Interview with the Artist

Cynthia Daniels is a Grammy and Emmy Award winning producer and recording engineer, known for her work in Broadway, film and television. She’s a two-time Grammy Award winner, (The Producers, [2001 Original Broadway Cast] and The Julie Andrews Collection CD), and has worked with everyone from Beyonce to Paul McCartney to Jennifer Lopez. Specializing in orchestral pop, she has recorded and produced countless broadway cast albums and large-scale productions in New York and London. She’s also produced solo and live records for some of the world’s most renowned vocalists and performers, such as Barbara Cook, Patti Lupone, Eartha Kitt,Sandra Bernhard and Elaine Stritch (Elaine Stritch: At Liberty). Ms. Daniels has also worked extensively in television and film and in 2007, she won an Emmy Award for composition and music supervision on the longest running daytime series Guiding Light. In 2011, she built a world-class recording studio in the Hamptons, (designed by architect John Storyk) and launched her own music label: MonkMusic Records, which focuses on young, emerging artists and producing audiophile quality, high-energy rock.

Dune Local's original trio, vocalist Tristeen Caravella (T. Kissy) and drummer John Loetscher of Hampton Bays, and guitarist Austin Quinn of East Quogue are long time friends who grew up together on Long Island. In the last few years, Chris Hamilton joined the band on bass, and they began writing music together.

Dune Local has been described as a harmonic blend of the best of rock, reggae, blues, & hip hop funneled into a powerful and unique sonic experience. Their eclectic style brings a little something for everyone to the table. Last year, Grammy and Emmy Award-winning producer Cynthia Daniels signed Dune Local to her independent music label, MonkMusic Records, and they're currently working on their second album.

Tune in to hear the band talk about their eclectic sound, how working with Cynthia Daniels has enhanced their music, and where they see themselves going. PLUS-- two in-studio performances. Check it out!!

Follow them online at dunelocal.com

Bruce Vilanch is a six-time Emmy Award winning comedy writer and actor. Probably best known to the public for his 4 years stint on Hollywood Squares, he is a featured writer for the Tonys, Grammys and Emmys and has been head writer for the Oscars since 2000. Bruce Vilanch began his career writing for Bette Midler in the mid 70s, before going on to write for such stars as Diana Ross, Billy Crystal, Lilly Tomlin, Roseanna Barr, Rosie O'Donnell, Elizabeth Taylor and Robin Williams, among many others. Vilanch was the subject of the 1999 documentary Get Bruce, which you can find on Netflix, and he appeared off-Broadway in his one-man show, Bruce Vilanch: Almost Famous. In this conversation, Bruce answers questions about the James Franco-Anne Hathaway-Oscars Fiasco, and talks about his dreams of being a movie star, how he professional relationship with Bette Midler began, what it was like to work with Robin Williams and how he feels about other people speaking his words all the time.

Bonnie Grice is a two-time Gracie Allen Award winning radio host, producer and interviewer. She is the producer and host of “The Song is You,” a weekly radio show that explores the impact of music in our lives; and the “Eclectic Café”- both of which are featured on Long Island's NPR station 88.3 WPPB in Southampton. A public radio veteran, she co-hosted the show “Anthem” on National Public Radio and has been heard on WNYC in New York, WGBH in Boston and KUSC in Los Angeles. Bonnie is also a librettist and author. She wrote the text for the two-act chamber opera, Mrs. Dalloway, based on the novel by Virginia Woolf, and she’s the author of From Z to A – A Classical Lover’s Alternative.

Tune in to hear Bonnie talk about her Harry Potter obsession, why she loves living in the Hamptons, what it's like to work at NPR, and how long it took her to find her true voice. Plus Bonnie and Walker talk about how they both deal with criticism, what it means to hit your creative ceiling, and- for the first time- publicly address their perceived rivalry. It's really juicy.

Is Walker dressed as a woman throughout the entire interview? Does Bonnie come bearing rainbow-colored gifts? Do they both break into an Italian aria? Tune in to find out.

Polly Draper is an award-winning actress, writer, producer, and director. Best known for her work on the ABC television drama thirtysomething, she also wrote and directed The Naked Brothers Band: The Movie, and The Naked Brothers Band TV series on Nickelodeon, both of which starred her two sons Nat and Alex Wolff. More recently, Polly has appeared in the Showtime dramedy The Big C, the CBS drama Golden Boy and the film Side Effects, directed by Steven Soderbergh. Tune in to hear Polly Draper talk about marriage and divorce, Yale Drama School, the theater, meeting her husband on the Arsenio Hall show, the casualties of riding mechanical bull, and what it's like having a dog on anti-depressants.

G.E. Smith is one of the most in-demand blues/rock guitarists in the world. He got his break in the late 70s backing Dan Hartman before joining Hall & Oates as their lead guitarist for six years. TV Viewers know him best as the Music Director for Saturday Night Live, where he lead the band between 1985 and 1995. He's toured with Bob Dylan and Roger Waters, and has played with everyone from Mick Jagger to Tina Turner to David Bowie to Jimmy Buffet. In 2007 he celebrated the launch of his GE Smith signature Fender Telecaster. Tune in to hear G.E. talk about the SNL years, what it was like to be married to Gilda Radner, how the Hall & Oates song Maneater came to be, and why he loves being a sideman. Plus- a live, in-studio performance.

The beauty of the land cannot mask the brutality of a farm town. As harvest draws near, Betty confronts a terrifying new reality. She will go to desperate lengths to save her family and must coldly decide whom to sacrifice.

That is the description of the new film Runoff which debuted at the LA Film Festival and was featured at this year's Hamptons International Film Festival.

In this conversation, Writer-Director Kimberly Levin and Producer Kurt Pitzer talk about what inspired the film, its universal theme of survival vs. integrity, why family farms are struggling to survive, and how our personal decisions can have global consequences for the earth.

"[Wildlike is] the story of Mackenzie, a troubled but daring teenage girl sent by her struggling mother to live with her uncle in Juneau, Alaska. At first he is a supportive caretaker and friend, but the relationship is not what it seems and Mackenzie must run away. Trying to make her way back to Seattle to find her absent mother, Mackenzie only winds up deeper in the Alaskan interior. With no one else to turn to, she shadows a loner backpacker, Bartlett, an unlikely father figure with scars of his own."

-Production Weekly

Wildlike makes its world premiere this weekend at the Hamptons International Film Festival. Tune in to hear the film's writer and director Frank Hall Green talk about what prompted him to tell this story, and the healing power of nature. Plus, Frank talks about one of his earlier films, Shooting Script, a documentary about his experience getting shot in the stomach in New York City.

Roberta Flack is one of the greatest songstresses of our time. Known for her classic #1 singles "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", "Killing Me Softly With His Song", "Where Is The Love" and "The Closer I Get to You", she remains the only solo artist to have won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year two consecutive times.

Tune in to hear Roberta Flack talk about how her classical music training influenced her as a songwriter and performer, how she discovered Killing me Softly (and what she thinks of the Fugees' version), and what she thinks about the state of pop music today.

Betty Buckley is a Tony Award winning actress and singer. Considered the quintessential musical theatre actress, in 1982 she originated the role of Grizabella in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, which won her a Tony Award and established her reputation as one of Broadway's leading ladies. She went on to play Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, both on Broadway and the West End, and Hesione in Broadway's Triumph of Love. In 2012 she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

TV viewers know her from the HBO series Oz, Law & Order SVU, and Eight is Enough, for which she was nominated for an Emmy. Her film credits includes M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, Brian De Palma's Carrie, Roman Polanski's Frantic, Woody Allen's Another Woman, and Tender Mercies which won 2 Academy Awards in 1983.

Betty Buckley has also had a prolific career as a recording artist. To date, she's released 16 albums including the Grammy nominated Stars and the Moon: Live at the Donmar. Her new solo album Ghostlight, produced by her childhood friend T. Bone Burnett has been hailed by fans and critics alike.

In this 2008 conversation, Betty talks about some of her most formative teachers, the impact Bob Fosse had on her as an artist, what it takes to sing one eleven o'clock number after another in concert, and how being an actress is like being a portrait painter.

Also- what does Betty think about being dubbed "the quintessential Broadway leading lady"? Tune in to find out.