Alvin Toffler and Margaret Mead, an author and an anthropologist who endeavored to understand the impact of scientific invention. In this episode of our series, The Experimenters, we hear from two visionaries who believed that while we’ve started a technological revolution, we don’t quite know where it’s going to take us. But maybe most interesting of all – we get to hearing these archival interviews from the very future these thinkers were trying to imagine. Mead and Toffler guide us into a view of what the present might have been — or perhaps in some ways actually came to pass.   Watch the recent animated episodes of The Experimenters: Oliver Sacks  George Washington Carver  Jacques Cousteau  Blank on Blank

Alvin Toffler and Margaret Mead, an author and an anthropologist who endeavored to understand the impact of scientific invention. In this episode of our series, The Experimenters, we hear from two visionaries who believed that while we’ve started a technological revolution, we don’t quite know where it’s going to take us. But maybe most interesting of all – we get to hearing these archival interviews from the very future these thinkers were trying to imagine. Mead and Toffler guide us into a view of what the present might have been — or perhaps in some ways actually came to pass. Watch the recent animated episodes of The Experimenters: <h4>Oliver Sacks</h4> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbaazbdIR_g" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h4>George Washington Carver</h4> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s9CK22ajSI" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h4>Jacques Cousteau</h4> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2IbTa4fXas" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Innocence, Innovation and Future Shock

Oliver Sacks, Jacques Cousteau, and George Washington Carver. Our podcast returns with lost interviews featuring this trio on self, sight, and deep-sea diving. The three icons had the imaginations and daring to go where none had gone before. They overcame indifference and bigotry, exploring the darkest depths of the ocean, and even challenging their own deepest assumptions. These men lived the very definition of scientific inquiry. We’ve brought the three together for the return of our special series, The Experimenters, featuring icons of science and innovation. Take a listen:  Watch the animated versions of these rare interviews below: Oliver Sacks  George Washington Carver  Jacques Cousteau    Blank on Blank

Oliver Sacks, Jacques Cousteau, and George Washington Carver. Our podcast returns with lost interviews featuring this trio on self, sight, and deep-sea diving. The three icons had the imaginations and daring to go where none had gone before. They overcame indifference and bigotry, exploring the darkest depths of the ocean, and even challenging their own deepest assumptions. These men lived the very definition of scientific inquiry. We’ve brought the three together for the return of our special series, The Experimenters, featuring icons of science and innovation. Take a listen: Watch the animated versions of these rare interviews below: <h4>Oliver Sacks</h4> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbaazbdIR_g" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h4>George Washington Carver</h4> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s9CK22ajSI" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h4>Jacques Cousteau</h4> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2IbTa4fXas" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Peanuts, Atlantis, and Colorblindness

Carl Sagan

“The evolutionary record is clear that extraterrestrials would be very different from us” – Carl Sagan in 1985, as told to Studs Terkel.   The incomprehensible vastness of the universe, the wonder of our own place in it all… Carl Sagan was able to explain the science of space in a way everyone could understand. As part of our special series, The Experimenters — we’re uncovering interviews with the icons of science, technology, and innovation — we found this conversation between Studs Terkel and Carl Sagan in the WFMT Studs Terkel Radio Archive. For this episode, we’ve zeroed in on Sagan’s thoughts on intelligent life in space, our place in the universe, and the Bible when it comes to explaining the natural world. Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: blankonblank.org/carl-sagan Blank on Blank

“The evolutionary record is clear that extraterrestrials would be very different from us” – Carl Sagan in 1985, as told to Studs Terkel.   The incomprehensible vastness of the universe, the wonder of our own place in it all… Carl Sagan was able to explain the science of space in a way everyone could understand. As part of our special series, The Experimenters — we’re uncovering interviews with the icons of science, technology, and innovation — we found this conversation between Studs Terkel and Carl Sagan in the WFMT Studs Terkel Radio Archive. For this episode, we’ve zeroed in on Sagan’s thoughts on intelligent life in space, our place in the universe, and the Bible when it comes to explaining the natural world. Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: <a href="http://blankonblank.org/carl-sagan" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">blankonblank.org/carl-sagan</a> <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Carl Sagan on Extraterrestrials *

Dame Stephanie Shirley

“I have to make my life worth saving, and each day you spend as if it would be your last” – Dame Steve Shirley in 2010 Dame Stephanie Shirley might be the most successful tech entrepreneur you have never heard of. In the early 1960s, Shirley started a barrier-breaking, all-woman software company that would eventually be valued at $3 billion. From a rarely heard oral history at The British Library, Shirley takes us on the journey from fleeing Nazi Germany as a little girl to breaking through in the new world of computers despite not being taken seriously as a woman working from home. Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: http://blankonblank.org/dame-stephanie-shirley Blank on Blank

“I have to make my life worth saving, and each day you spend as if it would be your last” – Dame Steve Shirley in 2010 Dame Stephanie Shirley might be the most successful tech entrepreneur you have never heard of. In the early 1960s, Shirley started a barrier-breaking, all-woman software company that would eventually be valued at $3 billion. From a rarely heard oral history at The British Library, Shirley takes us on the journey from fleeing Nazi Germany as a little girl to breaking through in the new world of computers despite not being taken seriously as a woman working from home. Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: <a href="http://blankonblank.org/interviews/dame-stephanie-shirley-survival-code/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://blankonblank.org/dame-stephanie-shirley</a> <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Dame Stephanie Shirley on Survival Code *

Temple Grandin

“Everything in my mind works like a search engine set for the image function.” – Temple Grandin in 2008 This rarely heard oral history with the autism activist, author, and professor of animal science, was uncovered at Colorado State University. In this conversation, Temple Grandin is at her best, explaining for the rest of us what it’s really like to have an autistic brain and how Einstein’s not the only genius who could have been dismissed for being different. Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: blankonblank.org/temple-grandin Blank on Blank

“Everything in my mind works like a search engine set for the image function.” – Temple Grandin in 2008 This rarely heard oral history with the autism activist, author, and professor of animal science, was uncovered at Colorado State University. In this conversation, Temple Grandin is at her best, explaining for the rest of us what it’s really like to have an autistic brain and how Einstein’s not the only genius who could have been dismissed for being different. Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: <a href="http://blankonblank.org/interviews/temple-grandin-visualizing-autism-aspergers-cattle-nerds/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">blankonblank.org/temple-grandin</a> <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Temple Grandin on Search Engines *

Frank Lloyd Wright

“Any man who really has faith in himself will be dubbed arrogant by his fellows” – Frank Lloyd Wright in 1957, as told to Mike Wallace Architect Frank Lloyd Wright did something new when he made buildings that somehow became one with the landscape. Long, low lines, and interiors that brought the light and space of the outside in. Wright’s designs and style seem very nice, very clean now, but at the time, he was a controversial personality. And like most famous architects, his work was as much hated as respected. And that’s what Mike Wallace wanted to talk about. Watch the animated Frank Lloyd Wright episode: blankonblank.org/frank-lloyd-wright This episode continues our special series, The Experimenters. We’re uncovering lost interviews with the icons of science, technology, and innovation – people who helped make the world we live in today. Blank on Blank

“Any man who really has faith in himself will be dubbed arrogant by his fellows” – Frank Lloyd Wright in 1957, as told to Mike Wallace Architect Frank Lloyd Wright did something new when he made buildings that somehow became one with the landscape. Long, low lines, and interiors that brought the light and space of the outside in. Wright’s designs and style seem very nice, very clean now, but at the time, he was a controversial personality. And like most famous architects, his work was as much hated as respected. And that’s what Mike Wallace wanted to talk about. Watch the animated Frank Lloyd Wright episode: <a href="http://blankonblank.org/interviews/architect-frank-lloyd-wright-interview-design-houses-praire-style/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">blankonblank.org/frank-lloyd-wright</a> This episode continues our special series, The Experimenters. We’re uncovering lost interviews with the icons of science, technology, and innovation – people who helped make the world we live in today. <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Frank Lloyd Wright on Arrogance *

“I wish that there had been another woman on my flight. I think it would have been a lot easier.” – Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, shortly after her historic launch in 1983. Interviewed by Gloria Steinem. At the time of this interview, as far as the public – and it turns out the press – were concerned, space was for clean-cut alpha males with names like Buzz. Then Sally Ride came along. Watch the animated Sally Ride episode: blankonblank.org/sally-ride This episode marks the return of our special series, The Experimenters. We’re uncovering lost interviews with the icons of science, technology, and innovation – people who helped make the world we live in today. Blank on Blank

“I wish that there had been another woman on my flight. I think it would have been a lot easier.” – Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, shortly after her historic launch in 1983. Interviewed by Gloria Steinem. At the time of this interview, as far as the public – and it turns out the press – were concerned, space was for clean-cut alpha males with names like Buzz. Then Sally Ride came along. Watch the animated Sally Ride episode: <a href="http://blankonblank.org/interviews/sally-ride-space-shuttle-first-woman-space-nasa/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">blankonblank.org/sally-ride</a> This episode marks the return of our special series, The Experimenters. We’re uncovering lost interviews with the icons of science, technology, and innovation – people who helped make the world we live in today. <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Sally Ride on Dumb Questions *

Garrison Keillor

“My family was shocked when I came home with a volume of Hemingway … There was a price to be paid for being interested in fiction.” – Garrison Keillor in 1994 In this new episode we have a conversation with a true storyteller, the humorist, Garrison Keillor. This interview was recorded in front a live audience back in November of 1994 at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. On stage that night was Keillor, the host of A Praire Home Companion, and George Plimpton, the famed editor of the Paris Review. The thread of their conversation that night was: the qualities of humor. What we loved about this conversation was something we hadn’t really thought about before: What is the obligation of humor? Enjoy. Watch the animated Nina Simone episode: blankonblank.org/garrison-keillor Blank on Blank

“My family was shocked when I came home with a volume of Hemingway … There was a price to be paid for being interested in fiction.” – Garrison Keillor in 1994 In this new episode we have a conversation with a true storyteller, the humorist, Garrison Keillor. This interview was recorded in front a live audience back in November of 1994 at the <a href="http://92ondemand.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">92nd Street Y</a> in New York City. On stage that night was Keillor, the host of A Praire Home Companion, and George Plimpton, the famed editor of the Paris Review. The thread of their conversation that night was: the qualities of humor. What we loved about this conversation was something we hadn’t really thought about before: What is the obligation of humor? Enjoy. Watch the animated Nina Simone episode: <a href="http://blankonblank.org/interviews/garrison-keillor-george-plimpton-humor-family-religion-writing-lake-wobegon/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">blankonblank.org/garrison-keillor</a> <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Garrison Keillor on Humor *

Nina Simone

“It’s a good time for black people to be alive. It’s a lot of hell. A lot of violence, but I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life. I have a chance to live, as I’ve dreamed.”  – Nina Simone in 1968, from a rare interview that’s never been heard before. Lilian Terry had a national radio show in Italy–everyone from Ray Charles to Duke Ellington appeared on her show–and there was one person she always wanted to interview: Nina Simone. But Lilian had heard Nina didn’t enjoy speaking with white people. Thankfully Lillian had a confidant in Max Roach who introduced Lilian to Nina at the Newport Festival in 1968. “Lilian Terry comes from Egypt, ” Roach said. With that simple introduction, Nina waved Lillian over. Soon they were talking about nefertitti and the pharoahs. Nina even told Lilian she thought she’d been in Egypt in a previous life. Watch the animated Nina Simone episode: blankonblank.org/nina-simone Blank on Blank

“It’s a good time for black people to be alive. It’s a lot of hell. A lot of violence, but I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life. I have a chance to live, as I’ve dreamed.”  – Nina Simone in 1968, from a rare interview that’s never been heard before. Lilian Terry had a national radio show in Italy–everyone from Ray Charles to Duke Ellington appeared on her show–and there was one person she always wanted to interview: Nina Simone. But Lilian had heard Nina didn’t enjoy speaking with white people. Thankfully Lillian had a confidant in Max Roach who introduced Lilian to Nina at the Newport Festival in 1968. “Lilian Terry comes from Egypt, ” Roach said. With that simple introduction, Nina waved Lillian over. Soon they were talking about nefertitti and the pharoahs. Nina even told Lilian she thought she’d been in Egypt in a previous life. Watch the animated Nina Simone episode: <a href="http://blankonblank.org/nina-simone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">blankonblank.org/nina-simone</a> <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Nina Simone on Shock *

Kurt Vonnegut

“Nothing means anything — except the artist makes his living by pretending, by putting it in a meaningful hole, though no such holes exist.” – Kurt Vonnegut in 1970 Kurt Vonnegut walked into a class room at NYU in November 1970. He was a guest speaker that day. He’d prepared some handwritten notes on what he wanted to say: there were his thoughts on the art of writing, his childhood, the death of his parents. He jumped from topic to topic as he shuffled through his papers. Sometimes his voice trailed off. He delivered punchlines with perfect timing. The class roared. Listening to this tape, we get to be flies on the wall that day.  So take a seat, but your book bag down and enjoy. Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: http://blankonblank.org/kurt-vonnegut Blank on Blank

“Nothing means anything — except the artist makes his living by pretending, by putting it in a meaningful hole, though no such holes exist.” – Kurt Vonnegut in 1970 Kurt Vonnegut walked into a class room at NYU in November 1970. He was a guest speaker that day. He’d prepared some handwritten notes on what he wanted to say: there were his thoughts on the art of writing, his childhood, the death of his parents. He jumped from topic to topic as he shuffled through his papers. Sometimes his voice trailed off. He delivered punchlines with perfect timing. The class roared. Listening to this tape, we get to be flies on the wall that day.  So take a seat, but your book bag down and enjoy. Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: <a href="http://blankonblank.org/interviews/kurt-vonnegut-man-eating-lampreys-indianapolis-parents-writing-big-space-fuck-space/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://blankonblank.org/kurt-vonnegut</a> <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Kurt Vonnegut on Man-Eating Lampreys *

A fantastic source of information.  A fantastic source of information.

Wonderful

Wonderful podcast, and may favorites are those who are being interviewed by Mike Wallace.

A look or listen to the past.

Blank on Blank

Richard Feynman

Interview by Charles WeinerRichard Feynman sat down for several hours of interviews in Altadena, California in June 1966. The conversations covered his life, thoughts on physics, and more. We uncovered this oral history at the American Institute of Physics. This interview used with permission of Melanie Jackson Agency, LLC.Read MoreThe Animated TranscriptCharles Weiner was a historian of science focusing on the political, social and ethical dimensions of contemporary science and the responses of scientists to public controversies arising from their work.My father, you see, interested me in patterns at the very beginning, and then later in things, like we would turn over stones and watch the ants carry the little white babies down deeper into the holes. We would look at worms. We’d go for walks and we’d look at things all the time: the stars, the way birds fly. He was always telling me interesting things.I mean this story’s a rumor, as far as I’m concerned, but the story is that before I was born he told my mother that “If it’s a boy, he’ll be a scientist.”My father used to sit me on his lap, and the one book we did use all the time was the Encyclopedia Britannica. He used to sit me on his lap when I was a kid and read out of the damned thing. There would be pictures of dinosaurs, and then he would read. You know the long words –- “the dinosaur” so and so “attains a length of so and so many feet.” He would always stop and he would say, “You know what that means? It means, if the dinosaur’s standing on our front yard, and your bedroom window, you know, is on the second floor, you’d see out the window his head standing looking at you. He would translate everything, and I learned to translate everything, so it’s the same disease. When I read something, I always translate it in the best I can into what does it really mean.See I  can remember my father talking, talking, and talking. When you go into the museum, for example, there are great rocks which have long cuts, grooves in them, from glacier. I remember, the first time going there, when he stopped there and explained to me about the ice moving and grinding. I can hear the voice, practically. Then he would tell me, “How do you think anybody knows that there were glaciers in the past?” He’d point out, “Look at that. These rocks are found in New York. And so there must have been ice in New York.” He understood.A thing that was very important about my father was not the facts but the process. How we find out. What is the consequence of finding such a rock. But that’s the kind of guy he was. I don’t think he ever successfully went to college. However, he did teach himself a great deal. He read a lot. He liked the rational mind, and liked those things which could be understood by thinking. So it’s not hard to understand I got interested in science.I got a laboratory in my room. We also played a trick on my mother there. We put sodium ferrocyanide in the towels, and another substance, an iron salt, probably alum, in the soap. When they come together, they make blue ink. So we were supposed to fool my mother, you see. She would wash her hands, and then when she dried them, the towels… her hands would turn blue. But we didn’t think the towel would turn blue.Anyway, she was horrified. The screams of “My good linen towels!” But she was always cooperative. She never was afraid of the experiments. The bridge partners, would tell her, “How can you let the child have a laboratory? And blow up the house!” — and all this kind of talk. She just said, “It’s worth it.” I mean, “ It’s worth the risk.” I took later solid geometry and trigonometry. In solid geometry was the first time I ever had any mathematical difficulties. It was my only experience with how it must feel to the ordinary human being. Then I discovered what was wrong. The diagrams that were being drawn on the blackboard were three-dimensional, and I was thinking of them as plane diagrams, and I couldn’t understand what the hell was going on. It was a mistake in the orientation.When he would draw pictures, and I would see a parallelogram, and he called it a square, because it was tilted out of the plane, you know. And I -– “Oh God, this thing doesn’t make any sense! What is he talking about?” It was a terrifying experience. Butterflies in my stomach kind of feeling. But it was just a dumb mistake. But I suspect that this kind of a dumb mistake is very common, to people learning mathematics. Part of the missing understanding is to mistake what it is you’re supposed to know.It isn’t the question of learning anything precisely, but of learning that there’s something exciting over there. I think that the same thing happened with my father. My father never really knew anything in detail, but would tell me what’s interesting about the world, and where, if you look, you’ll find still more interests, so that later I’d say, “Well, this is going to be good, I know — this has got something to do with this, which is hot stuff”. This kind of feeling of what was important and that is the key. The key was somehow to know what was important and what was not important, what was exciting, because I can’t learn everything.The thing that I loved was, everything that I read was serious — wasn’t written for a child. I didn’t like children’s things. Because, for one thing I was very very — and still am — sensitive and very worried about was that the thing to be dead honest; that it isn’t fixed up so it looks easy. Details purposely left out, or slightly erroneous explanations, in order to get away with it. This was intolerable.I kind of try to imagine what would have happened to me if I’d lived in today’s era. I’m rather horrified. I think there are too many books, that the mind gets boggled. If I got interested, I would have so many things to look at, I would go crazy. It’s too easy. The Bongo PlayerRichard Feynman slapping the bongos “One time I was in the recreation hall, late at night, when there weren’t many people, and I picked up a wastebasket and started to beat the back end of it. Some guy from way downstairs came running all the way up and said, “Hey! You play drums!” It turned out he really knew how to play drums, and he taught me how to play bongos.” – from Feynman’s book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Who Was Richard Feynman? Meet the mind in this great explainer video Richard Feynman USPS Stamps The Safe Cracker Of course Feynman was a master at cracking safes. Turns out when he needed a break from working on the atomic bomb during at Los Alamos during WWII, he taught himself how to pick combination locks on cabinets holding top secret nuclear secrets. Watch to find out how he cracked the codes.. The Artist Feynman began drawing in his 40s, shortly after developing the visual language for his famous Feynman diagrams, after a series of amicable arguments about art vs. science with his artist-friend Jirayr “Jerry” Zorthian. Brainpickings has more on the backstory. Feynman the artist went by the name “Ofey” Female Posing (1968)Credit: Brainpickings Jirayr Zorthian, date unknownCredit: Brainpickings The Mystery Machine That’s right: Feynman turned a Dodge Tradesman Mexivan into the ultimate psychics project on wheels by painting his famous Feynman diagrams on the sides of his 70s van.  Credits Executive Producer David Gerlach Animator Paul Ruttledge Series Producer Amy Drozdowska Music Chris Zabriskie “Air Hockey Saloon” “Out of the Skies, Under the Earth” “Is That You or Are You You”  Blank on Blank

<h4>Interview by Charles Weiner</h4>Richard Feynman sat down for several hours of interviews in Altadena, California in June 1966. The conversations covered his life, thoughts on physics, and more. We uncovered this oral history at the<a href="http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/5020_1.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> American Institute of Physics</a>. This interview used with permission of Melanie Jackson Agency, LLC.<a href="#read-more" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read More</a><h3>The Animated Transcript</h3>Charles Weiner was a historian of science focusing on the political, social and ethical dimensions of contemporary science and the responses of scientists to public controversies arising from their work.My father, you see, interested me in patterns at the very beginning, and then later in things, like we would turn over stones and watch the ants carry the little white babies down deeper into the holes. We would look at worms. We’d go for walks and we’d look at things all the time: the stars, the way birds fly. He was always telling me interesting things.I mean this story’s a rumor, as far as I’m concerned, but the story is that before I was born he told my mother that “If it’s a boy, he’ll be a scientist.”My father used to sit me on his lap, and the one book we did use all the time was the Encyclopedia Britannica. He used to sit me on his lap when I was a kid and read out of the damned thing. There would be pictures of dinosaurs, and then he would read. You know the long words –- “the dinosaur” so and so “attains a length of so and so many feet.” He would always stop and he would say, “You know what that means? It means, if the dinosaur’s standing on our front yard, and your bedroom window, you know, is on the second floor, you’d see out the window his head standing looking at you. He would translate everything, and I learned to translate everything, so it’s the same disease. When I read something, I always translate it in the best I can into what does it really mean.See I  can remember my father talking, talking, and talking. When you go into the museum, for example, there are great rocks which have long cuts, grooves in them, from glacier. I remember, the first time going there, when he stopped there and explained to me about the ice moving and grinding. I can hear the voice, practically. Then he would tell me, “How do you think anybody knows that there were glaciers in the past?” He’d point out, “Look at that. These rocks are found in New York. And so there must have been ice in New York.” He understood.A thing that was very important about my father was not the facts but the process. How we find out. What is the consequence of finding such a rock. But that’s the kind of guy he was. I don’t think he ever successfully went to college. However, he did teach himself a great deal. He read a lot. He liked the rational mind, and liked those things which could be understood by thinking. So it’s not hard to understand I got interested in science.I got a laboratory in my room. We also played a trick on my mother there. We put sodium ferrocyanide in the towels, and another substance, an iron salt, probably alum, in the soap. When they come together, they make blue ink. So we were supposed to fool my mother, you see. She would wash her hands, and then when she dried them, the towels… her hands would turn blue. But we didn’t think the towel would turn blue.Anyway, she was horrified. The screams of “My good linen towels!” But she was always cooperative. She never was afraid of the experiments. The bridge partners, would tell her, “How can you let the child have a laboratory? And blow up the house!” — and all this kind of talk. She just said, “It’s worth it.” I mean, “ It’s worth the risk.” I took later solid geometry and trigonometry. In solid geometry was the first time I ever had any mathematical difficulties. It was my only experience with how it must feel to the ordinary human being. Then I discovered what was wrong. The diagrams that were being drawn on the blackboard were three-dimensional, and I was thinking of them as plane diagrams, and I couldn’t understand what the hell was going on. It was a mistake in the orientation.When he would draw pictures, and I would see a parallelogram, and he called it a square, because it was tilted out of the plane, you know. And I -– “Oh God, this thing doesn’t make any sense! What is he talking about?” It was a terrifying experience. Butterflies in my stomach kind of feeling. But it was just a dumb mistake. But I suspect that this kind of a dumb mistake is very common, to people learning mathematics. Part of the missing understanding is to mistake what it is you’re supposed to know.It isn’t the question of learning anything precisely, but of learning that there’s something exciting over there. I think that the same thing happened with my father. My father never really knew anything in detail, but would tell me what’s interesting about the world, and where, if you look, you’ll find still more interests, so that later I’d say, “Well, this is going to be good, I know — this has got something to do with this, which is hot stuff”. This kind of feeling of what was important and that is the key. The key was somehow to know what was important and what was not important, what was exciting, because I can’t learn everything.The thing that I loved was, everything that I read was serious — wasn’t written for a child. I didn’t like children’s things. Because, for one thing I was very very — and still am — sensitive and very worried about was that the thing to be dead honest; that it isn’t fixed up so it looks easy. Details purposely left out, or slightly erroneous explanations, in order to get away with it. This was intolerable.I kind of try to imagine what would have happened to me if I’d lived in today’s era. I’m rather horrified. I think there are too many books, that the mind gets boggled. If I got interested, I would have so many things to look at, I would go crazy. It’s too easy. <h4>The Bongo Player</h4><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKTSaezB4p8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a>Richard Feynman slapping the bongos <blockquote>“One time I was in the recreation hall, late at night, when there weren’t many people, and I picked up a wastebasket and started to beat the back end of it. Some guy from way downstairs came running all the way up and said, “Hey! You play drums!” It turned out he really knew how to play drums, and he taught me how to play bongos.” – from Feynman’s book, <a href="http://io9.gizmodo.com/5909408/and-now-richard-feynman-playing-the-bongos" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!</a></blockquote> <h4>Who Was Richard Feynman?</h4> Meet the mind in this great explainer video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIJw3OLB9sI" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a>Richard Feynman USPS Stamps <h4>The Safe Cracker</h4> Of course Feynman was a master at cracking safes. Turns out when he needed a break from working on the atomic bomb during at Los Alamos during WWII, he taught himself how to pick combination locks on cabinets holding top secret nuclear secrets. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waw11zhaKSk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Watch to find out how he cracked the codes.</a>. <h4>The Artist</h4> Feynman began drawing in his 40s, shortly after developing the visual language for his famous Feynman diagrams, after a series of amicable arguments about art vs. science with his artist-friend Jirayr “Jerry” Zorthian. <a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/01/17/richard-feynman-ofey-sketches-drawings/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Brainpickings has more on the backstory</a>. Feynman the artist went by the name “Ofey” Female Posing (1968) Credit: Brainpickings Jirayr Zorthian, date unknown Credit: Brainpickings <h4>The Mystery Machine</h4> That’s right: Feynman turned a Dodge Tradesman Mexivan into the ultimate psychics project on wheels by painting his famous Feynman diagrams on the sides of his 70s van. <h3>Credits</h3> <h4>Executive Producer</h4> David Gerlach <h4>Animator</h4> Paul Ruttledge <h4>Series Producer</h4> Amy Drozdowska <h4>Music</h4> Chris Zabriskie “Air Hockey Saloon” “Out of the Skies, Under the Earth” “Is That You or Are You You” <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Richard Feynman on What It Means

“I‘m just an obnoxious guy who can make it appear charming, that’s what they pay me to do.” – Bill Murray in 1988 as told to T.J. English This previously unheard interview was recorded at Bill Murray’s house in New Jersey. T.J. was writing a profile for Irish America magazine. Bill’s dog was there and had an interest in his pants. Vintage Bill Murray on fame, Cadillacs, taking care of his mom and talking to women while famous. Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: http://blankonblank.org/bill-murray   Blank on Blank

“I‘m just an obnoxious guy who can make it appear charming, that’s what they pay me to do.” – Bill Murray in 1988 as told to T.J. English This previously unheard interview was recorded at Bill Murray’s house in New Jersey. T.J. was writing a profile for Irish America magazine. Bill’s dog was there and had an interest in his pants. Vintage Bill Murray on fame, Cadillacs, taking care of his mom and talking to women while famous. Watch the animated version of this episode from our series with PBS Digital Studios: <a href="http://blankonblank.org/interviews/bill-murray-obnoxious-ghostbusters-second-city-family-fame-hijinks/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://blankonblank.org/bill-murray</a> <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Bill Murray on Being Obnoxious *

Interview by Lawrence Grobel We put together this Blank on Blank using excerpts from two interviews Larry recorded on microcassette with Robin Williams in 1992. Read his related story that ran in Playboy.Larry has a great collection of 50 celebrity profiles called Signing In available on Amazon.Read MoreThe Animated TranscriptLawrence Grobel is a freelance writer who has written 22 books and for numerous national magazines and newspapers.In the year 2020, you’ll be seventy years old.Oh, my god.Now what will the world be like, then?It’ll be one giant film corporation. There’ll be no longer any government. It will be one nation, under God, indivisible, with circuits and VCRs for everyone. I don’t know. 2020. There’ll be cold fusion. We’ll actually be able to power our cars with our own feces. That’s right. The emissions problem will be a little intense, but just light a match.Things that I see in the future. I see… it could be quite incredible if we can master a few problems, like the air and the water thing might be nice. I see governments dissolving these barriers are all falling down for economic reasons. They’re all so interbound. That’s why when one market crashes it’s almost like a world stock market. And this a very long economic explanation… something I haven’t got a fucking clue about.Do you think that there’s a role of the artist in society?Yeah. For a comic especially, to constantly never let it take itself seriously, to play with, to fuck with the parameters. The premise that comedy is there to basically show us we fart, we laugh. to make us realize we still are part animal. As intellectual as we think we are, you still trip, we still have human foibles, sexuality, all the different things to still make you aware of your humanity. That’s what we’re supposed to do. It’s just to keep us awake, cut through the shit, peel off the mask and go, “Oh, you got a big nose.” Or put on the big nose and make you realize, “Wait a minute, I don’t have a big nose.”  All that stuff. So you don’t take yourself seriously and destroy the species. Do you ever worry about running out of material or ideas?No, there’s a world out there. Open a window, and it’s there.Sex…  if you view sex and just go, “you look pretty ridiculous.” Even the face. The face you make when you have an orgasm, is pretty much. No one looks… Probably even Warren Beatty, gets that kind of [shouts]. Everyone looks pretty fucking stupid, at the moment they fire the spoo. You get like the wind tunnel face. Baby, baby, baby, baby. Oh, baby, baby, baby, baby. Baby, baby, baby. Everything kind of goes [noise].It’s nature going, “You look like an animal.” It’s that one thing you got to know. You look a little silly. I don’t care what type of lighting you use, whatever strap on attachments, you still, sometimes look like a poodle and someone’s going to get a fire hose. These are the things you wonder. Let me ask you about birth as a topic. But you did do the birth of all 3 of your children?I just remember it was like a magic act. All of a sudden they put this little tent and next thing I heard this [sound] and then … They don’t scream the first few seconds, they just kind of go, “Eh! Wait! It’s cold! It’s very cold!” Then they wash them off and they suture them and they put those little yarmulke on. The little teamster cap. The little longshoreman cap. “Yo, Dad! Yo! Excuse me! You want me to unload this ship?” Then they handed her to me.I don’t think I asked you any about your faults, if you have any and what they are.In comedy, not pursuing things, committing to an idea and taking it to its fullest extent because it started when I first started performing, it was all jumping around. Explore an idea until you’ve exhausted it, really go to all the different parameters of it. I think another one is not working so much. This is very interesting, “Look at what’s bad about you.”What’s bad, yeah.Look in the mirror, and go, “Nostril hair. The fact that I braid them.”  Sometimes, keeping track of people. It’s always a weird combination of worrying so much about the outside world, and not… you have to be more aware of the inner circle, the folks that matter. Because it comes from performing, you always want to make sure that everyone in the audience is all taken care of. That constant desire to please all the time. That can get you in some shit.Do you have or ever make any New Year’s resolutions?I haven’t in a while, I haven’t made any in, I think, since I was about a kid. I used to give up a lot of things for Lent, too, and then I still got hairy.Here’s the best birth control in the whole world, if you really, if you have no pills, if you have no diaphragm, if you have no other form of contraception. Use it for ladies, if he comes at you with that little thing in his hand, just go [laughs]. Just laugh at it. They can’t deal with it, OK, it’ll be gone. The little thing will be out of there. Then it’s assault with the macaroni. Put it away.Interviewing Robin WilliamsIn the wake of the death of Robin Williams on August 11, 2014, here’s what Lawrence Grobel remembered about interviewing the comedy legend:Robin Williams made me laugh. He had a quick mind. Unlike most comedians I have interviewed, Williams was “on” more often than he was “off.”  Most comedians suffer from depression. I don’t exactly know why.  Rodney Dangerfield suffered from it until he turned 75 and found the right antidepressant that lessened his pain. You would never mistake Steve Martin for that “wild and crazy guy” he created; hanging with Steve can be like reading a book alone. Jim Carrey was pretty serious when we talked. Ray Romano even more so. Lucille Ball never cracked a smile. Bette Midler, too. Lily Tomlin took what she had to say very seriously. But Robin Williams?  He could twist serious into funny in an instant. He could make you laugh at the most offbeat things. The brains he would have liked to pick were Einstein’s and Stephen Hawking’s. If he could have chosen another profession, it would have been “quantum mechanics.”  His favorite movie was Dr. Strangelove, though the film he watched over and over again was Les Enfants de Paradise.  If he could commit one crime without being caught, it would have been “The destruction of all the nuclear secrets.”When I asked him what made him cry?  He said, “Just the insane violence all over the world, that makes me cry. And it’s unrelenting. I was performing in a club in New York and afterwards there was a guy sitting down with an Iranian, a Palestinian and an Israeli, and they all acknowledged that they want peace but they don’t know how to get to it. How do you create a Palestinian homeland when there’s a large amount of Palestinians who want to obliterate Israel? How do you stop this insane cycle that just keeps going on and on?”  When I asked him how he dealt with such matters as a comedian, he said, “You try and find a way to address it. Some people are better at it than I am. I haven’t hit that one yet. I’m trying to find interesting things to talk about with it.”When I asked him what he would like to invent, he came up with, “Cold fusion. That would be the big one.”  This was the same guy who danced around the stage doing an entire hilarious routine with a silk scarf; who brought one to tears with his sidesplitting take on the history of golf.   “Most animals have a defense mechanism,” he said to me. Making people laugh is mine. That’s my offense and defense.”I interviewed Robin Williams forPlayboy in 1992, for Rolling Stone in 2002, and for Autograph in 2009. The last time we spoke, I asked him what he would like to be known for?  He answered, “The benevolent fool.”And when I asked him his worst fear, he answered, “Losing your mind, your memory, your ability to think.”I don’t know if Robin committed suicide or not, I only know that he was found dead early Monday morning, August 11, and that he had been depressed.  Of all the people I’ve interviewed or spent time with, I can’t think of anyone less likely to take his own life than Robin Williams. He had the fastest mind, the most spontaneous way of thinking, and he was a genuinely nice guy. Perhaps, like Hemingway, he was losing his ability to think.  That would surely have led to depression. But it’s just so hard to imagine he’s gone. He was such a bright light in such a darkening world.Had he been a circus performer, he said he’d be “the last clown out of that little car.”That’s how I see him right now, the news of his death still so raw.  As the last clown following a long line of comedians squeezing out of a very small car.CreditsExecutive ProducerDavid GerlachAnimatorPatrick SmithAudio ProducerAmy DrozdowskaMusicJosh Woodward“The Bottom – Instrumental”PhotosParamount Televison/ABCTwentieth Century FoxMiramax PicturesSesame StreetU.S. NavyBlank on Blank

<h4>Interview by Lawrence Grobel </h4>We put together this Blank on Blank using excerpts from two interviews Larry recorded on microcassette with Robin Williams in 1992. Read his related <a href="http://iplayboy.com/interview/robin-williams" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">story that ran in Playboy</a>.Larry has a great collection of 50 celebrity profiles called Signing In available on<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Signing-Celebrity-Profiles-Lawrence-Grobel-ebook/dp/B00HFHLDXO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1417549104&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=lawrence+grobel+signing+in" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Amazon</a>.<a href="#read-more" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read More</a><h3>The Animated Transcript</h3>Lawrence Grobel is a freelance writer who has written 22 books and for numerous national magazines and newspapers.In the year 2020, you’ll be seventy years old.Oh, my god.Now what will the world be like, then?It’ll be one giant film corporation. There’ll be no longer any government. It will be one nation, under God, indivisible, with circuits and VCRs for everyone. I don’t know. 2020. There’ll be cold fusion. We’ll actually be able to power our cars with our own feces. That’s right. The emissions problem will be a little intense, but just light a match.Things that I see in the future. I see… it could be quite incredible if we can master a few problems, like the air and the water thing might be nice. I see governments dissolving these barriers are all falling down for economic reasons. They’re all so interbound. That’s why when one market crashes it’s almost like a world stock market. And this a very long economic explanation… something I haven’t got a fucking clue about.Do you think that there’s a role of the artist in society?Yeah. For a comic especially, to constantly never let it take itself seriously, to play with, to fuck with the parameters. The premise that comedy is there to basically show us we fart, we laugh. to make us realize we still are part animal. As intellectual as we think we are, you still trip, we still have human foibles, sexuality, all the different things to still make you aware of your humanity. That’s what we’re supposed to do. It’s just to keep us awake, cut through the shit, peel off the mask and go, “Oh, you got a big nose.” Or put on the big nose and make you realize, “Wait a minute, I don’t have a big nose.”  All that stuff. So you don’t take yourself seriously and destroy the species. Do you ever worry about running out of material or ideas?No, there’s a world out there. Open a window, and it’s there.Sex…  if you view sex and just go, “you look pretty ridiculous.” Even the face. The face you make when you have an orgasm, is pretty much. No one looks… Probably even Warren Beatty, gets that kind of [shouts]. Everyone looks pretty fucking stupid, at the moment they fire the spoo. You get like the wind tunnel face. Baby, baby, baby, baby. Oh, baby, baby, baby, baby. Baby, baby, baby. Everything kind of goes [noise].It’s nature going, “You look like an animal.” It’s that one thing you got to know. You look a little silly. I don’t care what type of lighting you use, whatever strap on attachments, you still, sometimes look like a poodle and someone’s going to get a fire hose. These are the things you wonder. Let me ask you about birth as a topic. But you did do the birth of all 3 of your children?I just remember it was like a magic act. All of a sudden they put this little tent and next thing I heard this [sound] and then … They don’t scream the first few seconds, they just kind of go, “Eh! Wait! It’s cold! It’s very cold!” Then they wash them off and they suture them and they put those little yarmulke on. The little teamster cap. The little longshoreman cap. “Yo, Dad! Yo! Excuse me! You want me to unload this ship?” Then they handed her to me.I don’t think I asked you any about your faults, if you have any and what they are.In comedy, not pursuing things, committing to an idea and taking it to its fullest extent because it started when I first started performing, it was all jumping around. Explore an idea until you’ve exhausted it, really go to all the different parameters of it. I think another one is not working so much. This is very interesting, “Look at what’s bad about you.”What’s bad, yeah.Look in the mirror, and go, “Nostril hair. The fact that I braid them.”  Sometimes, keeping track of people. It’s always a weird combination of worrying so much about the outside world, and not… you have to be more aware of the inner circle, the folks that matter. Because it comes from performing, you always want to make sure that everyone in the audience is all taken care of. That constant desire to please all the time. That can get you in some shit.Do you have or ever make any New Year’s resolutions?I haven’t in a while, I haven’t made any in, I think, since I was about a kid. I used to give up a lot of things for Lent, too, and then I still got hairy.Here’s the best birth control in the whole world, if you really, if you have no pills, if you have no diaphragm, if you have no other form of contraception. Use it for ladies, if he comes at you with that little thing in his hand, just go [laughs]. Just laugh at it. They can’t deal with it, OK, it’ll be gone. The little thing will be out of there. Then it’s assault with the macaroni. Put it away. <h4>Interviewing Robin Williams</h4><h4></h4>In the wake of the death of Robin Williams on August 11, 2014, here’s what Lawrence Grobel remembered about interviewing the comedy legend:Robin Williams made me laugh. He had a quick mind. Unlike most comedians I have interviewed, Williams was “on” more often than he was “off.”  Most comedians suffer from depression. I don’t exactly know why.  Rodney Dangerfield suffered from it until he turned 75 and found the right antidepressant that lessened his pain. You would never mistake Steve Martin for that “wild and crazy guy” he created; hanging with Steve can be like reading a book alone. Jim Carrey was pretty serious when we talked. Ray Romano even more so. Lucille Ball never cracked a smile. Bette Midler, too. Lily Tomlin took what she had to say very seriously. But Robin Williams?  He could twist serious into funny in an instant. He could make you laugh at the most offbeat things. The brains he would have liked to pick were Einstein’s and Stephen Hawking’s. If he could have chosen another profession, it would have been “quantum mechanics.”  His favorite movie was Dr. Strangelove, though the film he watched over and over again was Les Enfants de Paradise.  If he could commit one crime without being caught, it would have been “The destruction of all the nuclear secrets.”When I asked him what made him cry?  He said, “Just the insane violence all over the world, that makes me cry. And it’s unrelenting. I was performing in a club in New York and afterwards there was a guy sitting down with an Iranian, a Palestinian and an Israeli, and they all acknowledged that they want peace but they don’t know how to get to it. How do you create a Palestinian homeland when there’s a large amount of Palestinians who want to obliterate Israel? How do you stop this insane cycle that just keeps going on and on?”  When I asked him how he dealt with such matters as a comedian, he said, “You try and find a way to address it. Some people are better at it than I am. I haven’t hit that one yet. I’m trying to find interesting things to talk about with it.”When I asked him what he would like to invent, he came up with, “Cold fusion. That would be the big one.”  This was the same guy who danced around the stage doing an entire hilarious routine with a silk scarf; who brought one to tears with his sidesplitting take on the history of golf.   “Most animals have a defense mechanism,” he said to me. Making people laugh is mine. That’s my offense and defense.”I interviewed Robin Williams forPlayboy in 1992, for Rolling Stone in 2002, and for Autograph in 2009. The last time we spoke, I asked him what he would like to be known for?  He answered, “The benevolent fool.”And when I asked him his worst fear, he answered, “Losing your mind, your memory, your ability to think.”I don’t know if Robin committed suicide or not, I only know that he was found dead early Monday morning, August 11, and that he had been depressed.  Of all the people I’ve interviewed or spent time with, I can’t think of anyone less likely to take his own life than Robin Williams. He had the fastest mind, the most spontaneous way of thinking, and he was a genuinely nice guy. Perhaps, like Hemingway, he was losing his ability to think.  That would surely have led to depression. But it’s just so hard to imagine he’s gone. He was such a bright light in such a darkening world.Had he been a circus performer, he said he’d be “the last clown out of that little car.”That’s how I see him right now, the news of his death still so raw.  As the last clown following a long line of comedians squeezing out of a very small car.<h3>Credits</h3><h4>Executive Producer</h4>David Gerlach<h4>Animator</h4>Patrick Smith<h4>Audio Producer</h4>Amy Drozdowska<h4>Music</h4>Josh Woodward“The Bottom – Instrumental”<h4>Photos</h4>Paramount Televison/ABCTwentieth Century FoxMiramax PicturesSesame StreetU.S. Navy<a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Robin Williams on Masks

Interview by Jon SavageJon interviewed Kurt Cobain in a hotel room in New York City on July 22, 1993. He recorded the interview on cassette tape. We uncovered this interview RocksBackPages.com.Read MoreThe Animated TranscriptJon Savage is a writer, broadcaster, and music journalist.Did you have problems in high school?Yeah. You know I felt so different and so crazy that people just left me alone. I always felt that they would vote me “Most likely to kill everyone at a high school dance.” You know?My mother has always tried to keep a little bit of English culture in our family. Like we’d drink tea all the time. You know? Although I’ve never really known my ancestry. I didn’t even know until this year that the name Cobain was Irish. I found out through different phone books throughout America, I couldn’t find any Cobains at all. So I started calling Coburns and I found this one lady in San Francisco and she had been researching our family history. And it came from County Cork, which is a weird coincidence, because when we toured we played in Cork and the entire day I walked around in a daze. I’d never felt more spiritual in my life. I was almost in tears the whole day. It was the weirdest thing.I had a really good childhood until the divorce. Then all of a sudden my whole world changed. I couldn’t face some of my friends at school.I desperately wanted to have the classic, typical family. Mother, father.Because I couldn’t find any friends, male friends that I felt compatible with, I ended up hanging out with the girls a lot. And I just always felt that they weren’t treated with respect. Especially because women are just totally oppressed. I mean the words bitch and cunt were totally common. Although I listened to Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, and I really did enjoy some of the melodies they’d written, it took me so many years to realize that a lot of it had to do with sexism.The way that they just wrote about their dicks and having sex. I was just starting to understand what really was pissing me off so much, those last couple of years of high school. And then punk rock was exposed and then it all came together. It just fit together like a puzzle. It expressed the way I felt socially and politically. Just everything. You know. It was the anger that I felt. The alienation.Did you have problems with people thinking that you were gay?Yeah. I even thought that I was gay. I thought that might be the solution to my problem. Although I never experimented with it, I had a gay friend and then my mother wouldn’t allow me to be friends with him anymore because, well, she’s homophobic. It was real devastating because finally I’d found a male friend who I actually hugged and was affectionate to and we talked about a lot of things.So did you stop?Yeah, I couldn’t hang out with him anymore.Tell me how do you sing?Most of the time I sing right from my stomach. Right from where my stomach pain is. Every time I’ve had an endoscope, they find a red irritation in my stomach. But it’s all from anger. And screaming. I mean not only is my stomach has inflamed irritation, but I have scoliosis. And the weight of the guitar has made my back grow in this curvature. So it gives me a back pain all the time. You know? I’m always in pain, too, and that really adds to the anger in our music. It really does. I’m kind of grateful for it in a way.Maybe you’re feeling a bit better now…Yeah. Especially since I’ve been married and I’ve had a child. You know within the last year, my whole mental state and my physical state has almost improved one hundred percent. I haven’t felt this optimistic since right before the divorce. You know? [laughs]  Kurt Cobain’s DeathUpon hearing of Cobain’s death, his mother, Wendy O’Connor, said, “Now he’s gone and joined that stupid club.”She was referring to joining rock stars like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison who died at an early age.“Mad? Ya think?! If he came back right now I’d have to kill him, for what he did to us. I’d fucking kill him. I’d fuck him, and then I’d kill him.” – Courtney Love when asked if she was angry with Cobain for killing himselfPolice Crime Scene PhotosNearly two decades after Kurt Cobain’s death, the Seattle Police Department released 35 never-before-seen pictures from their investigation when Cobain was found dead in his Seattle-area home in April 1994.Credit: Seattle Police Department Credit: Seattle Police DepartmentCredit: Seattle Police DepartmentCredit: Seattle Police DepartmentCredit: Seattle Police DepartmentFrances Bean Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love’s daughter, Frances Bean, was just 20 months old when her dad died. Now she’s the executive producer behind the new documentary, Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck. Watch the trailer  Kurt’s Journals Cobain kept journals throughout his life – here are a few from the archives, courtesy of Brainpickings        Nirvana and The Power of Leadbelly How many people were introduced to legendary bluesman Leadbelly through Nirvana’s unplugged performance of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night“?  Credits Executive Producer David Gerlach Animator Patrick Smith Audio Producer Jane Marie Music Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit” “Pennyroyal Tea” “Love Buzz” “Lithium (Acoustic)” Crass “Bata Motel” Photos AP  Blank on Blank

<h4>Interview by Jon Savage</h4>Jon interviewed Kurt Cobain in a hotel room in New York City on July 22, 1993. He recorded the interview on cassette tape. We uncovered this interview <a href="http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/kurt-cobain-the-lost-interview" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">RocksBackPages.com</a>.<a href="#read-more" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read More</a><h3>The Animated Transcript</h3><a href="https://twitter.com/jonsavage1966" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jon Savage</a> is a writer, broadcaster, and music journalist.Did you have problems in high school?Yeah. You know I felt so different and so crazy that people just left me alone. I always felt that they would vote me “Most likely to kill everyone at a high school dance.” You know?My mother has always tried to keep a little bit of English culture in our family. Like we’d drink tea all the time. You know? Although I’ve never really known my ancestry. I didn’t even know until this year that the name Cobain was Irish. I found out through different phone books throughout America, I couldn’t find any Cobains at all. So I started calling Coburns and I found this one lady in San Francisco and she had been researching our family history. And it came from County Cork, which is a weird coincidence, because when we toured we played in Cork and the entire day I walked around in a daze. I’d never felt more spiritual in my life. I was almost in tears the whole day. It was the weirdest thing.I had a really good childhood until the divorce. Then all of a sudden my whole world changed. I couldn’t face some of my friends at school.I desperately wanted to have the classic, typical family. Mother, father.Because I couldn’t find any friends, male friends that I felt compatible with, I ended up hanging out with the girls a lot. And I just always felt that they weren’t treated with respect. Especially because women are just totally oppressed. I mean the words bitch and cunt were totally common. Although I listened to Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, and I really did enjoy some of the melodies they’d written, it took me so many years to realize that a lot of it had to do with sexism.The way that they just wrote about their dicks and having sex. I was just starting to understand what really was pissing me off so much, those last couple of years of high school. And then punk rock was exposed and then it all came together. It just fit together like a puzzle. It expressed the way I felt socially and politically. Just everything. You know. It was the anger that I felt. The alienation.Did you have problems with people thinking that you were gay?Yeah. I even thought that I was gay. I thought that might be the solution to my problem. Although I never experimented with it, I had a gay friend and then my mother wouldn’t allow me to be friends with him anymore because, well, she’s homophobic. It was real devastating because finally I’d found a male friend who I actually hugged and was affectionate to and we talked about a lot of things.So did you stop?Yeah, I couldn’t hang out with him anymore.Tell me how do you sing?Most of the time I sing right from my stomach. Right from where my stomach pain is. Every time I’ve had an endoscope, they find a red irritation in my stomach. But it’s all from anger. And screaming. I mean not only is my stomach has inflamed irritation, but I have scoliosis. And the weight of the guitar has made my back grow in this curvature. So it gives me a back pain all the time. You know? I’m always in pain, too, and that really adds to the anger in our music. It really does. I’m kind of grateful for it in a way.Maybe you’re feeling a bit better now…Yeah. Especially since I’ve been married and I’ve had a child. You know within the last year, my whole mental state and my physical state has almost improved one hundred percent. I haven’t felt this optimistic since right before the divorce. You know? [laughs] <h4>Kurt Cobain’s Death</h4>Upon hearing of Cobain’s death, his mother, Wendy O’Connor, said, “Now he’s gone and joined that stupid club.”She was referring to joining rock stars like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison who died at an early age.<blockquote>“Mad? Ya think?! If he came back right now I’d have to kill him, for what he did to us. I’d fucking kill him. I’d fuck him, and then I’d kill him.” – <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/10/courtney-love-on-kurt-cobain---for-what-he-did-to-us--i-d-fuckin" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Courtney Love</a> when asked if she was angry with Cobain for killing himself</blockquote><h4>Police Crime Scene Photos</h4>Nearly two decades after Kurt Cobain’s death, the Seattle Police Department released 35 never-before-seen pictures from their investigation when Cobain was found dead in his Seattle-area home in April 1994.Credit: Seattle Police Department  Credit: Seattle Police Department Credit: Seattle Police Department Credit: Seattle Police Department Credit: Seattle Police Department <h4>Frances Bean</h4> Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love’s daughter, Frances Bean, was just 20 months old when her dad died. Now she’s the executive producer behind the new documentary, Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4edUcI7TT0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Watch the trailer</a> <h4>Kurt’s Journals</h4> Cobain kept journals throughout his life – here are a few from the archives, courtesy of <a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/02/20/kurt-cobain-journals/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Brainpickings</a> <h4>Nirvana and The Power of Leadbelly</h4> How many people were introduced to legendary bluesman Leadbelly through Nirvana’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcXYz0gtJeM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">unplugged performance of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night</a>“? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcXYz0gtJeM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3>Credits</h3> <h4>Executive Producer</h4> David Gerlach <h4>Animator</h4> Patrick Smith <h4>Audio Producer</h4> Jane Marie <h4>Music</h4> Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit” “Pennyroyal Tea” “Love Buzz” “Lithium (Acoustic)” Crass “Bata Motel” <h4>Photos</h4> AP <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Kurt Cobain on Identity

John Coltrane

Interview by Frank KofskyOne afternoon in November 1966, Frank Kofsky took the train out to Long Island. He was about to spend a day with John Coltrane. This interview comes from the Pacifica Radio Archives.Read MoreThe Animated TranscriptFrank Kofsky was an author, scholar, jazz critic, and professor of history at California State University at Sacramento.Do you live far outside of…  wherever we are now?Well I guess I’m about four or five miles down the road (laughs).You really sound like Farmer John (laughs).Yeah man, when I come up here, I have to do all… to get everything I want to get—You know, I got to the store and do all that because I don’t want to come back up here.Where do you play at home?Anywhere. There’s a room over the garage out there that I’m getting fixed now to… I think it’s going to be my practice room. You know sometimes you build a room and it ends up you can still go in the toilet, so I don’t know, I hope I like it but… I keep a horn on the piano and I have a horn in my bedroom. The flute’s usually back there because when I go down tired, I lay down and practice and…About how many hours a day do you play, would you say?Not too much at this time. I find that it’s only when something is trying to come through you know that I really practice and then it’s just, I don’t know how many hours, it’s just all day. I did a foolish thing, I got dissatisfied with my mouth piece (laughs). I had some work done on this thing and instead of making it better, it ruined it. It really discouraged me, you know, a little bit because they were certain aspects of that playing that certain fast thing that I was reaching for that I couldn’t push because I had damaged this thing… so I just had to curtail it (laughs). But at that moment, it was so vivid in my mind, the difference in what I was getting on the horn, as soon as I put that horn in my mouth, I could hear it. I could feel it and I just stopped, I just went into other things. In fact, soprano’s one of the reasons I started (laughs) getting dissatisfied with that tenor mouthpiece, see? Because the sound of that soprano was actually so much closer to me in my ear.I didn’t want admit this damn thing because I said well the tenor’s my horn, this is my baby but the soprano, there’s still something there, just the voice of it that I can’t… It’s just really beautiful. I really like it.The people I was staying with have a friend, a young lady and she was downtown at one Malcolm X’s speeches and, lo and behold, who should plop down in the seat next to her but John Coltrane (laughs).(laughs) Yeah Were you impressed with him?Definitely, definitely. I felt I had to see the man. I was quite impressed.Some musicians have said there’s a relationship between some of Malcolm’s ideas and the music.Well, I think that music, being expression of the human heart or the human being itself, does express just what is happening. The whole of human experience at that particular time is being expressed. In any situation that we find in our lives, when there’s something we feel should be better, we must exert effort to try and make it better.So it’s the same socially, musically, politically, in any department of your life. I think music is an instrument. It can create the initial thought pattern that can create a change, you see, in the thinking of the people.I mean I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know that there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good.What were you looking for John, do you want some cigarettes or…?No, I’m just sitting up because my back is wet and I just need to get off the chair.I don’t have any more of my prepared questions to ask you, or my improvised questions (laughs) to ask you. I don’t know when I’ll ever get the chance to sit you down with a tape recorder again (laughs). Do you have anything else to get on here?I think you man, well you just about covered it, I believe…just about covered it. Interview BackstoryKofsky turned on his tape recorder when he got into Coltrane’s car. The two men drove through town and made a few stops along the way. Coltrane had moved to Huntington, New York with his wife Alice and their children in 1964. They lived in a modest house on a quiet, tree-lined street. It was a home to raise a family. Coltrane had just turned 40. He would die from liver cancer less than a year later.Hear the full conversationColtrane on Malcolm X“I was living downtown, I was in the hotel and I saw the posters and realized he was going to be over there. So I just said, ‘well I’m going over there and see this cat because I’d never seen him.’ I was quite impressed.Brotherhood“I believe with brotherhood there would be no poverty, and also with brotherhood there would be no war.”Performing“I only hope whoever’s out there listening, I hope they enjoying it. If they’re not enjoying it, then I’d rather not be there. I like an audience that does show what they feel and responds.”Adding A Sax Player“It helps me stay alive sometimes because I find that physically, man, the pace I’ve been leading, it’s so hard. I’ve gained so much weight. It’s just been a little hard physically, and I feel that I like to have somebody there in case I just can’t get that strength”Spirituality“I’ve got to grow through certain phases of this to other understandings and more consciousness and awareness of just what it is that I’m supposed to understand about it, and I’m sure all this will be part of the music”Learning“If there’s something you don’t understand, you have to go humbly to it. You don’t go to school and sit down and say I know what you’re getting ready to teach me, you know? You sit there and you learn. You open your mind. you absorb. You’ve got to be quiet, you’ve got to be still to do this.”The Coltrane Museum? Click to learn about the campaign to preserve his Long Island home The Church of Coltrane Coltrane is a recognized saint in the African Orthodox Church. The St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church, incorporates Coltrane’s music and his lyrics into their services. The Church founders were inspired after they saw Coltrane perform live in San Francisco in 1965. Trane and Miles Davis John Coltrane and Miles Davis perform during Coltrane’s final tour with the Miles Davis Quintet. Click the image to listen to “So What.” Credit: Trapeze Music &amp; Entertainment Limited Miles Davis and John Coltrane had a complicated relationship. Coltrane got his start as part of Davis’ band but by the end of the 1950’s he was well on his way to making a name for himself and split to go his own way. Both possessed of large personalities, they respected each others’ musicianship but were also highly competitive – a dynamic that probably pushed both towards the groundbreaking work each would produce in the years following. I was going with a girl who was an antique dealer in France. She gave this soprano sax to me and I gave it to Coltrane. I gave that thing to Trane, man, and it’s probably still in his hand. He probably died with it in his mouth! – Miles Davis The Quartet  Some of Coltrane’s most influential recording were made while he was signed to Impulse! Records, from 1961 – 1965. For these albums, the world got to hear a magical quartet: Coltrane on saxophone, McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. The group recorded the legendary A Love Supreme at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey in December 1964. John Coltrane’s manuscript for “A Love Supreme”Credit: National Museum of American History Amazingly, the group only played A Love Supreme live once, during a performance in France in 1965. Watch it here. By that same year, the quartet was starting to break up and Coltrane was moving towards a more abstract style. Coltrane’s Saxophones Credit: National Museum of American History  Coltrane had three saxophones: an alto, a tenor, and a soprano. The tenor pictured above was donated to the National Museum of American History by Coltrane’s son, Ravi. It’s a Mark VI tenor made in 1965 – the same year A Love Supreme was released –  by Henry Selmer Paris, a manufacturer of high-end instruments. More on Coltrane at the Smithsonian.    Credits Executive Producer David Gerlach Animator Patrick Smith Audio Producer Amy Drozdowska Colorist Diana Tantillo Music John Coltrane “In a Sentimental Mood” “My Favorite Things” APM Music Simon Thorpe (PRS), John Donaldson (BMI) “Break Out” Jean Gobinet (SACEM) “I Was Born Here” Colin Towns (PRS) “Downcast” Michele Generale (SIAE), Femi Olasehinde (PRS), Paolo Porta (SIAE) “Run Time” Photo Dutch National Archives Impulse Records / Charles Stewart  Blank on Blank

<h4>Interview by Frank Kofsky</h4>One afternoon in November 1966, Frank Kofsky took the train out to Long Island. He was about to spend a day with John Coltrane. This interview comes from the <a href="http://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/recording/bc1266" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pacifica Radio Archives.</a><a href="#read-more" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read More</a><h3>The Animated Transcript</h3>Frank Kofsky was an author, scholar, jazz critic, and professor of history at California State University at Sacramento.Do you live far outside of…  wherever we are now?Well I guess I’m about four or five miles down the road (laughs).You really sound like Farmer John (laughs).Yeah man, when I come up here, I have to do all… to get everything I want to get—You know, I got to the store and do all that because I don’t want to come back up here.Where do you play at home?Anywhere. There’s a room over the garage out there that I’m getting fixed now to… I think it’s going to be my practice room. You know sometimes you build a room and it ends up you can still go in the toilet, so I don’t know, I hope I like it but… I keep a horn on the piano and I have a horn in my bedroom. The flute’s usually back there because when I go down tired, I lay down and practice and…About how many hours a day do you play, would you say?Not too much at this time. I find that it’s only when something is trying to come through you know that I really practice and then it’s just, I don’t know how many hours, it’s just all day. I did a foolish thing, I got dissatisfied with my mouth piece (laughs). I had some work done on this thing and instead of making it better, it ruined it. It really discouraged me, you know, a little bit because they were certain aspects of that playing that certain fast thing that I was reaching for that I couldn’t push because I had damaged this thing… so I just had to curtail it (laughs). But at that moment, it was so vivid in my mind, the difference in what I was getting on the horn, as soon as I put that horn in my mouth, I could hear it. I could feel it and I just stopped, I just went into other things. In fact, soprano’s one of the reasons I started (laughs) getting dissatisfied with that tenor mouthpiece, see? Because the sound of that soprano was actually so much closer to me in my ear.I didn’t want admit this damn thing because I said well the tenor’s my horn, this is my baby but the soprano, there’s still something there, just the voice of it that I can’t… It’s just really beautiful. I really like it.The people I was staying with have a friend, a young lady and she was downtown at one Malcolm X’s speeches and, lo and behold, who should plop down in the seat next to her but John Coltrane (laughs).(laughs) Yeah Were you impressed with him?Definitely, definitely. I felt I had to see the man. I was quite impressed.Some musicians have said there’s a relationship between some of Malcolm’s ideas and the music.Well, I think that music, being expression of the human heart or the human being itself, does express just what is happening. The whole of human experience at that particular time is being expressed. In any situation that we find in our lives, when there’s something we feel should be better, we must exert effort to try and make it better.So it’s the same socially, musically, politically, in any department of your life. I think music is an instrument. It can create the initial thought pattern that can create a change, you see, in the thinking of the people.I mean I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know that there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good.What were you looking for John, do you want some cigarettes or…?No, I’m just sitting up because my back is wet and I just need to get off the chair.I don’t have any more of my prepared questions to ask you, or my improvised questions (laughs) to ask you. I don’t know when I’ll ever get the chance to sit you down with a tape recorder again (laughs). Do you have anything else to get on here?I think you man, well you just about covered it, I believe…just about covered it. <h4>Interview Backstory</h4>Kofsky turned on his tape recorder when he got into Coltrane’s car. The two men drove through town and made a few stops along the way. Coltrane had moved to Huntington, New York with his wife Alice and their children in 1964. They lived in a modest house on a quiet, tree-lined street. It was a home to raise a family. Coltrane had just turned 40. He would die from liver cancer less than a year later.<h4>Hear the full conversation</h4>Coltrane on Malcolm X“I was living downtown, I was in the hotel and I saw the posters and realized he was going to be over there. So I just said, ‘well I’m going over there and see this cat because I’d never seen him.’ I was quite impressed.Brotherhood“I believe with brotherhood there would be no poverty, and also with brotherhood there would be no war.”Performing“I only hope whoever’s out there listening, I hope they enjoying it. If they’re not enjoying it, then I’d rather not be there. I like an audience that does show what they feel and responds.”Adding A Sax Player“It helps me stay alive sometimes because I find that physically, man, the pace I’ve been leading, it’s so hard. I’ve gained so much weight. It’s just been a little hard physically, and I feel that I like to have somebody there in case I just can’t get that strength”Spirituality“I’ve got to grow through certain phases of this to other understandings and more consciousness and awareness of just what it is that I’m supposed to understand about it, and I’m sure all this will be part of the music”Learning“If there’s something you don’t understand, you have to go humbly to it. You don’t go to school and sit down and say I know what you’re getting ready to teach me, you know? You sit there and you learn. You open your mind. you absorb. You’ve got to be quiet, you’ve got to be still to do this.”<a href="http://thecoltranehome.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a>The Coltrane Museum? Click to learn about the campaign to preserve his Long Island home <h4>The Church of Coltrane</h4> Coltrane is a recognized saint in the African Orthodox Church. The St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church, incorporates Coltrane’s music and his lyrics into their services. The Church founders were inspired after they saw Coltrane perform live in San Francisco in 1965. <h4>Trane and Miles Davis</h4> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_x-N9dHA4k" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a>John Coltrane and Miles Davis perform during Coltrane’s final tour with the Miles Davis Quintet. Click the image to listen to “So What.” Credit: Trapeze Music &amp; Entertainment Limited Miles Davis and John Coltrane had a complicated relationship. Coltrane got his start as part of Davis’ band but by the end of the 1950’s he was well on his way to making a name for himself and split to go his own way. Both possessed of large personalities, they respected each others’ musicianship but were also highly competitive – a dynamic that probably pushed both towards the groundbreaking work each would produce in the years following. <blockquote>I was going with a girl who was an antique dealer in France. She gave this soprano sax to me and I gave it to Coltrane. I gave that thing to Trane, man, and it’s probably still in his hand. He probably died with it in his mouth! – <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/nov/06/miles-davis-interview-rocks-backpages" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Miles Davis</a></blockquote> <h4>The Quartet</h4> Some of Coltrane’s most influential recording were made while he was signed to Impulse! Records, from 1961 – 1965. For these albums, the world got to hear a magical quartet: Coltrane on saxophone, McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. The group recorded the legendary A Love Supreme at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey in December 1964. John Coltrane’s manuscript for “A Love Supreme” Credit: National Museum of American History Amazingly, the group <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1wlfNE748s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">only played A Love Supreme live once</a>, during a performance in France in 1965. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1wlfNE748s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Watch it here</a>. By that same year, the quartet was starting to break up and Coltrane was moving towards a more abstract style. <h4>Coltrane’s Saxophones</h4> Credit: National Museum of American History  Coltrane had three saxophones: an alto, a tenor, and a soprano. The tenor pictured above was donated to the National Museum of American History by Coltrane’s son, Ravi. It’s a Mark VI tenor made in 1965 – the same year A Love Supreme was released –  by Henry Selmer Paris, a manufacturer of high-end instruments. <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/saxophone-supreme-john-coltrane-legendary-instrument-joins-collections-american-history-museum-180950274/?no-ist" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">More on Coltrane at the Smithsonian</a>. <h3>Credits</h3> <h4>Executive Producer</h4> David Gerlach <h4>Animator</h4> Patrick Smith <h4>Audio Producer</h4> Amy Drozdowska <h4>Colorist</h4> Diana Tantillo <h4>Music</h4> John Coltrane “In a Sentimental Mood” “My Favorite Things” APM Music Simon Thorpe (PRS), John Donaldson (BMI) “Break Out” Jean Gobinet (SACEM) “I Was Born Here” Colin Towns (PRS) “Downcast” Michele Generale (SIAE), Femi Olasehinde (PRS), Paolo Porta (SIAE) “Run Time” <h4>Photo</h4> Dutch National Archives Impulse Records / Charles Stewart <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

John Coltrane on Giant Steps

Gene Wilder

Interview by Letty Cottin PogrebinThis conversation was recored on March 25, 2007 at the 92Y in New York City. Watch the full interview at 92Y On Demand.The Animated Transcript Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a founding editor of Ms. magazine, writer, lecturer, social justice activist, and the author of ten books.I was miscast in my first big part on Broadway. One night after the show, there was Mel Brooks wearing a merchant marine pea jacket. He looked striking in it.  I said: “Hello, hello, how nice to meet you.”  My goodness, you look so wonderful in that pea jacket.”  He said, “Yeah, they used to call them urine jackets, but they didn’t sell.”When I was 7-1/2 or 8 years old, my mother had a heart attack. This heavy-set doctor brought her home, told her some things while she was lying in bed.  Then came out to see me. Then he grabbed me by the arm.  It was summer, hot day and the sweat was dripping off of his face and falling onto my cheeks.He said: “Don’t ever get angry with your mother because you might kill her.”  He was not very psychologically oriented.  But the other thing he said was: “Try to make her laugh.” And that was a huge thing although I didn’t realize it at the time.  For the first time in my life, I tried consciously to make someone else laugh.  I knew I was very successful when she’d run to the bathroom and say: “Now, look what you’ve made me do.”When you please your mother by doing something, it gives you confidence that you can please other people.  I think that’s where the courage to make people laugh came from, but I didn’t want to be a comedian. I wanted to be an actor.  Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That’s what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn’t funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.When I was 18 and the hormones were raging and I was at school, University of Iowa I suddenly felt the overwhelming compulsion to pray.  I must have prayed for 20 minutes or so. I didn’t know what I was praying about, but I was feeling guilty about something. The next day or two, it was 30 minutes. Then it was an hour, then two hours. To skip ahead to the end of the 7-1/2 years of analysis, I was so afraid to feel free to enjoy my own life if my mother was sick and suffering everyday of her’s.  I didn’t think I had the right.If you ask an actor: why do you want to act?  I don’t think most of them know the real reasons.  After 7-1/2 years of analysis, I have a fairly good idea why.  My analyst said it’s better than running around naked in Central Park isn’t it?I was offered the part of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. When the director came to my house I said: “Well I like the script except when the audience sees Willy Wonka for the first time, I want to come out of the door with a cane and limp my way to the crowd. And they are like: ‘Oh, Willy Wonka, oh he is a cripple. Oh, my god, who thought…. I never knew that.’ And they quiet down, quiet down and Willy Wonka’s cane gets stuck in a brick and he starts to fall forward and he does a forward somersault and jumps up and the crowd cheers and applauds.” And the director said: “What do you want to do that for?” I said: “because from that time on no one will know whether I’m lying or telling the truth.” He said: “you mean if i say no, you won’t do the picture?” I said: “I’m afraid that’s the truth.”If the bell goes off when I read a script I say I’ve got to do this, but the bell hasn’t gone off for a long time because I’m tired of movies that are just based on special effects, on the F-word and “you mother F” and the F-ing. I’m being very polite.  But it’s the truth. I haven’t read anything that I really wanted to do for so long.  Now, I find it’s much more comforting to sit in my study, write starting at 10:30 or so, come out after an hour and a half, get a quick kiss from my wife, make a cup of tea, go back in, write, come about for lunch go back until 3:30, quarter to 4 and then call it a day. CREDITSExecutive ProducerDavid GerlachAnimatorPatrick SmithAudio ProducerKaitlin PrestMUSICJohnny Ripper “Cloudhead”Jan Meyer “Stung By A Bee”Joachim de lux “Du fond de l’abîme”PHOTOSNational Archives of the NetherlandsBlank on Blank

<h4>Interview by Letty Cottin Pogrebin</h4>This conversation was recored on March 25, 2007 <a href="http://92yondemand.org/gene-wilder-letty-cottin-pogrebin/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">at the 92Y</a> in New York City. Watch the full interview at <a href="http://www.92yondemand.org/gene-wilder-letty-cottin-pogrebin" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">92Y On Demand</a>.<h3>The Animated Transcript</h3> Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a founding editor of Ms. magazine, writer, lecturer, social justice activist, and the author of ten books.I was miscast in my first big part on Broadway. One night after the show, there was Mel Brooks wearing a merchant marine pea jacket. He looked striking in it.  I said: “Hello, hello, how nice to meet you.”  My goodness, you look so wonderful in that pea jacket.”  He said, “Yeah, they used to call them urine jackets, but they didn’t sell.”When I was 7-1/2 or 8 years old, my mother had a heart attack. This heavy-set doctor brought her home, told her some things while she was lying in bed.  Then came out to see me. Then he grabbed me by the arm.  It was summer, hot day and the sweat was dripping off of his face and falling onto my cheeks.He said: “Don’t ever get angry with your mother because you might kill her.”  He was not very psychologically oriented.  But the other thing he said was: “Try to make her laugh.” And that was a huge thing although I didn’t realize it at the time.  For the first time in my life, I tried consciously to make someone else laugh.  I knew I was very successful when she’d run to the bathroom and say: “Now, look what you’ve made me do.”When you please your mother by doing something, it gives you confidence that you can please other people.  I think that’s where the courage to make people laugh came from, but I didn’t want to be a comedian. I wanted to be an actor.  Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That’s what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn’t funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.When I was 18 and the hormones were raging and I was at school, University of Iowa I suddenly felt the overwhelming compulsion to pray.  I must have prayed for 20 minutes or so. I didn’t know what I was praying about, but I was feeling guilty about something. The next day or two, it was 30 minutes. Then it was an hour, then two hours. To skip ahead to the end of the 7-1/2 years of analysis, I was so afraid to feel free to enjoy my own life if my mother was sick and suffering everyday of her’s.  I didn’t think I had the right.If you ask an actor: why do you want to act?  I don’t think most of them know the real reasons.  After 7-1/2 years of analysis, I have a fairly good idea why.  My analyst said it’s better than running around naked in Central Park isn’t it?I was offered the part of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. When the director came to my house I said: “Well I like the script except when the audience sees Willy Wonka for the first time, I want to come out of the door with a cane and limp my way to the crowd. And they are like: ‘Oh, Willy Wonka, oh he is a cripple. Oh, my god, who thought…. I never knew that.’ And they quiet down, quiet down and Willy Wonka’s cane gets stuck in a brick and he starts to fall forward and he does a forward somersault and jumps up and the crowd cheers and applauds.” And the director said: “What do you want to do that for?” I said: “because from that time on no one will know whether I’m lying or telling the truth.” He said: “you mean if i say no, you won’t do the picture?” I said: “I’m afraid that’s the truth.”If the bell goes off when I read a script I say I’ve got to do this, but the bell hasn’t gone off for a long time because I’m tired of movies that are just based on special effects, on the F-word and “you mother F” and the F-ing. I’m being very polite.  But it’s the truth. I haven’t read anything that I really wanted to do for so long.  Now, I find it’s much more comforting to sit in my study, write starting at 10:30 or so, come out after an hour and a half, get a quick kiss from my wife, make a cup of tea, go back in, write, come about for lunch go back until 3:30, quarter to 4 and then call it a day. <h4></h4><h3>CREDITS</h3><h4>Executive Producer</h4>David Gerlach<h4>Animator</h4>Patrick Smith<h4>Audio Producer</h4>Kaitlin Prest<h4>MUSIC</h4><a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/johnny_ripper/lesprit_descalier/06_cloudhead" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Johnny Ripper “Cloudhead”</a><a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/jan_meyer/20140416170414710/20_stung_by_a_bee_johnny_ripper_remix#" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jan Meyer “Stung By A Bee”</a><a href="https://soundcloud.com/johnny_ripper/joachim-de-lux-du-fond-de-lab" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Joachim de lux “Du fond de l’abîme”</a><h4>PHOTOS</h4>National Archives of the Netherlands<a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Gene Wilder on The Truth

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Interview by Simon CritchleyThis conversation was recorded on December 17, 2012 before a live audience at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City, as part of the Happy Talk series.Read MoreThe Animated TranscriptSimon Critchley is Chair of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York.I would definitely say pleasure is not happiness. Because I think I kill pleasure. Like I take too much of it in, and therefore make it un-pleasurable, like too much coffee, and you’re miserable. I do that to pleasure often. So I don’t… There is no pleasure that I haven’t actually made myself sick on.I have thought a lot about this actually in my life lately to be honest, and have gotten nowhere with it, in a way that… meaning that there’s a period of time in your life where I kind of look back and I think, “Was I happy? Or was I just not aware?” It seems like a very basic question, but I really do think you reach a time where you go, “I don’t know.” It really does up-end a lot of things in your own life and in your own mind” But in my life now I think, I have three children and I think I’m happy when I’m with them and they’re okay. When I see them enjoying each other in front of me, and then they let me enjoy them in turn. That brings a feeling which I would say is happiness. Now I don’t know why. I mean I do know why, obviously, on the surface because they’re my kids, but it is a certain thing that happens, and I’m like, right now. Right now. This is it.But there are moments when something else creeps in there. And I’m not conscious of the love. I’m conscious of something else, which happens to be my own childhood. So all of a sudden, they start to reflect something other than what I hoped my childhood to be. Being with a kid always takes you to being a kid somehow, and they really are showing me a childhood I might not have had in some way. But if something else creeps in, it becomes a different kind of reflection. It’s of your shortcomings, your inadequacies, your incapabilities, your powerlessness, and on and on and on, which wakens up a whole other thing. That’s what I mean about happiness. Does it mean it ends, it ended? That gets so discouraging to me, about well, “What is this thing?”You know how people always say life is short. That’s kind of the phrase. Life is short. Time is short. And it does. As we get older, time does quicken. It’s long, and it’s long pertaining to that thought, that the past is not done with you because you can’t rid of it. And so therefore, it just starts to drag. You get a glimpse of what you might have wanted, or what it could’ve been, and you can start to have it right here in your life now, but then the past does creep in pretty quickly. And that is a very difficult one, on how to keep it there and not have it kind of ruin it.If we’re so keen on being happy, why do we spend so much time in the dark watching actors as brilliant as you portraying miserable creatures? What’s going on there?Any great novel that I can think of is actually drawing a character or narrative in such a way that is so brutally honest, in a way that you’ve thought, “oh, God, I never would have put it that way, but that’s it.” All of the sudden you come across it in a book, in such a way that you’re relieved that somebody actually got it down on paper. And you’re grateful because it is that awful or that brutal. And therefore, that memorable. And that’s why I’m talking to you about it, because if I don’t allow people to somehow identify with the worst inside themselves, they never have a chance at actually walking out with that person in their heart, or in their minds. They’re too easy to dismiss. It’s like it might not be the thing they’ll admit to a friend, you know what I mean. But if you’re honest, you kind of probably do. I do, and I know I can’t be that wildly different from everyone in this room. You know what I mean. I identify with a lot of things that I’ve done in the movies. It doesn’t mean I’ve literally done them. It’s identify with them. I identify with their source.That’s the thing with meditation too, right? If you meditate, every day, and you really get into meditation, meditation is actually coming right up to the lip of death and saying, “I’m here. I’m scared. I’m here.” That that’s life. If you can actually live in that place, that’s what happens. Right? It’s the same kind of thing that learning how to die, is therefore learning how to live.Okay. So, happy?Oh, God. When I am sitting out there I’m like, “I am the stupidest man in the room and I am about to step up on that stage.” That is what I think at that time and I go, Tthat has a lot to do with what we are about to talk about.” You know that I would think that. You know that I am going to talk about something that anyone would ever have to take seriously enough to incorporate into their own thoughts. But… so don’t listen. Watch the full ConversationHoffman on stage at the Rubin Museum of Art in December 2012 Credit: Rubin MuseumHoffman and Paul Thomas Anderson Hoffman and Director Paul Thomas Anderson collaborated on five of Anderson’s films: Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, and The Master  “When I saw him for the first time in Scent of a Woman, I just knew what true love was. I knew what love at first sight was. It was the strangest feeling sitting in a movie theater and thinking, ‘He’s for me and I’m for him.'” – Anderson speaking shortly after Hoffman’s death  I Love You, Mom Hoffman was born on July 23, 1967, in Fairport, New York, a suburb of Rochester. His parents divorced when he was young, and his mom raised Hoffman and his three siblings on her own. In accepting the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2006, Hoffman said: “My mom’s name is Marilyn O’Connor and she’s here tonight, and I’d like if you see her tonight to congratulate her, because she brought up four kids alone and she deserves a congratulations for that.” Watch his acceptance speech. The Oscar  Hoffman won his Oscar for playing Truman Capote in the 2005 film, Capote. But it’s an Oscar that almost never was. Hoffman had to be talked into taking the role by director Bennett Miller. Hoffman and Miller were friends going back to their college days, but Hoffman was unconvinced that he would be able to play the diminutive Capote, given his much larger physical size and presence. Preparing for Death of a SalesmanHoffman on stage in 2012 Credit: Broadway.com Hoffman was first exposed to the work of playwright, Arthur Miller, as a kid when he watched a local production of Miller’s All My Sons. After suffering a wrestling injury in high school, Hoffman turned to acting. He would end up getting the tortured lead of Miller’s seminal play, Death of a Salesman. Decades later, Hoffman again played Miller in the 2012 Broadway revival. In 2008, he talked to the New York Times about that formative experience discovering Arthur Miller’s work: “I literally thought, I can’t believe this exists. When I saw ‘All My Sons,’ I was changed — permanently changed — by that experience. It was like a miracle to me. But that deep kind of love comes at a price: for me, acting is torturous, and it’s torturous because you know it’s a beautiful thing. I was young once, and I said, That’s beautiful and I want that. Wanting it is easy, but trying to be great — well, that’s absolutely torturous.” CREDITS Executive Producer David Gerlach Animator Patrick Smith Audio Producer Amy Drozdowska MUSIC Never ending story (Scappare di Casa) / CC BY-NC 3.0 Lungfish (Eet) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 Railroad’s Whiskey Co (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 3.0 Everything Is Changing (Noi) / CC BY 3.0 Blank on Blank

<h4>Interview by <a href="http://www.simoncritchley.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Simon Critchley</a></h4>This conversation was recorded on December 17, 2012 before a live audience at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City, as part of the Happy Talk series.<a href="#read-more" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read More</a><h3>The Animated Transcript</h3><a href="http://www.simoncritchley.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Simon Critchley</a> is Chair of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York.I would definitely say pleasure is not happiness. Because I think I kill pleasure. Like I take too much of it in, and therefore make it un-pleasurable, like too much coffee, and you’re miserable. I do that to pleasure often. So I don’t… There is no pleasure that I haven’t actually made myself sick on.I have thought a lot about this actually in my life lately to be honest, and have gotten nowhere with it, in a way that… meaning that there’s a period of time in your life where I kind of look back and I think, “Was I happy? Or was I just not aware?” It seems like a very basic question, but I really do think you reach a time where you go, “I don’t know.” It really does up-end a lot of things in your own life and in your own mind” But in my life now I think, I have three children and I think I’m happy when I’m with them and they’re okay. When I see them enjoying each other in front of me, and then they let me enjoy them in turn. That brings a feeling which I would say is happiness. Now I don’t know why. I mean I do know why, obviously, on the surface because they’re my kids, but it is a certain thing that happens, and I’m like, right now. Right now. This is it.But there are moments when something else creeps in there. And I’m not conscious of the love. I’m conscious of something else, which happens to be my own childhood. So all of a sudden, they start to reflect something other than what I hoped my childhood to be. Being with a kid always takes you to being a kid somehow, and they really are showing me a childhood I might not have had in some way. But if something else creeps in, it becomes a different kind of reflection. It’s of your shortcomings, your inadequacies, your incapabilities, your powerlessness, and on and on and on, which wakens up a whole other thing. That’s what I mean about happiness. Does it mean it ends, it ended? That gets so discouraging to me, about well, “What is this thing?”You know how people always say life is short. That’s kind of the phrase. Life is short. Time is short. And it does. As we get older, time does quicken. It’s long, and it’s long pertaining to that thought, that the past is not done with you because you can’t rid of it. And so therefore, it just starts to drag. You get a glimpse of what you might have wanted, or what it could’ve been, and you can start to have it right here in your life now, but then the past does creep in pretty quickly. And that is a very difficult one, on how to keep it there and not have it kind of ruin it.If we’re so keen on being happy, why do we spend so much time in the dark watching actors as brilliant as you portraying miserable creatures? What’s going on there?Any great novel that I can think of is actually drawing a character or narrative in such a way that is so brutally honest, in a way that you’ve thought, “oh, God, I never would have put it that way, but that’s it.” All of the sudden you come across it in a book, in such a way that you’re relieved that somebody actually got it down on paper. And you’re grateful because it is that awful or that brutal. And therefore, that memorable. And that’s why I’m talking to you about it, because if I don’t allow people to somehow identify with the worst inside themselves, they never have a chance at actually walking out with that person in their heart, or in their minds. They’re too easy to dismiss. It’s like it might not be the thing they’ll admit to a friend, you know what I mean. But if you’re honest, you kind of probably do. I do, and I know I can’t be that wildly different from everyone in this room. You know what I mean. I identify with a lot of things that I’ve done in the movies. It doesn’t mean I’ve literally done them. It’s identify with them. I identify with their source.That’s the thing with meditation too, right? If you meditate, every day, and you really get into meditation, meditation is actually coming right up to the lip of death and saying, “I’m here. I’m scared. I’m here.” That that’s life. If you can actually live in that place, that’s what happens. Right? It’s the same kind of thing that learning how to die, is therefore learning how to live.Okay. So, happy?Oh, God. When I am sitting out there I’m like, “I am the stupidest man in the room and I am about to step up on that stage.” That is what I think at that time and I go, Tthat has a lot to do with what we are about to talk about.” You know that I would think that. You know that I am going to talk about something that anyone would ever have to take seriously enough to incorporate into their own thoughts. But… so don’t listen. <h4></h4><h4>Watch the full Conversation</h4><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiQkdprJso0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a>Hoffman on stage at the Rubin Museum of Art in December 2012 Credit: Rubin Museum <h4>Hoffman and Paul Thomas Anderson</h4> Hoffman and Director Paul Thomas Anderson collaborated on five of Anderson’s films: Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, and The Master <blockquote> “When I saw him for the first time in Scent of a Woman, I just knew what true love was. I knew what love at first sight was. It was the strangest feeling sitting in a movie theater and thinking, ‘He’s for me and I’m for him.'” – Anderson<a href="http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_565_-_paul_thomas_anderson" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> speaking shortly after Hoffman’s death</a> </blockquote> <h4>I Love You, Mom</h4> Hoffman was born on July 23, 1967, in Fairport, New York, a suburb of Rochester. His parents divorced when he was young, and his mom raised Hoffman and his three siblings on her own. In accepting the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2006, <a href="https://screen.yahoo.com/philip-seymour-hoffman-oscar-acceptance-033209925.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hoffman said</a>: “My mom’s name is Marilyn O’Connor and she’s here tonight, and I’d like if you see her tonight to congratulate her, because she brought up four kids alone and she deserves a congratulations for that.” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VcWRJHBUDM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Watch his acceptance speech</a>. <h4>The Oscar</h4> Hoffman won his Oscar for playing Truman Capote in the 2005 film, Capote. But it’s an Oscar that almost never was. Hoffman had to be talked into taking the role by director Bennett Miller. Hoffman and Miller were friends going back to their college days, but Hoffman was unconvinced that he would be able to play the diminutive Capote, given his much larger physical size and presence. <h4>Preparing for Death of a Salesman</h4>Hoffman on stage in 2012 Credit: <a href="http://Broadway.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Broadway.com</a> Hoffman was first exposed to the work of playwright, Arthur Miller, as a kid when he watched a local production of Miller’s All My Sons. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/movies/philip-seymour-hoffman-actor-dies-at-46.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">After suffering a wrestling injury</a> in high school, Hoffman turned to acting. He would end up getting the tortured lead of Miller’s seminal play, Death of a Salesman. Decades later, Hoffman again played Miller in the 2012 Broadway revival. In 2008, he talked to the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/magazine/21hoffman-t.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">New York Times</a> about that formative experience discovering Arthur Miller’s work: “I literally thought, I can’t believe this exists. When I saw ‘All My Sons,’ I was changed — permanently changed — by that experience. It was like a miracle to me. But that deep kind of love comes at a price: for me, acting is torturous, and it’s torturous because you know it’s a beautiful thing. I was young once, and I said, That’s beautiful and I want that. Wanting it is easy, but trying to be great — well, that’s absolutely torturous.” <h3>CREDITS</h3> <h4>Executive Producer</h4> David Gerlach <h4>Animator</h4> Patrick Smith <h4>Audio Producer</h4> Amy Drozdowska <h4>MUSIC</h4> Never ending story (<a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Scappare_di_Casa/" rel="cc:attributionURL nofollow" target="_blank">Scappare di Casa</a>) / <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/" rel="license nofollow" target="_blank">CC BY-NC 3.0</a> Lungfish (<a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Eet/" rel="cc:attributionURL nofollow" target="_blank">Eet</a>) / <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/" rel="license nofollow" target="_blank">CC BY-NC-SA 3.0</a> Railroad’s Whiskey Co (<a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/" rel="cc:attributionURL nofollow" target="_blank">Jahzzar</a>) / <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" rel="license nofollow" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 3.0</a> Everything Is Changing (<a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Noi/" rel="cc:attributionURL nofollow" target="_blank">Noi</a>) / <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/" rel="license nofollow" target="_blank">CC BY 3.0</a> <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Philip Seymour Hoffman on Happiness

Jim Morrison

Interview by Howard SmithThe interview was recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder in November 1969. Howard Smith was writing for the Village Voice. We uncovered this interview as part of the Smith Tapes project, which has preserved and remastered his remarkable collection of music interviews.The Animated TranscriptHoward Smith was an Oscar winning film director, broadcaster and journalist. Learn more here.Are you hungry?Why do you ask that?Well, maybe we could order out for some sandwiches or something. Chicken delight or something. You’re not hungry? How about you: are you hungry? Oh, it’s lunchtime. Did you have breakfast this morning?Yeah.You did. What’d you have?Oh, little things like chocolate cake and tea here.Is that all you had?That’s all I want.You should eat more, Howard.You put on a lot of weight. Are you eating a lot?Well, um… You know that’s something that really bothers me. What’s wrong with being fat? That’s what I want to know. Why is there such…I didn’t say there’s anything wrong with it.Why is it so onerous to be fat? Um… I don’t see anything wrong with fat. You know? I mean, I remember when I used to weigh 185 pounds. I’m the same height. I was the same height that I am now and I weighed 185 pounds and I was going to college. And I had this food ticket at the cafeteria. And the cafeteria food is mainly all based on starch. You know it’s cheap food, right?And so I don’t know what it was, but in order… I don’t know, I just felt like I was… If you missed your meal you just, you know… I just figured: “Well I was getting screwed, right?” If I missed a meal I blew it. So I’d get up at 6:30 every morning just to make breakfast, right? Eggs and grits and sausages and toast and milk. Then I’d go do a few classes. And I’d make it in there for lunch.Mashed potatoes. Every now and then they’d put a little piece of meat in something, you know? Then I’d go to a few more classes. And then I’d go to dinner and it was more mashed potatoes.And so about three months later I was 185 pounds. And you know what? I felt so great. I felt like a tank, you know. I felt like a large mammal. A big beast. When I’d move through the corridors or across the lawn, I just feel like I could knock anybody out of my way, you know. I was solid, man. It’s terrible to be thin and wispy, because, you know, you could get knocked over by a strong wind or something. Fat is beautiful.How much do you weigh now?I don’t know to tell you the truth. I’d guess somewhere in the neighborhood of about 150.Really?You want to compare biceps? (Laughs) You want a dead arm wrestling match, Howard? Are you ready? Are you in shape?All right. Yeah.Jim Morrison: We’ll wait until the interview’s over.CreditsExecutive ProducerDavid GerlachAnimatorPatrick SmithAudio ProducerAmy DrozdowskaMusicThe Doors “Soul Kitchen” |  “Who Do You Love”Joe Jones  “Light My Fire” (The Doors)Blank on Blank

<h4>Interview by Howard Smith</h4>The interview was recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder in November 1969. Howard Smith was writing for the Village Voice. We uncovered this interview as part of the <a href="http://thesmithtapes.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Smith Tapes project</a>, which has preserved and remastered his remarkable collection of music interviews.<h3>The Animated Transcript</h3>Howard Smith was an Oscar winning film director, broadcaster and journalist. Learn more <a href="http://thesmithtapes.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.Are you hungry?Why do you ask that?Well, maybe we could order out for some sandwiches or something. Chicken delight or something. You’re not hungry? How about you: are you hungry? Oh, it’s lunchtime. Did you have breakfast this morning?Yeah.You did. What’d you have?Oh, little things like chocolate cake and tea here.Is that all you had?That’s all I want.You should eat more, Howard.You put on a lot of weight. Are you eating a lot?Well, um… You know that’s something that really bothers me. What’s wrong with being fat? That’s what I want to know. Why is there such…I didn’t say there’s anything wrong with it.Why is it so onerous to be fat? Um… I don’t see anything wrong with fat. You know? I mean, I remember when I used to weigh 185 pounds. I’m the same height. I was the same height that I am now and I weighed 185 pounds and I was going to college. And I had this food ticket at the cafeteria. And the cafeteria food is mainly all based on starch. You know it’s cheap food, right?And so I don’t know what it was, but in order… I don’t know, I just felt like I was… If you missed your meal you just, you know… I just figured: “Well I was getting screwed, right?” If I missed a meal I blew it. So I’d get up at 6:30 every morning just to make breakfast, right? Eggs and grits and sausages and toast and milk. Then I’d go do a few classes. And I’d make it in there for lunch.Mashed potatoes. Every now and then they’d put a little piece of meat in something, you know? Then I’d go to a few more classes. And then I’d go to dinner and it was more mashed potatoes.And so about three months later I was 185 pounds. And you know what? I felt so great. I felt like a tank, you know. I felt like a large mammal. A big beast. When I’d move through the corridors or across the lawn, I just feel like I could knock anybody out of my way, you know. I was solid, man. It’s terrible to be thin and wispy, because, you know, you could get knocked over by a strong wind or something. Fat is beautiful.How much do you weigh now?I don’t know to tell you the truth. I’d guess somewhere in the neighborhood of about 150.Really?You want to compare biceps? (Laughs) You want a dead arm wrestling match, Howard? Are you ready? Are you in shape?All right. Yeah.Jim Morrison: We’ll wait until the interview’s over.<h3>Credits</h3><h4>Executive Producer</h4>David Gerlach<h4>Animator</h4>Patrick Smith<h4>Audio Producer</h4>Amy Drozdowska<h4>Music</h4>The Doors “Soul Kitchen” |  “Who Do You Love”Joe Jones  “Light My Fire” (The Doors)<a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Jim Morrison on Why Fat is Beautiful

Maurice Sendak

Interview by Andrew Romano and Ramin SetoodehAndrew and Ramin interviewed Sendak at his home in Connecticut in September 2009. Their original story ran in Newsweek. They made a digital recording of this previously unheard interview.The Animated TranscriptAndrew Romano is now West Coast Correspondent for Yahoo News. Ramin Seetodeh is Variety’s New York Bureau Chief.I love watching animal movies on television. And they always say don’t run away and don’t turn your back. And don’t lie down flat. And I love—it’s from my childhood—how do you prevent dying? How do you prevent being eaten or mauled by a monster? I still worry about it. (Laughter)I think there is something barbaric in children, and it’s missing in lots of books for them because we don’t like to think of it. We want them to be happy. Childhood is a very tough time. It was for me, and it was for my brother and my sister. They were both considerably older than I was and they protected me from my parents. They were the good parents. And my real parents were not so good, okay? They didn’t mean any harm. They were confused; they didn’t speak English. Living in a foreign country, and take it out on your kids. That’s all.But there are a lot of crazy people who have children, and I’ve always been interested in how children maneuver and decide how to live. It’s hard. I’ve always had a deep respect for children and how they solve complex problems by themselves.And how do they?I think through shrewdness, fantasy and just plain strength; they want to survive. They want to survive. The kids in Hansel and Gretel: Gretel, she saves her brother’s life. And a little girl saving a little boy’s life—when did children have to confront such terrible ordeals? Well they do. They do.Just a broad question: what should children’s stories contain?Well, how would I know? All I do know is that my parents were immigrants and they didn’t know that they should clean the stories up for us. So we heard horrible, horrible stories. And we loved them. We absolutely loved them. But the three of us—my sister, my brother and myself—grew up being very depressed people.So the great thing was my brother, who wrote stories and I’d illustrate his stories. There was one story we called “We Are Inseparable.” And they’re going to get married. The brother and sister are going to get married and nobody knows that there’s anything wrong with that. Nobody. Nobody. Hey, you love somebody. So it’s your sister. Big deal. Okay?Now, obviously Freud stuck into my brother’s head at the last minute to prevent this wedding from taking place. The boy’s in an accident—and I can’t remember what—and he’s bandaged and looks like a mummy. And she comes tearing to the hospital. “Let me in! Let me in!” And the parents are holding her back, holding her back and then she breaks down the door and she jumps on top of him and they both scream in unison, “We are inseparable!” And they leap out the window of the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital—like the 40th floor—and that’s how it ends. It was a really happy ending. (Laughter)Let’s tell the truth. Let’s talk about the kid who doesn’t make it sensationally well. Who struggles and fights, but really doesn’t know what he’s fighting against or for. And I don’t think that changes. We’re all adults in this room sitting talking about that. Has that ended? No. It doesn’t end. I still think the same way I thought as a child. I still worry. I’m still frightened. Everything is the same. Nothing changes. CreditsExecutive ProducerDavid GerlachAnimatorPatrick SmithAudio ProducerAmy DrozdowskaMusicOskar Schuster “Sneeuwland”Johnny Ripper “Opening Credits”Ergo Phizmiz &amp; Margita Zalite “Rolands Vegners”PhotosJames Nicoloro ProductionsBlank on Blank

<h4>Interview by Andrew Romano and Ramin Setoodeh</h4>Andrew and Ramin interviewed Sendak at his home in Connecticut in September 2009. Their original story ran in Newsweek. They made a digital recording of this previously unheard interview.<h3>The Animated Transcript</h3>Andrew Romano is now West Coast Correspondent for Yahoo News. Ramin Seetodeh is Variety’s New York Bureau Chief.I love watching animal movies on television. And they always say don’t run away and don’t turn your back. And don’t lie down flat. And I love—it’s from my childhood—how do you prevent dying? How do you prevent being eaten or mauled by a monster? I still worry about it. (Laughter)I think there is something barbaric in children, and it’s missing in lots of books for them because we don’t like to think of it. We want them to be happy. Childhood is a very tough time. It was for me, and it was for my brother and my sister. They were both considerably older than I was and they protected me from my parents. They were the good parents. And my real parents were not so good, okay? They didn’t mean any harm. They were confused; they didn’t speak English. Living in a foreign country, and take it out on your kids. That’s all.But there are a lot of crazy people who have children, and I’ve always been interested in how children maneuver and decide how to live. It’s hard. I’ve always had a deep respect for children and how they solve complex problems by themselves.And how do they?I think through shrewdness, fantasy and just plain strength; they want to survive. They want to survive. The kids in Hansel and Gretel: Gretel, she saves her brother’s life. And a little girl saving a little boy’s life—when did children have to confront such terrible ordeals? Well they do. They do.Just a broad question: what should children’s stories contain?Well, how would I know? All I do know is that my parents were immigrants and they didn’t know that they should clean the stories up for us. So we heard horrible, horrible stories. And we loved them. We absolutely loved them. But the three of us—my sister, my brother and myself—grew up being very depressed people.So the great thing was my brother, who wrote stories and I’d illustrate his stories. There was one story we called “We Are Inseparable.” And they’re going to get married. The brother and sister are going to get married and nobody knows that there’s anything wrong with that. Nobody. Nobody. Hey, you love somebody. So it’s your sister. Big deal. Okay?Now, obviously Freud stuck into my brother’s head at the last minute to prevent this wedding from taking place. The boy’s in an accident—and I can’t remember what—and he’s bandaged and looks like a mummy. And she comes tearing to the hospital. “Let me in! Let me in!” And the parents are holding her back, holding her back and then she breaks down the door and she jumps on top of him and they both scream in unison, “We are inseparable!” And they leap out the window of the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital—like the 40th floor—and that’s how it ends. It was a really happy ending. (Laughter)Let’s tell the truth. Let’s talk about the kid who doesn’t make it sensationally well. Who struggles and fights, but really doesn’t know what he’s fighting against or for. And I don’t think that changes. We’re all adults in this room sitting talking about that. Has that ended? No. It doesn’t end. I still think the same way I thought as a child. I still worry. I’m still frightened. Everything is the same. Nothing changes. <h3>Credits</h3><h4>Executive Producer</h4>David Gerlach<h4>Animator</h4>Patrick Smith<h4>Audio Producer</h4>Amy Drozdowska<h4>Music</h4>Oskar Schuster “Sneeuwland”Johnny Ripper “Opening Credits”Ergo Phizmiz &amp; Margita Zalite “Rolands Vegners”<h4>Photos</h4>James Nicoloro Productions<a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Maurice Sendak on Being a Kid

Interview by Barney HoskynsBarney interviewed Johnny Cash in October 1996. You can hear the full interview at Rock’s Backpages.Read MoreThe Animated TranscriptBarney Hoskyns is an author and is the editorial director of Rock’s Backpages, the online library of pop writing.I’ve always hung out with long-hairs. I’ve always hung out with people of that ilk. I’m one of the originals. I had sideburns down to my chin in ’50- For a while there I did. When I started my own TV show in Nashville in ’69, I had a group called The Who on as guests and I forget which one of them said, “Thank god we got somebody on television with long hair,” talking about me. You know. Although it wasn’t all that long.Do you really need to tour so much? Do you need to work so hard and drive yourself so hard?For my soul I do. Yeah, for my soul. It’s a gift. My mother always told me that any talent is a gift of God and I always believed it. If I quit, I would just live in front of the television and get fat and die pretty soon. So I don’t want to do that. You know I just hope and pray I can die with my boots on. I’ve been in hospital beds and I don’t want to end it up there.I went through a period that I didn’t want to sing those old songs again. I finally decided that I was really cheating them and myself. And I started singing all the old ones with gusto and lust. Like I loved them. Those songs, I Walk the Line and Folsom, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Ring of Fire. They’re part of me. They’re an extension of me when I get in front of that microphone. They’re a part of me going through that mic, you know, to that audience. They feel it and they know it if I feel it, you know. They’ll turn it right back to me, the appreciation. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what performing is all about, is sharing and communicating.Do you think… Could you have ever been a preacher? Were you ever tempted to-?No. I think in my world of religion, you’re called to preach or you don’t preach. Called by God to preach. I never been ordained by God to preach the gospel. I have a calling, it’s called to perform and sing. I think gospel song is a ministry in a way, you know. gospel music. gospel music is so ingrained into my bones, you know. I can’t do a concert without singing a gospel song. It’s what I was raised on. It was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time. Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt.I was going to ask you how the pain is in your jaw these days.It’s pretty severe.Really? All the time? Constant?Almost all the time, yeah.How do you-?Except when I’m on stage.Really?Yeah.That’s miraculous that it just leaves you. Yeah. Power of music I guess.Yeah, I pray for that and it works. It doesn’t alter or hinder my performance.It must be a struggle to have to take pain killers at the same time, to be able to regulate them-I don’t take them. I can’t take them. It’s like an alcoholic. he can’t drink. I can’t take pain pills.You must be very brave to-No. I’m not very brave because for five years I didn’t try to take the pain. I fought it. I had a total of 34 surgical procedures on my left jaw. Every doctor I’ve been to knows what to do next, too. To relieve me of pain, I don’t believe any of them. I’m handling it. It’s my pain. I’m not being brave either. I’m not brave at all after what I’ve been through, I just know how to handle it.When you look at yourself in the mirror do you feel like an American icon when you look at yourself in the mirror?God, what a question. Shit. I see the pimples on my nose and I see the fat jaw from the pain where it’s swollen or thinning hair or whatever. Icon? No. I don’t see him. He’s not in my mirror.You don’t see the John Wayne of rock and roll?No. … Thanks anyway.Do you look back now and think, “Wow, dressing in black was one hell of a smart career move?”No, I never thought about it. How does it help me? I don’t know. What good’s it do? I’m so uncomfortable wearing colors in public. I really am. Even denim. If I’ve got a day off in a town, I want to go out for a walk I’ll put on denim. But almost everything I’ve got the black on.I was interested to know whether you ever talked about gospel music with Elvis?Oh yeah. That’s all we talked about. Well that wasn’t all, we talked about girls too. Yeah, Elvis and I, a lot of shows we would sing together in the dressing room and invariably we’d go to black gospel. We knew the same songs. We grew up on the same songs. John R. CashCredit: Robert Sebree | sebreephoto.com Cash was born on Feb. 26, 1932, in Kingsland, Arkansas. He had six siblings and his family raised cotton. After high school, Cash headed to Detroit and found work in an automotive plant before enlisting in the Air Force. Cash put together his first band, the Landsberg Barbarians, while stationed in Germany. After his discharge in 1954, Cash moved to Memphis to make it in the music business. Cash could do a mean Elvis impersonation. “I Walk the Line” hit number 1 in 1956 and sold over 2 million copies. Cash couldn’t read music and composed songs in his head. He recorded 1,500 songs in his career. By the 1960s Cash was playing 300 shows a year. He and his first wife, Vivian, named their first daughter, Rosanne, after Cash’s nicknames for Vivian’s boobs: Rose and Anne. The Johnny Cash Show aired on ABC from 1969-71 and featured everyone from Louis Armstrong and The Who to Ray Charles and Pete Seeger Cash credits his second wife June, whom he married in 1968, with helping him stay off drugs. Johnny Cash died from complications of diabetes on September 12, 2003. He was 71.  Credits Executive Producer David Gerlach Animator Patrick Smith Audio Producer Amy Drozdowska Music Johnny Cash “Folsom Prison Blues” “Do Lord” “Ring of Fire” Photos Robert Sebree | sebreephoto.com Heinrich Klaffs via Flickr  Blank on Blank

<h4>Interview by Barney Hoskyns</h4>Barney interviewed Johnny Cash in October 1996. You can hear the full interview at <a href="http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/johnny-cash-1996" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rock’s Backpages</a>.<a href="#read-more" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read More</a><h3>The Animated Transcript</h3>Barney Hoskyns is an author and is the editorial director of Rock’s Backpages, the online library of pop writing.I’ve always hung out with long-hairs. I’ve always hung out with people of that ilk. I’m one of the originals. I had sideburns down to my chin in ’50- For a while there I did. When I started my own TV show in Nashville in ’69, I had a group called The Who on as guests and I forget which one of them said, “Thank god we got somebody on television with long hair,” talking about me. You know. Although it wasn’t all that long.Do you really need to tour so much? Do you need to work so hard and drive yourself so hard?For my soul I do. Yeah, for my soul. It’s a gift. My mother always told me that any talent is a gift of God and I always believed it. If I quit, I would just live in front of the television and get fat and die pretty soon. So I don’t want to do that. You know I just hope and pray I can die with my boots on. I’ve been in hospital beds and I don’t want to end it up there.I went through a period that I didn’t want to sing those old songs again. I finally decided that I was really cheating them and myself. And I started singing all the old ones with gusto and lust. Like I loved them. Those songs, I Walk the Line and Folsom, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Ring of Fire. They’re part of me. They’re an extension of me when I get in front of that microphone. They’re a part of me going through that mic, you know, to that audience. They feel it and they know it if I feel it, you know. They’ll turn it right back to me, the appreciation. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what performing is all about, is sharing and communicating.Do you think… Could you have ever been a preacher? Were you ever tempted to-?No. I think in my world of religion, you’re called to preach or you don’t preach. Called by God to preach. I never been ordained by God to preach the gospel. I have a calling, it’s called to perform and sing. I think gospel song is a ministry in a way, you know. gospel music. gospel music is so ingrained into my bones, you know. I can’t do a concert without singing a gospel song. It’s what I was raised on. It was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time. Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt.I was going to ask you how the pain is in your jaw these days.It’s pretty severe.Really? All the time? Constant?Almost all the time, yeah.How do you-?Except when I’m on stage.Really?Yeah.That’s miraculous that it just leaves you. Yeah. Power of music I guess.Yeah, I pray for that and it works. It doesn’t alter or hinder my performance.It must be a struggle to have to take pain killers at the same time, to be able to regulate them-I don’t take them. I can’t take them. It’s like an alcoholic. he can’t drink. I can’t take pain pills.You must be very brave to-No. I’m not very brave because for five years I didn’t try to take the pain. I fought it. I had a total of 34 surgical procedures on my left jaw. Every doctor I’ve been to knows what to do next, too. To relieve me of pain, I don’t believe any of them. I’m handling it. It’s my pain. I’m not being brave either. I’m not brave at all after what I’ve been through, I just know how to handle it.When you look at yourself in the mirror do you feel like an American icon when you look at yourself in the mirror?God, what a question. Shit. I see the pimples on my nose and I see the fat jaw from the pain where it’s swollen or thinning hair or whatever. Icon? No. I don’t see him. He’s not in my mirror.You don’t see the John Wayne of rock and roll?No. … Thanks anyway.Do you look back now and think, “Wow, dressing in black was one hell of a smart career move?”No, I never thought about it. How does it help me? I don’t know. What good’s it do? I’m so uncomfortable wearing colors in public. I really am. Even denim. If I’ve got a day off in a town, I want to go out for a walk I’ll put on denim. But almost everything I’ve got the black on.I was interested to know whether you ever talked about gospel music with Elvis?Oh yeah. That’s all we talked about. Well that wasn’t all, we talked about girls too. Yeah, Elvis and I, a lot of shows we would sing together in the dressing room and invariably we’d go to black gospel. We knew the same songs. We grew up on the same songs. <h4>John R. Cash</h4>Credit: Robert Sebree | <a href="http://sebreephoto.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">sebreephoto.com</a> Cash was born on Feb. 26, 1932, in Kingsland, Arkansas. He had six siblings and his family raised cotton. After high school, <a href="http://www.johnnycash.com/biography.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Cash headed to Detroit and found work in an automotive plant</a> before enlisting in the Air Force. Cash put together his first band, the Landsberg Barbarians, while stationed in Germany. After his discharge in 1954, Cash moved to Memphis to make it in the music business. Cash could do a <a href="http://youtu.be/4G8jeVrzJ9U?t=1m24s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">mean Elvis impersonation</a>. “I Walk the Line” hit number 1 in 1956 and sold over 2 million copies. Cash couldn’t read music and composed songs in his head. <a href="http://www.npr.org/2010/02/26/124074975/johnny-cash-a-ghost-rider-still-stirring-souls" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">He recorded 1,500 songs in his career.</a> By the 1960s Cash was playing 300 shows a year. <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-johnny-cash-20131031" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">He and his first wife, Vivian, named their first daughter, Rosanne, after Cash’s nicknames for Vivian’s boobs: Rose and Anne.</a> The Johnny Cash Show aired on ABC from 1969-71 and <a href="http://flavorwire.com/155120/the-johnny-cash-shows-10-best-guest-performances/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">featured everyone from </a><a href="http://blankonblank.org/interviews/louis-armstrong-on-his-chops/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Louis Armstrong</a> and The Who to <a href="http://blankonblank.org/interviews/ray-charles-on-singing-true/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ray Charles</a> and <a href="http://blankonblank.org/interview-category/pete-seeger/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pete Seeger</a> Cash credits his second wife June, whom he married in 1968, with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/13/arts/johnny-cash-country-music-bedrock-dies-at-71.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">helping him stay off drugs</a>. Johnny Cash died from complications of diabetes on September 12, 2003. He was 71. <h3>Credits</h3> <h4>Executive Producer</h4> David Gerlach <h4>Animator</h4> Patrick Smith <h4>Audio Producer</h4> Amy Drozdowska <h4>Music</h4> Johnny Cash “Folsom Prison Blues” “Do Lord” “Ring of Fire” <h4>Photos</h4> <a href="http://sebreephoto.com/2014/02/06/a-day-in-the-life-of-johnny-cash/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Robert Sebree | sebreephoto.com</a> <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/heiner1947/4399080229/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Heinrich Klaffs via Flickr</a> <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Johnny Cash on The Gospel

Interview by Howard Smith Howard interviewed Janis Joplin by phone on September 30, 1970. This turned out to be the last interview Janis ever did. She died on October 4, 1970. Howard was writing for the Village Voice.The Animated TranscriptHoward Smith was an Oscar winning film director, broadcaster and journalist.We were supposed to do an interview, do you remember, you know, a long time ago. And some article putting you down in Rolling Stone had just come out.YeahAnd you got very upset about that. Are you still that upset when you are put down in any articles?You know I should be able to get past that, you know. But I mean girls want to be reassured. Which is not to say that all people don’t. But I think women especially … I mean even though I know that those are just assholes that don’t know what they’re talking about and I should just continue with my music, you know. And let them either come into the show and listen, or go home and beat off. I don’t care what they do. I should be able to beat through that. But in my insides, it really hurts if someone doesn’t like me. You know, it’s silly. [laughs]Because I remember that time you were very upset.Well that was a pretty heavy time for me. It was really important, you know, whether people were going to accept me or not.A lot of women have been saying that the whole field of rock music is nothing more than just a big, male, chauvinist rip-off. How do you…Yeah?Yeah. And when I say: “well what about Janis Joplin, she made it?” And they say: “oh, her.” And it seems to bother a lot of women’s lib people that you’re kind of so upfront sexually.Well then that’s their problem. Not mine.I haven’t ever hardly talked with anyone in women’s lib. I haven’t been attacked by anyone yet. How can they attack me? I’m representing everything they said they want. You know what i mean? Well I have an opinion about this. It’s sort of like: you are what you settle for. Do you know what I mean? You’re only as much as you settle for. If they settle for being somebody’s dishwasher that’s their own fucking problem. If you don’t settle for that and you keep fighting it, you know, you’ll end up anything you want to be. How can they attack me? I’m just doing what I wanted to and what feels right and not settling for bullshit and it worked. How can they be mad at that?One girl I know said: well how come she doesn’t have any women in any of her groups?[Laughs] You show me a good drummer and I’ll hire one. Show me a good chick… Besides I don’t want any chicks on the road with me.You don’t?I’ve got enough competition, man. [Laughs] No, I like to be around men. [Laughs]Did all that shit I said about chicks sound bad?No, you said what you wanted to say. Don’t be silly.Well I don’t want to offend people. It’s just that like, you know, I have a certain set of circumstances I live under. Like you know all this repressive upbringing and things. I had that, too. You don’t think I had a repressive upbringing in Port Arthur, Texas? It’s just that it drove me crazy and I kept fighting against it. I don’t think you can talk anybody into fighting against it. If they don’t have it in themselves to need more. You know what I mean? Just plain need more. Then that’s that. If they do need more, they’ll get more. They’ll demand more. You know what i mean?Okay. thanks a lot.Sure enough.Okay. Goodbye.Bye Hear the complete interview here.CreditsExecutive ProducerDavid GerlachAnimatorPatrick SmithAudio ProducerAmy DrozdowskaMusicJanis Joplin“Cry Baby”“Kozmic Blues”“I Need A Man To Love”“Summertime”PhotosAPBlank on Blank

<h4>Interview by <a href="http://thesmithtapes.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Howard Smith</a> </h4>Howard interviewed Janis Joplin by phone on September 30, 1970. This turned out to be the last interview Janis ever did. She died on October 4, 1970. Howard was writing for the Village Voice.<h3>The Animated Transcript</h3>Howard Smith was an Oscar winning film director, broadcaster and journalist.We were supposed to do an interview, do you remember, you know, a long time ago. And some article putting you down in Rolling Stone had just come out.YeahAnd you got very upset about that. Are you still that upset when you are put down in any articles?You know I should be able to get past that, you know. But I mean girls want to be reassured. Which is not to say that all people don’t. But I think women especially … I mean even though I know that those are just assholes that don’t know what they’re talking about and I should just continue with my music, you know. And let them either come into the show and listen, or go home and beat off. I don’t care what they do. I should be able to beat through that. But in my insides, it really hurts if someone doesn’t like me. You know, it’s silly. [laughs]Because I remember that time you were very upset.Well that was a pretty heavy time for me. It was really important, you know, whether people were going to accept me or not.A lot of women have been saying that the whole field of rock music is nothing more than just a big, male, chauvinist rip-off. How do you…Yeah?Yeah. And when I say: “well what about Janis Joplin, she made it?” And they say: “oh, her.” And it seems to bother a lot of women’s lib people that you’re kind of so upfront sexually.Well then that’s their problem. Not mine.I haven’t ever hardly talked with anyone in women’s lib. I haven’t been attacked by anyone yet. How can they attack me? I’m representing everything they said they want. You know what i mean? Well I have an opinion about this. It’s sort of like: you are what you settle for. Do you know what I mean? You’re only as much as you settle for. If they settle for being somebody’s dishwasher that’s their own fucking problem. If you don’t settle for that and you keep fighting it, you know, you’ll end up anything you want to be. How can they attack me? I’m just doing what I wanted to and what feels right and not settling for bullshit and it worked. How can they be mad at that?One girl I know said: well how come she doesn’t have any women in any of her groups?[Laughs] You show me a good drummer and I’ll hire one. Show me a good chick… Besides I don’t want any chicks on the road with me.You don’t?I’ve got enough competition, man. [Laughs] No, I like to be around men. [Laughs]Did all that shit I said about chicks sound bad?No, you said what you wanted to say. Don’t be silly.Well I don’t want to offend people. It’s just that like, you know, I have a certain set of circumstances I live under. Like you know all this repressive upbringing and things. I had that, too. You don’t think I had a repressive upbringing in Port Arthur, Texas? It’s just that it drove me crazy and I kept fighting against it. I don’t think you can talk anybody into fighting against it. If they don’t have it in themselves to need more. You know what I mean? Just plain need more. Then that’s that. If they do need more, they’ll get more. They’ll demand more. You know what i mean?Okay. thanks a lot.Sure enough.Okay. Goodbye.Bye <h4>Hear the complete interview <a href="http://thesmithtapes.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.</h4><h3></h3><h3>Credits</h3><h4>Executive Producer</h4>David Gerlach<h4>Animator</h4>Patrick Smith<h4>Audio Producer</h4>Amy Drozdowska<h4>Music</h4>Janis Joplin“Cry Baby”“Kozmic Blues”“I Need A Man To Love”“Summertime”<h4>Photos</h4>AP<a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Janis Joplin on Rejection

Interviews by Howard SmithFor this episode, we used two of the five interviews Smith did with John Lennon and Yoko Ono between 1969-71. One took place at John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s apartment in the West Village in New York City. The other interview was done over the phone while the couple was in Montreal during their famous Bed-In.We discovered these interviews in the Smith Tapes archive.Read MoreThe Animated TranscriptHoward Smith was an Oscar winning film director, broadcaster and journalist for The Village Voice. TheSmithTapes.comPeople seem to be having a lot of trouble getting along with each other, I mean couples. Both of you seem very, very close.  What’s your secret?I can’t give you the formula for meeting the person that you’re going to love,  but it’s around, you know.  And it happens.  I mean it happened to me at 29 and Yoko Ono at 32.Yoko: Whatever.And it’s a long wait, you know, I didn’t think it was…  I thought it was an abstract thing, you know, when I was singing about all you need is love.  I was talking about something I hadn’t experienced.  I had experienced, you know, love for people in gusts, and love for things and trees and things like that, but I hadn’t experienced what I was singing about. It’s like anything, you sing about it first or write about it first, and find out what you were talking about after.Yoko: Well, I never thought that it would happen in this late stage of my life.  I mean, I just sort of, I was starting to give up hope, you know, that kind of thing, you know.  Becoming very cynical and all that.  But it happened and it’s very, very, very good.It’s no good having, being with people you can dominate all the time.  Or being with someone who can dominate you all the time.  Because either one is boring.  But if you’re with somebody who’s got a ticking mind, which was the best part about being with the Beatles when they were ticking, is they were ticking, you know?  But it began to slow down.But with Yoko Ono, it’s like living with 4 or 5 people…. [laughs] It’s far out.Yoko: Well we do say, four of us are getting along very well these days aren’t we? Or something like that.That’ll do. they’ll have us put away.Marriage thing itself, as an official ceremony seems to have somewhat gone out of style. How come you decided to go through with a regular marriage?Because we turned out to be romantics.  I mean we went through the whole intellectual bit about marriage, you know, where it’s a bit of paper and some guy gives it to you.  And that’s all true.  But when he gave it to us, it was very emotional, you know, and it wasn’t even a, we couldn’t even get a nice vicar or a bishop, you know, to do it. It’s completely against what we thought, what I thought intellectually, I thought well it’s never again, forget about this one.  You know, what a joke, what a joke it all is.  And the next minute, I’m standing there and she’s crying and it’s like we’re soft kids, you know.  So we’re romantic, and it made a difference.Can there be such a thing as being too close? Can that actually… Because in your case it doesn’t seem that way.Like stifling each other then. You see we’re both mind people, you know. So to be apart, we don’t have to physically be apart.Yoko: Exactly. You have to say that.I just said it.Yoko: Oh, alright.I just said it. Ding dong, ding dong. Next round.Yoko: But the point is this is an interesting example….Well they’re all brought up to think that a couple, you mustn’t give a child too much love, a couple mustn’t be together too much, it’s good for the husband to be working in America while the wife’s in Brazil. You know, we don’t believe all that jazz. That’s just some social Christian jazz that someone must have laid on us a few generations ago. And you can’t give a child too much love and if you love somebody, you can’t be with them enough. There’s no such thing. We don’t want to be apart.I just like TV, you know. I think to me, it replaced the fireplace when I was a child. They took the fire away and they put a TV in instead and I got hooked on it.Yoko: The complexity of it is incredible, you know.  So you can see, observe TV on many levels actually, many different levels.I was a great one as a kid for standing and just looking out a window for hours and hours and hours. Now the TV does that for me, except for the view changes immensely. One minute it’s the saint, the next it’s a rocket, or Vietnam. It’s very surreal. I leave it in on whether I have the sound on or not.Yoko: You don’t have to go to India any more. You know, you don’t have to go anywhere, you can just be here.It’s like Paul Kraston said, all I ask in life is a water bed, a TV and a typewriter. Well, I’ll just have an ordinary bed, a TV and a guitar. Apart from Yoko Ono. Bonus Interview OuttakesAll You Need Is Love“They were playing, All You Need is Love earlier on [the radio] and I was saying to Yoko, ‘I still believe all you need is love, you know.’ But I don’t believe that just saying it is going to do it, you know. I still believe in the fact that love is what we all need, what makes us all so desperate, [inaudible], or whatever the word, neurotic, etc, etc. But I still believe there’s many ways of getting to that situation, you know. There’s a lot of changes in society to come before we can ever get to a state of even realizing that love is what we need, you know. But I still believe in it, and there are some rude cracks about oh Beatles sang All You Need is Love, but it didn’t work for them, you know. But nothing will ever break the love we have for each other and I still believe all you need is love [crosstalk] I don’t have to live with three guys to prove that love is the basic necessity of all of us, you know.”Mind People“And because we are mind people, I thought it was because I was an only child, but what I had stepsisters, I lived alone. I always tripped out on my own or in books or something like that, you know. But she had sisters and brothers, but she was a different age group from them so she was pretty lonely. I guess it’s that, you know. We’re both conceptual people in a way, and it’s that. So we don’t have to be apart to get away from each other. And we really like being together all the time. And what about Sonny and Cher and Liz and Richard? I don’t think they’re ever apart, you know.”John Winston LennonHoward Smith with John Lenon and Yoko Ono Credit: thesmithtapes.com He was born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool during a German air raid in World War II. Lennon was a choir boy and a boy scout while growing up. He got his first instrument from a bus driver: a harmonica. In the summer of 1956 he crossed paths with Paul McCartney. Lennon reportedly met Yoko in 1966 at one of her art gallery shows in London. John and Yoko recorded their first album, Two Virgins, in 1968–two years before the Beatles broke up. The couple married on March 20, 1969 in Gibraltar. During their honeymoon, they held their first “Bed-in for Peace” at the Amsterdam Hilton. Lennon fought the U.S. government to avoid deportation in the early 1970s. Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman outside his New York City apartment on December 8, 1980. He was 40 years old. Remarkably Lennon had signed an autograph for Chapman earlier that same day. CREDITS Executive Producer David Gerlach Animator  Patrick Smith Audio Producer Amy Drozdowska MUSIC “Love” Written by John Lennon Performed by Priscilla Ahn Courtesy of In a Tree, Inc. By arrangement with Downtown Music Publishing “Love” Written &amp; Performed by John Lennon Courtesy of Capitol Music Group under license from Universal Music Enterprises By arrangement with Downtown Music Publishing “Oh, Yoko” Written &amp; Performed by John Lennon Courtesy of Capitol Music Group under license from Universal Music Enterprises By arrangement with Downtown Music Publishing “Love” Written by John Lennon Performed by Beck Courtesy of Fonograf Records By arrangement with Downtown Music Publishing PHOTOS The Smith Tapes National Archives of the Netherlands  Blank on Blank

<h4>Interviews by Howard Smith</h4>For this episode, we used two of the five interviews Smith did with John Lennon and Yoko Ono between 1969-71. One took place at John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s apartment in the West Village in New York City. The other interview was done over the phone while the couple was in Montreal during their famous Bed-In.We discovered these interviews in the <a href="http://thesmithtapes.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Smith Tapes archive</a>.<a href="#read-more" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read More</a><h3>The Animated Transcript</h3>Howard Smith was an Oscar winning film director, broadcaster and journalist for The Village Voice. <a href="http://TheSmithTapes.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">TheSmithTapes.com</a>People seem to be having a lot of trouble getting along with each other, I mean couples. Both of you seem very, very close.  What’s your secret?I can’t give you the formula for meeting the person that you’re going to love,  but it’s around, you know.  And it happens.  I mean it happened to me at 29 and Yoko Ono at 32.Yoko: Whatever.And it’s a long wait, you know, I didn’t think it was…  I thought it was an abstract thing, you know, when I was singing about all you need is love.  I was talking about something I hadn’t experienced.  I had experienced, you know, love for people in gusts, and love for things and trees and things like that, but I hadn’t experienced what I was singing about. It’s like anything, you sing about it first or write about it first, and find out what you were talking about after.Yoko: Well, I never thought that it would happen in this late stage of my life.  I mean, I just sort of, I was starting to give up hope, you know, that kind of thing, you know.  Becoming very cynical and all that.  But it happened and it’s very, very, very good.It’s no good having, being with people you can dominate all the time.  Or being with someone who can dominate you all the time.  Because either one is boring.  But if you’re with somebody who’s got a ticking mind, which was the best part about being with the Beatles when they were ticking, is they were ticking, you know?  But it began to slow down.But with Yoko Ono, it’s like living with 4 or 5 people…. [laughs] It’s far out.Yoko: Well we do say, four of us are getting along very well these days aren’t we? Or something like that.That’ll do. they’ll have us put away.Marriage thing itself, as an official ceremony seems to have somewhat gone out of style. How come you decided to go through with a regular marriage?Because we turned out to be romantics.  I mean we went through the whole intellectual bit about marriage, you know, where it’s a bit of paper and some guy gives it to you.  And that’s all true.  But when he gave it to us, it was very emotional, you know, and it wasn’t even a, we couldn’t even get a nice vicar or a bishop, you know, to do it. It’s completely against what we thought, what I thought intellectually, I thought well it’s never again, forget about this one.  You know, what a joke, what a joke it all is.  And the next minute, I’m standing there and she’s crying and it’s like we’re soft kids, you know.  So we’re romantic, and it made a difference.Can there be such a thing as being too close? Can that actually… Because in your case it doesn’t seem that way.Like stifling each other then. You see we’re both mind people, you know. So to be apart, we don’t have to physically be apart.Yoko: Exactly. You have to say that.I just said it.Yoko: Oh, alright.I just said it. Ding dong, ding dong. Next round.Yoko: But the point is this is an interesting example….Well they’re all brought up to think that a couple, you mustn’t give a child too much love, a couple mustn’t be together too much, it’s good for the husband to be working in America while the wife’s in Brazil. You know, we don’t believe all that jazz. That’s just some social Christian jazz that someone must have laid on us a few generations ago. And you can’t give a child too much love and if you love somebody, you can’t be with them enough. There’s no such thing. We don’t want to be apart.I just like TV, you know. I think to me, it replaced the fireplace when I was a child. They took the fire away and they put a TV in instead and I got hooked on it.Yoko: The complexity of it is incredible, you know.  So you can see, observe TV on many levels actually, many different levels.I was a great one as a kid for standing and just looking out a window for hours and hours and hours. Now the TV does that for me, except for the view changes immensely. One minute it’s the saint, the next it’s a rocket, or Vietnam. It’s very surreal. I leave it in on whether I have the sound on or not.Yoko: You don’t have to go to India any more. You know, you don’t have to go anywhere, you can just be here.It’s like Paul Kraston said, all I ask in life is a water bed, a TV and a typewriter. Well, I’ll just have an ordinary bed, a TV and a guitar. Apart from Yoko Ono. <h4>Bonus Interview Outtakes</h4>All You Need Is Love“They were playing, All You Need is Love earlier on [the radio] and I was saying to Yoko, ‘I still believe all you need is love, you know.’ But I don’t believe that just saying it is going to do it, you know. I still believe in the fact that love is what we all need, what makes us all so desperate, [inaudible], or whatever the word, neurotic, etc, etc. But I still believe there’s many ways of getting to that situation, you know. There’s a lot of changes in society to come before we can ever get to a state of even realizing that love is what we need, you know. But I still believe in it, and there are some rude cracks about oh Beatles sang All You Need is Love, but it didn’t work for them, you know. But nothing will ever break the love we have for each other and I still believe all you need is love [crosstalk] I don’t have to live with three guys to prove that love is the basic necessity of all of us, you know.”Mind People“And because we are mind people, I thought it was because I was an only child, but what I had stepsisters, I lived alone. I always tripped out on my own or in books or something like that, you know. But she had sisters and brothers, but she was a different age group from them so she was pretty lonely. I guess it’s that, you know. We’re both conceptual people in a way, and it’s that. So we don’t have to be apart to get away from each other. And we really like being together all the time. And what about Sonny and Cher and Liz and Richard? I don’t think they’re ever apart, you know.”<h4>John Winston Lennon</h4>Howard Smith with John Lenon and Yoko Ono Credit: <a href="http://thesmithtapes.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">thesmithtapes.com</a> He was born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool during a German air raid in World War II. Lennon was <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/12486/11-things-you-may-not-know-about-john-lennon" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a choir boy and a boy scout</a> while growing up. He got his first instrument from a bus driver: <a href="http://ultimateclassicrock.com/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-john-lennon/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a harmonica</a>. In the summer of 1956 <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/john-lennon/biography" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">he crossed paths with Paul McCartney</a>. Lennon reportedly met Yoko in 1966 at one of her art gallery shows in London. John and Yoko recorded their first album, Two Virgins, in 1968–two years before the Beatles broke up. The couple married on March 20, 1969 in Gibraltar. During their honeymoon, they held <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112082796" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">their first “Bed-in for Peace”</a> at the Amsterdam Hilton. Lennon <a href="http://rockhall.com/inductees/john-lennon/bio/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">fought the U.S. government to avoid deportation</a> in the early 1970s. Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman outside his New York City apartment on December 8, 1980. He was 40 years old. Remarkably Lennon had signed an autograph for Chapman earlier that same day. <h3>CREDITS</h3> <h4>Executive Producer</h4> David Gerlach <h4>Animator </h4> Patrick Smith <h4>Audio Producer</h4> Amy Drozdowska <h4>MUSIC</h4> “Love” Written by John Lennon Performed by Priscilla Ahn Courtesy of In a Tree, Inc. By arrangement with Downtown Music Publishing “Love” Written &amp; Performed by John Lennon Courtesy of Capitol Music Group under license from Universal Music Enterprises By arrangement with Downtown Music Publishing “Oh, Yoko” Written &amp; Performed by John Lennon Courtesy of Capitol Music Group under license from Universal Music Enterprises By arrangement with Downtown Music Publishing “Love” Written by John Lennon Performed by Beck Courtesy of Fonograf Records By arrangement with Downtown Music Publishing <h4>PHOTOS</h4> The Smith Tapes National Archives of the Netherlands <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

John Lennon on Love

Tupac Shakur

Interview by Benjamin SvetkeyBenjamin interviewed Tupac in a restaurant in Hollywood in March 1994. He was writing a profile that ran in Entertainment Weekly. Read Benjamin’s book Leading Man.The Animated TranscriptBenjamin Svetkey is an author and former writer and editor at Entertainment Weekly.May I have the vegetable spring roll and dungeness crab cake.What do you think is going to happen in 15 years for you? 10 years. Where do you see yourself?Best case: in a cemetery. Not in a cemetery. Sprinkled in ashes, smoked up by my homies. Worst case… I mean that’s the worst case. That’s the worst case. That’s the worst case. Best case: multimillionaire. Owning all of this shit. You know what I’m saying? Because anywhere else, if I was white I would have been like John Wayne. You know what I’m saying? Somebody who pulled himself up from their bootstraps. From poverty. From welfare. Now I am kissing Janet Jackson. I’m doing movies. I feel like a tragic hero in a Shakespeare play, you know what i’m saying?I’m not really that educated. You know. And I’m not really a religious person. But I believe that God wants me to do something and it has to do with Thug Life. You know I want there to be a life for the street element. Instead of we always getting shut out. You know. Instead of defenseless, having power.Well my mother was a woman. A black woman. A single mother. Raising two kids on her own. So she was dark skinned. Had short hair. Got no love from nobody except for a group called the Black Panthers. So that’s why she was a Black Panther. Because I don’t consider myself to be straight, you know, militant. You know what i’m saying? I’m a thug. I’m a thug. And my thug comes from… my definition of thug comes from half of the street element. Straight street hustling. And half of the Panther element. Half of the independence movement. Saying we want self-determination. We want to do it by self-defense and by any means necessary. That came from my family and that’ s what thug life is. It’s a mixture.How do people treat you differently? The people that you grew up with. Now that you’re famous.They believe in the machine, not Tupac. They don’t even know me no more. They just know about the machine.You mean the press machine.Yeah.Is that painful for you?Uh-huh. Everybody wants to use me. Everybody. From this level to the street level. I mean I’m used on every level. I have no friends. I have no resting place. I never sleep. I can never close my eyes. It’s horrible. Can you imagine what it’s like for you to be who I am, who I was, and for them to say that I raped a woman? And for the whole world to actually be entertaining the thought that you raped a woman. That’s hell.You’re feeling ripped off by the press.I am being ripped off, because I’ve never lied to the press. Just as much truth I bring to my work, a journalist should bring that much truth to their work. Why do I have honor and you guys don’t have honor? I’m not a fucking journalist? I’m a thug.Do you think you’ll prevail in court?I have to see. I believe in God. Whatever supposed to happen supposed to happen. But I can not live in a jail cell. That’s why I don’t rob people and stick up people. But for you to put me there and I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t go that route. I would die in jail. And that’s what they want. They want me to go through that. Then come out. I’m already dead. No creativity. I’m finished.There’s a machine that I have nothing to do with. It’s called the ”Tupac Machine.“ And the media in this country has just fueled it and made me a monster that people just… They say I’m a criminal. They say I spit hateful, vicious, violent lyrics. You know I’m ready to be the bad guy. They gave me that job. I’m ready to have it.When Dan Quayle was suggesting that your album should be pulled off the racks and stuff like that, in a way that could have been the best publicity you could have gotten for the album.I don’t see that as being the “best publicity you could’ve gotten.” Who wants the Vice President of the country that you live in. The country that you are ready to defend to say that your music is not fit without him even having listened to your album. Without him having known you or to meet you. For him to just make that. To say it out loud over the air.So you were hurt by that?I was crushed. Crushed.Do you have some great respect for Dan Quayle?No, I just have respect for government. A little respect for government to say, you know, how could you do that? You know what I’m saying?Do you see yourself as a role model?No. I see myself as real. Like I mean if I was the President I would have a responsibility, because people put me there. Nobody put me here. They just buy my records. They wouldn’t buy my records if my records wasn’t good. I’m being who i am in the record.Is there anything that’s giving you comfort these days?Recently Madonna came to me. Madonna, um… I met Madonna. She is a supporter.What was that like? Tell me about that.She told me: “they treat you like the Antichrist and I’ve been through that before and I just want to be a friend.” CreditsExecutive ProducerDavid GerlachAnimatorPatrick SmithAudio ProducerJane MarieMeet our teamMusicTupac“I Get Around”“Shorty Want to Be A Thug”“Hail Mary”“Changes”“So Many Tears”PhotosAPBlank on Blank

<h4>Interview by Benjamin Svetkey</h4>Benjamin interviewed Tupac in a restaurant in Hollywood in March 1994. He was writing a profile that ran in <a href="http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,301704,00.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Entertainment Weekly</a>. Read Benjamin’s book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Man-Vintage-Contemporaries-Original/dp/0307949613/ref=la_B00CF7D5A8_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1385571937&amp;sr=1-1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Leading Man</a>.<h3>The Animated Transcript</h3>Benjamin Svetkey is an author and former writer and editor at Entertainment Weekly.May I have the vegetable spring roll and dungeness crab cake.What do you think is going to happen in 15 years for you? 10 years. Where do you see yourself?Best case: in a cemetery. Not in a cemetery. Sprinkled in ashes, smoked up by my homies. Worst case… I mean that’s the worst case. That’s the worst case. That’s the worst case. Best case: multimillionaire. Owning all of this shit. You know what I’m saying? Because anywhere else, if I was white I would have been like John Wayne. You know what I’m saying? Somebody who pulled himself up from their bootstraps. From poverty. From welfare. Now I am kissing Janet Jackson. I’m doing movies. I feel like a tragic hero in a Shakespeare play, you know what i’m saying?I’m not really that educated. You know. And I’m not really a religious person. But I believe that God wants me to do something and it has to do with Thug Life. You know I want there to be a life for the street element. Instead of we always getting shut out. You know. Instead of defenseless, having power.Well my mother was a woman. A black woman. A single mother. Raising two kids on her own. So she was dark skinned. Had short hair. Got no love from nobody except for a group called the Black Panthers. So that’s why she was a Black Panther. Because I don’t consider myself to be straight, you know, militant. You know what i’m saying? I’m a thug. I’m a thug. And my thug comes from… my definition of thug comes from half of the street element. Straight street hustling. And half of the Panther element. Half of the independence movement. Saying we want self-determination. We want to do it by self-defense and by any means necessary. That came from my family and that’ s what thug life is. It’s a mixture.How do people treat you differently? The people that you grew up with. Now that you’re famous.They believe in the machine, not Tupac. They don’t even know me no more. They just know about the machine.You mean the press machine.Yeah.Is that painful for you?Uh-huh. Everybody wants to use me. Everybody. From this level to the street level. I mean I’m used on every level. I have no friends. I have no resting place. I never sleep. I can never close my eyes. It’s horrible. Can you imagine what it’s like for you to be who I am, who I was, and for them to say that I raped a woman? And for the whole world to actually be entertaining the thought that you raped a woman. That’s hell.You’re feeling ripped off by the press.I am being ripped off, because I’ve never lied to the press. Just as much truth I bring to my work, a journalist should bring that much truth to their work. Why do I have honor and you guys don’t have honor? I’m not a fucking journalist? I’m a thug.Do you think you’ll prevail in court?I have to see. I believe in God. Whatever supposed to happen supposed to happen. But I can not live in a jail cell. That’s why I don’t rob people and stick up people. But for you to put me there and I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t go that route. I would die in jail. And that’s what they want. They want me to go through that. Then come out. I’m already dead. No creativity. I’m finished.There’s a machine that I have nothing to do with. It’s called the ”Tupac Machine.“ And the media in this country has just fueled it and made me a monster that people just… They say I’m a criminal. They say I spit hateful, vicious, violent lyrics. You know I’m ready to be the bad guy. They gave me that job. I’m ready to have it.When Dan Quayle was suggesting that your album should be pulled off the racks and stuff like that, in a way that could have been the best publicity you could have gotten for the album.I don’t see that as being the “best publicity you could’ve gotten.” Who wants the Vice President of the country that you live in. The country that you are ready to defend to say that your music is not fit without him even having listened to your album. Without him having known you or to meet you. For him to just make that. To say it out loud over the air.So you were hurt by that?I was crushed. Crushed.Do you have some great respect for Dan Quayle?No, I just have respect for government. A little respect for government to say, you know, how could you do that? You know what I’m saying?Do you see yourself as a role model?No. I see myself as real. Like I mean if I was the President I would have a responsibility, because people put me there. Nobody put me here. They just buy my records. They wouldn’t buy my records if my records wasn’t good. I’m being who i am in the record.Is there anything that’s giving you comfort these days?Recently Madonna came to me. Madonna, um… I met Madonna. She is a supporter.What was that like? Tell me about that.She told me: “they treat you like the Antichrist and I’ve been through that before and I just want to be a friend.” <h3>Credits</h3><h4>Executive Producer</h4>David Gerlach<h4>Animator</h4>Patrick Smith<h4>Audio Producer</h4>Jane Marie<a href="/about-us/#team" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Meet our team</a><h4>Music</h4>Tupac“I Get Around”“Shorty Want to Be A Thug”“Hail Mary”“Changes”“So Many Tears”<h4>Photos</h4>AP<a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Tupac Shakur on Life and Death

Interview by Studs TerkelWe discovered two interviews with Buckminster Fuller that Studs Terkel recorded in 1965 and 1970. They’re part of the Studs Terkel Radio Archive.Read MoreThe Animated TranscriptStuds Terkel was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who interviewed thousands of everyday Americans and international notables during a 45-year stint at WFMT-FM in Chicago.One of the most original spirits of our time. Buckminister Fuller sings of man’s potency. Everyone aware of his work agrees that Buckminster Fuller’s one of the original minds of our time.I was born in the era of the specialist. I set about to be purposely comprehensive, just the opposite. And I made up my mind that you don’t just find out something to entertain yourself, you must find out things in order to be able to turn everything, not just in a philosophical statement, but into actually tools. I must reorganize the environment of man by which then greater numbers of men can prosper. That’s been my main undertaking.We can turn this tape, there’s no problem. There’s so many questions to ask you, Mr. Fuller.You can call me Bucky.Bucky …I was married in World War 1. Our first child was born and she caught this spinal meningitis and infantile paralysis and it was an awful struggle. This child lived to just before her fourth birthday and she died in November 1922 and so for 5 years I was feeling really horribly sad about this kid. I felt that if the kind of technology that went into making a battleship and an airplane and guns had gone into… I was sure this child had caught these things out of the environment and I was sure that there was something wrong about our environment. In the Navy I had learned how to navigate, I’ve used mathematics very powerfully. I learned how to calculate. I was sure things were just not being done in logical ways.By 1927 our second child was born and I had suddenly a new child after 5 years of going without the girl we loved so much. I said I got a chance now to look out for this new life and I’m going to have to really re-think everything I have. I had absolutely no money and suddenly this new child and everybody tells you you got to earn a living. I said I think this is absolutely a blinding thing. I’m either going to say you go out to make money or you’re going to make sense.I recall in Chicago wheeling my little child in her baby carriage in Lincoln Park. I was amazed, because a little biplane went over Lincoln Park. Air planes were not very common in those days. I said, “Isn’t it amazing. Here’s my child looking up at that airplane and that airplane in the sky is as natural to her as a bird.” Because when I was born, the airplane did not exist. It was really the start of the beginning of impossible things happening.I began to feel for what really needs to be done in a very biggest way. Well I found that I couldn’t improve an airplane very much, I’m not going to improve electronics very much. There were a great many people preoccupied with that, but where man was living, he was really very ignorant. It’s where people live that needs attention and I saw that the way in which we built was very, very ignorant. When you build a boat it’s got to float. So you learn to do a whole lot with little. It’s got to be strong enough not to sink. It’s got to to carry a cargo. The world of building on the land was very different from the sea and the sky. I said, “why was it different?” Because man used to build fortresses and the heavier and higher and thicker the walls the more secure it felt.Some people think of a house as a fortress rather than a place to live. Yes. So I’m going to see what happens If I will take the kind of technology that’s going with the sea and the sky and apply it over to the land.So many things to ask you, Bucky, that you have foreseen. Thinking of your geodesic dome, do you see actually roofed cities ever?We’re continually doing more with less, and my geodesic domes do a very great deal with very little but I think they’re only symptomatic, Studs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we find ways to control that environment over the city without even seeing the roof there, there would be an electrical field control so forth. We could make the water go and dump over here, and pipe it there, and so forth, whatever it may be.It seems that Buckminster Fuller speaks outrageously and, yet, you’ve come up with so many outrageous explanations that turn out to be right, and accurate, and true, and practical …Time and again, I am asked, “who else do you know who thinks the way you do, or does what you do?” I find it very strange to have to answer, “I don’t know anybody else.” It’s not because I think of myself as unique, but simply because I did choose a very different grand strategy, and not because I think that I have capabilities that other human beings don’t have.My daughter, who I was wheeling the baby carriage, who had an airplane as normal in her sky, now has her daughter and that daughter was born in New York. They were right in the flight path for flights out of LaGuardia and Idlewild. This little child then, in her crib, would hear this roar of those airplanes, and she saw many thousands of airplanes before she ever saw a bird. I saw the children’s books that were sent to her, which were the traditional, what a children’s book would be. They’re the same children’s books that were sent to me when I was a child. They were farm yard. There was a barn and all the nice natural things. The child would see the horse, and the pig, and the cow, and the goat, sheep, rooster. My granddaughter, in New York City, looked out the window and saw the airplanes, and she saw the automobiles going by by the minute, but when they gave her this farm book, she didn’t had never seen a sheep or a cow. It was as if you gave her these imaginary pictures of dragons and things. She was very accommodating. She laughed about it, it was very amusing. They weren’t natural to her. The Full Interviews with Buckminster FullerMay 13, 1970January 20, 1965Bucky Powered The Fuller Dome Credit: Ben Gelman/The Southern Illinoisan In April 1960, Bucky assembled the dome home in Carbondale [Illinois] and lived in it with his wife Anne until 1971. At the time Bucky was a professor in the Design Department at nearby Southern Illinois University. In the years that followed, Bucky’s home fell into disrepair. But now it’s been preserved. Learn more about the effort to save Bucky’s home. Go inside with Bucky and his wife. Anne and Buckminster Fuller in the living room. Credit: Ben Gelman/The Southern Illinoisan The Dymaxion American Dream House Dymaxion in Wichita, Kansas circa 1960 Interior of the DymaxionCredit: The Henry Ford  Credits Executive Producer David Gerlach Director Patrick Smith Animator Jennifer Yoo Series Producer Amy Drozdowska Music Johnny Ripper “Opening Credits” Oskar Schuster “Sneeuwland” Photos Thad Heckman The National Park Service PBF Board NFP The Henry Ford Ian Mcwilliams Tomm Pouce  Blank on Blank

<h4>Interview by Studs Terkel</h4>We discovered two interviews with Buckminster Fuller that Studs Terkel recorded in 1965 and 1970. They’re part of the <a href="http://studsterkel.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Studs Terkel Radio Archive</a>.<a href="#read-more" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read More</a><h3>The Animated Transcript</h3>Studs Terkel was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who interviewed thousands of everyday Americans and international notables during a 45-year stint at WFMT-FM in Chicago.One of the most original spirits of our time. Buckminister Fuller sings of man’s potency. Everyone aware of his work agrees that Buckminster Fuller’s one of the original minds of our time.I was born in the era of the specialist. I set about to be purposely comprehensive, just the opposite. And I made up my mind that you don’t just find out something to entertain yourself, you must find out things in order to be able to turn everything, not just in a philosophical statement, but into actually tools. I must reorganize the environment of man by which then greater numbers of men can prosper. That’s been my main undertaking.We can turn this tape, there’s no problem. There’s so many questions to ask you, Mr. Fuller.You can call me Bucky.Bucky …I was married in World War 1. Our first child was born and she caught this spinal meningitis and infantile paralysis and it was an awful struggle. This child lived to just before her fourth birthday and she died in November 1922 and so for 5 years I was feeling really horribly sad about this kid. I felt that if the kind of technology that went into making a battleship and an airplane and guns had gone into… I was sure this child had caught these things out of the environment and I was sure that there was something wrong about our environment. In the Navy I had learned how to navigate, I’ve used mathematics very powerfully. I learned how to calculate. I was sure things were just not being done in logical ways.By 1927 our second child was born and I had suddenly a new child after 5 years of going without the girl we loved so much. I said I got a chance now to look out for this new life and I’m going to have to really re-think everything I have. I had absolutely no money and suddenly this new child and everybody tells you you got to earn a living. I said I think this is absolutely a blinding thing. I’m either going to say you go out to make money or you’re going to make sense.I recall in Chicago wheeling my little child in her baby carriage in Lincoln Park. I was amazed, because a little biplane went over Lincoln Park. Air planes were not very common in those days. I said, “Isn’t it amazing. Here’s my child looking up at that airplane and that airplane in the sky is as natural to her as a bird.” Because when I was born, the airplane did not exist. It was really the start of the beginning of impossible things happening.I began to feel for what really needs to be done in a very biggest way. Well I found that I couldn’t improve an airplane very much, I’m not going to improve electronics very much. There were a great many people preoccupied with that, but where man was living, he was really very ignorant. It’s where people live that needs attention and I saw that the way in which we built was very, very ignorant. When you build a boat it’s got to float. So you learn to do a whole lot with little. It’s got to be strong enough not to sink. It’s got to to carry a cargo. The world of building on the land was very different from the sea and the sky. I said, “why was it different?” Because man used to build fortresses and the heavier and higher and thicker the walls the more secure it felt.Some people think of a house as a fortress rather than a place to live. Yes. So I’m going to see what happens If I will take the kind of technology that’s going with the sea and the sky and apply it over to the land.So many things to ask you, Bucky, that you have foreseen. Thinking of your geodesic dome, do you see actually roofed cities ever?We’re continually doing more with less, and my geodesic domes do a very great deal with very little but I think they’re only symptomatic, Studs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we find ways to control that environment over the city without even seeing the roof there, there would be an electrical field control so forth. We could make the water go and dump over here, and pipe it there, and so forth, whatever it may be.It seems that Buckminster Fuller speaks outrageously and, yet, you’ve come up with so many outrageous explanations that turn out to be right, and accurate, and true, and practical …Time and again, I am asked, “who else do you know who thinks the way you do, or does what you do?” I find it very strange to have to answer, “I don’t know anybody else.” It’s not because I think of myself as unique, but simply because I did choose a very different grand strategy, and not because I think that I have capabilities that other human beings don’t have.My daughter, who I was wheeling the baby carriage, who had an airplane as normal in her sky, now has her daughter and that daughter was born in New York. They were right in the flight path for flights out of LaGuardia and Idlewild. This little child then, in her crib, would hear this roar of those airplanes, and she saw many thousands of airplanes before she ever saw a bird. I saw the children’s books that were sent to her, which were the traditional, what a children’s book would be. They’re the same children’s books that were sent to me when I was a child. They were farm yard. There was a barn and all the nice natural things. The child would see the horse, and the pig, and the cow, and the goat, sheep, rooster. My granddaughter, in New York City, looked out the window and saw the airplanes, and she saw the automobiles going by by the minute, but when they gave her this farm book, she didn’t had never seen a sheep or a cow. It was as if you gave her these imaginary pictures of dragons and things. She was very accommodating. She laughed about it, it was very amusing. They weren’t natural to her. <h4>The Full Interviews with Buckminster Fuller</h4><a href="https://www.popuparchive.com/collections/938/items/12668" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">May 13, 1970</a><a href="https://www.popuparchive.com/collections/938/items/12668" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">January 20, 1965</a><h4>Bucky Powered</h4><h4> The Fuller Dome</h4> Credit: Ben Gelman/The Southern Illinoisan In April 1960, Bucky assembled the dome home in Carbondale [Illinois] and lived in it with his wife Anne until 1971. At the time Bucky was a professor in the Design Department at nearby Southern Illinois University. In the years that followed, Bucky’s home fell into disrepair. But now it’s been preserved. <a href="http://fullerdomehome.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Learn more about the effort to save Bucky’s home</a>. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wltL_qdj3-s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Go inside with Bucky and his wife</a>. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wltL_qdj3-s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a>Anne and Buckminster Fuller in the living room. Credit: Ben Gelman/The Southern Illinoisan <h4>The Dymaxion American Dream House</h4> Dymaxion in Wichita, Kansas circa 1960 Interior of the Dymaxion Credit: The Henry Ford <h3>Credits</h3> <h4>Executive Producer</h4> David Gerlach <h4>Director</h4> Patrick Smith <h4>Animator</h4> Jennifer Yoo <h4>Series Producer</h4> Amy Drozdowska <h4>Music</h4> Johnny Ripper “Opening Credits” Oskar Schuster “Sneeuwland” <h4>Photos</h4> Thad Heckman The National Park Service PBF Board NFP The Henry Ford Ian Mcwilliams Tomm Pouce <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Buckminster Fuller on The Geodesic Life

Interview by Keith AlthamKeith Altham sat down with Jimi Hendrix in London on September 11, 1970. This would turn out to be Hendrix’s final interview.We discovered this tape in the archives of Rocksbackpages.comRead MoreThe Animated TranscriptKeith Altham is a rock music journalist, broadcaster and press agent who has interviewed the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Marvin Gaye and more.Do you feel personally that you’ve got enough money now to live comfortably?Ah, I don’t think so. Not the way I’d like to live. Because like I want to get up in the morning and just roll over in my bed into an indoor swimming pool. And then swim to the breakfast table, you know, come up for air and get maybe a drink of orange juice or something like that. Then just fold up on from the chair into the swimming pool and swim into the bathroom and, you know, go and shave or whatever…You don’t want to live just comfortably, you want to live luxuriously?No, is that luxurious? I was thinking about a tent maybe overhanging a mountain stream. [laughs]It does appear, doesn’t it, the days of the baubles and bangles and the freaky hairstyle have all disappeared.Yeah, but see everybody goes through those stages… The first time around when you wear all these different things, you know. I just did that because I felt like I was being too loud or something. because my nature just changes, you know. Well I don’t want it to be only hyped up on all the visual thing, you know. I wanted people to like listen, too. I don’t know if they were or not though. It started to bring me down a little bit so I started cutting my hair. And started… rings disappearing one by one. [laughs]One time I said: maybe I should burn a guitar tonight. You know [laughs] smash a guitar or something like that. And they said: yeah, yeah! I said: you really think I should? They said: yeah, that’d be cool. I said: well, ok. So like I just worked up enough anger where I could do it, you know. But like I didn’t know it was anger until they told me that it was, like with destruction and all that. But I believe everybody should have like a room where they can get rid of all their releases, where they can do their releases at. So my room is a stage. [laughs]I mean, it has been said of you that you invented psychedelic music.[chuckles] A mad scientist approach. The way I write things, I just write them with a clash between reality and fantasy mostly. You have to use fantasy to show different sides of reality; it’s how it can bend. As a word reality is nothing, but each individual’s own way of thinking. Then the establishment grabs a big piece of that.You know all I write is what I feel that’s all. I don’t really round it off too good. I just keep it naked almost, you know. And like when we go to play, you know, you’re flipping around and flashing around and everything. They’re not going to see nothing but what their eyes see, you know. Forget about their ears. So like well I was trying to do too many things at the same time, which is my nature, you know. I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player or only as a songwriter. Or only as a music tap dancer. Something like this. [chuckles]I think certain people think of your music as essentially as “angry music.” As raging against perhaps the establishment principles.Oh it’s not raging against it. If it was up to me there’d be no such thing as the establishment, you know. It’s the blues that’s all I’m singing about. Today’s blues.Do you have any politics in fact yourself?Not really. I was getting ready to get into all that, but like everybody goes through that stage, too. I just… it all comes out in the music most of the time. We have this one song called “Straight Ahead.” And it just says, like, power to the people, freedom to the soul. Pass it on to the young and old. We don’t give a damn if your hair is short or long. Communication is coming on strong. And all this kind of stuff, you know.What are the things that you would like to see change?Oh, I don’t know. More color in the streets probably. I mean [chuckles] I really don’t know. If there’s a new idea, a new invention, or a new gas, or a new whatever you know, It should be brought at least into the open instead of carrying these same old burdens around with you. You have to be a freak in order to be different. And freaks they are very prejudiced. you have to have your hair long and talk in a certain way in order to be with them.In order to be the other way you have to have your hair short and wear ties. So we’re trying to make a third world happen, you know what I mean? There are too many heavy songs out nowadays. music has been getting too heavy, almost to the state of unbearable. I have this one little saying: when things get too heavy just call me helium–the lightest known gas to man. [laughs]You talk quite a bit about audio visual importance, too. The importance of a having a film with your music. Now are you thinking in terms of the days when we can fit a cassette into the side of our television and play music and a film together or, I mean…Yeah, a lot of people are making more money than they ever had nowadays. So when they get their flat they can…. they always find themselves with an extra room. So like this extra room could be a whole audio-visual environment. They could go in there, you know, just lay back, and the whole thing blossoms out with this color and sound type of scene. You can go in here and jingle out your nerves or something, you know. Hendrix’s Final InterviewKeith Altham with Jimi Hendirx Credit: Keith AlthamKeith Altham interviewed Hendrix a total of eight times over the years. According to Altham, Hendrix was “rambling” and showing signs of ill health during this their final interview together. Hendrix drank Mateus Rosé during the interview. More from Altham: “He wasn’t in the best physical shape five days before his death. He had been going through a difficult period with drugs and stress and tension and the (new group) Band of Gypsys, which he had brought together, hadn’t quite come off as he’d hoped it would.” Hear the full interview at Rock’s Backpages   What’s In A Name? Hendrix’s birth name was Johnny Allen Hendrix. He was born November 27, 1942 in Seattle while his father, Al, was away fighting in World War II. When Al returned home three years later, the couple changed Johnny’s name to James Marshall Hendrix. The reason for the name change is unknown, but it is speculated that Lucille, Hendrix’s mother, had an affair with a man named John Williams and when Al found out, he had the boy’s name changed. The boy may not have noticed, since everyone called him ‘Buster’ anyway.Jimi Hendrix as a baby. He was born in Seattle in 1942. Credit: Experience Music ProjectFinding His Voice in the Army In 1961, Hendrix enlisted in the United States Army and earned the right to wear the “Screaming Eagles” patch for the paratroop division. While stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Jimmy formed The King Casuals.Jimi playing guitar in the Army   Hendrix’s mugshot from his arrest in Toronto for drug possession in 1969Experience Music Project Paul Allen, the billionaire who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, is a massive Jimi Hendrix fan. Such a big fan, in fact, that he wanted to build a museum dedicated to the musician in their mutual hometown of Seattle. That idea latter blossomed into the Experience Music Project, a museum dedicated to pop culture that is housed in a controversial (some folks think it’s ugly) Frank Gehry-designed building that opened in 2000. Allen also has a massive collection of Hendrix memorabilia. It’s rumored that he shelled out $2 million the 1968 Stratocaster that Hendrix played at Woodstock. Here are some gems from the museum:“Voodoo Chile” notesHendrix’s notes  Credits Executive Producer David Gerlach Animator Patrick Smith Audio Producer Amy Drozdowska Music Jimi Hendrix “Trash Man” “Hush Now” “Message of Love” “Straight Ahead” “Come on (Let The Good Times Roll)” Photos Keith Altham AP  Blank on Blank

<h4>Interview by Keith Altham</h4>Keith Altham sat down with Jimi Hendrix in London on September 11, 1970. This would turn out to be Hendrix’s final interview.We discovered this tape in the archives of <a href="http://www.rocksbackpages.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rocksbackpages.com</a><a href="#read-more" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read More</a><h3>The Animated Transcript</h3>Keith Altham is a rock music journalist, broadcaster and press agent who has interviewed the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Marvin Gaye and more.Do you feel personally that you’ve got enough money now to live comfortably?Ah, I don’t think so. Not the way I’d like to live. Because like I want to get up in the morning and just roll over in my bed into an indoor swimming pool. And then swim to the breakfast table, you know, come up for air and get maybe a drink of orange juice or something like that. Then just fold up on from the chair into the swimming pool and swim into the bathroom and, you know, go and shave or whatever…You don’t want to live just comfortably, you want to live luxuriously?No, is that luxurious? I was thinking about a tent maybe overhanging a mountain stream. [laughs]It does appear, doesn’t it, the days of the baubles and bangles and the freaky hairstyle have all disappeared.Yeah, but see everybody goes through those stages… The first time around when you wear all these different things, you know. I just did that because I felt like I was being too loud or something. because my nature just changes, you know. Well I don’t want it to be only hyped up on all the visual thing, you know. I wanted people to like listen, too. I don’t know if they were or not though. It started to bring me down a little bit so I started cutting my hair. And started… rings disappearing one by one. [laughs]One time I said: maybe I should burn a guitar tonight. You know [laughs] smash a guitar or something like that. And they said: yeah, yeah! I said: you really think I should? They said: yeah, that’d be cool. I said: well, ok. So like I just worked up enough anger where I could do it, you know. But like I didn’t know it was anger until they told me that it was, like with destruction and all that. But I believe everybody should have like a room where they can get rid of all their releases, where they can do their releases at. So my room is a stage. [laughs]I mean, it has been said of you that you invented psychedelic music.[chuckles] A mad scientist approach. The way I write things, I just write them with a clash between reality and fantasy mostly. You have to use fantasy to show different sides of reality; it’s how it can bend. As a word reality is nothing, but each individual’s own way of thinking. Then the establishment grabs a big piece of that.You know all I write is what I feel that’s all. I don’t really round it off too good. I just keep it naked almost, you know. And like when we go to play, you know, you’re flipping around and flashing around and everything. They’re not going to see nothing but what their eyes see, you know. Forget about their ears. So like well I was trying to do too many things at the same time, which is my nature, you know. I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player or only as a songwriter. Or only as a music tap dancer. Something like this. [chuckles]I think certain people think of your music as essentially as “angry music.” As raging against perhaps the establishment principles.Oh it’s not raging against it. If it was up to me there’d be no such thing as the establishment, you know. It’s the blues that’s all I’m singing about. Today’s blues.Do you have any politics in fact yourself?Not really. I was getting ready to get into all that, but like everybody goes through that stage, too. I just… it all comes out in the music most of the time. We have this one song called “Straight Ahead.” And it just says, like, power to the people, freedom to the soul. Pass it on to the young and old. We don’t give a damn if your hair is short or long. Communication is coming on strong. And all this kind of stuff, you know.What are the things that you would like to see change?Oh, I don’t know. More color in the streets probably. I mean [chuckles] I really don’t know. If there’s a new idea, a new invention, or a new gas, or a new whatever you know, It should be brought at least into the open instead of carrying these same old burdens around with you. You have to be a freak in order to be different. And freaks they are very prejudiced. you have to have your hair long and talk in a certain way in order to be with them.In order to be the other way you have to have your hair short and wear ties. So we’re trying to make a third world happen, you know what I mean? There are too many heavy songs out nowadays. music has been getting too heavy, almost to the state of unbearable. I have this one little saying: when things get too heavy just call me helium–the lightest known gas to man. [laughs]You talk quite a bit about audio visual importance, too. The importance of a having a film with your music. Now are you thinking in terms of the days when we can fit a cassette into the side of our television and play music and a film together or, I mean…Yeah, a lot of people are making more money than they ever had nowadays. So when they get their flat they can…. they always find themselves with an extra room. So like this extra room could be a whole audio-visual environment. They could go in there, you know, just lay back, and the whole thing blossoms out with this color and sound type of scene. You can go in here and jingle out your nerves or something, you know. <h4>Hendrix’s Final Interview</h4>Keith Altham with Jimi Hendirx Credit: Keith Altham Keith Altham interviewed Hendrix a total of eight times over the years. According to Altham, Hendrix was “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/jimi-hendrixs-final-interview-to-be-broadcast-on-radio-in-its-entirety-8822688.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">rambling</a>” and showing signs of ill health during this their final interview together. Hendrix drank Mateus Rosé during the interview. <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/jimi-hendrixs-final-interview-to-be-broadcast-on-radio-in-its-entirety-8822688.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">More from Altham</a>: “He wasn’t in the best physical shape five days before his death. He had been going through a difficult period with drugs and stress and tension and the (new group) Band of Gypsys, which he had brought together, hadn’t quite come off as he’d hoped it would.” <a href="http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/jimi-hendrix-1970" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hear the full interview at Rock’s Backpages </a> <h4></h4> <h4>What’s In A Name?</h4> Hendrix’s birth name was Johnny Allen Hendrix. He was born November 27, 1942 in Seattle while his father, Al, was away fighting in World War II. When Al returned home three years later, the couple changed Johnny’s name to James Marshall Hendrix. The reason for the name change is unknown, but it is speculated that Lucille, Hendrix’s mother, had an affair with a man named John Williams and when Al found out, he had the boy’s name changed. The boy may not have noticed, since everyone called him ‘Buster’ anyway.Jimi Hendrix as a baby. He was born in Seattle in 1942. Credit: Experience Music Project <h4>Finding His Voice in the Army</h4> In 1961, Hendrix enlisted in the United States Army and earned the right to wear the “Screaming Eagles” patch for the paratroop division. While stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Jimmy formed The King Casuals.Jimi playing guitar in the Army  Hendrix’s mugshot from his arrest in Toronto for drug possession in 1969 <h4>Experience Music Project</h4> Paul Allen, the billionaire who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, is a massive Jimi Hendrix fan. Such a big fan, in fact, that he wanted to build a museum dedicated to the musician in their mutual hometown of Seattle. That idea latter blossomed into the Experience Music Project, a museum dedicated to pop culture that is housed in a controversial (some folks think it’s ugly) Frank Gehry-designed building that opened in 2000. Allen also has a massive collection of Hendrix memorabilia. It’s rumored that he shelled out $2 million the 1968 Stratocaster that Hendrix played at Woodstock. Here are some gems from the museum:“Voodoo Chile” notes Hendrix’s notes <h3>Credits</h3> <h4>Executive Producer</h4> David Gerlach <h4>Animator</h4> Patrick Smith <h4>Audio Producer</h4> Amy Drozdowska <h4>Music</h4> Jimi Hendrix “Trash Man” “Hush Now” “Message of Love” “Straight Ahead” “Come on (Let The Good Times Roll)” <h4>Photos</h4> Keith Altham AP <a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Jimi Hendrix on The Experience

Interview by Rocci FischFisch interviewed the Beastie Boys — Mike “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, and Adam “MCA” Yauch — on May 31, 1985 in a hotel room Washington, D.C. It was recorded on cassette tape and portions originally aired on ABC News Radio.The Animated TranscriptRocci Fisch is now a deputy editor at the WashingtonPost.com.Ad-Rock: “I wouldn’t be surprised if when we come back from this tour and we start recording our album we have like a song that’s just like a classic hit like The Beatles’ ‘Baby You Can Drive my Car.'”Mike D: We probably will.Ad-Rock: Probably. I don’t have a car, but it will probably be something like that.MCA: But if you had one, then somebody could drive it. She could drive it.Mike D: Your baby could drive it. I’m sure it wouldn’t be any problem. I could arrange it.MCA: No problem.Mike D: No problem, Jamaica.MCA: We got in last night. We took the bus right after the show.Rocci Fisch: Where were you last night?MCA: We nearly got arrested.Mike D: Yeah. Virginia.MCA: Listen to this: we’re on the stage playing and we happen to say—can I curse on this or is this like uh—Rocci Fisch: I’m going to edit it.MCA: So I said “mother fucker” a couple of times or he said “mother fucker” or something like that. And, ah, some cops went up to Madonna’s manager and said that the second we came off the stage that they were going to arrest us and put us in jail and it was that simple and there were no two ways about it.Mike D: Like it was really scary ’cause as soon as we came off the stage they grabbed us and said, “Yo, boys. You’re going to prison.”Ad-Rock: I tried to run away because I didn’t know what was going on and this guy, this cop, like he didn’t hit me that hard, but he like you know hit me in the back of the legs with his club. I mean if we had known in the first place we wouldn’t have done it. But this guy had to go and hit us.MCA: I never knew that it was illegal to use profanity before this.Mike D: You know, there’s a way we talk and it includes profanity. We never figured we’d be arrested for it.Rocci Fisch: What’s it like opening for Madonna?Mike D: Usually there’s about basically almost a riot breaking out after every show because either the crowd wants to kill us or we have to run from the girls because they mob us.Ad-Rock: Every single night is definitely really hard work. Harder work than I ever really imagined. We go out there and we just have to win this audience over. They don’t want to see rap music. They don’t want to see the Beastie Boys. They don’t care what we’re doing. They want one thing and one thing only: that’s to see Madonna come on stage. But then we go out there, we work hard, we win them over, and then they get real happy. It’s really kind of cool.Rocci Fisch: Are you guys the only white rappers?MCA: It looks that way right now and I’m real surprised at it. Although kids always come up to me after the show and tell me they rap also. But we’re the only ones on vinyl, I imagine.Rocci Fisch: Someone said today that maybe you’re “rappers for the suburbs.” How do you feel about somebody describing you that way?Ad-Rock: Well whoever said that is an ignorant moron, because we’re certainly not rap music for the suburbs. Because if he ever listened to our records and knows anything about rap music. That we are soul, hardcore, b-boy music, and we do not play sucker music. Like a Chaka Kahn “I Feel for You” is suburb rap music. They think that anything with someone, you know, saying something in a rhyme is rap music.Ad-Rock: But that’s certainly not us at all.Mike D: I’d just like to say, like, these people just don’t realize that when we’re in New York City we’ll go to the worst neighborhood in Queens, play to an entirely black audience with someone like Kurtis Blow for a thousand people. This is not a suburban audience. This is like the hardest core urban audience. The thing that really bothers like white critics won’t like us, because they have this whole preconceived notion of what rap music is: you gotta go out there and be angry and sing about the ghetto. And that’s the only reason for rap music to exist. You know?Rocci Fisch: How did you get your group name, Beastie Boys?MCA: It’s from the good old days. We were a hardcore band.Mike D: Yeah, we were like—I was like what, 14?MCA: Yeah.Mike D: I was like, 14, 15? That’s when we made our first record. We were all going to high school at the time and that’s how we met.MCA: At time it was the stupidest name that I could possibly think of. And if you could think of a stupider name I’d probably be pretty impressed now. So lay it on me: can you think of a stupider name than the Beastie Boys?Rocci Fisch: Not reallyMCA: So then that answers your question right there.Rocci Fisch: What’s def?MCA: What do you mean?Rocci Fisch: What do you mean def?MCA: Def is uh, you know, we are def. I’d say that’s a good answer. We are def.Ad-Rock: Def in New York is what—is something that’s really good, like us. You know what I mean? Def, like def jam.Mike D: Kind of like if you put on a James Brown record and you just know that’s def.MCA: Jam is something that you put on toast.Ad-Rock: We’re very into breakfast.Mike D: Yeah, we’re into breakfast a lot.MCA: It’s like, we like hot butter on our breakfast toast and we also like def jam on it. CreditsExecutive ProducerDavid GerlachAnimatorPatrick SmithAudio ProducerAmy DrozdowskaMusicBeastie Boys“License to Ill”PhotosSunny BakBlank on Blank

Interview by <a href="http://www.roccifisch.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rocci Fisch</a>Fisch interviewed the Beastie Boys — Mike “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, and Adam “MCA” Yauch — on May 31, 1985 in a hotel room Washington, D.C. It was recorded on cassette tape and portions originally aired on ABC News Radio.<h3>The Animated Transcript</h3>Rocci Fisch is now a deputy editor at the <a href="http://WashingtonPost.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">WashingtonPost.com</a>.Ad-Rock: “I wouldn’t be surprised if when we come back from this tour and we start recording our album we have like a song that’s just like a classic hit like The Beatles’ ‘Baby You Can Drive my Car.'”Mike D: We probably will.Ad-Rock: Probably. I don’t have a car, but it will probably be something like that.MCA: But if you had one, then somebody could drive it. She could drive it.Mike D: Your baby could drive it. I’m sure it wouldn’t be any problem. I could arrange it.MCA: No problem.Mike D: No problem, Jamaica.MCA: We got in last night. We took the bus right after the show.Rocci Fisch: Where were you last night?MCA: We nearly got arrested.Mike D: Yeah. Virginia.MCA: Listen to this: we’re on the stage playing and we happen to say—can I curse on this or is this like uh—Rocci Fisch: I’m going to edit it.MCA: So I said “mother fucker” a couple of times or he said “mother fucker” or something like that. And, ah, some cops went up to Madonna’s manager and said that the second we came off the stage that they were going to arrest us and put us in jail and it was that simple and there were no two ways about it.Mike D: Like it was really scary ’cause as soon as we came off the stage they grabbed us and said, “Yo, boys. You’re going to prison.”Ad-Rock: I tried to run away because I didn’t know what was going on and this guy, this cop, like he didn’t hit me that hard, but he like you know hit me in the back of the legs with his club. I mean if we had known in the first place we wouldn’t have done it. But this guy had to go and hit us.MCA: I never knew that it was illegal to use profanity before this.Mike D: You know, there’s a way we talk and it includes profanity. We never figured we’d be arrested for it.Rocci Fisch: What’s it like opening for Madonna?Mike D: Usually there’s about basically almost a riot breaking out after every show because either the crowd wants to kill us or we have to run from the girls because they mob us.Ad-Rock: Every single night is definitely really hard work. Harder work than I ever really imagined. We go out there and we just have to win this audience over. They don’t want to see rap music. They don’t want to see the Beastie Boys. They don’t care what we’re doing. They want one thing and one thing only: that’s to see Madonna come on stage. But then we go out there, we work hard, we win them over, and then they get real happy. It’s really kind of cool.Rocci Fisch: Are you guys the only white rappers?MCA: It looks that way right now and I’m real surprised at it. Although kids always come up to me after the show and tell me they rap also. But we’re the only ones on vinyl, I imagine.Rocci Fisch: Someone said today that maybe you’re “rappers for the suburbs.” How do you feel about somebody describing you that way?Ad-Rock: Well whoever said that is an ignorant moron, because we’re certainly not rap music for the suburbs. Because if he ever listened to our records and knows anything about rap music. That we are soul, hardcore, b-boy music, and we do not play sucker music. Like a Chaka Kahn “I Feel for You” is suburb rap music. They think that anything with someone, you know, saying something in a rhyme is rap music.Ad-Rock: But that’s certainly not us at all.Mike D: I’d just like to say, like, these people just don’t realize that when we’re in New York City we’ll go to the worst neighborhood in Queens, play to an entirely black audience with someone like Kurtis Blow for a thousand people. This is not a suburban audience. This is like the hardest core urban audience. The thing that really bothers like white critics won’t like us, because they have this whole preconceived notion of what rap music is: you gotta go out there and be angry and sing about the ghetto. And that’s the only reason for rap music to exist. You know?Rocci Fisch: How did you get your group name, Beastie Boys?MCA: It’s from the good old days. We were a hardcore band.Mike D: Yeah, we were like—I was like what, 14?MCA: Yeah.Mike D: I was like, 14, 15? That’s when we made our first record. We were all going to high school at the time and that’s how we met.MCA: At time it was the stupidest name that I could possibly think of. And if you could think of a stupider name I’d probably be pretty impressed now. So lay it on me: can you think of a stupider name than the Beastie Boys?Rocci Fisch: Not reallyMCA: So then that answers your question right there.Rocci Fisch: What’s def?MCA: What do you mean?Rocci Fisch: What do you mean def?MCA: Def is uh, you know, we are def. I’d say that’s a good answer. We are def.Ad-Rock: Def in New York is what—is something that’s really good, like us. You know what I mean? Def, like def jam.Mike D: Kind of like if you put on a James Brown record and you just know that’s def.MCA: Jam is something that you put on toast.Ad-Rock: We’re very into breakfast.Mike D: Yeah, we’re into breakfast a lot.MCA: It’s like, we like hot butter on our breakfast toast and we also like def jam on it. <h3>Credits</h3><h4>Executive Producer</h4>David Gerlach<h4>Animator</h4>Patrick Smith<h4>Audio Producer</h4>Amy Drozdowska<h4>Music</h4>Beastie Boys“License to Ill”<h4>Photos</h4><a href="http://www.sunnybak.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sunny Bak</a><a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

Beastie Boys on Being Stupid

Ziggy Stardust

Interview by Joe SmithThe conversation was recored on June 3, 1987 during the writing of Off the Record–Smith’s oral history of rock and roll. He interviewed more than 240 music artists and executives.In 2012, he donated a trove of 238 hours of interviews on cassette tapes to the Library of Congress. Listen to the full interview catalog.Read MoreThe Animated TranscriptIf it’s wearing a pink hat and a red nose, and it plays a guitar upside down, I will go and look at it. You know I love to see people being dangerous.There was a real feeling of inadequacy in that era. I never really felt like a rock singer or a rock star or whatever. I always felt a little bit out of my element which is a ridiculously high falutin way of looking at it. Now, from my standpoint, when I look back, I realize that from ‘72 through to about ‘76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star. You had a zillion records and the lifestyle, everything.But the lifestyle and everything. Anything that was going out there that had anything to do with being a rock and roll singer, then I was hey let’s go for this, let’s see what it is like.I read a quote, somebody called you a surreal cartoon character brought to life.It was, sort of. Ziggy was. I mean he was half out of sci-fi rock and half out of the Japanese theater.  The clothes were, at that time, simply outrageous. And simply… Nobody had seen anything like them before.Was there a point where people did not take your music seriously because you were doing theatrics?I think I moved out of Ziggy fast enough so as not to be caught by that one. Because most rock characters that one can create only have a short lifespan. They are one shots, they are cartoony. And the Ziggy thing was worth about one or two albums before I couldn’t really write anything else around him or the world that I wanted to sort of put together for him.I am a moderately good singer. I am not a great singer but I can interpret a song, which I don’t think is quite the same as singing it.  So I was never unaware of my strength as an interpretive performer but writing a song, for me… it never rang true. I had no problem writing something for Iggy Pop, or working with Lou Reed, or writing for Mott the Hoople. I can get into their mood and what they want to do, but I find it extremely hard to write for me. So I found it quite easy to write for the artists I would create, because I did find it much easier having created a Ziggy, to then write for him. Even though it was me doing it. I was able to sort of distance myself from the whole… yeah, well it can become very complicated.There is a psychological name for that.Yes. It is. Fucking with the fabric of time there. It did bring a whole sackful of its own inherent problems with it.Do you have an affection for some of these characters that you have created as you look back?I think the only time I get sort of nostalgic about any of that stuff at all is if I see the old videos or I see a bit of the Ziggy Stardust concerts or whatever. No, other than that I do not think I am cold about them, but I think it’s work done.I think that is an actor’s attitude too.I think you have to. Otherwise you start… You get into a danger of getting into the rut and maybe try to perpetuate something that has gone before. A lot of people that I know are bugged with the idea that they have got to have an audience, or they have got to be liked. I think the more that you fall into that trap it makes your own life harder to come to terms with, because an audience appreciation is only going to be periodic at the best of times. You will fall in and out of favor continually. I do not think it should be something one should be looking for. You should turn around at the end of the day and say I really like that piece of work, or that piece of work sucked. Not, was that popular or wasn’t it popular?Is it hard being David Bowie?Not really, not now, no. I do not have the outsider problem. For me, the world that I inhabit in reality is probably very different world than the one people expect that I would be in. It is quite sedate. It’s far removed from a lot of what they would feel to be the limousine traveling rock existence, or whatever.I went to one of the first art-oriented high schools in England. I had a very excellent teacher, Peter Frampton’s father who really kind of is quite an inspiration. I went into the visual side of an advertising agency and I was doing pasteup jobs and small designs for raincoats and things like that. Awful, absolutely awful.Maybe you should have kept it….Well, if all this goes down the tubes …You can always …Get on Madison Avenue with the best of them. I think those days are over. But it did give me an unbridled interest in art. It goes through your entire life. The Complete, Unedited InterviewNotes About BowieDavid Bowie was born on January 8th, 1947 in the Brixton section of London.He got his start in music playing saxophone as a teenager.While in school, one of his favorite teachers happened to be Peter Frampton’s father.Bowie’s right eye has a permanently dilated pupil after he was punched in the eye during a fight with school friend over a girl.He feared being confused with Davy Jones of The Monkees so he changed his name to Bowie–inspired by the knife developed by the 19th century American pioneer Jim Bowie.Bowie started his own mime troupe in the late 60sOn July 3 1973, David Bowie announced the retirement of his alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, on stage at London’s Hammersmith Odeon Theatre. “Not only is this the last show of the tour, but it’s the last show that we’ll ever do,” Bowie told the crowd. His band didn’t get the memo.John Lennon co-wrote and sang back up vocals on Bowie’s hit Fame.Sir Bowie? He turned down the offer of knighthood from the Queen in 2003. “I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that,” he said. “I seriously don’t know what it’s for. It’s not what I spent my life working for.CREDITSExecutive ProducerDavid GerlachAnimatorPatrick SmithAudio ProducerKaitlin PrestMUSICDavid Bowie“Ziggy Stardust”“Moonage Daydream”“Lady Stardust”PHOTOSAdam BielawskiNetherlands Institute for Sound and VisionCBS TelevisionVIDEO Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture, ParlophoneDavid Bowie “Life on Mars” Video, EMIOld Grey Whistle Test, BBCBlank on Blank

<h4>Interview by Joe Smith</h4>The conversation was recored on June 3, 1987 during the writing of Off the Record–Smith’s oral history of rock and roll. He interviewed more than 240 music artists and executives.In 2012, he donated a trove of 238 hours of interviews on cassette tapes to the Library of Congress. Listen to the full interview catalog.<a href="#read-more" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read More</a><h3>The Animated Transcript</h3>If it’s wearing a pink hat and a red nose, and it plays a guitar upside down, I will go and look at it. You know I love to see people being dangerous.There was a real feeling of inadequacy in that era. I never really felt like a rock singer or a rock star or whatever. I always felt a little bit out of my element which is a ridiculously high falutin way of looking at it. Now, from my standpoint, when I look back, I realize that from ‘72 through to about ‘76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star. You had a zillion records and the lifestyle, everything.But the lifestyle and everything. Anything that was going out there that had anything to do with being a rock and roll singer, then I was hey let’s go for this, let’s see what it is like.I read a quote, somebody called you a surreal cartoon character brought to life.It was, sort of. Ziggy was. I mean he was half out of sci-fi rock and half out of the Japanese theater.  The clothes were, at that time, simply outrageous. And simply… Nobody had seen anything like them before.Was there a point where people did not take your music seriously because you were doing theatrics?I think I moved out of Ziggy fast enough so as not to be caught by that one. Because most rock characters that one can create only have a short lifespan. They are one shots, they are cartoony. And the Ziggy thing was worth about one or two albums before I couldn’t really write anything else around him or the world that I wanted to sort of put together for him.I am a moderately good singer. I am not a great singer but I can interpret a song, which I don’t think is quite the same as singing it.  So I was never unaware of my strength as an interpretive performer but writing a song, for me… it never rang true. I had no problem writing something for Iggy Pop, or working with Lou Reed, or writing for Mott the Hoople. I can get into their mood and what they want to do, but I find it extremely hard to write for me. So I found it quite easy to write for the artists I would create, because I did find it much easier having created a Ziggy, to then write for him. Even though it was me doing it. I was able to sort of distance myself from the whole… yeah, well it can become very complicated.There is a psychological name for that.Yes. It is. Fucking with the fabric of time there. It did bring a whole sackful of its own inherent problems with it.Do you have an affection for some of these characters that you have created as you look back?I think the only time I get sort of nostalgic about any of that stuff at all is if I see the old videos or I see a bit of the Ziggy Stardust concerts or whatever. No, other than that I do not think I am cold about them, but I think it’s work done.I think that is an actor’s attitude too.I think you have to. Otherwise you start… You get into a danger of getting into the rut and maybe try to perpetuate something that has gone before. A lot of people that I know are bugged with the idea that they have got to have an audience, or they have got to be liked. I think the more that you fall into that trap it makes your own life harder to come to terms with, because an audience appreciation is only going to be periodic at the best of times. You will fall in and out of favor continually. I do not think it should be something one should be looking for. You should turn around at the end of the day and say I really like that piece of work, or that piece of work sucked. Not, was that popular or wasn’t it popular?Is it hard being David Bowie?Not really, not now, no. I do not have the outsider problem. For me, the world that I inhabit in reality is probably very different world than the one people expect that I would be in. It is quite sedate. It’s far removed from a lot of what they would feel to be the limousine traveling rock existence, or whatever.I went to one of the first art-oriented high schools in England. I had a very excellent teacher, Peter Frampton’s father who really kind of is quite an inspiration. I went into the visual side of an advertising agency and I was doing pasteup jobs and small designs for raincoats and things like that. Awful, absolutely awful.Maybe you should have kept it….Well, if all this goes down the tubes …You can always …Get on Madison Avenue with the best of them. I think those days are over. But it did give me an unbridled interest in art. It goes through your entire life. <h4>The Complete, Unedited Interview</h4><h4>Notes About Bowie</h4>David Bowie was born on January 8th, 1947 in the Brixton section of London.He got his start in music playing saxophone as a teenager.While in school, one of his favorite teachers happened to be Peter Frampton’s father.Bowie’s right eye has a permanently dilated pupil after <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/9787241/David-Bowie-22-things-you-didnt-know.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">he was punched in the eye during a fight </a>with school friend over a girl.He feared being confused with Davy Jones of The Monkees so he changed his name to Bowie–<a href="http://www.biography.com/people/david-bowie-9222045#early-years&amp;awesm=~oEsRy8m3nTPzb1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">inspired by the knife developed by the 19th century American pioneer Jim Bowie</a>.Bowie <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/david-bowie/biography#ixzz31uWb6KFv%20" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">started his own mime troupe</a> in the late 60sOn July 3 1973, <a href="http://ultimateclassicrock.com/david-bowie-last-ziggy-stardust/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">David Bowie announced the retirement of his alter ego, Ziggy Stardust</a>, on stage at London’s Hammersmith Odeon Theatre. “Not only is this the last show of the tour, but it’s the last show that we’ll ever do,” Bowie told the crowd. His band didn’t get the memo.John Lennon <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/david-bowie/biography" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">co-wrote and sang back up vocals</a> on Bowie’s hit Fame.Sir Bowie? <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/29904/10-famous-people-who-turned-down-knighthood" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">He turned down the offer of knighthood </a><a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/29904/10-famous-people-who-turned-down-knighthood" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">from the Queen</a> in 2003. “I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that,” he said. “I seriously don’t know what it’s for. It’s not what I spent my life working for.<h3>CREDITS</h3><h3>Executive Producer</h3>David Gerlach<h4>Animator</h4>Patrick Smith<h4>Audio Producer</h4>Kaitlin Prest<h3>MUSIC</h3>David Bowie“Ziggy Stardust”“Moonage Daydream”“Lady Stardust”<h3>PHOTOS</h3><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:David-Bowie_Chicago_2002-08-08_photoby_Adam-Bielawski-cropped.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Adam Bielawski</a>Netherlands Institute for Sound and VisionCBS Television<h3>VIDEO </h3>Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture, ParlophoneDavid Bowie “Life on Mars” Video, EMIOld Grey Whistle Test, BBC<a href="https://blankonblank.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blank on Blank</a>

David Bowie on Ziggy Stardust

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