187-775: Carnivàle ( / ˌ k ɑːr n ɪ ˈ v æ l / ) is an American television series set in the United States Dust Bowl during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The series, created by Daniel Knauf , ran for two seasons between 2003 and 2005. In tracing the lives of disparate groups of people in a traveling carnival , Knauf's story combined a bleak atmosphere with elements of the surreal in portraying struggles between good and evil and between free will and destiny. The show's mythology draws upon themes and motifs from traditional Christianity and gnosticism together with Masonic lore, particularly that of
374-495: A Carnivàle consultant had elated the producers by calling attention to his research about families managing cootch shows in the 1930s. The Carnivàle story was originally intended to be a trilogy of "books", consisting of two seasons each. This plan did not come to fruition, as HBO canceled the show after the first two seasons. Each season consists of twelve episodes. Airing on HBO benefited Carnivàle in several ways. Because HBO does not rely on commercial breaks, Carnivàle had
561-516: A Dust Bowl "Okie". The work of independent artists was also influenced by the crises of the Dust Bowl and the Depression. Author John Steinbeck , borrowing closely from field notes taken by Farm Security Administration worker and author Sanora Babb , wrote The Grapes of Wrath (1939) about migrant workers and farm families displaced by the Dust Bowl. Babb's own novel about the lives of
748-532: A Sunday 9:00 pm timeslot during its two-season run between 2003 and 2005. " Milfay ", Carnivàle 's pilot episode, drew 5.3 million viewers for its premiere on September 14, 2003. This marked the best ever debut for an HBO original series at the time, caused in part by the established HBO series Sex and the City being Carnivàle 's lead-in. This record was broken on March 21, 2004, by HBO series Deadwood , which debuted with 5.8 million viewers as
935-455: A TV series. Knauf turned the script's first act into a pilot episode , but, having no contacts in the television business, he was forced to shelve the project again and return to his regular job. A few years later, after realizing that his insurance career was not working out, he decided to give his screenwriting efforts a last chance by offering the Carnivàle pilot on his website. The script
1122-619: A Wonderful Life , It Happened One Night , the original King Kong , Mutiny on the Bounty , Top Hat , City Lights , Red River , The Lady from Shanghai , Rear Window , On the Waterfront , Rebel Without a Cause , Some Like It Hot , and The Manchurian Candidate . The studio system and the Golden Age of Hollywood succumbed to two forces that developed in the late 1940s: In 1938, Walt Disney's Snow White and
1309-504: A bulletin that suggested reestablishing native grasses by the "hay method". Developed in 1937 to speed up the process and increase returns from pasture, the "hay method" was originally supposed to occur in Kansas naturally over 25–40 years. After much data analysis, the causal mechanism for the droughts can be linked to ocean temperature anomalies. Specifically, Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperatures appear to have had an indirect effect on
1496-559: A compromise with Arnold in October 1940 and signing a consent decree agreeing to, within three years: The "Little Three" ( Universal Studios , United Artists , and Columbia Pictures ), who did not own any theaters, refused to participate in the consent decree. A number of independent film producers were also unhappy with the compromise and formed a union known as the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers and sued Paramount for
1683-419: A computer and manipulate them digitally. The possibilities became apparent in director James Cameron 's Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), in images of the shape-changing character T-1000 . Computer graphics or CG advanced to a point where Jurassic Park (1993) was able to use the techniques to create realistic looking animals. Jackpot (2001) became the first film that was shot entirely in digital. In
1870-471: A decade of dirt and dust, the drought ended when regular rainfall finally returned to the region. The government still encouraged continuing the use of conservation methods to protect the Plains' soil and ecology. At the end of the drought, the programs implemented during the tough times helped sustain a friendly relationship between farmers and the federal government. The President's Drought Committee issued
2057-428: A disabled father who was not commonly accepted as a normal human strongly informed the story and its treatment of freaks . Knauf named the intended feature film script Carnivàle , using an unusual spelling for a more outlandish look. Knauf had plotted the story's broad strokes as well as several plot details from early on and knew the story destination until the final scene. However, the resulting 180-page long script
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#17327835039312244-520: A downward shift into semi-skilled work. While semi-skilled work did not pay as well as high-skilled work, most of these workers were not impoverished. For the most part, by the end of the Dust Bowl the migrants generally were better off than those who chose to stay behind. After the Great Depression ended, some migrants moved back to their original states. Many others remained where they had resettled. About one-eighth of California's population
2431-666: A drifter who crossed paths with the carnival many years before, and who apparently possessed unusual abilities similar to Ben's own. The second plotline revolves around a Father Coughlin -esque Methodist preacher, Brother Justin Crowe ( Clancy Brown ), who lives with his sister Iris ( Amy Madigan ) in California . He shares Ben's prophetic dreams and slowly discovers the extent of his own unearthly powers, which include bending human beings to his will and making their sins and greatest evils manifest as terrifying visions. Certain that he
2618-706: A few personal belongings and headed west. Some residents of the Plains, especially Kansas and Oklahoma, fell ill and died of dust pneumonia or malnutrition . Between 1930 and 1940, about 3.5 million people moved out of the Plains states. In just over a year, over 86,000 people migrated to California . This number is more than the number of migrants to that area during the 1849 gold rush . Migrants abandoned farms in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico , but were often generally called " Okies ", "Arkies", or "Texies". Terms such as "Okies" and "Arkies" came to be standard in
2805-554: A head. Animals determined unfit for human consumption were killed; at the beginning of the program, more than 50% were so designated in emergency areas. The DRS assigned the remaining cattle to the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (FSRC) to be used in food distribution to families nationwide. Although it was difficult for farmers to give up their herds, the cattle slaughter program helped many of them avoid bankruptcy. "The government cattle buying program
2992-528: A homegrown supply of actors—lured west from the New York City stage after the introduction of sound films—to form one of the 20th century's most remarkable growth industries. At motion pictures' height of popularity in the mid-1940s, the studios were cranking out a total of about 400 movies a year, seen by an audience of 90 million Americans per week. Sound also became widely used in Hollywood in
3179-640: A major film production center. In Colorado , Denver was home to the Art-O-Graf Film Company, and Walt Disney 's early Laugh-O-Gram Studio was based in Kansas City , Missouri . From 1908, Jacksonville, Florida's motion picture industry saw more than 30 silent film companies establish studios in town, including Kalem Studios , Metro Pictures (later MGM ), Edison Studios , Majestic Films, King-Bee Films Corporation , Vim Comedy Company , Norman Studios , Gaumont Film Company and
3366-753: A messageboard before speaking to the press. One year after Carnivàle 's cancellation, a major Carnivàle convention called CarnyCon 2006 Live! was organized by fans. It took place in Woodland Hills, California on August 21–23, 2006. Many of the show's cast and crew attended the event and participated in discussion panels, which were recorded and made available on DVD afterwards. Despite its short two-season run, Carnivàle received numerous awards and nominations. The show's inaugural season received nominations for seven Emmy Awards in 2004, winning five including "Outstanding Art Direction For A Single-camera Series" and "Outstanding Costumes For A Series" for
3553-815: A number of theaters in the late 1920s, and would hold a monopoly on theaters in Detroit, Michigan . By the 1930s, almost all of the first-run metropolitan theaters in the United States were owned by the Big Five studios— MGM , Paramount Pictures , RKO , Warner Bros. , and 20th Century Fox . Motion picture companies operated under the studio system . The major studios kept thousands of people on salary—actors, producers, directors, writers, stunt men, crafts persons, and technicians. They owned or leased Movie Ranches in rural Southern California for location shooting of westerns and other large-scale genre films, and
3740-683: A piece on unanswered TV questions and called the show "a fantastically rich series with a frustratingly dense mythology". Like other cult television shows, Carnivàle gained a respectable following of dedicated viewers. Carnivàle fans referred to themselves as "Carnies" or "Rousties" ( roustabouts ), terms adopted from the show. Carnivàle 's complexity and subliminal mythology spawned dedicated fansites , although most discussion took place on independent internet forums . Show creator Daniel Knauf actively participated in online fandom and offered story- and mythology-related clues. He also gave insight into reasons for Carnivàle 's cancellation on
3927-405: A prologue talking of "a creature of light and a creature of darkness" (also known as Avatars) being born "to each generation" preparing for a final battle. Carnivàle does not reveal its characters as Avatars beyond insinuation, and makes the nature of suggested Avatars a central question. Reviewers believed Ben to be a Creature of Light and Brother Justin a Creature of Darkness. Other than through
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#17327835039314114-404: A report in 1935 covering the government's assistance to agriculture during 1934 through mid-1935: it discussed conditions, measures of relief, organization, finances, operations, and results of the government's assistance. Numerous exhibits are included in this report. In many regions, more than 75% of the topsoil was blown away by the end of the 1930s. Land degradation varied widely. Aside from
4301-488: A row. Muybridge's accomplishment led inventors everywhere to attempt to make similar devices. In the United States , Thomas Edison was among the first to produce such a device, the kinetoscope and kinetograph . The history of cinema in the United States can trace its roots to the East Coast , where, at one time, Fort Lee, New Jersey , was the motion-picture capital of America. The American film industry began at
4488-429: A show in which Carnivàle actor Michael J. Anderson had previously appeared . Knauf did not deny a stylistic link and made comparisons to John Steinbeck 's novel The Grapes of Wrath . When Lost began to receive major critical attention, Carnivàle and its type of mythological storytelling were compared to Lost 's story approach in several instances. Critical opinion remained divided about Carnivàle in
4675-437: A strong enough fan base, HBO might reconsider the show's future and allow the continuation of the show in another medium; but because of the amount of unused story material he still had, Knauf did not favor finishing the Carnivàle story with a three-hour movie. Knauf did not release a detailed run-down of intended future plots to fans, explaining that his stories are a collaboration of writers, directors and actors alike. He and
4862-652: A time to theaters and use the lock-in to cover for releases of mediocre quality. Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold —a noted " trust buster " of the Roosevelt administration—took this opportunity to initiate proceedings against the eight largest Hollywood studios in July 1938 for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act . The federal suit resulted in five of the eight studios (the "Big Five": Warner Bros. , MGM , Fox , RKO and Paramount ) reaching
5049-595: A title sequence that grounded viewers in the mid-1930s, but that also allowed people to feel a larger presence of good and evil over all of time." In early 2003, A52 pitched their idea to Carnivàle executives, who felt that the company's proposal was the most creative for the series' concept. The actual production included scanned transparencies of famous pieces of artwork, each scanned transparency being up to 300 MB in size. The resulting images were photoshopped and digitally rendered . A last step involved stock footage clips being compiled and digitally incorporated into
5236-401: A vacant lot near Georgia Street in downtown Los Angeles. While there, the company decided to explore new territories, traveling several miles north to Hollywood: a little village that was friendly and enjoyed the movie company filming there. Griffith then filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood, In Old California , a Biograph melodrama about California in the 19th century, when the state
5423-420: A very strong dust storm stripped topsoil from desiccated South Dakota farmlands in one of a series of severe dust storms that year. Beginning on May 9, 1934, a strong, two-day dust storm removed massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst such storms of the Dust Bowl. The dust clouds blew all the way to Chicago , where they deposited 12 million pounds (5,400 tonnes) of dust. Two days later,
5610-403: A youthful, innocent and anti-hero quality; Nick Stahl had the strongest consensus among the producers. The character of Sofie was originally written as more of an exotic gypsy girl, but Clea DuVall, a movie actor like Stahl, got the part after four auditions. Tim DeKay was cast as Jonesy because the producers felt he best portrayed a "very American-looking" baseball player of that period. One of
5797-542: Is Destitute Pea Pickers in California. Mother of Seven Children depicted a gaunt-looking woman, Florence Owens Thompson , holding three of her children. This picture expressed the struggles of people caught by the Dust Bowl and raised awareness in other parts of the country of its reach and human cost. Decades later, Thompson disliked the boundless circulation of the photo and resented that she had received no money from its broadcast. Thompson felt it made her perceived as
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5984-484: Is available on the official HBO website. Jeff Beal's score is primarily acoustic sounding electronics, but mixes themes of bluegrass as well as atmospheric rhythmic sounds. Bigger groups of strings support smaller ensembles of guitars , pianos , violins , cellos , and trumpets . The music sometimes uses ethnic instruments such as banjos , harmonicas , ukuleles , and duduks . Because HBO does not break individual episodes with commercials, Carnivàle 's music
6171-529: Is doing God's work, Brother Justin fully devotes himself to his religious duties, not realizing that his ultimate nemesis Ben Hawkins and the carnival are inexorably drawing closer. Daniel Knauf conceived the initial script for the show between 1990 and 1992 when he was unsatisfied with his job as a Californian health insurance broker and hoped to become a screenwriter . He had always been interested in carnivals and noted that this subject had rarely been dramatized on film. Knauf's experiences of growing up with
6358-666: Is led by Clancy Brown portraying the primary antagonist, the Methodist minister Brother Justin Crowe . Amy Madigan played his sister Iris. Robert Knepper supported them as the successful radio host Tommy Dolan later in the first season, while Ralph Waite had a recurring role as Reverend Norman Balthus, Brother Justin's mentor. K Callan performed in a recurring role as Eleanor McGill, a parishioner who became devoted to Brother Justin after seeing his power firsthand. Several cast changes took place in Season 2, some of them planned from
6545-481: Is of Okie heritage. Agricultural land and revenue boomed during World War I, but fell during the Great Depression and the 1930s. The agricultural land most affected by the Dust Bowl was 16 million acres (6.5 million hectares) of land in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. These 20 counties that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Soil Conservation Service identified as the worst wind-eroded region were home to
6732-400: Is paced similar to a movie, with character-specific leitmotifs from as early as the first episode. Characters are musically identified by solo instruments chosen for the character's ethnic background or nature. Some characters whose connections are only disclosed later in the series have intentionally similar themes. Different music is consciously used to represent the two different worlds of
6919-422: Is played. One of the most defining songs of Carnivàle is the 1920s song " Love Me or Leave Me " sung by Ruth Etting , which is used in several episodes to tie characters in the two worlds thematically. The plot of Carnivàle takes place in the 1930s Dust Bowl and revolves around the slowly converging storylines of a traveling carnival and a Californian preacher. Out of the 17 actors receiving star billing in
7106-615: The 100th meridian on the High Plains , characterized by plains that vary from rolling in the north to flat in the Llano Estacado . Elevation ranges from 2,500 ft (760 m) in the east to 6,000 ft (1,800 m) at the base of the Rocky Mountains . The area is semiarid , receiving less than 20 in (510 mm) of rain annually; this rainfall supports the shortgrass prairie biome originally present in
7293-601: The Great American Desert . The lack of surface water and timber made the region less attractive than other areas for pioneer settlement and agriculture. The federal government encouraged settlement and development of the Plains for agriculture via the Homestead Act of 1862 , offering settlers " quarter section " 160-acre (65 ha) plots. With the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the completion of
7480-507: The Great Depression had rendered economic conditions there little better than those they had left. The combined effects of World War I and the disruption of the Russian Revolution , which decreased the supply of wheat and other commodity crops, increased agricultural prices; this demand encouraged farmers to dramatically increase cultivation. For example, in the Llano Estacado of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas ,
7667-1107: The Kalem Company began using Fort Lee as a location for filming in the area, other filmmakers quickly followed. In 1909, a forerunner of Universal Studios , the Champion Film Company , built the first studio. Others quickly followed and either built new studios or leased facilities in Fort Lee. In the 1910s and 1920s , film companies such as the Independent Moving Pictures Company, Peerless Pictures Studios , Solax Studios , Eclair , Goldwyn Pictures Corporation , Star Film ( Georges Méliès ), World Film Company , Biograph Studios , Fox Film Corporation , Société Pathé Frères , Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. , Victor Film Company , and Selznick International Pictures were all making pictures in Fort Lee. Such notables as Mary Pickford got their start at Biograph Studios. In New York,
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7854-703: The Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens , which was built during the silent film era, was used by the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields . The Edison Studios were located in the Bronx . Chelsea, Manhattan , was also frequently used. Other Eastern cities, most notably Chicago and Cleveland , also served as early centers for film production. In the West, California was already quickly emerging as
8041-773: The Kinkaid Act (1904) and 320 acres (130 ha) elsewhere in the Great Plains under the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 . Waves of European settlers arrived in the plains at the beginning of the 20th century. A return of unusually wet weather seemingly confirmed a previously held opinion that the "formerly" semiarid area could support large-scale agriculture. At the same time, technological improvements such as mechanized plowing and mechanized harvesting made it possible to operate larger properties without increasing labor costs. With insufficient understanding of
8228-682: The Knights Templar order. Carnivàle was produced by HBO and aired between September 14, 2003, and March 27, 2005. Its creator, Daniel Knauf , also served as executive producer along with Ronald D. Moore and Howard Klein. Jeff Beal composed the original incidental music. Nick Stahl and Clancy Brown starred as Ben Hawkins and Brother Justin Crowe , respectively. The show was filmed in Santa Clarita, California , and nearby Southern California locations. Early reviews praised Carnivàle for style and originality but questioned
8415-497: The Lubin Manufacturing Company . Picture City, Florida was a planned site for a movie picture production center in the 1920s, but due to the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane , the idea collapsed and Picture City, Florida returned to its original name of Hobe Sound . An attempt to establish a film production center in Detroit also proved unsuccessful. The film patents wars of the early 20th century helped
8602-590: The Resettlement Administration , which later became the Farm Security Administration , encouraged small farm owners to resettle on other lands if they lived in drier parts of the Plains. During President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first 100 days in office in 1933, his administration quickly initiated programs to conserve soil and restore the nation's ecological balance. Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes established
8789-471: The United States , consisting mainly of major film studios (also known metonymically as Hollywood ), has remained a significant influence on the global film industry beginning in the early 20th century . Classical Hollywood cinema , which developed from 1910 to 1962, is still typical of most films made in America today. While French filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière are generally credited with
8976-637: The antagonist and protagonist may be blurred. The roots of post-classical storytelling may be seen in film noir , in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and in Hitchcock's storyline-shattering Psycho . The New Hollywood is the emergence of a new generation of film school-trained directors who had absorbed the techniques developed in Europe in the 1960s as a result of the French New Wave;
9163-476: The first transcontinental railroad in 1869, waves of new migrants and immigrants reached the Great Plains and greatly increased the acreage under cultivation. An unusually wet period in the Great Plains mistakenly led settlers and the federal government to believe that " rain follows the plow " (a popular phrase among real estate promoters) and that the region's climate had permanently changed. While initial agricultural endeavors were primarily cattle ranching ,
9350-473: The most commercially successful and most commercially successful movies in the world. Hollywood is considered to be the oldest film industry, where the earliest film studios and production companies emerged. It is the birthplace of various genres of cinema —among them comedy , drama , action , musical , romance , horror , science fiction , and epic —and has set the example for other national film industries. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated
9537-407: The studios and Hollywood grew. Before World War I , films were made in several American cities, but filmmakers tended to gravitate towards southern California as the industry developed. They were attracted by the warm, predictable climate with reliable sunlight, which made it possible to film their films outdoors year-round alongside the varied scenery that was available. War damage contributed to
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#17327835039319724-539: The " Black Sunday " black blizzards of April 14, 1935; Edward Stanley, the Kansas City news editor of the Associated Press, coined the term "Dust Bowl" while rewriting Geiger's news story. The term "the Dust Bowl" originally referred to the geographical area affected by the dust, but today it usually refers to the event itself (the term "Dirty Thirties" is also sometimes used). The drought and erosion of
9911-465: The " Judgement " Tarot card to the " Moon " and the " Sun ", identifying the Devil and God respectively, until the wind blows away all cards and the underlying sand to reveal the Carnivàle title artwork. Carnivàle features instrumental music composed by Jeff Beal , as well as many popular or obscure songs from the 1920s and 1930s, the time when Carnivàle 's story takes place. However, " After
10098-408: The 1930s for those who had lost everything and were struggling the most during the Great Depression. But not all migrants traveled long distances; most participated in internal state migration, moving from counties that the Dust Bowl badly impacted to other, less affected counties. So many families left their farms and were on the move that the proportion of migrants and residents was nearly equal in
10285-538: The 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde marked the beginning of American cinema rebounding as well, as a new generation of films would afterwards gain success at the box offices as well. Filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola , Steven Spielberg , George Lucas , Brian De Palma , Stanley Kubrick , Martin Scorsese , Roman Polanski , and William Friedkin came to produce fare that paid homage to the history of film and developed upon existing genres and techniques. Inaugurated by
10472-615: The 1969 release of Andy Warhol 's Blue Movie , the phenomenon of adult erotic films being publicly discussed by celebrities (like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope ), and taken seriously by critics (like Roger Ebert ), a development referred to, by Ralph Blumenthal of The New York Times , as " porno chic ", and later known as the Golden Age of Porn , began, for the first time, in modern American culture. According to award-winning author Toni Bentley , Radley Metzger 's 1976 film The Opening of Misty Beethoven , based on
10659-527: The 1990s had access to technological, political and economic innovations that had not been available in previous decades. Dick Tracy (1990) became the first 35 mm feature film with a digital soundtrack. Batman Returns (1992) was the first film to make use of the Dolby Digital six-channel stereo sound that has since become the industry standard. Computer-generated imagery was greatly facilitated when it became possible to transfer film images into
10846-504: The Ball ", which was a major hit in the 1890s, is used to prominent effect at the close of season 1, episode 2. The main title was written by The Revolution members Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman , and was released with selected themes by Jeff Beal on a Carnivàle television soundtrack by the record label Varèse Sarabande on December 7, 2004. Beal released tracks of Season 2 on his personal website. A complete list of music credits
11033-559: The Catholic watchdog organization The Legion of Decency —appalled by some of the provocative films and lurid advertising of the era later classified Pre-Code Hollywood —threatened a boycott of motion pictures if it did not go into effect. The films that did not obtain a seal of approval from the Production Code Administration had to pay a $ 25,000 fine (equivalent to $ 455,976 in 2023) and could not profit in
11220-541: The Depression-era Dust Bowl between 1934 and 1935, and consist of two main plotlines that slowly converge. The first involves a young man with strange healing powers named Ben Hawkins ( Nick Stahl ), who joins a traveling carnival when it passes near his home in Milfay, Oklahoma . Soon thereafter, Ben begins having surrealistic dreams and visions, which set him on the trail of a man named Henry Scudder,
11407-641: The Dust Bowl affected 100 million acres (400,000 km ) that centered on the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma Panhandle and touched adjacent sections of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. The Dust Bowl forced tens of thousands of poverty-stricken families, who were unable to pay mortgages or grow crops, to abandon their farms, and losses reached $ 25 million per day by 1936 (equivalent to $ 550 million in 2023). Many of these families, often called " Okies " because many of them came from Oklahoma, migrated to California and other states to find that
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#173278350393111594-558: The Dust Bowl in the mid-1970s when he revisited some of the worst afflicted counties: In contrast with Worster's pessimism, historian Mathew Bonnifield argued that the Dust Bowl's long-term significance was "the triumph of the human spirit in its capacity to endure and overcome hardships and reverses." A 2023 study in the Journal of Economic History found that while the Dust Bowl had large and enduring impacts on agricultural land, it had modest impacts on average wage incomes. The crisis
11781-688: The Fox Film Corporation owned the Fox Theatre . RKO (a 1928 merger between Keith-Orpheum Theaters and the Radio Corporation of America ) also responded to the Western Electric/ERPI monopoly over sound in films, and developed their own method, known as Photophone , to put sound in films. Paramount, which acquired Balaban and Katz in 1926, would answer to the success of Warner Bros. and RKO by purchasing
11968-427: The Great Depression limited mobility due to economic issues, decreasing migration. While the population of the Great Plains did fall during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, the drop was not caused by extreme numbers of migrants leaving the Great Plains but by of a lack of migrants moving from outside the Great Plains into the region. Government's greatly expanded participation in land management and soil conservation
12155-521: The Great Plains states. An examination of Census Bureau statistics and other records, and a 1939 survey of occupation by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of about 116,000 families who arrived in California in the 1930s, showed that only 43% of Southwesterners were doing farm work immediately before they migrated. Nearly a third of all migrants were professional or white-collar workers. Some farmers had to take on unskilled labor when they moved; leaving
12342-523: The Hollywood antitrust case, as did the Little Three studios. The United States Supreme Court eventually ruled in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. that the major studios ownership of theaters and film distribution was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act . As a result, the studios began to release actors and technical staff from their contracts with the studios. This changed
12529-466: The Hollywood studios. The Classical style began to emerge in 1913, was accelerated in 1917 after the U.S. entered World War I , and finally solidified when the film The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, ending the silent film era and increasing box-office profits for the film industry by introducing sound to feature films. Most Hollywood pictures adhered closely to a formula— Western , slapstick comedy , musical , animated cartoon , biographical —and
12716-576: The Scorpion Lady. The casting approach for Carnivàle was to cast the best available actors and to show the characters' realness as opposed to depending on freak illusions too much. Carnivàle 's casting directors John Papsodera and Wendy O'Brien already had experience in casting freaks from previous projects. The producers generally preferred actors who were not strongly identified with other projects, but were willing to make exceptions such as for Adrienne Barbeau as Ruthie. The script for
12903-498: The Seven Dwarfs was released during a run of lackluster films from the major studios, and quickly became the highest grossing film released to that point. Embarrassingly for the studios, it was an independently produced animated film that did not feature any studio-employed stars. This stoked already widespread frustration at the practice of block-booking , in which studios would only sell an entire year's schedule of films at
13090-831: The Soil Erosion Service in August 1933 under Hugh Hammond Bennett . In 1935, it was transferred and reorganized under the Department of Agriculture and renamed the Soil Conservation Service. It is now known as the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). As part of New Deal programs, Congress passed the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act in 1936, requiring landowners to share
13277-512: The US film industry. They were able to make their mark in a brand-new business: the exhibition of short films in storefront theaters called nickelodeons , after their admission price of a nickel (five cents). Within a few years, men like Samuel Goldwyn , William Fox , Carl Laemmle , Adolph Zukor , Louis B. Mayer , and the Warner Brothers (Harry, Albert, Samuel, and Jack) had switched to
13464-419: The actors who appeared in it; MGM , for example, claimed it had contracted "more stars than there are in heaven." Each studio had its own style and characteristic touches which made it possible to know this—a trait that rarely exists today. For example, To Have and Have Not (1944) is notable not only for the first pairing of actors Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) and Lauren Bacall (1924–2014), but because it
13651-485: The album Dust Bowl – American Stories , inspired by the history of the Dust Bowl. In a review, the music magazine No Depression wrote that the album's lyrics and music are "as potent as Woody Guthrie, as intense as John Trudell and dusted with the trials and tribulations of Tom Joad – Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath ." Cinema of the United States The cinema of
13838-467: The allocated government subsidies with the laborers who worked on their farms. Under the law, "benefit payments were continued as measures for production control and income support, but they were now financed by direct Congressional appropriations and justified as soil conservation measures. The Act shifted the parity goal from price equality of agricultural commodities and the articles that farmers buy to income equality of farm and non-farm population." Thus,
14025-408: The amount of topsoil had been reduced, it would have been more productive to shift from crops and wheat to animals and hay. During the Depression and through at least the 1950s, there was limited relative adjustment of farmland away from activities that became less productive in more-eroded counties. Some of the failure to shift to more productive agricultural products may be related to ignorance about
14212-561: The approach and execution of the story. The first episode set an audience record for an HBO original series and drew durable ratings through the first season. When the series proved unable to sustain these ratings in its second season, it was cancelled. An intended six-season run was thus cut short by four seasons. In all, 24 episodes of Carnivàle were broadcast. In 2004, the series won five Emmys out of fifteen nominations. The show received numerous other nominations and awards between 2004 and 2006. The two seasons of Carnivàle take place in
14399-508: The area of farmland doubled between 1900 and 1920, then tripled between 1925 and 1930. The agricultural methods farmers favored during this period created the conditions for large-scale erosion under certain environmental conditions. The widespread conversion of the land by deep plowing and other soil preparation methods to enable agriculture eliminated the native grasses that held the soil in place and helped retain moisture during dry periods. Furthermore, cotton farmers left fields bare during
14586-478: The area. The region is also prone to extended drought, alternating with unusual wetness of equivalent duration. During wet years, the rich soil provides bountiful agricultural output, but crops fail during dry years. The region is also subject to high winds. During early European and American exploration of the Great Plains , this region was thought unsuitable for European-style agriculture; explorers called it
14773-453: The artistic freedom to vary in episode length. Although the episodes averaged a runtime of 54 minutes, the episodes "Insomnia" and "Old Cherry Blossom Road" were 46 minutes and 59 minutes, respectively. HBO budgeted approximately US$ 4 million for each episode, considerably more than most television series receive. Carnivàle 's 1930s' Dust Bowl setting required significant research and historical consultants to be convincing, which
14960-546: The beginning, you'll be completely lost." IGN DVD 's Matt Casamassina, however, praised the show in two reviews, writing that the "gorgeously surreal" first season "dazzles with unpredictable plot twists and scares", and the "extraordinary" second season was "better fantasy – better entertainment, period – than any show that dares to call itself a competitor." A significant portion of reviews drew parallels between Carnivàle and David Lynch 's 1990s mystery TV series Twin Peaks ,
15147-404: The beginning. John Fleck, Karyne Steben and her sister Sarah had made their last appearance in the first season's finale, while Patrick Bauchau's and Diane Salinger's status was reduced to guest-starring. Ralph Waite joined the regular cast. Several new characters were introduced in recurring roles, most notably John Carroll Lynch as the escaped convict Varlyn Stroud and Bree Walker as Sabina
15334-563: The benefits of changing land use. A second explanation is a lack of availability of credit, caused by the high rate of failure of banks in the Plains states. Because banks failed in the Dust Bowl region at a higher rate than elsewhere, farmers could not get the credit they needed to obtain capital to shift crop production. In addition, profit margins in either animals or hay were still minimal, and farmers at first had little incentive to change their crops. Patrick Allitt recounts how fellow historian Donald Worster responded to his return visit to
15521-471: The birth of modern cinema, American cinema soon came to be a dominant force in the emerging industry. With more than 600 English-language films released annually as of 2017 , it has produced the fourth-largest number of films of any national cinema , after India , Japan , and China . While the national cinemas of the United Kingdom , Canada , Australia , and New Zealand also produce films in
15708-550: The carnival's blind mentalist Lodz, while Debra Christofferson played his lover, Lila the Bearded Lady. Diane Salinger portrayed the catatonic fortune teller Apollonia, and Clea DuVall acted as her tarot -card-reading daughter, Sofie. Adrienne Barbeau portrayed the snake charmer Ruthie, with Brian Turk as her son Gabriel, a strongman. John Fleck played Gecko the Lizard Man, and Karyne and Sarah Steben appeared as
15895-424: The cattle ranges of America and in the corn belt would have resulted in the marketing of thin cattle, immature hogs and the death of these animals on the range and on the farm, and if the old order had been in effect those years, we would have had a vastly greater shortage than we face today. Our program – we can prove it – saved the lives of millions of head of livestock. They are still on
16082-527: The characters, the show's good-and-evil theme manifests in the series' contemporary religion , the Christian military order Knights Templar , tarot divination , and in historical events like the Dust Bowl and humankind's first nuclear test . The writers had established a groundwork for story arcs, character biographies and genealogical character links before filming of the seasons began, but many of
16269-445: The conjoined twins Alexandria and Caladonia. The cootch show Dreifuss family was played by Toby Huss and Cynthia Ettinger as Felix "Stumpy" and Rita Sue, and Carla Gallo as their daughter Libby. Amanda Aday portrayed their other daughter, Dora Mae Dreifuss, in a recurring role. John Savage played the mysterious Henry Scudder in several episodes, while Linda Hunt lent her voice to the mysterious Management. The second storyline
16456-399: The decline of the then-dominant European film industry, in favor of the United States , where infrastructure was still intact. The stronger early public health response to the 1918 flu epidemic by Los Angeles compared to other American cities reduced the number of cases there and resulted in a faster recovery, contributing to the increasing dominance of Hollywood over New York City. During
16643-510: The displaced from the Texas Panhandle , Oklahoma Panhandle , and the surrounding Great Plains to adjacent regions. More than 500,000 Americans were left homeless. More than 350 houses had to be torn down after one storm alone. The severe drought and dust storms left many homeless; others had their mortgages foreclosed by banks, or felt they had no choice but to abandon their farms in search of work. Many Americans migrated west, looking for work. Parents packed up " jalopies " with their families and
16830-614: The drought of the 1930s, the unanchored soil turned to dust , which prevailing winds blew away in huge clouds that sometimes blackened the sky. These choking billows of dust – named "black blizzards" or "black rollers" – traveled cross-country, reaching as far as the East Coast and striking such cities as New York City and Washington, D.C. On the plains, they often reduced visibility to three feet (1 m) or less. Associated Press reporter Robert E. Geiger happened to be in Boise City, Oklahoma , to witness
17017-506: The early New Hollywood films like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider had been relatively low-budget affairs with amoral heroes and increased sexuality and violence, the enormous success enjoyed by Friedkin with The Exorcist , Spielberg with Jaws , Coppola with The Godfather and Apocalypse Now , Scorsese with Taxi Driver , Kubrick with 2001: A Space Odyssey , Polanski with Chinatown , and Lucas with American Graffiti and Star Wars , respectively helped to give rise to
17204-550: The early times of talkies, American studios found that their sound productions were rejected in foreign-language markets and even among speakers of other dialects of English. The synchronization technology was still too primitive for dubbing . One of the solutions was creating parallel foreign-language versions of Hollywood films. Around 1930, the American companies opened a studio in Joinville-le-Pont , France, where
17391-584: The ecology of the plains, farmers had conducted extensive deep plowing of the Great Plains ' virgin topsoil during the previous decade; this displaced the native, deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. The rapid mechanization of farm equipment, especially small gasoline tractors, and widespread use of the combine harvester contributed to farmers' decisions to convert arid grassland (much of which received no more than 10 inches (250 mm) of precipitation per year) to cultivated cropland. During
17578-613: The end of the 19th century, with the construction of Thomas Edison's " Black Maria ", the first motion-picture studio in West Orange, New Jersey . The cities and towns on the Hudson River and Hudson Palisades offered land at costs considerably less than New York City across the river, and benefited greatly as a result of the phenomenal growth of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century. The industry began attracting both capital and innovative work forces. In 1907, when
17765-528: The end of their careers or used the same creative teams on their films so that a DeMille film still looked like one whether it was made in 1932 or 1956. Post-classical cinema is the changing methods of storytelling in the New Hollywood. It has been argued that new approaches to drama and characterization played upon audience expectations acquired in the classical period: chronology may be scrambled, storylines may feature " twist endings ", and lines between
17952-617: The eventual shift of virtually all filmmaking to the West Coast by the 1930s. At the time, Thomas Edison owned almost all the patents relevant to motion picture production and movie producers on the East Coast acting independently of Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company were often sued or enjoined by Edison and his agents while movie makers working on the West Coast could work independently of Edison's control. In Los Angeles,
18139-400: The fact that it is so open to interpretation surprisingly proves to be one of its greatest strengths." Carnivàle was lauded for bringing "the hopelessness of the Great Depression to life" and for being among the first TV shows to show "unmitigated pain and disappointment", but reviewers were not confident that viewers would find the "slowly unfolding sadness" appealing over long or would have
18326-402: The farming sector commonly led to greater social mobility as there was a far greater likelihood that migrant farmers would later go into semi-skilled or high-skilled fields that paid better. Non-farmers experienced more downward occupational moves than farmers, but in most cases they were not significant enough to bring them into poverty, because high-skilled migrants were most likely to experience
18513-427: The federal government began an aggressive campaign to encourage Dust Bowl farmers to adopt planting and plowing methods that conserved the soil. The government paid reluctant farmers a dollar an acre (equivalent to $ 21 in 2023) to use the new methods. By 1938, the massive conservation effort had reduced the amount of blowing soil by 65%. The land still failed to yield a decent living. In the fall of 1939, after nearly
18700-400: The few actors who never had any real competition was Michael J. Anderson as Samson, whom Daniel Knauf had wanted as early as the initial meeting. Although almost every Carnivàle episode has a distinctive story with a new carnival setting , all episodes are part of an overarching good-versus-evil story that culminates and is resolved only very late in Season 2. The pilot episode begins with
18887-549: The film Titanic , Cameron wanted to push the boundary of special effects with his film, and enlisted Digital Domain and Pacific Data Images to continue the developments in digital technology which the director pioneered while working on The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day . Many previous films about the RMS Titanic shot water in slow motion , which did not look wholly convincing. Cameron encouraged his crew to shoot their 45-foot-long (14 m) miniature of
19074-417: The first appearance of the term Dust Bowl ; it was coined by Edward Stanley, Kansas City news editor of the Associated Press, while rewriting Geiger's news story. Spearman and Hansford County have been literaly [sic] in a cloud of dust for the past week. Ever since Friday of last week, there hasn't been a day pass but what the county was beseieged [sic] with a blast of wind and dirt. On rare occasions when
19261-409: The first season, 15 were part of the carnival storyline. The second season amounted to 13 main cast members, supplemented by several actors in recurring roles. Although such large casts make shows more expensive to produce, the writers are benefited with more flexibility in story decisions. The backgrounds of most characters were fully developed before the filming of Carnivàle began but were not part of
19448-459: The foreign language. The Spanish-language crews included people like Luis Buñuel , Enrique Jardiel Poncela , Xavier Cugat , and Edgar Neville . The productions were not very successful in their intended markets, due to the following reasons: Classical Hollywood cinema , or the Golden Age of Hollywood, is defined as a technical and narrative style characteristic of American cinema from 1913 to 1962, during which thousands of movies were issued from
19635-545: The general atmospheric circulation, while Pacific sea surface temperatures seem to have had the most direct influence. This catastrophe intensified the economic impact of the Great Depression in the region. In 1935, many families were forced to leave their farms and travel to other areas seeking work because of the drought, which had already lasted four years. The abandonment of homesteads and financial ruin resulting from catastrophic topsoil loss led to widespread hunger and poverty. Dust Bowl conditions fomented an exodus of
19822-497: The general weirdness of the show." Phil Gallo of Variety described Carnivàle as "an absolute visual stunner with compelling freak show characters—but the series unfortunately takes a leisurely approach toward getting to a point," and Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times suggested that "it's as if executives at the premium cable network want to see how far they can slow a narrative before viewers start tossing their remotes through
20009-482: The harsh winters' adverse effect on the cattle, beginning in 1886, a short drought in 1890, and general overgrazing , led many landowners to increase the amount of land under cultivation. Recognizing the challenge of cultivating marginal arid land, the U.S. government expanded on the 160 acres (65 ha) offered under the Homestead Act, granting 640 acres (260 ha) to homesteaders in western Nebraska under
20196-462: The intended clues remained unnoticed by viewers. While Ronald D. Moore was confident that Carnivàle was one of the most complicated shows on television, Daniel Knauf reassured critics that Carnivàle was intended to be a demanding show with a lot of subtext and admitted that "you may not understand everything that goes on but it does make a certain sense". Knauf provided hints about the show's mythological structure to online fandom both during and after
20383-455: The land's agricultural value often failed to return to pre-Dust Bowl levels. In highly eroded areas, less than 25% of the original agricultural losses were recovered. The economy adjusted predominantly through large relative population declines in more-eroded counties, both during the 1930s and through the 1950s. The economic effects persisted in part because of farmers' failure to switch to more appropriate crops for highly eroded areas. Because
20570-449: The large screen, let alone a small one. It's almost like a biblical injunction against pretension on television." A reviewer admitted his temptation to dismiss the first season of Carnivàle as "too artsy and esoteric" because his lack of involvement prevented him from understanding "what the heck was going on, [which] can be a problem for a dramatic television series." TV Zone however considered Carnivàle "a series like no other and [...]
20757-544: The late 1920s. After The Jazz Singer , the first film with synchronized voices was successfully released as a Vitaphone talkie in 1927, Hollywood film companies would respond to Warner Bros. and begin to use Vitaphone sound—which Warner Bros. owned until 1928—in future films. By May 1928, Electrical Research Product Incorporated (ERPI), a subsidiary of the Western Electric company, gained a monopoly over film sound distribution. A side effect of these " talkies "
20944-493: The lead-out of The Sopranos . Viewership dropped to 3.49 million for Carnivàle 's second episode but remained stable for the remainder of the season. The final episode of season one finished with 3.5 million viewers on November 30, 2003. Season one averaged 3.54 million viewers and a household rating of 2.41. Viewership for the second-season premiere on January 9, 2005, was down by two-thirds to 1.81 million. The ratings never recovered to their first-season highs, although
21131-472: The major studios owned hundreds of theaters in cities and towns across the nation in 1920 film theaters that showed their films and that were always in need of fresh material. In 1930, MPPDA President Will Hays created the Hays (Production) Code , which followed censorship guidelines and went into effect after government threats of censorship expanded by 1930. However, the code was never enforced until 1934, after
21318-520: The majority of the Great Plains migrants during the Dust Bowl. While migration from and between the Southern Great Plain States was greater than migration in other regions in the 1930s, the numbers of migrants from these areas had only slightly increased from the 1920s. The Dust Bowl and Great Depression thus did not trigger a mass exodus of southern migrants, but simply encouraged these migrants to keep moving where in other areas
21505-479: The migrant workers, Whose Names Are Unknown , was written in 1939, but was eclipsed and shelved in response to Steinbeck's success, and was not published till 2004. Many of folk singer Woody Guthrie 's songs, such as those on his 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads , are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, when he traveled with displaced farmers from Oklahoma to California and learned their traditional folk and blues songs, earning him
21692-567: The modern " blockbuster ", and induced studios to focus ever more heavily on trying to produce enormous hits. In the US, the PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984 to accommodate films that straddled the line between PG and R, which was mainly due to the controversies surrounding the violent content of the PG films Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins (both 1984). Film makers in
21879-566: The monopoly they still had over the Detroit Theaters—as Paramount was also gaining dominance through actors like Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake, Betty Hutton, crooner Bing Crosby, Alan Ladd, and longtime actor for studio Gary Cooper too- by 1942. The Big Five studios did not meet the requirements of the Consent of Decree during WWII, without major consequence, but after the war ended they joined Paramount as defendants in
22066-516: The most successful film of its time, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs . This distinction was promptly topped in 1939 when Selznick International created what is still, when adjusted for inflation, the most successful film of all time in Gone with the Wind . Many film historians have remarked upon the many great works of cinema that emerged from this period of highly regimented filmmaking. One reason this
22253-533: The movie-making process. Nestor Studios of Bayonne, New Jersey , built the first studio in the Hollywood neighborhood in 1911. Nestor Studios, owned by David and William Horsley, later merged with Universal Studios; and William Horsley's other company, Hollywood Film Laboratory, is now the oldest existing company in Hollywood, presently called the Hollywood Digital Laboratory. California 's more hospitable and cost-effective climate led to
22440-414: The network deviate from its traditional marketing strategies. Teaser trailers were inserted on CD-ROMs into Entertainment Weekly issues to draw attention to the show's visual quality. 30-second TV spots were aired in national syndication, cable and local avails for four weeks before the show's premiere instead of the usual seven days. The historical context of Carnivàle was deliberately emphasized in
22627-420: The network would have considered otherwise if the producers had been willing to lower the price of an episode to US$ 2 million; but the running costs for the sizable cast, the all-on-location shooting and the number of episodes per season were too enormous for them. The cancellation resulted in several story plot lines being unfinished, and outraged loyal viewers organized petitions and mailing drives to get
22814-424: The network, leading to the postponement of the filming of the second episode for fourteen months. One major change was the addition of extra material for Brother Justin's side of the story. Brother Justin was originally conceived as a well-established preacher, and as a recurring character rather than a regular one. However, after perusing the preliminary version of the pilot, Knauf and the producers realized that there
23001-486: The nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour". Migrants also influenced musical culture wherever they went. Oklahoma migrants, in particular, were rural Southwesterners who carried their traditional country music to California. Today, the " Bakersfield Sound " describes this blend, which developed after the migrants brought country music to the city. Their new music inspired a proliferation of country dance halls as far south as Los Angeles. The 2003–2005 HBO TV series Carnivàle
23188-511: The pandemic, public health officials temporarily closed movie theaters in some jurisdictions, large studios suspended production for weeks at a time, and some actors came down with the flu. This caused major financial losses and severe difficulties for small studios, but the industry as a whole more than recovered during the Roaring Twenties . In the early 20th century, when the medium was new, many Jewish immigrants found employment in
23375-437: The paradigm of film making by the major Hollywood studios, as each could have an entirely different cast and creative team. The decision resulted in the gradual loss of the characteristics which made Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures, RKO Pictures, and 20th Century Fox films immediately identifiable. Certain movie people, such as Cecil B. DeMille , either remained contract artists until
23562-497: The parity goal was to re-create the ratio between the purchasing power of the net income per person on farms from agriculture and that of the income of persons not on farms that prevailed during 1909–1914. To stabilize prices, the government paid farmers and ordered more than six million pigs to be slaughtered as part of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). It paid to have the meat packed and distributed to
23749-541: The patience or endurance to find out the meaning of the show. At the time, HBO made their commitments for only one year at a time, a third season would have meant opening up a new two-season book in Daniel Knauf 's six-year plan, including the introduction of new storylines for current and new characters, and further clarification and elaboration on the show's mythology. HBO announced that the show had been cancelled on May 11, 2005. HBO's president Chris Albrecht said
23936-524: The pilot episode " Milfay ", "Outstanding Cinematography For A Single-Camera Series" for the episode "Pick A Number", "Outstanding Hairstyling For A Series" for the episode "After the Ball Is Over", and "Outstanding Main Title Design". In 2005, the second season received eight further Emmy nominations without a win. Other awards include but are not limited to: Dust Bowl The Dust Bowl
24123-400: The pilot episode was the basis for the casting procedure, with little indication where the show went afterwards. This resulted in some preliminary casting disagreements between the creators and producers, especially for leading characters such as Ben, Brother Justin and Sofie. The character of Ben was always intended to be the leading man and hero of the series, yet he was also desired to display
24310-477: The play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (and its derivative, My Fair Lady ), and due to attaining a mainstream level in storyline and sets, is considered the "crown jewel" of this ' Golden Age '. At the height of his fame in the early 1970s, Charles Bronson was the world's No. 1 box office attraction, commanding $ 1 million per film. In the 1970s, the films of New Hollywood filmmakers were often both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. While
24497-552: The poor and hungry. The Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (FSRC) was established to regulate crop and other surpluses. In a May 14, 1935, address to the AAA, Roosevelt said: Let me make one other point clear for the benefit of the millions in cities who have to buy meats. Last year the Nation suffered a drought of unparalleled intensity. If there had been no Government program, if the old order had obtained in 1933 and 1934, that drought on
24684-465: The power of photography to capture motion. In 1894, the world's first commercial motion-picture exhibition was given in New York City , using Thomas Edison 's kinetoscope and kinetograph. In the following decades, the production of silent films greatly expanded, studios formed and migrated to California , and the films and stories they told became much longer. The United States produced
24871-453: The producers did, however, answer a few basic details about the immediate fate of major characters who were left in near-fatal situations in the final episode of Season 2. Knauf additionally provided in-depth information regarding the underlying fictional laws of nature that the writers had not been able to fully explore in the first two seasons. June 2007 however marked the first time that a comprehensive work of detailed character backgrounds
25058-629: The production side of the business. Soon they were the heads of a new kind of enterprise: the movie studio . The US had at least two female directors, producers and studio heads in these early years: Lois Weber and French-born Alice Guy-Blaché . They also set the stage for the industry's internationalism; the industry is often accused of Amero centric provincialism . Other movie makers arrived from Europe after World War I: directors like Ernst Lubitsch , Alfred Hitchcock , Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir ; and actors like Rudolph Valentino , Marlene Dietrich , Ronald Colman , and Charles Boyer . They joined
25245-505: The range, and other millions of heads are today canned and ready for this country to eat. The FSRC diverted agricultural commodities to relief organizations. Apples, beans, canned beef, flour and pork products were distributed through local relief channels. Cotton goods were later included, to clothe needy. In 1935, the federal government formed a Drought Relief Service (DRS) to coordinate relief activities. The DRS bought cattle in counties that were designated emergency areas for $ 14 to $ 20
25432-501: The region. The drought came in three waves: 1934 , 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as long as eight years. The Dust Bowl has been the subject of many cultural works, including John Steinbeck 's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath , the folk music of Woody Guthrie , and Dorothea Lange 's photographs depicting the conditions of migrants, particularly Migrant Mother , taken in 1936. The Dust Bowl area lies principally west of
25619-449: The same creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio. For example, Cedric Gibbons and Herbert Stothart always worked on MGM films, Alfred Newman worked at 20th Century Fox for twenty years, Cecil B. De Mille 's films were almost all made at Paramount , and director Henry King 's films were mostly made for 20th Century Fox . At the same time, one could usually guess which studio made which film, largely because of
25806-521: The same language, they are not part of the Hollywood system. Because of this, Hollywood has also been considered a transnational cinema , and has produced multiple language versions of some titles, often in Spanish or French. Contemporary Hollywood often outsources production to the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The major film studios of Hollywood are the primary source of
25993-477: The same sets and wardrobe and even mass scenes were used for different time-sharing crews. Also, foreign unemployed actors, playwrights, and winners of photogenic contests were chosen and brought to Hollywood, where they shot parallel versions of the English-language films. These parallel versions had a lower budget, were shot at night and were directed by second-line American directors who did not speak
26180-549: The same storm reached cities to the east, such as Cleveland , Buffalo , Boston , New York City , and Washington, D.C. Monuments like the Statue of Liberty and the United States Capitol were blotted out. Dust worked its way into even the most sealed homes, leaving a coating on food, skin, and furniture. That winter (1934–35), red snow fell on New England . On April 14, 1935, known as " Black Sunday ", 20 of
26367-477: The screen". James Poniewozik of Time called the first three episodes "frustrating" as well as "spellbinding." Amanda Murray of BBC said "With so little revealed, it's almost impossible to pass judgment on the show—it's hard to tell if this is just good, or going to be great." Later reviews were able to judge the series based on full seasons. While the acting, set design, costuming, art direction and cinematography continued to be praised, some reviewers disfavored
26554-466: The season two finale experienced an upswing with 2.40 million viewers on March 27, 2005. Season 2 averaged 1.7 million viewers, not enough to avert an imminent cancellation. Many early reviews gave Carnivàle good marks but also said its unique characters and story might prevent it from becoming a huge mainstream audience success. Daily Variety TV editor Joseph Adalian predicted that "it will get mostly positive reviews but some people will be put off by
26741-483: The sequence. The opening title sequence itself begins with a deck of Tarot cards falling into the sand, while the camera moves in and enters one card into a separate world presenting layers of artwork and footage from iconic moments of the American Depression era ; the camera then moves back out of a different card and repeats the procedure several times. The sequence ends with the camera shifting from
26928-476: The series finale of the successful Sex and the City . The series continued to receive extensive online advertisement for almost its entire run. Personalized and interactive online games inspired by tarot divination were created for Carnivàle 's internet presence. The official HBO website collaborated with RealNetworks to offer FATE: The Carnivàle Game , a downloadable game made available for trial and for purchase. Carnivàle: The Complete First Season
27115-644: The set. The actors' clothes were ragged and drenched in dirt, and Carnivàle had approximately 5,000 people costumed in the show's first season alone. The creative team listened to 1930s' music and radio and read old Hollywood magazines to get the period's sound, language, and slang right. The art department had an extensive research library of old catalogs, among them an original 1934 Sears Catalog , which were purchased at flea markets and antique stores. The East European background of some characters and Asian themes in Brother Justin's story were incorporated into
27302-473: The ship as if "we're making a commercial for the White Star Line". Even The Blair Witch Project (1999), a low-budget indie horror film by Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick , was a huge financial success. Filmed on a budget of just $ 35,000, without any big stars or special effects, the film grossed $ 248 million with the use of modern marketing techniques and online promotion. Though not on
27489-406: The short-term economic consequences of erosion, the Dust Bowl had severe long-term economic consequences. By 1940, counties that had experienced the most erosion had a greater decline in agricultural land values. The per-acre value of farmland declined by 28% in high-erosion counties and 17% in medium-erosion counties, relative to land value changes in low-erosion counties. Even over the long term,
27676-411: The show renewed. This generated more than 50,000 emails to the network in a single weekend. Show creator Daniel Knauf was unconvinced of the success of such measures, but explained that proposed alternatives like selling Carnivàle to a competing network or spinning off the story were not possible because of HBO owning Carnivàle 's plot and characters. At the same time, Knauf was hopeful that, given
27863-402: The show's print art, which depicted the 17-member cast surrounding a carnival truck. This image was accompanied by a tagline of the show's good versus evil theme: "Into each generation is born a creature of light and a creature of darkness." These measures were hoped to be backed up by positive critical reviews. To give ratings an initial boost, HBO placed the premiere of Carnivàle directly after
28050-454: The show's visible structure. The audience therefore only learned more about the characters as a natural aspect in the story. Season 1's first storyline is led by Nick Stahl portraying the protagonist Ben Hawkins , a young Okie farmer who joins a traveling carnival. Michael J. Anderson played Samson, the diminutive manager of the carnival. Tim DeKay portrayed Clayton "Jonesy" Jones, the crippled chief roustabout. Patrick Bauchau acted as
28237-503: The show. Aside from the show's supernatural elements, a historical consultant deemed Carnivàle 's historical accuracy to be excellent regarding the characters' lives and clothes, their food and accommodations, their cars and all the material culture. Carnivàle 's interiors were filmed at Santa Clarita Studios in Santa Clarita, California , while the show's many exterior scenes were filmed on Southern California locations. The scenes of fictional California town of Mintern, where
28424-499: The spread of film companies to other parts of the US, outside New York. Many filmmakers worked with equipment for which they did not own the rights to use. Therefore, filming in New York could be dangerous, as it was close to Edison's company headquarters, and close to the agents the company sent out to seize cameras. An alternative was Los Angeles , which had mild winters, a large selection of places to film, and, most importantly, it
28611-463: The stories about Brother Justin and Iris in Season 1 were based, were shot at Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills . The carnival set itself was moved around the greater Southern California area, to movie ranches and to Lancaster , which were to replicate the states of Oklahoma , Texas , and New Mexico . The permanent filming location of the carnival in Season 2 was Big Sky Ranch , which
28798-433: The story. Brother Justin's world features music of constructed orchestral sound with religious music and instruments. On the other hand, the score of the carnival side is more deconstructed and mystical, especially when the carnival travels through the Dust Bowl and remote towns. For carnival scenes taking place in the cootch ( striptease ) show or in cities, however, contemporary pop music , blues , folk , and ethnic music
28985-451: The studios in order to achieve their artistic visions. The apogee of the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics as The Wizard of Oz , Gone with the Wind , Stagecoach , Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Wuthering Heights , Only Angels Have Wings , Ninotchka and Midnight . Among the other films from the Golden Age period that are now considered to be classics: Casablanca , It's
29172-419: The summer of 1930. During the next decade, the northern plains suffered four of their seven driest calendar years since 1895, Kansas four of its 12 driest, and the entire region south to West Texas lacked any period of above-normal rainfall until record rains hit in 1941. When severe drought struck the Great Plains region in the 1930s, it resulted in erosion and loss of topsoil because of farming practices at
29359-405: The television business to give him full control over the budget, and appointed Ronald D. Moore as showrunner. (Knauf replaced Moore after one season when Moore left for the reimagined Battlestar Galactica .) The pilot episode, which was filmed over a period of 21 days, served as the basis for additional tweaking of intended story lines. Long creative discussions took place among the writers and
29546-783: The theaters, as the MPPDA controlled every theater in the country through the Big Five studios. Throughout the 1930s, as well as most of the golden age, MGM dominated the film screen and had the top stars in Hollywood, and they were also credited for creating the Hollywood star system altogether. Some MGM stars included "King of Hollywood" Clark Gable , Lionel Barrymore , Jean Harlow , Norma Shearer , Greta Garbo , Joan Crawford , Jeanette MacDonald , Gene Raymond , Spencer Tracy , Judy Garland , and Gene Kelly . Another great achievement of American cinema during this era came through Walt Disney's animation company . In 1937, Disney created
29733-666: The time was an independent city. In the Sultan's Power, directed by Boggs for Selig Polyscope Company, also starring Bosworth, is considered the first film shot entirely in Los Angeles, with shooting at 7th and Olive Streets, in 1909. In early 1910, director D. W. Griffith was sent by the Biograph Company to the West Coast with his acting troupe, consisting of actors: Blanche Sweet , Lillian Gish , Mary Pickford , Lionel Barrymore and others. They started filming on
29920-457: The time. The drought dried the topsoil and over time it became friable , reduced to a powdery consistency in some places. Without indigenous grasses in place, the plains' high winds picked up the topsoil and created massive dust storms . The persistent dry weather caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion. The Great Plains' fine soil eroded easily and was carried east by strong continental winds. On November 11, 1933,
30107-409: The two-season run of Carnivàle , and left fans a production summary of Carnivàle 's first season two years after cancellation. Matt Roush of TV Guide called Carnivàle "the perfect show for those who thought Twin Peaks was too accessible". The Australian said Carnivàle "seems to have been conceived in essentially literary terms" which "can sometimes work on the page but is deadly on
30294-448: The wind did subside for a period of hours, the air has been so filled with dust that the town appeared to be overhung by a fog cloud. Because of this long seige of dust and every building being filled with it, the air has become stifling to breathe and many people have developed sore throats and dust colds as a result. Much of the farmland was eroded in the aftermath of the Dust Bowl. In 1941, a Kansas agricultural experiment station released
30481-486: The winter, when winds in the High Plains are highest, and burned the stubble as a means to control weeds before planting, thereby depriving the soil of organic nutrients and surface vegetation. After fairly favorable climatic conditions in the 1920s with good rainfall and relatively moderate winters, which permitted increased settlement and cultivation in the Great Plains, the region entered an unusually dry era in
30668-428: The world's first sync-sound musical film , The Jazz Singer , in 1927, and was at the forefront of sound-film development in the following decades. It was fully released to the public on October 6, 1927. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has primarily been based in and around the thirty-mile zone centered in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles County, California . Director D. W. Griffith
30855-427: The worst "black blizzards" occurred across the entire sweep of the Great Plains, from Canada south to Texas. The storms caused extensive damage and appeared to turn day to night; witnesses reported that they could not see five feet (1.5 m) in front of them at certain points. Denver-based Associated Press reporter Robert E. Geiger happened to be in Boise City, Oklahoma , that day. His story about Black Sunday marked
31042-461: The writing, especially of Season 1, saying "the plot momentum is often virtually non-existent" or as "sometimes gripping but mostly boring." Other reviewers pointed out that Carnivàle may "demand more from its audience than many are willing to invest. [...] Without paying close attention, it's tempting to assume that the show is unnecessarily cryptic and misleading." Carnivàle 's story was surveyed as long and complex, "and if you don't start from
31229-592: The years after the show's cancellation. Alessandra Stanley of the Australian newspaper The Age remembers Carnivàle as a "smart, ambitious series that move[s] unusual characters around an unfamiliar setting imaginatively and even with grace, but that never quite quit the surly bonds of serial drama." Variety ' s Brian Lowry remembers the show as "largely a macabre fantasy" that eventually suffered from "its own bleakness and eccentricities". The A.V. Club dwelled on Carnivàle ' s cliffhanger ending in
31416-751: Was a blessing to many farmers, as they could not afford to keep their cattle, and the government paid a better price than they could obtain in local markets." Roosevelt ordered the Civilian Conservation Corps to plant the Great Plains Shelterbelt , a huge belt of more than 200 million trees from Canada to Abilene, Texas , to break the wind, hold water in the soil, and hold the soil in place. The administration also began to educate farmers on soil conservation and anti-erosion techniques, including crop rotation, strip farming , contour plowing , and terracing. In 1937,
31603-461: Was also used for Brother Justin's new home in fictional New Canaan. Carnivàle 's opening title sequence was created by A52, a visual effects and design company based in Los Angeles , and featured music composed by Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman . The opening title sequence won an Emmy for "Outstanding Main Title Design" in 2004. The production team of A52 had intended to "create
31790-613: Was an important result of the disaster. Different groups took many different approaches to responding to the disaster. To identify areas that needed attention, groups such as the Soil Conservation Service generated detailed soil maps and took photos of the land from the sky. To create shelterbelts to reduce soil erosion, groups such as the United States Forest Service 's Prairie States Forestry Project planted trees on private lands. Groups like
31977-456: Was central to the development of a film grammar . Orson Welles 's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited in critics' polls as the greatest film of all time . The first recorded instance of photographs capturing and reproducing motion was a series of photographs of a running horse by Eadweard Muybridge , which he took in Palo Alto, California , using a set of still cameras placed in
32164-452: Was claimed as the first to have been filmed in Los Angeles , in 1907. A plaque was unveiled by the city, in 1957, at Dearden's flagship store on the corner of Main Street and 7th Street, to mark the filming on the site when it had been a Chinese laundry. Bosworth's widow suggested the city had got the date and location wrong, and that the film was actually shot in nearby Venice , which at
32351-426: Was documented by photographers, musicians, and authors, many hired during the Great Depression by the federal government. For instance, the Farm Security Administration hired photographers to document the crisis. Artists such as Dorothea Lange were aided by having salaried work during the Depression. She captured what have become classic images of the dust storms and migrant families. Among her best-known photographs
32538-419: Was made possible with HBO's strong financial backing. As a result, reviews praised the look and production design of the show as "impeccable", "spectacular" and as "an absolute visual stunner." In 2004, Carnivàle won four Emmys for art direction, cinematography, costumes, and hairstyling. To give a sense of the dry and dusty environment of the Dust Bowl, smoke and dirt were constantly blown through tubes onto
32725-486: Was made public. Following a fundraising auction, Knauf offered fans a so-called "Pitch Document," a summary of Carnivàle 's first season. This document was originally written in 2002 and 2003 to give the writers and the studio an idea about the series' intended plot, and answered many of the show's mysteries. HBO reportedly invested in Carnivàle 's promotion as much as for any of its primetime series launches. The series' unconventional and complex narrative made
32912-427: Was no room for Justin to grow in a television series. Hence, it was decided to make Brother Justin an ordinary Methodist minister in a small town, setting him back in his career by about one or two years. Expanding Brother Justin's role opened new possibilities, and his sister Iris was created as a supporting character. Little was changed on Ben Hawkins' side except for the addition of the cootch ( striptease ) family;
33099-501: Was only 90 miles to the border of Mexico , in case they needed to run if Edison's enforcement agents found them. By 1912, most major film companies had set up production facilities in Southern California , near or in Los Angeles , because of the region's favorable year-round weather. The 1908 Selig Polyscope Company production of The Count of Monte Cristo , directed by Francis Boggs and starring Hobart Bosworth ,
33286-464: Was possible is that, with so many movies being made, not everyone had to be a big hit. A studio could gamble on a medium-budget feature with a good script and relatively unknown actors: Citizen Kane , directed by Orson Welles (1915–1985) and often regarded as the greatest film of all time , fits this description. In other cases, strong-willed directors like Howard Hawks (1896–1977), Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980), and Frank Capra (1897–1991) battled
33473-613: Was released as a widescreen six-disc Region 1 DVD box set on December 7, 2004, one month before the premiere of the second season. It was distributed by HBO Home Video and contained three audio commentaries and a behind-the-scenes featurette. The outer slipcover of the Region 1 set was made of a thick cardboard to mimic a bound book. The same set was released with less elaborate packaging in Region 2 on March 7, 2005, and in Region 4 on May 11, 2005. Carnivàle: The Complete Second Season
33660-518: Was released as a widescreen six-disc Region 1 DVD box set on July 18, 2006, in Region 2 on August 7, 2006, and in Region 4 on October 4, 2006. Each of these releases was distributed by HBO Home Video and contained three audio commentaries, on-stage interviews of the cast and producers, a featurette about the mythology of the series, and four short "Creating the Scene" segments about the concept, inspiration and execution process. Carnivàle aired on HBO on
33847-443: Was set during the dust bowl. The 2014 science fiction film Interstellar features a ravaged 21st-century America that is again scoured by dust storms (caused by a worldwide pathogen affecting all crops). Along with inspiration from the 1930s crisis, director Christopher Nolan features interviews from the 2012 documentary The Dust Bowl to draw further parallels. In 2017, Americana recording artist Grant Maloy Smith released
34034-412: Was subsequently forwarded to Howard Klein by Scott Winant , a mutual friend of the two men. After several meetings and conversations, Klein felt confident that Carnivàle would make a good episodic television series that could last for many years. Klein brought it to the attention of Chris Albrecht and Carolyn Strauss of HBO , who were immediately receptive. The network deemed Knauf too inexperienced in
34221-608: Was that many actors who had made their careers in silent films suddenly found themselves out of work, as they often had bad voices or could not remember their lines. Meanwhile, in 1922, US politician Will H. Hays left politics and formed the movie studio boss organization known as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). The organization became the Motion Picture Association of America after Hays retired in 1945. In
34408-405: Was the result of a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors (severe drought ) and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion , most notably the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in
34595-404: Was twice the length of a typical feature film script, and Knauf still felt that it was too short to do his story justice. He therefore shelved the screenplay as a learning experience. In the meantime, Hollywood studios rejected all but one of Knauf's other scripts, often for being "too weird." In the mid-1990s, Knauf met a few Writers Guild TV writers who encouraged him to revise Carnivàle as
34782-499: Was under Mexican rule . Griffith stayed there for months and made several films before returning to New York. Also in 1910, Selig Polyscope Company of Chicago established the first film studio in the Los Angeles area in Edendale , and the first studio in Hollywood opened in 1912. After hearing about Griffith's success in Hollywood, in 1913, many movie-makers headed west to avoid the fees imposed by Thomas Edison , who owned patents on
34969-649: Was written by two future winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature : Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), the author of the novel on which the script was nominally based, and William Faulkner (1897–1962), who worked on the screen adaptation. After The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, Warner Bros. gained huge success and were able to acquire their own string of movie theaters after purchasing Stanley Theaters and First National Productions in 1928. In contrast, Loews theaters owned MGM since forming in 1924, while
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