Mason Williams

A story about people whose lives are connected by typewriters. A meditation on creativity and technology featuring Tom Hanks, John Mayer, Sam Shepard, David McCullough and others.

The history of the irreverent "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" and the content battles it fought with its television network.

This rare foray into filmmaking by the iconic California visual artist opens with Mason Williams, the composer of "Classical Gas" solemnly making himself a drink on a hillside patio at dusk as if performing an incantation. Heavy reverb on the soundtrack amplifies every sound until he sits down to read through a stack of Ruscha's photography books, Twentysix Gas Stations, Some Los Angeles Apartments, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, etc. In an over-the-shoulder shot, we see each page of each book as Mason flips through them, briefly contemplating what he sees and reading any available text as a kind distanced recitation. Mason punctuates this seeming solemnity with moments of irreverence, manhandling, at times, these limited edition art objects as if they were toss away shopping catalogs as he presses on with his appointed task

In 1968 Harry Belafonte and Petula Clark sang together her song On the Path Of Glory for this special on NBC. Not such a remarkable event in itself, but Petula touched Harry's forearm during the duet and made TV history. It was the first time a white woman had touched a black man on US television. The sponsor insisted the touch be cut from the programme, the programme makers refused. In the decade’s “year of revolt”, Clark found herself at the centre of a media controversy involving race, censorship and endemic bigotry in a newly desegregated yet depressingly divided US.

In a joyous tour de force, the world's greatest paintings -- all schools, all periods -- flash by at the rate of eight per second; yet we are able to recognize and retain most.

Inspector Killany of the New York City police department is called in to investigate the murder of a subway passenger and the usual-and-unusual suspects climb on and off at each stop.