Thanks to all who joined us for our recent Book Lunch" livestream featuring a book from 1992 by the late Neil Postman called “Technopoly”. We loved your insightful thoughts and questions.

I took the deep dive into one of the last great polemical works on culture and technology - Neil Postman's Technopoly. I situate Postman as one of the greatest examples of New York Jewish intellectual life of the twentieth century more generally, as well as possessing totally unique perspective on what technology can and can't do in particular.

More on this recent livestream event, here:

This “Book Lunch” will feature a book from 1992 by the late Neil Postman called “Technopoly”.

At once a humanities and liberal arts based and informed historical survey of attitudes towards technology in the United States as well as a cultural polemic, rereading it in our current moment makes it is some ways a book that could have been written his

very month even - as its examples are incredibly "dated" in a technical sense.

I will do the deep dive into Technopoly, the title word being Postman's neologism for a new kind of totalitarianism, one where machines rather than we humans would be in charge.

I situate the author's attitudes and perspectives within the context of the legacy of Marshall McLuhan in particular and the liberal arts
and humanities in general, the latter being in many respects the foundation of our very podcast.

#booklunch #techopoly #NeilPostman #author #amwriting #mitchhampton #podcasts

Inside this Episode with host, Mitch Hampton

When it comes to nonfiction prose, surely the work and accomplishments of biographers and cultural and social historians might be at the forefront of meaningful documents of a given society.

When you being to consider what is involved in narrating the life story of a well known and public figure in the arts it becomes clear that this too is an art in itself.

The guest of this episode, Sam Wasson is one of the leading figures in such writing, not only is he a comprehensive and indefatigable chronicler of the history of Hollywood cinema, he is most unusual in his ability to understand equally both the classical Hollywood of the 1920s through the fifties as well as the New Hollywood of the 1960s and 70s.

Wasson is also a consummate journalist who has been able to speak with many of the most important figures and players in both periods and has been crafting surveys of the periods and their creators.

Interestingly I first became familiar with Wasson for his biography of Bob Fosse, only later reading his work on Hollywood.

I see Wasson as somebody on whom future academic historians and fans alike will rely to get a real feelings for the qualities of popular art over the past sixty odd years.

Sam Wasson's Bio

L.A. native Sam Wasson studied Film at Wesleyan University and at the USC School of Cinematic Arts before publishing his first book, A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards, “the critical resurrection of Blake Edwards" (Andrew Sarris). The subsequent publication of Paul on Mazursky, Wasson’s book of conversations with the legendary writer-director of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Down and Out in Beverly Hills, occasioned Quentin Tarantino to declare Mazursky "one of the great writer-directors of cinema.”

Published in 2010, Wasson's Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman became a New York and Los Angeles Times Best Seller and a New York Times and Publishers' Weekly best book of the year. Winner of the Cinémathèque française’s Meilleur livre étranger sur le cinéma, Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. has been translated into over a dozen languages and was named by Entertainment Weekly one of the best pop-culture books of all time. 

For his full bio visit:https://www.samwasson.com/about

Links to Mr. Wasson’s works: https://www.amazon.com/Books-Sam-Wasson/s? rh=n:283155,p_27:Sam+Wasson

In this the third part of an ongoing 70s cinema series I discuss the treatment of emotions -from detached humor, to intimate domesticity.

More on this Funky Friday, Here:

Seventies cinema is, above all else, about the undiluted, raw and immediate expression of human feelings in all of their authenticity.

The emotions I have in mind are not only those of the characters in the films but the attitudes too of the filmmakers.

The films see this expression as far more important than any solution or conclusion about what to do with any of these feelings.

This feature of 70s cinema is not for everybody, of course, but gives them their distinctiveness, across differences of genres and budgets.

Interestingly, humor and comedy is one of the ways they accomplish this - in addition to unsparing episodes of intense melodrama.

Rather than seeing these two modes as mere opposites I will show how they interact with one another, through the powers given to actors and radical tonal shifts within given films and, most unusually inside of single scenes.

Examples I discuss include Taxi Driver, A Woman Under The Influence, Nashville, Between The Lines , The Conversation and more to be announced.

#1970s #cassavetes #boston #cinema #francisfordcoppola #lindsaycrouse #jeffgoldblum #jilleikenberry #mariluhenner #gwenwelles #johnheard #scorsese #robertdeniro #paulschrader #genehackman #allengarfield #genarowlands #peterfalk #joanmicklinsilver #robertaltman #michaelmurphy #nyc #johncazale 

Inside this special livestream with your host, Mitch Hampton, here:

Alexandra Lange's "Meet Me At The Fountain", the first major book on the history of the mall a phenomenon that had an outsized influence for the past sixty years and, a Lange, makes clear in her book is often misunderstood and a force for as much positive as negative.

Lange's advantages as a writer are that she wears both the hats of a cultural or social historian and in her professional life is a design critic so she is equally as knowledgeable about aesthetics in the history of design and architecture.

I learned more from reading this book than I ever thought possible and will share Lange's prose and ideas with the audience, including some additional discussion of such classics as Robert Venturi's "Learning From Las Vegas", Martha Coolidge's movie Valley Girl , Charles Jenck's What Is Post-Modernism and some surprises revealed on the lunch.

More from Mitch on this special event!

“As Spring is associated with creativity in general, I thought it would be fitting to do a trio concert of all original compositions."

The music is Yves Klein Blues, the first movement of Hampton's Second Jazz Concerto - "Because After All One Must Begin" - The (Count) Basie Plus, and two others to be announced.

All the music was written in the past five years!

The trio features Justin Watt on drums and Zack Page on bass

Rob Chalfen is one of the living connections to the history of Boston and Cambridge's countercultural performing arts scene.

I have had the opportunity to perform in at least two of his iconic venues over the decades but did not know in those years just how knowledgeable he was about the political economy of the arts, though I did know him as a serious jazz historian and scholar and recording collector.

Rob Chalfen is what at one time would be identified as a hippie from the 60s and 70s, or as he would more accurately categorize it. "freak."

One of the things I have always appreciated about greater Boston is its attempt to combine political aspirations with aesthetics and Rob Chalfen has been in the thick of that over many decades.

I certainly learned a lot in this episode about Boston past and present.

Links to Rob’s beautiful work:

Website/Blog:

https://thecambridgeroom.wordpress.com/tag/rob-chalfen/

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In this 2nd part of our ongoing series exploring the beauty and pathos of 1970's films, with your host Mitch Hampton!

Enjoy our recent "Book Lunch" livestream featuring Douglas Coupland's iconic "Generation X" !

"In this book lunch I go back to the novel that helped start the Gen X category, discuss Coupland's prose style and what it is like being in the generation that bears the name.

On this book lunch proud (but never flag waving) Gen X'er Mitch Hampton returns to the novel that started it all: Douglas Coupland's Generation X

While mainly discussing Coupland's invention with language and the overall "hangout" quality of I'd characters, he will also discuss more generally the often misunderstood and overlooked nature of the generation of which he is part."

When first I was introduced to our guest it was courtesy of our producer.

At that time I was not acquainted with her work and career. Purvis is interesting in the theatre for a number of reasons, not the least of which is her equal proficiency in performance and direction as well as serious theoretical work, a breadth that is less common.

Her work in the theatre takes diversity most seriously as much more than a buzzword and some of her work consists in the translations and movements between and among different cultures from around the world, one example of which is the Chaepani intercultural performance project.

I found that we had an enormous amount in common intellectually and artistically and it was good to have conviviality with her on this episode.

Rosalie’s Bio

Rosalie Purvis holds a BA in Literature and Dance from Bard College and an MFA in Theatre Directing from Brooklyn College and a Phd in Performing and Media Arts from Cornell University where her dissertation “Intimate Acts of Translation” focused on intercultural performance methods and translation and border studies in performance.

Since 2000, she has worked as a freelance director/performer in New York City where work has been featured at, among others, the Atlantic Theatre’s Second Stage, Theatre for the New City, the Brick Theatre, Dixon Place, the Estrogenius Festival, Teatro la Teo, the Culture Project, Teatro Circulo, 59 East 59, the Puerto Rican Traveling Company, Dance New Amsterdam, 78th Street Theatre Lab and the Brooklyn Arts Exchange. She also creates site specific works, globally.

Most recently, she joined a Kolkata-based performing arts collective and together they have performed at various national borders.

She has taught courses in performance, literature and writing most recently at Cornell University, Ithaca College, Presidency College (Kolkata) Jadavpur University (Kolkata), the City University of New York, Mercy College in the Bronx, Pace University, Fairleigh Dickinson University and Marlboro College.

She is currently serving as Libra Assistant Professor of Theatre and English at the University of Maine.

Links to Rosalie’s beautiful work

https://www.rosalietpurvis.com/

Thanks to everyone who came to our recent "Funky Friday at Five" livestream that was a first in a series all about the beauty of 70s arts, culture and film. 

If you missed it, here it is and please share it with us!   

You may not know your host, Mitch Hampton is a 70s scholar  and currently working on a book about the decade!  More on this stream, here: 

Funky Friday @ 5: "70s Cinema Part 1, A new concept of beauty. My first foray into 70s cinema, t,v, and visual culture which I am currently writing a book about.  #1970s #1970svintage #1970sfilm #author #AmWriting #podcast Journey of an Aesthete Podcast #filmcriticism