Neil Gaiman Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”: One Master of Dramatic Storytelling Reads Another

in Literature, Poetry | December 16th, 2016

Which liv­ing writer stands as the heir to Edgar Allan Poe? A sil­ly ques­tion, admit­ted­ly: now, more than 160 years after his death, Poe’s influ­ence has spread so far and wide through­out lit­er­a­ture that no one writer’s work could pos­si­bly count as his defin­i­tive con­tin­u­a­tion. The most pop­u­lar and pow­er­ful mod­ern sto­ry­tellers owe more than a thing or two to Poe — or rather, have built upon Poe’s achieve­ments — with­out even know­ing it, espe­cial­ly if they hail from a dif­fer­ent part of the world and work a dif­fer­ent part of the cul­tur­al map than did 19th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca’s pio­neer of new and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly intense genre lit­er­a­ture.

Take, for instance, Neil Gaiman. “Every year, World­builders holds a giant auc­tion-char­i­ty-dona­tion thing, giv­ing peo­ple cool things and rais­ing an awful lot of mon­ey for a fan­tas­tic cause,” he says in the video above, which came out just this hol­i­day sea­son. “And every year, I seem to be read­ing a poem or book cho­sen by the peo­ple who pay mon­ey to World­builders.

This year, for rea­sons known only to them­selves, they have decid­ed I need to read Edgar Allan Poe’s ghast­ly, grue­some, dark, and famous poem ‘The Raven.’ So I’ve lit a num­ber of can­dles, fired up the fire, found a copy of the Oxford Book of Nar­ra­tive Verse, and I’m going to read it to you in a com­fort­able chair by the fire, as befits a poem told in the days of yore.”

Though many of his fans come to know him through his nov­els like Amer­i­can Gods and Star­dust, Gaiman’s writ­ing career has also includ­ed work in poet­ry, com­ic books, radio dra­ma, and movies, all of it using his sig­na­ture mix of fan­tas­ti­cal inven­tion, res­o­nant emo­tion, and pol­ished, wit­ty word­craft. When poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tors on projects in these fields and oth­ers want to work with him, they want to tap not just his uncom­mon sto­ry­telling skill, regard­less of the medi­um in which he tells his sto­ries, but his abil­i­ty to sat­is­fy both wide audi­ences and crit­ics with those sto­ries.

Poe, too, knew how to do this, and indeed described “The Raven” in a mag­a­zine essay as a work delib­er­ate­ly com­posed to “suit at once the pop­u­lar and the crit­i­cal taste,” and since its first pub­li­ca­tion in 1845, the poem has only grown bet­ter-known and more beloved. Here, in Neil Gaiman’s ten-minute read­ing, we can see and hear one mas­ter of high-impact sto­ry­telling acknowl­edg­ing anoth­er over all those 171 years.

Gaiman’s read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Christo­pher Walken’s Won­der­ful Read­ing of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (on the Anniver­sary of Poe’s Death)

The Great Stan Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

Lou Reed Rewrites Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” See Read­ings by Reed and Willem Dafoe

John Astin, From The Addams Fam­i­ly, Recites “The Raven” as Edgar Allan Poe

The Simp­sons Present Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and Teach­ers Now Use It to Teach Kids the Joys of Lit­er­a­ture

Hear the 14-Hour “Essen­tial Edgar Allan Poe” Playlist: “The Raven,” “The Tell-Tale Heart” & Much More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Characters Enter the Real World

in Animation, Film, Life | December 16th, 2016

Beau­ti­ful back­grounds are a sta­ple of direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki’s ani­mat­ed fea­tures. Whether depict­ing a whim­si­cal Euro­pean vil­lage, a mas­sive tra­di­tion­al bath­house com­plex pop­u­lat­ed by ghosts, or a rainy bus stop in sub­ur­ban Tokyo, they come to the fore in the qui­et moments for which this direc­tor is also deserved­ly cel­e­brat­ed.

Giv­en the rev­er­ence this old-fash­ioned artistry has inspired, it was par­tic­u­lar­ly auda­cious of Kore­an film­mak­er Kojer to sep­a­rate some of Miyazaki’s best known char­ac­ters from their hand-paint­ed habi­tats, via a painstak­ing Roto­scop­ing pro­ce­dure.

Their lib­er­a­tion was short lived, giv­en that Kojer’s inter­est lay in trans­pos­ing them onto live action approx­i­ma­tions of the Stu­dio Ghi­b­li orig­i­nals.

Shot pri­mar­i­ly in South Korea, the new set­tings, above, are uncan­ny dop­pel­gängers, fol­low­ing some vig­or­ous Pho­to­shop­ping. One won­ders if Kojer expe­ri­enced any regret, sev­er­al hun­dred hours into this masochis­tic assign­ment. So many challenges—from shad­ows to light­ing to cloudy skies in need of alter­ing, frame by painstak­ing frame. The obsta­cles posed by semi-trans­par­ent char­ac­ters such as Spir­it­ed Away’s No Face sound pos­i­tive­ly unearth­ly.

Clear­ly a labor of love from an artist whose most high pro­file work seems to be a web­series star­ring his own hand. His quest took him to Provence Vil­lage in Paju, South Korea and Seoul’s Olympic Park. He rode the #4 line sub­way to the end of the line and the #2 to Seok­chon Lake where the Amer­i­can art col­lec­tive FriendswithYou’s Super Moon project float­ed ear­li­er this year.

The result—some of it some shot out a car win­dow and cor­rect­ed in Adobe’s Warp Stabilizer—is set to the tune of “One Sum­mer’s Day” from Spir­it­ed Away.

Love­ly.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Bill Gates Lists His Favorite Books of 2016

in Books | December 16th, 2016

Bill Gates has appar­ent­ly been a big read­er all along, even dur­ing his Microsoft days. On his site, Gates Notes, he writes, “I’ve been read­ing about a book a week on aver­age since I was a kid. Even when my sched­ule is out of con­trol, I carve out a lot of time for read­ing.” And peri­od­i­cal­ly he pub­lish­es a list of his favorite reads.

He con­tin­ues: “If you’re look­ing for a book to enjoy over the hol­i­days, here are some of my favorites from this year. They cov­er an eclec­tic mix of topics—from ten­nis to ten­nis shoes, genomics to great lead­er­ship. They’re all very well writ­ten, and they all dropped me down a rab­bit hole of unex­pect­ed insights and plea­sures.”

The list includes String The­o­ry by David Fos­ter Wal­lace; The Gene: An Inti­mate His­to­ry by Sid­dhartha Mukher­jee; The Myth of the Strong Leader: Polit­i­cal Lead­er­ship in the Mod­ern Age by Archie Brown; The Grid by Gretchen Bakke, and Shoe Dog by Phil Knight.

Head to Gates Notes to find out what par­tic­u­lar­ly made each book near and dear to his heart.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

29 Lists of Rec­om­mend­ed Books Cre­at­ed by Well-Known Authors, Artists & Thinkers: Jorge Luis Borges, Pat­ti Smith, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, David Bowie & More

Take Big His­to­ry: A Free Short Course on 13.8 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry, Fund­ed by Bill Gates

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

The Late Alan Thicke Hosts a Twin Peaks Behind-the-Scenes Special (1990)

in Television | December 15th, 2016

When Alan Thicke died this week, he died a true man of tele­vi­sion. His more than forty-year career saw him not just star in the hit ABC sit­com Grow­ing Pains but host game, talk, and dance shows as well as com­pose the theme songs for Dif­f’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life. His final tweet praised the new sea­son of the Net­flix reboot of Full House (Grow­ing Pains’ near-con­tem­po­rary) on which he made a guest appear­ance. But he did­n’t live exclu­sive­ly in the main­stream: in Sep­tem­ber of 1990, he con­fessed — on nation­al tele­vi­sion, of course — his love of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s bound­ary-push­ing, real­i­ty bend­ing mys­tery series Twin Peaks.

“Every decade has its TV cult,” says Thicke, open­ing this ABC sea­son-pre­view spe­cial from the Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios lot. “Now, I was nev­er a Trekkie myself, but I do con­fess, I am a Peak­er.” A fair few view­ers across Amer­i­ca could, at that moment, say the same, since enthu­si­asm for the show peaked, as it were, around the end of its first sea­son and the begin­ning of its sec­ond, the pre­miere of which the net­work put togeth­er this seg­ment to hype (along­side the debut of Cop Rock, the non-iron­ic police-pro­ce­du­ral/­mu­si­cal). “There’s so much more to Twin Peaks than a riv­et­ing mur­der mys­tery,” Thicke con­tin­ues. “There’s a whole look and a feel and a tex­ture,” an expe­ri­ence “180 degrees away from any­thing else on tele­vi­sion.”

These fif­teen min­utes include brief con­ver­sa­tions with Twin Peaks’ cre­ators and col­lab­o­ra­tors. “It need­ed to be away from the reg­u­lar world and be a kind of a hair of a dream spot,” says Lynch, some­what cryp­ti­cal­ly, “and it need­ed a woods that had a wind of a mys­tery, you know, blow­ing through it.” Kyle MacLach­lan, who starred as FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er, offers fur­ther insight into the show’s appeal: “The peo­ple don’t… they don’t behave nor­mal­ly.” It also includes Sheryl Lee, who played the mur­dered home­com­ing queen Lau­ra Palmer, read­ing from the char­ac­ter’s “secret diary… her real diary.”

Using a map of the epony­mous small Wash­ing­ton town, Thicke attempts to catch those who missed all or part of Twin Peaks’ first sea­son up on its many plot threads, all direct­ly or indi­rect­ly relat­ed to the ques­tion of who killed Lau­ra Palmer. That cen­tral mys­tery would dri­ve the plot all the way up to the mid­dle of the sec­ond sea­son, and its res­o­lu­tion result­ed in declin­ing rat­ings and even­tu­al can­cel­la­tion. But as we learned with from the col­lec­tion of video essays we fea­tured yes­ter­day, the work of David Lynch is built on a foun­da­tion not of plot, but of pure images and sounds.

That so many more of us now under­stand that has placed us well to enjoy Twin Peaks’ long-await­ed third sea­son. Set to pre­miere next year on Show­time, it has, like Full House — two shows sel­dom com­pared to one anoth­er — trans­posed its core con­cepts from the realm of 20th-cen­tu­ry net­work tele­vi­sion into that of 21st-cen­tu­ry spe­cial­ty tele­vi­sion. “Revis­it­ing all this ter­ri­to­ry, there’s a fresh­ness to it, there’s a light­ness to it,” says MacLach­lan in the new behind-the-scenes teas­er above. Encour­ag­ing words, but one hopes above all that the project retains the ani­mat­ing cre­ative ten­sion expressed a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago, when Thicke asked how thought-out the show real­ly was: “Not too thought-out,” insist­ed Lynch. “Very thought-out,” insist­ed Frost.

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 20 Min­utes of Mark Frost’s New Secret His­to­ry of Twin Peaks, the Book Fans Have Wait­ed 25 Years to Read

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Exper­i­men­tal Band, Xiu Xiu: A Free Stream of Their New Album

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Dan­ish Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Twin Peaks Tarot Cards Now Avail­able as 78-Card Deck

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Techie Working at Home Creates Bigger Archive of Historical Newspapers (37 Million Pages) Than the Library of Congress

in Archives, History | December 12th, 2016

“Real news, fake news, who cares, it’s all the same, am I right?”

… Not to make light of an exis­ten­tial cri­sis in jour­nal­ism and the pub­lic trust—a dis­turb­ing devel­op­ment. Cyn­i­cism threat­ens to erode the very foun­da­tions of… well, ring your own alarm bell. Per­haps it’s time we (re)drew some hard lines around what we mean by the word “news.”

How to do that? I leave it to the experts—professors of jour­nal­ism, reporters and archivists and his­to­ri­ans who do the hard work of con­struct­ing genealo­gies and tax­onomies of news, dis­cov­er­ing its muta­tions and dead ends.

Jour­nal­ism libraries around the coun­try ful­fill the needs of these schol­ars, as does the Library of Con­gress. But if you real­ly want to dig into a com­pre­hen­sive collection—one that bests even the august Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment library (sort of)—you’ll need to vis­it the web­site of one Tom Trynis­ki, pri­vate cit­i­zen, retired “com­put­er expert,” writes Jim Epstein at Rea­son, and ded­i­cat­ed ama­teur, “work­ing alone.”

This being Rea­son, the pre­serve of “free minds and free mar­kets,” you can expect a good bit of crow­ing about the entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it of Tryniski’s accom­plish­ment—an archive of 37,439,000 his­toric news­pa­per pages from the U.S. and Cana­da, “orders of mag­ni­tude big­ger and more pop­u­lar than one cre­at­ed by a fed­er­al bureau­cra­cy with mil­lions of dol­lars to spend.” The video above says it suc­cinct­ly in a tagline: “Ama­teur beats gov’t at dig­i­tiz­ing news­pa­pers.”

Should you take an inter­est in what Tryniski—the sole employ­ee of Old Ful­ton New York Post­cards—spends, Epstein pro­vides a full account­ing of the site’s impres­sive­ly mea­ger oper­at­ing bud­get. Should you won­der where the LoC’s mon­ey goes, and why it uses so many more resources than one retiree, you may wish to do your own com­par­i­son between Tryniski’s site and the Feds’ online news archive, Chron­i­cling Amer­i­ca. (And maybe pay their place a vis­it in the flesh.) There’s more to a library than num­bers of pages and views.

In some ways, it’s not a fair com­par­i­son. Trynis­ki may be a com­put­er expert, but he’s not a web design­er (or he’s an ornery, old-school purist). His site (last updat­ed in 2014), with its frames and heavy use of Flash and GIFs, reflects the web’s anar­chic 90s hey­day. And where the LoC’s site chron­i­cles all of Amer­i­ca, Tryniski’s most­ly sticks to New York, with local papers like The Port Chester Jour­nal (above) rep­re­sent­ed heav­i­ly.

That said, the site’s search func­tions are much cool­er than those of glossier com­peti­tors, with options for “fuzzy search­ing,” “phon­ic search­ing” (for those of us who can’t spell), “and “user-defined syn­onyms.” Trynis­ki also knows his way around micro­film and a micro­film scan­ner, despite (we’re express­ly told for some rea­son in the video and Epstein’s arti­cle) his being “a high school grad­u­ate.”

In this tri­umph of the every­man sto­ry, how­ev­er, Trynis­ki does not intro­duce his own col­lec­tion with ful­mi­na­tions of the “old man shakes fist at” vari­ety. Instead he describes his col­lec­tion as a means of time trav­el. “It’s the day-to-day life,” he says, “that you could not imag­ine today. Read­ing the actu­al news­pa­per seems to bring it back into cur­rent con­text. Peo­ple… sit there and it’s like, they move back into that time, and it’s like they’re liv­ing in the same time as their grand­par­ents and great-grand­par­ents.”

Nobody needs to fix jour­nal­ism, libraries, or fed­er­al spend­ing to have this expe­ri­ence, and it’s one every­one should have—whether by trav­el­ing through the pages of old news­pa­pers or a fam­i­ly trove of pho­tos and let­ters. His­to­ry can seem like lit­tle more than a sto­ry we tell our­selves about the past, but the pri­ma­ry doc­u­ments have tales to tell that we could nev­er imag­ine.

Learn more about Tryniski’s col­lec­tion at Rea­son, and vis­it the quirky, decep­tive­ly ful­some Old Ful­ton NY Post Cards (named as such because the site began as a scanned col­lec­tion of post­cards from Tryniski’s home­town of Ful­ton, NY). You’ll find in its charm­ing­ly clunky envi­rons a fas­ci­nat­ing repos­i­to­ry of vin­tage news and pho­tos. And remem­ber, “If you did not read about it on Old Ful­ton NY Post Cards, IT DID NOT HAPPEN!!!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

From the Annals of Opti­mism: The News­pa­per Indus­try in 1981 Imag­ines its Dig­i­tal Future

“Titan­ic Sink­ing; No Lives Lost” and Oth­er Ter­ri­bly Innacu­rate News Reports from April 15, 1912

Archive of Hemingway’s News­pa­per Report­ing Reveals Nov­el­ist in the Mak­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Patti Smith Sings Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rains Gonna Fall” at Nobel Prize Ceremony & Gets a Case of the Nerves

in Music | December 10th, 2016

Bob Dylan did­n’t make the trip to Stock­holm to accept his Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture. Instead, Pat­ti Smith went on his behalf and per­formed a cov­er of his 1963 clas­sic, “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall.” And mid­way through a beau­ti­ful per­for­mance, she sim­ply for­got the words, paused, and said, “I apol­o­gize. I’m sor­ry, I’m so ner­vous,” and asked to start the sec­tion of the song again. Which she did.

The lyrics for “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” are dif­fi­cult, by no means easy to remem­ber. Add a case of nerves (which can beset even the most expe­ri­enced musi­cian) and you have the mak­ings for a very human moment. Watch the video the whole way through. It’s touch­ing on many lev­els.

You can read the text of Bob Dylan’s accep­tance speech, pre­sent­ed by the US Ambas­sador to Swe­den, here. And if you’re won­der­ing why Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in the first place, you can pick up his hand­some, new book, The Lyrics: 1961–2012.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: Camus, Shake­speare, Woolf, Wilde & More

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Pat­ti Smith Reads Her Final Words to Robert Map­plethor­pe

A Complete Reading of George Orwell’s 1984: Aired on Pacifica Radio, 1975

in Audio Books, Literature, Radio | December 8th, 2016

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were strik­ing thir­teen.” Thus, with one of the best-known open­ing sen­tences in all Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, begins George Orwell’s 1984, the nov­el that even 67 years after its pub­li­ca­tion remains per­haps the most oft-ref­er­enced vision of total­i­tar­i­an­is­m’s takeover of the mod­ern West­ern world. Its fable-like pow­er has, in fact, only inten­si­fied over the decades, which have seen it adapt­ed into var­i­ous forms for film, tele­vi­sion, the stage (David Bowie even dreamed of putting on a 1984 musi­cal), and, most often, the radio.

In recent years we’ve fea­tured radio pro­duc­tions of 1984 from 1949, 1953, and 1965. On their pro­gram From the Vault, the Paci­fi­ca Radio net­work has just fin­ished bring­ing out of the archives their own 1975 broad­cast of the nov­el as read by morn­ing-show host Charles Mor­gan.

Nei­ther an all-out radio dra­ma nor a straight-ahead audio­book-style read­ing, Paci­fi­ca’s 1984 uses sound effects and voice act­ing (some con­tributed by June For­ay, of Rocky and Bull­win­kle fame) to tell the sto­ry of Win­ston Smith and his inner and out­er strug­gle with the repres­sive, all-see­ing, lan­guage-dis­tort­ing gov­ern­ment of the super­state of Ocea­nia (and the city of Airstrip One, for­mer­ly known as Eng­land) that sur­rounds him.

It makes sense that Paci­fi­ca would put the whole of Orwell’s dire nov­el­is­tic warn­ing on the air­waves. Found­ed just after World War II by a group of for­mer con­sci­en­tious objec­tors, its first sta­tion, KPFA in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, began broad­cast­ing in the year of 1984’s pub­li­ca­tion. As it grew over sub­se­quent decades, the lis­ten­er-fund­ed Paci­fi­ca radio net­work gained a rep­u­ta­tion for both its polit­i­cal engage­ment and its uncon­ven­tion­al uses of the medi­um. (The Fire­sign The­ater, the troupe that arguably per­fect­ed the art of the dense, mul­ti-lay­ered stu­dio com­e­dy album, got their start at Paci­fi­ca’s Los Ange­les sta­tion KPFK.) Every era, it seems, pro­duces its own 1984, and this one sounds as res­o­nant in the 21st cen­tu­ry — a time even Orwell dared not imag­ine — as it must have in the 1970s.

You can hear Part 1 of Paci­fi­ca’s 1984 at the top of the post, then fol­low these links to all ten parts on their Sound­cloud page: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

Hear George Orwell’s 1984 Adapt­ed as a Radio Play at the Height of McCarthy­ism & The Red Scare (1953)

Hear a Radio Dra­ma of George Orwell’s 1984, Star­ring Patrick Troughton, of Doc­tor Who Fame (1965)

George Orwell’s 1984 Staged as an Opera: Watch Scenes from the 2005 Pro­duc­tion in Lon­don

David Bowie Dreamed of Turn­ing George Orwell’s 1984 Into a Musi­cal: Hear the Songs That Sur­vived the Aban­doned Project

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Tim Robbins’ Improv Classes Transform Prisoners’ Lives & Lower Recidivism Rates

in Comedy, Life, Politics, Psychology, Theatre | December 5th, 2016

If a 20‑something, Yale-edu­cat­ed New York­er reporter feels ner­vous step­ping in to her first ever improv class, imag­ine the stakes for your aver­age inmate, whose sur­vival depends on a suc­cess­ful­ly mono­lith­ic pro­jec­tion of tough­ness and con­trol.

Con­trol is actu­al­ly some­thing the Actors’ Gang Prison Project seeks to cul­ti­vate in its incar­cer­at­ed par­tic­i­pants. The Actors’ Gang’s Artis­tic Direc­tor, Tim Rob­bins, who found­ed the rad­i­cal­ly exper­i­men­tal ensem­ble fresh out of col­lege, notes a well-doc­u­ment­ed con­nec­tion between an inabil­i­ty to con­trol one’s emo­tions and crim­i­nal activ­i­ty.

Unchecked rage may have put these play­ers behind bars, but explor­ing a wide vari­ety of emo­tions behind the safe­ty of the Actors’ Gang’s mask-like white pan­cake make-up has proven lib­er­at­ing.

The dull prison rou­tine leaves pris­on­ers favor­ably inclined toward any divert­ing activ­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that allow for cre­ative expres­sion. Shake­speare has made an impact on this pop­u­la­tion. Why not com­me­dia dell’arte-influenced improv?

It’s a tru­ly ther­a­peu­tic fit, as Actors Gang ensem­ble mem­ber Sabra Williams, the founder of the Prison Project, explains in her TED Talk, below.

Par­tic­i­pants are sub­ject­ed and held to the rig­or­ous phys­i­cal­i­ty and emo­tion­al hon­esty at the core of this group’s aes­thet­ic. Per­son­al con­nec­tion to the vis­i­tors is lim­it­ed to what­ev­er may tran­spire in-the-moment, but with­in the prison pop­u­la­tion, rela­tion­ships blos­som. Both guards and pris­on­ers speak of new­found empa­thy.

The emo­tion­al insights aris­ing from these spon­ta­neous explo­rations teach par­tic­i­pants how to dif­fuse aggres­sive sit­u­a­tions, present a more pos­i­tive face to the world, and inter­act gen­er­ous­ly with oth­ers. In between class­es, par­tic­i­pants write in jour­nals, with a goal of shar­ing aloud.

Gang signs, mimed weapons, and bod­i­ly con­tact are out of bounds. Wild inven­tion often car­ries the day.

Par­tic­i­pants have zero recidi­vism, and a wait­ing list in the hun­dreds attests to the program’s pop­u­lar­i­ty.

You can learn more about the Actors’ Gang ten-year-old Prison Project here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Great­est Per­for­mances (1972)

Inmates in New York Prison Defeat Harvard’s Debate Team: A Look Inside the Bard Prison Ini­tia­tive

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

All of Wes Anderson’s Cinematic Commercials: Watch His Spots for Prada, American Express, H&M & More

in Film | November 30th, 2016

They say a film­mak­er qual­i­fies as an auteur if you can iden­ti­fy their work from any giv­en shot. That might strike even cinephiles as a dif­fi­cult task unless the film­mak­er in ques­tion is Wes Ander­son, who for twen­ty years’ worth of fea­ture films now has defined and refined a cin­e­mat­ic style increas­ing­ly unique to him and his host of reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tors. What qual­i­ties con­sti­tute the unmis­tak­ably Ander­son­ian? Vibrant col­ors, espe­cial­ly red and yel­low. Old build­ings. Uni­forms. The sounds of the British Inva­sion. Per­fect sym­me­try. The tech­nol­o­gy of the mid-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry as well as vin­tage Amer­i­can and Euro­pean design of that era. An eye for the imag­ined past as well as the past’s imag­ined future (and its use of Futu­ra). And of course, Bill Mur­ray.

Ander­son has used dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of these and oth­er aes­thet­ic choic­es not just in all his full-length films from Bot­tle Rock­et to The Grand Budapest Hotel, but also in his com­mer­cials. Giv­en the uncom­pro­mis­ing look and feel of his “real” fil­mog­ra­phy as well as its over­all suc­cess at the box office, one might not at first imag­ine Ander­son as the kind of auteur with the need, desire, or even abil­i­ty to make adver­tise­ments.

But make them he does, an aspect of his career that actu­al­ly began with a self-par­o­dy­ing 2004 Amer­i­can Express com­mer­cial star­ring the direc­tor him­self, hard at work on his lat­est, albeit fic­tion­al, qui­et spec­ta­cle of metic­u­lous­ness and anachro­nism (which also has explo­sions).

Ever the throw­back, Ander­son next shot a com­mer­cial for Japan, that land where, in the days before Youtube, so many Amer­i­can celebri­ties used to go to cash in on their image unbe­knownst to their West­ern pub­lic. Specif­i­cal­ly, he shot it for the Japan­ese telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions giant Soft­bank, cast­ing Brad Pitt as a Jacques Tati-style vaca­tion­er, good-natured if bum­bling and pos­sessed of an eye for the ladies, in the French coun­try­side. Two years lat­er, he and fre­quent writ­ing part­ner Roman Cop­po­la returned to his beloved ear­ly 1960s for Apartomat­ic, a spot for Stel­la Artois (a brand that has also employed the likes of Wim Wen­ders) that brings to life every young man’s fan­ta­sy of the ulti­mate auto­mat­ed bach­e­lor pad.

In 2012, Mod­ern Life and Talk To My Car, a pair of thir­ty-sec­ond com­mer­cials for a new Hyundai sedan, brought Ander­son back into the present. Nat­u­ral­ly, he deliv­ered a present deeply root­ed in the dreams of decades past, which, when the idea is to sell a prod­uct as sat­u­rat­ed with the mythol­o­gy of the post­war years as an auto­mo­bile, does the job ide­al­ly. “After months of cre­ative devel­op­ment on the new Hyundai Azera we were almost out of time to pro­duce the launch spots,” writes cre­ative direc­tor Robert Prins. “At the last minute some­one sug­gest­ed ask­ing Wes Ander­son to direct. We all laughed. Then he said yes.” Imag­ine the result­ing jeal­ousy in the con­fer­ence rooms of ad agen­cies all over the world, where the talk con­stant­ly ref­er­ences Ander­son­’s work with­out ever touch­ing the gen­uine arti­cle.

The fol­low­ing year, we fea­tured Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Ander­son­’s eight-minute short film star­ring Jason Schwartz­man (who became an Ander­son reg­u­lar, and a star in his own right, in Rush­more fif­teen years ear­li­er) as a race car dri­ver who crash­es into a strange­ly famil­iar vil­lage some­where in 1955 Italy. He shot it at Rome’s leg­endary Cinecit­tà stu­dio at the behest of a cer­tain Ital­ian brand called Pra­da (per­haps you’ve heard of them) and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cop­po­la also put togeth­er Pra­da: Can­dy, a series of three some­what more straight­for­ward com­mer­cials embed­ded as a playlist just above. Set in France this time, they tell the Jules and Jim-esque sto­ry of twin broth­ers vying for the atten­tion of the same girl, a blonde bon viveuse who hap­pens to have the same name — and if you believe the mar­ket­ing, the same per­son­al­i­ty — as Prada’s fra­grance.

Just yes­ter­day we fea­tured Come Togeth­er, Ander­son­’s lat­est com­mer­cial direc­to­r­i­al effort with Adrien Brody play­ing the ded­i­cat­ed con­duc­tor of a bad­ly delayed pas­sen­ger train on Christ­mas Eve. Though it osten­si­bly comes as noth­ing more than a pro­mo­tion for fast-fash­ion retail­er H&M, thou­sands of fans have already thrilled to this new glimpse into Ander­son­’s world — a make-believe one, but “we are all make-believe, too, every one of us,” as GQ’s Chris Heath puts it, “each self-assem­bled from a hotch­potch of dreams and expe­ri­ences and wish­es and ambi­tions and set­backs (and, yes, what we buy and what we say and what we wear and the way we choose to wear it, and all the rest of it).” Ander­son him­self might well agree. But when, we all won­der, will a brand come his way wor­thy of a com­mer­cial star­ring Bill Mur­ray?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Has Wes Ander­son Sold Out? Can He Sell Out? Crit­ics Take Up the Debate

A Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Wes Ander­son Video Essays

A Playlist of 172 Songs from Wes Ander­son Sound­tracks: From Bot­tle Rock­et to The Grand Budapest Hotel

Watch the Coen Broth­ers’ TV Com­mer­cials: Swiss Cig­a­rettes, Gap Jeans, Tax­es & Clean Coal

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Richard Feynman’s Poignant Letter to His Departed Wife Arline: Watch Actor Oscar Isaac Read It Live Onstage

in Letters, Life | November 30th, 2016

Media vita in morte sumus, goes the medieval line of poet­ry that lent the Eng­lish Book of Com­mon Prayer its most mem­o­rable expres­sion: “In the midst of life we are in death.” The remain­der of the poem extrap­o­lates a the­ol­o­gy from this obser­va­tion, some­thing one can only take on faith. But what­ev­er way we dress up the mys­tery of death, it remains ever-present and inevitable. Yet we might think of the mot­to as a palin­drome: In the midst of death, we are in life. The dead remain with us, for as long as we live and remem­ber them. This is also a mys­tery.

Even the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cists must con­front the pres­ence of the depart­ed, and few scientists—few writers—have done so with as much poignan­cy, direct­ness, elo­quence, and humor as Richard Feyn­man, in a let­ter to his wife Arline writ­ten over a year after she died of tuber­cu­lo­sis at age 25. Feyn­man, him­self only 28 years old at the time, sealed the let­ter, writ­ten in 1946, until his own death in 1988. “Please excuse my not mail­ing this,” he wrote with bit­ter humor in the post­script, “but I don’t know your new address.” Even in the midst of his pro­found grief, Feynman’s wit sparkles. It is not a per­for­mance for us, his posthu­mous read­ers. It is sim­ply the way he had always written—in let­ter after let­ter—to Arline.

In the video above, Oscar Isaac, who has embod­ied many a wise­crack­ing roman­tic, gives voice to the long­ing and pain of Feynman’s let­ter, in which the physi­cist con­fess­es, “I thought there was no sense to writ­ing.” Some­how, he could not help but do so, end­ing with stark­ly ambiva­lent truths he was unable to rec­on­cile with what he col­lo­qui­al­ly calls his “real­is­tic” nature: “You only are left to me. You are real.… I love my wife. My wife is dead.” Read the full let­ter below, via Let­ters of Note. For more from their Let­ters Live series, see Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch read Kurt Vonnegut’s let­ter to the school that banned his nov­el Slaugh­ter­house Five.

Octo­ber 17, 1946

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweet­heart.

I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.

It is such a ter­ri­bly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you under­stand how I am, stub­born and real­is­tic; and I thought there was no sense to writ­ing.

But now I know my dar­ling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.

I find it hard to under­stand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to com­fort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have prob­lems to dis­cuss with you — I want to do lit­tle projects with you. I nev­er thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We start­ed to learn to make clothes togeth­er — or learn Chi­nese — or get­ting a movie pro­jec­tor. Can’t I do some­thing now? No. I am alone with­out you and you were the “idea-woman” and gen­er­al insti­ga­tor of all our wild adven­tures.

When you were sick you wor­ried because you could not give me some­thing that you want­ed to and thought I need­ed. You needn’t have wor­ried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clear­ly even more true — you can give me noth­ing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of lov­ing any­one else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much bet­ter than any­one else alive.

I know you will assure me that I am fool­ish and that you want me to have full hap­pi­ness and don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are sur­prised that I don’t even have a girl­friend (except you, sweet­heart) after two years. But you can’t help it, dar­ling, nor can I — I don’t under­stand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meet­ings they all seem ash­es.

You only are left to me. You are real.

My dar­ling wife, I do adore you.

I love my wife. My wife is dead.

Rich.

PS Please excuse my not mail­ing this — but I don’t know your new address

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

Richard Feyn­man Cre­ates a Sim­ple Method for Telling Sci­ence From Pseu­do­science (1966)