KPFA - Radio Wolinsky

Alla Kovgan, director and writer of the film “Cunningham,” about the choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham, is interviewed by host Richard Wolinsky.

“Cunningham” takes us from the 1940s to early 1970s in the work and career of Merce Cunningham (1919-2009), with many of his dances recreated in 3D. In this discussion, Alla Kovgan talks about the difficulty of translating dance to film, and of the use of 3D in her work. She also talks about Cunningham’s philosophy of dance, as well as of his personal life, and his relationship with John Cage.

Variety: “Shot in glorious 3D that makes the technical mode feel indispensable (like in Wim Wenders’ comparable dance documentary “Pina,” sure, but also Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi” and even James Cameron’s “Avatar”), Kovgan’s ode to choreography master Merce Cunningham is sensational in every sense of the word.”

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Nick Tosches (1949-2019) in conversation with Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff, recorded October 19, 1994.

Nick Tosches, who died on October 20th, 2019, three days shy of his 70th birthday, was the quintessential professional writer. He wrote everything from record reviews to biographies to essays to novels. His career, which began as a rock journalist for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, eventually took him into biographies of Jerry Lee Lewis and Dean Martin, various works of non-fiction, novels, poetry and journalistic essays.

On October 19th, 1994, Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff sat down with Nick Tosches while he was on tour for his novel, “Trinities,” which is about an underground war for world-wide control of the heroin trade and is based, in part, on research for another book, “Power on Earth,” published in 1986, which is the biography of Italian banker Michele Sindona, who was linked both with some of the world’s largest financial institutions, the Vatican and the Italian underworld.

After the interview, Nick Tosches published five more books of fiction and poetry, biographies of boxer Sonny Liston, minstrel singer Emmet Miller and gangster Arnold Rothstein, and three other works of journalism. He also appeared on Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations in 2009. Trinities appears out of print but used copies are easily available on line.

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A.E. Van Vogt, born April 26th, 1912, died January 28, 2000 at the age of 87, was a science fiction writer who had his heyday from the mid 1940s through the 1960s, with such novels as The Weapon Shops of Isher, Slan, The Voyage of the Space Beagle and The World of Null A. Named a science fiction grandmaster in 1995, Van Vogt started by writing for Astounding Stories under editor John W. Campbell in the early 1940s, and most of those novellas and serialized novels found their way into hardback and paperback years later, as fix-ups, reworked material often with new titles. In 1950, he came under the spell – as did Campbell – of L. Ron Hubbard and Dianetics, and later wrote through the lens of general semantics, founded by Alfred Korzibsky.

In 1980, with the publication of a new novel, Cosmic Encounter, and a lawsuit against Twentieth Century Fox over the film Alien, parts of which were derived from his story “Discord in Scarlet” in the book Voyage of the Space Beagle, he was available to be interviewed on February 23, 1980 by Richard Wolinsky’s former co-hosts on the radio show Probabilities on KPFA, the late Lawrence Davidson, science fiction book buyer for the legendary Cody’s Bookstore in Berkeley, and science fiction author Richard A. Lupoff.

A.E. Van Vogt continued to write after the interview, with three more novels, Computerworld, based on the screenplay mentioned in the interview, Null-A Three and To Conquer Kiber, translated into a French edition and never published in English. A.E. Van Vogt settled with Twentieth Century Fox and according to Wikipedia, received $50,000 but no credit for Alien. It! The Terror from Beyond Space is often credited as Dan O’Bannon’s inspiration for Alien, but no mention in Wikipedia is made of Van Vogt on that film’s page. Van Vogt’s name is not listed in the credits for either movie in IMDb. His collaboration with Harlan Ellison, “The Human Operators,” was adapted for the 2002 revival of the TV series The Outer Limits, and the previously mentioned Rod Serling adaptation of the Witch aired in 1971 on Night Gallery. Most of his novels and short stories can be found as e-books through Amazon and other booksellers, along with used paperbacks and hardcovers. This interview was digitized, remastered, and re-edited from two and a half hours of material by Richard Wolinsky in December 2019.

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Tea Obreht, author of the magic realist western “Inland,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

The author of “The Tiger’s Wife” turns her attention to the American west in a tale that encompasses ghosts and camels, and the hardscrabble life of frontier families.

Recorded at Book Passage Bookstore in Corte Madera, California.

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Philip Pullman, author of the “His Dark Materials” trilogy, “The Golden Compass,” “The Subtle Knife” and “The Amber Spyglass” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. Recorded November 30, 2000.

Philip Pullman is the acclaimed author of a series of three  tantasy novels, titled collectively, “His Dark Materials” (there’s also a novella, a short story and a graphic novel in the series). Originally marketed as young adult novels, these books take on Judeo-Christian notions of morality as well as the way belief systems are manipulated by organized religion — all in the guise of a coming of age fantasy taking place on a world like, and very unlike, our own.

A failed 2007 version of “The Golden Compass” opened in theaters, and was not followed by sequels. Currently HBO is running a series based on the trilogy.

In 2017, Philip Pullman began a prequel series, “The Book of Dust,” with “La Belle Sauvage,” and dealing with the events where Lyra, as a baby, is brought to Oxford. The second volume in that series, “The Secret Commonwealth,” was published in October, 2019.

This interview was conducted during Philip Pullman’s only author tour through the United States. The program has been remastered and reedited in 2019 by Richard Wolinsky.

(featured image, 2008, Anna via Flickr, Creative Commons)

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