Patt Morrison for Friday, June 18, 2010

PATT MORRISON SCHEDULE

Friday, June 18, 2010

1-3 p.m.

 

CALL-IN @ 866-893-5722, 866-893-KPCC; OR JOIN THE CONVERSATION ONLINE ON THE PATT MORRISON BLOG AT KPCC-DOT-ORG

 

 

1:06 – 1:19

OPEN

 

 

1:21 – 1:39

Should the unemployed face mandatory drug tests?

Out of work? You’d better not be buying drugs with those unemployment checks. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch thinks the feds should drug test people on unemployment and welfare, and put them in treatment if they test positive.  He’s introduced an amendment to the tax extenders bill that would require anyone applying for unemployment or welfare benefits to pass a drug test in exchange for their benefits.  Individual states have tried unsuccessfully to pass initiatives such as these in the past, but just days after the latest bipartisan road blocking of President Obama’s efforts to renew a $140-billion unemployment benefits package, and with a senator backing it, could a plan like this really be viable?

 

Guests:

NOT CONFIRMED:

Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Senator from Utah

 

 

 

1:41 – 1:58:30

The new LA Film Festival?

It’s the 16^th annual LA Film Festival, but almost everything about it seems new.  It has new digs--downtown’s LA Live complex (it was formerly held in Westwood).  The films will be shown all over town in places like the Orpheum Theater, the Disney Hall’s Redcat theatre and the Ford Amphitheater.  It has a new artistic director, David Ansen, who is attempting to combine mass appeal with art house taste (if that’s possible).  One example—Big Hollywood is there in spades.  The festival will premiere both Summit Entertainment’s The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and Universal’s 3-D feature Despicable Me.  That doesn’t sound like a typical line-up at most indie-centric film festivals, right?  Well, the more sophisticated types will appreciate that over half of the films competing for bragging rights this year are international submissions. Ansen wants the under forty types to get an education in how to read and appreciate sub-titles.  Are his hopes too high?  In short, the festival will screen close to 80 films.  Patt talks us through some of them….but sans the sub-titles.  

 

Guests:

Rebecca Yeldham, Los Angeles Film Festival Director

SHE CALLS US

 

• Yeldham recently produced The Kite Runner, directed by Marc Forster (nominated for 2008 BAFTA and Golden Globe Awards), Linha de Passe, directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas (winner best actress 2008 Cannes Film Festival), and the upcoming release Anvil! The Story of Anvil, directed by first timer Sacha Gervasi (2008 Sundance Film Festival, 2009 SXSW and Spirit Award nominee and Audience Award winner at the 2008 LA, Sydney, and Galway Film Festivals). Her first collaboration with Walter Salles was on the award-winning The Motorcycle Diaries (nominated 2005 Golden Globe and Spirit Awards and Winner BAFTA for Best Foreign language film and Academy Award for Best Song) and she is now his producing partner, in post production on the documentary Searching

 

David Ansen, Artistic Director, Los Angeles Film Festival

HE CALLS US

·        David Ansen is a reviewer and senior editor for Newsweek, where he has been reviewing movies since 1977. He came to Newsweek after several years as the chief film critic at Boston's The Real Paper. Ansen appeared in This Film Is Not Yet Rated.^[1]Ansen has also written several documentaries for television, on Greta Garbo (for TNT), Groucho Marx (HBO), Elizabeth Taylor (PBS) and the Ace Award winning All About Bette (Bette Davis) for TNT. He was on the selection committee of the New York Film Festival from 1990 to 1998.^[1]

 

2:06 – 2:30

Iran: One year later and has anything changed?

It was June 2009 and the world watched as Iranians took to the streets of Tehran in violent and deadly protests.  Protestors turned to the Internet, blasting pictures and videos through Twitter and Facebook. Yet one year later, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still in power and expanding his nuclear agenda. Last week marked the one year anniversary of the Iran elections and the subsequent green movement and while demonstrations had fizzled out, the emotions and wounds still run deep.  With protests scheduled across the world, what can we expect from the Green Movement?  Will there be a bloody repeat of last year’s demonstrations or can change really come through peaceful protests?

 

Guest:

Babak Dehghanpisheh, Baghdad Bureau Chief for Newsweek.  He’s in Beirut, Lebanon.

CALL HIM:

 

Abbas Milani, Director of Iranian studies at Stanford University and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto

CALL HIM:

 

 

2:30 – 2:39

OPEN

 

 

2:41 – 2:58:30

Gail Sheehy, “Passages in Caregiving: Turning Chaos into Confidence”

If there was a guide for every stage in life, would you follow it?  Gail Sheehy, a literary journalist and author of 15 books, has chronicled some of the most complex stages of life in her books “Passages” and “Menopause: The Silent Passage.”  But in her latest book, “Passages in Caregiving: Turning Chaos into Confidence,” Sheehy taps into the life of caregivers, looking to her own experience with caring for her husband as a step-by-step journey.  “Passages in Caregiving” highlights the eight ‘passages’ Sheehy feels constitute the universal experience in caregiving and hopes to be a guide for those living as a caregiver.  But are Sheehy’s strategies and experiences really universal, when many families struggle to even may the medical bills?

 

Guest:

Gail Sheehy, literary journalist; contributing editor to Vanity Fair; author of 16 books, including “Passages” and a biography of Hillary Clinton titled “Hillary’s Choice.”

IN STUDIO

 

 

Jonathan Serviss

Producer, Patt Morrison Program

Southern California Public Radio

NPR Affiliate for Los Angeles

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415.497.2131, mobile

jserviss@kpcc.org / jserviss@scpr.org

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