James Franco Reads 6 Short Poems from His New Collection

in Creativity, Film, Poetry | May 5th, 2014

James Fran­co, like Ethan Hawke before him, is one of those movie stars who gets bashed left and right for dar­ing to behave like any oth­er arty young man. How dare he think he can write a nov­el, or paint, or make short films? What a pre­ten­tious idiot, right?!

I would counter that these activ­i­ties out him as a pas­sion­ate read­er who cares deeply about art and movies.

His celebri­ty opens doors that are barred to your aver­age arty young men, but it also ensures that he’ll be scape­goat­ed with­out mer­cy. (An arty young man of my acquain­tance earned some nice pub­lic­i­ty for him­self per­form­ing a one-man show titled “Bring Me the Head of James Fran­co, That I May Pre­pare a Savory Goulash in the Nar­row and Mis­shapen Pot of His Skull.” )

I rarely feel sor­ry for celebs who tweet their wound­ed feel­ings, but I was rather moved by Franco’s poet­ic take on what it’s like to be on the receiv­ing end of all this vit­ri­ol. It’s the first of six poems he reads in the video above, when he shared the stage with his 74-year-old men­tor Frank Bidart, who no doubt enjoyed per­form­ing to a sold out crowd of 800. Franco’s debut poet­ry collection’s title, Direct­ing Her­bert White owes some­thing to Bidart. His poem, “Her­bert White,” is the inspi­ra­tion for a short film direct­ed by Fran­co.

Those who would con­sid­er all that just more evi­dence of Franco’s insup­port­able pre­ten­tious­ness should con­sid­er the oppos­ing view­point, cour­tesy of non-movie star poet Bidart, who told the Chica­go Tri­bune:

 “I’m almost 75. At some point you know the para­me­ters of your life. The ter­ri­fy­ing thing about get­ting old­er is the feel­ing that every­thing that hap­pens from now on will be a species of some­thing that has already hap­pened. Becom­ing friends with James changed that: I no longer feel I can antic­i­pate the future. Which is lib­er­at­ing.”

Per­haps all that fran­tic, cross-media cre­ative expres­sion can result in some­thing more than a snarky one-man show.

Because

Because I played a knight,
And I was on a screen,
Because I made a mil­lion dol­lars,
Because I was hand­some,
Because I had a nice car,
A bunch of girls seemed to like me.

But I nev­er met those girls,
I only heard about them.
The only peo­ple I saw were the ones who hat­ed me,
And there were so many of those peo­ple.
It was easy to for­get about the peo­ple who I heard
Like me, and shit, they were all fuck­ing four­teen-year-olds.

And I holed up in my place and read my life away,
I watched a mil­lion movies, twice,
And I didn’t under­stand them any bet­ter.

But because I played a knight,
Because I was hand­some,

This was the life I made for myself.

Years lat­er, I decid­ed to look at what I had made,
And I watched myself in all the old movies, and I hat­ed that guy I saw.

But he’s the one who stayed after I died.

You can see James Fran­co and Frank Bidart’s Chica­go Human­i­ties Fes­ti­val appear­ance in its entire­ty here. Find more poet­ry read­ings in the poet­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Fran­co Reads a Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Poem ‘Howl’

James Fran­co Reads Short Sto­ry in Bed for The Paris Review

Lis­ten to James Fran­co Read from Jack Kerouac’s Influ­en­tial Beat Nov­el, On the Road

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a  Freaks and Geek diehard who gets all her Lohan-relat­ed intel from the poet­ry of James Fran­co and  d‑listed. Fol­low her@AyunHalliday

Neil deGrasse Tyson Moonwalking

in Dance, Physics | May 4th, 2014

A cou­ple weeks ago, we showed you the Pre-His­to­ry of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk, high­light­ing a med­ley of the fan­cy foot moves of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire and some less­er-known fig­ures like Rub­ber­neck Holmes and Earl “Snake­hips” Tuck­er. Some­one could just as eas­i­ly make anoth­er mon­tage, a Post-His­to­ry of Michael Jack­son’s Moon­walk, and it would sure­ly have to include the clip above. It fea­tures our favorite astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson strut­ting his stuff at StarTalk Live last year. In the back­ground, you can see anoth­er great moon­walk­er, Buzz Aldrin, on the stage.

Episode #9 of Tyson’s Cos­mos reboot airs on Fox tonight. US view­ers can watch episodes 1–8 on Hulu here. The orig­i­nal Cos­mos with Carl Sagan appears here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) eBooks Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Watch Episode #1 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cos­mos Reboot on Hulu (US View­ers)

Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Stag­ger­ing Genius of Isaac New­ton

Neil deGrasse Tyson Talks Aster­oid Physics & “Non New­ton­ian Solids” with Inspir­ing 9‑Year-Old Stu­dent

Werner Herzog Picks His 5 Top Films

in Film | May 2nd, 2014

If one can char­ac­ter­ize Stan­ley Kubrick by his com­plete con­trol over the medi­um and his dogged insis­tence on stay­ing with­in 30 miles of his house when shoot­ing a movie, even if it means dress­ing up a Lon­don fac­to­ry to look like Hue, Viet­nam as he did for Full Met­al Jack­et, then Wern­er Her­zog can be char­ac­ter­ized as his oppo­site.

Herzog’s movies are strange, messy and ecsta­t­ic, a far cry from the chilly aloof­ness of Kubrick. In both his fea­ture films and his doc­u­men­taries, Her­zog uses his cam­era to uncov­er new lay­ers of nature, expe­ri­ence and the human psy­che. And there have been few film­mak­ers more will­ing to shoot films in rugged, exot­ic places as Her­zog — from Antarc­ti­ca to the Ama­zon­ian rain­for­est. In fact, a num­ber of his most noto­ri­ous shoots seem more designed to test the endurance of the cast and crew than to pro­duce a movie.

His film Fitz­car­ral­do, for exam­ple, is about a guy who has the vision­ary idea to haul a river­boat over a moun­tain in the Ama­zon rain­for­est. Her­zog decid­ed, for the pur­pos­es of real­ism, that he would actu­al­ly drag a river­boat over a moun­tain. The pro­duc­tion, which is in the run­ning for the most mis­er­able film shoot ever, is the sub­ject of the absolute­ly riv­et­ing doc­u­men­tary The Bur­den of Dreams. At point one in the doc, Her­zog quips, “I should­n’t make movies any­more. I should go to a lunatic asy­lum.” And by the end of the movie, you think that he’s prob­a­bly right.

Of course, that crazed bravu­ra has always been at the cen­ter of Herzog’s mys­tique. After all, this is the guy who actu­al­ly ate a shoe after los­ing a bet with doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris (find 30 of his films online).

In 2009, when Her­zog released Bad Lieu­tenant: Port of Call New Orleans, he was asked by the folks over at Rot­ten Toma­toes to list his top 5 movies. This is a direc­tor who once said, “I believe the com­mon denom­i­na­tor of the Uni­verse is not har­mo­ny, but chaos, hos­til­i­ty and mur­der.” So it’s a pret­ty safe bet that The Lion King didn’t make the cut.

The list starts with Nos­fer­atu from 1922 (up top). Her­zog liked this movie so much that he shot his own ver­sion in 1979.

In my opin­ion, the great­est of great films is Nos­fer­atu by [F.W.] Mur­nau, which I should include in the great­est five films of all time.

Intol­er­ance (1916)

D.W. Grif­fith’s epic was his response to the pub­lic out­cry fol­low­ing his epi­cal­ly racist Birth of a Nation. The movie also hap­pened to rev­o­lu­tion­ize film­mak­ing.

Every­thing that [D.W.] Grif­fith made: Bro­ken Blos­soms, Intol­er­ance, Birth of a Nation, you just name it. Every­thing. He’s the Shake­speare of cin­e­ma. Peri­od. Watch his films and you’ll know instant­ly.

Next is Freaks, Tod Brown­ing’s 1932 cult mas­ter­piece that fea­tured actu­al cir­cus per­form­ers and dwarves. No doubt the movie was an influ­ence on Her­zog’s 1970 film Even Dwarves Start­ed Out Small. “It’s just for­mi­da­ble, it’s phe­nom­e­nal,” says Her­zog. “You’ve got­ta see it. It would take me an hour to explain.”

The last two films on Her­zog’s list? Where Is The Friend’s Home? (1987), Abbas Kiarostami’s qui­et tale of a kid who is just look­ing to return a note­book to his friend. And Rashomon (1950), Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s first true mas­ter­piece, the film that intro­duced Japan­ese film to the west­ern world after it won a Gold­en Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Fes­ti­val. The movie also clear­ly impressed Her­zog:

It is prob­a­bly the only film that I’ve ever seen which has some­thing like a per­fect bal­ance, which does not occur in film­mak­ing very often. You sense it some­times in great music, but I haven’t expe­ri­enced it in cin­e­ma, and it’s mind bog­gling. I don’t know how [Aki­ra] Kuro­sawa did it. It’s still a mys­tery to me. That’s great­ness.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Errol Mor­ris and Wern­er Her­zog in Con­ver­sa­tion

Wern­er Her­zog Has a Beef With Chick­ens

Wern­er Herzog’s Eye-Open­ing New Film Reveals the Dan­gers of Tex­ting While Dri­ving

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Pablo Picasso Poses as Popeye (1957)

in Art, Photography | May 1st, 2014

Suf­fer­ing from tuber­cu­lo­sis, André Villers spent eight long years at a sana­to­ri­um in the French Riv­iera town of Val­lau­ris, start­ing in 1947. There, while recov­er­ing, he learned pho­tog­ra­phy, refined his craft, and lat­er shot por­traits of Europe’s great artists — Fer­nand Léger, Alexan­der Calder, Sal­vador Dalí, Joan Miró, Marc Cha­gall, Max Ernst, Jean Cocteau, Luis Buñuel, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, to name a few. Villers met Picas­so in 1953 and stayed at his side for close to a decade, writes The Age, “qui­et­ly observ­ing and shoot­ing the man at work and at play.” In the image above, we find Picas­so most cer­tain­ly at play. Appar­ent­ly Pablo threw on some ran­dom clothes one day, and said “Look at me, I am Pop­eye!” That scene is record­ed for pos­ter­i­ty with the great image above. Click to view it in a larg­er for­mat.

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:

The Post­cards That Picas­so Illus­trat­ed and Sent to Jean Cocteau, Apol­li­naire & Gertrude Stein

Watch Picas­so Cre­ate Entire Paint­ings in Mag­nif­i­cent Time-Lapse Film (1956)

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

Watch Hand-Drawn Animations of 7 Stories & Essays by C.S. Lewis

in Animation, Literature, Philosophy, Religion | April 30th, 2014

I can vivid­ly recall the first time I read C.S. Lewis’s The Screw­tape Let­ters. I was four­teen, and I was pre­pared to be ter­ri­fied by the book, know­ing of its demon­ic sub­ject mat­ter and believ­ing at the time in invis­i­ble malev­o­lence. The nov­el is writ­ten as a series of let­ters between Screw­tape and his nephew Worm­wood, two dev­ils tasked with cor­rupt­ing their human charges, or “patients,” through all sorts of sub­tle and insid­i­ous tricks. The book has a rep­u­ta­tion as a lit­er­ary aid to Chris­t­ian living—like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress—but it’s so much more than that. Instead of fire and brim­stone, I found rib­ald wit, sharp satire, a cut­ting psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­sec­tion of the mod­ern West­ern mind, with its eva­sions, pre­ten­sions, and cagey delu­sions. Stripped of its the­ol­o­gy, it might have been writ­ten by Orwell or Sartre, though Lewis clear­ly owes a debt to Kierkegaard, as well as the long tra­di­tion of medieval moral­i­ty plays, with their cavort­ing dev­ils and didac­tic human types. Yes, the book is bald­ly moral­is­tic, but it’s also a bril­liant exam­i­na­tion of all the twist­ed ways we fool our­selves and dis­sem­ble,  or if you like, get led astray by evil forces.

If you haven’t read the book, you can see a con­cise ani­ma­tion of a crit­i­cal scene above, one of sev­en made by “C.S. Lewis Doo­dle” that illus­trate the key points of some of Lewis’s books and essays. Lewis believed in evil forces, but his method of pre­sent­ing them is pri­mar­i­ly lit­er­ary, and there­fore ambigu­ous and open to many dif­fer­ent read­ings (some­what like the dev­il Woland in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta). The author imag­ined hell as “some­thing like the bureau­cra­cy of a police state or a thor­ough­ly nasty busi­ness office,” a descrip­tion as chill­ing as it is inher­ent­ly com­ic. As you can see above in the ani­mat­ed scene from Screw­tape by C.S. Lewis Doo­dle, the devils—though drawn in this case as old-fash­ioned winged fiends—behave like pet­ty func­tionar­ies as they lead Wormwood’s solid­ly mid­dle-class “patient” into the sin­is­ter clutch­es of mate­ri­al­ist doc­trine by appeal­ing to his intel­lec­tu­al van­i­ty. As much as it’s a con­dem­na­tion of said doc­trine, the scene also works as a cri­tique of a pop­u­lar dis­course that thrives on fash­ion­able jar­gon and the desire to be seen as rel­e­vant and well-read, no mat­ter the truth or coher­ence of one’s beliefs.

Screw­tape was by no means my first intro­duc­tion to Lewis’s works. Like many, many peo­ple, I cut my lit­er­ary teeth on The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia (avail­able on audio here) and his bril­liant sci-fi Space Tril­o­gy. But it was the first book of his I’d read that was clear­ly apolo­getic in its intent, rather than alle­gor­i­cal. I’m sure I’m not unique among Lewis’s read­ers in grad­u­at­ing from Screw­tape to his more philo­soph­i­cal books and many essays. One such piece, “We Have No (Unlim­it­ed) Right to Hap­pi­ness,” takes on the mod­ern con­cep­tion of rights as nat­ur­al guar­an­tees, rather than soci­etal con­ven­tions. As he cri­tiques this rel­a­tive­ly recent notion, Lewis devel­ops a the­o­ry of sex­u­al moral­i­ty in which “when two peo­ple achieve last­ing hap­pi­ness, this is not sole­ly because they are great lovers but because they are also—I must put it crudely—good peo­ple; con­trolled, loy­al, fair-mind­ed, mutu­al­ly adapt­able peo­ple.” The C.S. Lewis Doo­dle above illus­trates the many exam­ples of fick­le­ness and incon­stan­cy that Lewis presents in his essay as foils for the virtues he espous­es.

The Lewis Doo­dle seen here illus­trates his 1948 essay “On Liv­ing in an Atom­ic Age,” in which Lewis chides read­ers for the pan­ic and para­noia over the impend­ing threat of nuclear war in the wake of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. Such an occur­rence, he writes, would only result in the already inevitable—death—just as the plagues of the six­teenth cen­tu­ry or Viking raids:

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be tak­en is to pull our­selves togeth­er. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atom­ic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sen­si­ble and human things — pray­ing, work­ing, teach­ing, read­ing, lis­ten­ing to music, bathing the chil­dren, play­ing ten­nis, chat­ting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not hud­dled togeth­er like fright­ened sheep and think­ing about bombs. They may break our bod­ies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dom­i­nate our minds.

It seems a very mature, and noble, per­spec­tive, but if you think that Lewis glibly gloss­es over the sub­stan­tive­ly dif­fer­ent effects of a nuclear age from any other—fallout, radi­a­tion poi­son­ing, the end of civ­i­liza­tion itself—you are mis­tak­en. His answer, how­ev­er, you may find as I do deeply fatal­is­tic. Lewis ques­tions the val­ue of civ­i­liza­tion alto­geth­er as a hope­less endeav­or bound to end in any case in “noth­ing.” “Nature is a sink­ing ship,” he writes, and dooms us all to anni­hi­la­tion whether we has­ten the end with tech­nol­o­gy or man­age to avoid that fate. Here is Lewis the apol­o­gist, pre­sent­ing us with the stark­est of options—either all of our endeav­ors are utter­ly mean­ing­less and with­out pur­pose or val­ue, since we can­not make them last for­ev­er, or all mean­ing and val­ue reside in the the­is­tic vision of exis­tence. I’ve not myself seen things Lewis’s way on this point, but the C.S. Lewis Doo­dler does, and urges his view­ers who agree to “send to your enquir­ing athe­is­tic mates” his love­ly lit­tle adap­ta­tions. Or you can sim­ply enjoy these as many non-reli­gious read­ers of Lewis enjoy his work—take what seems beau­ti­ful, humane, true, and skill­ful­ly, lucid­ly writ­ten (or drawn), and leave the rest for your enquir­ing Chris­t­ian mates.

You can watch all sev­en ani­ma­tions of C.S. Lewis’s writ­ings here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

C.S. Lewis’ Pre­scient 1937 Review of The Hob­bit by J.R.R. Tolkien: It “May Well Prove a Clas­sic”

Free Audio: Down­load the Com­plete Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis

18 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way and Gaiman

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

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

Carl Sagan Writes a Letter to 17-Year-Old Neil deGrasse Tyson (1975)

in Science, Television | April 29th, 2014

Carl Sagan, the turtle­neck-sport­ing astro­physi­cist from Cor­nell, was the great­est com­mu­ni­ca­tor of sci­ence of his gen­er­a­tion. Not only did he pub­lish hun­dreds of sci­en­tif­ic papers and was instru­men­tal in putting togeth­er that gold­en record on the Voy­ager space­crafts but he also wrote twen­ty crit­i­cal­ly praised best sell­ers on sci­ence, appeared reg­u­lar­ly on the Tonight Show, and even had a catch phrase — “bil­lions and bil­lions.” But Sagan is per­haps best known for his land­mark 1980 series Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age (watch it here). He took view­ers through a tour of the uni­verse, show­ing them things from the mind-bog­gling big to the infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small and every­thing in between. The show proved to be a huge hit; close to a half-bil­lion peo­ple tuned in world­wide.

Even before the reboot of Cos­mos pre­miered on FOX in March, Neil deGrasse Tyson — who hosts the show — was already seen as Sagan’s suc­ces­sor. Not only does he serve as the direc­tor of the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um in New York City and was instru­men­tal in kick­ing Plu­to out of the broth­er­hood of plan­ets, but he also authored numer­ous books, appears reg­u­lar­ly on The Dai­ly Show, and fre­quent­ly hosts AMAs on Red­dit. He’s also one of Amer­i­ca’s most vocal defend­ers of sci­ence at a time, unlike Sagan’s hey­day, when Cre­ation­ism, cli­mate change denial, and anti-vac­ci­na­tion hys­te­ria seem to be mak­ing inroads in our cul­ture.

Any­one who saw Tyson’s heart felt trib­ute to Sagan at the begin­ning of the first episode of Cos­mos knows that Sagan’s influ­ence on his younger coun­ter­part extend­ed much fur­ther than his media appear­ances. It was per­son­al. In 1975, Sagan, who was already famous at that time, was so impressed by Tyson’s col­lege appli­ca­tion that he per­son­al­ly reached out to him, hop­ing to con­vince the high school stu­dent to attend Cor­nell. He even offered to per­son­al­ly show Tyson around his lab.

You can read Sagan’s let­ter, dat­ed Novem­ber 12, 1975, below.

Dear Neil:

Thanks for your let­ter and most inter­est­ing resume. I was espe­cial­ly glad to see that, for a career in astron­o­my, you intend to do your under­grad­u­ate work in physics. In this way, you will acquire the essen­tial tools for a wide range of sub­se­quent astro­nom­i­cal endeav­ors.

I would guess from your resume that your inter­ests in astron­o­my are suf­fi­cient­ly deep and your math­e­mat­i­cal and phys­i­cal back­ground suf­fi­cient­ly strong that we could prob­a­bly engage you in real astro­nom­i­cal research dur­ing your under­grad­u­ate career here, if the pos­si­bil­i­ty inter­ests you. For exam­ple, we hope to be bring­ing back to Itha­ca in late cal­en­dar year 1976 an enor­mous array of Viking data on Mars both from the orbiters and from the lan­ders.

I would be delight­ed to meet with you when you vis­it Itha­ca. Please try and give as much advance notice of the date as you can because my trav­el sched­ule is quite hec­tic right now and I real­ly would like to be in Itha­ca when you drop by.

With all good wish­es,

Carl Sagan

Tyson was deeply moved by Sagan’s kind­ness and sin­cer­i­ty. He did ven­ture out to Itha­ca from the Bronx on a snowy after­noon. As Tyson recalled years lat­er, “I thought to myself, who am I? I’m just some high school kid.” In the end, Sagan’s per­son­al plea wasn’t quite enough to con­vince young Tyson to attend his school. As you can read in his response below, dat­ed April 30, 1976, Tyson decid­ed to go to Har­vard.

Dear Prof. Sagan

Thank you for your offer con­cern­ing the Viking Mis­sions. After long thought and deci­sion mak­ing I have cho­sen to attend Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty this Sep­tem­ber. I chose it not sim­ply because of its “valu­able” name but because they have a larg­er astron­o­my depart­ment in addi­tion to the Smith­son­ian Astro­phys­i­cal Obser­va­to­ry, so while I am major­ing in physics I will have more sur­round­ing me in the way of on-going research in astron­o­my.

I want to say that I did enjoy meet­ing you and I am very grate­ful for your hos­pi­tal­i­ty and the time you spent with me while at Cor­nell. I will through­out my under­grad­u­ate years keep you informed on any note­wor­thy news con­cern­ing astron­o­my-relat­ed work that I’m involved in. I do plan to apply again for the Viking Intern­ship next sum­mer.

Thanks again

Neil D. Tyson

You can see Tyson talk about his after­noon with Sagan. 40 years lat­er, he still seems incred­u­lous that it hap­pened.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Watch “Bottle,” an Award-Winning Stop Motion Animated Tale of Transoceanic Correspondence

in Animation, K-12, Life | April 29th, 2014

When I was in high school, my boyfriend showed me a film he had shot with his dad’s Super 8. It fea­tured a pair of golf clubs escap­ing from the garage and hus­tling down the dri­ve­way. I was bedaz­zled by his tech­nique, and amazed that that’s how he spent his week­ends before he met me.

I thought of those films the oth­er day on a tour of Cal Arts with a prospec­tive stu­dent. As part of ori­en­ta­tion, our group was shown “Bot­tle,” an award-win­ning stop motion short cre­at­ed when writer-direc­tor Kirsten Lep­ore was a grad stu­dent in the exper­i­men­tal ani­ma­tion pro­gram. 

In the minute or so it took our guide to remem­ber how to turn the sound on, I was actu­al­ly dread­ing it. I like nar­ra­tive. Fun­ny. Made­line Sharafi­an’s flat ani­ma­tion “Omelette,” which we were shown before “Bot­tle” as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the sort of work going on in the famed Char­ac­ter Ani­ma­tion depart­ment, deliv­ered on both counts.

Exper­i­men­tal, though? I pic­tured a Dali-esque com­put­er gen­er­at­ed land­scaped star­ring an anony­mous ball, and longed for Scot­t’s dad’s golf clubs. They had so much per­son­al­i­ty.

I am delight­ed to report that those clubs could­n’t hold a can­dle to the cast you will meet above. I don’t want to spoil any sur­pris­es. Suf­fice it to say that the fin­ished prod­uct involves sand, snow, the ocean, flot­sam, jet­sam, a bot­tle, many miles, and many, many hours of labor. If that, com­bined with an utter­ly charm­ing sto­ry­line, adds up to exper­i­men­tal, then I am all for exper­i­men­ta­tion. My kid was ready to change her major after see­ing it, but maybe I am the one who needs to attend.

Watch the mak­ing of video below to get a feel for the sort of wringer Lep­ore put her­self and her crew through. Obvi­ous­ly not a week­end project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hard­er Than It Looks: How to Make a Great Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion

Big Bang Big Boom: Graf­fi­ti Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion Cre­ative­ly Depicts the Evo­lu­tion of Life

Watch The New Amer­i­ca, a Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion Star­ring 800+ Laser Engraved Wood Blocks

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s golf clubs nev­er stopped run­ning. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Hear Led Zeppelin’s First Recorded Concert Ever (1968)

in Music | April 29th, 2014

It’s Decem­ber, 1968. You’re a teenaged kid in Spokane, Wash­ing­ton, keen to see Vanil­la Fudge—or “The Vanil­la Fudge,” as the pro­mot­er calls them—at Gonza­ga University’s Kennedy Pavil­ion, and… what’s this? The open­ing act is “Len Zef­flin?” Who the hell is that?

Maybe you’re hip, like Bob Gal­lagher, who knew Jim­my Page from the Yard­birds and looked for­ward to catch­ing his new band. Maybe not. Maybe, like Ker­ry Whit­sitt, you’re hop­ing “the first band wouldn’t stay on stage too long.” You know how it is… open­ing bands….

But then Page, Plant, Bon­ham, and Jones take the stage, and like Jeff “Tor” Nadeau, you look around to find the house “uni­ver­sal­ly mind-blown” by “the most stun­ning and awe­some sound ever.” And like Ker­ry, you don’t “want them to leave the stage—ever!”

These then-teenage fans’ rem­i­nisces of this his­toric show, only the fifth of Led Zeppelin’s first U.S. tour, come cour­tesy of the Zep­pelin web­site’s descrip­tion of the mis­tak­en­ly billed “Len Zefflin”’s ear­li­est record­ed con­cert, which you can hear in its entire­ty above, thanks to an enter­pris­ing young stu­dent who brought his tape recorder.

The band’s first album—Led Zep­pelin—wouldn’t hit stores for anoth­er three weeks. The kids haven’t heard any­thing like this before: Bonham’s explo­sive fills, Plant’s high-pitched har­mo­niz­ing to “Page’s pipe-wrench riffs.” By the time Zep­pelin left the stage, Bob Gal­lagher and his bud­dies were “flab­ber­gast­ed.” And “when Vanil­la Fudge came on, they were so sleepy. It was like, after that, psy­che­delia was dead and heavy met­al was born, all in a three-hour show.” Poor Vanil­la Fudge.

The raw, two-track tape record­ing of that frigid win­ter show has cir­cu­lat­ed for thir­ty years in var­i­ous boot­leg forms, but it’s new to Youtube, new to me, and maybe new to you too. Lis­ten to it and see if you can’t con­jure some of those lucky audi­ence-mem­bers’ awe in that moment of dis­cov­ery, when heavy met­al was born from the blues. The full track­list of the show is below. For the full expe­ri­ence, see the Youtube page to read a tran­scrip­tion of Robert Plan­t’s between-song stage pat­ter.

01 — Train Kept A Rollin’ [0:00]
02 — I Can’t Quit You [2:32]
03 — As Long As I Have You (incl Fresh Garbage / Shake / Hush) [9:15]
04 — Dazed And Con­fused [17:52]
05 — White Sum­mer [27:43]
06 — How Many More Times (incl The Hunter) [34:31]
07 — Pat’s Delight [50:07]

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Whole Lot­ta Led Zep­pelin: Live at the Roy­al Albert Hall and The Song Remains the Same–the Full Shows

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

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

Hear John Lennon Sing Home Demo Versions of “She Said, She Said,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and “Don’t Let Me Down”

in Music | April 28th, 2014

John Lennon was an invet­er­ate archivist of sound and image, doc­u­ment­ing his life in what­ev­er medi­um he had avail­able to him and leav­ing behind acres of tape for friends and fans to dis­cov­er. Lennon’s tapes com­prise hun­dreds of hours of song sketch­es, full demos, con­ver­sa­tions, jokes, and, as Yoko Ono puts it in her intro to The Lost Lennon Tapes, some “pret­ty per­son­al stuff.” The Lost Lennon Tapes was a radio series that aired between 1988 and 1992, pre­sent­ing over two hun­dred hours of archival Lennon audio in 219 episodes. Host­ed by Lennon’s friend Elliot Mintz, the series gave lis­ten­ers an inti­mate look into John’s cre­ative process through demos like that above, a 1966 series of sketch­es that would become Revolver’s “She Said, She Said.”

In this record­ing, Lennon, alone with a jan­g­ly gui­tar, works out the now-famil­iar chord pro­gres­sions and vocal melodies of the song in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent iterations—and with some quirky lyri­cal vari­ants (“She’s mak­ing me feel like my trousers are torn”). We get to hear the song evolve in sev­er­al stages, from its boun­cy two-chord begin­nings to its final, East­ern-inspired form. The demo also pro­vides evi­dence of the song’s con­cep­tu­al ori­gins; in the first cou­ple ver­sions, you can hear Lennon sing “he said” instead of “she.” The “he” refers to Peter Fon­da, who inspired the song by freak­ing Lennon out dur­ing an acid trip, utter­ing what became the song’s first line, “I know what it’s like to be dead.”

Just above you can hear sev­er­al dif­fer­ent 1966 home demo takes of “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” with John singing over a lone elec­tric gui­tar. Lennon stops and starts sev­er­al times, then, at 1:55, finds his groove and plays the whole song through. Next, we hear a run-through with added Mel­lotron, that odd ear­ly pro­to-syn­the­siz­er that lent the final George Mar­tin-pro­duced ver­sion so much of its dis­tinc­tive sound. Final­ly, at 6:15, hear one of the very first demo record­ings of the song—a beau­ti­ful solo acoustic ver­sion record­ed in Alme­ria, Spain. In the promi­nent gui­tar, we hear the strange, ser­pen­tine chord pat­tern that gives the song such a haunt­ing feel. Lennon began com­pos­ing the song in Spain while film­ing his scenes for Richard Lester’s How I Won the War.

Paul McCart­ney once called Lennon’s “Don’t Let Me Down” a “gen­uine plea” to Yoko, inter­pret­ing the song as John say­ing “I’m real­ly just let­ting my vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty be seen, so you must not let me down.” The Bea­t­les record­ed sev­er­al ver­sions of the song for the Let it Be ses­sions and released it as a B side to the “Get Back” sin­gle in 1969, though Phil Spec­tor even­tu­al­ly dropped the song from Let it Be. McCart­ney restored it to his re-release of the album, Let it Be… Naked, in which he stripped the songs of Spector’s stu­dio effects. Above, hear “Don’t Let Me Down” at its most stripped-down in a 1968 home demo. Just Lennon with his acoustic gui­tar, qui­et­ly strum­ming out his bluesy love tune, a stark con­trast to the scream­ing rock­er the song would become.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

John Lennon’s Raw, Soul-Bar­ing Vocals From the Bea­t­les’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (1969)

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

Free Online: Meet John Doe, Frank Capra’s Inspiring 1941 Classic

in Film | April 26th, 2014

In 2006, a jury of 1,500 film­mak­ers, actors, actress­es, crit­ics and his­to­ri­ans cre­at­ed a list of the 100 Most Inspir­ing Films of All Time. It’s a Won­der­ful Life, Frank Capra’s 1946 Christ­mas tale star­ring Jim­my Stew­art, took top hon­ors. And per­haps you know that the film fell into the pub­lic domain for some years, before being yanked back out. But anoth­er Frank Capra film, Meet John Doe, remains in the com­mons. And it ranks 49th on the same list of Inspi­ra­tional Films.

Called “a fable that deals with the dan­gers of home grown fas­cism, and the pow­er of the ordi­nary man and lit­tle peo­ple to pre­vent the tri­umph of dark forces,” Meet John Doe can be “grouped into a pop­ulist tril­o­gy of Capra films about Amer­i­can indi­vid­u­al­ism,” along with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton (1939). Star­ring Gary Coop­er and Bar­bara Stan­wyck, Meet John Doe (1941) was nom­i­nat­ed for the Acad­e­my Award for Best Sto­ry.

You can watch the uplift­ing film above, or find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. More pris­tine copies can be found on Ama­zon.

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:

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

22 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online