Peter Sellers: His Life in Home Movies

in Comedy, Film | August 30th, 2012

Peter Sell­ers was a com­pul­sive home movie mak­er. His house was clut­tered with cam­eras, cables and tape recorders, accord­ing to his first wife Anne Howe, and he liked to bring a cam­era along with him wher­ev­er he went, some­times hand­ing it to a com­pan­ion and clown­ing around in front of the lens.

In 1995, fif­teen years after Sell­er­s’s death, pro­duc­ers from BBC Are­na sort­ed through his exten­sive archive and assem­bled some of the best footage for a film called The Peter Sell­ers Sto­ry. In 2002 they short­ened it into The Peter Sell­ers Sto­ry: As He Filmed It (above), which tells the sto­ry of the come­di­an’s life almost exclu­sive­ly with footage from his own cam­era.

There are glimpses of some notable peo­ple from the actor’s cir­cle, includ­ing Stan­ley Kubrick, Sophia Loren, Lord Snow­don, Princess Mar­garet, Britt Ekland, Blake Edwards, Spike Mil­li­gan and Orson Welles. The audio is pieced togeth­er from vin­tage per­for­mances and inter­views, along with com­men­tary by Sell­er­s’s friends, fam­i­ly and col­leagues. It’s a unique film, offer­ing a per­son­al look at the enig­mat­ic and emo­tion­al­ly trou­bled genius who was able to slip con­fi­dent­ly into an amaz­ing range of personas–often in the same film–but was nev­er sure of his own. As Sell­ers once told an inter­view­er:

I have no per­son­al­i­ty of my own, you see. I could nev­er be a star because of this. I’m a char­ac­ter actor. I could­n’t play Peter Sell­ers the way Cary Grant plays Cary Grant, say–because I have no con­crete image of myself. I look in the mir­ror and what I see is some­one who has nev­er grown up–a crash­ing sen­ti­men­tal­ist who alter­nates between great heights and black depths. You know, it’s a fun­ny thing, but when I’m doing a role I feel it’s the role doing the role, if you know what I mean. When some­one tells me “You were great as so-and-so,” I feel they should be telling this to so-and-so, and when I fin­ish a pic­ture I feel a hor­ri­ble sud­den loss of iden­ti­ty.

The Peter Sell­ers Sto­ry: As He Filmed It will be added to our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les in Shake­speare­an Mode

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ ‘She Loves You’ in Four Voic­es

 

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The Dead Authors Podcast: H.G. Wells Comically Revives Literary Greats with His Time Machine

in Comedy, Literature, Podcasts | August 29th, 2012

Record­ed live in front of an audi­ence at the Upright Cit­i­zens Brigade The­atre in Los Ange­les, The Dead Authors Pod­cast—“Unscript­ed, bare­ly researched, all fun!”—showcases rau­cous con­ver­sa­tions between “time-trav­el­er” H.G. Wells (Paul F. Tomp­kins) and var­i­ous “dead authors.” Some of Wells’ guests have includ­ed Aesop, Dorothy Park­er, Gertrude Stein, Carl Sagan, and Jorge Luis Borges, all played by come­di­ans like Andy Richter (as Emi­ly Dick­in­son) and Bri­an Stack (as P.G. Wode­house).

In the episode above, Wells wel­comes the noto­ri­ous­ly misog­y­nis­tic and alleged­ly anti-Semit­ic Friedrich Niet­zsche (James Ado­mi­an) and the noto­ri­ous­ly racist writer of “weird tales” H.P. Love­craft (Paul Scheer). As the pod­cast descrip­tion has it, “if you are eas­i­ly offend­ed, you may find this one a bit chal­leng­ing.” The offense is mit­i­gat­ed by the fact that the dis­cus­sion “very rarely makes any sense AT ALL,” and that it’s damned fun­ny.

Both “authors” spout exag­ger­at­ed par­o­dies of their philoso­phies, in ridicu­lous accents, and (as you can see from the pho­to above), look equal­ly ridicu­lous to an audi­ence that some­times laughs along, some­times doesn’t, as will hap­pen in live com­e­dy. The actors are game, ad-lib­bing with ease and con­fi­dence and clear­ly hav­ing a great time. The only moments that aren’t impro­vised are when the actors play­ing Niet­zsche and Love­craft read from the writ­ers’ actu­al texts. In this con­text (and in these voic­es), the two both indeed make lit­tle sense. They’ll sur­vive the takedown—these are two dead authors who tend to be tak­en far too seri­ous­ly by their devo­tees. So, go ahead, lis­ten to Niet­zsche huff and puff his way through his bom­bas­tic and orac­u­lar pro­nounce­ments; hear Love­craft hiss through his florid and para­noid prose. It’s all for a good cause. The Dead Authors pod­cast ben­e­fits 826LA, a non-prof­it writ­ing and tutor­ing cen­ter for kids age 6–18.

You can find real works by Niet­zsche and Love­craft in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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The Crimson Permanent Assurance: Monty Python’s Comic Fantasy of Revolt Against the Corporations

in Comedy, Film | August 28th, 2012

In art, cer­tain themes are ever­green. They nev­er go out of date. Among them are love, death, and the intrin­si­cal­ly dehu­man­iz­ing nature of cor­po­ra­tions.

In 1983 Mon­ty Python tapped into one of the Great Themes with their short film The Crim­son Per­ma­nent Assur­ance. It tells the sto­ry of a group of elder­ly accoun­tants, “strained under the oppres­sive yoke of their new cor­po­rate man­age­ment,” who rise up against The Very Big Cor­po­ra­tion of Amer­i­ca and set sail on the high seas of inter­na­tion­al finance as a maraud­ing band of pirates.

The film was orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived by direc­tor Ter­ry Gilliam as an ani­mat­ed sequence for inclu­sion in Mon­ty Python’s The Mean­ing of Life, but as the idea grew he talked the group into let­ting him devel­op it into a live-action film. The Crim­son Per­ma­nent Assur­ance was even­tu­al­ly shown both on its own and as a pro­logue to The Mean­ing of Life. The title was inspired by the 1952 Burt Lan­cast­er adven­ture film The Crim­son Pirate. The cast is made up most­ly of unknown actors, but if you watch close­ly you’ll catch a glimpse of most of the Python mem­bers. Gilliam and Michael Palin have cameo roles as win­dow wash­ers, and Eric Idle, Ter­ry Jones and Gra­ham Chap­man appear very briefly at the begin­ning of the board­room scene.

The Crim­son Per­ma­nent Assur­ance is a delight­ful lit­tle film–and just as rel­e­vant now as ever, a reminder of the utter absur­di­ty of the claim that “cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple too.”

You will find The Crim­son Per­ma­nent Assur­ance added to our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam

Ter­ry Gilliam (Mon­ty Python) Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Ani­ma­tion

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The Famous Intro to 20th Century Fox Films … As It Ought to Be

in Comedy, Film, Random | August 24th, 2012

The world be an infi­nite­ly more cheer­ful place if every 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox Film start­ed like this, would­n’t it?

Find us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and don’t for­get to check out our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Online Movies.

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“Learn English With Ricky Gervais,” A New Podcast Debuts (NSFW)

in Comedy, Language Lessons | August 21st, 2012

Bom­bas­ti­cal­ly billed as “a new land­mark in human com­pre­hen­sion,” Ricky Ger­vais’ video pod­cast, “Learn Eng­lish with Ricky Ger­vais” does, in a way, break new ped­a­gog­i­cal ground. The trail­er above pro­vides a brief glimpse of the series’ first episode, cur­rent­ly avail­able for free on iTunes. The premise of the show is that Ger­vais and his part­ner Karl Pilk­ing­ton, in a posh-look­ing study with globe and fire­place, par­o­dy video lan­guage cours­es for non-Eng­lish speak­ers. Ger­vais’ obnox­ious grandios­i­ty and the almost method­i­cal obtuse­ness of Pilk­ing­ton have become leg­endary to fans of HBO’s The Ricky Ger­vais Show. Miss­ing here is the third mem­ber of that pro­gram, co-cre­ator of the orig­i­nal British The Office, Stephen Mer­chant, but what­ev­er the rea­son for his absence, this con­cept prob­a­bly works bet­ter as a duo, with Ger­vais play­ing the over­bear­ing and some­what abu­sive teacher and Pilk­ing­ton stand­ing in for the hypo­thet­i­cal “stu­dents,” who would no doubt find this method as bewil­der­ing as he does.

The full episode includes sub­ti­tles in a lan­guage that resem­bles Welsh but most­ly seems like gib­ber­ish (cor­rect me, Welsh speak­ers, if I’m wrong), and Ger­vais and Pilkington’s exchanges are chock-full of non-sequiturs and insults, some benign, some skirt­ing the bound­aries of the uncom­fort­ably xeno­pho­bic, but that’s kind of the point, and the source of much of the humor. The char­ac­ters here are too cul­tur­al­ly insen­si­tive and dense to teach any­one any­thing. Gervais—with Mer­chant and Pilkington—uses a sim­i­lar shtick in his An Idiot Abroad series, and it works, I think, but you’ll need to decide for your­self in the case of “Learn Eng­lish,” and you’ll need to down­load iTunes (on the off chance you don’t have it) and sub­scribe to the pod­cast to view the full first episode, which debuted on August 14th. Ger­vais has said that future episodes may involve either a small fee or adver­tis­ing to cov­er costs.

In the mean­time, stop by our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons, where you can down­load seri­ous lessons in 40 dif­fer­ent lan­guages, includ­ing French, Span­ish, Ital­ian, Man­darin, Ara­bic, and, yes, Eng­lish and Welsh.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Mnozil Brass: Europe’s Most Imaginative Brass Band

in Comedy, Music | August 17th, 2012

Here’s some­thing fun. And a bit weird. Mnozil Brass is an Aus­tri­an septet that com­bines musi­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty with absur­dist the­atre. The group’s name means “noz­zle,” and refers to the Mnozil Pub, a lit­tle place near the Vien­na Col­lege of Music where the found­ing mem­bers used to get togeth­er to drink and play music. Since form­ing in 1992, and the group’s enter­tain­ing mix­ture of music and clown­ing has grown steadi­ly in pop­u­lar­i­ty. Above is a skit called “Slow Motion” from Mnozil Brass’s new DVD, Mag­ic Moments. Think of it as a sort of “spaghet­ti west­ern music recital.” There are sev­er­al more sam­ples below, to give you a sense of the luna­cy:

The William Tell Over­ture:

Lone­ly Boy:

Bohemi­an Rhap­sody:

 

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Julia Child Shows David Letterman How to Cook Meat with a Blow Torch

in Comedy, Television | August 15th, 2012

Julia Child would have turned 100 years old today. As an author and tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty, Child intro­duced French cui­sine to the main­stream Amer­i­can pub­lic and turned cook­ing into a dai­ly adven­ture.

Child became fas­ci­nat­ed with French food after mov­ing to Paris in 1948. She stud­ied cook­ing at the renowned Cor­don Bleu school, and in 1961 co-authored the two-vol­ume Mas­ter­ing the Art of French Cook­ing. More than 2 mil­lion copies of the book have been sold, but Child is best known for her tele­vi­sion appear­ances on a suc­ces­sion of pro­grams, start­ing with The French Chef in 1962 and end­ing with Juli­a’s Casu­al Din­ners in 1999, just three years before her death in 2002 at the age of 92.

In 2009 she was the sub­ject of the film Julie & Julia, star­ring Meryl Streep. The movie is based on the real-life adven­tures of Julie Pow­ell, who was great­ly inspired by Child. “Some­thing came out of Julia on tele­vi­sion that was unex­pect­ed,” says Pow­ell in a video at Biography.com. “She’s not a beau­ti­ful woman, but her voice and her atti­tude and her playfulness–it’s just mag­i­cal. You can’t fake that. You can’t take class­es to learn how to be won­der­ful. She just want­ed to enter­tain and edu­cate peo­ple at the same time. Our food cul­ture is bet­ter for it.”

For a quick reminder of Child’s voice, atti­tude and playfulness–not to men­tion her con­sid­er­able skill with a blowtorch–we bring you her mem­o­rable late-1980s appear­ance on Late Night with David Let­ter­man, in which the resource­ful Child adjusts to time con­straints by chang­ing a sim­ple Amer­i­can ham­burg­er into beef tartare grat­iné.

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!

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George Carlin Performs His “Seven Dirty Words” Routine: Historic and Completely NSFW

in Comedy, Literature | August 13th, 2012

Okay, this is George Carlin’s infa­mous bit “Sev­en Words You Can Nev­er Say on Tele­vi­sion,” so please don’t watch it at work. That said, a bit of con­text: Car­lin, arch com­ic satirist and inci­sive social crit­ic, orig­i­nal­ly per­formed this rou­tine in Mil­wau­kee in 1972. Car­lin is delib­er­ate­ly push­ing the enve­lope here, and he’s pay­ing homage to the great Lenny Bruce, who was per­se­cut­ed by cen­sors and police, and hound­ed out of work, more or less, for doing what Car­lin does above—poking fun at our Amer­i­can squea­mish­ness about the body, sex­u­al­i­ty, and reli­gion. With Eliz­a­bethan glee, Car­lin takes sev­en words from Bruce’s orig­i­nal nine and reduces them to absur­di­ties. As we all know–South Park and pay cable excepted–most of these words are still taboo and can send cer­tain view­ers, media watch­dogs, and con­gress peo­ple into fits.

Carlin’s point is exact­ly that—people squirm when they hear obscene words, as though the lan­guage itself had some mag­i­cal­ly destruc­tive pow­er, but as he says, “there are no bad words. Bad thoughts, Bad inten­tions,” sug­gest­ing that the prob­lem lies in the minds and hearts of those who assume that quar­an­ti­ning cer­tain uses of lan­guage will keep us from cer­tain ideas and acts they fear—or in his own irrev­er­ent voice, that some words “will infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the coun­try from win­ning the war.…” Car­lin was arrest­ed after his Mil­wau­kee appear­ance when an audi­ence mem­ber com­plained, but a Wis­con­sin judge deter­mined that his speech was pro­tect­ed. Lat­er, when the bit was broad­cast by a New York radio sta­tion, legal trou­ble ensued once again, and the case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1978 that the gov­ern­ment had the right to restrict tele­vi­sion and radio broad­casts in case chil­dren were lis­ten­ing. Car­lin, who died in 2008 at the age of 71, said of the case, “My name is a foot­note in Amer­i­can legal his­to­ry, which I’m per­verse­ly kind of proud of.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

George Car­lin: The Mod­ern Man in Three Min­utes

Con­for­mi­ty Isn’t a Recipe for Excel­lence: Wis­dom from George Car­lin & Steve Jobs (NSFW)

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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