Richard Wright Stars as Bigger Thomas in a 1951 Screen Test for Native Son

in English Language, Film, Literature | July 22nd, 2013

Stick to what you know goes the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom. Author Richard Wright won acclaim doc­u­ment­ing the African-Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence in the 30’s and 40’s. Lit­er­ary stand­ing in the bag, he could have explored any num­ber of avenues through his writ­ing, or cho­sen to delve deep­er into the rich ter­ri­to­ry from which his career had been mined.

Or, you know, he could’ve starred in a 1951 film adap­ta­tion of Native Son, his best sell­ing Book of the Month Club selec­tion.

Which only real­ly counts as stick­ing with what one knows when one has the act­ing chops to back it up —some­thing the 40 year old Wright, play­ing a char­ac­ter 20 years younger than him­self, did not. It does­n’t help that the peri­od dia­logue sounds stilt­ed to mod­ern ears, and Buenos Aires makes a bizarre geo­graph­ic sub­sti­tute for the orig­i­nal’s Chica­go loca­tion. In the age of the dig­i­tal con­nec­tion, his turn in the lit­tle seen pro­duc­tion assumed train wreck sta­tus.

A cur­so­ry online search reveals a long line of ama­teur crit­ics bust­ing on Wright’s ulti­mate­ly ill-advised cel­lu­loid for­ay. Let us come at things from a slight­ly adjust­ed angle. Most of us have seen, if not been, an imag­i­na­tive child at play, whis­per­ing invent­ed lines for favorite dolls and action fig­ures’ spur of the moment sce­nar­ios.

Could­n’t we hold that that is what Wright is up to here? He may not be the most con­vinc­ing han­dling of a prop gun, but he still bests your aver­age 7‑year-old believ­er. Those will­ing to over­look an untrained actor’s less-than-Oscar inter­pre­ta­tion-cal­iber might be reward­ed with insight…

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Zora Neale Hurston Sing Tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can Folk Song “Mule on the Mount” (1939)

James Bald­win Bests William F. Buck­ley in 1965 Debate at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

Ralph Elli­son Reads from His Nov­el-in-Progress, June­teenth, in Rare Video Footage (1966)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day remem­bers the 80’s adap­ta­tion, star­ring Oprah Win­frey. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Star Wars Gets Dubbed into Navajo: a Fun Way to Preserve and Teach a Fading Language

in Film | July 19th, 2013

On July 10, Indi­an Coun­try Today announced the first film ever dubbed in the Nava­jo (or Dine’) lan­guage, with the head­line “Jedis and Indi­ans!” Yes, it’s a 35-year-old movie that’s been dig­i­tal­ly enhanced and tak­en on new mean­ing (some would say cheap­ened) in the light of the three “pre­quels,” but it’s a film that will nev­er lose its cul­tur­al cachet as a touch­stone for sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of movie lovers. I’m talk­ing of course, about the first Star Wars (or Episode IV: A New Hope). Despite the fact that the film has been dubbed into hun­dreds of lan­guages for bil­lions of non-Eng­lish speak­ers, this event is entire­ly different—the view­ers of the Nava­jo Star Wars are all native Eng­lish speak­ers who have under­stood and loved the orig­i­nal per­fect­ly well.

Rather than intro­duc­ing the film to a new audi­ence, the point of this exer­cise is to bring a very pop­u­lar, famil­iar piece of media to an audi­ence eager to con­nect with their fad­ing tra­di­tion­al lan­guage. Manueli­to Wheel­er, direc­tor of the Nava­jo Nation Muse­um in Ari­zona, con­ceived of the project to pre­serve the lan­guage for gen­er­a­tions, includ­ing his own, who are los­ing touch with Dine’. In the short video above, watch Wheel­er and the voice actors and trans­la­tors dis­cuss the project’s suc­cess in inspir­ing young peo­ple to speak more Nava­jo. Wheel­er told NPR’s All Things Con­sid­ered, “Lan­guage is at the core of a cul­ture. And I felt we need­ed a more con­tem­po­rary way to reach not just young peo­ple but the pop­u­la­tion in gen­er­al.” He also said that he is not flu­ent and that “there are thou­sands and thou­sands of us out there that are in that same sit­u­a­tion.”

So what bet­ter way to intro­duce those thou­sands to the fine com­plex­i­ties of Nava­jo than with a movie almost every­one knows all the dia­logue to? The trans­la­tion was not with­out its chal­lenges. The team of five trans­la­tors had to find ways to con­vey con­cepts unfa­mil­iar to the lan­guage, such as “robot,” which was trans­lat­ed to the equiv­a­lent of “a machine that thinks for itself.” The new­ly-dubbed film’s pre­mier at a Win­dow Rock, Ari­zona rodeo sta­di­um thrilled the small crowd of 200 peo­ple. As Indi­an Coun­try Today reports, the crowd “erupt­ed in cheers and screams when they heard famil­iar char­ac­ters like C‑3PO and Darth Vad­er deliv­er­ing clas­sic dia­logue in their beloved Dine’ lan­guage.” And as Wheel­er puts it above, “peo­ple were very engaged with­out feel­ing like they were in a les­son.” As any­one who’s stud­ied languages—their own or others—knows, pop cul­ture near­ly always trumps lec­tures and work­books.

Speak­ing of learn­ing lan­guages, don’t miss our handy col­lec­tion: Learn 46 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & More. And if any­one knows of free online Dine’ lessons, let us know and we’ll hap­pi­ly add them to the list.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Revis­its Aban­doned Movie Sets for Star Wars and Oth­er Clas­sic Films in North Africa

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

Star Wars as Silent Film

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

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Watch 25 Alfred Hitchcock Trailers, Exciting Films in Their Own Right

in Film | July 19th, 2013

“Mur­der!” exclaims the first word in the trail­er above. “Mys­tery!!” the next con­tin­ues. “Treach­ery!!! Romance!!!!” Before these claims can rack up a fifth excla­ma­tion point, we learn the plight of the pro­tag­o­nist — “hound­ed by spies,” “hunt­ed by police,” and “dou­ble-crossed by the woman he loves.” The film? Alfred Hitch­cock­’s The 39 Steps, (watch free online here) his 1935 British thriller star­ring Robert Donat and Madeleine Car­roll. The film has tak­en so many crit­i­cal lau­rels since its release that the way this trail­er bal­ly­hoos it like a pot­boil­er comes as a shock. “It STARTS with a MURDER,” “and ENDS in a THRILL” — not to men­tion a cer­tain cin­e­mat­ic craft in between.

If you sim­ply let the video run, it will treat you to 24 more trail­ers in a row for var­i­ous Hitch­cock fea­tures, from 1940’s For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent, “the thrill spec­ta­cle of the year,” to 1946’s Noto­ri­ous, “dar­ing­ly direct­ed by that mas­ter of sus­pense,” to 1976’s Fam­i­ly Plot, by which point breath­less onscreen text had gone out of style, replaced by sil­ly gags.  These come cour­tesy of archive.org, which main­tains an Alfred Hitch­cock Trail­er Col­lec­tion. Their rep­e­ti­tious promis­es of thrills, sus­pense, mys­tery, and intrigue of all stripes reminds us that, for all his pure film­mak­ing skill, Hitch­cock also act­ed simul­ta­ne­ous­ly as his own best sales­man: or rather, his pic­tures, pre­sent­ed in these tan­ta­liz­ing con­densed forms, sell them­selves. Can we assume that, like every­thing else about a Hitch­cock movie, this did­n’t hap­pen by chance?

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:

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

37 Hitch­cock Cameos over 50 Years: All in One Video

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

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The Poetry of Leonard Cohen Illustrated by Two Short Films

in Animation, Film, Literature, Poetry | July 18th, 2013

Look­ing back on the lit­er­ary career of Leonard Cohen—in full flower in the mid-six­ties before his sec­ond life as a folk singer/songwriter—one encoun­ters many com­par­isons to Joyce. For exam­ple, in the Nation­al Film Board of Canada’s descrip­tion of Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen, the 1965 doc­u­men­tary film about the 30-year-old Cana­di­an poet, we find: “it tru­ly is, after Joyce, a por­trait of the artist as a young man.” On the back cov­er of Cohen’s sec­ond and final nov­el, the hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry, post­mod­ernist Beau­ti­ful Losers, we find a blurb from the Boston Sun­day Her­ald: “James Joyce is not dead…. He lives in Mon­tre­al under the name of Cohen.”

Beau­ti­ful Losers’ dense sys­tem of his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences does put one in mind of Ulysses, but the lan­guage, the syn­tax, the eagle flights into the holy and dives into the pro­fane, remind me some­what of anoth­er Bud­dhist poet of Cana­di­an extrac­tion, Jack Ker­ouac. Cohen even sounds a bit like Ker­ouac, in the short 1967 film, “Poen” (above), an exper­i­men­tal piece that sets four read­ings of a prose-poem from Beau­ti­ful Losers to a mon­tage of stark­ly provoca­tive images from black-and-white film and pho­tog­ra­phy, Goya, and var­i­ous sur­re­al­ists. Made by Josef Reeve for the Nation­al Film Board, the short reels out four dif­fer­ent record­ed takes of Cohen read­ing the poem. At the end of each read­ing, he says, “cut,” and the film fades to black.

Tak­en from the novel’s con­text, the poem becomes a per­son­al med­i­ta­tion on med­i­ta­tion, or per­haps on writ­ing: “My mind seems to go out on a path, the width of a thread,” begins Cohen and unfolds an image of men­tal dis­cov­ery like that described by Don­ald Barthelme, who once said “writ­ing is a process of deal­ing with not-know­ing…. At best there’s a slen­der intu­ition, not much greater than an itch.”

In the ani­ma­tion above, from the NFB’s 1977 “Poets on Film No. 1,” Cana­di­an actor Paul Hecht reads Cohen’s poem “A Kite is a Vic­tim,” from his 1961 col­lec­tion The Spice-Box of Earth. Like the poem from Beau­ti­ful Losers, “A Kite is a Vic­tim” is also about process, but it’s a for­mal med­i­ta­tion, focused on the image of the kite, which flut­ters through each of the four stan­zas in metaphors of tam­ing, cap­tur­ing and nur­tur­ing lan­guage, then let­ting it go, hop­ing to be made “wor­thy and lyric and pure.” The pace of Hecht’s read­ing, the piano score behind his voice, and the vibrant col­or of the hand-drawn ani­ma­tion makes this a very dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence of Cohen’s writ­ing than “Poen.”

To see Leonard Cohen read­ing his poems as a young man, make sure you vis­it: Young Leonard Cohen Reads His Poet­ry in 1966 (Before His Days as a Musi­cian Began)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen

Street Artist Plays Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” With Crys­tal Glass­es

Leonard Cohen and U2 Per­form ‘Tow­er of Song,’ a Med­i­ta­tion on Aging, Loss & Sur­vival

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

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Hannah Arendt Discusses Philosophy, Politics & Eichmann in Rare 1964 TV Interview

in Film, History, Philosophy | July 16th, 2013

Han­nah Arendt’s work has come under some crit­i­cal fire late­ly, what with the release of the Mar­garethe Von Trot­ta-direct­ed biopic, star­ring Ger­man actress Bar­bara Sukowa as the con­tro­ver­sial polit­i­cal the­o­rist. At issue in the film and the sur­round­ing com­men­tary are Arendt’s (alleged­ly mis­lead­ing) char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of the sub­ject of her 1963 book Eich­mann in Jerusalem, as well as her ambivalent—some have said cal­lous, even “victim-blaming”—treatment of oth­er Jews. None of these con­tro­ver­sies are new, how­ev­er. As Arendt schol­ar Roger Berkowitz notes in a recent New York Times edi­to­r­i­al, at the time of her book’s pub­li­ca­tion, “Near­ly every major lit­er­ary and philo­soph­i­cal fig­ure in New York chose sides in what the writer Irv­ing Howe called a ‘civ­il war’ among New York intel­lec­tu­als.”

While acknowl­edg­ing Arendt’s flaws, Berkowitz seeks to exon­er­ate the best-known con­cept that emerged from her work on Eichmann’s tri­al, the “banal­i­ty of evil.” And while it can be com­fort­ing to have an inter­preter explain, and defend, the work of a major, con­tro­ver­sial, thinker, there is no intel­lec­tu­al sub­sti­tute for engag­ing with the work itself.

In the age of the media interview—radio, tele­vi­sion, pod­cast and otherwise—one can usu­al­ly see and hear an author explain her views in per­son. And so we have the inter­view above (in Ger­man with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles), in which Arendt sits with tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ter and jour­nal­ist Gunter Gaus for a Ger­man pro­gram called Zur Per­son (The Per­son), a Char­lie Rose-like show that fea­tured celebri­ties, impor­tant thinkers, and politi­cians (includ­ing an appear­ance by Hen­ry Kissinger).

A blog­ger at Jew­ish Phi­los­o­phy Place writes that Arendt’s interview—a tran­script of which was lat­er pub­lished in The Portable Han­nah Arendt as “What Remains? Lan­guage Remains”—is “slow and delib­er­a­tive, not sharp and declar­a­tive, mov­ing in cir­cles, not straight lines.” The inter­view touch­es on a vari­ety of top­ics, draw­ing on ideas expressed in Arendt’s ear­li­er works, The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism and The Human Con­di­tion. She is some­what cagey when it comes to the so-called “Eich­mann Con­tro­ver­sy,” and she may have had per­son­al as well as pro­fes­sion­al rea­sons for indi­rec­tion. Her affair with her for­mer pro­fes­sor, avowed and unre­pen­tant Nazi Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, dogged her post-war career, and the afore­men­tioned intel­lec­tu­al “civ­il war” prob­a­bly increased her cir­cum­spec­tion.

Arendt’s crit­ics, then and now, often remark upon what the Jew­ish Phi­los­o­phy Place writer suc­cinct­ly calls her “dis­dain for oth­ers.” While the new biopic (trail­er above) may obscure much of this crit­i­cal controversy—unfilmable as such things are anyway—readers wish­ing to under­stand one of the Holocaust’s most famous inter­preters should read, and hear, her in her own words before mak­ing any judg­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Han­nah Arendt’s Orig­i­nal Arti­cles on “the Banal­i­ty of Evil” in the New York­er Archive

Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger Talks About Lan­guage, Being, Marx & Reli­gion in Vin­tage 1960s Inter­views

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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

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Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?: A 1958 Look at How Modern Gadgets & Conveniences Lead to Existential Hell

in Film, Life, Technology | July 16th, 2013

Think grow­ing feel­ings of iso­la­tion in a world of mod­ern con­ve­niences is a new phe­nom­e­non? Slap a dial on that smart­phone, shove a col­lectible rock­et in your kid’s cere­al box, hop in a Cad­dy with fins and think again, pal!

Have I Told You Late­ly That I Love You, a cau­tion­ary tale cre­at­ed by Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia stu­dents in 1958, is a far-from-silent film marked by a near-total absence of human speech. The lit­tle boy char­ac­ter seems hap­py enough with his pop­si­cle and tele­vi­sion West­erns, but his white-col­lar dad and house­wife mom are marooned in their indi­vid­ual exis­ten­tial hells, unable to con­nect. Could the new­fan­gled, labor sav­ing devices with which their home and dad’s work­place abound be to blame?

The newsy radio report play­ing inter­mit­tent­ly in the back­ground would cer­tain­ly have it so. Sto­ries of hair loss, headaches and a kid shoot­ing his father over a TV-relat­ed dis­pute sug­gest none too sub­tly that progress has long been a source of anx­i­ety.

I might sug­gest that the moth­er is suf­fer­ing more from the rigid gen­der roles of her era than the tyran­ny of an auto­mat­ic dish­wash­er. Per­haps the sub­urbs weren’t offer­ing them much in the way of com­mu­ni­ty. Isn’t it pos­si­ble that the rela­tion­ship has gone cold due to the father’s pen­chant for hop­ping in bed with the girls from the steno pool?

That’s pret­ty stan­dard behav­ior on Mad Men, no?

While this short film offers none of the afore­men­tioned’s sexy, booze-soaked highs, there’s quite a bit of black-and-white design porn on dis­play. Dic­ta­phones, gleam­ing kitchen appli­ances,  a music box that dis­pens­es cig­a­rettes…

Oth­er­wise it’s a vision of an aver­age Amer­i­can 1950’s fam­i­ly as con­ceived of by Ing­mar Bergman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Before Mad Men: Famil­iar and For­got­ten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

Ayun Hal­l­i­day has always pre­ferred the Roar­ing Twen­ties. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Rare Print of Censored 1972 Rolling Stones Concert Film Cocksucker Blues Goes on Sale for £25,000

in Film, Music | July 15th, 2013

In 1971, The Rolling Stones record­ed their mas­ter­ful dou­ble album Exile on Main Street, under some fab­u­lous cir­cum­stances in the south of France. That same year, they embarked on their first Amer­i­can tour since the 1969 dis­as­ter at Alta­mont tar­nished their brand. Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Frank was there to film it all, and I mean all, with cam­eras back­stage and every­where else, wield­ed by band mem­bers, groupies, and road­ies. The result­ing film, Cock­suck­er Blues (short clip above)—named after an equal­ly elu­sive and deca­dent unre­leased sin­gle—was embar­goed by the band, banned by cen­sors, and only shown in 1979 and then only once every five years there­after, with Frank present, under a strange agree­ment nego­ti­at­ed with much legal wran­gling by Frank, the band, and the courts.

The film’s depic­tion of drug use and debauch­ery is to be expect­ed, but it’s an arti­fact that deserves to be seen on oth­er grounds as well, and it has been by many in boot­leg ver­sions cir­cu­lat­ing for decades. Don DeLil­lo made a point­ed ref­er­ence to the film in the fourth sec­tion of his Great Amer­i­can Nov­el ™, Under­world, and as one of the few crit­ics to review the film has said, it’s a movie as much about late 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca as about the Rolling Stones, “a far truer pic­ture of the USA than any­thing else Frank ever did.” Now, British rare book­seller Peter Har­ring­ton has obtained one of the few qual­i­ty prints of the film and offers it for sale for 25,000 pounds. On the Peter Har­ring­ton web­site, writer Glenn Mitchell cites Ter­ry Southern’s remem­brance of Kei­th Richard’s response to the film. When Robert Frank explained to Richards his idea by say­ing, “it’s vérité,” Richards appar­ent­ly respond­ed, “nev­er mind vérité, I want poet­ry.” “Maybe,” writes Mitchell, “they both got what they want­ed.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gimme Shel­ter: Watch the Clas­sic Doc­u­men­tary of the Rolling Stones’ Dis­as­trous Con­cert at Alta­mont

Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures The Rolling Stones Record­ing “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il” (1968)

Watch Phish Play All of The Rolling Stones’ Clas­sic Album, Exile on Main Street, Live in Con­cert

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

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Selling Cool: Lou Reed’s Classic Honda Scooter Commercial, 1984

in Film, Music, Television | July 11th, 2013

In the ear­ly 1980s the Hon­da Motor Com­pa­ny was try­ing to get peo­ple to think of its new Hon­da Elite scoot­ers as a cool way of get­ting around. To that end, the com­pa­ny enlist­ed a series of celebri­ties, includ­ing Miles Davis, Grace Jones and Devo, to appear in its ad cam­paign. The most notable piece in the cam­paign, by far, was a one-minute TV com­mer­cial in 1984 star­ring for­mer Vel­vet Under­ground front­man Lou Reed.

The film was shot in what was then a very rough-and-tum­ble Low­er East Side of Man­hat­tan. Direc­tor Steve Horn, hired by the Port­land, Ore­gon-based agency Wieden & Kennedy, under­ex­posed and overde­vel­oped the film to give it a grainy, doc­u­men­tary appear­ance. Edi­tor Lawrence Bridges, well-known for his work on Michael Jack­son’s “Beat It” video, was hired to piece it all togeth­er.

Bridges found the task of set­ting the images to Reed’s clas­sic 1972 song “Walk on the Wild Side” extreme­ly daunt­ing. The idea of using that song in a com­mer­cial seemed like a sac­ri­lege. “The gen­er­a­tion being adver­tised to at that point was prob­a­bly the most cyn­i­cal and sus­pi­cious toward the medi­um to date,” writes Bridges at Vimeo, “and, more­over, I had this mon­u­men­tal piece of music that I had to hon­or. For me, the answer was to make it into an ‘under­ground’ film.”

Bridges used tech­niques he had learned from French New Wave films and that he had exper­i­ment­ed with in MTV videos. “I got to work and used the junk cuts,” says Bridges, “includ­ing flash frames and run outs and whip pans that would nor­mal­ly end up being left on the floor for an assis­tant to clean up. I did all the things I’d done in music videos, like tak­ing a shot and divid­ing it ran­dom­ly in jump cuts, and all oth­er man­ner of post-pro­duc­tion tech­niques we used in music videos when we had less footage than the length of the actu­al video.”

When it was fin­ished, Bridges and his col­leagues arranged a meet­ing with a mar­ket­ing man­ag­er from Hon­da. It was a nerve-rack­ing encounter.  “The client was a very shrewd, prac­ti­cal per­son and I knew that he was averse to con­spic­u­ous­ly dar­ing cre­ative work,” says Bridges. “This grit­ty, almost avant-garde spot, set in pre-gen­tri­fied Low­er Man­hat­tan with every art film trope you could imag­ine might have put con­sid­er­able demands on his charm.” Instead, Bridges recalls, when the com­mer­cial was fin­ished play­ing the man from Hon­da broke the ten­sion by say­ing, “We need to be THAT scoot­er com­pa­ny.”

The spot made a huge splash on Madi­son Avenue. Its influ­ence could be seen all over the next gen­er­a­tion of com­mer­cials. But it did­n’t sell many scoot­ers. “For all its impact on the adver­tis­ing indus­try,” writes Ran­dall Rothen­berg in Where the Suck­ers Moon: The Life and Death of an Adver­tis­ing Cam­paign, “the Lou Reed com­mer­cial did lit­tle for Hon­da. Young Amer­i­cans had lit­tle inter­est in scoot­ers, no mat­ter how hip they were made out to be.”

NOTE: To see some of the ear­li­er scoot­er ads cre­at­ed for Hon­da by the Los Ange­les-based Dai­ley & Asso­ciates, you can fol­low these links: Devo; Miles Davis; Grace Jones and Adam Ant.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

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