An Animated Leonard Cohen Offers Reflections on Death: Thought-Provoking Excerpts from His Final Interview

in Animation, Life, Magazines, Music | November 11th, 2019

A month before Leonard Cohen died in Novem­ber, 2016, The New York­er’s edi­tor David Rem­nick trav­eled to the songwriter’s Los Ange­les home for a lengthy inter­view in which Cohen looked both for­ward and back.

As a for­mer Zen monk, he was also adept at inhab­it­ing the present, one in which the shad­ow of death crept ever clos­er.

His for­mer lover and muse, Mar­i­anne Ihlen, had suc­cumbed to can­cer ear­li­er in the sum­mer, two days after receiv­ing a frank and lov­ing email from Cohen:

Well, Mar­i­anne, it’s come to this time when we are real­ly so old and our bod­ies are falling apart and I think I will fol­low you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beau­ty and your wis­dom, but I don’t need to say any­thing more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good jour­ney. Good­bye old friend. End­less love, see you down the road.

The New York­er has nev­er shied from over-the-top phys­i­cal descrip­tions. The cour­te­ous, high­ly ver­bal young poet, who’d evinced “a kind of Michael Cor­leone Before the Fall look, sloe-eyed, dark, a lit­tle hunched” was now very thin, but still hand­some, with the hand­shake of “a court­ly retired capo.”

In addi­tion to an album, You Want It Dark­er, to pro­mote, Cohen had a mas­sive back­log of unpub­lished poems and unfin­ished lyrics to tend to before the sands of time ran out.

At 82, he seemed glad to have all his men­tal fac­ul­ties and the sup­port of a devot­ed per­son­al assis­tant, sev­er­al close friends and his two adult chil­dren, all of which allowed him to main­tain his music and lan­guage-based worka­holic habits.

Time, as he not­ed, pro­vides a pow­er­ful incen­tive for fin­ish­ing up, despite the chal­lenges posed by the weak­en­ing flesh:

At a cer­tain point, if you still have your mar­bles and are not faced with seri­ous finan­cial chal­lenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It’s a cliché, but it’s under­es­ti­mat­ed as an anal­gesic on all lev­els. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most com­fort­ing activ­i­ties, and the ben­e­fits of it are incal­cu­la­ble.

He had clear­ly made peace with the idea that some of his projects would go unfin­ished.

You can hear his fond­ness for one of them, a “sweet lit­tle song” that he recit­ed from mem­o­ry, eyes closed, in the ani­mat­ed inter­view excerpt, above:

Lis­ten to the hum­ming­bird

Whose wings you can­not see

Lis­ten to the hum­ming­bird

Don’t lis­ten to me.

Lis­ten to the but­ter­fly

Whose days but num­ber three

Lis­ten to the but­ter­fly

Don’t lis­ten to me.

Lis­ten to the mind of God

Which doesn’t need to be

Lis­ten to the mind of God

Don’t lis­ten to me.

These unfin­ished thoughts close out Cohen’s beau­ti­ful­ly named posthu­mous album, Thanks for the Dance, sched­uled for release lat­er this month.

Dianne V. Lawrence, who designed Cohen’s hum­ming­bird logo, a motif begin­ning with 1979’s Recent Songs album, spec­u­lates that Cohen equat­ed the hum­ming­bird’s enor­mous ener­gy usage and sus­te­nance require­ments with those of the soul.

Read Remnick’s arti­cle on Leonard Cohen in its entire­ty here. Hear a record­ing of David Rem­nick­’s inter­view with Cohen–his last ever–below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter­view: Record­ed by David Rem­nick of The New York­er

Leonard Cohen’s Last Work, The Flame Gets Pub­lished: Dis­cov­er His Final Poems, Draw­ings, Lyrics & More

How Leonard Cohen Wrote a Love Song

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 for her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Entire History of the British Isles Animated: 42,000 BCE to Today

in Animation, History | November 1st, 2019

The Unit­ed King­dom is a con­fus­ing place for many peo­ple, and their not-quite-answered ques­tions about it go all the way to what does and does not con­sti­tute the Unit­ed King­dom in the first place. Not to give the end­ing away, but the ani­mat­ed map above by his­tor­i­cal-car­to­graph­i­cal Youtu­ber Ollie Bye even­tu­al­ly reveals that, if you’re look­ing at the British Isles, you’re look­ing at the UK — unless, of course, you’re look­ing at the Repub­lic of Ire­land. But tak­ing the long view, the polit­i­cal divi­sion of the British Isles has sel­dom been so sim­ple. We know they were pop­u­lat­ed by what we now call cau­ca­soids at least 44,000 years ago, but by 700 BC three groups had divid­ed them up: the Britons, the Picts, and the Gaels.

The com­pli­ca­tions real­ly start at the time of the Roman Empire, when, depend­ing on where in the British Isles you went, you’d have encoun­tered the Icenii, the Parisi, the Cale­donii, the Iverni, and many oth­er dis­tinct peo­ples besides. When the Roman Empire gave way to the Roman Repub­lic, Bri­tan­nia, or Roman Britain, began its expan­sion (and its road-build­ing) across the Isles, start­ing from the south­east.

But with Rome’s with­draw­al in 410 a great many new bor­ders appear like spi­der­web cracks across the land. For cen­turies there­after, the British Isles is a place of many king­doms: Mer­cia, Wes­sex, Northum­bria, Gwynedd, and Deheubarth, to name but a few. (Not to men­tion the Vikings.) And then you have a year like 1066, when the Nor­man con­quest redraws a large chunk of the map at a stroke.

Even those most igno­rant of British his­to­ry will rec­og­nize a few of the king­doms that arise lat­er on in this peri­od: the King­dom of Scot­land, for exam­ple, or the King­dom of Wales. Start­ing from the mid-12th cen­tu­ry, a cer­tain King­dom of Eng­land begins to paint the map red. By 1604, the British Isles are clean­ly divid­ed between the King­dom of Eng­land and the King­dom of Scot­land; by 1707, the King­dom of Great Britain is run­ning the whole place. The sit­u­a­tion has­n’t changed much since, though any­one who has trav­eled across the British Isles knows that the osten­si­ble lack of polit­i­cal frac­tious­ness masks many endur­ing cul­tur­al divi­sions sub­tle to the out­sider: while every­one liv­ing every­where from John o’ Groats to Land’s End may offi­cial­ly be British, few would coun­te­nance being lumped togeth­er with all the rest of them.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Rise and Fall of the British Empire in an Ani­mat­ed Time-Lapse Map ( 519 A.D. to 2014 A.D.)

The Roman Roads of Britain Visu­al­ized as a Sub­way Map

Watch the His­to­ry of the World Unfold on an Ani­mat­ed Map: From 200,000 BCE to Today

The His­to­ry of Civ­i­liza­tion Mapped in 13 Min­utes: 5000 BC to 2014 AD

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

A His­to­ry of the Entire World in Less Than 20 Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki Free Online: A Four Part-Part Documentary on the Unstoppable Japanese Animator

in Animation, Film | October 9th, 2019

When Conan O’Brien found him­self tem­porar­i­ly out of a late-night tele­vi­sion host­ing job a few years ago, he went on tour with a stage show instead. If the doc­u­men­tary chron­i­cling that peri­od of his career was­n’t called Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, a sim­i­lar title could equal­ly fit the recent films that have cap­tured Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s oscil­la­tion between work and “retire­ment.” In 2013’s King­dom of Dreams and Mad­ness, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, we thought we wit­nessed Miyaza­ki ani­mat­ing the final frame of his final fea­ture. But his sub­se­quent with­draw­al from film­mak­ing proved short-lived, and his prepa­ra­tion for re-emer­gence (includ­ing his gone-viral cri­tique of exper­i­men­tal com­put­er ani­ma­tion) pro­vides the sub­ject for 2016’s Nev­er-End­ing Man.

This year, Nev­er-End­ing Man direc­tor Kaku Arakawa returns with 10 Years With Hayao Miyaza­ki, a four-part doc­u­men­tary avail­able to watch free at NHK’s web site, and whose trail­er appears at the top of the post. “Where­as Nev­er-End­ing Man tracked the director’s career from his short-lived retire­ment in 2013 to the ger­mi­na­tion of his forth­com­ing fea­ture How Do You Live?, this series cov­ers the decade run­ning up to 2013,” writes Car­toon Brew’s Alex Dudok de Wit. Those were busy years for Miyaza­k­i’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, involv­ing as they did the pro­duc­tion of Ponyo and The Wind Ris­es, as well as two films direct­ed by Miyaza­k­i’s son Goro: the Ursu­la K. LeGuin adap­ta­tion Tales from Earth­sea and the 1960s board­ing school-set From Up on Pop­py Hill.

Tales from Earth­sea came out in 2006, and at the time Miyaza­ki felt that Goro was unready to make his debut. As awk­ward as the peri­od of estrange­ment between Miyaza­ki père et fils dur­ing that movie’s pro­duc­tion may feel — espe­cial­ly giv­en how often they’re in the same office — it reflects the near-impos­si­bly high stan­dard to which the man who direct­ed My Neigh­bor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spir­it­ed Away holds not just his suc­ces­sor and his col­lab­o­ra­tors, but him­self. Above all him­self, as revealed by the can­did footage Arakawa’s decade of access to Miyaza­k­i’s life allowed him to gath­er.

“We see him at work in his pri­vate stu­dio and at Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, and relax­ing at home,” writes Dudok de Wit, “inso­far as he’s capa­ble of relax­ation.” What Miyaza­ki says to Arakawa about his craft, his world­view, and his life sug­gests a mind per­pet­u­al­ly at work, even dur­ing the rare times his hands aren’t. 10 Years With Hayao Miyaza­ki ends with the mak­ing of The Wind Ris­es, but Arakawa must sure­ly have known not to take the ani­ma­tor’s pro­nounce­ments of it being his final fea­ture seri­ous­ly: Hayao Miyaza­ki can’t stop, nor do we want him to.

Watch 10 Years With Hayao Miyaza­ki online here, and find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Hayao Miyaza­ki: A Video Essay on How the Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Reli­gion Shin­to Suf­fus­es Miyazaki’s Films

The Essence of Hayao Miyaza­ki Films: A Short Doc­u­men­tary About the Human­i­ty at the Heart of His Ani­ma­tion

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

Watch Moe­bius and Miyaza­ki, Two of the Most Imag­i­na­tive Artists, in Con­ver­sa­tion (2004)

Hayao Miyaza­ki Meets Aki­ra Kuro­sawa: Watch the Titans of Japan­ese Film in Con­ver­sa­tion (1993)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Animated Series Drawn & Recorded Tells “Untold Stories” from Music History: Nirvana, Leonard Cohen, Blind Willie Johnson & More

in Animation, Music | September 11th, 2019

Who hasn’t tast­ed the plea­sures, guilty or oth­er­wise, of VH1’s Behind the Music? The long-run­ning show, a juicy mix of tabloid gos­sip, doc­u­men­tary insight, and unabashed nos­tal­gia, debuted in 1997, a total­ly dif­fer­ent media age. Its orig­i­nal view­ers were the first gen­er­a­tion to use email, shop online, or down­load (usu­al­ly pirat­ed) music. Peo­ple were will­ing to sit through episodes of an hour or more, with­out a pause but­ton, whether they liked the music or not. (Some of the best shows pro­file the most ridicu­lous one-hit won­ders).

Behind the Music is still on, and you can stream old episodes all day long, paus­ing every few min­utes to check email or social media, stream anoth­er video, or down­load an album in sec­onds. But with so many dis­trac­tions, it’s easy to lose the thread of Huey Lewis and the News’ rise to star­dom or the thrilling life and times of Ice‑T. We need sto­ries like these, but we may need them in a small­er, more self-con­tained form.

Enter Drawn & Record­ed: Mod­ern Myths of Music, an online series that deliv­ers the fris­son of Behind the Music in a frac­tion of the time, with the added bonus of whim­si­cal, high-qual­i­ty ani­ma­tion and nar­ra­tion by T. Bone Bur­nett. Now in its fourth sea­son, the award-win­ning series, direct­ed and hand-drawn by ani­ma­tor Drew Christie for stu­dio Gun­pow­der & Sky, brings us anec­dotes “some­times hilar­i­ous, occa­sion­al­ly trag­ic, always com­pelling,” writes Ani­ma­tion Mag­a­zine.

Those sto­ries include “Leonard Cohen’s escape from Cuban author­i­ties after being detained under sus­pi­cion of espi­onage” (see the trail­er here) and the ori­gins of Kurt Cobain’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (above), a sto­ry we cov­ered in a pre­vi­ous post. Drawn & Record­ed has dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed itself from the afore­men­tioned pop music doc­u­men­tary show not only in its length and aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties but also in its will­ing­ness to ven­ture deep­er into music his­to­ry.

The episode below, for exam­ple, fea­tures trag­ic blues­man Blind Willie John­son, who made mod­ern his­to­ry when his music trav­eled into out­er space on the Voy­ager Gold­en Record. Giv­en their lengths of under five min­utes, each Drawn & Record­ed must prune its sto­ry carefully—there’s no room for mean­der­ing or gra­tu­itous rep­e­ti­tion. Each of the vignettes promis­es an “untold sto­ry” from music his­to­ry, and while that may not always be the case, they are each well-told and sur­pris­ing and often as strange as Christie’s ani­ma­tions and Burnett’s haunt­ed, raspy bari­tone sug­gest.

In the episode below, coun­try leg­end Jim­mie Rogers, whose influ­ence “would range from Hank Williams to Louis Arm­strong to Bob Dylan,” arrived in Kenya a decade after his death, by way of British mis­sion­ar­ies tot­ing a phono­graph. The native peo­ple became fas­ci­nat­ed with the sound of Rogers’ music. They pro­nounced his name “Chemirocha,” a word that came to mean “any­thing new and dif­fer­ent.” This became a song called “Chemirocha,” about a half-man/half-ante­lope god.

It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing­ly odd lit­tle tale about cross-cul­tur­al con­tact, one that has lit­tle to do with the biog­ra­phy of Jim­mie Rogers, and hence might nev­er make it into your stan­dard-issue doc­u­men­tary. But Drawn & Record­ed is some­thing else—a hand­made arti­fact that streams dig­i­tal­ly, telling sto­ries about musi­cians famous, infa­mous, and rarely remem­bered. Oth­er episodes fea­ture a can­ny mix of the con­tem­po­rary, clas­sic, and gold­en age, includ­ing Grimes, David Bowie, the Bea­t­les, Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe, MF Doom, and more. Find them, notes Ani­ma­tion Mag­a­zine, “on the Net­work, avail­able on DirecTV, DirecTV Now and AT&T U‑verse” or find scat­tered episodes on Vimeo.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to Nick Drake, Whose Haunt­ing & Influ­en­tial Songs Came Into the World 50 Years Ago Today

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

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

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The History of Europe from 400 BC to the Present, Animated in 12 Minutes

in Animation, History | September 4th, 2019

What does the future of Europe look like? Geopo­lit­i­cal times such as these do make one pon­der such ques­tions as, say, “In what shape (if any) will the Euro­pean Union make it through this cen­tu­ry?” But as any his­to­ri­an of Europe knows, that con­ti­nent has sel­dom had an easy time of it: Euro­pean his­to­ry is a his­to­ry of con­quests, rebel­lions, alliances made and bro­ken, and of course, wars aplen­ty — a major piece of the ratio­nale behind the cre­ation of orga­ni­za­tions like the Euro­pean Union in the first place. As a result, the divi­sion of Europe by the many groups and indi­vid­u­als who have laid claim to pieces of it has, over the past 2500 years, sel­dom held steady for long, as you can see on the ani­mat­ed map above.

The Roman Empire did man­age to paint the map red, lit­er­al­ly, in the sec­ond and third cen­turies, but dur­ing all eras before and after it looks as mul­ti­col­ored as it was polit­i­cal­ly dis­unit­ed. In ear­li­er times, Europe was home to peo­ples with names like the Gauls, Iberi­ans, Celts, and Scythi­ans, as well as empires like the Achaemenid and Seleu­cid Empire.

After the First World War, though — and the dis­so­lu­tion of such enti­ties as the Ottoman Empire, Aus­tria-Hun­gary, and the Pol­ish-Lithuan­ian Com­mon­wealth — the labels start to look more famil­iar. Most of us remem­ber the event marked by the last big change to this map, the end of the Union of Sovi­et Social­ist Republics. (Many of us even spent years there­after in class­rooms whose world maps still depict­ed the USSR as one mighty bloc.)

The map’s ani­ma­tion begins in 400 BC and ends in 2017 with Europe as a col­lec­tion of nation-states, each of which we now regard as not just polit­i­cal­ly but cul­tur­al­ly dis­tinct. But watch­ing the full two-and-a-half-mil­len­nia time-lapse reminds us that every coun­try in Europe has bro­ken off from, joined with, or oth­er­wise descend­ed from anoth­er place, indeed many oth­er places, most of which have long since ceased to exist. In the 21st cen­tu­ry, one often hears Europe described as essen­tial­ly unchang­ing, stuck in its ways, ossi­fied, and an after­noon spent watch­ing the pro­ceed­ings of Euro­pean Union bureau­cra­cy would hard­ly dis­abuse any­one of that notion. But then, would­n’t observers of Europe have felt the same way back in the hey­day of Rome?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Europe: 5,000 Years Ani­mat­ed in a Time­lapse Map

Watch World War I Unfold in a 6 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1914 to 1918

Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

The Entire His­to­ry of Japan in 9 Quirky Min­utes

Watch the His­to­ry of the World Unfold on an Ani­mat­ed Map: From 200,000 BCE to Today

A His­to­ry of the Entire World in Less Than 20 Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Voice Actor Dee Bradley Baker (Clone Wars,American Dad) Defends Cartoons on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #9

in Animation, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | September 4th, 2019

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is PMP-Voicing-Cartoons-with-Dee-Bradley-Baker-400-x-800.jpg



Are car­toons an inher­ent­ly juve­nile art form? Even ani­ma­tion aimed at adults is still typ­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered genre fiction–a guilty pleasure–and the form enables tones and approach­es that might sim­ply be con­sid­ered awful if pre­sent­ed as tra­di­tion­al live action. So what’s the appeal?

Dee’s voice can be heard in sub­stan­tial por­tion of today’s car­toons, espe­cial­ly for ani­mal or mon­ster nois­es, like Boots in the new big-screen adap­ta­tion of Dora the Explor­er, Momo and Appa in The Last Air­ben­der, Ani­mal in the new Mup­pet Babies, etc. He’s also a deep thinker who proud­ly defends car­toons as pro­vid­ing pri­mal delights of humor, jus­tice, and nar­ra­tive mean­ing.

Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an engage Dee about his expe­ri­ence as a voice actor (e.g. as Klaus Ger­man fish in a Seth Mac­Far­lane sit-com, fig­ur­ing out what Adven­ture Time was actu­al­ly about, doing all the sim­i­lar-but-dis­tinct voic­es of the var­i­ous clones in Clone Wars, com­ing up with a lan­guage for The Box­trolls, and recre­at­ing Mel Blanc’s voic­es in Space Jamand oth­er Looney Tunes projects), his role in col­lab­o­ra­tive cre­ation,  the con­nec­tion between car­toons and vaude­ville, how live-action films can be made “car­toon­ish,” graph­ic nov­els, car­toon music, and more. We also touch on Love & Robots, A Scan­ner Dark­ly, Lar­va, the doc­u­men­tary I Know That Voice, and the 1972 film What’s Up, Doc? Intro­duc­tion by Chick­ie.

We did read a few arti­cles in prepa­ra­tion for this about the phe­nom­e­non of adults watch­ing kid car­toons:

There’s also a lengthy red­dit thread that we mined for per­spec­tives.

This episode includes bonus con­tent that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Lemony Snicket Reveals His Edward Gorey Obsession in an Upcoming Animated Documentary

in Animation, Art, K-12, Life, Literature | August 30th, 2019

Had the gloom-haunt­ed Edward Gorey found a way to have a love child with Dorothy Park­er, their issue might well have been Lemo­ny Snick­et, the pseu­do­ny­mous author of a mul­ti­vol­ume fam­i­ly chron­i­cle brought out under the gen­teel appel­la­tion A Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events. 

- Gre­go­ry Maguire, The New York Times

Author Daniel Han­dler—aka Lemo­ny Snicket—was but a child when he for­tu­itous­ly stum­bled onto the curi­ous oeu­vre of Edward Gorey.

The lit­tle books were illus­trat­ed, hand-let­tered, and mys­te­ri­ous. They allud­ed to ter­ri­ble things befalling inno­cents in a way that made young Han­dler laugh and want more, though he shied from mak­ing such a request of his par­ents, lest the books con­sti­tute pornog­ra­phy.

(His fear strikes this writer as whol­ly reasonable—my father kept a copy of The Curi­ous Sofa: A Porno­graph­ic Work by Ogdred Weary—aka Edward Gorey—stashed in the bath­room of my child­hood home. Its per­ver­sions were many, though far from explic­it and utter­ly befud­dling to a third grade book­worm. The exceed­ing­ly eco­nom­i­cal text hint­ed at a mul­ti­tude of unfa­mil­iar taboos, and Gorey the illus­tra­tor under­stood the val­ue of a well-placed orna­men­tal urn.)

Inter­viewed above for Christo­pher Seufert’s upcom­ing fea­ture-length Gorey doc­u­men­tary, Han­dler is effu­sive about the depth of this ear­ly influ­ence:

The goth­ic set­ting. (Han­dler always fan­cied that an in-per­son meet­ing with Gorey would resem­ble the first 20 min­utes of a Ham­mer hor­ror movie.)

The dark, unwink­ing humor aris­ing from a plot as grim as that of The Hap­less Child, or The Blue Aspic, the first title young Han­dler pur­chased with his own mon­ey.

An inten­tion­al­ly murky pseu­do­nym geared to ignite all man­ner of wild­ly read­er­ly spec­u­la­tion as to the author’s lifestyle and/or true iden­ti­ty. (Gorey attrib­uted var­i­ous of his works to Dogear Wryde, Ms. Regera Dowdy, Eduard Blutig, O. Müde and the afore­men­tioned Ogdred Weary, among oth­ers.)

Even Lemo­ny Snickett’s web­site car­ries a strong whiff of Gorey.

In acknowl­edg­ment of this debt, Han­dler sent copies of the first two Snick­ett books to the reclu­sive author, along with a fan let­ter that apol­o­gized for rip­ping him off. Gorey died in April 2000, a cou­ple of weeks after the pack­age was post­ed, leav­ing Han­dler doubt­ful that it was even opened.

Han­dler namechecks oth­er artists who oper­ate in Gorey’s thrall: film­mak­ers Tim Bur­ton and Michel Gondry, musi­cians Aman­da Palmer and Trent Reznor, and nov­el­ist Neil Gaiman.

Per­haps owing to the spec­tac­u­lar pop­u­lar­i­ty of Snickett’s Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events, Gorey has late­ly become a bit more of an above-ground dis­cov­ery for young read­ers. Scholas­tic has a free Edward Gorey les­son plan, geared to grades 6–12.

More infor­ma­tion about Christo­pher Seufert’s Gorey doc­u­men­tary, with ani­ma­tions by Ben Wick­ey and the active par­tic­i­pa­tion of its sub­ject dur­ing his final four years of life, can be found here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edward Gorey Talks About His Love Cats & More in the Ani­mat­ed Series, “Goreytelling”

Edward Gorey Illus­trates H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inim­itable Goth­ic Style (1960)

The First Amer­i­can Pic­ture Book, Wan­da Gág’s Mil­lions of Cats (1928)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 9 for anoth­er sea­son of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Ray Harryhausen’s Creepy War of the Worlds Sketches and Stop-Motion Test Footage

in Animation, Film | August 29th, 2019

Most of us know The War of the Worlds because of Orson Welles’ slight­ly-too-real­is­tic radio adap­ta­tion, first broad­cast on Hal­loween 1938. But its source mate­r­i­al, H.G. Wells’ 1898 sci­ence-fic­tion nov­el, still fires up the imag­i­na­tion. Its many adap­ta­tions since have tak­en the form of com­ic books, video games, tele­vi­sion series, and more besides. Sev­er­al films have used The War of the Worlds as their basis, includ­ing a high-pro­file one in 2005 direct­ed by Steven Spiel­berg and star­ring Tom Cruise, and more than half a cen­tu­ry before that, George Pal’s first 1953 adap­ta­tion in all its Tech­ni­col­or glo­ry.

In recent years mate­ri­als have sur­faced show­ing us the mid­cen­tu­ry War of the Worlds pic­ture that could have been, one fea­tur­ing the stop-motion crea­ture-cre­ation of Ray Har­ry­hausen.

“Well before CGI tech­nol­o­gy beamed extrater­res­tri­als onto the big screen, stop-motion ani­ma­tion mas­ter Har­ry­hausen brought to life Wells’ vision of a slimy Mar­t­ian with enor­mous bulging eyes, a slob­ber­ing beaked mouth and ‘Gor­gon groups of ten­ta­cles’ in a 16 mm test reel,” writes Den of Geek’s Eliz­a­beth Rayne.

“The result is some­thing that looks like a twist­ed mashup of a Mup­pet and an octo­pus.” Har­ry­hausen had long dreamed of bring­ing The War of the Worlds to the big screen, and any­one who has seen Har­ry­hausen’s work of the 1950s and 60s, as it appears in such films as The 7th Voy­age of Sin­bad and Jason and the Arg­onauts, knows that he was sure­ly the man for this job. He cer­tain­ly had the right spir­it: as his own words put it at the begin­ning of the test-footage clip, “ANY imag­i­na­tive crea­ture or thing can be built and ani­mat­ed con­vinc­ing­ly.”

“I actu­al­ly built a Mar­t­ian based on H.G. Wells descrip­tion,” Har­ry­hausen says in the inter­view clip above. “He described the crea­ture that came from the space ship a sort of an octo­pus-like type of crea­ture.” Har­ry­hausen’s also pre­sent­ed his vision with includ­ed sketch­es of the tri­pod invaders lay­ing waste to Amer­i­ca both urban and rur­al. “I took it all around Hol­ly­wood,” he says, but alas, it nev­er quite con­vinced those who kept the gates of the Indus­try in the 1940s.

“We could­n’t raise mon­ey. Peo­ple weren’t that inter­est­ed in sci­ence fic­tion at that time.” Times have changed; the pub­lic has long since devel­oped an unquench­able appetite for sto­ries of human beings and advanced, hos­tile space invaders locked in mor­tal com­bat. But now such a spec­ta­cle would almost cer­tain­ly be real­ized with the inten­sive use of com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery, a tech­nol­o­gy impres­sive in its own way, but one that may nev­er equal the per­son­al­i­ty, phys­i­cal­i­ty, and sheer creepi­ness of the crea­tures that Ray Har­ry­hausen brought painstak­ing­ly to life, one frame at a time, all by hand.

via @41Strange

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Very First Illus­tra­tions of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1897)

Hor­ri­fy­ing 1906 Illus­tra­tions of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: Dis­cov­er the Art of Hen­rique Alvim Cor­rêa

Edward Gorey Illus­trates H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inim­itable Goth­ic Style (1960)

Hear the Prog-Rock Adap­ta­tion of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: The 1978 Rock Opera That Sold 15 Mil­lion Copies World­wide

Hear Orson Welles’ Icon­ic War of the Worlds Broad­cast (1938)

The Mas­cot, a Pio­neer­ing Stop Ani­ma­tion Film by Wla­dys­law Starewicz

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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