David Scheer on the ACA, Scuba Diving, and Sibling Diplomacy

The Rhinecliff Cinephile Behind NYU's Cinema Studies: Dana Polan

Norm sits with Dana Polan, the Martin Scorsese Professor and Chair of the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at NYU Tisch. The chat ranges across a lifetime of thinking seriously about American film. Dana grew up in New York and Westchester, did his doctorate in France, and was later knighted by the French Ministry of Culture as a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts. He explains how cinema studies emerged from English departments in the 70s, why USC made its production students take film history (and why they usually came back grateful), and how a young teaching assistant named Martin Scorsese could remember individual shots from films he'd seen years earlier. Dana explains the difference between a movie and a film, with Spielberg's own quote about Close Encounters as a starting point. Dana lays out the case for Scorsese as artist and Lucas as entertainer, the 80s backlash of hard-bodied masculinity in Die Hard and Rambo, the femme fatale in Double Indemnity and The Killers, and the way recent films like Barbie and Everything Everywhere All At Once try to have it every way at once. He makes the case for The Florida Project and the first Die Hard, pushes back gently on Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as accidental pedagogy, and explains why Strangers on a Train was the film that made him realize movies were made on purpose, shot by shot. Dana is currently co-writing Hoboken to Hollywood: The American Places of Frank Sinatra with Chuck Granata for Reaktion Books' Reverb series, and he shares stories from his Sinatra odysseys, including a tour of the Twin Palms bachelor pad in Palm Springs and a sobering evening in Las Vegas watching Sinatra's grandson perform in a no-gambling lounge. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

Tate and Ola Rubinstein: A Family, A Fair, and 45 Years in the Hudson Valley

Norm sits down with Tate and Ola Rubinstein, the husband-and-wife team behind Quail Hollow Events and the 45th annual Woodstock-New Paltz Art and Crafts Fair, returning to the Ulster County Fairgrounds Memorial Day weekend, Tate grew up at the shows his father Neil and uncle Scott founded in 1982, and Ola, an art historian by training, took over day-to-day direction after the couple moved back from New Mexico in 2017. They talk about the road back to the Hudson Valley, life in Placitas under the Sandia Mountains, raising two daughters who are serious gymnasts, and the meditative pull of tennis (with a few words about Jim Morrison's on-court personality for good measure). Norm gets to what it actually takes to put on a fair this size: 220 juried exhibitors, a 30-person staff drawn largely from SUNY New Paltz, the puzzle of laying out the grounds without putting two jewelers next to each other, and the diligence required to make sure every maker is really making their own work. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

Bard, Boona, and Bob Dylan: An Evening With Terence Boylan

Norm welcomes singer-songwriter Terence Boylan, who lives just down the road in Rhinebeck. Boona shows up with homemade margaritas and a lifetime of stories. He talks about the night he and his buddy stole a 1961 Corvette and drove from Buffalo to Greenwich Village at 15 to find Bob Dylan, and ended up lighting Dylan's cigarette outside the Gaslight. The next afternoon they were swapping songs at Izzy Young's Folklore Center. He played the New Folks Concert at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival on the same bill as Bob Dylan, Tom Rush, and Ian and Sylvia, hugged Joan Baez through her stage fright, and loaned Dylan his harmonica. He talks about getting signed to MGM at 17 by walking into the A and R office unannounced with his guitar, recording his first album Alias Boona with Bard classmates Donald Fagen and Walter Becker before they were Steely Dan, and the comedy and music album Playback under the name Appletree Theatre that John Lennon named one of his favorite records of the year. There are stories about his older brother John, who put together the band that backed Linda Ronstadt and went on to become the Eagles, and was just inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame. There are stories from Albert Grossman's kitchen with George Harrison and Paul Butterfield, hanging out at Adolph's near Bard with Dylan and Bobby Neuwirth, a David Geffen contract with more zeros than he had ever seen, and the chance turn that landed him in the house on River Road. Plus some songwriting advice from the muse, a new EP in progress, an invitation to tour Japan, and three Boylan songs: Who Do I Think I Am, Tell Me, and County Fair. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

Liza Donnelly on Women, Humor, and The New Yorker

Norm sits down with longtime New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly for a conversation about her more than four decades in cartooning. Liza talks about tracing James Thurber cartoons as a kid in Watergate-era Washington, the two years she spent submitting to The New Yorker before Lee Lorenz bought her first drawing in 1979, and her parallel life as a digital live-drawing journalist for CBS News, CNN, and The New Yorker, covering everything from the Oscar red carpet to the second E. Jean Carroll trial. She also gets into Cartooning for Peace, her research for Funny Ladies and Very Funny Ladies, and her new documentary Women Laughing, co-directed with Kathleen Hughes. For upcoming screenings check https://www.womenlaughingfilm.com/screenings [https://www.womenlaughingfilm.com/screenings] Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

From Chicago to Brooklyn to Google to a Rhinebeck Front Porch: The Elliott Malkin Story

Norm sits with Elliott Malkin, a parrot lover, artist (Graffiti for Butterflies), writer, podcaster, comb-over aficionado, and father who has taught cool shit at Bard, NYU, and Columbia and done cool shit for Google and so many others. Elliott takes Norm from a Chicago suburb bordering the famously targeted town of Skokie to a Brooklyn-to-Rhinebeck COVID migration that, like a lot in his life, he came to understand only later as part of a much bigger wave. They get into Lose Your Religion in Five Easy Steps, his genealogical art project tracing his family's path from a Hasidic ancestor to unaffiliated descendant, his stints at the New York Times and Google designing the productivity software you stare at all day, and what it was like to walk away from corporate tech this fall after nine years. Elliott also opens up about being diagnosed with autism at fifty, the relief of finally getting dialed down from eleven to eight, and raising kids in a neurodivergence-friendly household. Figuring out what's next, he's volunteering with Rhinebeck's College Connect, writing short stories nobody has read yet, and quietly working out what an artist becomes when he's not making art anymore. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org