The Story of Francis Ford Coppola’s Four-Decade-Struggle to Make Megalopolis

in Film | October 10th, 2024

This past sum­mer, out came a trail­er for Mega­lopo­lis, the movie Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la has spent half of his life try­ing to make. It took the bold approach of open­ing with quotes from reviews of his pre­vi­ous pic­tures, and not pos­i­tive ones: when it was first released, Rex Reed called Apoc­a­lypse Now “an epic piece of trash,” and even The God­fa­ther was “dimin­ished by its artsi­ness,” at least accord­ing to Pauline Kael. But film-crit­i­cism enthu­si­asts smelled some­thing fishy right away, and it took only the barest degree of research to dis­cov­er that not only had Reed and Kael (who liked The God­fa­ther, as did most every­one else) nev­er used those phras­es, none of the quotes in the trail­er were real.

All this evi­dence of crit­ics per­pet­u­al­ly fail­ing to grasp Cop­po­la’s visions seems to have been fab­ri­cat­ed with an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence sys­tem. This was a piece of bad press Mega­lopo­lis could’ve done with­out, sto­ries of its trou­bled pro­duc­tion hav­ing been cir­cu­lat­ing for months. But then, Cop­po­la has endured much worse in his long film­mak­ing career, like the hell­ish, enor­mous­ly pro­longed shoot­ing of Apoc­a­lypse Now, or the fire-sale of Zoetrope, the stu­dio he found­ed, after the box-office dis­as­ter of One From the Heart. That he was able to get Mega­lopo­lis into pro­duc­tion, let alone com­plete it, counts as some­thing of a tri­umph in itself.

The Be Kind Rewind video above recounts the sto­ry behind Mega­lopo­lis, in essence “a sto­ry about Cop­po­la him­self, informed by his own ambi­tions, set­backs, times of for­tune, and times of loss.” When he com­plet­ed the first full draft of the script in 1984, he could have had no idea of what lay in store for the project in the decades ahead, not least its numer­ous derail­ments by his own per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al crises as well as large-scale dis­as­ters like 9/11 and COVID-19. The result, at a cost of $120 mil­lion Cop­po­la raised by sell­ing off part of his win­ery, is a spec­ta­cle that med­i­tates on civ­i­liza­tion, moder­ni­ty, and utopia that, even this ear­ly in its release, has drawn reac­tions of aston­ish­ment, deri­sion, and — most com­mon­ly — flat-out mys­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The film “alter­nates grandiose rhetoric about gov­ern­ment and the mod­ern city with bor­der­line screw­ball com­e­dy, quotes Mar­cus Aure­lius and oth­er ancient thinkers, papers over sto­ry gaps with sonorous nar­ra­tion by cast mem­ber Lau­rence Fish­burne, and fills the screen with super­im­po­si­tions, split-screen mosaics, and images that aren’t meant to be tak­en lit­er­al­ly,” writes Rogerebert.com’s Matt Zoller-Seitz. “Movies like this only seem ‘indul­gent’ because we’re so deep into the era where every­thing has to be unmit­i­gat­ed fan ser­vice, the cin­e­mat­ic equiv­a­lent of cook­ing the Whop­per exact­ly how the cus­tomer dreamed about order­ing it.” Mega­lopo­lis is, in Be Kind Rewind’s final analy­sis, “the apoth­e­o­sis of auteurism, unre­strained spec­ta­cle that ampli­fies Cop­po­la’s best and worst instincts on a mas­sive scale.” Per­son­al­ly, I can’t wait to see it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Films: The God­fa­ther, Apoc­a­lypse Now & More

Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Hand­writ­ten Cast­ing Notes for The God­fa­ther

George Lucas Shoots a Cin­e­ma Ver­ité-Style Doc­u­men­tary on Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la (1969)

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

Is Amer­i­ca Declin­ing Like Ancient Rome?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Doctor Who Theme Reimagined as a Jacques Brel-esque Jazz Tune

in Comedy, Music | October 9th, 2024

Writ­ten by Ron Grain­er, and then famous­ly arranged and record­ed by Delia Der­byshire in 1963, the Doc­tor Who theme song has been adapt­ed and cov­ered many times, and even ref­er­enced by Pink Floyd. In the hands of come­di­an Bill Bai­ley, the song comes out a lit­tle differently–a lit­tle like a Bel­gian Jacques Brel-esque jazz cre­ation. This record­ing of “Doc­teur Qui” appar­ent­ly comes from the DVD Bill Bai­ley’s Remark­able Guide to the Orches­tra. Enjoy…

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 

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

How Doc­tor Who First Start­ed as a Fam­i­ly Edu­ca­tion­al TV Pro­gram (1963)

A Detailed, Track-by-Track Analy­sis of the Doc­tor Who Theme Music

Kurt Vonnegut’s Lost Board Game Is Finally for Sale

in Games, Literature | October 9th, 2024

Kurt Von­negut’s life was not with­out its ironies. Fight­ing in World War II, that descen­dant of a long line of Ger­man immi­grants in the Unit­ed States found him­self impris­oned in Dres­den just when it was dev­as­tat­ed by Allied fire­bomb­ing. To under­stand the rel­e­vance of this expe­ri­ence to his lit­er­ary work, one need only know that his cap­tors made him live in a slaugh­ter­house. It’s not sur­pris­ing that anti-war sen­ti­ments would sur­face again and again in the books he wrote after com­ing home. But one would hard­ly expect him to have spent his time away from the writ­ing desk on a mil­i­tary-themed board game.

“After releas­ing his first nov­el, Play­er Piano, in 1952, to pos­i­tive reviews and poor sales, he need­ed oth­er streams of income to sup­port his grow­ing fam­i­ly,” writes the New York Times’ Julia Carmel of the young Von­negut. Of all his endeav­ors — which includ­ed pub­lic rela­tions, a car deal­er­ship and a very brief stint at Sports Illus­trat­ed — he was most pas­sion­ate about design­ing a board game called Gen­er­al Head­quar­ters.” Read­ers of Von­negut’s nov­els might expect a sar­don­ical­ly didac­tic object les­son on the futil­i­ty of war, but in fact, “GHQ is a fast-paced two-play­er bat­tle game in which each play­er maneu­vers mil­i­tary units — infantry, armored vehi­cles, artillery and an air­borne reg­i­ment — to cap­ture the oth­er player’s head­quar­ters.”

Von­negut nev­er did man­age to sell the game, which has only just come avail­able for pur­chase at Barnes & Noble stores. Its long-delayed pro­duc­tion was the project of a table­top game design­er called Geoff Engel­stein, who ran across a brief men­tion of GHQ that even­tu­al­ly inspired him to inquire about the game’s sta­tus with the writer’s estate. The 40 pages of notes amid Von­negut’s papers include sev­er­al revi­sions of its rules, but also pitch let­ters to board-game com­pa­nies sug­gest­ing that GHQ could “become the third pop­u­lar checker­board game” — and even “be used to train cadets at the U.S. Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my at West Point.”

Despite prob­a­bly hav­ing missed its chance to enter the stan­dard mil­i­tary-acad­e­my cur­ricu­lum, the game could nev­er­the­less become a must-have among col­lec­tors of Von­negutiana. Accord­ing to the Kurt Von­negut Muse­um & Library’s online store, “this first edi­tion of GHQ fea­tures deluxe wood­en pieces and a 24-page com­men­tary book­let, show­ing Kurt Vonnegut’s actu­al design notes to give insight into his cre­ative process.” It may “lack the sig­na­ture dark sense of humor that runs through Mr. Von­negut’s writ­ing,” as Carmel puts it, but it sure­ly could­n’t be with­out his less wide­ly acknowl­edged — but no less char­ac­ter­is­tic — instinct for enter­tain­ment val­ue.

via The New York Times

Relat­ed con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

A New Kurt Von­negut Muse­um Opens in Indi­anapo­lis … Right in Time for Banned Books Week

The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Board Game, Inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s Rol­lick­ing Nov­el

Jack Ker­ouac Was a Secret, Obses­sive Fan of Fan­ta­sy Base­ball

The Fiendish­ly Com­pli­cat­ed Board Game That Takes 1,500 Hours to Play: Dis­cov­er The Cam­paign for North Africa

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Thomas Edison’s Recordings of Leo Tolstoy: Hear the Voice of the Great Russian Novelist

in History, Literature, Technology | October 8th, 2024

Born 196 years ago, Russ­ian nov­el­ist Leo Tolstoy’s life (1828–1910) spanned a peri­od of immense social, polit­i­cal, and tech­no­log­i­cal change, par­al­leled in his own life by his rad­i­cal shift from hedo­nis­tic noble­man to the­olo­gian, anar­chist, and veg­e­tar­i­an paci­fist. Though he did not live to see the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, the nov­el­ist did see Tsar Alexan­der II’s sweep­ing reforms, includ­ing the 1861 Eman­ci­pa­tion order that changed the social char­ac­ter of the coun­try. Near the end of his life, Tol­stoy saw the com­ing of new record­ing tech­nol­o­gy that would rev­o­lu­tion­ize the direc­tion of his own life’s work—telling sto­ries.

In his lat­er years Tol­stoy appeared in the new medi­um of film, which cap­tured his 80th birth­day in 1908, and his funer­al pro­ces­sion two years lat­er. He was the sub­ject of the first col­or pho­to­graph tak­en in Rus­sia (top) also in 1908. And that same year, Tol­stoy made sev­er­al audio record­ings of his voice, on a phono­graph sent to him per­son­al­ly by Thomas Edi­son. You can hear one of those record­ings, “The Pow­er of Child­hood,” made on April 19th, 1908, just above.

You’ll note, of course, that the great author reads in his native lan­guage. Most of the record­ings he made, which he intend­ed for the edi­fi­ca­tion of his coun­try­men, are in Russ­ian. Below, how­ev­er, you can hear him read from his last book, Wise Thoughts For Every Day in Eng­lish, Ger­man, French and Russ­ian. The book col­lects Tolstoy’s favorite pas­sages from thinkers as diverse as Lao-Tzu and Ralph Wal­do Emer­son. As Mike Springer wrote in a pre­vi­ous post on this record­ing, “Tol­stoy reject­ed his great works of fic­tion” as an old man, “believ­ing that it was more impor­tant to give moral and spir­i­tu­al guid­ance to the com­mon peo­ple.” To that end, he made a series of short record­ings, which you can hear at this site, on such sub­jects as art, law, moral­i­ty, pover­ty, non­vi­o­lence, and cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

The sto­ry of how Tol­stoy came to make these record­ings is a fas­ci­nat­ing one. Inter­est­ed in the new tech­nol­o­gy, Tol­stoy made his first record­ing in 1895, when, writes The Moscow Times, “an Edi­son rep­re­sen­ta­tive came to Yas­naya Polyana, Tol­stoy’s estate, to record the author’s voice. Those record­ings were tak­en over the bor­der to Berlin, where they lay in an archive until they were brought back to the Sovi­et Union after World War II.” When Stephen Bon­sal, edi­tor of the New York Times learned of Tolstoy’s inter­est in record­ing tech­nol­o­gy in 1907, he promised to send the nov­el­ist an Edi­son phono­graph of his own. Edi­son him­self, hear­ing of this, refused to accept any pay­ment, and per­son­al­ly sent his own machine to Tolstoy’s estate with the engraved mes­sage “A Gift to Count Leo Tol­stoy from Thomas Alva Edi­son.”

Edi­son asked Tol­stoy for many mul­ti-lin­gual record­ings, request­ing “short mes­sages” in Eng­lish and French, “con­vey­ing to the peo­ple of the world some thoughts that would tend to their moral and social advance­ment.” Tol­stoy dili­gent­ly made sev­er­al record­ings, some of which were then shipped to Edi­son in 1908. On Feb­ru­ary 21 of that year, the New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle on the exchange titled “Tolstoy’s Gift to Edi­son. Will Send Record of His Voice—Edison Gave Him a Phono­graph.” The world eager­ly await­ed the world-famous author’s mes­sage to its “civ­i­lized peo­ples.” It seems how­ev­er, that the mes­sage nev­er arrived. Accord­ing to Sput­nik News, the fate of that leg­endary record­ing “has yet to be found out.” Nev­er­the­less, thanks to Edi­son, we have sev­er­al oth­er record­ings of Tolstoy’s very well-pre­served voice, the record of a life lived to the end with fierce con­vic­tion and curios­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Leo Tol­stoy Became a Veg­e­tar­i­an and Jump­start­ed the Veg­e­tar­i­an & Human­i­tar­i­an Move­ments in the 19th Cen­tu­ry

The Only Col­or Pic­ture of Tol­stoy, Tak­en by Pho­tog­ra­phy Pio­neer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1908)

Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in 4 Lan­guages, 1909

Vin­tage Footage of Leo Tol­stoy: Video Cap­tures the Great Nov­el­ist Dur­ing His Final Days

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

Twin Peaks Actually Explained: A 4‑Hour Video Essay Demystifies It All

in Film | October 8th, 2024

I don’t know about you, but my YouTube algo­rithms can act like a nag­ging friend, sug­gest­ing a video for days until I final­ly give in. Such was the case with this video essay with the tan­ta­liz­ing title: “Twin Peaks ACTUALLY EXPLAINED (No, Real­ly)”.

First of all, before, dur­ing, and after 2017’s Twin Peaks The Return, the­o­ries were as inescapable as the cat memes on the Twin Peaks Face­book groups. After the mind-blow­ing Episode 8, they went into over­drive, includ­ing the bonkers idea that the final two episodes were meant to be watched *over­laid* on each oth­er. And I high­light­ed one in-depth jour­ney through the entire three decades of the Lynch/Frost cul­tur­al event for this very site.

So when I final­ly clicked on the link I balked imme­di­ate­ly: Four and a half hours? Are you kid­ding me? (You might be say­ing the very thing to your­self now.) But just like the nar­ra­tor says, bear with me. Over the week, I watched the entire thing in 30-minute seg­ments, not because it was gru­el­ing, but because time is pre­cious and there is a lot to chew over. By the end, I was rec­om­mend­ing the video to friends only to find some of them were already deep inside Twin Perfect’s analy­sis.

So here we are, with me high­ly encour­ag­ing you to invest the time (pro­vid­ing you have watched all three sea­sons of Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me), but also not want­i­ng to ruin some of Twin Perfect’s the­o­ries, which he lays out like a pros­e­cu­tor, walk­ing us through a gen­er­al the­o­ry of Lynch.

How­ev­er, I will make a few points:

• In 2019, we post­ed a video in which Lynch explains both the Uni­fied Field The­o­ry and Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion. There are at least two major sequences that Twin Per­fect sug­gests reflect the Uni­fied Field.
• Lynch’s obses­sion with elec­tric­i­ty and fire is essen­tial to the the­o­ry.
• The One-Armed Man’s quote “I mean it as it is, as it sounds,” dou­bles as Lynch’s approach: Twin Per­fect does a mas­ter­ful job show­ing many, many exam­ples where Lynch is direct­ly explain­ing his use of metaphor and sym­bol to us. Some­times that is straight into the cam­era.
• We now know why Sea­son Three fea­tured a three-minute shot of a man sweep­ing up peanuts from a bar floor.
• I’ve always felt that The Return was an explo­ration of the dan­gers of nos­tal­gia, and this essay con­firmed it for me. There was some­thing miss­ing at the cen­ter of the Third Sea­son, indeed.
• Twin Per­fect reads all quotes from the direc­tor in a mock-Lynch voice. For some this will grate; for me it was A BEAUTIFUL THING (wig­gly fin­ger ges­ture).

Twin Per­fect puts much more effort into this than most grad­u­ate stu­dents:

I have been work­ing on this video for two years, writ­ing and research­ing and edit­ing. I’ve been read­ing and watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to every cre­ator inter­view and AMA, every DVD extra and fea­turette, every TV spe­cial, every fan the­o­ry, blog, and pod­cast — any and all Twin Peaks-relat­ed posts I could find — try­ing to hone and pol­ish my script to be the best I thought it could pos­si­bly be. I focus-grouped my video with peo­ple, chal­leng­ing them to poke as many holes in my argu­ments as they could so that I could bet­ter illus­trate my ideas. I tried my best to cre­ate some­thing oth­ers would find of val­ue, some­thing that would add to the ongo­ing mys­tery and spark new dis­cus­sions about my favorite series.

Are there some prob­lems with the the­o­ry? Sure. But for every “I don’t know, man,” I said to myself, he imme­di­ate­ly fol­lowed it up with some­thing spot on. I think he deserves that MFA in Twin Peaks Stud­ies.

So brew up some strong cof­fee and cut your­self a slice of cher­ry pie, and get stuck in.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

Three Days in Twin Peaks: An In-Depth Jour­ney Through the Evoca­tive Loca­tions of David Lynch’s TV Series

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts., You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills.

David Lynch Releases on YouTube Interview Project: 121 Stories of Real America Recorded on a 20,000-Mile Road Trip

in Film, Travel | October 7th, 2024

Take a suf­fi­cient­ly long road trip across Amer­i­ca, and you’re bound to encounter some­thing or some­one Lynchi­an. Whether or not that idea lay behind Inter­view Project, the under­tak­ing had the endorse­ment of David Lynch him­self. Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, it was con­ceived by his son Austin, who along with film­mak­er Jason S. (known for the doc­u­men­tary David Lynch: The Art Life), drove 20,000 miles through the U.S. in search of what it’s tempt­ing to call the real Amer­i­ca, a nation pop­u­lat­ed by col­or­ful, some­times des­per­ate, often uncon­ven­tion­al­ly elo­quent char­ac­ters, 121 of whom Inter­view Project finds pass­ing the day in bars, work­ing at stores, or just sit­ting on the road­side.

Pro­fil­ing David Lynch in the nineties, David Fos­ter Wal­lace observed that “a good 65 per­cent of the peo­ple in met­ro­pol­i­tan bus ter­mi­nals between the hours of mid­night and 6 A.M. tend to qual­i­fy as Lynchi­an fig­ures — grotesque, enfee­bled, flam­boy­ant­ly unap­peal­ing, freight­ed with a woe out of all pro­por­tion to evi­dent cir­cum­stances.”

Inter­view Project sticks to small-town or rur­al set­tings — Camp Hill, Penn­syl­va­nia; Pigeon Forge, Ten­nessee; Tuba City, Ari­zona — but still encoun­ters peo­ple who may at first glance strike view­ers as dis­turb­ing, men­ac­ing, sad­den­ing, for­bid­ding, or some com­bi­na­tion there­of. But they all have com­pelling sto­ries to tell, and can do so with­in five min­utes.

Being the sub­ject of an Inter­view Project video requires a degree of forth­right open­ness that those who’ve spent their lives in the U.S. may not rec­og­nize as char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Amer­i­can. Though often beset by a host of crises, ail­ments, and griev­ances (imposed from with­out or with­in), they don’t hes­i­tate to assert them­selves and their world­views. Though there’s obvi­ous curios­i­ty val­ue in all these eccen­tric con­vic­tions, region­al twangs, and some­times har­row­ing mis­for­tunes, what emerges above all from these inter­views is an impres­sive resilience. Young or old, coher­ent or oth­er­wise, with or with­out a place to live, these peo­ple all come off as sur­vivors.

When Inter­view Project first went online in 2009, it was­n’t view­able on Youtube. Now, for its fif­teenth anniver­sary, all of its videos have been uploaded to that plat­form, and in high def­i­n­i­tion at that. Seen in this new con­text, Inter­view Project looks like an antecedent to cer­tain Youtube chan­nels that have risen to pop­u­lar­i­ty in the decade and a half since: Soft White Under­bel­ly, for instance, which devotes itself to inter­vie­wees at the extreme mar­gins of soci­ety. Extrem­i­ty isn’t the sig­nal char­ac­ter­is­tic of Inter­view Project’s sub­jects, depart dra­mat­i­cal­ly though their expe­ri­ences may from the mod­ern mid­dle-class tem­plate. One could pity how short their lives fall of the “Amer­i­can Dream” — or one could con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they’re all liv­ing that dream in their own way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of the Great Amer­i­can Road Trip

Real Inter­views with Peo­ple Who Lived in the 1800s

The New Studs Terkel Radio Archive Will Let You Hear 5,000+ Record­ings Fea­tur­ing the Great Amer­i­can Broad­cast­er & Inter­view­er

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

David Lynch Explains Why Depres­sion Is the Ene­my of Cre­ativ­i­ty — and Why Med­i­ta­tion Is the Solu­tion

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Strange, Sur­re­al­ist Video

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Private Snafu: The World War II Propaganda Cartoons Created by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

in Film, History | October 6th, 2024

Pri­vate Sna­fu was the U.S. Army’s worst sol­dier. He was slop­py, lazy and prone to shoot­ing off his mouth to Nazi agents. And he was huge­ly pop­u­lar with his fel­low GIs.

Pri­vate Sna­fu was, of course, an ani­mat­ed car­toon char­ac­ter designed for the mil­i­tary recruits. He was an adorable dolt who sound­ed like Bugs Bun­ny and looked a bit like Elmer Fudd. And in every episode, he taught sol­diers what not to do, from blab­bing about troop move­ments to not tak­ing malar­ia med­ica­tion.

The idea for the series report­ed­ly came from Frank Capra — the Oscar-win­ning direc­tor of It’s a Won­der­ful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton and, dur­ing WWII, the chair­man of the U.S. Army Air Force First Motion Pic­ture Unit. He want­ed to cre­ate a car­toon series for new recruits, many of whom were young, unworld­ly and in some cas­es illit­er­ate. Capra gave Dis­ney first shot at devel­op­ing the idea but Warn­er Bros’ Leon Schlesinger, a man who was as famous for his hard-dri­ving busi­ness acu­men as he was for wear­ing exces­sive cologne, offered a bid that was 2/3rds below that of Dis­ney.

The tal­ent behind this series was impres­sive, fea­tur­ing a ver­i­ta­ble who’s who of non-Dis­ney ani­mat­ing tal­ent, includ­ing Chuck Jones, Bob Clam­pett, and Friz Fre­leng. Sna­fu was voiced by Mel Blanc, who famous­ly did Bun­ny Bugs, Daffy Duck and lat­er Mar­vin the Mar­t­ian. And one of the main writ­ers was none oth­er than Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel.

As you can see in the first Sna­fu short Com­ing!! (1943), direct­ed by Chuck Jones (see above), the movie dis­plays a salty sen­si­bil­i­ty intend­ed for an army camp rather than a Sun­day mati­nee. The movie opens with a dead­pan voiceover explain­ing that, in infor­mal mil­i­tary par­lance, SNAFU means “Sit­u­a­tion Nor­mal All…All Fouled Up,” hint­ing that the usu­al trans­la­tion of the acronym includes a pop­u­lar Anglo-Sax­on word. Lat­er, it shows Pri­vate Sna­fu day­dream­ing about a bur­lesque show – com­plete with a shape­ly exot­ic dancer doff­ing her duds – as he obliv­i­ous­ly wrecks a plane.

Though there were no writ­ing cred­its for each indi­vid­ual episode, just lis­ten to the voiceover for Gripes (1943), direct­ed by Friz Fre­leng. Dr. Seuss’s trade­mark singsong cadence is unmis­tak­able includ­ing lines like:

“The moral, Sna­fu, is that the hard­er you work, the soon­er we’re gonna beat Hitler, that jerk.”

Gas! (1944), direct­ed by Chuck Jones, fea­tures a cameo from Bugs Bun­ny.

And final­ly, Going Home, direct­ed by Chuck Jones, was slat­ed to come out in 1944 but the War Depart­ment kiboshed it. The ratio­nale was nev­er explained but some think that the film’s ref­er­ence to a mas­sive, top-secret weapon that was to be deployed over Japan was just a lit­tle too close to the Man­hat­tan Project.

You can watch a long list of Pri­vate Sna­fu episodes here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

Dr. Seuss’ World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Films: Your Job in Ger­many (1945) and Our Job in Japan (1946)

Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of the Nazi–Walt Disney’s 1943 Film Shows How Fas­cists Are Made

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

The Greatest Shot in Television: Science Historian James Burke Had One Chance to Nail This Scene … and Nailed It

in Science, Technology, Television | October 4th, 2024

The 80-sec­ond clip above cap­tures a rock­et launch, some­thing of which we’ve all seen footage at one time or anoth­er. What makes its view­ers call it “the great­est shot in tele­vi­sion” still today, 45 years after it first aired, may take more than one view­ing to notice. In it, sci­ence his­to­ri­an James Burke speaks about how “cer­tain gas­es ignite, and that the ther­mos flask per­mits you to store vast quan­ti­ties of those gas­es safe­ly, in their frozen liq­uid form, until you want to ignite them.” Use a suf­fi­cient­ly large flask filled with hydro­gen and oxy­gen, design it to mix the gas­es and set light to them, and “you get that” — that is, you get the rock­et that launch­es behind Burke just as soon as he points to it.

One can only admire Burke’s com­po­sure in dis­cussing such tech­ni­cal mat­ters in a shot that had to be per­fect­ly timed on the first and only take. What you would­n’t know unless you saw it in con­text is that it also comes as the final, cul­mi­nat­ing moment of a 50-minute explana­to­ry jour­ney that begins with cred­it cards, then makes its way through the inven­tion of every­thing from a knight’s armor to canned food to air con­di­tion­ing to the Sat­urn V rock­et, which put man on the moon.

For­mal­ly speak­ing, this was a typ­i­cal episode of Con­nec­tions, Burke’s 1978 tele­vi­sion series that traces the most impor­tant and sur­pris­ing moves in the evo­lu­tion of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy through­out human his­to­ry.

Though not as wide­ly remem­bered as Carl Sagan’s slight­ly lat­er Cos­mos, Con­nec­tions bears repeat view­ing here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, not least for the intel­lec­tu­al and visu­al brava­do typ­i­fied by this “great­est shot in tele­vi­sion,” now viewed near­ly 18 mil­lion times on Youtube. Watch it enough times your­self, and you’ll notice that it also pulls off some minor sleight of hand by hav­ing Burke walk from a non-time-sen­si­tive shot into anoth­er with the already-framed rock­et ready for liftoff. But that hard­ly lessens the feel­ing of achieve­ment when the launch comes off. “Des­ti­na­tion: the moon, or Moscow,” says Burke, “the plan­ets, or Peking” — a clos­ing line that sound­ed con­sid­er­ably more dat­ed a few years ago than it does today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Endeavour’s Launch Viewed from Boost­er Cam­eras

The 100 Most Mem­o­rable Shots in Cin­e­ma Over the Past 100 Years

The Most Beau­ti­ful Shots in Cin­e­ma His­to­ry: Scenes from 100+ Films

125 Great Sci­ence Videos: From Astron­o­my to Physics & Psy­chol­o­gy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Is Now a Retro Video Game

in Video Games | October 2nd, 2024

The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show–it start­ed first as a musi­cal stage pro­duc­tion in 1973, then became a cult clas­sic film in 1975. Now, a half-cen­tu­ry lat­er, it gets reborn as a retro video game. Sched­uled to be released by Hal­loween, the game fea­tures “8‑bit chip­tune ren­di­tions of Rocky Hor­ror’s leg­endary songs,” includ­ing the “Time Warp” of course. Accord­ing to The Wrap, it also boasts “8‑bit-styled graph­ics bring­ing the show’s sets and char­ac­ters to life, com­bin­ing ’80s nos­tal­gia with the show’s ’70s retro vibes.” The game will be avail­able for Sony Playsta­tion, Xbox, Nin­ten­do Switch and Steam. Enjoy.

via The Wrap

Relat­ed Con­tent

How Rocky Hor­ror Became a Cult Phe­nom­e­non

1978 News Report on the Rocky Hor­ror Craze Cap­tures a Teenage Michael Stipe in Drag

Rare Inter­view: Tim Cur­ry Dis­cuss­es The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show, Dur­ing the Week of Its Release (1975)

Artificial Intelligence & Drones Uncover 303 New Nazca Lines in Peru

in Art, History, Technology | October 2nd, 2024

If you vis­it one tourist site in Peru, it will almost cer­tain­ly be the ruined Incan city of Machu Pic­chu. If you vis­it anoth­er, it’ll prob­a­bly be the Naz­ca Desert, home to many large-scale geo­glyphs made by pre-Inca peo­ples between 500 BC and 500 AD. Many of these “Naz­ca lines” are lit­er­al­ly that, run­ning across the desert floor in an abstract fash­ion, but oth­ers are fig­u­ra­tive, depict­ing human beings, flo­ra, fau­na, and var­i­ous less eas­i­ly cat­e­go­riz­able chimeras. The preser­v­a­tive effects of the cli­mate kept many of these designs iden­ti­fi­able by the time mod­erns dis­cov­ered them in 1927, and thanks to arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence tech­nol­o­gy, researchers are find­ing new ones still today.

“A team from the Japan­ese Uni­ver­si­ty of Yamagata’s Naz­ca Insti­tute, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with IBM Research, dis­cov­ered 303 pre­vi­ous­ly unknown geo­glyphs of humans and ani­mals, all small­er in size than the vast geo­met­ric pat­terns that date from AD 200–700 and stretch across more than 400 sq km of the Naz­ca plateau,” writes the Guardian’s Dan Col­lyns.

“The use of AI com­bined with low-fly­ing drones rev­o­lu­tion­ized the speed and rate at which the geo­glyphs were dis­cov­ered, accord­ing to a research paper pub­lished this week in the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences,” and many more Naz­ca lines could remain to be iden­ti­fied with these meth­ods.

The new­ly iden­ti­fied geo­glyphs “include birds, plants, spi­ders, human­like fig­ures with head­dress­es, decap­i­tat­ed heads and an orca wield­ing a knife,” writes CNN’s Katie Hunt. She also cites hypothe­ses about why the orig­i­nal cre­ators of these fig­ures did the painstak­ing work of dis­plac­ing stone after stone to cre­ate images most­ly invis­i­ble to the human eye: it’s pos­si­ble that “they formed a sacred space that was per­haps a place of pil­grim­age. Oth­er the­o­ries pro­pose they played a part in cal­en­dars, astron­o­my, irri­ga­tion or for move­ment, such as run­ning or danc­ing, or com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” Some of them, sure­ly, were meant only for the eyes of the gods, and so it may stand to rea­son that only our mod­ern gods of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence have been able to reveal them.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Machu Pic­chu, One of the New 7 Won­ders of the World

The Solar Sys­tem Drawn Amaz­ing­ly to Scale Across 7 Miles of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert

Peru­vian Singer & Rap­per, Rena­ta Flo­res, Helps Pre­serve Quechua with Viral Hits on YouTube

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

A Mys­te­ri­ous Mono­lith Appears in the Utah Desert, Chan­nel­ing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.