He is the creator, executive producer and head writer of the new HBO series Deadwood, a western drama set in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Milch left a teaching job at Yale University to go to Hollywood and work on the show Hill Street Blues. He also worked on NYPD Blue, for which he won two Emmys. Milch is a former heroin addict and alcoholic.
He calls his latest project a "musical novel." It's a new CD, Greendale, a 10-song cycle with his band Crazy Horse, set in a fictional California seaside town. He also shot a feature film version on Super8, which made the film festival circuit and will be in wider distribution in April.
Clarke is the former national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and counterterrorism. He held the position in President Clinton's administration and continued for President Bush. He resigned in March 2003. His new book is Against All Enemies: Inside Americaâs War on Terror. In the book he criticizes the Bush administration for failing to heed warnings about al Qaeda before Sept. 11, and for invading Iraq without evidence of a connection to al Qaeda. Clarke also worked for the Reagan Administration and the first Bush administration.
On March 7, the actor and monologist Spalding Gray was found dead in the East River in New York. Gray, 62, had been missing for two months. His family believes he committed suicide. Gray was best known for his autobiographical monologues, including Swimming to Cambodia, Monster in a Box and It's a Slippery Slope. Over the last 19 years he was a frequent guest on Fresh Air. We listen back to excerpts of his performances and interviews: Swimming to Cambodia (rebroadcast from Aug. 20, 1985), Monster in a Box (rebroadcast from Sept.
Actor Spalding Gray, famous for his autobiographical monologues, was found dead on March 7 in New York's East River. He'd been missing for two months. In the first of a two-part series, Terry Gross speaks with people who knew Gray well, including his wife, Kathie Russo, and his friend, Robby Stein. The second program features excerpts of GrayÂs Fresh Air interviews.
McCambridge died March 2 at the age of 87. McCambridge chilled audiences in the 1970s as the voice of the Devil in The Exorcist. She won an Academy Award for her first film role — in 1949 for All the King's Men. She also starred with Joan Crawford in Nicholas Ray's western, Johnny Guitar.
TV critic David Bianculli reviews Deadwood the new TV series - a Western — on HBO by writer David Milch who brought us NYPD Blue and Hill Street Blues.
She is the principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in Britain. She was the first woman ever to be named principal conductor of a major British orchestra. Since 1993, Alsop has also been music director of the Colorado Symphony, where her programming won several national awards. She has had guest appearances with many orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony and the symphony orchestras of Toronto, Atlanta, Houston, Cincinnati and Indianapolis. She was a protigi of Leonard Bernstein.
Harrison is the widow of George Harrison, the former Beatle. The two were married for 24 years. Harrison died in December 2001. Before his death, he began working on his Dark Horse catalogue (1976-1992), his entire body of work, plus unreleased demos. The box set (on Capitol Records) includes six albums as well as a DVD of seven restored music videos. Just this week Harrison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Note: Audio for this feature is not available due to Internet rights issues.
In his new book, Disarming Iraq, Blix writes about what happened in the months leading up to the war in Iraq last year. Blix, formerly the head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, has been named chairman of the newly formed International Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, which began its work in January 2004.
Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews some silent musical scores by the Alloy Orchestra. They write and perform new music for silent films. Schwartz looks at their scores for the Buster Keaton films, The General and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (on DVD, Image Entertainment).
With his book, The Elegant Universe, physicist Brian Greene developed a reputation for explaining complex scientific theories with insight and clarity. The book was the basis for a PBS series. His new book is The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. Greene is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard and his doctorate from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar.
His new memoir is called When I was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School. As a teenager, Kashner left his comfortable suburban life on Long Island, N.Y. and became the first student to attend the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colo. Kasher's teachers were the great beat writers William Burroughs, Allan Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Kerouac. Kashner is also the author of a novel, Sinatraland, as well as three non-fiction books. He is a regular contributor to Vanity Fair.
Winfield was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Sounder. He appeared in many television shows, and was a voice on The Simpsons. He died at the age of 62 from a heart attack.
His new book is Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive. It is a large-format book with photos and text by Waterman. In the early 1960s, Waterman became interested in traditional blues music. He rediscovered blues legend Son House living in Rochester, N.Y. Waterman then formed Avalon Productions, the first agency dedicated to promoting blue artists. Waterman managed many acts, including Bonnie Raitt. He's been representing and photographing blues artists for more than 40 years. He is the only non-performer to be inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
