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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Music Songwriter Carole Bayer Sager Feels a Connection to God
There’s a story in Carole Bayer Sager’s just-published memoir, “They’re Playing Our Song,” about the day she met Marvin Hamlisch. They were supposed to discuss writing the score for a TV pilot. The meeting was short; Hamlisch told her he had to leave for London to start scoring the new James Bond movie, “The Spy…
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Culture I’m Not a Jewish Doctor But I Play One on ‘Chicago Med’
Fans of “Chicago Med,” which debuted last year, may have noticed a slight discrepancy in its casting. The major-city trauma center did not have a single Jewish doctor on staff. Jewish moms everywhere were aghast. But, for season two, problem solved. “I never thought I’d play an orthodox Jewish man,” said Ato Essandoh, who’s played…
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Culture The Transparent Jewish History of Jeffrey Tambor
‘There’s Lear or there’s Maura,” Jeffrey Tambor told me. “I chose Maura.” Maura is Maura (née Mort) Pfefferman, at the center of the Amazon Prime streaming series “Transparent.” In her late 60s, she reintroduces herself as transgender to her estranged wife and children — each of whom, to use a show business expression, has his…
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Culture Riveting HBO Documentary Revisits Charlie Hebdo Terror Attacks
The cashier tried to stop him. You can’t come in now, she said. But he brushed past her, explaining he just needed bread for Shabbat. Moments later he was dead. All this was recorded on security footage at a kosher supermarket in Paris, a reminder — if one were needed — of the frailty of…
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The Schmooze Why Daniel Radcliffe Hopes His Jewish Grandmother Never Sees His New Movie ‘Imperium’
(JTA) — In his new film, “Imperium,” Daniel Radcliffe plays FBI agent Nate Foster, who goes undercover to take down skinheads planning to set off a dirty bomb. The film, which opens Friday, is taut and exciting. It is also a movie the former “Harry Potter” star doesn’t want his 93-year-old Jewish grandmother to see….
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Culture Logan Lerman’s Journey From Percy Jackson to Philip Roth
Percy Jackson is not dead. He’s in a coma, and not likely to survive — at least in film — but where there’s life, there’s hope. This according to Logan Lerman, the 24-year-old star of the two popular Percy Jackson films, “The Lightning Thief” and “Sea of Monsters.” Since then, Lerman has established himself as…
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Culture Peter Yarrow Contemplates Life Without Mary
Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey have performed together about a half-dozen times a year since their partner, Mary Travers, passed away in 2009. Yes, Yarrow says, long-time fans of the influential folk group, Peter, Paul and Mary may at first think they sound a little “peculiar” without her. But that’s just at first, he…
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Culture Ron Suskind’s Family Story of Autism Will Make You Weep
A little over twenty years ago, Ron Suskind seemed to be in a very good place. He looked forward to going to work every day. A reporter on the rise for the Wall Street Journal, he’d just been promoted to senior national affairs writer. Reporting wasn’t “just what I did, but it was an expression…
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