10 Tips From Billy Wilder on How to Write a Good Screenplay

in Film, Writing | August 6th, 2013

There’s an old sto­ry — Orson Welles called it “the great­est Hol­ly­wood one-lin­er ever made” — that when some­one attend­ing the 1958 funer­al of Har­ry Cohn, the fear­some pres­i­dent of Colum­bia Pic­tures, asked how it was pos­si­ble that such a huge crowd would show up for Cohn’s funer­al, Bil­ly Wilder quipped: “Well, give the peo­ple what they want.”

The sto­ry is almost cer­tain­ly apoc­ryphal. The line may have been spo­ken by some­one else, at a dif­fer­ent Hol­ly­wood mogul’s funer­al. But the fact that it is so often attrib­uted to Wilder says some­thing about his rep­u­ta­tion as a man with a razor-sharp wit and a firm grasp of the imper­a­tives of pop­u­lar movie-mak­ing. In films like Sun­set Boule­vard, Some Like it Hot, Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty and Sab­ri­na, Wilder used his for­mi­da­ble craft as a direc­tor to tell sto­ries in a clear and effi­cient way. It was an eth­ic he picked up as a screen­writer.

Wilder was born in Aus­tria-Hun­gary and moved as a young man to Ger­many, where he worked as a news­pa­per reporter. In the late 1920s he began writ­ing screen­plays for the Ger­man film indus­try, but he fled the coun­try soon after Adolf Hitler became chan­cel­lor in 1933. Wilder made his way to Hol­ly­wood, where he con­tin­ued to write screen­plays. He co-wrote a num­ber of suc­cess­ful films in the 30s, includ­ing Ninotch­ka, Hold Back the Dawn and Ball of Fire. In the ear­ly 40s he got his first chance to direct a Hol­ly­wood movie, and a long string of hits fol­lowed. In 1960 he won three Acad­e­my Awards for pro­duc­ing, writ­ing and direct­ing The Apart­ment.

Wilder was 90 years old when the young direc­tor Cameron Crowe approached him in 1996 about play­ing a small role in Jer­ry Maguire. Wilder said no, but the two men formed a friend­ship. Over the next sev­er­al years they talked exten­sive­ly about film­mak­ing, and in 1999 Crowe pub­lished Con­ver­sa­tions with Wilder. One of the book’s high­lights is a list of ten screen­writ­ing tips by Wilder. “I know a lot of peo­ple that have already Xerox­ed that list and put it by their type­writer,” Crowe said in a 1999 NPR inter­view. “And, you know, there’s no bet­ter film school real­ly than lis­ten­ing to what Bil­ly Wilder says.”

Here are Wilder’s ten rules of good film­mak­ing:

1: The audi­ence is fick­le.
2: Grab ’em by the throat and nev­er let ’em go.
3: Devel­op a clean line of action for your lead­ing char­ac­ter.
4: Know where you’re going.
5: The more sub­tle and ele­gant you are in hid­ing your plot points, the bet­ter you are as a writer.
6: If you have a prob­lem with the third act, the real prob­lem is in the first act.
7: A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audi­ence add up two plus two. They’ll love you for­ev­er.
8: In doing voice-overs, be care­ful not to describe what the audi­ence already sees. Add to what they’re see­ing.
9: The event that occurs at the sec­ond act cur­tain trig­gers the end of the movie.
10: The third act must build, build, build in tem­po and action until the last event, and then — that’s it. Don’t hang around.

Note: Read­ers might also be inter­est­ed in Wilder’s 1996 Paris Review inter­view. It’s called The Art of of Screen­writ­ing.

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via Gotham Writ­ers’ Work­shop

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Watch Ray­mond Chandler’s Long-Unno­ticed Cameo in Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Nico, Bob Dylan & Salvador Dalí

in Art, Film | August 6th, 2013

Just the oth­er day, I had a chat with a well-known poet who laid out for me his the­o­ry that Andy Warhol invent­ed our con­cep­tion of mod­ern Amer­i­ca. When we think about this coun­try, the poet explained, we think about this coun­try broad­ly in the way that Warhol (and thus his dis­ci­ples) envi­sioned it. We here at Open Cul­ture have cov­ered sev­er­al of the forms in which the artist pro­mul­gat­ed his dis­tinc­tive brand of Amer­i­cana, and today, for the 85th anniver­sary of his birth, we’ve round­ed up a few of his famous “screen tests,” the short films he made between 1963 and 1968 that offer por­traits of hun­dreds of fig­ures, famous and oth­er­wise, who hap­pened to pass through his studio/social club/subcultural hot zone, The Fac­to­ry. Just above, you can watch Warhol’s screen test with Nico, the Ger­man singer who would become an inte­gral part of the Fac­to­ry-formed band the Vel­vet Under­ground.

Lit­tle-heard at the time but ulti­mate­ly high­ly influ­en­tial, the Vel­vet Under­ground’s sound shaped much Amer­i­can pop­u­lar music — and giv­en pop­u­lar music’s cen­tral­i­ty back then, much of Amer­i­can cul­ture to come. You may not nec­es­sar­i­ly buy that argu­ment, but sure­ly you can’t argue against the influ­ence of a cer­tain singer-song­writer by the name of Bob Dylan, Warhol’s screen test with whom appears just above.

Com­ing from a Pol­ish immi­grant fam­i­ly, and seem­ing­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the cul­ti­va­tion of his own out­sider sta­tus his entire life, Warhol under­stood the impor­tance of for­eign­ers to the vital­i­ty of Amer­i­can cul­ture. Nat­u­ral­ly, he did­n’t miss his chance to shoot a screen test with Sal­vador Dalí, below, when the Span­ish sur­re­al­ist came to the Fac­to­ry.

See also our pre­vi­ous post on Warhol’s screen tests with Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Edie Sedg­wick, and oth­ers. When you’ve watched them all, con­sid­er con­tin­u­ing your cel­e­bra­tion of life in Andy Warhol’s 85th birth­day with the Earth­Cam and The Warhol Muse­um’s col­lab­o­ra­tion Fig­ment. It offers live cam­era feeds of not only his grave but the church where he was bap­tized. Com­par­isons to the view­ing expe­ri­ence of Empire are encour­aged.

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:

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestling Fame (1985)

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

The film Andy Warhol: A Mir­ror of the Six­ties has been added to our list of 550 Free Movies Online.

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.

Warhol’s Cinema: A Mirror for the Sixties (1989)

in | August 5th, 2013

This 64 minute doc­u­men­tary from 1989 exam­ines Andy Warhol’s films from the 1960s. (You can view sev­er­al of these films — Eat, Sleep, and Kiss – here.) The doc­u­men­tary above was made by Chan­nel 4 in asso­ci­a­tion with The Fac­to­ry, MOMA and the Whit­ney Muse­um of Art. The film was direct­ed & pro­duced by Kei­th Grif­fiths, and it has been added to our col­lec­tion of 550 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestling Fame (1985)

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

Thom Yorke’s Isolated Vocal Track on Radiohead’s 1992 Classic, ‘Creep’

in Music | August 5th, 2013

The 1992 song “Creep,” Radio­head’s anthem of self loathing and unre­quit­ed love, was orig­i­nal­ly record­ed in one take.

The song had been writ­ten sev­er­al years ear­li­er by singer Thom Yorke, when he was still a stu­dent at Exeter Uni­ver­si­ty. “When I wrote it,” Yorke said in an ear­ly inter­view, “I was in the mid­dle of a real­ly, real­ly seri­ous obses­sion. It last­ed about eight months. And it was unsuc­cess­ful, which made it even worse. She knows who she is.”

The emo­tions were appar­ent­ly still run­ning deep when Yorke and his band­mates went into Chip­ping Nor­ton Stu­dios in their home­town of Oxford to record their debut album, Pablo Hon­ey. The raw, cathar­tic qual­i­ty of “Creep” caused an imme­di­ate stir, said pro­duc­er Paul Kolderie. “Every­one in the stu­dio applaud­ed when it was done.”

The orig­i­nal take was large­ly retained, except for a few touch-ups. Yorke went back into the stu­dio and record­ed a rewrit­ten first verse. He also agreed to change the sar­cas­tic phrase “You’re so fuck­ing spe­cial” to “You’re so very spe­cial” to make the song suit­able for Amer­i­can radio. You can hear Yorke’s vocals from the san­i­tized ver­sion in the iso­lat­ed track above. For the full arrange­ment, see the offi­cial video below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

A Mid­dle-East­ern Ver­sion of Radiohead’s 1997 Hit “Kar­ma Police”

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endear­ing Advice About Boys (And Much More)

Radio­head-Approved, Fan-Made Film of the Band at Rose­land for 2011′s The King of Limbs Tour

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ 1991

Free: Download 151 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Stories from Tor.com

in e-books, Sci Fi | August 3rd, 2013

A quick note: If you’re not already famil­iar with it, Tor.com is a web site ded­i­cat­ed to “sci­ence fic­tion, fan­ta­sy, and all the things that inter­est SF and fan­ta­sy read­ers.” And, among oth­er things, the site reg­u­lar­ly pub­lish­es orig­i­nal sci-fi sto­ries. To cel­e­brate its 5th birth­day, Tor has decid­ed to assem­ble the last five years of its orig­i­nal fic­tion and make it avail­able as down­load­able ebook files. You will need to reg­is­ter with the site before­hand, and then you can down­load the texts in var­i­ous for­mats — PDF, Mobi, and ePub — all of which can be loaded onto ebook read­ers. And, yes, it’s all free.

If you’re a sci-fan, we’d encour­age you to see our post from ear­li­er this week, 100 Great Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Women Writ­ers and then some of the great relat­ed mate­r­i­al below.

via i09

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 11 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

Isaac Asimov’s Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sic, The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, Dra­ma­tized for Radio (1973)

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

425 Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook

Watch the First Commercial Ever Shown on American TV, 1941

in History, Television | August 2nd, 2013

Let’s set the scene: The Brook­lyn Dodgers are play­ing the Philadel­phia Phillies at Ebbets Field on July 1, 1941, and the game is being aired on WNBT-TV (lat­er to become WNBC). Before the game begins, TV view­ers see this: a 10-sec­ond adver­tise­ment for Bulo­va clocks and watch­es. The ad shows a clock and a map of the Unit­ed States, with a voice-over that says, “Amer­i­ca runs on Bulo­va time.” This litte spot (which ran at 2:29 pm, if you’re keep­ing Bulo­va time) marked the advent of some­thing much big­ger — com­mer­cial­ized tele­vi­sion. Ear­li­er in 1941, the FCC had approved a plan to turn TV into big busi­ness. When Bulo­va paid $9 dol­lars to plug its brand, the plan was actu­al­ized. Every adver­tise­ment seen since (for bet­ter or worse) has a com­mon lin­eage in this moment.

via Mash­able

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:

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Before Mad Men: Famil­iar and For­got­ten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

100 Great Sci-Fi Stories by Women Writers (Read 20 for Free Online)

in Literature, Sci Fi | August 1st, 2013

Image by Frankie Fougan­thin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Since 2009, the orga­ni­za­tion VIDA: Women in the Lit­er­ary Arts has sought to bring bal­ance to the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of female authors in the lit­er­ary world. As revealed by the 2010 con­tro­ver­sy begun by author Jodi Picoult over the gush­ing treat­ment Jonathan Franzen’s Free­dom received in the New York Times, the dis­par­i­ty, and the bias, are real. Author Jen­nifer Wein­er chimed in as well, writ­ing: “when a man writes about fam­i­ly and feel­ings, it’s lit­er­a­ture with a cap­i­tal L, but when a woman con­sid­ers the same top­ics, it’s romance, or a beach book.” This fracas—involving a num­ber of most­ly New York literati and the death of the term “chick lit”—didn’t split even­ly down gen­der lines. Both male and female writ­ers lined up to defend Picoult and Franzen, but it did open up legit­i­mate ques­tions about the old (most­ly white) boys club that claims the upper ech­e­lons of lit­er­ary fic­tion and the brass ring that is the New York Times book review.

What received no notice in the pop­u­lar media dur­ing all this chat­ter was the place of women writ­ers in genre fic­tion, which most­ly lives out­side the gates and rarely gets much notice from the crit­ics (with the excep­tion of a hand­ful of “seri­ous” writ­ers and the Young Adult mar­ket). Well, there is a dis­cus­sion about gen­der par­i­ty in the sci­ence fic­tion world tak­ing place now on the blog of sci-fi crit­ic and writer Ian Sales. Sales curates SF Mis­tress­works—a blog for women sci-fi writers—and after review­ing a 1975 anthol­o­gy called Women of Won­der, he asked read­ers over at his blog to sub­mit their favorite short fic­tion by women writ­ers. His goal? To col­lect 100 sto­ries and novel­las as a counter to the clas­sic, and almost whol­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed col­lec­tion, 100 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Short Short Sto­ries, edit­ed by Isaac Asi­mov. You can read the full list of 100 over at Sales’ blog. Below, we’ve excerpt­ed those sto­ries that are freely avail­able online. If you’re a sci­ence fic­tion fan and find your­self unable to name more than one or two female authors in the genre (every­one knows, for exam­ple, the fab­u­lous Ursu­la K. Le Guin and Mar­garet Atwood, pic­tured above), you might want to take a look at some of the great work you’ve missed out on.

Sales’ list spans sev­er­al decades and, as he writes, demon­strates “a good spread of styles and themes and approach­es across the genre.”

1 ‘The Fate of the Posei­do­nia’, Clare Winger Har­ris (1927, short sto­ry) online here

12 ‘The New You’, Kit Reed (1962, short sto­ry) online here

13 ‘The Put­nam Tra­di­tion’, Sonya Dor­man (1963, short sto­ry) online here

16 ‘The Heat Death of the Uni­verse’, Pamela Zoline (1967, short sto­ry) online here

24 ‘The Violet’s Embryo’, Angéli­ca Gorodis­ch­er (1973, nov­el­ette) online here (excerpt)

28 ‘The View from End­less Scarp’, Mar­ta Ran­dall (1978, short sto­ry) online here

51 ‘The Road to Jerusalem’, Mary Gen­tle (1991, short sto­ry) online here

71 ‘Cap­tive Girl’, Jen­nifer Pel­land (2006, short sto­ry) online here

79 ‘Spi­der the Artist’, Nne­di Okrafor (2008, short sto­ry) online here

81 ‘Eros, Phil­ia, Agape’, Rachel Swirsky (2009, nov­el­ette) online here

82 ‘Non-Zero Prob­a­bil­i­ties’, NK Jemisin (2009, short sto­ry) online here

85 ‘Blood, Blood’, Abbey Mei Otis (2010, short sto­ry) online here and here

88 ‘Amaryl­lis’, Car­rie Vaughn (2010, short sto­ry) online here

89 ‘I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno’, Vylar Kaf­tan (2010, short sto­ry) online here

91 ‘Six Months, Three Days’, Char­lie Jane Anders (2011, short sto­ry) online here

93 ‘The Car­tog­ra­ph­er Bees and the Anar­chist Wasps’, E Lily Yu (2011, short sto­ry) online here

94 ‘Silent­ly and Very Fast’, Cath­erynne M Valente (2011, novel­la) online here, here and here

96 ‘A Vec­tor Alpha­bet of Inter­stel­lar Trav­el’, Yoon Ha Lee (2011, short sto­ry) online here

97 ‘Immer­sion’, Aliette de Bodard (2012, short sto­ry) online here

98 ‘The Lady Astro­naut of Mars’, Mary Robi­nette Kow­al (2012, nov­el­ette) online here

* Please note: an ear­li­er ver­sion of this post was titled “The 100 Best Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Women Writ­ers (Read 20 for Free Online).” As this list’s cura­tor, Ian Sales, points out unequiv­o­cal­ly below, this is not meant to be a defin­i­tive “best of” in any sense. Our apolo­gies for mis­read­ing his inten­tions. 

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 11 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

Isaac Asi­mov Recalls the Gold­en Age of Sci­ence Fic­tion (1937–1950)

425 Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook

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

Martin Scorsese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies

in Film | July 31st, 2013

Cin­e­ma as we’ve almost always known it — “Edi­son, the Lumière broth­ers, Méliès, Porter, all the way through Grif­fith and on to Kubrick”  — has “real­ly almost gone.” So writes Mar­tin Scors­ese in his recent essay for the New York Review of Books, “The Per­sist­ing Vision: Read­ing the Lan­guage of Cin­e­ma.” He argues that tra­di­tion­al film forms have “been over­whelmed by mov­ing images com­ing at us all the time and absolute­ly every­where, even faster than the visions com­ing at the astro­naut” in Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. “We have no choice but to treat all these mov­ing images com­ing at us as a lan­guage. We need to be able to under­stand what we’re see­ing and find the tools to sort it all out.” Only nat­ur­al that Scors­ese, as one of the best-known, high­est-pro­file auteurs alive, would ref­er­ence Kubrick, his gen­er­a­tional pre­de­ces­sor in the untir­ing fur­ther­ance of cin­e­mat­ic vision and craft.

We just yes­ter­day fea­tured a post about Kubrick­’s 1963 list of ten favorite films. Scors­ese, for his part, has impressed many as one of the most enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly cinephilic direc­tors work­ing in Amer­i­ca today: his essays about and appear­ances on the DVDs of his favorite movies stand as evi­dence for the sur­pris­ing breadth of his appre­ci­a­tion. Today, why not have a look at Scors­ese’s list, which he put togeth­er for Sight and Sound mag­a­zine, and which begins with the Kubrick selec­tion you might expect:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – Stan­ley Kubrick
• 8½ (1963) – Fed­eri­co Felli­ni
• Ash­es and Dia­monds (1958) – Andrzej Waj­da
• Cit­i­zen Kane (1941) – Orson Welles
• The Leop­ard (1963) – Luchi­no Vis­con­ti
• Paisan (1946) – Rober­to Rosselli­ni
• The Red Shoes (1948) – Michael Powell/Emeric Press­burg­er
• The Riv­er (1951) – Jean Renoir
• Sal­va­tore Giu­liano (1962) – Francesco Rosi
• The Searchers (1956) – John Ford
• Uget­su Mono­gatari (1953) – Mizoguchi Ken­ji
• Ver­ti­go (1958) – Alfred Hitch­cock

In “The Per­sist­ing Vision,” he cham­pi­ons com­pre­hen­sive film preser­va­tion, cit­ing the case of Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go, the final entry on his list, now named the great­est film of all time by Sight and Sound’s crit­ics poll. “When the film came out some peo­ple liked it, some didn’t, and then it just went away.” When, after decades of obscu­ri­ty, Ver­ti­go came back into cir­cu­la­tion,  the col­or was com­plete­ly wrong,” and “the ele­ments — the orig­i­nal pic­ture and sound neg­a­tives — need­ed seri­ous atten­tion.” A restora­tion of the “decay­ing and severe­ly dam­aged” film even­tu­al­ly hap­pened, and “more and more peo­ple saw Ver­ti­go and came to appre­ci­ate its hyp­not­ic beau­ty and very strange, obses­sive focus.” I, per­son­al­ly, could­n’t imag­ine the world of cin­e­ma with­out it — nor with­out any of the oth­er pic­tures Scors­ese calls his favorites.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspir­ing Film­mak­er Needs to See

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films for a Young Film­mak­er

Revis­it Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hand-Drawn Sto­ry­boards for Taxi Dri­ver

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Mar­tin Scors­ese Brings “Lost” Hitch­cock Film to Screen in Short Faux Doc­u­men­tary

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.

Stephen Colbert Tries to Make Sense of MOOCs with the Head of edX

in Comedy, MIT, MOOCs | July 31st, 2013

Last week Anant Agar­w­al, Pres­i­dent of edX (the MOOC con­sor­tium launched by Har­vard and MIT), paid a vis­it to The Col­bert Report. And it did­n’t take long for the host, the one and only Stephen Col­bert, to ask fun­ny but unmis­tak­ably prob­ing ques­tions about the advent of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es. “I don’t under­stand. You’re in the knowl­edge busi­ness in a uni­ver­si­ty. Let’s say I had a shoe store, ok, and then I hired you to work at my shoe store. And you said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s give the shoes away for free.’ I would fire you and then prob­a­bly throw shoes at your head.” In oth­er words, why would uni­ver­si­ties dis­rupt them­selves and give edu­ca­tion away at no cost? Where’s the san­i­ty in that?  If you have five min­utes, you can watch Agar­wal’s response and get a few laughs along the way. And if you’re ready to take a MOOC, then dive into our col­lec­tion of 550 Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. 120 new cours­es will be start­ing in August and Sep­tem­ber alone.

via The Har­vard Crim­son

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert Talks Sci­ence with Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Stephen Col­bert Dish­es Out Wis­dom & Laughs at North­west­ern

Har­vard and MIT Cre­ate EDX to Offer Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es World­wide

Noam Chomsky Went Gangnam Style … Ever So Briefly?

in MIT, Music, Philosophy, Random | July 30th, 2013

I’m usu­al­ly pret­ty dialed into this stuff, but some­how this one slipped by me last fall. Dur­ing the Gang­nam Style craze, MIT shot a par­o­dy video where Noam Chom­sky, the father of mod­ern lin­guis­tics, made a cameo appear­ance. Maybe it slipped by me because the appear­ance is brief. About 5 sec­onds, start­ing at the 3:20 mark. We were on the ball enough, how­ev­er, to spot anoth­er par­o­dy by Ai Wei­wei and then we had Slavoj Žižek demys­ti­fy­ing the whole Gang­nam Style phe­nom­e­non, com­plete with wild hand ges­tic­u­la­tions and fran­tic rubs of the nose. Any­way, one day this will make for some good archival footage — pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al meets inter­na­tion­al pop cul­ture craze — so we’re adding it to the trove.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

A Shirt­less Slavoj Žižek Explains the Pur­pose of Phi­los­o­phy from the Com­fort of His Bed

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)