The New Yorker Web Site is Entirely Free This Summer (Until It Goes Behind a Paywall This Fall)

in Magazines, Media | July 22nd, 2014

Yes­ter­day, The New York­er mag­a­zine pub­lished “A Note to Read­ers,” announc­ing the new strat­e­gy behind its web site. The site now has a dif­fer­ent look and feel. It will also be gov­erned by a new set of eco­nom­ics, which will include putting the entire site behind a pay­wall. The edi­tors write, “in the fall, we [will] move to a sec­ond phase, imple­ment­ing an eas­i­er-to-use, log­i­cal, metered pay­wall. Sub­scribers will con­tin­ue to have access to every­thing; non-sub­scribers will be able to read a lim­it­ed num­ber of pieces—and then it’s up to them to sub­scribe. You’ve like­ly seen this sys­tem elsewhere—at the Times, for instance—and we will do all we can to make it work seam­less­ly.”

But, until then, the site won’t be half open (as it has been dur­ing recent years). It’ll be entire­ly open. Again, the edi­tors write: “Begin­ning this week, absolute­ly every­thing new that we publish—the work in the print mag­a­zine and the work pub­lished online only—will be unlocked. All of it, for every­one. Call it a sum­mer-long free-for-all. Non-sub­scribers will get a chance to explore The New York­er ful­ly and freely, just as sub­scribers always have.”

What should you read while The New York­er is open? I’d focus on the old stuff, which will pre­sum­ably get locked up too. Here are a few quick sug­ges­tions: Tru­man Capote’s In Cold Blood seri­al­ized in the pages of the mag­a­zine in 1965; J.D. Salinger’s Jan­u­ary 1948 pub­li­ca­tion of his endur­ing short sto­ry “A Per­fect Day for a Banana Fish;” and, of course, Han­nah Arendt’s orig­i­nal arti­cles on “the Banal­i­ty of Evil”?  If you have prob­lems read­ing the text (in the lat­ter two cas­es), be sure to click the pages to zoom in.

via Gal­l­ey­Cat

Stephen Fry Explains the Rules of Cricket in 10 Animated Videos

in Animation, Sports | July 21st, 2014

Found­ed in Lon­don in 1787, The Maryle­bone Crick­et Club (MCC) began pub­lish­ing The Laws of Crick­et in 1788, and lat­er became the gov­ern­ing body of the game. More than two cen­turies lat­er, the MCC has passed gov­ern­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties to The Inter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil. But it still pub­lish­es The Laws of Crick­et and helps young play­ers and casu­al fans learn more about the bat-and-ball game that dates back to ear­ly 16th-cen­tu­ry Eng­land, if not before. And let’s face it, if you did­n’t grow up in a coun­try that fig­ured into the British Empire, you can prob­a­bly use a primer. Or maybe 10 ani­mat­ed ones nar­rat­ed by actor, writer, crick­et lover and occa­sion­al umpire Stephen Fry. Click the play but­ton on the video above, and you can watch the col­lec­tion of ani­ma­tions, cov­er­ing every­thing from what hap­pens when a “wick­et is down” to when the “bats­man is out his ground.” When you’re done, you can enjoy some oth­er Fry nar­ra­tions we’ve fea­tured in blog posts past. See the “relat­eds” below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince”

Stephen Fry Intro­duces the Strange New World of Nanoscience

Stephen Fry Explains Cloud Com­put­ing in a Short Ani­mat­ed Video

Stephen Fry Reads the Leg­endary British Ship­ping Fore­cast

Does this play outside the US?

in | July 21st, 2014

Sun Ra’s Full Lecture & Reading List From His 1971 UC Berkeley Course, “The Black Man in the Cosmos”

in Music, Philosophy, UC Berkeley | July 21st, 2014

A pio­neer of “Afro­fu­tur­ism,” band­leader Sun Ra emerged from a tra­di­tion­al swing scene in Alaba­ma, tour­ing the coun­try in his teens as a mem­ber of his high school biol­o­gy teacher’s big band. While attend­ing Alaba­ma Agri­cul­tur­al and Mechan­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty, he had an out-of-body expe­ri­ence dur­ing which he was trans­port­ed into out­er space. As biog­ra­ph­er John Szwed records him say­ing, “my whole body changed into some­thing else. I land­ed on a plan­et that I iden­ti­fied as Sat­urn.” While there, aliens with “lit­tle anten­na on each ear. A lit­tle anten­na on each eye” instruct­ed him to drop out of col­lege and speak through his music. And that’s just what he did, chang­ing his name from Her­man Blount and nev­er look­ing back.

Whether you believe that sto­ry, whether Sun Ra believes it, or whether his entire per­sona is a the­atri­cal put-on should make no dif­fer­ence. Because Sun Ra would be a vision­ary either way. Com­bin­ing Afro­cen­tric sci­ence fic­tion, eso­teric and occult phi­los­o­phy, Egyp­tol­ogy, and, with his “Arkestra,” his own brand of free jazz-futur­ism that has no equal on earth, the man is tru­ly sui gener­is. In 1971, he served as artist-in-res­i­dence at UC Berke­ley and offered a spring semes­ter lec­ture, African-Amer­i­can Stud­ies 198, also known as “Sun Ra 171,” “The Black Man in the Uni­verse,” or “The Black man in the Cos­mos.” The course fea­tured read­ings from—to name just a few—theosophist Madame Blavatsky, French philoso­pher Con­stan­tin Fran­cois de Chas­se­boeuf, black Amer­i­can writer and poet Hen­ry Dumas, and “God,” whom the cos­mic jazz the­o­rist report­ed­ly list­ed as the author of The Source Book of Man’s Life and Death (oth­er­wise known as the King James Bible).

Now we have the rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear a full lec­ture from that class, thanks to Ubu.com. Lis­ten to Sun Ra spin his intri­cate, bizarrely oth­er­world­ly the­o­ries, drawn from his per­son­al phi­los­o­phy, pecu­liar ety­molo­gies, and idio­syn­crat­ic read­ings of reli­gious texts. Hear­ing him speak is a lit­tle like hear­ing him play, so be pre­pared for a lot of free asso­ci­a­tion and jar­ring, unex­pect­ed jux­ta­po­si­tions. Szwed describes a “typ­i­cal lec­ture” below:

Sun Ra wrote bib­li­cal quotes on the board and then ‘per­mu­tat­ed’ them—rewrote and trans­formed their let­ters and syn­tax into new equa­tions of mean­ing, while mem­bers of the Arkestra passed through the room, pre­vent­ing any­one from tap­ing the class. His lec­ture sub­jects includ­ed Neo­pla­ton­ic doc­trines; the appli­ca­tion of ancient his­to­ry and reli­gious texts to racial prob­lems; pol­lu­tion and war; and a rad­i­cal rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible in light of Egyp­tol­ogy.

Luck­i­ly for us, some sly stu­dent cap­tured one of those lec­tures on tape.

For more of Pro­fes­sor Ra’s spaced out pre­sen­ta­tion, see the Helsin­ki inter­view above, also from 1971. And if you decide you need your own edu­ca­tion in “Sun Ra 171,” see the full read­ing list from his Berke­ley course below, cour­tesy of the blog New Day.

The Egypt­ian Book of the Dead

Radix

Alexan­der His­lop: Two Baby­lons

The Theo­soph­i­cal works of Madame Blavatsky

The Book of Oah­spe

Hen­ry Dumas: Ark of Bones

Hen­ry Dumas: Poet­ry for My Peo­ple eds. Hale Charfield & Eugene Red­mond, Car­bon­dale: South­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty Press 1971

Black Fire: An Anthol­o­gy of Afro-Amer­i­can Writ­ing, eds. Leroi Jones & Lar­ry Neal, New York: William Mor­row 1968

David Liv­ingston: Mis­sion­ary Trav­els

Theodore P. Ford: God Wills the Negro

Rut­ledge: God’s Chil­dren

Sty­lus, vol. 13, no. 1 (Spring 1971), Tem­ple Uni­ver­si­ty

John S. Wil­son: Jazz. Where It Came From, Where It’s At, Unit­ed States Infor­ma­tion Agency

Yosef A. A. Ben-Jochan­nan: Black Man of the Nile and His Fam­i­ly, Alk­ibu Ian Books 1972

Con­stan­tin Fran­cois de Chas­se­boeuf, Comte de Vol­ney: The Ruins, or, Med­i­ta­tion on the Rev­o­lu­tions of Empires, and the Law of Nature, Lon­don: Pio­neer Press 1921

The Source Book of Man’s Life and Death (Ra’s descrip­tion; = The King James Bible)

Pjotr Demi­anovitch Ous­pen­sky: A New Mod­el of the Uni­verse. Prin­ci­ples of the Psy­cho­log­i­cal Method in Its Appli­ca­tion to Prob­lems of Sci­ence, Reli­gion and Art, New York: Knopf 1956

Fred­er­ick Bod­mer: The Loom of Lan­guage. An Approach to the Mas­tery of Many Lan­guages, ed. Lancelot Hog­ben, New York: Nor­ton & Co. 1944

Black­ie’s Ety­mol­o­gy

Count­less oth­er free cours­es from UC Berke­ley can be found in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds and audio cour­tesy of Sen­si­tive Skin Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Her­bie Han­cock Presents the Pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Lec­tures at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty: Watch Online

Son­ic Youth Gui­tarist Thurston Moore Teach­es a Poet­ry Work­shop at Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty: See His Class Notes (2011)

Space Jazz, a Son­ic Sci-Fi Opera by L. Ron Hub­bard, Fea­tur­ing Chick Corea (1983)

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

Wearable Books: In Medieval Times, They Took Old Manuscripts & Turned Them into Clothes

in Design, History, Letters, Life | July 21st, 2014

I like old news­pa­per, smooth­ing it out to read about what was hap­pen­ing on the day an old­er rel­a­tive packed away the good crys­tal or some oth­er frag­ile tchotchke.

Trav­el­ing in India, I dug how the snacks I pur­chased to eat on the train came wrapped in old book pages. When my trav­el­ing com­pan­ion real­ized he had lost his jour­nal, there was com­fort in know­ing that it would be rein­car­nat­ed as cones to hold deli­cious chana jor garam.

Tak­ing a thrift store frame apart, I was thrilled to dis­cov­er that behind the pre­vi­ous own­ers kit­tens in a bas­ket print lurked a home­made Moth­er’s Day card from the 40’s and a cal­en­dar page that not­ed the date some­one named David quit drink­ing. (I sent it along to Found Mag­a­zine.)

What I would­n’t give to stum­ble upon a dress lined with a 13th-cen­tu­ry man­u­script. Or a bishop’s miter stiff­ened with racy 13th-cen­tu­ry Norse love poet­ry!

Appar­ent­ly, it’s a rich tra­di­tion, putting old pages to good use, once they start feel­ing like they’ve out­lived their intend­ed pur­pose. The bish­op like­ly did­n’t know the specifics on the mate­r­i­al that made his hat stand up. I’ll bet the  sis­ters of the Ger­man Cis­ter­cian con­vent where the dress above orig­i­nat­ed were more con­cerned with the out­ward appear­ance of the gar­ments they were stitch­ing for their wood­en stat­ues than the not-for-dis­play lin­ing.

As Dutch art his­to­ri­an Erik Kwakkel explains on his medieval­frag­ments blog, the inven­tion of the Guten­berg press demot­ed scads of hand­writ­ten text to more pro­le­tar­i­an pur­pose. Ulti­mate­ly, it’s not as grim as it sounds:

the dis­mem­bered books were to have a sec­ond life: they became trav­el­ers in time, stow­aways… with great and impor­tant sto­ries to tell. Indeed, sto­ries that may oth­er­wise not have sur­vived, giv­en that clas­si­cal and medieval texts fre­quent­ly only come down to us in frag­men­tary form. The ear­ly his­to­ry of the Bible as a book could not be writ­ten if we were to throw out frag­ment evi­dence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

Dutch Book From 1692 Doc­u­ments Every Col­or Under the Sun: A Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­ors

Archive of Hand­writ­ten Recipes (1600 – 1960) Will Teach You How to Stew a Calf’s Head and More

The British Library Puts Online 1,200 Lit­er­ary Trea­sures From Great Roman­tic & Vic­to­ri­an Writ­ers

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er and the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of The East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

T.S. Eliot Illustrates His Letters and Draws a Cover for Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats

in Books, Letters | July 21st, 2014

Like so many poets, Thomas Stearns Eliot could write a fine let­ter. Unlike quite so many poets, he could also illus­trate those fine let­ters with an amus­ing pic­ture or two. The T.S. Eliot Soci­ety’s web site has sev­er­al exam­ples of what the author of “The Waste Land” could do when he got think­ing visu­al­ly as well as tex­tu­al­ly. At the top of the post, we have a cov­er he drew for a book of his own, Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats, a well-known work of Eliot’s in its own right but also indi­rect­ly known and loved by mil­lions as the basis of Andrew Lloyd Web­ber’s musi­cal Cats. Well before this satir­i­cal feline mate­r­i­al attained such grand embell­ish­ment for and far-reach­ing fame on the stage, it took its first, hum­ble pub­lic form in 1939. Had you bought Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats then, you would have bought the one above, with Eliot’s hand-drawn cov­er. (It runs $37,000 now.) The very next year, a new edi­tion came out ful­ly illus­trat­ed by Nicholas Bent­ley. The inim­itable Edward Gorey took his turn with the 1982 edi­tion, and the lat­est, pub­lished in 2009, fea­tures the art of Ger­man illus­tra­tor Axel Schef­fler.

Above and below, you can see a cou­ple more sur­viv­ing exam­ples of what Eliot could do with pen and ink, albeit not in a con­text nec­es­sar­i­ly intend­ed for pub­li­ca­tion. While Eliot’s actu­al hand­writ­ing may not make for easy read­ing, even if you can read the Ger­man in which he some­times wrote, his draw­ings vivid­ly dis­play his impres­sions of the peo­ple pre­sum­ably men­tioned in the text. I’d have tak­en such pains, too, if I had the expec­ta­tion some 20th-cen­tu­ry men of let­ters seemed to that their col­lect­ed cor­re­spon­dence would even­tu­al­ly see print. Yet Eliot him­self went back and forth about it, “torn over whether to allow pub­lic access to his pri­vate let­ters after his death,” writes Salon’s Kera Bolonik. “ ‘I don’t like read­ing oth­er people’s pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence in print, and I do not want oth­er peo­ple to read mine,’ he said in 1927. But six years lat­er, he admit­ted he had an ‘inerad­i­ca­ble’ desire for his let­ters to reach a wider audi­ence. ‘We want to con­fess our­selves in writ­ing to a few friends, and we do not always want to feel that no one but those friends will ever read what we have writ­ten’ ” — or see what we have drawn.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

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

In Dark PSA, Director Richard Linklater Suggests Radical Steps for Dealing with Texters in Cinemas

in Comedy | July 20th, 2014

At the Alamo Draft­house cin­e­mas, they don’t mess around. They tell you right on their web site, “We have a zero-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy towards talk­ing and tex­ting dur­ing the movie. If you talk or text, you will receive one warn­ing. If it hap­pens again, you will be kicked out with­out a refund.” And they appar­ent­ly mean it. Want some proof? Here’s Exhib­it A — a clip that mocks a cus­tomer who appar­ent­ly got kicked out of their “crap­py” the­ater in Austin, Texas for tex­ting. Then there’s Exhib­it B above — a sar­don­ic Alamo Draft­house video fea­tur­ing indie film­mak­er Richard Lin­klater sug­gest­ing rad­i­cal steps for deal­ing with the type of peo­ple found in Exhib­it A. It’s all a bit of dark humor (of course). But here’s some­thing that’s not a joke. You can watch Lin­klater’s break­through 1991 film, Slack­er, free online. You can also hear the Texas native talk about his new film Boy­hood on Fresh Air here.

Part­ing words: Don’t mess with Texas, par­tic­u­lar­ly film­mak­ers in Texas.

via Gawk­er/@Sheerly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Free Online: Richard Linklater’s Slack­er, the Clas­sic Gen‑X Indie Film

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

David Lynch’s Unlike­ly Com­mer­cial for a Home Preg­nan­cy Test (1997)

George Harrison Wrote His Last Letter to Austin Powers Creator Mike Myers, Asking for a Mini Me Doll (2001)

in Comedy, Letters, Music | July 19th, 2014

In a band full of extro­vert­ed goof­balls and pranksters, George Har­ri­son was the qui­et one, the seri­ous Bea­t­le, the straight man and intro­spec­tive mys­tic, right? Not so, accord­ing to Trav­el­ling Wilburys band­mate Tom Pet­ty, who once coun­tered the “qui­et Bea­t­le” sobri­quet with “he nev­er shut up. He was the best hang you could imag­ine.” Not so, accord­ing to Har­ri­son him­self, who once said “I think I’ve had an image, peo­ple have had a con­cept of me being real­ly straight cause I was the seri­ous one or some­thing. I mean, I’m the biggest lunatic around. I’m com­plete­ly com­i­cal, you know? I like crazi­ness. I had to in order to be in the Bea­t­les.”

It’s true that Har­ri­son dis­liked fame and its trap­pings and dove deeply into life’s mys­ter­ies. In his final tele­vised inter­view, he is con­tem­pla­tive and, yes, deeply seri­ous. And while some of the sto­ries of the end of his life are heartbreaking—like that of the oncol­o­gist who alleged­ly showed up unan­nounced at the dying Bea­t­les’ door and cajoled him into sign­ing an auto­graph when he could bare­ly write his name—the sto­ry of the last let­ter he ever wrote made me smile.

Accord­ing to Mike Myers, cre­ator of Wayne’s World and the six­ties spoof Austin Pow­ers fran­chise, that let­ter arrived in his hands on the very day of Harrison’s death, deliv­ered via pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor as Myers and crew shot the third of the Pow­ers films.

Har­ri­son wrote but nev­er mailed the short note a month before his death in Novem­ber, 2001. In it, he reveals his love for Austin Pow­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly the “Mini Me” char­ac­ter from The Spy Who Shagged Me (played by Verne Troyer)—a minia­ture clone of Pow­ers’ neme­sis Dr. Evil. In a GQ inter­view, Myers quotes from the let­ter: “…sit­ting here with my Dr. Evil doll…I just want­ed to let you know I’ve been all over Europe for a mini-you doll.” Har­ri­son also jok­ing­ly cor­rect­ed Myers’ Liv­er­pudlian: “Dr. Evil says frickin’ but any good Scouser dad will tell you it’s actu­al­ly ‘frig­gin’ as in a ‘four of fish and fin­ger pie,’ if you get my drift.”

The “Scouser dad” ref­er­ence was par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant for Myers, whose par­ents come from Liv­er­pool. “You don’t know what The Bea­t­les were in my house,” Myers told WENN news, “They were every­thing. Liv­er­pool was poor­ish and it was rough and all of a sud­den it was cool to come from this town, so my par­ents were eter­nal­ly grate­ful.” Har­ri­son returned the grat­i­tude, writ­ing “thanks for the movies, so much fun,” a sen­ti­ment Myers reacts to with “Dude, I can’t even.” And real­ly, what could else could you say? “To get this let­ter,” and on the very day of Harrison’s pass­ing no less, “was unbe­liev­able,” said Myers, “It hits you and it can knock you off your feet.”

As for that rep­u­ta­tion for seri­ous­ness? I don’t know about you, but from now on, when I think of the last days of George Har­ri­son, I won’t think of his oppor­tunis­tic doc­tor, or his turn­ing down the OBE, or even that fate­ful final per­for­mance on VH1. I’ll imag­ine him sit­ting on the couch with a Dr. Evil doll, writ­ing Mike Myers to request a Mini Me.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan and George Har­ri­son Play Ten­nis, 1969

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

Phil Spector’s Gen­tle Pro­duc­tion Notes to George Har­ri­son Dur­ing the Record­ing of All Things Must Pass

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

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

Did the Wayback Machine Catch Russian-Backed Rebels Claiming Responsibility for Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17?

in Current Affairs, Web/Tech | July 19th, 2014

If you’re a long-time read­er of Open Cul­ture, you know all about Archive.org — a non-prof­it that hous­es all kinds of fas­ci­nat­ing texts, audio, mov­ing images, and soft­ware. And don’t for­get archived web pages. Since 1996, Archive’s “Way­back Machine” has been tak­ing snap­shots of web­sites, pro­duc­ing a his­tor­i­cal record of this still fair­ly new thing called “the web.” Right now, the Way­back Machine holds 417 bil­lion snap­shots of web sites, includ­ing one page show­ing that “Igor Girkin, a Ukrain­ian sep­a­ratist leader also known as Strelkov, claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty on a pop­u­lar Russ­ian social-net­work­ing site for the down­ing of what he thought was a Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary trans­port plane short­ly before reports that Malaysian Air­lines Flight MH17 had crashed near the rebel held Ukrain­ian city of Donet­sk.” (This quote comes from The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, which has more on the sto­ry.) Girk­in’s post was cap­tured by the Way­back Machine at 15:22:22 on July 17. By 16:56, Girk­in’s post was tak­en offline — but not before Archive.org had its copy.

To keep tabs on this sto­ry, fol­low Archive’s Twit­ter and Face­book pages.

Akira Kurosawa & Gabriel García Márquez Talk About Filmmaking (and Nuclear Bombs) in Six Hour Interview

in Film, History, Literature | July 18th, 2014

You know you’re doing some­thing right in your life if the Nobel Prize-win­ning author of 100 Years of Soli­tude talks to you like a gid­dy fan boy.

Back in Octo­ber 1990, Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez sat down with Aki­ra Kuro­sawa in Tokyo as the Japan­ese mas­ter direc­tor was shoot­ing his penul­ti­mate movie Rhap­sody in August — the only Kuro­sawa movie I can think of that fea­tures Richard Gere. The six hour inter­view, which was pub­lished in The Los Ange­les Times in 1991, spanned a range of top­ics but the author’s love of the director’s movies was evi­dent all the way through. At one point, while dis­cussing Kurosawa’s 1965 film Red Beard, Gar­cía Márquez said this: “I have seen it six times in 20 years and I talked about it to my chil­dren almost every day until they were able to see it. So not only is it the one among your films best liked by my fam­i­ly and me, but also one of my favorites in the whole his­to­ry of cin­e­ma.”

One nat­ur­al top­ic dis­cussed was adapt­ing lit­er­a­ture to film. The his­to­ry of cin­e­ma is lit­tered with some tru­ly dread­ful adap­ta­tions and even more that are sim­ply inert and life­less. One of the Kurosawa’s true gifts as a film­mak­er was turn­ing the writ­ten word into a vital, mem­o­rable image. In movies like Throne of Blood and Ran, he has proved him­self to be arguably the finest adapter of Shake­speare in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma.

Gar­cía Márquez: Has your method also been that intu­itive when you have adapt­ed Shake­speare or Gorky or Dos­to­evsky?

Kuro­sawa: Direc­tors who make films halfway may not real­ize that it is very dif­fi­cult to con­vey lit­er­ary images to the audi­ence through cin­e­mat­ic images. For instance, in adapt­ing a detec­tive nov­el in which a body was found next to the rail­road tracks, a young direc­tor insist­ed that a cer­tain spot cor­re­spond­ed per­fect­ly with the one in the book. “You are wrong,” I said. “The prob­lem is that you have already read the nov­el and you know that a body was found next to the tracks. But for the peo­ple who have not read it there is noth­ing spe­cial about the place.” That young direc­tor was cap­ti­vat­ed by the mag­i­cal pow­er of lit­er­a­ture with­out real­iz­ing that cin­e­mat­ic images must be expressed in a dif­fer­ent way.

Gar­cía Márquez: Can you remem­ber any image from real life that you con­sid­er impos­si­ble to express on film?

Kuro­sawa: Yes. That of a min­ing town named Ili­dachi [sic], where I worked as an assis­tant direc­tor when I was very young. The direc­tor had declared at first glance that the atmos­phere was mag­nif­i­cent and strange, and that’s the rea­son we filmed it. But the images showed only a run-of-the-mill town, for they were miss­ing some­thing that was known to us: that the work­ing con­di­tions in (the town) are very dan­ger­ous, and that the women and chil­dren of the min­ers live in eter­nal fear for their safe­ty. When one looks at the vil­lage one con­fus­es the land­scape with that feel­ing, and one per­ceives it as stranger than it actu­al­ly is. But the cam­era does not see it with the same eyes.

When Kuro­sawa and Gar­cía Márquez talked about Rhap­sody in August, the mood of the inter­view dark­ened. The film is about one old woman strug­gling with the hor­rors of sur­viv­ing the atom­ic attack on Nagasa­ki. When it came out, Amer­i­can crit­ics bris­tled at the movie because it had the audac­i­ty to point out that many Japan­ese weren’t all that pleased with get­ting nuked. This is espe­cial­ly the case with Nagasa­ki. While Hiroshi­ma had numer­ous fac­to­ries and there­fore could be con­sid­ered a mil­i­tary tar­get, Nagasa­ki had none. In fact, on August 9, 1945, the orig­i­nal tar­get for the world’s sec­ond nuclear attack was the indus­tri­al town of Kita Kyushu. But that town was cov­ered in clouds. So the pilots cast about look­ing for some place, any place, to bomb. That place proved to Nagasa­ki.

Below, Kuro­sawa talks pas­sion­ate­ly about the lega­cy of the bomb­ing. Inter­est­ing­ly, Gar­cía Márquez, who had often been a vocif­er­ous crit­ic of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy, sort of defends America’s actions at the end of the war.

Kuro­sawa: The full death toll for Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki has been offi­cial­ly pub­lished at 230,000. But in actu­al fact there were over half a mil­lion dead. And even now there are still 2,700 patients at the Atom­ic Bomb Hos­pi­tal wait­ing to die from the after-effects of the radi­a­tion after 45 years of agony. In oth­er words, the atom­ic bomb is still killing Japan­ese.

Gar­cía Márquez: The most ratio­nal expla­na­tion seems to be that the U.S. rushed in to end it with the bomb for fear that the Sovi­ets would take Japan before they did.

Kuro­sawa: Yes, but why did they do it in a city inhab­it­ed only by civil­ians who had noth­ing to do with the war? There were mil­i­tary con­cen­tra­tions that were in fact wag­ing war.

Gar­cía Márquez: Nor did they drop it on the Impe­r­i­al Palace, which must have been a very vul­ner­a­ble spot in the heart of Tokyo. And I think that this is all explained by the fact that they want­ed to leave the polit­i­cal pow­er and the mil­i­tary pow­er intact in order to car­ry out a speedy nego­ti­a­tion with­out hav­ing to share the booty with their allies. It’s some­thing no oth­er coun­try has ever expe­ri­enced in all of human his­to­ry. Now then: Had Japan sur­ren­dered with­out the atom­ic bomb, would it be the same Japan it is today?

Kuro­sawa: It’s hard to say. The peo­ple who sur­vived Nagasa­ki don’t want to remem­ber their expe­ri­ence because the major­i­ty of them, in order to sur­vive, had to aban­don their par­ents, their chil­dren, their broth­ers and sis­ters. They still can’t stop feel­ing guilty. After­wards, the U.S. forces that occu­pied the coun­try for six years influ­enced by var­i­ous means the accel­er­a­tion of for­get­ful­ness, and the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment col­lab­o­rat­ed with them. I would even be will­ing to under­stand all this as part of the inevitable tragedy gen­er­at­ed by war. But I think that, at the very least, the coun­try that dropped the bomb should apol­o­gize to the Japan­ese peo­ple. Until that hap­pens this dra­ma will not be over.

The whole inter­view is fas­ci­nat­ing. They con­tin­ue to talk about his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry, nuclear pow­er and the dif­fi­cul­ty of film­ing rose-eat­ing ants. You can read the entire thing here. It’s well worth you time.

via Thomp­son on Hol­ly­wood H/T Sheer­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Kurosawa’s Rashomon Free Online, the Film That Intro­duced Japan­ese Cin­e­ma to the West

Andy Warhol Inter­views Alfred Hitch­cock (1974)

Lis­ten to François Truffaut’s Big, 12-Hour Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (1962)

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

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.