Dick Van Dyke, Paul Lynde & the Original Cast of Bye Bye Birdie Appear on The Ed Sullivan Show (1961)

in Film, Television, Theatre | August 6th, 2014

Think back, if you will to the dawn of the 60’s, or fail­ing that, the third sea­son of Mad Men, when Broad­way musi­cals could still be con­sid­ered legit­i­mate adult enter­tain­ment and Bye Bye Birdie was the hottest tick­et in town.

Six months after the show’s 1960 open­ing, Broadway’s—soon to be television’s—latest star  Dick Van Dyke, appeared on the Ed Sul­li­van show to intro­duce the rest of the coun­try to the musi­cal their high schools and com­mu­ni­ty the­aters would be per­form­ing in per­pe­tu­ity.

The show­case also afford­ed the Amer­i­can view­ing pub­lic their first glimpse of the man who would out­last Sul­li­van as a fix­ture in their liv­ing rooms, Hol­ly­wood’s most out­ra­geous Square, Paul Lyn­de.

Lyn­de had his camp and ate it too in the role of a solid­ly Mid­west­ern father of two who, by virtue of his asso­ci­a­tion with his teenage daugh­ter, finds him­self appear­ing on none oth­er than… The Ed Sul­li­van Show! It’s a tru­ly meta moment. The stu­dio audi­ence seems to enjoy the joke, and Sul­li­van appears pleased too, when he wan­ders on after “Hymn for a Sun­day Evening” as the song is prop­er­ly called. Accord­ing to his biog­ra­phy, Always on Sun­day, his response upon first hear­ing was less enthu­si­as­tic. When the mer­ry Broad­way crowd turned to check Sul­li­van’s response to Lyn­de’s gulp­ing final admis­sion, (“I love you, Ed!”),  Sul­li­van report­ed that he want­ed the floor to open up and swal­low both him and his wife.

Way to get with the joke, Ed!

Lat­er in the episode, there’s some grace­ful Van Dyke foot­work on “Put on a Hap­py Face,” a song that even the most sea­soned the­ater­go­ers tend to for­get orig­i­nat­ed with this show, prob­a­bly because it does noth­ing to advance the plot.

Lyn­de and Van Dyke reprised their roles in the 1962 film, but in a typ­i­cal tale of stage-to-screen heart­break, Susan Wat­son, Lyn­de’s orig­i­nal Birdie daugh­ter, was replaced by 22-year-old bomb­shell, Ann-Mar­gret. (The deli­cious­ly bitchy remark Mau­reen Sta­ple­ton made about her at the wrap par­ty turns out to be apoc­ryphal, or at least intend­ed more kind­ly than it would seem.) See what she brings to “Hymn for a Sun­day Evening” below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Dig­i­tal Archive of Vin­tage Tele­vi­sion Com­mer­cials

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

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Saul Bass’ Rejected Poster Concepts for The Shining (and His Pretty Excellent Signature)

in Design, Film | August 6th, 2014

saul-bass-poster-design

Stan­ley Kubrick­’s per­fec­tion­ism extend­ed well beyond his films them­selves. He even took pains to ensure the pro­mo­tion of his projects with posters as mem­o­rable as the actu­al expe­ri­ence of watch­ing them. The poster for Bar­ry Lyn­don remains per­haps the most ele­gant of all time, and who could for­get the first time A Clock­work Orange’s promised audi­ences (or threat­ened audi­ences with the promise of) “the adven­tures of a young man whose prin­ci­pal inter­ests are rape, ultra-vio­lence, and Beethoven”? Though less often seen today, the bright yel­low orig­i­nal poster for The Shin­ing, with that uniden­ti­fied pointil­list face and its expres­sion of shock, may well unset­tle you more than even the film itself.

saul-bass-kubrick-poster-concept-1

It came from the office of famous graph­ic design­er Saul Bass, known not just for sto­ry­board­ing Kubrick­’s Spar­ta­cus but for cre­at­ing the title sequences for movies like Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Gold­en Arm and Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go (whose poster Bass also designed), North by North­west, and Psy­cho (whose immor­tal “show­er scene” Bass may also have come up with). Kubrick right­ly fig­ured Bass had what it took to deliv­er the con­sid­er­able impact of his psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror pic­ture in graph­ic form.

saul-bass-the-shining-film-poster-2

“This poster design wasn’t a ‘design and done’ deal how­ev­er,” writes Derek Kim­ball in a Design­Bud­dy post on the evo­lu­tion of the image. “Many of Bass’ con­cepts were reject­ed by Kubrick before set­tling on the final design.” You can see three of them here in this post, and the rest there. Each one includes Kubrick­’s hand­writ­ten notes of objec­tion: “hand and bike are too irrel­e­vant,” “title looks bad small,” “too much empha­sis on maze,” “looks like sci­ence fic­tion film,” “hotel looks pecu­liar.” You’ve got to admit that the man has a point in every case, although I sus­pect Bass knew in advance which design the auteur would, once through the wringer of revi­sions, have the least trou­ble with. “I am excit­ed about all of them,” Bass writes, “and I could give you many rea­sons why I think they would be strong and effec­tive iden­ti­fiers for the film,” but one in par­tic­u­lar, “provoca­tive, scary, and emo­tion­al,” “promis­es a pic­ture I haven’t seen before.”

saul-bass-the-shining-film-poster-3

You have to appre­ci­ate that kind of con­fi­dence in his team’s work when deal­ing with such a famous­ly exact­ing client — and, look­ing at the let­ter itself, you real­ly have to have to appre­ci­ate the kind of con­fi­dence it takes to sign your name with a car­i­ca­ture of your own face on the body of your name­sake fish.

mrbass_0

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Saul Bass’ Vivid Sto­ry­boards for Kubrick’s Spar­ta­cus (1960)

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Pon­ders Why Man Cre­ates

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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Director Robert Rodriguez Teaches The Basics of Filmmaking in Under 10 Minutes

in Education, Film | August 6th, 2014

Orson Welles once claimed that Gregg Toland, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er for Cit­i­zen Kane, taught him every­thing he need­ed to know about shoot­ing movies in a half hour. Direc­tor Robert Rodriguez — who start­ed off as the poster boy for ‘90s indie cin­e­ma and is cur­rent­ly mak­ing a healthy liv­ing turn­ing out movies like Sin City: A Dame to Kill For – claims that he can reduce that time by a third. In 10 Minute Film School, which you can watch above, Rodriguez quick­ly hits on some of the key points of movie mak­ing while espous­ing the same rebel DIY spir­it that made him a suc­cess. Remem­ber, this is a guy who made a fea­ture film, El Mari­achi, for $7000.

Rodriguez’s basic phi­los­o­phy doesn’t dwell on learn­ing the fine points of Aris­totelian act struc­ture or the tech­ni­cal nuances of the Red cam­era. He just wants you to start shoot­ing stuff. “Don’t dream about being a film­mak­er,” he pro­claims in the video, which looks like it was shot some time dur­ing the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion. “You are a film­mak­er. Now let’s get down to busi­ness.”

He tells aspir­ing film­mak­ers to become tech­ni­cal — learn the tools of the trade. If you don’t, you might become over­ly reliant on the techies who may or may not be inter­est­ed in real­iz­ing your vision. He also doesn’t put too much stock in screen­writ­ing books like Save the Cat. “Any­one know how to write?” he asks the audi­ence. “No? Good. Every­one else writes the same way. Start writ­ing your way. That makes you unique.”

He also advis­es against sto­ry­boards. “Make a blank screen for your­self and sit there and watch your movie. Imag­ine your movie, shot for shot, cut for cut…Write down the shots you see and then go get those shots.”

The video shows its age when Rodriguez starts to talk about equip­ment. No aspir­ing film­mak­er aside from a cel­lu­loid fetishist is going to shoot a first fea­ture on 16mm when cheap­er, eas­i­er dig­i­tal cam­eras are avail­able. Yet the core of his mes­sage is still valid. “You don’t want any­thing too fan­cy,” he states over and over. Fan­cy equip­ment makes for life­less, dull films, lack­ing in that reck­less, adven­tur­ous spir­it of the new­bie moviemak­er.

Essen­tial­ly, Rodriguez wants to keep the “inde­pen­dent” in inde­pen­dent film­mak­ing. Just as he tells his charges to get tech­ni­cal, Rodriguez also tells them to keep their bud­gets low. The more mon­ey a stu­dio sinks into a pro­duc­tion, the more they can dic­tate how that mon­ey is spent. Rodriguez had a gui­tar case, a tur­tle and a small Tex­an town at his dis­pos­al when he was start­ing out, and, with that, he strung togeth­er the sto­ry of El Mari­achi. In the 20 plus years since, Rodriguez has main­tained cre­ative con­trol over just about all of his movies.

One final note. “Don’t both­er going to film school,” he says. As some­one with an over­priced MFA in film, I have to say that he’s prob­a­bly right.

via Film­mak­er IQ

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

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

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George Harrison Explains Why Everyone Should Play the Ukulele

in Music | August 5th, 2014

HarrisonUkeNote

George Har­ri­son loved the ukulele, and real­ly, what’s not to love? For its dain­ty size, the uke can make a pow­er­ful­ly cheer­ful sound, and it’s an instru­ment both begin­ners and expert play­ers can learn and eas­i­ly car­ry around. As Harrison’s old friend Joe Brown remarked, “You can pick up a ukulele and any­body can learn to play a cou­ple of tunes in a day or even a few hours. And if you want to get good at it, there’s no end to what you can do.” Brown, once a star in his own right, met Har­ri­son and the Bea­t­les in 1962 and remem­bers being impressed with the fel­low uke-lover Harrison’s range of musi­cal tastes: “He loved music, not just rock and roll…. He’d go crack­ers, he’d phone me up and say ‘I’ve got this great record!’ and it would be Hoagy Charmichael and all this Hawai­ian stuff he used to like. George was not a musi­cal snob.”

“Crack­ers” may be the per­fect word for Harrison’s uke-phil­ia; he uses it him­self in the adorable note above from 1999. “Every­one I know who is into the ukulele is ‘crack­ers,’” writes George, “you can’t play it and not laugh!” Har­ri­son remained upbeat, even dur­ing his first can­cer scare in 1997, the knife attack at his home in 1999, and the can­cer relapse that even­tu­al­ly took his life in 2001. The ukulele seemed a sweet­ly gen­uine expres­sion of his hope­ful atti­tude. And after Harrison’s death, it seemed to his friends the per­fect way to memo­ri­al­ize him. Joe Brown closed the Har­ri­son trib­ute con­cert at Roy­al Albert Hall with a uke ver­sion of “I’ll See You In My Dreams,” and Paul McCart­ney remem­bered his friend in 2009 by strum­ming “Some­thing” on a ukulele at New York’s Citi Field.

In his remarks, McCart­ney fond­ly rem­i­nisced: “When­ev­er you went round George’s house, after din­ner the ukule­les would come out and you’d inevitably find your­self singing all these old num­bers.” Just above, see Har­ri­son and an old-time acoustic jazz ensem­ble (includ­ing Jools Hol­land on piano) play one of those “old numbers”—“Between The Dev­il and Deep Blue Sea”—in 1988. The song even­tu­al­ly wound up on his last album, the posthu­mous­ly released Brain­washed. Just below, see Har­ri­son, McCart­ney, and Ringo Starr sing a casu­al­ly har­mo­nious ren­di­tion of the 1927 tune “Ain’t She Sweet” while loung­ing pic­nic-style in a park.

In Hawaii, where Har­ri­son owned a 150-acre retreat, and where he was known as Keo­ki, it’s said he bought ukule­les in batch­es and gave them away. The sto­ry may be leg­end, but it cer­tain­ly sounds in char­ac­ter. He was a gen­er­ous soul to the end. Just below, see Har­ri­son strum­ming and whistling away in a home video made short­ly before his death. You can hear the hoarse­ness in his voice from his throat can­cer, but you won’t hear much sad­ness there, I think.

And for good mea­sure:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cians Re-Imag­ine the Com­plete Song­book of the Bea­t­les on the Ukulele

Ravi Shankar Gives George Har­ri­son a Sitar Les­son … and Oth­er Vin­tage Footage

George Har­ri­son Wrote His Last Let­ter to Austin Pow­ers Cre­ator Mike Myers, Ask­ing for a Mini Me Doll (2001)

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

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Two Legends: Weird Al Yankovic “Interviews” James Brown (1986)

in Comedy, Music | August 5th, 2014

Last week, America’s reign­ing bard of sil­ly par­o­dy songs, “Weird Al” Yankovic scored his first num­ber one album, Manda­to­ry Fun. His vast­ly improved take on Robin Thicke’s catchy, if deeply creepy, ear­worm Blurred Lines alone might just be worth the price of the album. This week­end saw the release of the James Brown biopic Get On Up, star­ring Chad­wick Bose­man, Octavia Spencer and Dan Aykroyd. So we thought you all might be inter­est­ed in watch­ing Weird Al’s inter­view of the God­fa­ther of Soul in 1986. You can watch it above.

Ok, so that inter­view didn’t actu­al­ly hap­pen. It was cob­bled togeth­er to make it look like Weird Al was pep­per­ing the music leg­end with bizarre and inane ques­tions. Exam­ple: “What was it like the very first time you sat in a buck­et full of warm oat­meal?” or “What can you do with a duck that you can’t do with an ele­phant?”

Back in the ‘80s and ear­ly ‘90s when MTV played videos and not end­less real­i­ty TV shows about the drunk and the vapid, Weird Al reg­u­lar­ly host­ed Al-TV, a par­o­dy of the music chan­nel. Boast­ing the tagline “putting the ‘vid’ in video and the ‘odd’ in audio,” Al-TV fea­tured skits, fake news reports and, of course, Weird Al’s trade­mark music video spoofs. It also fea­tured dada-esque “inter­views,” like the one with Brown. Below we have some more to check out, like this one where Weird Al ridicules that most dull and pompous of pop stars, Sting.

Weird Al’s inter­view with pop genius Prince is real­ly odd, and not just because of Weird Al’s dopey ques­tions — “What do you do when some­one on the street gives you a piece of cheese?” Per­haps it’s that know­ing smirk on Prince’s face.  Or maybe it’s because the inter­view hap­pens while sur­round­ed by his well-coiffed entourage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD4rYdK3y9A

And final­ly, Weird Al doesn’t have to do much with Avril Lav­i­gne. One sus­pects that the orig­i­nal inter­view would be pret­ty fun­ny even with­out the jokes. At one point, Yankovic asks, “Can you ram­ble inco­her­ent­ly for a while about some­thing that nobody cares about?”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

“Weird Al” Yankovic Releas­es “Word Crimes,” a Gram­mar Nerd Par­o­dy of “Blurred Lines”

Every Appear­ance James Brown Ever Made On Soul Train. So Nice, So Nice!

James Brown Blows Away the Rolling Stones in 18 Elec­tric Min­utes (1964)

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

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

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A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Interview (1964)

in Music, Television | August 5th, 2014

Have you heard of the Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to Long-Haired Men? If not, you can’t say you know all of David Bowie’s groups. Fifty years ago, in his very first tele­vi­sion inter­view, Bowie appeared in the capac­i­ty of its spokesman, as well as that of “Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al League for the Preser­va­tion of Ani­mal Fil­a­ment.” “I think we’re all fair­ly tol­er­ant,” says the 17-year-old then known as David (or even Dav­ey) Jones, “but for the last two years we’ve had com­ments like ‘Dar­ling!’ and ‘Can I car­ry your hand­bag?’ thrown at us, and I think it just has to stop now.” Cliff Michel­more, host of the BBC pro­gram Tonight where this all went down in Novem­ber 1964, asks if such behav­ior sur­pris­es him, because, “after all, you’ve got real­ly rather long hair, haven’t you?” “We have, yes,” replies the pro­to-Bowie Bowie. “I think we all like long hair, and we don’t see why oth­er peo­ple should per­se­cute us because of this.”

The “we” to which he refers com­pris­es all the equal­ly mop-topped young dudes flank­ing him. Togeth­er, they would lat­er appear on anoth­er BBC pro­gram, Gad­zooks! It’s All Hap­pen­ing, as the group — this time musi­cal — the Man­ish Boys, per­form­ing their big num­ber, a cov­er of Bob­by Bland­’s “I Pity the Fool.” But accord­ing to the David Bowie FAQ, pro­duc­er Bar­ry Lang­ford had, for that appear­ance, pre­vi­ous­ly “insist­ed that David cut his 17” long hair,” result­ing in the brief for­ma­tion of the Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to Long-Haired Men and, con­se­quent­ly, “numer­ous news­pa­per reports… of course it was all a scam for some free pub­lic­i­ty.” What­ev­er his style — and he’s had a few — Bowie has clear­ly always known how to work the ever-reengi­neered pub­lic­i­ty machine. Some­times he’s done it by going with the flow, but only par­tial­ly, as we see here, where he and the Man­ish Boys sport rough­ly nine-inch hair rather than cuts to the harsh ear­ly-1960s stan­dard. Bowie, nev­er one of rock­’s ded­i­cat­ed long­hairs, can’t have found this too ter­ri­bly oppres­sive in real­i­ty, although when he returned to the BBC 35 years lat­er for a chat with the more stri­dent Jere­my Pax­man, he did so with a look that might have done the old Soci­ety proud.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

David Bowie Talks and Sings on The Dick Cavett Show (1974)

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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Farmer Serenades Cows by Playing Lorde’s “Royals” on the Trombone

in Music | August 5th, 2014

Farm­ers like Derek Klin­gen­berg know that you can enchant cows with music. Above, watch him start play­ing Lorde’s “Roy­als” on the trom­bone and the cows come a run­nin’.

If you’ve been an OC read­er long enough, you won’t be sur­prised by this scene. Ear­li­er this year, we fea­tured A Playlist of Music Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-Proven to Increase Cows’ Milk Pro­duc­tion — a playlist that includes tunes by REM, Aretha Franklin, Simon & Gar­funkel, and Lou Reed. And, before that, we’ve shown you cows groov­ing to some New Orleans-style jazz. Music isn’t just “the uni­ver­sal lan­guage of mankind,” as Hen­ry Wadsworth Longfel­low once said. It belongs clear­ly to our bovine friends too…

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sir Patrick Stew­art Demon­strates How Cows Moo in Dif­fer­ent Eng­lish Accents

Jazz for Cows

A Playlist of Music Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-Proven to Increase Cows’ Milk Pro­duc­tion: REM, Lou Reed & More

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5‑Minute Animation Maps 2,600 Years of Western Cultural History

in Art, History | August 4th, 2014

Work­ing with his col­leagues, Max­i­m­il­ian Schich, an art his­to­ri­an at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Dal­las, took Free­base (Google’s “com­mu­ni­ty-curat­ed data­base of well-known peo­ple, places, and things”) and gath­ered data on 150,000 impor­tant artists and cul­tur­al fig­ures who lived dur­ing the long arc of West­ern his­to­ry (6oo BCE to 2012). The schol­ars then mapped these fig­ures’ births and deaths (blue=birth, red=death) and traced their move­ments through time and place. The result is a 5‑minute ani­ma­tion (above), show­ing how the West­’s great cul­tur­al cen­ters shift­ed from Rome, even­tu­al­ly to Paris (cir­ca 1789), and more recent­ly to New York and Los Ange­les. Maps doc­u­ment­ing the flow of ideas and peo­ple in oth­er geo­gra­phies will come next.

Accord­ing to NPR, “The mod­els [used to cre­ate the videos] are the lat­est appli­ca­tion of a rapid­ly grow­ing field, called net­work sci­ence — which uses visu­al­iza­tions to find the under­ly­ing pat­terns and trends in com­plex data sets.” And they could yield some unex­pect­ed insights into the his­to­ry of migra­tion — for exam­ple, even with the advent of planes, trains and auto­mo­biles, mod­ern artists don’t move too much far­ther from their birth­places (an aver­age of 237 miles) rel­a­tive to the art­sy types who lived in the 14th cen­tu­ry (133 miles on aver­age).

A com­plete report on the project was pub­lished in the jour­nal Sci­ence by Schich and his col­leagues. Unfor­tu­nate­ly you’ll need a sub­scrip­tion to read it.

via NPR/Nature

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Social Media in the Age of Enlight­en­ment and Rev­o­lu­tion

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

Euro­pean Cul­tur­al His­to­ry in 91 Free Lec­tures by George Mosse

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