Freaks

Tod Browning, the director of ‘Freaks’, had been a member of a travelling circus in his youth and was determined that in his adaptation of the Tod Robbin’s short story ‘Spurs’ the carnival performers that provided his cast would be fairly represented.
Consequently the ‘freaks’ of the title are the heroes of the piece with the villainy provided by two ‘normal’ circus artistes who conspire to kill one of their fellow performers.
However, Browning could not control the response of the general public to his film.
Problems began when F. Scott Fitzgerald, then a jobbing screenwriter, was nursing a hangover in the studio cafeteria as the Siamese twins from the production came in for lunch.
Fitzgerald saw them and scrambled out of the cafeteria to vomit in the nearest bathroom.
Fitzgerald references the scene in his short story ‘Crazy Sunday’ where he has the main character, a screenwriter, see a troupe of circus performers from a film in production wandering around the studio lot. Fitzgerald's character proves to be made of stronger stuff than his creator and has no adverse reaction to seeing the troupe.
Browning presented the studio with his final cut which ran at around 90 minutes.
A series of disastrous test screenings culminated in a threat of a lawsuit to the studio from a woman who claimed the film had made her miscarry her baby.
The studio removed scenes that were deemed to be too shocking or disturbing, which included the ‘freaks’ attacking one of the villains as she lay under a tree and a particularly gruesome castration scene. They also added an epilogue that provided a substantially more up-beat ending.
This new 64 minute version was the one that saw commercial release and it is believed that the scenes removed are lost forever...

Smile

By 1965 Brian Wilson had tired of the Beach Boys persona as a ‘fun in the sun’ band, singing about the beach, girls and good times. He wanted to experiment more musically and expand the scope of the band from it’s base of close harmonies and infectious hooks.
On the second side of ‘The Beach Boys Today!’ (1965) Wilson moved away from the up-beat songs that had defined the band up to this point and presented a series of melancholic ballads.
This didn’t affect the albums sales but did disturb some of the other Beach Boys and the groups record label. For ‘Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) (1965) Mike Love and Capitol Records sought assurances from Wilson that there would be a return to the carefree, happy-go-lucky style that had brought them such success.
On the surface Wilson appeared to accept this with songs such as ‘Amusement Parks USA’ and ‘California Girls’ but musically Wilson moved into new levels of symphonic sophistication and more complex arrangements of the songs.
Wilson then made a decision that the Beatles would also make a year later by making the Beach Boys a studio project. Rather than touring and promoting their music through concerts the Beach Boys would work from the studio and focus on new musical releases.
This would allow Wilson the time he needed to produce the more intricate music he wanted to without the demands of the road on the group as well.
The decision paid off almost immediately with ‘Pet Sounds’ (1966).
Featuring unconventional instrumentation from sources as unlikely as bicycle bells and dog whistles and dense layers of vocal harmony ‘Pet Sounds’ was a huge leap for ‘pop’ music.
However it was not the commercial smash that Capitol had hoped for.
‘Pet Sounds’ reached #10 in the American charts which, while far from a disaster, is put in perspective by the fact that their previous release ‘Beach Boys Party!’ (1965) reached #6 despite consisting entirely of cover versions.
However ‘Pet Sounds’ was a massive hit in the UK. It reached #2 in the chart there and became massively influential in British music circles.
The Beatles took huge inspiration from ‘Pet Sounds’ and their next release ‘Revolver’ (1966) was similarly groundbreaking. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was a melancholic ballad featuring innovative orchestration while ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ had a backing track made up of tape loops that were randomly mixed from various parts of the recording studio.
While the Beatles were working on ‘Revolver’ Wilson had recorded ‘Good Vibrations’.
‘Good Vibrations’ was a single that eventually would be released at a length of three minutes and thirty seven seconds. It’s recording involved 17 sessions at 4 different studios, over 90 hours of tape and a budget of $50,000. Wilson has said that the recording of the elecro-theremin for the song cost $15,000 on it’s own.
Wilson saw this as a prototype for the recording of the new Beach Boys album ‘Smile’.
‘Smile’ was seen by Wilson as a ‘teenage symphony to God’ and would feature songs that were thematically and musically linked.
One of the major features of the album was to have been a suite of songs called ‘The Elements.’
These songs would be related to Earth, Air , Fire and Water but this is where the cracks in the project began to appear.
Wilson, who had began to show signs of mental fragility and had exhibited depresion and paranoia over the last few months became increasingly more unstable.
At a point where the sessions were proving challenging Wilson had ordered a sand pit be installed in the studio. He felt that having the ‘beach’ in the studio would inspire the group.
During the recording of the ‘Fire Suite’ for the album Wilson became increasingly obsessed with the song. He was frustrated by the groups inability to nail the recording and ordered them to wear toy firemen hats to focus on the song properly. Eventually, as the song took shape, Wilson managed to convince himself that the recording had caused a number of fires in the surrounding neighbourhood and ordered all the tapes of the session to be burned.
Wilson’s mental disintegration and opposition from within the group as to the value of the project meant that progress was very slow.
The next blow came when Wilson was driving in his car one day and the new Beatles single ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ came on the radio. Wilson pulled over to listen and when the song finished turned to his companion in the car and simply said ‘They got there first.’
On the 6th of May 1967 a press release was issued that ‘Smile’ was being shelved as a project by the Beach Boys.
On the 11th of September 1967 the new Beach Boys album was released. It was called ‘Smiley Smile’ and featured a number of tracks composed for the ‘Smile’ album.
Tellingly, for the first time the production of the album was credited to the group rather than Brian Wilson.
In 2004 Brian Wilson teamed up with his key collaborator on the original ‘Smile’ project Van Dyke Parks and members of his own touring band to record ‘SMiLE’.
This was an attempt by Wilson to reflect what the original album should have been.
Thematically and structurally it was closer to the spirit of the album as originally envisaged and the involvement of Parks was seen as vital by Wilson.
However the lack of any Beach Boys on the album angered former Beach Boy Mike Love who sued Wilson in 2005. Love maintained that the re-recording of Beach Boys songs caused millions of dollars in damages to a partnership between him and Wilson.
This lawsuit was thrown out of court by a federal judge in 2007 who determined that no such partnership existed between Love and Wilson at the time of the re-recordings and that none had existed for decades...

Szkieletor

‘Szkieletor’ was originally intended to become headquarters of the Naczelna Organizacja Techniczna (Main Technical Organisation) in Krakow, Poland.
Construction began in 1975 but was halted in 1981 due to financial constraints.
At the time that work stopped on the building the internal structure had been completed but the exterior walls had not been built.
Locals dubbed the building ‘Szkieletor’ after ‘Skeletor’ the villain from the popular 80's cartoon series ‘He-Man and the Masters of the Universe’.
For now, it is believed to be too expensive to complete, adapt or demolish the building...

The Arcades Project

Originally planned as a magazine article to be completed with his friend Franz Hessel, Walter Benjamin began work on ‘The Arcades Project’ in 1927.
Initially taking shape in a small black notebook the work would span the rest of Benjamins life and end up forming 426 double pages of manuscript that he deposited with his friend George Bataille to be stored in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris on the outbreak of war in 1939.
From it’s origins as an essay ‘The Arcades Project’ became a series of quotations that Benjamin collected to be formed into what he described as ‘a literary montage.’
Benjamin saw himself as a ‘ragpicker’. A man sifting through the detritus of history and forming a narrative from the refuse. He had appropriated this vision of the ragpicker as poet from Charles Baudelaire and used another of Baudelaire’s images, that of the ‘flaneur’, to form the theme of ‘The Arcades Project.’
Baudelaire saw the ‘flaneur’ as ‘a person who walks the city in order to experience it.’
Benjamin saw the ‘flaneur’ as a product of modernity and the city. Specifically he believed that the Arcades, areas of the city covered with steel and glass protecting those inside from the elements, provided a natural staging post for the journeys of the ‘flaneur.’
The Arcades contained new kinds of shops and living quarters, novel forms of architecture and provided a fresh showcase for fashion, advertising and photography and Benjamin saw in them the shaping of the modern world.
Starting as an essay then, ‘The Arcades Project’ moved rapidly into a much larger work than Benjamin first anticipated. Initially his plan was to avoid analysis:
‘I needn’t say anything. Merely show.’
Benjamin hoped to do this by collecting quotations. Soon he had collected over 600.
Benjamin took pride in his archival organisation and felt that the quotations were so well collated and organised that ‘you can get an overview at a glance.’
The bibliography for the project eventually stood at 850 titles.
With the work threatening to spiral out of control Benjamin attempted to use some of the material he had collected for ‘The Arcades Project’ for a shorter work on Baudelaire.
Neither project was completed.
On September 27th 1940 Walter Benjamin committed suicide in a town called Portbou on the border between France and Spain while trying to avoid being captured by the invading Nazi forces. The group he was with had been denied passage at the border.
Benjamin had been carrying two manuscripts with him when he died.
One of these was ‘On the Concept of History’ which Hannah Arendt collected when she crossed at Portbou a few months later and passed on to Theodor Adorno.
The other had disappeared. There is speculation that it could have been a final form of ‘The Arcades Project’ but this seems unlikely.
Instead, editions of ‘The Arcades Project’ have been published since 1980 based on the notes in the manuscript stored in the Bibliotheque Nationale.
Critics have seen these versions as speculative at best but it seems unlikely that Benjamin would have objected too strongly to people picking though his rags...

Game of Death/The Crow

In 1972 Bruce Lee started filming ‘Game of Death.’
100 minutes of footage was recorded, including a fight scene with NBA All Star Kareem Abdul- Jabbar who was a former student of Lee’s.
Production was halted when Lee received an offer from Warner Brothers to star in ‘Enter the Dragon’, a co-production between Warner Brothers and Golden Harvest which Lee believed would bring him international stardom.
He went off to make ‘Enter the Dragon’ intending to return to ‘Game of Death’ immediately afterwards. However, a few months after completing ‘Enter the Dragon’ and six days before it’s theatrical release Lee died of cerebral edema.
Following Lee’s death Robert Clouse, the director of ‘Enter the Dragon’, was hired to complete ‘Game of Death’ using the previously filmed footage and newly assembled shots. Unfortunately of the 100 minutes of footage that had been shot and printed only 15 minutes worth was deemed useable.
In the original film ‘Game of Death’ was designed as a showcase for Lee’s own martial art form Jeet Kune Do. Lee’s character would be forced to fight his way through a pagoda facing masters of various martial arts on his way through the building. Lee would win each battle with his dialogue outlining the deficiencies in his opponents form.
In Clouse’s 1978 version the plot was adjusted to accommodate the use of other actors to replace Lee in key scenes.
Now, Lee would play a martial arts movie star who refuses to be intimidated by a racketeering syndicate. The syndicate attempted to assassinate Lee’s character by having a henchman sneak onto the set of his new film and shoot him. Lee’s character survives but requires plastic surgery which alters the features on his face and uses the opportunity to fake his own death.
Clouse was criticised for using actual footage of Lee’s funeral in these scenes.
He then goes after the syndicate with the final scene taking place in the upper floors of a restaurant the villains are using as a base and the fight scenes from the original production feature heavily.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar refused to take part in the re-shoot so a stand-in was used for him.
Chuck Norris is also credited as appearing in the film although all the footage that features him was originally shot for ‘Way of the Dragon.’
Generally the film was well received despite scenes such as a shot of a stand-in looking at ‘himself’ in a mirror which has an obvious cardboard cut out of Lee’s face stuck on it.
Clouse went on to make ‘Game of Death II’ which also featured footage from Lee’s early films but his character is killed off early on to allow his character’s brother to complete the story.
In 1993 Brandon Lee, Bruce’s son, was completing production on ‘The Crow.’
Lee was shooting a scene where his character was facing a gang of thugs and is shot in the stomach. The gun was loaded with blank cartridges but a dummy round was lodged in the barrel and fired out when the trigger was pulled.
Lee was shot in the abdomen and the round lodged in his spine. He died 12 hours later.
Again, the decision was made to complete the film using stand-ins and existing footage and
‘The Crow’ was released on May 13th 1994.

The Black Room by The KLF

The performance of the KLF and Extreme Noise Terror at the BRIT Awards in 1992 should have been a great deal messier.
A dead sheep and 8 gallons of blood had been purchased from an abattoir in Northanpton earlier that day and the dismemberment of the animal was due to form the central act of the show.
The animal parts were to be thrown into the crowd of music business executives who occupied the front row of the show and the blood was going to be following.
In the end the protestations of Extreme Noise Terror, strict vegans who vandalised butchers shops, meant that the KLF agreed to not use the sheep or blood during the show.
Instead Bill Drummond opened fire on the crowd with a machine gun loaded with blanks...
Later that night the sheep was dumped on the forecourt of the hotel where the official BRIT’s aftershow party was taking place. There was a sign hung around it’s neck that read:
‘I died for ewe-bon appetit.’
At the end of their performance a voice boomed out over the crowd:
‘The KLF have left the music business.’
No one believed it. The KLF were a hugely successful act. Following their incarnation as the Timelords and their Number One hit ‘Doctorin’ The Tardis’ the KLF had followed up with another six Top Ten singles and another Number One with ‘3 am Eternal’.
Their first album ‘The White Room’ was designed to form the soundtrack for a film that was never actually made. It was a blend of ‘Stadium House’, downtempo tracks and electropop confections and the follow up album ‘The Black Room’ was conceived as a complementary piece that would merge dance beats with industrial metal.
Extreme Noise Terror and the KLF had recorded some tracks and work was supposed to continue on the album after the BRITs.
Before the performance Jonathan King, one of the organisers of the BRITs, had warned the group from anything too controversial.
In the aftermath Piers Morgan described the act as ‘sick’ and the group as ‘pop’s biggest wallies.’
Jonathan King then made a statement backing the group and their actions.
A spokesman for the band described this as ‘the real low point.’
Shortly after the KLF announced their official retirement from the music business.
Never ones for half measures, they deleted the group’s entire back catalogue and all plans for ‘The Black Room’ were shelved.
You can’t help feeling that if Jonathan King had just agreed with Piers Morgan we would have got one more album out of them...

The Gran Cavallo by Leonardo da Vinci

Ludovico il Moro, the Duke of Milan, commissioned Leonardo in 1482 to create the greatest equestrian statue in the world.
Conceived as a tribute to his father Francesco, Ludovico wanted Leonardo to surpass the largest equestrian monuments of the time, Donatello’s statue of Gattemelata in Padua and Verrocchio’s Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice.
Seventy tons of bronze were immediately set aside for the casting of the statue but Leonardo didn’t make any progress on the project for a number of years.
In 1492 a clay model of the horse was completed which was larger than the two statues that Leonardo had been set as his benchmark. The model became known as the ‘Gran Cavallo’ and Leonardo began to make detailed plans for it’s casting in bronze.
By 1494 Milan was under the threat of invasion by Charles VIII of France.
Although known as ‘The Affable’, Charles was militarily and imperially ambitious.
He had bought the neutrality of Austria and Britain and had ambitions to conquer Italy.
Charles entered Italy in 1494 and quickly took Naples and Florence.
The advance of the French terrified the other Italian rulers, including the Pope and Ludovico, who formed an anti-French alliance called the League of Venice.
One of Ludovico’s first acts was to take the bronze set aside for the ‘Gran Cavallo’ to be used to make cannons to see off the invaders.
Charles was eventually seen off but Louis XII of France invaded again in 1499.
This time French troops used the clay model for target practice and it was destroyed.
In 1977 Charles Dent, an American pilot and artist, decided that, as a tribute to the Renaissance generally and Leonardo specifically, construction of the horse should be completed with the statue being presented to the city of Milan.
The cost of the statue was $2.5 million and it was unveiled in 1999.
Charles Dent had however passed away in 1994.
A sculpture by Nina Amaku called ‘The American Horse’ was commissioned by Frederik Meijer, a retail magnate, for inclusion in his Gardens and Sculpture Park in Michigan.
The sculpture is 24 feet tall and is based on Leonardo’s design.
When Michaelangelo saw the clay model for the ‘Gran Cavello’ he expressed doubts that Leonardo would actually be able to cast it.
As it turns out the vagaries of fate took that dilemma out of Leonardo’s hands...