Johnny Depp Reads an Infamous Scene from Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels

in Literature | February 21st, 2014

In 1966, Hunter S. Thomp­son launched his career with the pub­li­ca­tion of Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Ter­ri­ble Saga of the Out­law Motor­cy­cle Gangs. The book was the result of Thomp­son liv­ing with the bik­ers for a year. He drank with them, hung out with them and wit­nessed both their com­radery and their bru­tal­i­ty. “I was no longer sure whether I was doing research on the Hel­l’s Angels or being slow­ly absorbed by them,” he wrote. He was ulti­mate­ly seduced by their out­law mys­tique and par­tic­u­lar­ly by their pas­sion for motor­cy­cles.

In the video clip above, tak­en from the doc­u­men­tary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thomp­son, John­ny Depp reads excerpts from the famed Edge Speech in Hell’s Angels about the joys and ter­rors of rid­ing a bike reck­less­ly at night.

There was no hel­mets on those nights, no speed lim­it, and no cool­ing it down on the curves. The momen­tary free­dom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a waver­ing alco­holic off the wag­on.

Thompson’s flir­ta­tion with the Hell’s Angels end­ed abrupt­ly when he called out a bik­er named Junkie George for engag­ing in domes­tic abuse. “Only a punk beats his wife,” he quipped. Junkie took umbrage and pro­ceed­ed to beat him sense­less.

The book, when it came out, sim­i­lar­ly didn’t impress the Angels. In the clip below, which aired on Cana­di­an TV, an Angel con­fronts a sur­pris­ing­ly qui­et and twitchy Thomp­son before a stu­dio audi­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

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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The Roving Typist: A Short Film About a New York Writer Who Types Short Stories for Strangers

in Creativity, Film, Writing | February 21st, 2014

C.D. Her­melin, a lit­er­ary agency asso­ciate with a degree in Cre­ative Writ­ing, is the self-pro­claimed Rov­ing Typ­ist. It’s an apt title for one who achieved fame and for­tune — okay, rent mon­ey — by appear­ing in var­i­ous pub­lic spaces around New York City, type­writer in lap. Direc­tor Mark Cer­sosi­mo’s short film, above, intro­duces him as a mild-man­nered, slight­ly awk­ward soul. Engag­ing with strangers lured by the sign taped to his type­writer case is where Her­melin comes into his own.

The sign promis­es “sto­ries while you wait,” a con­cept that recalls the “Poems on Demand” author and writ­ing guru, Natal­ie Gold­berg, who com­posed poems to raise funds for the Min­neso­ta Zen Cen­ter. (Her­melin got his idea — and per­mis­sion to imple­ment it — from a guy he saw doing some­thing sim­i­lar in San Fran­cis­co.)

He’s open to requests, and pay­ment is left to the dis­cre­tion of the recip­i­ent. He seems to take extra care when his cus­tomer is a child.

A harm­less enough pur­suit in an era where sub­way musi­cians and car­i­ca­tur­ists lin­ing the path to the Cen­tral Park Zoo hus­tle hard­er than ‘90s-era shell game artistes.

It’s rea­son­able to assume that inno­cent­ly blun­der­ing onto a cel­lo play­er’s turf is the worst trou­ble a guy like Her­melin’s like­ly to stir up.

Instead, he became the tar­get of a mass cyber­bul­ly­ing cam­paign, after a stranger post­ed a pho­to of him and his type­writer parked on the High Line on a swel­ter­ing day in 2012. Cue an avalanche of hip­ster-hat­ing Red­dit com­ments, in addi­tion to a meme at his expense.

Rather than suc­cumb to the vast neg­a­tive out­pour­ing, the Rov­ing Typ­ist con­front­ed the sit­u­a­tion head on, pub­lish­ing his side of the sto­ry in The Awl:

Orig­i­nal­ly, it felt sil­ly label­ing my ven­ture a “cause” while I defend­ed myself to an anony­mous horde—but now it feels any­thing but. The expe­ri­ence of being labeled and then cast aside made me real­ize that what many peo­ple call “hip­ster­ism” or, what they per­ceive as a slav­ish devo­tion to irony, are often in fact just forms of extreme, rad­i­cal sin­cer­i­ty. I think of Brook­lyn-based “hip­ster” brand Mast Broth­ers Choco­late, which uses an old-fash­ioned schooner to retrieve their cacao beans, because the ener­gy is clean­er, because they think that’s how it should be done. I think of the legions of Etsy-type hand­made artist shops, of peo­ple who couldn’t make mon­ey in their pro­fes­sion, so found a way to make mon­ey with their art.

Sub­ject a whim­si­cal project to the forge, and it just might become a voca­tion.

Be sure to check out the bonus out­take “I Was  A Hat­ed Hip­ster Meme” and don’t fret if your trav­els won’t take you near New York City any­time soon. Her­melin and his type­writer are spend­ing the win­ter indoors, ful­fill­ing the pub­lic’s on-demand sto­ries via mail order.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Rees Presents a Primer on the Arti­sanal Craft of Pen­cil Sharp­en­ing

Humans of New York: Street Pho­tog­ra­phy as a Cel­e­bra­tion of Life

What Hap­pens When Every­day Peo­ple Get a Chance to Con­duct a World-Class Orches­tra in NYC

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the long run­ning zine, The East Vil­lage Inky. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Why is Ukraine in Crisis?: A Quick Primer For Those Too Embarrassed to Ask

in Current Affairs | February 21st, 2014

Why have Ukraini­ans been protest­ing since Novem­ber? It’s a ques­tion you might feel strange ask­ing in Feb­ru­ary. But not to wor­ry, The Wash­ing­ton Post has put togeth­er a help­ful video that explains the cri­sis in two min­utes (above), along with a relat­ed primer: 9 ques­tions about Ukraine you were too embar­rassed to ask. A deep­er analy­sis can be found in the pages of The New York Review of Books.

For the lat­est news on what’s hap­pen­ing in Ukraine, you can get live video and social media updates at The New York Times.

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Johnny Rotten Goes Before TV’s Judge Judy in 1997 … and Wins!

in Music, Television | February 20th, 2014

In the clip above, ex-Sex Pis­tols leader John Lydon (aka “John­ny Rot­ten”) goes before TV’s Judge Judy in a 1997 episode of the day­time show. How and why this came about I can­not begin to imag­ine. The case is straight­for­ward enough. Robert Williams, for­mer drum­mer of Lydon’s post-Pis­tols band Pub­lic Image Lim­it­ed, brought suit against the punk icon for breach of con­tract and assault and bat­tery. Judy obvi­ous­ly doesn’t care much for Williams and calls him a “nud­nik.” She seems to like Lydon, though, despite hav­ing to shush his snide out­bursts numer­ous times. It’s also clear she has absolute­ly no idea who he is. “I don’t know from this band,” she says, “This last band I heard was Lawrence Welk… Jim­my Dorsey… Tom­my Dorsey… I don’t know. Those are bands!”

Judy ulti­mate­ly calls out Williams for expect­ing so much order amidst the chaos of the music busi­ness, and she dis­miss­es his suit. And as for John­ny Rotten’s odd fif­teen min­utes on day­time tele­vi­sion? “Per­haps this was the moment Lydon’s ambi­tion as a TV pre­sen­ter was born,” mus­es Dan­ger­ous Minds. Who knows? It’s a long way from the famous Bill Grundy inter­view, yet per­haps not so far from his tele­vised con­fronta­tions of the fol­low­ing few decades. But con­sid­er as evi­dence a much ear­li­er Lydon appear­ance on a 1979 TV court show, “Juke Box Jury” (above), where Lydon and a pan­el of celebri­ties pass ver­dicts on the cur­rent pop hits: “It ain’t the Don­na Sum­mers I know. I hate it. It was awful!”

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sex Pis­tols Front­man John­ny Rot­ten Weighs In On Lady Gaga, Paul McCart­ney, Madon­na & Katy Per­ry

Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s … John Lydon in a But­ter Com­mer­cial?

John­ny Rotten’s Cor­dial Let­ter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Next to the Sex Pis­tols, You’re ‘a Piss Stain’

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

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Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket

in Film | February 20th, 2014

Vivian Kubrick, daugh­ter of the late, great film­mak­er, shot a behind-the-scenes movie about the mak­ing of The Shin­ing (1980) at the ten­der age of 17. For Full Met­al Jack­et (1987) – Stan­ley Kubrick’s next movie — Vivian not only com­posed the score under the pseu­do­nym Abi­gail Mead but she also shot 18 hours of footage for anoth­er planned doc­u­men­tary. That movie nev­er came to pass and most like­ly nev­er will; Vivian broke off all con­tact with her fam­i­ly in the late ‘90s.

Yet frag­ments of the behind-the-scenes footage have found their way into a cou­ple of doc­u­men­taries – Stan­ley Kubrick: A Life in Pic­tures, direct­ed by Kubrick’s long time pro­duc­er and broth­er-in-law Jan Har­lan and in Jon Ronson’s Stan­ley Kubrick’s Box­es. (Ron­son actu­al­ly dis­cov­ered the footage in a sta­ble house on the Kubrick estate.)

Some­one has help­ful­ly strung togeth­er the footage into a sin­gle video. See above. One of the first things that strike you is just how weird the shoot was. Though the film cli­max­es dur­ing the bat­tle of Hue in trop­i­cal Viet­nam, Kubrick is seen on set bark­ing orders in a win­ter coat. That’s because the movie was shot in Eng­land. An aban­doned gas works fac­to­ry near Lon­don, of all places, served as the war torn city.

Kubrick’s famed per­fec­tion­ism shines through in the video. He labors to get just the right spac­ing between lime-cov­ered actors play­ing corpses in an open grave and he tells his actors just how many groin pulls to do dur­ing the famous “this is my rifle, this is my gun” sequence. “It should be three shakes. This is…my…gun. In time to the thing.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing (As Told by Those Who Helped Him Make It)

Room 237: New Doc­u­men­tary Explores Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing and Those It Obsess­es

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

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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Roger Ebert Lists the 10 Essential Characteristics of Noir Films

in Film | February 20th, 2014

A Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion list of Roger Ebert’s 141 “Great Movies” includes only two films noir—The Third Man and The Killing—yet the late great crit­ic had quite a lot to say about the genre. In an inter­view with radio show To the Best of Our Knowl­edge, for exam­ple, Ebert described noir films as teach­ing their char­ac­ters a les­son: “that they’re weak­er than they thought they were and they’re capa­ble of evil that they didn’t think they could com­mit.” His deeply philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion will draw you into the nihilis­tic abyss at the heart of noir. And yet many of his reviews of such films com­ment as much on sur­faces as depths. For all their psy­cho­log­i­cal bru­tal­i­ty, noir films were noth­ing if not styl­ish.

Ebert’s enthu­si­as­tic review of 2005 neo-noir Sin City, for exam­ple, calls it a movie “not about nar­ra­tive but about style… a com­ic book brought to life and pumped with steroids.” Ten years ear­li­er, he wrote on the noir explo­sion of the mid-90s: “Not since its hey­day (rough­ly from 1940 to 1955) has film noir been more pop­u­lar than it is right now.” Ebert’s exam­ples are such hyper-styl­ized films as Pulp Fic­tion, Exot­i­ca, Sev­en, and even Bat­man For­ev­er, all of which ges­ture toward clas­si­cal noir loca­tions and cos­tum­ing fetish­es. And in our post yes­ter­day on 25 time­less noir films, we quot­ed from anoth­er 1995 Ebert piece. This time he writes on clas­sic noir char­ac­ter­is­tics, and brings togeth­er much of his think­ing on the grim themes and louche styl­is­tic man­ner­isms of the genre. Below, we have Ebert’s ten essen­tial com­ments, slight­ly abridged, on what “Film noir is…”

1. A French term mean­ing “black film,” or film of the night.
2. A movie which at no time mis­leads you into think­ing there is going to be a hap­py end­ing.
3. Loca­tions that reek of the night, of shad­ows, of alleys, of the back doors of fan­cy places, of apart­ment build­ings with a high turnover rate, of taxi dri­vers and bar­tenders who have seen it all.
4. Cig­a­rettes. Every­body in film noir is always smok­ing, as if to say, “On top of every­thing else, I’ve been assigned to get through three packs today.”
5. Women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice ver­sa.
6. For women: low neck­lines, flop­py hats, mas­cara, lip­stick, dress­ing rooms, boudoirs… high heels, red dress­es, elbow length gloves, mix­ing drinks […]
7. For men: fedo­ras, suits and ties, shab­by res­i­den­tial hotels with a neon sign blink­ing through the win­dow, buy­ing your­self a drink out of the office bot­tle, cars with run­ning boards, all-night din­ers […]
8. Movies either shot in black and white, or feel­ing like they were.
9. Rela­tion­ships in which love is only the final flop card in the pok­er game of death.
10. The most Amer­i­can film genre, because no soci­ety could have cre­at­ed a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betray­al, unless it were essen­tial­ly naive and opti­mistic.

Be sure to see Ebert’s full piece here. Ebert loved all things noir, includ­ing com­ic book films like Sin City and Bat­man Begins. One of his favorite neo-noirs was Leav­ing Las Vegas (per­haps in part due to his own acknowl­edged alco­holism). But as he avers in his radio inter­view and in book The Great Movies, per­haps his favorite clas­sic noir film was Detour, “a movie so filled with imper­fec­tions that it would not earn the direc­tor a pass­ing grade in film school.” All the same, he writes, the film “lives on, haunt­ing and creepy, an embod­i­ment of the guilty soul of film noir.” Watch Edgar G. Ulmer’s “ham-hand­ed” yet unfor­get­table 1945 Detour above and learn more about the film in this pre­vi­ous post from Col­in Mar­shall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25 Noir Films That Will Stand the Test of Time: A List by “Noir­chael­o­gist” Eddie Muller

The Third Man: Film Noir Clas­sic on YouTube

Roger Ebert Talks Mov­ing­ly About Los­ing and Re-Find­ing His Voice (TED 2011)

The Two Roger Eberts: Emphat­ic Crit­ic on TV; Inci­sive Review­er in Print

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

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The Postcards That Picasso Illustrated and Sent to Jean Cocteau, Apollinaire & Gertrude Stein

in Art | February 20th, 2014

picasso postcard 1

Pablo Picasso’s coterie of friends and col­lab­o­ra­tors was vast and glam­orous. Fol­low­ing his move to France, Picas­so befriend­ed the flam­boy­ant Russ­ian bal­let impre­sario Serge Diaghilev, whose Bal­lets Russ­es sets he went on to design, and whose pri­ma bal­le­ri­na Picas­so went on to mar­ry. Picas­so also became friends with com­posers (such as Igor Stravin­sky) and emi­nent painters, includ­ing his Cubist broth­er-in-arms Georges Braques, and his com­pa­tri­ot, Juan Gris.

Today, we bring you a num­ber of the post­cards that Picas­so sent to his friends, many of which he per­son­al­ly illus­trat­ed, quick­ly dash­ing off a note or a pic­ture in a loose, wavy script. Above, you can view an image of Picasso’s post­card to his close friend and artist, Jean Cocteau, depict­ing the bal­cony at No. 10, Rue d’Anjou, where Cocteau’s moth­er had an apart­ment.  Below, you can view a sketch Picas­so sent off to the fore­fa­ther of the Sur­re­al­ist move­ment, his rotund friend and poet Guil­laume Apol­li­naire. The mes­sage reads, blunt­ly, “I don’t see you any­more. Are you dead?”

Picasso à Apollinaire

In the length­i­est of the post­cards, dat­ing from 1919 and pro­vid­ed by Some­thing Rich & Strange, Picas­so writes to Gertrude Sein, per­haps describ­ing a hol­i­day:

picasso to stein

“Mais non Gertrude,

il n’y a pas des mouch­es et je n’ai vu encore qu’un mous­tique, que j’ai tué d’ailleurs.  Ecrives si le couer vous dit.  Milles bonnes choses de nous deux a vous [et mlle Tok­las]

votre Picas­so.

-

“No, Gertrude,

there are no flies, and I haven’t seen more than one mos­qui­to, which I killed, any­way.  Write me if the mood strikes. All the best to you and Ms. Tok­las.

Yours, Picas­so”

Inter­est­ed read­ers may pur­chase a col­lec­tion of Picasso’s post­cards on Ama­zon.

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:

Six Post­cards From Famous Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Kaf­ka, Ker­ouac & More

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

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Quantum Entanglement Animated

in Animation, Physics | February 20th, 2014

PhD Comics has released the third video in an ani­mat­ed series explain­ing Quan­tum con­cepts and devices. This one focus­es on Quan­tum Entan­gle­ment and fea­tures the work of Cal­tech physi­cists Jeff Kim­ble and Chen-Lung Hung. Mean­while Jorge Cham, cre­ator of PhD Comics, pro­vides the accom­pa­ny­ing ani­ma­tion.

Entire cours­es on Quan­tum Entan­gle­ment can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Physics Cours­es, part of our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Susskind Teach­es You “The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum” for Under­stand­ing Mod­ern Physics

Quan­tum Physics Made Rel­a­tive­ly Sim­ple: A Mini Course from Nobel Prize-Win­ning Physi­cist Hans Bethe

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion

What’s Next for the Large Hadron Col­lid­er? PhD Comics Intro­duces the Search for Extra Dimen­sions

The Famous Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics: The New Online Edi­tion (in HTML5)

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