Monty Python Sings “The Philosopher’s Song,” Revealing the Drinking Habits of Great European Thinkers

in Comedy, Philosophy | March 11th, 2014

Did you know, stu­dent of dead white philoso­phers, that Hei­deg­ger was a “boozy beg­gar”? Wittgen­stein a “beery swine” and Descartes a “drunk­en fart”? What about Pla­to, who, “they say, could stick it away; Half a crate of whiskey every day”? Nei­ther did I until I saw mem­bers of Mon­ty Python sing “The Philosopher’s Song,” above, from their 1982 live show at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. Eric Idle, in what looks like an Aus­tralian bush hat strung with teabags, intro­duces the num­ber, say­ing it’s “a nice intel­lec­tu­al song for those two or three of you in the audi­ence who under­stand these things.” Then Idle, joined by Michael Palin and fre­quent Python col­lab­o­ra­tor Neil Innes, launch­es into a paean to drink­ing that col­or­ful­ly calls the great philoso­phers crazed dip­so­ma­ni­acs. Well, all but John Stu­art Mill, who got “par­tic­u­lar­ly ill” from “half a pint of shandy.”

It’s all non­sense, right? Maybe so, but the Pythons were no strangers to phi­los­o­phy. Hav­ing assem­bled from the august bod­ies of Oxford and Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ties, they per­pet­u­al­ly revis­it­ed aca­d­e­m­ic themes, if only to mock them. And yet some philoso­phers take the work of Mon­ty Python very seri­ous­ly. In his Mon­ty Python and Phi­los­o­phy: Nudge, Nudge, Think Think!, Phi­los­o­phy Pro­fes­sor Gary Hard­cas­tle refers to an essay called “Trac­ta­tus Come­dio-Philo­soph­i­cus,” which “wants us to know that the only dif­fer­ence between Mon­ty Python and aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy is that phi­los­o­phy isn’t fun­ny.” So there you have it. Skip the years of penury and over­work and go direct­ly to Youtube for your high­er edu­ca­tion in the clas­sics from the Pythons. Then lis­ten to Pro­fes­sor Hardcastle—in Open Court’s “Pop­u­lar Cul­ture and Phi­los­o­phy” pod­cast above—expound at length on the philo­soph­ic virtues of Cleese, Idle, Palin, Gilliam, and Jones. And final­ly, a bonus: below watch Christo­pher Hitchens sing “The Philoso­pher’s Song” from mem­o­ry in a 2009 inter­view.

The song grew out of an ear­li­er Python set­up known as “The Bruce Sketch” (below). The sketch is pret­ty dated—some moments cer­tain­ly come off as more offen­sive than per­haps deemed at the time. (Our Eng­lish read­ers will have to let us know if “pom­my bas­tard” smarts.) Four Aus­tralian phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors at the fic­ti­tious Uni­ver­si­ty of Woola­maloo, all of them named Bruce, wel­come a new mem­ber, Michael Bald­win (whom they insist on call­ing “Bruce”). The Bruces seem a nice bunch of chaps until they start in on their rules, reveal­ing a con­temp­tu­ous obses­sion with keep­ing out the “poofters.” It’s per­fect­ly in keep­ing with this assem­bly of ami­able right-wing nation­al­ists: The Bruces inform their Eng­lish col­league that he may teach “the great social­ist thinkers, pro­vid­ed he makes it clear that they were wrong,” and then they get a vis­it from a shuf­fling car­i­ca­ture of an Abo­rig­i­nal ser­vant (whom one must­n’t mis­treat, state the rules, “if there’s any­one watch­ing”). In addi­tion to big­otry, Aus­tralia, pol­i­tics and prayer, the Bruces, their new mem­ber learns, seem most­ly con­cerned with drink­ing rather than phi­los­o­phy. In my per­son­al expe­ri­ence of some aca­d­e­m­ic quar­ters, this is at least one part of the sketch that hasn’t aged at all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an: Reli­gious Satire, Polit­i­cal Satire, or Blas­phe­my?

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

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Watch Episode #1 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos Reboot on Hulu (US Viewers)

in Astronomy, Television | March 11th, 2014

After a long wait, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s reboot of Cos­mos began air­ing on Fox this past Sun­day night, some 34 years after Carl Sagan launched his epic series on the more heady air­waves of PBS. Fox execs pre­dict­ed big num­bers for the first show — 40 mil­lion view­ers. But only 5.8 mil­lion showed up. But, as we know, quan­ti­ty has noth­ing to do with qual­i­ty. Crit­ics have called Tyson’s show a “strik­ing and wor­thy update” of the orig­i­nal. If you live in the US, you can see for your­self. Episode 1 appears above, and it looks like the remain­ing 12 episodes will appear on Hulu. For those out­side the US, our apolo­gies that you can’t see this one. But we do have some great relat­ed mate­r­i­al below, includ­ing one of our favorite posts: Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Neil deGrasse Tyson Deliv­ers the Great­est Sci­ence Ser­mon Ever

Stephen Col­bert Talks Sci­ence with Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Stag­ger­ing Genius of Isaac New­ton

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John Waters Talks About His Books and Role Models in a Whimsical Animated Video

in Animation, Books, Film, Life | March 10th, 2014

Kudos to car­toon­ist Flash Rosen­berg for hav­ing the huevos to illus­trate cult film icon John Waters’ remarks at the New York Pub­lic Library in real time before a live audi­ence. The first half minute of this ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion Por­trait had me wor­ried on her behalf. What a relief when the the coiled lump she was swab­bing with brown water­col­or turned out to be a cin­na­mon roll, and not the sub­stance Divine (the direc­tor’s muse) famous­ly ate—for real—in 1972’s Pink Flamin­gos.

It’s a very free asso­cia­tive process. The top­ic under dis­cus­sion turns out to be not baked goods, but rather role mod­els. (Roll mod­els, get it?)

As to who the Sire of Sleaze choos­es to ele­vate in this capac­i­ty:

Croon­er John­ny Math­is, whose heav­en­ly pipes Waters pre­scribes as a poten­tial rem­e­dy for bipar­ti­san ugli­ness.

Play­wright Ten­nessee Williams (whose work Car­di­nal Spell­man denounced as “revolt­ing, deplorable, moral­ly repel­lent…”)

And, touch­ing­ly, his par­ents, whom Rosen­berg draws with arms encir­cling their pen­cil-mus­tached tot, a sweet Three Is a Mag­ic Num­ber tableau. (In non-ani­mat­ed life, Waters is one of four chil­dren.)

The Prince of Puke mod­est­ly deflects inter­view­er Paul Hold­en­gräber’s asser­tion that he him­self is a role mod­el, advis­ing his fans to pick ten flawed indi­vid­u­als from whom they’ve learned some­thing  and “let them know how much you mean to them.”  (He may have meant “let them know how much they mean to you,” but it might be a fun sort of exer­cise to fol­low his instruc­tions as uttered.)

And if on some far off evening, you’re moved to have sex on his grave, know that this role mod­el’s ghost will rest con­tent.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Waters Makes Hand­made Christ­mas Cards, Says the “Whole Pur­pose of Life is Christ­mas”

Grow­ing Up John Waters: The Odd­ball Film­mak­er Cat­a­logues His Many For­ma­tive Rebel­lions (1993)

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

Ayun Hal­l­i­day told you cha cha heels, black ones! Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Stephen King Creates a List of 96 Books for Aspiring Writers to Read

in Books, Writing | March 10th, 2014

stephenking

Image by The USO, via Flickr Com­mons

I first dis­cov­ered Stephen King at age 11, indi­rect­ly through a babysit­ter who would plop me down in front of day­time soaps and dis­ap­pear. Bored with One Life to Live, I read the stacks of mass-mar­ket paper­backs my absen­tee guardian left around—romances, mys­ter­ies, thrillers, and yes, hor­ror. It all seemed of a piece. King’s nov­els sure looked like those oth­er lurid, pulpy books, and at least his ear­ly works most­ly fit a cer­tain for­mu­la, mak­ing them per­fect­ly adapt­able to Hol­ly­wood films. Yet for many years now, as he’s ranged from hor­ror to broad­er sub­jects, King’s cul­tur­al stock has risen far above his genre peers. He’s become a “seri­ous” writer and even, with his 2000 book On Writ­ing—part mem­oir, part “textbook”—something of a writer’s writer, mov­ing from the super­mar­ket rack to the pages of The Paris Review. 

Few con­tem­po­rary writ­ers have chal­lenged the some­what arbi­trary divi­sion between lit­er­ary and so-called genre fic­tion so much as Stephen King, whose sta­tus pro­vokes word wars like this recent debate at the Los Ange­les Review of Books. What­ev­er adjec­tives crit­ics throw at him, King plows ahead, turn­ing out book after book, refin­ing his craft, hap­pi­ly shar­ing his insights, and read­ing what­ev­er he likes. As evi­dence of his dis­re­gard for aca­d­e­m­ic canons, we have his read­ing list for writ­ers, which he attached as an appen­dix to On Writ­ing. Best-sell­ing genre writ­ers like Nel­son DeMille, Thomas Har­ris, and needs-no-intro­duc­tion J.K. Rowl­ing sit com­fort­ably next to lit-class sta­ples like Dick­ens, Faulkn­er, and Con­rad. King rec­om­mends con­tem­po­rary real­ist writ­ers like Richard Bausch, John Irv­ing, and Annie Proulx along­side the occa­sion­al post­mod­ernist or “dif­fi­cult” writer like Don DeLil­lo or Cor­mac McCarthy. He includes sev­er­al non-fic­tion books as well.

King pref­aces the list with a dis­claimer: “I’m not Oprah and this isn’t my book club. These are the ones that worked for me, that’s all.” Below, we’ve excerpt­ed twen­ty good reads he rec­om­mends for bud­ding writ­ers. These are books, King writes, that direct­ly inspired him: “In some way or oth­er, I sus­pect each book in the list had an influ­ence on the books I wrote.” To the writer, he says, “a good many of these might show you some new ways of  doing your work.” And for the read­er? “They’re apt to enter­tain you. They cer­tain­ly enter­tained me.”

10. Richard Bausch, In the Night Sea­son
12. Paul Bowles, The Shel­ter­ing Sky
13. T. Cor­aghes­san Boyle, The Tor­tilla Cur­tain
17. Michael Chabon, Were­wolves in Their Youth
28. Rod­dy Doyle, The Woman Who Walked into Doors
31. Alex Gar­land, The Beach
42. Peter Hoeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow
49. Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club
53. Bar­bara King­solver, The Poi­son­wood Bible
54. Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
58. Nor­man Maclean, A Riv­er Runs Through It and Oth­er Sto­ries
62. Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ash­es
66. Ian McE­wan, The Cement Gar­den
67. Lar­ry McMurtry, Dead Man’s Walk
70. Joyce Car­ol Oates, Zom­bie
71. Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods
73. Michael Ondaat­je, The Eng­lish Patient
84. Richard Rus­so, Mohawk
86. Vikram Seth, A Suit­able Boy
93. Anne Tyler, A Patch­work Plan­et

Like much of King’s own work, many of these books sug­gest a spec­trum, not a chasm, between the lit­er­ary and the com­mer­cial, and many of their writ­ers have found suc­cess with screen adap­ta­tions and Barnes & Noble dis­plays as well as wide­spread crit­i­cal acclaim. For the full range of King’s selec­tions, see the entire list of 96 books at Aero­gramme Writ­ers’ Stu­dio.

via Gal­l­ey­cat

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King Turns Short Sto­ry into a Free Web­com­ic

Stephen King Writes A Let­ter to His 16-Year-Old Self: “Stay Away from Recre­ation­al Drugs”

Stephen King Reads from His Upcom­ing Sequel to The Shin­ing

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

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

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The Only Drawing from Maurice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illustrate The Hobbit

in Art, Books | March 10th, 2014

SendakHobbit1

I envy nobody the clear­ly tor­tur­ous task of inter­pret­ing the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, from Peter Jack­son on down. With his three Lord of the Rings films in the ear­ly 2000s, New Zealand’s cin­e­mat­ic native son actu­al­ly did an admirable job of deflect­ing much of the inevitable wrath of Tolkien’s enor­mous, high­ly detail-ori­ent­ed, eas­i­ly angered inter­na­tion­al fan base. One sens­es, how­ev­er, that he stands on slight­ly less firm ground with his new­er adap­ta­tion, and indeed expan­sion, of The Hob­bit. The nov­el, which Tolkien wrote for chil­dren in 1937 and whose suc­cess led him to go the full dis­tance with the Lord of the Rings books, now finds itself turn­ing into its own trio of film spec­ta­cles, each install­ment of which gets the strongest pos­si­ble mar­ket­ing push (up to and includ­ing Mid­dle-Earth-themed dish­es at Den­ny’s) upon its the­atri­cal release. It can seem an awful­ly grand treat­ment for a hum­ble (if endur­ing­ly adven­tur­ous) book. To grant The Hob­bit a sep­a­rate visu­al dimen­sion, then, would­n’t we want a tal­ent which, though for­mi­da­ble, tend­ed toward sub­tle­ty and under­state­ment — and, lest we for­get the nov­el­’s tar­get audi­ence, one who under­stands chil­dren?

CA.0322.tolkein-sendak.

We near­ly had one in Mau­rice Sendak, he of Where the Wild Things Are, who in the mid-1960s cre­at­ed sam­ple art­work for The Hob­bit’s pro­posed 30th-anniver­sary deluxe illus­trat­ed edi­tion. For a vari­ety of rea­sons, from Sendak’s reluc­tance to Tolkien’s crank­i­ness to a label­ing sna­fu by the pub­lish­er to a heart attack that took Sendak out of com­mis­sion for a while, the promis­ing con­cept nev­er came to fruition. Specifics of the accounts con­flict, though you can find one from Tony DiTer­l­izzi at the Los Ange­les Times and anoth­er, propos­ing cor­rec­tions to the for­mer, at Too Many Books and Nev­er Enough. What­ev­er the ulti­mate obsta­cle, Sendak com­plet­ed just two draw­ings for the book; the only one that sur­vives appears at the top of this post, show­ing us how he envi­sioned the hob­bit hero Bil­bo Bag­gins and the wiz­ard Gan­dalf.  Just above, we have Tolkien’s own draw­ing of Bil­bo at home, prov­ing him none too shab­by an illus­tra­tor in his own right, and one who by def­i­n­i­tion gets the details right. Still, I grieve for nev­er hav­ing seen the direc­tions in which Sendak could have tak­en this bit of mate­r­i­al from the beloved Tolkien canon — and, bet­ter yet, what minor here­sies the irrev­er­ent artist could have sly­ly inflict­ed upon it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

The Mind & Art of Mau­rice Sendak: A Video Sketch

Watch the Ani­ma­tion of Mau­rice Sendak’s Sur­re­al and Con­tro­ver­sial Sto­ry, In the Night Kitchen

Down­load Eight Free Lec­tures on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

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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Download Over 22,000 Golden & Silver Age Comic Books from the Comic Book Plus Archive

in Archives, Comics/Cartoons | March 10th, 2014

HORIZONTALBESTCOMICS

The decade begin­ning with the late 1930s is known as the Gold­en Age of com­ic books. Many of the super­heroes from today’s block­buster fran­chis­es, includ­ing Bat­man, Super­man, and Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, emerged dur­ing this peri­od, and the indus­try grew into a com­mer­cial pow­er­house. Fol­low­ing a sales dip dur­ing the ear­ly 1950s that marked the end of the Gold­en Age, the Sil­ver Age began (cir­ca 1956) and last­ed for some fif­teen years.

Dur­ing this era, super­hero com­ic books ini­tial­ly lost steam — let­ting sto­ries of hor­ror, romance, and crime grow in pop­u­lar­i­ty — before emerg­ing tri­umphant­ly once more with char­ac­ters like Spi­der-Man and The Flash. While copy­right remains very much in effect for such titles, a slew of com­ic books from the same peri­od, many of which have nar­row­ly missed attain­ing such icon­ic sta­tus, are avail­able online at Com­ic Book Plus.

DAREDEVIL

Sim­i­lar to the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um, which we wrote about last week, Com­ic Book Plus con­tains a near inex­haustible quan­ti­ty of Gold­en and Sil­ver Age com­ic books. The collection’s times­pan ranges from the late 1930s through to the ear­ly 1960s, and includes many thou­sands of com­ic books in the Super­hero, Sci-Fi, and Hor­ror gen­res.

LINDALARK

Those han­ker­ing for some­thing a lit­tle more unusu­al will also be in luck. Des­per­ate to read about a hos­pi­tal romance? Why not give Lin­da Lark Stu­dent Nurse a read in the Med­ical Love cat­e­go­ry? Sick of land­lub­bers hog­ging all the atten­tion in com­ic books? Head to the Water/Boats sec­tion, where you can read all about Davy Jones, the navy lieu­tenant who lives in Atlantis and does bat­tle with the evil Dr. Fang, in Under­sea Agent.

UNDERSEAAGENT

Com­ic Book Plus also has a ter­rif­ic selec­tion of for­eign com­ic books, includ­ing impres­sive col­lec­tions in Ger­man, Hin­di, Ital­ian, Por­tuguese, and Span­ish. You can see Super Hombre here.

SUPERHOMBRE

Final­ly, the site con­tains a num­ber of U.S. gov­ern­ment edu­ca­tion­al pam­phlets, includ­ing Bert The Tur­tle Says Duck And Cov­er, a guide to sur­viv­ing atom­ic bomb blasts.

BERTTHETURTLE

For fur­ther read­ing, head on over to Com­ic Book Plus. You can pre­view all mate­ri­als with­out reg­is­tra­tion. But you will need to reg­is­ter (for free) if you want to down­load the var­i­ous com­ic books.

H/T to Yoc­itrus for mak­ing us aware of this archive.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Free Com­ic Books Turn Kids Onto Physics: Start with the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

The Pulp Fic­tion Archive: The Cheap, Thrilling Sto­ries That Enter­tained a Gen­er­a­tion of Read­ers (1896–1946) 

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Martin Scorsese, Sonic Youth, Guillermo del Toro, Wes Anderson & Other Icons List Their Top 10 Art Films

in Film | March 10th, 2014

the red shoes movie poster

If you are a movie maven, you know about the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion. Since the days of Laserdiscs, Cri­te­ri­on has made a name for itself by amass­ing a vast and thor­ough cat­a­log of indie films, art house flicks and the occa­sion­al block­buster. They dis­trib­ute DVDs of direc­tors as diverse as Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Jane Cam­pi­on, and Stan Brakhage.

For their web­site, Cri­te­ri­on has asked a num­ber of film­mak­ers, writ­ers and oth­er cul­tur­al fig­ures to come up with their Top 10 Cri­te­ri­on movies ever. They are fas­ci­nat­ing, illu­mi­nat­ing and often sur­pris­ing.

The late, great band Son­ic Youth – which made a name for itself for its loud, growl­ing gui­tars and end­less lay­ers of noisy feed­back — picked some remark­ably qui­et, med­i­ta­tive movies: Yasu­jiro Ozu’s con­tem­pla­tive late mas­ter­piece Float­ing Weeds tops the list and Chan­tal Aker­man’s three-hour long min­i­mal­ist mas­ter­piece Jeanne Diel­man, 23, quai du Com­merce, 1080 Brux­elles comes in at num­ber two.

Like­wise, low-bud­get hor­ror leg­end Roger Cor­man picked Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni’s high art mas­ter­piece L’avventura as his top pick. “Nev­er has ‘wait­ing around’ been so glo­ri­ous,” he writes.

Less sur­pris­ing are Mar­tin Scors­ese’s picks. He puts Rober­to Rossellini’s Paisan at num­ber one and Michael Pow­ell and Emer­ic Pressburger’s Tech­ni­col­or mar­vel The Red Shoes at num­ber two. Scors­ese has on mul­ti­ple occa­sions declared his love of the for­mer and was cen­tral to get­ting the lat­ter restored.

Edgar Wright – direc­tor of Scott Pil­grim vs. the World and last summer’s apoc­a­lyp­tic com­e­dy The World’s End – proud­ly picked Bri­an DePal­ma’s Blow Out as his top movie. “I have heard peo­ple call them­selves Bri­an De Pal­ma apol­o­gists,” he writes. “I am proud to say that I am a huge fan with­out any caveats.”

And The Exor­cist direc­tor William Fried­kin reveals him­self to be a fan of Alain Resnais, plac­ing both Night and Fog and The Last Year at Marien­bad high on his list. His praise of the recent­ly depart­ed French New Wave icon’s most famous movie is also an elo­quent defense of any chal­leng­ing movie.

I’ve seen Marien­bad at least twen­ty times over the past fifty years, and I don’t under­stand one scene of it, but what a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence. I don’t 
under­stand the Grand Canyon or Schoenberg’s Trans­fig­ured Night, either, but they con­tin­ue to move me.

You can see all of the Cri­te­ri­on top ten lists here. Oth­er fig­ures on the list include Jonathan Lethem, the Beast­ie Boys’ Adam Yauch, James Fran­co, Lena Dun­ham, Guiller­mo del Toro, Wes Ander­son, John Lurie, Brie Lar­son, Don­ald Fagen & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

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

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

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200 Free Documentaries: A Super Rich List of Finely-Crafted Documentaries on the Web

in Film | March 8th, 2014

I’ve often called doc­u­men­tary my favorite kind of film, know­ing full well that the label des­ig­nates less a defined genre than a use­ful­ly mal­leable descrip­tion. What does a doc­u­men­tary have? An unscript­ed, non­fic­tion­al sto­ry; inter­views; footage can­did­ly shot — maybe. It may also include script­ed, staged, fic­tion­al mate­r­i­al, and may treat real events in a fic­tion­al­ized man­ner or search for the real­i­ty in events cloud­ed by fic­tion. For fine exam­ples of the last, see the works of Errol Mor­ris, four of which — A Brief His­to­ry of Time on Stephen Hawk­ing (above), Novem­ber 22, 1963 on JFK, They Were There on IBM, and Wern­er Her­zog Eats His Shoe on, well, sub­ject obvi­ous – you can see right here in our col­lec­tion of 200 free doc­u­men­taries online. And speak­ing of Her­zog, the oth­er liv­ing film­mak­er doing the most to push out­ward the bound­aries of doc­u­men­tary, we have From One Sec­ond to the Next, on the dan­gers of tex­ting while dri­ving, and Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog, on his own life and work.

But cin­e­ma had the doc­u­men­tary long before it had the likes of Mor­ris and Her­zog, and our col­lec­tion includes a diver­si­ty of such pic­tures from all over the past cen­tu­ry. 1958’s Ansel Adams: Pho­tog­ra­ph­er, for instance, pro­files in motion the prac­tice of the man whose work in still imagery antic­i­pat­ed, in many ways, the mod­ern nature doc­u­men­tary. Doc­u­men­tary films have arguably pro­vid­ed the rich­est means of view­ing every kind of cre­ative mind at work, from Alfred Hitch­cock (The Men Who Made the Movies: Hitch­cock, Dial H for Hitch­cock) to James Joyce (The Tri­als of Ulysses) to Joni Mitchell (Woman of Heart and Mind) to Charles Bukows­ki (Born Into This). Some of them even came as ear­ly entries from not-yet famous direc­tors, includ­ing Stan­ley Kubrick (Day of the Flight, Fly­ing Padre, The Sea­far­ers), Jean-Luc Godard (Oper­a­tion Con­crete), and Kevin Smith (Mae Day: The Crum­bling of a Doc­u­men­tary). Nobody can ever say where the doc­u­men­tary form will go next, but watch these 200 and you’ll have a pret­ty fair idea of all the excit­ing places — geo­graph­i­cal, intel­lec­tu­al, per­son­al, and artis­tic — it’s gone already.

See our col­lec­tion of 200 free doc­u­men­taries online, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion of 635 Free Movies Online.

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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