AMERICAN MASTERS: BUCKMINSTER FULLER: THINKING OUT LOUD (TV)
Summary
One in this documentary series that explores the lives and achievements of America's most celebrated native-born and adopted artists and performers. This documentary examines the life of R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) -- an American engineer, architect, inventor, philosopher, and mathematician who is most famous for designing the geodesic dome. This program combines interviews with friends, family, and colleagues, as well as still photos and vintage newsreel and television footage to chronicle the following developments in Fuller's life: early indications of his genius during his New England childhood; his early failures in young adulthood, including bankruptcy, being kicked out of Harvard, and thoughts of suicide; an epiphany that led to a life devoted to humanitarianism; Fuller's rush of interrelated ideas in the late 1920s; his work on a model for a revolutionary house that he believed could radically change the housing industry; the lack of investor interest in his Dymaxion House; the profound effect of his childhood summers at Bear Island, Maine, on his ideas about technology; Fuller's Dymaxion car -- a radical, three-wheeled auto -- that would have been mass-produced until a tragedy ended Fuller's dreams by 1934; Fuller's unusual relationship with his wife, Anne, who lived with her family on Long Island while he lived and worked in New York City; Fuller's Dymaxion Deployment Unit, a lightweight, mobile house based on galvanized steel grain silos, which began as a New Deal civilian housing concept but was co-opted for military use during World War II; Fuller's plan to ease the post-war housing shortage with inexpensive, prefab homes using aircraft technology; the prototype Fuller House, built in an airplane factory in Wichita, Kansas; the enormous media attention the Fuller House received in 1946, eliciting thousands of orders from young married veterans for houses which were never built due to disagreement between Fuller and his investors; Fuller's post-Wichita period, which found him bankrupt and unemployed; the way an invitation to teach at Black Mountain College in 1948 led him to an community of artists, who were enthusiastic about his ideas and helped catalyze his notion of the tetrahedron as a structural unit in building; Fuller's formation of Geodesics Inc. and the Pentagon's purchase of his new "geodesic dome" structure for the Marine Corps in 1953; Fuller's obsession with minimizing weight in construction; the huge financial, critical, and personal success of the geodesic dome, which reached its zenith with the construction of the geodesic U.S. Pavilion at the 1967 World Fair in Montreal; Fuller's emergence as a cult leader of countercultural youth in the 1960s, when young people embraced his eco-friendly approach to technology and his humanitarian ideals; the development of his "World Game"; and his final years of constant lecture tours, as he spread his ideas throughout the world. Includes interviews or footage of the following individuals, among others: broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite; Paul Goldberger of the New York Times; artist Ken Snelson; New York City Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Schuyler Chapin; Allan Temko of the San Francisco Chronicle; Fuller's archivist Medard Gabel; film director Arthur Penn; classmate Gerard Hughes; Calvin Tomkins of The New Yorker; Bruce Mazlish of M.I.T.; World Architecture editor Martin Pawley; sculptor Antonio Salemme; colleague Evelyn Nef; restaurateur Romany Marie; sisters-in-law Hope and Hester Hewlett; Harvard mathematician Amy Edmondson; architect Philip Johnson; lighting designer Abe Feder; Fuller's daughter, Allegra Fuller Snyder; Jay Baldwin, editor of The Whole Earth Catalog; colleague Betty Chapin; aviator Amelia Earhart, who rode Fuller's Dymaxion car; Ed Applewhite; business associate Cynthia Asbury; photographer Jay Maisel; artist Al Hirschfeld; engineer Bill Wainwright; composer John Cage; union leader Chester Richards; contractor L.C. Bohannan; Wichita House housekeeper Elva Schuessler; Wichita House resident Bill Graham; choreographer Merce Cunningham; photographer Hazel Larsen; colleague Neva Goodwin; author Hugh Kenner; Fuller's wife Anne Hewlett Fuller; "Today" anchors Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters (1969); and designer Ed Schlossberg.
Cataloging of this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS WNET New York, NY
- DATE: April 10, 1996 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 1:30:22
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:42283
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries; Arts Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Arts documentaries; Architects; Biography; Geodesic domes; Inventors
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1986-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Susan Lacy … Executive Producer
- Jaime Snyder … Executive Producer
- Karen Goodman … Producer, Director, Writer
- Kirk Simon … Producer, Director, Writer, Additional Photography by
- Nancy Graydon Roach … Associate Producer, Assistant Editor/Post-Production Supervisor
- Molly O'Brien … Associate Producer
- Carol Wilson … Associate Producer
- Bonnie Goldstein DeVarco … Researcher, Senior Researcher
- Lee Montgomery … Researcher
- Josh Siegal … Researcher
- Jamie Verinis … Researcher
- Jan Hartman … Writer
- Jim Butler … Script Consultant
- Brian Keane … Music by, Original Music by
- Morley Safer … Narrator
- Spalding Gray … Voice, Excerpts from Fuller's writings read by
- Philip Bosco … Voice
- Kate Burton … Voice
- Ellen Burstyn … Voice
- Sara Fishko … Voice
- Robert Sean Leonard … Voice
- E.G. Marshall … Voice
- Robert McNeil … Voice
- Matthew Modine … Voice
- Tony Roberts … Voice
- Marian Seldes … Voice
- Mike Wallace … Voice
- Ed Applewhite
- Cynthia Asbury
- Jay Baldwin
- L.C. Bohannan
- John Cage
- Betty Chapin
- Schuyler Chapin
- Walter Cronkite
- Merce Cunningham
- Hugh Downs
- Amelia Earhart
- Amy Edmondson
- Abe Feder
- Anne Hewlett Fuller
- R. Buckminster Fuller
- Medard Gabel
- Paul Goldberger
- Neva Goodwin
- Bill Graham
- Hester Hewlett
- Hope Hewlett
- Al Hirschfeld
- Gerard Hughes
- Philip Johnson
- Hugh Kenner
- Hazel Larsen
- Jay Maisel
- Marie, Romany (Romany Marie)
- Bruce Mazlish
- Evelyn Nef
- Martin Pawley
- Arthur Penn
- Chester Richards
- Antonio Salemme
- Ed Schlossberg
- Elva Schuessler
- Ken Snelson
- Allegra Fuller Snyder
- Allan Temko
- Calvin Tomkins
- Bill Wainwright
- Barbara Walters