Knowing of my longstanding fascination with private conversations made unintentionally public, my friend David Hochman sent along this treasure from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library. Please note what the very specific president does not discuss (payment). Click here to listen.
I had a short but fun telephone interview yesterday with Richard Curtis, who wrote the screenplays for Four Weddings and a Funeral and Bridget Jones’ Diary, two films I enjoyed tremendously, and who has written and directed a new film that will open in October called Pirate Boat. Formerly titled The Boat That Rocked–I guess …
I’ll leave it to my friends in Philadelphia to decide how warmly to embrace Michael Vick; the spirit of forgiveness has never really been the City of Brotherly Love’s style, but if it’s worth a couple of touchdowns, I’m sure Iggle fans can learn to be warm and fuzzy. I am more impressed by the …
FORGET WHETHER VICK SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO PLAY–SHOULD TOM DELAY BE ALLOWED TO DANCE? Read More »
“One gift, one time — that’s bribery. Lots of gifts over a long time — that’s politics.” I have just learned that the above line–spoken by the eminent Roland Vanatua on page 210 of The Coup, was cited in June by Mr. E. Frank Stephenson, an economics professor at Berry College in Georgia. Writing on …
You never can tell what a summer will be remembered for. The summer of 1975 got Jaws, the summer of 1916 got the Somme. One summer gets a hummable ditty from Mungo Jerry that will be played on the radio until the end of time, and another summer gets Hurricane Katrina. With about four weeks …
Image via CrunchBase So much of the talk about saving newspapers seems to miss the point: it’s not really important to save newspapers, but it’s really important to save news organizations. You can be a smart ass like Chris Andersen and talk about how much `news’ you get from Twitter, but for most important stuff …
. . .on the roof of the famous Puck Building, much of the staff of Spy assembled. These were friends of mine. Photos by Julie Mihaly, courtesy Natasha Lessink. In the top picture, Constance Drayton, Cindy Arlinsky, John Brodie, Ben Svetkey, Rachel Urquhart, George Kalagerakis, Elissa Schappell, Kurt Andersen, Cynthia Cotts, Joe Mastrianni, Graydon Carter, …
I am so looking forward to the start of the new season of Mad Men in two weeks that I have gone to work at the agency. That’s my self-assembled avatar being welcomed by Don Draper and Roger Sterling (right), as Peggy, Pete and Joan look on (left) . If you want to make one …
. . .for the home team, and although I am partial to the Yankees, when my friend David Jensen is kind enough to take me to a Met game, I’m all about the boys in blue. And orange. On what turned out to be a beautiful night, we saw the Mets defeat the Colorado Rockies …
Two Sundays ago I went over to the Jacob Burns Center and interviewed Armando Iannucci, the director and co-writer of In the Loop for the Daily Beast. In the Loop is one of the best political satires I have seen in years, one that uses comic insights into human foibles–vanity, ambition, anxiety, lust, and so …
INTERVIEW WITH ARMANDO IANNUCCI OF `IN THE LOOP’ Read More »