In an interview with Lawrence Grobel in 1991, Robin Williams shared his vision for the year 2020. The world, according to Williams, would be one giant movie corporation, and we would have cleaned the air and solved water supply problems by then. The interview proves yet again Williams’s incredible comedic genius, rapid wit and concern for the world around him.
Had it not been for David Gerlach, journalist and founder of Quoted Studios, the interview would have remained buried among countless stacks of tapes in an archive. In 2013, Gerlach launched a web series titled Blank on Blank in partnership with PBS Digital Studios. Gerlach created short animated videos from rare, archival audio interviews with musicians, actors, scientists and politicians, from Johnny Cash to Ayn Rand.
Three years on, the project and the YouTube channel have over 120,000 followers and millions of views. Having worked at a great number of newsrooms such as MSNBC, ABC and Newsweek, Gerlach knew of a vast treasure of interviews waiting to be rediscovered. Acquainted with the new forms of easy-to-consume media, Gerlach created a short video of an old interview of U2’s Bono for the Rolling Stone magazine. The video caught the attention of PBS Digital Studios. Together, they have created over 70 videos.
So far, Gerlach has enlightened the world on Janis Joplin’s brush with rejection and Kurt Cobain’s thoughts on life. He unearthed an old interview of Cher talking about kitsch in 1999, another one of Grace Kelly narrating an anecdote that features John F Kennedy and Hubert de Givenchy, and a recording of Kurt Vonnegut’s profound thoughts on man-eating lampreys as explained to a class of New York University students in 1970. The series features legends such as John Lennon, David Bowie, Tupac Shakur and Michael Jackson.
Gerlach discovered these tapes from the most interesting places, including audio archives, old journalists, and children of journalists who had saved these priceless tape recordings. A fascinating discovery, for instance, was made by a woman called Lisa Potts. She found a tape behind her dresser of an interview of writer Ray Bradbury that she had recorded as a journalism student in 1972 as she and a friend drove him to their college for a lecture. This was clipped to a five-minute byte by Gerlach and audio producer Amy Drozdowska before being animated by Patrick Smith.
Blank on Blank makes the words and thoughts of some of the brightest minds and most loved legends of the past century accessible to a new generation. One that would never have heard, for instance, Carl Sagan’s thoughts about the vast and spectacular universe that we inhabit.