Jean-Luc Godard Shoots Marianne Faithfull Singing “As Tears Go By” (1966)

in Film, Music | June 12th, 2012

When you want to learn a thing or two about Jean-Luc Godard, you turn to New York­er film crit­ic Richard Brody. I do, any­way, since the man wrote the book on Godard: name­ly, Every­thing is Cin­e­ma: The Work­ing Life of Jean-Luc Godard. He fol­lowed up our post on Godard­’s film of Jef­fer­son Air­plane’s 1968 rooftop con­cert with a tweet link­ing us to a clip from Godard­’s fea­ture Made in U.S.A

That film came out in 1966, two years before the immor­tal Air­plane show but well into Godard­’s first major burst of dar­ing cre­ativ­i­ty, which began with 1959’s Breath­less and last­ed at least until Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il, his 1968 doc­u­men­tary on — or, any­way, includ­ing — the Rolling Stones. Brody point­ed specif­i­cal­ly to the clip above, a brief scene where Mar­i­anne Faith­full sings “As Tears Go By,” a hit, in sep­a­rate record­ings, for both Faith­full and the Stones.

Brody notes how these two min­utes of a cap­pel­la per­for­mance from the 19-year-old Faith­full depict the “styles of the day.” For a long time since that day, alas, we Amer­i­can film­go­ers had­n’t had a chance to ful­ly expe­ri­ence Made in U.S.A. Godard based its script on Don­ald E. West­lake’s nov­el The Jug­ger but nev­er both­ered to secure adap­ta­tion rights, and the film drift­ed in legal lim­bo until 2009. But today, with that red tape cut, crisp new prints cir­cu­late freely around the Unit­ed States. Keep an eye on your local revival house­’s list­ings so you won’t miss your chance to wit­ness Faith­ful­l’s café per­for­mance, and oth­er such Godar­d­ian moments, in their the­atri­cal glo­ry. The cinephili­cal­ly intre­pid Brody, of course, found a way to see it, after a fash­ion, near­ly thir­ty years before its legit­i­mate Amer­i­can release: “The Mudd Club (the White Street night spot and music venue) got hold of a 16-mm. print and showed it — with the pro­jec­tor in the room — to a crowd of heavy smok­ers. It was like watch­ing a movie out­doors in Lon­don by night, or as if through the shroud­ing mists of time.”

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:

Jean-Luc Godard Films The Rolling Stones Record­ing “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il” (1968)

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial

Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Kevin Spacey Plays Hapless Ventriloquist in New Series of International Films

in Film | June 11th, 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOPJxBjHkgc

If only more liquor com­pa­nies thought as cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly as Jame­son, we’d nev­er run out of stunt-ish yet care­ful­ly craft­ed short films to watch on the inter­net. They’ve put on some­thing called the First Shot con­test, which teams up-and-com­ing film­mak­ers from around the world with no less a lumi­nary of stage and screen than Kevin Spacey. Above, you’ll find The Ven­tril­o­quist, fruit of the labors of Amer­i­can writer-direc­tor Ben­jamin Leav­itt. Spacey stars as the tit­u­lar street per­former, work­ing every day the same emp­ty L.A. street cor­ner, long­ing for the same cof­fee-cart girl, and falling into an ever more com­bat­ive rela­tion­ship with Mr. Hig­gins, his polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect, Char­lie McCarthy-era throw­back of a dum­my. Open Cul­ture read­ers will, of course, already know that Spacey has what it takes for the role, hav­ing seen his nine impres­sions in six min­utes.

Spir­it of a Den­ture, writ­ten and direct­ed by South African win­ner Alan Shel­ley, casts Spacey as a den­tist and frigate enthu­si­ast who one night finds him­self alone in his office with an actu­al sea pirate. Enve­lope, below, by Russ­ian writer-direc­tor Alek­sey Nuzh­ny, dress­es Spacey in a bland­ly gar­ish out­fit of Sovi­et casu­al wear. The year is 1985. The place sits some­where behind the Iron Cur­tain. The char­ac­ter is a col­lec­tor of inter­na­tion­al postal can­cel­la­tion stamps, with only the return of a delib­er­ate­ly mis­mailed let­ter to New Zealand stand­ing in the way of his grand pro­jec­t’s com­ple­tion. Leav­itt, Shel­ley, and Nuzh­ny know how to draw on Spacey’s pecu­liar strengths as an actor: his askew-every­man mys­tique, his dis­tinc­tive­ly fine com­mand of seem­ing­ly bland fea­tures, his seam­less assump­tion of voic­es and man­ner­isms that few oth­er play­ers could take on with dig­ni­ty. Even cer­tain A‑list film­mak­ers, as movie­go­ers know all to well, can’t quite man­age that.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Orson Welles on the Art of Acting: ‘There is a Villain in Each of Us’

in Film, Theatre | June 11th, 2012

An actor, said Orson Welles, cre­ates a truth­ful per­for­mance by look­ing into his or her own char­ac­ter and selec­tive­ly tak­ing things away. “There is a vil­lain in each of us, a mur­der­er in each of us, a fas­cist in each of us, a saint in each of us, and the actor is the man or woman who can elim­i­nate from him­self those things which will inter­fere with that truth.” The com­ments are from a pub­lic talk Welles gave late in his life, and are pre­served in this scene from the 1995 doc­u­men­tary by Vas­sili Silovic and Oja Kodar, Orson Welles: The One-Man Band.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was the Genius Behind Cit­i­zen Kane

Orson Welles’ Last Inter­view and Final Moments Cap­tured on Film

Orson Welles Nar­rates Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry, Kafka’s Para­ble, and Free­dom Riv­er

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Michael Lewis Tells Princeton Graduates How Moneyball Rules Apply to Real Life

in Books, Graduation Speech | June 11th, 2012

More and more we see a trend — high cal­iber schools are ask­ing celebri­ties to deliv­er their big com­mence­ment speech­es. Conan O’Brien at Dart­mouth. Stephen Col­bert at North­west­ern. Den­zel Wash­ing­ton at Penn. Tom Han­ks at Yale. The list goes on. Admit­ted­ly, the talks can be enter­tain­ing. But, it’s still a breath of fresh air when schools actu­al­ly put an author cen­ter stage. Wit­ness Neil Gaiman at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts and now Michael Lewis at Prince­ton.

Lewis grad­u­at­ed from Prince­ton in 1982, and went on to write many best­sellers — Liar’s Pok­er, The Blind Side, The Big Short, and Mon­ey­ball, a book turned into a Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion by Brad Pitt. You prob­a­bly know the gist of Mon­ey­ball. Major league base­ball clubs have long over­val­ued star play­ers, and under­val­ued ver­sa­tile ones who fly beneath the radar. That only changed when scrap­pi­er, finan­cial­ly-pressed teams start­ed min­ing base­ball data in intel­li­gent ways. Well, it turns out the same log­ic applies to the work­ing world. Cor­po­ra­tions reward exec­u­tives out­ra­geous­ly, while under­valu­ing many con­trib­u­tors in an orga­ni­za­tion, which leads “suc­cess­ful” peo­ple to believe they’re extreme­ly tal­ent­ed rather than gen­er­al­ly lucky. So here’s Lewis’ mes­sage to Prince­ton grads. When you get rich or famous, don’t get too car­ried away with your­self. Your suc­cess might have to do with “being there,” or being in the right sys­tem, more than any­thing else.

And now for anoth­er real­i­ty check for grad­u­ates — this one from Welles­ley High Eng­lish teacher David McCul­lough Jr. (son of the famous his­to­ri­an) who tells grads “You are not spe­cial. You are not excep­tion­al.” The empir­i­cal evi­dence makes that clear:

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Stanley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Interview with The New Yorker

in Film | June 8th, 2012

Stan­ley Kubrick did­n’t like giv­ing long inter­views, but he loved play­ing chess. So when the physi­cist and writer Jere­my Bern­stein paid him a vis­it to gath­er mate­r­i­al for a piece for The New York­er about a new film project he was writ­ing with Arthur C. Clarke, Kubrick was intrigued to learn that Bern­stein was a fair­ly seri­ous chess play­er. After Bern­stein’s brief arti­cle on Kubrick and Clarke, “Beyond the Stars,” appeared in the mag­a­zine’s “Talk of the Town” sec­tion in April of 1965, Bern­stein pro­posed doing a full-length New York­er pro­file on the film­mak­er and his new project. For some rea­son, Kubrick accept­ed. So lat­er that year Bern­stein flew to Eng­land, where Kubrick was get­ting ready to film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bern­stein stayed there for much of the film­ing, play­ing chess with Kubrick every day between takes. When the piece even­tu­al­ly ran in The New York­er it was appro­pri­ate­ly titled “How About a Lit­tle Game?”

One thing Bern­stein learned about Kubrick was that he loved gad­gets. He had a spe­cial fond­ness for tape recorders. In the pro­file, Bern­stein quotes the film­mak­er’s wife Chris­tiane as say­ing, “Stan­ley would be hap­py with eight tape recorders and one pair of pants.”

So when it came time to do the inter­views, Kubrick took con­trol as direc­tor and insist­ed on using one of the devices. “My inter­views were done before tape recorders were com­mon­place,” Bern­stein lat­er wrote. “I cer­tain­ly did­n’t have one. Kubrick did. He did all his script writ­ing by talk­ing into it. He said that we should use it for the inter­views. Lat­er on, when I used a quote from the tape he did­n’t like, he said, ‘I know it’s on the tape, but I will deny say­ing it any­way.’ ”

Kubrick talked with Bern­stein on a range of top­ics relat­ed to his ear­ly career. In the near­ly 77 min­utes of audio pre­served in the record­ing above, Kubrick dis­cuss­es his bad grades in high school and his good luck in land­ing a job as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er for Look mag­a­zine, his ear­li­est film work pro­duc­ing news­reels, and all of his fea­ture films up to that point, includ­ing Paths of Glo­ry, Loli­ta and Dr. Strangelove. He talks about his work­ing rela­tion­ships with Clarke and Vladimir Nabokov, and his views on space explo­ration and the threat of nuclear war.

The exact time of the inter­view is dif­fi­cult to pin down. Sources across the Inter­net give the date as Novem­ber 27, 1966, but that is cer­tain­ly incor­rect. While it’s true that Kubrick gives the date as Novem­ber 27 at the begin­ning of the tape, Bern­stein’s profile–which includes mate­r­i­al from the interview–was pub­lished on Novem­ber 12, 1966, and Kubrick made cor­rec­tions to the gal­ley proofs as ear­ly as April, 1966. The inter­view was appar­ent­ly con­duct­ed in mul­ti­ple takes start­ing on Novem­ber 27, 1965 and end­ing some­time in ear­ly 1966. Film­ing of 2001: A Space Odyssey com­menced on Decem­ber 29, 1965 (a month after the taped con­ver­sa­tion begins), and near the end of the tape Kubrick men­tions hav­ing already shot 80,000 feet, or about 14.8 hours, of film.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Fil­mog­ra­phy Ani­mat­ed

Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Pho­tographs: Browse Them or Own Them

Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Kurt Vonnegut: “How To Get A Job Like Mine” (2002)

in Literature, Writing | June 8th, 2012

Kurt Von­negut had many endear­ing qual­i­ties, one being that he liked to trav­el to uni­ver­si­ties where he deliv­ered a talk called “How To Get A Job Like Mine.” The sub­stance, how­ev­er, was always dif­fer­ent, and the con­ver­sa­tion often did­n’t focus on the writ­ing life, or any­thing like it. The talk was real­ly a ves­sel for what­ev­er hap­pened to be on Von­negut’s mind, and it prob­a­bly was­n’t uncom­mon for him to mean­der through his talk, as he did here, then pause and say, “Now, let’s see what the hell else I’ve got here. Where did I even start? I don’t know.”

The talk will give you a glimpse into the quirky per­son­al­i­ty that was Von­negut’s, some non sequiturs on sex & gen­der, anec­dotes about his uncle Alex, and then a few heart­felt thoughts on the life worth liv­ing. Even­tu­al­ly, we final­ly get to writ­ing, or some­thing remote­ly approach­ing it. Von­negut was known for giv­ing a humor­ous spiel on the “shape” or “blue­print” of the sto­ry, explain­ing what Kafka’s Meta­mor­pho­sis, Shake­speare’s Ham­let and Cin­derel­la all have in com­mon. If you want to zero in on that famous bit, feel free to jump ahead. But be warned that you’ll be miss­ing a lot of sweet ran­dom­ness and good fun.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Writ­ing Tips from Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

John Steinbeck’s Six Tips for the Aspir­ing Writer and His Nobel Prize Speech

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

What Is a Flame?: The First Prize-Winner at Alan Alda’s Science Video Competition

in Animation, Education, K-12, Video - Science | June 8th, 2012

If an eleven year old child asked you to explain what a flame was, what would you say? When Alan Alda was 11 and posed the ques­tion, his teacher replied, “Oxy­da­tion.”

Unsat­is­fied and still curi­ous, Alda went on to help cre­ate the Cen­ter for Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Sci­ence at Stony Brook Uni­ver­si­ty. This year the Cen­ter issued the Flame Chal­lenge, invit­ing all com­ers to take a stab at explain­ing what a flame is. The only require­ment: Make your expla­na­tion clear, and inter­est­ing, to an 11-year-old.

Sci­en­tists from all over the world sent in entries – some were just one sen­tence (one actu­al­ly stat­ed, “A flame is oxi­da­tion.” Come on!). Anoth­er was a 37-page writ­ten expla­na­tion. After judg­ing the entries (all of which were pre-screened by sci­en­tists for accu­ra­cy), class­rooms of 11-year-olds declared a win­ner: an ani­mat­ed video by Ben Ames, a doc­tor­al stu­dent in quan­tum optics.

In the sev­en-and-a-half minute video, the con­ge­nial voice of a sci­en­tist (Ames) explains a flame to a beard­ed man chained in hell.

“See that fire over there?” Ames asks. “Have you ever real­ly won­dered what the flames are from that fire? I mean look at all those col­ors!”

He goes on charm­ing­ly to describe the process, with­out avoid­ing big words that kids actu­al­ly seem to love: when atoms (car­bon and hydro­gen) react to heat and change form, that’s pyrol­y­sis. That chem­i­cal reac­tion radi­ates light: chemi­lu­mi­nes­cence. Then the changed car­bon and hydro­gen inter­act with oxy­gen and that’s—you guessed it—oxi­da­tion.

But 11-year-olds love music too, right? Ames wraps it up with a song:

The fuel los­es mass, it turns to gas

Before the next change through, some atoms shine blue

When the process is com­plete, it gives off heat

Extra car­bon will glow—red, orange, yel­low.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based edu­ca­tion writer.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Watch Hendrix, The Who, and Others Play 1967’s Monterey Pop, the “First Real Rock Festival”

in Music | June 8th, 2012

Even a mild inter­est in the cul­ture of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can rock will lead you to learn about the Wood­stock Music & Art Fair, those oft-com­mem­o­rat­ed “three days of peace and music” in August 1969. But roll the clock back two years, turn from the east coast to the west, and you’ll find the tem­plate for that icon­ic “Aquar­i­an Expo­si­tion”: the Mon­terey Inter­na­tion­al Pop Music Fes­ti­val. Held from June 16 to June 18, 1967 in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Mon­terey Coun­ty Fair­grounds, Mon­terey Pop fea­tured a who’s-who of the com­ing momen­t’s musi­cal pan­theon: Jef­fer­son Air­plane, Janis Joplin, Simon and Gar­funkel, Ravi Shankar (play­ing for an entire after­noon), and the Grate­ful Dead. In the intense­ly era-dis­till­ing clip above, watch a cer­tain Jimi Hen­drix fire off his inim­itable ver­sion of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” Not bad at all for what Rusty DeS­o­to called “the first real rock fes­ti­val.”

Mon­terey Pop, orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived as a rock-legit­imiz­ing com­pan­ion to the exist­ing Mon­terey Jazz and Folk Fes­ti­vals, brought many of its host­ed artists a kind of pop­u­lar­i­ty they’d nev­er had before. Otis Red­ding, just six months before his untime­ly death, enjoyed his first pre­dom­i­nant­ly non-black live audi­ence in Mon­terey — and they, by all accounts, enjoyed him. Colum­bia Records gave Joplin and her band, Big Broth­er and the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny, a con­tract on the strength of their Mon­terey show (right above). A great deal of high-qual­i­ty film and audio tape of these per­for­mances sur­vives, thanks in large part to doc­u­men­tar­i­an D.A. Pen­nebak­er, whose film Mon­terey Pop remains the defin­i­tive record of the fes­ti­val. Watch any of the footage, such as the clip below of a ram­bunc­tious out­fit by the name of The Who, and you’ll under­stand just how force­ful­ly Mon­terey Pop launched these artists into the zeit­geist.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Wakes Up New York; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Wood­stock Revis­it­ed in Three Min­utes

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.