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| Debuted April 19, 2007 |
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What do you do if you don't like where you are in life? You simply decide to move forward, into the next stage, by sheer force of will. A widow; an ambitious, first-time screenwriter; and a 13-year-old girl all charge forward into their futures—with uneven results.
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Prologue.
After her boyfriend Michael was killed in the September 11 attacks, Kristen Wilde began coping with the loss in a strange way: by doing stand-up. She talks to host Ira Glass about a comedy routine that, in retrospect, maybe wasn't so funny.
We heard about Kristen from documentary producer Amanda McBaine, who is making a feature-length film about her.
Also, Ira was filmed on a hill overlooking a brand-new subdivision outside Provo, Utah.
Appearing in this story:
• Kristen Wilde |
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Act One. Lights, Camera, Traction!
At the age of 63, Suzanne Knode wrote her first screenplay ever. She lives in the Burbank Senior Artists Colony (BSAC) in Los Angeles, an independent living facility for people over 55 that offers writing and acting and painting classes. Suzanne wrote the screenplay, a ten-minute short called Bandida, in a screenwriting class. Everyone at the facility liked it so much that they decided to make it into a movie. They hired a director and held open auditions, and as the project took shape, expectations started rising.
This story came to us by way of radio producer Darby Maloney.
Appearing in this story:
• Suzanne Knode—BSAC resident and screenwriter
• Ronny Novick—Film director
• Tim Carpenter—Executive director of BSAC
• Helen Miller—BSAC resident and actor
• Sarkis Hagopian—Actor
• Charlie Schridde—BSAC resident |
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Act Two. Miami Vices.
There's a show called Mortified in which ordinary people get onstage in front of a live audience and read embarrassing artifacts from their pasts: old letters, poems, mash notes, and—of course—diaries. We filmed Sascha Rothschild reading excerpts from her teenage journal, in which she documents, in bubblegum script with heart-dotted "i"s, her surprisingly quick slide into middle-school debauchery.
Aside from the stories in the first episode of our television show, "Reality Check," this is the only one that has also appeared on our radio show. The radio version is in an episode called "My Experimental Phase."
Appearing in this story:
• Sascha Rothschild |
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