Beginnings Profiles Shakespeare and Company’s Sylvia Beach Whitman

in Books, Film | March 16th, 2012

Last Decem­ber, we fea­tured the doc­u­men­tary Por­trait of a Book­store as an Old Man in trib­ute to its recent­ly passed sub­ject, not­ed book­seller and eccen­tric George Whit­man. His store Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny has sent a bea­con from Paris’ Left Bank to writ­ers and bib­lio­philes the world over for six­ty years, and it con­tin­ues to do so under Whit­man’s daugh­ter, Sylvia Beach Whit­man. While prac­ti­cal­ly every book­store in busi­ness today takes pains to set itself apart as some­thing “more than just a book­store,” Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny has been hip to that plan since its incep­tion, offer­ing a read­ing library, Sun­day tea, a sto­ried makeshift writ­ers’ colony, and a taste of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry’s expa­tri­ate-filled Parisian lit­er­ary scene. Read­ers well-versed in the his­to­ry of that scene will notice a clever bit of attempt­ed pre­des­ti­na­tion on George Whit­man’s part in nam­ing his daugh­ter after Sylvia Beach, the Amer­i­can founder of anoth­er famous book­store called Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny, which oper­at­ed from 1921 to 1941.

You can learn more about Sylvia Beach Whit­man — much more than you’d expect to in under four min­utes — from art-world doc­u­men­tar­i­an Chiara Clemente’s pro­file of her on the Sun­dance Chan­nel’s doc­u­men­tary series Begin­nings. Whit­man remem­bers her days as Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny’s offi­cial mop­pet, when its writ­ers in res­i­dence — her “hun­dreds of broth­ers and sis­ters” — would tell her cus­tom-made bed­time sto­ries before flop­ping down on their own beds built atop the book piles. She’s since grown up and gone on to do big things with the store, includ­ing start­ing a bien­ni­al lit­er­ary fes­ti­val which has brought in the likes of Jung Chang, Paul Auster, David Hare, and Perse­po­lis author Mar­jane Satrapi, who fea­tures in a Begin­nings short of her own (see above). When not hard at work on a page of com­ic art, Satrapi lights up a cig­a­rette and remem­bers how, due to the last forty years of con­stant polit­i­cal churn in her native Iran, no Iran­ian of her gen­er­a­tion has lived any­thing like a “nor­mal” life. The series also cov­ers the ear­ly lives and first inspi­ra­tions of cre­ators includ­ing shoe design­er Chris­t­ian Louboutin, Blue Hill chef Dan Bar­ber, and… well, you can’t describe Yoko Ono as any­thing but Yoko Ono. But you can watch her episode of Begin­nings on NYTimes.com and hear about her strug­gle to find her way to the avant-garde after emerg­ing from her fam­i­ly’s artis­tic tra­di­tion­al­ism. H/T New York­er

Relat­ed con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing George Whit­man, Own­er of Famed Book­store, Shake­speare & Com­pa­ny

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film Set at Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny

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

Michael Shermer’s Baloney Detection Kit: What to Ask Before Believing

in Science | March 15th, 2012

Ear­li­er this week The New York Times pub­lished an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion between philoso­pher Michael Lynch and physi­cist Alan Sokal on epis­temic first prin­ci­ples, or, as Lynch put it in an ear­li­er essay, the “Rea­sons for Rea­son.” To illus­trate the prac­ti­cal advan­tage of obser­va­tion and induc­tive rea­son­ing in the for­ma­tion of beliefs, Sokal quotes a pas­sage from James Robert Brown’s Who Rules in Sci­ence?:

Cer­tain rea­son­ing pat­terns tend to pro­mote sur­vival; oth­ers don’t. If Og rea­soned: “In the past tigers have reg­u­lar­ly eat­en peo­ple, but I’m sure this one will be quite friend­ly,” then very like­ly Og is not your ances­tor.

Beliefs are impor­tant. How we form them can have pro­found con­se­quences for our own lives and–especially in a democracy–for the lives of the peo­ple around us. In this 15-minute video from the Richard Dawkins Foun­da­tion, Skep­tic mag­a­zine founder and edi­tor Michael Sher­mer gives prac­ti­cal advice on how to sep­a­rate sense from non­sense when form­ing beliefs. The next time some­one tries to con­vince you of a tiger’s friend­li­ness, do your­self a favor and take heed of what Sher­mer has to say.

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!

Andy Warhol’s ‘Screen Test’ of Bob Dylan: A Classic Meeting of Egos

in Art, Film, Music | March 14th, 2012

Yes­ter­day we post­ed John Belushi’s screen test for Sat­ur­day Night Live. Today we fea­ture an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent kind of “screen test”: Andy Warhol’s unblink­ing film por­trait of an irri­tat­ed-look­ing Bob Dylan.

Between 1964 and 1966 Warhol and his assis­tant, Ger­ard Malan­ga, used a 16mm Bolex cam­era to make 472 short films of peo­ple, both famous and obscure, who came to vis­it his “Fac­to­ry” on East 47th Street in New York. The idea of call­ing them “Screen Tests” was some­thing of a joke, accord­ing to Malan­ga. “None of these screen tests amount­ed to giv­ing those peo­ple the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go on in the under­ground film world,” Malan­ga said in a 2009 inter­view. “It was kind of a par­o­dy of Hol­ly­wood.”

To Warhol biog­ra­phers Tony Scher­man and David Dal­ton, the Screen Tests are seri­ous works of art, the prod­uct of Warhol’s “inge­nious con­cep­tion of a mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry por­trait.” In Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol, they write:

When movies were invent­ed, their crit­ics claimed there was one thing they could­n’t do: cap­ture the soul, the dis­til­la­tion of per­son­al­i­ty. Iron­i­cal­ly, this turned out to be one of film’s great­est capac­i­ties. Oper­at­ed close up, the movie cam­era lets us read, per­haps more clear­ly than any oth­er instru­ment, a sub­jec­t’s emo­tions. As his hun­dreds of six­ties, sev­en­ties, and eight­ies pho­to-silk-screen por­traits attest, Warhol was com­pelled to por­tray the human face. The Bolex let him home in on flick­er­ing expres­sions and shift­ing nods, a near-instant rais­ing and low­er­ing of eye­brows, a quick side­long glance, pen­sive and thought­ful slow noods, or a three-minute slide from com­po­sure into self-con­cious giddiness–fleeting emo­tions that nei­ther paint nor a still cam­era could cap­ture. Andy’s ambi­tion for the Screen Tests, as for film in gen­er­al, was to reg­is­ter per­son­al­i­ty.

Warhol’s method was to load 100 feet of film into the cam­era, place it on a tri­pod, press the but­ton, and leave it running–sometimes even walk­ing away–until the film was gone. It was like a star­ing con­test he could­n’t lose. Each roll took almost three min­utes. In Dylan’s case two rolls were exposed: one for a wide view, the oth­er a close-up. The short clip above includes footage from both rolls.

The exact date of the ses­sion is unknown. Scher­man and Dal­ton write that it most like­ly occurred in Jan­u­ary of 1966, just before Dylan’s world tour. Some wit­ness­es say it hap­pened in late July of 1965, around the time of Dylan’s his­toric “elec­tric” per­for­mance at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. What­ev­er the date, by all accounts it was an awk­ward, chilly encounter.

Dylan pulled up at the Fac­to­ry in a sta­tion wag­on with his friend, Bob Neuwirth. From the begin­ning, accord­ing to Scher­man and Dal­ton, it was clear that Dylan was deter­mined to demon­strate his supe­ri­or cool. “As for Andy’s motives,” they write, “he was clear­ly star-struck, in awe of Dylan’s sud­den, vast celebri­ty. He had a more prac­ti­cal agen­da, too: to get Dylan to appear in a Warhol movie.”

But Dylan was­n’t hav­ing it. After the sullen Screen Test, he walked over to a large paint­ing of Elvis Pres­ley that Warhol had already set aside for him as a gift and, by one account, said “I think I’ll just take this for pay­ment, man.” He and Neuwirth then lift­ed the paint­ing, which was near­ly sev­en feet tall, car­ried it out of the stu­dio, down the freight ele­va­tor and into the street, where they strapped it–with no pro­tec­tion whatsoever–onto the roof of the sta­tion wag­on and drove away.

Post­script: Dylan nev­er liked the paint­ing, Dou­ble Elvis, so he trad­ed it with his man­ag­er, Albert Gross­man, for a sofa. It’s now in the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. (The paint­ing, that is. Not the sofa.)

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:

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

Watch Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests of Three Female Mus­es: Nico, Edie Sedg­wick & Mary Woronov

130,000 Pho­tographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Avail­able Online, Cour­tesy of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty

RIP Peter Bergman; Hear the Firesign Theatre’s 1970 Masterpiece

in Comedy | March 13th, 2012

“I’m too young to have been around when these were cur­rent,” reads one YouTube com­ment post­ed to a piece of Fire­sign The­atre mate­r­i­al, “but as soon as I heard their first four albums or so, my dad’s jokes sud­den­ly made sense.” Respond­ing to anoth­er clip, some­one else recalls, “My father quot­ed bits of their show through­out my entire child­hood, and as we got old­er we asked where they came from.” A third com­menter appears below yet anoth­er arti­fact from a Fire­sign record: “My dad has been lis­ten­ing to this since it came out in 1969, and I myself have been lis­ten­ing to it since he showed me it when I was sev­en in 1989… and we’re STILL find­ing new things about it.” I count myself in this parade of late-twen­ties-ear­ly-thir­ties lis­ten­ers who embrace enthu­si­asm for the Fire­sign The­atre as their patro­cliny. Hav­ing nev­er known a world with­out all four of these guys whom Robert Christ­gau was call­ing “the grand old men of head com­e­dy” even in 1977, we find our­selves not just dis­mayed but star­tled by the pass­ing of found­ing mem­ber Peter Bergman last Fri­day.

For a refresh­er course — or even a first course — in the inim­itable Fire­sign sen­si­bil­i­ty, look no fur­ther than the quartet’s 1970 album Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pli­ers, avail­able in four parts on YouTube. Enthu­si­asts of stu­dio-record­ed com­e­dy con­sid­er it the Ulysses of the form (or even its Finnegans Wake), though you won’t have to per­form quite so much schol­ar­ship before you’re allowed to laugh at the jokes.

In the late six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties, Bergman and his co-sur­re­al­ists Phil Austin, David Oss­man, and Philip Proc­tor real­ized they could use then-mod­ern record­ing stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy not just as a facil­i­ty for cap­tur­ing com­e­dy, but for cre­at­ing com­e­dy — a new kind of com­e­dy nobody had ever heard before. Lay­er­ing speech upon noise upon son­ic abstrac­tion, the Fire­sign The­atre did with the tra­di­tions of radio com­e­dy what Steely Dan did with those of jazz and rock, craft­ing a dense satir­i­cal polypho­ny of jab, word­play, allu­sion, and con­trolled inar­tic­u­la­cy that yields dif­fer­ent laughs on dif­fer­ent lev­els depend­ing on where, when, and who you are. This proved the ide­al way to tell the sto­ry of Don’t Crush That Dwarf’s pro­tag­o­nist George Leroy Tirebiter, for­mer teen actor and cur­rent wee-hour chan­nel-flip­per in a dystopi­an future Los Ange­les cloud­ed with evan­ge­lism, huck­ster­ism, and creep­ing para­noia.

Bergman him­self said they made their records to be heard about eighty times. If we in this newest wave of adult Fire­sign The­atre fan­dom believe the col­lege sto­ries our fathers tell, Don’t Crush That Dwarf could play eighty times dur­ing the course of a sin­gle par­ty. (Before the inven­tion of the inter­net, I sup­pose you took your intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion where you found it.) Unlike them, we didn’t come upon the album by way of an insis­tent friend sit­ting us down with a pair of head­phones and a joint; we’ve been hear­ing Dad play the thing since we were in dia­pers. I find it impos­si­ble to imag­ine a child­hood — indeed, an exis­tence — with­out con­stant ref­er­ences to hot-but­tered groat clus­ters, Morse Sci­ence High School, Ersatz Broth­ers Cof­fee, or the Depart­ment of Redun­dan­cy Depart­ment. I haven’t quite heard the Fire­sign Theatre’s mas­ter­piece eighty times yet, but when­ev­er I put on their inter­pre­ta­tion of Hesiod’s five ages of man by way of the five ages of Tirebiter’s life, I lis­ten with the con­fi­dence that it will last me through five of my own.

Links to each part of Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pli­ers: one, two, three, four

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

Rome Reborn — An Amazing Digital Model of Ancient Rome

in History | March 12th, 2012

What did ancient Rome look like in A.D. 320? Rome Reborn is an inter­na­tion­al ini­tia­tive to answer this ques­tion and cre­ate a 3D dig­i­tal mod­el of the Eter­nal City at a time when Rome’s pop­u­la­tion had reached its peak (about one mil­lion) and the first Chris­t­ian church­es were being built. The result is a tru­ly stun­ning bird’s-eye and ground view of ancient Rome that makes you feel as if you were actu­al­ly there. There are also some high-res­o­lu­tion images that lend them­selves per­fect­ly to being used as wall­pa­per for your com­put­er. HT @amishare

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

Build­ing The Colos­se­um: The Icon of Rome

Vis­it Pom­peii (also Stone­henge & Ver­sailles) with Google Street View

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

Frank Zappa Debates Censorship on CNN’s Crossfire (1986)

in Music, Politics, Television | March 9th, 2012

Cross­fire aired on CNN from 1982 to 2005, famous­ly pit­ting lib­er­al pun­dits and spe­cial guests against their con­ser­v­a­tive coun­ter­parts. Per­haps you will remem­ber the most famous episode — the day in 2004 when Jon Stew­art paid a vis­it and demol­ished the whole premise of the show. It’s hard to top that moment. But, maybe com­ing in a close sec­ond was Frank Zap­pa’s mem­o­rable appear­ance in 1986.

On that March day, Zap­pa jumped into the fray and fought the cul­ture wars of the 1980s. His main oppo­nent was­n’t the often prick­ly con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Robert Novack. Instead, it was John Lofton, a right-wing colum­nist for The Wash­ing­ton Times, who argued that gov­ern­ment should cen­sor rock lyrics deemed unfriend­ly to fam­i­lies. Zap­pa, who con­sid­ered him­self a con­ser­v­a­tive too, took umbrage and you can watch the con­ver­sa­tion unfold … and at times dete­ri­o­rate. Also don’t miss Zap­pa’s tes­ti­mo­ny before Con­gress in 1985.

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:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of Frank Zap­pa in 401 Songs

Watch Frank Zap­pa Play Michael Nesmith on The Monkees(1967)

The Fabric of the Cosmos with Brian Greene: Watch the Complete NOVA Series Online

in Physics, Television, Video - Science | March 7th, 2012

For­get about inclined planes and pul­leys. In this series from the PBS pro­gram NOVA, physics is pre­sent­ed as an exot­ic, mind-bend­ing realm.

The Fab­ric of the Cos­mos, first broad­cast in Novem­ber, fol­lows up on the 2003 Peabody Award-win­ning The Ele­gant Uni­verse. Both series are adapt­ed from the best-sell­ing books of host Bri­an Greene, a math­e­mati­cian and physi­cist at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.

Like the ear­li­er series, which was cen­tered around String The­o­ry, The Fab­ric of the Cos­mos deals with ideas that are on the cut­ting edge of sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry. “This is a report from the fron­tier of cos­mic thought,” wrote Den­nis Over­bye last Novem­ber in The New York Times, “as fresh as last mon­th’s Nobel Prizes, uncom­pro­mis­ing in its intel­lec­tu­al ambi­tions and dis­cern­ing in its choice of com­pelling sci­en­tif­ic issues. The action ranges from Times Square to the Grand Canyon, from bowl­ing lanes and bil­liard tables to the lim­its of the imag­i­na­tion.”

The series is arranged in four parts of approx­i­mate­ly 50 min­utes each. The episodes are called “What is Space?;” ‘The Illu­sion of Time,’ ‘Quan­tum Leap,’ and ‘Uni­verse or Mul­ti­verse?’

Mick Jones Plays Three Favorite Songs by The Clash at the Library

in Music | March 6th, 2012

The venue isn’t as large. The head of hair isn’t as full. The beat does­n’t dri­ve as hard. But the song remains the same. Above, Mick Jones revis­its a Clash clas­sic, “Train in Vain,” at the open­ing of The Rock and Roll Pub­lic Library in 2009. Below, we head back to the band’s hey­day when The Clash played the same tune at the US Fes­ti­val in San Bernardi­no CA (cir­ca May 1982). Oth­er charm­ing songs played that day include:

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Stay Free

Neil deGrasse Tyson Remembers His First Meeting with Carl Sagan

in Astronomy, Physics, Science, Television | March 5th, 2012

Carl Sagan left a big void when he died in 1996. His elo­quence, his pas­sion for explain­ing sci­ence to a wider pub­lic, made him a major cul­tur­al fig­ure in late 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. Now a new voice is emerg­ing. Neil deGrasse Tyson, like Sagan, is an astronomer and physi­cist with a remark­able gift for speak­ing about the beau­ty and impor­tance of sci­ence. Like Sagan, he hosts a PBS tele­vi­sion pro­gram (NOVA Sci­en­ceNOW) and appears fre­quent­ly on talk shows. The pass­ing of the torch will become obvi­ous next year, when Tyson hosts the sequel to Sagan’s ground-break­ing 1980 TV series, Cos­mos. Tyson’s con­nec­tion to Sagan actu­al­ly began at a very young age. In the video clip above, Tyson tells Ted Simons of the region­al PBS show Ari­zona Hori­zon the sto­ry of a remark­able act of gen­eros­i­ty by Sagan when Tyson was only a teenag­er. If it whets your appetite, be sure to watch the com­plete 25-minute inter­view below. And don’t miss our very pop­u­lar relat­ed post: Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read.

Spielberg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nominations: ‘Commercial Backlash!’

in Film | March 2nd, 2012

Here’s an intrigu­ing clip from ear­ly 1976: A cam­era rolls as a 29-year-old Steven Spiel­berg sits down with friends to watch the tele­vised announce­ment of the Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tions for 1975. Spiel­berg’s film from that year, Jaws, was a mon­ster hit–the high­est-gross­ing movie in his­to­ry up until then–so he was feel­ing pret­ty cocky. “You’re about to see a sweep of the nom­i­na­tions,” he says as the broad­cast begins. But when the nom­i­nees for Best Direc­tor are named, his jaw drops:

• Fed­eri­co Felli­ni for Ama­cord
• Stan­ley Kubrick for Bar­ry Lyn­don
• Sid­ney Lumet for Dog Day After­noon
• Robert Alt­man for Nashville
• Milos For­man for One Flew Over the Cuck­oo’s Nest

“I got beat­en out by Felli­ni!” Spiel­berg says to his friends, the char­ac­ter actors Joe Spinell and Frank Pesce. And he’s right. When the list for Best Pic­ture is announced, the very same movies make it–all except for Fellini’s Ama­cord, which is replaced by Jaws.

Milos For­man and One Flew Over the Cuck­oo’s Nest went on to win the Oscars for Best Direc­tor and Best Pic­ture that year. Despite direct­ing a string of beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed block­busters–Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Ter­res­tri­al–Spiel­berg would not win an Acad­e­my Award for Best Direc­tor for anoth­er 18 years, with Schindler’s List.

The video of Spiel­berg’s defeat 36 years ago is fas­ci­nat­ing to watch. “What makes it so great,” writes Erik Davis at Movies.com, “is being able to watch a rare slice of his­to­ry in which a mas­ter of his craft actu­al­ly fails at some­thing. He fails at get­ting that direct­ing nod, and you can tell in his face that he want­ed it. He want­ed it bad.” H/T Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Steven Spiel­berg Admits Swal­low­ing a Tran­sis­tor to Andy Warhol and Bian­ca Jag­ger

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