Tammy Faye Messner, the onetime first lady of TV evangelism, died Friday at the age of 65; she had battled cancer for years. Terry Gross interviewed the former Tammy Faye Bakker on January 15, 2004, about the rise and fall of the ministry she led with ex-husband Jim Bakker, the puppet show that gave them their start, and her surprising later life as a gay icon.
There's something about the journey of John Waters' Hairspray to its current incarnation as a candy-colored, big-budget movie musical that I can't quite believe.
Poet Sekou Sundiata died this week at age 58; the cause was heart failure. Sundiata, who taught literature at New York City's New School University for many years, was considered one of the fathers of the spoken-word movement. He wrote the plays Blessing the Boats, The Circle Unbroken is a Hard Bop, The Mystery of Love, Udu, and the 51st (dream) state. His albums include Longstoryshort and The Blue Oneness of Dreams. We remember him with excerpts from interviews that originally aired in May 1994, April 1997, and November 2002.
John Waters' movie Hairspray, about a full-figured teen who bops her way to popularity (and fights for racial integration) on a TV dance show in '60s Baltimore, was a cult camp classic that became a hit Broadway musical. Now that stage musical has been re-adapted into a film — starring John Travolta, no less, in the role created by Waters' drag-queen muse Divine.
We talk with director and choreographer Adam Shankman, who directed The Wedding Planner and choreographed Boogie Nights — not to mention the legendary musical episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
"There is a madness in Gaza now." So says New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger, who joins Terry Gross to talk about the Palestinian power struggle that's erupted recently and how the battles between the Hamas and Fatah factions are affecting life in the West Bank and Gaza.
Erlanger has reported from all over the world, serving in Moscow, Bangkok, Prague and other cities. Prior to his tenure at the Times, he wrote for The Boston Globe.
Fresh Air's critic-at-large reviews a new DVD set featuring two masterpieces by French filmmaker Chris Marker: 1962's La Jetee and 1984's Sans Soleil.
The first is a science-fiction story set in a post-apocalyptic Paris; except for two seconds of motion, the entire story is told in still photographs.
The brilliantly perceptive Sans Soleil's narrator tells viewers about the letters she's received from a globetrotting friend; her monologue is accompanied by footage from around the world.
Natasha Trethewey was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Native Guard, her most recent collection of poetry. The title refers to a regiment of African- American soldiers who fought for the Union in the Civil War.
Trethewey grew up the child of a racially mixed marriage in Mississippi. Her mother was murdered by her stepfather; these, along with the South and its singular ways, are recurring themes in her poetry.
Trethewey teaches creative writing at Emory University. Native Guard is her third collection.
It's been a year since the start of last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah. We'll discuss life in Lebanon, and the conflict's unintended consequences, with Timor Goksel, former spokesperson and senior adviser for the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon. Goksel now teaches at the American University of Beirut.
Kasi Lemmons' film Talk to Me, which opens this weekend, centers on the radio DJ, television personality and activist Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene Jr. (played by Don Cheadle). Greene was a driving force in the black community of Washington D.C.; we talk with Lemmons and with Dewey Hughes, who first hired Greene at the D.C. radio station WOL-AM.
Russian arms dealer Victor Bout has armed Islamic extremists and sold weapons to some of the Third World's most abusive and murderous dictators and warlords — and he's known for fueling both sides of conflicts.
His success is rooted in the legacy of the Cold War, whose messy unraveling left him with easy access to massive inventories of weapons and ammunition built up by the Soviets. We talk about Bout with journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, who've co-written a book about him: Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible.
Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, ranks as one of the U.S.'s leading addiction researchers. She's helped demonstrate that addiction is in fact a disease — a disease of the brain — and that all addictions, whether it's to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, sex, gambling or even food, are more alike than was previously thought.
Volkow, who's the great-granddaughter of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, grew up in Mexico City — in the house where her famous ancestor was assassinated.
Food scientist Massimo Marcone travels the world's remotest corners to investigate bizarre food "delicacies" — cheese infested with squirming maggots, coffee brewed from coffee beans extracted from the feces of a cat-like creature, salad oil made from nuts excreted by goats, and so on.
Marcone teaches food science at the University of Guelph, in Ontario. His new book is In Bad Taste? The Adventures and Science Behind Food Delicacies
Chu Berry, otherwise known as Leon Berry, was a tenor saxophonist who backed singers like Billie Holiday and Mildred Bailey in the 1930s, and jammed with Fletcher Henderson's and Cab Calloway's bands. He died in 1941, at the age of 33, in a car accident.
Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a sprawling limited-edition box set from Mosaic, titled Classic Chu Berry Columbia and Victor Sessions.
Jonathan Oberlander, a political scientist with an expertise in health-care politics and policy, discusses problems with the U.S. health-care system and considers how other countries handle health care. He'll also give us a critique of Michael Moore's documentary Sicko. Oberlander is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Rescue Dawn, the first Hollywood feature from German New Wave director Werner Herzog, is the true story of Dieter Dengler, the only U.S. pilot to sucessfully escape from a North Vietnamese-controlled prison. This dramatized version, starring Christian Bale as Dengler, marks the second time Herzog has told the story.
She was a home-grown phenomenon, an operatic soprano trained entirely in the U.S. in an era when most singers developed their craft in Europe, and she made a notable second career after her retirement as a formidable arts administrator and advocate. Fresh Air spoke with her in 1985.
Beverly Sills, the Brooklyn-born opera star with the charming smile and the clean, silvery coloratura, died Monday at the age of 78. Fresh Air's classical music critic pays tribute.
Poet and novelist Carol Muske-Dukes founded the University of Southern California's doctoral program in literature and creative writing; she's written three novels and seven collections of poetry, been a National Book Award finalist and received a Guggenheim fellowship.
