Watch Laurence Olivier, Liv Ullmann and Christopher Plummer’s Classic Polaroid Ads

in Film, Photography, Technology, Television, Theatre | January 5th, 2014

Before Urban Out­fit­ters and Project Impos­si­ble, before the adorable bick­er­ing ubiq­ui­ty of spokes­peo­ple James Gar­ner and Mari­ette Hart­ley, Polaroid kept things classy by entrust­ing its rep­u­ta­tion to the most seri­ous of seri­ous actors.

Take Lau­rence Olivi­er. Who else could have made the phrase “Polaroid SX-70 Land Cam­era” sound like Shake­speare? Seri­ous­ly. He could’ve tacked the string of superla­tives he unleash­es against a black back­ground above onto the end of Hen­ry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech and I would have been none the wis­er.

(And gen­tle­men in Eng­land now a‑bed

Shall think them­selves accursed they were not here,

And hold their man­hoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day -

Pock­et sized, fold­ing, elec­tron­i­cal­ly con­trolled, motor dri­ven…)

Accord­ing to the late Peter Wens­berg, a for­mer Polaroid exec and author of Land’s Polaroid, A Com­pa­ny and the Man Who Invent­ed It, Sir Lau­rence agreed to the 1972 spot on the con­di­tion that it would­n’t be shown in Eng­land. (YouTube would­n’t be found­ed for anoth­er thir­ty years.)

Sir Lar­ry was fol­lowed in 1979 by actress Liv Ull­mann, solemn­ly prais­ing the  SX70 Sonar OneStep’s moment-cap­tur­ing abil­i­ties. Is there a Polaroid some­where in the Ing­mar Bergman Archive of his and Ull­man­n’s 12-year-old daugh­ter Linn, stand­ing at the sink, wash­ing dish­es? Or has YouTube become the sole reli­quary for these pre­cious moments?

Christo­pher Plum­mer’s 1980 spot seems down­right loose by con­trast, as he kicks back on a beach, aim­ing his SX70 Sonar OneStep at a Gold­en Retriev­er and a canoe’s worth of kids. (Sir Lar­ry’s sub­ject was a rather fussy porce­lain clock.)

Giv­en their his­to­ry, it’s easy to think of Polaroid’s instant cam­eras as a gim­mick or a fad, but such not­ed pho­tog­ra­phers as Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Hel­mut New­ton, and Walk­er Evans were fans of the SX-70.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Amer­i­can Film­mak­ers in Japan­ese Ads: Quentin Taran­ti­no Sells Cell Phones, Orson Welles Hawks Whisky

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Ayun Hal­l­i­day has the sort of vision that screams out for an unlim­it­ed sup­ply of free dig­i­tal shots. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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

in Music | January 3rd, 2014

It’s pret­ty well estab­lished by this point that Phil Spec­tor is dan­ger­ous­ly insane. But once upon a time, he was also insane in the best pos­si­ble way, will­ing to use meth­ods no oth­er record pro­duc­er would to cre­ate his sig­na­ture six­ties “wall of sound” with huge ensem­bles and off-the-wall effects that turned the stu­dio into an instru­ment. And for all his doc­u­ment­ed vio­lence, Spec­tor was also once a sur­pris­ing­ly gen­tle writer, as you can see in his notes to George Har­ri­son, made dur­ing the record­ing of Harrison’s Spec­tor-pro­duced triple-album All Things Must Pass. In his com­ments, Spec­tor coax­es Har­ri­son to work hard­er on his vocal per­for­mances and make his voice more promi­nent through­out the album’s eigh­teen stu­dio tracks.

Although he’d made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to The Bea­t­les as a song­writer, Har­ri­son was eager to do his own thing dur­ing the band’s demise in the late six­ties. All Things Must Pass is gen­er­al­ly thought of as his first solo album, but he had actu­al­ly released two pre­vi­ous records under his name, the 1968 film sound­track Won­der­wall Music and the exper­i­men­tal 1969 Elec­tron­ic Sound. Both of these, how­ev­er, are large­ly instru­men­tal, and Har­ri­son had yet to step out of the The Bea­t­les as a singer in his own right until All Things Must Pass in 1970. Spector’s notes make it clear that Har­ri­son was less than con­fi­dent in his vocal abil­i­ties. In the midst of his tech­ni­cal com­ments, Spec­tor fre­quent­ly refers to Harrison’s voice as “buried” in the mix. The let­ter as a whole is an intrigu­ing glimpse into Spector’s process and, I think, a glimpse of Har­ri­son work­ing to over­come his nat­ur­al ret­i­cence. After his list of notes on each track—some a sen­tence or two, some paragraph-length—Spector ends with a diplo­mat­ic sum­ma­tion that reit­er­ates his desire to put Harrison’s voice front-and-cen­ter.

George, on all the 18 num­bers I just men­tioned, this is what I feel are the most impor­tant items on each. Nat­u­ral­ly, wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, of main impor­tance is to get a good vocal per­for­mance by your­self. Also, if you do any of the back­ground voic­es, you should spend con­sid­er­able time on them to make sure they are good…. I think you should spend what­ev­er time you are going to on per­for­mances so that they are the very best you can do and that will make the remix­ing of the album that much eas­i­er. I real­ly feel that your voice has got to be heard through­out the album so that the great­ness of the songs can real­ly come through. We can’t cov­er you up too much (and there real­ly is no need to) although as I said, I’m sure excel­lent mix­es can be obtained with just the prop­er amount of time spent on each one.

The let­ter fin­ish­es on a very warm note:

George, thank you for all your under­stand­ing about what we dis­cussed, I appre­ci­ate your con­cern very much and hope to see you as soon as it is pos­si­ble.

Much love. Regards to every­one. Hare Krish­na,

Phil Spec­tor

Read the full let­ter here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Ravi Shankar (RIP) Gives George Har­ri­son a Sitar Les­son … and Oth­er Vin­tage Footage

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

Cartoonist R. Crumb Assesses 21 Cultural Figures, from Dylan & Hitchcock, to Kafka & The Beatles

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Literature | January 3rd, 2014

Any fan of “under­ground” com­ic artist Robert Crumb knows that the man has no shy­ness about his pref­er­ences: not in jazz music, not in pol­i­tics, and cer­tain­ly not in the female form. Alex Wood, co-oper­a­tor of the offi­cial R. Crumb site (pic­tured with Crumb above), has dis­cov­ered that the artist’s opin­ions offer a vivid win­dow into the artist’s mind. “Over the years, talk­ing with Robert about many dif­fer­ent things, I’ve been sur­prised by some of the things he likes and dis­likes,” Wood writes. “We all know he loves old music from the ear­ly part of the last cen­tu­ry, and does­n’t like rock music. But then he says he likes Tom­my James and the Shon­dells, and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs? So in a dis­cus­sion in May, 2011, I asked his opin­ion on a list of peo­ple in the news past and present.” This became part one of the series “Crumb on Oth­ers,” which has at this point grown to sev­en full pages.

Below, we offer you a selec­tion of the rough­ly 150 fig­ures from music, film, visu­al art, and let­ters Crumb has so far assessed, his reac­tions rang­ing from high praise to out­right dis­missal to amus­ing anec­dotes of his own encoun­ters with the lumi­nar­ies in ques­tion. With these, you can see how your notes on the likes of Bob Dylan, Alfred Hitch­cock, Philip K. Dick, and Charles Dar­win com­pare with those of the cre­ator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Nat­ur­al, the hand that gave us “Keep on Truckin’,” and the lead­ing light of of Zap Comix — a lumi­nary who has gen­er­at­ed no small amount of high praise, out­right dis­missal, and amus­ing anec­dote him­self. Here are the remain­ing parts. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7.

On Mark Twain: “Tom Sawyer and Huck­le­ber­ry Finn don’t do that much for me. But his lat­er stuff, he gets more cranky as he gets old­er. His cri­tique gets more inter­est­ing. When I was 15, I read What Is Man? and it made a pro­found impres­sion on me. It changed my life. It’s all about pre­des­ti­na­tion ver­sus freewill. He was a big believ­er in pre­des­ti­na­tion. He didn’t think we had any free will.”

On Bob Dylan: “I hate his voice. I can’t stand to hear him sing. I thought some of the songs that he wrote in the mid-60s were kind of clever, with clever lyrics. But I just can’t stand to hear him or see him per­form. And I think his heart is in the right place a lot of times, you know. Some­one told me he was an afi­ciona­do of old 20s, old time music, and that he lis­tens to the same kind of stuff I like.”

On Walt Dis­ney: “When I was a lit­tle kid in the 50s, we were pro­found­ly enthralled by Dis­ney, and pro­found­ly affect­ed by the Dis­ney vision. But to my taste, the whole thing starts to decline in the ear­ly 1950s. The last one that I think is a tru­ly vision­ary work is Alice In Won­der­land. Begin­ning with Peter Pan cir­ca 1953 it starts to slide into some­thing too cor­po­rate.”

On Janis Joplin: “Sad case, very sad case. She tried to act like she was hard and tough, but she wasn’t at all. She was soft and vul­ner­a­ble. She drank a lot, and got a lot of bad advice. She was sur­round­ed by vul­tures and vam­pires and scoundrels, and they just did her in. She final­ly end­ed up face-down in her own vom­it alone in some hotel room; too much hero­in and alco­hol, 27 years old.”

On Alfred Hitch­cock: “I talked to some­body who knew Kim Novak, some old­er woman, and Kim Novak told her shock­ing things about Alfred Hitch­cock and his sex­u­al pro­cliv­i­ties. That kind of sur­prised me. I don’t know why. I guess when you look at Hitch­cock you don’t see a guy with an aggres­sive sex­u­al libido. Just goes to show you can nev­er tell a book by its cov­er. I ought to know that by now.”

On The Bea­t­les: “Some of the last stuff they did, you know, it kind of gets dark, and that’s more inter­est­ing to me, the last stuff they did before they broke up. Well, that and the music they did before they actu­al­ly start­ed record­ing under Bri­an Epstein. The only way you can hear that, I think, is to see the doc­u­men­taries where it shows them play­ing in Ham­burg and the Cav­ern Club. Before Bri­an Epstein got ahold of them and cleaned them up and made them over into those cute mop-tops and put them in those mod suits. Before that, they were greas­er guys – leather jack­ets and greasy hair. And they just played this sort of dri­ving, hard rock-a-bil­ly music. And they were real­ly good at that.”

On Pablo Picas­so: “I once wrote that I envied Picas­so, because he was the type of artist who didn’t let any­thing stand in the way of his art. He would just slam the door on his wives, his girl­friends, his chil­dren – any­body, when it was time to do his art. I always envied that about him. Also his pow­er­ful, pen­e­trat­ing, hyp­not­ic way with women. I envied that about him too.”

On Franz Kaf­ka: “Before I did that book on Kaf­ka, I had nev­er read him and didn’t know any­thing about him. But once I took that book project on, then I had to read all his stuff. And then I real­ly got to like him. And while work­ing on that project, I felt a very close kin­ship with Kaf­ka. It was very strange. I start­ed feel­ing deeply con­nect­ed to Kaf­ka some­how. Some­thing I hadn’t expect­ed at all.”

On Charles Bukows­ki: “Love ’im, love his writ­ing. He was a very dif­fi­cult guy to hang out with in per­son, but on paper he was great. One of the great Amer­i­can writ­ers of the late 20th Cen­tu­ry. [ … ] The last time I saw Bukows­ki, he came to this par­ty in San Fran­cis­co, it was a poet­ry read­ing. And these two women that I knew  they just kind of closed in on Bukows­ki. One was talk­ing to him in one ear and the oth­er was talk­ing to him in his oth­er ear. He was stand­ing there with a beer bot­tle in each hand and get­ting drunk as fast as he could. And the last moment I saw him, they were lead­ing him off to the bed­room.”

On William Bur­roughs: “He was a very eccen­tric char­ac­ter; very eccen­tric ideas and thoughts. He tried all kinds of strange, avant-garde psy­chother­a­pies. He was into psy­chic exper­i­men­ta­tion. He built him­self an orgone box based upon the the­o­ries of Wil­helm Reich. He lat­er got involved in Sci­en­tol­ogy and had this E‑meter and used it as a way to psy­chi­cal­ly clear him­self. He said it was his elec­tri­cal Oui­ja board. He tried oth­er stuff too, like out of body expe­ri­ence. I can relate to all that stuff because I’m inter­est­ed in all that fringe, psy­chic exper­i­men­ta­tion also. But he was very seri­ous about that stuff.”

On Bet­tie Page: “She had the most per­fect body and the cutest face of all in that pin­up era of the 1940s and 1950s. She was the gold stan­dard. There was nobody supe­ri­or to her phys­i­cal­ly. And her pos­es, she always looked cheer­ful and whole­some, she nev­er looked sleazy. It didn’t mat­ter if she was pos­ing in a sado­masochis­tic set­up with those high heel boots and whips, it always looks like it’s just a fun­ny game to her, you know? She could have a ball-gag in her mouth and she looks like the girl next door just hav­ing fun.”

On Woody Allen: “One of my favorite movies of his was Crimes and Mis­de­meanors. It was a great movie. In that movie, there was an esteemed oph­thal­mol­o­gist, very respect­ed in his pro­fes­sion. He has this mis­tress, this neu­rot­ic woman and she’s threat­en­ing to expose him and the secret affair he’s hav­ing. She threat­ens to come over to his house and make a big scene and ruin his life. He also has a broth­er who’s involved in the crime syn­di­cate. So he goes to the broth­er and the broth­er has her killed by a pro­fes­sion­al. All the main male char­ac­ters in the movie, I’ve come to sus­pect that they’re all parts of Woody Allen’s per­son­al­i­ty. The respect­ed oph­thal­mol­o­gist is part of him; this nerdy, ide­al­is­tic doc­u­men­tary film-mak­er — that’s part of him. And there’s this real­ly arro­gant com­e­dy writer/director played by Alan Alda who plays such a jerk, and that’s part of Woody Allen also; very inter­est­ing. And I sus­pect that movie is kind of — and I don’t even know how aware of it he was — a con­fes­sion. It was right around the time that whole scan­dal with Mia Far­row’s daugh­ter hap­pened — maybe right before — because Mia Far­row was in it. But, the oph­thal­mol­o­gist gets away with it.”

On Philip K. Dick: “I’ve actu­al­ly nev­er read any of his books. All I ever read was inter­views with him and that account he gave of his reli­gious expe­ri­ence — his mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ence. The whole expe­ri­ence… the way he described it, it was great. I should read his books but I nev­er got around to it. I was nev­er big on sci­ence fic­tion, but he was always more inter­est­ing and imag­i­na­tive than a lot of sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers.” (Crumb illus­trat­ed Dick­’s “meet­ing with God.”)

On Charles Dar­win: “I nev­er real­ly read Dar­win or stud­ied much about him. I have the most broad, gen­er­al idea about his the­o­ries of nat­ur­al selec­tion and evo­lu­tion. But I do know that when a lot of upper class Eng­lish peo­ple start­ed read­ing his books, and his the­o­ries began to be wide­ly known in the 1870s, it cre­at­ed a huge change that has­n’t been wide­ly rec­og­nized by his­to­ri­ans, to my knowl­edge. Peo­ple’s atti­tudes toward reli­gion changed due to his book, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the upper class­es in Eng­land, they stopped con­sid­er­ing it their absolute duty to go to church and be a good church-going per­son. A lot of the upper class dropped out, let their church mem­ber­ship lapse. Before that. they all went to church, for appear­ance sake if noth­ing else. But after Dar­win, that all changed.”

On Jack Ker­ouac: “When I was 17, I read On The Road, and it sick­ened me, because my reac­tion was, ‘Oh God, these guys are out there hav­ing so much fun. I’m not hav­ing any fun at all. I’m just sit­ting here in my par­ents house. But them — the girls, the adven­tures, they’re just like hav­ing a fuckin’ lark On The Road.’ ”

On Jean-Paul Sartre: “A fun­ny guy, Sarte’s a fun­ny guy. You know, peo­ple don’t think of him as fun­ny because he was so seri­ous about exis­ten­tial­ism and com­mu­nism and stuff like that. [ … ] He wrote a book about his child­hood that was pret­ty fun­ny. It’s very self-dep­re­cat­ing, and he writes about what a lit­tle bour­geois, arro­gant shit he was as a kid. Fun­ny guy, I like Sarte.”

On Michelan­ge­lo: “The guy is just like glo­ri­fy­ing the male body. It’s all about writhing, mus­cu­lar male bod­ies. And even the women, they have male bod­ies with tits past­ed on. The guy’s not into women, you can tell. He’s not into fem­i­nine at all. He’s not inter­est­ed in the round, ellip­ti­cal charms of the female form. No, he’s inter­est­ed in the lumpy, mus­cu­lar male body. And the whole [Sis­tine] Chapel is noth­ing but that.”

On Hen­ry Miller:  “Just like Ker­ouac, I was about nine­teen when I read him, and again, I was dev­as­tat­ed because he was hav­ing too much fuck­ing fun. He was fuck­ing so many women. He was so suc­cess­ful with women, it made me sick. He’d brag about how he came on to some woman on the street and end­ed up fuck­ing her in the bush­es. I thought, ‘God, how does he do that?’ It made me sick with envy. But try­ing to read him lat­er, I thought he was way, way, too long-wind­ed. I thought he need­ed seri­ous edit­ing.”

On Orson Welles: “I don’t under­stand why some peo­ple are so impressed by that guy. The most enter­tain­ing Orson Welles thing I’ve ever heard was some out­takes from a radio com­mer­cial that he was doing. And he’s real­ly in a bad mood and he’s insult­ing the pro­duc­ers and tech­ni­cians in the stu­dio and telling them, ‘This is a lot of shit I hope you know.’ ”

On Hunter Thomp­son: “I met him a cou­ple of times. He used to hang out at that Mitchell Broth­ers The­ater on O’Far­rell Street in San Fran­cis­co, which was a strip joint run by the Mitchell Broth­ers. There was this kind of like Irish-Jour­nal­ist-Mafia that used to hang around there. He and these oth­er Irish char­ac­ters from San Fran­cis­co who were into jour­nal­ism there, news­pa­per guys, they hung around there for some rea­son, I don’t know why. But Thomp­son did a lot of cocaine and drank, and then he would go on these long ‘cocaine raps,’ rant­i­ng and rav­ing. But by the time I met him, y’ know, he was already well-advanced to being real­ly fuck­ing out of his mind.”

On Mar­tin Scors­ese: “I think Good­fel­las is prob­a­bly the best film about the mod­ern Amer­i­can crime syn­di­cates. Casi­no was kind of a fol­low-up to Good­fel­las, and I did­n’t think it was quite as good. Prob­a­bly Good­fel­las got so much praise it kind of went to his head so every­body got togeth­er and made this indul­gent film. It had it’s good parts, it was good, it just was­n’t as good as Good­fel­las. For one thing, there were too many close ups on DeNiro’s face. I just kept want­i­ng the cam­era to back-off. OK, you think the guy’s great look­ing, but Jesus, OK, it’s enough, back-off!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

Record Cov­er Art by Under­ground Car­toon­ist Robert Crumb

A Short His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, Accord­ing to the Irrev­er­ent Com­ic Satirist Robert Crumb

R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Coun­try Fea­tures 114 Illus­tra­tions of the Artist’s Favorite Musi­cians

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Five Hardcore Deaths Suffered By Roman Emperors

in History | January 3rd, 2014

It is iron­ic that the ancient world that cre­at­ed the adage “mod­er­a­tion in all things” could dis­re­gard this coun­sel in fla­grant fash­ion. We’ve recent­ly writ­ten about a num­ber of var­i­ous Gre­co-Roman excess­es, from cer­tain Roman gas­tro­nom­ic overindul­gences to grotesque­ly imag­i­na­tive Greek tor­ture meth­ods. Today, con­tin­u­ing this trend, we bring you a short list of the most grue­some deaths of Roman emper­ors, based on The Awl’s 2012 post, “Roman Emper­ors, Up To AD 476 And Not Includ­ing Usurpers, In Order Of How Hard­core Their Deaths Were” com­piled by Josh Fruh­linger.

With­out fur­ther ado, and in no par­tic­u­lar order, here is the list:

Cara­calla & Geta (198–217 C.E.) – Unlike some of the oth­er emper­ors we’ve gath­ered here, Cara­calla real­ly was a jerk of colos­sal pro­por­tions. After reign­ing over Rome for a few years along­side his father, Sep­ti­m­ius Severus, Cara­calla took charge of the Roman Empire in tan­dem with his younger broth­er, Geta, in 211. The reign of broth­er­ly love didn’t last long: after fail­ing to assas­si­nate Geta dur­ing the rev­el­ry that was the fes­ti­val of Sat­ur­na­lia, Cara­calla had him slaugh­tered in their mother’s arms by loy­al cen­tu­ri­ons dur­ing a peace agree­ment meet­ing.

To fol­low with this frat­ri­ci­dal motif, Cara­calla him­self was mur­dered in 217 by a man whose broth­er Cara­calla may have had killed just days ear­li­er. Cara­calla had stopped on the side of a road to uri­nate while jour­ney­ing to Edessa, and was dis­patched by Julius Mar­tialis, one of his body­guards, with a sin­gle sword blow. Mar­tialis, in turn, suc­cumbed to an arrow fired by an Impe­r­i­al Guard archer. We pre­sume that Mar­tialis did­n’t have any more broth­ers, because things seem to have end­ed there.

Joannes (423–425 C.E.) – By the rare extant accounts, Joannes seems to have been a senior civ­il ser­vant of some abil­i­ty who had, to his detri­ment, failed to estab­lish a firm grip on the Empire. Although Pro­copius, an antique schol­ar, had called him “both gen­tle and well-endowed with sagac­i­ty and thor­ough­ly capa­ble of val­or­ous deeds,” Joannes was quick­ly engulfed in con­flict with the east­ern part of the Empire. In 425, the east­ern Empire’s army cap­tured him, cut off his hands, and placed him on a don­key to be parad­ed and jeered at in a hip­po­drome. Hav­ing suf­fered both insult and injury, Joannes was put out of his mis­ery and decap­i­tat­ed.

Com­modus (177–192 C. E.) – On paper, Com­modus should have made an exem­plary emper­or. Both his grand­fa­ther and father were emper­ors before him, and his father, Mar­cus Aure­lius, was praised both as a ruler and one of Stoicism’s cen­tral thinkers. Com­modus, how­ev­er, inher­it­ed nei­ther his father’s philo­soph­i­cal incli­na­tions nor his polit­i­cal smarts. To cap off a reign plagued by polit­i­cal strife, Com­modus let him­self fall vic­tim to some destruc­tive mega­lo­ma­nia: after Rome was engulfed in a con­fla­gra­tion, Com­modus declared him­self to be the new Romu­lus and cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly re-found­ed the city under the new name of Colo­nia Lucia Annia Com­modi­ana. The renam­ing of his empire’s fore­most city didn’t quite cut it, how­ev­er, and Com­modus resort­ed to renam­ing the months of the year after his 12 names. As Decem­ber of 192 (known, by this point, as Pius of 192) drew to a close, Com­modus was poi­soned by his con­cu­bine, but vom­it­ed the sub­stance, where­upon his wrestling train­ing part­ner was sent in by a num­ber of sen­a­tors to stran­gle the emper­or in the bath­tub.

Valer­ian (253–259 C. E.) – If Joannes’ demise strikes you as hav­ing been some­what undig­ni­fied, Valerian’s end was a full-blown assault on human decen­cy. Lac­tan­tius, an ear­ly Chris­t­ian author, claimed that after his cap­ture by the Per­sian king Sha­pur I, Valer­ian was put to use as a regal foot­stool to help the Per­sian ruler mount his horse. Valer­ian, under­stand­ably, expressed some con­ster­na­tion at such treat­ment, and offered Sha­pur a hefty sum in exchange for his free­dom. There are two ver­sions of what tran­spired next. In the first, Sha­pur express­es his dis­dain for Valerian’s measly offer by pour­ing molten gold down the for­mer emperor’s throat. In the sec­ond, Sha­pur also express­es his dis­dain, albeit in a more cre­ative fash­ion, this time by flay­ing Valerian’s skin and sub­se­quent­ly stuff­ing it with straw to be put on dis­play. Thank­ful­ly, there’s evi­dence to con­tra­dict Lac­tan­tius’ account, which leads some his­to­ri­ans to believe that Valer­ian was used as nei­ther fur­ni­ture nor gold recep­ta­cle, but rather lived a qui­et life with some of his sol­diers in an inde­ter­mi­nate Per­sian city. For his sake, we hope they’re right.

Above, you can see “The Humil­i­a­tion of Valer­ian by Sha­pur,” a pen and black ink sketch cre­at­ed by Hans Hol­bein the Younger in 1521.

For a full list of gory deaths, head on over to The Awl.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cook Real Recipes from Ancient Rome: Ostrich Ragoût, Roast Wild Boar, Nut Tarts & More

Dis­cov­er the “Brazen Bull,” the Ancient Greek Tor­ture Machine That Dou­bled as a Musi­cal Instru­ment

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

Cours­es on Roman his­to­ry can be found in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 800 Free Online Cours­es

Short Film “Syd Barrett’s First Trip” Reveals the Pink Floyd Founder’s Psychedelic Experimentation (1967)

in Music | January 3rd, 2014

Every musi­cal era has its cau­tion­ary tales, and its vision­ar­ies. The six­ties pro­duced its share of them all, but also a hand­ful of bril­liant mis­fits who were insep­a­ra­bly both, all of them psy­che­del­ic pio­neers. Skip Spence, for example—the bril­liant found­ing mem­ber of Jef­fer­son Air­plane, then Moby Grape, who effec­tive­ly end­ed his career attack­ing his band­mates with a fire axe. Then of course, there’s the found­ing singer/songwriter of Pink Floyd, Syd Bar­rett, whose decline found him onstage, almost cata­ton­ic, with a can of Bryl­creem and a crushed bot­tle of pills called Man­drax drip­ping down his face. When Bar­rett passed away in 2006, most of the reaction—after the shock of learn­ing he’d still been alive—centered on the sequence of psy­chot­ic break­downs dur­ing 1967 that would leave Bar­rett changed for­ev­er. Spence and sev­er­al oth­er, more obscure fig­ures, had sim­i­lar­ly dra­mat­ic, and per­ma­nent, shifts in con­scious­ness, and of all of them the same ques­tion gets asked: was it the drugs?

Of course we’re ask­ing if the drugs cre­at­ed the men­tal ill­ness­es or just exac­er­bat­ed the inevitable, but we’re also ask­ing if the drugs cre­at­ed the music. It’s a worth­while, if some­what uncom­fort­able, inquiry that’s prob­a­bly impos­si­ble to answer. But I must admit, it’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine the first incar­na­tion of Pink Floyd with­out Barrett’s heavy exper­i­men­ta­tion. The short film above implies a direct con­nec­tion and takes us to Syd’s psy­che­del­ic incep­tion. Sim­ply titled Syd Barrett’s First Trip, the first part of the film, “Gog Magog Hills,” fol­lows a clean-cut Bar­rett and sev­er­al com­pan­ions as they frol­ic in a field on LSD. As you prob­a­bly gath­ered, it’s his first time. Then the film cuts abrupt­ly to “Abbey Road Stu­dios,” to footage doc­u­ment­ing Pink Floyd in Lon­don after hav­ing just signed their first con­tract with EMI in 1967. It’s the begin­ning of the end for Barrett’s career and men­tal health, but the inau­gu­ra­tion of the band as mass-mar­ket phe­nom­e­non.

Accord­ing to the film­mak­er, Nigel Lesmoir-Gor­don, the film “just hap­pened…. It is an unself­con­scious film. It was not planned.” Of the ’66 footage, shot by his wife Jen­ny, he writes on the film’s IMDB page:

I shared the flat with some close friends from Cam­bridge, includ­ing Syd Bar­rett, who was busy becom­ing a rock star with Pink Floyd. A few hun­dred yards down the street at 101 Cromwell Road, our preter­nat­u­ral­ly cool friend Nigel was run­ning the hip­ster equiv­a­lent of an arty salon. Between our place and his, there passed the cream of Lon­don alter­na­tive society–poets, painters, film-mak­ers, char­la­tans, activists, bores and self-styled vision­ar­ies.

These are the char­ac­ters in Syd’s entourage in this “raw, unedit­ed footage,” which was orig­i­nal­ly silent, though many peo­ple have added music such as the new age‑y ambi­ent sound­scape in the ver­sion above. I hap­pen to think it’s a nice com­ple­ment, but if you find it intru­sive, turn the vol­ume off. The images, as the film­mak­er admits, are still “stun­ning.”

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Psy­che­del­ic Scenes of Pink Floyd’s Ear­ly Days with Syd Bar­rett, 1967

Syd Bar­rett: Under Review, a Full Doc­u­men­tary About Pink Floyd’s Bril­liant and Trou­bled Founder

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Aldous Huxley’s LSD Death Trip

Two Peter Gabriel Albums ‘Scratch My Back … And I’ll Scratch Yours,’ Streaming Free for a Limited Time

in Music | January 2nd, 2014

Peter Gabriel’s cov­er album, Scratch My Back, came out in ear­ly 2010, and it fea­tured Gabriel’s quite orig­i­nal remakes of songs by David Bowie, Lou Reed, David Byrne, Regi­na Spek­tor and oth­er major artists. Now comes the fol­low-up: Set to be released on Jan­u­ary 6, the new album,  And I’ll Scratch Yours, flips the con­cept of the pre­vi­ous album. This time around, artists like Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, Lou Reed, Paul Simon and Feist record some of Peter Gabriel’s biggest hits — songs like “Games With­out Fron­tiers,” “Mer­cy Street” and “Biko.” The albums can be pur­chased togeth­er here, but, hap­pi­ly, you can stream them online for free — but only for a a lim­it­ed time — on NPR’s First Lis­ten site. Enjoy.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture in 2014. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

Peter Gabriel Plays Full Con­cert in Mod­e­na, Italy (1994)

Peter Gabriel and His Big Orches­tra Play Live at the Ed Sul­li­van The­ater

Chaos Cinema: A Breakdown of How 21st-Century Action Films Became Incoherent

in Film | January 2nd, 2014

If you read Open Cul­ture, you prob­a­bly love watch­ing movies. I’d wager, how­ev­er, that you don’t love watch­ing action movies. I don’t mean that you oper­ate at an intel­lec­tu­al lev­el far above any such pal­try enter­tain­ments; I mean that the craft of action film­mak­ing has itself declined. You’ve sure­ly felt that today’s big-bud­get spec­ta­cles of chase, fight, and explo­sion — Trans­form­ers, the Jason Bourne films, last few Bonds, the lat­est Bat­man tril­o­gy — don’t thrill you as did those of decades past — Hard Boiled, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Wild Bunch, Die Hard — but per­haps you can’t pin down quite why. Have action movies changed, you may won­der, or have I? Ger­man-born, UCLA-based film schol­ar Matthias Stork argues for the for­mer, break­ing down the cor­rup­tion of mod­ern action film­mak­ing in his video essay Chaos Cin­e­ma. “Through­out the first cen­tu­ry of moviemak­ing, the default style of com­mer­cial cin­e­ma was clas­si­cal,” he begins. “It was metic­u­lous and patient. In the­o­ry, at least, every com­po­si­tion and cam­era move had a mean­ing, a pur­pose, and movies did not cut with­out good rea­son.”

No longer. Where action film­mak­ers once “prid­ed them­selves on keep­ing the view­er well-ori­ent­ed” in time and space, they now throw dis­parate images togeth­er hap­haz­ard­ly, enslaved to “rapid edit­ing, close fram­ings, bipo­lar lens lengths, and promis­cu­ous cam­era move­ment,” trad­ing “visu­al intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty for sen­so­ry over­load,” leav­ing it to the sound­track to pro­vide a sem­blance of con­ti­nu­ity. Stork exam­ines the qual­i­ties and effects of this new style of “chaos cin­e­ma” in three parts. The first cov­ers the visu­al dis­in­te­gra­tion of action sequences them­selves; the sec­ond cov­ers the defi­cien­cy’s pen­e­tra­tion even into scenes of dia­logue and music and the emer­gence of the “shaky-cam”; the third sum­ma­rizes and engages respons­es to the first two parts. Whether or not main­stream com­mer­cial film­mak­ing will ever cure itself and return to con­vinc­ing, coher­ent action rather than the impres­sion­is­tic “gen­er­al idea of action,” we now have a fas­ci­nat­ing diag­no­sis of the dis­ease. (For fur­ther dis­cus­sion of Chaos Cin­e­ma, con­sid­er lis­ten­ing to Stork’s appear­ance on Bat­tle­ship Pre­ten­sion, a favorite film pod­cast of mine.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dark Knight: Anato­my of a Flawed Action Scene

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

The 10 Hid­den Cuts in Rope (1948), Alfred Hitchcock’s Famous “One-Shot” Fea­ture Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss Sing Country Versions of Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” & “When the Levee Breaks”

in Music | January 2nd, 2014

They make an unlike­ly duo—the one­time lead singer of the hard­est-par­ty­ing rock band in the world and the soft-voiced con­tem­po­rary blue­grass singer and fid­dler. And yet some­how, the pair­ing of Robert Plant and Ali­son Krauss makes per­fect sense, if not on paper then cer­tain­ly on the stage and in the stu­dio. They’ve been col­lab­o­rat­ing for years and won five Gram­mies for their 2007 album Rais­ing Sand, which appeared on some of the most promi­nent crit­i­cal best-of lists that year. And Plant has gone on record say­ing that his work with Krauss per­ma­nent­ly altered his musi­cal direc­tion and helped him recon­nect with his own Eng­lish coun­try music back­ground.

Both Krauss and Plant get to explore sev­er­al Amer­i­can roots avenues in Rais­ing Sand, an album of songs by such lumi­nar­ies as Sam Philips, the Ever­ly Broth­ers, Townes Van Zandt, and Doc Wat­son. But in the videos above, the pair—backed by a coun­try band—mosey through two old Led Zep­pelin songs renowned for their thun­der­ous loud­ness and sweep­ing gui­tars. “Black Dog” (orig­i­nal here) begins with Jim­my Page’s unmis­tak­able intro riff picked out on a ban­jo while Plant goofs around and attempts a two-step. It feels like we’re in for a nov­el­ty act, but when the two start singing har­monies, the strength of their musi­cal bond is imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent, even in what some might con­sid­er a butcher­ing of an icon­ic tune. Krauss takes the lead vocal in “When the Lev­ee Breaks” (orig­i­nal here) while Plant hangs back and strums a gui­tar. She turns the song into straight coun­try, and most­ly sells it, save the band’s thin, unin­spired instru­men­tal break­downs and gui­tar solos that only vague­ly recall the orig­i­nal. All-in-all it’s an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment in genre trans­po­si­tion, though I think we’re lucky to have been spared an album of Plant and Krauss re-invent­ing clas­sic Zep­pelin as con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­cana.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Dutch­man Mas­ters the Art of Singing Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Back­wards

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

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

The Story of Einstein’s Brain: A Japanese Professor Tracks Down the Organ in a Bizarre Documentary

in Film, Physics | January 2nd, 2014

The 1994 doc­u­men­tary above, Einstein’s Brain, is a curi­ous arti­fact about an even stranger rel­ic, the brain of the great physi­cist, extract­ed from his body hours after he died in 1955. The brain was dis­sect­ed, then embarked on a con­vo­lut­ed mis­ad­ven­ture, in sev­er­al pieces, across the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent. Before Ein­stein’s Brain tells this sto­ry, it intro­duces us to our guide, Japan­ese schol­ar Ken­ji Sug­i­mo­to, who imme­di­ate­ly emerges as an eccen­tric fig­ure, wob­bling in and out of view, mum­bling awed phras­es in Japan­ese. We encounter him in a dark­ened cathe­dral, star­ing up at a back­lit stained-glass cleresto­ry, pray­ing, per­haps, though if he’s pray­ing to any­one, it’s prob­a­bly Albert Ein­stein. His first words in heav­i­ly accent­ed Eng­lish express a deep rev­er­ence for Ein­stein alone. “I love Albert Ein­stein,” he says, with reli­gious con­vic­tion, gaz­ing at a stained-glass win­dow por­trait of the sci­en­tist.

Sugimoto’s devo­tion per­fect­ly illus­trates what a Physics World arti­cle described as the cul­tur­al ele­va­tion of Ein­stein to the sta­tus of a “sec­u­lar saint.” Sug­i­mo­to’s zeal, and the rather implau­si­ble events that fol­low this open­ing, have prompt­ed many peo­ple to ques­tion the authen­tic­i­ty of his film and to accuse him of per­pe­trat­ing a hoax. Some of those crit­ics may mis­take Sugimoto’s social awk­ward­ness and wide-eyed enthu­si­asm for cred­u­lous­ness and unpro­fes­sion­al­ism, but it is worth not­ing that he is expe­ri­enced and cre­den­tialed as a pro­fes­sor in math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence his­to­ry at the Kin­ki Uni­ver­si­ty in Japan and, accord­ing to a title card, he “spent thir­ty years doc­u­ment­ing Einstein’s life and per­son.”

For a full eval­u­a­tion, see a poor­ly proof­read but very well-sourced arti­cle at “bad sci­ence blog” Deplet­ed Cra­ni­um that tells the com­plete sto­ry of Einstein’s brain, and sup­ports Sugimoto’s tale by ref­er­ence to sev­er­al accounts. Of the doc­u­men­tary, we’re told that “based on all avail­able data, the basic premise and the events shown in the doc­u­men­tary are indeed true.” In the film, Sug­i­mo­to trav­els across the U.S. in search of Dr. Thomas Har­vey, the man who orig­i­nal­ly removed Einstein’s brain at Prince­ton. (See one of the orig­i­nal pathol­o­gy pho­tos, with added labels, of the brain above). Deplet­ed Cra­ni­um con­tin­ues to set the scene as fol­lows:

Even­tu­al­ly, Sug­i­mo­to tracks down Thomas Har­vey at his home in Kansas. When he requests to see the brain, Har­vey brings out two glass jars con­tain­ing the pieces. At this point, Sug­i­mo­to makes a shock­ing request: he asks Har­vey if he could have a small piece of the brain to keep as a per­son­al memen­to. Har­vey says “I don’t see any rea­son why not” and pro­ceeds to retrieve a carv­ing knife and a cut­ting board from his kitchen. He cuts a small sec­tion from a sam­ple he iden­ti­fies as being part of Einstein’s brain stem and cere­bel­lum and gives it to Sug­i­mo­to in a small con­tain­er. In the final scene, Sug­i­mo­to cel­e­brates by tak­ing his piece of the brain to a local kereoke [sic] bar and singing a favorite Japan­ese song.

The notion that the bulk of Ein­stein’s brain would have end­ed up in a clos­et in Kansas seems strange enough. And as for Har­vey: the pathol­o­gist shopped the brain around for decades—if not for prof­it, then for notoriety—even dri­ving across the coun­try with jour­nal­ist Michael Pater­ni­ti in 1997 to deliv­er a large por­tion of the brain to Dr. San­dra Witel­son of McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty in Ontario. Pater­ni­ti doc­u­ment­ed the road trip in his book Dri­ving Mr. Albert, which appears to cor­rob­o­rate much of Sugimoto’s nar­ra­tive, though the trip may itself have been a pub­lic­i­ty stunt.

In addi­tion to the brain, Einstein’s eyes were also removed, with­out autho­riza­tion, by his oph­thal­mol­o­gist, who kept them in a safe­ty deposit box (where they pre­sum­ably remain). The entire sto­ry of Ein­stein’s remains is grue­some­ly out­landish, though one might con­sid­er it a mod­ern celebri­ty exam­ple of the cen­turies-old prac­tice of body snatch­ing. If some or all of this intrigues you, you’ll appre­ci­ate Sugimoto’s doc­u­men­tary. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the video upload is rough. It was record­ed from Swedish tele­vi­sion, has Swedish sub­ti­tles, and is gen­er­al­ly pret­ty low-res. How­ev­er, as a title card at the open­ing tells us, “due to the extreme­ly lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of this doc­u­men­tary, this will have to suf­fice until a copy of high­er qual­i­ty ris­es to the sur­face.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Impos­es on His First Wife a Cru­el List of Mar­i­tal Demands

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Ein­stein Doc­u­men­tary Offers A Reveal­ing Por­trait of the Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Sci­en­tist

Ein­stein for the Mass­es: Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Presents a Primer on the Great Physicist’s Think­ing

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

What Books, Movies, Songs & Paintings Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2014?

in Art, Books, Film, Law, Music | January 2nd, 2014

Every year, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain high­lights major works that would have entered the pub­lic domain had the copy­right law that pre­vailed until 1978 still remained in effect today. That law (estab­lished in 1909) allowed works to remain under copy­right for a max­i­mum of 56 years — which means that 2014 would have wel­comed into the pub­lic domain works first pub­lished in 1957. Some high­lights (from the longer list) include:

Books

• Jack Ker­ouac, On the Road
• Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
• Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christ­mas and The Cat in the Hat
• Studs Terkel, Giants of Jazz
• Ian Flem­ing, From Rus­sia, with Love

Movies

• 12 Angry Men (Hen­ry Fon­da, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Klug­man, Ed Beg­ley, and more)
• A Farewell to Arms (Rock Hud­son and Jen­nifer Jones)
• Jail­house Rock (Elvis Pres­ley)
• The Sev­enth Seal (writ­ten and direct­ed by Ing­mar Bergman and star­ring Max von Sydow and Bengt Ekerot)
• Fun­ny Face (Audrey Hep­burn and Fred Astaire)
• Gun­fight at the O.K. Cor­ral (Burt Lan­cast­er and Kirk Dou­glas)

Music

• “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peg­gy Sue” (Bud­dy Hol­ly, Jer­ry Alli­son, and Nor­man Pet­ty)
• “Great Balls of Fire” (Otis Black­well and Jack Ham­mer)
• “Wake Up, Lit­tle Susie” (Felice and Boudleaux Bryant)
• Elvis Presley’s hits: “All Shook Up” (Otis Black­well and Elvis Pres­ley) and “Jail­house Rock” (Jer­ry Leiber and Mike Stoller)
• The musi­cal “West Side Sto­ry” (music by Leonard Bern­stein, lyrics by Stephen Sond­heim, and book by Arthur Lau­rents)

Art

• Dali’s “Celes­tial Ride” and “Music: the Red Orches­tra”
• Edward Hopper’s “West­ern Motel”
• Picasso’s “Las Meni­nas” set of paint­ings

Under the cur­rent copy­right regime, you’ll have to wait anoth­er 39 years — until 2053 — before these works hit the com­mons.

You can find a longer list of 1957 works still under copy­right on Duke’s web­site.

Note: If you’re won­der­ing how many works of art entered the pub­lic domain in 2014, the answer is sim­ple: 0. As the Duke site notes, “Not a sin­gle pub­lished work” is enter­ing the pub­lic domain in 2014. “In fact, in the Unit­ed States, no pub­li­ca­tion will enter the pub­lic domain until 2019.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sher­lock Holmes Is Now in the Pub­lic Domain, Declares US Judge

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 13 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries