Comic Bill Maher host of the HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher. Like his previous show, Politically Incorrect, Real Time features a roundtable of guests who make jokes and talk politics. This week's guests are actress Janeane Garofalo and California Gov. Gray Davis. Maher is also the author of When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden.
Noah Feldman is a professor of the New York University School of Law with a doctorate in Islamic Thought from Oxford. Until recently he was head of the constitutional team with the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq. He is serving as an adviser as Iraq seeks to draft a new constitution. Feldman is also the author of the new book, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy. In the book he argues that it is time for Islamic democracies.
Book critic Maureen Corrigan comments on Vivian Gornick's recent admission (which she has since denied) that she had invented some scenes and conversations in her memoir.
Eitan Gorlin's latest film, The Holy Land, won the Grand Jury Best Feature Film prize at the 2002 Slamdance Film Festival. It's a love story, loosely based on his novella Mike's Place, A Jerusalem Diary, and his experiences as a bartender at Mike's Place, a popular bar on the Tel Aviv waterfront where Jews, Muslims, internationals, atheists and devouts congregate. Since the making of the film, Mike's Place was the site of a suicide bombing.
Underground comic book writer Harvey Pekar and his wife Joyce Brabner. In 1976 Pekar published the first in a series of comic books about his mundane life as a veterans hospital clerk and record collector in Cleveland. It was called American Splendor, and he has continued to publish them since. In 1987 one of them earned him an American Book Award. Now he is the subject of the new film American Splendor which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.
Filmmakers Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini are the team behind American Splendor, which is a hybrid of fiction and documentary. Their previous documentaries are Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's and The Young and the Dead.
Film critic David Edelstein reviews The Magdalene Sisters by Scottish writer/director Peter Mullan. It's based on Ireland's actual Magdalene Asylums where Catholic girls accused of "moral crimes" (anything from getting pregnant, to being too attractive, to accusing a man of rape) were sent to work in laundries to atone for their sins. These virtual prisons finally closed their doors in 1996.
Sun Studios founder Sam Phillips died today in Memphis at the age of 80. He was revered as one of the leading catalysts in post-World War II American music. As a record producer in the 1950s and 60s, his recordings launched the careers of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, to name a few. This interview first aired September 15, 1997.
A conversation with music writer Peter Guralnick about the death of Sun Studios founder Sam Phillips. Guralnick is the author of a two volume biography of Elvis Presley: Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love.
Krakauer is the author of the book Into Thin Air, about the disastrous 1996 Mount Everest climb in which eight climbers were killed. His new book, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, is about Mormon fundamentalism and the story of the two Lafferty brothers who murdered a woman and her infant daughter because they say that they had received a revelation from God to do so. Krakauer reports there are some 40,000 Mormon fundamentalists in the American West, Canada and Mexico. The Mormon Church does not recognize fundamentalists as part of their faith.
Nigerian-born actor Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in the new Stephen Frears film Dirty Pretty Things. Ejiofor plays an immigrant former doctor who now must make his living in London as a cab driver and hotel clerk. Ejiofor graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and was named Outstanding Newcomer in The London Evening Standard Awards 2000. He recently completed a sell-out run at London's National Theatre as Christopher in Blue/Orange. At the age of 19 he had a role in Steven Spielberg's film Amistad.
She is the author of the best-selling book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend, about the horse who became a racetrack sensation in the 1930s. Her book is the basis of the new film starring Tobey Maguire, Jeff Bridges and Chris Cooper. The New York Times called the book, "a captivating story... with the detail of good history, the blistering pace of Seabiscuit himself, and the charm of grand legend." Hillenbrand has chronic fatigue syndrome and during the writing of Seabiscuit, she almost never left her home. She has been writing about thoroughbred racing for 15 years.
He was Laura Hillenbrand's editor on the book Seabiscuit. He'll talk about working with Hillenbrand, who has chronic fatigue syndrome, while she was writing the best-selling book.
He's the author of the new book, All The Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. It's about the 1953 CIA coup in Iran that put an end to democratic rule, and in turn led the way for the Islamic Revolution of 1979. He writes, "It was the first time the United States overthrew a foreign government. It set a pattern for years to come and shaped the way millions of people view the United States."
He is on the brink of becoming the world's first openly gay bishop of the Episcopal Church. He was elected by the Diocese of New Hampshire, but the appointment must be approved at the church's national general convention next week. His nomination has divided the church. Robinson, who is 56 years old, was married for 13 years. He continues to be close to his ex-wife and two daughters. For the last 15 years he has been in a relationship with another man.
