The Scene That Reveals the Beauty of Classic Hollywood Cinema

in Film | January 2nd, 2025

1939 is wide­ly con­sid­ered the great­est year in Hol­ly­wood his­to­ry. Back then, writes 1939: The Year in Movies author Tom Flan­nery, the so-called “Big Eight” major Amer­i­can stu­dios “had a com­bined 590 actors, 114 direc­tors and 340 writ­ers under con­tract, each of whom worked an eight-hour shift every week­day,” plus half a day on Sat­ur­day. “It took an aver­age of 22 days to shoot a movie, at an aver­age cost of $300,000.” Annu­al gross­es exceed­ing $700 mil­lion “made it eas­i­er to take a chance on ‘risky’ or com­mer­cial­ly untest­ed mate­r­i­al.” From this indus­tri­al envi­ron­ment came forth one new fea­ture for every sin­gle day of the year, includ­ing Gone With the Wind, The Wiz­ard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton, Stage­coach, and Young Mr. Lin­coln.

There’s one prob­lem with this fram­ing: The Philadel­phia Sto­ry did­n’t come out until 1940. In his new video above, Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, uses that cel­e­brat­ed pic­ture — and in fact, just one of its scenes in par­tic­u­lar — to reveal the com­mer­cial-artis­tic genius of old Hol­ly­wood.

This was not, we must note, an indi­vid­ual genius: “We’re used to think­ing about movies as the vision of one per­son, an auteur direc­tor, but the stu­dio sys­tem of Hol­ly­wood’s gold­en age did­n’t real­ly work like that.” Despite the tal­ent of George Cukor, who went on to direct A Star Is Born and My Fair Lady, “there’s real­ly no auteur here, but rather a col­lec­tion of top-tier artists and crafts­men com­ing togeth­er to real­ize a great sto­ry and ele­vate great per­for­mances,” all of who make impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions to the scene exam­ined here.

The col­lab­o­ra­tors iden­ti­fied by Puschak include cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Joseph Rut­ten­berg, art direc­tor Cedric Gib­bons (design­er of the Oscar stat­uette), and cos­tume design­er Adri­an Green­berg (known monony­mous­ly as Adri­an). Nor can he ignore the work of the film’s three prin­ci­pal per­form­ers, a cer­tain Cary Grant, James Stew­art, and Katharine Hep­burn. It may have been Stew­art who won the Acad­e­my Award for Best Actor for The Philadel­phia Sto­ry, but it was Hep­burn who ulti­mate­ly gained the most: hav­ing been sad­dled with a rep­u­ta­tion as “box-office poi­son” in the thir­ties due to her famous­ly cold screen pres­ence, she seized the chance to por­tray a char­ac­ter who suf­fers for sim­i­lar qual­i­ties of per­son­al­i­ty and is ulti­mate­ly redeemed. She got her come­back — and we have a shim­mer­ing, wit­ty mon­u­ment to the most gold­en of Hol­ly­wood’s ages.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Down­load Vin­tage Film Posters in High-Res: From The Philadel­phia Sto­ry to Attack of the Crab Mon­sters

Mar­tin Scors­ese Intro­duces Clas­sic Movies: From Cit­i­zen Kane and Ver­ti­go to Lawrence of Ara­bia and Gone with the Wind

Every Frame a Paint­ing Returns to YouTube & Explores Why the Sus­tained Two-Shot Van­ished from Movies

When a Mod­ern Direc­tor Makes a Fake Old Movie: A Video Essay on David Fincher’s Mank

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Famous Architects Dress as Their Famous New York City Buildings (1931)

in Architecture, Photography | January 1st, 2025

On Jan­u­ary 13, 1931, the Soci­ety of Beaux-Arts Archi­tects held a ball at the Hotel Astor in New York City. Accord­ing to an adver­tise­ment for the event, any­one who paid $15 per tick­et (big mon­ey dur­ing the Depres­sion) could see a “hilar­i­ous mod­ern art exhi­bi­tion” and things “mod­ernistic, futur­is­tic, cubis­tic, altru­is­tic, mys­tic, archi­tis­tic and fem­i­nis­tic.” Atten­dees also got to wit­ness more than 20 famous archi­tects dressed as build­ings they had designed—buildings that would become fix­tures of the New York City sky­line.

In the pic­ture above, we have from left to right: A. Stew­art Walk­er as the Fuller Build­ing (1929), Leonard Schultze as the Wal­dorf-Asto­ria Hotel (1931), Ely Jacques Kahn as the Squibb Build­ing (1930), William Van Alen as the Chrysler Build­ing (1930), Ralph Walk­er as 1 Wall Street (1931), D.E. Ward as the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tow­er and Joseph H. Freed­lan­der as the Muse­um of the City of New York (1930).

A 2006 arti­cle in The New York Times notes that the event, now con­sid­ered “one of the most spec­tac­u­lar par­ties of the last cen­tu­ry,” was cov­ered by WABC radio. A few pho­tographs remain, like the one above. As does a tan­ta­liz­ing short bit of video.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via NYT

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Archi­tect Breaks Down the Design Of Four Icon­ic New York City Muse­ums: the Met, MoMA, Guggen­heim & Frick

Archi­tect Breaks Down Five of the Most Icon­ic New York City Apart­ments

An Immer­sive, Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of New York City’s Icon­ic Grand Cen­tral Ter­mi­nal

A Whirl­wind Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of the New York Pub­lic Library–“Hidden Details” and All

 

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What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2025: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Early Hitchcock Films, Tintin and Popeye Cartoons & More

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Law, Music | January 1st, 2025

Each Pub­lic Domain Day seems to bring us a rich­er crop of copy­right-lib­er­at­ed books, plays, films, musi­cal com­po­si­tions, sound record­ings, works of art, and oth­er pieces of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. This year hap­pens to be an espe­cial­ly notable one for con­nois­seurs of Bel­gian cul­ture. Among the char­ac­ters enter­ing the Amer­i­can pub­lic domain, we find a cer­tain boy reporter named Tintin, who first appeared — along with his faith­ful pup Milou, or in Eng­lish, Snowy — in the Jan­u­ary 10th, 1929 issue of Le Petit Vingtième, the chil­dren’s sup­ple­ment of the news­pa­per Le Vingtième Siè­cle.

Now, here in le vingt-et-unième-siè­cle, that first ver­sion of Tintin can be rein­vent­ed in any man­ner one can imag­ine — at least in the Unit­ed States. In the Euro­pean Union, as the Duke Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain direc­tors Jen­nifer Jenk­ins and James Boyle note in their Pub­lic Domain Day blog post for this year, that Tintin remains under copy­right until 2054, a date based on his cre­ator Hergé hav­ing died in 1983. The thor­ough­ly Amer­i­can com­ic-strip hero Pop­eye also made his debut in 1929, but as Jenk­ins and Boyle has­ten to add, while that “Pop­eye 1.0 had super­hu­man capa­bil­i­ties, he did not derive them from eat­ing spinach until 1931.” Even so, “it appears that the copy­right in this 1931 com­ic strip was not renewed — if this is true, Popeye’s spinach-fueled strength is already in the pub­lic domain.”

This year also brings a devel­op­ment in a sim­i­lar mat­ter of detail relat­ed to no less a car­toon icon than Mick­ey Mouse: last year freed the first ver­sion of Mick­ey Mouse, his riv­er-nav­i­gat­ing, farm-ani­mal-bash­ing Steam­boat Willie incar­na­tion. “In 2025 we wel­come a dozen new Mick­ey Mouse films from 1929,” write Jenk­ins and Boyle, “Mick­ey speaks his first words – ‘Hot dogs! Hot dogs!’ – and debuts his famil­iar white gloves. That ver­sion of Mick­ey is now offi­cial­ly in the pub­lic domain.”

This Pub­lic Domain Day also brings us lit­er­ary works like Faulkn­er’s The Sound and the Fury, Hem­ing­way’s A Farewell to Arms, Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (as well as detec­tive nov­els from Agatha Christie and the pseu­do­ny­mous Ellery Queen, once the biggest mys­tery writer in Amer­i­ca); the first sound films by Alfred Hitch­cock, John Ford, and the Marx Broth­ers; musi­cal com­po­si­tions like “Sin­gin’ in the Rain,” Gersh­win’s An Amer­i­can in Paris, and Rav­el’s Boléro; actu­al record­ings of Rhap­sody in Blue and “It Had To Be You”; and Sur­re­al­ist works of art by Sal­vador Dalí and — pend­ing fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion into their copy­right sta­tus — per­haps even René Magritte, whose L’empire des lumières just sold for a record $121 mil­lion. Who knows? 2025 could be the year we all look to Bel­gium for inspi­ra­tion.

For more on what’s enter­ing the pub­lic domain today, vis­it this Duke Uni­ver­si­ty web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hergé Draws Tintin in Vin­tage Footage (and What Explains the Character’s Endur­ing Appeal)

An Intro­duc­tion to René Magritte, and How the Bel­gian Artist Used an Ordi­nary Style to Cre­ate Extra­or­di­nar­i­ly Sur­re­al Paint­ings

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

Alfred Hitch­cock Presents Some of the First Words Ever Spo­ken on Film .… and They’re Saucy Ones (1929)

An Ear­ly Ver­sion of Mick­ey Mouse Enters the Pub­lic Domain on Jan­u­ary 1, 2024

What’s Enter­ing the Pub­lic Domain in 2024: Enjoy Clas­sic Works by Vir­ginia Woolf, Char­lie Chap­lin, Buster Keaton, D. H. Lawrence, Bertolt Brecht & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Complete History of the Music Video: From the 1890s to Today

in History, Music | December 31st, 2024

If you want to under­stand the his­to­ry of music videos, you must con­sid­er a lot of things that are not obvi­ous­ly music videos. The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the first selec­tion of MTV’s inau­gur­al broad­cast, must sure­ly count as a music video — but then, it was pro­duced a cou­ple years ear­li­er for the much dif­fer­ent con­text of the British chart pro­gram Top of the Pops, much like Queen’s pro­to music video for “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” from 1975. But is Bob Dylan’s much-par­o­died card-drop­ping “per­for­mance” of “Sub­ter­ranean Home­sick Blues” from a decade ear­li­er, shot for D. A. Pen­nebak­er’s Dont Look Back, a music video? What about A Hard Day’s Night, the Bea­t­les’ exu­ber­ant­ly nar­ra­tive-light film from the year before?

All of these come up in the new his­to­ry of the music video from YouTube chan­nel Poly­phon­ic above, which com­piles into an over three-hour-long view­ing expe­ri­ence all the episodes of its series on the sub­ject. In its long his­tor­i­cal view, the music video did­n’t begin with the Fab Four, and not even with their epoch-mak­ing appear­ance on The Ed Sul­li­van Show.

One can trace it far­ther back, past Sco­pi­tone film juke­box­es (includ­ed in “the canon of Camp” by Susan Son­tag in her famous essay); past Dis­ney’s Fan­ta­sia (essen­tial­ly eight ani­mat­ed clas­si­cal music videos strung togeth­er); past even The Jazz Singer, the first fea­ture-length musi­cal “talkie,” which in 1927 put a defin­i­tive end to the era of silent film.

Per­haps the ear­li­est iden­ti­fi­able pre­de­ces­sor of the music video is “The Lit­tle Lost Child,” which in 1894 was exhib­it­ed as an “illus­trat­ed song.” Its deliv­ery of a nar­ra­tive through pro­ject­ed still images accom­pa­nied by live piano was like noth­ing its audi­ences had expe­ri­enced before, with an emo­tion­al pow­er greater than the sum of its visu­al and musi­cal parts. This was a brand new tech­nol­o­gy, and indeed, like any cul­tur­al his­to­ry, that of the music video is also a tech­no­log­i­cal his­to­ry, one advanced by film, broad­cast tele­vi­sion, cable tele­vi­sion, and in our time, inter­net stream­ing, which stayed the for­m’s loom­ing prospect of pop-cul­tur­al irrel­e­vance. Now, in the twen­ty-twen­ties, we must ask our­selves this: when Tik­Tok users post them­selves danc­ing, zoom­ing in on pan­cakes, or skate­board­ing while drink­ing Ocean Spray, is it a music video?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The 50 Great­est Music Videos of All Time, Ranked by AV Club

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

David Bowie Releas­es 36 Music Videos of His Clas­sic Songs from the 1970s and 1980s

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Longest Construction Projects in History: Why Sagrada Família, the Milan Duomo, Greek Temples & Other Famous Structures Took Generations to Complete

in Architecture, History | December 30th, 2024

Pub­lic-tran­sit projects are the reli­gious build­ing endeav­ors of twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, less because they’re moti­vat­ed by the belief in any par­tic­u­lar deity than by how much time and mon­ey they now require to com­plete. Take New York’s Sec­ond Avenue sub­way, whose less than two-mile-long first phase opened in 2017: its con­struc­tion had cost $4.45 bil­lion, and the line itself had first been pro­posed 97 years ear­li­er. That’s noth­ing by ancient stan­dards: the Tem­ple of Apol­lo at Didy­ma took six cen­turies; the Tem­ple of Olympian Zeus at Athens lagged a full 650 years behind sched­ule; and the Heraion of Samos end­ed up pass­ing the 800-year mark.

These facts come from the new Told in Stone video above on “the longest con­struc­tion project in his­to­ry.” Some of the struc­tures cov­ered will be famil­iar to Open Cul­ture read­ers: for instance, Notre-Dame de Paris, which took near­ly 200 years to build (and which reopened just this month after five years of fire-dam­age repair and restora­tion), or Sagra­da Família, which broke ground in 1882 and is sched­uled for com­ple­tion in 2026 — if you don’t count dec­o­rat­ing its exte­ri­or, which could go on until 2034. Orna­men­ta­tion is impor­tant in archi­tec­ture of this kind: it’s why the Duo­mo di Milano, whose con­struc­tion began in 1386, was­n’t tru­ly com­plete until 1965.

The dec­o­ra­tion process was also pro­longed in the case of the Basil­i­ca Papale di San Pietro in Cit­tà di Vat­i­cano, or Saint Peter’s Basil­i­ca, which took 120 years to build, span­ning the ear­ly six­teenth and sev­en­teenth cen­turies. As the time­line goes for such an ambi­tious project in that era, it could have been worse; that par­tic­u­lar High Renais­sance church owes its noto­ri­ety to its sheer cost, which works out to “tens of bil­lions” of dol­lars today. This video, being Microsoft-spon­sored, leads up to that soft­ware giant’s 3D, AI-assist­ed repli­ca of Saint Peter’s Basil­i­ca, which we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture when it was released this past fall. Per­haps behold­ing its glo­ry will give New York­ers a lit­tle more faith that the Sec­ond Avenue Sub­way will reach 125th Street in their life­times.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of Sagra­da Família, Antoni Gaudí’s Auda­cious Church That’s Been Under Con­struc­tion for 142 Years

The Cre­ation & Restora­tion of Notre-Dame Cathe­dral, Ani­mat­ed

Explore the World’s First 3D Repli­ca of St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, Made with AI

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Sto­ry of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi and the Duo­mo in Flo­rence

How Design­ing Build­ings Upside-Down Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture, Mak­ing Pos­si­ble St. Paul’s Cathe­dral, Sagra­da Família & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Hunter S. Thompson Remembers Jimmy Carter’s Captivating Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

in Literature, Music, Politics | December 29th, 2024

51 years ago, Hunter S. Thomp­son wrote Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail ’72, which “is still con­sid­ered a kind of bible of polit­i­cal report­ing,” not­ed Matt Taib­bi in a 40th anniver­sary edi­tion of the book. Fear and Loathing ’72 entered the canon of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal writ­ing for many rea­sons. But if you’re look­ing for one bot­tom-line expla­na­tion, it prob­a­bly comes down to this: Says Taib­bi, “Thomp­son stared right into the flam­ing-hot sun of shame­less lies and cyn­i­cal horse­shit that is our pol­i­tics, and he described exact­ly what he saw—probably at seri­ous cost to his own men­tal health, but the ben­e­fit to us was [his leg­endary book].”

Thomp­son may have reached some jour­nal­is­tic apogee with his cov­er­age of the ’72 Nixon-McGov­ern cam­paign. But his polit­i­cal writ­ing hard­ly stopped there. The Gonzo jour­nal­ist cov­ered the ’76 elec­tion for Rolling Stone mag­a­zine. And inevitably he crossed paths with Jim­my Carter (RIP), the even­tu­al win­ner of the elec­tion. Above, Thomp­son recalls the day when Carter first made an impres­sion upon him.

It hap­pened at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia School of Law on May 4, 1974. Speak­ing before a gath­er­ing of alum­ni lawyers, Carter upset their cel­e­bra­to­ry occa­sion when he dis­man­tled the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem they were so proud of. And Carter par­tic­u­lar­ly caught Thomp­son’s atten­tion when he traced his sense of social jus­tice back to a song writ­ten by Bob Dylan:

The oth­er source of my under­stand­ing about what’s right and wrong in this soci­ety is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan. After lis­ten­ing to his records about “The Bal­lad of Hat­tie Car­ol” and “Like a Rolling Stone” and “The Times, They Are a‑Changing,” I’ve learned to appre­ci­ate the dynamism of change in a mod­ern soci­ety.

I grew up as a landown­er’s son. But I don’t think I ever real­ized the prop­er inter­re­la­tion­ship between the landown­er and those who worked on a farm until I heard Dylan’s record, “I Ain’t Gonna Work on Mag­gie’s Farm No More.” So I come here speak­ing to you today about your sub­ject with a base for my infor­ma­tion found­ed on Rein­hold Niebuhr and Bob Dylan.

You can read the full text of Carter’s speech here. It’s also worth watch­ing a relat­ed clip below, where Thomp­son elab­o­rates on Carter, his famous speech and his alleged mean streak that put him on the same plane as Muham­mad Ali and Son­ny Barg­er (the god­fa­ther of The Hells Angels).

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post first appeared on our site in 2012. With the pass­ing of Pres­i­dent Carter, it seemed like a good time to bring it back.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The 2,000+ Films Watched by Pres­i­dents Nixon, Carter & Rea­gan in the White House

Hear the Uncen­sored Orig­i­nal Ver­sion of “Hur­ri­cane,” Bob Dylan’s Protest Song About Jailed Box­er Rubin “Hur­ri­cane” Carter (1976)

Hunter Thomp­son Explains What Gonzo Jour­nal­ism Is, and How He Writes It (1975)

 

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Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter of Advice to People Living in the Year 2088

in Letters, Literature | December 27th, 2024

There was a time when a com­pa­ny like Volk­swa­gen could com­mis­sion var­i­ous lumi­nar­ies to write let­ters to the future, then pub­lish them in Time mag­a­zine as part of an ad cam­paign. In fact, that time was­n’t so very long ago: it was the year 1988, to be pre­cise, when no less an opti­mistic (or opti­misti­cal­ly bleak?) nov­el­ist than Kurt Von­negut was still active. At some point between writ­ing Blue­beard and Hocus Pocus, he com­posed a mis­sive direct­ed toward human­i­ty a cen­tu­ry hence (in 2088), which you can read even in this rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly year of 2024 here.

Von­negut begins with quo­ta­tions from Shake­speare and St. John the Divine, explain­ing that “our cen­tu­ry has­n’t been as free with words of wis­dom as some oth­ers, I think, because we were the first to get reli­able infor­ma­tion about the human sit­u­a­tion.” In his time, we knew full well “how many of us there were, how much food we could raise or gath­er, how fast we were repro­duc­ing, what made us sick, what made us die, how much dam­age we were doing to the air and water and top­soil on which most life forms depend­ed, how vio­lent and heart­less nature can be, and on and on. Who could wax wise with so much bad news pour­ing in?”

Of spe­cial import to him was the rev­e­la­tion that “Nature was no con­ser­va­tion­ist. It need­ed no help from us in tak­ing the plan­et apart and putting it back togeth­er some dif­fer­ent way, not nec­es­sar­i­ly improv­ing it from the view­point of liv­ing things.” Earth may have giv­en rise to human­i­ty, but it has not the capac­i­ty to care whether we or any oth­er par­tic­u­lar life form sur­vives on it. And so we must take it upon our­selves to ensure our own well-being, which requires liv­ing in accor­dance with what Von­negut calls “Nature’s stern but rea­son­able sur­ren­der terms”:

  1. Reduce and sta­bi­lize your pop­u­la­tion.
  2. Stop poi­son­ing the air, the water, and the top­soil.
  3. Stop prepar­ing for war and start deal­ing with your real prob­lems.
  4. Teach your kids, and your­selves, too, while you’re at it, how to inhab­it a small plan­et with­out help­ing to kill it.
  5. Stop think­ing sci­ence can fix any­thing if you give it a tril­lion dol­lars.
  6. Stop think­ing your grand­chil­dren will be OK no mat­ter how waste­ful or destruc­tive you may be, since they can go to a nice new plan­et on a space­ship. That is real­ly mean, and stu­pid.
  7. And so on. Or else.

You can eas­i­ly imag­ine these words uttered by Von­negut him­self, but how about by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch? There’s no need to imag­ine: you can sim­ply watch the new video above, tak­en from a recent Let­ters Live event. Cum­ber­batch is one of the series’ star read­ers, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly inter­pret­ed let­ters by Nick Cave, Albert Camus, Alan Tur­ing, and oth­ers onstage. This advice to the “ladies and gen­tle­men of AD 2088” has proven to be one of his hits; you can hear anoth­er, ear­li­er read­ing here. Per­haps Von­negut’s words bear repeat­ing, but then, he always showed a sharp aware­ness that human­i­ty has few qual­i­ties as per­sis­tent as the inabil­i­ty to lis­ten.

Relat­ed con­tent:

In 1988, Kurt Von­negut Writes a Let­ter to Peo­ple Liv­ing in 2088, Giv­ing 7 Pieces of Advice

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Watch James Earl Jones Read Kurt Vonnegut’s Let­ter Urg­ing High-School Stu­dents to Cre­ate Art & “Make Your Soul Grow”

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch & Ian McK­ellen Read Epic Let­ters Writ­ten by Kurt Von­negut

Hear Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Read­ing Let­ters by Kurt Von­negut, Alan Tur­ing, Sol LeWitt, and Oth­ers

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The New York Times Presents the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, Selected by 503 Novelists, Poets & Critics

in Books, Literature | December 26th, 2024

For long­time read­ers of Amer­i­can book jour­nal­ism, scrolling through the New York Times Book Review’s just-pub­lished list of the 100 best books of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry will sum­mon dim mem­o­ries of many a once-unig­nor­able crit­i­cal fuss. At one time or anoth­er over the past 25 years, some of us felt as if we could hard­ly con­sid­er our­selves lit­er­ate unless we’d read The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay, say, or A Vis­it from the Goon Squad, or The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao, or seem­ing­ly any­thing by George Saun­ders — all of which have placed on the Book Review’s list, the prod­uct of sur­vey­ing “hun­dreds of lit­er­ary lumi­nar­ies,” some of whose bal­lots have been made avail­able for pub­lic view­ing.

As a reminder of how deep we are into this cen­tu­ry, more than a few of the authors of these not­ed books — Denis John­son, Joan Did­ion, Philip Roth, Cor­mac McCarthy, Hilary Man­tel — have already shuf­fled off this mor­tal coil. Rober­to Bolaño, whose The Sav­age Detec­tives and 2666 placed at num­bers 38 and 6, respec­tive­ly, was already dead when both of those nov­els first appeared in Eng­lish trans­la­tion.

Some selec­tions may cause despair over the health of lit­er­a­ture itself: Don­na Tart­t’s The Goldfinch, for instance, whose rap­tur­ous recep­tion crit­ic James Wood once mem­o­rably described as “fur­ther proof of the infan­tiliza­tion of our lit­er­ary cul­ture: a world in which adults go around read­ing Har­ry Pot­ter.”

But then, every­one will have their objec­tions, which is the point behind these lists as much as behind lit­er­ary prizes like the Nobel, works by whose lau­re­ates from Toni Mor­ri­son to Han Kang have placed among the top 100. I note the omis­sion of Saul Bel­low and J. M. Coet­zee, whose Rav­el­stein and Eliz­a­beth Costel­lo would’ve eas­i­ly made my bal­lot were I lumi­nary enough to vote. In any case, these stand­ings are hard­ly like­ly to look much the same in a few decades’ time. Imag­ine a list of the best books of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry com­posed in 1924, when even The Great Gats­by had­n’t come out — or indeed, a list of the best books of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry from 1824, thir­teen years before the pub­li­ca­tion of the first nov­el by a cer­tain promis­ing young scrib­bler named Dick­ens.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

29 Lists of Rec­om­mend­ed Books Cre­at­ed by Well-Known Authors, Artists & Thinkers: Jorge Luis Borges, Pat­ti Smith, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, David Bowie & More

The 100 Best Nov­els: A Lit­er­ary Crit­ic Cre­ates a List in 1898

Joseph Brodsky’s List of 83 Books You Should Read to Have an Intel­li­gent Con­ver­sa­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Francis Ford Coppola Picks His Favorite Criterion Movies & Gives Advice to Filmmakers

in Film | December 26th, 2024

Upon step­ping into the hal­lowed Cri­te­ri­on Clos­et, stocked with hun­dreds of that cinephile video label’s finest releas­es, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la speaks of a direc­tor who “believed in a film he want­ed to make, and used his entire for­tune, because the financ­ing sys­tem of the time would­n’t finance it. And it came out and it was a big flop, and he died sort of pen­ni­less, not real­iz­ing that this film he put every­thing up for” would “be con­sid­ered today the mas­ter­piece that we con­sid­er it.” The auteur in ques­tion is Jacques Tati, and the film is Play­time, though one imag­ines that Cop­po­la’s own recent expe­ri­ence with Mega­lopo­lis was­n’t so very far from his mind.

“I think he’s the only film­mak­er, oth­er than present com­pa­ny, who took a big hunk of what wealth he had earned in his life and put it up to make a film that nobody else would make,” Cop­po­la con­tin­ues. But when you do that, “usu­al­ly it with­stands the test of time.”

His long career has afford­ed him many a les­son in the unex­pect­ed turns a pic­ture’s after­life can take. Take Rum­ble Fish, his sec­ond S. E. Hin­ton adap­ta­tion of 1983 after The Out­siders. He intend­ed it as “an art film for kids,” but “the kids at that time did­n’t total­ly get it right away, and I thought it was a very big fail­ure and was very upset about it, because I sort of loved the film.”

Only lat­er did Cop­po­la find out how influ­en­tial this seem­ing dud had been in Latin Amer­i­ca, where young peo­ple “went to this one the­ater to see this weird movie called Rum­ble Fish, which they had no idea what it was, but it some­how struck them, and it inspired a whole gen­er­a­tion to become film­mak­ers and nov­el­ists.” But he’d nev­er have been in a posi­tion to make it — to say noth­ing of The God­fa­ther, The Con­ver­sa­tion, and Apoc­a­lypse Now — if he had­n’t heed­ed the words of Dance, Girl, Dance direc­tor Dorothy Arzn­er, who hap­pened to be his direct­ing teacher at UCLA. Doubt­ful about his poten­tial to become a film­mak­er, he declared his inten­tion to quit try­ing. To which Arzn­er respond­ed: “I’ve been around, and I know you’ll make it.” Indeed, Cop­po­la made it in the movies — and, more impor­tant­ly, he con­tin­ues mak­ing movies today.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Four-Decade-Strug­gle to Make Mega­lopo­lis

Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Films: The God­fa­ther, Apoc­a­lypse Now & More

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Mar­tin Scors­ese Names His Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Wes Ander­son Vis­its a Paris Video Store and High­lights the Films He Loves: Kuro­sawa, Truf­faut, Buñuel & More

The Cult of the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion: The Com­pa­ny Ded­i­cat­ed to Gath­er­ing & Dis­trib­ut­ing the Great­est Films from Around the World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Bob Dylan Reads “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” On His Holiday Radio Show (2006)

in Music | December 24th, 2024

Allow me to name just a few of the peo­ple I want to hear host­ing and curat­ing radio shows—former Sex Pis­tols’ singer John Lydon, for­mer Clash front­man Joe Strum­mer, for­mer Woody Guthrie imper­son­ator Bob Dylan.…

Luck­i­ly for me, this ain’t just fan­ta­sy base­ball; at var­i­ous times, and with vary­ing lev­els of com­mit­ment, each of these tastemak­ers has host­ed a pro­gram show­cas­ing their own favorite artists. In Dylan’s case, the com­mit­ment was pret­ty sub­stan­tial. His show, Theme Time Radio Hour, ran for almost three years—once a week from 2006 to 2009—on satel­lite radio.

Each episode cen­tered on a gen­er­al theme, hence the title, but the selec­tions were all over the place—more or less what you’d expect from Dylan: an eclec­tic col­lec­tion of folk, blues, gospel, soul, coun­try, mod­ern pop, and rock ‘n’ roll mixed with old-time radio jin­gles, nov­el­ties, and pro­mos, and the host’s odd­ball com­men­tary and hokey humor. Record­ed while Dylan was on the road, then edit­ed togeth­er with pho­ny “lis­ten­er calls” and emails, Theme Time Radio Hour aimed, Dylan said, “to expand the musi­cal taste” of his lis­ten­ers. That it did, even in its most tra­di­tion­al episode, name­ly the hol­i­day spe­cial on Christ­mas and New Year’s, or as Dylan calls it, “a Yule­tide extrav­a­gan­za.”

In his 2006 Christ­mas broad­cast, above, Dylan bounces from Bob Seger to the Sta­ples Singers to Lord Nel­son, “uncrowned king of Soca,” and Mabel Mafuya, who plays “a Mara­bi style, sort of like South African rag­time.” The wide vari­ety of well- and less­er-known artists—all play­ing Christ­mas music—combined with Dylan’s wry inter­jec­tions, makes for delight­ful­ly weird lis­ten­ing. But when it comes time for his own con­tri­bu­tion, he goes for the obvi­ous and recites Clement Clarke Moore’s “‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas.” You may not have thought much of this the first time you heard it, much less the mil­lionth. But in Dylan’s read­ing, the stock­ings sound like they were hung with care in some dim, smoky beat­nik cof­fee­house and the sug­ar plums dance to the fin­ger-snap­ping bop rhythms of jazz poet­ry while a harp­si­chord plays “O Tan­nen­baum” in the back­ground.

It’s a very cool ren­di­tion, in oth­er words, of a very corny piece of writ­ing. Through­out the spe­cial, Dylan dis­plays a real knack for suss­ing new sounds and angles from old, tired hol­i­day clich­es. His exten­sive knowl­edge of hol­i­day tunes may place him in the com­pa­ny of John Waters and the many oth­er “men who love Christ­mas music” pro­filed in the doc­u­men­tary Jin­gle Bell Rocks! Whether he is a col­lec­tor or just an avid lis­ten­er, I do not know, but by the time you’ve fin­ished lis­ten­ing to his 2006 Theme Time Radio Hour Christ­mas spe­cial, you will find your appre­ci­a­tion for the hol­i­day genre thor­ough­ly expand­ed.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan’s Thanks­giv­ing Radio Show: A Playlist of 18 Delec­table Songs

The Top 10 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Read by Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

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

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How A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Its Beloved Soundtrack Album, Almost Never Happened

in Music, Television | December 24th, 2024

A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas uses a cast of ama­teur child voice actors, deals with the theme of sea­son­al depres­sion, and cul­mi­nates in the recita­tion of a Bible verse, all to a jazz score. It was not, safe to say, the spe­cial that CBS had expect­ed, to say noth­ing of its spon­sor, the Coca-Cola Com­pa­ny. In all like­li­hood, it would have been can­celed, but see­ing as it had already been announced and pro­mot­ed (and in any case, was com­plet­ed only a few days before it was sched­uled to air), the show went on. In the event, not only did it please the view­ers of Amer­i­ca, it went on to become one of the most beloved pieces of Christ­mas ani­ma­tion — and that jazz score went on to become one of the most beloved Christ­mas albums.

In the new Dig­ging the Greats video above, bassist Bran­don Shaw breaks down some of the dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of Vince Guaral­di’s score, with help from drum­mer Ryan Shaw (not just Bran­don’s broth­er, but also a musi­cian with his own direct con­nec­tion to Peanuts pro­duc­tions) and pianist Jon­té Moore.

“There’s beau­ty, because of the major 9 sound­ing, but there’s, like, this ten­sion,” Moore explains while play­ing the imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able chords of “Christ­mas­time Is Here.” “Some­thing’s maybe miss­ing: it could be peo­ple who have lost a loved one, or are maybe just tired of the hol­i­day sea­son, so they have this weight that they car­ry.” We’re a long way indeed from the insipid cheer of many a hol­i­day pro­duc­tion.

“Christ­mas­time Is Here” may be the sin­gle most influ­en­tial piece of A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas’ musi­cal lega­cy. But it’s best heard in the con­text of the whole sound­track, where it sounds of a piece with the “jazz arrange­ments of Christ­mas clas­sics,” as Shaw puts it, as well as with “Linus and Lucy,” the Peanuts theme song Guaral­di had pre­vi­ous­ly com­posed. This coher­ent aes­thet­ic and sen­si­bil­i­ty — the com­poser’s, of course, but also that of the world Charles Schulz cre­at­ed — goes a long way toward mak­ing the project not just a col­lec­tion of Christ­mas songs, but an endur­ing Christ­mas album: one that, over the next cou­ple of days, even those of us with­out enthu­si­asm for Christ­mas music in gen­er­al will be spin­ning as many times as we can get away with.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Vince Guaral­di, the Jazz Com­pos­er Who Cre­at­ed the Best Christ­mas Album Ever, A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas

Enjoy Clas­sic Songs from A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, Per­formed by Vince Guaral­di Trio Drum­mer Jer­ry Granel­li

How Inno­v­a­tive Jazz Pianist Vince Guaral­di Became the Com­pos­er of Beloved Char­lie Brown Music

Charles Schulz Draws Char­lie Brown in 45 Sec­onds and Exor­cis­es His Demons

The Endur­ing Appeal of Schulz’s Peanuts — Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #116

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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