An Oral History of Mad Men

April 8, 2015


With the second half of Mad Men's final season having started this week, The Hollywood Reporter have this great oral history of the show.

Christina Hendricks (Joan Holloway) I was up for another pilot, and I chose Mad Men. The [agency I was with] was like, "It's on AMC, it's a period piece, it's never going to go. Are you crazy? You're not going to make money for us …" I thought it was a little impatient of them. So I moved on.
 

Mark Duplass Keynote at SXSW

April 5, 2015
This is well worth an hour of your time. At the recent SXSW festival indie filmmaker and actor Mark Duplass gives a keynote speech on how to go about making movies yourself. The first 25 minutes is his step-by-step guide to how you can get short films and low budget features made and seen. The rest of the time is him taking questions and comments from the audience.

   

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A Rush Was Made on the Treasurer

March 2, 2015
I'm doing some research on the history of Clydebank FC at the moment. This newspaper report concerns the first incarnation of the club who went by the name Clydebank, who existed from 1888-1895. From what I've read of football fans of the late 19th and early 20th Century they appeared to be ready to riot at a moment's notice. I've come across numerous stories of punch-ups on the terraces, punch-ups that started on the terrace and ended up on the pitch, and just plain assaults on players by sp...
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Whiplash Short

March 1, 2015
The short film Damien Chazelle made as proof of concept for the Oscar winning full-length film 'Whiplash'.

UPDATE: Not surprisingly the short was taken down due to a copyright claim. Instead here's an 'Anatomy of a Scene' from Whiplash on the New York Times.


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Al Jean Remembers Leonard Nimoy

March 1, 2015
Simpsons showrunner Al Jean speaks about Leonard Nimoy in this Vulture piece

"Later, we asked him to play himself in our X-Files parody, and when we asked him to sing "Good Morning Starshine," he knew full well we were having a little fun with the solo album he released (and I loved), but again, he could not have been a better sport."
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Bossnappers Rehearsals

February 27, 2015
We've started rehearsals for Bossnappers this week. Should you wish you can buy tickets from See Tickets. Below are some photographs from the first couple of nights.










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Sean Penn in The Slab Boys

February 26, 2015
I'm away to see The Slab Boys at the Citizens Theatre tonight, so here's an article in Rolling Stone from 1983 on Sean Penn. The then 22 year old had just finished a Broadway run of the Paisley set play.

"I think a movie, like Raiders of the Lost Ark is just like taking drugs," snarls the man who claims he has never touched recreational chemicals. "I'm against the whole idea of 'Oh, it's good entertainment.' “My dream," he says, is to play Phil Ochs. I have a recording of him speaking in hi...
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Kids in the Hall '88

February 22, 2015
The Kids in the Hall are probably my favourite sketch troupe, and their five seasons my favourite sketch show. Rolling Stone have a reprint of the feature they ran on them in 1988 when they first came to attention.

The article came as a PDF extra on the season one DVD. Another extra from that DVD is the oral history video below.

Like Monty Python's, the Kids' sketches begin with an absurd premise, but they're not outrageous for outrageousness' sake; they craft provocative, lyrical performance p...

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Harris Wittels 1984-2015

February 21, 2015
Comedian, writer and occasional actor Harris Wittels died on Thursday at the tragically young age of 30. I was a fan of his writing and his podcast appearances. I particularly enjoyed his appearances on Parks and Recreation, where along with Coltin Dunne he formed Pawnee's Animal Control division. I always hoped for a spin-off and was actually quite disappointed when the two characters were sacked for gross incompetence and April took over.

His Parks co-star Aziz Ansari wrote an amazing, funny...
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A Comedian's Year

February 19, 2015
Comedian Bec Hill filmed/photographed her audiences over the course of a year. She did this to show how audience numbers vary.

  

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