As an Angeleno with an hour-long commute, he was desperate to escape the "bad music and worse news" on radio and started listening to books recorded for the blind. Thus was born the idea for his company, Books on Tape, founded in 1975. - MSN (The Washington Post)
Her time as film critic at The LA Times coincided with the rise of both the ‘80s Hollywood blockbuster and the American independent scene. - Los Angeles Times
To claim, as many do, that art should “transcend” politics — that it exists in a realm where the push and pull of human conflict have no relevance — represents an impoverished view of both politics and art. To the extent that art has any bearing on the world, it’s necessarily political. - San Francisco Chronicle
Says one academic observer, "He's used to being in front of a camera. He's used to performing. While before this conflict his poll numbers were pretty low, they've skyrocketed. And that's because he’s been able to use his strengths during this conflict." - MSN (The Washington Post)
The director says he has no interest in making movies about the rich. "It is very valuable for me to always focus on ordinary people." Perhaps paradoxically, that has won him success and a following across the globe. - The New York Times
Among her notable performances in film and television were Welcome to L.A., Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Brewster McCloud, and the third episode ever of Star Trek, but she's best remembered for her Oscar-nominated portrayal of Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan in Robert Altman's M*A*S*H. - The Hollywood Reporter
"Charles Dibdin was no one-hit wonder, but a hugely prolific, extremely famous figure. He performed in operas and then wrote his own, composed more than a thousand songs, toured one-man shows around the country, and opened his own London theatre." - BBC
He started with Sadler's Wells Ballet in London in 1940, appeared with the Paris Opera Ballet and with touring companies across four continents, then taught the national ballets of Colombia and Venezuela as well as at Sarah Lawrence and Juilliard before not-retiring to Mississippi in his 70s. - AP
In particular, he was the first to use polyester resin and Plexiglas to make sculptures. (He learned how to shape and sand them in shop class.) His goal as an artist, he once said, was "to cut out large chunks of ocean or sky and say: 'Here it is.'" - ARTnews
"When Richard Eyre accepted his knighthood and I asked why, he said 'vanity.' If somebody asks me why I turned down an OBE, I’d say 'vanity' too. It wouldn’t suit me, like wearing a bobble hat or something." - The Guardian (UK)
At the L.A. Philharmonic, Kraft was principal timpanist, composer-in-residence, and associate conductor; he co-founded the L.A. Phil New Music Group, with which he started the orchestra's now-famous Green Umbrella concerts of contemporary music. (Kraft was also Stravinsky's preferred percussionist.) - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
"More than fifty years of writing about Naipaul! Yet only in the last few years, the dust having settled"— Naipaul died in 2018, and, writes Theroux, was a far less difficult person in his final years — " I have seen how complex our relationship was." - London Review of Books
"O'Rourke was one of the most quoted writers in America, dissecting US politics and culture with a withering disdain and a powerful line in put-downs – often laced with a warm, self-deprecating humanity." A frequent magazine contributor and talk-show guest, he was once Rolling Stone's foreign affairs correspondent. - The Guardian
"Critics and collectors, once made aware that Ms. Herrera existed, were rapt by the intensity of her work, which she achieved by juxtaposing geometric shapes in contrasting colors." - MSN (The Washington Post)
Born in Czechoslovakia and raised in Canada (where he first met such young comics as his later stars Dan Aykroyd and Rick Moranis), Reitman made his first major impression as the producer of “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (1978). - Variety
