Every Frame a Painting Explains the Filmmaking Techniques of Martin Scorsese, Jackie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

in Film | December 23rd, 2014

How does Mar­tin Scors­ese deliv­er dra­mat­ic moments with such impact? Why do Jack­ie Chan’s kicks and punch­es, even those per­formed in ser­vice of jokes, land with such impact? And why do Michael Bay movies, despite their near-fetishis­tic inclu­sion of things crash­ing into oth­er things, seem to lack any kind of impact at all (apart from that on audi­ence adren­a­line and box office num­bers)? Ques­tions like these keep cinephiles, film­mak­ers, and cinephilic film­mak­ers up at night, and they also appar­ent­ly dri­ve edi­tor and video essay­ist Tony Zhou to make his series Every Frame a Paint­ing. At the top of the post, you can watch his analy­sis of Scors­ese’s use of silence; below, of how Jack­ie Chan does action com­e­dy; and at the bot­tom, how Michael Bay crafts his unique brand of cin­e­mat­ic “Bay­hem.”

Michael Bay, you might incred­u­lous­ly ask — the guy who direct­ed the Trans­form­ers movies? Indeed. But as Zhou puts it, “Even if you dis­like him (as I do), Bay has some­thing valu­able to teach us about visu­al per­cep­tion.” His video essays aim to learn from all films, draw­ing lessons from those that suc­ceed at every lev­el (as some say sev­er­al of Scors­ese’s do) to those that exem­pli­fy a kind of high­ly spe­cial­ized mas­tery (as Jack­ie Chan’s best sure­ly do), to those that fail at even their own aims (as Jack­ie Chan’s Amer­i­can pro­duc­tions tend to do), to those that aggres­sive­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly pur­sue ques­tion­able aes­thet­ic ends (as, well… per­haps you can guess).

Hav­ing watched these three videos and thus come to under­stand what sit­u­a­tions bring on a Scors­esean silence, why Hong Kong mon­ey allows Jack­ie Chan to per­fect­ly kick a bad guy down a stair­case, and which tra­di­tions Michael Bay exag­ger­ates to achieve his brand of visu­al max­i­mal­ism, you’ll want to move on to Zhou’s oth­er analy­ses, which break down the tech­niques of direc­tors like Edgar Wright, David Finch­er, and Steven Spiel­berg. Evi­dent­ly a fan of both East Asian cin­e­ma and ani­ma­tion, he also looks hard at what work­ing out­side live real­i­ty allows Japan­ese direc­tor Satoshi Kon to do, and what super­star Kore­an film­mak­er Bong Joon-ho gets out of tele­pho­to pro­file shots in Moth­er. “There’s actu­al­ly a lot of great videos on the inter­net ana­lyz­ing movie con­tent or themes,” he says in the lat­ter essay, “but I think we’re miss­ing stuff about the actu­al form — you know, the pic­tures and the sound.” Every Frame a Paint­ing shows us exact­ly what we’re miss­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

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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Young John Belushi Imitates Truman Capote & Performs Live on Second City Stage (1972)

in Comedy | December 23rd, 2014

The tow­er­ing giants of 80s comedy—Harold Ramis, Cather­ine O’Hara, Mar­tin Short, John Can­dy, Rick Mora­nis, Gil­da Rad­ner, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray—seem to have emerged as ful­ly-formed genius­es on the sound­stages of Sat­ur­day Night Live and in major com­e­dy films and TV shows. Like­wise more recent names like Bob Odenkirk, Tina Fey, Steve Car­rell, Amy Sedaris, and Stephen Col­bert. But the fact is, like most artists, these stars got their start on hum­bler stages—those of the Sec­ond City improv the­ater, the longest run­ning troupe of its kind in the U.S. and Cana­da. Oper­at­ing in Chica­go, L.A., and Toron­to, Sec­ond City began with a small group of Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go actors, includ­ing the late Mike Nichols and his com­e­dy part­ner Elaine May. The first the­ater opened in 1959, and dur­ing the six­ties Sec­ond City nur­tured actors and comics like Alan Arkin, Del Close, Joan Rivers, and Peter Boyle.

Among the mind-bog­gling wealth of tal­ent Sec­ond City pro­duced, one come­di­an stands out both because of his leg­endary phys­i­cal com­e­dy and his untime­ly and trag­ic death. And though these descrip­tions apply equal­ly to Sec­ond City alum Chris Far­ley, today we’re focus­ing in on John Belushi, who joined Sec­ond City in 1971, four years before the debut of Sat­ur­day Night Live and his sub­se­quent turns in The Blues Broth­ers and Ani­mal House. In the clip at the top, see Belushi play “the humil­i­at­ed son of a father who died a less-than-respectable death.” Join­ing him onstage are Joe Flaherty—best known for his work on Sec­ond City’s SCTV—and Harold Ramis, Jim Fish­er, Judy Mor­gan, and Euge­nie Ross-Lem­ing. Just above, the same cast sur­rounds Belushi as he does his Tru­man Capote impres­sion.

Both per­for­mances date from 1972, and though the video and audio qual­i­ty leave much to be desired, they’re well worth watch­ing, espe­cial­ly Belushi’s Capote. Remem­bered more per­haps for his bizarre comedic vio­lence, it’s easy to for­get the over two-dozen char­ac­ters Belushi imper­son­at­ed while on SNL, includ­ing Hen­ry Kissinger, Tip O’Neil, Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, John Lennon, and William Shat­ner. Par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant now, as we look back on the career of Joe Cock­er, who died yes­ter­day, is Belushi’s famous impres­sion of the spir­it­ed British singer, above. When Cock­er saw it, he “became hys­ter­i­cal,” say­ing, “You can’t not laugh at this.” It’s a fit­ting trib­ute to Belushi, a true fan of Cock­er’s art, and to Cock­er, who had the humil­i­ty and good humor to appre­ci­ate a good joke at his expense.

You can watch a longer video of old Sec­ond City per­for­mances on this page. It runs about 40 min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Belushi’s Impro­vised Screen Test for Sat­ur­day Night Live (1975)

John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd Get Bri­an Wil­son Out of Bed and Force Him to Go Surf­ing, 1976

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

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

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Susan Sarandon Reads an Animated Version of Good Night Moon … Without Crying

in Books, Film, K-12, Life | December 23rd, 2014

One’s nev­er too old to be read a sto­ry. There’s no shame in steal­ing a cou­ple of min­utes from your busy, stress-filled day to let actress Susan Saran­don read you one, above.

Good­night Moon was nev­er a part of my child­hood, but it came into heavy rota­tion when my own kids were lit­tle. It wasn’t a title they clam­ored for—in my expe­ri­ence, the intend­ed demo­graph­ic favors the junky and cringe-induc­ing over clas­sics of children’s lit­er­a­ture, but no mat­ter.

All day, I indulged their han­ker­ing for tales of preschool-aged dinosaurs who had to be taught how to share, giant sil­ly cook­ies, and a cer­tain tele­vi­sion char­ac­ter who react­ed poor­ly to being passed over as flower girl. In return, I ruled the night.

I trea­sured Good­night Moon not so much because it made them fall asleep—there are shelves upon shelves of depend­able choic­es in that department—but rather for its sim­plic­i­ty. There were no moral lessons. Noth­ing spark­ly or mag­ic or forced. Noth­ing that catered to their sup­posed whims. Author Mar­garet Wise Brown’s stat­ed aim with regard to the child read­er was “to jog him with the unex­pect­ed and com­fort him with the famil­iar.”

I approve. But there’s not a lot of jog­ging in Good­night Moon. Just that comb and that brush and that bowl­ful of mush. What a blessed relief.

As one approach­es the end, Good­night Moon begins to rival Charlotte’s Web as children’s literature’s great med­i­ta­tion on death. The cat­a­logue of all those things we’re say­ing good­night to harkens to the final scene in Our Town, when the new­ly dead Emi­ly, revis­it­ing her child­hood home, cries, “All that was going on in life and we nev­er noticed.”

Every time my small crew made it to “good­night stars, good­night air, good­night nois­es every­where,” I was croak­ing. (Not fig­u­ra­tive­ly, though a lit­tle research reveals I am not the only one to think this love­ly phrase would make a great epi­taph.)

This emo­tion­al col­lapse was equal parts cathar­tic and embar­rass­ing. What can I say? My cup ran­neth over. I was glad to learn that E. B. White’s voice betrayed him, too, record­ing Charlotte’s Web’s most poignant scene.

“Oh, earth, you’re too won­der­ful for any­body to real­ize you.”

Nar­rat­ing the light­ly ani­mat­ed sto­ry for 1999’s Good­night Moon & Oth­er Sleep­y­time Tales, Saran­don exhibits aston­ish­ing self con­trol. It’s prob­a­bly a good thing for chil­dren every­where to see that there’s at least one adult out there with the steel to sol­dier through. Her youngest child was still lit­tle when she went into the record­ing booth. If she’d want­ed, she could’ve milked it for every last drop of pathos, but I’m glad she played it straight, because most of us can’t.

(And few of us can write a book so ele­gant on a top­ic so pro­found. Sarandon’s would-be pub­lish­ers reject­ed her children’s book about a “very fun­ny rac­coon” who dies.”)

Find oth­er great sto­ries in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Christo­pher Walken Reads Where The Wild Things Are

Free Audio: Go the F–k to Sleep Nar­rat­ed by Samuel L. Jack­son

Down­load Bryan Cranston’s Read­ing of You Have to F–king Eat as a Free Audio Book (NSFW)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author whose sole con­tri­bu­tion to the pic­ture book canon is Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Tate Digitizes 70,000 Works of Art: Photos, Sketchbooks, Letters & More

in Archives, Art | December 22nd, 2014

Photograph of Nigel Henderson by Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Pho­to­graph of Nigel Hen­der­son via Nigel Hen­der­son Estate

If you’re like me, one of the first items on your itin­er­ary when you hit a new city is the art muse­ums. Of course one, two, even three or four vis­its to the world’s major col­lec­tions can’t begin to exhaust the wealth of paint­ing, sculp­ture, pho­tog­ra­phy, and more con­tained with­in. Rotat­ing and spe­cial exhibits make tak­ing it all in even less fea­si­ble. That’s why we’re so grate­ful for the dig­i­tal archives that insti­tu­tions like the Get­ty, LA Coun­ty Muse­um of Art, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the Nation­al Gallery, and the British Library make avail­able free online. Now anoth­er muse­um, Britain’s Tate Mod­ern, gets into the dig­i­tal archive are­na with around 70,000 dig­i­tized works of art in their online gallery.

Sketch of the bus stop

“Sketch of the bus stop” from the estate of Josef Her­man

But wait, there’s more. Much more. A sep­a­rate dig­i­tal archive—the Tate’s Archives & Access project—offers up a trove of mate­ri­als you’re unlike­ly to encounter much, if at all, in their phys­i­cal spaces. That’s because this col­lec­tion dig­i­tizes lit­tle-seen “artists’ mate­ri­als, includ­ing pho­tographs, sketch­books, diaries, let­ters and objects, doc­u­ment­ing the lives and work­ing process­es of British born and émi­gré artists, from 1900 to the present.” These include, writes The Guardian, “the love let­ters of painter Paul Nash, the detailed sculp­ture records of Bar­bra Hep­worth, and 3,000 pho­tographs by Nigel Hen­der­son, pro­vid­ing a behind-the-scenes back­stage look at London’s 1950s jazz scene.” Thus far, the Tate has uploaded about 6,000 items, “includ­ing 52 col­lec­tions relat­ing to 79 artists.” At the Tate archive, you’ll find pho­tographs like that of painter and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nigel Hen­der­son (see top of the post) and also paint­ings by the high­ly regard­ed Pol­ish-British real­ist, Josef Her­man (right above).

Squared-up drawings of soldiers 1920-1921 by David Jones 1895-1974

“Squared-up draw­ings of sol­diers” via The estate of David Jones

You’ll find pre­lim­i­nary sketch­es like the 1920–21 Squared-up draw­ings of sol­diers by painter and poet David Jones, above, one of 109 sketch­es and two sketch­books avail­able by the same artist. You’ll find let­ters like that below, writ­ten by sculp­tor Ken­neth Armitage to his wife Joan Moore in 1951—one of hun­dreds. These are but the tini­est sam­pling of what is now “but a drop in the ocean,” The Guardian writes, “giv­en the more than 1 mil­lion items in the [phys­i­cal] archive.” Archive head Adri­an Glew calls the col­lec­tion “a nation­al archival trea­sure” that is also “for the enrich­ment of the whole world.”

Letter from Kenneth Armitage to Joan Moore [1951] by Kenneth Armitage 1916-2002

Let­ter from Ken­neth Armitage to Joan Moore via the The Ken­neth Armitage Foun­da­tion

The remain­der of the dig­i­tized Archives & Access collection—52, 000 items in total—should be avail­able by the sum­mer of 2015. While view­ing art and arti­facts online is cer­tain­ly no sub­sti­tute for see­ing them in per­son, it’s bet­ter than nev­er see­ing them at all. In any case, mil­lions of pieces are only view­able by cura­tors and spe­cial­ists and nev­er make their way to gallery floors. But with the appear­ance and expan­sion of free online archives like the Tate’s, that sit­u­a­tion will shift dra­mat­i­cal­ly, open­ing up nation­al trea­sures to inde­pen­dent schol­ars and ordi­nary art lovers the world over.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

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

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Watch the Opening of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with the Original, Unused Score

in Film, Music, Sci Fi | December 22nd, 2014

How does a movie become a “clas­sic”? Expla­na­tions, nev­er less than utter­ly sub­jec­tive, will vary from cinephile to cinephile, but I would sub­mit that clas­sic-film sta­tus, as tra­di­tion­al­ly under­stood, requires that all ele­ments of the pro­duc­tion work in at least near-per­fect har­mo­ny: the cin­e­matog­ra­phy, the cast­ing, the edit­ing, the design, the set­ting, the score. Out­side first-year film stud­ies sem­i­nars and delib­er­ate­ly con­trar­i­an cul­ture columns, the label of clas­sic, once attained, goes prac­ti­cal­ly undis­put­ed. Even those who active­ly dis­like Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, for instance, would sure­ly agree that its every last audio­vi­su­al nuance serves its dis­tinc­tive, bold vision — espe­cial­ly that open­ing use of “Thus Spake Zarathus­tra.”

But Kubrick did­n’t always intend to use that piece, nor the oth­er orches­tral works we’ve come to close­ly asso­ciate with mankind’s ven­tures into realms beyond Earth and strug­gles with intel­li­gence of its own inven­tion. Accord­ing to Jason Kot­tke, Kubrick had com­mis­sioned an orig­i­nal score from A Street­car Named Desire, Spar­ta­cus, Cleopa­tra, and Who’s Afraid of Vir­ginia Woolf com­pos­er Alex North.

At the top of the post, you can see 2001’s open­ing with North’s music, and below you can hear 38 min­utes of his score on Spo­ti­fy. As to the ques­tion of why Kubrick stuck instead with the tem­po­rary score of Strauss, Ligeti, and Khatch­a­turi­an he’d used in edit­ing, Kot­tke quotes from Michel Cimen­t’s inter­view with the film­mak­er:

How­ev­er good our best film com­posers may be, they are not a Beethoven, a Mozart or a Brahms. Why use music which is less good when there is such a mul­ti­tude of great orches­tral music avail­able from the past and from our own time? [ … ]  Although [North] and I went over the pic­ture very care­ful­ly, and he lis­tened to these tem­po­rary tracks and agreed that they worked fine and would serve as a guide to the musi­cal objec­tives of each sequence he, nev­er­the­less, wrote and record­ed a score which could not have been more alien to the music we had lis­tened to, and much more seri­ous than that, a score which, in my opin­ion, was com­plete­ly inad­e­quate for the film.

North did­n’t find out about Kubrick­’s choice until 2001’s New York City pre­miere. Not an envi­able sit­u­a­tion, cer­tain­ly, but not the worst thing that ever hap­pened to a col­lab­o­ra­tor who failed to rise to the direc­tor’s expec­ta­tions.

For more Kubrick and clas­si­cal music, see our recent post: The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

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:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Gets a Brand New Trail­er to Cel­e­brate Its Dig­i­tal Re-Release

1966 Film Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

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

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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Joe Cocker Sings “With A Little Help From My Friends,” Live in 2013 and At Woodstock in 1969

in Music | December 22nd, 2014

Today as we say good­bye to British singer Joe Cock­er, who died at 70 after a strug­gle with lung can­cer, we’ll remem­ber him most for that 1969 Wood­stock per­for­mance of The Bea­t­les’ “With a Lit­tle Help From My Friends.” It was with­out a doubt a career-defin­ing moment. He nev­er stopped per­form­ing the song in his inim­itably gruff style, his raspy voice part­ly a prod­uct of too many cig­a­rettes and some pret­ty hard liv­ing over the decades. Known also for his air gui­tar pro­fi­cien­cy, Cock­er suc­cess­ful­ly cov­ered oth­er famous bands like Traf­fic and The Box Tops, and made many songs—like Bil­ly Preston’s “You Are So Beau­ti­ful to Me”—unique­ly his.

But yes, it’s that 1969 debut album, also titled With a Lit­tle Help from My Friends, with its mix of orig­i­nals and big-name cov­ers from The Bea­t­les and Bob Dylan, that first brought us the Joe Cock­er we fond­ly pay trib­ute to this hol­i­day week. I over­heard some­one describe Cock­er as the only per­son who could do The Bea­t­les bet­ter than they could, which is going a bit too far. But he may be the only artist whose cov­ers of the band are as well-known and well-loved as their orig­i­nals. Paul McCart­ney, who will lead memo­ri­als this week with Ringo Starr, said of Cocker’s “A Lit­tle Help,” “it was just mind-blow­ing, [he] total­ly turned the song into a soul anthem and I was for­ev­er grate­ful to him for doing that.” Indeed. At the top of the post, see Cock­er and band above play “With a Lit­tle Help” in Cologne, Ger­many in 2013, and just above, watch again that grip­ping Wood­stock per­for­mance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix at Wood­stock: The Com­plete Per­for­mance in Video & Audio (1969)

Dick Cavett’s Epic Wood­stock Fes­ti­val Show (August, 1969)

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

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Kurt Vonnegut Gives Advice to Aspiring Writers in a 1991 TV Interview

in Education, Literature, Television, Writing | December 22nd, 2014

Remem­ber when tele­vi­sion was the big goril­la poised to put an end to all read­ing?

Then along came the mir­a­cle of the Inter­net. Blogs begat blogs, and thus­ly did the peo­ple start to read again!

Of course, many a great news­pa­per and mag­a­zine fell before its mighty engine. So it goes.

So did tele­vi­sion in the old fash­ioned sense. So it goes.

Fun­ny to think that these fast-mov­ing devel­op­ments weren’t even part of the land­scape in 1991, when author Kurt Von­negut swung by his home­town of Indi­anapo­lis to appear on the local pro­gram, Across Indi­ana.

Host Michael Atwood point­ed out the irony of a tele­vi­sion inter­view­er ask­ing a writer if tele­vi­sion was to blame for the decline in read­ing and writ­ing. After which he lis­tened polite­ly while his guest answered at length, com­par­ing read­ing to an acquired skill on par with “ice skat­ing or play­ing the French horn.”

Gee… irony elic­its a more fre­net­ic approach in the age of Buz­zFeed, Twit­ter, and YouTube. (Nailed it!)

Irony and human­i­ty run neck and neck in Vonnegut’s work, but his appre­ci­a­tion for his Hoosier upbring­ing was nev­er less than sin­cere:

When I was born in 1922, bare­ly a hun­dred years after Indi­ana became the 19th state in the Union, the Mid­dle West already boast­ed a con­stel­la­tion of cities with sym­pho­ny orches­tras and muse­ums and libraries, and insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing, and schools of music and art, rem­i­nis­cent of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire before the First World War. One could almost say that Chica­go was our Vien­na, Indi­anapo­lis our Prague, Cincin­nati our Budapest and Cleve­land our Bucharest.

To grow up in such a city, as I did, was to find cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions as ordi­nary as police sta­tions or fire hous­es. So it was rea­son­able for a young per­son to day­dream of becom­ing some sort of artist or intel­lec­tu­al, if not a police­man or fire­man. So I did. So did many like me.

Such provin­cial cap­i­tals, which is what they would have been called in Europe, were charm­ing­ly self-suf­fi­cient with respect to the fine arts. We some­times had the direc­tor of the Indi­anapo­lis Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra to sup­per, or writ­ers and painters, and archi­tects like my father, of local renown.

I stud­ied clar­inet under the first chair clar­inetist of our orches­tra. I remem­ber the orchestra’s per­for­mance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Over­ture, in which the can­nons’ roars were sup­plied by a police­man fir­ing blank car­tridges into an emp­ty garbage can. I knew the police­man. He some­times guard­ed street cross­ings used by stu­dents on their way to or from School 43, my school, the James Whit­comb Riley School.  

Vonnegut’s views were shaped at Short­ridge High School, where he num­bered among the many not-yet-renowned writ­ers hon­ing their craft on The Dai­ly Echo. Thought he did­n’t bring it up in the video above, the Echo also yield­ed his nick­name: Snarf.

Von­negut agreed with inter­view­er Atwood that the dai­ly prac­tice of keep­ing a jour­nal is an excel­lent dis­ci­pline for begin­ning writ­ers. He also con­sid­ered jour­nal­is­tic assign­ments a great train­ing ground. He made a point of men­tion­ing that Mark Twain and Ring Lard­ner got their starts as news­pa­per reporters. It may be hard­er for aspir­ing writ­ers to find pay­ing work these days, but the Inter­net is replete with oppor­tu­ni­ties for those who crave a dai­ly assign­ment.

It’s also over­flow­ing with bul­let point­ed lists on how to become a writer, but if you’re like me, you’ll pre­fer to receive this advice from Von­negut, him­self, on a set fes­tooned with farm­ing imple­ments, quilts, and dipped can­dles.

The inter­view con­tin­ues in the remain­ing parts:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Reads Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Like Von­negut, she’s a native of Indi­anapo­lis, and her moth­er was the edi­tor of the Short Ridge Dai­ly Echo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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12 Interminable Days of Xmas: Hear the Longest, Trippiest Holiday Carol

in Music, YouTube | December 22nd, 2014

“The Twelve Days of Christ­mas” is, of course, already long and repet­i­tive, such that when in recent years I’ve sung even the first few notes of it at “Ave Maria” speed, I’ve been greet­ed with sat­is­fy­ing moans of agony. This year I decid­ed that the thing must be put to tape, with each verse slow­er than the last. The whole thing now runs to around 75 min­utes.

To  make this pleas­ing­ly bear­able, even if an exer­cise in Zen-like patience, I crowd-sourced the back­ing arrange­ments for the vers­es among musi­cian-fans of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast, plus a few spe­cial guests, includ­ing Camper van Beethoven’s Jonathan Segel (who arranged and per­formed verse 11 and plays solos on gui­tar, lap steel, and vio­lin in the verse 12 group jam) and New York come­di­an Adam Sank (who adds a naughty mono­logue to verse 12).

Here’s a quick guide to help you keep your bear­ings dur­ing this strange trip:

-Vers­es 1 and 2 are my effort, to estab­lish the con­cept for the album: ignore the melody to set any beat at any tem­po you want and throw down a bunch of tracks with­out sec­ond-guess­ing your­self or redo­ing any­thing.

-Verse 3 is Swedish prog-key­boardis­t/­gui­tarist Daniel Gustafs­son, sport­ing a baroque ensem­ble.

-Verse 4 is Jason Dur­so and Shan­non Far­rell pro­vid­ing some staid beau­ty while a nar­ra­tor spouts some epi­grams about our expe­ri­ence of time.

-Verse 5 is a dis­co mon­stros­i­ty by a being who wants to be known only as Wil­son.

-Vers­es 6 and 7 are elec­tron­ic, tex­tured pieces by Maxx Bartko and Bel­gian musi­cian Timo Car­li­er respec­tive­ly. Come­di­an Alex Fos­sel­la (@afossella) pro­vides some brief nar­ra­tion in the vein of True Detec­tive.

-Verse 8 is a col­lage of atmos­pher­ic sounds and acoustic instru­ments by Kenn Busch and Jen­ny Green, while Verse 9 turns into a tune­ful acoustic folk song fea­tur­ing UK singer Al Bak­er.

-On return­ing in verse 10, Daniel Gustafs­son estab­lish­es a death-met­al pur­ga­to­ry, which morphs in Jonathan Segel’s verse 11 into an end­less night­mare land­scape.

-Verse 12 is over 25 min­utes alone, with a jazz fusion vibe a la Miles Davis’s Bitch­es Brew and con­tri­bu­tions from Kylae Jor­dan (sax), Rei Tangko (piano), Gustafs­son, Segel, Wil­son, Car­li­er, Greg Thorn­burg, and Sank, over my bass and drums.

An ear­ly com­menter on the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life site where the “song” was post­ed (as an exem­plar in sup­port of a dis­cus­sion on Edmund Burke’s ideas about aese­thet­ic judg­ments of the sub­lime), said that it’s “kind of what I would expect a Pink Floyd Christ­mas album to sound like.”

Can you live through the 12 days? What will your mind look like on the oth­er side?

A free, audio-only mp3 ver­sion of the song can be found here.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er is a musi­cian who releas­es his work free to the pub­lic. He also hosts the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog, which you can access via iTunes or the PEL web site.

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Ayn Rand’s Reviews of Children’s Movies: From Bambi to Frozen

in Comedy, Film | December 20th, 2014

white rand

Warm and fuzzy, she was­n’t. But that’s part­ly why it’s fun to imag­ine the acer­bic Ayn Rand tak­ing a crack at review­ing chil­dren’s movies. And that’s why it’s fun to read Mal­lo­ry Ort­berg’s par­o­dy in The New York­er, which fea­tures 17 Ran­di­an reviews of clas­sic kids films, begin­ning with Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs:

An indus­tri­ous young woman neglects to charge for her house­keep­ing ser­vices and is right­ly exploit­ed for her naïveté. She dies with­out ever hav­ing sought her own hap­pi­ness as the high­est moral aim. I did not fin­ish watch­ing this movie, find­ing it impos­si­ble to sym­pa­thize with the main char­ac­ter. —No stars.

Get the remain­ing movie reviews — and a few more laughs — right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Flan­nery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

Ayn Rand Adamant­ly Defends Her Athe­ism on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)

Ayn Rand Trash­es C.S. Lewis in Her Mar­gin­a­lia: He’s an “Abysmal Bas­tard”

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Download the John Lennon/Yoko Ono “War is Over (If You Want It)” Poster in 100+ Languages

in Current Affairs | December 20th, 2014

war is over

Over on the Imag­ine­Peace web­site, Yoko Ono invites you to down­load and share a poster declar­ing “War is Over (If You Want It)” in over 100 lan­guages — every­thing from Ara­bic and Afrikaans to Ger­man, Hin­di, Tibetan and Yid­dish. Those words were first made famous, of course, by Lennon and Ono’s 1971 Christmas/Vietnam War protest song. And though we’re not real­ly clos­er to achiev­ing world peace four decades lat­er, it’s some­thing we can cer­tain­ly aspire to.

All posters can be down­loaded in var­i­ous dif­fer­ent sizes, with the largest being 3000 x 4000. (Also find small ver­sions that can be loaded as wall­pa­per onto your smart phone.) Bet­ter yet, the posters are made avail­able under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. To get more of the back­sto­ry on John and Yoko’s peace ini­tia­tives, watch the clip below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bed Peace Revis­its John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Viet­nam Protests

John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

I Met the Wal­rus: An Ani­mat­ed Film Revis­it­ing a Teenager’s 1969 Inter­view with John Lennon

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Lou Reed Sings “Blue Christmas” with Laurie Anderson, Rufus Wainwright & Friends (2008)

in Music | December 19th, 2014

Elvis Pres­ley record­ed “Blue Christ­mas” for his Christ­mas album in 1957 and made the song some­thing of a hol­i­day clas­sic. In the years to come, “Blue Christ­mas” would be cov­ered by John­ny Math­is, John­ny Cash, The Mis­fits, Spring­steen, Ringo Starr, Bon Jovi and even­tu­al­ly Lou Reed too. Above, we have Lou per­form­ing the song at the Knit­ting Fac­to­ry in Decem­ber 2008. He’s joined on stage by Rufus Wain­wright, Martha Wain­wright, the McGar­rigle sis­ters, his wife Lau­rie Ander­son, Chaim Tan­nebaum, and Joel Zifkin. Below, find Lou pro­vid­ing the musi­cal back­ground for Sean Lennon and a host of musi­cians, who play a stir­ring ver­sion of John Lennon’s “Hap­py Xmas (War Is Over).” Both clips appear on the DVD A Not So Silent Night.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter 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. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

 

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