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Caption	The German premiere of The Bucket List, 2008
Birth name	Robert Norman Reiner
Birth date	March 06, 1947
Birth place	Bronx, New York, United States
Years active	1959–present
Occupation	Actor, director, producer, writer, political activist
Spouse	Penny Marshall (1971–1981) Michele Singer (1989–present)

Robert Norman "Rob" Reiner (born March 6, 1947) is an American actor, director, producer, writer, and political activist.

As an actor, Reiner first came to national prominence as Archie and Edith Bunker's (played by Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton, respectively) son-in-law, Michael "Meathead" Stivic, on All in the Family. That role earned him two Emmy Awards during the 1970s. As a director, Reiner was recognized by the Directors Guild of America (DGA) with nominations for Stand by Me, When Harry Met Sally..., and A Few Good Men. He was trained at the UCLA Film School.

Early life

Reiner was born to a Jewish family in The Bronx, New York, and is the son of Estelle Reiner (née Lebost), an actress, and Carl Reiner, a comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director. As a child, Reiner lived in New Rochelle, New York, where his family lived at 48 Bonnie Meadow Road. This is similar to 148 Bonnie Meadow Road, the fictional address of the Petries on The Dick Van Dyke Show, the 1960s CBS sitcom created by his father. Also, his latest film Flipped takes place at the corner of Bonnie Meadow Lane and Renfrew Street.

At the age of 13, Rob relocated with his family to the Los Angeles area, where he attended Beverly Hills High School with Richard Dreyfuss, Bonnie Franklin and Albert Brooks. He went on to enroll at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also has a sister, Sylvia Anne (Annie) Reiner (born 1957), who is a poet, playwright, and author; and a brother, Lucas Reiner (born 1962), a painter, actor, and director.

Career

Reiner began his career writing for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968 and 1969. After a short break, Reiner became famous playing Michael "Meathead" Stivic, Archie Bunker's liberal son-in-law, on Norman Lear's 1970s sitcom All in the Family, which was the most-watched television program for five years (1971–1976) in the United States.

The nickname "Meathead," referring to Reiner's character Mike Stivic in All in the Family, became a pop culture reference. Indeed, Reiner has stated, "I could win the Nobel Prize and they'd write 'Meathead wins the Nobel Prize'." O'Connor coined the name "Meathead" after arriving at the studio one day with a bag of ten subs from a nearby deli. In just ten minutes, O'Connor realized that Reiner had eaten four whole subs and was on his fifth. At that point O'Connor remarked, "Indeed, you are the Meathead if I ever saw one! Save some for the rest of us!" Co-star Jean Stapleton turned to Producer Norman Lear and said, "Carroll just gave Mike Stivic a name that will live in infamy!"

Reiner was parodied in Butt Out, a South Park episode which revolved around the theme of smoking and anti-tobacco activism. He is portrayed as selfish, bad-tempered and obese, and never without food in his hand/mouth. This is a running joke in the episode; as he rants about the evils and health hazards of smoking, he eats more rapidly still and begins sweating and shaking, as if on the verge of a stroke or heart attack. Reiner has not commented on his 'appearance' in the episode.

In a 2004 interview on A&E; Biography, Reiner said that he enjoyed working with Carroll O'Connor on-screen, as well as becoming best friends and for having a second father-in-law, off-screen. Reiner was a loyal friend to him until O'Connor's death on June 21, 2001. At the time, he, alongside Sally Struthers and Danielle Brisebois, attended O'Connor's funeral.

From the 1980s to present day, Reiner has been known as a director of successful Hollywood films. Some of these films—The Princess Bride, Stand By Me, and This Is Spinal Tap— have achieved cult status. Reiner has stated that the film which will go down as his masterpiece is Stand by Me. The film is also his favorite film of his own work. He often collaborates with film editor Robert Leighton, whom he also shares with fellow director-thespian Christopher Guest as their go-to editor.

Reiner has gone on to direct other critically and commercially successful films with his own company, Castle Rock Entertainment, such as When Harry Met Sally..., Misery, and his most commercially successful work A Few Good Men.

Reiner's latest film, The Bucket List, was released in December 2007 and starred Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as two terminally ill men who escape from a cancer ward and head off on a road trip with a wish list of tasks to accomplish before they die. Although the film was popular with audiences, film critic Roger Ebert, a thyroid cancer sufferer, was especially off-put by treatment of the disease in the film: "'The Bucket List' thinks dying of cancer is a laugh riot followed by a dime-store epiphany."

Reiner has made cameos in a number of movies, including Throw Momma from the Train, Sleepless in Seattle, Bullets Over Broadway, The First Wives Club, Primary Colors, , and 30 Rock.

Reiner's upcoming film, Flipped, is scheduled for release in 2010.It was released September, 2010.

Personal life

rally on Oct. 29, 2003]] Rob Reiner is the son of Carl Reiner and Estelle Reiner. He was married to actress-director Penny Marshall from 1971 to 1981 and adopted Marshall's daughter from a previous marriage, actress Tracy Reiner. Reiner and Marshall divorced in 1981.

Reiner married photographer Michele Singer in 1989. They have three children. In 1997, Reiner and wife Michele founded the "I Am Your Child Foundation," now "Parents' Action for Children," a non-profit organization promoting early childhood development by producing and distributing celebrity-hosted educational videos for parents.

Reiner has devoted considerable time and energy to liberal activism in recent years.

Reiner is a co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights which initiated the defense team against California's passing of prop 8 which banned same sex marriage in the state.

In 1998, Reiner chaired the campaign to pass Prop 10, the California Children and Families Initiative, which created First 5 California, a program of early childhood development services, funded by a tax on tobacco products. He served as the first chairman of First 5 California, from 1999 to 2006. Reiner came under criticism for campaigning for a ballot measure (Prop 82) to fund state-run preschools while still chair of the First Five Commission, causing him to resign from his position on March 29, 2006. An audit was conducted, and it concluded that the state commission did not violate state law and that it had clear legal authority to conduct its public advertising campaigns related to preschool. In the end, Prop 82 failed to win approval, garnering only 39.1% support.

Reiner was mentioned as a possible candidate to run against California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006 but decided not to run for personal reasons. He campaigned extensively for Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore in 2000, and he campaigned in Iowa for Democratic Presidential candidate Howard Dean just before the 2004 Iowa caucuses. He endorsed Hillary Clinton for president for the 2008 election cycle.

Reiner is a member of the Social Responsibility Task Force, an organization advocating moderation where social issues (such as violence and tobacco use) and the entertainment industry meet.

Reiner is also active in environmental issues, and he successfully led the effort to establish California's Ahmanson Ranch as a state park and wildlife refuge rather than as a commercial real estate development. He introduced Spinal Tap at the London Live Earth concert in July 2007.

Filmography

Film

Halls of Anger – Actor (1969)

Summertree – Actor (1971)

Fire Sale – Actor (1977)

This Is Spinal Tap – Actor, Director, Song-Writer (1984)

The Sure Thing – Director (1985)

Stand by Me – Director (1986)

The Princess Bride – Director (1987)

Throw Momma from the Train – Actor (1987)

When Harry Met Sally... – Director (1989)

Postcards from the Edge – Actor (1990)

Misery – Director (1990)

A Few Good Men – Director (1992)

Sleepless In Seattle – Actor (1993)

North – Director (1994)

Bullets Over Broadway – Actor (1994)

The American President – Director (1995)

Bye Bye Love – Actor (1995)

Ghosts of Mississippi – Director (1996)

The First Wives Club – Actor (1996)

Primary Colors – Actor (1998)

EDtv – Actor (1999)

The Story of Us – Director (1999)

Alex & Emma – Director (2003)

- Actor (2003)

Rumor Has It... - Director (2005)

Everyone's Hero - Voice Actor (2006)

The Bucket List – Director (2007)

Flipped – Director, Producer, Screenplay (2010)

Television

The Smothers Brothers – Writer (1967)

The Andy Griffith Show – Copyboy (1967)

Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. – hippie (1969)

The Beverly Hillbillies - Jethro's College protester friend (1969)

The Partridge Family – Snake (1971)

The Rockford Files – Larry 'King' Sturtevant (1974)

All in the Family – Michael Stivic (1971–1978)

Saturday Night Live – Himself (1975)

The $10,000 Pyramid – Guest as himself on debut week (1973)

Happy Days – Cowrote the first episode (1974)

Likely Stories, Vol. 1 – Director (1981)

It's Garry Shandling's Show – Appeared several times as himself, helping Garry to 'advance the plot' (1986–1990)

Morton & Hayes – Narrator (1991)

The Larry Sanders Show – Cameo playing himself in several episodes including Doubt Of The Benefit

Curb Your Enthusiasm – Season 2, Episode 5 (as himself) (2001)

The Simpsons – Guest-starred as himself in Million Dollar Abie (2006)

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip – Guest-starred as himself (2006)

Hannah Montana – Guest-starred as himself (2009)

Wizards of Waverly Place – Guest-starred as himself (2009)

30 Rock – Guest-starred as himself (2010)

References

External links

Rob Reiner's biography, awards, and milestones at Hollywood.com

Rob Reiner Archive of American Television Interview

American Foundation for Civil Rights at Wehoconfidential.com

Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century actors Category:Actors from New York City Category:American bloggers Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American film producers Category:American television actors Category:American Jews Category:American people of Romanian-Jewish descent Category:Activists from California Category:California Democrats Category:Early childhood education in the United States Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish comedians Category:People from Beverly Hills, California Category:People from the Bronx Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni

Caption	Matheson in 2008
Pseudonym	Logan Swanson
Birthname	Richard Burton Matheson
Birthdate	February 20, 1926
Birthplace	Allendale, New Jersey, United States
Occupation	Novelist, Short story writer, Screenwriter
Nationality	American
Period	1950–present
Influenced	Stephen King, Richard Christian Matheson
Genre	Science fiction, Fantasy, Horror

Richard Burton Matheson (born February 20, 1926) is an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He is perhaps best known as the author of What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return, Duel, and I Am Legend, all four of which have been adapted as major motion pictures. Matheson has also written for several The Twilight Zone television show episodes such as "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet".

Personal life

Matheson was born in Allendale, New Jersey, the son of Norwegian immigrants Fanny (née Mathieson) and Bertolf Matheson, a tile floor installer. Matheson was raised in Brooklyn and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1943. He then entered the military and spent World War II as an infantry soldier. In 1949 he earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and moved to California in 1951. He married Ruth Ann Woodson on July 1, 1952 and has four children, three of whom (Chris, Richard Christian, and Ali Matheson) are writers of fiction and screenplays.

Career

His first short story, "Born of Man and Woman", appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1950 and is the tale of a monstrous child chained in its parents' cellar told in the first person as the creature's diary (in poignantly non-idiomatic English). Between 1950 and 1971, Matheson produced dozens of stories, frequently blending elements of the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres, making important contributions to the further development of modern horror.

Several of his stories, like "Third from the Sun" (1950), "Deadline" (1959) and "Button, Button" (1970) are simple sketches with twist endings; others, like "Trespass" (1953), "Being" (1954) and "Mute" (1962) explore their characters' dilemmas over twenty or thirty pages. Some tales, such as "The Funeral" (1955) and "The Doll that Does Everything" (1954) incorporate zany satirical humour at the expense of genre clichés, and are written in an hysterically overblown prose very different from Matheson's usual pared-down style. Others, like "The Test" (1954) and "Steel" (1956), portray the moral and physical struggles of ordinary people, rather than the then nearly ubiquitous scientists and superheroes, in situations which are at once futuristic and everyday. Still others, such as "Hell House" (1953), "The Curious Child" (1954) and perhaps most of all, "Duel" (1971) are tales of paranoia, in which the everyday environment of the present day becomes inexplicably alien or threatening. "Duel" was adapted for Steven Spielberg's first feature, the TV movie of that name.

He wrote 14 episodes for the American TV series The Twilight Zone, including "Steel" (mentioned above), and the famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", plus "Little Girl Lost", a story about a young girl tumbling into the fourth dimension; adapted the works of Edgar Allan Poe for Roger Corman and Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out for Hammer Films. He also contributed a number of scripts to the Warner Brothers western series Lawman between 1958 and 1962. He wrote the episode "The Enemy Within", considered one of the best. In 1973, Matheson earned an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his teleplay for The Night Stalker, one of two TV movies written by Matheson that preceded the series . Matheson also wrote the screenplay for Fanatic (US title: Die! Die! My Darling!) starring Tallulah Bankhead and Stefanie Powers.

Matheson's first novel, Someone Is Bleeding, was published in 1953. His novels include The Shrinking Man (filmed as The Incredible Shrinking Man, again from Matheson's own screenplay), and a science fiction vampire novel, I Am Legend, (filmed as The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971), and I Am Legend (2007)). Other Matheson novels turned into notable films include What Dreams May Come, Stir of Echoes, Bid Time Return (as Somewhere in Time), and Hell House (as The Legend of Hell House), the last two adapted and scripted by Matheson himself. Three of his short stories were filmed together as Trilogy of Terror (1975), including "Prey" (initially published in the April 1969 edition of Playboy magazine) with its famous Zuni warrior doll. Matheson's short story "Button, Button", was filmed as The Box in 2009, and was also adapted for a 1986 episode of The Twilight Zone.

In 1960, Matheson published The Beardless Warriors, a nonfantastic, autobiographical novel about teenage American soldiers in World War II. It was filmed in 1967 as The Young Warriors though most of Matheson's plot was jettisoned. During the 1950s he published a handful of Western stories (later collected in By the Gun); and during the 1990s he published Western novels such as Journal of the Gun Years, The Gunfight, The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickok and Shadow on the Sun. He has also written a blackly comic locked-room mystery novel, Now You See It..., aptly dedicated to Robert Bloch, and the suspense novels 7 Steps to Midnight and Hunted Past Reason.

Matheson cites specific inspirations for many of his works. Duel derived from an incident in which he and a friend, Jerry Sohl, were dangerously tailgated by a large truck on the same day as the Kennedy assassination. (However, there are similarities with a William M Robson script of the July 15, 1962 episode of the radio drama, Suspense: Snow on 66.) A scene from the 1953 movie Let's Do It Again in which Aldo Ray and Ray Milland put on each other's hats, one of which is far too big for the other, sparked the thought "what if someone put on his own hat and that happened," which became The Shrinking Man. Bid Time Return began when Matheson saw a movie poster featuring a beautiful picture of Maude Adams and wondered what would happen if someone fell in love with such an old picture. In the introduction to Noir: 3 Novels of Suspense (1997), which collects three of his early books, Matheson has said that the first chapter of his suspense novel Someone is Bleeding (1953) describes exactly his meeting with his wife Ruth, and that in the case of What Dreams May Come, "the whole novel is filled with scenes from our past."

According to film critic Roger Ebert, Matheson's scientific approach to the supernatural in I Am Legend and other novels from the 1950s and early 1960s "anticipated pseudorealistic fantasy novels like Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist."

In 2010, Matheson was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame

Influence

Other writers

Stephen King has listed Matheson as a creative influence and his novel Cell is dedicated to Matheson, along with filmmaker George A. Romero.

In the August 7, 2009, issue of Entertainment Weekly devoted to vampires, Anne Rice stated that when she was a child, Matheson's short story "A Dress Of White Silk", was a prime early influence on her interest in vampires and fantasy fiction.

Tributes

In books

Richard's son, Richard Christian Matheson, wrote a novel Created By, in which the hero's father is named Burt, a reference to Matheson senior's middle name.

Richard Christian Matheson adapted his father's short story "Dance of the Dead" for the TV series Masters of Horror. It was directed by Tobe Hooper and starred Robert Englund and Ryan McDonald.

He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson edited by Christopher Conlon was released in a limited hardcover edition in February 2009. This book is an anthology of 16 original stories inspired by Matheson's works. Contributors include Nancy A. Collins, Joe R. Lansdale, Whitley Strieber, F. Paul Wilson, and Stephen King collaborating with his son, horror author Joe Hill. On Sept. 14, 2009, it was released in paperback.

In films

Richard Christian Matheson penned the screenplay for "Battleground" for the first segment of Stephen King's Nightmares & Dreamscapes. He paid homage to his father by including the Zuni fetish doll from the last segment of Trilogy of Terror in a scene.

M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, about inexplicable mass suicide, has a parallel with Matheson's short story Lemmings, which is also about inexplicable mass suicide.

In television

A character named "Senator Richard Matheson" appeared in several episodes of The X-Files. The series' creator, Chris Carter, was a fan of Matheson's work on two series that influenced The X-Files (The Twilight Zone and ). Also, the TV series adaptation of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids had the Szalinski family relocating to the town of Matheson, Colorado.

In the Babylon 5 TV series, the episode "A Spider in the Web" mentions a ship called the Matheson as one of many requesting permission to leave the station.

The telepath "John Matheson" in Crusade was named in honour of Matheson.

A villain of the week on Burn Notice was named after Matheson.

Season 8 of Family Guy featured an episode titled "The Splendid Source". Family Guy writer Mark Hentemann stated that the episode's plot was based on Matheson's short story of the same name.

In games and rides

Matheson St. in the Konami game Silent Hill, was named in his honor.

Homage to Matheson is paid daily by Disney Imagineers who distinctly included the chalk markings (which marked the portal wall from The Twilight Zone episode "Little Girl Lost") in the boiler-room area of the famous Disney thrill-ride "The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror".

Bibliography

Novels

Someone is Bleeding (1953)

Fury on Sunday (1953)

I Am Legend (1954) filmed as The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man & I Am Legend

The Shrinking Man (1956); filmed as The Incredible Shrinking Man and subsequently reprinted under that title; also the basis of the film The Incredible Shrinking Woman

A Stir of Echoes (1958); filmed as Stir of Echoes

Ride the Nightmare (1959); adapted as an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour

The Beardless Warriors (1960); filmed as The Young Warriors

Comedy of Terrors with Elsie Lee (1964); filmed as The Comedy of Terrors

Hell House (novel) (1971); filmed as The Legend of Hell House

The Night Stalker (1972); written with Jeff Rice

The Night Strangler (1973)

Bid Time Return (1975); filmed as Somewhere in Time and subsequently reprinted under that title

What Dreams May Come (1978); filmed as What Dreams May Come

Earthbound (editorially abridged version published under the pseudonym "Logan Swanson" 1982; restored text published under Matheson's own name 1989)

Journal of the Gun Years (1992)

The Gunfight (1993)

7 Steps to Midnight (1993)

Shadow on the Sun (1994)

Now You See It... (1995)

The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickock (1996)

The Path: A New Look at Reality (1999)

Passion Play (2000)

Hunger and Thirst (2000)

Camp Pleasant (2001)

Abu and the 7 Marvels (2002)

Hunted Past Reason (2002)

Come Fygures, Come Shadowes (2003)

Woman (2006)

Other Kingdoms (2010)

Short stories

"Born of Man and Woman" (1950)

"Third from the Sun" (1950); adapted as a Twilight Zone episode (1960)

"The Waker Dreams" (AKA "When the Waker Sleeps") (1950)

"Blood Son" (1951)

"Through Channels" (1951)

"Clothes Make the Man" (1951)

"Return" (1951)

"The Thing" (1951)

"Witch War" (1951)

"Dress of White Silk" (1951)

"F---" (AKA "The Foodlegger") (1952)

"Shipshape Home" (1952)

"SRL Ad" (1952)

"Advance Notice" (AKA "Letter to the Editor") (1952)

"Lover, When You're Near Me" (1952)

"Brother To The Machine" (1952)

"To Fit the Crime" (1952)

"The Wedding" (1953)

"Wet Straw" (1953)

"Long Distance Call" (AKA "Sorry, Right Number") (1953)

"Slaughter House" (1953)

"Mad House" (1953)

"The Last Day" (1953)

"Lazarus II" (1953)

"Legion of Plotters" (1953)

"Death Ship" (1953); adapted as a Twilight Zone episode (1963)

"Disappearing Act" (1953)

"The Disinheritors" (1953)

"Dying Room Only" (1953)

"Full Circle" (1953)

"Mother by Protest" (AKA "Trespass") (1953)

"Little Girl Lost" (1953); adapted as a Twilight Zone episode (1962)

"Being" (1954)

"The Curious Child" (1954)

"When Day Is Dun" (1954)

"Dance of the Dead" (1954)

"The Man Who Made the World (1954)

"The Traveller" (1954)

"The Test" (1954)

"The Conqueror" (1954)

"Dear Diary" (1954)

"The Doll That Does Everything" (1954)

"Descent" (1954)

"Miss Stardust" (1955)

"The Funeral" (1955) Adapted as story segment for Rod Serling's Night Gallery

"Too Proud to Lose" (1955)

"One for the Books" (1955)

"Pattern for Survival" (1955)

"A Flourish of Strumpets (1956)

"The Splendid Source" (1956); The basis of the Family Guy episode "The Splendid Source".

"Steel" (1956); adapted as a Twilight Zone episode (1963)

"The Children of Noah" (1957)

"A Visit to Santa Claus" (AKA "I'll Make It Look Good," as Logan Swanson) (1957)

"The Holiday Man" (1957)

"Old Haunts" (1957)

"The Distributor" (1958)

"The Edge" (1958)

"Lemmings" (1958)

"Mantage" (1959)

"Deadline" (1959)

"The Creeping Terror" (AKA "A Touch of Grapefruit") (1959)

"No Such Thing as a Vampire" (1959)

"Big Surprise" (AKA "What Was In The Box") (1959)

"Crickets" (1960)

"Day of Reckoning" (AKA "The Faces," "Graveyard Shift") (1960)

"First Anniversary" (1960)

"From Shadowed Places" (1960)

"Finger Prints" (1962)

"Mute" (1962); adapted as a Twilight Zone episode (1963)

"The Likeness of Julie" (as Logan Swanson) (1962)

"The Jazz Machine" (1963)

"Crescendo" (AKA "Shock Wave") (1963)

"Girl of My Dreams" (1963)

"'Tis the Season to Be Jelly" (1963)

"Deus Ex Machina" (1963)

"Interest" (1965)

"A Drink of Water" (1967)

"Needle in the Heart" (AKA "Therese") (1969)

"Prey" (1969) (Later adapted to the Zuni Fetish Doll, in the Trilogy of Terror)

"Button, Button" (1970); filmed as a The Twilight Zone episode in 1986; filmed as The Box (2009)

"'Til Death Do Us Part" (1970)

"By Appointment Only" (1970)

"The Finishing Touches" (1970)

"Duel" (1971); filmed as Duel (1971)

"Big Surprise" (1971) Adapted as story segment for Rod Serling's Night Gallery

"Where There's a Will" (with Richard Christian Matheson) (1980)

"And Now I'm Waiting" (1983)

"Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (as The Twilight Zone episode in 1963; as segment four of , 1983; first published in 1984)

"Getting Together" (1986)

"Buried Talents" (1987)

"The Near Departed" (1987)

"Shoo Fly" (1988)

"Person to Person" (1989)

"Two O'Clock Session" (1991)

"The Doll" (as Twilight Zone episode, published as story in 1993)

"Go West, Young Man" (1993)

"Gunsight" (1993)

"Little Jack Cornered" (1993)

"Of Death and Thirty Minutes" (1993)

"My Ambition" (2006)

Short story collections

Born of Man and Woman (1954)

The Shores of Space (1957)

Shock! (1961)

Shock 2 (1964)

Shock 3 (1966)

Shock Waves (1970) Published as Shock 4 in the UK (1980)

Button, Button (1970) adapted as a Twilight Zone episode (1986), filmed as The Box (2009)

Richard Matheson: Collected Stories (1989)

By the Gun (1993)

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (2000)

Pride with Richard Christian Matheson (2002)

Duel (2002)

Offbeat: Uncollected Stories (2002)

Darker Places (2004)

Unrealized Dreams (2004)

Duel and The Distributor (2005) Previously unpublished screenplays of these two stories

Button, Button: Uncanny Stories (2008) (Tor Books)

Uncollected Matheson: Volume 1 (2008)

Uncollected Matheson: Volume 2 (2010)

Television

: "The Enemy Within" (1966)

The Martian Chronicles Mini-Series: (1979, 1980)

Nonfiction

The Path: Metaphysics for the 90s (1993)

Additional reading

California Sorcery, edited by William F. Nolan and William Schafer

References

External links

Matheson biography at tabula-rasa.info

Richard Matheson featured on AMC-TV's Sci-Fi Department webshow

Richard Matheson Archive of American Television Interview

Category:1926 births Category:American fantasy writers Category:American horror writers Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:American science fiction writers Category:Edgar Award winners Category:Living people Category:American people of Norwegian descent Category:University of Missouri alumni Category:United States Army soldiers Category:Worldcon Guests of Honor Category:World Fantasy Award winning authors

Name	Sidney Sheldon
Birthdate	February 11, 1917
Birthplace	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Deathdate	January 30, 2007
Deathplace	Rancho Mirage, California, United States
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	American
Period	1969-2005
Genre	Crime fiction, Thriller
Influenced	Tilly Bagshawe
Website	Website|http://www.hachettebookgroupusa.com/features/sidneysheldon/meet_ss.html}}

Sidney Sheldon (February 11, 1917 – January 30, 2007) was an Academy Award-winning American writer. His TV works spanned a 20-year period during which he created The Patty Duke Show (1963–66), I Dream of Jeannie (1965–70) and Hart to Hart (1979–84), but it was not until after he turned 50 and began writing best-selling novels such as Master of the Game (1982), The Other Side of Midnight (1973) and Rage of Angels (1980) that he became most famous.

Life and career

Sheldon was born Sidney Schechtel in Chicago, Illinois, to parents of Russian Jewish ancestry, Ascher "Otto" Schechtel (1894–1967), manager of a jewelry store, and Natalie Marcus. At 10, he made his first sale, $5 for a poem. The novels contained a lot of suspense and devices to keep the reader turning the page: in Las Vegas in 1989. His daughter, Mary Sheldon, became a novelist in her own right.

He struggled with bipolar disorder for years; he contemplated suicide at 17 (talked out of it by his father, who discovered him), as detailed in his autobiography published in 2005, The Other Side of Me

Sheldon died on January 30, 2007 from complications arising from pneumonia at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California.'''

He was cremated. His ashes were interred in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

Awards

Sheldon won an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay (1947) for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, a Tony Award (1959) for his musical Redhead, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on I Dream of Jeannie, an NBC sitcom.

Bibliography

Novels

The Naked Face (1970)

The Other Side of Midnight (1973)

A Stranger in the Mirror (1976)

Bloodline (1977)

Rage of Angels (1980)

Master of the Game (1982)

If Tomorrow Comes (1985)

Windmills of the Gods (1987)

The Sands of Time (1988)

Memories of Midnight (1990)

The Doomsday Conspiracy (1991)

The Stars Shine Down (1992)

Nothing Lasts Forever (1994)

Morning, Noon and Night (1995)

The Best Laid Plans (1997)

Tell Me Your Dreams (1998)

The Sky Is Falling (2001)

Are You Afraid of the Dark? (2004)

Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game by Tilly Bagshawe (2009)

Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness by Tilly Bagshawe (2010)

Autobiography

The Other Side of Me (2005)

Broadway Plays

The Merry Widow

Alice in Arms

Redhead

Roman Candle

Gomes(London)

Films

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer

Three Guys Named Mike

Annie Get Your Gun

Dream Wife

You're Never Too Young

Anything Goes

Billy Rose's Jumbo

Bloodline

Television

I Dream of Jeannie

If Tomorrow Comes

The Patty Duke Show

Hart to Hart

See also

List of bestselling novels in the United States

Tilly Bagshawe

References

External links

Archive of American Television interview

1987 audio interview with Sidney Sheldon at Wired for Books.org by Don Swaim

Two Sidney Sheldon Interviews on Sidewalks Entertainment

Sheldon's death obituary at NYTimes.com

Novels by Sidney Sheldon Category:1917 births Category:2007 deaths Category:American novelists Category:American screenwriters Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:Best Original Screenplay Academy Award winners Category:Burials at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery Category:Tony Award winners Category:Writers from Chicago, Illinois Category:Jewish American writers Category:American people of Russian descent Category:Northwestern University alumni Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:People with bipolar disorder Category:Deaths from pneumonia Category:Infectious disease deaths in California

Name	Sheldon Leonard
Caption	from the trailer for the film Another Thin Man (1939)
Birthdate	February 22, 1907
Birthplace	New York City, New York, United States
Deathdate
Deathplace	Beverly Hills, California, United States
Occupation	Actor, Writer, Producer, Director
Spouse	Frances Bober (1931-1997) (his death) 2 children
Yearsactive	1934-1996

Sheldon Leonard (February 22, 1907 – January 10, 1997) was a pioneering American film and television producer, director, writer, and actor.

Biography

Leonard was born Sheldon Leonard Bershad in New York City, the son of middle class Jewish parents Anna and Frank Bershad. As an actor, Leonard specialized in playing supporting characters, especially gangsters or "heavies", in films such as It's a Wonderful Life (1946), To Have and Have Not (1944), and Open Secret (1948). His trademark was his especially thick New York accent, usually delivered from the side of his mouth. In the cult classic Decoy, Leonard uses his "heavy" persona to create the hard-boiled police detective Joe Portugal. In the 1950s, Leonard provided the voice of lazy cat Dodsworth in two Warner Bros. cartoons directed by Robert McKimson.

In radio, Leonard played an eccentric racetrack tout on The Jack Benny Program in the late 1940s and early '50s. His role was to salute Benny out of the blue in railroad stations, on street corners, or in department stores ("hey Bud, come here a minute"), ask Benny what he was about to do, and then proceed to try to argue him out of his course of action by resorting to inane and irrelevant racing logic. Ironically, as "The Tout," he never gave out information on horse racing, unless Jack demanded it. One excuse the tout gave was "Who knows about horses?" Leonard was part of the ensemble cast of the Martin and Lewis radio show. He also appeared frequently on The Adventures of the Saint, often playing gangsters and heavies, but also sometimes in more positive roles.

But he is better known as the producer of hugely popular television series, including The Danny Thomas Show {aka Make Room For Daddy} (1953–64), The Andy Griffith Show (1960–68), The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–66), and I Spy (1965–68). Leonard also provided the voice of Linus the Lionhearted in a series of Post Crispy Critters cereal TV commercials in 1963-64, which led to a Linus cartoon series that aired on Saturday (and later, Sunday) mornings on CBS (1964–66) and ABC (1967–69). He also was briefly the star of his own television show Big Eddie, where he played the owner of a large sports arena. The show lasted only one season (1975–76).

The character of Andy Taylor was introduced in a 1960 episode of The Danny Thomas Show, which led to the series of The Andy Griffith Show. Leonard is informally credited with developing the practice of using an episode of a series as a backdoor pilot episode for new series, in which a guest star is introduced as a new character with the intention using this character as the basis for a new show.

Leonard also has the distinction (along with author Mickey Spillane) of being the first Miller Lite spokesmen. Using his trademark accent, he told the audience "I was at first reluctant to try Miller Lite, but then I was persuaded to do so by my friend, Large Louis." One of his last acting roles was a guest appearance on the TV series Cheers, in which he played the proprietor of "The Hungry Heifer," Norm Peterson's favorite eating establishment.

Leonard died at 89, and was buried at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Bill Cosby included an impersonation of Sheldon Leonard in one track of his 1966 hit comedy album Wonderfulness. The track, "Niagara Falls", describes Sheldon Leonard's honeymoon at Niagara Falls.

In 2007 he was given a posthumous "tip of the hat" in the situation comedy, The Big Bang Theory in which the lead characters are named Sheldon and Leonard.

Select filmography

Producer

The Andy Griffith Show

The Danny Thomas Show

The Dick Van Dyke Show

I Spy

My World and Welcome to It

Gomer Pyle, USMC (he also made one on-screen appearance as a director in a Hollywood Marine movie in the Season 5 episode "A Star Is Not Born")

From a Bird's Eye View

Shirley's World

Director

The Andy Griffith Show

The Danny Thomas Show

The Dick Van Dyke Show

My Favorite Martian

I Spy

Actor

Another Thin Man (1939)

Tall, Dark and Handsome (1941)

Hit the Ice (1943)

Uncertain Glory (1944)

To Have and Have Not (1944)

Bowery Bombshell (1946)

Decoy (1946)

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Sinbad the Sailor (1947)

Jinx Money (1948)

Two Knights from Brooklyn (1949)

Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)

Behave Yourself! (1951)

Money From Home (1953)

[Guys and Dolls (film)|Guys and Dolls]] (1955)

Pocketful of Miracles (1961)

Further reading

Autobiography: And The Show Goes On: Broadway and Hollywood Adventures. Limelight, 1995, ISBN 0-87910-184-9

References

External links

Sheldon Leonard Archive of American Television interview

Category:1907 births Category:1997 deaths Category:American film actors Category:American Jews Category:American television actors Category:American television producers Category:Eagle Scouts Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish American writers Category:Actors from New York City Category:Stuyvesant High School alumni

Name	Seth MacFarlane
Alt	A man (Seth MacFarlane) with black hair, and tan skin with a black shirt on, leans forward while laughing into a microphone.
Caption	Seth MacFarlane at the San Diego Comic-Con International in July 2010.
Birth name	Seth Woodbury MacFarlane
Birth date	October 26, 1973
Birth place	Kent, Connecticut
Occupation	Actor, animator, writer, comedian, singer, producer, voice actor
Years active	1995–present

Seth Woodbury MacFarlane (; born October 26, 1973) is an American animator, writer, comedian, producer, actor, singer, voice actor, and director best known for creating the animated sitcoms Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show, for which he also voices many of the shows' various characters.

A native of Kent, Connecticut, MacFarlane is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied animation, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree. He was an animator and writer for Hanna-Barbera for several television shows, including Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken and Dexter's Laboratory, before creating his own series for 20th Century Fox entitled Family Guy in 1999. MacFarlane would go on to co-create American Dad! in 2005, The Winner in 2007 and The Cleveland Show in 2009 for 20th Century Fox.

As an actor, he has made guest appearances on shows such as Gilmore Girls, The War at Home and FlashForward. MacFarlane's interest in science fiction and fantasy has led to cameo and guest appearances on and voicing the character of Johann Kraus in Guillermo del Toro's . In 2008, he created his own YouTube series entitled Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. As a performer, MacFarlane has sung at several venues, including Carnegie and Royal Albert Hall.

MacFarlane has won several awards for his work on Family Guy, including two Primetime Emmy Awards, and an Annie Award. In 2009, he won the Webby Award for Film & Video Person of the Year. He has been a subject of criticism from television watchdog groups, such as the Parents Television Council, who regularly condemn Family Guy for its indecency. He occasionally speaks at universities and colleges throughout the United States, and is an outspoken supporter of gay rights and the legalization of marijuana.

MacFarlane has announced he is working on a debut album, which he recently announced will be released sometime in March 2011.

Early life and career

MacFarlane's mother, Ann Perry (née Sager), was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts. MacFarlane's parents met in 1970 where they both lived and worked in Boston, and married later that year. During his childhood, MacFarlane developed an interest in illustration and began drawing cartoon characters Fred Flintstone and Woody Woodpecker, as early as two years old. By the age of five, MacFarlane knew that he would want to pursue a career in animation, and began by creating flip books, after his parents found a book on the subject. Four years later, at nine, MacFarlane began publishing a weekly comic strip entitled "Walter Crouton" for The Kent Good Times Dispatch, the local newspaper in Kent, Connecticut, which paid him five dollars per week.

MacFarlane received his high school diploma in 1991 from the Kent School. MacFarlane went on to study film, video and animation at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. At RISD, MacFarlane created a series of independent films, eventually meeting future Family Guy cast member Mike Henry, whose brother was MacFarlane's classmate. His senior year at RISD, MacFarlane created a thesis film entitled The Life of Larry, which would eventually become the inspiration for Family Guy. MacFarlane's professor submitted his film to the animation studio Hanna-Barbera, where he was later hired. He also worked as a writer and storyboard artist on Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, and Dexter's Laboratory. In 1996, MacFarlane created a sequel to The Life of Larry entitled Larry and Steve, which features a middle-aged character named Larry and an intellectual dog, Steve. The short was broadcast as one of Cartoon Network's World Premiere Toons. Executives at Fox saw both Larry shorts and contracted MacFarlane to create a series based on the characters, to be called Family Guy.

Further career

At 24, MacFarlane was television's youngest executive producer. MacFarlane stated that the pilot for Family Guy took half a year to create and produce.

Bolstered by high DVD sales and established fan loyalty, Family Guy developed into a $1 billion franchise.

Family Guy

Family Guy first aired January 31, 1999. MacFarlane's work in animating Family Guy has been influenced by Jackie Gleason and Woody Allen's work, along with examples from The Simpsons and All in the Family. In addition to writing three episodes, "Death Has a Shadow", "Family Guy Viewer Mail 1" and "North by North Quahog", MacFarlane voices Family Guy's main characters – Peter Griffin, Stewie Griffin, Brian Griffin and Glenn Quagmire as well as Tom Tucker and his son Jake and additional characters.

MacFarlane's success with Family Guy has opened doors to other ventures relating to Family Guy. On April 26, 2005, he and composer Walter Murphy created . The soundtrack features a Broadway show tune theme, and MacFarlane voiced Stewie in the track "Stewie's Sexy Party". A fan of Broadway musicals, Two years later, in August 2007, he closed a digital content production deal with AdSense. MacFarlane takes cast members on the road to voice characters in front of live audiences. Family Guy Live provides fans with the opportunity to hear future scripts. In mid-2007, Chicago fans had the opportunity to hear the then upcoming sixth season premiere "Blue Harvest". Shows have been played in Montreal, New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

On July 22, 2007, in an interview with "The Hollywood Reporter", MacFarlane announced that he may start working on a feature film, although "nothing's official." In September 2007, Ricky Blitt gave TV.com an interview confirming that he had already started working on the script. Then in TV Week on July 18, 2008, MacFarlane confirmed plans to produce a theatrically released Family Guy feature film sometime "within the next year". He came up with an idea for the story, "something that you could not do on the show, which [to him] is the only reason to do a movie." He later went to say he imagines the film to be "an old-style musical with dialogue" similar to The Sound of Music, saying that he would "really be trying to capture, musically, that feel."

Despite its popularity, Family Guy has not been immune to criticism. The Parents Television Council frequently criticizes Family Guy for its content, once organized a letter-writing campaign aimed at removing Family Guy from FOX's lineup, and has filed complaints with the Federal Communications Commission alleging that some episodes of the show contained indecent content. MacFarlane has responded to the PTC's criticism by saying, among other things, "That's like getting hate mail from Hitler. They're literally terrible human beings." Family Guy has been cancelled twice, although strong fan support and DVD sales have caused Fox to reconsider. MacFarlane mentioned how these cancellations affected the lineup of writers each time Fox again gave Family Guy the green light, "One of the positive aspects of 'Family Guy' constantly being pulled off [the air] is that we were always having to restaff writers". and the series resumed airing regularly, beginning with "Back to the Woods".

American Dad!

Seth co-created American Dad!, with Matt Weitzman and Mike Barker. American Dad! was first shown after Super Bowl XXXIX as a sneak preview on February 6, 2005. The show began airing regularly on Fox on May 1, 2005. MacFarlane describes the show being similar to All in the Family

American Dad! received its inspiration from President George W. Bush's policies. The show focuses on Stan Smith, a straight-laced CIA officer and fanatical conservative. Stan's wife (Francine) and children, (Hayley and Steve), share a typical middle class home with Roger, an extraterrestrial rescued by Stan from Area 51, and Klaus, a goldfish who hosts the transplanted brain of an East German, 1986 Olympian skier. Seth MacFarlane provides the voices of Stan and Roger, basing Roger's voice on Paul Lynde as he played Uncle Arthur in Bewitched.

The Winner

MacFarlane was the executive producer of a live-action sitcom starring Rob Corddry called The Winner. The show premiered on Fox on March 4, 2007. The plot has a man named Glen discussing the time he matured at 32 and has him pursuing his only love after she moves in next door. Glen meets her son and both become good friends.

After six episodes, the show was officially canceled on May 16, 2007. However, at Family Guy Live in Montreal on July 21, 2007, Seth MacFarlane stated, "It is looking like there could be a future life for The Winner". After MacFarlane's statement neither Fox nor MacFarlane has released any details of plans for the show to return. The show was mentioned in the Family Guy episode "Family Gay" where all of the horses at a racing track are named after failed Fox shows, The Winner being one of them.

The Cleveland Show

Seth MacFarlane has recently developed a Family Guy spin-off called The Cleveland Show, which focuses on the character of Cleveland Brown and his family. The idea for the show originated from a suggestion by Family Guy writer and voice of Cleveland, Mike Henry. Fox has ordered 22 episodes and the series first aired on September 27, 2009. Due to the cancellation of Mike Judge's King of the Hill, the American adaptation of Sit Down, Shut Up being moved to Saturday nights, and the renewal of American Dad!, The Simpsons is now the only cartoon on Fox's "Animation Domination" line-up that was not created by Seth MacFarlane. The show, which was picked up to air a first season consisting of 22 episodes, was picked up by Fox for a second season, consisting of 13 episodes, bringing the total number to 35 episodes. The announcement was made on May 3, 2009 before the first season even premiered. Due to strong ratings FOX picked up the back 9 episodes of season 2 which would make a 22 episode season and bring the total episode count of the show to 44.

Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy

On September 10, 2008, MacFarlane released a series of webisodes known as Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. These animated shorts were distributed by Burger King and released weekly. The series saw a successful launch with Seth MacFarlane's YouTube Channel, SethComedy, becoming the most watched YouTube channel of the week obtaining over 3 million video views only two days after the first episode (a Super Mario Bros. parody) was released. They have since been released to DVD and Blu-Ray.

Guest appearances

MacFarlane has appeared in sitcoms, comedy and news programs, independent films, and other animated shows. In 2002, MacFarlane appeared in the Gilmore Girls episode "Lorelai's Graduation Day". Four years later on November 5, 2006, MacFarlane guest starred on Fox's The War at Home as "Hillary's Date", an unnamed 33-year-old man who secretly dates teenaged Hillary in the episode "I Wash My Hands of You". MacFarlane has also appeared as the engineer Ensign Rivers on the show in the third season episode "" and the fourth season episode "". He is also a frequent guest on the radio talkshow Loveline, hosted by Dr. Drew Pinsky.

on September 8, 2008.]] In Fox's comedy show MADtv on November 11, 2006, MacFarlane appeared and showed a live action re-enactment of a scene from the Family Guy episode "Fast Times at Buddy Cianci Jr. High". In the scene, Peter and Lois suspect Chris of murdering his teacher's husband. As a reaction, Meg jumps out the window in fear. A version with McFarlane as Peter, Nicole Parker as Kathy Griffin as Lois, Ike Barinholtz as Dane Cook as Chris, Nicole Randall Johnson as Queen Latifah as Meg, and Keegan-Michael Key as Snoop Dogg as Stewie was recorded over the original cartoon. MacFarlane served as a host to the Canadian Awards for the Electronic & Animated Arts's Second Annual Elan Awards on February 15, 2008.

MacFarlane has also appeared on news shows and late night television shows such as Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Late Show with David Letterman. On January 19, 2007, MacFarlane appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC to discuss Stephen Colbert's appearance on The O'Reilly Factor and Bill O'Reilly's return appearance on The Colbert Report. MacFarlane introduced the segment by saying in Stewie's voice "Oh, wait Bill. Hold still, allow me to soil myself on you. Victory is mine!" Three months later on March 24, 2007, MacFarlane was interviewed on Fox's Talkshow with Spike Feresten, and closed the show by singing the Frank Sinatra song "You Make Me Feel So Young". He also provided Stewie's voice when he appeared as a brain tumor-induced hallucination to Seeley Booth in an episode of Bones, writing his own dialogue for the episode. On May 8, 2009, MacFarlane was a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher.

Other than Family Guy and American Dad!, MacFarlane voices characters in other cartoon shows and movies. He voiced Wayne "The Main Brain" McClain in an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. He has also voiced various characters on Adult Swim's Robot Chicken, including a parody of Lion-O and Emperor Palpatine as well as Peter Griffin in the Season 2 premiere – he even parodied himself in the Season 4 premiere, in which he renewed the show simply by mentioning it in a Family Guy-like cutaway after its fictitious cancellation at the end of Season 3. He also played the villain "The Manotaur" in Bob Boyle's animated kids series Yin Yang Yo!. In addition, MacFarlane voiced Johann Krauss in the 2008 film . He also had a guest appearance in the animated film where he sings "That Was Then (And This is Too)", the opening theme. He had also starred in a commercial for Hulu in which he plays an alien presenting Hulu as an "evil plot to destroy the world," progressively as his famous Family Guy and American Dad! characters.

On August 1, 2009, MacFarlane performed at The BBC Proms with John Wilson and his orchestra, singing a selection of songs from MGM musicals alongside Kim Criswell, Sarah Fox, Sir Thomas Allen, and Curtis Stigers. Three songs from High Society, Singin' in the Rain, and That's Entertainment were featured. He made another appearance with the John Wilson orchestra in a BBC Two special, Swingin' Christmas, on December 25, 2010.

Seth also played in a character named Ziggy in the 2010 film, The Tooth Fairy. In August 2010, MacFarlane appeared as a guest voiceover in a sci-fi themed episode of Disney's Phineas and Ferb entitled Nerds of a Feather. Also in 2010, Seth was roastmaster of the Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff.

Speaking engagements

to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in September 2010]] MacFarlane is a frequent speaking guest on college campuses. MacFarlane was invited by Harvard University's class of 2006 to deliver the "class day" address on June 7, 2006. He spoke as himself, as Peter Griffin, as Stewie Griffin, and as Glenn Quagmire. He has also delivered speeches at George Washington University, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Texas, the University of Missouri, University of Toledo, Bowling Green State University and Loyola Marymount University.

Activism

Political beliefs

MacFarlane is a supporter of the Democratic Party.

Gay rights support

MacFarlane came to support gay rights and gay marriage after a family member wondered aloud whether his gay cousin's homosexuality could be "cured". MacFarlane went on to wonder, "Why is it that Johnny Spaghetti Stain in fucking Georgia can knock a woman up, legally be married to her, and then beat the shit out of her, but these two intelligent, sophisticated writers who have been together for 20 years can't get married?" Official production of Family Guy was halted for most of December 2007 and various periods afterwards. Fox continued producing episodes without MacFarlane's final approval, and although he refused to work on the show during the strike, his contract with Fox required him to contribute to any episodes it subsequently produced. Rumors of continued production on Family Guy prompted the statement from MacFarlane that "...it would just be a colossal dick move if they [continued production without his final approval]." He appeared at a Star Wars convention to promote his new Family Guy episode "Blue Harvest" on May 26, 2007. He is a skilled pianist and singer who, in his early years, trained with an elderly couple who were Frank Sinatra's vocal coaches. In early 2007, fellow comedian Alex Borstein reported in an interview that MacFarlane is classical in several aspects of his life, in that "his pop culture knowledge is very retro. Seth doesn't have e-mail at home, doesn't own a computer and he doesn't really watch television. He doesn't understand MySpace and despises most new music."

MacFarlane is unmarried. In 2004, in an interview with The Daily Princetonian, MacFarlane noted his similarities to Brian on Family Guy, revealing, "I have some Brian type issues from time to time – looking for the right person – but I date as much as the next guy".

On July 16, 2010, MacFarlane's mother Perry MacFarlane died, after battling cancer. The death was reported by Larry King on his show, Larry King Live, who acknowledged a conversation he had with her during an interview with her son in May 2010. A brief opening scene from the first episode of the ninth season of Family Guy ("And Then There Were Fewer") mentions her lifespan, and dedicates the episode to her.

MacFarlane is an atheist. He revealed this on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, MacFarlane was scheduled to return to Los Angeles on American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston, Massachusetts. Suffering from a hangover from the previous night's celebrations, and with an incorrect departure time (8:15 a.m. instead of 7:45 a.m.) from his travel agent, Fifteen minutes after departure, American Airlines Flight 11 was hijacked, and at 8:46 a.m. was flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, obliterating the airplane, destroying the building and killing everyone on board.

In an interview with TVShowsOnDVD.com, MacFarlane said the following about his close call:

MacFarlane's interest in sci-fi and music are regularly themes for his birthday and Christmas parties in Los Angeles. In 2009, he held a Star Wars-themed Christmas party. In 2010, he held a Rat Pack-themed party for his birthday with a 60-piece orchestra and performance by Frank Sinatra, Jr..

Filmography

Films

Television

Awards

References

External links

Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy

Interview on IGN.com

Seth MacFarlane at Voice Chasers

}}

Category:1973 births Category:Actors from Connecticut Category:American actors of English descent Category:American animators Category:American atheists Category:American baritones Category:American comedians Category:American male singers Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:American television producers Category:American television writers Category:American voice actors Category:Annie Award winners Category:Connecticut Democrats Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Family Guy Category:Former Roman Catholics Category:Kent School alumni Category:LGBT rights activists from the United States Category:Living people Category:People from Litchfield County, Connecticut Category:People from Providence, Rhode Island Category:Rhode Island School of Design alumni Category:Science fiction fans Category:American comedians

Name	David Carradine
Caption	Carradine in September 2006
Birth name	John Arthur Carradine
Birth date	December 08, 1936
Birth place	Hollywood, California,
Death date	June 03, 2009
Death place	Bangkok, Thailand
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1963–2009
Spouse	Donna Lee Becht(1960–1968)Linda Gilbert(1977–1983)Gail Jensen(1986–1997)Annie Bierman(2004–2009) born John Arthur Carradine, was an American character actor, best known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine in the 1970s television series, Kung Fu and its 1990s sequel series, . He was a member of a productive acting family dynasty that began with his father, John Carradine. His acting career, which included major and minor roles on stage, television and cinema, spanned over four decades. A prolific "B" movie actor, and was nominated four times for a Golden Globe Award. The last nomination was for his title role in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill.
Title	The Spirit of Shaolin
Location	Boston
Publisher	Tuttle Publishing
Isbn	0804817510}}

(See Shaolin Kung Fu) (1991) (autobiography, 1995) Co-authored with David Nakahara. (Alternate transliteration of "Tai Chi" is Tai chi chuan) (1995) Co-authored with David Nakahara. (Alternate transliteration is Qigong) (1997) (2006)

See also

Carradine family

References

Further reading

External links

David Carradine at TV Guide

Onion interview

IGN interview with David Carradine

"A Fresh Thing": David Carradine

David Carradine – The Daily Telegraph obituary

Los Angeles Times, Friday, June 5, 2009.">McLellan, Dennis. "David Carradine dies at 72; star of 'Kung Fu'," Los Angeles Times, Friday, June 5, 2009.

David Carradine Family Tree

Hikari Takano Interview With David Carradine

Category:1936 births Category:2009 deaths Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:Accidental deaths in Thailand Category:Actors from California Category:Actors who died on location Category:American actors of German descent Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American film producers Category:American martial artists Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American television actors Category:American television directors Category:American television personalities Category:American television producers Category:American voice actors Category:American wushu practitioners Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) Category:California Democrats Category:Deaths by hanging Category:People from Oakland, California Category:People from San Francisco, California Category:People from the Greater Los Angeles Area Category:San Francisco State University alumni Category:Saturn Award winners

Bryce Zabel is an American television producer, director, writer, industry leader and occasional actor. He is widely known as the chairman/CEO of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences who was forced to twice postpone the Emmy Awards following the September 11 attacks. He has received the "created by" or "developed by" credit of five network and syndicated television series.

Professional biography

Overview

With hundreds of hours of produced film and television credits, CNN correspondent-turned-writer-producer-director Bryce Zabel has most recently scripted a trio of new mini-series which aired in the U.S. market and were distributed worldwide. They include the medical thriller Pandemic (2007, Hallmark), the pirate adventure Blackbeard (2006, Hallmark), and the disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure (2005, NBC).

In television, Zabel was showrunner (creator or developer/producer/writer) on the UFO-conspiracy series Dark Skies from 1996–1997, The Crow: Stairway to Heaven from 1998–1999 and the Fox African-American superhero series M.A.N.T.I.S. from 1994-1995. He also wrote and produced on (1993–1994), and The Fifth Corner (1992).

As a feature writer, Zabel has received writing credit on and . He also wrote the first Sci-Fi Channel original film, Office Denial.

A long-time member of the Directors Guild of America, he first worked as a director on the Los Angeles magazine series "Eye on LA" and . He is set to make his feature directorial debut in 2009 on Let's Do It, a comedy about the first student film ever produced, back in 1929.

As an actor, he appeared as a reporter in the Dark Skies episode "The Warren Omission", and as a priest in the Lois & Clark episode, "All Shook Up".

In 2001, Zabel became the first writer/producer to be elected as Chairman and CEO of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, since his boyhood idol Rod Serling. Elected the month before 9/11, he took office at a time when he was forced to twice postpone the 53rd Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2006, he was interviewed about this decision by the Dallas-based Media Orchard :

"In 2001, the Emmys were scheduled for September 16th. So we cancelled them. What else could we do? Five days after 9/11 nobody was going to be in a self-congratulatory mood to celebrate on red carpets with little gold statues when thousands had died so tragically. We re-scheduled for October 7. Incredibly, that's the day the bombing campaign in Afghanistan began. We were forced to cancel again. I went out that morning before some 200 TV cameras with Les Moonves of CBS and we talked to the media about all this. I got a call from a friend who said, "Dude, you've been on TV more this weekend than the president." It was an amazing media carpet ride -- appearances on everything from "Politically Incorrect" to "The Today Show." Anyway, we tried again on November 4 and actually did the show. We were up against the seventh game of an exciting World Series but who cared?"

While leading the TV Academy the next year, he led the negotiations that resulted in the Emmy telecast license fee being increased by 250 percent. He left office in 2003, saying his one term was so eventful it felt like two.

Current work

Zabel is currently the lead writer and a producer on Animal Armageddon, an eight-part non-fiction miniseries for Animal Planet. It deals with mass extinction events.

The latest screenplay written by Bryce and Jackie Zabel, Miles From Nowhere completed filming in Los Angeles in the summer of 2008. It is the story of a high school athlete who decides to try for a sub-four-minute mile to deal with the death of a friend. The film stars Treat Williams.

Zabel has also created a film review site, Movie Smackdown, that reviews two related films in competition against each other. The slogan is "Two Films - One Review - No Holds Barred."

Awards and nominations

In 2008, Zabel's Hallmark miniseries Pandemic (co-written with Jackie Zabel) won the Writers Guild of America award in the Original Long Form category. It was the third WGA award Zabel has been nominated for and his first win. Previously, he was nominated for Episodic Drama (L.A. Law; "Justice Swerved") and Original Long Form (Dark Skies; "The Awakening"). His other nominations were shared with David E. Kelley and Brent V. Friedman. Zabel was also nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe award for Best Television Episode (L.A. Law; "Justice Swerved") in 1991. The nomination was shared with David E. Kelley.

Education

Zabel attended high school in Hillsboro, Oregon. He earned a BA degree in broadcast journalism at the University of Oregon in Eugene. After graduation, Zabel stayed in Eugene and worked at television station KVAL-TV and radio station KZEL-FM. He taught as an adjunct professor of a graduate level class on producing at University of Southern California from 2006-2007.

Personal life

Zabel is married to writer and producer Jackie Zabel whom he met during a news conference in the office of the mayor of Los Angeles. They have three children.

References

External links

Bryce Zabel's personal website

Byrce Zabel's LinkedIn profile

For What It's Worth, Zabel's personal blog

Movie Smackdown!

Instant History

Category:American film critics Category:American actors Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:People from Hillsboro, Oregon Category:University of Oregon alumni Category:Alternate history writers Category:American science fiction writers Category:Writers from California Category:Literary collaborators Category:University of Southern California faculty Category:Writers Guild of America Award winners Category:American television producers Category:American television writers Category:American television directors

Birthdate	March 22, 1941
Birthplace	New York City, New York, United States
Occupation	Professor, Poet, Author, Anthologist
Nationality	American
Notable works	The Apple That Astonished Paris, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning

Billy Collins (born William James Collins March 22, 1941) is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004-2006.

Biography

Early years

Collins was born in New York City to William and Katherine Collins. Katherine Collins was a nurse who stopped working to raise the couple's only child. Mrs. Collins had the ability to recite verses on almost any subject, which she often did, and cultivated in her young son the love of words, both written and spoken. Billy Collins attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains and received a B.A. (English) from the College of the Holy Cross in 1963 and received his M.A. and Ph.D in English from the University of California, Riverside. His professors at Riverside included Victorian scholar and poet Robert Peters. In 1975 Collins founded The Mid Atlantic Review with his good friend and co-editor, Michael Shannon.

Career

Collins is a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College in the Bronx, where he joined the faculty in 1968 and has taught for over thirty years. Additionally, he is a founding Advisory Board member of the CUNY Institute for Irish-American Studies at Lehman College. He also has taught and served as a visiting writer at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York as well as teaching workshops across the U.S. and in Ireland. Collins is a member of the faculty of SUNY Stonybrook Southampton College, where he teaches poetry workshops. Collins was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2001 and held the title until 2003. Collins served as Poet Laureate for the State of New York from 2004 until 2006. Collins has been named Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Winter Park Institute in Winter Park, Florida, an affiliate of Rollins College. He is an editor at The Alaska Quarterly Review.

As U.S. Poet Laureate, Collins read his poem The Names at a special joint session of the United States Congress on September 6, 2002, held to remember the victims of the 9/11 attacks.Watch Collins read the poem here. Though, unlike their British counterparts, U.S. poets laureate are not asked or expected to write occasional poetry, Collins was asked by the Librarian of Congress to write a poem especially for that event. Collins will not read "The Names" in public, nor will he include it in any of his books. As Poet Laureate, Collins instituted the program, Poetry 180 for high schools. Collins chose 180 poems for the program and the accompanying book, Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry-- one for each day of the school year. Collins edited a second anthology, 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day to refresh the supply of available poems. The program is online, and poems are available there for no charge.

In 1997, Collins recorded The Best Cigarette, a collection of 34 of his poems that would become a bestseller. In 2005, the CD was re-released under a Creative Commons license, allowing free, non-commercial distribution of the recording. He also recorded two of his poems for the audio versions of Garrison Keillor's collection Good Poems (2002). Collins has appeared on Keillor's radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, numerous times, where he gained a portion of his large following. In 2005, Collins recorded "Billy Collins Live: A Performance at the Peter Norton Symphony Space" in New York City. Collins was introduced by his friend, actor Bill Murray.

Billy Collins has been called "The most popular poet in America" by the New York Times. When he moved from the University of Pittsburgh Press to Random House, the advance he received shocked the poetry world — a six-figure sum for a three-book deal, virtually unheard of in poetry. The deal secured for Collins through his literary agent, Chris Calhoun of Sterling Lord Literistic, with the editor Daniel Menaker, remained the talk of the poetry world, and indeed the literary world, for quite some time.

Over the years, the U.S. magazine Poetry has awarded Collins several prizes in recognition of poems they publish. During the 1990s, Collins won five such prizes. The magazine also selected him as "Poet of the Year" in 1994. In 2005 Collins was the first annual recipient of its Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and in 1993, from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Poetry collections

Pokerface (1977)

Video Poems (1980)

; University of Arkansas Press, 2006, ISBN 9781557288233

Questions About Angels (1991)

The Art of Drowning University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995, ISBN 9780822955672

Picnic, Lightning (1998)

Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes (2000)

; reprint Random House, Inc., 2002, ISBN 9780375755194 ; reprint Random House, Inc., 2007, ISBN 9780375755217

She Was Just Seventeen (2006)

Editor

References

External links

The Library of Congress. Collins Online Resources

Biography

Billy Collins Biography at PoetryFoundation.org

Griffin Poetry Prize biography (2004 judge and award emcee)

Billy Collins biography at poets.org

Audio and video

Audio: Billy Collins reading at the 2003 Key West Literary Seminar

Audio: Billy Collins lecture and reading at the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar: "Dear Reader"

11 animated poems read by Billy Collins

Collins at Open-Door Poetry

33 poems read aloud by Billy Collins, no charge (Creative Commons)

Billy Collins reads "My Jacket is Polished Gray" from The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation

Interviews

Littoral, the Journal of the Key West Literary Seminar">"The Pleasures of Disorientation": 2009 Interview on Littoral, the Journal of the Key West Literary Seminar

Q&A; With Billy Collins

Author interview with Collins in Guernica Magazine (Guernicamag.com)

Category:American poets Category:American Poets Laureate Category:Lehman College faculty Category:College of the Holy Cross alumni Category:People from New York City Category:University of California, Riverside alumni Category:Sarah Lawrence College faculty Category:1941 births Category:Living people

Name	Andy Rooney
Birthname	Andrew Aitken Rooney
Birthdate	January 14, 1919
Birthplace	Albany, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Writer, humorist, television personality
Nationality	American
Citizenship	United States
Alma mater	Colgate University and later attended Colgate University in Hamilton in Upstate New York, where he was initiated into the Sigma Chi fraternity, until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in August 1941. Rooney began his career in newspapers while in the Army when, in 1942, he began writing for Stars and Stripes in London during World War II. He later published a memoir, My War (1995) about his war reporting. In addition to recounting firsthand several notable historical events and people (like the entry into Paris, the concentration camps, etc.), Rooney describes how it shaped his experience both as a writer and reporter.

Remarks on Kurt Cobain's suicide

In a 1994 segment, Rooney attracted controversy with his remarks on Kurt Cobain's suicide. He expressed his dismay that the death of Richard Nixon was overshadowed by Cobain's suicide, stating that he had never heard of Cobain or his band, Nirvana. He went on to say that Cobain's suicide made him angry. "A lot of people would like to have the years left that he threw away," Rooney said. "What's all this nonsense about how terrible life is?" he asked, and he added, speaking rhetorically to a young woman who had wept at the suicide, "I'd love to relieve the pain you're going through by switching my age for yours." "What would all these young people be doing if they had real problems like a Depression, World War II or Vietnam?" "If he applied the same brain to his music that he applied to his drug-infested life, it's reasonable to think that his music may not have made much sense either." Later, Rooney admitted that he might have been "unfair" and apologized on air.

Family life

His wife of 62 years, Marguerite "Margie" Rooney (née Howard), died in 2004 of heart failure. Rooney later wrote, "her name does not appear as often as it originally did [in my essays] because it hurts too much to write it." He has four children, including a daughter, Emily Rooney, who is a TV talk show host and former ABC News producer; she currently hosts a nightly Boston-area public affairs program, Greater Boston, on WGBH. Emily's identical twin, Martha, is Chief of the Public Services Division at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. The third daughter, Ellen, is a photographer based in London. His son, Brian Rooney, has been a correspondent for ABC since the 1980s.

Rooney currently lives in the Rowayton section of Norwalk, Connecticut and in Rensselaerville, New York, and is a longtime season ticket holder for the New York Giants.

Awards

2001 - Emperor Has No Clothes Award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Books

Books written by Rooney:

A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney, 1981 (ISBN 0-689-11194-0)

The Complete Andy Rooney, 1983 (ISBN 0-446-11219-4)

And More by Andy Rooney, 1985 (ISBN 0-517-40622-5)

Pieces of My Mind, 1986 (ISBN 0-689-11492-3)

The Most of Andy Rooney, 1986 (ISBN 0-689-11864-3)

Word for Word, 1988 (ISBN 0-399-13200-7)

Not That You Asked..., 1989 (ISBN 0-394-57837-6)

Most of Andy Rooney, 1990 (ISBN 0-88365-765-1)

Sweet and Sour, 1992 (ISBN 0-399-13774-2)

My War, 1997 (ISBN 0-517-17986-5)

Sincerely, Andy Rooney, 1999 (ISBN 1-891620-34-7)

Common Nonsense, 2002, (ISBN 1-58648-144-4)

Years of Minutes, 2003 (ISBN 1-58648-211-4)

Out of My Mind, 2006 (ISBN 1-58648-416-8)

60 Years of Wisdom and Wit, 2009 (ISBN 1-58648-773-6)

References

External links

CBS Biography

Archive of previous "A Few Minutes..." segments

Andy Rooney Podcast among other CBS podcasts

Snopes.com on Rooney E-Mail Snopes.com's article on false e-mail claims

Category:American atheists Category:American humorists Category:American television journalists Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:American memoirists Category:Colgate University alumni Category:Commentators Category:American broadcasters of Irish descent Category:Living people Category:Recipients of the Bronze Star Medal Category:People from Albany, New York Category:People from Norwalk, Connecticut Category:United States Army soldiers Category:War correspondents Category:1919 births