I THINK I DO (And Me!) On Public Radio's STUDIO 360

Over Memorial Day weekend, a story about my "Aha Moment" as a filmmaker aired on WNYC-FM's arts show STUDIO 360. The "Aha Moment" is a regular segment on Kurt Andersen's show as artists, authors, and (in my case) filmmakers talk about a specific moment in their creative life when a light went off and inspiration struck. In my case, it happened when I was in college and I saw the Merchant-Ivory film MAURICE.  It was the first time I had ever see a gay love story and, even more remarkable, one with an actual happy ending--at least for the title character, that is.

My piece aired on public radio stations around the country over the holiday weekend and I got some wonderful responses, hearing from a lot of folks some of whom I'd lost touch with even (including the editor the first short story anthology I was in, NOT THE ONLY ONE). But I also heard that a lot of people didn't get to listen it due to vacation/family events. So here's the link to listen to it online at STUDIO 360's website. Also you can get STUDIO 360 as a podcast, which highly recommend.

Anyway, I had a great time talking with the producer Jenny Lawton about my moment and she did a wonderful job editing the piece, to include clips from TV movies about AIDS, the film MAURICE, and my first feature film I THINK I DO (including the wedding proposal that Tuc Watkins makes!). While I had always been interested in movies and filmmaking since I was a kid, it was seeing MAURICE that really set me on my course as to what types of films I was interested in making.

Subway Cars Go Into The Deep

If you've ever wondered where old subway cars go when they have served their time, the answer is probably not what you'd expect. They don't end up in junkyards or parked in old railsheds. Instead, they serve a deeper (ha) purpose, sunk to the bottom of the ocean to form artificial reefs.

Via the STUDIO 360 Twitter feed, I found these stunning images of subway cars on the way to their final destination. This series of pics, some surreal and some surprisingly beautiful, were taken by NYC photographer Stephen Mallon. The MTA has been dropping subway cars into the deep all up and down the Atlantic Coast for the last ten years to create the artificial habitats for marine wildlife. Certainly a much more productive reuse than the scrap heap.

Why Pop Music Is Getting Sad

A regular podcast I enjoy is Studio 360 from WNYC, with Kurt Andersen. It's a weekly show about all aspects of the arts from unusual angles. This week's episode had a story about why pop music is getting sad. Literally. Someone did an empirical study of pop songs over the last 40 years and, back in the 1960's, the vast majority of hit songs were in a major key and extremely upbeat tempo around 116 beats per minute.  Nowadays, the majority are in a minor key and the bpm's have dropped to around 100.

As part of the conversation, they dissect the "Barbie Girl" song (remember that one?!) from the 1997 as a key hit in this trend towards minor keys. There is even a discussion of Mozart in relation to all of this which was unexpected as well, along with a lively interview with Alice Cooper who laments the lack of major keys in pop music today. He seems like an unlikely champion of old school hit making but he makes his point strongly and eloquently for a rock star.  All in all a really cool piece of radio journalism that, afterwards, will have you listening to the radio in a different way.