Miles Davis’ Chili Recipe Revealed

Image by Tom Palum­bo, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

No one cooked on the trum­pet like Miles Davis. And, as it turns out, he was also quite good in the kitchen (see? I spared you a pun). Tired of going out to restau­rants, the food­ie Davis decid­ed to learn to make his favorite dish­es. “I taught myself how to cook by read­ing books and prac­tic­ing, just like you do on an instru­ment,” he wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “I could cook most of the French dishes—because I real­ly liked French cooking—and all the black Amer­i­can dish­es.”

Davis, writes the Chica­go Sun-Times, “knew how to sim­mer with soul […] He made chili, Ital­ian veal chops and he fried fish in a secret bat­ter.” Davis’ cook­book has dis­ap­peared, and he’s appar­ent­ly tak­en his recipe secrets to the grave with him. All but one—his favorite, “a chili dish,” he writes, “I called Miles’s South Side Chica­go Chili Mack. I served it with spaghet­ti, grat­ed cheese, and oys­ter crack­ers.”

While Davis didn’t exact­ly spell out the ingre­di­ents or instruc­tions for his beloved chili in his mem­oir, his first wife Frances, whom Davis trust­ed implic­it­ly with the chili mak­ing, sub­mit­ted the fol­low­ing to Best Life mag­a­zine in 2007. While you’re prep­ping, I rec­om­mend you put on 1956’s Cookin’ With the Miles Davis Quin­tet.

Miles’s South Side Chica­go Chili Mack (Serves 6)

1/4 lb. suet (beef fat)
1 large onion
1 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. ground veal
1/2 lb. ground pork
salt and pep­per
2 tsp. gar­lic pow­der
1 tsp. chili pow­der
1 tsp. cumin seed
2 cans kid­ney beans, drained
1 can beef con­som­mé
1 drop red wine vine­gar
3 lb. spaghet­ti
parme­san cheese
oys­ter crack­ers
Heineken beer

1. Melt suet in large heavy pot until liq­uid fat is about an inch high. Remove sol­id pieces of suet from pot and dis­card.
2. In same pot, sauté onion.
3. Com­bine meats in bowl; sea­son with salt, pep­per, gar­lic pow­der, chili pow­der, and cumin.
4. In anoth­er bowl, sea­son kid­ney beans with salt and pep­per.
5. Add meat to onions; sauté until brown.
6. Add kid­ney beans, con­som­mé, and vine­gar; sim­mer for about an hour, stir­ring occa­sion­al­ly.
7. Add more sea­son­ings to taste, if desired.
8. Cook spaghet­ti accord­ing to pack­age direc­tions, and then divide among six plates.
9. Spoon meat mix­ture over each plate of spaghet­ti.
10. Top with Parme­san and serve oys­ter crack­ers on the side.
11. Open a Heineken.

Men­tal Floss, who bring us the above, also cites anoth­er recipe Davis learned from his father, quot­ed by John Szwed in So What: The Life of Miles Davis. This one comes with no instruc­tions, so “like a jazz musi­cian, you’ll have impro­vise.”

bacon grease
3 large cloves of gar­lic
1 green, 1 red pep­per
2 pounds ground lean chuck
2 tea­spoons cumin
1/2 jar of mus­tard
1/2 shot glass of vine­gar
2 tea­spoons of chili pow­der
dash­es of salt and pep­per
pin­to or kid­ney beans
1 can of toma­toes
1 can of beef broth

serve over lin­guine

Dig it, man.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

1967 Cook­book Fea­tures Recipes by the Rolling Stones, Simon & Gar­funkel, Bar­bra Streisand & More

Ernest Hemingway’s Sum­mer Camp­ing Recipes

Alice B. Tok­las Reads Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge (1963)

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

Watch a Hand-Painted Animation of Dostoevsky’s “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”

Pub­lished in 1864, Fyo­dor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Under­ground has a rep­u­ta­tion as the first exis­ten­tial­ist nov­el. It estab­lished a tem­plate for the genre with a por­trait of an iso­lat­ed man con­temp­tu­ous of the sor­did soci­ety around him, par­a­lyzed by doubt, and obsessed with the pain and absur­di­ty of his own exis­tence. Also true to form, the nar­ra­tive, though it has a plot of sorts, does not redeem its hero in any sense or offer any res­o­lu­tion to his gnaw­ing inner con­flict, con­clud­ing, lit­er­al­ly, as an unfin­ished text. Thir­teen years lat­er, the great Russ­ian writer, his health in decline but his lit­er­ary rep­u­ta­tion and finan­cial prospects much improved, wrote a sim­i­lar sto­ry, “The Dream of a Ridicu­lous Man.”

In this tale, an unnamed nar­ra­tor also med­i­tates on his absurd state, to the point of sui­cide. But he observes this spir­i­tu­al malaise at a dis­tance, recall­ing the sto­ry as an old­er man from a van­tage point of wis­dom: “I am a ridicu­lous per­son,” the sto­ry begins, “Now they call me a mad­man. That would be a pro­mo­tion if it were not that I remain as ridicu­lous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are all dear to me now.” This char­ac­ter, unlike Dostoevsky’s bit­ter under­ground man, has had a trans­for­ma­tive experience—a dream in which he expe­ri­ences the full moral weight of his choic­es on a grand scale. In a moment of instant enlight­en­ment, our pro­tag­o­nist becomes a kinder, more humane per­son con­cerned with the wel­fare of oth­ers.

It is the dif­fer­ence between these two tales which makes the sta­t­ic, inter­nal Under­ground a very dif­fi­cult sto­ry to adapt to the screen—as far as I know it hasn’t been done—and “Ridicu­lous Man,” with its vivid dream imagery and dynam­ic char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, almost ide­al. The 1992 ani­ma­tion (in two parts above) uses painstak­ing­ly hand-paint­ed cells to bring to life the alter­nate world the nar­ra­tor finds him­self nav­i­gat­ing in his dream. From the flick­er­ing lamps against the drea­ry, dark­ened cityscape of the ridicu­lous man’s wak­ing life to the shift­ing, sun­lit sands of the dream­world, each detail of the sto­ry is fine­ly ren­dered with metic­u­lous care. Drawn and direct­ed by Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Alexan­der Petrov—who won an Acad­e­my Award for his 1999 adap­ta­tion of Hem­ing­way’s The Old Man and the Sea—this is clear­ly a labor of love, and of tremen­dous skill and patience.

The tech­nique Petrov uses, writes Gali­na Saubano­va, is one of“Finger Paint­ing”: “Forc­ing the paint on the glass, the artist draws with his fin­gers, using brush­es only in excep­tion­al cas­es. One fig­ure is one film frame, which flash­es with­in 1/24 of a sec­ond while watch­ing. Petrov draws more than a thou­sand paint­ings for one minute of his film.” In Russ­ian with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles tak­en from Con­stance Garnett’s trans­la­tion, the twen­ty-minute “ani­mat­ed paint­ing” sub­lime­ly real­izes Dostoevsky’s tale of per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion with a light­ness and lyri­cism that a live-action film can­not dupli­cate, although a 1990 BBC pro­duc­tion called “The Dream” cer­tain­ly has much to rec­om­mend it. If you like Petrov’s work, be sure to watch his Old Man and the Sea here. Also online are his short films “The Mer­maid” (1997) and “My Love” (2006).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See a Beau­ti­ful­ly Hand-Paint­ed Ani­ma­tion of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (1999)

Watch Piotr Dumala’s Won­der­ful Ani­ma­tions of Lit­er­ary Works by Kaf­ka and Dos­to­evsky

Two Beau­ti­ful­ly-Craft­ed Russ­ian Ani­ma­tions of Chekhov’s Clas­sic Children’s Sto­ry “Kash­tan­ka”

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

 

Everyday Economics: A New Course by Marginal Revolution University Where Students Create the Syllabus

In 2012, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabar­rok, two econ pro­fes­sors at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty, launched Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty (oth­er­wise known as MRUni­ver­si­ty) which deliv­ers free, inter­ac­tive cours­es in the eco­nom­ics space. Dur­ing its ear­ly days, MRUni­ver­si­ty cre­at­ed cours­es on The Great Econ­o­mistsDevel­op­ment Eco­nom­icsInter­na­tion­al Trade, and The Eco­nom­ic His­to­ry of the Sovi­et Union. And now it’s cre­at­ing a some­what uncon­ven­tion­al new course called Every­day Eco­nom­ics. The course tries to show how eco­nom­ics impacts peo­ple’s day-to-day lives. And, rather suit­ably, MRUni­ver­si­ty is invit­ing its stu­dents — every­day peo­ple around the globe — to vote for top­ics the course should cov­er. It’s what’s called a “stu­dent-dri­ven” course.

The course is being built in stages, and you can already watch lec­tures (above) from the first sec­tion, taught by Don Boudreaux. It cov­ers Trade and Pros­per­i­ty broad­ly speak­ing, and gets into top­ics like The Hock­ey Stick of Human Pros­per­i­ty and How the Divi­sion of Knowl­edge Saved My Son’s Life.

The next sec­tion, to be taught by Tyler Cowen, will focus on Food. And right now MRUni­ver­si­ty wants your input on the top­ics this sec­tion might focus on. For exam­ple, you might rec­om­mend that they explain “Why is tip­ping so preva­lent in restau­rants but not in oth­er parts of the econ­o­my?” You can make your sug­ges­tions here.

everyday economics

What oth­er top­ics will the course cov­er as it unfolds? It’s all still TBD. But, again, you’re invit­ed to help shape the syl­labus. Big­ger pic­ture sug­ges­tions are being sought here.

For more cours­es on the Dis­mal Sci­ence, don’t for­get to peruse our list of Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es. It part of our meta col­lec­tion called, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty Launch­es, Bring­ing Free Cours­es in Eco­nom­ics to the Web

An Intro­duc­tion to Great Econ­o­mists — Adam Smith, the Phys­iocrats & More — Pre­sent­ed in New MOOC

The His­to­ry of Eco­nom­ics & Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry Explained with Comics, Start­ing with Adam Smith

Take a Free Course on the Finan­cial Mar­kets with Robert Shiller, Win­ner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Shakespeare’s Restless World: A Portrait of the Bard’s Era in 20 Podcasts

bardtimes_2192865b

The BBC’s acclaimed pod­cast A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects brought us just that: the sto­ry of human civ­i­liza­tion as told through arti­facts from the Egypt­ian Mum­my of Horned­jitef to a Cre­tan stat­ue of a Minoan Bull-leaper to a Kore­an roof tile to a Chi­nese solar-pow­ered lamp. All those 100 items came from the for­mi­da­ble col­lec­tion held by the British Muse­um, and any ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­er to that pod­cast will know the name of Neil Mac­Gre­gor, the insti­tu­tion’s direc­tor. Now, Mac­Gre­gor has returned with anoth­er series of his­tor­i­cal audio explo­rations, one much more focused both tem­po­ral­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly but no less deep than its pre­de­ces­sor. The ten-part Shake­speare’s Rest­less World “looks at the world through the eyes of Shake­speare’s audi­ence by explor­ing objects from that tur­bu­lent peri­od” — i.e., William Shake­speare’s life, which spanned the 1560s to the 1610s: a time of Venet­ian glass gob­lets, African sunken gold, chim­ing clocks, and hor­rif­ic relics of exe­cu­tion.

These trea­sures illu­mi­nate not only the Eng­lish but the glob­al affairs of Shake­speare’s day. The Bard lived dur­ing a time when mur­der­ers plot­ted against Eliz­a­beth I and James I, Eng­land expelled its Moors, Great Britain strug­gled to unite itself, human­i­ty gained an ever more pre­cise grasp on the keep­ing of time, and even “civ­i­lized” nations got spooked and slaugh­tered their own. Just as the study of Shake­speare’s plays reveals a world bal­anced on the tip­ping point between the mod­ern con­scious­ness and the long, slow awak­en­ing that came before, the study of Shake­speare’s time reveals a world that both retains sur­pris­ing­ly vivid ele­ments of its bru­tal past and has already begun incor­po­rat­ing sur­pris­ing­ly advanced ele­ments of the future to come. Even if you don’t give a hoot about the lit­er­ary mer­its of Richard III, Titus Andron­i­cus, or The Mer­chant of Venice, these real-life sto­ries of polit­i­cal intrigue, grue­some blood­shed, and, er, Venice will cer­tain­ly hold your atten­tion. You can start with the “tabloid his­to­ry of Shake­speare’s Eng­land” in the first episode of Shake­speare’s Rest­less World above, then con­tin­ue on either at the series’ site or on iTunes. And if you find your­self get­ting into the series, you can get Mac­Gre­gor’s com­pan­ion book, Shake­speare’s Rest­less World: Por­trait of an Era.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Dis­cov­er What Shakespeare’s Hand­writ­ing Looked Like, and How It Solved a Mys­tery of Author­ship

Fol­ger Shake­speare Library Puts 80,000 Images of Lit­er­ary Art Online, and They’re All Free to Use

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

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.

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

Would that we had a dime for every car­toon­ist whose course was chart­ed hap­pi­ly copy­ing Charles Schulz’s sem­i­nal strip, Peanuts, while oth­er, more ath­let­ic chil­dren played togeth­er in the fresh air and sun­shine.

Such admis­sions pro­lif­er­ate in inter­views and blog posts. They’re near­ly as numer­ous as the online tuto­ri­als on draw­ing such beloved Peanuts char­ac­ters as Wood­stock, Linus Van Pelt, and Schulz’ sad sack stand-in Char­lie Brown.

The short video above melds the edu­ca­tion­al ease of a YouTube how-to with the self-direct­ed, per­haps more artis­ti­cal­ly pure aspects of the pre-dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence, as Charles Schulz him­self pen­cils Char­lie Brown seat­ed at Schroeder’s toy piano in well under a minute.

You’ll have to watch close­ly if you want to pick up Sparky’s step-by-step tech­nique. There are no geo­met­ric point­ers, only a spir­i­tu­al dis­clo­sure that “poor old Char­lie Brown” was a scape­goat whose suf­fer­ing was com­men­su­rate with that of his cre­ator.

His voiceover down­grades the psy­chic pain to the lev­el of lost golf and bridge games, but as car­toon­ist and for­mer Peanuts copy­ist Bill Wat­ter­son, cre­ator of Calvin and Hobbes, point­ed out in a 2007 review of David Michaelis’ Schulz biog­ra­phy, Schulz’s unhap­pi­ness was deep seat­ed:

Schulz always held his par­ents in high regard, but they were emo­tion­al­ly remote and strange­ly inat­ten­tive to their only child. Schulz was shy and alien­at­ed dur­ing his school years, retreat­ing from near­ly every oppor­tu­ni­ty to reveal him­self or his gifts. Teach­ers and stu­dents con­se­quent­ly ignored him, and Schulz nursed a life­long grudge that so few attempt­ed to draw him out or rec­og­nized his tal­ent…

Once he final­ly achieved his child­hood dream of draw­ing a com­ic strip, how­ev­er, he was able to expose and con­front his inner tor­ments through his cre­ative work, mak­ing inse­cu­ri­ty, fail­ure and rejec­tion the cen­tral themes of his humor. Know­ing that his mis­eries fueled his work, he resist­ed help or change, appar­ent­ly pre­fer­ring pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess over per­son­al hap­pi­ness. Des­per­ate­ly lone­ly and sad through­out his life, he saw him­self as “a noth­ing,” yet he was also con­vinced that his artis­tic abil­i­ty made him spe­cial.

Good grief. I have a hunch none of this found its way into the life­long workaholic’s own guide to draw­ing Peanuts char­ac­ters. It’s not a secret, how­ev­er, that a dark side often comes with the ter­ri­to­ry as a slew of recent auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal graph­ic nov­els from those drawn to the pro­fes­sion will attest.

Via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Ani­ma­tions of Peanuts: Com­mer­cials for the Ford Motor Com­pa­ny (1959–1961)

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

New York­er Car­toon Edi­tor Bob Mankoff Reveals the Secret of a Suc­cess­ful New York­er Car­toon

23 Car­toon­ists Unite to Demand Action to Reduce Gun Vio­lence: Watch the Result

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

A Photographic Tour of Haruki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Memory, and Reality Meet

MurakamiMap

Last week saw me in line at one of Los Ange­les’ most beloved book­stores, wait­ing for a signed copy of Haru­ki Murakami’s new nov­el Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age upon its mid­night release. The con­sid­er­able hub­bub around the book’s entry into Eng­lish — to say noth­ing of its orig­i­nal appear­ance last year in Japan­ese, when it sold a much-dis­cussed mil­lion copies in a sin­gle month — demon­strates, 35 years into the author’s career, the world’s unflag­ging appetite for Murakami­ana. Just recent­ly, we fea­tured the arti­facts of Murakami’s pas­sion for jazz and a col­lec­tion of his free short sto­ries online, just as many oth­ers have got into the spir­it by seek­ing out var­i­ous illu­mi­nat­ing inspi­ra­tions of, loca­tions in, and quo­ta­tions from his work. The author of the blog Ran­domwire, known only as David, has done all three, and tak­en pho­tographs to boot, in his grand three-part project of doc­u­ment­ing Murakami’s Tokyo: the Tokyo of his begin­nings, the Tokyo where he ran the jazz bars in which he began writ­ing, and the Tokyo which has giv­en his sto­ries their oth­er­world­ly touch.

dennys-tokyo-1042x586

Murakami’s “depic­tions of the lone­li­ness and iso­la­tion of mod­ern Japan­ese life ingra­ti­at­ed him with the country’s youth who often strug­gle to assert their indi­vid­u­al­i­ty in the face of soci­etal notions of con­for­mi­ty,” David writes, not­ing also that “such com­par­isons fail to do jus­tice to his unique brand of sur­re­al fan­ta­sy and urban real­ism which seam­less­ly blends togeth­er dream, mem­o­ry and real­i­ty against the back­drop of every­day life in Japan.” Know­ing the city of Tokyo as well as he knows the Muraka­mi canon, David works his way from the Den­ny’s where “Mari, while mind­ing her own busi­ness, is inter­rupt­ed by an old acquain­tance Taka­hashi in After Dark”; to Wase­da Uni­ver­si­ty, alma mater of both Muraka­mi him­self and Nor­we­gian Wood’s pro­tag­o­nist Toru Watan­abe; to both loca­tions of Peter Cat, the jazz café and bar Muraka­mi ran with his wife in the 1970s and ear­ly 80s; to Mei­ji Jin­gu sta­di­um, where Muraka­mi wit­nessed the home run that some­how con­vinced him he could write his first nov­el, Hear the Wind Sing; to DUG, anoth­er under­ground jazz bar vis­it­ed by stu­dents like Toru Watan­abe in the 1960s and still open today; to Met­ro­pol­i­tan Express­way No. 3, from which 1Q84’s pro­tag­o­nist Aomame climbs down into a par­al­lel real­i­ty.

peter-cat-jazz-coaster

David also drops into spots that, if they don’t count as ful­ly Murakami­an, at least count as Murakamiesque, such as an “antique shop-cum-café” oppo­site the first site of Peter Cat: “Like a sur­re­al plot twist in one of Murakami’s books the scene of me sit­ting there amongst the mounds of antique junk drink­ing tea from a porce­lain cup was verg­ing on the absurd. More than once I glanced out­side the win­dow just to check that the real world hadn’t left me behind.” If you find he missed any patch of Murakami’s Tokyo along the way, let him know; he has, he notes at the end of part three, almost enough for a part four — just as much of Col­or­less Tsuku­ru’s fol­low-up has no doubt already cohered in Murakami’s imag­i­na­tion, that fruit­ful meet­ing place of the real and the absurd. Here are the links to the exist­ing sec­tions: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

kinokuniya-books3-1024x575

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Trans­lates The Great Gats­by, the Nov­el That Influ­enced Him Most

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.

Moebius’ Storyboards & Concept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

A decade before David Lynch’s flawed but visu­al­ly bril­liant adap­ta­tion of Dune hit the sil­ver screen (see our post on that from Mon­day), anoth­er cin­e­mat­ic vision­ary tried to turn Frank Herbert’s cult book into a movie. And it would have been a mind-bog­gling­ly grand epic.

By 1974, Chilean-French film­mak­er Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky had already direct­ed two mas­ter­pieces of cult cin­e­ma – El Topo and The Holy Moun­tain. Both films are hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry fever dreams filled with nudi­ty, vio­lence, East­ern mys­ti­cism and pun­gent­ly sur­re­al images. Jodor­owsky him­self is what they call in Los Ange­les a spir­i­tu­al wan­der­er. He threw him­self into every vari­ety of reli­gious expe­ri­ence that he could – from shaman­ism to the Kab­bal­ah to hal­lu­cino­gens. In prepa­ra­tion for shoot­ing Holy Moun­tain, the direc­tor and his wife report­ed­ly went with­out sleep for a week while under the care of a Zen mas­ter. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, lead­ing fig­ures of the coun­ter­cul­ture were big fans. John Lennon per­son­al­ly kicked in a mil­lion dol­lars to finance his movies. When French pro­duc­ers asked Jodor­owsky to adapt Dune, he was at the peak of his pres­tige.

dune1

As the 2013 doc­u­men­tary Jodorowsky’s Dune shows, the direc­tor man­aged to assem­ble a jaw-drop­ping group of tal­ent for the film. This ver­sion of Dune was set to star David Car­ra­dine, Orson Welles, Sal­vador Dali and Mick Jag­ger. It was going to have Pink Floyd do the sound­track. And it was going to have the then unknown artist H. R. Giger along with French com­ic book artist Jean Giraud, oth­er­wise known as Moe­bius, design the sets.

Sad­ly, Jodorowsky’s grand vision proved to be too grand for the film’s financiers and they pulled the plug. The movie clear­ly belongs in the pan­theon – along with Stan­ley Kubrick’s Napoleon and Welles’s Heart of Dark­ness – of the great­est movies nev­er made. Com­pared to those oth­er films, though, Jodorowsky’s movie sounds way groovi­er.

dune2

Of all the tal­ent lined up for the project, Moe­bius proved to be cen­tral to help­ing Jodor­owsky real­ize his grandiose vision dur­ing pre-pro­duc­tion. Below Jodor­owsky describes how the famed, and blind­ly fast, illus­tra­tor proved indis­pens­able to him. Above is a clip from Jodorowsky’s Dune, where the direc­tor and Moe­bius describe more or less the same sto­ry.

I need­ed a pre­cise script… I want­ed to car­ry out film on paper before film­ing it… These days all films with spe­cial effects are done as that, but at the time this tech­nique was not used. I want­ed a draughts­man of com­ic strips who has the genius and the speed, who can be used as a cam­era and who gives at the same time a visu­al style… I was by chance with my sec­ond war­rior: Jean Giraud alias Moe­bius. I say to him: “If you accept this work, you must all give up and leave tomor­row with me to Los Ange­les to speak with Dou­glas Trum­bull (2001: A Space Odyssey)”. Moe­bius asked for a few hours to think about it. The fol­low­ing day, we left for the Unit­ed States. It would take too a long time to tell… Our col­lab­o­ra­tion, our meet­ings in Amer­i­ca with the strange ones illu­mi­nat­ed and our con­ver­sa­tions at sev­en o’clock in the morn­ing in the small cof­fee which was in bot­tom of our work­shops and which by “chance” was called Café the Uni­verse. Giraud made 3000 draw­ings, all mar­velous… The script of Dune, thanks to his tal­ent, is a mas­ter­piece. One can see liv­ing the char­ac­ters; one fol­lows the move­ments of cam­era. One visu­al­izes cut­ting, the dec­o­ra­tions, the cos­tumes…

In this post, you can see some of the sto­ry­boards and con­cept art that Moe­bius pro­duced. (More can be found at Duneinfo.com.) Look­ing at them, you can’t help but won­der how cin­e­ma his­to­ry would be dif­fer­ent if this film ever hit the the­aters.

mobiues_jodorowskys_dune_00

mobiues_jodorowskys_dune_01

Via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Revis­it Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hand-

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 @jonccrowAnd check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

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

As a kid who wore Doc Mar­tins to high school gym class and refused par­tic­i­pa­tion on prin­ci­ple, it was my firm belief that “sports aren’t punk.” But had I known then what I know now about the ath­let­ic prowess of one of my heroes, Joe Strum­mer, I might have been a lit­tle more moti­vat­ed to try and com­pete with the great man’s abil­i­ty. A cham­pi­on run­ner dur­ing his lone­ly years at board­ing school, Strum­mer nev­er lost the runner’s bug, sup­pos­ed­ly fin­ish­ing two marathons, and pos­si­bly a third, while with The Clash. Let’s begin with that “pos­si­bly,” shall we? First, watch the clip above from the doc­u­men­tary Joe Strum­mer: The Future is Unwrit­ten.

For con­text, know that before the release of 1982’s Com­bat Rock, the band’s man­ag­er Bernie Rhodes sug­gest­ed that Strum­mer dis­ap­pear to Austin for a while to stir up some con­tro­ver­sy and increase tick­et sales. Strum­mer instead went to Paris with­out telling anyone—turning a hoax A.W.O.L. sto­ry into a real one. He tells it above, casu­al­ly toss­ing out, “and I ran the Paris Marathon, too,” a bury­ing of the lede Grantland’s Michael Bertin com­pares to Buzz Aldrin men­tion­ing his moon­walk between a bass fish­ing sto­ry and his wife’s casse­role. Peo­ple train for months, years, for marathons; Strum­mer, it seems strolled onto the course with his girl­friend of the time, Gaby Salter, and “allegedly”—alleges this Wikipedia entry—fin­ished in an aston­ish­ing 3 hours, 20 min­utes. Lat­er, asked by a reporter to describe his reg­i­men before the race, he said, “Drink 10 pints of beer the night before the race. Ya got that? And don’t run a sin­gle step at least four weeks before the race.”

StrummerParisMarathon

Every­thing about this sto­ry seems sus­pect, includ­ing the fact that in the sup­posed pho­to­graph of Strum­mer and Salter post-race (above)—both in run­ning gear but look­ing as fresh as if they’d just strolled out of the hotel patis­serienei­ther one wears a bib num­ber … “some­thing,” Bertin points out, “that a race par­tic­i­pant should have.” What’s more, Strum­mer was “capa­ble of rewrit­ing his­to­ry to make him­self look bet­ter,” which may explain his cagey reluc­tance to elab­o­rate. Bertin offers many more rea­sons to think the sto­ry a fab­ri­ca­tion, yet there is at least one high­ly cred­i­ble fact to sup­port it: The Lon­don Marathon, which Strum­mer most decid­ed­ly did run (see him below, race bib and all), fin­ish­ing with a most respectable time of 4:13 with­out any pri­or train­ing at all. Chris Salewicz’s Redemp­tion Song: The Bal­lad of Joe Strum­mer quotes Gaby Salter say­ing “He hadn’t trained. He just bought some shorts and said, ‘Let’s run a marathon.’” Salter petered out halfway through. Lat­er in the book, Antony Genn, Strummer’s col­lab­o­ra­tor in the Mescaleros, recounts the hard-drink­ing Strum­mer say­ing of his marathon expe­ri­ence, “I didn’t fuckin’ train. Not once. Just turned up and did it.’”

StrummerLondonMarathon

While this seems patent­ly impos­si­ble, per­haps it’s true after all that the front­man of the The Clash, who weath­ered the rise and fall of punk bet­ter than any of his con­tem­po­raries, had such nat­ur­al phys­i­cal endurance he could casu­al­ly toss off a marathon in-between drunks and packs of smokes. Real run­ners will sure­ly scoff, but if Joe Strum­mer ever did train, no one ever saw him do it. If he were alive now, he’d be 62 years old and prob­a­bly still mak­ing records and knock­ing ’em back. Maybe he’d even breeze through the New York Marathon on his way to the stu­dio. And if we asked him for his secret, he’d prob­a­bly tell us some­thing like he told that reporter who asked about Paris: “’Do not try this at home.’ I mean, it works for me and Hunter Thomp­son, but it might not work for oth­ers.” Yeah, ya think?

via Dan­ger­ous­Minds and Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Doc­u­men­tary Viva Joe Strum­mer: The Sto­ry of the Clash Sur­veys the Career of Rock’s Beloved Front­man

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

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

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