Weekend Reads (Aug 27): John Wayne, “Bubba Ho-Tep,” Cornerstone Festival, mewithoutYou, Black Hole Sounds
Recommended weekend reading for August 27, 2022.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Last week, I mentioned that Sacheen Littlefeather had finally received an apology for how she was treated following her protest at the 1973 Oscars. A prominent detail of that night was that John Wayne was so upset, he had to be restrained by several guards from assaulting Littlefeather. But in this well-researched piece, Farran Smith Nehme pokes some big holes in that story.
You would think, would you not, that if John Wayne had been either in the wings or backstage, with six security men tussling with him in some kind of goal-line stand, as Wayne hollered that he was gonna drag Sacheen Littlefeather right off the ding-dang stage, that this would have been noticed and remarked upon somewhere in the many, many, many stories and columns published in the days and weeks right after this particular Oscar ceremony — not least by Littlefeather herself.
You would be wrong.
Wayne was well-known as a strong conservative and had espoused racist views in a 1971 interview with Playboy magazine. Therefore, it made total sense that he would want to rush the stage and stop Littlefeather’s protest. But as Nehme’s article reveals, the facts just don’t seem to bear that out. Or as Nehme puts it, “Six security guards holding [Wayne] back lest he race onstage and attack like he’s King Kong: Until one steps forward, I’m going with ‘never happened.’”
Rather, this looks like a classic case of a story that was increasingly embellished and exaggerated over time until it became a myth, and people liked the myth so much — it lined up so nicely with their biases and preconceived notions — that they continued promulgating it without a second thought.
Prior to his death in 2010, Satoshi Kon had been working on a new film titled Dreaming Machine. It’s extremely unlikely that the film will ever be completed, but Animation Obsessive gives us a glimpse at what might’ve been.
In essence, Kon was imagining a retrofuturistic post-apocalypse. Think Fallout, but made by someone who’d probably never heard of Fallout. It was Astro Boy gone wrong.
And yet Kon was creating Dreaming Machine for a broad audience. “He was really clear […] this was a family film that he was trying to make,” recalled Aya Suzuki, a key animator on the project. Dreaming Machine’s plot moved away from the esoteric aspects of films like Paprika. Kon was entering a new stage of his career.
If you’re at all a fan of anime, and you have the opportunity, then I highly recommend watching the 2021 documentary Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist. It’s filled with fascinating behind-the-scenes looks at Kon’s various films and delves into his work habits, his desire to grow and evolve the anime industry, his impact on cinema at large, and his sense of frustration at his films’ success (or lack thereof).
Related: Satoshi Kon’s last words.
For every movie that makes it to the theater (or streaming service, as the case may be), countless others don’t get made for various reasons (e.g., artistic disagreements, budget concerns). Variety lists 20 of the best movies never made. They include: a Donald Trump-inspired deep fake movie from the creators of South Park; Colin Trevorrow’s conclusion to the Star Wars sequel trilogy; Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man; and Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness.
Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis has become a critical and commercial success since being released earlier this year. However, I would contend that Don Coscarelli’s Bubba Ho-Tep — in which the King must battle an Egyptian mummy with the help of an old Black man who claims to be John F. Kennedy — remains the greatest Elvis movie of all time.
Bubba Ho-Tep was adapted from a short story written by Joe R. Lansdale, which was published in a literary anthology called The King Is Dead: Tales of Elvis Post-Mortem. A lot of people forget this now, but it was a frequent pop culture punchline throughout the ’80s that Elvis had faked his own death and was secretly still living.
I was fortunate enough to see Bubba Ho-Tep in the theatre when it came Lincoln’s own Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, and it was an absolute blast. But how it could it not be when you’ve got Bruce Campbell playing the King in a performance for the ages? I mean, just try to watch this trailer and not crack a huge smile… I dare you.
In light of the recent Discovery/HBO Max merger, a number of shows have been removed from HBO Max with little notice being given to, well, anyone. One of the removed titles was Infinity Train, and creator Owen Dennis weighs in on the confusion, anger, and sorrow surrounding Discovery’s decision.
I think the way that Discovery went about this is incredibly unprofessional, rude, and just straight up slimy. I think most everyone who makes anything feels this way. Across the industry, talent is mad, agents are mad, lawyers and managers are mad, even execs at these companies are mad. I can’t think of a single person who works in animation and entertainment that, when you bring this all up, doesn’t say “What the fuck are they doing? How do they plan to have anyone ever want to work with them again?”
Because why would we? What is the point of making something, spending years working on it, putting in nights and weekends doing their terrible notes, losing sleep and not seeing our families, if it’s just going to be taken away and shot in the backyard? It’s so incredibly discouraging and they’re definitely not going to be getting their best work out of whoever decides to stay.
He also offers some interesting thoughts on piracy and the need to preserve culture, including pop culture.
I don’t believe you should pirate something just because you don’t have money. That’s essentially saying “Yes, you artist, you made something and now I get to have it for free. You don’t get to be paid, you don’t get to have your health insurance, all because I wanna see something you worked for years on for free this evening while I eat a frozen pizza.” That’s very selfish and I would consider that to be theft of labor.
However, if you’re no longer given any chance to access or pay for the art? We’re now talking about restricting you from seeing and experiencing your culture and history, purely because someone is creating artificial scarcity. Now we’re talking about preservation of our history.
Some folks have been complaining that Netflix titles all look the same, and not in a good way.
Netflix’s in-house produced television shows and movies tend to all have the same look and feel, to the point that it’s sometimes really distracting. Although it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly makes all Netflix shows look the same, a few things stand out: The image in general is dark, and the colors are extremely saturated; Especially in scenes at night, there tends to be a lot of colored lighting, making everything look like it’s washed in neon even if the characters are inside; Actors look like the makeup is caked on their faces, and details in their costumes like puckering seams are unusually visible; Most annoying to me, everything is also shot in an extremely conventional way, using the most conventional set ups to indicate mystery or intrigue as possible—to indicate that something weird is going on the framing always has a dutch angle, for example — or more often just having everyone shot in a medium close up.
I have to confess, I’ve never noticed this. And we even have the cheapest Netflix tier, so presumably it should be even more noticeable since we’re not getting the full 4K experience.
Alan Parish has uploaded a bunch of photos from the 2002 Cornerstone Festival and I’m in a state of pure nostalgic bliss. His photos include some great bands (e.g., Havalina, Luxury, Starflyer 59) as well as the crowds and festival grounds. Looking through them brings back so many awesome memories.
Related: Last year, I uploaded a bunch of my own Cornerstone photos.
Also related: If you never made it to Bushnell, Illinois, then I’m not sure I can fully explain why the Cornerstone Festival was so special to so many of us. Suffice to say, when the festival shut down in 2012, it was the end of an era, and I highly doubt we’ll ever see its like again.
Come the first week of July, I would make the trek to Bushnell, Illinois along with a group of Nebraska friends. We’d invariably meet up with a host of new and old friends from around the world once we got there, and spend the next week hanging out, seeing awesome concerts, and generally enjoying what several of us came to consider a true slice of heaven on earth.
Speaking of Cornerstone, one of the most memorable performances I ever saw there was mewithoutYou’s set from 2002, when they played in the blistering heat wearing suits, sweaters, and turtlenecks. (As soon as their set was over, I recall the drummer running off the stage, stripping off his clothes, and collapsing on the ground while people poured ice all over him.) The celebrated post-hardcore band called it quits last week with a handful of shows in their hometown of Philadelphia, bringing to a close two decades of incredible music.
This is a band who taught a small but very curious segment of the populace a new way of thinking about their faith. There’s a lot of Christians out there who can chart the chapters of their spiritual journey by the mewithoutYou albums that soundtracked them. Many of those people have families of their own now. Some might be pastoring churches. Others are working with the homeless and hungry in their areas. And in that way, this band’s influence will spread far, far beyond the measure of other, more household name-type acts. They had a great run. They’re done for now. But they’ll never die.
mewithoutYou released a lot of great music over the years, but my favorite remains their sophomore album, 2004’s Catch for Us the Foxes.
Capitol Records recently signed a deal with an up-and-coming rapper named FN Meka only to cancel it after FN Meka’s music was accused of perpetuating racist stereotypes. It wouldn’t be the first time an artist lost their record deal due to controversy but here’s the twist: FN Meka isn’t a person but rather, an AI-generated bot.
Capitol Records’ signing of the fictional “robot rapper” had just been announced last week, although the project goes back years as an independent endeavor. The “artificial reality” hip-hop character was described as the brainchild of Anthony Martini and Brandon Le, cofounders of Factory New. Martini — who’s also chief music officer and partner at Slip.stream — said in an interview with Music Business Worldwide that “technically speaking, FN Meka is voiced by a human. But everything else about him — from his lyrics to the chords and tempo underpinning his music — is based on AI.”
The project was quickly attacked for seeming to feed the language and themes of Black street life into a computer that spat out lyrics about themes common to hip-hop, including copious use of the N-word, via the depersonalized tactics of artificial intelligence.
Via The Dispatch.
This story is fascinating, and I strongly suspect that we’ll see more like it as AI-generated art grows in popularity. Obviously one can’t criticize FN Meka directly because he’s not a real human; he’s only spouting what his algorithm told him to say. But the question then becomes, why did FN Meka’s creators — who aren’t Black — choose that particular info for his algorithm? Were they hoping that would make him sound more “authentic” as a rapper?
Related: Technology seems like it ought to be neutral, but it can contain surprising biases. For instance, facial recognition technology has been criticized for failing to accurately recognize Black faces due in part to the fact that the samples used to train such technology are often White and male.
Earlier this year, NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope, which has allowed us to see deeper and further into the universe than ever before. But NASA has also brought us the sounds of a black hole. And yes, they’re as creepy as you’d imagine for something that swallows light.
Since 2003, the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been associated with sound. This is because astronomers discovered that pressure waves sent out by the black hole caused ripples in the cluster’s hot gas that could be translated into a note — one that humans cannot hear some 57 octaves below middle C. Now a new sonification brings more notes to this black hole sound machine. This new sonification — that is, the translation of astronomical data into sound — is being released for NASA’s Black Hole Week this year.
Related: NASA has converted the digital data associated with various celestial bodies, including our own Milky Way galaxy, into their sonic equivalents. The one for the “Pillars of Creation” (one of my favorite things in space) sounds like something from a Doctor Who episode.
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