Programme Details

The American film director and actor, Sydney Pollack, has been one of Hollywood's leading lights for the past forty years. He won seven Oscars for Out of Africa and has acted for Kubrick and Woody Allen. His new film, The Interpreter, is released today and in Night Waves this evening he talks to Paul Allen about the balance between the search for serious meaning and entertainment and the challenge of directing Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn.

And as a new book about Memphis is published and a season featuring some of the city's finest musicians reaches its climax Paul will also be examining how blacks and whites learned from each other to produce not just Howling Wolf but Elvis Presley, Ann Peebles and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

A quieter, more dream-like America is explored in the work of the photographer, Gregory Crewdson and the critic Joanna Pitman will be deciphering the huge, hyper real images - like frozen short stories - which he's exhibiting at the White Cube gallery in London.

And if all that's not enough to tempt you how about the poet, Robert Crawford, reflecting on that Scottish icon, Landseer's Monarch of the Glen.

Join Paul Allen for Night Waves at 9.30pm this evening.





Presenter: Paul Allen
Producer: Zahid Warley 

Additional information:

1) The Interpreter by Sydney Pollack goes on national release on Friday 15th April certificate 12A
2) The season of performances and films by Memphis musicians runs until Monday 18th April at the Barbican Centre, London.
http://www.barbican.org.uk/memphis/
Robert Gordon's book - It Came from Memphis is published by Secker and Warburg
The CD of the same name is on the Manteca label.
Charlie Gillett's radio show can be heard every Saturday night between eight and ten on BBC London 94.9 FM
6) Gregory Crewdson's show Beneath the Roses runs until the 21st May at the White Cube Gallery in London.
http://www.whitecube.com/flash.html
7) Monarch of the Glen: Landseer in the Highlands is at the Royal Scottish Academy until July http://www.royalscottishacademy.org/