Podcast summary
McSweeney's, publisher of the young and hip, brings us a debut novel of breadth, glee and sharp consequence by a 90-year-old ex-Marine who is also a two-time screenwriting Oscar nominee ("Bad Day at Black Rock") and co-creator of Mr. Magoo.
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Participant(s) Bio
Born in 1917, Millard Kaufman plunged into World War II on Guadalcanal as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps, then made D-Day landings on Guam and Okinawa. He co-created the beloved Mr. Magoo and was twice nominated for screenwriting Oscars-in 1954 for Take the High Ground! and in 1956 for the legendary Bad Day at Black Rock. He won the Brussels World's Fair screenwriting award for Raintree County in 1958. He is the author of Plots and Characters, a text on screenwriting that was published in 1999, and has taught at Johns Hopkins and at the Sundance Institute. He lives in Los Angeles and is currently working on his second novel.
Leo Braudy is University Professor and Bing Professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he teaches seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English literature, film history and criticism, and American culture. He is the author of five books: Narrative Form in History and Fiction: Hume, Fielding, and Gibbon; Jean Renoir: The World of his Films; The World in a Frame: What We See in Films; The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its History; Native Informant: Essays on Film, Fiction and Popular Culture; and From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity.
He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post Book World, International Herald Tribune, London Sunday Express, Travel Holiday, Times Literary Supplement, Film Quarterly, and Harper's, among other publications.
He frequently appears as a commentator on popular culture, cultural history, and films on a variety of television shows, including Crossfire, World of Wonder, The Maria Shriver Show, and the South Bank Show.
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