How to Make Sure You Get Open Culture in Your Facebook Newsfeed: Now You Can Take Control

in Media, Technology | July 9th, 2015

For the longest time, Face­book gave you no abil­i­ty to con­trol what con­tent you see in your Face­book news­feed. Some 378,000 peo­ple have “liked” our Face­book page. But only a frac­tion actu­al­ly see Open Cul­ture posts in their news­feed. That’s because a Face­book algo­rithm start­ed mak­ing the deci­sions for you, show­ing you mate­r­i­al from some people/publishers, and not oth­ers.

Now, Face­book has final­ly intro­duced a new fea­ture that will let you con­trol what you see. Please check out the instruc­tions below. When you’re done read­ing them, con­sid­er giv­ing us a Like on Face­book, and then set your news­feed accord­ing­ly. (You get bonus points if you Fol­low us on Twit­ter too!)

  • If you’re using a mobile phone, open the Face­book app, click the “More” icon along the bot­tom of the app, then scroll down and click “News­feed pref­er­ences,” then click “Pri­or­i­tize who to see first,” and make your picks. (You can select more than one item.)
  • If you’re using Face­book on a com­put­er, click on the down­ward fac­ing arrow on the top nav bar, then click “News­feed pref­er­ences,” locate one of the peo­ple or pub­lish­ers you fol­low, and change the set­ting from “Fol­low­ing” to “See First.”

Hope all of that makes sense.

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A Dreamily Animated Introduction to Haruki Murakami, Japan’s Jazz and Baseball-Loving Postmodern Novelist

in Animation, Literature | July 9th, 2015

If the impres­sion­is­tic ani­ma­tion style of psy­chol­o­gist, writer, and film­mak­er Ilana Simons’ “About Haru­ki Murakami”—a short video intro­duc­tion to the jazz bar own­ing, marathon run­ning, Japan­ese novelist—puts you in mind of Richard Lin­klater’s Wak­ing Life, then the ellip­ti­cal, lucid dream nar­ra­tion may do so even more. “He did­n’t use too many words,” Simons tells us. “Too many words is kin­da… too many words. Some­one’s always los­ing their voice. Some­one’s hear­ing is acute. Haru­ki Muraka­mi.” Like Roger Ebert said of Lin­klater’s film, Simons’ ode to Murakami—and the nov­el­ist’s work itself—is “philo­soph­i­cal and play­ful at the same time.”

Simons reads us Murakami’s exis­ten­tial­ist account of how he became a nov­el­ist, at age 29, after hav­ing an epiphany at a base­ball game: “The idea struck me,” he says, “I could write a nov­el…. I could do it.” And he did, sit­ting down every night after work­ing the bar he owned with his wife, writ­ing by hand and drink­ing beer. “Before that,” he has said in an inter­view with singer/songwriter John Wes­ley Hard­ing, “I did­n’t write any­thing. I was just one of those ordi­nary peo­ple. I was run­ning a jazz club, and I did­n’t cre­ate any­thing at all.” And it’s true. Besides sud­den­ly decid­ing to become a nov­el­ist, “out of the blue” at almost 30, then sud­den­ly becom­ing an avid marathon run­ner at age 33, Murakami’s life was pret­ty unre­mark­able.

It’s not entire­ly sur­pris­ing that he became a nov­el­ist. Both of Murakami’s par­ents taught Japan­ese lit­er­a­ture, though he him­self was not a par­tic­u­lar­ly good stu­dent. But the author of such beloved books as Nor­we­gian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle, Kaf­ka on the Shore and dozens of short sto­ries (read six free here), has most­ly drawn his inspi­ra­tion from out­side his nation­al tradition—from Amer­i­can base­ball and jazz, from British inva­sion rock and roll, from Fitzger­ald, Kaf­ka, and Hol­ly­wood films. As Col­in Mar­shall wrote in a pre­vi­ous post on the BBC Muraka­mi doc­u­men­tary below, “he remained an author shaped by his favorite for­eign cultures—especially Amer­i­ca’s. This, com­bined with his yearn­ing to break from estab­lished norms, has gen­er­at­ed enough inter­na­tion­al demand for his work to sell briskly in almost every lan­guage.”

Murakami’s desire to break with norms, Simons tells us in her charm­ing, visu­al­ly accom­plished ani­mat­ed short, is symp­to­matic of his “detach­ment” and “intro­spec­tion.” Muraka­mi “liked escape, or he just does­n’t like join­ing groups and invest­ing too many words in places where words have been too often.” The thought of “orga­nized activ­i­ties,” Muraka­mi has said, like “hold­ing hands at a demon­stra­tion… gives me the creeps.” Murakami’s love of soli­tude makes him seem mys­te­ri­ous, “elu­sive,” says pre­sen­ter Alan Yen­tob in the film above. But one of the extra­or­di­nary things about Murakami—in addi­tion to his run­ning a 62-mile “ultra­ma­rathon” and con­quer­ing the lit­er­ary world on a whim—is just how ordi­nary he is in many ways. Both Simons’ increas­ing­ly sur­re­al­ist, bebop-scored short and the BBC’s cool jazz-backed explo­ration make this con­trast seem all the more remark­able. It’s Murakami’s abil­i­ty to stretch and bend the ordi­nary world, Simons sug­gests near the end of her lyri­cal trib­ute, that makes his read­ers feel that “some­how, mag­i­cal­ly… he does some­thing very pri­vate and inti­mate with their brains”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 6 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

A 56-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Ray Charles, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

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

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178 Beautifully-Illustrated Letters from Artists: Kahlo, Calder, Man Ray & More

in Art, Letters | July 9th, 2015

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Eight years ago—that’s some­thing like five decades in Inter­net time—the Smith­son­ian held an exhi­bi­tion, “More than Words: Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from the Smithsonian’s Archives of Amer­i­can Art,” which fea­tured a curat­ed selec­tion of 178 hand-illus­trat­ed let­ters, love notes, dri­ving direc­tions, and jot­tings of cur­rent events, from var­i­ous artists. The selec­tions can still be found online, even though Liza Kirwin’s selec­tions for the exhib­it can now also be found in an accom­pa­ny­ing book.

The illus­trat­ed let­ters make for human­iz­ing insights into the pri­vate world of artists that we usu­al­ly only expe­ri­ence through their work.

The 1945 let­ter from George Grosz to Erich S. Her­rmann (above) is to invite his friend (and art deal­er) to his birth­day par­ty, promis­ing not just one glass of Hen­nessy, but six (and more). “Lis­ten: boy!” he declares. “You are cor­dial­ly invit­ed to attend the birth­day par­ty of ME.” This was when Grosz was in his 50s and liv­ing in Hunt­ing­ton, New York. It should be not­ed that Grosz met his end falling down a flight of stairs while drunk, but the man knew how to par­ty.

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Joseph Lin­don Smith was an Amer­i­can illus­tra­tor best known for being the artist who trav­eled to Egypt and doc­u­ment­ed the exca­va­tions at Giza and the Val­ley of the Kings, very faith­ful in their rep­re­sen­ta­tion. But in 1894, this let­ter finds Smith, 31 years old, liv­ing in Paris, try­ing to make a go of it as an artist, and hav­ing enough suc­cess to tell his par­ents: “Behold your son paint­ing under a show­er of gold,” he writes. Check out that hand­writ­ing: it’s beau­ti­ful.

calder illustrated letter

Sculp­tor Alexan­der Calder wrote this note to Vas­sar col­league and friend Agnes Rindge Claflin in 1936, con­tin­u­ing some con­ver­sa­tion they were hav­ing about col­or, and not­ing her choic­es mark her as a “Parcheesi hound,” and adding that he’s a fan of the game too. The lit­tle illus­tra­tion, which is straight Calder, is cute too. Claflin would lat­er go on to nar­rate one of MOMA’s first films to accom­pa­ny an exhib­it, Her­bert Matter’s 1944 film on Calder, Sculp­ture and Con­struc­tions.

man ray illustrated letter

This Man Ray let­ter to painter Julian E. Levi looks like it has been wor­ried over or recycled—-“Dear Julian” appears sev­er­al times on the sta­tionery from Le Select Amer­i­can Bar in Mont­par­nasse. It’s a bit dif­fi­cult to make out all his writ­ing: he starts men­tion­ing “Last year’s 1928 wine har­vest is sup­posed to be the very finest in the last fifty years” at the begin­ning, but I’m more fas­ci­nat­ed with the bot­tom right: “I have sev­en tall blondes with 14 big tits and one with sap­phire garters.”

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Final­ly, we close out with a let­ter Fri­da Kahlo sent to her friend Emmy Lou Packard in 1940, where she thanked Packard for tak­ing care of Diego dur­ing an ill­ness. The let­ter gets sealed, Priscil­la Frank notes at Huff­Po, with three lip­stick kiss­es — “one for Diego, one for Emmy Lou, and one for her son.”

There’s plen­ty more illus­trat­ed let­ters to explore at the Smith­son­ian site and in Kir­win’s hand­some book, fea­tur­ing artists well known and obscure, but all who knew how to com­pose a good let­ter.

via Huff­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

Six Post­cards From Famous Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Kaf­ka, Ker­ouac & More

James Joyce’s “Dirty Let­ters” to His Wife (1909)

Read Rejec­tion Let­ters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Von­negut & Andy Warhol

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Download & Play The Shining Board Game

in Books | July 9th, 2015

Shining game 1

Stephen King’s 1977 psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror nov­el The Shin­ing has inspired sev­er­al oth­er works, most notably Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 1980 film adap­ta­tion, a movie wide­ly con­sid­ered to have ele­vat­ed King’s sto­ry of the pos­sessed Over­look Hotel and its luck­less win­ter care­tak­ers, the Tor­rance fam­i­ly, to a high­er artis­tic plane. But King him­self nev­er real­ly approved of Kubrick­’s inter­pre­ta­tion: “Parts of the film are chill­ing, charged with a relent­less­ly claus­tro­pho­bic ter­ror,” he said, “but oth­ers fall flat. A vis­cer­al skep­tic such as Kubrick just could­n’t grasp the sheer inhu­man evil of the Over­look Hotel.”

Shining game 2

Pre­sum­ably King had a bet­ter time play­ing the board game of The Shin­ing, which won the first Microgame Design Con­test in 1998, and about which you can read more at Board Game Geek. It has been said that King him­self helped with the game’s devel­op­ment and offered his ser­vices as an ear­ly play-tester, though some will con­test that. (See the claims in the com­ments sec­tion below.)

You can tell that the game’s faith lies with King’s nov­el rather than Kubrick­’s film by its use of things that nev­er made it from page to screen as game­play ele­ments, such as the hotel grounds’ hedge-sculp­ture ani­mals that come to vicious life.

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You can play The Shin­ing board game as the Tor­rance fam­i­ly, in which case you’ll have to fight those hedge ani­mals. Or you can play it as the Over­look Hotel itself, in which case you’ll con­trol them. Each play­er has a host of imple­ments at their dis­pos­al — ghosts, decoys, the famous axe and snow­mo­bile — all meant to help them accom­plish the task of dri­ving the oth­er side away. Think of it as a sim­pli­fied wargame set in a haunt­ed hotel.

If you’d like to see how you fare, whether in the shoes of the Tor­rances or the Indi­an-bur­ial-ground foun­da­tion of the Over­look, you’ll find all the game’s mate­ri­als freely avail­able on the Micro­grame Design Con­test’s site. Print them out, set them up, and pre­pare to feel some sheer inhu­man evil for your­self.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

7 Free Stephen King Sto­ries: Pre­sent­ed in Text, Audio, Web Com­ic & a Graph­ic Nov­el Video

Stephen King Reveals in His First TV Inter­view Whether He Sleeps With the Lights On (1982)

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Meditation 101: A Short, Animated Beginner’s Guide

in Health, Psychology | July 9th, 2015

Katy Davis (AKA Gob­blynne) cre­at­ed an immense­ly pop­u­lar video ani­mat­ing Dr. Brené Brown’s insights on The Pow­er of Empa­thy. Now, she returns with anoth­er ani­mal-filled ani­ma­tion that could also put you on the right men­tal track. Nar­rat­ed by Dan Har­ris, this one lays out the basics of med­i­ta­tion and deals with some com­mon mis­con­cep­tions and points of frus­tra­tion. Give it a quick watch, and if you want to give med­i­ta­tion a first, sec­ond or third try, check out these Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA. If you know of oth­er help­ful med­i­ta­tion resources, feel free to let us know in the com­ments.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Son­ny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Prac­tic­ing Yoga Made Him a Bet­ter Musi­cian

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy (1960)

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How Walking Fosters Creativity: Stanford Researchers Confirm What Philosophers and Writers Have Always Known

in Creativity, Life, Literature, Psychology | July 8th, 2015

Walking

Image via Diego Sevil­la Ruiz

A cer­tain Zen proverb goes some­thing like this: “A five year old can under­stand it, but an 80 year old can­not do it.” The sub­ject of this rid­dle-like say­ing has been described as “mindfulness”—or being absorbed in the moment, free from rou­tine men­tal habits. In many East­ern med­i­ta­tive tra­di­tions, one can achieve such a state by walk­ing just as well as by sit­ting still—and many a poet and teacher has pre­ferred the ambu­la­to­ry method.

This is equal­ly so in the West, where we have an entire school of ancient philosophy—the “peri­patet­ic”—that derives from Aris­to­tle and his con­tem­po­raries’ pen­chant for doing their best work while in leisure­ly motion. Friedrich Niet­zsche, an almost fanat­i­cal walk­er, once wrote, “all tru­ly great thoughts are con­ceived by walk­ing.” Niet­zsche’s moun­tain walks were ath­let­ic, but walk­ing—Frédéric Gros main­tains in his A Phi­los­o­phy of Walk­ing—is not a sport; it is “the best way to go more slow­ly than any oth­er method that has ever been found.”

Gros dis­cuss­es the cen­tral­i­ty of walk­ing in the lives of Niet­zsche, Rim­baud, Kant, Rousseau, and Thore­au. Like­wise, Rebec­ca Sol­nit has pro­filed the essen­tial walks of lit­er­ary fig­ures such as William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, and Gary Sny­der in her book Wan­der­lust, which argues for the neces­si­ty of walk­ing in our own age, when doing so is almost entire­ly unnec­es­sary most of the time. As great walk­ers of the past and present have made abun­dant­ly clear—anecdotally at least—we see a sig­nif­i­cant link between walk­ing and cre­ative think­ing.

More gen­er­al­ly, writes Fer­ris Jabr in The New York­er, “the way we move our bod­ies fur­ther changes the nature of our thoughts, and vice ver­sa.” Apply­ing mod­ern research meth­ods to ancient wis­dom has allowed psy­chol­o­gists to quan­ti­fy the ways in which this hap­pens, and to begin to explain why. Jabr sum­ma­rizes the exper­i­ments of two Stan­ford walk­ing researchers, Mar­i­ly Oppez­zo and her men­tor Daniel Schwartz, who found that almost two hun­dred stu­dents test­ed showed marked­ly height­ened cre­ative abil­i­ties while walk­ing. Walk­ing, Jabr writes in poet­ic terms, works by “set­ting the mind adrift on a froth­ing sea of thought.” (Hear Dr. Oppez­zo dis­cuss her study in a Min­neso­ta pub­lic radio inter­view above.)

Oppez­zo and Schwartz spec­u­late, “future stud­ies would like­ly deter­mine a com­plex path­way that extends from the phys­i­cal act of walk­ing to phys­i­o­log­i­cal changes to the cog­ni­tive con­trol of imag­i­na­tion.” They rec­og­nize that this dis­cov­ery must also account for such vari­ables as when one walks, and—as so many notable walk­ers have stressed—where. Researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan have tack­led the where ques­tion in a paper titled “The Cog­ni­tive Ben­e­fits of Inter­act­ing with Nature.” Their study, writes Jabr, showed that “stu­dents who ambled through an arbore­tum improved their per­for­mance on a mem­o­ry test more than stu­dents who walked along city streets.”

One won­ders what James Joyce—whose Ulysses is built almost entire­ly on a scaf­fold­ing of walks around Dublin—would make of this. Or Wal­ter Ben­jamin, whose con­cept of the flâneur, an arche­typ­al urban wan­der­er, derives direct­ly from the insights of that most imag­i­na­tive deca­dent poet, Charles Baude­laire. Clas­si­cal walk­ers, Roman­tic walk­ers, Mod­ernist walkers—all rec­og­nized the cre­ative impor­tance of this sim­ple move­ment in time and space, one we work so hard to mas­ter in our first years, and some­times lose in lat­er life if we acquire it. Going for a walk, con­tem­po­rary research confirms—a mun­dane activ­i­ty far too eas­i­ly tak­en for granted—may be one of the most salu­tary means of achiev­ing states of enlight­en­ment, lit­er­ary, philo­soph­i­cal, or oth­er­wise, whether we roam through ancient forests, over the Alps, or to the cor­ner store.

via The New York­er/Stan­ford News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

The Psy­chol­o­gy of Messi­ness & Cre­ativ­i­ty: Research Shows How a Messy Desk and Cre­ative Work Go Hand in Hand

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

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

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Pico Iyer on “the Art of Stillness”: How to Enrich Your Busy, Distracted Life by Unplugging and Staying Put

in Life, TED Talks, Travel | July 8th, 2015

Hav­ing known Pico Iyer for quite some time, on paper and in per­son, as a per­pet­u­al exam­ple and occa­sion­al men­tor in the writ­ing of place, it delights me to watch him attract more lis­ten­ers than ever with the talks he’s giv­en in recent years, the most pop­u­lar of which advo­cate some­thing called “still­ness.” But at first I won­dered: did this shift in sub­ject mean that Iyer—a Cal­i­for­nia-grown Brit from an Indi­an fam­i­ly who most­ly lives in Japan (“a glob­al vil­lage on two legs,” as he once called him­self), known for books like Video Night in Kath­man­du, Falling off the Map, and The Glob­al Soul—had put his sig­na­ture hard-trav­el­ing ways behind him?

Hard­ly. But he did start telling the world more about his long-stand­ing habit of rou­tine­ly seek­ing out the most qui­et, least “con­nect­ed” places he can—the sea­side no-speech-allowed Catholic her­mitage, the rur­al vil­lage out­side Kyoto—in order to reflect upon the time he has spent cir­cling the globe, trans­pos­ing him­self from cul­ture to alien cul­ture. “24 years ago, I took the most mind-bend­ing trip across North Korea,” he tells us, “but the trip last­ed a few days. What I’ve done with it sit­ting still—going back to it in my head, try­ing to under­stand it, find­ing a place for it in my thinking—that’s last­ed 24 years already, and will prob­a­bly last a life­time.”

If we want to fol­low Pico’s exam­ple, we must strike a bal­ance: we must process the time we spend doing some­thing intensely—traveling, writ­ing, pro­gram­ming, lift­ing weights, what have you—with time spent not doing that some­thing, a pur­suit in its own way as intense. He con­nects all this with the 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy cul­ture in which we find our­selves, cit­ing the exam­ple of folks like Wired co-founder Kevin Kel­ly and even cer­tain enlight­en­ment-mind­ed Googlers who reg­u­lar­ly and rig­or­ous­ly detach them­selves from cer­tain kinds of mod­ern devices, going “com­plete­ly offline in order to gath­er the sense of direc­tion and pro­por­tion they’ll need when they go online again.”

Achiev­ing such a prop­er intel­lec­tu­al, psy­cho­log­i­cal, social, and tech­no­log­i­cal com­part­men­tal­iza­tion in life may seem like a rare trick to pull off. But if you ever doubt its pos­si­bil­i­ty, just revis­it the last talk from Pico we fea­tured, in which he describes his encounter with Leonard Cohen, the only man alive who has suc­cess­ful­ly com­bined the lifestyles of rock star and Zen monk.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Best Writ­ing Advice Pico Iyer Ever Received

Pico Iyer on “The Joy of Less”

How Leonard Cohen’s Stint As a Bud­dhist Monk Can Help You Live an Enlight­ened Life

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Behind-the-Scenes Footage of Jerry Lewis’ Ill-Conceived Holocaust Movie The Day The Clown Cried

in Film | July 8th, 2015

The auteur respon­si­ble for The Dis­or­der­ly Order­lies might not be the obvi­ous choice to make a movie about the Holo­caust but that’s appar­ent­ly what hap­pened. For the hand­ful of peo­ple who have seen Jer­ry Lewis’s The Day the Clown Cried – his unre­leased 1972 film about a washed-up clown named Hel­mut Doork who amus­es a box­car of Jew­ish chil­dren all the way to an Auschwitz gas cham­ber — say that the movie is far, far worse than you might imag­ine.

“This film was real­ly awe-inspir­ing, in that you are rarely in the pres­ence of a per­fect object,” said Har­ry Shear­er in a 1992 Spy Mag­a­zine arti­cle about the movie. “This was a per­fect object. This movie is so dras­ti­cal­ly wrong, its pathos and its com­e­dy are so wild­ly mis­placed, that you could not, in your fan­ta­sy of what it might be like, improve on what it real­ly is. “Oh My God!” — that’s all you can say.” (Below you can hear Shear­er tell Howard Stern more about the film.)

There is report­ed­ly only one copy of the movie and that print is under lock and key. Lewis is adamant that the movie is nev­er going to be seen by the pub­lic while he still has a say in the mat­ter. “It was all bad and it was bad because I lost the mag­ic,” Lewis told an audi­ence at the 2013 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. “You will nev­er see it, no-one will ever see it, because I am embar­rassed at the poor work.”

Its mind-bog­gling awful­ness and its inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty has placed The Day the Clown Cried into that rar­i­fied pan­theon of leg­endary lost films like the orig­i­nal cut of Erich von Stroheim’s Greed. Only the film is pur­pose­ful­ly kept in obscu­ri­ty. Every once in a while, a new frag­ment of the movie will pop up on the inter­net only to be quick­ly quashed.

The lat­est glimpse of this famous­ly wrong-head­ed pro­duc­tion comes in the form of a sev­en-minute clip of a mak­ing-of doc­u­men­tary on the film that aired on Flem­ish TV. You can watch it above. There’s a longer sec­tion here.

The clip opens with Lewis in clown face doing his rub­ber-faced slap­stick shtick. It’s not espe­cial­ly fun­ny out of con­text. In con­text one can only imag­ine that the rou­tine would be about as hilar­i­ous as a whoop­ie cush­ion dur­ing the My Lai mas­sacre.

Lat­er, the doc­u­men­tary shows Lewis behind the cam­era and he seems every bit the auteur. The voice over notes that Lewis is work­ing “as a clown, actor, direc­tor, con­duc­tor and pro­duc­er.” Lewis is even seen telling his French sound engi­neer how to use his Nagra tape recorder.

But per­haps the most sur­pris­ing moment in the clip is when that 1960s pow­er cou­ple Jane Birkin and Serge Gains­bourg are seen hang­ing around the set. There real­ly does seem to be some­thing with the French and Jer­ry Lewis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Auschwitz Cap­tured in Haunt­ing Drone Footage (and a New Short Film by Steven Spiel­berg & Meryl Streep)

Mem­o­ry of the Camps (1985): The Holo­caust Doc­u­men­tary that Trau­ma­tized Alfred Hitch­cock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

Anne Frank: The Only Exist­ing Video Now Online

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

 

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Watch Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and 2001: A Space Odyssey Get Run Through Google’s Trippy Deep Dream Software

in Film, Technology | July 7th, 2015

Last week, The Guardian report­ed:

Google has made its “incep­tion­ism” algo­rithm avail­able to all, allow­ing coders around the world to repli­cate the process the com­pa­ny used to cre­ate mes­meris­ing dream­scapes with its image pro­cess­ing neur­al-net­work.

The sys­tem, which works by repeat­ed­ly feed­ing an image through an AI which enhances fea­tures it recog­nis­es, was first demon­strat­ed by Google two weeks ago. It can alter an exist­ing image to the extent that it looks like an acid trip, or begin with ran­dom noise to gen­er­ate an entire­ly orig­i­nal dream­scape.

Since then a coder, Roelof Pieters, began mess­ing around with the pub­licly-avail­able soft­ware, and decid­ed to take the “Great San Fran­cis­co Acid Wave” scene from Ter­ry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and run it through “Deep Dream,” as the soft­ware is known. The results (below), now going viral across the inter­net, are pret­ty trip­py and intense. Just when you thought Hunter S. Thomp­son could­n’t get more “out there,” this comes along.

We noticed that Pieters ran a sim­i­lar exper­i­ment with pieces of Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and we could­n’t help but put them on dis­play. Watch above.

via Giz­mo­do

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online: Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Read 18 Lost Sto­ries From Hunter S. Thompson’s For­got­ten Stint As a For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

 

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The Mysterious Physics Behind How Bikes Ride by Themselves

in Physics, Sports | July 7th, 2015

So sim­ple and yet so com­plex. The bicy­cle remains the world’s most pop­u­lar form of trans­porta­tion, found in house­holds world­wide, in coun­tries rich and poor. And yet the bike remains some­thing of a mys­tery to us. How the bike can ride almost on its own is some­thing physi­cists still pon­der and write aca­d­e­m­ic papers about. It’s also the sub­ject of this new episode from the pop­u­lar YouTube series Minute Physics. The video explains in a few suc­cinct min­utes what we know and still don’t know about this fix­ture in our every­day lives. All stuff to think about on your next ride.…

via NPR

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Physics: Free Online Cours­es

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Now Com­plete­ly Online

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

The Art & Sci­ence of Bike Design: A 5‑Part Intro­duc­tion from the Open Uni­ver­si­ty

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What’s the Difference Between Stanley Kubrick’s & Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (A Side-by-Side Comparison)

in Film | July 7th, 2015

In 1964, Stan­ley Kubrick was rid­ing high from the suc­cess of his Cold War black com­e­dy Dr. Strangelove. For his next film, Kubrick want­ed to make some­thing dif­fer­ent. He want­ed to make a sci­ence fic­tion epic at a time when sci-fi was a byword for cheap and cheesy. And so, the direc­tor reached out to writer Arthur C. Clarke, after read­ing his short sto­ry “The Sen­tinel.” In a let­ter dat­ed March 31, 1964, Kubrick wrote:

I had been a great admir­er of your books for quite a time and had always want­ed to dis­cuss with you the pos­si­bil­i­ty of doing the prover­bial “real­ly good” sci­ence-fic­tion movie.

My main inter­est lies along these broad areas, nat­u­ral­ly assum­ing great plot and char­ac­ter:
1. The rea­sons for believ­ing in the exis­tence of intel­li­gent extra-ter­res­tri­al life.
2. The impact (and per­haps even lack of impact in some quar­ters) such dis­cov­ery would have on Earth in the near future.
3. A space probe with a land­ing and explo­ration of the Moon and Mars.

The two soon met at Trad­er Vic’s in New York and start­ed hash­ing out a sto­ry that became 2001: A Space Odyssey. Over the course of the next four years, Kubrick and Clarke talked and cor­re­spond­ed fre­quent­ly. The orig­i­nal plan was for both to devel­op the nov­el first and then adapt the result­ing work into a screen­play. In prac­tice, the script devel­oped in par­al­lel to the book. Kubrick demand­ed rewrite after rewrite from an increas­ing­ly impa­tient Clarke as the movie went into pro­duc­tion. The book ulti­mate­ly came out a cou­ple months after the movie’s April 1968 pre­miere. Ever the mas­ter manip­u­la­tor, Kubrick, in all like­li­hood, did this on pur­pose so that Clarke’s efforts wouldn’t over­shad­ow the film.

The folks over at Cine­fix put togeth­er a video on the dif­fer­ences between the book and the movie. If you can get past the bro-tas­tic voice-over, the piece offers a pret­ty thor­ough account­ing. You can watch part one and part two above.

One of the biggest dif­fer­ences is that in the book, HAL, Dave Bow­man and com­pa­ny are off to Sat­urn. But Kubrick’s spe­cial effects guru Dou­glas Trum­bull couldn’t get the ringed plan­et to look right, so the direc­tor sim­ply changed the mission’s des­ti­na­tion.

Most of the oth­er dif­fer­ences boil down to a dif­fer­ence in the medi­um. Clarke explains every­thing in the sto­ry in great detail – from the man-apes’ evo­lu­tion to the real rea­son HAL9000 went on his killing spree. Kubrick, in con­trast, explained almost noth­ing.

In a 1970 inter­view, Kubrick talked more about the dif­fer­ence between the two works.

It’s a total­ly dif­fer­ent kind of expe­ri­ence, of course, and there are a num­ber of dif­fer­ences between the book and the movie. The nov­el, for exam­ple, attempts to explain things much more explic­it­ly than the film does, which is inevitable in a ver­bal medi­um. […]

[The movie], on the oth­er hand, is basi­cal­ly a visu­al, non­ver­bal expe­ri­ence. It avoids intel­lec­tu­al ver­bal­iza­tion and reach­es the view­er’s sub­con­scious in a way that is essen­tial­ly poet­ic and philo­soph­ic. The film thus becomes a sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence, which hits the view­er at an inner lev­el of con­scious­ness, just as music does, or paint­ing.

Actu­al­ly, film oper­ates on a lev­el much clos­er to music and to paint­ing than to the print­ed word, and, of course, movies present the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­vey com­plex con­cepts and abstrac­tions with­out the tra­di­tion­al reliance on words. I think that 2001, like music, suc­ceeds in short-cir­cuit­ing the rigid sur­face cul­tur­al blocks that shack­le our con­scious­ness to nar­row­ly lim­it­ed areas of expe­ri­ence and is able to cut direct­ly through to areas of emo­tion­al com­pre­hen­sion.

So you are some­one who finds the movie to be frus­trat­ing­ly oblique, the book will give you answers. But it prob­a­bly won’t blow your mind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

The Shin­ing and Oth­er Com­plex Stan­ley Kubrick Films Recut as Sim­ple Hol­ly­wood Movies

Lost Kubrick: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick’s Unfin­ished Films

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Explore the Mas­sive Stan­ley Kubrick Exhib­it at the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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