November 2004: East Coast Listening Room Redux

The Third Coast Festival was happy to return to Brooklyn for another Listening Room with Dean Olsher, of PRI’s The Next Big Thing , from WNYC.

Host bio:

Dean Olsher considers himself lucky to have grown up during the last gasp of radio's golden age on New York's airwaves. He began broadcasting at the age of 14, and passed the test for his FCC license that year (and the test for his driver's license three years later.) In 1987, Olsher began reporting on culture for National Public Radio, defining his beat broadly, from the grand (Major American Poets Gather At The White House) to the grandly absurd (Lorena Bobbitt Found Not Guilty ). He is currently the host/executive producer of WNYC's The Next Big Thing.

This evening's program, held at Galapagos Arts Space in New York City, included the following excerpts and radio stories. Click on available links to hear selections.

The Modern Woodsman
by Adam Clitheroe for the Audible Picture Show

In this non-narrated piece, animator and filmmaker Adam Clitheroe explores Nature vs Nokia. (3:47)

Momento Mori
by Jude Fletcher, for the 2004 Third Coast Festival Shortdocs: Stories About Darkness

Some members of Jude Fletcher's family have a fondness for taking pictures of the dead. Their photo albums boast the typical shots of joyous celebrations and family gatherings, side by side with shots of loved ones in their caskets. As eerie as this may seem, photographing the dead, or memento mori, was popular back in the 19th century. Fletcher takes a trip to Story City, Iowa, to discover why this faded tradition is still cherished by some in her family, and to come to terms with her own feelings on the matter. (8:19)

Thirteen Ways
by Pejk Malinovski for The Next Big Thing , 2004 Third Coast Festival / Richard H. Driehaus
Foundation Competition Directors' Choice Award

Writer Sam Swope visits a class of restless, imaginative eleven year-olds in Queens, New York, where he embraces the challenge of teaching Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." (7:39)

Big Stone Heads
by Jack Chance for Hearing Voices

Producer Jack Chance takes a trip to remote Easter Island to record some of the local music, and collects traditional stories about how the island's famous stone heads, called moai, were arrayed around the perimeter of the island many centuries ago.(5:15)

She's Alright, My Mum Is
by Kim Normanton and Nigel Acheson, for Loftus Productions/BBC Radio 4, 2004 Third Coast Festival / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition Gold Award winner

When mothers suffer from mental or physical illnesses, their eldest children often take on responsibilities far beyond their years. With candor and humor, young caregivers Jade Nicholles, Lewis Shoulders and Stacey Richards talk about the challenges they face looking after a parent with a debilitating illness.(7:52)

June 2004 - Listening Room with Rick Moody

Rick Moody is the author of several critically acclaimed novels and collections of short fiction, including Garden State, The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven, The Ice Storm, as well as The Black Veil: A Memoir With Digressions . Moody has earned various literary awards and was presented with a Guggenheim fellowship in 2000. He has taught at several educational institutions, including the Bennington College Writing Seminars. Moody was born in New York City and now lives on Fishers Island, New York.

Since 2001, Moody has been a regular contributor to PRI's The Next Big Thing, from WNYC, offering audio versions of his short stories, produced with sound and music.

This evening's event was held at Steppenwolf's Garage Theatre in Chicago. Excerpts from the following radio stories were heard at this Listening Room; click on available links to hear selections.

Holy Soul
by Matt Power, Dean Olsher, Emily Botein, The Next Big Thing, 2002

For many teens coming of age in the 1970s, the Beat poets served as rebel heroes. Matt Power was no different, around the time he met Allen Ginsberg... in the flesh. This narrative first appeared as an essay for Heeb Magazine . (4:46)

Boys
by Rick Moody and Meredith Monk, The Next Big Thing, 2001

Boys is a short story Moody wrote that was simply about syntax, about how changing the structure of a sentence, "Boys enter the house," can itself bring about a pleasing shape for a narrative.(5:46)

Metal
by Rick Moody and One Ring Zero, 2002

RM: "Metal was an assignment from an editor friend of mine who was collecting testamentary material about heavy metal. I'm a little too old to have ever really liked the music that went by that name, although I liked some of the really early examples: Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, etc. And of course Deep Purple. The music on this track is by a band in Brooklyn I really like, One Ring Zero." (7:57)

Alamo: A Radio Play
by Rick Moody and Bruce Odland, The Next Big Thing, 2003

In this radio drama, middle-aged, doctoral candidate Irving Paley is obsessed with a work of contemporary sculpture in downtown Manhattan, and the ways it affects those who pass by it regularly. On an answering machine he collects the stories of a range of New Yorkers, all of whom have some relationship to Alamo, aka "the Cube." Over the course of an interview with a public radio reporter about the project, Paley reveals how the Cube has slowly consumed his life, while back at the sculpture, a mystery surrounding the artwork deepens.

March 2004 – East Coast Listening Room with Dean Olsher

Host bio:
Dean Olsher considers himself lucky to have grown up during the last gasp of radio's golden age on New York's airwaves. He began broadcasting at the age of 14, and passed the test for his FCC license that year (and the test for his driver's license three years later.) In 1987, Olsher began reporting on culture for National Public Radio, defining his beat broadly, from the grand (Major American Poets Gather At The White House) to the grandly absurd (Lorena Bobbitt Found Not Guilty). He is currently the host/executive producer of WNYC's The Next Big Thing, a show that exploits all the forms at which radio excels, to try to make sense of the world.

This evening's program, held at Galapagos Art Space in New York City, included the following excerpts and radio stories. Click on available links to hear selections.

Milton Reid: Panthers and Palm Trees
by Alex Kotlowitz and Amy Dorn, Chicago Matters, 2003

A mural painter finds his niche enlivening the walls of Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes. He finds himself not only decorating interiors, but painting portraits of the residents' intimate relationships and drawing the details of their imaginations.

Jarman's Garden
by Sherre DeLys, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2003

English filmmaker Derek Jarman made his final home in Dungeness, Kent, at the edge of the sea, in a desolate expanse of shingle-thin waterworn stones that lie in layers there. Producer Sherre Delys visits the unique garden he created, a project into which Jarman put an extraordinary amount of passion and physical labor during his long illness.

The Change in Farming
by Steve Wadhams and Adam Goddard, Outfront, CBC, 1999

A young Canadian musician interviews his 90-year-old grandfather about the changes in farming methods that he's witnessed through the years, then composes a piece using excerpts from the conversation. The result is a lively homage to history, experimental music and the relationship between the two.

Paper Work
by Emily Botein and Matt Power, The Next Big Thing, 2004

The order came from Deitch Projects: 125 flowers, each made from 48 individually folded pieces of paper, to be delivered to the SoHo gallery in less than a week. Making origami under deadline and for pay—is it art, zen or hell?

Dreaming of Fat Men
by Lorelei Harris, RTE (Ireland), 1995

One evening in 1994, four women came together for a feast. They had never met one another before, and as far as anybody knew, they only had one thing in common: they were all obese. The women ate, drank, talked, laughed and shared some of their deepest secrets.

February 2004 – Listening Room with Dan Collison and Steve James

Dan Collison founded Long Haul Productions (longhaulpro.org - formerly called DC Productions) in 1992, after four years as senior producer and editor of National Public Radio's All Things Considered (Weekend). Since, he's been a regular contributor to NPR, has traveled around the country producing documentaries, and has been honored with many awards, including the prestigious duPont-Columbia Award for his story Scenes from a Transplant.

Collison has produced stories for television's Nightline, taught radio workshops and conducted oral history interviews for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He's also a contributor to the book Local Heroes: Changing America .

Steve James is the award-winning director and co-editor of Hoop Dreams , for which he won the coveted Directors Guild Award, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Editing. James is an Executive Producer, Story Director, and Series Editor for the forthcoming PBS documentary miniseries The New Americans, airing in March 2004.

James recently completed Stevie, a feature-length portrait of a young man for whom James was once a Big Brother. The film premiered at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival and went on to win the coveted grand jury prize - the Joris Ivens Award - at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.

Excerpts from the following documentary films and radio story were heard at this Listening Room. Click on available links to hear selections.

Hoop Dreams
by Steve James, Kartemquin Films,1991

Street agent Big Earl Smith drives young recruit Arthur Agee out to Westchester to play for the coaches at St. Joseph's High School, home to a legendary powerhouse basketball program. (1:40)

Stevie
by Steve James, 2003

After ten years away, the filmmaker returns to southern Illinois to resume a relationship with Stevie Fielding, for whom he once served as an advocate Big Brother. (3:30)

Movin' Out the Bricks
by Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister, Long Haul Productions, 2003

Coco's rap (1:26)
The opening scene in which Catherine Coco Means gets ready to move from the Stateway Gardens public housing high-rise, "the bricks" as she calls them, to her first ever apartment outside "the projects." (3:19)
Hoop Dreams

After celebrating his 18th birthday, Arthur is disqualified from receiving public aid, creating even greater hardship for the family. (2:08)

Movin' Out the Bricks
Coco is confronted by her landlord about violating the terms of her lease agreement. (3:37)

Stevie
Stevie talks about a rapprochement between him and his estranged mother, then further surprises her by attending her church. (4:00)

Movin' Out the Bricks
Coco goes back to school to try to get her GED, gets a lecture from her daughter's teacher about her daughter's poor attendance and announces that she (Coco) is dropping out of school. (5:26)

Stevie
A trip to a Chicago nightclub turns ugly when Stevie gets drunk, raising self-doubts for the filmmaker about his own responsibility to Stevie and the film. (2:50)