Apocalypse Now’s “Ride of the Valkyries” Attack: The Anatomy of a Classic Scene

in Film | October 17th, 2013

“I love the smell of napalm in the morn­ing.” There we have undoubt­ed­ly the most famous quote of what must count as one of Robert Duval­l’s finest per­for­mances, and sure­ly his most sur­pris­ing: that of Lieu­tenant Colonel Bill Kil­go­re in Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s Apoc­a­lypse Now. As you’ll no doubt recall — and if you don’t recall it, min­i­mize your brows­er for a few hours and make your way to a screen­ing, or at least watch it online — Cap­tain Ben­jamin Willard’s Con­ra­di­an boat jour­ney into the Viet­nam War’s dark heart hits a snag fair­ly ear­ly in the pic­ture: they need to pass through a coastal area under tight Viet Cong con­trol.

Kil­go­re, ini­tial­ly reluc­tant to call in his heli­copters to back up Willard’s dubi­ous mis­sion, changes his mind when he real­izes that Willard counts among his own small crew famed pro­fes­sion­al surfer Lance B. John­son. The Lieu­tenant Colonel, it turns out, loves to surf. He also loves to blast Richard Wag­n­er’s “Ride of the Valkyries” from heli­copter-mount­ed speak­ers. “It scares the hell out of the slopes,” he explains. “My boys love it.”

At the top, you can watch the fruits of Willard and Kil­go­re’s coop­er­a­tion, an oper­at­ic napalm airstrike that takes the entire beach: not an easy thing to accom­plish, and cer­tain­ly not an easy thing to film. As any­one acquaint­ed with the mak­ing of Apoc­a­lypse Now has heard, the pro­duc­tion tend­ed to turn as com­pli­cat­ed, con­fus­ing, and per­ilous as the Viet­nam War itself, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly for lack of plan­ning.

At Empire, you can view the scene’s orig­i­nal sto­ry­boards and read along­side them a brief inter­view with Doug Clay­bourne, who on the film had the envi­able title of Heli­copter Wran­gler. Arriv­ing to the Philip­pines-based shoot (in “the mid­dle of nowhere”), Clay­bourne found Cop­po­la on the beach with a bull­horn, Mar­tin Sheen just replac­ing Har­vey Kei­t­el in the role of Willard, chop­pers bor­rowed from Pres­i­dent Fer­di­nand Mar­cos (who peri­od­i­cal­ly took them back to use against insur­rec­tions else­where), a com­ing typhoon, and “a lot of chaos.”

But Cop­po­la, Clay­bourne, and the rest of the team saw it through, achiev­ing results even more strik­ing, in moments, than these sto­ry­boards sug­gest. As for the unflap­pable Kil­go­re, well, we all remem­ber him rush­ing to catch a tan­ta­liz­ing wave even before the fight­ing sub­sides. After all, to quote his sec­ond-most famous line, “Char­lie don’t surf!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

Demen­tia 13: The Film That Took Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la From Schlock­ster to Auteur

Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Hand­writ­ten Cast­ing Notes for The God­fa­ther

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

The Best Writing Advice Pico Iyer Ever Received

in Writing | October 17th, 2013

One can work with lan­guage all day, I have found—write, teach, blog and tweet incessantly—and still suc­cumb to all the worst habits of lazy writ­ers: indulging strings of clichés and abstrac­tions, mak­ing it impos­si­ble for a read­er to, as they say, “locate her­self” in time and space. Trav­el writer and essay­ist Pico Iyer found this out on the job. Though he had writ­ten his way through grad­u­ate school and the pages of Time mag­a­zine, he still need­ed to hear the advice of his edi­tor at Knopf, Charles Elliott. “The read­er wants to trav­el beside you,” said Elliott, “look­ing over your shoul­der.”

Such a sim­ple notion. Essen­tial even. But Elliott’s advice is not lim­it­ed to the dog­ma of “show, don’t tell” (maybe a lim­it­ed way to think of writ­ing). More point­ed­ly he stress­es the con­nec­tion of abstract ideas to con­crete, spe­cif­ic descrip­tions that anchor events to a real­i­ty out­side the author’s head, one the read­er wants see, hear, touch, etc. The “best writ­ing advice” Iyer ever received is a use­ful pre­cept espe­cial­ly, I think, for peo­ple who write all of the time, and who need to be remind­ed, like Iyer, to keep it fresh. Read his full descrip­tion at The Amer­i­can Schol­ar.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Cor­mac McCarthy’s Three Punc­tu­a­tion Rules, and How They All Go Back to James Joyce

Toni Mor­ri­son Dis­pens­es Writ­ing Wis­dom in 1993 Paris Review Inter­view

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

Free Online: 10 of the Greatest Silent Films of All Time

in Film | October 10th, 2013

Silent films had a respectable show­ing, as it were, on Sight & Sound mag­a­zine’s last big crit­ics poll. The votes, cast to deter­mine the great­est motion pic­tures of all time, placed three silents among the top ten over­all: F.W. Mur­nau’s Sun­rise, Dzi­ga Ver­tov’s Man with a Movie Cam­era, and Carl Theodor Drey­er’s The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc. These, of course, also rank at the top of Sight & Sound’s sep­a­rate list of the ten great­est silent films of all time, which came out as fol­lows:

1. Sun­rise (F.W. Mur­nau, 1927)
2. Man with a Movie Cam­era (Dzi­ga Ver­tov, 1929)
3. The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Drey­er, 1928)
4. Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (Sergei Eisen­stein, 1925)
5. The Gen­er­al (Buster Keaton, 1926)
6. Metrop­o­lis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
7. City Lights (Char­lie Chap­lin, 1931)
8. Sher­lock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
9. Greed (Erich von Stro­heim, 1923)
10. Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1928) and Intol­er­ance (D.W. Grif­fith, 1916)

Though all of these pic­tures came out with­in the seem­ing­ly short 15-year span between 1916 and 1921, they rep­re­sent a wide cin­e­mat­ic diver­si­ty: in form, in theme, in genre, in place of ori­gin (of both the films and the film­mak­ers), in sen­si­bil­i­ty, in aes­thet­ics. You prob­a­bly rec­og­nize all of their names, espe­cial­ly if you’ve tak­en a film stud­ies course, and you may think of them all as famil­iar, but how many have you watched? Even we avowed cinephiles have a way of trick­ing our­selves into believ­ing we’ve seen all the most impor­tant movies in their entire­ty, when in real­i­ty we know only about, albeit some­times a lot about, their place in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma and their cur­rents of influ­ence that flow into films made today.

But thanks to the inter­net, we can catch up with ease. Giv­en the age of works from the silent era, most of them have passed into the pub­lic domain. You can there­fore watch almost all of the top ten great­est silent films of all time, as select­ed by the 2012 Sight & Sound crit­ics poll, for free, online, right now. Some you can even watch right here, with­out leav­ing Open Cul­ture: at the top of the post, you’ll find Sun­rise. Just above, we’ve fea­tured Man with a Movie Cam­era. Below, The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc. To watch the oth­ers, sim­ply click their linked titles on the list. After you’ve enjoyed every­thing from Mur­nau’s Ger­man-Expres­sion­ist-by-way-of-Hol­ly­wood romance to Keaton’s epic com­e­dy to Buñuel’s sur­re­al­ist pro­ces­sion of still-trou­bling visions, you’ll not just know where many mod­ern cin­e­mat­ic tech­niques came from, you’ll feel how they’ve evolved over the decades. All of the films list­ed above appear on our list of Great Silent Films, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

100 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics 

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist Direc­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

Hol­ly­wood, Epic Doc­u­men­tary Chron­i­cles the Ear­ly His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma

535 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

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

Watch Lovebirds Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman Sing “Makin’ Whoopee!” Live

in Life, Literature, Music | October 8th, 2013

Aman­da Palmer and Neil Gaiman strike me as a very hap­pi­ly mar­ried cou­ple, an impres­sion their live cov­er of Makin’ Whoopee sup­ports.

What’s their secret? As any­one with an inter­est in romance or Earth Sci­ence will tell you, oppo­sites attract. On the sur­face of things, the exhi­bi­tion­is­tic, high­ly the­atri­cal, always con­tro­ver­sial Palmer is quite dif­fer­ent from her unfail­ing­ly dis­creet hus­band of the last two-and-a-half years. (Watch him mine his ret­i­cence to great com­ic effect at the 2.52 mark.)

That’s not to say they don’t have things in com­mon.

Both are insane­ly pro­lif­ic, the fruits of their labors dis­played across a vari­ety of plat­forms—music, comics, film, lit­er­a­ture, com­mence­ment speech­es, TED talks, Twit­ter…

Both have rabid fan bases and blogs (Hers accepts com­ments; his does not.)

He was raised in a Sci­en­tol­o­gist house­hold. She scrawled Nope. Not plan­ning to fund Sci­en­tol­ogy with my Kick­starter mon­ey. That would be dumb on her nude tor­so, then post­ed a self­ie on her web­site, thus pour­ing gaso­line on the fires that pow­er that por­tion of the inter­net devot­ed to spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion about their reli­gious affil­i­a­tion.

And while he has three chil­dren from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage, the Gaiman-Palmer union has yet to pro­duce any lit­tle Neil or Aman­das. Which brings us back to Makin’ Whoopee. Whether or not the lyrics jibe with one’s per­son­al out­look, the song’s endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty (85 years and count­ing) might sug­gest its cen­tral dilem­ma is ever­green. Its bio­log­i­cal obser­va­tions are cer­tain­ly above reproach: sex often leads to babies, who lead to the sort of respon­si­bil­i­ties that sig­nal the end of the hon­ey­moon, if not the mar­riage.

Per­haps an open rela­tion­ship in the whoopee depart­ment will con­tin­ue to keep things play­ful between the Gaiman-Palmers, regard­less of what their future holds. It’s real­ly none of our busi­ness, is it?

(Those drawn to spec­u­la­tion, could do so live, when the alt.power-couple (Naman­da? Ameil?) bring their “inti­mate night” of spo­ken word, songs, sto­ries, audi­ence chats and sur­pris­es to New York City’s Town Hall.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aman­da Palmer’s Tips for Being an Artist in the Rough-and-Tum­ble Dig­i­tal Age

Down­load Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman Gives Grad­u­ates 10 Essen­tial Tips for Work­ing in the Arts

BBC Radio Adap­ta­tion of Neil Gaiman’s Nev­er­where Begins Sat­ur­day: A Pre­view

Ayun Hal­l­i­day must ten­der her regrets as she is direct­ing a cast of 15 home schooled teens in her hus­band’s musi­cal, Yeast Nation, that night. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

How Animated Cartoons Are Made: Watch a Short, Charming Primer from 1919

in Animation | October 6th, 2013

Wal­lace Carl­son, a pio­neer­ing ani­ma­tor who cre­at­ed films like Dreamy Dud: He Resolves Not to Smoke (1915), joined Bray Stu­dios in 1917, where, among oth­er things, he pro­duced a film called How Ani­mat­ed Car­toons Are Made. Accord­ing to Car­toon Research, a site ded­i­cat­ed to car­toon his­to­ry, the film offers per­haps the ear­li­est and truest look at how car­toons were made near­ly a cen­tu­ry ago. And it’s all done with some charm and wit. You can find the nine-minute short added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 575 Free Movies Online. Mean­while, if old-time ani­ma­tion fas­ci­nates you, you’ll want to watch How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made, a 1939 pro­duc­tion that takes you inside the mak­ing of Snow White (1937).

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:

Watch The Amaz­ing 1912 Ani­ma­tion of Stop-Motion Pio­neer Ladis­las Stare­vich, Star­ring Dead Bugs

Euro­pean Cave Art: Was It The Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

The Dis­ney Car­toon That Intro­duced Mick­ey Mouse & Ani­ma­tion with Sound (1928)

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made (1939)

Who Wrote at Standing Desks? Kierkegaard, Dickens and Ernest Hemingway Too

in Literature, Writing | October 3rd, 2013

Kierkegaard appar­ent­ly did his best writ­ing stand­ing up, as did Charles Dick­ens, Win­ston Churchill, Vladimir Nabokov and Vir­ginia Woolf. Also put Ernest Hem­ing­way in the stand­ing desk club too.

In 1954, George Plimp­ton inter­viewed Hem­ing­way for the lit­er­ary jour­nal he co-found­ed the year before, The Paris Review. The inter­view came pref­aced with a descrip­tion of the nov­el­ist’s writ­ing stu­dio in Cuba:

Ernest Hem­ing­way writes in the bed­room of his house in the Havana sub­urb of San Fran­cis­co de Paula. He has a spe­cial work­room pre­pared for him in a square tow­er at the south­west cor­ner of the house, but prefers to work in his bed­room, climb­ing to the tow­er room only when “char­ac­ters” dri­ve him up there…

The room is divid­ed into two alcoves by a pair of chest-high book­cas­es that stand out into the room at right angles from oppo­site walls.…

It is on the top of one of these clut­tered bookcases—the one against the wall by the east win­dow and three feet or so from his bed—that Hem­ing­way has his “work desk”—a square foot of cramped area hemmed in by books on one side and on the oth­er by a news­pa­per-cov­ered heap of papers, man­u­scripts, and pam­phlets. There is just enough space left on top of the book­case for a type­writer, sur­mount­ed by a wood­en read­ing board, five or six pen­cils, and a chunk of cop­per ore to weight down papers when the wind blows in from the east win­dow.

A work­ing habit he has had from the begin­ning, Hem­ing­way stands when he writes. He stands in a pair of his over­sized loafers on the worn skin of a less­er kudu—the type­writer and the read­ing board chest-high oppo­site him.

Pop­u­lar Sci­ence, a mag­a­zine with roots much old­er than the Paris Review, first began writ­ing about the virtues of stand­ing desks for writ­ers back in 1883. By 1967, they were explain­ing how to fash­ion a desk with sim­ple sup­plies instead of fork­ing over $800 for a com­mer­cial mod­el — a hefty sum in the 60s, let alone now. Ply­wood, saw, ham­mer, nails, glue, var­nish — that’s all you need to build a DIY stand-up desk. Or, as Papa Hem­ing­way did, you could sim­ply  throw your writ­ing machine on the near­est book­case and get going. As for how to write the great Amer­i­can nov­el, I’m not sure that Pop­u­lar Sci­ence offers much help. But maybe some advice from Hem­ing­way him­self will steer you in the right direc­tion. See Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion.

For more on the ben­e­fits of the stand­ing desk, see this post from the Har­vard Busi­ness Review.

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!

Richard Dawkins and Jon Stewart Debate Whether Science or Religion Will Destroy Civilization

in Religion, Science | October 2nd, 2013

One of the sad facts of human psy­chol­o­gy is that knowl­edge can be used for evil just as eas­i­ly as it can be used for good. If the human race had nev­er fig­ured out how to use fire, for exam­ple, we would­n’t have to wor­ry about those pesky arson­ists.

If some peo­ple are will­ing to use the fruits of knowl­edge to hurt peo­ple, should we stop acquir­ing knowl­edge? It sounds absurd, but that’s a ques­tion that is often asked, though it’s invari­ably couched in dif­fer­ent lan­guage.

When Richard Dawkins, the evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist and out­spo­ken athe­ist, made an appear­ance on The Dai­ly Show last week to pro­mote his new mem­oir, host Jon Stew­art asked: “Do you believe that the end of our civ­i­liza­tion will be through reli­gious strife or sci­en­tif­ic advance­ment?”  The answer, Dawkins said, is prob­a­bly both. “Sci­ence pro­vides, in the form of tech­nol­o­gy, weapons which hith­er­to have been avail­able only to rea­son­ably respon­si­ble gov­ern­ments,” said Dawkins, and those weapons “are like­ly to become avail­able to nut­cas­es who believe that their god requires them to wreak hav­oc and destruc­tion.”

The con­ver­sa­tion then moves beyond reli­gious fanati­cism. “Sci­ence is the most pow­er­ful way to do what­ev­er it is you want to do,” said Dawkins, “and if you want to do good, it’s the most pow­er­ful way of doing good. If you want to do evil, it’s the most pow­er­ful way to do some­thing evil.”

Dawkin­s’s last state­ment echoes the words of Albert Ein­stein, who warned that the sci­en­tif­ic method is only a means to an end, and that the wel­fare of human­i­ty depends ulti­mate­ly on shared goals. You can hear Ein­stein make his point by vis­it­ing our post, “Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)”.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

Jon Stewart’s William & Mary Com­mence­ment Address: The Entire World is an Elec­tive

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

in Books, Music | October 1st, 2013

Image by Avro, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“David Bowie Is,” the exten­sive ret­ro­spec­tive exhib­it of the artist and his fab­u­lous cos­tumes, hit Toron­to last Fri­day (see our post from ear­li­er today), and as many peo­ple have report­ed, in addi­tion to those costumes—and pho­tos, instru­ments, set designs, lyric sheets, etc.—the show includes a list of Bowie’s favorite books. Described as a “vora­cious read­er” by cura­tor Geof­frey Marsh, Bowie’s top 100 book list spans decades, from Richard Wright’s raw 1945 mem­oir Black Boy to Susan Jacoby’s 2008 analy­sis of U.S. anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism in The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son.

Bowie’s always had a com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with the U.S., but his list shows a lot of love to Amer­i­can writ­ers, from the afore­men­tioned to Tru­man Capote, Hubert Sel­by, Jr., Saul Bel­low, Junot Diaz, Jack Ker­ouac and many more. He’s also very fond of fel­low Brits George Orwell, Ian McE­wan, and Julian Barnes and loves Mishi­ma and Bul­gakov.  You can read the full list below or over at Open Book Toron­to, who urges you to “grab one of these titles and set­tle in to read — and just think, some­where, at some point, David Bowie (or, to be more accu­rate, the man behind David Bowie, David Jones) was doing the exact same thing.” If that sort of thing inspires you to pick up a good book, go for it. You could also peruse the list, then puz­zle over the lit­er­ate Bowie’s lyrics to “I Can’t Read.” You can also explore a new relat­ed book–Bowie’s Book­shelf: The Hun­dred Books that Changed David Bowie’s Life.

1. Inter­views With Fran­cis Bacon by David Sylvester
2. Bil­ly Liar by Kei­th Water­house
3. Room At The Top by John Braine
4. On Hav­ing No Head by Dou­glass Hard­ing
5. Kaf­ka Was The Rage by Ana­tole Bro­yard
6. A Clock­work Orange by Antho­ny Burgess
7. City Of Night by John Rechy
8. The Brief Won­drous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
9. Madame Bovary by Gus­tave Flaubert
10. Ili­ad by Homer
11. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkn­er
12. Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
13. Berlin Alexan­der­platz by Alfred Döblin
14. Inside The Whale And Oth­er Essays by George Orwell
15. Mr. Nor­ris Changes Trains by Christo­pher Ish­er­wood
16. Halls Dic­tio­nary Of Sub­jects And Sym­bols In Art by James A. Hall
17. David Bomberg by Richard Cork
18. Blast by Wyn­d­ham Lewis
19. Pass­ing by Nel­la Lar­son
20. Beyond The Bril­lo Box by Arthur C. Dan­to
21. The Ori­gin Of Con­scious­ness In The Break­down Of The Bicam­er­al Mind by Julian Jaynes
22. In Bluebeard’s Cas­tle by George Stein­er
23. Hawksmoor by Peter Ack­royd
24. The Divid­ed Self by R. D. Laing
25. The Stranger by Albert Camus
26. Infants Of The Spring by Wal­lace Thur­man
27. The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
28. The Song­lines by Bruce Chatwin
29. Nights At The Cir­cus by Angela Carter
30. The Mas­ter And Mar­gari­ta by Mikhail Bul­gakov
31. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
32. Loli­ta by Vladimir Nabokov
33. Her­zog by Saul Bel­low
34. Puck­oon by Spike Mil­li­gan
35. Black Boy by Richard Wright
36. The Great Gats­by by F. Scott Fitzger­ald
37. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishi­ma
38. Dark­ness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
39. The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
40. McTeague by Frank Nor­ris
41. Mon­ey by Mar­tin Amis
42. The Out­sider by Col­in Wil­son
43. Strange Peo­ple by Frank Edwards
44. Eng­lish Jour­ney by J.B. Priest­ley
45. A Con­fed­er­a­cy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
46. The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
47. 1984 by George Orwell
48. The Life And Times Of Lit­tle Richard by Charles White
49. Awop­bopaloobop Alop­bam­boom: The Gold­en Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
50. Mys­tery Train by Greil Mar­cus
51. Beano (com­ic, ’50s)
52. Raw (com­ic, ’80s)
53. White Noise by Don DeLil­lo
54. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The South­ern Dream Of Free­dom by Peter Gural­nick
55. Silence: Lec­tures And Writ­ing by John Cage
56. Writ­ers At Work: The Paris Review Inter­views edit­ed by Mal­colm Cow­ley
57. The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Char­lie Gillette
58. Octo­bri­ana And The Russ­ian Under­ground by Peter Sadecky
59. The Street by Ann Petry
60. Won­der Boys by Michael Chabon
61. Last Exit To Brook­lyn By Hubert Sel­by, Jr.
62. A People’s His­to­ry Of The Unit­ed States by Howard Zinn
63. The Age Of Amer­i­can Unrea­son by Susan Jaco­by
64. Met­ro­pol­i­tan Life by Fran Lebowitz
65. The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stop­pard
66. The Bridge by Hart Crane
67. All The Emperor’s Hors­es by David Kidd
68. Fin­ger­smith by Sarah Waters
69. Earth­ly Pow­ers by Antho­ny Burgess
70. The 42nd Par­al­lel by John Dos Pas­sos
71. Tales Of Beat­nik Glo­ry by Ed Saun­ders
72. The Bird Artist by Howard Nor­man
73. Nowhere To Run The Sto­ry Of Soul Music by Ger­ri Hir­shey
74. Before The Del­uge by Otto Friedrich
75. Sex­u­al Per­son­ae: Art And Deca­dence From Nefer­ti­ti To Emi­ly Dick­in­son by Camille Paglia
76. The Amer­i­can Way Of Death by Jes­si­ca Mit­ford
77. In Cold Blood by Tru­man Capote
78. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
79. Teenage by Jon Sav­age
80. Vile Bod­ies by Eve­lyn Waugh
81. The Hid­den Per­suaders by Vance Packard
82. The Fire Next Time by James Bald­win
83. Viz (com­ic, ear­ly ’80s)
84. Pri­vate Eye (satir­i­cal mag­a­zine, ’60s – ’80s)
85. Select­ed Poems by Frank O’Hara
86. The Tri­al Of Hen­ry Kissinger by Christo­pher Hitchens
87. Flaubert’s Par­rot by Julian Barnes
88. Mal­doror by Comte de Lautréa­mont
89. On The Road by Jack Ker­ouac
90. Mr. Wilson’s Cab­i­net of Won­der by Lawrence Weschler
91. Zanoni by Edward Bul­w­er-Lyt­ton
92. Tran­scen­den­tal Mag­ic, Its Doc­trine and Rit­u­al by Eliphas Lévi
93. The Gnos­tic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
94. The Leop­ard by Giuseppe Di Lampe­dusa
95. Infer­no by Dante Alighieri
96. A Grave For A Dol­phin by Alber­to Den­ti di Pira­jno
97. The Insult by Rupert Thom­son
98. In Between The Sheets by Ian McE­wan
99. A People’s Tragedy by Orlan­do Figes
100. Jour­ney Into The Whirl­wind by Euge­nia Ginzburg

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:

Bri­an Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion & 59 Books For Build­ing Your Intel­lec­tu­al World

Bowie’s Book­shelf: A New Essay Col­lec­tion on The 100 Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life

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)

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

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Interview Get Reborn as an Animated Cartoon

in Animation, Life, Music | September 27th, 2013

Four days before her death, Janis Joplin spoke with Howard Smith of the Vil­lage Voice in what was to be her last inter­view.

Their con­ver­sa­tion has been res­ur­rect­ed as a four minute ani­ma­tion for PBS Dig­i­tal Stu­dios’ Blank on Blank series. The car­toon Janis bears a close resem­blance to Glo­ria Steinem, an uncom­fort­able fit once the top­ic turns from her sad­ness at crit­i­cal rejec­tion to the sis­ter­hood’s alleged with­hold­ing of affec­tion.

Smith hits his sub­ject with some lead­ing ques­tions that smack of the myr­i­ad ways Wom­en’s Lib was dis­tort­ed by even the lib­er­al media of the time: “It seems to both­er a lot of Wom­en’s Lib peo­ple that you’re so upfront sex­u­al­ly,” he mus­es.

No need to take that one at any­thing less than face val­ue…

Joplin allowed her­self to be led, toss­ing off sev­er­al state­ments that ani­ma­tor Patrick Smith faith­ful­ly illus­trates. (In my opin­ion the wound­ed female drum­mers rock far more than preg­nan­cy and vac­u­ums, his short­hand for “set­tling.” )

When lat­er, Joplin timid­ly asks if “all that $#*% I said about chicks” sound­ed bad, Smith reas­sures her that no, she said what she want­ed to say. Per­haps he got what he want­ed her to say.

As com­menter hey­itsmoi observed on YouTube, “It’s always both­ered me when peo­ple ask suc­cess­ful women to com­ment on how some oth­er women don’t like them. I’ve yet to hear a suc­cess­ful man to be asked why oth­er men don’t like him, even though there’s sure to be plen­ty. Women seem to con­stant­ly be put in this defen­sive posi­tion where they can’t answer the ques­tion with­out mak­ing it sound like all women are jeal­ous beasts who can’t han­dle that some woman made it, and that’s sim­ply not true.”

If you’re left feel­ing vague­ly queasy, I sug­gest “Stilet­to Pow­er,” Blank on Blank’s take on Lar­ry Gro­bel’s 1994 inter­view with Far­rah Faw­cett. Gro­bel’s approach seemed to have been one of turn on the tape recorder and then get out of the way. Mis­sion accom­plished. The result­ing mono­logue is as fero­cious as it is fun­ny.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­ma­tions Revive Lost Inter­views with David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck

Remem­ber­ing Janis Joplin: Some Clas­sic Live Per­for­mances and Pre­views of a New Joplin Musi­cal

‘Beast­ie Boys on Being Stu­pid’: An Ani­mat­ed Inter­view From 1985

Ayun Hal­l­i­day has fond feel­ings for both of the women fea­tured in the above arti­cle . Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Watch the Sex Pistols’ Very Last Concert (San Francisco, 1978)

in Music | September 25th, 2013

Many things have hap­pened on the inter­net this week, among them some get off my lawn out­rage at a $375 Urban Out­fit­ters leather jack­et designed to repli­cate the home­made swag every punk rock kid once draped over their shoul­ders. Then there’s the Justin Bieber/Black Flag mash-up t‑shirt that “ruined punk for­ev­er.” I may have spent some for­ma­tive years immersed in ersatz punk and hard­core cul­ture, but no mat­ter how old and cranky I may be com­pared to the tar­get mar­ket of this mer­chan­dise, I just can’t bring myself to get both­ered. No one has said it bet­ter than Dave Berman: “punk rock died when the first kid said / ‘punk’s not dead, punk’s not dead.’”

The stri­dent desire of some to cling to a punk rock ethos can be amus­ing since the move­men­t’s most famous fig­ure­heads, the Sex Pis­tols, crashed and burned a lit­tle over three years after form­ing and one year after intro­duc­ing their mas­cot, Sid Vicious. The band’s cre­ative destruc­tion often seems like the most viable expres­sion of punk. It burns itself out on its own ener­gy. Every­thing else you can say about it is just more Mal­colm McLaren mar­ket­ing.

Or, put dif­fer­ent­ly, maybe the only dis­cus­sion worth hav­ing about punk rock is archival. It came, it went, get over it—but oh, what a glo­ri­ous comet trail left by the likes of John­ny Rot­ten! And we have evi­dence of the tail end on film. Above, you can see the Pis­tols very last per­for­mance at San Francisco’s Win­ter­land Ball­room in Jan­u­ary of 1978.

The film opens with text excus­ing some qual­i­ty con­trol issues: “The footage con­tained in this video is rare archive mate­r­i­al and irre­place­able. The pub­lish­ers feel that the qual­i­ty of the con­tent… far out­weighs any minor… short­com­ings of sound and vision.” Then we’re off to the races, intro­duced by a pair of announc­ers, male and female, like an Olympic event. Despite the dis­claimer, this is decent film and audio, and def­i­nite­ly “qual­i­ty con­tent.” Bril­liant, in fact (Sid actu­al­ly plays!), and an excel­lent argu­ment for why this band need­ed no future. A YouTube com­menter help­ful­ly breaks down the video into the track­list below. Great stuff.

01:45 — God Save The Queen , 05:56 — I Wan­na Be Me , 10:04 — Sev­en­teen , 12:27 — New York , 15:54 — EMI , 19:38 — Belsen Was Gas , 21:50 — Bod­ies , 25:50 — Hol­i­days In The Sun , 31:17 — Liar , 35:40 — No Feel­ings , 38:55 — Prob­lems , 43:26 — Pret­ty Vacant, 46:57 — Anar­chy In The UK , 52:43 — No Fun

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sex Pis­tols Front­man John­ny Rot­ten Weighs In On Lady Gaga, Paul McCart­ney, Madon­na & Katy Per­ry

John­ny Rotten’s Cor­dial Let­ter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Next to the Sex Pis­tols, You’re ‘a Piss Stain’

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

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