New Video Essay Celebrates HBO’s Deadwood, One of the Greatest Dramas in American TV History

We live in a gold­en age of tele­vi­sion, not just because tech­nol­o­gy lets us watch shows when­ev­er we like, how­ev­er we like — thus free­ing shows from the tedious need to repeat past events every episode, or worse, to forego the idea of an over­ar­ch­ing sto­ry entire­ly — but because tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides us so many ways to talk about the shows as well. When else, for exam­ple, could a crit­ic like Matt Zoller Seitz make the kind of thought­ful video essays he does for so wide an audi­ence? He does­n’t even labor under the oblig­a­tion to write only about cur­rent pro­grams, and you can see the fruits of that free­dom in his new video essay above. “A Lie Agreed Upon,” pro­duced for the tenth anniver­sary of the debut of HBO’s Dead­wood, exam­ines the still-res­o­nant neo-West­ern series cre­at­ed by tele­vi­sion auteur David Milch, its gen­e­sis, its artis­tic accom­plish­ments, and what it still has to say about soci­ety. “If you’ve read my work,” writes Zoller-Seitz on his blog at RogerEbert.com, “you know I nev­er miss an oppor­tu­ni­ty to work Dead­wood into the con­ver­sa­tion, as a legit­i­mate point of com­par­i­son with oth­er shows or films or because I just love talk­ing about it.”

Zoller-Seitz chan­nels this crit­i­cal com­pul­sion into “a stand-alone, near­ly half-hour-long piece, co-pro­duced with Hit­Fix, that looks at the show’s style and major themes, as well as its roots in dif­fer­ent gen­res, includ­ing the West­ern and the gang­ster pic­ture.” On that  page, you can even read the essay’s anno­tat­ed script, which gives you a look at the thought behind this short but rich exe­ge­sis on “one of the great­est dra­mas in Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion his­to­ry,” a show that, though orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived for an ancient Roman set­ting, flaw­less­ly made the tran­si­tion to a sto­ry of “the found­ing of civ­i­liza­tion” in post-Civ­il War South Dako­ta. Going from “lewd farce” to “com­e­dy of man­ners” to “polit­i­cal dra­ma,” Dead­wood holds fast to the theme of the basic truths, real or imag­ined, around which soci­ety coheres. After run­ning down the series’ rough-and-tum­ble cast of char­ac­ters, most of them addict­ed to one prim­i­tive Old West drug or anoth­er — booze, lau­danum, hope — Zoller-Seitz para­phras­es Milch’s own thoughts on the sub­ject: “A com­mu­ni­ty’s col­lec­tive agree­ment on cer­tain prin­ci­ples can be yet anoth­er kind of intox­i­cant — per­haps the most pow­er­ful one of all.”

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Wayne: 26 Free West­ern Films Online

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

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.

Orson Welles Reads From America’s Greatest Poem, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1953)

Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass often makes its way into the hands of over­sized Amer­i­can char­ac­ters of, shall we say, uncer­tain repute. We learned, for exam­ple, under scan­dalous cir­cum­stances, of Bill Clin­ton’s admi­ra­tion for the book, and we’ll nev­er for­get the role it played in the rise and fall of sim­i­lar­ly allit­er­a­tive­ly named, pow­er-mad Wal­ter White.

Anoth­er fic­tion­al mastermind—Sideshow Bob—quotes glee­ful­ly from Leaves of Grass in a recent Simp­sons episode. And per­haps the most out­ré char­ac­ter of them all—the florid speech of the rogue and pimp Al Swearen­gen in HBO’s Dead­woodderives in part from the “bar­bar­ic yawp” Whit­man describes as his native tongue in the poem from which the book’s title comes, “Song of Myself.”

One of the many rea­sons this par­tic­u­lar poem from Leaves of Grass cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion of out­law intel­lec­tu­als (and nar­cis­sists) may be Whitman’s inven­tion of a new Amer­i­can poet­ic idiom for the elo­quent asser­tion of stri­dent­ly defi­ant per­son­al iden­ti­ties. (As Ezra Pound put it, Whit­man “broke the new wood.”) The Guardian placed “Song of Myself” at the top of a 10 best Amer­i­can poems list for the “peer­less self-per­for­mance” of the poem’s hyp­not­ic cadences. Who bet­ter to inter­pret those lines than anoth­er self-invent­ed Amer­i­can con­trar­i­an, Orson Welles?

Dur­ing some dif­fi­cult times in the fifties—in part due to Welles’ IRS trouble—the great actor/di­rec­tor/­mul­ti-media impre­sario found work on radio plays in Eng­land, includ­ing The Lives of Har­ry Lime (based on his char­ac­ter in The Third Man) and The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes (as Mori­ar­ty). In 1953, the BBC con­tract­ed with Welles to record an hour of read­ings from “Song of Myself.” BBC 3 broad­cast the ses­sion, and it lat­er saw release as an LP, now sad­ly out of print. For­tu­nate­ly, how­ev­er, much of this record­ing has been dig­i­tal­ly pre­served. At the top, hear Welles read sec­tion VI of the poem, and direct­ly above, hear him read the hereti­cal sec­tion XLVIII. The Mick­le Street Review, an online jour­nal of Whit­man stud­ies, hosts a small part of Side 1 and, it appears, all of Side 2 of the record, below. The text of the poem was too long for a full treat­ment, and Welles, it seems, abridged and adapt­ed some of the work him­self. His read­ing was appar­ent­ly very well received by the UK press.

Side 1:

Side 2:

While the BBC com­mis­sioned the recordings—and Welles no doubt need­ed the money—he already had an affin­i­ty for Whit­man. In the same year he com­plete­ly re-invent­ed Amer­i­can film with Cit­i­zen Kane, he also began broad­cast­ing the Orson Welles Show on CBS Radio, on which he and his guests gave dra­mat­ic read­ings from dra­ma, poet­ry, and fic­tion. Welles pro­duced 19 episodes, though only 8 have sur­vived. One of the lost episodes, from Decem­ber 1, 1941, fea­tured Welles read­ing from Leaves of Grass. As fur­ther evi­dence, we have this pho­to­graph of Welles read­ing Gay Wil­son Allen’s The Soli­tary Singer, a crit­i­cal biog­ra­phy of the poet.

What draws Welles, and rest­less per­son­al­i­ties like him, to Whit­man, and espe­cial­ly to Leaves of Grass? One answer lies in Whit­man’s own life. Ear­ly on, PBS’s Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence tells us, Whit­man staked out “rad­i­cal posi­tions… putting him in near con­stant oppo­si­tion to soci­ety’s pre­vail­ing sen­ti­ments.” He nev­er mod­er­at­ed his views or his voice, though faced with charges of blas­phe­my, obscen­i­ty, bad writ­ing, and var­i­ous oth­er pub­lic vices at the time. Whit­man’s stead­fast com­mit­ment to his polit­i­cal and artis­tic vision brought him world­wide acclaim, as well as cen­sure, in his life­time. A par­tic­u­lar­ly scathing 1882 Atlantic review of the sec­ond print­ing of Leaves of Grass cat­a­logues Whit­man’s lit­er­ary abus­es and con­cludes that “the book can­not attain to any very wide influ­ence.” Despite this ter­ri­bly wrong­head­ed pre­dic­tion, the review­er at least rec­og­nizes Whit­man’s “gen­er­ous aspi­ra­tion,” a qual­i­ty held in com­mon by all of Whit­man’s admir­ers, be they heroes, vil­lains, or just aver­age peo­ple respond­ing to the poet­’s raw self-asser­tion and capa­cious, grandiose, and par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­can, form of long­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Reads Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in a 1977 Exper­i­men­tal Film

Orson Welles Meets H.G. Wells in 1940: The Leg­ends Dis­cuss War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and WWII

Hear Walt Whit­man (Maybe) Read­ing the First Four Lines of His Poem, “Amer­i­ca” (1890)

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

World Science U Starts to Offer Innovative, Free Courses in the Sciences

In high school, my physics teacher taught the class by hav­ing us lis­ten to his long, monot­o­nous lec­tures. After I real­ized that I couldn’t digest his ver­bal lessons, I stopped lis­ten­ing. Instead, I picked up a text­book and nev­er looked back. I can only imag­ine how much bet­ter off I would have been had I tak­en a physics class like Bri­an Greene’s spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty course on World Sci­ence U.

We fea­tured Greene’s work two years ago, when the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty physi­cist and math­e­mati­cian launched his impres­sive PBS series, The Fab­ric of The Cos­mos. Now, Greene and oth­er sci­en­tists have cre­at­ed a new edu­ca­tion plat­form called World Sci­ence U, and it promis­es to offer rich, rig­or­ous and engag­ing cours­es in the sci­ences — for free. As Greene explains above, the free cours­es offered by World Sci­ence U take abstract con­cepts and rep­re­sent them graph­i­cal­ly, using a slew of inter­ac­tive activ­i­ties and real-world sce­nar­ios. Stu­dents receive imme­di­ate per­for­mance feed­back on the prob­lem sets they com­plete, and have access to a large num­ber of video lec­tures. The­o­ry is illus­trat­ed by way of intu­itive ani­ma­tions, and exer­cis­es are paired with video solu­tions that take stu­dents through the ide­al way to derive the answer.

Although lat­er class­es will tack­le gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­tyquan­tum mechan­ics, and oth­er sub­jects, World Sci­ence U has only two full cours­es avail­able at present. The first is Greene’s brief con­cep­tu­al class on spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty that lasts 2–3 weeks, called Space, Time, and Ein­steinThere’s also a more advanced, uni­ver­si­ty lev­el course on the same top­ic called Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­i­tywhich lasts about 10 weeks. Inter­est­ed? We’ll let Greene him­self tell you a lit­tle more about them in the video below.

World Sci­ence U also has a nifty sec­tion called Sci­ence Unplugged, where read­ers can find dozens of short video answers to a mul­ti­tude of ques­tions they may have about sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts, like dark mat­ter and quan­tum mechan­ics. Below, for exam­ple, Greene explains the anthrop­ic prin­ci­ple:

To learn more, vis­it World Sci­ence U. We’ve added its ear­ly cours­es to our large list of free physics cours­es, part of our com­pendi­um of over 825 free online cours­es.

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:

The Fab­ric of the Cos­mos with Bri­an Greene: Watch the Com­plete NOVA Series Online

The Ori­gins Project Brings Togeth­er Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Bill Nye, Ira Fla­tow, and More on One Stage

The Harvard Classics: Download All 51 Volumes as Free eBooks

harvardclassics-e1309476756550

Every rev­o­lu­tion­ary age pro­duces its own kind of nos­tal­gia. Faced with the enor­mous social and eco­nom­ic upheavals at the nine­teenth century’s end, learned Vic­to­ri­ans like Wal­ter Pater, John Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold looked to High Church mod­els and played the bish­ops of West­ern cul­ture, with a monk­ish devo­tion to pre­serv­ing and trans­mit­ting old texts and tra­di­tions and turn­ing back to sim­pler ways of life. It was in 1909, the nadir of this milieu, before the advent of mod­ernism and world war, that The Har­vard Clas­sics took shape. Com­piled by Harvard’s pres­i­dent Charles W. Eliot and called at first Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf, the com­pendi­um of lit­er­a­ture, phi­los­o­phy, and the sci­ences, writes Adam Kirsch in Har­vard Mag­a­zine, served as a “mon­u­ment from a more humane and con­fi­dent time” (or so its upper class­es believed), and a “time cap­sule…. In 50 vol­umes.”

What does the mas­sive col­lec­tion pre­serve? For one thing, writes Kirsch, it’s “a record of what Pres­i­dent Eliot’s Amer­i­ca, and his Har­vard, thought best in their own her­itage.” Eliot’s inten­tions for his work dif­fered some­what from those of his Eng­lish peers. Rather than sim­ply curat­ing for pos­ter­i­ty “the best that has been thought and said” (in the words of Matthew Arnold), Eliot meant his anthol­o­gy as a “portable university”—a prag­mat­ic set of tools, to be sure, and also, of course, a prod­uct. He sug­gest­ed that the full set of texts might be divid­ed into a set of six cours­es on such con­ser­v­a­tive themes as “The His­to­ry of Civ­i­liza­tion” and “Reli­gion and Phi­los­o­phy,” and yet, writes Kirsch, “in a more pro­found sense, the les­son taught by the Har­vard Clas­sics is ‘Progress.’” “Eliot’s [1910] intro­duc­tion express­es com­plete faith in the ‘inter­mit­tent and irreg­u­lar progress from bar­barism to civ­i­liza­tion.’”

In its expert syn­er­gy of moral uplift and mar­ket­ing, The Har­vard Clas­sics (find links to down­load them as free ebooks below) belong as much to Mark Twain’s bour­geois gild­ed age as to the pseu­do-aris­to­crat­ic age of Victoria—two sides of the same ocean, one might say.

The idea for the col­lec­tion didn’t ini­tial­ly come from Eliot, but from two edi­tors at the pub­lish­er P.F. Col­lier, who intend­ed “a com­mer­cial enter­prise from the begin­ning” after read­ing a speech Eliot gave to a group of work­ers in which he “declared that a five-foot shelf of books could pro­vide”

a good sub­sti­tute for a lib­er­al edu­ca­tion in youth to any­one who would read them with devo­tion, even if he could spare but fif­teen min­utes a day for read­ing.

Col­lier asked Eliot to “pick the titles” and they would pub­lish them as a series. The books appealed to the upward­ly mobile and those hun­gry for knowl­edge and an edu­ca­tion denied them, but the cost would still have been pro­hib­i­tive to many. Over a hun­dred years, and sev­er­al cul­tur­al-evo­lu­tion­ary steps lat­er, and any­one with an inter­net con­nec­tion can read all of the 51-vol­ume set online. In a pre­vi­ous post, we sum­ma­rized the num­ber of ways to get your hands on Charles W. Eliot’s anthol­o­gy:

You can still buy an old set off of eBay for $399 [now $299.99]. But, just as eas­i­ly, you can head to the Inter­net Archive and Project Guten­berg, which have cen­tral­ized links to every text includ­ed in The Har­vard Clas­sics (Wealth of Nations, Ori­gin of Species, Plutarch’s Lives, the list goes on below). Please note that the pre­vi­ous two links won’t give you access to the actu­al anno­tat­ed Har­vard Clas­sics texts edit­ed by Eliot him­self. But if you want just that, you can always click here and get dig­i­tal scans of the true Har­vard Clas­sics.

In addi­tion to these options, Bartle­by has dig­i­tal texts of the entire col­lec­tion of what they call “the most com­pre­hen­sive and well-researched anthol­o­gy of all time.” But wait, there’s more! Much more, in fact, since Eliot and his assis­tant William A. Neil­son com­piled an addi­tion­al twen­ty vol­umes called the “Shelf of Fic­tion.” Read those twen­ty volumes—at fif­teen min­utes a day—starting with Hen­ry Field­ing and end­ing with Nor­we­gian nov­el­ist Alexan­der Kiel­land at Bartle­by.

What may strike mod­ern read­ers of Eliot’s col­lec­tion are pre­cise­ly the “blind spots in Vic­to­ri­an notions of cul­ture and progress” that it rep­re­sents. For exam­ple, those three har­bin­gers of doom for Vic­to­ri­an certitude—Marx, Niet­zsche, and Freud—are nowhere to be seen. Omis­sions like this are quite telling, but, as Kirsch writes, we might not look at Eliot’s achieve­ment as a rel­ic of a naive­ly opti­mistic age, but rather as “an inspir­ing tes­ti­mo­ny to his faith in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of demo­c­ra­t­ic edu­ca­tion with­out the loss of high stan­dards.” This was, and still remains, a noble ide­al, if one that—like the utopi­an dreams of the Victorians—can some­times seem frus­trat­ing­ly unat­tain­able (or cul­tur­al­ly impe­ri­al­ist). But the wide­spread avail­abil­i­ty of free online human­i­ties cer­tain­ly brings us clos­er than Eliot’s time could ever come.

You can find the Har­vard Clas­sics list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Harold Bloom Cre­ates a Mas­sive List of Works in The “West­ern Canon”: Read Many of the Books Free Online

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

The Har­vard Clas­sics: A Free, Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion

975 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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

Free Course: “Darwin and Design” Examines Philosophical Questions of Intelligence and Human Behavior


Darwin’s the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion by nat­ur­al selec­tion pro­vid­ed a sci­en­tif­ic answer to a philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion: must design imply a design­er? To the dis­may and dis­be­lief of many of Darwin’s con­tem­po­raries, and a great many still, his the­o­ry can answer the ques­tion in the neg­a­tive. But there are many more ques­tions yet to ask about seem­ing­ly designed sys­tems, such as those posed by Alan Tur­ing and John Sear­le: might such orga­nized sys­tems, nat­ur­al and man­made, them­selves be intel­li­gent? The his­to­ry of these inquiries among philoso­phers, sci­en­tists, and writ­ers is the sub­ject of Prof. James Par­adis’ MIT course, “Dar­win and Design.” The class explores such a diverse range of texts as Aristotle’s Physics, the Bible, Adam’s Smith’s Wealth of Nations, William Gibson’s Neu­ro­mancer, and of course, Darwin’s Ori­gin of Species.

Along­side the sci­en­tif­ic con­clu­sions so-called “Dar­win­ism” draws are the impli­ca­tions for human self-under­stand­ing. Giv­en the thou­sands of years in which human­i­ty placed itself at the cen­ter of the uni­verse, and the few hun­dred in which it at least held fast to con­cepts of its spe­cial cre­ation, what, asks Prof. Par­adis, does Dar­win­ism mean “for ideas of nature and of mankind’s place there­in?” The class explores this ques­tion through “man­i­fes­ta­tions of such unde­signed worlds in lit­er­ary texts” both clas­si­cal and con­tem­po­rary. See the full course descrip­tion below:

Humans are social ani­mals; social demands, both coop­er­a­tive and com­pet­i­tive, struc­ture our devel­op­ment, our brain and our mind. This course cov­ers social devel­op­ment, social behav­iour, social cog­ni­tion and social neu­ro­science, in both human and non-human social ani­mals. Top­ics include altru­ism, empa­thy, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the­o­ry of mind, aggres­sion, pow­er, groups, mat­ing, and moral­i­ty. Meth­ods include evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, cog­ni­tive sci­ence, social psy­chol­o­gy and anthro­pol­o­gy.

Prof. Par­adis taught the class in the Fall of 2010, but thanks to MIT’s Open Course­ware, all of the lec­tures (above), assign­ments, and course mate­ri­als are freely avail­able, though you’ll have to pur­chase most of the texts (you can find some in our list of 500 free ebooks). You can’t reg­is­ter or receive cred­it for the course—so you can skip writ­ing the papers and meet­ing  dead­lines of around 100 pages of read­ing per week—but if you work through some or all of the lec­tures and assigned read­ings, Prof. Par­adis promis­es an enlight­en­ing “his­tor­i­cal foun­da­tion for under­stand­ing a rich lit­er­ary tra­di­tion, as well as many assump­tions held by peo­ple in many con­tem­po­rary cul­tures.” Giv­en that this is an MIT course, Prof. Par­adis assumes some famil­iar­i­ty on the part of his stu­dents with the basic Dar­win­ian con­cepts and con­tro­ver­sies. For a broad overview of Dar­win’s impor­tance to a wide vari­ety of fields, take a look at Stan­ford’s online lec­ture series “Dar­win’s Lega­cy.”

“Dar­win and Design” is but one of over 800 free online cours­es we’ve com­piled, includ­ing many on evo­lu­tion, anthro­pol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, and cog­ni­tive sci­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Genius of Charles Dar­win Revealed in Three-Part Series by Richard Dawkins

Dar­win: A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Charles Darwin’s Son Draws Cute Pic­tures on the Man­u­script of On the Ori­gin of Species

875 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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

Watch Kevin Smith’s Clever First Film, Mae Day: The Crumbling of a Documentary (1992)

Since 1994’s Clerks turned him from a proud New Jer­sey slack­er into a lead­ing light of the 1990s’ Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent film boom, cinephiles have ener­get­i­cal­ly debat­ed Kevin Smith’s abil­i­ties as a film­mak­er. Even Smith admits that he con­sid­ers him­self more a writer who hap­pens to direct than a direc­tor per se, and his fans and detrac­tors alike seem to con­sid­er his scripts more a vehi­cle for his enter­tain­ing way with speech — with jokes, with cul­tur­al ref­er­ences, with elab­o­rate foul­mouthed­ness — than any­thing else. It cer­tain­ly does­n’t sur­prise me that so much of his 21st-cen­tu­ry out­put con­sists of pod­casts, nor that, when you go all the way back in his film­mak­ing career, even before Clerks, you find a short but talk­a­tive, joc­u­lar, by turns placid and vit­ri­olic, only seem­ing­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al piece like Mae Day: The Crum­bling of a Doc­u­men­tary, his first and only stu­dent film, made while enrolled for just four months at the tech­ni­cal­ly ori­ent­ed Van­cou­ver Film School.

Hav­ing come up with the idea for a doc­u­men­tary on a local trans­sex­u­al named Emel­da Mae, Smith and class­mate Scott Mosier, who would go on to become Smith’s long­time pro­duc­ing part­ner, found them­selves unpre­pared to fol­low through on the project as they’d (vague­ly) envi­sioned it. To make mat­ters worse, Mae her­self then skipped town, leav­ing behind not a hint as to her where­abouts. But amid this film-school cri­sis, Smith’s true film­mak­ing tal­ent flow­ered: instead of a “seri­ous” pro­file of his absent sub­ject, he made a satir­i­cal exam­i­na­tion of how that idea ran so quick­ly and unsal­vage­ably aground, con­sist­ing not just of his and Mosier’s par­o­d­i­cal­ly con­fi­dent reflec­tions on the nature of the “fail­ure,” but also their irate instruc­tors’ and col­lab­o­ra­tors’ earnest­ly detailed accounts of how they could­n’t get their act togeth­er. But just two years lat­er, Clerks would slouch its way to game-chang­ing promi­nence in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma. What­ev­er you think of every­thing Smith and Mosier have put out since, you have to admit that this lazy-stu­dent gam­bit worked out pret­ty well for them.

You will find Mae Day: The Crum­bling of a Doc­u­men­tary list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tions of 635 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Kevin Smith’s Three Tips For Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers (NSFW)

Lick the Star: Sofia Coppola’s Very First Film Fol­lows a 7th-Grade Con­spir­a­cy (1998)

The First Films of Great Direc­tors: Kubrick, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Taran­ti­no & Truf­faut

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.

Hunter S. Thompson Writes an Ode to Jack Kerouac in 1998 (After Calling Him an “Ass, a Mystic Boob” in 1958)

Today is the 92nd birth­day of author and cul­tur­al icon Jack Ker­ouac. Born in Low­ell, Mass­a­chu­setts in 1922, Ker­ouac was one of the troi­ka of writ­ers – along with Allen Gins­berg and William S. Bur­roughs – who formed the core of the Beat Gen­er­a­tion. He wrote shag­gy dog sto­ries — thin­ly veiled auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal tales about sex and drugs, friend­ship and spir­i­tu­al yearn­ing. His style was spon­ta­neous and off-hand, yet he craft­ed pas­sages of such poet­ic beau­ty that they make the read­er gasp. He wrote his huge­ly influ­en­tial book On the Road — leg­end has it — dur­ing a 20-day writ­ing ben­der. He went so far as to tape togeth­er strips of paper into one con­tin­u­ous scroll of paper so as not to break his flow.

It’s hard to imag­ine Hunter S. Thomp­son and his dis­tinc­tive brand of jour­nal­ism with­out Jack Ker­ouac. Both wrote bril­liant, ram­bling tracts about Amer­i­ca. Both could turn a phrase like nobody’s busi­ness. Both had polit­i­cal philoso­phies that didn’t fit com­fort­ably on either the left or right side of the spec­trum. The dif­fer­ence is that Ker­ouac was doing all of this while Thomp­son was just hit­ting puber­ty.

So it might be sur­pris­ing to learn that Thomp­son appar­ent­ly loathed Kerouac’s writ­ing when he was a young man. In a let­ter penned when the future gonzo jour­nal­ist was a mere 21 years old, he sav­aged the Beat writer.

The man is an ass, a mys­tic boob with intel­lec­tu­al myopia. The Dhar­ma thing was quite as bad as The Sub­ter­raneans and they’re both with­ered appendages to On The Road — which isn’t even a nov­el in the first place…If some­body doesn’t kill that fool soon, we’re all going to be labeled “The gen­er­a­tion of the Third Sex.”

Is this a sin­cere opin­ion or is this blus­ter? Or is it both?

Thir­ty years lat­er, it’s hard to see if Thompson’s opin­ion of Ker­ouac has evolved. In a record­ing from 1998, which you can lis­ten to above, he seems to praise Ker­ouac while at the same time slip­ping in the shiv. In the video, an obvi­ous­ly ine­bri­at­ed Thomp­son can be heard read­ing a poem ded­i­cat­ed to the author.

Now I want to tell you.… In fact he (Ker­ouac) was a great influ­ence on me.… So now I wan­na put out my poem…This is my Ode to Jack Ker­ouac, who remains one of my heroes…Uhhhh…How about this… This is called, let’s see…This is called ‘Hip­py Ode To Jack’…

“Four dogs went to the wilder­ness, Only three came back.
Two dogs died from Guinea Worm, The oth­er died from you.
Jack Ker­ouac.”

Well, Jack was not inno­cent. He ran over dogs…Just think of it…OK…That’s enough of that for now…Thank you very much. And.…Ahhh…Ya, well…Jack was an artist in every way…I admire the dog thing most of all.

So Hap­py Birth­day, Jack. Hunter brings insults and back­hand­ed com­pli­ments with a side of innu­en­do.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beat­nik Film Stars Jack Ker­ouac and Allen Gins­berg

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot, 1943

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.

Watch Stephen Sondheim (RIP) Teach a Kid How to Sing “Send In the Clowns”

Stephen Son­deim’s  “Send in the Clowns,” like the much man­gled “Mem­o­ry” from the much maligned musi­cal CATS, has weath­ered any num­ber of ill-advised inter­pre­ta­tions.

The show-stop­ping solo from 1973’s A Lit­tle Night Music’ref­er­ence to clowns is not meant to be lit­er­al, but that did­n’t stop the Mup­pet Show from send­ing a trio of them in to back Judy CollinsFrank Sina­tra peeked around on every cho­rus, as if he’d yet to come to grips with the fact that Bozo would­n’t be pop­ping up on cue.

It’s mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions like these that set com­posers spin­ning in their graves, but Sond­heim is still very much in the game. His approach to musi­cal the­ater con­tin­ues to be exact­ing, no doubt nerve wrack­ing, though the Guild­hall School of Music and Dra­ma stu­dent he’s fine-tun­ing in the video above bears up brave­ly.

She’s a cou­ple of decades too young to play Desiree, whose unsuc­cess­ful attempt to woo an old lover away from his teenage bride occa­sions the song, but no mat­ter. Her adjust­ments show the div­i­dends a close read­ing of the text can pay.

See what you can do with Sond­heim’s advice next time you’re singing in the show­er, the only place pri­vate enough for me to believe I’m doing cred­it to his oeu­vre. Those of us who can’t sing can take heart know­ing that the orig­i­nal Desiree, Gly­nis Johns, could­n’t either, at least by the mas­ter’s usu­al stan­dards. The song’s unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly short phras­ing allowed her to shine as an actress, and deflect­ed from any vocal short­com­ings.

Here are the lyrics. If you need fur­ther inspi­ra­tion, watch Ing­mar Bergman’s Smiles of a Sum­mer Night, on which A Lit­tle Night Music is based.

Those who are more direc­tor than diva may pre­fer to eval­u­ate the per­for­mances below. In my opin­ion, at least one of them mer­its a firm rap on the knuck­les from Mae­stro Sond­heim for exces­sive wal­low­ing. (Hint for those whose time is short: we’ve saved the best for last.)

Judi Dench, Desiree in the 1995 Roy­al Nation­al The­atre revival, per­form­ing at the BBC Proms 2010, in hon­or of Sond­heim’s 80th birth­day.

Glenn Close, anoth­er Night Music vet at Carnegie Hall.

Car­ol Bur­nett stuck close to the spir­it of the orig­i­nal in a non-com­ic sketch for her 1970’s vari­ety show, costar­ring the late Har­vey Kor­man.

Bernadette Peters, the 2010 Broad­way revival’s Desiree, at South­ern Methodist Uni­ver­si­ty. Her accom­pa­nist seems pret­ty hap­py with this per­for­mance. 

Dame Judi again, show­ing us how it’s done, in cos­tume on the edge of a giant red bed, with Lau­rence Gui­t­tard as Fred­erik. Have a han­kie ready at the 3:10 mark.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Tay­lor Teach­es You to Play “Car­oli­na in My Mind,” “Fire and Rain” & Oth­er Clas­sics on the Gui­tar

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

What Books, Movies, Songs & Paint­ings Could Have Entered the Pub­lic Domain on Jan­u­ary 1, 2014?

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the musi­cal­ly ungift­ed Bride of Urine­town. Fol­low her  @AyunHalliday

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