WBAI-FM Upcoming Program
Arts Express

Wed, Sep 3, 2025 9:00 PM

MELISSA LEO CHECKS IN

** "I'm not gonna play women who are the invention of a guy..."

Melissa Leo Talks The Knife, Snowden. The actress in a conversation revisiting her portrayal of political filmmaker Laura Poitras in Oliver Stone's Snowden - and who in the real world has been a key investigative figure championing the NSA whistleblower now in exile, on and offscreen.

Leo likewise discusses the police state, whether political or racial. And as an actress who has appeared in multiple roles on both sides of the law, from her start in Miami Vice to 21 Grams - delving into her latest portrayal as a deceptivelyconcerned, sinister cop terrorizing a black family in The Knife.

** "I'm an American, and I am not happy for a while..."

Pacifica Host Garland Nixon tries out his theater critic hat - that is, deciphering the European theater of the absurd.. With connections to Malcolm, Obama, Kamala and Bush; chess, the Green Goblin, and nukes; Germany pushing for a WWII revenge do-over against Russia; the clown show at the oval office - and if we can't put Ukraine in NATO, we'll put NATO in Ukraine... 

** "The artist Philip Guston provocatively painted himself wearing the KKK hood - even calling the hooded figures self-portraits..."

Painting Klansmen: The Klan on canvas. Exploring themes of violence, evil and complicity. And what it has to do with Guston's bookshop art exhibit raided by the LAPD's Red Squad back then...

** "Today we have Manchurian Candidates all over the landscape..."

Arts Express Paris Correspondent Professor Dennis Broe on the new 'Manchurian Candidates' - as the continued brainwashing of the US masses never actually ended since the Cold War back then, depicted in that 1962 Red Scare political thriller, The Manchurian Candidate, likewise starring Frank Sinatra - that today 'would make the Laurence Harvey character blush...' 

 

 


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