Richard Kind is beloved by fans and colleagues alike. A versatile actor and endearing presence on TV shows like Spin City, Mad About You, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, movies including Argo, and A Serious Man, and animated films including A Bug’s Life, Cars, and Inside Out, he has made a lasting impression. He’s also performed on Broadway in such shows as The Producers and accumulated a lifetime’s worth of anecdotes and observations. Leonard and Jessie are among his biggest admirers and had a ball spending an hour in conversation with him.
A onetime piano prodigy is now an Oscar nominee. Having won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition in 2011, Kris Bowers has spread his wings and achieved his goal of becoming a composer for film and television. Among his credits: Green Book, Bridgerton, When They See Us, and the upcoming Space Jam: A New Legacy. What’s more, his charming short subject, A Concerto is a Conversation, which he directed with Ben Proudfoot, is an Academy Award nominee. (watch it at www.concertodoc.com) As you will hear, Kris is engaging, articulate, and equally comfortable talking about Bach and Bugs Bunny.
He’s enjoying the success and acclaim he rightly deserves for The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix’s most-watched scripted miniseries), but Scott Frank is not just a flavor of the month. He’s written movies like Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Minority Report, Logan, and our favorite sleeper The Lookout, which marked his directing debut. Scott has a wealth of observations about screenwriting and moviemaking which he shares with Leonard and Jessie, who have belatedly discovered Godless, the exceptional Western miniseries he made for Netflix in 2017. It’s another must-see.
His new biography Mike Nichols: A Life is garnering rave reviews, but that’s no surprise. Mark Harris’s other two books, Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back are required reading for anyone who loves films. A native New Yorker, Mark spent many years writing for Entertainment Weekly, which put him on the front lines of pop culture. He continues to cover the film scene for New York magazine. A diligent researcher as well as a fan, Mark has much to say about digging deep in order to tell a good (and accurate) story, as you will hear.