Making a movie is a very mathematical operation, Federico Fellini explains in this interview from 1972. It is like firing a missile into space—everything has to be prepared.

This control over film-making is neatly contrasted with the often random nature of documentary-making, when moments later a telephone rings and the interview is stopped. Fittingly, the sequence is kept in, as if it had been scripted.

There is also a great interplay between Fellini and interviewer Philip Jenkinson, where the director responds to the questions about his films—Roma, Amacord, Satyricon, his techniques, and his life, but rarely giving a definitive answer. There is a drama going on here between the two, of nuance and mood, with Fellini cleverly avoiding his being tied to one thought, one explanation, one answer. That is for the critics, he says.

Ultimately, Fellini defines movie-making, or artistic creation, as a form of autobiography.

Everything is autobiographical. How is it possible to live outside of yourself? Anything we do is also a testifying of yourself. If a creator makes something that pretends to be very objective, it is the autobiography of a man who is very objective…

He ends in a similar form:

...How is it possible to do something outside of your myth, of your world, of your character, of your history, of yourself?

It brings the interview almost full-circle, but Fellini’s answers throughout only leave the viewer wanting to know more. This is a classic and rare TV interview and demands to be seen.
 

 
With thanks to NellyM
 

 
I can’t get enough these hilariously ‘shopped album covers by artist, motion graphics designer and animator, Cris Shapan. Shapan has worked on Yo Gabba Gabba!, Tom Goes to the Mayor, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and currently toils on Comedy Central’s Kroll Show.

PS - You may have seen the Alan Hale’s Roman Orgy before. This has been passed around Facebook like a wildfire under the assumption that it was a real album cover!
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…
 

’Blood on the Tracks’ - Robert A. Zimmerman

Fast-paced 1958 thriller: a jilted train driver hi-jacks his New York subway train to exact revenge upon his love rival, only to threaten the life of his ex-lover. The last 30 pages are missing. Don’t know if she survives.

 
Christophe Gowans is a Graphic Designer and Art Director, who once designed for the music industry (with Peter Saville Associates, Assorted Images, amongst others) and has since produced some stunning work for Blitz, Esquire, Modern Painters, Stella and The Sunday Telegraph.

Christophe is also the talent of a series of fun, collectible and original art works that re-imagine classic albums as book covers.

These fabulous Record Books are on display at his site and are also available to buy at The Rockpot.
 

’Abbey Road’ - The Beatles

Classic paperback. The story of two catholic sisters growing up in a swiftly changing post-war Britain. Guess what? It doesn’t end well.

 

’The Dark Side of the Moon’ - Pink Floyd

Alternative scientific textbook from the 60s. Californian professor Floyd achieved enormous success with this study of the moon’s influence on the menstrual cycle. Indeed, he was able to found his own college, specialising in the study of women’s fertility. The college no longer exists. It was shut down in 1972, having been razed to the ground by a mob of angry husbands.

 
More of Christophe’s ‘Record Books’, after the jump…
 

 
The Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris is known as much for the beauty of its monuments as for the celebrity of its occupants, boasting the remains of Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Maria Callas, Edit Piaf, and countless others. However, its arguably most dramatic tomb belongs to an author most people have never heard of.

Georges Rodenbach was a 19th century Belgian writer, best known for a book pretty much relegated to serious literary pursuants. Bruges-la-Morte, a symbolist novel published in 1892, was about a man mourning his dead wife. It’s known for being debilitating tragic and intensely romantic; one of the central thematic elements is the decay of the city, itself.

So, it’s painfully poignant that Rodenbach’s tomb depicts a patina bronze likeness of him actually emerging from the grave, a rose in one hand. Fairly fitting for a man whose opus contained lines like this:

As he walked, the sad faded leaves were driven pitilessly around him by the wind, and under the mingling influences of autumn and evening, a craving for the quietude of the grave … overtook him with unwanted intensity.

Excuse me while I go turn in my leather jacket and electric guitar—my punk rock cred has been compromised, because I’m apparently a teen goth girl right now.

 
Real life villains get the “Legion of Doom” treatment by Brazilian designer and illustrator Butcher Billy.

Artist’s statement:

Some might say all art is a reflection of the times we live in.

If back in the day comics and movies were pretty naive and faced only as pure escapism, today’s fiction has to evoke reality to create something truly meaningful… and frightening.

This series is an experiment where a dictator, a psycho, a murderer (sometimes they are the whole package) or even a suspicious figure from real life is mashed with a comics bad guy - strangely related some way or the other with his counterpart.

The depressing thing? Realising that if the comic book supervillains were actually the ones threatening real life, the world wouldn’t be such a bad place.

See more of Butcher Billy’s designs here.

 

 

 

 

 
Via Nerdcore via Butcher Billy

 
The “Whassup?” commercial from 1999 will forever be burned in my brain. What started out as one of the funniest TV commercials, ever, turned into torture once everyone on the planet had to say “Whassup?” at least 10,000 times a day. It felt like the catchphrase went on for years. Way, way past its expiration date.

Well, artist Mathias Lachal is breathing new life into the famous Budweiser commercial with his very own spin. And guess what? It’s amazing. Just watch.

 
Via Nerdcore

 
A very, very happy birthday to the very, very wonderful Yoko Ono who turns 80 today!

I was introduced to Yoko Ono (I mean the concept of her; her work) when I was a little kid, probably 6 years old, and I found a copy of her book Grapefruit at a church rummage sale for like a quarter. I’m not trying to impress anyone with how smart or sophisticated I was when I was a small child, Grapefruit was something I stumbled across. All I knew about her then was that she had something to do (I didn’t know what, exactly) with the Beatles, who I was all into because I’d recently seen Yellow Submarine.

Grapefruit, a tiny book of the short, simplistic, whimsical and often hilarious artistic aphorisms Yoko is known for, is not exactly beyond the comprehension level of a precocious child. Here are some examples:

Carry a bag of peas.
Leave a pea wherever you go.

or

Steal all the clocks and watches
in the world.
Destroy them.

or

Imagine the clouds dripping.
Dig a hole in your garden to
put them in.

It helps if you imagine Yoko’s voice reading it. For me it was love at first sight. I have always been in love with Grapefruit and with Yoko Ono. There has never been a time in my life when I wasn’t. I grabbed her albums from cut-out bins and garage sales throughout the 70s. Yoko was awesome and made music like no other!

I never got the whole “Yoko sucks” thing. It seemed so idiotic to me, then as now (I can see someone thinking that in 1975, but after post-punk showed just how ahead of her time she was? There’s no excuse anymore!).

Yoko Ono is a charter member of my pantheon of personal heroes. I even own a “Box of Smile,” her conceptual art piece that was mass produced in 1971 (It’s a small plastic box with a mirror inside. I have never—and I repeat NEVER—seen someone fail to crack a smile when they open it, not once).

When Yoko Ono announced on her Twitter feed in 2009 that she would answer some questions, she answered mine in the first batch. Keeping in mind what I wrote above, here’s what I asked and her reply:

@RichardMetzger
Do you find that children “get” your conceptual art pieces better than adults?

@yokoono
Not necessarily. There are kids who think they are grown ups and don’t want to know anything that smells like kids stuff. And there are grown-ups who are still kids at heart who clearly get my work.

That made my day, I can assure you.

An excerpt from Yoko’s “Mind Train”:
 

 
Below, Yoko tells interviewer David Frost, in 1967: “My ultimate goal in film-making is to make a film which includes a smiling face snap of every single human being in the world.”
 

 
Creeptacular images of retired ventriloquist dummies from the book Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits by photographer Matthew Rolston.
 

 

 

 
Via Everlasting Blort

 
Appropriately titled “Throne of Nerds” by Canada-based computer programmer Mike DeWolfe.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Bring me the head of George W Bush: Game of Thrones puts former POTUS on a spike

Game of Thrones severed head cake pops

Game of Thrones theme sung by a Siamese cat

The Dude of Thrones

Via Neatorama

 
A delightful moment in TV history as The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band perform “High School Hermit” (aka “Metaphorically Speaking”) on Do Not Adjust Your Set, circa 1967.

This excellent little classic was left-off their debut album Gorilla, which was a shame as it contains everything that made the Bonzos so utterly lovable.
 

 
Bonus: The Bonzos perform ‘Noises For The Leg’ take 2 from TV 1969, after the jump…