According to his Wikipedia page, Donald F. Glut is “an American writer, motion picture director, screenwriter, amateur paleontologist, musician and actor.” To that I would add “fanboy extraordinaire” (Pushing 70, Glut is now a respected elder fanman among the ComicCon set). His most notable work was the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980.

Glut became known to readers of Forrest J Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine for the amateur films he made between 1953 and 1969—41 in total—many including unauthorized stories starring Superman, Spider-Man, Frankenstein’s monster and Will Eisner’s masked crimebuster, The Spirit.

Glut’s 1969 Spider-Man movie—which has a super-villain called “Dr. Lightning” not seen in the Marvel comic—was his final amateur film. It is considered, historically speaking, to be the very first Spider-Man fan film, and indeed the first live action attempt to put the character onscreen.

A 2-DVD set of all 41 of Donald F. Glut’s amateur films called I Was A Teenage Moviemaker was released in 2006.
 

Glut on set
 

 
Earlier today, the people who run the Public Image Limited web presence (I’m doing everything in my power not to say “John Lydon” here) put out a call to the band’s fans for any “never before seen” photographs or video footage for a documentary on PiL that is in the works. If you have anything tasty in that direction, you are urged to get in touch at PiLarchive@gmail.com. The statement indicated that those who contribute footage or pictures that are used in the documentary will be named in the end credits.
 

Calling all PiL fans!

We are in the process of making a comprehensive, career-spanning documentary film about Public Image Ltd. and we would like your help!

We are looking for never before seen photographs as well as film and video footage of PiL and John Lydon from any time period. If you have ANYTHING that you think may be of interest please drop us a note. You will be credited in the end titles if we use your footage.

Do you have a snapshot at The Rainbow on Christmas 1978?

Do you have a photo souvenir of the infamous Ritz riot show? Do you have a picture with or without John showing your injuries after being hit by a flying object!

Did you shoot video of John signing your PiL records at the Monsters of Alternative rock Tour in 1989?

We know PiL fans are most creative people. Your ongoing support is greatly appreciated. We salute you lollypop mob.

If you can help please send us an email to: PiLarchive@gmail.com

Please forward or share this info…

 
Here’s some incredible PiL footage that has been seen before, “Death Disco” from Top of the Pops in 1979:
 

 
Fifty years ago today, on January 29th, 1964, Stanley Kubrick’s film Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned t to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was released.

In light of the Cold War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kubrick (like millions of others) was deeply concerned at the thought of a possible nuclear war between America and Russia. He decided to make a movie about it, and read numerous books on the subject. At first, he considered making a straightforward thriller about a possible nuclear accident. As this rough idea evolved, Kubrick bought the rights for Peter George’s Red Alert (aka Two Hours to Doom) and began working on a screenplay.

As he researched the subject further, Kubrick began to see the total absurdity of an all out nuclear war, and opted to make “a nightmare comedy.” An original draft opened with extra-terrestrials viewing Earth after a nuclear holocaust. It was to be called The Delicate Balance of Terror. Kubrick then decided the film required a level of “inspired lunacy” within a realistic framework. He therefore brought in “Existentialist hipster” and controversial author of Candy, Terry Southern.

As the late film critic Alexander Walker described it, the result was:

“...the most perfectly written comedic screenplay of post-war cinema.”

 
Take a gander at this superb Richard Williams title credits sequence from The Liquidator. The theme tune is sung by the great Shirley Bassey and was written and conducted by Lalo Schifrin.

Obviously, the makers of this 1965 film were trying their hand at creating another James Bond, with Rod Taylor playing “Boysie Oakes,” a character that came from a Cold War-era spy book series that also tried to get in on the James Bond action. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of “sub-Bond” rip-offs produced during the Sixties. The Liquidator, to its credit, tried harder by hiring Bassey and Schifrin. They even presciently snagged the gorgeous young Jill St. John a few years before she became a proper Bond girl in Diamonds Are Forever.
 

 
Here’s a boffo live vocal version of the theme:
 

 
Schifrin would go on to score another James Bond wannabe, Murderers’ Row starring Dean Martin as secret agent Matt Helm. It’s got one of the greatest opening sequences of any “Sixties” movie. Watch it here.

Bonus clip: Shirley Bassey sings “Goldfinger” in 1974.
 

 
Here’s a scene from The Shining where the ghost of “Delbert Grady”—the previous caretaker of the Overlook Hotel—is digitally removed. Not that we didn’t already know that Jack Torrance was losing his shit, but this tinkered with scene makes him look even more unhinged.

 
Via Laughing Squid

 
In my (admittedly very limited) experience, there are two kinds of moonshine: the hellish and the treacherous. The hellish, of course, is immediately recognizable by taste, like drinking (and usually eventually vomiting) liquid fire. In fact, I’d wager to say that, no matter the route, moonshine tends to exit the body with a trademark burn. The second kind, the treacherous, is sneaky. It’s deceptively smooth, sometimes even delicious, and you can drink way too much of it before you realize you’re in trouble.

Regardless of my own terrible experiences with moonshine, its production is fascinating, and its history largely misunderstood. This is the Last Dam Run of Likker I’ll Ever Make, later recut and renamed The Last One, captures the twilight of moonshine culture. Starring the infamous Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton, the documentary follows Sutton through the entire process, and records his reflections on a life of moonshining.

In 2009, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives raided Sutton, and he was sentenced to eighteen months in federal prison for the operation of an illegal still and possession of a firearm as a felon. The the raid was actually led by Jim Cavanaugh, or “Waco Jim,” the negotiator during the siege on David Koresh and the Branch Davidians cult (yes, that guy is still doing raids). Sutton was 62 years old at the time, and had just been diagnosed with cancer. Knowing he may have had very little time left, he begged the judge to allow him to serve what may have been his final days on house arrest. In the infinite wisdom of our punitive judicial system, the judge refused an old moonshiner the right to die of cancer in his own home, and as a result, Sutton committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.

To its credit, the documentary isn’t narrated. Neither celebrating nor condemning Sutton, it simply allows him to speak, sometimes with insight, sometimes in ignorance, but always to charming effect. He loves his cats, his “old lady,” his Model A Ford, and yes, his moonshining. Sutton self-published an autobiographical guide to moonshine in 1999, and after that he made a home video of the process, which he self-released on VHS. Truly committed to producing quality liquor and recording the specifics of the trade for future generations, the man had a sense of posterity, and of purpose.
 

 
“Of all arts, for us cinema is the most important.”—Lenin, 1919

An exhibition of Soviet silent-era film posters now underway at London’s Gallery for Russian Arts and Design features, among many treasures, a fair few of the important works of the design team of brothers Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg. Far from household names, it’s true, but their place in art history is difficult to deny. Their success was somewhat serendipitous—it happened that their Dada-inspired method of found image manipulation dovetailed perfectly with the conceits and priorities of the Constructivist movement that was dominating Soviet graphics of their time. They enjoyed a nearly decade-long run of superb work that ended only with Georgii’s untimely death in a 1933 traffic accident. I quote at length here from curator Christopher Mount’s essay in the exhibition catalog of their 1997 MoMA retrospective:

The 1920s and early 1930s were a revolutionary period for the graphic arts throughout Europe. A drastic change took place in the way graphic designers worked that was a direct consequence of experimentation in both the fine and the applied arts. Not only did the formal vocabulary of graphic design change, but also the designer’s perception of self. The concept of the designer as “constructor”—or, as the Dadaist Raoul Hausmann preferred, “monteur” (mechanic or engineer)—marked a paradigmatic shift within the field, from an essentially illustrative approach to one of assemblage and nonlinear narrativity. This new idea of assembling preexisting images, primarily photographs, into something new freed design from its previous dependence on realism. The subsequent use of collage—a defining element of modern graphic design—enabled the graphic arts to become increasingly nonobjective in character.

In Russia, these new artist-engineers were attracted to the functional arts by political ideology. The avant-gardists’ rejection of the fine arts, deemed useless in a new Communist society, in favor of “art for use” in the service of the state, was key in the evolution of the poster. Advertising was now a morally superior occupation with ramifications for the new society; as such, it began to attract those outside the usual illustrative or painterly backgrounds—sculptors, architects, photographers—who brought new ideas and techniques to the field.

Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg were prominent members of this group, which was centered in Moscow and active throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. The Stenberg brothers produced a large body of work in a multiplicity of mediums, initially achieving renown as Constructivist sculptors and later working as successful theatrical designers, architects, and draftsmen; in addition, they completed design commissions that ranged from railway cars to women’s shoes. Their most significant accomplishment, however, was in the field of graphic design, specifically, the advertising posters they created for the newly burgeoning cinema in Soviet Russia.

These works merged two of the most important agitational tools available to the new Communist regime: cinema and the graphic arts. Both were endorsed by the state, and flourished in the first fifteen years of Bolshevik rule. In a country where illiteracy was endemic, film played a critical role in the conversion of the masses to the new social order. Graphic design, particularly as applied in the political placard, was a highly useful instrument for agitation, as it was both direct and economical. The symbiotic relationship of the cinema and the graphic arts would result in a revolutionary new art form: the film poster.

 

 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
We are in the land of bewhiskered firearms experts, secret agents, and eccentric Majors, where the quality of weapons are considered by their effectiveness to kill, without thought to the consequences of this function. It’s a fictional land, but with much bearing in fact.

Geoffrey Boothroyd liked to read spy novels, and in 1956, he was much taken by the latest thriller from Ian Fleming. But there was something wrong with this novel that featured the dashing Secret Service agent, James Bond, “certain inaccuracies” that made Mr. Boothroyd contact the author, to tell him:

“‘I don’t think Bond was going to last very long if he used a 25 Beretta pistol…

.
If we look at the series of James Bond novels, we can see that in the first, Casino Royale, Fleming armed his hero with a .25 calibre Beretta M418. This was a small pocket pistol that had limited stopping power. Bond kept this weapon in a chamois shoulder holster, which sounds overly fashionable (and done so as not ruin the line of his jacket), but it is not practical for a quick draw, as the soft leather catches onto the pistol. This is why holsters are usually made of solid, hard leather, for easy access.

Boothroyd wrote a politely critical letter to Fleming, in which he stated:

I have, by now, got rather fond of Mr. James Bond. I like most of the things about him, with the exception of his rather deplorable taste in firearms. In particular, I dislike a man who comes into contact with all sorts of formidable people using a .25 Beretta. This sort of gun is really a lady’s gun, and not a really nice lady at that. If Mr. Bond has to use a light gun he would be better off with a .22 rim fire; the lead bullet would cause more shocking effect than the jacketed type of the .25.

May I suggest that Mr. Bond be armed with a revolver?

 

Geoffrey Boothroyd and Ian Fleming try out a pistol for James Bond.
 
Ian Fleming was greatly impressed by Boothroyd’s knowledge, and wrote back:

KEMSLEY HOUSE, LONDON, W.C.1.

31st May, 1956

Dear Mr Boothroyd,

I really am most grateful for your splendid letter of May 23rd.

You have entirely convinced me and I propose, perhaps not in the next volume of James Bond’s memoirs but, in the subsequent one, to change his weapons in accordance with your instructions.

Since I am not in the habit of stealing another man’s expertise, I shall ask you in due course to accept remuneration for your most valuable technical aid.

Incidentally, can you suggest where I can see a .38 Airweight in London. Who would have one?

As a matter of interest, how do you come to know so much about these things? I was delighted with the photographs and greatly impressed by them. If ever there is talk of making films of some of James Bond’s stories in due course, I shall suggest to the company concerned that they might like to consult you on some technical aspects. But they may not take my advice, so please do not set too much store by this suggestion.

From the style of your writing it occurs to me that you may have written books or articles on these subjects. Is that so?

Bond has always admitted to me that the .25 Beretta was not a stopping gun, and he places much more reliance on his accuracy with it than in any particular qualities of the gun itself. As you know, one gets used to a gun and it may take some time for him to settle down with the Smith and Wesson. But I think M. should advise him to make a change; as also in the case of the .357 Magnum.

He also agrees to give a fair trial to the Bern Martin holster, but he is inclined to favour something a little more casual and less bulky. The well-worn chamois leather pouch under his left arm has become almost a part of his clothes and he will be loath to make a change though, here again, M. may intervene.

At the present moment Bond is particularly anxious for expertise on the weapons likely to be carried by Russian agents and I wonder if you have any information on this.

As Bond’s biographer I am most anxious to see that he lives as long as possible and I shall be most grateful for any further technical advices you might like me to pass on to him.

Again, with very sincere thanks for your extremely helpful and workmanlike letter.

Yours sincerely

(Signed)

IAN FLEMING

G. Boothroyd, Esq.,
17, Regent Park Square,
Glasgow, S

Indeed, Fleming did take on Mr. Boothroyd’s advice. In the fifth Bond novel, From Russia With Love, the Secret Service agent was greatly imperiled when the silencer on his Beretta snagged on his favorite chamois holster. This was the last novel in which Bond used a Beretta 418. In the subsequent novel, Dr. No, Bond was armed with a Walther PPK.

As a “thank you” to the Glasgow-based firearms expert, Fleming created the character Major Boothroyd, who first appeared in the sixth novel Dr. No as Bond’s service armorer. This character became “Q” in the Bond films, who was first played by Peter Burton in Dr. No, then from the second film, From Russia With Love, onwards, he was played by Desmond Llewelyn, until the actor’s death in 1999. John Cleese then took over the role right up to the arrival of Daniel Craig, where “Q” disappeared from the film series, until Ben Wishaw took up the role in Skyfall (2012).

Boothroyd also helped design the three-quarter trigger guard pistol used on the cover of Fleming’s From Russia With Love. Due to his interest in handguns, Boothroyd gave advice to the police during the murder investigation of American-Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel.

Boothroyd died in October 2001.

During the filming of the third James Bond movie, Goldfinger, at Pinewood Studios, England, in 1963, Sean Connery took time-off to present a brief film on the history of Bond’s weapon of choice.

Connery introduces Geoffrey Boothroyd, who explains the background to his interest in the character, the differences between the Beretta 418, Walther PPK and Boothroyd’s preferred gun, the Magnum 44—Dirty Harry’s favored tool of his trade.
 

 
H/T Letters of Note

 
“You’re an actor, you can sing, now let’s record some tunes.” That’s probably how it went for all those sixties’ film icons like Richard Chamberlain, Albert Finney, Richard Harris, and even Dirk Bogarde (though admittedly he only spoke the words).

“It’s merchandising, baby, this could be another career for you. Today the album, tomorrow Las Vegas!”

David Hemmings could sing, well, that is he had sung, and to great acclaim. Okay, as a boy soprano, but it was with the English National Opera, in a production of Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw. Very impressive. And Hemmings had also performed with a handful of folk bands in the early sixties before hitting it big as an actor in Blow Up.

So, it must have seemed like a win-win proposition to have Hemmings record a selection of tracks with his musical pals Roger McGuinn (guitar), Chris Hillman (bass) and Ed Thigpen (drums) for an album David Hemmings Happens. Happens? Well, it was the sixties.

To be fair it’s not bad, and opens with the rather impressive “Back Street Mirror” before going onto Tim Hardin’s “Reason to Believe,” and on side two, Bill Martin’s “After the Rain.”

In between is a selection of songs (some co-written by Hemmings) that vary in quality, ranging form the stream-of-consciousness ramblings of “Good King James,” “War’s Mystery” and “Talkin’ LA,” to “Anathea,” which Jarvis Cocker rates as one of Hemmings’ best recordings.

That said, at times the actor in Hemmings tends to take over proceedings, and the singer’s left behind. Yet, it’s certainly no “dud,” but an interesting collaboration between Hemmings, McGuinn, and Hillman, that brings out another side to this iconic star.

01. “Back Street Mirror”
02. “Reason to Believe”
03. “Good King James”
04. “Bell Birds
05. “Talkin’ L.A.”
06. “Anathea”
07. “After the Rain”
08. “War’s Mystery”
09. “The Soldier Wind”
 

 
Bonus, Dirk Bogarde sings ‘Lyrics for Lovers’ after the jump…

 
This fascinating 50-minute mishmosh of a documentary was created in 1969 as a kind of promotional movie for The Magic Christian. It defies summary primarily for being noticeably under-produced, that is to say, practically free-form. It features a somewhat fatuous voice-over by his fellow Goon, UK comedy legend Spike Milligan that I would reckon is at least 50% extemporized—no less entertaining for that. It’s difficult to envision such a shambolic program making it to air today. Milligan’s text is a masterpiece of pop psychologizing—it’s entertaining to imagine a similar strategy being used to explore Lady Gaga or Kanye West.

The footage provides no coherent through line, which in some ways is a strength and tends to reinforce the underlying point, which is that Sellers has no essence to grasp onto. Late in the documentary we see an editorial cartoon after one of Sellers’ marriages in which he sits at the breakfast table surrounded by portraits of his various roles—Sellers himself has no face at all. Wifey says, “So that’s what you really look like.” It’s been said that Sellers wasn’t pleased with this cartoon.

The documentary, in true 1969 fashion, has a few NSFW elements, including nudity and footage of a bullfight and open-heart surgery. It also is crammed with famous people, including 3 of the 4 Beatles, Roger Moore, Lucille Ball, Richard Attenborough, and so forth. We hear a lot about Sellers’ love of gadgets and cars as well as some frank footage in which Sellers discusses one of his (many) heart attacks. Naturally Sellers speaks in a bunch of wildly varying registers throughout.

The documentary was never re-broadcast by the BBC, reportedly because Sellers thought he came off as depressed (fair enough). As the documentary makes abundantly clear, Sellers was a depressed sort, and his quicksilver personality changes were likely the product of no small anxiety. However, no amount of pop psychology can really settle the question of the “real” Sellers, as it cannot settle the question of the “real” anybody. Sellers’ characterizations had a peculiarly inflexible aspect to them that made them seem marvelously true-to-life. His work is one of the glories of the twentieth century; as Milligan (I think? the voice sounds different) says, “He’s Mr. I-Don’t-Know of the twentieth century. He is Mr. Twentieth Century.”
 

 
via Cinephilia and Beyond