Shakespeare’s Restless World: A Portrait of the Bard’s Era in 20 Podcasts

in History, Literature, Theatre | August 22nd, 2014

bardtimes_2192865b

The BBC’s acclaimed pod­cast A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects brought us just that: the sto­ry of human civ­i­liza­tion as told through arti­facts from the Egypt­ian Mum­my of Horned­jitef to a Cre­tan stat­ue of a Minoan Bull-leaper to a Kore­an roof tile to a Chi­nese solar-pow­ered lamp. All those 100 items came from the for­mi­da­ble col­lec­tion held by the British Muse­um, and any ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­er to that pod­cast will know the name of Neil Mac­Gre­gor, the insti­tu­tion’s direc­tor. Now, Mac­Gre­gor has returned with anoth­er series of his­tor­i­cal audio explo­rations, one much more focused both tem­po­ral­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly but no less deep than its pre­de­ces­sor. The ten-part Shake­speare’s Rest­less World “looks at the world through the eyes of Shake­speare’s audi­ence by explor­ing objects from that tur­bu­lent peri­od” — i.e., William Shake­speare’s life, which spanned the 1560s to the 1610s: a time of Venet­ian glass gob­lets, African sunken gold, chim­ing clocks, and hor­rif­ic relics of exe­cu­tion.

These trea­sures illu­mi­nate not only the Eng­lish but the glob­al affairs of Shake­speare’s day. The Bard lived dur­ing a time when mur­der­ers plot­ted against Eliz­a­beth I and James I, Eng­land expelled its Moors, Great Britain strug­gled to unite itself, human­i­ty gained an ever more pre­cise grasp on the keep­ing of time, and even “civ­i­lized” nations got spooked and slaugh­tered their own. Just as the study of Shake­speare’s plays reveals a world bal­anced on the tip­ping point between the mod­ern con­scious­ness and the long, slow awak­en­ing that came before, the study of Shake­speare’s time reveals a world that both retains sur­pris­ing­ly vivid ele­ments of its bru­tal past and has already begun incor­po­rat­ing sur­pris­ing­ly advanced ele­ments of the future to come. Even if you don’t give a hoot about the lit­er­ary mer­its of Richard III, Titus Andron­i­cus, or The Mer­chant of Venice, these real-life sto­ries of polit­i­cal intrigue, grue­some blood­shed, and, er, Venice will cer­tain­ly hold your atten­tion. You can start with the “tabloid his­to­ry of Shake­speare’s Eng­land” in the first episode of Shake­speare’s Rest­less World above, then con­tin­ue on either at the series’ site or on iTunes. And if you find your­self get­ting into the series, you can get Mac­Gre­gor’s com­pan­ion book, Shake­speare’s Rest­less World: Por­trait of an Era.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Dis­cov­er What Shakespeare’s Hand­writ­ing Looked Like, and How It Solved a Mys­tery of Author­ship

Fol­ger Shake­speare Library Puts 80,000 Images of Lit­er­ary Art Online, and They’re All Free to Use

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

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

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Folger Shakespeare Library Puts 80,000 Images of Literary Art Online, and They’re All Free to Use

in Art, Literature, Museums, Theatre | August 20th, 2014

TheLondonStage

Has a writer ever inspired as many adap­ta­tions and ref­er­ences as William Shake­speare? In the four hun­dred years since his death, his work has pat­terned much of the fab­ric of world lit­er­a­ture and seen count­less per­mu­ta­tions on stage and screen. Less dis­cussed are the visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Shake­speare in fine art and illus­tra­tion, but they are mul­ti­tude. In one small sam­pling, Richard Altick notes in his exten­sive study Paint­ings from Books, that “pic­tures from Shake­speare account­ed for about one fifth—some 2,300—of the total num­ber of lit­er­ary paint­ings record­ed between 1760 and 1900” among British artists.

FolgerMidsummer

In the peri­od Altick doc­u­ments, a rapid­ly ris­ing mid­dle class drove a mar­ket for lit­er­ary art­works, which were, “in effect, exten­sions of the books them­selves: they were detached forms of book illus­tra­tion, in which were con­stant­ly assim­i­lat­ed the lit­er­ary and artis­tic tastes of the time.” These works took the form of humor­ous illustrations—such as the As You Like It-inspired satir­i­cal piece at the top from 1824—and much more seri­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tions, like the undat­ed Cur­ri­er & Ives Midsummer-Night’s Dream lith­o­graph above. Now, thanks to the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library, these images, and tens of thou­sands more from their Dig­i­tal Image Col­lec­tion, are avail­able online. And they’re free to use under a CC BY-SA Cre­ative Com­mons license.

RichardIIICostume

As Head of Col­lec­tion Infor­ma­tion Ser­vices Erin Blake explains, “basi­cal­ly this means you can do what­ev­er you want with Fol­ger dig­i­tal images as long as you say that they’re from the Fol­ger, and as long a you keep the cycle of shar­ing going by freely shar­ing what­ev­er you’re mak­ing.” The Folger’s impres­sive repos­i­to­ry has been called “the world’s finest col­lec­tion of Shakespere­an art.” As well as tra­di­tion­al paint­ings and illus­tra­tions, it includes “dozens of cos­tumes and props used in nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Shake­speare pro­duc­tions,” such as the embroi­dered vel­vet cos­tume above, worn by Edwin Booth as Richard III, cir­ca 1870. You’ll also find pho­tographs and scans of “’extra-illus­trat­ed’ books filled with insert­ed engrav­ings, man­u­script let­ters, and play­bills asso­ci­at­ed with par­tic­u­lar actors or pro­duc­tions; and a great vari­ety of sou­venirs, com­ic books, and oth­er ephemera asso­ci­at­ed with Shake­speare and his works.”

FolgerFuseli

In addi­tion to illus­tra­tions and mem­o­ra­bil­ia, the Fol­ger con­tains “some 200 paint­ings” and draw­ings by fine artists like “Hen­ry Fuseli, Ben­jamin West, George Rom­ney, and Thomas Nast, as well as such Eliz­a­bethan artists as George Gow­er and Nicholas Hilliard.” (The strik­ing print above by Fuseli shows Mac­beth’s three witch­es hov­er­ing over their caul­dron.) Great and var­ied as the Folger’s col­lec­tion of Shake­speare­an art may be, it rep­re­sents only a part of their exten­sive hold­ings. You’ll also find in the Dig­i­tal Images Col­lec­tion images of antique book­bind­ings, like the 1532 vol­ume of a work by Agrip­pa von Nettescheim (Hein­rich Cor­nelius), below.

Folger1532Binding

The col­lec­tion’s enor­mous archive of 19th cen­tu­ry prints is an espe­cial treat. Just below, see a print of that tow­er of 18th cen­tu­ry learn­ing, Samuel John­son, who, in his famous pref­ace to an edi­tion of the Bard’s works declared, “Shake­speare is above all writ­ers.” All in all, the immense dig­i­tal col­lec­tion rep­re­sents, writes The Pub­lic Domain Review, “a huge injec­tion of some won­der­ful mate­r­i­al into the open dig­i­tal com­mons.” Already, the Fol­ger has begun adding images to Wiki­me­dia Com­mons for use free and open use in Wikipedia and else­where on the web. And should you some­how man­age, through some vora­cious feat of dig­i­tal con­sump­tion, to exhaust this trea­sure hold of images, you need not fear—they’ll be adding more and more as time goes on.

FolgerDrJohnson

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

Down­load 35,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

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

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Dick Van Dyke, Paul Lynde & the Original Cast of Bye Bye Birdie Appear on The Ed Sullivan Show (1961)

in Film, Television, Theatre | August 6th, 2014

Think back, if you will to the dawn of the 60’s, or fail­ing that, the third sea­son of Mad Men, when Broad­way musi­cals could still be con­sid­ered legit­i­mate adult enter­tain­ment and Bye Bye Birdie was the hottest tick­et in town.

Six months after the show’s 1960 open­ing, Broadway’s—soon to be television’s—latest star  Dick Van Dyke, appeared on the Ed Sul­li­van show to intro­duce the rest of the coun­try to the musi­cal their high schools and com­mu­ni­ty the­aters would be per­form­ing in per­pe­tu­ity.

The show­case also afford­ed the Amer­i­can view­ing pub­lic their first glimpse of the man who would out­last Sul­li­van as a fix­ture in their liv­ing rooms, Hol­ly­wood’s most out­ra­geous Square, Paul Lyn­de.

Lyn­de had his camp and ate it too in the role of a solid­ly Mid­west­ern father of two who, by virtue of his asso­ci­a­tion with his teenage daugh­ter, finds him­self appear­ing on none oth­er than… The Ed Sul­li­van Show! It’s a tru­ly meta moment. The stu­dio audi­ence seems to enjoy the joke, and Sul­li­van appears pleased too, when he wan­ders on after “Hymn for a Sun­day Evening” as the song is prop­er­ly called. Accord­ing to his biog­ra­phy, Always on Sun­day, his response upon first hear­ing was less enthu­si­as­tic. When the mer­ry Broad­way crowd turned to check Sul­li­van’s response to Lyn­de’s gulp­ing final admis­sion, (“I love you, Ed!”),  Sul­li­van report­ed that he want­ed the floor to open up and swal­low both him and his wife.

Way to get with the joke, Ed!

Lat­er in the episode, there’s some grace­ful Van Dyke foot­work on “Put on a Hap­py Face,” a song that even the most sea­soned the­ater­go­ers tend to for­get orig­i­nat­ed with this show, prob­a­bly because it does noth­ing to advance the plot.

Lyn­de and Van Dyke reprised their roles in the 1962 film, but in a typ­i­cal tale of stage-to-screen heart­break, Susan Wat­son, Lyn­de’s orig­i­nal Birdie daugh­ter, was replaced by 22-year-old bomb­shell, Ann-Mar­gret. (The deli­cious­ly bitchy remark Mau­reen Sta­ple­ton made about her at the wrap par­ty turns out to be apoc­ryphal, or at least intend­ed more kind­ly than it would seem.) See what she brings to “Hymn for a Sun­day Evening” below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Dig­i­tal Archive of Vin­tage Tele­vi­sion Com­mer­cials

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author and home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Bertolt Brecht Sings “Mack the Knife” in a 1929 Recording

in Music, Theatre | July 28th, 2014

brecht sings

Since 2008, a record­ing has been mak­ing the rounds on YouTube of Bertolt Brecht singing ‘Die Mori­tat von Mack­ie Mess­er,’ or what’s more com­mon­ly known as “Mack the Knife” in Eng­lish, a song Kurt Weill and Brecht com­posed for The Three­pen­ny Opera, which pre­miered in Berlin in 1928. The Brecht record­ing dates back to 1929, and, accord­ing to Discogs, it was released in 1960 on a 7‑inch Ger­man album called Bertolt Brecht Singt. Below, you can hear Brecht make his way through the tune. The clip comes accom­pa­nied by a quirky, new ani­mat­ed video cre­at­ed by the stu­dio Qual­i­ty Schnal­li­ty, Inc.

“Mack the Knife” has, of course, been cov­ered by count­less artists over the years. Bob­by Darin sang per­haps the most famous, swing­ing ver­sion in 1958. There are also clas­sic ver­sions by Louis Arm­strong, Frank Sina­tra, and Ella Fitzger­ald, not to men­tion more con­tem­po­rary ones by Lyle Lovett, The Psy­che­del­ic Furs, The Young Gods, Nick Cave, and Mar­i­anne Faith­full. Did we miss one of your favorites?

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!

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clean­est Record­ings of 1920s Louis Arm­strong Songs You’ll Ever Hear

Bertolt Brecht Tes­ti­fies Before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (1947)

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Ubu Roi: Alfred Jarry’s Scandalous Play Strikingly Adapted for Television (1965)

in Television, Theatre | July 28th, 2014

“Mer­dre,” the very first word spo­ken in Alfred Jar­ry’s Ubu Roi, needs no intro­duc­tion. When it first opened — and closed — on stage in 1896, it did­n’t have to do much more than that to get its audi­ence worked up. As soon as this hyper-vul­gar satire of the pow­er­ful came to its delib­er­ate­ly undra­mat­ic end, a “riot” broke out, his­to­ry books invari­ably note. Some­thing in Jar­ry’s tale of the sav­age, infan­tile, and all-desir­ing roy­al­ty of the title touched a nerve, and the Sur­re­al­ist and The­atre of the Absurd move­ments that fol­lowed would strive to keep on touch­ing it. But the strange, low-mind­ed Ubu Roi and its sequels would, while no longer liable to prompt fisticuffs, retain a kind of pow­er over the next cen­tu­ry and beyond. That lega­cy is vis­i­ble even in French polit­i­cal dis­course, where the insult “Ubuesque” tends to get thrown around to describe a cer­tain impul­sive, self-sat­is­fy­ing kind of pub­lic fig­ure.

Jean-Christo­pher Aver­ty’s tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion of Ubu Roi above first aired in 1965. Its con­tent, pre­sum­ably by then famil­iar enough to the view­ing audi­ence, no longer shocked, but its aes­thet­ic choic­es still look strik­ing today. “I can almost guar­an­tee you will nev­er see anoth­er film that looks even remote­ly like this,” says The Sick, the Strange, and the Awful. It “dis­pels any types of cam­era pan­ning, zooms and even mov­ing the cam­era at all,” plac­ing, “at any one time, three, four, six dif­fer­ent mini-scenes onscreen, all inter­act­ing with each oth­er in bizarre ways. Char­ac­ters will pass things to each oth­er, and the item will change size depend­ing on where the cam­era is. It’s visu­al­ly dis­ori­en­tat­ing, and cool as hell.” The sim­ply attired char­ac­ters against back­grounds reduced to their most basic ele­ments (when not just a black void) retain the the­atri­cal­i­ty of the mate­r­i­al, but it all comes togeth­er visu­al­ly with the kind of opti­cal effects that had only recent­ly become pos­si­ble. Jar­ry’s dar­ing pre­saged the era of any­thing-goes the­atre; only nat­ur­al that his work would go on to explore the lim­it­less visu­al pos­si­bil­i­ties opened at the dawn of the video age. But if it start­ed any riots in mid­dle-class French liv­ing rooms, his­to­ry has left them unrecord­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

Watch Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

Un Chien Andalou: Revis­it­ing Buñuel and Dalí’s Sur­re­al­ist Film

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Four Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

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

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Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot Airs on American TV (1961): Starring Burgess Meredith & Zero Mostel

in Television, Theatre | May 18th, 2014

1961 saw the tele­vi­sion debuts of The Bob Newhart Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, ABC’s Wide World of Sports, Yogi Bear, and …um, Samuel Beck­et­t’s Wait­ing for Godot, famous­ly described by the­ater crit­ic Vivian Merci­er as “a play in which noth­ing hap­pens, twice.”

Burgess Mered­ith and Zero Mos­tel, both try­ing to sal­vage careers after being black­list­ed in the McCarthy peri­od, starred as Vladimir and Estragon, in WNTA-TV’s Play of the Week series’ no-frills pro­duc­tion. In con­trast to the recent Broad­way revival star­ring griz­zled,  grub­by  knights of the realm, Ian McK­ellen and Patrick Stew­art, Mered­ith and Mos­tel make a pret­ty harmless—and appar­ent­ly unharmed—team. Vladimir’s prostate trou­ble was scrubbed from the shoot­ing script, along with some 40 min­utes of the stage ver­sion, five years after its dis­as­trous Amer­i­can pre­miere. 

Alan Schnei­der, who direct­ed that pro­duc­tion, returned to helm the Play of the Week, along with orig­i­nal Amer­i­can cast mem­bers Kurt Kaszn­er and Alvin Epstein, repris­ing their sup­port­ing turns as Poz­zo and Lucky. Schnei­der appears to have had his hands full with the always-larg­er-than-life Mos­tel who chews plen­ty of scenery in addi­tion to his car­rot.

For his part, Mos­tel stat­ed that he “wished to be re-black­list­ed” if that would keep him from ever hav­ing to work with that direc­tor again.

Despite the ten­sion, he and Mered­ith achieve a win­some Lau­rel and Hardy-like rap­port as they plod up and down a paint­ed road with chore­o­graphed aim­less­ness.

It’s still a bit hard for me to imag­ine Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion audi­ences tun­ing-in in num­bers suf­fi­cient to jus­ti­fy the effort.

To be fair, there were a lot few­er chan­nels then. Play of the Week was a high brow project serv­ing up seri­ous the­atri­cal work on the small screen. The first episode was Judith Ander­son­’s Medea. Com­pared to that, or Shake­speare, or Ibsen, a prostate-free Godot might be passed off as tele­vised enter­tain­ment the whole fam­i­ly could tol­er­ate for an hour and forty-nine min­utes.

If you’re up for it, the entire pro­duc­tion is yours for the view­ing below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Rare Audio: Samuel Beck­ett Reads Two Poems From His Nov­el Watt

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the award-win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Great Shakespeare Plays Retold with Stick Figures in Three Simple Drawings

in Comedy, Comics/Cartoons, Literature, Theatre | March 29th, 2014

MacbethComic

Oth­er than Romeo and Juli­et and pos­si­bly Ham­let,  Shake­speare does­n’t exact­ly lend him­self to the ele­va­tor pitch. The same creaky plot devices and unfath­omable jokes that con­found mod­ern audi­ences make for long wind­ed sum­maries.

Not to say it can’t be done. Mya Gosling, a South­east Asia Copy Cat­a­loger at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, has been amus­ing her­self, and more recent­ly oth­ers, with “Good Tick­le Brain,” a web com­ic that reduces each of the com­plete works to a mere three pan­els. (Titus Andron­i­cus’ blood­bath required but one.)

Those of us who are semi-versed in the Bard should delight in the way major char­ac­ters and com­plex side plots are glibly strick­en from the record.

(Methinks Lady Mac­Beth would not be pleased…)

And what high school­er won’t expe­ri­ence a per­verse thrill, when the obscure and bor­ing text his class has been pars­ing for weeks is dis­patched with the swift­ness of your aver­age Garfield? (The wise teacher will be in no rush to share these rev­e­la­tions…)

HenryIV

Gosling, whose dad intro­duced her to Shake­speare at an ear­ly age, knows the mate­r­i­al well enough to sub­vert it. Who cares if her artis­tic tal­ent max­es out with stick fig­ures? Famil­iar­i­ty allows her to nail the end­ing of Troilus and Cres­si­da (“Home­r’s Ili­ad hap­pens”). The mid­dle pan­el of Win­ter’s Tale is devot­ed to “some poor guy” get­ting eat­en by a bear, and why should­n’t it be, when the author’s famous stage direc­tion is the only thing most peo­ple can dredge up with regard to that par­tic­u­lar play?

As for the title of her web com­ic, it’s an insult from one of her faves, Hen­ry IV, part 1. My kind of geek­ery, for­sooth.

H/T Michael Good­win, the author of Economix, a book that explains The His­to­ry of Eco­nom­ics & Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry with Comics. See a sam­ple by click­ing here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Course: A Sur­vey of Shakespeare’s Plays

Dis­cov­er What Shakespeare’s Hand­writ­ing Looked Like, and How It Solved a Mys­tery of Author­ship

The Bea­t­les Per­form a Fun Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream (1964)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s 16-year-old daugh­ter plays a small part in Michael Almerey­da’s Cym­be­line. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Hear Orson Welles’ Radio Performances of 10 Shakespeare Plays (1936–1944)

in Film, Theatre | March 22nd, 2014

welles shakes

Before he direct­ed Cit­i­zen Kane, Orson Welles was already famous. He was an enfant ter­ri­ble of that new medi­um radio — one of his plays, an adap­ta­tion of War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, famous­ly ter­ri­fied the nation in 1938. He was also known as a wun­derkind of the stage.

Dur­ing the late 1930s, Welles and his pro­duc­ing part­ner John House­man (yes, that John House­man) were the toast of Broad­way, thanks to a string of auda­cious clas­si­cal revivals. The most famous of these pro­duc­tions was a 1937 adap­ta­tion of William Shakespeare’s Julius Cae­sar, which gave the play an unex­pect­ed rel­e­vance. Welles dressed the cast in mod­ern attire; sol­diers were out­fit­ted to look like Nazi black shirts. And the show was lit in a man­ner meant to recall a Nurem­berg ral­ly. Pre­sent­ed at a time when Hitler’s pow­er was grow­ing, the pro­duc­tion jolt­ed Amer­i­can audi­ences and made Welles famous. Time Mag­a­zine even put him on its cov­er.

Being a trail­blaz­er in both radio and the stage, Welles adapt­ed many of his stage pro­duc­tions for the wire­less.  The Inter­net Archive has post­ed many of these record­ings online, which you can lis­ten to for free. The selec­tion includes per­for­mances of Ham­let, Romeo and Juli­et, Richard III, Mac­beth and, of course, Julius Cae­sar, among oth­ers. In most cas­es, these record­ings — along with a few set pho­tos — are the only doc­u­ments left of Welles’s ground­break­ing pro­duc­tions.

But if you want to get a sense of what Welles’s Julius Cae­sar actu­al­ly looked like, you can check out Richard Lin­klater’s lit­tle-seen, crit­i­cal­ly-praised com­e­dy Me and Orson Welles (2008). The movie stars Zac Efron as a young actor who lands a small part in the pro­duc­tion only to find him­self com­pet­ing with the great direc­tor for the affec­tions of a girl. The movie might be a tri­fle but experts have mar­veled at how close the film is to Welles’s vision. Check out the trail­er below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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