The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912): The Truly Weird Origin of Modern Stop-Motion Animation

in Animation, Film, History | November 27th, 2019

These days, ever more ambi­tions com­put­er-ani­mat­ed spec­ta­cles seem to arrive in the­aters every few weeks. But how many of them cap­ture our imag­i­na­tions as ful­ly as works of the thor­ough­ly ana­log art of stop-motion ani­ma­tion? The uncan­ny effect (and imme­di­ate­ly vis­i­ble labor-inten­sive­ness) of real, phys­i­cal pup­pets and objects made to move as if by them­selves still cap­ti­vates view­ers young and old: just watch how the Wal­lace and Gromit series, Ter­ry Gilliam’s Mon­ty Python shorts, The Night­mare Before Christ­mas, and even the orig­i­nal King Kong as well as Ray Har­ry­hausen’s mon­sters in Jason and the Arg­onauts and The 7th Voy­age of Sin­bad have held up over the decades.

The film­mak­ers who best under­stand the mag­ic of cin­e­ma still use stop-motion today, as Wes Ander­son has in The Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs. They all owe some­thing to a Pol­ish-Russ­ian ani­ma­tor of the ear­ly-to-mid-20th cen­tu­ry by the name of Ladis­las Stare­vich. Long­time Open Cul­ture read­ers may remem­ber the works of Stare­vich pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here, includ­ing the Goethe adap­ta­tion The Tale of the Fox and the much ear­li­er The Cam­era­man’s Revenge, a tale of infi­deli­ty and its con­se­quences told entire­ly with dead bugs for actors. Stare­vich, then the Direc­tor of the Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry in Kau­nas, Lithua­nia, pulled off this cin­e­mat­ic feat “by installing wheels and strings in each insect, and occa­sion­al­ly replac­ing their legs with plas­tic or met­al ones,” says Phil Edwards in the Vox Almanac video above.

“How Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion Began” comes as a chap­ter of a minis­eries called Almanac Hol­ly­would­n’t, which tells the sto­ries of “big changes to movies that came from out­side Hol­ly­wood.” It would be hard indeed to find any­thing less Hol­ly­wood than a man installing wheels and strings into insect corpses at a Lithuan­ian muse­um in 1912, but in time The Cam­era­man’s Revenge proved as deeply influ­en­tial as it remains deeply weird. Stare­vich kept on mak­ing films, and sin­gle­hand­ed­ly fur­ther­ing the art of stop-motion ani­ma­tion, until his death in France (where he’d relo­cat­ed after the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion) in 1965.

And though Stare­vich may not be a house­hold name today, Edwards reveals while trac­ing the sub­se­quent his­to­ry of stop-motion ani­ma­tion that cin­e­ma has­n’t entire­ly failed to pay him trib­ute: Ander­son­’s The Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox is in a sense a direct homage to The Tale of the Fox, and Gilliam has called Stare­vich’s work “absolute­ly breath­tak­ing, sur­re­al, inven­tive and extra­or­di­nary, encom­pass­ing every­thing that Jan Svankma­jer, Waler­ian Borow­czyk and the Quay Broth­ers would do sub­se­quent­ly.” He sug­gests that, before we enter the “mind-bend­ing worlds” of more recent ani­ma­tors, we “remem­ber that it was all done years ago, by some­one most of us have for­got­ten about now” — and with lit­tle more than a few dead bugs at that.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Amaz­ing 1912 Ani­ma­tion of Stop-Motion Pio­neer Ladis­las Stare­vich, Star­ring Dead Bugs

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladis­las Starevich’s Ani­ma­tion of Goethe’s Great Ger­man Folk­tale (1937)

The Mas­cot, a Pio­neer­ing Stop Ani­ma­tion Film by Wla­dys­law Starewicz

The His­to­ry of Stop-Motion Films: 39 Films, Span­ning 116 Years, Revis­it­ed in a 3‑Minute Video

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

Spike Jonze’s Stop Motion Film Haunt­ing­ly Ani­mates Paris’ Famed Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny Book­store

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How to Behave in a British Pub: A World War II Training Film from 1943, Featuring Burgess Meredith

in Film, History, Life, Travel | November 25th, 2019

Fore­warned is fore­armed, so in 1943, the Unit­ed States Office of War Infor­ma­tion cre­at­ed a train­ing film to pre­vent sol­diers bound for Great Britain from earn­ing their Ugly Amer­i­can stripes.

The excerpt above con­cen­trates on pub eti­quette, cast­ing actor and Army Air Corps cap­tain Burgess Mered­ith in the role of a dis­creet mil­i­tary Vir­gil, explain­ing in hushed tones the British pen­chant for non-chilled beer and smok­ing or read­ing the paper unmo­lest­ed.

He also cau­tions incom­ing GIs against throw­ing their mon­ey around or mak­ing fun of kilt-wear­ing Scotsmen—commonsense advice that still applies.

To ensure the mes­sage sticks, he con­jures a cringe­wor­thy, semi-sloshed bad apple, who struts around in uni­form, bray­ing insults at the locals, until he dis­ap­pears in a puff of smoke.

No won­der the reception’s a bit frosty, when Mered­ith, ven­tures forth, also in uni­form. But unlike the brash bad­die who went before, Mered­ith has vet­ted his hosts, approach­ing as one might a skit­tish ani­mal. He offers cig­a­rettes, enjoys a game of darts as a spec­ta­tor, and buys his new friends drinks, being care­ful to choose some­thing in their price range, know­ing that they will insist on rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing in kind.

The film is pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with teach­ing restraint.

In anoth­er sec­tion of the not-quite-38-minute film offi­cial­ly called A Wel­come to Britain (see below), Mered­ith cau­tions young recruits to take small por­tions of food, know­ing how restrict­ed their hosts’ rations are.

The most uncom­fort­able teach­able moment comes when an elder­ly Eng­lish­woman spon­ta­neous­ly invites a black GI to tea, after thank­ing him for his ser­vice:

Now look men, you heard that con­ver­sa­tion, that’s not unusu­al here. It’s the sort of thing that hap­pens quite a lot. Now let’s be frank about it, there are col­ored sol­diers as well as white here, and there are less social restric­tions in this coun­try. An Eng­lish woman ask­ing a col­ored boy to tea, he was polite about it, and she was polite about it. Now, that might not hap­pen at home, but the point is, we’re not at home, and the point is too, if we bring a lot of prej­u­dices here, what are we going to do about them?

(No advice to young black sol­diers on whether they’re hon­or bound to accept, should an elder­ly Eng­lish­woman invite them to tea, when they were per­haps en route to the pub.)

Watch the entire­ty of A Wel­come to Britain, includ­ing a cameo by Bob Hope at the 30 minute mark, here.

For an updat­ed guide to British pub eti­quette, check out the Amer­i­can expats of Post­mod­ern Fam­i­ly reac­tion video here.

via Daniel Hol­land

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 His­tor­i­cal Films on YouTube

1,000,000 Min­utes of News­reel Footage by AP & British Movi­etone Released on YouTube

How the Fences & Rail­ings Adorn­ing London’s Build­ings Dou­bled (by Design) as Civil­ian Stretch­ers in World War II

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 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Watch 9 Classic & Lost Punk Films (1976–1981): All Restored and Now Streaming Online

in Film, Music | November 21st, 2019

There is a purist feel­ing about punk to which I’m some­times sym­pa­thet­ic: punk died, and its death was an inevitable con­se­quence of its live-fast-die-young phi­los­o­phy and thus should be rev­er­ent­ly respect­ed. To immor­tal­ize and com­mer­cial­ize punk is to betray its anar­chist spir­it, full stop. This kind of piety doesn’t stand up to scruti­ny. For one thing, some of punk’s most influ­en­tial impre­sar­ios were shame­less hawk­ers of a sen­sa­tion­al­ized prod­uct. For anoth­er, from the critic’s per­spec­tive, “there is prob­a­bly no one such thing as ‘punk.’”

So writes edi­tor Bob Mehr at Nicholas Wind­ing Refn’s online cura­to­r­i­al project Ears, Eyes and Throats: Restored Clas­sic and Lost Punk Films 1976–1981. Punk emerged as a series of rock and roll art pranks and anti-pop stances; it also emerged in pub­lish­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, poet­ry read­ings, per­for­mance art, graph­ic art, fash­ion, and, yes, film. Like ear­li­er move­ments devot­ed to mul­ti­ple media (Dada espe­cial­ly comes to mind, and like Dada, punk’s defin­ing fea­ture may be the man­i­festo), punk names an assem­blage of cre­ative ges­tures, loose­ly relat­ed more by atti­tude than aes­thet­ic.

Punk’s loose­ness “presents a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty” for film cura­tors, writes Mehr. “If there aren’t a lot of bar­ri­ers thrown in your way, you’ve got a poten­tial­ly wide array of work to choose from that can click togeth­er in illu­mi­nat­ing ways.” The films show­cased in Ears, Eyes and Throats fea­ture few of the punk super­stars memo­ri­al­ized in the usu­al trib­utes. Instead, to “illus­trate the breadth of this material”—that is, the breadth of what might qual­i­fy as “punk film”—Mehr has cho­sen “films (and bands) which the gen­er­al pub­lic prob­a­bly wasn’t famil­iar with.”

This includes “San Francisco-by-way-of-Bloomington-Indiana’s MX-80 Sound and their Why Are We Here? (1980), Richard Galkowski’s Deaf/Punk, fea­tur­ing The Offs (1979) [see a clip above] and Stephanie Beroes’ Pitts­burth-based Debt Begins at 20 (1980).” There are oth­er rare and obscure films, like Galkowski’s Moody Teenag­er (1980) and Liz Keim and Karen Merchant’s nev­er-before-seen In the Red (1978). And there are films from more rec­og­niz­able names—two from “leg­endary anony­mous col­lec­tive” The Res­i­dents, whom many might say are more Dada than punk, and a “2K dig­i­tal restora­tion of the leg­endary first film by DEVO, In the Begin­ning Was the End: The Truth About De-Evo­lu­tion (1976).”

Is punk rel­e­vant? Maybe the ques­tion rash­ly assumes we know what punk is. Expand your def­i­n­i­tions with the nine films at Ears, Eyes and Throats, all of which you can stream there. And revise your sense of a time when punk, like hip-hop, as Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D says in an essay fea­tured on the site, wasn’t some­thing you “could go out and just buy… Couldn’t slide your­self into punk. You had to kind of get cre­ative.”

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short His­to­ry of How Punk Became Punk: From Late 50s Rock­a­bil­ly and Garage Rock to The Ramones & Sex Pis­tols

The 100 Top Punk Songs of All Time, Curat­ed by Read­ers of the UK’s Sounds Mag­a­zine in 1981

The Sto­ry of Pure Hell, the “First Black Punk Band” That Emerged in the 70s, Then Dis­ap­peared for Decades

“Stay Free: The Sto­ry of the Clash” Nar­rat­ed by Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D: A New 8‑Episode Pod­cast

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The 1926 Silent Film The Flying Ace Tells the Alternative Universe Story of a Black Fighter Pilot, Many Years Before African-Americans Were Allowed to Serve as Pilots in the US Army

in Film | November 20th, 2019

The ori­gin of dra­mat­ic sto­ry­telling in cin­e­ma is often traced to a sin­gle movie, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. It also hap­pens to be a film that cel­e­brates the racist vio­lence of the Ku Klux Klan, based on a nov­el, The Clans­man, that does the same. The film’s tech­ni­cal achieve­ments and its racism became inte­gral to Hol­ly­wood there­after. Only rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly have black film­mak­ers begun enter­ing the main­stream with very dif­fer­ent kinds of sto­ries, win­ning major awards and mak­ing record prof­its.

This would have been unthink­able in the 1920s, a peri­od of intense racial vio­lence when black WWI vet­er­ans came home to find their coun­try armed against them. “When the sol­diers returned,” writes Megan Pugh for the San Fran­cis­co Silent Film Fes­ti­val, “Jim Crow still reigned supreme and lynch mobs con­tin­ued to ter­ror­ize the South.” Hol­ly­wood pla­cat­ed white audi­ences by only ever fea­tur­ing black char­ac­ters in sub­servient, stereo­typ­i­cal roles, or cast­ing white actors in black­face.

Against these oppres­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tions, black film­mak­ers like Oscar Micheaux and George and Noble Jack­son “used cin­e­ma to con­front Amer­i­can racism,” respond­ing to Grif­fith with films like Micheaux’s With­in Our Gates and the Jack­sons’ uplift­ing The Real­iza­tion of a Negro’s Ambi­tion. There were also sev­er­al white film­mak­ers who made so-called “race movies.” But most of their films avoid any explic­it polit­i­cal com­men­tary.

These include the films of Richard Nor­man, who between 1920 and 1928 made sev­en fea­ture-length silent movies with all-black casts, “geared toward black audi­ences.” He made romances, come­dies, and adven­ture films, cast­ing black actors in seri­ous, “dig­ni­fied” roles. “Instead of tack­ling dis­crim­i­na­tion head-on in his films,” writes Pugh, “Nor­man cre­at­ed a kind of world where whites—and con­se­quent­ly racism—didn’t even exist.”

Though we may see this as a cyn­i­cal com­mer­cial deci­sion, and its own kind of appease­ment to seg­re­ga­tion, the approach also enabled Nor­man to tell pow­er­ful, alter­nate-uni­verse sto­ries that a more real­ist bent would not allow. 1926’s The Fly­ing Ace, for exam­ple, Norman’s only sur­viv­ing film, is about a black fight­er pilot return­ing home to “resume his civil­ian career as a rail­road detective—without remov­ing his Army Air Ser­vice uni­form, a con­stant reminder of his patri­o­tism and val­or.”

Nor­man tells the mov­ing sto­ry of Cap­tain Bil­ly Stokes (see Part 1 at the top), “a mod­el for the ideals of racial uplift,” despite the fact that “African-Amer­i­cans were not allowed to serve as pilots in the Unit­ed States Armed Forces until 1940.” One might say that rewrit­ing recent his­to­ry as wish-ful­fill­ment has always been a func­tion of cin­e­ma since… well, at least since The Birth of a Nation, if not fur­ther back to The Great Train Rob­bery.

Nor­man takes this impulse and dra­ma­tizes the life of an impos­si­bly hero­ic black WWI ser­vice­man, at a time when such men faced wide­spread abuse and dis­crim­i­na­tion in real­i­ty. While he insist­ed that he only made genre films, and avoid­ed what he called the “pro­pa­gan­da nature” of Micheaux’s films, it’s hard not to read The Fly­ing Ace as a polit­i­cal state­ment of its own, and not only for its oblique top­i­cal com­men­tary.

The film cen­ters on pos­i­tive, com­plex black char­ac­ters at a time when stu­dios made quite a bit of mon­ey doing exact­ly the oppo­site. Nor­man gave black audi­ences heroes of their own to root for. In The Fly­ing Ace, Cap­tain Stokes not only returns from fly­ing dan­ger­ous mis­sions for his coun­try, but he then goes on to cap­ture a band of thieves who stole his employer’s pay­roll. The char­ac­ter “nev­er would have made it onscreen in a Hol­ly­wood movie of the time.”

Nor­man estab­lished his stu­dio in Jack­sonville Flori­da, at the time con­sid­ered “the Win­ter Film Cap­i­tal of the World.” Many major stu­dios decamped there from New York until WWI, when they moved west to L.A. Nor­man, who grew up in Mid­dle­burg, Flori­da, made a for­tune invent­ing soft drinks before turn­ing to movies. He returned to his home state to find lit­tle com­pe­ti­tion left in Jack­sonville in the 1920s.

His stu­dio would become “one of the three lead­ing pro­duc­ers of race films in Amer­i­ca,” next to the Micheaux Film Cor­po­ra­tion and the Jack­sons’ Lin­coln Motion Pic­ture Com­pa­ny. In 2016, Nor­man Stu­dios was des­ig­nat­ed a Nation­al His­toric Land­mark. The filmmaker’s son, Richard Nor­man Jr. became a pilot, inspired by The Fly­ing Ace, and has plans to turn the build­ing into a muse­um cel­e­brat­ing Jack­sonville’s, and Nor­man’s, cin­e­ma lega­cy.

via Silent Movie GIFS

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Pio­neer­ing Films of Oscar Micheaux, America’s First Great African-Amer­i­can Film­mak­er

Watch D.W. Griffith’s Silent Mas­ter­piece Intol­er­ance Free Online — It’s the “Ulysses of the Cin­e­ma!”

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics 

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Improv Comedy (Live and Otherwise) Examined on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #20

in Comedy, Film, Pretty Much Pop, Television, Theatre | November 20th, 2019

 

What role does improv com­e­dy play in pop­u­lar cul­ture? It shows up in the work of cer­tain film direc­tors (like Christo­pher Guest, Adam McK­ay, and Robert Alt­man) and has sur­faced in some of the TV work of Lar­ry David, Robin Williams, et al. But only in the rare case of a show like Whose Line Is It Any­way? is the pres­ence of impro­vi­sa­tion obvi­ous. So is this art form doomed to live on the fringes of enter­tain­ment? Is it maybe of more appar­ent ben­e­fit to its prac­ti­tion­ers than to audi­ences?

Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an are joined by Tim Snif­f­en, announc­er on the pop­u­lar Hel­lo From the Mag­ic Tav­ern pod­cast, and a mem­ber of the Impro­vised Shake­speare Com­pa­ny and Baby Wants Can­dy (impro­vised musi­cals). He’s also writ­ten for Live From Here and oth­er things. We dis­cuss dif­fer­ent types of improv, a bit of the his­to­ry and struc­ture of Sec­ond City, improv’s alleged self-help ben­e­fits, how impro­vi­sa­tion relates to reg­u­lar act­ing, writ­ing, pod­cast­ing, and oth­er arts, and more.

Here are a few improv pro­duc­tions to check out:

For fur­ther read­ing, check out:

For musi­cal improv, try Naked­ly Exam­ined Music #30 with Paul Wer­ti­co and David Cain, and also #55 with Don Pre­ston (Zappa’s key­boardist) whom Mark quot­ed in this dis­cus­sion.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion 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: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Quentin Tarantino’s World War II Reading List

in Books, Film, History | November 19th, 2019

Image by Georges Biard, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

With his first three fea­tures Reser­voir Dogs, Pulp Fic­tion, and Jack­ie Brown, Quentin Taran­ti­no claimed 1990s Los Ange­les as his own. Then he struck bold­ly out into not just new geo­graph­i­cal and cul­tur­al ter­ri­to­ries, but oth­er time peri­ods. With his first full-on peri­od piece, 2009’s Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds, he showed audi­ences just how he intend­ed to use his­to­ry: twist­ing it for his own cin­e­mat­ic pur­pos­es, of course, but only mak­ing his depar­tures after steep­ing him­self in accounts of the time in which he envi­sioned his sto­ry tak­ing place. This nat­u­ral­ly involves plen­ty of read­ing, and Taran­ti­no recent­ly pro­vid­ed His­to­ryNet with a few titles that helped him prop­er­ly sit­u­ate Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds in the Europe of the Sec­ond World War.

Taran­ti­no calls Ian Ous­by’s Occu­pa­tion: The Ordeal of France 1940–1944 “a very good overview that answered all of my ques­tions about life in Nazi-occu­pied France.” Ulysses Lee’s The Employ­ment of Negro Troops is “the most pro­found thing I’ve ever read on both the war and racist Amer­i­ca of the 1940s, com­mis­sioned by the U.S. Army to exam­ine the effec­tive­ness of their employ­ment of black sol­diers.” And for Taran­ti­no, who does­n’t just make films but lives and breathes them, under­stand­ing Nazi Ger­many means under­stand­ing its cin­e­ma, begin­ning with Eric Rentschler’s Min­istry of Illu­sion: Nazi Cin­e­ma and Its After­life, “a won­der­ful crit­i­cal reex­am­i­na­tion of Ger­man cin­e­ma under Joseph Goebbels” that “goes far beyond the demo­niz­ing approach employed by most writ­ers on this sub­ject,” includ­ing even excerpts from Goebbels’ diaries.

Rentschler also “dares to make a fair appraisal of Nazi film­mak­er Veit Har­lan,” who made anti­se­mit­ic block­busters as one of Goebbels’ lead­ing pro­pa­gan­da direc­tors. But the work of no Nazi film­mak­er had as much of an impact as that of Leni Riefen­stahl, two books about whom Taran­ti­no puts on his World War II read­ing list: Glenn B. Infield­’s Leni Riefen­stahl: The Fall­en Film God­dess, the first he ever read about her, as well as Riefen­stahl’s epony­mous mem­oir, which he calls “mes­mer­iz­ing. Though you can’t believe half of it. That still leaves half to pon­der. Her descrip­tions of nor­mal friend­ly con­ver­sa­tions with Hitler are amaz­ing and ring of truth” — and that praise comes from a film­mak­er who made his own name with good dia­logue.

In a recent DGA Quar­ter­ly con­ver­sa­tion with Mar­tin Scors­ese, Taran­ti­no revealed that he’s also at work on a book of his own about that era: “I’ve got this char­ac­ter who had been in World War II and he saw a lot of blood­shed there. Now he’s back home, and it’s like the ’50s, and he does­n’t respond to movies any­more. He finds them juve­nile after every­thing that he’s been through. As far as he’s con­cerned, Hol­ly­wood movies are movies. And so then, all of a sud­den, he starts hear­ing about these for­eign movies by Kuro­sawa and Felli­ni,” think­ing “maybe they might have some­thing more than this pho­ny Hol­ly­wood stuff.” He soon finds him­self drawn inex­orably in: “Some of them he likes and some of them he does­n’t like and some of them he does­n’t under­stand, but he knows he’s see­ing some­thing.” This is hard­ly the kind of premise that leads straight to the kind of vio­lent cathar­sis in which Taran­ti­no spe­cial­izes, but then, he’s pulled off more unlike­ly artis­tic feats in his time.

via His­to­ryNet

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains How to Write & Direct Movies

How Quentin Taran­ti­no Steals from Oth­er Movies: A Video Essay

How Quentin Taran­ti­no Cre­ates Sus­pense in His Favorite Scene, the Ten­sion-Filled Open­ing Moments of Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds

The Films of Quentin Taran­ti­no: Watch Video Essays on Pulp Fic­tion, Reser­voir Dogs, Kill Bill & More

Leni Riefenstahl’s Tri­umph of the Will Wasn’t a Cin­e­mat­ic Mas­ter­piece; It Was a Stag­ger­ing­ly Effec­tive Piece of Pro­pa­gan­da

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

82 Animated Interviews with Living, Dead, Celebrated & Sometimes Disgraced Celebrities

in Animation, Film, Music, Television | November 19th, 2019

Who wants to live in the present? It’s such a lim­it­ing peri­od, com­pared to the past.

—Roger Ebert, Play­boy 1990

Were Ebert alive today would he still express him­self thus­ly in a record­ed inter­view? His remarks are spe­cif­ic to his cin­e­mat­ic pas­sion, but still. As a smart Mid­west­ern­er, he would have real­ized that the corn has ears and the pota­toes have eyes. Remarks can be tak­en out of con­text. (Wit­ness the above.)

Recent his­to­ry has shown that not every­one is keen to roll back the clock—women, peo­ple of col­or, and gen­der non-con­form­ing indi­vid­u­als have been reclaim­ing their nar­ra­tives in record num­bers, air­ing secrets, expos­ing injus­tice, and artic­u­lat­ing offens­es that can no longer stand.

If pow­er­ful, old­er, white het­ero­sex­u­al men in the enter­tain­ment busi­ness are exer­cis­ing ver­bal cau­tion these days when speak­ing as a mat­ter of pub­lic record, there’s some good­ly cause for that.

It also makes the archival celebri­ty inter­views excerpt­ed for Quot­ed Stu­dios’ ani­mat­ed series, Blank on Blank, feel very vibrant and uncen­sored, though be fore­warned that your blood may boil a bit just review­ing the celebri­ty line up—Michael Jack­son, Woody Allen, Clint East­wood hold­ing forth on the Pussy Gen­er­a­tion 10 years before the Pussy­hat Project legit­imized com­mon usage of that charged word….

(In full dis­clo­sure, Blank on Blank is an oft-report­ed favorite here at Open Cul­ture.)

Here’s rap­per Tupac Skakur, a year and a half before he was killed in a dri­ve by shoot­ing, cast­ing him­self as a trag­ic Shake­speare­an hero,

His mus­ings on how dif­fer­ent­ly the pub­lic would have viewed him had he been born white seem even more rel­e­vant today. Read­ers who are only pass­ing­ly acquaint­ed with his artis­tic out­put and leg­end may be sur­prised to hear him trac­ing his alle­giance to “thug life” to the pos­i­tive role he saw the Black Pan­thers play­ing in his sin­gle mother’s life when he was a child.

On the oth­er hand, Shakur’s lav­ish and freely expressed self pity at the way the press report­ed on his rape charge (for which he even­tu­al­ly served 9 months) does not sit at all well in 2019, nor did it in 1994.

Like the major­i­ty of Blank on Blank entries, the record­ing was not the interview’s final form, but rather a jour­nal­is­tic ref­er­ence. Ani­ma­tor Patrick Smith may add a lay­er of visu­al edi­to­r­i­al, but in terms of nar­ra­tion, every sub­ject is telling their own undi­lut­ed truth.

It is inter­est­ing to keep in mind that this was one of the first inter­views the Blank on Blank team tack­led, in 2013.

Six years lat­er, it’s hard to imag­ine they would risk choos­ing that por­tion of the inter­view to ani­mate. Had Shakur lived, would he be can­celled?

Guess who was the star of the very first Blank on Blank to air on PBS back in 2013?

Broad­cast­er and tele­vi­sion host Lar­ry King. While King has stead­fast­ly rebutted accu­sa­tions of grop­ing, we sus­pect that if the Blank on Blank team was just now get­ting around to this sub­ject, they’d focus on a dif­fer­ent part of his 2001 Esquire pro­file than the part where he regales inter­view­er Cal Fuss­man with tales of pre-cell­phone “seduc­tion.”

It’s only been six years since the series’ debut, but it’s a dif­fer­ent world for sure.

If you’re among the eas­i­ly trig­gered, liv­ing leg­end Meryl Streep’s thoughts on beau­ty, har­vest­ed in 2014 from a 2008 con­ver­sa­tion with Enter­tain­ment Weekly’s Chris­tine Spines, won’t offer total respite, but any indig­na­tion you feel will be in sup­port of, not because of this celebri­ty sub­ject.

It’s actu­al­ly pret­ty rous­ing to hear her mer­ri­ly expos­ing Hol­ly­wood play­ers’ pig­gish­ness, sev­er­al years before the Har­vey Wein­stein scan­dal broke.

For even more evi­dence of “a dif­fer­ent world,” check out inter­view­er Howard Smith’s remark to Janis Joplin in her final inter­view-cum-Blank-on-Blank episode, four days before here 1970 death:

A lot of women have been say­ing that the whole field of rock music is noth­ing more than a big male chau­vin­ist rip off and when I say, “Yeah, what about Janis Joplin? She made it,” they say, “Oh…her.” It seems to both­er a lot of women’s lib peo­ple that you’re kind of so up front sex­u­al­ly.

Joplin, stung, unleash­es a string of invec­tives against fem­i­nists and women, in gen­er­al. One has to won­der if this reac­tion was Smith’s goal all along. Or maybe I’m just hav­ing flash­backs to mid­dle school, when the pop­u­lar girls would always send a del­e­gate dis­guised as a con­cerned friend to tell you why you were being shunned, prefer­ably in a high­ly pub­lic glad­i­a­to­r­i­al are­na such as the lunch­room.

I pre­sume that sort of stuff occurs pri­mar­i­ly over social media these days.

Good on the Blank on Blank staff for pick­ing up on the tenor of this inter­view and titling it “Janis Joplin on Rejec­tion.”

You can binge watch a playlist of 82 Blank on Blank episodes, fea­tur­ing many thoughts few express so open­ly any­more, here or right below.

When you’re done with that, you’ll find even more Blank on Blank entries on the cre­ators’ web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitch­cock Med­i­tates on Sus­pense & Dark Humor in a New Ani­mat­ed Video

Joni Mitchell Talks About Life as a Reluc­tant Star in a New Ani­mat­ed Inter­view

The Out­siders: Lou Reed, Hunter S. Thomp­son, and Frank Zap­pa Reveal Them­selves in Cap­ti­vat­ing­ly Ani­mat­ed Inter­views

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 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Pretty Much Pop #19 Discusses Race and the Target Audience w/ Rodney Ramsey

in Film, Pretty Much Pop, Television | November 14th, 2019

We’ve all felt at var­i­ous points (maybe at most points) that some media cre­ation has reached us by mis­take, that we are not the tar­get audi­ence. 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can TV was aimed large­ly at a white major­i­ty, with a par­al­lel, under­fund­ed chan­nel of con­tent aimed at peo­ple of col­or.

So how have things changed? There still seem to be “black shows,” but how do they fit in to a land­scape where inclu­sive­ness is a tool by which shows attempt to appeal to every­one (i.e. get all the mon­ey)? Comedian/actor/writer/producer Rod­ney Ram­sey joins Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing out­side your demo­graph­ic, whether iden­ti­fy­ing with char­ac­ters requires phys­i­cal com­mon­al­i­ties, “black voice,” and the evolv­ing TV land­scape.

We touch on Watch­men, Atlanta, Black Pan­ther, Inse­cure, Sor­ry to Both­er You, BlacK­kKlans­man, Tyler Per­ry, Dear White Peo­ple, Black Jesus, and the black Her­mi­none issue.

Some of the arti­cles we con­sid­ered includ­ed:

Fol­low Rod­ney @Rodney_Ramsey.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion 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: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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