Hasta La Ideas

“Glimpses of the USA (pictured) made [Charles and Ray Eames’] career soar, as well it should have. Charles’ greatest interest was in ideas. Glimpses of the USA was not to show off; I think he just loved doing what he did. When he did the do-nothing machine, for instance, that was just because he liked to play. This was a guy who never grew up—he was never ashamed of what he did.

I think Glimpses of the USA was their biggest impact. They were lovers—with one another, with the world, and with their work. And that came through, so that it wasn’t just information well told (which it was). It was a kind of a love affair with America that Charles had that made him a good propagandist, because he really believed that this was a good country for him and for the rest of us. I think the inspiration derived from the enthusiasm and the commitment, as well as from any mechanics of design. So while the chairs changed their careers as designers, Glimpses of the USA changed their public roles as filmmakers and communicators.”

-Filmmaker Bill Jersey, whose feature-length documentary, Eames: The Architect and the Painter, premieres Monday on PBS

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For being such a household name in a field not known for having many that well know, it’s odd that there’s never been a non-documentary film about Frank Lloyd Wright. It makes it particularly odd considering what a nice role it would be for some Oscar-hungry actor, given Wright’s often rough and difficult-to-endure personality, pared with his genius for design (he’s clearly the Steve Jobs of his era). That might soon be about to change, as the Hollywood Reporter reports that the writter behind The Informant!, Nicholas Meyer, has penned Taliesin, a film about the architect’s home in rural Wisconsin. The paper continues with news that Bruce Beresford, perhaps best known for Driving Miss Daisy, has signed on to direct. He tells the Reporter, “It doesn’t cover his whole life, just a small section of it, and it doesn’t whitewash him into some sort of saint.” As to who will star, the pair is staying tight lipped, but say they have someone in mind. Let us know who you’re thinking in the comments.

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In The Seven Crystal Balls, Tintin’s ride was a golden Lincoln Zephyr.

We’re slightly nervous about the Spielberg-directed The Adventures of Tintin, an animated 3-D extravaganza that brings Hergé‘s spunky gumshoe reporter to life (the title character is played by Jamie Bell, despite our entreaties that the role be given to Burberry’s Christopher Bailey). On the bright side, the film’s imminent American debut has occasioned some swell Tintin coverage. In the Wall Street Journal, Meghan Cox Gurdon did a fine job of elucidating the enduring appeal of the brave yet fallible young Belgian, whose dramatic adventures remain at human scale. “And he is always gorgeously drawn in the distinctive clean lines of his creator, Georges Remi (whose initials reversed and pronounced in French produced the nom de plume Hergé),” she writes. “Hergé’s style is so perfectly suited to the two-dimensional medium of comics that any digital version was bound to produce howls of outrage.” Meanwhile, Fred Bierman of The New York Times calls attention to Tintin’s excellent and wide-ranging taste in cars, from a 1921 Ford Model T to a 1971 Land Rover 109. And how’s this for a kicker?

The automobile is even responsible for Tintin’s most identifiable trait: the upturned tuft of his orange hair. In the first book, Tintin’s hair was combed flat, but it was a fast ride in an open-top 1925 Mercedes that gave rise to his now-famous hairstyle. It has stayed that way ever since.

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Saul Bass tribute time! This evening, the Museum of Modern Art and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences join forces to present “Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design,” part of MoMA’s festival of film preservation. In addition to the New York premiere of Saul and Elaine Bass’s Academy Award-winning 1968 short Why Man Creates, freshly preserved by the Academy Film Archive, the event will include a rich selection of Bass-designed title sequences, commercials, and corporate campaigns. But this is no ordinary screening: designers Chip Kidd and Kyle Cooper will be on hand to offer their perspectives on Bass’s enduring influence, and design historian (and Bass pal) Pat Kirkham will share her memories of the late designer. Can’t make it to MoMA? Order Kirkham’s new book about Bass. The eagerly anticipated tome, out this month from Laurence King, was designed by Jennifer Bass (daughter of Saul) and contains a whopping 1,484 illustrations. (Yes, we counted.)
continued…

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This writer’s brain is still a bit mushy from either jet lag or having eaten nothing but pasta for the past two weeks, so while he rests his weary head, here’s a great documentary by filmmaker Oliver Riley-Smith, Behind the Wall. It concerns the effort to save and preserve both murals and street art in Los Angeles, an issue that recently rose to particular prominence during LA MOCA‘s often controversial “Art in the Streets” exhibition.

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