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John Vanderslice

John Warren Vanderslice (born May 22, 1967) is an American musician, songwriter, record producer, and recording engineer. He is the owner and founder of Tiny Telephone, an analog recording studio in North Oakland. He has released sixteen full-length studio albums and five remix records and EPs on Dead Oceans and Barsuk Records and has collaborated with musicians such as the Mountain Goats, St. Vincent, and Spoon.

Early years
Vanderslice grew up in rural North Florida before his family moved to Maryland when he was 11. In 1989, he graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Maryland, where he also studied art history. Vanderslice moved to San Francisco in 1990. While supporting himself as a waiter, Vanderslice took classes at University of California, Berkeley, with the intention of becoming an English teacher. Vanderslice then spent five years as a member of the experimental band Mk Ultra, with whom he released three albums in the 1990s. The last of these, The Dream Is Over, received a 9.2 from Pitchfork.

In 1997, he founded Tiny Telephone, a 3,000 sq. ft., two-room recording studio in the Mission District of San Francisco. The studio was initially used as a rehearsal space before being developed as a full-time, all-analog recording studio. Bands who recorded in the studio included Death Cab for Cutie, Sleater-Kinney, Okkervil River, Deerhoof, The Mountain Goats, The Magnetic Fields, Tune-yards, and Spoon. The original studio closed in 2020, with Vanderslice saying that despite being booked year-round it was no longer financially solvent. However, an Oakland location of Tiny Telephone, opened in 2015, continues to operate.

Solo career
In 2000, Vanderslice released his first solo album, Mass Suicide Occult Figurines, and briefly gained some national media attention for the single "Bill Gates Must Die" after concocting a hoax in which Microsoft supposedly threatened legal action over the song; Vanderslice had trouble manufacturing the CD because the artwork resembled that of a Windows installation disc, and at least one manufacturer was wary of legal action. During the controversy, he was interviewed by Spin, Wired, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Time Travel Is Lonely and Life and Death of an American Fourtracker followed in 2001 and 2002 respectively, followed by 2004’s Cellar Door.

Many songs on the 2005 album Pixel Revolt referenced the September 11, 2001 attacks and the Iraq War and were more overtly political in their lyrical content. The album earned an 8.3 rating on Pitchfork and was cited for its "meticulous arrangements" with "everything in its right place", and declared an "excellent album". The album's ending resolves the narrator's struggles with acute depression ("Dead Slate Pacific") and suicidal thoughts ("The Golden Gate") with a love song to psychotropic drugs ("CRC 7173, Affectionately").

The title of Vanderslice's 2007 album, Emerald City, references both the nickname of the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and the name of the city in The Wizard of Oz. He has said about the album: "I was so beaten down after the 2000 election and after 9/11 and then the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan; I was so depleted as a person after all that stuff happened, that I had to write my way out of it. I really had to write political songs because for me it is a way of making sense and processing what is going on." Emerald City achieved a score of 82/100 on Metacritic. Entertainment Weekly called the album "a gleaming gem" that doesn't disappoint. Billboard's review of the record called Vanderslice an "always perceptive lyricist". Calling Vanderslice a "master story-teller", Matt Fink of Paste said that Emerald City was "vividly imagined yet subtle in tone, with conflicted character sketches unfolding around somber synth melodies, creaky electronic effects, and fuzzy acoustic guitar strums."

In 2009, with Romanian Names, Vanderslice broke away from overtly political lyrical content characteristic of previous albums and turned his focus to personal reflections on romance and a modern person’s relationship to the natural landscape. Maintaining his commitment to fully analog production, Vanderslice recorded guitar and piano tracks for this album in his analog basement studio of his San Francisco home. He completed further instrumentation and production at his own Tiny Telephone recording studio with producer Scott Solter.

In 2010, Vanderslice released a free EP called Green Grow The Rushes.

A full album, White Wilderness, was released on January 25, 2011, on Dead Oceans. Here, Vanderslice forwent his usual meticulous process of manipulating and heavily over-dubbing tracks in the recording studio, in favor a pared-down production style. He recorded the album live with Minna Choi and the 19-member Magik*Magik Orchestra, the house orchestra of Tiny Telephone, in three days at Berkeley’s historically-renowned Fantasy Studios. Vanderslice wrote acoustic versions of each song, while Choi wrote all orchestral arrangements. The collaboration resulted in a looser sound that maintained the structural complexity and pop sensibility of Vanderslice’s previous songwriting. Lyrically, Vanderslice reflects on his trajectory as a musician and performer and draws inspiration from the California landscape. "The Piano Lesson" recounts early memories of learning to play the piano as a child, while "After It Ends" imagines a performer destroying and escaping his venue at the end of a show. The romping "Convict Lake" is an autobiographical account of an overdose on LSD during a camping trip at this Sierra Nevada, California, lake. It was produced and recorded by John Congleton.

In January 2012, Vanderslice left his record contract with Dead Oceans. He created a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to start his own label and reached his $18,500 goal within hours of starting the campaign, which ultimately resulted in his ninth album, Dagger Beach.

With Dagger Beach, Vanderslice pushed experimentation with analog production techniques to the forefront of his songwriting. For some songs, including "Harlequin Press" and "Damage Control", he tried to avoid familiar song structures by writing over improvised drum parts played by longtime collaborator Jason Slota. On the album, Vanderslice revisits the theme of navigating the California landscape as a metaphor for personal relationships: “Raw Wood” reflects on solo camping in Wildcat camp of Point Reyes National Park, while “North Coast Rep” describes a disintegrating friendship by way of a found photograph of the Sonoma, California, landscape.

In conjunction with Dagger Beach, Vanderslice released his own full cover version of David Bowie's Diamond Dogs. The idea for the cover album came in August 2012, when Vanderslice performed Diamond Dogs in full at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco, followed by a screening of Michel Gondry's cult classic, The Science of Sleep. After intensive rehearsing for a single show with a limited audience, Vanderslice decided to channel his creative efforts with Bowie's original material into an entire cover version of the album. It was released on limited edition vinyl in June 2013. Using the original album as a backbone to experiment and improvise in the recording studio with collaborators, Vanderslice altered lyrics, song structures, chord progressions, and titles of many of the songs.

With full control of the production and distribution of his self-released albums and a commitment to quality control, Vanderslice had both Dagger Beach and Diamond Dogs pressed on 200-gram vinyl by audiophile Quality Record Pressings plant. In response to widespread music file sharing and in an effort to control sound quality of distributed files, he has made high-quality music files of many self-released songs freely available online.

In an interview with The New Yorker, Vanderslice stated that a near-death experience in 2014, in which the van he was touring in almost flipped on Interstate 80 in Ohio, prompted him to quit touring and making records. Surviving the incident was a life-altering experience: “After that happened, maybe a second later, I was like, I’m done. I don’t want to die in a van. It wasn’t sad, it wasn’t celebratory. It was just like, eh, I had a good run.”

Vanderslice began touring again in 2018 with Undertow Music, performing a series of house shows. His album The Cedars also released that year would be his last album fully recorded and mixed by analog means of production. His following albums are almost all recorded digitally in his small backyard studio in Los Angeles including Dollar Hits (2020) and d E A T h ~ b U g (2021).

In 2021, Vanderslice self-released his first fully electronic record. CRYSTALS 3.0 is the culmination of a span of experimentation with harsh noise and drugs, curious samples and cascading sequencers. A seamless 19-minute sequence of melodies, meticulous static bursts, and spring-loaded beats, CRYSTALS 3.0 applies the unencumbered enthusiasm of vintage Vanderslice records to his ideas about breaking old molds, about avoiding easy interpretation.

Those samples populate CRYSTALS 3.0 like reawakened ghosts, maybe guests of honor at one of the drug parties Vanderslice throws in the backyard with his wife, Maria Vanderslice. The whole dense little record "feels like a distilled fête", its 13 overlapping tracks functioning as fragments from conversations and encounters.

Recording technique and collaborations
Vanderslice is a proponent of using analog instruments and recording equipment to produce a richer, more raw sound, which he has sometimes called "sloppy hi-fi". He has collaborated closely with engineer/producers in the production of his albums, including John Congleton, Scott Solter, and John Croslin.

Since 2014, Vanderslice has been a full-time record producer at Tiny Telephone and has worked with Frog Eyes, Samantha Crain, the Mountain Goats, and Grandaddy. He has previously worked with Sophie Hunger, Bombadil, Strand of Oaks, and Spoon. Currently, he rarely takes on production work to focus on his own music.

In 2020, Vanderslice almost entirely pivoted away from analog recording and has become an advocate for the freedom of experimentation afforded by digital recording.

Vanderslice was a contributing producer on the Spoon album, Gimme Fiction, and also produced The Mountain Goats albums We Shall All Be Healed, The Sunset Tree, and Heretic Pride. In March and April 2009, he toured alongside The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle in the "Gone Primitive Tour". These shows featured Vanderslice and Darnielle each playing acoustic sets and then performing material together.

On several occasions, Vanderslice has chosen bands to tour with him who have gone on to widespread recognition and critical respect, including Sufjan Stevens, Okkervil River, The Tallest Man On Earth, and St. Vincent.

Influences and interests
Vanderslice is heavily influenced by film and is a fan of David Lynch and Ingmar Bergman. His song "Promising Actress" references the film Mulholland Drive (film). His 2004 release, Cellar Door is inspired by and largely written about the 2001 film Donnie Darko. He is a prolific amateur photographer, and has taken publicity photos for Thao Nguyen, The Mountain Goats, Will Sheff of Okkervil River, and Mirah. He has also had his work used as album artwork by Matt Nathanson, Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes, and Mobius Band, as well as for his own 2009 release, Romanian Names.

John Vanderslice has radically changed the style of music he creates since shifting away from analog recording in 2020, citing his modern musical influences as Arca (musician), JPEGMafia, Autechre, and Modeselektor.

Albums

 * Mass Suicide Occult Figurines (2000)
 * Time Travel Is Lonely (2001)
 * Life and Death of an American Fourtracker (2002)
 * Cellar Door (2004)
 * Pixel Revolt (2005)
 * Emerald City (2007)
 * Romanian Names (2009)
 * White Wilderness (recorded with the Magik*Magik Orchestra) (2011)
 * Dagger Beach (2013)
 * Vanderslice Plays Diamond Dogs (2013)
 * The Cedars (2019)
 * Dollar Hits (2020)
 * ETHICAL JUTE MOUSE: Lost Songs from Tiny Telephone 2001–2021 (2021)
 * John, I can't believe civilization is still going here in 2021! Congratulations to all of us. Love, DCB (2021)
 * d E A T h ~ b U g (2021) (released under the moniker ORANGEPURPLEBEACH)
 * Released Under Creative Commons 0 (2022)
 * CRYSTALS 3.0 (2023)

Remix albums

 * MGM Endings: Cellar Door Remixes (2004)
 * Suddenly It All Went Dark: Pixel Revolt Live to 2-Track (2006)
 * Scott Solter Remixes Pixel Revolt in Analog (2007)

Singles and EPs

 * "Bedside recordings vol. 1.2" – 7" (with the Mountain Goats) (2003)
 * Moon Colony Bloodbath – EP (with the Mountain Goats) (2009)
 * "Too Much Time" – 7" (2009)
 * "D.I.A.L.O." – 7" (2010)
 * Green Grow the Rushes – (2010)
 * "Song For Clay Miller" – Flexi (2013)
 * "Midnight Blue" – Flexi (2015)
 * Amethyst (2022)

title: John Vanderslice


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Kenneth Boulding's evolutionary perspective

Kenneth E. Boulding's evolutionary perspective is an approach to economics (see also evolutionary economics) put forward most completely in his Ecodynamics (1978) and Evolutionary Economics (1981) had roots in his 1934 work on population theory and the age structure of capital as well as his Reconstruction (1950) with chapter titles like "An Ecological Introduction" and "The Theory of the Economic Organism."

Perspectives
One of the first major perspectives of Boulding's evolutionary perspective was his emphasis on know-how or, to use the term of Vladimir Vernadsky (1926) and Teilhard de Chardin (1959), which Boulding used as well, the "Noosphere." This is the counterpart in social and economic evolution to the role of genetic information and DNA in biological evolution. Just as DNA provides the genetic know-how to produce a chicken from an egg, automotive engineers and their recording devices contain the know-how to produce an automobile.

One of the first major neoclassical casualties of this perspective comes from Boulding's critique of the usual factors of production, land, labor and capital:

It is much more accurate to identify the factors of production as know-how (that is genetic information structure), energy, and materials, for, as we have seen, all processes of production involve the direction of energy by some know-how structure toward the selection, transportation, and transformation of materials into the product.

"Labor" is a category marginally useful to Boulding for studying distribution, but of no use whatever for studying production. Boulding's factors of production are know-how, materials and energy; hence, a theory which holds labor—a heterogeneous collection of artifacts of know-how, energy and materials—as the source of value in the production process has "all the scientific validity of the medieval elements of earth, air, fire, and water."

Another former president of the American Economic Association, Georgescu-Roegen, also began to dissent from orthodox economics for reasons not dissimilar to Boulding. In his classic work, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, Georgescu-Roegen issued a call for the end of the circular flow diagrams used in mainstream thought and textbooks in which the production and circulation process are detached from the physical reality, the scale, of the planet's resources and pollution sinks. He called for greater attention to be given to the second law of thermodynamics – that it be treated as a cornerstone of the mainstream paradigm. Boulding can be seen as addressing this call. Once one considers the possibility that labor can be seen as an intermediate surrogate for more fundamental factors, like know-how, materials and energy, then it is a short step to treat (as Boulding sometimes does) capital as a surrogate for know-how and land as surrogate for material resources and the traditional factors of production, land, labor and capital, are easily rearticulated as know-how, energy and materials. If and when that sort of transformation in thought takes place, professional attention will immediately be focused on the throughput resulting from the production and consumption process. With the rising perception of environmental degradation and the unrelenting thrust of the environmental movement, there is every reason to expect the profession to include throughput as a centerpiece in the production process. Boulding's factors of production accomplish this task.

Post-civilized society
Once the traditional factor of production (i.e. capital) is reinterpreted as know-how, one can easily conclude that know-how and the growth of knowledge are "the essential key to economic development. Investment, financial systems and economic organizations and institutions are in a sense only the machinery by which a knowledge process is created and expressed." ("Economic Development as an Evolutionary System"). Boulding (1961) (1964) embedded his view of development in a long-term perspective that envisages us as moving from our current "civilized society" to "post-civilized society". The driving force of this movement is science or the culture that supports science. Development of the third world is a critical part of the movement to a "post-civilized society".

His "post-civilized society" is not the stationary state of John Stuart Mill or Herman Daly, but it does have a stable population. As a young man in his twenties, Boulding took a position that we now refer to as neo-Malthusian. He argued that "the indication seems to be" that the (per-capita) income level at which the western world would only reproduce itself is one "that the actual standard of life can never reach." (1939, 107) Thirty years later, still prior to Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb (1969) and the limits-to-growth literature (e.g., Meadows, 1971), Boulding argued (1965) that it "is hard to avoid considerable pessimism" about the prospects of development, especially in countries with high birth rates, which could undermine the great potential of a post-civilized society.

His major contribution to this problem is probably the argument (1964) for tradable birth-right permits. His dissidence on this issue is political – it runs against the grain of the political climate both then and now. If he was correct about the emerging seriousness of the population problem and if that level of concern is one day reflected in popular political sentiment, there is every reason to expect the profession to embrace Boulding's call for tradable birth-right permits, since it is based squarely on neoclassical concern for efficiency.

Criticism of mainstream economists
Boulding is widely known for his criticism of mainstream economists' use of equilibrium analysis and, in particular, for the profession's acceptance of what Boulding calls "Samuelson's dynamics" (originating with the Foundations (1947)). To appreciate his position, it is important to reflect on the different time scales in biological evolution and what Boulding calls social or societal evolution. With the advent of the human capacity for developing complex images (1950), social evolution has proceeded orders of magnitude faster than biological evolution. Changes, for example, in the size of the human brain have occurred orders of magnitude more slowly than social and economic changes in the last ten millennia.

Yet slower than biological evolution is the time scale of astronomical change. The relations among the celestial bodies of the solar system were first depicted mathematically by Newton. The precision with which the field of celestial mechanics is able to describe the movements of bodies of the solar system is due to the incredibly slow time scale of astronomical, evolutionary change. Boulding's longstanding concern was that equilibrium analysis, market dynamics and growth theory as practised in conventional economics are based on the mathematics of difference and differential equations, as found in celestial mechanics.

Along with his critique of equilibrium analysis, he has the following critique with the profession's methodological emphasis on prediction as being the criterion of good theory:

Prediction of the future is possible only in systems that have stable parameters like celestial mechanics. The only reason why prediction is so successful in celestial mechanics is that the evolution of the solar system has ground to a halt in what is essentially a dynamic equilibrium with stable parameters. Evolutionary systems, however, by their very nature have unstable parameters. They are disequilibrium systems and in such systems our power of prediction, though not zero, is very limited because of the unpredictability of the parameters themselves. If, of course, it were possible to predict the change in the parameters, then there would be other parameters which were unchanged, but the search for ultimately stable parameters in evolutionary systems is futile, for they probably do not exist.... Social systems have Heisenberg principles all over the place, for we cannot predict the future without changing it.

There is a fundamental theorem in information theory that says information has to be surprising. Equilibrium can't exist in a system in which information is an essential element. The parameters are always changing. I describe econometrics as the attempt to find the celestial mechanics of non-existent universes. (1991)

Biological evolution gives considerable emphasis to the ability of organisms to adapt to unpredictable change—their survival value. In his words,

 * ...the perception of potential threats to survival may be much more important in determining behavior than the perceptions of potential profits, so that profit maximization is not really the driving force. It is fear of loss rather than hope of gain that limits our behavior.

Boulding's observation or conjecture was made prior to widespread adoption of the same idea by economists in the eighties following work done in psychology in the seventies for which a Nobel prize was awarded in 2002.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text: User talk:203.23.90.241

title: User talk:203.23.90.241


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Papillon (1973 film)

Papillon is a 1973 historical adventure drama prison film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. The screenplay by Dalton Trumbo and Lorenzo Semple Jr. was based on the 1969 autobiography by the French convict Henri Charrière. The film stars Steve McQueen as Charrière ("Papillon") and Dustin Hoffman as Louis Dega. Because it was filmed at remote locations, the film was quite expensive for the time ($12 million), but it earned more than twice that in its first year of release. The film's title is French for "Butterfly", referring to Charrière's tattoo and nickname.

Plot
Henri Charrière is a safecracker nicknamed "Papillon" because of the butterfly tattoo on his chest. In France, he is wrongly convicted of murdering a pimp in 1933 and is sentenced to life imprisonment in French Guiana. En route, he meets a fellow convict, Louis Dega, an infamous forger and embezzler. Papillon offers to protect Dega if he will fund the former's escape once they reach Guiana. Enduring the horrors of life in a jungle labour camp, the two become friends.

One day, Papillon defends Dega from a sadistic guard and escapes into the jungle but is captured and sentenced to two years in solitary confinement. In gratitude, Dega has extra food smuggled to Papillon. When the smuggling is discovered, the warden screens Papillon's cell in darkness for six months and halves his rations, but Papillon refuses to give up Dega's name. He is eventually released and sent to the infirmary in St-Laurent-du-Maroni to recover.

Papillon sees Dega again and asks him to arrange for another escape attempt. Dega helps him meet an inmate doctor who offers to secure a boat on the outside with the help of a man named Pascal. Fellow prisoner Clusiot and a gay orderly named André Maturette join the escape plot. During the escape, Clusiot is knocked unconscious by a guard. Dega subdues the guard and reluctantly joins Papillon and Maturette, climbing the walls to the outside. The trio meet Pascal, and they escape into the night. In the jungle the next day, Pascal delivers the prisoners to their boat, but after he leaves, the convicts discover it is fake. They encounter a local trapper who has killed the bounty hunters waiting for them. He guides the three to a leper colony, where they obtain supplies and a seaworthy boat.

The trio lands in British Honduras and are accosted by a group of soldiers, who wound Maturette. He is captured along with Dega, while Papillon evades the soldiers and lives for a long period with a native tribe. He awakens one morning to find them gone, leaving him with a small sack of pearls. Papillon pays a nun to take him to her convent, where he asks the Mother Superior for refuge, but instead, she turns him over to the authorities.

Papillon is returned to French Guiana and sentenced to another five years of solitary confinement. He emerges a graying old man, along with Maturette, whom he sees just before the latter dies. Papillon is moved to the remote Devil's Island, where he reunites with Dega, who has long given up hope of being released.

From a high cliff, Papillon observes a cove where he realizes the waves are powerful enough to carry a man out to sea and to the nearby mainland. Papillon persuades Dega to join him in another escape, and the men make two floats from bagged-up coconuts. Dega then decides not to escape and begs Papillon not to either. Papillon embraces Dega, then leaps from the cliff and is carried out to sea.

A narrator states that Papillon lived the rest of his life a free man, while the prison was eventually closed.

Production
After the publication of Papillon in 1969, a bidding war started between Avco-Embassy Pictures, Continental Distributing, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and numerous French film companies for the film rights. Continental Distributing won the rights for $500,000, with the intent to hire Roman Polanski as director and Warren Beatty as lead actor, but the studio's funding fell through. It sold the rights to producer Robert Dorfmann, who initially intended to hire Terence Young as director and Charles Bronson as star, before turning to Franklin J. Schaffner and Steve McQueen. The film's first screenplay by William Goldman, which was more faithful to the book than the final film, was rewritten by Lorenzo Semple Jr. to expand the role of Louis Dega, in an attempt to convince Dustin Hoffman to join the cast and eliminate depictions of homosexuality among prisoners. After Hoffman's casting, Dalton Trumbo further rewrote the screenplay. Ratna Assan made her film debut in Papillon by portraying an indigenous woman named Zoraima, which resulted in extreme censorship when the film was screened in Indonesia.

Papillon was filmed at various locations in Spain and Jamaica, with the cave scenes filmed beneath what is now the Xtabi hotel on the cliffs of Negril. The town scenes near the beginning of the film were shot in Hondarribia, Spain. The St-Laurent-du-Maroni penal colony scenes were filmed in Falmouth, Jamaica, and the swamp scenes were shot near Ferris Cross. Interior scenes were shot in Montego Bay, while other scenes were filmed in Kingston, Ocho Rios and Savanna-la-Mar.

Most of the French prisoners on the island were portrayed by German-Jamaican extras. Steve McQueen's famous cliff-jumping scene near the film's climax took place from the cliffs in Maui, Hawaii. McQueen insisted on performing the cliff-jumping stunt himself. He later said it was "one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life".

McQueen was paid $2 million, along with the contractual stipulation that he receive first billing over Dustin Hoffman. In addition, author Henri Charrière acted as consultant on location, apprising the filmmakers of the things he encountered during his years of imprisonment.

The Prison of St-Laurent-du-Maroni, where Henri Charrière was held, and where most of the action takes place, was faithfully recreated using the original blueprints. Footage of the historic prison in French Guiana plays under the end credits, which is shown to be abandoned and covered in jungle growth.

Soundtrack
The score to Papillon was composed and conducted by Jerry Goldsmith. It was recorded in Rome, Italy, at the Ortophonic Recording Studio by the "Unione Musicisti Roma Orchestra". The film marked Goldsmith's fourth (of seven) collaboration with director Franklin J. Schaffner, following his Academy Award-nominated scores to Planet of the Apes and Patton. Both the director and composer shared the belief that film music should be used economically. They wanted the music as commentary only, in sequences in which it can emphasize the psychological aspects of the film. In Papillon, the film is two and a half hours long, but has 40 minutes with music.

Goldsmith's compositions, characterized by a late romantic symphonic and impressionistic style suffused with a metered, exotic timbre (using instruments from Caribbean folk music), are distributed mainly in the second half of the film. They generally accompany scenes outside the prison, during the various escape attempts by the protagonist. He used a delicate melodic approach, dominated by a very catchy theme expressed as a waltz, which was often played using an accordion. The instrument was associated with the French origin of the protagonists. The theme song became famous with the popularity of the film, and it was released in many variations by different record companies.

The score was partially released on vinyl in 1973 and reissued over the years. In the 21st century, an edition was released on CD by Universal Records in France. For the first time, it was the complete version of music from the film (including about five minutes of previously unreleased tracks). The DVD of the English-language version of the film includes an option to listen to Goldsmith's music as an isolated audio track.

Goldsmith earned his sixth Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score for this soundtrack. It was one of the American Film Institute's 250 nominated soundtracks for the top 25 American film scores.

Box office
The film was a commercial success and grossed $3,126,574 in its opening week. It earned theatrical rentals in the United States and Canada of $21.3 million.

Critical reception
Roger Ebert's review at the film's original release was two stars out of four. He said that the main flaw was a failure to gain audience interest in McQueen's and Hoffman's characters: "You know something has gone wrong when you want the hero to escape simply so that the movie can be over."

Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "a big, brave, stouthearted, sometimes romantic, sometimes silly melodrama with the kind of visual sweep you don't often find in movies anymore."

Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote, "For 150 uninterrupted minutes, the mood is one of despair, brutality, and little hope. On a professional level, the Allied Artists release is expert in all creative and technical areas. On an audience level, it is a relentless downer."

Gene Siskel gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, and called it "just plain boring".

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "'Papillon' is an eloquent tribute to the indomitability of the human spirit and a powerful indictment of those institutions dedicated only to breaking it. As such, it's lots easier to admire than to enjoy."

Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it "a keen disappointment ... this lumbering vehicle directed by Franklin J. Schaffner leaves Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman stranded on the screen while opportunities for vivid filmmaking and sympathetic characterizations are bungled at every turn."

Richard Combs of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that "what is missing is any of the book's anger at the outrageous hypocrisy, injustice and inhumanity of the system; any of the passion which feeds Papillon's compulsion to escape."

In a contemporary review, Quentin Tarantino called it "a pretty iconic film for boys my age who saw it when it came out... The film is very involving. It contains maybe McQueen's finest serious acting moment on film, when he sticks his head out of the solitary confinement door and is not only unrecognizable but completely deranged. And the film contains one of the most powerful time cuts I've ever seen in a motion picture. The film's also not a little pretentious, self consciously arty, unrelentingly grim, extremely grueling and except for Dustin Hoffman keeping a bankroll and an extra pair of spectacles up his ass, completely devoid of any entertainment value."

Papillon holds a 72% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 32 reviews.

Awards and honors
In 1974, the film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score (Jerry Goldsmith) and a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actor, Drama (Steve McQueen).

In popular culture
The song "Devil's Island", by the American heavy metal band Megadeth, written by lead singer Dave Mustaine, was inspired by this film, and appeared on the band's 1986 album Peace Sells... but Who's Buying?.

The song, "Human Insecticide", by the Canadian thrash metal band Annihilator from their 1989 album, Alice in Hell, was inspired by this film.

The Editors song, "Papillon", from their 2009 album, In This Light and on This Evening, opens with the line, "Make our escape, you're my own papillon".

Mark Kozelek and Desertshore recorded a song called "Hey You Bastards I'm Still Here", named after Papillon's last quote from the film, spoken in voiceover before the closing credits start.

A parody of Papillon, Farfallon, is a 1974 Italian comedy film directed by Riccardo Pazzaglia.

2017 film
Another film based on the autobiographies of Charrière and the 1973 film, also called Papillon, was released in 2017, directed by Danish director Michael Noer. Charlie Hunnam played the lead role of Henri Charrière, and Rami Malek played Louis Dega. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2017.

title: Papillon (1973 film)


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User talk:Ratty

Ratty's Talk Page. Welcome Stranger.

title: User talk:Ratty


text:
Margaret Leech

Margaret Kernochan Leech (November 7, 1893 – February 24, 1974), also known as Margaret Pulitzer, was an American historian and fiction writer. She won the Pulitzer Prize for History both in 1942 (Reveille in Washington, Harper) (first woman to win for history) and in 1960 (In the Days of McKinley, Harper).

Life and career
She was born in Newburgh, New York, obtained a B.A. from Vassar College in 1915, and worked for fund-raising organizations during World War I, including the American Committee for Devastated France.

She started her writing career for the Condé Nast publishing company before World War I. Leech also worked in advertising and publicity. After the war, she became friendly with members of the Algonquin Round Table, including critic-raconteur Alexander Woollcott.

On August 1, 1928 she married Ralph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World newspaper. (His father, Joseph Pulitzer, had established the Pulitzer Prize by a bequest to Columbia University.) They had one daughter, Susan.

Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865, is an account of Washington, D.C. during the American Civil War and deals with, among other things, Abraham Lincoln and his wife, along with Rose Greenhow, the Confederate spy whose work was helpful in the Southern forces winning the First Battle of Bull Run. Passages from the book are quoted in George Saunders' novel, Lincoln In The Bardo (2016).

In the Days of McKinley is a biography of President William McKinley, carefully told in minute detail, and he is shown as a more attractive person and better president than some have depicted him. In addition to the history Pulitzer, the book was awarded the Bancroft Prize in 1960.

Leech also wrote three novels: The Back of the Book (1924), Tin Wedding (1926), and The Feathered Nest (1928) and, in 1927, co-wrote a biography of Anthony Comstock with Heywood Broun.

Leech died of a stroke in New York City at age 80.

Publications

 * The Back of the Book (1924)
 * Tin Wedding (1926)
 * Anthony Comstock: Roundsman of the Lord (1927)
 * The Feathered Nest (1928)
 * ''Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 (1941)
 * In the Days of McKinley (1960)

title: Margaret Leech


text:
Nikola Vitov Gučetić

Nikola Vitov Gučetić (Nicolò Vito di Gozzi, Nicolai Viti Gozzii; 1549–1610) was a Ragusan statesman, polymath, philosopher, science writer and author of one of the first scientific dissertations regarding speleology.

Life
Gučetić was born in Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia), into the Gučetić (Gozze) noble family, being kin of the earlier writer Đivo Gučetić (1451–1502). He received most of his education in Dubrovnik and Italy. He was the central person in the cultural life in Dubrovnik in his time and owned probably the biggest private library in town.

Rarely traveling outside the limits of town, he was occupied by trade, finances, and other official duties for the city-state. Elected Rector of the Republic of Ragusa seven times at the turn of the 17th century, he devoted his life to the prosperity of the city.

Pope Clement VIII awarded him an honorary doctorate in philosophy as well as master's degree in theology. Gozze was highly regarded for his works related to philosophy, politics, sociology, and pedagogy.

Gučetić married Marija Gundulić-Gučetić, who was a philosopher too, and wrote La querelle des femmes u renesansnom Dubrovniku. The dedication written in her husband's book ''Discorsi di m. Nicolò ; Vito di Gozze sopra le metheore d'Aristotile. Ridotti in dialogo e divisi in quatro giornate under the title "Alla non men bella, che virtuosa e gentil donna Fiore Zuzori in Ragugia" Venetiis, 1582, is an extraordinary discourse in Ragusan heritage, given in the first place in the defence of the authors' friend Cvijeta Zuzorić ("Fiore Zuzori''") but also the other women. Marija was uncompromisingly critical towards the Dubrovnik society that attacked her friend. Her criticism was so sharp that censorship was imposed on it. Marija's dedication has a theoretical value as well because it constitutes a part of a huge debate on the worth of women led in Europe from the 14th century on. The article puts her text in the context of this debate.

Works
Gučetić wrote in the Italian and Latin:
 * Commentaria in sermonem Auer. De substantia orbis, et in propositiones de causis 1580
 * Dialogo d'amore detto Antos, secondo la mente di Platone 1581
 * Dialogo della Bellezza detto Antos, secondo la mente di Platone 1581
 * Sopra le Metheore d' Aristotile ("About Aristotle's meteors"), first in 1584 and in 1585 the second edition, in Venice.
 * This work is a comment on explanations of natural phenomena according to the principles of natural philosophy given by Aristotle.
 * Dello stato delle republiche secondo la mente di Aristotele 1591
 * Discorsi della penitenza 1589
 * Governo della famiglia 1589

On winds and caves
In a part of the book "About Aristotle's meteors" relating to the meteorology which discuss the phenomenon of wind, the writer mentions two caves noted to generate very strong winds at their entrances:
 * Šipun cave near Cavtat in the Dubrovnik area
 * An unnamed cave in Popovo polje in Herzegovina – most probably today's Vjetrenica cave (vjetar=wind)

Based on these observations, Gučetić explained the origin of winds in general and winds in some caves by the process of evaporation of the Earth's elements which is caused by the Sun. Being warm, dryer and denser, the evaporation medium is unable to penetrate the Earth through its surface, but only through the large openings and that is what produces wind. Gučetić noted that wind cannot be observed deeper inside the cave, but only at the entrance. He explained that by the acceleration of the air current in narrower passages, similar to that one of the sea current in narrow sea passages.

In the case of a windless šipun cave, Gučetić stated that this phenomenon is not universal for all caves. He explained the absence of wind on its entrance by its higher humidity and presence of a lake in one or more of possible passages. According to his opinion, the bigger amount of water is favorable for the growth of stygobites and troglobites which are abundant in the šipun cave.

title: Nikola Vitov Gučetić


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Spreading like wildfire

 * Someone's little essay. I copied the bit of useful information to wildfire; don't see any use for what's left. Jgm 02:13, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC) [from main vfd]
 * Delete this wildfire musing. -- WOT 04:07, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: What's interesting is that the author really was trying to talk about the term "wildfire" and how useless a metaphor it is. Kind of neat, and not the usual praline of the imagination we get.  It has to be deleted as original research, of course, but it's one of the least patently offensive and insane essays that has shown up here. Geogre 13:40, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Surprisingly coherent for a deletion candidate, but still a personal essay. --Michael Snow 23:29, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Redirected to wildfire, since information was copied there. —No-One Jones 11:52, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)