For a few years now the Saul Bass-inspired “Hitchcock” font has been available on the net, but not until this has someone done something really great with it. Brought to you by - who else - Some Guy On The Internet: the titles to Star Wars if Saul Bass had done them.
(link provided by the estimable Greg Dunlap, he of Cineblog, Drupal development and the Coffee Table Hall Of Fame )
In the trailer for his creationist film Expelled:No Intelligence Allowed , actor, former Nixon speech writer and game show host Ben Stein stands before a blackboard in an empty college classroom and writes, Bart Simpson-like: I Will Not Challenge Darwin.
See, he’s being punished, Ben is, as are all of us who dare to question the Unassailable Conclusions of Science. In the convenient binary world of this film, Mr. Stein hopes to do to confused viewers what he did to dry eyes: offer soothing relief along with blurry vision.
Doing nothing to dispel the impression about Stein, first given in the Nixon era, that he is least trustworthy when he’s writing, he goes on to explain in the trailer that something with Nazi overtones called “Big Science” is silencing scientists who “challenge Darwin”. Even more hilariously it asserts we now live in an “era of Darwin where challenge of the status quo is rarely unpunished” - this nugget accompanied by footage of a cheetah killing a wildebeest.
Setting aside the most obvious problem with the above premise - the small fact that science is challenge, an all-day-every-day challenge to root out the false - even and especially those falsehoods inadvertently produced by science itself - the trailer Stein hosts not only grossly misrepresents science, fascism and cheetahs, the producers also misrepresented their own film to the scientists who appear in it.
According to Cornelia Dean’s piece in the 9/27/07 New York Times “Scientists Feel Miscast By Film On Life’s Origin“, Stein’s producers approached leaders of the science community with a more middle-of-the-road film. For people who don’t accept evolution, they sure had no problem with their own film’s title and theme changing slightly over time.
A few months ago, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins received an e-mail message from a producer at Rampant Films inviting him to be interviewed for a documentary called “Crossroads.”
The film, with Ben Stein, the actor, economist and freelance columnist, as its host, is described on Rampant’s Web site as an examination of the intersection of science and religion. Dr. Dawkins was an obvious choice. An eminent scientist who teaches at Oxford University in England, he is also an outspoken atheist who has repeatedly likened religious faith to a mental defect.
But now, Dr. Dawkins and other scientists who agreed to be interviewed say they are surprised — and in some cases, angered — to find themselves not in “Crossroads” but in a film with a new name and one that makes the case for intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism. The film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” also has a different producer, Premise Media.
The film is described in its online trailer as “a startling revelation that freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been expelled from publicly-funded high schools, universities and research institutions.” According to its Web site, the film asserts that people in academia who see evidence of a supernatural intelligence in biological processes have unfairly lost their jobs, been denied tenure or suffered other penalties as part of a scientific conspiracy to keep God out of the nation’s laboratories and classrooms.
Mr. Stein appears in the film’s trailer, backed by the rock anthem “Bad to the Bone,” declaring that he wants to unmask “people out there who want to keep science in a little box where it can’t possibly touch God.”
If he had known the film’s premise, Dr. Dawkins said in an e-mail message, he would never have appeared in it. “At no time was I given the slightest clue that these people were a creationist front,” he said.
Eugenie C. Scott, a physical anthropologist who heads the National Center for Science Education, said she agreed to be filmed after receiving what she described as a deceptive invitation.
“I have certainly been taped by people and appeared in productions where people’s views are different than mine, and that’s fine,” Dr. Scott said, adding that she would have appeared in the film anyway. “I just expect people to be honest with me, and they weren’t.”
The growing furor over the movie, visible in blogs, on Web sites and in conversations among scientists, is the latest episode in the long-running conflict between science and advocates of intelligent design, who assert that the theory of evolution has obvious scientific flaws and that students should learn that intelligent design, a creationist idea, is an alternative approach.
There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth. And while individual scientists may embrace religious faith, the scientific enterprise looks to nature to answer questions about nature. As scientists at Iowa State University put it last year, supernatural explanations are “not within the scope or abilities of science.”
Tonight at the Hideout was the latest in a string of comedy-centric events put on by Chicago rock label Drag City. At the front bar I spotted DC’s Dan Koretzky and asked him what’s with his stalwart music label and the comedy lately (back in December, I saw the first in his series at Weeds hosted by Fred Armisen). I got a helpful “I dunno, but thanks for coming” for my trouble. Hey, who cares why? Just keep up the great work, especially when it brings my heroes onstage.
Tonight’s panel: No less than creators of the mighty 1970s National Lampoon magazine: Anne Beatts, Chris Miller and Brian McConnachie all wrote and edited the late great magazine in its heyday (universally known as “when it was funny”) and shared hours of stories about the giants there including Henry Beard, Doug Kinney, Michael “Mr. Mike” O’Donohue, and even P.J. “David Horowitz” O’Rourke.
The ‘70-’75 Lampoon was evergreen for smart gags and brutal satire, and as a bona fide humor magazine, nothing since has ever came close. The Onion is the only contender, yet forever removed from the ‘Poon’s weight class due to its being a parody form. Maybe the Buffalo Beast?
Some sniff at the post-’75 ‘Poon, but not me. I started regularly buying it in ‘79 or so and purchased the many available reprints of the early days. I even liked it into the 1980s, but by ‘82 or ‘83 it was clearly weakened beyond help.
By then it had served its purpose in the North American comedic pageant: populating Saturday Night Live and SCTV with writers and performers and re-conceiving the American comedy film with Animal House.
Beatts, now a screenwriting instructor at USC, relayed a great story detailing a time she took acid with Mike O’Donoghue and earned her place at the sausage party that was the Lampoon. In the time before her unprecedented work on the early years of Saturday Night Live, she told of being brought to NatLamp editorial dinners and having her stuff run in the magazine before long. She had loving descriptions of the late Michael O’Donoghue, a guy who I mostly remember for an early SNL bit where he performed an imitation of “Tony Orlando and Dawn after having nine inch steel spikes with real sharp ends plunged into their eyes.” I was, what, nine years old when I saw that? I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but I will never forget the punhcline writhing and shrieking of Mr. Mike and “Dawn”.
Miller, who along with Doug Kinney and Harold Ramis wrote the screenplay for Animal House based on his experiences as a Dartmouth frat boy, talked up his new book and recalled his journey to the Lampoon’s pages on the back of debauched stories detailing holiday turkey-fucking, beatoff contests and erotic encounters with telephones. Oh, and the phrase “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs”? That was him, too. Miller wrote for an agency before he was fired for pulling out a bag of pot in front of his bosses.
McConnachie, a recognizable visage from the many films he’s appeared in rolled out some tape of John Belushi in his National Lampoon Radio Hour days doing a Sondheim-esque turn as Captain Ahab in the musical “Moby.”
During Q&A, every one of them name-checked James Thurber as an influence, which only makes sense - and Beatts invoked Dorothy Parker’s name along with the Algonquin round table.
Beatts also remarked about the lack of a point of view in modern mainstream comedies. She called out Judd Apatow specifically, guessing that his point of view was either not discernible or was “unattractive guys can get with attractive women”. Thanks Ann, for putting a finger on what isn’t there with the Apatows and the Chandrasekhars: what Thurber would call “Humor: emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.”
And thanks as always to the eagle-eyed Maureen for spotting this once-in-a-lifetime event. Love you!
In the feature film High Fidelity, a John-Belushi-like wag bears the standard for punk rock from a storefront on Milwaukee and Honore streets in Chicago.
In the 1980s, I was a John-Belushi-like wag and bore the standard for punk rock from a music club on Milwaukee and Honore streets in Chicago.
In the feature film Office Space, a hapless cubicle-dweller pretends to work on a Year 2000 software project.
In the 1990s, I was a hapless cubicle-dweller pretending to work on a Year 2000 software project.
In the feature film The Break Up, a charming Polish-American manchild gives humorous tours of downtown Chicago from a large vehicle.
In the 2000s, I was a charming Polish-American manchild who gave humorous tours of downtown Chicago from a large vehicle.
My name is Rob Warmowski, and I live my life in terror of the plotlines of mainstream romantic comedies.
a seven-hour documentary film called bbs: the documentary has been completed by jason scott. this film chronicles the golden age of what we know now as the “online” world.
the early days of disembodied typing took place on small systems called bulletin board systems, running on early microcomputers such as the apple 2, the commodore 64 or texas instruments ti/99s.
i spent a lot of the early reagan era as an online teen dork. i was a vandal and a bully and sometimes i wrote some neat stuff. jason scott’s texfiles.com is a vast repository of some of the pieces of online culture that inhabited these systems and were passed around the english speaking world as a form of slow digital agitprop. browsing jason’s site is like traveling to a vast mental hospital and trying to unravel the complicated secret societies that run the place.
on friday may 9th, the chicago police shut down the hothouse during a performance of the cuban group orquesta aragon. the place is losing tens of thousands of dollars while they wait out a court date. the reason? improper amusement license, say the cops. not so, say the managers, who claim to have dotted all i’s and crossed all t’s. “harrassment of the left” cry others, i.e. anyone who saw how the cops broke up the antiwar protest of march 20. orquesta aragon’s performances in the us have reportedly caused some ruckus with anti-castro demonstrators in the past, but if you follow that link you will see cuban musicians and hear some cool non-jazzy dance orchestra (charanga) pieces…and not a single AK-47, five-year plan or red star to be seen.
politically motivated shutdown or sudden hardening of license terms in a post-epitome nightclub disaster chicago? one thing is absolutely certain: the non-profit hothouse, one of our city’s finest rooms, is not owned by anybody related to mayor daley.
it’s been a few weeks since i saw the documantary film the cruise, and i can’t stop thinking about it. i think it’s the best film i’ve seen in a long time.
it concerns an unforgettable new york city tour guide named timothy “speed” levitch, who rides a double-decker bus and every day brings the rubberneckers through not just manhattan, but himself. the journey, or cruise, is everything and i came away from this film absolutely in love with levitch, the film’s director bennet miller, and again with manhattan.
speed, if you ever read this, i want you to know that i too have stared up at the towers of america’s 20th-century fever-dream, microphone in hand, charged with the responsibility to interpret the mass madness to $17.00 ticket-holders. the cowshit surrounding my chicago makes prolific building material, a target-rich environment for pathos, bathos, high drama, low urges and the most unimaginable tensions. i too must speak in explosions to have any hope of portraying this place’s lessons. yet, before you, i am briefly silent in greatest appreciation of your impossible gift.
i hope the movie’s getting you a little tail, too.
