The next film in our series exploring modernism in the movies, Robert Aldrich’s acerbic 1955 noir classic Kiss Me Deadly, will screen at the end of the Lawrence Arts Center’s Free State Film Festival on June 30th. Lawrence Modern’s in-house film buff Kellee Pratt will once again introduce the film, followed by a virtual Q&A with noted biographer and author Alan K. Rode, a frequent presenter at the TCM Classic Film Festival, Noir City Hollywood and Chicago film festivals.
A fever dream of seduction and the threat of nuclear annihilation, Kiss Me Deadly was easily the most enigmatic film to come out of Hollywood in the 1950s. The plotline is delightfully cryptic: private investigator Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) has a line on something big, but he can’t quite figure out what it is. (His loyal aide and part-time lover Velda (Maxine Cooper) calls it the “Great Whatsit.”) A philandering, penny-ante gumshoe, Hammer finds himself at the center of a complex web of intrigue that includes the cops, the feds, the Mafia, and a mysterious glowing box hidden in a locker at the Hollywood Athletic Club. Mike zooms around midcentury L.A. in a shiny new Corvette trying to stitch it all together, all the while cracking heads and smashing vinyl records, taking us on a wild and crazy ride at breakneck speed. There is no other film noir quite like it, and fewer still have left such a lasting impression. The film inspired a generation of filmmakers—François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard cited Deadly as one of the biggest influences on the French New Wave—and movies such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Repo Man, and Pulp Fiction have paid homage to it.
“‘Kiss Me Deadly’ represents a cultural crossroad where classic film noir experienced a cinematic head-on collision with Cold War paranoia,” Rode writes. “The essential private eye created by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler evolved into A.I. Bezzerides and Robert Aldrich’s brutally magnified vision of Mickey Spillane’s atomic age sleuth Mike Hammer. Star Ralph Meeker’s scorched earth sojourn through a crumbling, post-World War II Los Angeles is unforgettable cinema.”
Please join us at the Lawrence Arts Center on June 30th to enjoy this apocalyptic noir in the comfort and safety of an air-conditioned theater. Tickets can be purchased here.
Big thanks to Alan K. Rode for supporting our film series. Special thanks to the Lawrence Arts Center for collaborating with us and generously programming us into this year’s festival.
Kiss Me Deadly trailer | Criterion Collection review | Free State FF tickets | Alan K. Rode bio
My first instinct when I approached Studio 804’s latest finished product, located at 436 Indiana St., was to photograph it from every conceivable angle. The house looked radiant as it shimmered in the early morning sunlight, and I felt an irresistible, perhaps mindless, urge to capture the fleeting moment before it was gone. On this well-attended open house last weekend, many others did the same: Instagram is once again alight with knockout images of another beautiful rectangular box inside and out, this one even more visually appealing than 2022’s 519 Indiana Street house, which at the time felt like a high point in the design/build program.
My assessment was premature, though. It was merely a plateau, not a pinnacle. As each successive 804 class raises the bar, students find creative ways of topping their predecessors, even as they have come to recycle many of their forms. Last year’s confection was a stunning amuse-bouche for architecture fans and a first-class upgrade of 2015’s New York House. (Though I first dismissed it as too decadent for the neighborhood, I’ve since come to admire it.) This year’s house improves 519 Indiana’s layout and features Corten steel exterior siding, which was inspired by Studio 804’s previous Random Road House project. The rich, textured metal jacket contrasts perfectly with the shiny Studio 804 house next door and feels more rooted in the local vernacular.
The architectural change of clothes has been highly successful lately in attracting buyers for 804’s projects. This year’s house sold for $663,500 months before it was completed. Studio 804 is a non-profit, and proceeds from the sale are reinvested in the following project. This results in buildings that continue to improve each year as students add new variations on their brand of increasingly sophisticated rectangular (or otherwise boxy) shapes and minimalist, hermetically sealed interior spaces that have won many design and energy efficiency awards.
Some perspective is in order. Most Studio 804 students have never designed or built anything before being put to this highly complicated task. They face constraints that most practicing architects never have to deal with and are often limited by what’s donated or left over from previous projects. The project timeline is insanely compressed. As Studio 804’s founder and senior leader, Prof. Dan Rockhill, told me, “You can’t have 28 people with really no full-on experience in nine months build a house where every single thing in there is custom.” And yet, by some miracle, they manage to pull it off every year.
So, what’s next?
My hope is that next year, students will embrace universal design principles along with a focus on beauty and technical performance. Practically, that means designing an interior accessible to people of all ages. While elevating the main living spaces imparts an otherworldly feeling, with privileged views and privacy, it also makes it difficult for old people who must climb a long flight of stairs to get to the kitchen. And what about animals? Unreachable cabinets too high for short old people is another problem. So are bathrooms that you can’t turn around in a wheelchair and narrow door openings that restrict them. More and more people are living in their 90s, and they don’t want to live in nursing homes.
Moreover, most can’t afford $7,000 a month. Is it possible to be beautiful and affordable, or is beauty only for the rich? How do you design and build a house for $350,000, the average cost of a house in Lawrence? Can a house still be sexy at that price, or is that simply out of the question?
These problems can be fixed, but it will require a shift in focus that encompasses a broader social vision. Are students up to this task?
Over the past 15 years that I’ve interacted off-and-on with Studio 804 students, I’ve noticed a recurring fetishization of technology when discussing their work, as if it were an end in itself. Not that there is inherently anything wrong with that—technology is a pillar of modern architecture—and it’s not the case with every student, but it’s enough that I’ve begun to wonder if they have a vocabulary for talking about what it is they’re doing when it comes to spatial needs.
Many students have an excellent vocabulary for discussing the shape of space and certain technical and structural effects, but I rarely hear them talking about function, humanity, or spirituality in architecture. Perhaps they are too afraid to use that vocabulary because it isn’t fully developed. But to the extent that language can be further developed and expressed in actual buildings, I believe we will see a tremendous breakthrough that will elevate Studio 804 to new heights.
To continue down the same path of repetitive forms and industrial chic is boring, and it only looks functional. Architects are in the business of solving human problems. While designing with humanity—or designing with nature, for that matter—probably will never win a design award, it shows purpose beyond self-indulgence.
Studio 804 students have already proven they can do the impossible. The next level of progress is a higher responsibility to solve the pressing housing problems of the future. In doing so, they can also create architecture that touches the soul and connects on an emotional level—something we can love, not just admire. When that happens, I’ll leave my camera in the bag, stand back, and smile.
For a moment in 2015, Lawrence Modern gamely attempted to examine modern architecture through film—the modernist medium par excellence—with movies curated by KU School of Architecture faculty. Our Modernism in Cinema series only lasted a couple of shows, but it left an afterimage that hasn’t worn off, and we are eager to delve into the enthralling synergy of movies and architecture once again. This time around, though, we plan to screen a slate of mostly classic films chosen by film scholars, filmmakers, and film aficionados. On April 19, we will screen the first film in our reboot, Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 noir thriller, at 7 p.m. at the Lawrence Arts Center’s 10th and Mass. Studios. Local Kellee Pratt, a film scholar and longtime Turner Classic Movies social media influencer, will discuss the film with Lawrence Modern’s Bill Steele.
A self-professed old movie cheerleader, Kellee’s love of cinema began after early brushes with fame—her mother was friends with Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell—and the influence of her grandmother, who made her watch “Witness for the Prosecution” on TV when she was a teenager. She was hooked. After graduating from KU with a degree in Communication Studies, Pratt had an early career in sales and marketing but has lived a parallel life as a film nut—the kind who will jet to see a rare 35mm-only pre-Code Bette Davis film. In addition to TCM, she writes about film on her blog, Outspoken & Freckled, serves on the board of the Classic Movie Blog Association, and has been teaching classic film courses for many years through the City of Lawrence’s Lifelong Learning program.
Pratt will present many of the films in our series with the goal of sparking a conversation about classic films through the lens of architecture and music.
“What is interesting about film is how many pioneering, innovative movies were influential not only unto themselves but in the style they projected,” Pratt says. Case in point: Vertigo, a film about a man remaking a woman into the image of his dead lover, which Pratt chose to kick off the series because it continues to be influential in terms of how architectural elements and music can tap into the audience’s subconscious. “I get excited when I can convert someone who has never seen this film before and then enlighten them about it.” She adds, “The whole point of this is, I want people to look at old films and look at them in a different light.”
Please join us for Vertigo on April 19th. Tickets are on sale at the Lawrence Arts Center and can be purchased here. Runtime is 2 hrs. 8 min. A brief discussion will follow the screening. (The next film in the series will be announced at the event.) This will likely sell out! Don’t miss this chance to see Hitchcock’s masterpiece with fresh insight, meet new people, and have fun!
We wish to thank the Lawrence Arts Center for collaborating with us on this exciting film series and Lawrence Modern’s Tom Harper for generously sponsoring the event.
All films in the series are $10 and open to the public.
Of the approximately 800 students who joined Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship program (1932-1959), W. Kelly Oliver, 97, is one of its last surviving apprentices. Last month, Lawrence Modern’s Dennis Domer interviewed Oliver at the Pioneer Ridge assisted living facility, where Oliver recalled his decade working in the program and later efforts with Taliesin Associated Architects, the firm established after Wright’s death to maintain and further his legacy. One of the many interesting parts of the interview is Oliver’s recollection of KU architecture professor Curtis Besinger, a key figure at Taliesin who served for 15 years as the Fellowship’s de facto music director and left the studio penniless. Domer’s interview followed a documentary screening of an extended conversation between Oliver and Frank Baron, a fellow Pioneer Ridge resident and retired KU German professor. You can watch that video here. Fascinating stuff from a bygone era in architectural history that, thanks to Kelly Oliver, still captures our imagination. Special thanks to Tim Phillips for his videography.
Design by Tim Hossler. Photo at top: Kelly Oliver and Frank Lloyd Wright having dinner, 1957.
On a Frank Lloyd Wright binge? We’ve got you covered. Lawrence Modern is excited to offer you a rare opportunity to hear architect W. Kelly Oliver, one of a handful of Taliesin fellows still alive who studied and worked directly under Wright, talk about his residency.
Born in 1926, Oliver studied architecture at the University of Wyoming and Washington State College and began his fellowship at Wright’s Taliesin studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin in 1949. Over a ten year period until Wright died in 1959, Oliver supervised construction of numerous Wright-designed projects, including the Usonian model house exhibition in New York (1953) that took place on the grounds that would eventually become the Guggenheim Museum.
W. Kelly OliverFLW and Kelly Oliver at Taliesin, 1954
After Wright’s death, Oliver continued working on unfinished Wright buildings as part of the Taliesin Associated Architects group and established his own firm in Dallas, Texas in the early 1960s. A notable example of Wright’s influence on his work is the Mitchell House in Irving, Texas, where Oliver melded Wrightian organics with a Polynesian vibe. In 1966, Oliver moved to Denver, Colorado and formed Oliver and Hellgren Architects, where he practiced architecture until he retired in 2011. He and his wife relocated to Lawrence to be near family in 2019.
Mr. Oliver, who turned 97 in July, still refers to his teacher as “Mr. Wright” and can vividly recall what daily life was like at Taliesin, Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. Fellow Pioneer Ridge resident and retired KU linguist Frank Baron took interest in Oliver’s association with Wright and interviewed him for a documentary film that will be shown in the retirement community’s movie theater, followed by a Q&A with our own Dennis Domer and Mr. Oliver. We are grateful to Mr. Oliver, his family, Frank Baron and Pioneer Ridge for this special film and conversation. Consider yourselves the architectural one-percenters for the opportunity to attend.
This is a free event, but seating is LIMITED. RSVP is required. Email tomharper@stephensre.com. Please RSVP only if you are 100% sure you can attend.
Please arrive at 3:45 p.m. The program will start promptly 4:00 p.m. and conclude at 6:00 p.m. There will be signs directing you to the theater upon entering Pioneer Ridge.
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