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With or Without Jefferson Airplane, Jorma Kaukonen Keeps Flying
Jorma Kaukonen was halfway through a 45-minute phone interview last week when the subject of a Jefferson Airplane reunion finally came up. The former lead guitarist of the band that not only helped...
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How I Leveraged Instagram to Make a Movie About Tinder
It all started in October 2014. I was working as a technology consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. One Saturday afternoon, I wrote a short story about a man searching for love on Tinder, a popular...
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What to Wear to a Club On a Thursday Night
*ASAP Ferg People came out on a weeknight for the re-launch of DUH, hosted by the D.I.Y Hip Hop artist Alex Chapman, Joe Grun and friends or ASAP Ferg or because it was a Thursday night in NYC and...
View ArticleMaybe American Sniper Really is Anti-war
I like a good action movie and I like Clint Eastwood movies and so I went to see American Sniper. I also had a personal interest: decades earlier in Vietnam, I'd interviewed America's top sniper -- a...
View ArticleHow John Carpenter's Music Changed the World
2015's first great album may not even be from a musician. Now out, Lost Themes by John Carpenter has the icy menace of something out of a '80s horror flick. That's deliberate, not to mention fitting,...
View ArticleClint Eastwood Is Unforgiven
I was introduced to Clint Eastwood via Philo Beddoe when Dad took us to the theater to see Every Which Way but Loose. I had not yet seen any Dirty Harry movies or even any episodes of Rawhide. So Philo...
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Musings on Kim Fowley and Edgar Froese
Edgar Froese founder of Tangerine Dream, and Kim Fowley, the music producer/songwriter/professional creep, both died this week. They both had long-lasting careers on the edges of rock n' roll. These...
View ArticleOscars 2015: So Hollywood Is Still Racist (and Sexist), Now What?
Recently, the Academy Awards nominated the movie Selma for best motion picture, yet many wondered how the academy did not select any of the cast or the director for a 2015 Oscar. People are further...
View ArticleCommunity Civility and a Response to the Controversy Over The Vagina...
I'd like to follow up on my previous blog post on the Mount Holyoke College controversy surrounding The Vagina Monologues because of the responses I've received. They've run the gamut from praise to...
View ArticleFake Baby From 'American Sniper' Addresses Controversy
At $200 Million and counting, American Sniper has touched a nerve and set off a national debate on who is real and who is fake. After being maligned by journalists, morning anchors, and bloggers, the...
View ArticleTop Ten Best-Selling Ebooks -- Week of January 24
Media tie-ins are well known to power titles up the ranks of the Digital Book World Ebook Best-Seller List. And this week, the Bradley Cooper film adaptation of American Sniper drives two separate...
View ArticleParenthood is Ending and I'm Shamelessly Bawling
Tomorrow night is the end of an era. A very sweet era. Parenthood, the show that has captured us for six seasons is bidding its adieu. I love the show. With passion. Because it is the perfect blend of...
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A Nostalgic Glance Down Memory Lane: Remembering Joe Franklin
Maybe it was because his mother's name -- like my mom's -- was Anna. Or maybe it was because he loved the talk show format, or that he was unconventional, marching to the tune of his own sound bite. Or...
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'Black or White' Tackles a Touchy Subject
Race relations can be a touchy subject. Only a very perceptive filmmaker could tackle the topic and be remotely successful. It would require a writer/director to be smart, balanced, sensitive and able...
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Ode to Joy: Robin, Joan and Laughter's Long Life
The late Robin Williams. It sounds like an oxymoron. How could anyone so energetically quick-witted ever be late? The same could be said for Joan Rivers who was so ahead of her time, she kept...
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Eyes Only - Bradley Cooper and Julianne Moore Shine
Consider this -- two of the best performances of the year center around the smallest of movements, the quietest asides, the slightest shift of the eye. I'm talking about Bradley Cooper in American...
View ArticleOpen Letter to Young Black Hollywood: Ending Segregation
There is a story that Elijah Muhammad would often tell about a mule that was chained to a tree for many, many years. Finally, when the mule was unchained, he still didn't leave the tree's side. You may...
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Sundance Interview: Christmas, Again Director Charles Poekel, Stars Kentucker...
Charles Poekel's debut feature, screening this week at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, offers a melancholic slice-of-life look at a Brooklyn neighborhood holiday staple: the open-24/7 Christmas tree...
View ArticleAmerican Sniper Chris Kyle: A Conversation That Lingers
Shortly before his tragic death, we had the great fortune to interview American sniper Chris Kyle. His brutal honesty and unwavering sense of good and evil were remarkable, and at times haunting, and...
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Sundance Interview: Best of Enemies Directors Morgan Neville & Robert Gordon
Largely forgotten by history, Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Jr. squared off in a series of crackling debates on ABC in 1968, which scored high ratings, got the country talking, and left both men...
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