Take a Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House, the Mansion That Has Appeared in Blade Runner, Twin Peaks & Countless Hollywood Films

There are more than a few of us who’d enjoy the oppor­tu­ni­ty to live in a house that appears in Blade Run­ner; there are rather few of us who would val­ue that oppor­tu­ni­ty at $23 mil­lion, the ask­ing price giv­en in the 2019 Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video on Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1924 Ennis House above. Yet even beyond the Wright pedi­gree and the Blade Run­ner pres­tige, the house has also appeared in a host of oth­er films, a screen résumé that begins nine years after its con­struc­tion, when it made its screen debut as the man­sion of a lady auto tycoon in Michael Cur­tiz’s Female.

In the decades that fol­lowed, it went on to pro­vide set­tings for pic­tures — usu­al­ly genre pic­tures — like The House on Haunt­ed Hill, The Day of the Locust, The Replace­ment Killers, and Rush Hour. “The Ennis house appar­ent­ly tran­scends space and time,” says the nar­ra­tion of Thom Ander­sen’s doc­u­men­tary Los Ange­les Plays Itself. ” It could be fic­tion­al­ly locat­ed in Wash­ing­ton or Osa­ka. It could play an ancient vil­la, a nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry haunt­ed house, a con­tem­po­rary man­sion, a twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry apart­ment build­ing, or a twen­ty-sixth-cen­tu­ry sci­ence lab where Klaus Kin­s­ki invents time trav­el.”

The Ennis House soon became visu­al short­hand for the home of wealthy, flam­boy­ant­ly sin­is­ter B‑movie vil­lains. That makes all the more notable its use in Blade Run­ner (a film that made sev­er­al clichéd Los Ange­les loca­tions fresh again), which turns it into the tow­er where Deckard lives. Even the set-built inte­ri­or of his apart­ment uses the same Mayan-motif tiles as the house­’s famous con­crete-block exte­ri­or. But the real rooms of the Ennis House have also received plen­ty of screen time, not just in the movies but also on tele­vi­sion — and even tele­vi­sion-with­in-tele­vi­sion, in the case of Twin Peaks’  fic­tion­al soap opera Invi­ta­tion to Love.

As the last of Wright’s Mayan Revival hous­es, the Ennis House marks the end of his attempt to break into south­ern Cal­i­for­nia. The archi­tect him­self lat­er admit­ted that it had exceed­ed rea­son­able scale: “That’s what you do, you know, after you get going, and get going so far, that you get out of bounds,” he said. “I think the Ennis House was out of bounds for a con­crete-block house.” Like much of Wright’s work, it also proved bet­ter to pho­to­graph than inhab­it; despite its most recent and ambi­tious ren­o­va­tion being com­plet­ed just a few years ear­li­er, it end­ed up sell­ing for $5 mil­lion below ask­ing price. I appre­ci­ate Blade Run­ner as much as any­one, but $18 mil­lion is still more than I’d pay for a 40-minute walk to the sub­way.

Relat­ed con­tent:

That Far Cor­ner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Ange­les – A Free Online Doc­u­men­tary

A Beau­ti­ful Visu­al Tour of Tir­ran­na, One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Remark­able, Final Cre­ations

Inside the Beau­ti­ful Home Frank Lloyd Wright Designed for His Son (1952)

When Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Dog­house, His Small­est Archi­tec­tur­al Cre­ation (1956)

What Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unusu­al Win­dows Tell Us About His Archi­tec­tur­al Genius

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hous­es Offer Vir­tu­al Tours: Hol­ly­hock House, Tal­iesin West, Falling­wa­ter & 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 Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Johnny Cash & The Clash’s Joe Strummer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” (2002)

In 1958, Mer­le Hag­gard saw John­ny Cash play in San Quentin, and went on to sing hon­est coun­try songs for coun­try out­laws. In 1982, future Rage Against the Machine gui­tarist Tom Morel­lo saw Joe Strum­mer play with The Clash in Chica­go and went on to play angry right­eous rock for angry punks. Both Cash and Strum­mer, who died less than a year apart, were musi­cal prophets in their way, inspir­ing oth­ers to pick up their mes­sage and car­ry it to the com­mon fan. The same, of course, could be said of Bob Mar­ley. And though those three would like­ly have dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions of the word “redemp­tion,” they shared a belief in music as a force for good.

Just above, hear Cash and Strum­mer sing Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song,” with Morel­lo on gui­tar. Record­ed dur­ing the ses­sions for Cash’s last album, the Rick Rubin-pro­duced Amer­i­can IV: The Man Comes Around, the duet hap­pened more or less by chance.

Says Rubin, “Joe was com­ing every day, because he loved John­ny Cash, and he just hap­pened to be in L.A. on vaca­tion. And he actu­al­ly extend­ed his trip a week longer just to come every day and be around John­ny.” Rubin also record­ed a solo take of Strum­mer singing “Redemp­tion Song” (below), which appeared on Strum­mer’s final album, the posthu­mous­ly released Street­core.


“Orig­i­nal­ly, the song was sup­posed to be a duet, and we record­ed it as a duet,” Rubin con­tin­ues, “But, just in case, both John­ny and Joe sang the whole song sev­er­al times” on their own. The duet ver­sion appears on the third disc, titled Redemp­tion Songs, of the released Cash box set Unearthed, which fea­tures out­takes and alter­nates from the Rubin-pro­duced Amer­i­can Record­ings series of Cash cov­er songs. Seems fit­ting some­how that one of the last songs both Strum­mer and Cash would record would be this one, and that they would sing it togeth­er. As one site suc­cinct­ly put it, the record­ing rep­re­sents “the first true punk rock star and the last. Togeth­er for­ev­er.”

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Marley’s Redemp­tion Song Final­ly Gets an Offi­cial Video: Watch the Ani­mat­ed Video Made Up of 2747 Draw­ings

Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

Did Joe Strum­mer, Front­man of The Clash, Run the Paris and Lon­don Marathons?

“Joe Strummer’s Lon­don Call­ing”: All 8 Episodes of Strummer’s UK Radio Show Free Online

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

The Amazing Recording History of The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun”

The most streamed Bea­t­les song isn’t “She Loves You,” “Hey Jude,” or “All You Need Is Love.” It isn’t even “Yes­ter­day.” If you were about to guess “Some­thing,” you’re on the right track, at least as far as the source album and song­writer. In fact, it’s George Har­rison’s oth­er sig­na­ture song “Here Comes the Sun,” which has racked up 1,433,830,334 Spo­ti­fy streams as of this writ­ing, near­ly a mil­lion more than “In My Life” right below it. The You Can’t Unhear This video above breaks down what makes “Here Comes the Sun” stand out even amid the for­mi­da­ble Bea­t­les cat­a­log, from its con­cep­tion through its record­ing process.

Though it comes off as a sim­ple song — whose invit­ing qual­i­ty may well have some­thing to do with its out­sized pop­u­lar­i­ty — “Here Comes the Sun” turns out to be the result of a tech­ni­cal­ly com­plex and uncon­ven­tion­al process fair­ly char­ac­ter­is­tic of the late Bea­t­les. Start­ing with a melody craft­ed while play­ing an acoustic gui­tar in Eric Clap­ton’s gar­den (hav­ing recused him­self from yet anoth­er busi­ness meet­ing), Har­ri­son enriched it with such tech­niques as run­ning his gui­tar through a revolv­ing Leslie speak­er meant for an organ and hav­ing his hulk­ing Moog syn­the­siz­er trans­port­ed to Abbey Road so he could add a lay­er of elec­tron­ic sub­lim­i­ty.

At this point in the life of the Bea­t­les, every­one involved could sure­ly feel that the band’s end was near. Regard­less, none of the Fab Four was quite work­ing in iso­la­tion, and indeed, the “Here Comes the Sun” ses­sions — which, of course, end­ed up on Abbey Road, the final album they record­ed — rep­re­sent some of their last work as a unit. It’s not sur­pris­ing that such a con­text would pro­duce, say, John Lennon’s grim­ly descend­ing “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” which ends side one; what star­tles no mat­ter how many times you hear it is the gen­tle opti­mism with which Har­rison’s side two opens imme­di­ate­ly there­after, espe­cial­ly if you’re not turn­ing an LP over in between.

Even in iso­la­tion, “Here Comes the Sun” has made such a cul­tur­al impact that Carl Sagan lob­bied for its inclu­sion on the Voy­ager “Gold­en Records,” which were launched into out­er space with the intent to give oth­er forms of intel­li­gent life a glimpse of human civ­i­liza­tion. The Bea­t­les also liked the idea, but they did­n’t own the nec­es­sary rights; those belonged to the label EMI, who in the rec­ol­lec­tion of Sagan’s wid­ow Ann Druyan demand­ed a pro­hib­i­tive fee for the song’s use. Had it been includ­ed, per­haps it could’ve end­ed up the first inter­galac­tic hit song — one enjoyed in the orbit of anoth­er sun entire­ly.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Bea­t­les Release the First Ever Video for “Here Comes the Sun”

Hear The Bea­t­les’ “Here Comes the Sun” With a Re-Dis­cov­ered George Har­ri­son Solo

Flash­mob Per­forms The Bea­t­les’ “Here Comes the Sun” in Madrid Unem­ploy­ment Office

How George Mar­tin Defined the Sound of the Bea­t­les: From String Quar­tets to Back­wards Gui­tar Solos

Watch George Harrison’s Final Inter­view and Per­for­mance (1997)

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 Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

 

When Leonard Cohen Guest Starred on Miami Vice (1986)

Leonard Cohen was Canada’s answer to Bob Dylan. While best known per­haps as a singer-song­writer who penned the tune “Hal­lelu­jah” — which was cov­ered by Jeff Buck­ley, John Cale and just about every­one else under the sun — he was also at vary­ing points in his col­or­ful life a poet, a nov­el­ist, a law stu­dent and a Zen monk. Well, you can add to this list guest star on Mia­mi Vice. Yes. Mia­mi Vice, Michael Mann’s decade-defin­ing crime series that some­how made stub­ble, pas­tel col­ors and Don John­son cool.

Appear­ing on the episode “French Twist,” Cohen plays Fran­cois Zolan, a French secret ser­vice agent who is up to no good. Though he’s in the episode for only a cou­ple of min­utes and almost all of it on the phone, Cohen just man­ages to ooze men­ace. You can see him and some tru­ly breath­tak­ing exam­ples of ‘80s fash­ion in the clip above.

Mia­mi Vice had a habit of cast­ing music icons. Lit­tle Richard, Frank Zap­pa, Miles Davis, Willie Nel­son, and Eartha Kitt also appeared in the series. But, unlike Cohen, they didn’t act in French.

Below you can see a mon­tage of 20 rock stars who appeared on Mia­mi Vice dur­ing its run.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Frank Zap­pa & Miles Davis Played a Drug Deal­er and a Pimp on Mia­mi Vice

The Poet­ry of Leonard Cohen Illus­trat­ed by Two Short Films

How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums

Young Leonard Cohen Reads His Poet­ry in 1966 (Before His Days as a Musi­cian Began)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow

The Writer Who Directed, The Director Who Wrote: Every Frame a Painting Explores the Genius of Billy Wilder

When the acclaimed cin­e­ma video-essay chan­nel Every Frame a Paint­ing made its come­back this past sum­mer, its cre­ators Tony Zhou and Tay­lor Ramos took a close look at the “sus­tained two-shot,” which cap­tures a stretch of dia­logue between two char­ac­ters with­out the inter­fer­ence of a cut. Though it’s become some­thing of a rar­i­ty under today’s shoot-every­thing-and-fig­ure-it-out-in-edit­ing ethos, it was used often in clas­sic Hol­ly­wood pic­tures. Take, for exam­ple, the work of Pol­ish-born writer-direc­tor Bil­ly Wilder, who began his film career in pre­war Ger­many, then went to Hol­ly­wood and “embarked on a series of osten­si­bly dar­ing, dis­en­chant­ed movies, against the grain of Amer­i­can cheer­ful­ness.”

So writes David Thom­son in The New Bio­graph­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of Film. “Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty was a thriller based on the prin­ci­ple that crime springs from human greed and deprav­i­ty; The Lost Week­end was the cinema’s most graph­ic account of alco­holism; A For­eign Affair has shots of a ruined Berlin accom­pa­nied by the tune ‘Isn’t It Roman­tic?’; Sun­set Boule­vard mocks the mad­den­ing glam­our with­in Hol­ly­wood; Ace in the Hole expos­es the unscrupu­lous­ness of the sen­sa­tion­al press; Sta­lag 17 is a pris­on­er-of-war film that under­cuts cama­raderie.” And the fine­ly honed com­e­dy of The Apart­ment or Some Like It Hot has only grown more enter­tain­ing — because rar­er — over the decades.

But was straight­for­ward com­e­dy real­ly Wilder’s forte? His pic­tures are fun­ny, but often in a high­ly par­tic­u­lar way. His “char­ac­ters do not mean what they say, and they do not say what they mean,” Zhou explains: this is ver­bal irony. But it comes along with two addi­tion­al fla­vors of irony: dra­mat­ic, which aris­es “when the audi­ence knows more infor­ma­tion than the char­ac­ters,” cre­at­ing sus­pense over whether those char­ac­ters find out the truth “and what hap­pens as a result”; and sit­u­a­tion­al, which aris­es “when a char­ac­ter makes choic­es that lead to an unex­pect­ed and yet inevitable con­clu­sion.” In his scripts, Wilder could “weave all these types of ironies togeth­er while main­tain­ing a strong emo­tion­al core.”

Even so, no great film­mak­er is mere­ly a sto­ry­teller. Despite being famous pri­mar­i­ly as a dia­logue writer, Wilder “insist­ed that his films should work as images first.” Among oth­er tech­niques, “he put the cam­era where the sub­text was, which allowed the audi­ence to fol­low the emo­tions of the scene and not just the lit­er­al mean­ing.” He also “used as few cam­era setups as pos­si­ble,” shoot­ing pages of his script with­out a cut. (Instruc­tive­ly, the video com­pares a scene from Wilder’s orig­i­nal Sab­ri­na with its hope­less­ly awk­ward equiv­a­lent in Syd­ney Pol­lack­’s 1995 remake.) Nor is it inci­den­tal to his fil­mog­ra­phy’s endurance that he embod­ied that old-fash­ioned com­bi­na­tion of respect and con­tempt for the view­er. “Let the audi­ence add up two plus two,” he once advised younger film­mak­ers, and “they’ll love you for­ev­er.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

10 Tips From Bil­ly Wilder on How to Write a Good Screen­play

The Essen­tial Ele­ments of Film Noir Explained in One Grand Info­graph­ic

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

Decod­ing the Screen­plays of The Shin­ing, Moon­rise King­dom & The Dark Knight: Watch Lessons from the Screen­play

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 Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Complete Howard Stern Interview with Kamala Harris

It’s hard to know where to start. This elec­tion comes down to whether we want to reward some­one who tried to sub­vert our democ­ra­cy four years ago. Whether we want to pre­serve the alliances that have kept the peace since World War II. Whether women want to resist los­ing rights they long thought secure. (It’s abor­tion now, and IVF and con­tra­cep­tion next.) Whether we want two new extrem­ists on the Supreme Court for decades to come. Whether we want basic com­pe­tence in the White House, or a men­tal­ly declin­ing chaos agent that calls the shots. Whether we want to hon­or basic facts, or pro­mote con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that erode any sense of truth. The list goes on.

It’s dis­cour­ag­ing that it’s even close, but nine years into this fever dream, we should­n’t be sur­prised that we’re head­ing towards anoth­er razor-thin elec­tion. Above, Kamala Har­ris tells Howard Stern, “Let’s not throw up our hands. Let’s roll up our sleeves, because this is our coun­try.” We’d urge you to take action and vote on Novem­ber 5, or for­ev­er hold your peace. This is your chance to have a say.

Watch the com­plete Howard Stern inter­view with Kamala Har­ris above.

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

This past sum­mer, out came a trail­er for Mega­lopo­lis, the movie Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la has spent half of his life try­ing to make. It took the bold approach of open­ing with quotes from reviews of his pre­vi­ous pic­tures, and not pos­i­tive ones: when it was first released, Rex Reed called Apoc­a­lypse Now “an epic piece of trash,” and even The God­fa­ther was “dimin­ished by its artsi­ness,” at least accord­ing to Pauline Kael. But film-crit­i­cism enthu­si­asts smelled some­thing fishy right away, and it took only the barest degree of research to dis­cov­er that not only had Reed and Kael (who liked The God­fa­ther, as did most every­one else) nev­er used those phras­es, none of the quotes in the trail­er were real.

All this evi­dence of crit­ics per­pet­u­al­ly fail­ing to grasp Cop­po­la’s visions seems to have been fab­ri­cat­ed with an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence sys­tem. This was a piece of bad press Mega­lopo­lis could’ve done with­out, sto­ries of its trou­bled pro­duc­tion hav­ing been cir­cu­lat­ing for months. But then, Cop­po­la has endured much worse in his long film­mak­ing career, like the hell­ish, enor­mous­ly pro­longed shoot­ing of Apoc­a­lypse Now, or the fire-sale of Zoetrope, the stu­dio he found­ed, after the box-office dis­as­ter of One From the Heart. That he was able to get Mega­lopo­lis into pro­duc­tion, let alone com­plete it, counts as some­thing of a tri­umph in itself.

The Be Kind Rewind video above recounts the sto­ry behind Mega­lopo­lis, in essence “a sto­ry about Cop­po­la him­self, informed by his own ambi­tions, set­backs, times of for­tune, and times of loss.” When he com­plet­ed the first full draft of the script in 1984, he could have had no idea of what lay in store for the project in the decades ahead, not least its numer­ous derail­ments by his own per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al crises as well as large-scale dis­as­ters like 9/11 and COVID-19. The result, at a cost of $120 mil­lion Cop­po­la raised by sell­ing off part of his win­ery, is a spec­ta­cle that med­i­tates on civ­i­liza­tion, moder­ni­ty, and utopia that, even this ear­ly in its release, has drawn reac­tions of aston­ish­ment, deri­sion, and — most com­mon­ly — flat-out mys­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The film “alter­nates grandiose rhetoric about gov­ern­ment and the mod­ern city with bor­der­line screw­ball com­e­dy, quotes Mar­cus Aure­lius and oth­er ancient thinkers, papers over sto­ry gaps with sonorous nar­ra­tion by cast mem­ber Lau­rence Fish­burne, and fills the screen with super­im­po­si­tions, split-screen mosaics, and images that aren’t meant to be tak­en lit­er­al­ly,” writes Rogerebert.com’s Matt Zoller-Seitz. “Movies like this only seem ‘indul­gent’ because we’re so deep into the era where every­thing has to be unmit­i­gat­ed fan ser­vice, the cin­e­mat­ic equiv­a­lent of cook­ing the Whop­per exact­ly how the cus­tomer dreamed about order­ing it.” Mega­lopo­lis is, in Be Kind Rewind’s final analy­sis, “the apoth­e­o­sis of auteurism, unre­strained spec­ta­cle that ampli­fies Cop­po­la’s best and worst instincts on a mas­sive scale.” Per­son­al­ly, I can’t wait to see it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Hand­writ­ten Cast­ing Notes for The God­fa­ther

George Lucas Shoots a Cin­e­ma Ver­ité-Style Doc­u­men­tary on Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la (1969)

Demen­tia 13: The Film That Took Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la From Schlock­ster to Auteur

Is Amer­i­ca Declin­ing Like Ancient Rome?

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 Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Doctor Who Theme Reimagined as a Jacques Brel-esque Jazz Tune


Writ­ten by Ron Grain­er, and then famous­ly arranged and record­ed by Delia Der­byshire in 1963, the Doc­tor Who theme song has been adapt­ed and cov­ered many times, and even ref­er­enced by Pink Floyd. In the hands of come­di­an Bill Bai­ley, the song comes out a lit­tle differently–a lit­tle like a Bel­gian Jacques Brel-esque jazz cre­ation. This record­ing of “Doc­teur Qui” appar­ent­ly comes from the DVD Bill Bai­ley’s Remark­able Guide to the Orches­tra. Enjoy…

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

How Doc­tor Who First Start­ed as a Fam­i­ly Edu­ca­tion­al TV Pro­gram (1963)

A Detailed, Track-by-Track Analy­sis of the Doc­tor Who Theme Music

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Kurt Vonnegut’s Lost Board Game Is Finally for Sale

Kurt Von­negut’s life was not with­out its ironies. Fight­ing in World War II, that descen­dant of a long line of Ger­man immi­grants in the Unit­ed States found him­self impris­oned in Dres­den just when it was dev­as­tat­ed by Allied fire­bomb­ing. To under­stand the rel­e­vance of this expe­ri­ence to his lit­er­ary work, one need only know that his cap­tors made him live in a slaugh­ter­house. It’s not sur­pris­ing that anti-war sen­ti­ments would sur­face again and again in the books he wrote after com­ing home. But one would hard­ly expect him to have spent his time away from the writ­ing desk on a mil­i­tary-themed board game.

“After releas­ing his first nov­el, Play­er Piano, in 1952, to pos­i­tive reviews and poor sales, he need­ed oth­er streams of income to sup­port his grow­ing fam­i­ly,” writes the New York Times’ Julia Carmel of the young Von­negut. Of all his endeav­ors — which includ­ed pub­lic rela­tions, a car deal­er­ship and a very brief stint at Sports Illus­trat­ed — he was most pas­sion­ate about design­ing a board game called Gen­er­al Head­quar­ters.” Read­ers of Von­negut’s nov­els might expect a sar­don­ical­ly didac­tic object les­son on the futil­i­ty of war, but in fact, “GHQ is a fast-paced two-play­er bat­tle game in which each play­er maneu­vers mil­i­tary units — infantry, armored vehi­cles, artillery and an air­borne reg­i­ment — to cap­ture the oth­er player’s head­quar­ters.”

Von­negut nev­er did man­age to sell the game, which has only just come avail­able for pur­chase at Barnes & Noble stores. Its long-delayed pro­duc­tion was the project of a table­top game design­er called Geoff Engel­stein, who ran across a brief men­tion of GHQ that even­tu­al­ly inspired him to inquire about the game’s sta­tus with the writer’s estate. The 40 pages of notes amid Von­negut’s papers include sev­er­al revi­sions of its rules, but also pitch let­ters to board-game com­pa­nies sug­gest­ing that GHQ could “become the third pop­u­lar checker­board game” — and even “be used to train cadets at the U.S. Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my at West Point.”

Despite prob­a­bly hav­ing missed its chance to enter the stan­dard mil­i­tary-acad­e­my cur­ricu­lum, the game could nev­er­the­less become a must-have among col­lec­tors of Von­negutiana. Accord­ing to the Kurt Von­negut Muse­um & Library’s online store, “this first edi­tion of GHQ fea­tures deluxe wood­en pieces and a 24-page com­men­tary book­let, show­ing Kurt Vonnegut’s actu­al design notes to give insight into his cre­ative process.” It may “lack the sig­na­ture dark sense of humor that runs through Mr. Von­negut’s writ­ing,” as Carmel puts it, but it sure­ly could­n’t be with­out his less wide­ly acknowl­edged — but no less char­ac­ter­is­tic — instinct for enter­tain­ment val­ue.

via The New York Times

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

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

A New Kurt Von­negut Muse­um Opens in Indi­anapo­lis … Right in Time for Banned Books Week

The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Board Game, Inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s Rol­lick­ing Nov­el

Jack Ker­ouac Was a Secret, Obses­sive Fan of Fan­ta­sy Base­ball

The Fiendish­ly Com­pli­cat­ed Board Game That Takes 1,500 Hours to Play: Dis­cov­er The Cam­paign for North Africa

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 Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Thomas Edison’s Recordings of Leo Tolstoy: Hear the Voice of the Great Russian Novelist

Born 196 years ago, Russ­ian nov­el­ist Leo Tolstoy’s life (1828–1910) spanned a peri­od of immense social, polit­i­cal, and tech­no­log­i­cal change, par­al­leled in his own life by his rad­i­cal shift from hedo­nis­tic noble­man to the­olo­gian, anar­chist, and veg­e­tar­i­an paci­fist. Though he did not live to see the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, the nov­el­ist did see Tsar Alexan­der II’s sweep­ing reforms, includ­ing the 1861 Eman­ci­pa­tion order that changed the social char­ac­ter of the coun­try. Near the end of his life, Tol­stoy saw the com­ing of new record­ing tech­nol­o­gy that would rev­o­lu­tion­ize the direc­tion of his own life’s work—telling sto­ries.

In his lat­er years Tol­stoy appeared in the new medi­um of film, which cap­tured his 80th birth­day in 1908, and his funer­al pro­ces­sion two years lat­er. He was the sub­ject of the first col­or pho­to­graph tak­en in Rus­sia (top) also in 1908. And that same year, Tol­stoy made sev­er­al audio record­ings of his voice, on a phono­graph sent to him per­son­al­ly by Thomas Edi­son. You can hear one of those record­ings, “The Pow­er of Child­hood,” made on April 19th, 1908, just above.

You’ll note, of course, that the great author reads in his native lan­guage. Most of the record­ings he made, which he intend­ed for the edi­fi­ca­tion of his coun­try­men, are in Russ­ian. Below, how­ev­er, you can hear him read from his last book, Wise Thoughts For Every Day in Eng­lish, Ger­man, French and Russ­ian. The book col­lects Tolstoy’s favorite pas­sages from thinkers as diverse as Lao-Tzu and Ralph Wal­do Emer­son. As Mike Springer wrote in a pre­vi­ous post on this record­ing, “Tol­stoy reject­ed his great works of fic­tion” as an old man, “believ­ing that it was more impor­tant to give moral and spir­i­tu­al guid­ance to the com­mon peo­ple.” To that end, he made a series of short record­ings, which you can hear at this site, on such sub­jects as art, law, moral­i­ty, pover­ty, non­vi­o­lence, and cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

The sto­ry of how Tol­stoy came to make these record­ings is a fas­ci­nat­ing one. Inter­est­ed in the new tech­nol­o­gy, Tol­stoy made his first record­ing in 1895, when, writes The Moscow Times, “an Edi­son rep­re­sen­ta­tive came to Yas­naya Polyana, Tol­stoy’s estate, to record the author’s voice. Those record­ings were tak­en over the bor­der to Berlin, where they lay in an archive until they were brought back to the Sovi­et Union after World War II.” When Stephen Bon­sal, edi­tor of the New York Times learned of Tolstoy’s inter­est in record­ing tech­nol­o­gy in 1907, he promised to send the nov­el­ist an Edi­son phono­graph of his own. Edi­son him­self, hear­ing of this, refused to accept any pay­ment, and per­son­al­ly sent his own machine to Tolstoy’s estate with the engraved mes­sage “A Gift to Count Leo Tol­stoy from Thomas Alva Edi­son.”

Edi­son asked Tol­stoy for many mul­ti-lin­gual record­ings, request­ing “short mes­sages” in Eng­lish and French, “con­vey­ing to the peo­ple of the world some thoughts that would tend to their moral and social advance­ment.” Tol­stoy dili­gent­ly made sev­er­al record­ings, some of which were then shipped to Edi­son in 1908. On Feb­ru­ary 21 of that year, the New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle on the exchange titled “Tolstoy’s Gift to Edi­son. Will Send Record of His Voice—Edison Gave Him a Phono­graph.” The world eager­ly await­ed the world-famous author’s mes­sage to its “civ­i­lized peo­ples.” It seems how­ev­er, that the mes­sage nev­er arrived. Accord­ing to Sput­nik News, the fate of that leg­endary record­ing “has yet to be found out.” Nev­er­the­less, thanks to Edi­son, we have sev­er­al oth­er record­ings of Tolstoy’s very well-pre­served voice, the record of a life lived to the end with fierce con­vic­tion and curios­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Leo Tol­stoy Became a Veg­e­tar­i­an and Jump­start­ed the Veg­e­tar­i­an & Human­i­tar­i­an Move­ments in the 19th Cen­tu­ry

The Only Col­or Pic­ture of Tol­stoy, Tak­en by Pho­tog­ra­phy Pio­neer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1908)

Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in 4 Lan­guages, 1909

Vin­tage Footage of Leo Tol­stoy: Video Cap­tures the Great Nov­el­ist Dur­ing His Final Days

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

T. S. Eliot’s Classic Modernist Poem The Waste Land Gets Adapted into Comic-Book Form

The phrase “April is the cru­elest month” was first print­ed more than 100 years ago, and it’s been in com­mon cir­cu­la­tion almost as long. One can eas­i­ly know it with­out hav­ing the faintest idea of its source, let alone its mean­ing. This is not, of course, to call T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land an obscure work. Despite hav­ing met with a deri­sive, even hos­tile ini­tial recep­tion, it went on to draw acclaim as one of the cen­tral Eng­lish-lan­guage poems of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, to say noth­ing of its sta­tus as an achieve­ment with­in the mod­ernist move­ment. But how, here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, to read it afresh?

One new avenue to approach The Waste Land is this com­ic-book adap­ta­tion by Julian Peters, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his graph­ic ren­di­tions of oth­er such poems as Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee, W. B. Yeats’ “When You Are Old,” and Eliot’s own “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

It’s an adap­ta­tion, to be pre­cise, of the first of The Waste Land’s five sec­tions, “The Bur­ial of the Dead,” which opens on a First World War bat­tle­field — at least in Peters’ adap­ta­tion, which puts the first line “April is the cru­elest month” into the con­text of night­mar­ish imagery of blood­shed and death — and ends in a worka­day Lon­don likened to Dan­te’s hell.

The Waste Land presents a tempt­ing but daunt­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to an illus­tra­tor, filled as it is with vivid evo­ca­tions of place and appear­ances by intrigu­ing char­ac­ters (includ­ing, in this sec­tion, “Madame Sosostris, famous clair­voy­ante”), and char­ac­ter­ized as it is by exten­sive lit­er­ary quo­ta­tion and sud­den shifts of con­text. But Peters has made a bold start of it, and any­one who reads his adap­ta­tion of “The Bur­ial of the Dead” will be wait­ing for his adap­ta­tions of “A Game of Chess” through “What the Thun­der Said.” Though much-scru­ti­nized over the past cen­tu­ry, Eliot’s mod­ernist mas­ter­piece (hear Eliot read it here) still tends to con­found first-time read­ers. To them, I always advise con­sid­er­ing poet­ry a visu­al medi­um, an idea whose pos­si­bil­i­ties Peters con­tin­ues to explore on a much more lit­er­al lev­el. Explore it here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Read the Entire Com­ic Book Adap­ta­tion of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

A Com­ic Book Adap­ta­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s Poignant Poem Annabel Lee

W. B. Yeats’ Poem “When You Are Old” Adapt­ed into a Japan­ese Man­ga Com­ic

T. S. Eliot Illus­trates His Let­ters and Draws a Cov­er for Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats

T. S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “TheLovee Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

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 Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


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