Remembering Lenny Bruce and When Taboo-Breaking Comedy Collided with the Law

in Comedy, History, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | September 14th, 2007

Lenny Bruce (born Leonard Alfred Schnei­der) intro­duced a strong­ly satir­i­cal, taboo-break­ing form of com­e­dy dur­ing the 1950s and 1960s, which paved the way for some of America’s great come­di­ans — Richard Pry­or, George Car­lin, Chris Rock, even John Stew­art. And for ush­er­ing in this new era of com­e­dy, Bruce paid a heavy per­son­al price. In 1961, San Fran­cis­co author­i­ties arrest­ed Bruce on obscen­i­ty charges. Then, in 1964, Bruce found him­self in the crosshairs of Manhattan’s Dis­trict Attor­ney, Frank Hor­gan. A six month tri­al fol­lowed, which raised impor­tant First Amend­ment issues, and which also brought Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Allen Gins­berg, Nor­man Mail­er, and William Sty­ron to Bruce’s defense. (Dylan would lat­er write a song about the affair.) But, regard­less, the tri­al end­ed bad­ly for Bruce, and, two years lat­er, the impov­er­ished come­di­an would die of a hero­in over­dose.

For Bruce’s lega­cy, things have got­ten a lit­tle bet­ter. In 2003, Gov­er­nor George Pata­ki grant­ed New York’s first posthu­mous par­don to the satirist, call­ing it “a dec­la­ra­tion of New York’s com­mit­ment to uphold­ing the First Amend­ment.” Mean­while, legal schol­ars have writ­ten books that paint Bruce and his First Amend­ment bat­tles in a rather sym­pa­thet­ic light. Below you can find a video clip of Lenny Bruce appear­ing on the very pop­u­lar Steve Allen Show. It gives you a pret­ty good look at the brand of com­e­dy that Bruce pre­sent­ed to the wider nation. (You can access Part II of the video here.) Beyond this, you may also want to check out the actu­al FBI file that was kept on Bruce. It’s been pub­lished thanks to the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act. And if you’re up for more video footage, here is a clear­ly deflat­ed Bruce using his tri­al as fod­der for com­e­dy.

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New R.E.M. Concert Video “Leaving New York”

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | September 13th, 2007

Below we have “R.E.M. Live, record­ed on the Around the World Tour, which pro­mot­ed Around the Sun, a stu­dio album from 2004. It is to be released Octo­ber 16.” (Thanks to Justin for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion.)

Source: Stere­ogum. (For more music, check out our col­lec­tion of MP3 Blogs.)

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Meet Larry David (in Video)

in Comedy, Media, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | September 11th, 2007

larrydavid2.jpgHBO just start­ed air­ing the sixth sea­son of Curb Your Enthu­si­asm, so it seemed fit­ting to serve up this lengthy inter­view with Lar­ry David. The talk is very fun­ny. No shock there. But it also gets into some good sub­stance. How Lar­ry got into com­e­dy; how he strug­gled dur­ing his ear­ly standup years and had to scratch togeth­er mon­ey for a can of Chef Boyardee; how he approach­es writ­ing com­e­dy; how he has gen­er­at­ed ideas for the most mem­o­rable episodes of “Curb” and Sein­feld — it all gets touched on here.

We have includ­ed the first part below, plus links to the oth­er sev­en seg­ments. For more Lar­ry David inter­views, check out the 60 Min­utes piece on Lar­ry from this past week­end. You can watch it online here.

Part 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

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Wine Tasting for Beginners

in Video - Arts & Culture | August 29th, 2007

Geared toward begin­ners, this series of videos cre­at­ed by Wine Library TV offers an intro­duc­tion to the basics of wine tast­ing. In these nine videos, you’ll learn how to taste wine and train your palate, why the tem­per­a­ture of wine mat­ters, how wine glass­es can affect the taste of wine, and how to decant it. Plus, you will learn some­thing about the dif­fer­ence between “new world” and “old world” wines and a lit­tle about wine rat­ings too. The host has his own unique style. It’s a lit­tle Jim Cramer-esque, to my mind. But if it works for you, the videos can help you move from sim­ply drink­ing wine to tast­ing it with a lit­tle insight and per­spec­tive.

While on this sub­ject, we should refer you back to an item men­tioned in one of our more pop­u­lar pieces, 10 Unex­pect­ed Uses of the iPod. Here, we men­tioned that you can use your MP3 play­er to take a series of wine tast­ing cours­es (“Enjoy­ing Wine,” “Select­ing Wine,” and “Wine Regions”). Each costs $35. You can down­load a free demo from the ven­dor’s home­page and see if it works for you.

But if you pre­fer some good free resources, head over to Vinog­ra­phy. This big wine blog fea­tures on the left-hand nav­i­ga­tion bar (scroll down a lit­tle) a long list of free wine pod­casts and spe­cial­ized blogs. While you’re there, you may par­tic­u­lar­ly want to check out their wine aro­ma card, which is hand­i­ly pub­lished in Eng­lish, Span­ish and Ital­ian. An impres­sive site, to be sure.

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William Gibson, Father of Cyberpunk, Reads New Novel in Second Life

in Books, Sci Fi, Video - Arts & Culture | August 21st, 2007

William Gib­son, who launched the cyber­punk genre with the 1984 clas­sic Neu­ro­mancer, has­n’t lost any steam. Pat­tern Recog­ni­tion, pub­lished a good 20+ years lat­er, won wide praise in 2005. Now, he’s come out with Spook Coun­try, and it’s cur­rent­ly #66 on the Ama­zon best­seller list. Below, you can catch Gib­son read­ing from his new work in Sec­ond Life. What can be more fitting?Also, you may want to check out Boing­Bo­ing’s “nerdgas­mic” inter­view with Gib­son (iTunes — Feed — MP3 Stream), plus Cory Doc­tor­row’s rev­er­en­tial review of the new work. And final­ly, if you need more, you can watch Gib­son give a book talk at Cody’s in Berke­ley CA, cour­tesy of Fora.Tv.For your dai­ly dose of dig­i­tal cul­ture, sub­scribe to our feed.

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Ingmar Bergman Dies at 89

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | July 30th, 2007

Ing­mar Bergman, one of the great film­mak­ers of the last cen­tu­ry, has died at 89. You can read the full obit in the NY Times here, and catch a piece of his mas­ter­work Per­sona below (or buy the film in full here). Film buffs may also want to check out Bergman’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, The Mag­ic Lantern.

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How To Write About Your Friends: Irving Reviews Grass

in Books, Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | July 9th, 2007

John Irv­ing pub­lished a long defense of Ger­man author Gün­ter Grass’s new mem­oir, Peel­ing the Onion in the New York Times Book Review yes­ter­day. The book cre­at­ed a storm of when it came out in Ger­man last year. Grass, who received the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 1999, revealed that he spent the last months of World War II as a mem­ber of an SS tank divi­sion. While he was only 17 at the time and claimed nev­er to have fired a weapon in bat­tle, the rev­e­la­tion was clear­ly upset­ting to many not only for the nature of Grass’s involve­ment (the Waf­fen-SS hav­ing exe­cut­ed many of Nazi Germany’s most hor­rif­ic war crimes) but for the fifty-year delay in his con­fes­sion.

Irv­ing’s “review” is a fas­ci­nat­ing read because of the way an old friend­ship and a tricky eth­i­cal ques­tion are man­aged in prose. Not­ing that one of his most famous char­ac­ters, Owen Meany, shares the ini­tials of Grass’s Oskar Matzerath from The Tin Drum (it’s “homage”), Irv­ing made a point of declar­ing that he will be attend­ing at least one par­ty for Grass’s 80th birth­day, pos­si­bly more. And his defense of Grass’s long silence about the Waf­fen-SS? “But good writ­ers write about the impor­tant stuff before they blab about it; good writ­ers don’t tell sto­ries before they’ve writ­ten them!”

To decide for your­self, you can read the first chap­ter of the book online here. If you get cable, Gün­ter Grass and Nor­man Mail­er will be appear­ing on Book­TV this Sun­day, July 15 at noon. Or you can watch Grass being inter­viewed by Char­lie Rose right here:

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Michael Moore’s “Sicko” — Fox Likes It More Than Google?

in Current Affairs, Film, Google, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | July 2nd, 2007

For some, it came as no sur­prise that “Sicko,” Michael Moore’s lat­est film and crit­i­cal look at Amer­i­ca’s health­care sys­tem, got strong reviews at The Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. What else would you expect from Europe’s lefty intel­li­gentsia? Then there was this lit­tle curve­ball. The right-lean­ing Fox News also called the film “bril­liant and uplift­ing.” How like­ly is that? The odds are next to zero. But it hap­pened, and it says some­thing rather extra­or­di­nary about the film. (You can watch the trail­er for the movie on your iPod here.)

In the mean­time, Google has got­ten itself into a bit of a PR deba­cle with the release of Sicko. Last week, a Google employ­ee took the posi­tion on a Google health­care blog that “Moore’s film por­trays the indus­try as mon­ey and mar­ket­ing dri­ven, and fails to show healthcare’s inter­est in patient well-being and care.” And then she invit­ed the health­care indus­try to use Adwords, the com­pa­ny’s mon­ey-rak­ing ad plat­form, to show­case for the pub­lic all the good that they do for us. When Google got the inevitable blow­back, the cor­po­rate PR folks kicked things into gear. Soon enough, we were told that the Google employ­ee had been speak­ing out of turn and they released an adden­dum on their main cor­po­rate blog, which says some­thing and yet noth­ing at the same time. Where does Google real­ly stand on the issue? Who knows. They’re play­ing things pre­dictably safe, and that’s to be expect­ed when your com­pa­ny stands to gen­er­ate bil­lions of ad rev­enue from a mul­ti-tril­lion dol­lar indus­try. Mean­while where does Fox stand on all of this (and I am talk­ing about the com­pa­ny, rather than the indi­vid­ual film review­er cit­ed above)? Prob­a­bly nowhere good.

Below, you can find Michael Moore talk­ing with Bill Maher (HBO) about the health­care prob­lem that cuts across the polit­i­cal divide. Give it a good look, but bet­ter yet, go see the movie.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.