Shades of noir

Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen

PRX

Arts

4.6 • 675 Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2019

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When noir haunts and inspires. Portishead’s seminal album “Dummy,” which came out 25 years ago this week, was inspired by the band members’ obsession with mid-century spy movies. Karen Russell was struggling writing her first novel when she saw the classic noir film “The Night of the Hunter.” It helped her pull off the critically acclaimed “Swamplandia” and has been an inspiration ever since. And Kurt Andersen talks with Carter Burwell, who has scored most of the Coen Brothers films, beginning with their first, the very noirish “Blood Simple.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From PRX.
0:05.9	Today on Studio 360,
0:08.0	The album itself was so different to anything that had come out before.
0:17.4	The Portishead album, Dummy, still surprising 25 years later.
0:21.9	It's not cute. It's intelligent. It's experimental. It's emotional.
0:27.4	What was and is so smart about Dummy.
0:35.4	Plus?
0:40.5	This felt like a a gift to me to see this particular scene.
0:44.5	How watching the old movie Night of the Hunter
0:46.9	triggered a creative breakthrough for the novelist Karen Russell.
0:50.2	Everything had been really resonating,
0:51.5	and then suddenly just structurally, there's this enormous surprise.
0:58.9	That's part of our whole hour of Noir today on Studio 360, right after this.
1:09.4	This is Studio 360. I'm Kurt Annes.
1:12.0	And I'm sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
1:14.3	This first level of garden.
1:15.7	This is Thomas Jefferson's vegetable garden.
1:17.5	I like to have the roasted chicken base.
1:19.2	Very well done.
1:20.4	Editing is all about timing.
1:22.0	I try to get a little bit away from the actual subject.
1:24.7	You must get sick of your own voice, right?
	...

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