Category Archives: Video Vault
Public Service: Preaching The Evils Of Comic Books
When I was a boy and played with the gang we did a lot of things. We roasted potatoes and went on expeditions, we tipped over garbage cans now and then, we wrote nasty remarks about the teacher on the sidewalk. We never spent our afternoons like this, reading.
Daniel Clowes’ Unaired Ad Spot For Apple
It’s hard not to be entranced by this 2004 Apple advertisement starring cartoonist Daniel Clowes (click to view). It was part of the largely unsuccessful “Switch” campaign created by Errol Morris. The ads star mostly unknown “citizens” (including Morris’s son), as well as some b-list celebrities and cult figures like Clowes.
When Crispin Glover Freaked Out David Letterman
Came across this article about Crispin Glover in the Detroit Free Press this morning. It talks about the actor’s turn in a Detroit production of the Elmore Leonard play “Freaky Deaky.” Nothing of much value in the article, however, aside from a slightly amusing quote from Glover regarding his 1987 appearance (see above) on Late Night with David Letterman:…
Teenage Mother (1967)
When the scare film Teenage Mother (1967) was released, promotional posters billed it as “The film that dares to explain what most parents can’t.” Why parents couldn’t explain contraception or teenage pregnancy remains a mystery, but let’s chalk it up to the conservative social climate of the time (and the filmmaker’s desire to market controversy). Directed by cult exploitation…
Andy Kaufman’s Breakfast With Freddie Blassie
In My Breakfast With Blassie (1983), Andy Kaufman meets professional wrestler “Classy” Freddie Blassie for breakfast at a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. Food is ordered, the conversation is dull, and Freddie Blassie is obsessed with their waitress, a pregnant Thai woman. It’s the type of comedic discomfort that’s made Larry David rich, just 20 years earlier. Full movie…
Future Shock (1972)
Released in 1972, this documentary is based on the popular and widely translated book “Future Shock” by noted American futurist Alvin Toffler. Hosted and narrated by Orson Welles, there’s a fairly sinister tone throughout, mainly one of paranoia regarding what’s to come. Given the film is nearly 40 years old, seeing the future from the perspective of the past…
The United States of Psychedelia
In 1976 Vincent Collins was contracted by the United States Information Agency, the government’s propaganda agency, to create a film celebrating the country’s bicentennial. The end result is included above. In its own tweaked-out way, it reminds of the time the Bush Administration asked Stephen Colbert to speak at the White House Correpondent’s Dinner.
