AUSTIN KLEON : TUMBLELOG

PT Anderson on (not) shooting food scenes

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:48:00 -0500

PT Anderson on (not) shooting food scenes:

For Ed Champion, who asked, “Why do so many films and TV shows have restaurant scenes in which nobody eats or even picks at their food?”

From a 2007 Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross and PT Anderson about There Will Be Blood:

GROSS: “…The characters in the movie have no pleasure. There’s very little eating in the movie….Did you intentionally leave food out of the movie?

ANDERSON: Not really intentionally, no. There was actually one scene that we cut out that caught Daniel sort of mid-bite, he was having a steak…we had to decide if Daniel was going to be doing anything in that last scene in the bowling alley, and I suggested that he be gnawing on a piece of steak, or at least what he could get the nutrients of, considering his teeth had probably fallen out, just suck on a steak, and I knew it was a tall order because to do take after take of gnawing on a steak is really dangerous ground to get into…

…besides that, any time you can leave stuff like food out is a good thing, you know, because it just usually ends up being a matching nightmare, or it just involves more people, putting food on tables, and stuff. Stripping it down to its essentials was not only the proper thing to do out there in that setting, but really a cheat in making life easier just making the film.

More on food in movies on Ed’s twitter.

78-year-old Pablo Picasso and a young woman on the Riviera,...

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:39:00 -0500

78-year-old Pablo Picasso and a young woman on the Riviera, 1960

His drawings from his seventies often contrast himself as a buffoonish, wizened dwarf opposite a beautiful young woman.

Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers said it best:

Well some people try to pick up girls
And get called assholes
This never happened to Pablo Picasso
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist his stare and
So Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole

(…)

Well he was only 5’3”
But girls could not resist his stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole

Picasso: Drawing With Light - 1949 LIFE magazine LIFE...

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:28:00 -0500

Picasso: Drawing With Light - 1949 LIFE magazine

LIFE photographer Gjon Mili visited Picasso in 1949. Mili showed the artist some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates jumping in the dark—and Picasso’s mind began to race. The series of photographs that follows—Picasso’s light drawings—were made with a small flashlight in a dark room; the images vanished almost as soon as they were created.

Frank O’Hara, “Poem (Lana Turner has...

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:30:00 -0500

Frank O’Hara, “Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)”

Next time you complain about not having time to write, read this, and slap yourself: O’Hara wrote this on his lunch break.

"Childhood is a branch of cartography."

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:13:00 -0500

"Childhood is a branch of cartography." : Michael Chabon does the old cliche “When I was a kid we played outside all day” article, only includes his great ideas about literature and maps:

Matt Groening once did a great Life in Hell strip that took the form of a map of Bongo’s neighborhood. At one end of a street that wound among yards and houses stood Bongo, the little one-eared rabbit boy. At the other stood his mother, about to blow her stack—Bongo was late for dinner again. Between mother and son lay the hazards —labeled angry dogs, roving gang of hooligans, girl with a crush on bongo—of any journey through the Wilderness: deadly animals, antagonistic humans, lures and snares. It captured perfectly the mental maps of their worlds that children endlessly revise and refine. Childhood is a branch of cartography.

See also: my posts on worldbuilding and maps of fictional worlds.

"Souvenirs of Content"

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:42:00 -0500

"Souvenirs of Content": Love this quote from Seth Godin on why anyone would want to buy a book:

I view [my books] as souvenirs of content you could get less conveniently and less organized for free online if you chose to…

Souvenirs of content! Love this idea. More from Hugh MacLeod:

If you wanted to give your favorite cousin a nice birthday present, what would you rather do? Give him a copy of your favorite author’s latest book, or just e-mail him a link to the author’s blog? What would your cousin think if you tried the latter? Exactly.

And why do people pay $30 for a “I HEART NEW YORK” t-shirt, when they can walk down Fifth Avenue for free? Different objects, both molecular and digital, offer different totemic, emotional and social value for their user, which alters the inherent experience. Does the music on a Rolling Stones album that you found in the bargain bin of a record store, differ from the same album that Keith Richards personally autographed and gave to you? Technically, no. But the social context GREATLY adds to the overall experience and value.

See more on “what if we give it away?”

"To fake a photograph, all you have to do is change the caption. To fake a painting, change the..."

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:07:29 -0500

“To fake a photograph, all you have to do is change the caption. To fake a painting, change the attribution.”

- Errol Morris

"Anyone who says they’ve figured out how to make records sell more than 50 million copies is..."

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:18:00 -0500

“Anyone who says they’ve figured out how to make records sell more than 50 million copies is lying and smoking Koolaid. It doesn’t work like that. You just find a group of songs that touches you and gives you goosebumps. I go by my goosebumps.”

- Quincy Jones

"I’ve never planned anything. I haven’t had any career at all. I only have a life."

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:22:00 -0500

“I’ve never planned anything. I haven’t had any career at all. I only have a life.”

- Werner Herzog

"Those things are like buckled belts."

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:06:42 -0500

“Those things are like buckled belts.”

- Bill Callahan on the sentences of James Salter

Tiger Woods on advice from his dad

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:18:00 -0500

Tiger Woods on advice from his dad:

Some might be a little surprised by this, but I used to play a lot of golf with my dad. He gave me the same advice:

When I was young, maybe 6 or 7 years old, I’d play on the Navy golf course with my pop. My dad would say, “Okay, where do you want to hit the ball?” I’d pick a spot and say I want to hit it there. He’d shrug and say, “Fine, then figure out how to do it.” He didn’t position my arm, adjust my feet, or change my thinking. He just said go ahead and hit the darn ball. My dad’s advice to me was to simplify. He knew that at my age I couldn’t digest all of golf’s intricacies. He kept it simple: If you want to hit the ball to a particular spot, figure out a way to do it. Even today, when I’m struggling with my game, I can still hear him say, “Pick a spot and just hit it.” When I’m making adjustments during a round, I know some of the television commentators theorize that I’m changing this or moving that, but really what I’m doing is listening to Pop.

Card Sorting: Designing Usable CategoriesThe basic process...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:42:00 -0500

Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories

The basic process behind card sorting is straightforward: you create a set of cards that represent content to be organised and have a range of different people (either one-on-one or as a group) sort the cards into logical groups.

This is pretty much the same technique Meg and I used to edit my book.

Remembering the Past is Like Imagining the FutureThat’s what...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:03:00 -0500

Remembering the Past is Like Imagining the Future

That’s what Daniel Schacter at Harvard and his friends have discovered, by doing functional MRI studies of brains subjected to different kinds of cues. (Science News report, Nature review article, Charlie Rose interview.) Subjects are inserted gently into the giant magnetic field, then asked to either conjure up a memory or imagine a future scenario about some particular cue-word. What you see is that the same sites in the brain light up in both cases. The brain on the left in this image is remembering the past — on the right, it’s concocting an imaginary scenario about the future.

(via gerry)

Tom Hart on Yoshida Sensha and the inspiration that he takes...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:55:00 -0500

Tom Hart on Yoshida Sensha and the inspiration that he takes from Japanese manga that refuses to worry about “realism”:

You never believe you’re in the real world. In my own notes and sketches I always stay grounded, and I want lift off. Sensha lifts off. The imagination has to be the core.

So at some point I realized I need something to keep me UNgrounded. To keep me and the reader aware that this is imaginary…

"I’m trying to figure out two very simple things: How to Live, and How To Die. Period...."

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 10:04:00 -0500

“I’m trying to figure out two very simple things: How to Live, and How To Die. Period. That’s all I’m trying to do, all day long. (And I’m also trying to have some meals, and have some snacks…)”

- Maira Kalman, TED talk

Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion A system for...

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:34:00 -0500

Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion

A system for allowing a shoe wearer to lean forwardly beyond his center of gravity by virtue of wearing a specially designed pair of shoes which will engage with a hitch member movably projectable through a stage surface. The shoes have a specially designed heel slot which can be detachably engaged with the hitch member by simply sliding the shoe wearer’s foot forward, thereby engaging with the hitch member.

In other words: a patent submitted by “inventor” Michael J. Jackson!

"Before you can know something, you have to dream about it."

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:23:00 -0500

“Before you can know something, you have to dream about it.”

- Jonah Lehrer on napping (via)

Afghan War Rugs

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:47:37 -0500

Afghan War Rugs

Aymara Language: The Future Is Behind You, The Past is In Front Of You

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:07:00 -0500

Aymara Language: The Future Is Behind You, The Past is In Front Of You:

The speakers of Aymara, an Indian language of the high Andes, think of time differently than just about everyone else in the world:

Most of us describe the future as ahead or in front of us, and the past as behind us. Until the view of the Aymara speakers was deconstructed, no significant exceptions to this way of thinking about time had been demonstrated….

…the Aymara call the future qhipa pacha/timpu, meaning back or behind time, and the past nayra pacha/timpu, meaning front time. And they gesture ahead of them when remembering things past, and backward when talking about the future.

…the Aymara speakers see the difference between what is known and not known as paramount, and what is known is what you see in front of you, with your own eyes.

The past is known, so it lies ahead of you. (Nayra, or “past,” literally means eye and sight, as well as front.) The future is unknown, so it lies behind you, where you can’t see.

I blogged this three years ago, but it’s still blows my mind…

See also: HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? By Lera Boroditsky

Maira Kalman on Thomas Jefferson and time

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:54:27 -0500

Maira Kalman on Thomas Jefferson and time