Terry Gross

Hall has been an actor, a private detective and a screenwriter -- he wrote the horror movie C.H.U.D. Now he is a novelist, writing mysteries featuring Stanley Hastings, a failed actor turned detective.

Nilsson founded the Tenderloin Action Group in San Francisco. He works with "drifters and dreamers who shared the same conundrums of heart and head that confront us all." The organization has a grass-roots theatre group and are putting together a film, "Chalk," a pool-hall drama, about and starring homeless actors. Nilsson began the project as a way to alleviate his own feelings concerning his younger brother, who lived on the street.

Probation officer for Los Angeles County Jim Galipeau works with gangs in Los Angeles, and is currently trying to raise money for a program with older gang members. He has been a probation officer for 27 yearsm is a Vietnam vet, and a teenage street fighter and drug addict. Terry talked with Galipeau in March, and invited him back for another conversation.

The world of New York drag queens was captured on film long before "Paris Is Burning." In 1968, a movie called "The Queen" documented the Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant. The film was a sensation in New York City; it was even shown at the Cannes Film Festival. This month "The Queen" has been revived for a short run at New York's Film Forum. Terry talks with Jack Doroshow also known as Sabrina, the organizer and mistress of ceremonies of the 1968 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant.

Wall Street Journal correspondent Erik Larson is interested in how companies know the intimate details of our lives. His new book, The Naked Consumer, is an investigation into direct marketing techniques--how corporations collect the vast network of data they use to market their products.

Kim Rich has written a new memoir, "Johnny's Girl," about growing up in Anchorage, Alaska during the oil boom years. Her father was a notorious underworld figure in the city who operated illegal gambling houses and massage parlors all over the city. He was eventually murdered.

Writer Allan Berube wrote the book, "Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women In World War II." He spent ten years interviewing gay and lesbian veterans, searching out wartime letters, and consulting newly declassified government documents. He found that hundreds of thousands of gays entered the military despite a procedure for screening out homosexuals. Terry will talk with him about the ban on gays in the military and the hearings going on now, and whether it should be repealed.

Harris is the writer and director of "Just Another Girl on the IRT." She became one of few African-American women film directors to have her film released nationally. The film won the special jury prize for a first-time film maker at the Sundance Film Festival. It's about a high school junior, Chantel, who is an A-student, with a gift of gab and an attitude.

It's Oscar night. New Yorker film critic Terrence Rafferty joins Terry to talk about the best and worst of last year's movies, who deserves to win tonight, and who probably will.