Watch Steven Spielberg’s Rarely Seen 1968 Film, Amblin’

in Film | November 1st, 2012

In 1968, Steven Spiel­berg was 21 years old and the hip­pie coun­ter­cul­ture was swirling all around, but his mind was focused on one thing only: mak­ing movies.

Spiel­berg had been crank­ing out 8mm films since he was 12 years old, and he had been hang­ing around the sound stages and edit­ing rooms of Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures as an unpaid clerk and errand boy since the sum­mer after his junior year in high school, absorb­ing every­thing he could about the process of film­mak­ing. He hoped some­one would give him a chance to direct a project–any project. He tried to gen­er­ate inter­est by tak­ing his child­hood films around to pro­duc­ers. “I would bun­dle the pic­tures in a brief­case and lit­er­al­ly car­ry my pro­jec­tor over to some­body’s office,” Spiel­berg told Enter­tain­ment Week­ly last year. “It was like I was a very young Willy Loman; box­ing up my wares and going from stu­dio office to stu­dio office. Not a lot, but maybe 10 per­cent of the pro­duc­ers that I tried to get to see my films did see my films.”

Spiel­berg real­ized he need­ed some­thing more pro­fes­sion­al to show. He found a busi­ness­man to finance a 35mm short film. Denis C. Hoff­man, who ran an opti­cal effects house called Cine­fx, read a script Spiel­berg had writ­ten and agreed to give the young man $10,000 to make the film , so long as it fea­tured music by a band he man­aged, called Octo­ber Coun­try. The film was to be called Amblin’.

“It was going to be a tone poem about a boy and a girl who meet in the desert, hitch­hik­ing their way to the Pacif­ic Ocean,” Spiel­berg told EW. “Very sim­ple sto­ry. I wrote it in a day.” Spiel­berg asked Richard Levin, a young man work­ing at the Bev­er­ly Hills library, to play the male lead. He found the female lead, Pamela McMyler, in a direc­to­ry of actors. The sto­ry is told in pic­tures and sound effects, with no dia­logue. Spiel­berg would lat­er dis­miss Amblin’ as lit­tle more than a “Pep­si com­mer­cial,” but the film clear­ly shows Spiel­berg’s gift for visu­al sto­ry­telling. His ear­ly men­tor at Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures, Chuck Sil­vers, said of his reac­tion to Amblin’: “I looked at what I still feel is the per­fect motion pic­ture.”

Although Spiel­berg would go on to name his film and tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny Amblin Enter­tain­ment, he’s not all that fond of Amblin’ the film. “I can’t look at it now,” he said in 1978. “It real­ly proved how apa­thet­ic I was dur­ing the Six­ties. When I look back at that film, I can eas­i­ly say, ‘No won­der I did­n’t go to Kent State,’ or ‘No won­der I did­n’t go to Viet­nam or I was­n’t protest­ing when all my friends were car­ry­ing signs and get­ting clubbed in Cen­tu­ry City.’ I was off mak­ing movies, and Amblin’ is the slick by-prod­uct of a kid immersed up to his nose in film.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Steven Spielberg’s Debut: Two Films He Direct­ed as a Teenag­er

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

Steven Spiel­berg on the Genius of Stan­ley Kubrick

New York is Empty: Art Imitates Life

in Animation | October 29th, 2012

Talk about strange tim­ing. On Tues­day, direc­tor Ross Ching released the third video in his “Emp­ty Amer­i­ca” series, and it shows New York City wiped clean of tourists and traf­fic. If you did­n’t know any bet­ter, you’d think that the video sim­ply cap­tured the city as it pre­pared for the arrival of Hur­ri­cane Sandy. (See images of desert­ed NYC here, here and here.) But, this video is all arti­fice, not real­i­ty, and it comes on the heels of two sis­ter videos show­ing San Fran­cis­co and Seat­tle as bar­ren as can be.

San Fran­cis­co

Seat­tle

via Devour and Kot­tke

The Rolling Stones Sing the Beatles’ “Eight Days a Week” in a Hotel Room (1965)

in Film, Music | October 29th, 2012

Today we set the Way­back Machine to Ire­land, 1965, where we find a young Mick Jag­ger and a shock­ing­ly restored Kei­th Richards staving off the down­time bore­dom of a two-day tour with a not-entire­ly-rev­er­en­tial Bea­t­les sin­ga­long. Despite the drab­ness of the room in which doc­u­men­tar­i­an Peter White­head caught the lads clown­ing, it’s clear that Jag­ger was feel­ing his oats. Go ahead and read those famous lips when he wraps them around the cho­rus of Eight Days a Week.

This price­less pri­vate moment is culled from the just released, not-entire­ly-fin­ished doc­u­men­tary, The Rolling Stones: Char­lie Is My Dar­ling — Ire­land 1965. For­mer Stones’ pro­duc­er Andrew Loog Old­ham recent­ly chalked the near-50-year delay to the mas­sive explo­sion of the band’s pop­u­lar­i­ty. Padding things out to a prop­er fea­ture length would have required addi­tion­al film­ing. (I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion had shot to the top of the Amer­i­can charts just two months ear­li­er,  from which point on, the lads’ dance card was filled.

Lucky thing, that. What might in its day have amount­ed to a fun peek behind the scenes feels far more com­pelling as a just-cracked time cap­sule. The sad spec­ta­cle of Bri­an Jones mus­ing about his future options is off­set by the youth­ful lark­ing about of rock­’s most cel­e­brat­ed senior cit­i­zens.

See the trail­er for The Rolling Stones: Char­lie Is My Dar­ling — Ire­land 1965 right below.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day briefly men­tioned Mick Jag­ger’s lips vis-à-vis Lau­ren Bacall in her mem­oir, Dirty Sug­ar Cook­ies: Culi­nary Obser­va­tions, Ques­tion­able Taste.

Download a Free, New Halloween Story by Neil Gaiman (and Help Charities Along the Way)

in Audio Books, Literature | October 29th, 2012

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the free, down­load­able sto­ries and nov­els by author Neil Gaiman avail­able online in video, audio, and text for­mat. This is a won­der­ful thing, to be sure; Gaiman’s a fan­tas­tic writer of dark fan­ta­sy for chil­dren and adults alike, so who bet­ter to inau­gu­rate this year’s Hal­loween cel­e­bra­tions with a new free sto­ry, avail­able for down­load through Audible.com and read by Neil him­self?

Gaiman’s new sto­ry, enti­tled “Click-Clack the Rat­tle­bag,” is creepy, for sure, but that’s all I’m going say about it. You’ll need to down­load it your­self to find out more, and you real­ly should because for every down­load of the sto­ry, Audi­ble has agreed to donate a dol­lar to one of two char­i­ties that Neil has chosen—one for the U.S. and one for the U.K.. Gaiman has more infor­ma­tion on his per­son­al web­site, where he describes his nego­ti­a­tions with Audi­ble in set­ting up the dona­tions and the process of record­ing the sto­ry. He writes:

The sto­ry is unpub­lished (it will be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing anthol­o­gy called Impos­si­ble Mon­sters, edit­ed by Kasey Lans­dale and com­ing out from Sub­ter­ranean Press). It’s fun­ny, a lit­tle bit, and it’s scary, just enough for Hal­lowe’en, I hope.

Gaiman also has a few requests: first, you need to down­load the sto­ry by Hal­loween in order to make the dona­tion; sec­ond, please don’t give the sto­ry away—encourage peo­ple to go down­load it for them­selves; and last­ly, “wait to lis­ten to it until after dark.” Atmos­phere mat­ters.

You do not need an Audi­ble account to down­load the sto­ry, but you do need to give them your email address to prove you’re a human. U.S. read­ers should go to www.audible.com/ScareUs and U.K. read­ers to www.audible.co.uk/ScareUs. (Gaiman pro­vides no instruc­tions for read­ers in oth­er coun­tries; I sup­pose they could go to either site). So don’t wait—help Audi­ble raise mon­ey for some wor­thy edu­ca­tion­al char­i­ties and get in the spir­it with some great new fic­tion from one of the most imag­i­na­tive writ­ers work­ing today. Final­ly, if you’re look­ing for more scary reads this Hal­loween, down­load Gaiman’s “All Hal­low’s Read” book rec­om­men­da­tions in a .pdf.

Note: Do you want to lis­ten to oth­er free audio books by Neil Gaiman? Just head over to Audible.com and reg­is­ter for a 30-day free tri­al. You can down­load any audio­book for free. Then, when the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it, and still keep the audio book. The choice is entire­ly yours. And, in full dis­clo­sure, let me tell you that we have a nice arrange­ment with Audi­ble. When­ev­er some­one signs up for a free tri­al, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Final­ly, we also sug­gest that you explore our col­lec­tion of 450 Free Audio Books. It’s loaded with great clas­sics.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

The Physics of Coffee Rings Finally Explained

in Physics | October 29th, 2012

It’s Mon­day morn­ing. Anoth­er work week begins; anoth­er cup of cof­fee to the res­cue. If you’re not care­ful, you might spill a bit of that pre­cious cof­fee and then lat­er won­der (à la Jer­ry Sein­feld) — What is the deal with that cof­fee ring on the table? Why does it form a ring with dark, out­er edges? You can imag­ine Sein­feld ask­ing this, right?

Well, it turns out there’s an answer for this. And it comes straight from a lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s Depart­ment of Physics and Astron­o­my. Yes, my friends, it all comes down to the shape of the par­ti­cles in the liq­uid. Cof­fee is made up of spher­i­cal par­ti­cles, and they get dis­trib­uted uneven­ly, with some push­ing out­ward towards an edge and form­ing dark rings. Mean­while, oth­er liq­uids are made up of oblong par­ti­cles that get dis­trib­uted even­ly, hence no rings. The UPenn video above breaks it all down for you.

Amaz­ing­ly, this isn’t our first post on Physics and Cof­fee. Here’s a quick look at how they drink cof­fee at zero grav­i­ty in the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. Enjoy!

via Radio Lab

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About Cof­fee in Three Min­utes

Free Online Cours­es Online about Physics from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics

Hear Sylvia Plath Read Her Poem ‘A Birthday Present’

in Literature, Poetry | October 27th, 2012

Sylvia Plath would have turned 81 years old today. It’s a strange thing to imag­ine. Plath’s rep­u­ta­tion as a poet is so sad­ly bound up with her death by sui­cide at the age of 30, and so many of the lines in her lat­er poet­ry sound like sui­cide notes, that it seems impos­si­ble to pic­ture her mak­ing it to old age. In “Lady Lazarus,” Plath writes: “Dying/Is an art, like every­thing else./I do it excep­tion­al­ly well.”

Plath is remem­bered main­ly for the poems she wrote in the last half year of her life, when she had sep­a­rat­ed from her hus­band, the poet Ted Hugh­es. It was then that Plath found her “real voice,” as Hugh­es put it, in a marathon burst of cre­ativ­i­ty that result­ed in the com­po­si­tion of some 70 poems, over half of which were col­lect­ed in her posthu­mous book, Ariel.

But the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Plath’s final days–her anger and sense of betray­al over her hus­band’s infi­deli­ty, her deci­sion to kill her­self by turn­ing on the gas and plac­ing her head in an unlight­ed oven while her two young chil­dren slept in anoth­er room–have com­pli­cat­ed her lit­er­ary lega­cy. A mor­bid cult has sur­round­ed Plath, with many of her most fer­vent admir­ers gloss­ing over the poet­’s long strug­gle with men­tal ill­ness to find in her a mar­tyred fem­i­nist saint, a mod­ern Ophe­lia.

“It has fre­quent­ly been asked whether the poet­ry of Plath would have so aroused the atten­tion of the world if Plath had not killed her­self,” writes Janet Mal­colm in The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hugh­es. “I would agree with those who say no. The death-rid­den poems move us and elec­tri­fy us because of our knowl­edge of what hap­pened.” It’s a shame, because Plath’s achieve­ment should be judged on its own mer­its. In 2000, Joyce Car­ol Oates described some of the qual­i­ties she admired in Plath’s writ­ing:

The most mem­o­rable of Sylvia Plath’s incan­ta­to­ry poems, many of them writ­ten dur­ing the final, tur­bu­lent weeks of her life, read as if they’ve been chis­eled, with a fine sur­gi­cal instru­ment, out of Arc­tic ice. Her lan­guage is taught and orig­i­nal; her strat­e­gy elip­ti­cal; such poems as “Les­bos,” “The Munich Man­nequins,” “Par­a­lyt­ic,” “Dad­dy” (Plath’s most noto­ri­ous poem), and “Edge” (Plath’s last poem, writ­ten in Feb­ru­ary, 1963), and the pre­scient “Death & Co.” linger long in the mem­o­ry, with the pow­er of malev­o­lent nurs­ery rhymes. For Plath, “The blood jet is poet­ry,” and read­ers who might know lit­tle of the poet­’s pri­vate life can nonethe­less feel the authen­tic­i­ty of Plath’s recur­ring emo­tions: hurt, bewil­der­ment, rage, sto­ic calm, bit­ter res­ig­na­tion. Like the great­est of her pre­de­ces­sors, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Plath under­stood that poet­ic truth is best told slant­wise, in as few words as pos­si­ble.

Oates called Plath “our acknowl­edged Queen of Sor­rows, the spokes­woman for our most pri­vate, most help­less night­mares.” The poem above, “A Birth­day Present,” is one of the pri­vate and night­mar­ish poems col­lect­ed in Ariel. Plath wrote it just over half a cen­tu­ry ago as she was con­tem­plat­ing the approach of her 30th birth­day, and some­thing dark­er. The record­ing is from a BBC broad­cast in Decem­ber of 1962, only two months before Plath’s death. (You can read the text as you lis­ten.) In his 1966 fore­ward to the first U.S. edi­tion of Ariel, the poet Robert Low­ell made the fol­low­ing assess­ment of Plath:

Sui­cide, father-hatred, self-loathing–nothing is too much for the macabre gai­ety of her con­trol. Yet it is too much; her art’s immor­tal­i­ty is life’s dis­in­te­gra­tion. The sur­prise, the shim­mer­ing, unwrapped birth­day present, the tran­scen­dence “into the red eye, the caul­dron of morn­ing,” and the lover, who are always wait­ing for her, are Death, her own abrupt and defi­ant death.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dylan Thomas Recites ‘Do Not Go Gen­tle into That Good Night’ and Oth­er Poems

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance”

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Famous­ly Cen­sored Beat Poem, Howl

Hear Sylvia Plath Read Fif­teen Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

New Animated Film Tells the Life Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman

in Comedy, Film | October 24th, 2012

John Cleese, Eric Idle, Ter­ry Jones, Ter­ry Gilliam, and Michael Palin have all entered their late six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties in rea­son­able pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Gra­ham Chap­man, how­ev­er, “self­ish­ly dropped dead in 1989,” thus tak­ing on the offi­cial title of “the dead one from Mon­ty Python.” That comes straight from the press mate­ri­als pro­mot­ing A Liar’s Auto­bi­og­ra­phy: The Untrue Sto­ry of Mon­ty Python’s Gra­ham Chap­man, the high­ly non­tra­di­tion­al biopic that recent­ly made its debut in the Unit­ed King­dom. The elab­o­rate pro­duc­tion com­mand­ed the visu­al tal­ents of no few­er than four­teen sep­a­rate ani­ma­tion stu­dios and the vocal tal­ents of no few­er than five Pythons, Chap­man him­self includ­ed. Short­ly before his pass­ing, Chap­man record­ed him­self read­ing the text of his auto­bi­og­ra­phy A Liar’s Auto­bi­og­ra­phy (Vol­ume VI), and that audio track pro­vides the basis of the ver­i­ta­ble kalei­do­scope of aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties and lev­els of comedic taste you can glimpse in the trail­er above. Oh, and the film’s in 3D.

The notion that a tale like Chap­man’s life demands a pack of tellers has a prece­dent in the book, which famous­ly cred­its five authors: Chap­man him­self, his part­ner David Sher­lock, The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy mas­ter­mind Dou­glas Adams, crime writer David Yal­lop, and Alex Mar­tin. Those at all famil­iar with Chap­man should feel pleased to see rep­re­sent­ed in the trail­er a seem­ing­ly appro­pri­ate mix­ture of har­row­ing for­ma­tive wartime expe­ri­ence, sex­u­al adven­ture, obvi­ous fab­ri­ca­tion, and sheer drunk­en­ness — and that does­n’t yet take into account all that Mon­ty Python busi­ness. The trail­er’s final moments cred­it its absur­di­ty-lov­ing, pipe-smok­ing sub­ject with call­ing A Liar’s Auto­bi­og­ra­phy “the best movie I’ve been in since I died.” That takes it out of com­pe­ti­tion with the beloved Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail and Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an in which Chap­man liv­ing­ly starred, but it still looks like a for­mi­da­ble effort. And the sur­viv­ing Pythons might tell you, it’d sure­ly hold its own against Yel­low­beard.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl: The Com­e­dy Clas­sic

Alan Watts and His Zen Wis­dom Ani­mat­ed by Cre­ators of South Park

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Richard Linklater’s Slacker, the Classic Gen‑X Indie Film

in Film | October 23rd, 2012

Think back to the Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent film boom (some­times known as “indiewood”) of the nineties. Which of that time’s fresh-faced auteurs strike you as impor­tant? Which of their first fea­tures retain their impact? Quentin Taran­ti­no’s Reser­voir Dogs, cer­tain­ly; Kevin Smith’s Clerks, which sum­moned a vast fan cul­ture out of nowhere; Robert Rodriguez’s much-dis­cussed “$7,000 movie” El Mari­achi; Steven Soder­bergh’s con­cept-prov­ing Sex, Lies, and Video­tape, per­haps the bell­wether of the entire move­ment. But you may under­es­ti­mate Richard Lin­klater’s low-key debut Slack­er at your per­il.

He con­struct­ed the 1991 film (avail­able to view on YouTube) as a series of set pieces — some irrev­er­ent, some mean­der­ing, and some bizarre, but most all of them with stealth­ily uni­ver­sal res­o­nance — tak­ing place across the col­lege town of Austin, Texas. Dou­glas Cou­p­land hav­ing coined the term “Gen­er­a­tion X” with his epony­mous nov­el less than four months before, the North Amer­i­can zeit­geist had come to take seri­ous, if smirk­ing, notice of all these slouchy twen­tysome­things who seemed to turn up with­out warn­ing, spout­ing end­less streams of ideas, the­o­ries, wise­cracks, and elab­o­rate plans, yet drained of any­thing rec­og­niz­able as ambi­tion. These slack­ers, as we now call them with­out hes­i­ta­tion, make up the drama­tis per­sonæ of Slack­er. You can see them in their own pecu­liar type of action by watch­ing the pic­ture free online.

The first slack­er to appear, a deeply con­flict­ed motor­mouth in the back seat of a taxi, comes played by Lin­klater him­self. He seems nor­mal enough, essen­tial­ly an aim­less late-twen­tysome­thing you still meet in cof­fee shops today. But as the cam­era drifts from block to block, from neigh­bor­hood to Austin neigh­bor­hood, pick­ing up on any low-momen­tum sto­ry it can, behav­iors turn stranger. A book­store clerk who lives for JFK con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries log­or­rhe­ical­ly describes his own book-in-progress on the sub­ject to a help­less acquain­tance. A skin­ny stu­dent type liv­ing in a room crammed with tele­vi­sions and even wear­ing one on back claims des­per­a­tion to own yet anoth­er set. Two fel­lows egg a third on to throw a type­writer off a bridge and thus sym­bol­i­cal­ly final­ize a breakup. And let us nev­er for­get the immor­tal seg­ment where­in But­t­hole Surfers drum­mer Tere­sa Tay­lor attempts to sell what she describes as a “Madon­na pap smear.” Like the ear­ly films of Taran­ti­no, Smith, and Rodriguez, Slack­er remains thrilling­ly fun to watch, espe­cial­ly for the enthu­si­ast of micro-bud­get cin­e­ma. But some­where around its final pas­sage, which begins when a slack­er picks up the Pix­elvi­sion cam­era through which we our­selves see the next few min­utes, you real­ize you’ve been watch­ing some­thing on a high­er plane. Forced to bet which of the films of this move­ment schol­ars will rel­ish enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly a cen­tu­ry from now, I’d bet on Slack­er, which has now beed added to our ever-expand­ing list, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch German Painter Gerhard Richter Create Abstract Art

in Art | October 23rd, 2012

The Ger­man painter Ger­hard Richter goes back and  forth between pho­to­re­al­ism and com­plete abstrac­tion. In this film we see the artist in his abstract mode, using a giant squeegee to apply and scrape off suc­ces­sive lay­ers of paint.

In 2008 and 2009 the reclu­sive Richter allowed film­mak­er Corin­na Belz into his stu­dio in Cologne to doc­u­ment the cre­ation of a series of large abstract paint­ings. Belz was ini­tial­ly sur­prised by the num­ber of lay­ers Richter used to cre­ate his decep­tive­ly sim­ple-look­ing works. “Some­times,” she said in an inter­view on her web site, “I looked at a paint­ing and thought: It’s good like this. But then came the next step in the process, and what I had per­ceived as a fin­ished pic­ture would be destroyed before my very eyes; just paint­ed over. It’s not easy when your ‘pro­tag­o­nists’ are con­stant­ly dis­ap­pear­ing.”

Even Richter often does­n’t know when one of his abstract paint­ings will be fin­ished. “It’s very sur­pris­ing often,” he told Tate Mod­ern Direc­tor Nicholas Sero­ta in a filmed inter­view last year, before the open­ing of a major ret­ro­spec­tive of his work. “I’m paint­ing again and again every day and so it seems you will nev­er come to an end, it will nev­er become a good paint­ing, and sud­den­ly it’s fin­ished: ‘Oh, good.’ ”

Belz’s film, Ger­hard Richter Paint­ing, was released in 2011 to crit­i­cal acclaim. Ear­li­er this month an abstract paint­ing by the 80-year-old Richter set a record for the most mon­ey ever paid for a work by a liv­ing artist, bring­ing $34.2 mil­lion at Sothe­by’s in Lon­don.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

Anselm Kiefer at Work, Cre­at­ing His “World of Ruina­tion”

John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Two Appearances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

in Music, Television | October 23rd, 2012

I imag­ine there are some pret­ty bizarre con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries out there about the fact that John Lennon pre­miered his film for the song “Imag­ine” on Sep­tem­ber 11th, 1971. You won’t find any of them here, but it is an odd coin­ci­dence. Lennon and his oft-maligned wife Yoko Ono made their first appear­ance on The Dick Cavett show on that day (above) to debut their new work. They ban­ter about their hair­cuts (they donat­ed their long hair to be auc­tioned at Sotheby’s—it wasn’t). They dis­cuss Lennon’s chang­ing music career. There’s some strange fun with peo­ple in head-to-toe burqua-like bags. Most­ly they plug: screen­ing some of their films and debut­ing a song from Yoko’s weird (I’d argue weird­ly-bril­liant) dou­ble album Fly.

Cavett looks ner­vous, but most­ly holds his own against Lennon’s quick-wit­ted music hall chat­ter, always unpre­dictably dis­arm­ing. Lennon is the star here, of course; he had just turned thir­ty and only days ear­li­er released the Imag­ine album in the U.S., which would go to num­ber one world­wide. Nev­er­the­less, he does his lev­el best to make this a joint inter­view and to pro­mote his wife’s work as much, if not more, than his own. I imag­ine there’s no short­age of peo­ple who hat­ed this, and still do, but I think it’s gal­lant and sin­cere. But maybe I’m easy on them. Because I can fast for­ward. View­ers of the orig­i­nal broad­cast had to wait till near­ly the end to see the “Imag­ine” film. With the mag­ic of dig­i­tal, all you have to do is skip ahead to 58:05. It’s worth the effort.

John and Yoko returned to Cavett’s show in 1972.  Lennon seems a bit jumpy here—nervous per­haps since both he and Yoko per­form live in this appear­ance; John does his less-than-stel­lar anthem “Woman is the Nig­ger of the World” and elo­quent­ly defends the inflam­ma­to­ry title line; Yoko sings her, well, weird “We are Water,” both with the back­ing band Elephant’s Mem­o­ry.

There’s a humor­ous ref­er­ence to George Harrison’s appear­ance on the show the pre­vi­ous year, but things take a slight­ly more seri­ous turn here than their pre­vi­ous inter­view. The show aired in May, just a few months before the his­toric 1972 elec­tion in which incum­bent Nixon round­ly trounced the recent­ly depart­ed George McGov­ern. Lennon and Ono dis­cuss their pos­si­ble depor­ta­tion that year due to Nixon’s dis­plea­sure at their anti-war activ­i­ties. This nev­er came to pass, but it was a tense time for Lennon since he had made New York his base of oper­a­tions for the past year. I imag­ine someone’s writ­ten an alter­nate his­to­ry in which Lennon was deport­ed, said the hell with it, and nev­er returned to New York. No telling what he’d be up to now, but as these inter­views make clear, he wouldn’t be sell­ing nos­tal­gia or mount­ing Bea­t­les reunion tours.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.