John Lasseter, Executive Vice President of Creative for Pixar, Inc. Lasseter was one of the founding members of the computer animated filmmaking company. He served as Director and Animator of the feature films Toy Story, Toy Story 2 and A Bugs Life. He was also Executive Producer of Monsters, Inc. Toy Story was the first computer-animated feature film. Lasseter also directed a number of shorts for Pixar, including Tin Toy, Reds Dream and Luxo, Jr. Tin Toy won an Oscar in 1988 for Best Animated Short Film.
Rob Siegel and Carol Kolb of The Onion. It's a weekly national newspaper and Web site. The satirical tabloid-style dispatch has headlines like "Lowest Common Denominator Continues to Plummet" and "U.S. Vows to Defeat Whoever It Is We're at War With." Siegel is The Onion's editor-in-chief and Kolb is the senior editor. The Onion began in 1988 as an alternative weekly newspaper and went online in 1996.
He is the cartoon editor of the New Yorker magazine. His new book is The Naked Cartoonist: A New Way to Enhance Creativity. It's a how-to of cartooning and a collection of New Yorker cartoons, including many of Mankoffâs own.
Photographer Doug Niven. Hes curated a new show (with companion coffee table book published by National Geographic Press) called Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side. Its an exhibition of photos from the Vietnam War, as seen through the lens of North Vietnamese photographers. It runs until March 17th 2002 at the International Center of Photography in Manhattan (www.icp.org). Its the first time these photos have been publicly shown. They were locked away in government archives or secretly stored by the photographers.
He directed Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. The film has been nominated for 13 Academy Awards, including Best Director, best Picture and Screenplay. His other films include Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners. The New Zealander is also slated to direct the other two upcoming films of the Hobbit trilogy, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Boston Globe reporters Walter Robinson and Mike Rezendes. They're part of the investigative staff that broke the story of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The staff has written a new book about the scandal called Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church. In January of 2002, the Globe published a two-part series revealing the details of a decades-long cover-up by the Boston Archdiocese. They told how a pedophile priest had been shuttled from parish to parish, and of the millions of dollars paid to victims to keep the story secret.
Human rights leader Jeri Laber. Shes one of the founders of Helsinki Watch, which eventually became Human Rights Watch. Her new book, The Courage of Strangers: Coming of Age with the Human Rights Movement is a memoir that is part personal history and part history of the human rights movement. Laber was executive director of Helsinki Watch from 1979 to 1995 and has written many articles for newspapers and magazines. She's been awarded the Order of Merit by President Vaclav Havel on behalf of the Czech Republic, and she's also won the prestigious MacArthur Grant.
Language commentator Geoff Nunberg talks about plagiarism in light of stories last month about historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose plagiarizing other texts.
Journalist David E. Hoffman's new book is called The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia. He profiles a group of men who became leaders in post-soviet Russia, taking over industry, commanding private armies and buying up television stations. Hoffman is the former Moscow Bureau chief for the Washington Post. Now he is based in D.C. as the newspapers Foreign Editor.
Chuck Jones, creator of the cartoon characters Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and many others for Warner Bros., died Friday at the age of 89. His career in animation lasted nearly 70 years. Fresh Air remembers him with a 1989 interview.
His TV series, Primetime Glick, is a spoof of celebrity talk shows. Short plays Jiminy Glick, the self-absorbed host of the fictitious talk show. He interviews A-list celebrity guests, but often gets information about these guests wrong. The new season of Primetime Glick premieres this weekend. Martin Short was a cast member on both Saturday Night Live and SCTV. His movies include Father of the Bride, The Three Amigos, and Innerspace.
Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews Don't Worry About Me, the posthumously released CD from Joey Ramone. The lead singer of the punk band the Ramones died last April at the age of 49.
His book is called Them: Adventures with Extremists. (Simon and Schuster). He traveled around the world interviewing different types of extremistsfrom Islamic fundamentalists in a Jihad training camp, to Ku Klux Klansmen at rallies. Them was first published in the U.K. in the spring of 2001.
South African surgeon, journalist and documentary filmmaker Jonathan Kaplan has treated patients in many war torn locations, including Kurdistan, Mozambique, and Eritrea. He writes about his experiences in his new book, The Dressing Station: A Surgeons Chronicle of War and Medicine (Grove Press). He began his medical career in South Africa, where he first cared for patients wounded by political violence.
