Listen to 21-Year-Old David Letterman’s College Radio Show (1969)

in Comedy, Radio | April 7th, 2014

Over thir­ty years at the desk of his very own late-night talk show, mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions of fans, the respect of come­di­ans the world over: David Let­ter­man has had, by any mea­sure, an awful­ly good run. Though they had to know it could come soon­er or lat­er, thou­sands of view­ers, since Let­ter­man announced last Thurs­day that he plans to retire in 2015, face the immi­nent prospect of a world with­out the Late Show as they know it. For the young and young-ish among them, many of whom didn’t come into the world them­selves until after Letterman’s 1982 nation­al debut (see video at bot­tom), this con­sti­tutes an entire­ly new and trou­bling­ly less absurd tele­vi­su­al real­i­ty. But the mas­ter com­e­dy host didn’t sim­ply emerge on to the scene, ful­ly formed, those 32 years ago. Any­one who’s watched long enough to notice the fre­quen­cy of Letterman’s ref­er­ences to Indi­anapo­lis, his home­town and the media mar­ket that grant­ed him his first “big” chance as a weath­er­man, knows that he nev­er for­got his roots.

As with many illus­tri­ous careers, Letterman’s hum­ble ear­ly shot fol­lowed even hum­bler, ear­li­er shots. Just above, you can hear the 21-year-old “Dave Letterman”’s broad­cast from April Fool’s Day 1969 on WAGO-AM, the closed-cir­cuit radio sta­tion he helped to found at his future alma mater, Ball State Uni­ver­si­ty. Though only a five-minute clip, this record­ing show­cas­es not just Letterman’s preter­nat­u­al micro­phone pres­ence, but his way with the near-psy­che­del­ic walls of sound effects, seem­ing­ly free-asso­cia­tive speech, and pure wack­i­ness that so came into its own in the late six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties. (The Fire­sign The­ater would soon per­fect it.) Let­ter­man fol­low­ers who must know every­thing — and they cer­tain­ly exist — should note that, when he calls a deliri­ous-sound­ing woman in this seg­ment, he calls none oth­er than Michelle Cook, the very first Mrs. Let­ter­man. Though we have yet to learn the iden­ti­ty of Letterman’s Late Show replace­ment, I feel cer­tain, after this lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence, that the Let­ter­man of twen­ty years from now will rise from the ranks of pod­cast­ing. Lis­ten out for him; he may not drop col­or­ful phras­es just like “horse den­tures falling into a rust­ed how­itzer artillery shell,” but you’ll know him when you hear him. Or her.

Below you can watch Bill Mur­ray’s appear­ance on Let­ter­man’s first 1982 show.

via WFMU’s Beware of the Blog

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tom Waits and David Let­ter­man: An Amer­i­can Tele­vi­sion Tra­di­tion

R.E.M Plays “Radio Free Europe” on Their Nation­al Tele­vi­sion Debut on The David Let­ter­man Show (1983)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch Orson Welles’ Trailer for Citizen Kane: As Innovative as the Film Itself

in Film | April 2nd, 2014

Over the years, the movie trail­er has evolved from being a long bag­gy com­mer­cial for an upcom­ing fea­ture to a visu­al­ly strik­ing mini-gem of film­mak­ing that some­times over­shad­ows the film it adver­tis­es. Pret­ty much every trail­er from a movie by Zack Sny­der, for instance, is expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter than the actu­al film.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, one of the first film­mak­ers to embrace the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the movie trail­er was one of cinema’s great inno­va­tors – Orson Welles. The trail­er for Cit­i­zen Kane, which you can see above, has no actu­al footage from the movie – some­thing of a rar­i­ty. Instead, the trail­er serves as a curi­ous four-minute long doc­u­men­tary fea­tur­ing behind-the-scenes footage and short vignettes of char­ac­ters react­ing to the movie’s mys­te­ri­ous cen­tral char­ac­ter.

Dis­play­ing the same visu­al verve that would make Cit­i­zen Kane a cin­e­mat­ic land­mark, the trail­er opens with a gor­geous shot of a boom low­er­ing into view. And then we hear Welles’s sig­na­ture bari­tone voice intro­duc­ing him­self, “How do you do, ladies and gen­tle­men. This is Orson Welles.”

After inform­ing the audi­ence about a com­ing attrac­tion — his film — Welles segues straight into a shot of pret­ty girls, deliv­ered with a wry wink at the audi­ence. “Speak­ing of attrac­tions, cho­rus girls are cer­tain­ly an attrac­tion. Frankly, ladies and gen­tle­men, we’re just show­ing you the cho­rus girls for the pur­pos­es of bal­ly­hoo.”

He goes on to intro­duce the cast of Cit­i­zen Kane — mem­bers of Welles’s famed Mer­cury The­atre like Joseph Cot­ten, Agnes Moore­head, and Ray Collins — on set but out of cos­tume, look­ing bash­ful­ly toward the cam­era. The one per­son miss­ing is Welles him­self, who, aside from his urbane, author­i­ta­tive voice over, is com­plete­ly absent.

The trail­er then shifts gears. “Cit­i­zen Kane is a sto­ry about a mod­ern Amer­i­can called Kane, Charles Fos­ter Kane. I don’t know how to tell you about him, there’s so much to say. I’ll turn you over to the char­ac­ters in the pic­ture.” We then see a mon­tage of the char­ac­ters of Cit­i­zen Kane. They’re all on the tele­phone, air­ing their wild­ly diver­gent opin­ions of the film’s cen­tral char­ac­ter. Kane him­self nev­er makes an appear­ance. Welles ends the piece by pre­sent­ing Kane as an enig­ma, “a hero, a scoundrel, a no-account, a swell guy, a great lover, a great Amer­i­can cit­i­zen, and a dirty dog.”

Crit­ic and actor Simon Cal­low argued in his book Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu that the trail­er for Kane was just as ground­break­ing as the movie. It’s all shot with the same look as Kane — deep focus and expres­sion­is­tic light­ing.

Com­pare Kane’s trail­er with one that was more typ­i­cal of its time like Casablan­ca. Amid the over­wrought copy and some com­i­cal­ly flashy tran­si­tions, that trail­er all but tells you what is going to hap­pen in the film. There’s vio­lence! Dan­ger! Romance! Kane’s trail­er, on the oth­er hand, is less a sales pitch than a mys­tery. It shows plen­ty about the peo­ple behind the mak­ing of the movie but it shows noth­ing from the actu­al film. Based sole­ly on the trail­er, you don’t know what Kane is about, short of being about a shad­owy, com­pli­cat­ed char­ac­ter called Kane.

Welles wasn’t just being cagey for the sake of build­ing audi­ence inter­est. He was try­ing to head off a fight.  Though Welles pub­licly claimed that Kane was not about media baron William Ran­dolph Hearst, you can hard­ly blame the tycoon for feel­ing oth­er­wise. Hearst was a news­pa­per mag­nate with a show­girl mis­tress who built him­self a pre­pos­ter­ous­ly opu­lent cas­tle. Cit­i­zen Kane is about a news­pa­per mag­nate with a show­girl wife who built him­self a pre­pos­ter­ous­ly opu­lent cas­tle.

Hearst did every­thing he could to stop the movie’s pro­duc­tion – and he could do quite a lot. When he failed to kill the pic­ture by pres­sur­ing the stu­dio, he pres­sured the­ater own­ers. He used his media empire to slan­der Welles – using the direc­tor’s com­pli­cat­ed per­son­al life as tabloid fod­der and even imply­ing that he was a Com­mu­nist. Hearst’s cam­paign to dis­cred­it Welles was so suc­cess­ful that when the direc­tor’s name came up dur­ing the 1942 Acad­e­my Awards, it elicit­ed boos.

Welles, of course, got the last laugh. Kane was such an auda­cious, stun­ning­ly orig­i­nal work that, once redis­cov­ered in the 1950s, it was quick­ly declared a mas­ter­piece. The pres­ti­gious Sight and Sound poll of crit­ics and film­mak­ers rat­ed Kane as the best movie ever made for five decades straight before get­ting unseat­ed last year by Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Orson Welles’ Clas­sic Radio Per­for­mance of 10 Shake­speare Plays

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

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.

Hipsters Ordering Coffee

in Comedy, Food & Drink | April 2nd, 2014

“Cap­puc­ci­no small, low fat, extra dry.” Sor­ry to say, but that’s my line 2–3 times per day. That makes me almost as bad as the cof­fee-order­ing hip­sters in this new video by Nacho Punch. Let the video roll for a bit. It has its fun­ny moments.

On a more seri­ous note, if you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, con­sid­er spend­ing Sat­ur­day, May 3rd at Stan­ford’s one-day cof­fee sym­po­sium. Orga­nized by Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies, the sym­po­sium — Cof­fee: From Tree to Beans to Brew and Every­thing in Between – will fea­ture guest speak­ers (his­to­ri­ans, sci­en­tists, the CEO of Blue Bot­tle Cof­fee, etc.) talk­ing about what goes into mak­ing this great bev­er­age of ours. Stu­dents will also have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in cof­fee tast­ing and eval­u­a­tion ses­sions. In full dis­clo­sure, I helped put the pro­gram togeth­er. It promis­es to be a great day. So I had to give a plug. You can learn more and sign up here.

via Huff­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Curi­ous Sto­ry of London’s First Cof­fee­hous­es (1650–1675)

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

Men In Com­mer­cials Being Jerks About Cof­fee: A Mashup of 1950s & 1960s TV Ads

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

George R.R. Martin Releases a Free Chapter From The Winds of Winter: Read It Online

in Books, e-books | March 30th, 2014

In recent days, George R.R. Mar­tin pub­lished a blog post that begins, “Hiya kids, hiya hiya hiya. With sea­son 4 of HBO’s GAME OF THRONES almost upon us, I thought the time was ripe for me to give my read­ers anoth­er taste of WINDS OF WINTER.” The new chap­ter, he tells us, “is actu­al­ly an old chap­ter.  But no, it’s not one I’ve pub­lished or post­ed before.” The chap­ter, called “Mer­cy,” opens with these words:

She woke with a gasp, not know­ing who she was, or where.

The smell of blood was heavy in her nos­trils… or was that her night­mare, lin­ger­ing? She had dreamed of wolves again, of run­ning through some dark pine for­est with a great pack at her hells, hard on the scent of prey.

Half-light filled the room, grey and gloomy. Shiv­er­ing, she sat up in bed and ran a hand across her scalp. Stub­ble bris­tled against her palm. I need to shave before Izem­baro sees. Mer­cy, I’m Mer­cy, and tonight I’ll be raped and mur­dered. Her true name was Merce­dene, but Mer­cy was all any­one ever called her…

Except in dreams. She took a breath to qui­et the howl­ing in her heart, try­ing to remem­ber more of what she’d dreamt, but most of it had gone already. There had been blood in it, though, and a full moon over­head, and a tree that watched her as she ran.

You can read the chap­ter in full here. Mar­tin notes that you can also enjoy a new Tyri­on chap­ter, “that is live and avail­able with the ICE & FIRE app.” It’s free on iTunes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Down­load 33 Great Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books & Free eBooks

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

The Ware Tetral­o­gy: Free Sci­Fi Down­load

575 Free eBooks: Down­load Great Books for Free

David Bowie Talks and Sings on The Dick Cavett Show (1974)

in Music, Television | March 25th, 2014

I can think of very few taste­ful phe­nom­e­na to have come to promi­nence in the sev­en­ties, but David Bowie’s albums and Dick Cavet­t’s talk shows both make the short list. In the mid­dle of that decade, Bowie cer­tain­ly made the tele­vi­sion rounds; we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his 1975 appear­ance oppo­site Cher, and today we have his appear­ance oppo­site Cavett from the pre­vi­ous year. “David Bowie is a super­star in a cat­e­go­ry that has nev­er actu­al­ly been defined,” says the host about the rock­er, to audi­ence cheers, “because as soon as a crit­ic tries to say what he is, he changes, like a chameleon.” It seems that Bowie, then at the height of his self-trans­for­ma­tive ten­den­cies, could reduce even the most elo­quent man on tele­vi­sion to that not-quite-accu­rate cliché. As the for­mer host told Esquire thir­ty years after this broad­cast, “Does­n’t a chameleon exert tremen­dous ener­gy to become indis­tin­guish­able from its envi­ron­ment?”

Yet Cavett ulti­mate­ly holds his own with Bowie, a feat I doubt many of the rest of us could pull off then or now. The appear­ance involves more than just music; while Bowie does per­form, he also sits down to talk, some­thing that his fans had­n’t yet seen him do in 1974. To many of them, he remained for the most part a mys­tery, albeit an astute­ly rock­ing one. “Who is he? What is he?” Cavett rhetor­i­cal­ly asks the crowd. “Man? Woman? Robot?” In the event, they dis­cuss his school days, his ride on the Trans-Siber­ian Rail­way, the unfor­get­table Dia­mond Dogs cov­er art, his step back from “glit­ter,” why oth­er peo­ple would have feared inter­view­ing him, and whether he pic­tures him­self at six­ty (in the far-flung year of 2007). How easy to for­get, in this age when we can often con­verse with our idols by mere­ly send­ing them an @ reply on Twit­ter, how much a show­man like Bowie could leave to our imag­i­na­tions. He remains admirably secre­tive by today’s stan­dards, but back in the sev­en­ties, any­thing he said would have come as a rev­e­la­tion — espe­cial­ly if prompt­ed by no less art­ful a con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

David Bowie Releas­es Vin­tage Videos of His Great­est Hits from the 1970s and 1980s

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A Glimpse Into How Wes Anderson Creatively Remixes/Recycles Scenes in His Different Films

in Film | March 23rd, 2014

Wes Anderson’s movies always trig­ger a healthy buzz in the pop cul­ture world, and his recent­ly released Grand Budapest Hotel is no dif­fer­ent. Already, the film has won the Sil­ver Bear at the Berlin Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, and if IMDB rat­ings are any­thing to go by, it’s well on its way to becom­ing anoth­er Ander­son clas­sic.

Anderson’s cin­e­mat­ic style is one of the most dis­tinc­tive in Hol­ly­wood today, and we’ve recent­ly writ­ten about two video essays that high­light some of his favorite styl­is­tic tech­niques. If you’ve ever seen The Roy­al Tenen­baums, you’ll imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize his trade­mark visu­als: the soft, sur­re­al palette, the tight­ly framed cen­tered shots, and the steady cam­er­a­work are among his favorite tools.

Above, we bring you yet anoth­er visu­al essay on Anderson’s film­mak­ing, cour­tesy of the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion. This time, how­ev­er, the focus is Anderson’s sole ani­mat­ed fea­ture, Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox. The clip, enti­tled The Fox & Mr. Ander­son, is a split-screen short, which match­es Mr. Fox to Anderson’s oth­er films, shot for per­fect shot. Here we see the Mr. Fox pro­tag­o­nists march­ing in step with the broth­ers of The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed, and Steve Zis­sou, of The Life Aquat­ic With Steve Zis­sou fame, mir­ror­ing the scowl of Mr. Fox him­self; here is Rat, Fox’s mor­tal ene­my, lying wound­ed, oppo­site Rush­more’s  injured Max Fis­ch­er. While brief, the col­lec­tion is a beau­ti­ful anthol­o­gy of Ander­son­’s work and some of the visu­als that make encore per­for­mances.

via Bib­liok­lept

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

Wes Anderson’s Favorite Films: Moon­struck, Rosemary’s Baby, and Luis Buñuel’s The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

Hear Orson Welles’ Radio Performances of 10 Shakespeare Plays (1936–1944)

in Film, Theatre | March 22nd, 2014

Before he direct­ed Cit­i­zen Kane, Orson Welles was already famous. He was an enfant ter­ri­ble of that new medi­um radio — one of his plays, an adap­ta­tion of War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, famous­ly ter­ri­fied the nation in 1938. He was also known as a wun­derkind of the stage.

Dur­ing the late 1930s, Welles and his pro­duc­ing part­ner John House­man (yes, that John House­man) were the toast of Broad­way, thanks to a string of auda­cious clas­si­cal revivals. The most famous of these pro­duc­tions was a 1937 adap­ta­tion of William Shakespeare’s Julius Cae­sar, which gave the play an unex­pect­ed rel­e­vance. Welles dressed the cast in mod­ern attire; sol­diers were out­fit­ted to look like Nazi black shirts. And the show was lit in a man­ner meant to recall a Nurem­berg ral­ly. Pre­sent­ed at a time when Hitler’s pow­er was grow­ing, the pro­duc­tion jolt­ed Amer­i­can audi­ences and made Welles famous. Time Mag­a­zine even put him on its cov­er.

Being a trail­blaz­er in both radio and the stage, Welles adapt­ed many of his stage pro­duc­tions for the wire­less.  The Inter­net Archive has post­ed many of these record­ings online, which you can lis­ten to for free. The selec­tion includes per­for­mances of Ham­let, Romeo and Juli­et, Richard III, Mac­beth and, of course, Julius Cae­sar, among oth­ers. In most cas­es, these record­ings — along with a few set pho­tos — are the only doc­u­ments left of Welles’s ground­break­ing pro­duc­tions.

But if you want to get a sense of what Welles’s Julius Cae­sar actu­al­ly looked like, you can check out Richard Lin­klater’s lit­tle-seen, crit­i­cal­ly-praised com­e­dy Me and Orson Welles (2008). The movie stars Zac Efron as a young actor who lands a small part in the pro­duc­tion only to find him­self com­pet­ing with the great direc­tor for the affec­tions of a girl. The movie might be a tri­fle but experts have mar­veled at how close the film is to Welles’s vision. Check out the trail­er below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

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.

Electric Photo of Nikola Tesla, 1899

in History | March 21st, 2014

Quite the shot: Niko­la Tes­la appears in a mul­ti­ple-expo­sure pho­to in 1899, while a Tes­la coil dis­charges mil­lions of volts.

Want to see more old sparks fly­ing? Here we have an image of Mark Twain, the lit­er­ary giant, tin­ker­ing in More Tes­la’s lab­o­ra­to­ry in 1894.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Plays With Elec­tric­i­ty in Niko­la Tesla’s Lab (Pho­to, 1894)

Thomas Edi­son and Niko­la Tes­la Face Off in “Epic Rap Bat­tles of His­to­ry”

“Sweet Home Alaba­ma” Played on Tes­la Coils

How the Tes­la Mod­el S is Made: A Behind-the-Scenes Tour

The Perfect Symmetry of Wes Anderson’s Movies

in Film | March 19th, 2014

Video essay­ist Kog­o­na­da pre­vi­ous­ly made some bril­liant obser­va­tions about the visu­al obses­sions of some of cinema’s great­est for­mal­ists. Stan­ley Kubrick, as Kog­o­na­da ele­gant­ly points out, com­pos­es most of his shots using one-point per­spec­tive. Once called out, it becomes a motif that’s real­ly hard to ignore. Yasu­jiro Ozu – a direc­tor who has more cin­e­mat­ic eccen­tric­i­ties than just about any oth­er major direc­tor – had a fas­ci­na­tion with win­dows, door­ways and cor­ri­dors.

For his lat­est essay, Kog­o­na­da takes on per­haps film’s most famous for­mal­ist work­ing today – Wes Ander­son. As you can see from the video above, Ander­son loves to com­pose his shots with per­fect sym­me­try. From his break­out hit Rush­more, to his stop-motion ani­mat­ed movie The Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox, to his most recent movie The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ander­son con­sis­tent­ly orga­nizes the ele­ments in his frame so that the most impor­tant thing is smack in the mid­dle.

Direc­tors are taught in film school to avoid sym­me­try as it feels stagey. An asym­met­ri­cal­ly framed shot has a nat­ur­al visu­al dynamism to it. It also makes for a more seam­less edit to the next shot, espe­cial­ly if that shot is anoth­er asym­met­ri­cal­ly framed shot. But if you’ve watched any­thing by Ander­son, you know that seem­ing stagey has nev­er been one of his con­cerns. Instead, Ander­son has devel­oped his own quirky, imme­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fi­able visu­al style.

When crit­ics com­plained about Ozu’s pro­cliv­i­ty for essen­tial­ly mak­ing the same movie over and over again, he famous­ly respond­ed by say­ing, “I only know how to make tofu. I can make fried tofu, boiled tofu, stuffed tofu. Cut­lets and oth­er fan­cy stuff, that’s for oth­er direc­tors.” Ander­son would prob­a­bly not con­sid­er him­self a tofu mak­er, but he would most like­ly appre­ci­ate Ozu’s sen­ti­ment.

Check out anoth­er Kog­o­na­da essay below about Anderson’s ten­den­cy for com­pos­ing shots from direct­ly over­head.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

Wes Anderson’s Favorite Films: Moon­struck, Rosemary’s Baby, and Luis Buñuel’s The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

Watch David Brenner (RIP) Make the First of His 158 Appearances on The Tonight Show in 1971

in Comedy, Uncategorized | March 15th, 2014

News just hit the wires that come­di­an David Bren­ner (1936–2014) died at his home today at the age of 78. Can­cer was appar­ent­ly the cause.

Born in Philadel­phia, Bren­ner start­ed out a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er, but even­tu­al­ly launched a career as a come­di­an. His big break came on Jan­u­ary 8, 1971 when John­ny Car­son let him do nine min­utes of standup on The Tonight Show. Car­son appar­ent­ly liked Bren­ner’s obser­va­tion­al com­e­dy rou­tine. In years to come, Bren­ner made a record-set­ting 157 appear­ances on John­ny’s show, some­times as a com­e­dy act, some­times as a sub­sti­tute host. Above you can watch the very first of those fun­ny appear­ances.

H/T @MrCraigBierko

Relat­ed Con­tent:

RIP: George Car­lin on the Tonight Show (1966)

Ayn Rand Instructs John­ny Car­son on the Virtue of Self­ish­ness, 1967

Jim Henson’s Ani­mat­ed Film, Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, Pre­sent­ed by John­ny Car­son (1974)