New Hollywood of the '60s meets global warming for kids

I conducted 2 radically different interviews yesterday. One was with award-winning children's book author, illustrator and environmental activist LYNNE CHERRY about her fine new book HOW WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT OUR CHANGING CLIMATE. This textbook, geared for children in middle school, presents the hard science of what we know about global warming, and also introduces kids to the idea of "citizen science". As Professor David Sobel describes it in the intro: "This is a hopeful book in a discouraging time." To make it short and sweet: if you care about children's science education AND the state of our planet's "health", get this book.

On a completely different note, I also interviwed writer and journalist MARK HARRIS about his monumental history of the changing Hollywood of the 1960s as seen through the stories of the 5 films that were up for an Oscar in 1968: BONNIE AND CLYDE; THE GRADUATE; IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT; GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER and finally, and most bizarrely, DR. DOLITTLE. This book is a great history of cinema, a must read for cinephiles, but it is also one rollicking dishy collection of digressions, stories and tales. On JULY 4, 1965 JANE FONDA through a party at her Malibu home, with Roger Vadim, the French director she was about to marry. All the main characters of Harris' book rub elbows in this wild mix of the "new" and old" Hollywood and the stories of this party are many. Here is a mere snippet from Harris' book to give you a taste:

“I remember the party, as does everyone who went near it, very well, “ says Buck Henry, who was in Los Angeles working with Mel Brooks to create a new comedy series, Get Smart, that would make it’s debut on NBC in the fall. “I’m not even sure I was invited, but I went anyway because I knew a lot of people. What I recall was the feeling that there was the adults’ room and the kid’s section, where it was really fun to be. There was a space for [Henry] Fonda and the establishment in the back, but there was certainly a large percentage of young Hollywood—because there were all of Jane’s friends. People got into big trouble, people left and came back, there was a lot to drink, a large segment of the group was going outside to do drugs of one level or another. And of course, the Byrds were playing, and they moved me almost beyond words.” At one point, Henry Fonda went over to his happily stoned son and yelled, “Can’t you get them to turn it down?” (pp.104)

Both MARK HARRIS and LYNNE CHERRY interviews will be broadcast soon.