Hunter Davis and his preternatural Ian McKellen impression; Masami Teraoka on almost 50 years of boundary-stretching art; Happy Birthday Rocky, Natasha, and Witch Hazel (June Foray); Pat Metheny on tenor sax; and probably one or two other things you wouldn't expect on a public radio show.
People come out in droves to watch Endeavour make its victory lap in LA
Off-Ramp's John Rabe and Jerry Gorin went to downtown LA and Altadena, respectively, to catch a glimpse of Endeavour and to talk with enthusiastic Angelenos about the historic event.
Locals in downtown said that it was a "once in a lifetime event" and that they wanted to "witness history" and experience it with other people. Onlookers gathered at the plaza of the DOT building, on top of the LAPD building, city hall, and everywhere else you can imagine. Unfortunately for Rabe and others who didn't have the sense to climb up high, they caught sight of the shuttle for all of 3 seconds.
In Altadena, though, hundreds upon hundreds of people, including many families who'd taken their kids out of school, hiked up to a hillside near the Jet Propulsion Lab and were not disappointed. The shuttle-on-top-of-the-plane teased the crowd for a second when it peaked around the Santa Monica mountains and people also realized how low it was flying and grew even more excited. A few minutes later the plane emerged from the Arroyo Seco pass in the south and flew in from the east, making a majestic swoop over the hillside and Hahamongna Watershed Park before disappearing again, this time on its way to LAX.
New Getty Villa exhibit: The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection
Is it possible to do an offbeat museum show on the world's most famous antiquities? That's what the Getty Villa is trying to do with its new Pompeii exhibit. The results are mixed, but fascinating.
It's been 1,933 years since Mount Vesuvius blew open in 79 AD, inundating the southerly exurbs of Naples with ash and lava, killing many thousands and preserving for the ages the art, buildings and remains of the people of the posh seaside town of Pompeii.
There have been hundreds of shows around the world in the past decade or two showing the dazzling, defeated remnants of this great, lost civilization. We had one here in LA just 13 years ago. Now the scholars at the Getty Villa have taken a leap of faith, and come up with a new idea: The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection.
The idea is to present the ways the world has thought of Pompeii over the three centuries since the great catastrophe was uncovered. But, apart from a few 18th and 20th Century pieces, the preeminent concentration is on the 19th Century--particularly on works inspired by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "Last Days of Pompeii." The internationally popular 1834 pot-boiler set up the Roman Decadence prototype for generations, from the novels and movies of "Ben Hur" and "Quo Vadis" to such 1950s fictive-filmic extravagances as "The Robe" and "Demetrius and the Gladiators."
Since Lytton, old Rome never seems not to have been decadent, and Pompeii, with its luscious, erotic art, luxurious homes, and Mediterranean languor seems to have embodied this lascivious, non-stop decline. The show demonstrates how the repressed creative minds of the Victorian era had a field day with this concept, resulting in borderline-concupiscent oversize tableaus, straight and gay, each of them first-rate fun in its way. Of course there are also the epochal representations of the multi-Hiroshima eruption itself ... more impressive, perhaps, but not as interesting.
The pre-Bulwer-Lytton paintings tend to be more modest, and one would imagine, easier to live with--pastorals of the 18th century explorations, with country girls carrying baskets on their heads, the half-excavated old forum surrounded by peaceful cattle and herders. There's also good stuff about the progress of the dig itself.
If there is a problem with the show, it's that the most conspicuous content--especially from the 1800's -- is simply not first rate. It's puzzling that the great epic painters of that time -- and those most fascinated with the classical era such as David and Gerome, for instance -- pretty much ignored Pompeii and its story. Lawrence Alma Tadema and Francesco Netti tried hard, but just aren't in that major league.
But here in LA, which lives under an indefinite sentence of destruction by a plus-eight-on the-Richter-scale quake, the show fascinates ... Especially when the show is in a venue -- the Getty Villa - that reproduces one of Pompeii's greatest homes.
The night of the show's opening, I looked back into the Villa's central courtyard in the dusk. Among its brightlit Pompeian pillars, we happy Angelini disported ourselves over good wine, food and music. As as blissed, one imagines, as any gathering of the original Pompeiians in the original villa might have been on a similar kindly summer night, 1,933 years ago, just before their friendly old mountain went nuclear.
(Marc also recommends a great modern novel about the disaster: Robert Harris' "Pompeii," which reads a lot easier than Bulwer-Lytton. What doesn't?)
Hunter Davis and "Will the real Ian McKellen please stand up?"
Look at his picture! He's only 29, probably shaves once a week, and is a self-described "skinny kid." Does this look like someone out of whose mouth could come the time- and smoke-worn voice of Richard the Third and Gandalf the Grey?
Things got a little out of hand when Hunter Davis came into the Off-Ramp studio to talk about his spot-on Ian McKellen impression in this million+ hit YouTube video.
We walked out of the studio not knowing exactly what happened. Was that really Ian McKellen and does he like big butts? Are we mad or gratified? How badly did we want it to happen? Who punk'd who?
Meantime, Hunter continues to do voice over and theatre, and has just launched a new project. He writes, "It's rather silly, but the main project I'm about to release on my YouTube channel is a parody web series called 'The Dark Knight Retires' in which I play Batman (believe it or not) giving up crimefighting to try something else in life while still dealing with villains and whatnot."
(If you want to listen to the entire half-hour shenanigan, I've posted the whole interview here.)
Masami Teraoka, groundbreaking Japanese artist flips traditions
This is a special Off-Ramp Extra segment recorded on the road at the new Samuel Freeman gallery in Culver City, featuring my entire interview with iconic Japanese artist Masami Teraoka, with a live and active audience.
Teraoka made his name inserting modern items into paintings that otherwise looked like traditional Japanese wood block prints -- cell phones, hamburgers, etc. -- as a way of commenting on how American culture infiltrated Japanese culture.
Later, he dug into the AIDS crisis with poignant and pointed works.
And lately, he's been addressing the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Those paintings are rather graphic, so you'll have to check the link below, or go see them through October 13th at the gallery.
Masami is a rare artist who loves talking about every nuance of his work, and is also much funnier than most artists, as you'll hear in our unedited interview.
Granddaddies of horror, noir and Disney movies explored as works of Expressionist art
Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari are two of the most iconic silent films of all time. Metropolis has influenced the entire cannon of science fiction, while Dr. Caligari's influence can be seen in everything from film noir to horror to Disney. The two films are also paragons of German Expressionist filmmaking, a movement that is perhaps more closely related to the visual arts than any other in cinema history.
Expressionism is a loaded word. It first described early modernist painting by artists interested in primitive, abstract art. It then described an avant-garde movement in classical music. But around the First World War, Expressionism became attached to a period of stark and brutal printmaking. Those high-contrast, black and white images made a huge influence on Germany's filmmakers between the wars.
Britt Salvesen, head of LACMA's prints, drawings and photographs department, and Timothy Benson, curator of LACMA's Robert Rifkind Center for German Expressionist studies, have collaborated on a new exhibit highlighting Metropolis and Dr. Caligari. As part of LACMA's push to include film in its program, the two are excited to situate the films among their vast collection of German Expressionist art. Off-Ramp reporter Jerry Gorin spoke with the two of them ahead of the opening.
Why did Expressionist filmmaking arise in Germany?
Salvesen: Within the international cinema industry, there was a wish to develop distinctive styles. German expressionist styles built upon visual styles, printmaking, and it was carried over into films which could then be branded as German and Expressionist.
What is about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari? Why does it so perfectly embody the Expressionist aesthetic?
Benson: It's really the atmosphere created, it's almost like being inside an Expressionist painting. Wilhem Warm did these wonderful sets. You see these light and dark shadows, it's very dramatic, and the acting is like dancing - it's more like dancing than talking. You see wonderful interplay between acting and stage sets.
Salvesen: Dr. Caligari really creates its own universe. Somehow it's on the border between dream and reality. It's a story within a story - one of the first films to do that - opening with a character telling story to another character. So from the beginning you are wondering who has access to truth, who's living in a dream, and who is sane or insane. It's a hallucinatory scenario. This related to certain subject matters and pre-occupations that had already appeared in artwork.
What was German cinema like up to that point?
Benson: I'd say it was much more naturalistic. Much more like in American cinema. This is exactly what German Expressionism, if you want a definition, is breaking away from. The idea of putting a camera in front of a stage as if it were a play is abandoned for a more active camera and more active actors. One of the terms they had for this kind of drama was "Scream" drama - inspired by Edward Munch's "The Scream" - where instead of normal conversations, everything is extraordinary.
Salvesen: The contrast between Expressionist acting styles and visual aesthetics was Extreme! You went into these abstract sets, where spaces seemed tilted, or cramped. They didn't feel like real rooms. Actors took on very exaggerated facial expressions and gestures - all very distinctive to this movement.
Where do you find the influence of German Expressionism on subsequent genres?
Salvesen: I first started to think about the influence on today's filmmakers when last year I coordinated the Tim Burton exhibition. I worked with him on selecting art from the museum's collection that appealed to him, several of which were German Expressionist prints. I started to see those connections, with him specifically, but also with the broader genres.
Benson: Film noir to me is the most deeply connected. In Film Noir, the atmosphere is just as important as the characters - in fact, acts as a character.
Set design as a character?
Benson: I think so. They become important to the emotional atmosphere.
Masterworks of German Expressionist Cinema runs through March 2013 in the Ahmanson Building at the LA County Museum of Art. The museum will also be screening both films in October, which will include a showing of Dr. Caligari with live musical accompaniment from Robert Israel.
Happy 95th birthday to June Foray, whose talents make animation expert Charles Solomon hear voices
You can meet June Foray in person, and wish her a happy birthday, AND get in cheaper if you bring her some flowers! There's a public party for her at The Coffee Gallery in Altadena on Thursday, September 27. Will Ryan and the Cactus County Cowboys will be there, too! Check the link below to hear their exclusive Off-Ramp performance of "Rhythm Rides the Range.")
I knew June Foray before I ever met her. I knew Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Natasha Fatale from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Dudley Do-Right’s adoring Nell Fenwick. George of the Jungle’s patient wife Ursula. The Bronx Princess in Stan Freberg’s Making America Great album. And Witch Hazel in Chuck Jones’ Broomstick Bunny. And I knew countless other animals, princesses, wizards, newsboys and other characters who would have been mute without Junes’ talents.
The more I learned about animation the more I realized what made June such a great voice actress was not that she could do so many voices, but that she was first and foremost a great actress. When she read a line, you believed it. Witch Hazel was really so worried she might become pretty she’d mistake Bugs Bunny in his Halloween costume for a real witch — one she could ask for ugly tips. You understood Rocky’s skepticism about Boris’ Badenov’s latest scheme — and Natasha’s concern that it wasn’t going to work -- again. June understood the importance of an inflection, a stressed word or a pause when she delivered a line. Even a cartoon squirrel has thoughts and emotions: June understood them and how to make them feel real to an audience.
And she understood how to be understated. Chuck Jones used to say that after working with an actress as polished as June, he lost all patience with performers who overacted behind the mike and wanted to yell, “Don’t just do something, stand there!”
When I began writing about animation, June was one of the first people to make me feel like a welcome member of the artistic community. I learned she served as an ambassador of good will for the medium, doing voices for fans, speaking at festivals and giving parties so visiting artists could meet Southern California animators. I used to joke that if a flying saucer landed, I could just say I knew June Foray and the Little Green Men would happily beep that she’d spoken at their animation festival on Saturn.
I also discovered that June was an intelligent, well-read woman, and an outspoken liberal who made Nixon’s enemies list for helping to organize the Meat Boycott.
Years later, I take pleasure in knowing the real June as well as the many characters she brought to life on the screen. Happy 95th June, and many happy returns!