Curt Schleier is a freelance writer and author who covers business and the arts for a variety of publications. Follow him on Twitter at @tvsoundoff.
Curt Schleier
By Curt Schleier
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The Schmooze Randy Cohen on Being Secular and Getting Fired
For 614 weeks over a 12-year period, Randy Cohen was a latter-day Dear Abby. As author of The Ethicist column in The New York Times Magazine, he provided a moral compass for readers facing quandaries large and small. He collected many of those efforts in a just-published book, “Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics…
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News Helping Them Return to Civilian Life
Just before a Chicago Cubs-St. Louis Cardinals baseball game at the end of July, 100 veterans of America’s military walked onto a sold-out Wrigley Field and took a reenlistment oath. They weren’t planning to rejoin their old units. Rather, they were committing to a six-month fellowship run by The Mission Continues, which helps returning veterans…
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The Schmooze Ari Graynor on Jewish Mothers and Phone Sex
What do two nice Jewish girls in Manhattan do when they’re short on rent? Silly question. They open a phone-sex line, of course. That’s the premise of “For a Good Time Call…” which opens in select cities August 31 and nationally in September. It may sound silly, but the plot is loosely based on fact….
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The Schmooze From China, With Love
Linda Goldstein Knowlton is in New York City promoting her new documentary, “Somewhere Between,” and Skyping with her daughter, Ruby, who is in California, when a telephone call interrupts. She asks the caller to hang on; sending Ruby off to school is clearly more important than promoting her film — especially since Ruby was, in…
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The Schmooze Ira Glass on Making Movies and Sleepwalking
Ira Glass is no Howard Stern — yet. By that we mean he isn’t the King of All Media (Stern’s self-anointed title), but at the very least he’s the crown prince and heir apparent. Glass, of course, is the host of Chicago Public Radio’s popular program This American Life. More recently, he’s taken on the…
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The Schmooze Shlomo Carlebach Whack-a-Mole
“Soul Doctor,” the musical about the life of the rockin’ rabbi, Shlomo Carlebach, is a theatrical version of the carnival whack-a-mole game. It seems to pop up every now and then, but disappears back into its hole almost as quickly as it appeared. The play was the first English language production of the National Yiddish…
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The Schmooze Herzl Documentary Is No Dream
“It Is No Dream” is a biographical documentary about the life of Theodor Herzl. The good news is it isn’t a nightmare, either. Filmmaker Richard Trank does a better-than-decent job telling the story of the father of Zionism. He integrates contemporary footage of places where Herzl lived and visited with archival footage in an interesting…
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The Schmooze David Frankel on Sex Scenes and Meryl Streep
“Hope Springs,” opening nationally August 8, is centered on a long-married couple whose relationship has gone stale. Kay Soames, played by Meryl Streep, is frustrated by the lack of intimacy in her relationship with her husband Arnold, played by Tommy Lee Jones. Arnold refuses to acknowledge that anything is wrong and resists her efforts to…
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