Hear What is Jazz?: Leonard Bernstein’s Introduction to the Great American Art Form (1956)

in Jazz, Music | April 30th, 2015

By 1956, jazz was enter­ing its hard bop phase, far from its New Orleans birth­place. At the same time, it was frac­tur­ing into sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al gen­res, with the influ­ence of Latin rhythms and the south sea breezes of lounge.

Rock and Roll was just about to dis­place this music as a pub­lic men­ace du jour (or a pass­ing fad as some thought). This fas­ci­nat­ing Colum­bia release from 1956 finds the com­pos­er and con­duc­tor Leonard Bern­stein set­ting down his thoughts on the art form of jazz. A spo­ken word record with sam­ples from rag­time to Miles Davis, Bern­stein’s defense-as-lec­ture is a win­dow on the cul­ture wars at the time.

He’s here to defend jazz against its crit­ics, and argues against their opin­ions: jazz has low-class ori­gins, it’s loud, and it’s not art — the same cri­tiques to be lev­eled decades lat­er against hip hop.

In 1956, Bern­stein was already known to the gen­er­al pub­lic as an edu­ca­tor on clas­si­cal music. He gave lec­tures on CBS’ Omnibus TV pro­gram on the great sym­phonies, while he had already dab­bled in the instru­men­ta­tion and tex­tures of jazz in his score to On the Water­front, and was busy work­ing on West Side Sto­ry. So he was in a per­fect posi­tion to intro­duce a con­ser­v­a­tive mind to jazz. “I love it because it’s an orig­i­nal kind of emo­tion­al expres­sion, in that it is nev­er whol­ly sad or whol­ly hap­py,” he says.

Appear­ing on the album is Buck Clay­ton, Louis Arm­strong, Buster Bai­ley, Bessie Smith, Teo Macero, and Miles Davis. Davis, who had just been signed by Columbia’s George Avakian, plays “Sweet Sue,” mak­ing this track his first record­ing for the label. Bern­stein illus­trates jazz music the­o­ry, “blue notes,” dis­so­nance, rhythm and explores the African ori­gins of the music for 42 fas­ci­nat­ing min­utes. Did this LP turn a lot of clas­si­cal musos on to jazz? Did this influ­ence the chil­dren whose par­ents had this in their col­lec­tion? Was it all for­got­ten sev­er­al years lat­er with Beat­le­ma­nia? What­ev­er the answer, it’s an intrigu­ing rem­nant of a tran­si­tion­al time.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Con­cert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

Leonard Bern­stein Demys­ti­fies the Rock Rev­o­lu­tion for Curi­ous (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

110 Drawings and Paintings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of Middle-Earth and Beyond

in Art, Literature | April 29th, 2015

768px-J.R.R._Tolkien_-_Glaurung_sets_forth_to_seek_Turin

A few years ago, we fea­tured J.R.R. Tolkien’s per­son­al cov­er designs for the Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy, a series of nov­els that jus­ti­fi­ably made his name as a world-builder in prose (and occa­sion­al verse), but rather over­shad­owed his out­put as an illus­tra­tor. He did­n’t just do cov­ers for his own books, either. You can get a sense of the breadth of Tolkien’s visu­al art at the Tolkien Gate­way’s gallery of over 100 images by Tolkien, which reveal the land­scapes, let­ters, inte­ri­ors, and ani­mals with­in the cre­ator of Mid­dle-Earth­’s mind.

J.R.R._Tolkien_-_West_Gate_of_Moria

Many of these images come with descrip­tions of their prove­nance, which you can read if you click on their thumb­nails in the gallery. At the top of the post, you’ll find Tolkien’s 1927 paint­ing Glau­rung Sets Forth to Seek Turin, first pub­lished in The Sil­mar­il­lion Cal­en­dar 1978.

“The title is in Old Eng­lish let­ters, which J. R. R. Tolkien fre­quent­ly used when writ­ing in a for­mal style,” says the Tolkien Gate­way, not­ing that, “at the time of the paint­ing the name of the Father of Drag­ons was Glórund, not Glau­rung,” and that “the entrance to Nar­gothrond is here seen as a sin­gle arch, unlike the triple doors seen in oth­er draw­ings.” (Leave it to a Tolkien fan site to have just this sort of infor­ma­tion at the ready.)

J.R.R._Tolkien_-_The_Hall_at_Bag-End,_Residence_of_B._Baggins_Esquire_(Colored_by_H.E._Riddett)

We also have here Tolkien’s cray­on draw­ing of the West Gate of the Moria, a scene described in The Fel­low­ship of the Ring as fol­lows: “Beyond the omi­nous water were reared vast cliffs, their stern faces pal­lid in the fad­ing light: final and impass­able.” Just above is Tolkien’s ren­der­ing of Bag-End, res­i­dence of a cer­tain B. Bag­gins, Esquire, “coloured by H.E. Rid­dett and first pub­lished in the Eng­lish De Luxe edi­tion and in a new edi­tion of the Dutch trans­la­tion (both 1976) of The Hob­bit.” Just below, you can see his 1911 sketch of the much less fan­tas­ti­cal Lam­b’s Farm, Gedling.

J.R.R._Tolkien_-_Lamb's_Farm,_Gedling

Beyond perus­ing the images in the Tolkien Gate­way, you’ll also want to have a look at Wayne G. Ham­mond and Christi­na Scul­l’s book, J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illus­tra­tor. Some Tolkien enthu­si­asts will, under­stand­ably, pre­fer to keep their per­son­al visu­al­iza­tions of the Lord of the Rings uni­verse unsul­lied by non-tex­tu­al imagery such as this, but if all of Peter Jack­son’s megabud­get film adap­ta­tions did­n’t sul­ly you, then Tolkien’s mild, almost rus­tic but still solemn­ly evoca­tive draw­ings and paint­ings can only enrich the Mid­dle-Earth in your own mind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Hear J.R.R. Tolkien Read From The Lord of the Rings and The Hob­bit

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

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

The Poetry of the Cherry Blossoms Comes to Life in a One Minute Time Lapse Video

in Biology, Life, Poetry, Travel | April 29th, 2015

Are we to look at cher­ry blos­soms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloud­less? To long for the moon while look­ing on the rain, to low­er the blinds and be unaware of the pass­ing of spring—these are even more deeply mov­ing. Branch­es about to blos­som or gar­dens strewn with fad­ed flow­ers are wor­thi­er of our admi­ra­tion.

-Yoshi­da Kenko, Essays in Idle­ness (1330–1332)

Depend­ing on your coor­di­nates, cher­ry blos­som sea­son is either approach­ing, over, or in full riotous bloom. Every year, the Brook­lyn Botan­ic Gar­den sched­ules its annu­al Saku­ra Mat­suri fes­ti­val in igno­rance of what the weath­er may hold. Will lin­ger­ing win­ter tem­per­a­tures delay the blos­soms, or will spring come ear­ly, caus­ing the trees to erupt way ear­li­er than antic­i­pat­ed?

The only thing one can be cer­tain of is a mob scene, as ardent flower-view­ers of all ages stam­pede toward the cot­ton can­dy-col­ored trees, devices in hand. Mod­ern hana­mi prac­tice would sure­ly con­found the elite of the 8th Cen­tu­ry Impe­r­i­al Court. They wouldn’t have under­stood the con­cept of “self­ie” if it bit ‘em in the shakuhachi.

Of course, for every deter­mined 21st-cen­tu­ry soul who makes a point of admir­ing the blos­soms dur­ing their brief appear­ance, there are thou­sands more who, in the words of bureau­crat-turned-monk, Kenko, “low­er the blinds…unaware of the pass­ing of spring.”

Per­haps this lat­ter group is who Dave Allen, the Brook­lyn Botan­ic Garden’s for­mer web­mas­ter, had in mind when he installed a cam­era in a weath­er­proof box near the Cher­ry Esplanade. Every 3 min­utes, the shut­ter snapped, cap­tur­ing not just the glo­ri­ous Prunus ‘Kan­zan’ (aka Sekiya­ma) that line the walk­ways, but also a wide range of vis­i­tors who flocked to the gar­den between April 18 to April 26, 2008, seek­ing respite from the pres­sures of urban liv­ing.

The time lapse video Allen assem­bled from 3000 cap­tured moments takes slight­ly more than a minute to view. I think we have time to spare…

Watch it once for the main attrac­tion…

And then again for the (pix­il­lat­ed) peo­ple. Ran­dom­ly press “pause” to catch a kiss­ing cou­ple, a Hasidic man in a shtreimel, and a lit­tle girl in pink who some­how found her­self the sole human on the path…

Then one more time for the shad­ows of the clouds. Ah… That’s like­ly the time-strapped vir­tu­al viewer’s best chance for achiev­ing the sort of mind­set one might ascribe to The Tale of Gen­ji.

(Though per­haps a calm and con­tem­pla­tive mood was nev­er the goal. As ninth cen­tu­ry aris­to­crat­ic poet Ari­wara no Nar­i­hi­ra wrote (in trans­la­tion by Hiroa­ki Sato & Bur­ton Wat­son):

If there were no such thing

as cher­ry blos­soms

in this world,

in spring­time how untrou­bled

our hearts would be!

There is a mod­ern schol­ar on Tum­blr whose research sup­ports this take on the pink blooms’ blood quick­en­ing effects.)

In a week or two it will all be over.

As the petals fall, take refuge in Toi Der­ri­cotte’s recent poem. Its set­ting should feel famil­iar…

Cher­ry blos­soms

I went down to

min­gle my breath

with the breath

of the cher­ry blos­soms.

There were pho­tog­ra­phers:

Moth­ers arrang­ing their

chil­dren against 

gnarled old trees;

a cou­ple, hug­ging, 

asks a passer­by

to snap them

like that,

so that their love

will always be caught

between two friend­ships:

ours & the friend­ship

of the cher­ry trees.

Oh Cher­ry,

why can’t my poems

be as beau­ti­ful?

A young woman in a fur-trimmed

coat sets a card table

with linens, can­dles,

a pic­nic bas­ket & wine.

A father tips

a boy’s wheel­chair back

so he can gaze

up at a branched

heav­en.

                     All around us

the blos­soms

flur­ry down

whis­per­ing,

        Be patient

you have an ancient beau­ty.

                                            Be patient,

                                  you have an ancient beau­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spring: A Short Film Based on Hemingway’s Mem­oir

Venice in a Day: From Day­break to Sun­set in Time­lapse

The Beau­ty of Namib­ian Nights in Time­lapse Motion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day will be releas­ing the 55th issue of her zine, the East Vil­lage Inky at the Brook­lyn Zine Fest this Sun­day. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

John Cleese Explores the Health Benefits of Laughter

in Comedy, Health, Psychology | April 29th, 2015

If you live in a big city like Los Ange­les or San Fran­cis­co, you’ll dis­cov­er that there are just a bewil­der­ing vari­ety of yoga styles out there — there’s Ash­tan­ga Yoga if you want a real work out, there’s Yin Yoga if you want to chill out and there’s Bikram Hot Yoga if you want heat stroke. Add to this list Laugh­ter Yoga. Yes, Laugh­ter Yoga.

For a seg­ment of the 2001 BBC series The Human Face, John Cleese, a man who knows some­thing about laugh­ter, ven­tured to Mum­bai, India to see what Laugh­ter Yoga is all about. He inter­views the man behind it all, Dr. Madan Kataria, who argues that laugh­ter is bril­liant at low­er­ing stress and improv­ing the immune sys­tem. And best of all, you don’t even need mats or unflat­ter­ing pants to do it. You just need a group of like-mind­ed peo­ple and a will­ing­ness to look sil­ly. In the video, which you can see above, Cleese yuks it up with a group of Mum­bai locals.

“We all know what a good laugh feels like,” he tells the cam­era. “But what struck me was how easy it was to get start­ed. When you have a lot of warm, friend­ly, fun­ny faces com­ing at you, you respond very naturally…I’m struck by how laugh­ter con­nects you to peo­ple. It’s almost impos­si­ble to main­tain any kind of dis­tance or any sense of social hier­ar­chy when you’re just howl­ing with laugh­ter. Laugh­ter is a force for democ­ra­cy”

Appar­ent­ly, you don’t even have to be in an espe­cial­ly jol­ly mood to reap the health ben­e­fits of Laugh­ter Yoga. Forced laugh­ter tricks the body into releas­ing endor­phins too. In Laugh­ter Yoga, as with life, the mot­to is “fake it til you make it.”

So if you are inter­est­ed in laugh­ing like a mad­man in the pri­va­cy of your own home, Dr. Kataria has an instruc­tion­al video for you, which you can see right above. There are a sur­pris­ing num­ber of laugh­ing exer­cis­es avail­able — from the milk­shake move, where you pan­tomime guz­zling a drink, to the argu­ment laugh­ter, where you wag a fin­ger, to the Visa laugh­ter where you pre­tend to laugh through the tears as you open your cred­it card state­ment. So go ahead and try it. You’ll feel bet­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yoga in an X‑Ray Machine

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Son­ny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Prac­tic­ing Yoga Made Him a Bet­ter Musi­cian

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

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 lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

An Animated Ray Bradbury Explains Why It Takes Being a “Dedicated Madman” to Be a Writer

in Creativity, Literature | April 28th, 2015

The good folks at Blank on Blank have been breath­ing new life into long-lost record­ed inter­views with cul­tur­al icons by turn­ing them into ani­mat­ed shorts. In the past, they have made films fea­tur­ing the likes of Janis Joplin, David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son and Dave Brubeck. For their most recent release, they do Ray Brad­bury, the beloved sci-fi author and mono­rail enthu­si­ast. You can watch it above.

In 2012, Lisa Potts found a cas­sette tape wedged behind a dress­er. It con­tained an inter­view she did with Brad­bury back in 1972 when she was a stu­dent jour­nal­ist. Potts and fel­low stu­dent Chadd Coates talked to the author in the back of a car while they were mak­ing their way from Bradbury’s West L.A. home to Chap­man Col­lege in Orange Coun­ty where he was slat­ed to give a lec­ture.

In the inter­view, Brad­bury expounds on a wide range of top­ics – from the impor­tance of friends – “That’s what friends are, the peo­ple who share your crazy out­look and pro­tect you from the world” – to his fear of dri­ving – “The whole activ­i­ty is stu­pid.”

But the area where he seems to get the most pas­sion­ate is, not sur­pris­ing­ly, about the act of cre­at­ing. Accord­ing to Brad­bury, you don’t need a fan­cy, over­priced MFA to write. He nev­er went to col­lege after all. His school was his local pub­lic library. What you real­ly need to be a writer is an obses­sive love of writ­ing, friends who are will­ing to nour­ish your obses­sion and a will­ing­ness to be a lit­tle crazy.

I am a ded­i­cat­ed mad­man, and that becomes its own train­ing. If you can’t resist, if the type­writer is like can­dy to you, you train your­self for a life­time. Every sin­gle day of your life, some wild new thing to be done. You write to please your­self. You write for the joy of writ­ing. Then your pub­lic reads you and it begins to gath­er around your sell­ing a pota­to peel­er in an alley, you know. The enthu­si­asm, the joy itself draws me. So that means every day of my life I’ve writ­ten. When the joy stops, I’ll stop writ­ing.

For any­one sweat­ing blood in a cof­fee shop over a stub­born screen­play or nov­el, lines like that are balm for the soul. The whole inter­view has this same infec­tious joy of cre­at­ing. Brad­bury, by the way, wrote up until he died at the age of 91.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

A Day in the After­life: Revis­it­ing the Life & Times of Philip K. Dick

Ani­ma­tions Revive Lost Inter­views with David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck

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 lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hear Dziga Vertov’s Revolutionary Experiments in Sound: From His Radio Broadcasts to His First Sound Film

in Art, Film | April 28th, 2015

The doc­u­men­tary form, like every oth­er kind of onscreen sto­ry­telling, is a very recent devel­op­ment in human his­to­ry. Yet we tend to take for grant­ed the way in which it con­structs our sense of reality—from not only much-maligned real­i­ty TV, but also end­less loops of cable news and Net­flix chan­nels. But the man wide­ly cred­it­ed with the inven­tion of doc­u­men­tary film, Dzi­ga Ver­tov, made decid­ed­ly anti-sto­ry movies, par­tic­u­lar­ly his Man With a Movie Cam­era (watch it online here)—a film that jars con­tem­po­rary sen­si­bil­i­ties. With no nar­ra­tive to speak of, the movie con­tains rough­ly 1,775 sep­a­rate shots from three cities, shot over four years time, and edit­ed togeth­er by his wife. Its view­ing is indeed a dizzy­ing expe­ri­ence, and its direc­tor Vertov—born David Kaufman—truly illus­trates the aes­thet­ic of his pseu­do­nym, which means “spin­ning top.”

Vertov’s rad­i­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion did not begin and end with Man With a Movie Cam­era or his oth­er avant-garde doc­u­men­taries and ani­ma­tions. (Find eight of Ver­tov’s films here.) Once a psy­chol­o­gy stu­dent in Pet­ro­grad, the future film­mak­er start­ed his artis­tic career as a writer of futur­ist poet­ry and sci­ence fic­tion. Entranced by emerg­ing record­ing tech­nol­o­gy and com­mit­ted to dis­rupt­ing tra­di­tion­al forms, in 1916 Ver­tov began, writes Mono­skop, “exper­i­ment­ing with the per­cep­tion and arrange­ment of sound.”

He cre­at­ed “sound poems,” and pro­duced “ver­bal mon­tage struc­tures.” Of his audio art, Ver­tov remarked, “I had an idea about the need to enlarge our abil­i­ty for orga­nized hear­ing. Not lim­it­ing this abil­i­ty to the bound­aries of usu­al music. I decid­ed to include the entire audi­ble world into the con­cept of ‘Hear­ing.’”

After the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, Ver­tov embraced Bol­she­vist agit-prop; his “Kino-Prav­da,” or “truth films,” cel­e­brat­ed indus­tri­al­iza­tion and the Russ­ian work­er. His first sound film, Enthu­si­asm! The Don­bass Sym­pho­ny (1930)—a “paean to coal and steel workers”—integrates his exper­i­ments with sound record­ing in an entire­ly nov­el way. Ubuweb describes the film and its accom­pa­ny­ing sound­track as “Vertov’s most rev­o­lu­tion­ary achieve­ment: a sym­pho­ny of abstract indus­tri­al noise for which a spe­cial­ly designed giant mobile recod­ing sys­tem was con­struct­ed (it weighed over a ton) in order to cap­ture the din of mines, fur­naces and fac­to­ries. For Ver­tov, the intro­duc­tion of sound film didn’t mean talkies, but the oppor­tu­ni­ty to col­lage, mon­tage and splice togeth­er con­struc­tions of pure envi­ron­men­tal noise.”

You can hear three excerpts of this indus­tri­al sound col­lage above and the remain­ing sev­en at Ubuweb. Lis­ten to them first as exam­ples of “sound poems,” then watch Enthu­si­asm: The Don­bass Sym­pho­ny at the top for a bet­ter under­stand­ing of why Ver­tov remains such an influ­en­tial, indeed essen­tial, film—and audio—artist wide­ly cred­it­ed with free­ing new media from the aes­thet­ic con­fines of the stage and the page. Just below, lis­ten to one of Ver­tov’s ear­ly exper­i­ments with doc­u­men­tary sound art, from 1916. Just as he sought to cre­ate an inter­na­tion­al work­er’s visu­al lan­guage through film, “Through radio, he attempt­ed to estab­lish audi­to­ry com­mu­ni­ca­tion across the whole of the world’s pro­le­tari­at by way of record­ing the sounds of work­places and of life itself.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Dzi­ga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, the 8th Best Film Ever Made

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Eight Free Films by Dzi­ga Ver­tov, Cre­ator of Sovi­et Avant-Garde Doc­u­men­taries

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Fritz Lang Tells the Riveting Story of the Day He Met Joseph Goebbels and Then High-Tailed It Out of Germany

in Film, History | April 28th, 2015

The more World War II his­to­ry you read, the more you under­stand not just the evil of the Nazis, but their incom­pe­tence. Some­times you hear vari­a­tions on the obser­va­tion that “in Nazi Ger­many, at least the trains ran on time,” but even that has gone up for debate. It seems more and more that the Holo­caust-per­pe­trat­ing polit­i­cal par­ty got by pri­mar­i­ly on their way with pro­pa­gan­da — and in that, they did have a tru­ly for­mi­da­ble appa­ra­tus.

Much of the dubi­ous cred­it there goes to Hitler’s close asso­ciate Joseph Goebbels, Reich Min­is­ter of Pro­pa­gan­da and an anti-semi­te even by Nazi stan­dards. “Pow­er based on guns may be a good thing,” he said in a 1934 Nurem­berg Par­ty Con­ven­tion speech. “It is, how­ev­er, bet­ter and more grat­i­fy­ing to win the heart of a peo­ple and keep it.” He under­stood the pow­er of film in pur­suit of this end, pro­vid­ing not only essen­tial assis­tance for pro­duc­tions like Leni Riefen­stahl’s Tri­umph of the Will, but also attempt­ing to recruit no less a lead­ing light of Ger­man cin­e­ma than Fritz Lang, direc­tor of three Doc­tor Mabuse pic­tures, the pro­to-noir M, and the expres­sion­ist epic Metrop­o­lis.

Goebbels loved Metrop­o­lis, but had rather less appre­ci­a­tion for The Tes­ta­ment of Dr. Mabuse, going so far as to ban it for its sup­posed poten­tial to instill in its view­ers a dis­trust of their lead­ers. And so, on one fate­ful day in 1933 when Goebbels called Lang to his office, the film­mak­er won­dered if he might find a way to get the ban lift­ed. But Goebbels pre­ferred to talk, at great length, about anoth­er pro­pos­al: Lang’s employ­ment in artis­tic ser­vice of the Nazi cause.

“The Fuhrer and I have seen your films,” Lang quotes Goebbels as say­ing, “and the Fuhrer made clear that ‘this is the man who will give us the nation­al social­ist film.’ ” Feel­ing no choice but to thank Goebbels for the hon­or and osten­si­bly accept the offered (or per­haps insist­ed-upon) posi­tion as the head of state film pro­duc­tion, Lang went home and imme­di­ate­ly told his ser­vant to pre­pare lug­gage “for a one- or two-week trip to Paris,” leav­ing Ger­many that same evening, nev­er to return until the late 1950s. You can hear Lang tell this sto­ry in Ger­man in the clip at the top of the post, and again in Eng­lish, and in more detail, in the 1974 inter­view with William Fried­kin above.

But did it it real­ly hap­pen as he says? In his Film Quar­ter­ly arti­cle “Fritz Lang and Goebbels: Myth and Facts,” Gös­ta Wern­er casts doubt, not­ing that “even though it is high­ly prob­a­ble that Goebbels did offer Lang the post as head of the entire Ger­man film pro­duc­tion, there is not a word about it in Goebbel­s’s usu­al­ly metic­u­lous diary for the year 1933. Lang is not men­tioned there at all.” For Lang’s part, his pass­port’s “for­eign cur­ren­cy stamps from Berlin tes­ti­fy, as do the var­i­ous entry and exit stamps, that between the jour­neys abroad in the sum­mer of 1933 Lang returned to Berlin, which city he left final­ly only on 31 July 1933 — four months after his leg­endary meet­ing with Goebbels and sup­posed dra­mat­ic escape.”

But then, you expect a cer­tain amount of dra­ma from a sto­ry­teller of Lang’s cal­iber, onscreen as well as off. And despite hold­ing the views of, in Wern­er’s words, a “fierce nation­al­ist,” Lang clear­ly made the right choice in real­i­ty by not get­ting caught up in the offices of the Third Reich, when­ev­er and how­ev­er he made that choice. To this day, cinephiles respect and admire the pow­er of Lang’s film­mak­ing — a pow­er that we can only feel relieved did­n’t fall into the wrong hands.

via Bib­liok­lept/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Lam­beth Walk—Nazi Style: The Ear­ly Pro­pa­gan­da Mash Up That Enraged Joseph Goebbels

Metrop­o­lis: Watch a Restored Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece (1927)

Fritz Lang’s M: The Restored Ver­sion of the Clas­sic 1931 Film

Fritz Lang’s “Licen­tious, Pro­fane, Obscure” Noir Film, Scar­let Street (1945)

Titan­ic: The Nazis Cre­ate a Mega-Bud­get Pro­pa­gan­da Film About the Ill-Fat­ed Ship … and Then Banned It (1943)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

David Lynch Creates a Very Surreal Plug for Transcendental Meditation

in Film | April 28th, 2015

While fans wait with increas­ing dour moods on the future of the Twin Peaks reboot, David Lynch is busy doing…something. When the Tribeca Dis­rup­tive Inno­va­tion Awards hon­ored the direc­tor for his work as founder and chair­man of the David Lynch Foun­da­tion, it turned out Lynch couldn’t make the evening.

Instead of the usu­al apol­o­gy email, the man who once turned some test footage into a weird short film made a quick video to screen at the award show. It’s…Lynchian.

The video fea­tures a Bar­bie doll—-renamed Trix­ie for this short—-lying on a pur­ple blan­ket and tak­ing a call from Lynch, who is out shop­ping for Trixie’s make­up. Hear­ing Lynch’s ver­sion of a woman’s voice is strange enough, but he goes on to chas­tise the young girl when she sug­gests sun­bathing nude is a form of med­i­ta­tion. Then fol­lows Lynch’s pitch for Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion, which he’s been using as a cre­ative boon since before Eraser­head. See our pre­vi­ous post: David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty. And also: David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney.

The video ends with some mechan­i­cal birds singing. Pos­si­bly they’re from a place where there’s always music in the air, or, most prob­a­bly, from Digi Birds.

Inci­den­tal­ly, this isn’t Lynch’s first Bar­bie video. In 2011 he pro­mot­ed his new cof­fee line with a sim­i­lar video which you can check out here.

Until the Showtime/Twin Peaks nego­ti­a­tions are final­ly solved, any new Lynch is worth check­ing out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

David Lynch Takes Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers Inside the Art & Craft of Mak­ing Indie Films

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 7 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.