Tom Freston, who oversaw MTV for 17 years, is now “serving as a board member and adviser to the Moby Group, which owns a burgeoning string of television and radio networks in a country where simply owning a television was illegal not so long ago.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Australian Arts Policy Should Forget The High Art-Popular Art Dichotomy
Composer Matthew Hindson: “An opera company in a metropolitan city is not in itself more important to Australian culture than a rock band in Wadeye. … Just because something makes money should not imply it is artistically inferior. If something is not commercially successful it may still have immense cultural value.”
When A Banking Group Wanted A Symbol Of Canada, Whom Did They Choose?
Not Wayne Gretzky. “[When] the Paris-based Euro Banking Association was looking for a Canadian symbol for its booth at a major international banking conference in Toronto this week, … [the group] turned to Glenn Gould, the Canadian pianist known as much for his eccentricities as his musical genius.”
Before The Emmys Were Gay
Former winner Norman Sunshine: “Looking forward to tonight’s Primetime Emmy awards, hosted by the openly gay actress Jane Lynch, I can’t help but think how far we’ve come since my own encounter with the awards show in 1976” – when he had to hide his longtime relationship with a studio executive.
Diner, The Musical! (Songs By Sheryl Crow)
“Eddie, Shrevie and Boogie are heading to Broadway: Production company Base Entertainment announced Tuesday that it will mount a musical version of Barry Levinson’s 1982 seriocomic hit Diner – and has enlisted Levinson to write the book and Sheryl Crow to write the lyrics and music.”
No Place Is Safe: Spencer Tunick Does Mass Nude Photo Shoot At Dead Sea
“One thousand two hundred male and female volunteers woke up early Saturday morning to participate in a mass nude photograph by artist Spencer Tunick at the Dead Sea. The volunteers included men and women ranging from 20 years old to somewhere in their sixties.”
Maurice Sendak Says Children’s Books Today Aren’t Wild Enough
“With books today, I’m not always sure if they’re truthful or faithful to what’s going on with children. … There’s a certain passivity, a going back to childhood innocence that I never quite believed in. We remembered childhood as a very passionate, upsetting, silly, comic business.”
Vancouver Playhouse Gets $1M City Bailout
“The City of Vancouver secretly approved a bailout of more than $1-million for the struggling Vancouver Playhouse Theatre and the Museum Of Vancouver (MOV), and will provide an annual operating grant to the theatre company, which had been facing bankruptcy without the emergency help.”
Now-Former Borders Employees Tell Us What They Really Think
“As Borders closed forever this weekend, one patron snapped a photograph of a bitter bookseller’s manifesto an unidentified store: ‘Things We Never Told You: Ode to a Bookstore Death’.”
Philadelphia Orchestra Splits With Philly Pops
“Peter Nero and his orchestra have agreed to split from the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, ending a six-year experiment that was bumpy from the start, stormy at the end, and never fully consummated.”