Watch 8 Classic Cult Films for Free: Night of the Living Dead, Plan 9 from Outer Space & More

in Film | March 11th, 2014

night of the living dead free

The whole cat­e­go­ry of cult movies is a slip­pery one. Every­one knows what a hor­ror flick or a West­ern looks like but describ­ing a cult movie is much more sub­jec­tive. Cult movies can be any genre. They tend to be campy or kitschy or in some oth­er way very strange. Often they are either movies that are so weird­ly and intense­ly per­son­al that they alien­ate and baf­fle main­streams audi­ences, or films that are such utter and com­plete train wrecks that some­how they push through the mere­ly mediocre into the sub­lime. Or, in the best cas­es, both.

Dan­ny Peary, in his sem­i­nal 1981 book Cult Movies, put such high art movies as Cit­i­zen Kane along­side mid­night movie sta­ples like Freaks (watch it free online) and El Topo. Some­how that doesn’t feel right. Hav­ing the sup­posed best (or sec­ond best) movie ever made in the same cat­e­go­ry as a hap­less mess like Troll 2 seems to be a dis­ser­vice to both movies, no mat­ter how rabid the fan­base is.

For their list 30 Cult Movies That Absolute­ly Every­body Must See, the writ­ers of the web­site io9 wres­tled with this exact issue:

We debat­ed a lot what we would con­sid­er a “cult movie” for the pur­pos­es of this list, and we most­ly stuck to films that were not huge box-office hits and did­n’t get mas­sive main­stream expo­sure when they were first released. The films on this list most­ly either flew under the radar or were con­sid­ered mas­sive flops when they came out orig­i­nal­ly.

Like any such list, there is plen­ty to be quib­bled with — Don­nie Darko is ranked high­er than Eraser­head? Real­ly? – but that’s real­ly just part of the fun. Below are a few cult movies that you can watch right now for free – two of which are on the io9 list.

Plan 9 from Out­er Space – There’s a great scene in Tim Burton’s biopic Ed Wood where a cross-dress­ing Wood runs into Orson Welles at a bar. They share a drink and com­mis­er­ate about the dif­fi­cul­ties of being a vision­ary in Hol­ly­wood. By all def­i­n­i­tions, Wood was as much of an auteur as Welles. His movies were a prism through which he worked through some very per­son­al issues.

It’s just that, unlike Welles, Wood was a com­i­cal­ly inept and lazy film­mak­er. Crit­ic Michael Medved once dubbed his Plan 9 from Out­er Space as the worst movie ever made. And it’s a hard to argue with that asser­tion. Shots in the movie alter­nate dis­ori­ent­ing­ly between day and night in the mid­dle of the same scene. The act­ing isn’t so much as wood­en as som­nam­bu­lis­tic. The spe­cial effects are laugh­ably child­ish –a flam­ing space­craft at one point of the movie was accom­plished by set­ting a hub­cap alight with some gaso­line. Yet through­out the entire film, Wood’s boy­ish enthu­si­asm shines through. Plan 9 might be ter­ri­ble, but it’s also a lot of fun.

Night of the Liv­ing Dead – Though George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead was made for next to noth­ing, all of the production’s lim­i­ta­tions some­how turned into assets. The film’s grainy black-and-white cin­e­matog­ra­phy and hand-held cam­era gave Romero’s zom­bie gore-fest a lev­el of real­ism that was unseen in hor­ror movies up to that point — like a news­reel from the apoc­a­lypse. The Liv­ing Dead wound up being one of the most prof­itable movies of all time, which for investors proved to be unfor­tu­nate. In what has to be one of the costli­est cler­i­cal errors in movie his­to­ry, the dis­trib­u­tors for­got to include a copy­right state­ment in cred­its. As a result, the movie quick­ly fell into the pub­lic domain. Check it out.

Detour — Edgar G. Ulmer’s hasti­ly pro­duced film noir bears all the marks of a movie made on a shoe­string. The direc­tion is ham hand­ed. The act­ing is often shrill. A tale about tox­ic love and ill-got­ten gains, Detour should have by all rights been anoth­er for­got­ten, dis­pos­able B‑movie. Yet some­how Ulmer man­aged to cap­ture ligh­in­ing in a bot­tle. “Haunt­ing and creepy,” writes Roger Ebert. “An embod­i­ment of the guilty soul of film noir. No one who has seen it has eas­i­ly for­got­ten it.”

You can find more cult clas­sics in our col­lec­tion of 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More, includ­ing The Wild Ride with Jack Nichol­son, Blue­beard (also direct­ed by Edgar G. Ulmer), the 1962 indie hor­ror film Car­ni­val of Souls, Demen­tia 13 (an ear­ly Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la  hor­ror film), and Abel Ferrara’s cult clas­sic slash­er film The Driller Killer.

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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Soviet-Era Illustrations Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1976)

in Art, Literature | March 11th, 2014

Hobbit1

Until I read J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings, my favorite book grow­ing up was, by far, The Hob­bit. Grow­ing up in Rus­sia, how­ev­er, meant that instead of Tolkien’s Eng­lish ver­sion, my par­ents read me a Russ­ian trans­la­tion. To me, the trans­la­tion eas­i­ly matched the pace and won­der of Tolkien’s orig­i­nal. Look­ing back, The Hob­bit prob­a­bly made such an indeli­ble impres­sion on me because Tolkien’s tale was alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent than the Russ­ian fairy tales and children’s sto­ries that I had pre­vi­ous­ly been exposed to. There were no child­ish hijinks, no young pro­tag­o­nists, no par­ents to res­cue you when you got into trou­ble. I con­sid­ered it an epic in the truest lit­er­ary sense.

As with many Russ­ian trans­la­tions dur­ing the Cold War, the book came with a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent set of illus­tra­tions. Mine, I remem­ber regret­ting slight­ly, lacked pic­tures alto­geth­er. A friend’s edi­tion, how­ev­er, was illus­trat­ed in the typ­i­cal Russ­ian style: much more tra­di­tion­al­ly styl­ized than Tolkien’s own draw­ings, they were more angu­lar, friend­lier, almost car­toon­ish. In this post, we include a num­ber of these images from the 1976 print­ing. The cov­er, above, depicts a grin­ning Bil­bo Bag­gins hold­ing a gem. Below, Gan­dalf, an osten­si­bly harm­less soul, pays Bil­bo a vis­it.

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Next, we have the three trolls, argu­ing about their var­i­ous eat­ing arrange­ments, with Bil­bo hid­ing to the side.

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Here, Gol­lum, née Smeagol, pad­dles his raft in the depths of the moun­tains.

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Final­ly, here’s Bil­bo, ful­fill­ing his role as a bur­glar in Smaug’s lair.

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For more of the Sovi­et illus­tra­tions of The Hob­bit, head on over to Retro­naut.

For anoth­er Sovi­et take on The Hob­bit, watch this 1985 TV adap­ta­tion.

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:

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

Down­load a Free Course on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

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

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

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Enjoy the Greatest Silent Films Ever Made in Our Collection of 101 Free Silent Films Online

in Film | March 11th, 2014

We all know the stages of cin­e­ma’s ear­ly devel­op­ment: first came the pic­tures, sec­ond came the motion, and third came the sound. But many of us, even rea­son­ably active film buffs, don’t real­ize how much the art form took its shape between steps two and three. Most of the visu­al lan­guage we instinc­tive­ly rec­og­nize as stan­dard in the movies today came togeth­er before their char­ac­ters ever spoke an audi­ble word. Hence the impor­tance of not just watch­ing the films of today, and not just catch­ing up with impor­tant works back to the the “gold­en age” of Hol­ly­wood, but going even far­ther back, to the ear­ly 1930s, even all the way to the 1910s — deep, in oth­er words, into the silent era. Out­side a uni­ver­si­ty film-stud­ies pro­gram, you could­n’t always do this eas­i­ly.  But now, to free you from the need to haunt spe­cial­ist video stores (if your city has them) and hope for silent screen­ings at the near­est reper­to­ry cin­e­ma (if your city has one), we give you our col­lec­tion of 101 free silent films online, part of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

We don’t mean obscure silent films, either. You may remem­ber our post on Sight & Sound mag­a­zine’s list of the ten great­est silents of all time, nine of which you can watch right now in our col­lec­tion. In chrono­log­i­cal order: D.W. Grif­fith’s Intol­er­ance (1916), Erich von Stro­heim’s Greed (1923), Buster Keaton’s Sher­lock Jr. (1924), Sergei Eisen­stein’s Bat­tle­ship Potemkin (1925), Buster Keaton’s The Gen­er­al (1926), Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927), F.W. Mur­nau’s Sun­rise (1927), Luis Buñuel’s Un chien andalou (1928), Carl Theodor Drey­er’s The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc (1928), Dzi­ga Ver­tov’s Man with a Movie Cam­era (1929). You can also catch up, final­ly, on a vari­ety of oth­er impor­tant films besides, from four by French visu­al-spec­ta­cle pio­neer Georges Méliès (After the Ball, Cin­derel­la, The Dev­il­ish Ten­ant, The Impos­si­ble Voy­age) and six of Eng­lish sus­pense king Alfred Hitch­cock­’s ear­li­est works (Down­hill, Easy Virtue, The Lodger, The Plea­sure Gar­den). And that’s just scratch­ing the sur­face of our col­lec­tion of Free Silent Films.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist Direc­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

Hol­ly­wood, Epic Doc­u­men­tary Chron­i­cles the Ear­ly His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma

Watch 10 of the Great­est Silent Films of All Time, All Free Online

Three Great Films Star­ring Char­lie Chap­lin, the True Icon of Silent Com­e­dy

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

in Comedy, Philosophy | March 11th, 2014

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

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

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

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

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

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

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

in Astronomy, Television | March 11th, 2014

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

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Neil deGrasse Tyson Deliv­ers the Great­est Sci­ence Ser­mon Ever

Stephen Col­bert Talks Sci­ence with Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Stag­ger­ing Genius of Isaac New­ton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

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

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

in Books, Writing | March 10th, 2014

stephenking

Image by The USO, via Flickr Com­mons

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

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

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

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

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

via Gal­l­ey­cat

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King Turns Short Sto­ry into a Free Web­com­ic

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

Stephen King Reads from His Upcom­ing Sequel to The Shin­ing

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

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

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

in Art, Books | March 10th, 2014

SendakHobbit1

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

CA.0322.tolkein-sendak.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

The Mind & Art of Mau­rice Sendak: A Video Sketch

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

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

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

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

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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