Terry Gross

Choreographer and dancer Merce Cunnigham. He's been called "one of the great iconoclasts in 20th-century art." He revolutionized modern dance, pioneering abstract movement with his music director John Cage. This week the Lincoln Center in New York City is honoring him. (REBROADCAST FROM 12/17/1985).

John Boorman directed the film "The General," which is now out on video. The film is based on the life of the notorious Irish thief and gangster Martin Cahill. Cahill stole about 60 million dollars in a series of ingenioius robberies he masterminded in the 1980's. Boorman has directed many other films including Deliverance, Point Blank, Hope and Glory, Excalibur, The Emerald Forest, and Beyond Rangoon. (Rebroadcast of 1/4/99)

Stand-up comic Margaret Cho. Her new one-woman show "I'm The One That I Want" is about her foray into the TV sitcom, when she was the first Asian-American to star in her own TV show. The series, "All-american Girl" was short lived, and a nightmare for Cho.

Novelist, screenwriter and biographer A.E. Hotchner. His memoir "Papa Hemingway" (Carroll & Graff) about his friend and colleague, Ernest Hemingway has just been republished. Hotchner met Hemingway when he was a 20-something journalist, on assignment to interview Hemingway for Cosmopolitan magazine. That first interview in 1948 developed into a 14 year friendship.

Singer and songwriter Loudon Wainwright the Third. He has a new CD, "Social Studies," a collection of topical songs, many which were first featured on NPR's Morning Edition. Loudon Wainwright III grew up in the town of Bedford in wealthy Westchester County north of New York City. He became a folk singer/songwriter in the late '60s, singing humorous and autobiographical songs.

Scott Dikkers is editor-in-chief of The Onion, an alternative weekly based in Madison, Wisconsin. He along with the editors of The Onion, have published the new book "Our Dumb Century" (Three Rivers Press) It's a parody of newspaper headlines spanning this century.

Former media critic Tom Rosenstiel, now the director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, created to address the media's role in society and how journalists could do their jobs better. He'll discuss the coverage of the disappearance of John F. Kennedy Jr's plane. Rosenstiel is the former media critic for the Los Angeles Times and the chief Congressional correspondent for Newsweek magazine. Rosenstiel is also the author of "Strange Bedfellows: How Television and the Presidential Candidates Changed American politics, 1992" (Hyperion Press).

Film producer David Puttnam. His films include "Chariots of Fire," "Local Hero," "The Killing Fields," and "Midnight Express." His latest film -- and probably his last -- is "My Life So Far" a period piece set in the Scottish Highlands in the late 1920s. Puttnam is retiring from film making to tend to his duties as a member of the British House of Lords and Chairman of the National AIDS Trust.

Renowned naturalist and film maker Sir David Attenborough. In January, his book "The Life of Birds" was released. It's a companion to a new 10-part PBS series which begins airing forests to desert, to cities and isolated wildernesses, the flying and the flightless, the seed eaters and the meat-eaters. The series was broadcast on the BBC last fall. Most recently he has just returned from the North Sea of the coast of Scotland doing research for one of his next major projects a comprehensive study of mammals. Originally aired 1/14/99.

French film legend Jeanne Moreau. She's been called the Grande Dame of French cinema. Her breakthrough came in 1958, when Louis Malle, one of the instigators of the "New Wave" of French cinema, gave her an important rôle in his first feature film, Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud. The actress and director fell in love during the making of the film, and Malle wrote his second film, the erotic classic Les Amants especially for her. In the 1960's, she used her star power to work with the European directors she most admired, Brook, Bunel, and Truffaut.