Chaos Cinema: A Breakdown of How 21st-Century Action Films Became Incoherent

in Film | January 2nd, 2014

If you read Open Cul­ture, you prob­a­bly love watch­ing movies. I’d wager, how­ev­er, that you don’t love watch­ing action movies. I don’t mean that you oper­ate at an intel­lec­tu­al lev­el far above any such pal­try enter­tain­ments; I mean that the craft of action film­mak­ing has itself declined. You’ve sure­ly felt that today’s big-bud­get spec­ta­cles of chase, fight, and explo­sion — Trans­form­ers, the Jason Bourne films, last few Bonds, the lat­est Bat­man tril­o­gy — don’t thrill you as did those of decades past — Hard Boiled, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Wild Bunch, Die Hard — but per­haps you can’t pin down quite why. Have action movies changed, you may won­der, or have I? Ger­man-born, UCLA-based film schol­ar Matthias Stork argues for the for­mer, break­ing down the cor­rup­tion of mod­ern action film­mak­ing in his video essay Chaos Cin­e­ma. “Through­out the first cen­tu­ry of moviemak­ing, the default style of com­mer­cial cin­e­ma was clas­si­cal,” he begins. “It was metic­u­lous and patient. In the­o­ry, at least, every com­po­si­tion and cam­era move had a mean­ing, a pur­pose, and movies did not cut with­out good rea­son.”

No longer. Where action film­mak­ers once “prid­ed them­selves on keep­ing the view­er well-ori­ent­ed” in time and space, they now throw dis­parate images togeth­er hap­haz­ard­ly, enslaved to “rapid edit­ing, close fram­ings, bipo­lar lens lengths, and promis­cu­ous cam­era move­ment,” trad­ing “visu­al intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty for sen­so­ry over­load,” leav­ing it to the sound­track to pro­vide a sem­blance of con­ti­nu­ity. Stork exam­ines the qual­i­ties and effects of this new style of “chaos cin­e­ma” in three parts. The first cov­ers the visu­al dis­in­te­gra­tion of action sequences them­selves; the sec­ond cov­ers the defi­cien­cy’s pen­e­tra­tion even into scenes of dia­logue and music and the emer­gence of the “shaky-cam”; the third sum­ma­rizes and engages respons­es to the first two parts. Whether or not main­stream com­mer­cial film­mak­ing will ever cure itself and return to con­vinc­ing, coher­ent action rather than the impres­sion­is­tic “gen­er­al idea of action,” we now have a fas­ci­nat­ing diag­no­sis of the dis­ease. (For fur­ther dis­cus­sion of Chaos Cin­e­ma, con­sid­er lis­ten­ing to Stork’s appear­ance on Bat­tle­ship Pre­ten­sion, a favorite film pod­cast of mine.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dark Knight: Anato­my of a Flawed Action Scene

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

The 10 Hid­den Cuts in Rope (1948), Alfred Hitchcock’s Famous “One-Shot” Fea­ture Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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The Story of Einstein’s Brain: A Japanese Professor Tracks Down the Organ in a Bizarre Documentary

in Film, Physics | January 2nd, 2014

The 1994 doc­u­men­tary above, Einstein’s Brain, is a curi­ous arti­fact about an even stranger rel­ic, the brain of the great physi­cist, extract­ed from his body hours after he died in 1955. The brain was dis­sect­ed, then embarked on a con­vo­lut­ed mis­ad­ven­ture, in sev­er­al pieces, across the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent. Before Ein­stein’s Brain tells this sto­ry, it intro­duces us to our guide, Japan­ese schol­ar Ken­ji Sug­i­mo­to, who imme­di­ate­ly emerges as an eccen­tric fig­ure, wob­bling in and out of view, mum­bling awed phras­es in Japan­ese. We encounter him in a dark­ened cathe­dral, star­ing up at a back­lit stained-glass cleresto­ry, pray­ing, per­haps, though if he’s pray­ing to any­one, it’s prob­a­bly Albert Ein­stein. His first words in heav­i­ly accent­ed Eng­lish express a deep rev­er­ence for Ein­stein alone. “I love Albert Ein­stein,” he says, with reli­gious con­vic­tion, gaz­ing at a stained-glass win­dow por­trait of the sci­en­tist.

Sugimoto’s devo­tion per­fect­ly illus­trates what a Physics World arti­cle described as the cul­tur­al ele­va­tion of Ein­stein to the sta­tus of a “sec­u­lar saint.” Sug­i­mo­to’s zeal, and the rather implau­si­ble events that fol­low this open­ing, have prompt­ed many peo­ple to ques­tion the authen­tic­i­ty of his film and to accuse him of per­pe­trat­ing a hoax. Some of those crit­ics may mis­take Sugimoto’s social awk­ward­ness and wide-eyed enthu­si­asm for cred­u­lous­ness and unpro­fes­sion­al­ism, but it is worth not­ing that he is expe­ri­enced and cre­den­tialed as a pro­fes­sor in math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence his­to­ry at the Kin­ki Uni­ver­si­ty in Japan and, accord­ing to a title card, he “spent thir­ty years doc­u­ment­ing Einstein’s life and per­son.”

EinsteinsBrain

For a full eval­u­a­tion, see a poor­ly proof­read but very well-sourced arti­cle at “bad sci­ence blog” Deplet­ed Cra­ni­um that tells the com­plete sto­ry of Einstein’s brain, and sup­ports Sugimoto’s tale by ref­er­ence to sev­er­al accounts. Of the doc­u­men­tary, we’re told that “based on all avail­able data, the basic premise and the events shown in the doc­u­men­tary are indeed true.” In the film, Sug­i­mo­to trav­els across the U.S. in search of Dr. Thomas Har­vey, the man who orig­i­nal­ly removed Einstein’s brain at Prince­ton. (See one of the orig­i­nal pathol­o­gy pho­tos, with added labels, of the brain above). Deplet­ed Cra­ni­um con­tin­ues to set the scene as fol­lows:

Even­tu­al­ly, Sug­i­mo­to tracks down Thomas Har­vey at his home in Kansas. When he requests to see the brain, Har­vey brings out two glass jars con­tain­ing the pieces. At this point, Sug­i­mo­to makes a shock­ing request: he asks Har­vey if he could have a small piece of the brain to keep as a per­son­al memen­to. Har­vey says “I don’t see any rea­son why not” and pro­ceeds to retrieve a carv­ing knife and a cut­ting board from his kitchen. He cuts a small sec­tion from a sam­ple he iden­ti­fies as being part of Einstein’s brain stem and cere­bel­lum and gives it to Sug­i­mo­to in a small con­tain­er. In the final scene, Sug­i­mo­to cel­e­brates by tak­ing his piece of the brain to a local kereoke [sic] bar and singing a favorite Japan­ese song.

The notion that the bulk of Ein­stein’s brain would have end­ed up in a clos­et in Kansas seems strange enough. And as for Har­vey: the pathol­o­gist shopped the brain around for decades—if not for prof­it, then for notoriety—even dri­ving across the coun­try with jour­nal­ist Michael Pater­ni­ti in 1997 to deliv­er a large por­tion of the brain to Dr. San­dra Witel­son of McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty in Ontario. Pater­ni­ti doc­u­ment­ed the road trip in his book Dri­ving Mr. Albert, which appears to cor­rob­o­rate much of Sugimoto’s nar­ra­tive, though the trip may itself have been a pub­lic­i­ty stunt.

In addi­tion to the brain, Einstein’s eyes were also removed, with­out autho­riza­tion, by his oph­thal­mol­o­gist, who kept them in a safe­ty deposit box (where they pre­sum­ably remain). The entire sto­ry of Ein­stein’s remains is grue­some­ly out­landish, though one might con­sid­er it a mod­ern celebri­ty exam­ple of the cen­turies-old prac­tice of body snatch­ing. If some or all of this intrigues you, you’ll appre­ci­ate Sugimoto’s doc­u­men­tary. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the video upload is rough. It was record­ed from Swedish tele­vi­sion, has Swedish sub­ti­tles, and is gen­er­al­ly pret­ty low-res. How­ev­er, as a title card at the open­ing tells us, “due to the extreme­ly lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of this doc­u­men­tary, this will have to suf­fice until a copy of high­er qual­i­ty ris­es to the sur­face.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Impos­es on His First Wife a Cru­el List of Mar­i­tal Demands

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Ein­stein Doc­u­men­tary Offers A Reveal­ing Por­trait of the Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Sci­en­tist

Ein­stein for the Mass­es: Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Presents a Primer on the Great Physicist’s Think­ing

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

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

in Art, Books, Film, Law, Music | January 2nd, 2014

2014whatcouldhavebeencollage

Every year, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain high­lights major works that would have entered the pub­lic domain had the copy­right law that pre­vailed until 1978 still remained in effect today. That law (estab­lished in 1909) allowed works to remain under copy­right for a max­i­mum of 56 years — which means that 2014 would have wel­comed into the pub­lic domain works first pub­lished in 1957. Some high­lights (from the longer list) include:

Books

  • Jack Ker­ouac, On the Road
  • Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
  • Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christ­mas and The Cat in the Hat
  • Studs Terkel, Giants of Jazz
  • Ian Flem­ing, From Rus­sia, with Love

Movies

  • 12 Angry Men (Hen­ry Fon­da, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Klug­man, Ed Beg­ley, and more)
  • A Farewell to Arms (Rock Hud­son and Jen­nifer Jones)
  • Jail­house Rock (Elvis Pres­ley)
  • The Sev­enth Seal (writ­ten and direct­ed by Ing­mar Bergman and star­ring Max von Sydow and Bengt Ekerot)
  • Fun­ny Face (Audrey Hep­burn and Fred Astaire)
  • Gun­fight at the O.K. Cor­ral (Burt Lan­cast­er and Kirk Dou­glas)

Music

  • “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peg­gy Sue” (Bud­dy Hol­ly, Jer­ry Alli­son, and Nor­man Pet­ty)
  • “Great Balls of Fire” (Otis Black­well and Jack Ham­mer)
  • “Wake Up, Lit­tle Susie” (Felice and Boudleaux Bryant)
  • Elvis Presley’s hits: “All Shook Up” (Otis Black­well and Elvis Pres­ley) and “Jail­house Rock” (Jer­ry Leiber and Mike Stoller)
  • The musi­cal “West Side Sto­ry” (music by Leonard Bern­stein, lyrics by Stephen Sond­heim, and book by Arthur Lau­rents)

Art

  • Dali’s “Celes­tial Ride” and “Music: the Red Orches­tra”
  • Edward Hopper’s “West­ern Motel”
  • Picasso’s “Las Meni­nas” set of paint­ings

Under the cur­rent copy­right regime, you’ll have to wait anoth­er 39 years — until 2053 — before these works hit the com­mons.

You can find a longer list of 1957 works still under copy­right on Duke’s web­site.

Note: If you’re won­der­ing how many works of art entered the pub­lic domain in 2014, the answer is sim­ple: 0. As the Duke site notes, “Not a sin­gle pub­lished work” is enter­ing the pub­lic domain in 2014. “In fact, in the Unit­ed States, no pub­li­ca­tion will enter the pub­lic domain until 2019.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sher­lock Holmes Is Now in the Pub­lic Domain, Declares US Judge

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 13 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

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A Brief History of Hollywood Censorship and the Ratings System

in Film, History | December 31st, 2013

Cen­sor­ship, as most seri­ous film­go­ers know, shaped the sen­si­bil­i­ty of all the pic­tures we know from the “Gold­en Age” of Hol­ly­wood. It did so in the form of 1930’s “Motion Pic­ture Pro­duc­tion Code (also known as the Hays Code),” which “set up a small jury to review films for con­tent,” at first “still with­out teeth and large­ly mocked by indus­try insid­ers.” But that changed in a big way when “the Amer­i­can Bish­ops of the Roman Catholic Church orga­nized The Legion of Decen­cy and, in 1934, with the sup­port of Protes­tant and Jew­ish Orga­ni­za­tions, began call­ing for boy­cotts of films deemed unac­cept­able. [ … ] The Hol­ly­wood stu­dios, still reel­ing from the loss­es of 1933 due in large part to the delayed effects of the Great Depres­sion, were forced to act.” That sum­ma­ry comes from “The His­to­ry of Hol­ly­wood Cen­sor­ship and the Rat­ings Sys­tem,” a brief but in-depth les­son pro­duced by Film­mak­er IQ. Its video ver­sion appears at the top. Below, you can watch 1941’s The Out­law, the bust size of whose star Jane Rus­sell had the cen­sors demand­ing “37 spe­cif­ic reshoots.”

The com­plete sto­ry of cen­sor­ship and rat­ings in Hol­ly­wood involves such ele­ments of Amer­i­can his­to­ry and cul­ture as not just the Great Depres­sion and the Roman Catholic Church, but the 1919 World Series Gam­bling scan­dal, the Chicago’s Women’s Munic­i­pal League, mighty sys­tems of pro­duc­tion, the sport of box­ing, Howard Hugh­es, and of course, the almighty dol­lar. Even­tu­al­ly, film­mak­ers began to sim­ply defy the Hays Code; you can watch Otto Pre­minger’s famous exam­ple of just that, the 1953 com­e­dy The Moon is Blue (pos­sessed, cen­sors said, of “an unac­cept­ably light atti­tude towards seduc­tion, illic­it sex, chasti­ty, and vir­gin­i­ty”). In 1968, the weak­ened Code’s replace­ment arrived: the Motion Pic­ture Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca’s Rat­ings sys­tem and its still-famil­iar G, PG, R, and X (PG-13 was intro­duced in 1984; NC-17 replaced X in 1990). Quaint as these mea­sures may now seem, the les­son tells us that con­tro­ver­sy has remained. “Some may say that films were sex­i­er and scari­er under the cen­sor­ship of the pro­duc­tion code – for noth­ing that can be seen is as tan­ta­liz­ing and hor­ri­fy­ing as what the imag­i­na­tion and antic­i­pa­tion can con­jure. But giv­en the choice between free­dom and cen­sor­ship, free­dom is the only sus­tain­able option.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ear­ly Hol­ly­wood Cen­sored

Did Hol­ly­wood Movies Stu­dios “Col­lab­o­rate” with Hitler Dur­ing WW II? His­to­ri­an Makes the Case

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Every Time “Making Love” Was Uttered in a Woody Allen Film: A Four Minute Montage

in Comedy, Film | December 27th, 2013

Woody Allen once said that “sex with­out love is a mean­ing­less expe­ri­ence, but as far as mean­ing­less expe­ri­ences go it’s pret­ty damn good.” Most read­ers would be com­pelled to think that Allen’s slight frame, trade­mark horn-rimmed glass­es, and stut­ter­ing deliv­ery would pre­clude his char­ac­ters from achiev­ing much of any­thing in the sex­u­al realm. After all, how could the con­sum­mate neb­bish­es that Allen por­trays in most of his films pos­si­bly impress a mem­ber of the fair­er sex? Some­how, how­ev­er, in spite of their whing­ing neu­roti­cism, Allen’s geek incar­nates trans­form into gal­lants of prodi­gious pro­por­tions in almost every role. Those want­i­ng con­crete evi­dence may take a look at Take the Mon­ey and Run (1969), Annie Hall (1977), or Man­hat­tan (1979), among myr­i­ad oth­ers, and note that Allen’s char­ac­ters repeat­ed­ly end up with women who seemed to make a gross error in sex­u­al selec­tion.

Last month, we brought you a super­cut of Woody Allen’s stam­mers, com­pris­ing a 44-minute grad­u­ate course in Allen’s awk­ward man­ner­isms. Today, we con­tin­ue this tra­di­tion and bring you anoth­er Allen super­cut; this time, the mon­tage con­sists of four-odd min­utes of every occur­rence of the term “mak­ing love” in Allen’s films, begin­ning with What’s New Pussy­cat (1965) and end­ing in To Rome With Love (2012). Mer­ry Christ­mas!

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:

Woody Allen Answers 12 Uncon­ven­tion­al Ques­tions He Has Nev­er Been Asked Before

Watch a 44-Minute Super­cut of Every Woody Allen Stam­mer, From Every Woody Allen Film

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Woody Allen Box­es a Kan­ga­roo, 1966

 

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Akira Kurosawa to Ingmar Bergman: “A Human Is Not Really Capable of Creating Really Good Works Until He Reaches 80”

in Film, Letters | December 26th, 2013

KurosawatoBergman

In July of 1988, Ing­mar Bergman—retired from film—turned 70. He had every rea­son to believe that his best work lay behind him. After all, he had won three Acad­e­my Awards (and the Irv­ing G. Thal­berg Memo­r­i­al Award), two BAF­TAs, sev­en Cannes prizes, six Gold­en Globes, and a host of oth­er hon­ors. His oeu­vre includ­ed such seem­ing­ly unsur­pass­able achieve­ments as Wild Straw­ber­ries, The Sev­enth Seal, Fan­ny and Alexan­der, and too many more to name, and that year he pub­lished his mem­oirs, The Mag­ic Lantern, in which he con­fessed “I prob­a­bly do mourn the fact that I no longer make films.”

But no!, writes the Swedish director’s Japan­ese coun­ter­part, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, the “real work is just begin­ning.” At least that’s how Kura­sawa, then 77, felt about his “sec­ond baby­hood.” Kuro­sawa wrote the let­ter above to Bergman on his birth­day, pro­fess­ing his deep admi­ra­tion. The feel­ing went both ways. The typ­i­cal­ly self-dep­re­cat­ing Bergman once called his The Vir­gin Spring a “a lousy imi­ta­tion of Kuro­sawa” and added, “at the time my admi­ra­tion for the Japan­ese cin­e­ma was at its height. I was almost a samuri myself!” Read the full tran­script of Kurosawa’s birth­day wish­es to Bergman below (orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in Chap­lin mag­a­zine).

Dear Mr. Bergman,

Please let me con­grat­u­late you upon your sev­en­ti­eth birth­day.

Your work deeply touch­es my heart every time I see it and I have learned a lot from your works and have been encour­aged by them. I would like you to stay in good health to cre­ate more won­der­ful movies for us.

In Japan, there was a great artist called Tes­sai Tomio­ka who lived in the Mei­ji Era (the late 19th cen­tu­ry). This artist paint­ed many excel­lent pic­tures while he was still young, and when he reached the age of eighty, he sud­den­ly start­ed paint­ing pic­tures which were much supe­ri­or to the pre­vi­ous ones, as if he were in mag­nif­i­cent bloom. Every time I see his paint­ings, I ful­ly real­ize that a human is not real­ly capa­ble of cre­at­ing real­ly good works until he reach­es eighty.

A human is born a baby, becomes a boy, goes through youth, the prime of life and final­ly returns to being a baby before he clos­es his life. This is, in my opin­ion, the most ide­al way of life.

I believe you would agree that a human becomes capa­ble of pro­duc­ing pure works, with­out any restric­tions, in the days of his sec­ond baby­hood.

I am now sev­en­ty-sev­en (77) years old and am con­vinced that my real work is just begin­ning.

Let us hold out togeth­er for the sake of movies.

With the warmest regards,

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Via Cinephil­ia and Beyond

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick to Ing­mar Bergman: “You Are the Great­est Film­mak­er at Work Today” (1960)

Ing­mar Bergman Eval­u­ates His Fel­low Film­mak­ers — The “Affect­ed” Godard, “Infan­tile” Hitch­cock & Sub­lime Tarkovsky

Watch Kurosawa’s Rashomon Free Online, the Film That Intro­duced Japan­ese Cin­e­ma to the West

Dick Cavett’s Wide-Rang­ing TV Inter­view with Ing­mar Bergman and Lead Actress Bibi Ander­s­son (1971)

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

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Werner Herzog Presents Two Visions of America in How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck (1981) and God’s Angry Man (1976)

in Film | December 26th, 2013

As an Amer­i­can, I admit that only an out­sider can view my coun­try with the great­est clar­i­ty. And as long as we want to look at the Unit­ed States through for­eign eyes, why not look through those of Wern­er Her­zog? Even aside from his wild­ly cre­ative body of work as a fea­ture film­mak­er — he made Aguirre, the Wrath of God; he made Fitz­car­ral­do; he made Bad Lieu­tenant: Port of Call New Orleans — Her­zog the doc­u­men­tar­i­an has offered up a host of his own rich and sur­pris­ing per­cep­tions. He’s trav­eled the globe, from the Less­er Antilles (La Soufrière) to Antarc­ti­ca (Encoun­ters at the End of the World) to south­ern France’s pre­his­toric caves (Cave of For­got­ten Dreams), look­ing intense­ly and com­ment­ing even more intense­ly on peo­ple, from cham­pi­on ski jumpers (The Great Ecsta­sy of the Wood­carv­er Stein­er) to Viet­nam pris­on­ers of war (Lit­tle Dieter Needs to Fly) to wildlife film­mak­ers eat­en by bears (Griz­zly Man). By com­par­i­son, most of us might con­sid­er places like the auc­tion hous­es and tel­e­van­gel­i­cal broad­cast stu­dios of Amer­i­ca com­par­a­tive­ly unex­ot­ic ter­ri­to­ry.

Not Her­zog, how­ev­er: when he watch­es a live­stock sale, he hears in the rapid-fire bab­ble of the auc­tion­eer “the last poet­ry pos­si­ble, the poet­ry of cap­i­tal­ism,” and when he watch­es a tele­vi­sion preach­er, he sees an appeal to “the para­noia and crazi­ness of our civ­i­liza­tion.” Here we have two fruits of these strands of Her­zog’s fas­ci­na­tion with his now-adopt­ed home­land of Amer­i­ca: 1976’s How Much Wood Could a Wood­chuck Chuck and 1981’s God’s Angry Man. Like many oth­er doc­u­men­taries of Her­zog’s, and not a few of his fic­tion films, these doc­u­men­taries deal with pur­suits so spe­cial­ized, obses­sive, or both that watch­ing them in prac­tice becomes mes­mer­iz­ing. The first wit­ness­es a series of auc­tion­eers as their obscure, qua­si-musi­cal pat­ter keeps one high­ly par­tic­u­lar gear of the econ­o­my spin­ning. The sec­ond, one even more con­cerned with mon­ey and with an orig­i­nal title of Creed and Cur­ren­cy, looks into the world of Los Ange­les’ flam­boy­ant, dona­tion-demand­ing, FCC-hat­ing, seem­ing­ly untir­ing reli­gious broad­cast­er Dr. Gene Scott. Do cow­boy-hat­ted rur­al busi­ness­men and man­ic tel­e­van­ge­lists accu­rate­ly rep­re­sent Amer­i­ca? Hard­ly. But inter­pret­ed by Her­zog, they show you the coun­try in a way nobody else could.

Find more great films in our col­lec­tion of 600 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Herzog’s Eye-Open­ing New Film Reveals the Dan­gers of Tex­ting While Dri­ving

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

Errol Mor­ris and Wern­er Her­zog in Con­ver­sa­tion

Wern­er Her­zog Has a Beef With Chick­ens

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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The Junky’s Christmas: William S. Burrough’s Dark Claymation Christmas Film Produced by Francis Ford Coppola (1993)

in Film | December 25th, 2013

Back in 1993, the Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs wrote and nar­rat­ed a 21 minute clay­ma­tion Christ­mas film. And, as you can well imag­ine, it’s not your nor­mal hap­py Christ­mas flick. Nope, this film – The Junky’s Christ­mas – is all about Dan­ny the Car­wiper, a junkie, who spends Christ­mas Day try­ing to score a fix. Even­tu­al­ly he finds the Christ­mas spir­it when he shares some mor­phine with a young man suf­fer­ing from kid­ney stones, giv­ing him the “immac­u­late fix.” There you have it. This film pro­duced by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, or you can buy it on Ama­zon here. via @UBUWeb

This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site on Christ­mas, 2010.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

Demen­tia 13: The Film That Took Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la From Schlock­ster to Auteur

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.