'Quartet': Dustin Hoffman, Behind The Camera

Terry Gross — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 15:53:00 +0000

In December, the actor Dustin Hoffman sat in a box seat at the Kennedy Center as his old friend, Robert De Niro, saluted him at a celebration marking one of the highest accolades for an artist in the United States: a Kennedy Center Honor.

It was a recognition of Hoffman's decades-long career as an actor, during which he has played some of the silver screen's most memorable characters: Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate, Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, Dorothy Michaels in Tootsie, Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man, Carl Bernstein in All The President's Men

'The Fall Of The House Of Dixie' Built A New U.S.

Terry Gross — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:50:00 +0000

This month marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Lincoln issued on Jan. 1, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War. The document declares that all those held as slaves within any state, or part of a state, in rebellion "shall be then, thenceforward and forever free."

Historian Bruce Levine explores the destruction of the old South and the reunified country that emerged from the Civil War in his new book, The Fall of the House of Dixie.

Quentin Tarantino, 'Unchained' And Unruly

Terry Gross — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:48:00 +0000

Quentin Tarantino's film Django Unchained is a spaghetti western-inspired revenge film set in the antebellum South; it's about a former slave who teams up with a bounty hunter to target the plantation owner who owns his wife.

The cinematic violence that has come to characterize Tarantino's work as a screenwriter and director — from Reservoir Dogs at the start of his career in 1992 to 2009's Inglourious Basterds -- is front and center again in Django.

Doris Day: A Hollywood Legend Reflects On Life

Terry Gross — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 16:48:00 +0000

As part of our year-end wrap up, we are sharing the best Fresh Air interviews of 2012. This interview was originally broadcast on April 2, 2012.

The biggest female box-office star in Hollywood history, Doris Day started singing and dancing when she was a teenager, and made her first film when she was 24. After nearly 40 movies, she walked away from that part of her life in 1968, and started rescuing and caring for animals.

Now 90, the actress lives in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif.

'Not Fade': Rock 'N' Roll, Here To Stay

Terry Gross — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:37:00 +0000

In some ways, the film Not Fade Away is an extension of the friendship between the film's writer and director, David Chase, and its executive producer and musical supervisor, Steven Van Zandt.

Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, first encountered Van Zandt on TV, when Van Zandt introduced the Rascals to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

'Unchained' Admiration Between Actor And Director

Terry Gross — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:14:13 +0000

When Christoph Waltz auditioned for the role of SS officer Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, he read the passage assigned for the audition, then kept going until he had gone through the entire role as Tarantino himself filled in for the other parts.

"It was partly hilarious, partly just fabulous, partly scary," Waltz tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

A Daughter Remembers Her 'Entertainer' Father

Terry Gross — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 18:45:00 +0000

If you look up the name Lyle Talbot on IMDb, you'll find dozens of films and television shows he appeared in, starting with the 1931 short The Nightingale and ending with roles on Newhart and Who's the Boss. He made a movie with Bogart before Bogart was a star.

'Life Of Pi' Star On The 'Duet' of Acting

Terry Gross — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 20:15:00 +0000

You might think that actor Irrfan Khan — the co-star of the special effects-filled film Life of Pi -- performed his scenes by himself, or with inanimate objects that would later be transformed via CGI.

'When God Talks Back' To The Evangelical Community

Terry Gross — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 17:05:00 +0000

This interview was originally broadcast on Fresh Air on March 26, 2012. When God Talks Back was released in paperback on Nov. 13.

While attending services and small group meetings at The Vineyard, an evangelical church with 600 branches across the country, anthropologist T.M.

Doris Kearns Goodwin On Lincoln And His 'Team Of Rivals'

Terry Gross — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:49:00 +0000

This interview was originally broadcast on Nov. 8, 2005.

When Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg were working on the film Lincoln, they had many conversations with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Her book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, is about Lincoln's relationship with his cabinet.