KPFA - Radio Wolinsky

Richard Connema, long-time Hollywood stills photographer and San Francisco theatre critic, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

Richard Connema is the Bay Area reviewer for the theater website Talkin’ Broadway. From 1946 to 1993, first at Republic Pictures, and later at Warner Bros., he was a staff stills photographer for dozens of movie shoots, from A Streetcar Named Desire, through Rebel Without a Cause, Giant, The Music Man, My Fair Lady, and on through Missouri Breaks and later films.

Though speaking with a benign brain tumor which limits his vocabulary, Richard Connema talks about his years in Hollywood, including the underground gay community, the blacklist, sexual harassment and what it was like to work with several Hollywood stars. He is currently working on a memoir, which is about one-third completed.

At the age of 91, he continues to write reviews at talkinbroadway.com

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Bill Hayes, author of “Insomniac City: New York, Oliver and Me,” and co-editor of the posthumous collection of essays, “The River of Consciousness” by Oliver Sacks, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

The author of three previous books, Bill Hayes moved to New York in 2008 following the sudden death of his long-time partner in order to start fresh. After the move, he wound up becoming partners with noted neurologist and philosopher Oliver Sacks (“Awakenings”). This book, published two years after Sacks’ death looks back on their lives together while at the same time taking verbal and visual photographs of random people in New York. Bill Hayes talks about Oliver Sacks, about his career, and about his life was irrevocably changed.

Bill Hayes website

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Roz Chast, whose latest book is “Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

A regular cartoonist for the New Yorker since 1978, Roz Chast has developed a following for her quirky, strange and funny cartoons.. She started out in the National Lampoon and Village Voice but has since become a regular and familiar artist in the New Yorker.

In this interview, she talks about her start as an artist, discusses how cartoons wind up in the magazine, and focuses on her new book, a graphic guide-book to New York, originally written for her daughter but expanded into an often funny and probably helpful look at the Big Apple.

Roz Chast website

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Stephen Greenblatt, whose latest book is “The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve,” winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction for “The Swerve,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, though only a couple of pages in length, ha proven to be one of the most durable and consequential myths in the history of civilization. Notions such as original sin and the lowered status of women derive (via interpretation) from this awkward and problematic story.

In this wide-ranging interview, Stephen Greenblatt traces the myth and how it has affected society through examination of Saint Augustine (who created the notion of original sin) to Saint Jerome, and as enlightenment weakened the story’s influence, through the poet Milton and modern ideas about cloning and in vitro fertilization.

Stephen Greenblatt website

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Salman Rushdie, whose latest novel is “The Golden House,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

The author of “The Satanic Verses” and several other novels, discusses his latest work of fiction, which focuses on a wealthy Indian family living in New York, and concerns such topics as the relationship of wealth to criminal enterprises in New York and Bombay (Mumbai), the world of the artist in New York, the recent presidential election, film images in our culture, and more.

In this interview, he discusses all of these topics, as well as his views on free speech for Nazis, Islamophobia, and the rise of authoritarian regimes in the United States, India and elsewhere.

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