Watch Kevin Smith’s Clever First Film, Mae Day: The Crumbling of a Documentary (1992)

in Film | March 12th, 2014

Since 1994’s Clerks turned him from a proud New Jer­sey slack­er into a lead­ing light of the 1990s’ Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent film boom, cinephiles have ener­get­i­cal­ly debat­ed Kevin Smith’s abil­i­ties as a film­mak­er. Even Smith admits that he con­sid­ers him­self more a writer who hap­pens to direct than a direc­tor per se, and his fans and detrac­tors alike seem to con­sid­er his scripts more a vehi­cle for his enter­tain­ing way with speech — with jokes, with cul­tur­al ref­er­ences, with elab­o­rate foul­mouthed­ness — than any­thing else. It cer­tain­ly does­n’t sur­prise me that so much of his 21st-cen­tu­ry out­put con­sists of pod­casts, nor that, when you go all the way back in his film­mak­ing career, even before Clerks, you find a short but talk­a­tive, joc­u­lar, by turns placid and vit­ri­olic, only seem­ing­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al piece like Mae Day: The Crum­bling of a Doc­u­men­tary, his first and only stu­dent film, made while enrolled for just four months at the tech­ni­cal­ly ori­ent­ed Van­cou­ver Film School.

Hav­ing come up with the idea for a doc­u­men­tary on a local trans­sex­u­al named Emel­da Mae, Smith and class­mate Scott Mosier, who would go on to become Smith’s long­time pro­duc­ing part­ner, found them­selves unpre­pared to fol­low through on the project as they’d (vague­ly) envi­sioned it. To make mat­ters worse, Mae her­self then skipped town, leav­ing behind not a hint as to her where­abouts. But amid this film-school cri­sis, Smith’s true film­mak­ing tal­ent flow­ered: instead of a “seri­ous” pro­file of his absent sub­ject, he made a satir­i­cal exam­i­na­tion of how that idea ran so quick­ly and unsal­vage­ably aground, con­sist­ing not just of his and Mosier’s par­o­d­i­cal­ly con­fi­dent reflec­tions on the nature of the “fail­ure,” but also their irate instruc­tors’ and col­lab­o­ra­tors’ earnest­ly detailed accounts of how they could­n’t get their act togeth­er. But just two years lat­er, Clerks would slouch its way to game-chang­ing promi­nence in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma. What­ev­er you think of every­thing Smith and Mosier have put out since, you have to admit that this lazy-stu­dent gam­bit worked out pret­ty well for them.

You will find Mae Day: The Crum­bling of a Doc­u­men­tary list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tions of 635 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Kevin Smith’s Three Tips For Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers (NSFW)

Lick the Star: Sofia Coppola’s Very First Film Fol­lows a 7th-Grade Con­spir­a­cy (1998)

The First Films of Great Direc­tors: Kubrick, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Taran­ti­no & Truf­faut

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.

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Hunter S. Thompson Writes an Ode to Jack Kerouac in 1998 (After Calling Him an “Ass, a Mystic Boob” in 1958)

in Literature | March 12th, 2014

Today is the 92nd birth­day of author and cul­tur­al icon Jack Ker­ouac. Born in Low­ell, Mass­a­chu­setts in 1922, Ker­ouac was one of the troi­ka of writ­ers – along with Allen Gins­berg and William S. Bur­roughs – who formed the core of the Beat Gen­er­a­tion. He wrote shag­gy dog sto­ries — thin­ly veiled auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal tales about sex and drugs, friend­ship and spir­i­tu­al yearn­ing. His style was spon­ta­neous and off-hand, yet he craft­ed pas­sages of such poet­ic beau­ty that they make the read­er gasp. He wrote his huge­ly influ­en­tial book On the Road — leg­end has it — dur­ing a 20-day writ­ing ben­der. He went so far as to tape togeth­er strips of paper into one con­tin­u­ous scroll of paper so as not to break his flow.

It’s hard to imag­ine Hunter S. Thomp­son and his dis­tinc­tive brand of jour­nal­ism with­out Jack Ker­ouac. Both wrote bril­liant, ram­bling tracts about Amer­i­ca. Both could turn a phrase like nobody’s busi­ness. Both had polit­i­cal philoso­phies that didn’t fit com­fort­ably on either the left or right side of the spec­trum. The dif­fer­ence is that Ker­ouac was doing all of this while Thomp­son was just hit­ting puber­ty.

So it might be sur­pris­ing to learn that Thomp­son appar­ent­ly loathed Kerouac’s writ­ing when he was a young man. In a let­ter penned when the future gonzo jour­nal­ist was a mere 21 years old, he sav­aged the Beat writer.

The man is an ass, a mys­tic boob with intel­lec­tu­al myopia. The Dhar­ma thing was quite as bad as The Sub­ter­raneans and they’re both with­ered appendages to On The Road — which isn’t even a nov­el in the first place…If some­body doesn’t kill that fool soon, we’re all going to be labeled “The gen­er­a­tion of the Third Sex.”

Is this a sin­cere opin­ion or is this blus­ter? Or is it both?

Thir­ty years lat­er, it’s hard to see if Thompson’s opin­ion of Ker­ouac has evolved. In a record­ing from 1998, which you can lis­ten to above, he seems to praise Ker­ouac while at the same time slip­ping in the shiv. In the video, an obvi­ous­ly ine­bri­at­ed Thomp­son can be heard read­ing a poem ded­i­cat­ed to the author.

Now I want to tell you.… In fact he (Ker­ouac) was a great influ­ence on me.… So now I wan­na put out my poem…This is my Ode to Jack Ker­ouac, who remains one of my heroes…Uhhhh…How about this… This is called, let’s see…This is called ‘Hip­py Ode To Jack’…

“Four dogs went to the wilder­ness, Only three came back.
Two dogs died from Guinea Worm, The oth­er died from you.
Jack Ker­ouac.”

Well, Jack was not inno­cent. He ran over dogs…Just think of it…OK…That’s enough of that for now…Thank you very much. And.…Ahhh…Ya, well…Jack was an artist in every way…I admire the dog thing most of all.

So Hap­py Birth­day, Jack. Hunter brings insults and back­hand­ed com­pli­ments with a side of innu­en­do.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beat­nik Film Stars Jack Ker­ouac and Allen Gins­berg

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot, 1943

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.

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Watch Stephen Sondheim (RIP) Teach a Kid How to Sing “Send In the Clowns”

in Music, Theatre | March 12th, 2014

Stephen Son­deim’s  “Send in the Clowns,” like the much man­gled “Mem­o­ry” from the much maligned musi­cal CATS, has weath­ered any num­ber of ill-advised inter­pre­ta­tions.

The show-stop­ping solo from 1973’s A Lit­tle Night Music’s ref­er­ence to clowns is not meant to be lit­er­al, but that did­n’t stop the Mup­pet Show from send­ing a trio of them in to back Judy Collins. Frank Sina­tra peeked around on every cho­rus, as if he’d yet to come to grips with the fact that Bozo would­n’t be pop­ping up on cue.

It’s mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions like these that set com­posers spin­ning in their graves, but Sond­heim is still very much in the game. His approach to musi­cal the­ater con­tin­ues to be exact­ing, no doubt nerve wrack­ing, though the Guild­hall School of Music and Dra­ma stu­dent he’s fine-tun­ing in the video above bears up brave­ly.

She’s a cou­ple of decades too young to play Desiree, whose unsuc­cess­ful attempt to woo an old lover away from his teenage bride occa­sions the song, but no mat­ter. Her adjust­ments show the div­i­dends a close read­ing of the text can pay.

See what you can do with Sond­heim’s advice next time you’re singing in the show­er, the only place pri­vate enough for me to believe I’m doing cred­it to his oeu­vre. Those of us who can’t sing can take heart know­ing that the orig­i­nal Desiree, Gly­nis Johns, could­n’t either, at least by the mas­ter’s usu­al stan­dards. The song’s unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly short phras­ing allowed her to shine as an actress, and deflect­ed from any vocal short­com­ings.

Here are the lyrics. If you need fur­ther inspi­ra­tion, watch Ing­mar Bergman’s Smiles of a Sum­mer Night, on which A Lit­tle Night Music is based.

Those who are more direc­tor than diva may pre­fer to eval­u­ate the per­for­mances below. In my opin­ion, at least one of them mer­its a firm rap on the knuck­les from Mae­stro Sond­heim for exces­sive wal­low­ing. (Hint for those whose time is short: we’ve saved the best for last.)

Judi Dench, Desiree in the 1995 Roy­al Nation­al The­atre revival, per­form­ing at the BBC Proms 2010, in hon­or of Sond­heim’s 80th birth­day.

Glenn Close, anoth­er Night Music vet at Carnegie Hall.

Car­ol Bur­nett stuck close to the spir­it of the orig­i­nal in a non-com­ic sketch for her 1970’s vari­ety show, costar­ring the late Har­vey Kor­man.

Bernadette Peters, the 2010 Broad­way revival’s Desiree, at South­ern Methodist Uni­ver­si­ty. Her accom­pa­nist seems pret­ty hap­py with this per­for­mance. 

Dame Judi again, show­ing us how it’s done, in cos­tume on the edge of a giant red bed, with Lau­rence Gui­t­tard as Fred­erik. Have a han­kie ready at the 3:10 mark.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Tay­lor Teach­es You to Play “Car­oli­na in My Mind,” “Fire and Rain” & Oth­er Clas­sics on the Gui­tar

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the musi­cal­ly ungift­ed Bride of Urine­town. Fol­low her  @AyunHalliday

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Watch 8 Classic Cult Films for Free: Night of the Living Dead, Plan 9 from Outer Space & More

in Film | March 11th, 2014

night of the living dead free

The whole cat­e­go­ry of cult movies is a slip­pery one. Every­one knows what a hor­ror flick or a West­ern looks like but describ­ing a cult movie is much more sub­jec­tive. Cult movies can be any genre. They tend to be campy or kitschy or in some oth­er way very strange. Often they are either movies that are so weird­ly and intense­ly per­son­al that they alien­ate and baf­fle main­streams audi­ences, or films that are such utter and com­plete train wrecks that some­how they push through the mere­ly mediocre into the sub­lime. Or, in the best cas­es, both.

Dan­ny Peary, in his sem­i­nal 1981 book Cult Movies, put such high art movies as Cit­i­zen Kane along­side mid­night movie sta­ples like Freaks (watch it free online) and El Topo. Some­how that doesn’t feel right. Hav­ing the sup­posed best (or sec­ond best) movie ever made in the same cat­e­go­ry as a hap­less mess like Troll 2 seems to be a dis­ser­vice to both movies, no mat­ter how rabid the fan­base is.

For their list 30 Cult Movies That Absolute­ly Every­body Must See, the writ­ers of the web­site io9 wres­tled with this exact issue:

We debat­ed a lot what we would con­sid­er a “cult movie” for the pur­pos­es of this list, and we most­ly stuck to films that were not huge box-office hits and did­n’t get mas­sive main­stream expo­sure when they were first released. The films on this list most­ly either flew under the radar or were con­sid­ered mas­sive flops when they came out orig­i­nal­ly.

Like any such list, there is plen­ty to be quib­bled with — Don­nie Darko is ranked high­er than Eraser­head? Real­ly? – but that’s real­ly just part of the fun. Below are a few cult movies that you can watch right now for free – two of which are on the io9 list.

Plan 9 from Out­er Space – There’s a great scene in Tim Burton’s biopic Ed Wood where a cross-dress­ing Wood runs into Orson Welles at a bar. They share a drink and com­mis­er­ate about the dif­fi­cul­ties of being a vision­ary in Hol­ly­wood. By all def­i­n­i­tions, Wood was as much of an auteur as Welles. His movies were a prism through which he worked through some very per­son­al issues.

It’s just that, unlike Welles, Wood was a com­i­cal­ly inept and lazy film­mak­er. Crit­ic Michael Medved once dubbed his Plan 9 from Out­er Space as the worst movie ever made. And it’s a hard to argue with that asser­tion. Shots in the movie alter­nate dis­ori­ent­ing­ly between day and night in the mid­dle of the same scene. The act­ing isn’t so much as wood­en as som­nam­bu­lis­tic. The spe­cial effects are laugh­ably child­ish –a flam­ing space­craft at one point of the movie was accom­plished by set­ting a hub­cap alight with some gaso­line. Yet through­out the entire film, Wood’s boy­ish enthu­si­asm shines through. Plan 9 might be ter­ri­ble, but it’s also a lot of fun.

Night of the Liv­ing Dead – Though George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead was made for next to noth­ing, all of the production’s lim­i­ta­tions some­how turned into assets. The film’s grainy black-and-white cin­e­matog­ra­phy and hand-held cam­era gave Romero’s zom­bie gore-fest a lev­el of real­ism that was unseen in hor­ror movies up to that point — like a news­reel from the apoc­a­lypse. The Liv­ing Dead wound up being one of the most prof­itable movies of all time, which for investors proved to be unfor­tu­nate. In what has to be one of the costli­est cler­i­cal errors in movie his­to­ry, the dis­trib­u­tors for­got to include a copy­right state­ment in cred­its. As a result, the movie quick­ly fell into the pub­lic domain. Check it out.

Detour — Edgar G. Ulmer’s hasti­ly pro­duced film noir bears all the marks of a movie made on a shoe­string. The direc­tion is ham hand­ed. The act­ing is often shrill. A tale about tox­ic love and ill-got­ten gains, Detour should have by all rights been anoth­er for­got­ten, dis­pos­able B‑movie. Yet some­how Ulmer man­aged to cap­ture ligh­in­ing in a bot­tle. “Haunt­ing and creepy,” writes Roger Ebert. “An embod­i­ment of the guilty soul of film noir. No one who has seen it has eas­i­ly for­got­ten it.”

You can find more cult clas­sics in our col­lec­tion of 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More, includ­ing The Wild Ride with Jack Nichol­son, Blue­beard (also direct­ed by Edgar G. Ulmer), the 1962 indie hor­ror film Car­ni­val of Souls, Demen­tia 13 (an ear­ly Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la  hor­ror film), and Abel Ferrara’s cult clas­sic slash­er film The Driller Killer.

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.

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Soviet-Era Illustrations Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1976)

in Art, Literature | March 11th, 2014

Hobbit1

Until I read J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings, my favorite book grow­ing up was, by far, The Hob­bit. Grow­ing up in Rus­sia, how­ev­er, meant that instead of Tolkien’s Eng­lish ver­sion, my par­ents read me a Russ­ian trans­la­tion. To me, the trans­la­tion eas­i­ly matched the pace and won­der of Tolkien’s orig­i­nal. Look­ing back, The Hob­bit prob­a­bly made such an indeli­ble impres­sion on me because Tolkien’s tale was alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent than the Russ­ian fairy tales and children’s sto­ries that I had pre­vi­ous­ly been exposed to. There were no child­ish hijinks, no young pro­tag­o­nists, no par­ents to res­cue you when you got into trou­ble. I con­sid­ered it an epic in the truest lit­er­ary sense.

As with many Russ­ian trans­la­tions dur­ing the Cold War, the book came with a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent set of illus­tra­tions. Mine, I remem­ber regret­ting slight­ly, lacked pic­tures alto­geth­er. A friend’s edi­tion, how­ev­er, was illus­trat­ed in the typ­i­cal Russ­ian style: much more tra­di­tion­al­ly styl­ized than Tolkien’s own draw­ings, they were more angu­lar, friend­lier, almost car­toon­ish. In this post, we include a num­ber of these images from the 1976 print­ing. The cov­er, above, depicts a grin­ning Bil­bo Bag­gins hold­ing a gem. Below, Gan­dalf, an osten­si­bly harm­less soul, pays Bil­bo a vis­it.

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Next, we have the three trolls, argu­ing about their var­i­ous eat­ing arrange­ments, with Bil­bo hid­ing to the side.

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Here, Gol­lum, née Smeagol, pad­dles his raft in the depths of the moun­tains.

4

Final­ly, here’s Bil­bo, ful­fill­ing his role as a bur­glar in Smaug’s lair.

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For more of the Sovi­et illus­tra­tions of The Hob­bit, head on over to Retro­naut.

For anoth­er Sovi­et take on The Hob­bit, watch this 1985 TV adap­ta­tion.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

Down­load a Free Course on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

The Only Draw­ing from Mau­rice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illus­trate The Hob­bit

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Enjoy the Greatest Silent Films Ever Made in Our Collection of 101 Free Silent Films Online

in Film | March 11th, 2014

We all know the stages of cin­e­ma’s ear­ly devel­op­ment: first came the pic­tures, sec­ond came the motion, and third came the sound. But many of us, even rea­son­ably active film buffs, don’t real­ize how much the art form took its shape between steps two and three. Most of the visu­al lan­guage we instinc­tive­ly rec­og­nize as stan­dard in the movies today came togeth­er before their char­ac­ters ever spoke an audi­ble word. Hence the impor­tance of not just watch­ing the films of today, and not just catch­ing up with impor­tant works back to the the “gold­en age” of Hol­ly­wood, but going even far­ther back, to the ear­ly 1930s, even all the way to the 1910s — deep, in oth­er words, into the silent era. Out­side a uni­ver­si­ty film-stud­ies pro­gram, you could­n’t always do this eas­i­ly.  But now, to free you from the need to haunt spe­cial­ist video stores (if your city has them) and hope for silent screen­ings at the near­est reper­to­ry cin­e­ma (if your city has one), we give you our col­lec­tion of 101 free silent films online, part of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

We don’t mean obscure silent films, either. You may remem­ber our post on Sight & Sound mag­a­zine’s list of the ten great­est silents of all time, nine of which you can watch right now in our col­lec­tion. In chrono­log­i­cal order: D.W. Grif­fith’s Intol­er­ance (1916), Erich von Stro­heim’s Greed (1923), Buster Keaton’s Sher­lock Jr. (1924), Sergei Eisen­stein’s Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (1925), Buster Keaton’s The Gen­er­al (1926), Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927), F.W. Mur­nau’s Sun­rise (1927), Luis Buñuel’s Un chien andalou (1928), Carl Theodor Drey­er’s The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc (1928), Dzi­ga Ver­tov’s Man with a Movie Cam­era (1929). You can also catch up, final­ly, on a vari­ety of oth­er impor­tant films besides, from four by French visu­al-spec­ta­cle pio­neer Georges Méliès (After the Ball, Cin­derel­la, The Dev­il­ish Ten­ant, The Impos­si­ble Voy­age) and six of Eng­lish sus­pense king Alfred Hitch­cock­’s ear­li­est works (Down­hill, Easy Virtue, The Lodger, The Plea­sure Gar­den). And that’s just scratch­ing the sur­face of our col­lec­tion of Free Silent Films.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist Direc­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

Hol­ly­wood, Epic Doc­u­men­tary Chron­i­cles the Ear­ly His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma

Watch 10 of the Great­est Silent Films of All Time, All Free Online

Three Great Films Star­ring Char­lie Chap­lin, the True Icon of Silent Com­e­dy

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.

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Monty Python Sings “The Philosopher’s Song,” Revealing the Drinking Habits of Great European Thinkers

in Comedy, Philosophy | March 11th, 2014

Did you know, stu­dent of dead white philoso­phers, that Hei­deg­ger was a “boozy beg­gar”? Wittgen­stein a “beery swine” and Descartes a “drunk­en fart”? What about Pla­to, who, “they say, could stick it away; Half a crate of whiskey every day”? Nei­ther did I until I saw mem­bers of Mon­ty Python sing “The Philosopher’s Song,” above, from their 1982 live show at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. Eric Idle, in what looks like an Aus­tralian bush hat strung with teabags, intro­duces the num­ber, say­ing it’s “a nice intel­lec­tu­al song for those two or three of you in the audi­ence who under­stand these things.” Then Idle, joined by Michael Palin and fre­quent Python col­lab­o­ra­tor Neil Innes, launch­es into a paean to drink­ing that col­or­ful­ly calls the great philoso­phers crazed dip­so­ma­ni­acs. Well, all but John Stu­art Mill, who got “par­tic­u­lar­ly ill” from “half a pint of shandy.”

It’s all non­sense, right? Maybe so, but the Pythons were no strangers to phi­los­o­phy. Hav­ing assem­bled from the august bod­ies of Oxford and Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ties, they per­pet­u­al­ly revis­it­ed aca­d­e­m­ic themes, if only to mock them. And yet some philoso­phers take the work of Mon­ty Python very seri­ous­ly. In his Mon­ty Python and Phi­los­o­phy: Nudge, Nudge, Think Think!, Phi­los­o­phy Pro­fes­sor Gary Hard­cas­tle refers to an essay called “Trac­ta­tus Come­dio-Philo­soph­i­cus,” which “wants us to know that the only dif­fer­ence between Mon­ty Python and aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy is that phi­los­o­phy isn’t fun­ny.” So there you have it. Skip the years of penury and over­work and go direct­ly to Youtube for your high­er edu­ca­tion in the clas­sics from the Pythons. Then lis­ten to Pro­fes­sor Hardcastle—in Open Court’s “Pop­u­lar Cul­ture and Phi­los­o­phy” pod­cast above—expound at length on the philo­soph­ic virtues of Cleese, Idle, Palin, Gilliam, and Jones. And final­ly, a bonus: below watch Christo­pher Hitchens sing “The Philoso­pher’s Song” from mem­o­ry in a 2009 inter­view.

The song grew out of an ear­li­er Python set­up known as “The Bruce Sketch” (below). The sketch is pret­ty dated—some moments cer­tain­ly come off as more offen­sive than per­haps deemed at the time. (Our Eng­lish read­ers will have to let us know if “pom­my bas­tard” smarts.) Four Aus­tralian phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors at the fic­ti­tious Uni­ver­si­ty of Woola­maloo, all of them named Bruce, wel­come a new mem­ber, Michael Bald­win (whom they insist on call­ing “Bruce”). The Bruces seem a nice bunch of chaps until they start in on their rules, reveal­ing a con­temp­tu­ous obses­sion with keep­ing out the “poofters.” It’s per­fect­ly in keep­ing with this assem­bly of ami­able right-wing nation­al­ists: The Bruces inform their Eng­lish col­league that he may teach “the great social­ist thinkers, pro­vid­ed he makes it clear that they were wrong,” and then they get a vis­it from a shuf­fling car­i­ca­ture of an Abo­rig­i­nal ser­vant (whom one must­n’t mis­treat, state the rules, “if there’s any­one watch­ing”). In addi­tion to big­otry, Aus­tralia, pol­i­tics and prayer, the Bruces, their new mem­ber learns, seem most­ly con­cerned with drink­ing rather than phi­los­o­phy. In my per­son­al expe­ri­ence of some aca­d­e­m­ic quar­ters, this is at least one part of the sketch that hasn’t aged at all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an: Reli­gious Satire, Polit­i­cal Satire, or Blas­phe­my?

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

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Watch Episode #1 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos Reboot on Hulu (US Viewers)

in Astronomy, Television | March 11th, 2014

After a long wait, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s reboot of Cos­mos began air­ing on Fox this past Sun­day night, some 34 years after Carl Sagan launched his epic series on the more heady air­waves of PBS. Fox execs pre­dict­ed big num­bers for the first show — 40 mil­lion view­ers. But only 5.8 mil­lion showed up. But, as we know, quan­ti­ty has noth­ing to do with qual­i­ty. Crit­ics have called Tyson’s show a “strik­ing and wor­thy update” of the orig­i­nal. If you live in the US, you can see for your­self. Episode 1 appears above, and it looks like the remain­ing 12 episodes will appear on Hulu. For those out­side the US, our apolo­gies that you can’t see this one. But we do have some great relat­ed mate­r­i­al below, includ­ing one of our favorite posts: Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Neil deGrasse Tyson Deliv­ers the Great­est Sci­ence Ser­mon Ever

Stephen Col­bert Talks Sci­ence with Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Stag­ger­ing Genius of Isaac New­ton

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John Waters Talks About His Books and Role Models in a Whimsical Animated Video

in Animation, Books, Film, Life | March 10th, 2014

Kudos to car­toon­ist Flash Rosen­berg for hav­ing the huevos to illus­trate cult film icon John Waters’ remarks at the New York Pub­lic Library in real time before a live audi­ence. The first half minute of this ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion Por­trait had me wor­ried on her behalf. What a relief when the the coiled lump she was swab­bing with brown water­col­or turned out to be a cin­na­mon roll, and not the sub­stance Divine (the direc­tor’s muse) famous­ly ate—for real—in 1972’s Pink Flamin­gos.

It’s a very free asso­cia­tive process. The top­ic under dis­cus­sion turns out to be not baked goods, but rather role mod­els. (Roll mod­els, get it?)

As to who the Sire of Sleaze choos­es to ele­vate in this capac­i­ty:

Croon­er John­ny Math­is, whose heav­en­ly pipes Waters pre­scribes as a poten­tial rem­e­dy for bipar­ti­san ugli­ness.

Play­wright Ten­nessee Williams (whose work Car­di­nal Spell­man denounced as “revolt­ing, deplorable, moral­ly repel­lent…”)

And, touch­ing­ly, his par­ents, whom Rosen­berg draws with arms encir­cling their pen­cil-mus­tached tot, a sweet Three Is a Mag­ic Num­ber tableau. (In non-ani­mat­ed life, Waters is one of four chil­dren.)

The Prince of Puke mod­est­ly deflects inter­view­er Paul Hold­en­gräber’s asser­tion that he him­self is a role mod­el, advis­ing his fans to pick ten flawed indi­vid­u­als from whom they’ve learned some­thing  and “let them know how much you mean to them.”  (He may have meant “let them know how much they mean to you,” but it might be a fun sort of exer­cise to fol­low his instruc­tions as uttered.)

And if on some far off evening, you’re moved to have sex on his grave, know that this role mod­el’s ghost will rest con­tent.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Waters Makes Hand­made Christ­mas Cards, Says the “Whole Pur­pose of Life is Christ­mas”

Grow­ing Up John Waters: The Odd­ball Film­mak­er Cat­a­logues His Many For­ma­tive Rebel­lions (1993)

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

Ayun Hal­l­i­day told you cha cha heels, black ones! Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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

in Books, Writing | March 10th, 2014

stephenking

Image by The USO, via Flickr Com­mons

I first dis­cov­ered Stephen King at age 11, indi­rect­ly through a babysit­ter who would plop me down in front of day­time soaps and dis­ap­pear. Bored with One Life to Live, I read the stacks of mass-mar­ket paper­backs my absen­tee guardian left around—romances, mys­ter­ies, thrillers, and yes, hor­ror. It all seemed of a piece. King’s nov­els sure looked like those oth­er lurid, pulpy books, and at least his ear­ly works most­ly fit a cer­tain for­mu­la, mak­ing them per­fect­ly adapt­able to Hol­ly­wood films. Yet for many years now, as he’s ranged from hor­ror to broad­er sub­jects, King’s cul­tur­al stock has risen far above his genre peers. He’s become a “seri­ous” writer and even, with his 2000 book On Writ­ing—part mem­oir, part “textbook”—something of a writer’s writer, mov­ing from the super­mar­ket rack to the pages of The Paris Review. 

Few con­tem­po­rary writ­ers have chal­lenged the some­what arbi­trary divi­sion between lit­er­ary and so-called genre fic­tion so much as Stephen King, whose sta­tus pro­vokes word wars like this recent debate at the Los Ange­les Review of Books. What­ev­er adjec­tives crit­ics throw at him, King plows ahead, turn­ing out book after book, refin­ing his craft, hap­pi­ly shar­ing his insights, and read­ing what­ev­er he likes. As evi­dence of his dis­re­gard for aca­d­e­m­ic canons, we have his read­ing list for writ­ers, which he attached as an appen­dix to On Writ­ing. Best-sell­ing genre writ­ers like Nel­son DeMille, Thomas Har­ris, and needs-no-intro­duc­tion J.K. Rowl­ing sit com­fort­ably next to lit-class sta­ples like Dick­ens, Faulkn­er, and Con­rad. King rec­om­mends con­tem­po­rary real­ist writ­ers like Richard Bausch, John Irv­ing, and Annie Proulx along­side the occa­sion­al post­mod­ernist or “dif­fi­cult” writer like Don DeLil­lo or Cor­mac McCarthy. He includes sev­er­al non-fic­tion books as well.

King pref­aces the list with a dis­claimer: “I’m not Oprah and this isn’t my book club. These are the ones that worked for me, that’s all.” Below, we’ve excerpt­ed twen­ty good reads he rec­om­mends for bud­ding writ­ers. These are books, King writes, that direct­ly inspired him: “In some way or oth­er, I sus­pect each book in the list had an influ­ence on the books I wrote.” To the writer, he says, “a good many of these might show you some new ways of  doing your work.” And for the read­er? “They’re apt to enter­tain you. They cer­tain­ly enter­tained me.”

10. Richard Bausch, In the Night Sea­son
12. Paul Bowles, The Shel­ter­ing Sky
13. T. Cor­aghes­san Boyle, The Tor­tilla Cur­tain
17. Michael Chabon, Were­wolves in Their Youth
28. Rod­dy Doyle, The Woman Who Walked into Doors
31. Alex Gar­land, The Beach
42. Peter Hoeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow
49. Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club
53. Bar­bara King­solver, The Poi­son­wood Bible
54. Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
58. Nor­man Maclean, A Riv­er Runs Through It and Oth­er Sto­ries
62. Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ash­es
66. Ian McE­wan, The Cement Gar­den
67. Lar­ry McMurtry, Dead Man’s Walk
70. Joyce Car­ol Oates, Zom­bie
71. Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods
73. Michael Ondaat­je, The Eng­lish Patient
84. Richard Rus­so, Mohawk
86. Vikram Seth, A Suit­able Boy
93. Anne Tyler, A Patch­work Plan­et

Like much of King’s own work, many of these books sug­gest a spec­trum, not a chasm, between the lit­er­ary and the com­mer­cial, and many of their writ­ers have found suc­cess with screen adap­ta­tions and Barnes & Noble dis­plays as well as wide­spread crit­i­cal acclaim. For the full range of King’s selec­tions, see the entire list of 96 books at Aero­gramme Writ­ers’ Stu­dio.

via Gal­l­ey­cat

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King Turns Short Sto­ry into a Free Web­com­ic

Stephen King Writes A Let­ter to His 16-Year-Old Self: “Stay Away from Recre­ation­al Drugs”

Stephen King Reads from His Upcom­ing Sequel to The Shin­ing

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

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

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The Only Drawing from Maurice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illustrate The Hobbit

in Art, Books | March 10th, 2014

SendakHobbit1

I envy nobody the clear­ly tor­tur­ous task of inter­pret­ing the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, from Peter Jack­son on down. With his three Lord of the Rings films in the ear­ly 2000s, New Zealand’s cin­e­mat­ic native son actu­al­ly did an admirable job of deflect­ing much of the inevitable wrath of Tolkien’s enor­mous, high­ly detail-ori­ent­ed, eas­i­ly angered inter­na­tion­al fan base. One sens­es, how­ev­er, that he stands on slight­ly less firm ground with his new­er adap­ta­tion, and indeed expan­sion, of The Hob­bit. The nov­el, which Tolkien wrote for chil­dren in 1937 and whose suc­cess led him to go the full dis­tance with the Lord of the Rings books, now finds itself turn­ing into its own trio of film spec­ta­cles, each install­ment of which gets the strongest pos­si­ble mar­ket­ing push (up to and includ­ing Mid­dle-Earth-themed dish­es at Den­ny’s) upon its the­atri­cal release. It can seem an awful­ly grand treat­ment for a hum­ble (if endur­ing­ly adven­tur­ous) book. To grant The Hob­bit a sep­a­rate visu­al dimen­sion, then, would­n’t we want a tal­ent which, though for­mi­da­ble, tend­ed toward sub­tle­ty and under­state­ment — and, lest we for­get the nov­el­’s tar­get audi­ence, one who under­stands chil­dren?

CA.0322.tolkein-sendak.

We near­ly had one in Mau­rice Sendak, he of Where the Wild Things Are, who in the mid-1960s cre­at­ed sam­ple art­work for The Hob­bit’s pro­posed 30th-anniver­sary deluxe illus­trat­ed edi­tion. For a vari­ety of rea­sons, from Sendak’s reluc­tance to Tolkien’s crank­i­ness to a label­ing sna­fu by the pub­lish­er to a heart attack that took Sendak out of com­mis­sion for a while, the promis­ing con­cept nev­er came to fruition. Specifics of the accounts con­flict, though you can find one from Tony DiTer­l­izzi at the Los Ange­les Times and anoth­er, propos­ing cor­rec­tions to the for­mer, at Too Many Books and Nev­er Enough. What­ev­er the ulti­mate obsta­cle, Sendak com­plet­ed just two draw­ings for the book; the only one that sur­vives appears at the top of this post, show­ing us how he envi­sioned the hob­bit hero Bil­bo Bag­gins and the wiz­ard Gan­dalf.  Just above, we have Tolkien’s own draw­ing of Bil­bo at home, prov­ing him none too shab­by an illus­tra­tor in his own right, and one who by def­i­n­i­tion gets the details right. Still, I grieve for nev­er hav­ing seen the direc­tions in which Sendak could have tak­en this bit of mate­r­i­al from the beloved Tolkien canon — and, bet­ter yet, what minor here­sies the irrev­er­ent artist could have sly­ly inflict­ed upon it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

The Mind & Art of Mau­rice Sendak: A Video Sketch

Watch the Ani­ma­tion of Mau­rice Sendak’s Sur­re­al and Con­tro­ver­sial Sto­ry, In the Night Kitchen

Down­load Eight Free Lec­tures on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

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.

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