The History of the Movie Camera in Four Minutes: From the Lumiere Brothers to Google Glass

in Film | March 18th, 2014

For their annu­al Life­time Achieve­ment Awards, the folks over at the Soci­ety of Cam­era Oper­a­tors put togeth­er a love­ly, sur­pris­ing­ly rous­ing video about the evo­lu­tion of the movie cam­era over the course of the past cen­tu­ry or so of cin­e­ma. And, as you can see above, it has changed quite a bit.

The piece begins at the begin­ning, with the ear­ly pio­neers of film: the Lumiere broth­ers’ first motion pic­ture cam­eras and their rev­o­lu­tion­ary actu­al­ités, Georges Méliès’ baroque flights of fan­cy, D. W. Grif­fith’s sprawl­ing epics. The cam­eras that shot these films were crude, boxy and hand-pow­ered but their basic mechan­ics were rough­ly the same as the sophis­ti­cat­ed 70mm cam­eras Stan­ley Kubrick used to shoot 2001: A Space Odyssey six decades lat­er.

Then in the ‘80s, things start­ed to change with the release of ana­log video. Sud­den­ly, you could cap­ture move­ment in a man­ner that didn’t involve expos­ing frame by frame an unspool­ing reel of light-sen­si­tive cel­lu­loid. And with the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion that start­ed in the ‘90s, cam­eras, and the very nature of cin­e­ma, changed. Daz­zling spec­ta­cles like Avatar and Grav­i­ty could be cre­at­ed almost entire­ly with­in a com­put­er, while at the same time the cam­eras them­selves grew small­er and more portable.

To under­score just how democ­ra­tized the tech­nol­o­gy of movie mak­ing has become, the end of the video shows Hol­ly­wood cam­era­men shoot­ing movies with iPhones. The piece ends with what could only be seen as an omi­nous tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment for the Soci­ety of Cam­era Oper­a­tors: Google Glass, which has the poten­tial to turn every sin­gle per­son into a per­pet­u­al cam­era oper­a­tor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

40 Great Film­mak­ers Go Old School, Shoot Short Films with 100 Year Old Cam­era

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

A Trip to the Moon (and Five Oth­er Free Films) by Georges Méliès, the Father of Spe­cial Effects

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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William S. Burroughs Teaches a Free Course on Creative Reading and Writing (1979)

in Literature, Writing | March 17th, 2014

Accord­ing to Ted Mor­gan, author of William S. Bur­roughs biog­ra­phy Lit­er­ary Out­law (which Bur­roughs hat­ed), the hard-liv­ing Beat writer added “teacher” to the list of jobs he did not like after an unhap­py semes­ter teach­ing cre­ative writ­ing at the City Col­lege of New York. He com­plained about dimwit­ted stu­dents, and dis­liked the job—arranged for him by Allen Ginsberg—so much that he lat­er turned down a posi­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Buf­fa­lo that paid $15,000 a semes­ter, even though he des­per­ate­ly need­ed the mon­ey. That Bur­roughs had recent­ly kicked hero­in may have con­tributed to his unease with the pro­sa­ic reg­u­lar­i­ties of col­lege life. What­ev­er the sto­ry, he lat­er remarked that the “teach­ing gig was a les­son in nev­er again.”

What then could have lured Bur­roughs out to Boul­der Col­orado five years lat­er to deliv­er a series of lec­tures on cre­ative writ­ing at Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty? He’d picked up his hero­in habit again, and his friend­ship with Ginsberg—who co-found­ed Naropa’s writ­ing program—must have played a part. What­ev­er the rea­sons, this assign­ment dif­fered great­ly from his City Col­lege stint: no stu­dent writ­ing, no office hours or admin. Just Bur­roughs doing what came naturally—holding court, on lit­er­a­ture, para­psy­chol­o­gy, occult eso­ter­i­ca, vio­lence, aliens, neu­ro­science, and his own nov­els Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine.

Bur­roughs’ lec­tures are heav­i­ly philo­soph­i­cal, which might have turned off his New York stu­dents, but sure­ly turned on his Naropa audi­ence. And if you stopped to lis­ten, it will prob­a­bly turn you on too, in ways cre­ative and intel­lec­tu­al. Osten­si­bly on the sub­ject of cre­ative read­ing, Bur­roughs also offers cre­ative writ­ing instruc­tion in each talk. His dis­cus­sions of writ­ers he admires—from Car­son McCullers to Aleis­ter Crow­ley to Stephen King—are fas­ci­nat­ing, and he uses no short­age of exam­ples to illus­trate var­i­ous writ­ing tech­niques. For­tu­nate­ly for us, the lec­tures were record­ed. Says Dan­ger­ous Minds, who pro­vide help­ful descrip­tions of each lec­ture: “now you can have your very own cre­ative writ­ing class from William S. Bur­roughs, all thanks to the won­ders of YouTube.” Hear all three lec­tures above, and be by turns inspired, instruct­ed, enlight­ened, and warped.

You can find Bur­rough’s lec­tures on Cre­ative Read­ing list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His Con­tro­ver­sial 1959 Nov­el Naked Lunch

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

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Sid Vicious Sings Paul Anka’s “My Way” in His Own Spectacular Way

in Film, Music | March 17th, 2014

A film that began its life as a script called Who Killed Bam­bi?, writ­ten by Roger Ebert and Russ Mey­er, The Great Rock and Roll Swin­dle (trail­er below) became a far­ci­cal caper star­ring the Sex Pis­tols minus their lead singer. John­ny Rot­ten had quit the band at this point and appears only in archival footage. Most­ly The Great Rock and Roll Swin­dle was a vehi­cle for Mal­colm McLaren to sell him­self as the guru of punk and the dri­ving force behind the band. Direct­ed by Julien Tem­ple (who also made the far supe­ri­or Sex Pis­tols doc, The Filth and the Fury), Swin­dle is also notable for almost launch­ing a Sid Vicious solo career, and it might have worked, were it not for his epi­cal­ly destruc­tive flame-out in 1978.

The film saw release two years lat­er, and pro­duced a sound­track album, which I remem­ber find­ing in a used record bin—pre-Google—and think­ing I’d dis­cov­ered some long lost Sex Pis­tols album. One lis­ten dis­abused me of the notion. Some of album is a snap­shot of the band’s sham­bol­ic final days, but most of it is devot­ed to “jokey mate­r­i­al” from the movie and most of that is pret­ty ter­ri­ble. The sole excep­tion is Sid’s ver­sion of Paul Anka’s “My Way” (top), a sneer­ing piss take on the song Sina­tra made famous. After some obnox­ious faux-croon­ing, Sid tears through song with punk aplomb. All­mu­sic apt­ly describes the per­for­mance as “inar­guably remark­able” yet show­ing that Sid was “inca­pable of com­pre­hend­ing the irony of his sit­u­a­tion.”

The moment of the per­for­mance itself is bathed in sad irony. I’ve always thought it showed that—had he just a lit­tle more instinct for self-preservation—we might have some­day seen Sid Vicious record­ing an album’s worth of brat­ty takes on the Amer­i­can Song­book, but prob­a­bly at McLaren’s behest. What more he might have had in him is any­one’s guess; in life he seemed unable to rise above the role McLaren assigned him in the film “Gim­mick.” But he made it look good. Those famil­iar with Alex Cox’s defin­i­tive por­trait Sid and Nan­cy will of course remem­ber Gary Oldman’s recre­ation of Sid’s “My Way” (above). Con­vinc­ing stuff, but no sub­sti­tute for the real thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sid Vicious and Nan­cy Spun­gen Take Phone Calls on New York Cable TV (1978)

Watch the Sex Pis­tols’ Very Last Con­cert (San Fran­cis­co, 1978)

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

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

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Aldous Huxley, Psychedelics Enthusiast, Lectures About “the Visionary Experience” at MIT (1962)

in Literature, Psychology | March 17th, 2014

huxley_visionary

Today, those who get “turned on” to Aldous Hux­ley (as they might have said back in the 1960s) get it through his books: the dystopi­an nov­el Brave New World, usu­al­ly, or per­haps the mesca­line mem­oir The Doors of Per­cep­tion. But dur­ing Hux­ley’s life­time, espe­cial­ly in its final years from the late 1950s to the ear­ly 60s, he made no small num­ber of adher­ents through lec­tur­ing. Hav­ing trans­plant­ed him­self from his native Eng­land to Cal­i­for­nia in 1937, he even­tu­al­ly achieved great regard among the region’s self-styled intel­lec­tu­als and spir­i­tu­al seek­ers, giv­ing talks at such mys­ti­cal­ly high-in-the-zeit­geist places as Hol­ly­wood and San­ta Bar­bara’s Vedan­ta tem­ples and even Big Sur’s famous Esalen Insti­tute. But the pro­lif­ic speech-giv­er also went far­ther afield, to far squar­er venues such as the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. There, in 1962, he record­ed the album Vision­ary Expe­ri­ence: A Series Of Talks On The Human Sit­u­a­tion, which you can hear on Ubuweb, or right below.

At that point, Hux­ley had already gained world­wide fame for his views on bet­ter liv­ing, which was some­times achieved, he believed, through psy­che­del­ic drugs. This might have already sound­ed like old hat in, say, the San Fran­cis­co of the late 1960s, let alone the 70s and onward, but in these record­ings Hux­ley says his piece in — I still can’t quite believe it — the MIT of the ear­ly 1960s. But Hux­ley, diag­nosed a cou­ple years before with the can­cer that would claim his life the next, had noth­ing to lose by spread­ing the word of his sub­stance-induced dis­cov­er­ies. These would, as you may remem­ber, even facil­i­tate the death itself, Hux­ley’s final vision­ary expe­ri­ence. To learn even more about all those that pre­ced­ed it, see his col­lec­tion Writ­ings on Psy­che­delics and the Vision­ary Expe­ri­ence (1931–1963), that’s avail­able on the Inter­net Archive. While we here at Open Cul­ture don’t endorse drug use, we do endorse the words of Hux­ley as a sub­sti­tute, and per­haps an even more vivid one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beau­ti­ful, LSD-Assist­ed Death: A Let­ter from His Wid­ow

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Dis­cov­ers the Secrets of Aldous Hux­ley and His Art of Dying

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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See The Guidonian Hand, the Medieval System for Reading Music, Get Brought Back to Life

in Music | March 17th, 2014

guidoneanhand

Singing a piece of music for the first time while read­ing the notes from a sheet is hard, and requires com­plete con­trol of one’s vocals. Today, the most pop­u­lar ways of teach­ing this skill to musi­cians are based on the solfège method, where notes on a scale are matched to par­tic­u­lar syl­la­bles: your stan­dard do, re, mi, fa, so la, si. Stu­dents prac­tice singing dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of these syl­la­bles, using vary­ing rhythms and inter­vals, and even­tu­al­ly cement their knowl­edge of that par­tic­u­lar scale.  The method is, sur­pris­ing­ly, almost a mil­le­ni­um old, with the first Euro­pean use of this mnemon­ic tech­nique dat­ing back to the mid­dle ages.

In the 11th cen­tu­ry, a monk known as Gui­do of Arez­zo, began to use the “Guidon­ian hand” as way to teach medieval music singers his hexa­chord, or six-note scales. Arez­zo, who had also devised the mod­ern musi­cal nota­tion sys­tem, had noticed that singers strug­gled to remem­ber the var­i­ous Gre­go­ri­an chants that the monas­tic orders per­formed in the monas­ter­ies.

To help their mem­o­riza­tion, Gui­do decid­ed to take the first syl­la­ble in each line of the well known hymn Ut Queant Lax­is, and cre­at­ed a hexa­chord, or six note scale, that singers famil­iar with the hymn already knew: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la.  The hand, shown above, was a map of the musi­cal notes in this hexa­chord sys­tem, with each note asso­ci­at­ed with a par­tic­u­lar joint. In all, the Guidon­ian hand ranges almost three octaves. Although it had fall­en out of use for the past few cen­turies, the Guidon­ian hand seems to be mak­ing a come­back. Here’s a video of the method in action, for­ward­ed our way by Anton Hecht, an Open Cul­ture read­er:

I love the con­cept, but can’t help feel that using the Guidon­ian hand dur­ing a per­for­mance makes you look a lit­tle like a first grad­er strug­gling with basic arith­metic.

For more infor­ma­tion on the Guidon­ian hand, check out this write­up of a 2011 Stan­ford sym­po­sium, and watch anoth­er demon­stra­tion video, here.

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 a Record­ing of a Song Writ­ten on a Man’s Butt in a 15-Cen­tu­ry Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ing

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

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

Explo­sive Cats Imag­ined in a Strange, 16th Cen­tu­ry Mil­i­tary Man­u­al

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Seinfeld & Nothingness: A Supercut of the Show’s Emptiest Moments

in Comedy, Philosophy, Television | March 16th, 2014

They say Sein­feld was about noth­ing. But the clip above puts that sense of noth­ing­ness into per­spec­tive. Run­ning six plus min­utes, the mon­tage assem­bled by LJ Frez­za presents “A super­cut of emp­ty shots. A New York with­out peo­ple.” Essen­tial­ly moments of pure noth­ing­ness. When you’re done, you can grad­u­ate to some more exis­ten­tial­ist ideas — some fun, some sub­stan­tive — in our archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Exis­ten­tial Star Wars: Sartre Meets Darth Vad­er

The Jean-Paul Sartre Cook­book: Philoso­pher Pon­ders Mak­ing Omelets in Long Lost Diary Entries

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Sartre, Hei­deg­ger, Niet­zsche: Doc­u­men­tary Presents Three Philoso­phers in Three Hours

100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

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Watch David Brenner (RIP) Make the First of His 158 Appearances on The Tonight Show in 1971

in Comedy, Uncategorized | March 15th, 2014

News just hit the wires that come­di­an David Bren­ner (1936–2014) died at his home today at the age of 78. Can­cer was appar­ent­ly the cause.

Born in Philadel­phia, Bren­ner start­ed out a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er, but even­tu­al­ly launched a career as a come­di­an. His big break came on Jan­u­ary 8, 1971 when John­ny Car­son let him do nine min­utes of standup on The Tonight Show. Car­son appar­ent­ly liked Bren­ner’s obser­va­tion­al com­e­dy rou­tine. In years to come, Bren­ner made a record-set­ting 157 appear­ances on John­ny’s show, some­times as a com­e­dy act, some­times as a sub­sti­tute host. Above you can watch the very first of those fun­ny appear­ances.

H/T @MrCraigBierko

Relat­ed Con­tent:

RIP: George Car­lin on the Tonight Show (1966)

Ayn Rand Instructs John­ny Car­son on the Virtue of Self­ish­ness, 1967

Jim Henson’s Ani­mat­ed Film, Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, Pre­sent­ed by John­ny Car­son (1974)

 

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Animated Video Features Werner Herzog Discussing His Childhood Adventures & 20th-Century Rage

in Animation, Environment, Film, Life | March 14th, 2014

I’m not sur­prised that film­mak­er Wern­er Her­zog hates the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the word “adven­ture,” when he’s spent over four decades court­ing it in the most clas­sic sense. In the New York Pub­lic Library Con­ver­sa­tion Por­trait above (one of a series that includes the John Waters pro­file we brought you ear­li­er this week), the ven­er­a­ble direc­tor describes the sort of child­hood that could cause one to take a dim view of pack­aged tours mas­querad­ing as adven­ture.

After the infant Her­zog sur­vived a bomb­ing that cov­ered him in rub­ble, his moth­er, under­stand­ably fear­ing for her chil­dren’s safe­ty, fled to the moun­tains. The remote­ness of his upbring­ing shel­tered him in some ways (“I did not even know that cin­e­ma exist­ed until I was 11”) and not, in oth­ers. (“At age four, I was in pos­ses­sion of a func­tion­ing sub­ma­chine gun and my broth­er had a hand grenade.”)

When he says that hunger was a pre­vail­ing theme, I dare you to dis­agree.

I’m like­wise inclined to pay atten­tion when he asserts that the mod­ern obses­sion with tech­nol­o­gy is gob­bling resources at a dis­as­trous pace, and that thou­sands of world lan­guages will have dis­ap­peared for good by 2050.

Dire pre­dic­tions, and yet he fills me with cheer every time he opens his mouth. I swear it’s not just that mar­velous, much imi­tat­ed voice. It’s also a com­fort to know we’ve got a pro­lif­ic artist remain­ing at his out­post from a sense of duty, gloomy yet stout as a child in his belief that an ecsta­sy of truth lies with­in human grasp.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Herzog’s Eye-Open­ing New Film Reveals the Dan­gers of Tex­ting While Dri­ving

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Mas­ter Cura­tor Paul Hold­en­gräber Inter­views Hitchens, Her­zog, Goure­vitch & Oth­er Lead­ing Thinkers

Ayun Hal­l­i­day looks in the eyes of the bear … Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Free Stanley Kubrick App Features Great Photos, Script Notes, Interviews & More

in Film, iPad, iPhone | March 14th, 2014

KubrickScreenIn 2012, the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art (LACMA) unveiled a sprawl­ing, exhaus­tive exhib­it on Stan­ley Kubrick. And it had just about every­thing you might want on the great direc­tor. Ear­ly pho­tographs he took for Look mag­a­zine in the 1940s? Check. The blood soaked dress­es of those creepy twins from The Shin­ing? You got it! Sketch­es, notes and doc­u­ments about Napoleon, the great­est movie he nev­er made? They had a whole room for that. For those cinephiles who wor­ship at Kubrick’s altar, LACMA’s exhib­it was akin to a vis­it to the Vat­i­can. There were more holy relics there than you could shake a mono­lith at—oh, and they had one of those there too.

The exhib­it wrapped up in June 2013. If you missed it and you are jonesing for more Kubrick mem­o­ra­bil­ia, take heart — LACMA designed an app in con­junc­tion with the exhib­it for the iPhone, iPad and Android and you can down­load it right now. For free. The app is about as sprawl­ing as the exhib­it (and it will take a bit of time to down­load) but it fea­tures hand drawn notes from Kubrick, behind-the-scenes pic­tures from all of his movies, and inter­views with the direc­tor, plus ones with the likes of Elvis Mitchell, Christo­pher Nolan and Dou­glas Trum­bull.

The only thing that the app and the exhib­it didn’t cov­er is the ever-grow­ing num­ber of insane con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries sur­round­ing his work. Want some­thing about how The Shin­ing is real­ly about a faked moon land­ing or how Eyes Wide Shut is real­ly about the Illu­mi­nati? Look some­where else.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Daugh­ter Shares Pho­tos of Her­self Grow­ing Up on Her Father’s Film Sets

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries — Free Online

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

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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David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Americans” and Other Songs on 1975 Variety Show

in Music, Television | March 14th, 2014

David Bowie and Cher: the com­bi­na­tion sounds so incon­gru­ous, but then you think about it and real­ize the two could hard­ly have more in com­mon. Two singers of the same gen­er­a­tion, close indeed in age but both (whether through their sen­si­bil­i­ties or through var­i­ous cos­met­ic tech­nolo­gies) per­pet­u­al­ly youth­ful; both per­form­ers of not exact­ly rock and not exact­ly pop, but some oscil­lat­ing form between that they’ve made whol­ly their own; both mas­ters of the dis­tinc­tive­ly flam­boy­ant and the­atri­cal; both giv­en to some­times rad­i­cal changes of image through­out the course of their careers; and both imme­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fi­able by just one name. The only vast dif­fer­ence comes in their per­for­mance sched­ules: Bowie, despite releas­ing an acclaimed album The Next Day last year, seems to have quit play­ing live shows in the mid-2000s, while Cher’s con­tin­u­ing tours grow only more lav­ish.

Long before this cur­rent stage of Bowie and Cher’s lives as musi­cal icons, the two came togeth­er on an episode of the lat­ter’s short-lived solo (i.e., with­out ex-hus­band Son­ny Bono, with whom she’d host­ed The Son­ny & Cher Show) tele­vi­sion vari­ety show, sim­ply titled Cher. On the broad­cast of Novem­ber 23, 1975, Bowie and Cher sang “Young Amer­i­cans,” at the top, “Can You Hear Me,” just above, and bits of oth­er songs besides.

Watch these clips not just for the per­for­mances, and not just for the out­fits — cos­tumes, real­ly, espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er Cher’s even then-famous vari­ety of arti­fi­cial hair­styles — but for the video effects, which by mod­ern stan­dards look like some­thing out of a late-night pub­lic-access cable pro­gram. An espe­cial­ly trip­py set of visu­als accom­pa­nies Bowie’s solo moment on the episode below, singing about the one qual­i­ty that per­haps unites he and Cher more than any oth­er: “Fame.” And lots of it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

David Bowie Releas­es Vin­tage Videos of His Great­est Hits from the 1970s and 1980s

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

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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Stanley Kubrick’s Daughter Shares Photos of Herself Growing Up on Her Father’s Film Sets

in Film | March 13th, 2014

kubricks chair

Since Vivian Kubrick was in grade school, she worked as a col­lab­o­ra­tor with her famous film­mak­er father. She had cameos in a num­ber of his movies includ­ing 2001: A Space Odyssey and Bar­ry Lyn­don. She shot the behind-the-scenes doc­u­men­tary about the mak­ing of The Shin­ing at the age of 24. And she com­posed the score for Full Met­al Jack­et under the pseu­do­nym of Abi­gail Mead. Kubrick seemed to groom his daugh­ter to be his cin­e­mat­ic heir. And then in the late 90s, that all stopped. She cut off all con­tact with her fam­i­ly.

chimp kubrick

Kubrick’s fam­i­ly was ini­tial­ly cagey about what hap­pened to her, say­ing sim­ply that she was liv­ing in LA. But then in 2010, Kubrick’s step­daugh­ter Katha­ri­na opened up. “We weren’t lying, we were just being eco­nom­i­cal with the truth,” she told The Dai­ly Beast. “Because if you say, ‘My sis­ter has become a Sci­en­tol­o­gist,’ where do you go from that?”

styrofoam

The Church of Scientology’s pol­i­cy of dis­con­nec­tion is one of its most con­tro­ver­sial prac­tices. It’s not clear if Vivian for­mer­ly dis­con­nect­ed with her fam­i­ly but she did report­ed­ly attend her father’s funer­al in 1999 with a Sci­en­tol­o­gist min­der. When her sis­ter Anya died of can­cer in 2009, she did not attend that funer­al even though they were, by all accounts, insep­a­ra­ble grow­ing up.

anya vivian

The rift between Kubrick and his daugh­ter became final when he asked her to score Eyes Wide Shut and she refused, as “They had a huge fight. He was very unhap­py,” recalled Kubrick­’s wife and Vivian’s moth­er. “He wrote her a 40-page let­ter try­ing to win her back. He begged her end­less­ly to come home from Cal­i­for­nia. I’m glad he didn’t live to see what hap­pened.”

Crit­ic Lau­rent Vachaud argues that Eyes Wide Shut – a movie that seems about as open to inter­pre­ta­tion as The Shin­ing – is real­ly a requiem to his lost daugh­ter.

steenbeck

Recent­ly on her Twit­ter feed, Vivian post­ed a series of pho­tos of her­self on the set of her father’s movies. One pic­ture shows an eight-year old Vivian clutch­ing a baby chimp used on 2001. Anoth­er shows her hang­ing out on the milk bar set of A Clock­work Orange. “I helped cut out those Sty­ro­foam let­ters on the wall,” she writes. Anoth­er pic­ture shows Vivian sit­ting before a 16mm Steen­beck, edit­ing her doc­u­men­tary on The Shin­ing. And, most poignant­ly, one of her pic­ture’s shows Vivian and Kubrick embrac­ing on a deck chair.

“In Mem­o­ry of my Dad,” she writes. “Who I loved with all my heart and soul… Dad and Me on the back veran­da of Abbots Mead.”

More pho­tos can be found on her Twit­ter stream.

Via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

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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