I haven’t got around to posting a lot about 1968, but we’re celebrating the anniversary of one of the craziest years ever, and it’s been helpful for me to look back on that yesteryear chaos to remind myself that these times are comparatively calm. Seriously. While everybody is uneasy about the Supreme Court hearings, 50 years ago in 1968 the Democratic National Convention collapsed into a full on riot raging through the streets of Chicago.

I’m reminded of this today because I just discovered this new archive of Allen Ginsberg recordings. Here’s Open Culture with the word…

Last month Colin Marshall gave you the scoop on Stanford University’s digitization of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” a project that takes you inside the making of the iconic 1955 poem. As a quick follow up, it’s worth mentioning this: Stanford has also just put online over 2,000 Ginsberg audio cassette recordings, giving you access to “a staggering amount of primary source material associated with the Beat Generation” and its most acclaimed poet.

For a quick taste of what’s in the archive, Stanford Libraries points you to an afternoon breakfast table conversation between Ginsberg and another legendary Beat figure, William S. Burroughs. But you can rummage/search through the whole collection and find your own favorite recordings here.

Allen Ginsberg’s surreal spirituality made the radical Buddhist an unforgettable fixture in Chicago in 1968. Here’s the poet trying to meditate the riot into submission. It didn’t work, but this is pretty far out…

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Sunday, August 26, marked the 50th anniversary of the release of The Beatles’ biggest hit, “Hey Jude.”

Here’s what Rolling Stone has to say about the song and it’s role as a high-water marker in The Beatles song catalog as well as their partnership as friends and as a band…

“Hey Jude” sums up the Beatles’ turbulent summer of 1968 — a tribute to their friendship, right at the moment it was starting to fracture. The single was a smash as soon as they released it on August 26th, 50 years ago — their biggest hit, topping the U.S. charts for nine weeks. It’s the Beatles at their warmest, friendliest, most open-hearted. John, Paul, George and Ringo sound utterly in sync, building to that power-drone “na na na na” chant. Yet it’s a song born from conflict. Nobody knew they were falling apart — in fact, “Hey Jude” was released four days after Ringo officially quit the band, walking out on the White Album sessions. Paul wrote it during John’s divorce, to cheer up his mate’s five-year-old son. As Julian Lennon recalled, “He was just trying to console me and Mum.” The world has been taking consolation from “Hey Jude” ever since.

Read the whole article here.

And here’s a great video of the band rehearsing their classic at EMI studios…

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I don’t remember how old I was when I learned that Detroit was the only place with a Devil’s Night. I’m posting this on Thursday evening, but I won’t share it with anyone until Friday morning, just in time for the night before Halloween — Devil’s Night.

The film Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages was released in 1922. The silent movie tells a history of witchcraft dating from ancient times until the early days of the 20th Century. The most famous version is the 1968 release which adds a great narrative performance by William Burroughs, and a killer, abstract jazz soundtrack from Daniel Humair.

This isn’t the first time I’ve posted this for Halloween. It won’t be the last. Have a wonderful terrible celebration…

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“Beyond the age of innocence…into the age of awareness,” read the caption at the top of Medium Cool‘s stylized poster when the film was released 45 years ago in 1969. The line is telling in that it speaks to the real-life events at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago that are captured in the film. However, the phrase also speaks to the film itself which married documentary techniques to dramatic devices to create a new kind of movie experience in which the line between cinematic action and actual real-life drama were blurred in an intense frisson that found the felt experiences of those days bleeding — sometimes literally — betweeen the frames of the film.

Haskell Wexler is an award-winning cinematographer who lensed masterpieces like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, Days of Heaven and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. For Medium Cool Wexler took a directing and writing credit along with his work as the film’s photographer.

Wexler set out to make a very different film, but once the chaos at the convention began to unfold he grabbed his camera and had his star — Robert Forster — and his crew wade directly into the riot and into movie immortality. Here’s Wexler waxing on his career and on his crazy-brave creation, Medium Cool…

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Several posts back I mentioned that this year is the 45 anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s production house American Zoetrope. It also happens to be the 35th anniversary of the 1979 film Apocalypse Now which was written by Zoetrope man of letters, John Milius and directed — of course — by Coppola himself.

Fellow Zoetroper George Lucas wanted to direct the film, shooting it with a small documentary crew on locations in California. Milius wanted to direct too — his plan was to film in Vietnam in the middle of a real war zone a la Haskell Wexler’s immortal Medium Cool which features a third act shot in the middle of the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. You know you’re in strange territory when the cooler head that prevailed was Francis Ford Coppola’s, who decided to helm the film himself in yet another bid to make a massive hit that would finally free him to direct the personal films he’d always yearned to make between his other massive hits.

The whole funny, willful, ignorant, hubristic, idealistic, psychedelic, militaristic, surf-tastic and cinematic story is told here, in this warm and generous interview of John by his old friend Francis, which illuminates the central role the writer played in the making of the classic film…

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While George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was originally panned by critics in 1968, the film has gone on to wide acclaim — it jump-started modern zombie cinema, and also mixed-in dark social commentary about the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960′s.

Romero’s 1978 follow-up, Dawn of the Dead, didn’t suffer a sophomore jinx in the series — everything from the script to the acting to the production values are cranked-up. More importantly, this is the film that defines the zombie of today as a metaphor for American consumer culture run amok.

In keeping with my latest spook-tacular posts, I’m happy to point you to George Romero’s other classic, Dawn of the Dead. If you’ve seen the film before, enjoy it again. If you’re a newbie, get ready to see where the Zombie Apocalypse really began.

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The French filmmaker Agnes Varda’s candid camera work, and the natural performances and settings in her narrative films and documentaries influenced no less than Jean-Luc Godard. As a result, Varda is considered to be one of the key influences in the development of the French New Wave.

In 1968, Varda traveled to America to shoot her short film Black Panthers — Huey!. Here’s what the Virtual Circuit site says about the movie:

This riveting documentary, “Black Panthers – Huey!”, directed by French filmmaker Agnès Varda transports you to the pivotal Free Huey rally held on February 17th, 1968 (Newton’s birthday), at Oakland Auditorium in Alameda, California. Newton, the charismatic young college student who, along with Bobby Seale, created the Black Panther Party, had been jailed for allegedly killing a police officer. His arrest–widely believed at the time to be a setup–galvanized Party support throughout the nation and led to a boom in Party membership, bringing a new level of public attention to the Panthers’ cause. Over 5,000 people attended the rally, which featured Party leaders and guest speakers including Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, James Forman, Bob Avakian, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown and Ron Dellums. Through stark un-editorialized footage, this documentary chronicles the speakers outlining the Party’s platform goals, their strategies for freeing Newton from jail and more. B&W, 31 minutes.
Plus: BLACK PANTHER NEWSREEL (USA, 1968): The California Newsreel was an underground alternative to the commercial broadcast media of the 1960’s. This unique clip provides a chilling look at the California racial environment of 1968, including demonstration scenes outside the Alameda County Jail. A rare in-jail interview with Huey P. Newton, is featured, with Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale also offering perspectives on the Panthers and what they perceive as police brutality on the black community. Essential viewing for anyone interested in American or Afro-American history, these two pieces provide an entertaining and educational look at a turbulent, incendiary time.

Here is the film.

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