Podcast appearances and mentions of Ted Mann

Elon Musk’s leverage over the Republican Party, made plain by his threats to finance primary challenges against anyone who fails to fully support Donald Trump, comes from his multibillion-dollar bank account. Recently, he’s decided to spend some of that money on behalf of the party. In Wisconsin, Musk has spent upwards of $13 million to sway a state supreme court race that has ramifications for Republican control of the US House of Representatives. To discuss this, host David Papadopoulos is joined by Elon Musk reporter Dana Hull, Bloomberg Businessweek senior writer Max Chafkin and politics reporter Ted Mann. Then, later in the episode, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Steve Man joins to talk about his optimistic view on Tesla sales. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Elon Musk has been in Washington a few weeks now, and he and his team of Silicon Valley adjutants show no signs of stopping their efforts to (illegally, many legal experts say) dismantle portions of the federal government in the name of Donald Trump. This weekend, we discussed how the Tesla co-founder and far-right billionaire was given access to a central component of government—the mechanism by which the Treasury distributes trillions of dollars authorized by Congress. Today, Max Chafkin discusses these historic events with Bloomberg reporters Dana Hull, Ted Mann and Anthony Cormier. Cormier co-reported a story on Musk’s effort to collapse the US Agency for International Development, which distributes humanitarian and development aid all over the world. In addition to the ramifications Musk’s unprecedented actions may have for the 249-year-old republic, we also consider what this all means for his finances.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is KCBS Radio's daily Tech and Business Report. Today, KCBS Radio news anchor Steve Scott spoke with Bloomberg's Ted Mann. As President Trump plans to levy tariffs against the United States' biggest trading partners, the decision to target China may chafe with the White House's biggest ally in the tech, Elon Musk. The Tesla founder is hoping that Trump would make an exception for graphite imported from China. The mineral is a key component in lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles. You can hear our Tech and Business Report weekdays at 12:30 pm on KCBS Radio and for more, tune into Bloomberg Technology weekdays at 8 am.

With Donald Trump back in the White House, global business leaders attending the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland this week seem to be falling into line with the US president’s “America First” agenda. Today on the show, host David Gura talks to Bloomberg’s Ted Mann about Trump’s influence over Davos, and the CEOs who missed the opening of the conference — including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — but had front-row seats at his inauguration. Read more: ‘Which Time Were You Lying?’: The Great CEO Flip-Flop Over Trump Hits Davos Further listening: Davos Is Learning the ‘Art of the Deal’ With TrumpSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With Donald Trump back in the White House, global business leaders attending the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland this week seem to be falling into line with the US president’s “America First” agenda. Today on the show, host David Gura talks to Bloomberg’s Ted Mann about Trump’s influence over Davos, and the CEOs who missed the opening of the conference — including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — but had front-row seats at his inauguration. Read more: ‘Which Time Were You Lying?’: The Great CEO Flip-Flop Over Trump Hits Davos Further listening: Davos Is Learning the ‘Art of the Deal’ With TrumpSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For the past day or so, Elon Musk has been singularly focused, on X, on one target: funding the US government. He has, basically, single-handedly, killed a bipartisan bill that would keep the federal government running through January 1, 2025. To unpack what is happening — and will what will happen — Max Chafkin sits down with Bloomberg News reporter Ted Mann. It’s a huge gamble, by Musk and Trump, on what could be a very problematic start to Trump’s new administration.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Neste episódio, Paulo Leite e Tiago Barros mergulham no universo das manobras contabilísticas que marcaram alguns dos maiores escândalos financeiros da história. Por vezes, a contabilidade torna-se mais uma ilusão do que um reflexo fiel da saúde financeira das empresas. Casos emblemáticos como Enron, Lehman Brothers e Worldcom são exemplos de como práticas desonestas podem mascarar a realidade e levar a consequências devastadoras para acionistas, trabalhadores e até para a economia global. Desde pequenas manipulações para maquilhar resultados até fraudes descaradas, reconhecer os sinais destas práticas é crucial para evitar armadilhas e proteger o capital. Bibliografia: "Financial Shenanigans", de Howard Schilit e Jeremy Peeler "Smartest Guys In The Room", de Peter Elkins e Bethany McLean "Lights Out", de Thomas Gryta e Ted Mann

Your astronomically impaired hosts hop a rocket to therapy as they talk about SPACE TRUCKERS (1996), directed by Stuart Gordon, written by Ted Mann and Stuart Gordon and starring Dennis Hopper, Debi Mazar and Brad Dorff. It's Unsane therapy of the stellar kind. Go pigs! LINKSWee Freekz FBUnsane Radio WebsiteTarr and Fether's WebsitePsycho Cinema FBUnsane … Continue reading "Unsane Radio 0277 – Space Truckers"

In this episode, I was lucky enough to interview Ted Mann, the CEO and co-founder of CollX, a platform designed to help collectors determine the value of their trading cards. Ted shares how the idea for CollX was inspired by his son's interest in Pokémon cards and the difficulty in assessing their value. He explains that the platform utilizes advanced technology, such as visual search, to allow users to take pictures of their cards and instantly get value estimates. This innovation addresses a common problem among collectors who often feel at a disadvantage without accurate pricing information. Ted also mentions the app's evolution and its success in attracting a significant user base, noting that CollX has grown to include a variety of functionalities like buying, selling, and building collections.Ted discusses the broader card collecting industry, noting its substantial and growing market, with a secondary market worth about $5 billion and approximately 85 million American adults involved in card collecting. He highlights the app's success, with around 2 million users actively adding their cards to the platform. Ted also delves into CollX's monetization strategies, including marketplace commissions and subscription services like CollX Pro, which offers additional features for power users and professional sellers. Join us as Ted shares his background and prior ventures, illustrating his longstanding passion for using technology to solve real-world problems in this exciting episode of The First Customer!Guest Info:CollXhttps://collx.appTed Mann's LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/tedmann/Connect with Jay on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jayaigner/The First Customer Youtube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/@thefirstcustomerpodcastThe First Customer podcast websitehttps://www.firstcustomerpodcast.comFollow The First Customer on LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com/company/the-first-customer-podcast/

We're back with another episode of Revival House, but this time we're not heading to a 100 year old theater... The David Geffen and Ted Mann theaters at the Academy Museum of Motion Arts and Pictures are a new addition to L.A's revival programming. In this episode, we explore what the theaters, which only opened in 2021, have to offer our city's moviegoing landscape. And hopefully, we demystify what seeing a movie here is actually like! (Did you know that tickets are only $10? And no, they don't just show Oscar winners.) In this episode, How To LA producer Victoria Alejandro sits in the red velvet seats of the David Geffen theater with Academy Museum Director of Programming, K.J. Relth-Miller, to talk community access, screening trends, and the power of movie theaters. If you're curious about the Academy Museum, you can check out our other LAist Studios series, The Academy Museum Podcast here. Guests: Academy Museum Director of Programming K.J. Relth-Miller 

We're back with another episode of Revival House, but this time we're not heading to a 100 year old theater... The David Geffen and Ted Mann theaters at the Academy Museum of Motion Arts and Pictures are a new addition to L.A's revival programming. In this episode, we explore what the theaters, which only opened in 2021, have to offer our city's moviegoing landscape. And hopefully, we demystify what seeing a movie here is actually like! (Did you know that tickets are only $10? And no, they don't just show Oscar winners.) In this episode, How To LA producer Victoria Alejandro sits in the red velvet seats of the David Geffen theater with Academy Museum Director of Programming, K.J. Relth-Miller, to talk community access, screening trends, and the power of movie theaters. If you're curious about the Academy Museum, you can check out our other LAist Studios series, The Academy Museum Podcast here. Guests: Academy Museum Director of Programming K.J. Relth-Miller 

We're back with another episode of Revival House, but this time we're not heading to a 100 year old theater... The David Geffen and Ted Mann theaters at the Academy Museum of Motion Arts and Pictures are a new addition to L.A's revival programming. In this episode, we explore what the theaters, which only opened in 2021, have to offer our city's moviegoing landscape. And hopefully, we demystify what seeing a movie here is actually like! (Did you know that tickets are only $10? And no, they don't just show Oscar winners.) In this episode, How To LA producer Victoria Alejandro sits in the red velvet seats of the David Geffen theater with Academy Museum Director of Programming, K.J. Relth-Miller, to talk community access, screening trends, and the power of movie theaters. If you're curious about the Academy Museum, you can check out our other LAist Studios series, The Academy Museum Podcast here. Guests: Academy Museum Director of Programming K.J. Relth-Miller 

We're back with another episode of Revival House, but this time we're not heading to a 100 year old theater... The David Geffen and Ted Mann theaters at the Academy Museum of Motion Arts and Pictures are a new addition to L.A's revival programming. In this episode, we explore what the theaters, which only opened in 2021, have to offer our city's moviegoing landscape. And hopefully, we demystify what seeing a movie here is actually like! (Did you know that tickets are only $10? And no, they don't just show Oscar winners.) In this episode, How To LA producer Victoria Alejandro sits in the red velvet seats of the David Geffen theater with Academy Museum Director of Programming, K.J. Relth-Miller, to talk community access, screening trends, and the power of movie theaters. If you're curious about the Academy Museum, you can check out our other LAist Studios series, The Academy Museum Podcast here. Guests: Academy Museum Director of Programming K.J. Relth-Miller 

We're back with another episode of Revival House, but this time we're not heading to a 100 year old theater... The David Geffen and Ted Mann theaters at the Academy Museum of Motion Arts and Pictures are a new addition to L.A's revival programming. In this episode, we explore what the theaters, which only opened in 2021, have to offer our city's moviegoing landscape. And hopefully, we demystify what seeing a movie here is actually like! (Did you know that tickets are only $10? And no, they don't just show Oscar winners.) In this episode, How To LA producer Victoria Alejandro sits in the red velvet seats of the David Geffen theater with Academy Museum Director of Programming, K.J. Relth-Miller, to talk community access, screening trends, and the power of movie theaters. If you're curious about the Academy Museum, you can check out our other LAist Studios series, The Academy Museum Podcast here. Guests: Academy Museum Director of Programming K.J. Relth-Miller 

#255: We're back with another episode of Revival House, but this time we're not heading to a 100 year old theater... The David Geffen and Ted Mann theaters at the Academy Museum of Motion Arts and Pictures are a new addition to L.A's revival programming. In this episode, we explore what the theaters, which only opened in 2021, have to offer our city's moviegoing landscape. And hopefully, we demystify what seeing a movie here is actually like! (Did you know that tickets are only $10? And no, they don't just show Oscar winners.) In this episode, How To LA producer Victoria Alejandro sits in the red velvet seats of the David Geffen theater with Academy Museum Director of Programming, K.J. Relth-Miller, to talk community access, screening trends, and the power of movie theaters. If you're curious about the Academy Museum, you can check out our other LAist Studios series, The Academy Museum Podcast here. Guests: Academy Museum Director of Programming K.J. Relth-Miller   

Mac and Stock welcome Ted Mann, founder and CEO of CollX, to the podcast. CollX is an app that lets any collector answer the age-old question: "What's it worth?!"During the episode Ted shares the story of CollX and how he sees technology shaping and expanding the hobby in the coming years through the CollX app and Card Dealer Pro (which CollX acquired in June 2022).Learn more about CollX through the link below or by searching "CollX" in the App Store or Google Play.https://www.collx.app/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Collx Co-Founder and CEO Ted Mann joins me this week to update us on the newest feature added to his app. CollX has added AI to their app and its going to change the way we collect.  Also in Hobby Happenings, Drew and I review this week's releases and look at recent auction results. Please note HOFer Brooks Robinson passed after we recorded last night. We will talk about Robinson on Saturday's show.

This week Ted Mann Co-Founder and CEO of CollX joins me to talk about the launch of CollX new Marketplace and their plans for The National next week.  In Hobby Happenings Drew and I review this week's new releases, discuss some recent auction results and look at this week's grading numbers. Send questions and feedback to us at ttmcast@yahoo.com

New York spent nearly $1 billion on a new solar-panel factory in Buffalo, hoping Elon Musk and Tesla would use it to transform the local economy. But things haven't worked out as planned, with a local lawmaker calling it a “bad deal.” WSJ reporter Ted Mann joins host Zoe Thomas to explain what went wrong. Plus, Meta's Twitter competitor, Threads, has quickly attracted tens of millions of users. Ann-Marie Alcántara discusses what they like and don't like about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meet Elon Musk, the Muskian mogul who Elon Musks his way to the pinnacle of Muskitude. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:Prepare to be wowed by the Musk Foundation website.Luc Olinga, "Errol Musk, Elon's Dad, Prompts a New Controversy," TheStreet (2022).Musk's attack on Jane GoodallCade Metz and Neal E. Boudette, "Inside Tesla as Elon Musk Pushed an Unflinching Vision for Self-Driving Cars," The New York Times (2021).Andrew J. Hawkins and Umar Shakir, "Elon Musk unveils a new Master Plan, a path to sustainable energy future, but no new cars," The Verge (2023).Adam Kovacs and Adam Westbrook, "Elon Musk Has Some bad Ideas for Mass Transit. We Have Solutions," The New York Times (2022).Adam Something, "Elon Musk's Loop is a Bizarrely Stupid Idea," YouTube (2021).Ted Mann and Julie Bykowicz, "Elon Musk's Boring Company Ghosts Cities Across America," The Wall Street Journal (2022).Nikki McCann Ramirez, "Paul Pelosi Conspiracy Theory Trends on Twitter After Elon Musk Pushes It," Rolling Stone (2022).Ted McCormick, "The billionaire space race reflects a colonial mindset that fails to imagine a different world," The Conversation (2021).Marina Koren, "The War in Ukraine is Testing the Myth of Elon Musk," The Atlantic (2022).Radhika Viswanathan, "Elon Musk's plan to bring a mini-submarine to rescue the Thai boys," Vox (2018).A podcast episode from Backpacker that describes the amazing Thai cave rescueZoe Schiffer and Casey Newton, "Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first," Platformer (2023)Emile P. Torres, "How Elon Musk sees the future: His bizarre sci-fi vision should concern us all," Salon, July 17, 2022.Support the show

Welcome to Episode 1 of Card Jawn! The team discusses what's the best sports card show in the country? (10:08), how to prospect young rookie cards (18:38), would you rather rip hobby boxes yourself or join a break? (23:00) and the future of CollX & Card Dealer Pro (27:00) Guest: David Grzybowski, Ted Mann and Alex Lynn  Download CollX for FREE on iPhone & Android here: https://www.collx.app Learn more about Card Dealer Pro: https://www.carddealerpro.com 

Ted Mann built an application that can give you an accurate value range for cards collectors may want to be graded. Chalk + Dog brings together the vast experience and expertise of two of the brightest agencies in media, sports, wagering and gaming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ted Mann built an application that can give you an accurate value range for cards collectors may want to be graded.Chalk + Dog brings together the vast experience and expertise of two of the brightest agencies in media, sports, wagering and gaming.

On this episode, we talk about the great American filmmaker Robert Altman, and what is arguably the worst movie of his six decade, thirty-five film career: his 1987 atrocity O.C. and Stiggs. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On this episode, we're going to talk about one of the strangest movies to come out of the decade, not only for its material, but for who directed it.   Robert Altman's O.C. and Stiggs.   As always, before we get to the O.C. and Stiggs, we will be going a little further back in time.   Although he is not every cineaste's cup of tea, it is generally acknowledged that Robert Altman was one of the best filmmakers to ever work in cinema. But he wasn't an immediate success when he broke into the industry.   Born in Kansas City in February 1925, Robert Altman would join the US Army Air Force after graduating high school, as many a young man would do in the days of World War II. He would train to be a pilot, and he would fly more than 50 missions during the war as part of the 307th Bomb Group, operating in the Pacific Theatre. They would help liberate prisoners of war held in Japanese POW Camps from Okinawa to Manila after the victory over Japan lead to the end of World War II in that part of the world.   After the war, Altman would move to Los Angeles to break into the movies, and he would even succeed in selling a screenplay to RKO Pictures called Bodyguard, a film noir story shot in 1948 starring Lawrence Tierney and Priscilla Lane, but on the final film, he would only share a “Story by” credit with his then-writing partner, George W. George. But by 1950, he'd be back in Kansas City, where he would direct more than 65 industrial films over the course of three years, before heading back to Los Angeles with the experience he would need to take another shot.   Altman would spend a few years directing episodes of a drama series called Pulse of the City on the DuMont television network and a syndicated police drama called The Sheriff of Cochise, but he wouldn't get his first feature directing gig until 1957, when a businessman in Kansas City would hire the thirty-two year old to write and direct a movie locally. That film, The Delinquents, cost only $60k to make, and would be purchased for release by United Artists for $150k. The first film to star future Billy Jack writer/director/star Tom Laughlin, The Delinquents would gross more than a million dollars in theatres, a very good sum back in those days, but despite the success of the film, the only work Altman could get outside of television was co-directing The James Dean Story, a documentary set up at Warner Brothers to capitalize on the interest in the actor after dying in a car accident two years earlier.   Throughout the 1960s, Altman would continue to work in television, until he was finally given another chance to direct a feature film. 1967's Countdown was a lower budgeted feature at Warner Brothers featuring James Caan in an early leading role, about the space race between the Americans and Soviets, a good two years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. The shoot itself was easy, but Altman would be fired from the film shortly after filming was completed, as Jack Warner, the 75 year old head of the studio, was not very happy about the overlapping dialogue, a motif that would become a part of Altman's way of making movies. Although his name appears in the credits as the director of the film, he had no input in its assembly. His ambiguous ending was changed, and the film would be edited to be more family friendly than the director intended.   Altman would follow Countdown with 1969's That Cold Day in the Park, a psychological drama that would be both a critical and financial disappointment.   But his next film would change everything.   Before Altman was hired by Twentieth-Century Fox to direct MASH, more than a dozen major filmmakers would pass on the project. An adaptation of a little known novel by a Korean War veteran who worked as a surgeon at one of the Mobile Auxiliary Surgical Hospitals that give the story its acronymic title, MASH would literally fly under the radar from the executives at the studio, as most of the $3m film would be shot at the studio's ranch lot in Malibu, while the executives were more concerned about their bigger movies of the year in production, like their $12.5m biographical film on World War II general George S. Patton and their $25m World War II drama Tora! Tora! Tora!, one of the first movies to be a Japanese and American co-production since the end of the war.    Altman was going to make MASH his way, no matter what. When the studio refused to allow him to hire a fair amount of extras to populate the MASH camp, Altman would steal individual lines from other characters to give to background actors, in order to get the bustling atmosphere he wanted. In order to give the camp a properly dirty look, he would shoot most of the outdoor scenes with a zoom lens and a fog filter with the camera a reasonably far distance from the actors, so they could act to one another instead of the camera, giving the film a sort of documentary feel. And he would find flexibility when the moment called for it. Sally Kellerman, who was hired to play Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, would work with Altman to expand and improve her character to be more than just eye candy, in large part because Altman liked what she was doing in her scenes.   This kind of flexibility infuriated the two major stars of the film, Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland, who at one point during the shoot tried to get Altman fired for treating everyone in the cast and crew with the same level of respect and decorum regardless of their position. But unlike at Warners a couple years earlier, the success of movies like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider bamboozled Hollywood studio executives, who did not understand exactly what the new generation of filmgoers wanted, and would often give filmmakers more leeway than before, in the hopes that lightning could be captured once again.   And Altman would give them exactly that.   MASH, which would also be the first major studio film to be released with The F Word spoken on screen, would not only become a critical hit, but become the third highest grossing movie released in 1970, grossing more than $80m. The movie would win the Palme D'Or at that year's Cannes Film Festival, and it would be nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress for Ms. Kellerman, winning only for Best Adapted Screenplay. An ironic win, since most of the dialogue was improvised on set, but the victory for screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. would effectively destroy the once powerful Hollywood Blacklist that had been in place since the Red Scare of the 1950s.   After MASH, Altman went on one of the greatest runs any filmmaker would ever enjoy.   MASH would be released in January 1970, and Altman's follow up, Brewster McCloud, would be released in December 1970. Bud Cort, the future star of Harold and Maude, plays a recluse who lives in the fallout shelter of the Houston Astrodome, who is building a pair of wings in order to achieve his dream of flying. The film would feature a number of actors who already were featured in MASH and would continue to be featured in a number of future Altman movies, including Sally Kellerman, Michael Murphy, John Schuck and Bert Remson, but another reason to watch Brewster McCloud if you've never seen it is because it is the film debut of Shelley Duvall, one of our greatest and least appreciated actresses, who would go on to appear in six other Altman movies over the ensuing decade.   1971's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, for me, is his second best film. A Western starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, was a minor hit when it was first released but has seen a reevaluation over the years that found it to be named the 8th Best Western of all time by the American Film Institute, which frankly is too low for me. The film would also bring a little-known Canadian poet and musician to the world, Leonard Cohen, who wrote and performed three songs for the soundtrack. Yeah, you have Robert Altman to thank for Leonard Cohen.   1972's Images was another psychological horror film, this time co-written with English actress Susannah York, who also stars in the film as an author of children's books who starts to have wild hallucinations at her remote vacation home, after learning her husband might be cheating on her. The $800k film was one of the first to be produced by Hemdale Films, a British production company co-founded by Blow Up actor David Hemmings, but the film would be a critical and financial disappointment when it was released Christmas week. But it would get nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score. It would be one of two nominations in the category for John Williams, the other being The Poseidon Adventure.   Whatever resentment Elliott Gould may have had with Altman during the shooting of MASH was gone by late 1972, when the actor agreed to star in the director's new movie, a modern adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1953 novel The Long Goodbye. Gould would be the eighth actor to play the lead character, Phillip Marlowe, in a movie. The screenplay would be written by Leigh Brackett, who Star Wars nerds know as the first writer on The Empire Strikes Back but had also adapted Chandler's novel The Big Sleep, another Phillip Marlowe story, to the big screen back in 1946.   Howard Hawks and Peter Bogdanovich had both been approached to make the film, and it would be Bogdanovich who would recommend Altman to the President of United Artists. The final film would anger Chandler fans, who did not like Altman's approach to the material, and the $1.7m film would gross less than $1m when it was released in March 1973. But like many of Altman's movies, it was a big hit with critics, and would find favor with film fans in the years to come.   1974 would be another year where Altman would make and release two movies in the same calendar year. The first, Thieves Like Us, was a crime drama most noted as one of the few movies to not have any kind of traditional musical score. What music there is in the film is usually heard off radios seen in individual scenes. Once again, we have a number of Altman regulars in the film, including Shelley Duvall, Bert Remsen, John Schuck and Tom Skerritt, and would feature Keith Carradine, who had a small co-starring role in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, in his first major leading role. And, once again, the film would be a hit with critics but a dud with audiences. Unlike most of Altman's movies of the 1970s, Thieves Like Us has not enjoyed the same kind of reappraisal.   The second film, California Split, was released in August, just six months after Thieves Like Us. Elliott Gould once again stars in a Robert Altman movie, this time alongside George Segal. They play a pair of gamblers who ride what they think is a lucky streak from Los Angeles to Reno, Nevada, would be the only time Gould and Segal would work closely together in a movie, and watching California Split, one wishes there could have been more. The movie would be an innovator seemingly purpose-build for a Robert Altman movie, for it would be the first non-Cinerama movie to be recorded using an eight track stereo sound system. More than any movie before, Altman could control how his overlapping dialogue was placed in a theatre. But while most theatres that played the movie would only play it in mono sound, the film would still be a minor success, bringing in more than $5m in ticket sales.   1975 would bring what many consider to be the quintessential Robert Altman movie to screens.   The two hour and forty minute Nashville would feature no less than 24 different major characters, as a group of people come to Music City to be involved in a gala concert for a political outsider who is running for President on the Replacement Party ticket. The cast is one of the best ever assembled for a movie ever, including Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakely, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Robert DoQui, Shelley Duvall, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Barbara Harris, Cristina Raines, Lily Tomlin and Keenan Wynn.   Altman would be nominated for two Academy Awards for the film, Best Picture, as its producer, and Best Director, while both Ronee Blakely and Lily Tomlin would be nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Keith Carradine would also be nominated for an Oscar, but not as an actor. He would, at the urging of Altman during the production of the film, write and perform a song called I'm Easy, which would win for Best Original Song. The $2.2m film would earn $10m in ticket sales, and would eventually become part of the fourth class of movies to be selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1991, the first of four Robert Altman films to be given that honor. MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and The Long Goodbye would also be selected for preservation over the years.   And we're going to stop here for a second and take a look at that list of films again.   MASH Brewster McCloud McCabe and Mrs. Miller Images The Long Goodbye Thieves Like Us California Split Nashville   Eight movies, made over a five year period, that between them earned twelve Academy Award nominations, four of which would be deemed so culturally important that they should be preserved for future generations.   And we're still only in the middle of the 1970s.   But the problem with a director like Robert Altman, like many of our greatest directors, their next film after one of their greatest successes feels like a major disappointment. And his 1976 film Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, and that is the complete title of the film by the way, did not meet the lofty expectations of film fans not only its director, but of its main stars. Altman would cast two legendary actors he had not yet worked with, Paul Newman and Burt Lancaster, and the combination of those two actors with this director should have been fantastic, but the results were merely okay. In fact,  Altman would, for the first time in his career, re-edit a film after its theatrical release, removing some of the Wild West show acts that he felt were maybe redundant.   His 1977 film 3 Women would bring Altman back to the limelight. The film was based on a dream he had one night while his wife was in the hospital. In the dream, he was directing his regular co-star Shelley Duvall alongside Sissy Spacek, who he had never worked with before, in a story about identity theft that took place in the deserts outside Los Angeles. He woke up in the middle of the dream, jotted down what he could remember, and went back to sleep. In the morning, he didn't have a full movie planned out, but enough of one to get Alan Ladd, Jr., the President of Twentieth-Century Fox, to put up $1.7m for a not fully formed idea. That's how much Robert Altman was trusted at the time. That, and Altman was known for never going over budget. As long as he stayed within his budget, Ladd would let Altman make whatever movie he wanted to make. That, plus Ladd was more concerned about a $10m movie he approved that was going over budget over in England, a science fiction movie directed by the guy who did American Graffiti that had no stars outside of Sir Alec Guinness.   That movie, of course, was Star Wars, which would be released four weeks after 3 Women had its premiere in New York City. While the film didn't make 1/100th the money Star Wars made, it was one of the best reviewed movies of the year. But, strangely, the film would not be seen again outside of sporadic screenings on cable until it was released on DVD by the Criterion Collection 27 years later.   I'm not going to try and explain the movie to you. Just trust me that 3 Women is from a master craftsman at the top of his game.   While on the press tour to publicize 3 Women, a reporter asked Altman what was going to be next for him. He jokingly said he was going to shoot a wedding. But then he went home, thought about it some more, and in a few weeks, had a basic idea sketched out for a movie titled A Wedding that would take place over the course of one day, as the daughter of a Southern nouveau riche family marries the son of a wealthy Chicago businessman who may or may not a major figure in The Outfit.   And while the film is quite entertaining, what's most interesting about watching this 1978 movie in 2023 is not only how many great established actors Altman got for the film, including Carol Burnett, Paul Dooley, Howard Duff, Mia Farrow, Vittorio Gassman, Lauren Hutton, and, in her 100th movie, Lillian Gish, but the number of notable actors he was able to get because he shot the film just outside Chicago. Not only will you see Dennis Christopher just before his breakthrough in Breaking Away, and not only will you see Pam Dawber just before she was cast alongside Robin Williams in Mark and Mindy, but you'll also see Dennis Franz, Laurie Metcalfe, Gary Sinese, Tim Thomerson, and George Wendt.   And because Altman was able to keep the budget at a reasonable level, less than $1.75m, the film would be slightly profitable for Twentieth Century-Fox after grossing $3.6m at the box office.   Altman's next film for Fox, 1979's Quintet, would not be as fortunate.   Altman had come up with the story for this post-apocalyptic drama as a vehicle for Walter Hill to write and direct. But Hill would instead make The Warriors, and Altman decided to make the film himself. While developing the screenplay with his co-writers Frank Barhydt and Patricia Resnick, Altman would create a board game, complete with token pieces and a full set of rules, to flesh out the storyline.   Altman would once again work with Paul Newman, who stars as a seal hunter in the early days of a new ice age who finds himself in elaborate game with a group of gamblers where losing in the game means losing your life in the process. Altman would deliberately hire an international cast to star alongside Newman, not only to help improve the film's ability to do well in foreign territories but to not have the storyline tied to any specific country. So we would have Italian actor Vittorio Gassman, Spaniard Fernando Rey, Swedish actress Bibi Andersson, French actress Brigitte Fossey, and Danish actress Nina van Pallandt.    In order to maintain the mystery of the movie, Altman would ask Fox to withhold all pre-release publicity for the film, in order to avoid any conditioning of the audience. Imagine trying to put together a compelling trailer for a movie featuring one of the most beloved actors of all time, but you're not allowed to show potential audiences what they're getting themselves into? Altman would let the studio use five shots from the film, totaling about seven seconds, for the trailer, which mostly comprised of slo-mo shots of a pair of dice bouncing around, while the names of the stars pop up from moment to moment and a narrator tries to create some sense of mystery on the soundtrack.   But audiences would not be intrigued by the mystery, and critics would tear the $6.4m budget film apart. To be fair, the shoot for the film, in the winter of 1977 outside Montreal was a tough time for all, and Altman would lose final cut on the film for going severely over-budget during production, although there seems to be very little documentation about how much the final film might have differed from what Altman would have been working on had he been able to complete the film his way.   But despite all the problems with Quintet, Fox would still back Altman's next movie, A Perfect Couple, which would be shot after Fox pulled Altman off Quintet. Can you imagine that happening today? A director working with the studio that just pulled them off their project. But that's how little ego Altman had. He just wanted to make movies. Tell stories. This simple romantic comedy starred his regular collaborator Paul Dooley as  Alex, a man who follows a band of traveling bohemian musicians because he's falling for one of the singers in the band.   Altman kept the film on its $1.9m budget, but the response from critics was mostly concern that Altman had lost his touch. Maybe it was because this was his 13th film of the decade, but there was a serious concern about the director's ability to tell a story had evaporated.   That worry would continue with his next film, Health.   A satire of the political scene in the United States at the end of the 1970s, Health would follow a health food organization holding a convention at a luxury hotel in St. Petersburg FL. As one would expect from a Robert Altman movie, there's one hell of a cast. Along with Henry Gibson, and Paul Dooley, who co-write the script with Altman and Frank Barhydt, the cast would include Lauren Bacall, Carol Burnett, James Garner and, in one of her earliest screen appearances, Alfre Woodard, as well as Dick Cavett and Dinah Shore as themselves.   But between the shooting of the film in the late winter and early spring of 1979 and the planned Christmas 1979 release, there was a change of management at Fox. Alan Ladd Jr. was out, and after Altman turned in his final cut, new studio head Norman Levy decided to pull the film off the 1979 release calendar. Altman fought to get the film released sometime during the 1980 Presidential Campaign, and was able to get Levy to give the film a platform release starting in Los Angeles and New York City in March 1980, but that date would get cancelled as well. Levy then suggested an April 1980 test run in St. Louis, which Altman was not happy with. Altman countered with test runs in Boston, Houston, Sacramento and San Francisco. The best Altman, who was in Malta shooting his next movie, could get were sneak previews of the film in those four markets, and the response cards from the audience were so bad, the studio decided to effectively put the film on the proverbial shelf.   Back from the Mediterranean Sea, Altman would get permission to take the film to the Montreal World Film Festival in August, and the Telluride and Venice Film Festivals in September. After good responses from film goers at those festivals, Fox would relent, and give the film a “preview” screening at the United Artists Theatre in Westwood, starting on September 12th, 1980. But the studio would give the film the most boring ad campaign possible, a very crude line drawing of an older woman's pearl bracelet-covered arm thrusted upward while holding a carrot. With no trailers in circulation at any theatre, and no television commercials on air, it would be little surprise the film didn't do a whole lot of business. You really had to know the film had been released. But its $14k opening weekend gross wasn't really all that bad. And it's second week gross of $10,500 with even less ad support was decent if unspectacular. But it would be good enough to get the film a four week playdate at the UA Westwood.   And then, nothing, until early March 1981, when a film society at Northwestern University in Evanston IL was able to screen a 16mm print for one show, while a theatre in Baltimore was able to show the film one time at the end of March. But then, nothing again for more than another year, when the film would finally get a belated official release at the Film Forum in New York City on April 7th, 1982. It would only play for a week, and as a non-profit, the Film Forum does not report film grosses, so we have no idea how well the film actually did. Since then, the movie showed once on CBS in August 1983, and has occasionally played on the Fox Movie Channel, but has never been released on VHS or DVD or Blu-Ray.   I mentioned a few moments ago that while he was dealing with all this drama concerning Health, Altman was in the Mediterranean filming a movie. I'm not going to go too much into that movie here, since I already have an episode for the future planned for it, suffice to say that a Robert Altman-directed live-action musical version of the Popeye the Sailor Man cartoon featuring songs by the incomparable Harry Nilsson should have been a smash hit, but it wasn't. It was profitable, to be certain, but not the hit everyone was expecting. We'll talk about the film in much more detail soon.   After the disappointing results for Popeye, Altman decided to stop working in Hollywood for a while and hit the Broadway stages, to direct a show called Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. While the show's run was not very long and the reviews not very good, Altman would fund a movie version himself, thanks in part to the sale of his production company, Lion's Gate, not to be confused with the current studio called Lionsgate, and would cast Karen Black, Cher and Sandy Dennis alongside newcomers Sudie Bond and Kathy Bates, as five female members of The Disciples of James Dean come together on the 20th anniversary of the actor's death to honor his life and times. As the first film released by a new independent distributor called Cinecom, I'll spend more time talking about this movie on our show about that distributor, also coming soon, suffice it to say that Altman was back. Critics were behind the film, and arthouse audiences loved it. This would be the first time Altman adapted a stage play to the screen, and it would set the tone for a number of his works throughout the rest of the decade.   Streamers was Altman's 17th film in thirteen years, and another adaptation of a stage play. One of several works by noted Broadway playwright David Rabe's time in the Army during the Vietnam War, the film followed four young soldiers waiting to be shipped to Vietnam who deal with racial tensions and their own intolerances when one soldier reveals he is gay. The film featured Matthew Modine as the Rabe stand-in, and features a rare dramatic role for comedy legend David Alan Grier. Many critics would note how much more intense the film version was compared to the stage version, as Altman's camera was able to effortlessly breeze around the set, and get up close and personal with the performers in ways that simply cannot happen on the stage. But in 1983, audiences were still not quite ready to deal with the trauma of Vietnam on film, and the film would be fairly ignored by audiences, grossing just $378k.   Which, finally, after half an hour, brings us to our featured movie.   O.C. and Stiggs.   Now, you might be asking yourself why I went into such detail about Robert Altman's career, most of it during the 1970s. Well, I wanted to establish what types of material Altman would chose for his projects, and just how different O.C. and Stiggs  was from any other project he had made to date.   O.C. and Stiggs began their lives in the July 1981 issue of National Lampoon, as written by two of the editors of the magazine, Ted Mann and Tod Carroll. The characters were fun-loving and occasionally destructive teenage pranksters, and their first appearance in the magazine would prove to be so popular with readers, the pair would appear a few more times until Matty Simmons, the publisher and owner of National Lampoon, gave over the entire October 1982 issue to Mann and Carroll for a story called “The Utterly Monstrous Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs.” It's easy to find PDFs of the issues online if you look for it.   So the issue becomes one of the biggest selling issues in the history of National Lampoon, and Matty Simmons has been building the National Lampoon brand name by sponsoring a series of movies, including Animal House, co-written by Lampoon writers Doug Kenney and Chris Miller, and the soon to be released movies Class Reunion, written by Lampoon writer John Hughes… yes, that John Hughes… and Movie Madness, written by five Lampoon writers including Tod Carroll. But for some reason, Simmons was not behind the idea of turning the utterly monstrous mind-roasting adventures of O.C. and Stiggs into a movie. He would, however, allow Mann and Carroll to shop the idea around Hollywood, and wished them the best of luck.   As luck would have it, Mann and Carroll would meet Peter Newman, who had worked as Altman's production executive on Jimmy Dean, and was looking to set up his first film as a producer. And while Newman might not have had the credits, he had the connections. The first person he would take the script to his Oscar-winning director Mike Nichols, whose credits by this time included Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff?, The Graduate, Catch-22, and Carnal Knowledge. Surprisingly, Nichols was not just interested in making the movie, but really wanted to have Eddie Murphy, who was a breakout star on Saturday Night Live but was still a month away from becoming a movie star when 48 Hours was released, play one of the leading characters. But Murphy couldn't get out of his SNL commitments, and Nichols had too many other projects, both on Broadway and in movies, to be able to commit to the film.    A few weeks later, Newman and Altman both attended a party where they would catch up after several months. Newman started to tell Altman about this new project he was setting up, and to Newman's surprise, Altman, drawn to the characters' anti-establishment outlook, expressed interest in making it. And because Altman's name still commanded respect in Hollywood, several studios would start to show their interest in making the movie with them. MGM, who was enjoying a number of successes in 1982 thanks to movies like Shoot the Moon, Diner, Victor/Victoria, Rocky III, Poltergeist, Pink Floyd - The Wall, and My Favorite Year, made a preemptive bid on the film, hoping to beat Paramount Pictures to the deal. Unknown to Altman, what interested MGM was that Sylvester Stallone of all people went nuts for the script when he read it, and mentioned to his buddies at the studio that he might be interested in making it himself.   Despite hating studio executives for doing stuff like buying a script he's attached to  then kicking him off so some Italian Stallion not known for comedy could make it himself, Altman agree to make the movie with MGM once Stallone lost interest, as the studio promised there would be no further notes about the script, that Altman could have final cut on the film, that he could shoot the film in Phoenix without studio interference, and that he could have a budget of $7m.   Since this was a Robert Altman film, the cast would be big and eclectic, filled with a number of his regular cast members, known actors who he had never worked with before, and newcomers who would go on to have success a few years down the road. Because, seriously, outside of a Robert Altman movie, where are you going to find a cast that included Jon Cryer, Jane Curtin, Paul Dooley, Dennis Hopper, Tina Louise, Martin Mull, Cynthia Nixon, Bob Uecker, Melvin van Peebles, and King Sunny Adé and His African Beats? And then imagine that movie also featuring Matthew Broderick, Jim Carrey, Robert Downey, Jr. and Laura Dern?   The story for the film would both follow the stories that appeared in the pages of National Lampoon fairly closely while also making some major changes. In the film, Oliver Cromwell “O.C.” Oglivie and Mark Stiggs are two ne'er-do-well, middle-class Phoenix, Arizona high school students who are disgusted with what they see as an omnipresent culture of vulgar and vapid suburban consumerism. They spend their days slacking off and committing pranks or outright crimes against their sworn enemies, the Schwab family, especially family head Randall Schwab, a wealthy insurance salesman who was responsible for the involuntary commitment of O.C.'s grandfather into a group home. During the film, O.C. and Stiggs will ruin the wedding of Randall Schwab's daughter Lenore, raft their way down to a Mexican fiesta, ruin a horrible dinner theatre performance directed by their high school's drama teacher being attended by the Schwabs, and turn the Schwab mansion into a homeless shelter while the family is on vacation. The film ends with O.C. and Stiggs getting into a gun fight with Randall Schwab before being rescued by Dennis Hopper and a helicopter, before discovering one of their adventures that summer has made them very wealthy themselves.   The film would begin production in Phoenix on August 22nd, 1983, with two newcomers, Daniel H. Jenkins and Neill Barry, as the titular stars of the film. And almost immediately, Altman's chaotic ways of making a movie would become a problem. Altman would make sure the entire cast and crew were all staying at the same hotel in town, across the street from a greyhound racetrack, so Altman could take off to bet on a few of the races during production downtime, and made sure the bar at the hotel was an open bar for his team while they were shooting. When shooting was done every day, the director and his cast would head to a makeshift screening room at the hotel, where they'd watch the previous day's footage, a process called “dailies” in production parlance. On most films, dailies are only attended by the director and his immediate production crew, but in Phoenix, everyone was encouraged to attend. And according to producer Peter Newman and Dan Jenkins, everyone loved the footage, although both would note that it might have been a combination of the alcohol, the pot, the cocaine and the dehydration caused by shooting all day in the excessive Arizona heat during the middle of summer that helped people enjoy the footage.    But here's the funny thing about dailies.   Unless a film is being shot in sequence, you're only seeing small fragments of scenes, often the same actors doing the same things over and over again, before the camera switches places to catch reactions or have other characters continue the scene. Sometimes, they're long takes of scenes that might be interrupted by an actor flubbing a line or an unexpected camera jitter or some other interruption that requires a restart. But everyone seemed to be having fun, especially when dailies ended and Altman would show one of his other movies like MASH or The Long Goodbye or 3 Women.   After two months of shooting, the film would wrap production, and Altman would get to work on his edit of the film. He would have it done before the end of 1983, and he would turn it in to the studio. Shortly after the new year, there would be a private screening of the film in New York City at the offices of the talent agency William Morris, one of the larger private screening rooms in the city. Altman was there, the New York-based executives at MGM were there, Peter Newman was there, several of the actors were there. And within five minutes of the start of the film, Altman realized what he was watching was not his cut of the film. As he was about to lose his stuff and start yelling at the studio executives, the projector broke. The lights would go up, and Altman would dig into the the executives. “This is your effing cut of the film and not mine!” Altman stormed out of the screening and into the cold New York winter night.   A few weeks later, that same print from New York would be screened for the big executives at the MGM lot in Los Angeles. Newman was there, and, surprisingly, Altman was there too. The film would screen for the entire running length, and Altman would sit there, watching someone else's version of the footage he had shot, scenes put in different places than they were supposed to be, music cues not of his design or consent.   At the end of the screening, the room was silent. Not one person in the room had laughed once during the entire screening. Newman and Altman left after the screening, and hit one of Altman's favorite local watering holes. As they said their goodbyes the next morning, Altman apologized to Newman. “I hope I didn't eff up your movie.”   Maybe the movie wasn't completely effed up, but MGM certainly neither knew what to do with the film or how to sell it, so it would just sit there, just like Health a few years earlier, on that proverbial shelf.   More than a year later, in an issue of Spin Magazine, a review of the latest album by King Sunny Adé would mention the film he performed in, O.C. and Stiggs, would, quote unquote, “finally” be released into theatres later that year.   That didn't happen, in large part because after WarGames in the early summer of 1983, almost every MGM release had been  either an outright bomb or an unexpected financial disappointment. The cash flow problem was so bad that the studio effectively had to sell itself to Atlanta cable mogul Ted Turner in order to save itself. Turner didn't actually want all of MGM. He only wanted the valuable MGM film library, but the owner of MGM at the time was either going to sell it all or nothing at all.   Barely two months after Ted Turner bought MGM, he had sold the famed studio lot in Culver City to Lorimar, a television production company that was looking to become a producer and distributor of motion pictures, and sold rest of the company he never wanted in the first place to the guy he bought it all from, who had a kind of seller's remorse. But that repurchase would saddle the company with massive bills, and movies like O.C. and Stiggs would have to sit and collect dust while everything was sorted out.   How long would O.C. and Stiggs be left in a void?   It would be so long that Robert Altman would have time to make not one, not two, but three other movies that would all be released before O.C. and Stiggs ever saw the light of day.   The first, Secret Honor, released in 1984, featured the great Philip Baker Hall as former President Richard Nixon. It's probably Hall's single best work as an actor, and the film would be amongst the best reviewed films of Altman's career.   In 1985, Altman would film Fool For Love, an adaptation of a play by Sam Shepard. This would be the only time in Shepard's film career where he would star as one of the characters himself had written. The film would also prove once and for all that Kim Basinger was more than just a pretty face but a real actor.   And in February 1987, Altman's film version of Beyond Therapy, a play by absurdist playwright Christopher Durant, would open in theatres. The all-star cast would include Tom Conti, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Guest, Julie Hagerty and Glenda Jackson.   On March 5th, 1987, an article in Daily Variety would note that the “long shelved” film would have a limited theatrical release in May, despite the fact that Frank Yablans, the vice chairman of MGM, being quoted in the article that the film was unreleasable. It would further be noted that despite the film being available to international distributors for three years, not one company was willing to acquire the film for any market. The plan was to release the movie for one or two weeks in three major US markets, depending on its popularity, and then decide a future course of action from there.   But May would come and go, without a hint of the film.   Finally, on Friday, July 10th, the film would open on 18 screens, but none in any major market like Chicago, Los Angeles or New York City. I can't find a single theatre the film played in that weekend, but that week's box office figures would show an abysmal $6,273 worth of tickets were sold during that first weekend.   There would not be a second weekend of reported grosses.   But to MGM's credit, they didn't totally give up on the film.   On Thursday, August 27th, O.C. and Stiggs would open in at least one theatre. And, lucky for me, that theatre happened to be the Nickelodeon Theatre in Santa Cruz. But despite the fact that the new Robert Altman was opening in town, I could not get a single friend to see it with me. So on a Tuesday night at 8:40pm, I was the only person in all of the region to watch what I would soon discover was the worst Robert Altman movie of all time. Now, I should note that even a bad Robert Altman movie is better than many filmmakers' best movies, but O.C. and Stiggs would have ignobility of feeling very much like a Robert Altman movie, with its wandering camera and overlapping dialogue that weaves in and out of conversations while in progress and not quite over yet, yet not feeling anything like a Robert Altman movie at the same time. It didn't have that magical whimsy-ness that was the hallmark of his movies. The satire didn't have its normal bite. It had a number of Altman's regular troop of actors, but in smaller roles than they'd usually occupy, and not giving the performances one would expect of them in an Altman movie.   I don't know how well the film did at the Nick, suffice it to say the film was gone after a week.   But to MGM's credit, they still didn't give up on the film.   On October 9th, the film would open at the AMC Century City 14, one of a handful of movies that would open the newest multiplex in Los Angeles.   MGM did not report grosses, and the film was gone from the new multiplex after a week.   But to MGM's credit, they still didn't give up on the film.   The studio would give the film one more chance, opening it at the Film Forum in New York City on March 18th, 1988.   MGM did not report grosses, and the film was gone after a week. But whether that was because MGM didn't support the film with any kind of newspaper advertising in the largest market in America, or because the movie had been released on home video back in November, remains to be seen.   O.C. and Stiggs would never become anything resembling a cult film. It's been released on DVD, and if one was programming a Robert Altman retrospect at a local arthouse movie theatre, one could actually book a 35mm print of the film from the repertory cinema company Park Circus.   But don't feel bad for Altman, as he would return to cinemas with a vengeance in the 1990s, first with the 1990 biographical drama Vincent and Theo, featuring Tim Roth as the tortured genius 19th century painter that would put the actor on the map for good. Then, in 1992, he became a sensation again with his Hollywood satire The Player, featuring Tim Robbins as a murderous studio executive trying to keep the police off his trail while he navigates the pitfalls of the industry. Altman would receive his first Oscar nomination for Best Director since 1975 with The Player, his third overall, a feat he would repeat the following year with Short Cuts, based on a series of short stories by Raymond Carver. In fact, Altman would be nominated for an Academy Award seven times during his career, five times as a director and twice as a producer, although he would never win a competitive Oscar.   In March 2006, while editing his 35th film, a screen adaptation of the then-popular NPR series A Prairie Home Companion, the Academy would bestow an Honorary Oscar upon Altman. During his acceptance speech, Altman would wonder if perhaps the Academy acted prematurely in honoring him in this fashion. He revealed he had received a heart transplant in the mid-1990s, and felt that, even though he had turned 81 the month before, he could continue for another forty years.   Robert Altman would pass away from leukemia on November 20th, 2006, only eight months after receiving the biggest prize of his career.   Robert Altman had a style so unique onto himself, there's an adjective that exists to describe it. Altmanesque. Displaying traits typical of a film made by Robert Altman, typically highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective and often a subversive twist.   He truly was a one of a kind filmmaker, and there will likely never be anyone like him, no matter how hard Paul Thomas Anderson tries.     Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again in two weeks, when Episode 106, Mad Magazine Presents Up the Academy, is released.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.  

On this episode, we talk about the great American filmmaker Robert Altman, and what is arguably the worst movie of his six decade, thirty-five film career: his 1987 atrocity O.C. and Stiggs. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On this episode, we're going to talk about one of the strangest movies to come out of the decade, not only for its material, but for who directed it.   Robert Altman's O.C. and Stiggs.   As always, before we get to the O.C. and Stiggs, we will be going a little further back in time.   Although he is not every cineaste's cup of tea, it is generally acknowledged that Robert Altman was one of the best filmmakers to ever work in cinema. But he wasn't an immediate success when he broke into the industry.   Born in Kansas City in February 1925, Robert Altman would join the US Army Air Force after graduating high school, as many a young man would do in the days of World War II. He would train to be a pilot, and he would fly more than 50 missions during the war as part of the 307th Bomb Group, operating in the Pacific Theatre. They would help liberate prisoners of war held in Japanese POW Camps from Okinawa to Manila after the victory over Japan lead to the end of World War II in that part of the world.   After the war, Altman would move to Los Angeles to break into the movies, and he would even succeed in selling a screenplay to RKO Pictures called Bodyguard, a film noir story shot in 1948 starring Lawrence Tierney and Priscilla Lane, but on the final film, he would only share a “Story by” credit with his then-writing partner, George W. George. But by 1950, he'd be back in Kansas City, where he would direct more than 65 industrial films over the course of three years, before heading back to Los Angeles with the experience he would need to take another shot.   Altman would spend a few years directing episodes of a drama series called Pulse of the City on the DuMont television network and a syndicated police drama called The Sheriff of Cochise, but he wouldn't get his first feature directing gig until 1957, when a businessman in Kansas City would hire the thirty-two year old to write and direct a movie locally. That film, The Delinquents, cost only $60k to make, and would be purchased for release by United Artists for $150k. The first film to star future Billy Jack writer/director/star Tom Laughlin, The Delinquents would gross more than a million dollars in theatres, a very good sum back in those days, but despite the success of the film, the only work Altman could get outside of television was co-directing The James Dean Story, a documentary set up at Warner Brothers to capitalize on the interest in the actor after dying in a car accident two years earlier.   Throughout the 1960s, Altman would continue to work in television, until he was finally given another chance to direct a feature film. 1967's Countdown was a lower budgeted feature at Warner Brothers featuring James Caan in an early leading role, about the space race between the Americans and Soviets, a good two years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. The shoot itself was easy, but Altman would be fired from the film shortly after filming was completed, as Jack Warner, the 75 year old head of the studio, was not very happy about the overlapping dialogue, a motif that would become a part of Altman's way of making movies. Although his name appears in the credits as the director of the film, he had no input in its assembly. His ambiguous ending was changed, and the film would be edited to be more family friendly than the director intended.   Altman would follow Countdown with 1969's That Cold Day in the Park, a psychological drama that would be both a critical and financial disappointment.   But his next film would change everything.   Before Altman was hired by Twentieth-Century Fox to direct MASH, more than a dozen major filmmakers would pass on the project. An adaptation of a little known novel by a Korean War veteran who worked as a surgeon at one of the Mobile Auxiliary Surgical Hospitals that give the story its acronymic title, MASH would literally fly under the radar from the executives at the studio, as most of the $3m film would be shot at the studio's ranch lot in Malibu, while the executives were more concerned about their bigger movies of the year in production, like their $12.5m biographical film on World War II general George S. Patton and their $25m World War II drama Tora! Tora! Tora!, one of the first movies to be a Japanese and American co-production since the end of the war.    Altman was going to make MASH his way, no matter what. When the studio refused to allow him to hire a fair amount of extras to populate the MASH camp, Altman would steal individual lines from other characters to give to background actors, in order to get the bustling atmosphere he wanted. In order to give the camp a properly dirty look, he would shoot most of the outdoor scenes with a zoom lens and a fog filter with the camera a reasonably far distance from the actors, so they could act to one another instead of the camera, giving the film a sort of documentary feel. And he would find flexibility when the moment called for it. Sally Kellerman, who was hired to play Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, would work with Altman to expand and improve her character to be more than just eye candy, in large part because Altman liked what she was doing in her scenes.   This kind of flexibility infuriated the two major stars of the film, Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland, who at one point during the shoot tried to get Altman fired for treating everyone in the cast and crew with the same level of respect and decorum regardless of their position. But unlike at Warners a couple years earlier, the success of movies like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider bamboozled Hollywood studio executives, who did not understand exactly what the new generation of filmgoers wanted, and would often give filmmakers more leeway than before, in the hopes that lightning could be captured once again.   And Altman would give them exactly that.   MASH, which would also be the first major studio film to be released with The F Word spoken on screen, would not only become a critical hit, but become the third highest grossing movie released in 1970, grossing more than $80m. The movie would win the Palme D'Or at that year's Cannes Film Festival, and it would be nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress for Ms. Kellerman, winning only for Best Adapted Screenplay. An ironic win, since most of the dialogue was improvised on set, but the victory for screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. would effectively destroy the once powerful Hollywood Blacklist that had been in place since the Red Scare of the 1950s.   After MASH, Altman went on one of the greatest runs any filmmaker would ever enjoy.   MASH would be released in January 1970, and Altman's follow up, Brewster McCloud, would be released in December 1970. Bud Cort, the future star of Harold and Maude, plays a recluse who lives in the fallout shelter of the Houston Astrodome, who is building a pair of wings in order to achieve his dream of flying. The film would feature a number of actors who already were featured in MASH and would continue to be featured in a number of future Altman movies, including Sally Kellerman, Michael Murphy, John Schuck and Bert Remson, but another reason to watch Brewster McCloud if you've never seen it is because it is the film debut of Shelley Duvall, one of our greatest and least appreciated actresses, who would go on to appear in six other Altman movies over the ensuing decade.   1971's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, for me, is his second best film. A Western starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, was a minor hit when it was first released but has seen a reevaluation over the years that found it to be named the 8th Best Western of all time by the American Film Institute, which frankly is too low for me. The film would also bring a little-known Canadian poet and musician to the world, Leonard Cohen, who wrote and performed three songs for the soundtrack. Yeah, you have Robert Altman to thank for Leonard Cohen.   1972's Images was another psychological horror film, this time co-written with English actress Susannah York, who also stars in the film as an author of children's books who starts to have wild hallucinations at her remote vacation home, after learning her husband might be cheating on her. The $800k film was one of the first to be produced by Hemdale Films, a British production company co-founded by Blow Up actor David Hemmings, but the film would be a critical and financial disappointment when it was released Christmas week. But it would get nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score. It would be one of two nominations in the category for John Williams, the other being The Poseidon Adventure.   Whatever resentment Elliott Gould may have had with Altman during the shooting of MASH was gone by late 1972, when the actor agreed to star in the director's new movie, a modern adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1953 novel The Long Goodbye. Gould would be the eighth actor to play the lead character, Phillip Marlowe, in a movie. The screenplay would be written by Leigh Brackett, who Star Wars nerds know as the first writer on The Empire Strikes Back but had also adapted Chandler's novel The Big Sleep, another Phillip Marlowe story, to the big screen back in 1946.   Howard Hawks and Peter Bogdanovich had both been approached to make the film, and it would be Bogdanovich who would recommend Altman to the President of United Artists. The final film would anger Chandler fans, who did not like Altman's approach to the material, and the $1.7m film would gross less than $1m when it was released in March 1973. But like many of Altman's movies, it was a big hit with critics, and would find favor with film fans in the years to come.   1974 would be another year where Altman would make and release two movies in the same calendar year. The first, Thieves Like Us, was a crime drama most noted as one of the few movies to not have any kind of traditional musical score. What music there is in the film is usually heard off radios seen in individual scenes. Once again, we have a number of Altman regulars in the film, including Shelley Duvall, Bert Remsen, John Schuck and Tom Skerritt, and would feature Keith Carradine, who had a small co-starring role in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, in his first major leading role. And, once again, the film would be a hit with critics but a dud with audiences. Unlike most of Altman's movies of the 1970s, Thieves Like Us has not enjoyed the same kind of reappraisal.   The second film, California Split, was released in August, just six months after Thieves Like Us. Elliott Gould once again stars in a Robert Altman movie, this time alongside George Segal. They play a pair of gamblers who ride what they think is a lucky streak from Los Angeles to Reno, Nevada, would be the only time Gould and Segal would work closely together in a movie, and watching California Split, one wishes there could have been more. The movie would be an innovator seemingly purpose-build for a Robert Altman movie, for it would be the first non-Cinerama movie to be recorded using an eight track stereo sound system. More than any movie before, Altman could control how his overlapping dialogue was placed in a theatre. But while most theatres that played the movie would only play it in mono sound, the film would still be a minor success, bringing in more than $5m in ticket sales.   1975 would bring what many consider to be the quintessential Robert Altman movie to screens.   The two hour and forty minute Nashville would feature no less than 24 different major characters, as a group of people come to Music City to be involved in a gala concert for a political outsider who is running for President on the Replacement Party ticket. The cast is one of the best ever assembled for a movie ever, including Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakely, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Robert DoQui, Shelley Duvall, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Barbara Harris, Cristina Raines, Lily Tomlin and Keenan Wynn.   Altman would be nominated for two Academy Awards for the film, Best Picture, as its producer, and Best Director, while both Ronee Blakely and Lily Tomlin would be nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Keith Carradine would also be nominated for an Oscar, but not as an actor. He would, at the urging of Altman during the production of the film, write and perform a song called I'm Easy, which would win for Best Original Song. The $2.2m film would earn $10m in ticket sales, and would eventually become part of the fourth class of movies to be selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1991, the first of four Robert Altman films to be given that honor. MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and The Long Goodbye would also be selected for preservation over the years.   And we're going to stop here for a second and take a look at that list of films again.   MASH Brewster McCloud McCabe and Mrs. Miller Images The Long Goodbye Thieves Like Us California Split Nashville   Eight movies, made over a five year period, that between them earned twelve Academy Award nominations, four of which would be deemed so culturally important that they should be preserved for future generations.   And we're still only in the middle of the 1970s.   But the problem with a director like Robert Altman, like many of our greatest directors, their next film after one of their greatest successes feels like a major disappointment. And his 1976 film Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, and that is the complete title of the film by the way, did not meet the lofty expectations of film fans not only its director, but of its main stars. Altman would cast two legendary actors he had not yet worked with, Paul Newman and Burt Lancaster, and the combination of those two actors with this director should have been fantastic, but the results were merely okay. In fact,  Altman would, for the first time in his career, re-edit a film after its theatrical release, removing some of the Wild West show acts that he felt were maybe redundant.   His 1977 film 3 Women would bring Altman back to the limelight. The film was based on a dream he had one night while his wife was in the hospital. In the dream, he was directing his regular co-star Shelley Duvall alongside Sissy Spacek, who he had never worked with before, in a story about identity theft that took place in the deserts outside Los Angeles. He woke up in the middle of the dream, jotted down what he could remember, and went back to sleep. In the morning, he didn't have a full movie planned out, but enough of one to get Alan Ladd, Jr., the President of Twentieth-Century Fox, to put up $1.7m for a not fully formed idea. That's how much Robert Altman was trusted at the time. That, and Altman was known for never going over budget. As long as he stayed within his budget, Ladd would let Altman make whatever movie he wanted to make. That, plus Ladd was more concerned about a $10m movie he approved that was going over budget over in England, a science fiction movie directed by the guy who did American Graffiti that had no stars outside of Sir Alec Guinness.   That movie, of course, was Star Wars, which would be released four weeks after 3 Women had its premiere in New York City. While the film didn't make 1/100th the money Star Wars made, it was one of the best reviewed movies of the year. But, strangely, the film would not be seen again outside of sporadic screenings on cable until it was released on DVD by the Criterion Collection 27 years later.   I'm not going to try and explain the movie to you. Just trust me that 3 Women is from a master craftsman at the top of his game.   While on the press tour to publicize 3 Women, a reporter asked Altman what was going to be next for him. He jokingly said he was going to shoot a wedding. But then he went home, thought about it some more, and in a few weeks, had a basic idea sketched out for a movie titled A Wedding that would take place over the course of one day, as the daughter of a Southern nouveau riche family marries the son of a wealthy Chicago businessman who may or may not a major figure in The Outfit.   And while the film is quite entertaining, what's most interesting about watching this 1978 movie in 2023 is not only how many great established actors Altman got for the film, including Carol Burnett, Paul Dooley, Howard Duff, Mia Farrow, Vittorio Gassman, Lauren Hutton, and, in her 100th movie, Lillian Gish, but the number of notable actors he was able to get because he shot the film just outside Chicago. Not only will you see Dennis Christopher just before his breakthrough in Breaking Away, and not only will you see Pam Dawber just before she was cast alongside Robin Williams in Mark and Mindy, but you'll also see Dennis Franz, Laurie Metcalfe, Gary Sinese, Tim Thomerson, and George Wendt.   And because Altman was able to keep the budget at a reasonable level, less than $1.75m, the film would be slightly profitable for Twentieth Century-Fox after grossing $3.6m at the box office.   Altman's next film for Fox, 1979's Quintet, would not be as fortunate.   Altman had come up with the story for this post-apocalyptic drama as a vehicle for Walter Hill to write and direct. But Hill would instead make The Warriors, and Altman decided to make the film himself. While developing the screenplay with his co-writers Frank Barhydt and Patricia Resnick, Altman would create a board game, complete with token pieces and a full set of rules, to flesh out the storyline.   Altman would once again work with Paul Newman, who stars as a seal hunter in the early days of a new ice age who finds himself in elaborate game with a group of gamblers where losing in the game means losing your life in the process. Altman would deliberately hire an international cast to star alongside Newman, not only to help improve the film's ability to do well in foreign territories but to not have the storyline tied to any specific country. So we would have Italian actor Vittorio Gassman, Spaniard Fernando Rey, Swedish actress Bibi Andersson, French actress Brigitte Fossey, and Danish actress Nina van Pallandt.    In order to maintain the mystery of the movie, Altman would ask Fox to withhold all pre-release publicity for the film, in order to avoid any conditioning of the audience. Imagine trying to put together a compelling trailer for a movie featuring one of the most beloved actors of all time, but you're not allowed to show potential audiences what they're getting themselves into? Altman would let the studio use five shots from the film, totaling about seven seconds, for the trailer, which mostly comprised of slo-mo shots of a pair of dice bouncing around, while the names of the stars pop up from moment to moment and a narrator tries to create some sense of mystery on the soundtrack.   But audiences would not be intrigued by the mystery, and critics would tear the $6.4m budget film apart. To be fair, the shoot for the film, in the winter of 1977 outside Montreal was a tough time for all, and Altman would lose final cut on the film for going severely over-budget during production, although there seems to be very little documentation about how much the final film might have differed from what Altman would have been working on had he been able to complete the film his way.   But despite all the problems with Quintet, Fox would still back Altman's next movie, A Perfect Couple, which would be shot after Fox pulled Altman off Quintet. Can you imagine that happening today? A director working with the studio that just pulled them off their project. But that's how little ego Altman had. He just wanted to make movies. Tell stories. This simple romantic comedy starred his regular collaborator Paul Dooley as  Alex, a man who follows a band of traveling bohemian musicians because he's falling for one of the singers in the band.   Altman kept the film on its $1.9m budget, but the response from critics was mostly concern that Altman had lost his touch. Maybe it was because this was his 13th film of the decade, but there was a serious concern about the director's ability to tell a story had evaporated.   That worry would continue with his next film, Health.   A satire of the political scene in the United States at the end of the 1970s, Health would follow a health food organization holding a convention at a luxury hotel in St. Petersburg FL. As one would expect from a Robert Altman movie, there's one hell of a cast. Along with Henry Gibson, and Paul Dooley, who co-write the script with Altman and Frank Barhydt, the cast would include Lauren Bacall, Carol Burnett, James Garner and, in one of her earliest screen appearances, Alfre Woodard, as well as Dick Cavett and Dinah Shore as themselves.   But between the shooting of the film in the late winter and early spring of 1979 and the planned Christmas 1979 release, there was a change of management at Fox. Alan Ladd Jr. was out, and after Altman turned in his final cut, new studio head Norman Levy decided to pull the film off the 1979 release calendar. Altman fought to get the film released sometime during the 1980 Presidential Campaign, and was able to get Levy to give the film a platform release starting in Los Angeles and New York City in March 1980, but that date would get cancelled as well. Levy then suggested an April 1980 test run in St. Louis, which Altman was not happy with. Altman countered with test runs in Boston, Houston, Sacramento and San Francisco. The best Altman, who was in Malta shooting his next movie, could get were sneak previews of the film in those four markets, and the response cards from the audience were so bad, the studio decided to effectively put the film on the proverbial shelf.   Back from the Mediterranean Sea, Altman would get permission to take the film to the Montreal World Film Festival in August, and the Telluride and Venice Film Festivals in September. After good responses from film goers at those festivals, Fox would relent, and give the film a “preview” screening at the United Artists Theatre in Westwood, starting on September 12th, 1980. But the studio would give the film the most boring ad campaign possible, a very crude line drawing of an older woman's pearl bracelet-covered arm thrusted upward while holding a carrot. With no trailers in circulation at any theatre, and no television commercials on air, it would be little surprise the film didn't do a whole lot of business. You really had to know the film had been released. But its $14k opening weekend gross wasn't really all that bad. And it's second week gross of $10,500 with even less ad support was decent if unspectacular. But it would be good enough to get the film a four week playdate at the UA Westwood.   And then, nothing, until early March 1981, when a film society at Northwestern University in Evanston IL was able to screen a 16mm print for one show, while a theatre in Baltimore was able to show the film one time at the end of March. But then, nothing again for more than another year, when the film would finally get a belated official release at the Film Forum in New York City on April 7th, 1982. It would only play for a week, and as a non-profit, the Film Forum does not report film grosses, so we have no idea how well the film actually did. Since then, the movie showed once on CBS in August 1983, and has occasionally played on the Fox Movie Channel, but has never been released on VHS or DVD or Blu-Ray.   I mentioned a few moments ago that while he was dealing with all this drama concerning Health, Altman was in the Mediterranean filming a movie. I'm not going to go too much into that movie here, since I already have an episode for the future planned for it, suffice to say that a Robert Altman-directed live-action musical version of the Popeye the Sailor Man cartoon featuring songs by the incomparable Harry Nilsson should have been a smash hit, but it wasn't. It was profitable, to be certain, but not the hit everyone was expecting. We'll talk about the film in much more detail soon.   After the disappointing results for Popeye, Altman decided to stop working in Hollywood for a while and hit the Broadway stages, to direct a show called Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. While the show's run was not very long and the reviews not very good, Altman would fund a movie version himself, thanks in part to the sale of his production company, Lion's Gate, not to be confused with the current studio called Lionsgate, and would cast Karen Black, Cher and Sandy Dennis alongside newcomers Sudie Bond and Kathy Bates, as five female members of The Disciples of James Dean come together on the 20th anniversary of the actor's death to honor his life and times. As the first film released by a new independent distributor called Cinecom, I'll spend more time talking about this movie on our show about that distributor, also coming soon, suffice it to say that Altman was back. Critics were behind the film, and arthouse audiences loved it. This would be the first time Altman adapted a stage play to the screen, and it would set the tone for a number of his works throughout the rest of the decade.   Streamers was Altman's 17th film in thirteen years, and another adaptation of a stage play. One of several works by noted Broadway playwright David Rabe's time in the Army during the Vietnam War, the film followed four young soldiers waiting to be shipped to Vietnam who deal with racial tensions and their own intolerances when one soldier reveals he is gay. The film featured Matthew Modine as the Rabe stand-in, and features a rare dramatic role for comedy legend David Alan Grier. Many critics would note how much more intense the film version was compared to the stage version, as Altman's camera was able to effortlessly breeze around the set, and get up close and personal with the performers in ways that simply cannot happen on the stage. But in 1983, audiences were still not quite ready to deal with the trauma of Vietnam on film, and the film would be fairly ignored by audiences, grossing just $378k.   Which, finally, after half an hour, brings us to our featured movie.   O.C. and Stiggs.   Now, you might be asking yourself why I went into such detail about Robert Altman's career, most of it during the 1970s. Well, I wanted to establish what types of material Altman would chose for his projects, and just how different O.C. and Stiggs  was from any other project he had made to date.   O.C. and Stiggs began their lives in the July 1981 issue of National Lampoon, as written by two of the editors of the magazine, Ted Mann and Tod Carroll. The characters were fun-loving and occasionally destructive teenage pranksters, and their first appearance in the magazine would prove to be so popular with readers, the pair would appear a few more times until Matty Simmons, the publisher and owner of National Lampoon, gave over the entire October 1982 issue to Mann and Carroll for a story called “The Utterly Monstrous Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs.” It's easy to find PDFs of the issues online if you look for it.   So the issue becomes one of the biggest selling issues in the history of National Lampoon, and Matty Simmons has been building the National Lampoon brand name by sponsoring a series of movies, including Animal House, co-written by Lampoon writers Doug Kenney and Chris Miller, and the soon to be released movies Class Reunion, written by Lampoon writer John Hughes… yes, that John Hughes… and Movie Madness, written by five Lampoon writers including Tod Carroll. But for some reason, Simmons was not behind the idea of turning the utterly monstrous mind-roasting adventures of O.C. and Stiggs into a movie. He would, however, allow Mann and Carroll to shop the idea around Hollywood, and wished them the best of luck.   As luck would have it, Mann and Carroll would meet Peter Newman, who had worked as Altman's production executive on Jimmy Dean, and was looking to set up his first film as a producer. And while Newman might not have had the credits, he had the connections. The first person he would take the script to his Oscar-winning director Mike Nichols, whose credits by this time included Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff?, The Graduate, Catch-22, and Carnal Knowledge. Surprisingly, Nichols was not just interested in making the movie, but really wanted to have Eddie Murphy, who was a breakout star on Saturday Night Live but was still a month away from becoming a movie star when 48 Hours was released, play one of the leading characters. But Murphy couldn't get out of his SNL commitments, and Nichols had too many other projects, both on Broadway and in movies, to be able to commit to the film.    A few weeks later, Newman and Altman both attended a party where they would catch up after several months. Newman started to tell Altman about this new project he was setting up, and to Newman's surprise, Altman, drawn to the characters' anti-establishment outlook, expressed interest in making it. And because Altman's name still commanded respect in Hollywood, several studios would start to show their interest in making the movie with them. MGM, who was enjoying a number of successes in 1982 thanks to movies like Shoot the Moon, Diner, Victor/Victoria, Rocky III, Poltergeist, Pink Floyd - The Wall, and My Favorite Year, made a preemptive bid on the film, hoping to beat Paramount Pictures to the deal. Unknown to Altman, what interested MGM was that Sylvester Stallone of all people went nuts for the script when he read it, and mentioned to his buddies at the studio that he might be interested in making it himself.   Despite hating studio executives for doing stuff like buying a script he's attached to  then kicking him off so some Italian Stallion not known for comedy could make it himself, Altman agree to make the movie with MGM once Stallone lost interest, as the studio promised there would be no further notes about the script, that Altman could have final cut on the film, that he could shoot the film in Phoenix without studio interference, and that he could have a budget of $7m.   Since this was a Robert Altman film, the cast would be big and eclectic, filled with a number of his regular cast members, known actors who he had never worked with before, and newcomers who would go on to have success a few years down the road. Because, seriously, outside of a Robert Altman movie, where are you going to find a cast that included Jon Cryer, Jane Curtin, Paul Dooley, Dennis Hopper, Tina Louise, Martin Mull, Cynthia Nixon, Bob Uecker, Melvin van Peebles, and King Sunny Adé and His African Beats? And then imagine that movie also featuring Matthew Broderick, Jim Carrey, Robert Downey, Jr. and Laura Dern?   The story for the film would both follow the stories that appeared in the pages of National Lampoon fairly closely while also making some major changes. In the film, Oliver Cromwell “O.C.” Oglivie and Mark Stiggs are two ne'er-do-well, middle-class Phoenix, Arizona high school students who are disgusted with what they see as an omnipresent culture of vulgar and vapid suburban consumerism. They spend their days slacking off and committing pranks or outright crimes against their sworn enemies, the Schwab family, especially family head Randall Schwab, a wealthy insurance salesman who was responsible for the involuntary commitment of O.C.'s grandfather into a group home. During the film, O.C. and Stiggs will ruin the wedding of Randall Schwab's daughter Lenore, raft their way down to a Mexican fiesta, ruin a horrible dinner theatre performance directed by their high school's drama teacher being attended by the Schwabs, and turn the Schwab mansion into a homeless shelter while the family is on vacation. The film ends with O.C. and Stiggs getting into a gun fight with Randall Schwab before being rescued by Dennis Hopper and a helicopter, before discovering one of their adventures that summer has made them very wealthy themselves.   The film would begin production in Phoenix on August 22nd, 1983, with two newcomers, Daniel H. Jenkins and Neill Barry, as the titular stars of the film. And almost immediately, Altman's chaotic ways of making a movie would become a problem. Altman would make sure the entire cast and crew were all staying at the same hotel in town, across the street from a greyhound racetrack, so Altman could take off to bet on a few of the races during production downtime, and made sure the bar at the hotel was an open bar for his team while they were shooting. When shooting was done every day, the director and his cast would head to a makeshift screening room at the hotel, where they'd watch the previous day's footage, a process called “dailies” in production parlance. On most films, dailies are only attended by the director and his immediate production crew, but in Phoenix, everyone was encouraged to attend. And according to producer Peter Newman and Dan Jenkins, everyone loved the footage, although both would note that it might have been a combination of the alcohol, the pot, the cocaine and the dehydration caused by shooting all day in the excessive Arizona heat during the middle of summer that helped people enjoy the footage.    But here's the funny thing about dailies.   Unless a film is being shot in sequence, you're only seeing small fragments of scenes, often the same actors doing the same things over and over again, before the camera switches places to catch reactions or have other characters continue the scene. Sometimes, they're long takes of scenes that might be interrupted by an actor flubbing a line or an unexpected camera jitter or some other interruption that requires a restart. But everyone seemed to be having fun, especially when dailies ended and Altman would show one of his other movies like MASH or The Long Goodbye or 3 Women.   After two months of shooting, the film would wrap production, and Altman would get to work on his edit of the film. He would have it done before the end of 1983, and he would turn it in to the studio. Shortly after the new year, there would be a private screening of the film in New York City at the offices of the talent agency William Morris, one of the larger private screening rooms in the city. Altman was there, the New York-based executives at MGM were there, Peter Newman was there, several of the actors were there. And within five minutes of the start of the film, Altman realized what he was watching was not his cut of the film. As he was about to lose his stuff and start yelling at the studio executives, the projector broke. The lights would go up, and Altman would dig into the the executives. “This is your effing cut of the film and not mine!” Altman stormed out of the screening and into the cold New York winter night.   A few weeks later, that same print from New York would be screened for the big executives at the MGM lot in Los Angeles. Newman was there, and, surprisingly, Altman was there too. The film would screen for the entire running length, and Altman would sit there, watching someone else's version of the footage he had shot, scenes put in different places than they were supposed to be, music cues not of his design or consent.   At the end of the screening, the room was silent. Not one person in the room had laughed once during the entire screening. Newman and Altman left after the screening, and hit one of Altman's favorite local watering holes. As they said their goodbyes the next morning, Altman apologized to Newman. “I hope I didn't eff up your movie.”   Maybe the movie wasn't completely effed up, but MGM certainly neither knew what to do with the film or how to sell it, so it would just sit there, just like Health a few years earlier, on that proverbial shelf.   More than a year later, in an issue of Spin Magazine, a review of the latest album by King Sunny Adé would mention the film he performed in, O.C. and Stiggs, would, quote unquote, “finally” be released into theatres later that year.   That didn't happen, in large part because after WarGames in the early summer of 1983, almost every MGM release had been  either an outright bomb or an unexpected financial disappointment. The cash flow problem was so bad that the studio effectively had to sell itself to Atlanta cable mogul Ted Turner in order to save itself. Turner didn't actually want all of MGM. He only wanted the valuable MGM film library, but the owner of MGM at the time was either going to sell it all or nothing at all.   Barely two months after Ted Turner bought MGM, he had sold the famed studio lot in Culver City to Lorimar, a television production company that was looking to become a producer and distributor of motion pictures, and sold rest of the company he never wanted in the first place to the guy he bought it all from, who had a kind of seller's remorse. But that repurchase would saddle the company with massive bills, and movies like O.C. and Stiggs would have to sit and collect dust while everything was sorted out.   How long would O.C. and Stiggs be left in a void?   It would be so long that Robert Altman would have time to make not one, not two, but three other movies that would all be released before O.C. and Stiggs ever saw the light of day.   The first, Secret Honor, released in 1984, featured the great Philip Baker Hall as former President Richard Nixon. It's probably Hall's single best work as an actor, and the film would be amongst the best reviewed films of Altman's career.   In 1985, Altman would film Fool For Love, an adaptation of a play by Sam Shepard. This would be the only time in Shepard's film career where he would star as one of the characters himself had written. The film would also prove once and for all that Kim Basinger was more than just a pretty face but a real actor.   And in February 1987, Altman's film version of Beyond Therapy, a play by absurdist playwright Christopher Durant, would open in theatres. The all-star cast would include Tom Conti, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Guest, Julie Hagerty and Glenda Jackson.   On March 5th, 1987, an article in Daily Variety would note that the “long shelved” film would have a limited theatrical release in May, despite the fact that Frank Yablans, the vice chairman of MGM, being quoted in the article that the film was unreleasable. It would further be noted that despite the film being available to international distributors for three years, not one company was willing to acquire the film for any market. The plan was to release the movie for one or two weeks in three major US markets, depending on its popularity, and then decide a future course of action from there.   But May would come and go, without a hint of the film.   Finally, on Friday, July 10th, the film would open on 18 screens, but none in any major market like Chicago, Los Angeles or New York City. I can't find a single theatre the film played in that weekend, but that week's box office figures would show an abysmal $6,273 worth of tickets were sold during that first weekend.   There would not be a second weekend of reported grosses.   But to MGM's credit, they didn't totally give up on the film.   On Thursday, August 27th, O.C. and Stiggs would open in at least one theatre. And, lucky for me, that theatre happened to be the Nickelodeon Theatre in Santa Cruz. But despite the fact that the new Robert Altman was opening in town, I could not get a single friend to see it with me. So on a Tuesday night at 8:40pm, I was the only person in all of the region to watch what I would soon discover was the worst Robert Altman movie of all time. Now, I should note that even a bad Robert Altman movie is better than many filmmakers' best movies, but O.C. and Stiggs would have ignobility of feeling very much like a Robert Altman movie, with its wandering camera and overlapping dialogue that weaves in and out of conversations while in progress and not quite over yet, yet not feeling anything like a Robert Altman movie at the same time. It didn't have that magical whimsy-ness that was the hallmark of his movies. The satire didn't have its normal bite. It had a number of Altman's regular troop of actors, but in smaller roles than they'd usually occupy, and not giving the performances one would expect of them in an Altman movie.   I don't know how well the film did at the Nick, suffice it to say the film was gone after a week.   But to MGM's credit, they still didn't give up on the film.   On October 9th, the film would open at the AMC Century City 14, one of a handful of movies that would open the newest multiplex in Los Angeles.   MGM did not report grosses, and the film was gone from the new multiplex after a week.   But to MGM's credit, they still didn't give up on the film.   The studio would give the film one more chance, opening it at the Film Forum in New York City on March 18th, 1988.   MGM did not report grosses, and the film was gone after a week. But whether that was because MGM didn't support the film with any kind of newspaper advertising in the largest market in America, or because the movie had been released on home video back in November, remains to be seen.   O.C. and Stiggs would never become anything resembling a cult film. It's been released on DVD, and if one was programming a Robert Altman retrospect at a local arthouse movie theatre, one could actually book a 35mm print of the film from the repertory cinema company Park Circus.   But don't feel bad for Altman, as he would return to cinemas with a vengeance in the 1990s, first with the 1990 biographical drama Vincent and Theo, featuring Tim Roth as the tortured genius 19th century painter that would put the actor on the map for good. Then, in 1992, he became a sensation again with his Hollywood satire The Player, featuring Tim Robbins as a murderous studio executive trying to keep the police off his trail while he navigates the pitfalls of the industry. Altman would receive his first Oscar nomination for Best Director since 1975 with The Player, his third overall, a feat he would repeat the following year with Short Cuts, based on a series of short stories by Raymond Carver. In fact, Altman would be nominated for an Academy Award seven times during his career, five times as a director and twice as a producer, although he would never win a competitive Oscar.   In March 2006, while editing his 35th film, a screen adaptation of the then-popular NPR series A Prairie Home Companion, the Academy would bestow an Honorary Oscar upon Altman. During his acceptance speech, Altman would wonder if perhaps the Academy acted prematurely in honoring him in this fashion. He revealed he had received a heart transplant in the mid-1990s, and felt that, even though he had turned 81 the month before, he could continue for another forty years.   Robert Altman would pass away from leukemia on November 20th, 2006, only eight months after receiving the biggest prize of his career.   Robert Altman had a style so unique onto himself, there's an adjective that exists to describe it. Altmanesque. Displaying traits typical of a film made by Robert Altman, typically highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective and often a subversive twist.   He truly was a one of a kind filmmaker, and there will likely never be anyone like him, no matter how hard Paul Thomas Anderson tries.     Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again in two weeks, when Episode 106, Mad Magazine Presents Up the Academy, is released.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.  

Collx Co-Founder and CEO Ted Mann joins me to update us on the exciting things happening at Collx. We look back at the last years growth of this powerful collecting tool and look ahead to some cutting edge things they have in store. In Hobby Happenings Drew and I look at some auction results and more. Send questions and feedback to us at ttmcast@yahoo.com

A look at AI search technology from Google, Microsoft, Neeva, FlammeAI and even Snapple. Sling launches Freestream for free streaming movies and TV; Nintendo hikes the price on their upcoming Zelda game; How to prevent a SIM card swap; new features for Google Maps, Translate and Lens; a look at Hot Wheels Rift Rally mixed reality video game; finding the best seat on an airplane.Listeners ask about finding the best products online, how to install apps on a Fire TV stick and more.Guests include WSJ's Joanna Stern to talk about Bing AI, Juan Carlos Bagnell (SomeGadgetGuy) to chat new OnePlus products and Ted Mann, creator of the Collx app, which lets you scan your sports card collection to find the value.Links to what's mentioned in the show:https://raindrop.io/richontech/rich-on-tech-2-11-23-31548696Follow Rich!richontech.tvSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to The Year Ahead - our hit the ground running new year podcast series where we chat to our friends in news about what they've got their eye on this year, and in true Squiz form, we get their reading, watching and listening recommendations. Today we talk with one-half of the Equity Mates team, Alec Renahan... RECOMMENDATIONS: Lights Out: Pride, Delusion and the Fall of General Electric by Thomas Grata and Ted Mann. Equity Mates The Dive podcast Equity Mates Investing podcast

Elon Musk's Boring Company hasn't done much to alleviate “soul-destroying traffic” despite its initial promises to several cities. We talk with WSJ's Ted Mann about what's behind Boring's poor track record and with a transportation official in California about what Musk promised her county. Further Reading: -Elon Musk's Boring Company Ghosts Cities Across America  Further Listening: -Why Elon Musk's Twitter Is Losing Advertisers  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The word of the year for 2022 is gaslighting.  Merriam-Webster chooses the word of the year based only on data from lookups and in 2022, lookups for gaslighting increased 1,740%.  Most interestingly, there was not a particular news event that drove the lookups, it was a word that had interest every single day of the year.  Peter Sokolowski, editor at large for Merriam-Webster joins us for a definition of this year's top word and a look at some more including oligarch, codify, sentient, and loamy.   Next, Elon Musk has been under a lot of scrutiny since he took over Twitter, but another one of his companies is being looked at for ghosting cities across America.  Musk's Boring company, which has teased cities with plans to dig out underground tunnels to help relieve what he called “soul-destroying” traffic, has had a lot of big ideas but rarely followed through after being confronted with the realities of building public infrastructure.  The only place where Musk has been able to showcase a finished project has been a 1.6 mile “loop experience” under the Las Vegas Convention Center.  Ted Mann, reporter at the WSJ, joins us for how many cities still want to work with the Boring Co. despite its uneven record.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We recorded our first live show on Tuesday night September 13th 2022. Drew Pelto, Les Wolff and I were joined by Rich Mueller from Sports Collectors Daily to talk cards, collecting and autographs. Jeff Owens from Sports Collectors Digest, Ted Mann from Collx.app and a host of collectors were in attendance and joined in our discussion. Please send feedback to ttmcast@yahoo.com

On this episode of “Busted Open”, hosts Dave LaGreca & Bully Ray are joined by Joe Palazzolo and Ted Mann, the two writers of the Wall Street Journal articles that have uncovered several powerful accusations about Vince McMahon. We have an in-depth breakdown on that conversation and the repercussions moving forward.

Time Stamps:(0:40) - Introduction to Ted, his background, and CollX(3:38) - How hard or easy is it to understand how much a card is worth? The CollX product and technology.(8:50) - The future of how CollX wants to expand - marketplace, personalization, and community(17:07) - Ted's take on the most exciting things happening in modern sports cards(21:25) - The growth potential of trading cards and CollX's research on the card market(28:23) - How cultural influencers can and will impact trading cards(34:11) - Exciting thoughts on raw cards, dealers and stores, and more(38:53) - Closing thoughts from Ted and where to find CollXFind Ted and CollX:On their website = collx.appOn TikTok = https://www.tiktok.com/@collxappFind Neustreet:On our website = https://neustreet.com/On Twitter =  https://twitter.com/realneustreetOn Instagram = https://www.instagram.com/realneustreetOn TikTok = https://www.tiktok.com/@neustreet

We have two outstanding CEOs from the world of collecting. Ted Mann of Collx joins the show (8:59) joins us to talk about this week's acquisition of Card Dealer Pro. The CEO of BuySportsCards.com Conner Walden comes on the show (47:56) to talk about his new marketplace, our hobby and their plans for The National. We also have our regular segments including Bakers Dozen (7:29), Making the Grade (32:15), TTMCast Stamp of Approval (34:41), the Vern Rapp Minute (36:34) and our weekly TTM Returns (39:14). Please send feedback to us at ttmcast@yahoo.com.

Vince McMahon, the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE, stepped aside as CEO and chairman of the company last week after allegations surfaced that he had an affair with a former employee and agreed to pay $3 million to keep it secret. WSJ's Ted Mann explains what's at stake for the company. Further Reading: -WWE Board Probes Secret $3 Million Hush Pact by CEO Vince McMahon, Sources Say  -WWE's Vince McMahon Steps Back From CEO Role Amid Misconduct Probe  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With help from son Charlie, Ted Mann saw a tool to develop to hobby easier and CollX was born, they've hit the scene and grew fast, the crazy part...they've only just begun. Ted joins us to talk about the app and what's coming!Follow us on Social Media: Website:https://www.sportscardnationpodcast.com Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Sportscardnationpodcast/ Twitter:https://twitter.com/Sportscardnati1?s=20 Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/sportscardnationpodcast/YouTube:https://youtube.com/c/SportsCardNationPodcasthttps://www.flow.page/sportscardnationpodcast 

Two awesome guests this week. First Founder and President of Collx.app Ted Mann (22:53) joins the show to talk about his fun free app for collectors, then Captain of the 1980 Men Olympic Gold Metal hockey team Mike Eruzione (1:17:11) comes on to talk about his Olympic experiences and signing autographs. In addition we have our regular segments including Bakers Dozen (7:12), Making the Grade (54:27), TTMCast Stamp of Approval (57:19), the Vern Rapp Minute (1:02:04) and TTM Returns (1:05:52). Please send feedback to us at ttmcast@yahoo.com

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: February 21st, 2022Engineering CultureWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for February 21st, 2022.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on February 21st included Tom Lyon, Tom Killalea, Ian, Antranig Vartanian, Matt Campbell, Simeon Miteff, Matt Ranney and Aaron Hartwig. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them: Alex Heath's tweet on FB meeting about updated values: “meta, metamates, me” [@4:44](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=284) Can an established company “change its values” in any sense? [@8:43](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=523) Draw the owl > Twilio CEO: Yes, it was a meme, but it's a great representation of our job. > There is no instruction book and no one is going to tell us how to do our work. > It's now woven into our culture and used as a cheeky, but encouraging reply to > those who email colleagues at Twilio asking how to do something. [@12:42](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=762) How do you establish engineering culture? Copy-paste values? [@20:44](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=1244) When are values set down in a company's history?  Amazon's brand image, expanding beyond books Assessing values when hiring [@27:51](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=1671) Principles vs values  Principles are absolutes, cannot be taken too far Values are about relative importance, in balance with other values ACM Code of Ethics Relative importance of values. Can some values be learned, while others cannot? [@45:11](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=2711) “Turn-around CEOs”, trying to change an established company culture [@47:39](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=2859) Sun culture, early days [@54:32](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=3272) Connection between values and business model Urgency in context, requires nuance [@1:03:37](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=3817) Values on the wall. When are values simply ignored?  Jack Handey wiki, Deep Thoughts recurring SNL short sketches, eg Thanksgiving ~30secs “Sharpen fast” [@1:13:49](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=4429) What are the important things to get set early? Bryan and Adam on Joyent and Delphix [@1:22:05](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=4925) Matt Ranney on his time at Uber  Trying to shape an established culture Leadership's values vs engineers Business ethics [@1:35:47](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=5747) GE Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann (2020) Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric book [@1:37:03](https://youtu.be/w9MQJbC26h4?t=5823) Conclusions  Adam: Get it right first, but it's not a lost cause if you don't. Bryan: Look for value alignment in organizations you might want to join, it's tough to change course after the fact. Matt: generous compensation has an effect on how closely one cares to scrutinize their organization's values ¯_(ツ)_/¯ If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

It was one of the world's most valuable companies … But a series of bad business decisions and change in leadership led to General Electric's steep decline. Thomas Gryta, author of Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric, joins host Charles Mizrahi to talk about the figures and controversies that ended GE's reign as America's most powerful corporation. Topics Discussed: An Introduction to Thomas Gryta (00:00:00) Early Days of General Electric (00:03:56)               Celebrity CEO Jack Welch (00:6:40) Stepping into Finance (00:17:23) Successor Jeff Immelt (00:20:07) Pulling Back the Curtain on GE's Magic (00:27:07) A New Age of Regulation (00:33:34) Last Ditch Efforts (00:40:37) Goodbye Jeff (00:47:35) John Flannery's Approach (00:50:04) Lessons Learned (00:56:17) Guest Bio: Thomas Gryta is a Wall Street Journal reporter and author. He covers the latest on General Electric as well as various industrial conglomerates. In addition, Gryta co-authored Lights Out (below), with Ted Mann. Their book follows one of America's most iconic companies, General Electric, and its fall from grace. This gripping story serves as a cautionary tale of what can happen when businesses lose direction. Resources Mentioned: https://www.amazon.com/Lights-Out-Delusion-General-Electric/dp/0358250412 (Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric) Transcript: https://charlesmizrahi.com/podcast/2022/01/25/the-fall-general-electric-thomas-gryta/ (https://charlesmizrahi.com/podcast/)   Don't Forget To... • Subscribe to my podcast! • Download this episode to save for later • Liked this episode? Leave a kind review!   Subscribe to Charles' Alpha Investor newsletter today: https://pro.banyanhill.com/m/1729783 (https://pro.banyanhill.com/m/1729783)

General Electric was once considered the most valuable company in the world, a conglomerate that spanned industries and was respected specifically for its management prowess. But over the last two decades, the company has imploded in slow motion. On Tuesday, GE announced it would break into three distinct companies, marking the beginning of the end for the multinational behemoth. Axios Re:Cap host Felix Salmon is joined by Ted Mann, journalist and co-author of Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the fall of General Electric. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently said that every leader in the world must read “Lights Out: Pride, Delusion and the Fall of General Electric.” Written by two masterful Wall Street Journal reporters, Tom Gryta and Ted Mann, it's an astonishingly true tale of how GE went from being one of the world's sustainably great companies to […] The post Tom Gryta & Ted Mann: The Leadership Failures Of Two CEOs Who Steered GE Into Its Tragic Fall appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently said that every leader in the world must read “Lights Out: Pride, Delusion and the Fall of General Electric.” Written by two masterful Wall Street Journal reporters, Tom Gryta and Ted Mann, it's an astonishingly true tale of how GE went from being one of the world's sustainably great companies to […] The post Tom Gryta & Ted Mann: The Leadership Failures Of Two CEOs Who Steered GE Into Its Tragic Fall appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.

We're rollin' in the dough this week with a double dip of interesting business talk. First up are Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann of The Wall Street Journal who look at the rise and fall of one of America's iconic companies. In Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric, Gryta and Mann lay out the consequences that came from believing in the mythology GE created for itself. Source

We’re rollin’ in the dough this week with a double dip of interesting business talk. First up are Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann of The Wall Street Journal who look at the rise and fall of one of America’s iconic companies. In Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric, Gryta and Mann lay out the consequences that came from believing in the mythology GE created for itself. Then we move from Wall Street to Main Street where Carol Roth (she of The Roth Effect found right here on Ricochet) talks about the biggest transfer of wealth in history in her new book, The War on Small Business: How the Government Used the Pandemic to Crush the Backbone of America (available on June 29th). And congratulations to @PrestonStorm for taking home the coveted Lilek's Post of the Week for his post “I Wish Libertarians Would Pick Better Battles and Heroes” Music from this week's episode: Taking Care of Business by Bachman Turner Overdrive.

We’re rollin’ in the dough this week with a double dip of interesting business talk. First up are Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann of The Wall Street Journal who look at the rise and fall of one of America’s iconic companies. In Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric, Gryta and Mann lay out […]

Sean Kelly talked with me about Between the Lions; comic books; radio comedy; being on early TV in Canada and making him jaded to TV; being on Saturday Night Live for two weeks; Jean Doumanian; Michel Choquette getting him on the Lampoon; Bruce McCall; Canada: The Re&$2!&! Neighbor on Your Doorstep; Beaverton: Canada's humor magazine; Canadian jokes; Son O'God Comix; Zimmerman; his son, writer Chris Kelly; Matty Simmons believing tits sell magazines; National Lampoon Radio Hour; John Belushi, Brian McConnachie, George Trow, and Christopher Guest join the Radio Hour; Well Intentioned Blues; writing Lemmings with Tony Hendra; hiring Chevy Chase; Zal Yanovsky tries to kill Chevy; Chevy permanently disfigures Alice Playten; Doug Kenney; Henry Bear; Michael O'Donoghue; Tony Hendra; Brian McConnachie; at a certain age everyone's Jewish; Paul Jacobs; growing old; seeing Christopher Plummer at 17 and working with him 30 years later; Harvey Weinstein; Robert Downey Sr; Jim Downey; Sam Gross; Al Jean & Mike Reiss; Fred Graver & Kevin Curran; Ted Mann & Tod Carroll; Disco Beaver from Outer Space; Steve Martin: All Commercials; Paul Reubens & Gilbert Gottfried's SNL auditions; Ferris Butler, and some anecdotes of the problems of Saturday Night Live '80. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is convinced there's bipartisan support for big infrastructure spending. But WSJ's Ted Mann explains why reaching a deal may be an uphill battle.

A.M. Edition for March 5. The House will have to approve the revised bill after it passes the Senate. WSJ's Caitlin Ostroff has context ahead of today's February jobs report from the Labor Department. WSJ's Ted Mann examines infrastructure projects in America. Marc Stewart hosts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thomas Gryta is a reporter at the Wall Street Journal and the co-author, with Ted Mann, of Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric. In this episode, Robert talks with Gryta about the book, how GE soared in value under its charismatic leader, Jack Welch, and how hubris, excessive financial leverage, and the company's dependence on profits from GE Capital, nearly forced America's most famous industrial company into bankruptcy.  

Joe Biden was sworn in today as the 46th president of the United States. WSJ's Siobhan Hughes was at the ceremony, and Ted Mann was on the streets outside.

Season-2, episode 4(Part 2) of “ZENPod”, continuing our conversation with Smt. Nirmala Rajasekar, the first Indian musician to receive the Bush Fellowship and the McKnight Fellowship. Nirmala serves as a Vice President of the Global Carnatic Musicians' Association, an organisation created to be a unified voice for Carnatic musicians. You can read more about her on www.nirmalarajasekar.com “Travels are what has given me insights into different things, I followed the path that the Universe has shown me” – says Smt. Nirmala Rajasekar in her talk with Venkatesh Mahadevan Nirmala Rajasekar is recognised as one of the premier Saraswathi veena players in the world today. Nirmala has performed in many world renowned venues such as the United Nations and Carnegie Hall, New York City, USA; Ted Mann concert Hall, Minneapolis, MN; Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN; BBC, London, England; Kongresshaus, Zurich, Switzerland; Musee Rietberg, Zurich, Switzerland; Bali, Indonesia; Music Academy, Chennai, India; Narada Gana Sabha, Chennai, India; Chembur Fine Arts, Mumbai, India; Bangalore Gayana Samaja, India and the Ravindra Kalakshethra, Bangalore, India. Some of her awards from leading - The Music Academy, Narada Gana Sabha, Sri Krishna Gana Sabha, Bangalore Gayana Samaja; Vocational Excellence Award (Rotary Club International), Veena Sudar Oli, Women of Substance Award 2014, Veena Kala Vithakar (Veenalayam Toronto), and a Lifetime Achievement award (IAM). Nirmala has been recognised by the City of Houston, Texas for her cultural contributions “ZENPod” is a Podcast series that features trailblazers from different walks of life, with a purpose to build an empowered eco-system where learnings and experiences from these enlightened professionals, will be available within “arms reach of desire” for those who aspire to scale higher and wish to contribute, in their life's pursuit. We at “ZENPod” believe that one person's journey is another person's learning. In these talks, we will touch upon spirituality and the intersection in real Life and how it can be leveraged on, for reaching a higher goal!

Season-2, episode 3 of “ZENPod”, featuring Smt. Nirmala Rajasekar, the first Indian musician to receive the Bush Fellowship and the McKnight Fellowship. Nirmala serves as a Vice President of the Global Carnatic Musicians' Association, an organisation created to be a unified voice for Carnatic musicians. You can read more about her on www.nirmalarajasekar.com “Being Spiritual is deeply personal, it's that person's individual soul, spirit; what takes them to a plane where they can be completely happy with themselves” – says Smt. Nirmala Rajasekar in her talk with Venkatesh Mahadevan Nirmala Rajasekar is recognised as one of the premier Saraswathi veena players in the world today. Nirmala has performed in many world renowned venues such as the United Nations and Carnegie Hall, New York City, USA; Ted Mann concert Hall, Minneapolis, MN; Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN; BBC, London, England; Kongresshaus, Zurich, Switzerland; Musee Rietberg, Zurich, Switzerland; Bali, Indonesia; Music Academy, Chennai, India; Narada Gana Sabha, Chennai, India; Chembur Fine Arts, Mumbai, India; Bangalore Gayana Samaja, India and the Ravindra Kalakshethra, Bangalore, India. Some of her awards from leading - The Music Academy, Narada Gana Sabha, Sri Krishna Gana Sabha, Bangalore Gayana Samaja; Vocational Excellence Award (Rotary Club International), Veena Sudar Oli, Women of Substance Award 2014, Veena Kala Vithakar (Veenalayam Toronto), and a Lifetime Achievement award (IAM). Nirmala has been recognised by the City of Houston, Texas for her cultural contributions “ZENPod” is a Podcast series that features trailblazers from different walks of life, with a purpose to build an empowered eco-system where learnings and experiences from these enlightened professionals, will be available within “arms reach of desire” for those who aspire to scale higher and wish to contribute, in their life's pursuit.

The Supreme Court put an end to the nearly seven-year drama over Bridgegate, ruling that a scheme to overwhelm a town with traffic jams wasn't federal fraud. WSJ's Ted Mann takes us through the saga and explains what the Supreme Court's ruling means for federal corruption cases.

The U.S. Treasury has been legally robbed! In this episode, discover the secret provisions in the multi-trillion dollar CARES Act that no one is talking about (like the new process for over the counter drug approvals) and discover the reasons behind problems that everyone is talking about (like why Mom & Pops can't get a small business loan approved but Fogo de Chao can.) The good news is that the problems are so obvious that they are easily fixed... If Congress ever comes back from vacation.  Please Support Congressional Dish – Quick Links Click here to contribute monthly or a lump sum via PayPal Click here to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Send Cash App payments to: $CongressionalDish or Donation@congressionaldish.com Use your bank’s online bill pay function to mail contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North, Number 4576, Crestview, FL 32536 Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes CD160: Equifax Breach CD199: Surprise Medical Bills CD201: WTF is the Federal Reserve? CD212: The COVID-19 Response Laws Bills H.R.748 - CARES Act Text: H.R.748 - CARES Act Roll Call: H.R.748 - CARES Act House passed by voice vote at 1:25pm on March 27th Transcript: House debate Tom Massie demanded a recorded vote but an insufficient number of members supported him and the demand for a recorded vote was refused Signed by Trump on March 27 CARES Act Outline DIVISION A - Keeping Workers Paid and Employed, Health Care System Enhancements, and Economic Stabilization TITLE I - Keeping American Workers Paid and Employed Act Sec. 1102: "Paycheck Protection Program" (Small Business Loans) The Federal Government will guarantee 100% of the loans made under this authority between February 15, 2020 and June 30, 2020. The loans are allowed to be used by businesses to pay for their employees salaries, tips, sick and vacation time, health care, retirement benefits, and state and local taxes. Sole proprietors and independent contractors are eligible. All payments are capped at a salary rate of $100,000/yr per individual. Payments are not eligible for employees who live outside the United States, even if they are US citizens. A “small business” is defined as a business with fewer than 500 employees per physical location. Usually, franchises in a large corporate chain would be except from receiving these loans, but that exemption is waived. Nonprofits and veterans organizations are eligible as well. The maximum loan amount is $10 million. No personal guarantee or collateral can be required to get the loans between February 15, 2020 and June 30, 2020. There are no penalties allowed for prepayment of the loans. The Federal government will collect no administration fees. Interest rates are capped at 4% Fees for banks: The government will pay the bankers processing fees of 5% for loans under $350,000, 3% for loans between $350,000 and $2 million, and 1% of loans over $2 million. Loan payments must be allowed to be deferred - so no required payments of principal, interest, or fees - for at least 6 months and up to one year. The loans are allowed to be sold on the secondary market, but if the investor doesn’t want to abide by the deferment requirements, the government can buy the loan. Banks are going to be exempted from some disclosure requirements for these loans. The law authorizes $349 billion for this program. Sec. 1106: The loans from Section 1102 are eligible for forgiveness - as in you don’t have to pay them back - if the loan money was used for payroll costs, interest-only on mortgage payments (it specifically excludes payments towards the principal on a mortgage loan), rent payments, and/or utility payments. The government will pay the bankers for amount of the loan forgiven plus interest, capped at the amount of the principal on the loan. The amount of loan forgiveness will be reduced if the business employees fewer people during the COVID-19 crisis than they did before. The amount of forgiveness will be reduced by the amount of salary that employees who make less than $100,000/yr have their pay reduced beyond a 25% cut. Businesses can get loan forgiveness for extra money given to tipped employees. Businesses who re-hire their employees or re-instate employees salary to their pre-crisis level by June 30, 2020 will be eligible to have their loans forgiven. The banks will decide who will have their loans forgiven and banks are prohibited from being punished if the documentation submitted to them is wrong until June 30, 2020. Sec. 1110: From January 31, 2020 through December 31, 2020, businesses with fewer than 500 employees, sole proprietorships, and independent contractors can request a $10,000 advance to pay for employee sick leave, payroll, increased costs for materials, rent, or mortgage payments. The business can be approved using a credit score or self certification of the ability to repay. The advance can be up to $10,000 and must be paid within 3 days. If the applicant is approved for a loan, the advance will be reduced from the loan forgiveness amount. If the applicant isn’t approved, the advance doesn’t have to be repaid. $10 billion is appropriated for the advances. Sec. 1112: The government will pay the principal, interest, and fees for six months on some existing loans that are guaranteed by the government by the Small Business Act. $17 billion is appropriated for these payments. Sec. 1113: Until March 27, 2021, small businesses that want to declare bankruptcy and reorganize under Chapter 11 must have debts under $7.5 million instead of $2,725,625 as is usually the case, which increases the number of small businesses that will be eligible. TITLE II - Assistance for American Workers, Families, and Businesses SUBTITLE A: Unemployment Insurance Provisions Sec. 2102: Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Who qualifies: People who would qualify under existing State laws People who self-certify that are able to work except that the person has been diagnosed with COVID-19, someone in their home has been diagnosed with COVID-19, they are caring for someone with COVID-19, has a child whose daycare or school is closed due to COVID-19, can’t get to work because of a COVID-19 quarantine, their work is closed due to COVID-19, or they are self employed. People who do not qualify are people who have the ability to telework with pay or people who are receiving paid sick leave or other paid leave benefits Effective period: Beginning on or after January 27, 2020 and ending on or before December 31, 2020 Limits: No one can get unemployment benefits for more than 39 weeks, but this can be extended by the Secretary of Labor if needed Sec. 2104: Unemployment Amounts: It’s the amount determined by your state’s unemployment law plus $600 per week if the state chooses to enter into an agreement with the Secretary of Labor. The Federal government will pay for 100% of the costs of the extra unemployment payments and the administration costs. It’s an unlimited appropriation and it’s valid until July 31, 2020. SUBTITLE B: Rebates and Other Individual Provisions Sec. 2201: Issues a means tested “advanced refund" of $1,200 per adult and $500 per child. You only get the full amount as an adult if you make $75,000 per adult or less. People who make more than $75,000 per adult will have their check amount reduced based on their income up to about $100,000. People who make more than that will get nothing. The payment will be delivered via direct deposit to anyone who has authorized the IRS to do so since January 1, 2018 while everyone else will have to wait for checks. If we accidentally get overpaid, the IRS can’t charge us interest on that payment. The payments will be made for the 2019 tax year if you have already done your taxes for last year. If you haven’t, it’ll be based on 2018. They will send a notification in the mail to us about our payments to our last known address, which will tell us the amount and if it’s going to be delivered via direct deposit or by check. Sec. 2202: Waives rules that penalize removing money from your retirement accounts if you take the money out between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020.. You can take out up $100,000 in “coronavirus-related distributions”. You are allowed to pay it back in full for 3 years starting on the day you took the money out. To qualify, you have to self certify that you are someone who had COVID-19, is caring for a spouse or dependent who had COVID-19, or someone who was financially screwed in some way due to being quarantined, having work hours reduced, or having to care for a child. Sec. 2203: Waives the requirements that people over the age of 72, or their dependents who inherited their retirement accounts, to withdraw some money from the retirement accounts every year. The waiver is valid even for people who were not adversely affected by COVID-19. Sec. 2204: Allows people - even those that don’t itemize their deductions - to deduct $300 in donations in 2020 for cash payments given to charities, a government organization, educational organizations, veterans organizations… There’s a long list. Applies to taxable years starting with 2020. Sec. 2205: For people who do itemize their deductions, the current limit of cash contributions than can be written off (which is a maximum of 60% of the taxpayer’s tax bill for the year) is suspended. You can deduct up to your entire tax bill, although maybe even more because carry-overs are allowed. For corporations, the usual limit of cash contributions that can be written off (10% of the corporation’s income) is increased to 25% of the corporation’s income. The corporate limit increase is valid only in 2020. Sec. 2206: Allows employers to pay for some of an employee’s student loan - principal and/or interest - tax free if the payment is made by January 1, 2021. SUBTITLE C - Business provisions Sec. 2301: Employers with more than 100 employees will be able to get a tax credit for half of the wages they pay to their employee’s who can’t work, with a limit of $10,000 per employee per quarter. Employer with fewer than 100 employees can get the tax credit for all their employees. Employers who qualify are ones that had to close due to COVID-19 or whose gross receipts are less than 50% of what they were the same quarter last year. Employers who take out the small business loans created by this law can’t get this credit too. They will lose this tax credit in the quarter after their gross receipts are more than 80% of what they were in same quarter the prior year. This is predicted to save companies $54.6 billion. Sec. 2302: Allows employers to defer payroll taxes, with half the amount required to be paid by December 31, 2021 and the other half due by December 31, 2022. Businesses that have had loans forgiven using the provisions in this law are not eligible. Sec. 2303: The IRS code has, for many years, allowed business losses to be carried over to following years, so that the companies tax liability will be lower in the years to come. This law changes that so business losses from 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 can be carried backwards to each of the five years before the loss while also allowing the existing option to carry the losses forward too. The law also removes the limit that said that this couldn’t be done to offset more than 80% of taxable income for 2018, 2019, or 2020, which means this can be used to zero out their taxable income for years since 2013. This means that companies will be able to get refunds on taxes they paid on taxes going as far back as 2013. In those years, corporate tax rates were higher, so reducing their income levels retroactively lets them get more money back from those higher tax years. There’s no requirement that the businesses that get this tax gift be in any way negatively affected by COVID-19. This is estimated to provide $25.5 billion to corporations Sec. 2304: Prior to the 2017 tax cut law, individual taxpayers could deduct unlimited business losses against other kinds of income. The 2017 tax law changed that so that losses could only be used to shelter the first $250,000 or $500,000 of a married couple’s nonbusiness income, such as capital gains from stock market investments. This law retroactively removes new limits imposed by the 2017 tax law going back to 2018 and until 2021. This will allow individuals to submit amended returns and get refunds that weren’t allowed in 2018 and 2019. In reality, this will allow wealthy investors to use losses generated by depreciation in real estate to minimize their taxes on profits from things like investments in the stock market. No harm from COVID-19 needs to be proven in order to use and benefit from this provision. This is the second largest tax giveaway in this law. This is projected to cost almost $170 billion. Sec. 2305: Allows corporations expecting a refund due to the repeal of the alternative minimum tax in 2017 to get that refund faster. Sec. 2306: Increases the amount corporations can deduct on the interest expenses it pays on its loans from 30% of the company’s “adjusted taxable income” to 50%. Companies can do this regardless of any affect COVID-19 had on their business. This is projected to cost $13.4 billion. Sec. 2307: A tax credit for real estate owners, this changes a provision in the 2017 tax law to allow real estate owners to write off the costs of improvements to the interiors of their properties in the first year instead of spreading them out over many years. This is backdated to the enactment of the tax law, which will allow real estate owners to get tax refunds. Sec. 2308: Waives the federal excise tax on any alcohol used in hand sanitizer for calendar year 2020. TITLE III - Supporting America’s Health Care System in the Fight Against the Coronavirus Part 1 - Addressing Supply Shortages Subpart A - Medical Product Supplies Sec. 3101: Orders a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on the security of the United States medical product supply chain, specifically by evaluating the dependance of the United States and our private sector on critical drugs and devices sources or manufactured outside of the United States. Sec. 3103: Manufacturers of certain types of masks and ventilators are granted immunity from lawsuits during public health emergencies. Subpart B - Mitigating Emergency Drug Shortages Sec. 3112: Requires the manufacturers of drugs critical to the public health to report interruptions to the supply of the drug when the cause of the interruption is an interruption in the supply of the active pharmaceutical ingredient. They must also create and implement risk management plans. Is not effective until mid-September 2020. Subpart C - Preventing Medical Device Shortages Sec. 3121: Requires manufacturers of medical devices that are critical to public health to report to the government during or in advance of a public health emergency any interruptions in the manufacture of the devices that could lead to a meaningful disruption in the supply of that device in the United States. Unless it’s not possible, the government must get this notification at least 6 months prior to the date that the interruption or discontinuance is expected. The government must then distribute the information to appropriate health care industry officials. The government can keep the information from the public if disclosing it increases the likelihood of over-purchase of the product. Part II - Access to Health Care For COVID-19 Patients Subpart A - Coverage of Testing and Preventive Services Sec. 3201: Amends the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (the 2nd COVID-19 Response Law) so that coverage is only for COVID-19 tests that are “approved, cleared, or authorized” or that the developer has requested or intends to request emergency use authorization, is developed in and authorized by a State, or another test that HHS determines appropriate in writing. This provision did not change the language (loophole) that requires visits be covered only if they “result in the ordering or administration of a COVID-19 test.” Sec. 3202: Health care providers must publish on a public internet website the prices for COVID-19 testing. If health insurers have a negotiated rate with a providers, they are allowed to pay that rate if it is lower than the published rate. If there is no negotiated rate, the insurance companies must pay the amount listed on their public website. Sec. 3203: The health insurance companies “shall” be required to cover, without cost sharing, “any qualifying coronavirus preventive service” (which is “a service or immunization that is intended to prevent or mitigate coronavirus disease 2019) within 15 days of it’s official recommendation by the United States Preventive Services Task Force or the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Subpart B - Support for Health Care Providers Sec. 3211: Provides $1.32 billion in extra funding for community health centers that are testing for COVID-19 Sec. 3215: Gives legal immunity in State and Federal courts to medical professionals who volunteer and provide services during the COVID-19 public health emergency declared on January 31, 2020, but the immunity is only valid for actions that took place after March 27th (the date of enactment). The immunity is not valid if the health care professional acted with willful or gross negligence or if the health professional was intoxicated by drugs or alcohol. Subpart C - Miscellaneous Provisions Sec. 3222: Elderly people who are homebound due to social distancing requirements during the COVID-19 emergency will be able to get government food deliveries as if they were homebound due to illness, as the law usually requires. Part III - Innovation Sec. 3301: Allows contracts created by BARDA (the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority) during a public health emergency to continue past the end date of the public health emergency. Sec. 3302: Requires - no option - the Secretary of Health and Human Services to expedite the development and review of new animal drugs if preliminary clinical evidence indicates that the new drug might prevent or treat an animal disease that could cause serious or life-threatening diseases in humans, if the expedited process is requested by the organization creating the animal drug. Part IV - Health Care Workforce Sec. 3401: Appropriates $23.7 million per year through 2025 for grants to health professions schools and other public and nonprofit health or educational organizations, but with most of the grants being funded at significantly lower rates than they were during the Obama years. For example, for loan repayments and fellowships, they provided $5 million/yr during 2010-2014; that’s decreased to $1.2 million for 2021-2025. For educational assistance for people from disadvantaged backgrounds, they provided $60 million/yr during 2010-2014; that’s decreased to $15 million for 2021-2025. For grants to public and nonprofit private hospitals and medical schools, they provided $125 million/yr during 2010-2014; that’s decreased to under $49 million for 2021-2025. For health education center programs, they provided $125 million/yr during 2010-2014; that’s decreased to under $41.2 million for 2021-2025. For public health training centers, they provided at least $43 million/yr for 2012-2015; that’s decreased to $17 million for 2021-2025. The only category that gets significantly greater funding is a pediatric specialty loan repayment program that requires the student to work for at least 2 years in pediatric medicine to get the money. The funding level was $50 million/yr from 2010-2013, the funding is authorized to be unlimited from 2021 through 2025. All of these are authorizations for appropriations, they don’t provide any additional money. Sec. 3403: Requires grants and contracts be awarded for a Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program, that would train health professionals in geriatrics. The law authorizes about $40 million, but doesn’t appropriate it. This is a problem because Congress frequently will authorize programs they have no intention of funding, and without the funding, they don’t really exist. Sec. 3404: Authorizes appropriations, but does not appropriate, for nursing eduction programs about $138 million/yr for fiscal years 2021 through 2025, which is a decrease from the funding of $338 million that was valid from 2011-2016. Also authorizes, but does not appropriate, $117 million/yr from 2021-2015 for nursing student loans. Subtitle B - Education Provisions Sec. 3503: Through 2021, the requirement that all colleges match Federal funding for student work-study programs) is waived except for private for-profit organizations. Sec. 3504: Colleges will be allowed to use some of their federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant money for students facing “unexpected expenses and unmet financial need”. The student can be given up to the maximum Federal Pell Grant for that year (which is currently $6,345). Sec. 3505: Allows colleges to pay student their work-study wages up to the full amount they would have been paid had there not been an emergency. They can make the payments in one-time grants or as multiple payments. Sec. 3506: The semester that students with loans couldn’t finish because of COVID-19 will not be counted towards their lifetime limits on subsidized loan eligibility. Sec. 3507: The semester that students with loans couldn’t finish because of COVID-19 will not be counted towards their lifetime limits on Pell Grant eligibility. Sec. 3508: Colleges, including for-profit colleges, that have students with loans withdraw from their schools due to COVID-19 will not have to repay the money they received from that student. The students will not have to return the money either and their loan obligation will be cancelled. The schools are allowed to let the student return after a leave of absence. Sec. 3511: Gives the Secretary of Education the option, at the request of a State, local, or tribal government, to waive statutory and regulatory requirements except for civli rights laws. The waivers may also be granted to charter schools. The waivers will not be valid past the 2019-2020 school year. Sec. 3512: During the COVID-19 emergency, the Secretary of Education can make payments - including on principal and interest - on loans issued to historically black colleges and universities through the HBCU Capital Financing Loan program, but the payments will have to be repaid to the Department of Education no sooner than one year after the COVID-19 emergency ends. The law appropriates $62 million. Sec. 3513: The Secretary of Education is required to suspend all payments due for student loans until September 30, 2020. Interest is not allowed to accrue during the suspension time. Each month during the suspicion must be treated as if the payments were made for the purpose of loan forgiveness programs. During the suspension period, student loan collections actions including wage garnishment and tax refund reductions must stop. People with student loans are allowed to keep making payments towards their principal. Sec. 3518: Allows the Secretary of Education to change the requirements, including matching requirements, for grant money given to colleges for the year of the emergency and the following fiscal year. Sec. 3519: Allows the Secretary of Education to excuse teachers from obligations they made to receive grants. The Secretary of Education is required to waive requirements that teaching service be consecutive for loan forgiveness as long as the teach completes a total of 5 years of required teaching service. Subtitle C - Labor Provisions Sec. 3606: Allows employers who will get a credit for the sick and family leave they are providing their employees to get that credit in advance. Sec. 3608: Required payments to employee pension plans can be postponed until January 1, 2021, but they must be paid with interest. Sec. 3610: Allows any government agency to change their contracts to allow the government to pay for up to 40 hours per week of paid leave that a contractor provides to its employees until September 30, 2020. This only applies to contractors who can’t work because the facilities where they work are closed and who can’t do their work remotely. Subtitle D - Finance Committee Sec. 3701: High deductible health insurance plans that do not include deductibles for telehealth services will still be considered high deductible plans. Sec. 3702: Starting on January 1, 2020, menstrual care products are considered medical products, which allows people to purchase them with Health Savings Accounts. Sec. 3703: Allows people on Medicare to be covered for telehealth visits to doctors they have not seen before. Sec. 3705: During the COVID-19 emergency, dialysis patients who receive their treatments at home do not need to meet face to face with their doctors, which allows the visit to be conducted via telehealth. Sec. 3706: The Secretary of Health and Human Services can allow hospice physicians or nurse practitioners to conduct patient visits via telehealth during the COVID-19 emergency Sec. 3709: Stops the 2% Medicare sequestration from May 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020, but extends sequestration for an extra year (to 2030 instead of 2029) Sec. 3710: Medicare will pay an extra 20% for people diagnosed with COVID-19, using “diagnosis codes, condition codes, or other such means as may be necessary” during the emergency period declared by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Sec. 3713: Beginning on the day that a COVID-19 vaccine is licensed, Medicare will not charge a deductible for the the vaccine or its administration. Sec. 3714: Allows people on Medicare to get 90 day supplies of their drugs in a single refill for the during of the COVID-19 emergency declared by the HHS Secretary. Sec. 3719: During the emergency period, the Secretary of HHS can loan hospitals an advance of up to 6 months of Medicare payments. The payments can be made periodically or in a lump sum for up to 100% of the their usual payments, 125% for critical access hospitals. Hospitals will have to be given 120 days before any payments are decreased to offset the loans and must be given at least 1 year from the date of their first loan receipt to pay back the balance in full. Subtitle E: Health and Human Services Extenders Part I - Medicare Provisions Sec. 3803: Restores the funding levels of recently gutted low income programs. $13 billion to state health insurance programs, $7.5 billion to area agencies on aging, and $5 billion for aging and disability resources centers, and $12 billion for the National Center for Benefits and Outreach Enrollment. Part II - Medicaid Provisions Sec. 3813: Delays $4 billion in payment cuts to hospitals written into the Affordable Care Act which were supposed to begin in 2014. Hospitals were expected to be treating fewer uninsured individuals when the cuts were written into law. Part III - Human Services and Other Health Programs Sec. 3821: Extends the “Sexual Risk Avoidance Education Program” (abstinence eduction) from its scheduled end of May 22, 2020 to November 30, 2020. The program gives grants to states that agree to promote abstinence-only sex ed. Requirements and funding levels Sec. 3822: Extends the “Personal Responsibility Education Program” from its scheduled end of May 22, 2020 to November 30, 2020. Requirements and funding Part IV - Public Health Provisions Sec. 3831: Adds $1.5 billion to the funding for Community Health Centers to bring the funding to equal the 2019 funding, and funds them at the same rate through November 30, 2020. Adds $241 million to the funding for the National Health Service Corps, whose funding was allowed to lapse in December 2019, restoring its funding to equal the 2019 funding. Adds $45 million to teaching health centers that operate graduate medical programs to bring the funding to equal the 2019 funding, and funds them at the same rate through November 30, 2020. Subtitle F - Over the Counter Drugs Part 1 - OTC Drug Review Sec. 3851: Creates a new process for FDA approval of over the counter drug applications. Allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue administrative orders to approve changes and new uses of over the counter drugs instead of requiring drug companies to go through the standard review process that takes longer. Companies whose applications are approved will get 18 month exclusivity on their drugs. Sec. 3854: Allows sunscreen companies with products affected by a pending FDA order to request that the HHS Secretary instead use the new, faster, less complete administrative order process created by Section 3851 for over the counter drugs. They must make this request by mid September 2020. Administrative orders issued by the HHS Secretary will be “deemed to be a final order”. As part of this process, the company may request and the HHS Secretary must conduct a “confidential meeting” with the company to discuss what data they should submit to show that their ingredients are safe and effective. Part II - User Fees Sec. 3862: Beginning in fiscal year 2021, to fund the new processes for over the counter drug approvals created by Section 3851, facilities that manufacture over the counter drugs will be assessed an annual fee and there will be either a $500,000 or $100,000 fee for requests to change drug monographs using the process created by Section 3851. Companies will not have to pay the fee if they are requesting changes to enhance warnings or instructions on the labels. TITLE IV - Economic Stabilization and Assistance to Severely Distressed Sectors of the United States Economy Subtitle A - Coronavirus Economic Stabilization Act of 2020 Sec. 4002: Defines a “covered loss” as “losses directly or indirectly as a result of coronavirus, as determined by the Secretary”, with “the Secretary” being Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “Eligible business” is an air carrier or “a United States business that has not otherwise received adequate economic relief in the form of loans or loan guarantees provided under this Act” Sec. 4003: Gives the Secretary of the Treasury the authorization to “make loans, loan guarantees and other investments” to "eligible businesses”, States, and local governments up to a total of $500 billion dollars. $46 billion must be directed at the airline industry and $454 billion will be loans, loan guarantees, and “other investments” determined by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Sec. 4004: Limits the amount of money that an employee of a business that gets a Treasury Department loan to $3 million plus half of whatever they got over $3 million in 2019 for the length of the loan plus one year. Sec. 4005: Until March 1, 2022, the Secretary of Transportation will have the authority to require any airline that takes loan money to maintain their flight schedules, as the Secretary of Transportation determines is needed. Sec. 4007: Suspends a 7.5% Federal excise tax on airlines from March 27, 2020 through the end of the year. Sec. 4008: Amends the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform law to allow the FDIC to provide insurance for all accounts of banks that don’t accrue interest until December 31, 2020. Sec. 4009: Between March 13, 2020 and either the end of the COVID-19 emergency or December 31, 2020, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve is exempt from requirements that they give the public a day’s notice before their meetings and that they make public the minutes of their behind closed doors meetings. They must only keep a record of their votes and reasons for their votes which might be released to the public later (there’s no requirement that they be released). Sec. 4011: Allows unlimited lending to “nonbank financial institutions” such as insurance companies, venture capitalists, currency exchanges, and pawn shops until the end of the emergency declared on March 13 or until December 31, 2020. Sec. 4012: Lowers the amount of actual money that community banks must have in their possession from 9% to 8%, and gives the banks with less than that a “reasonable grace period” to get the money. This is valid until the end of the emergency declared on March 13 or until December 31, 2020. Sec. 4013: Allows banks to avoid counting troubled loans as troubled on their balance sheets from March 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020 or 60 days after the emergency declared on March 13th ends. Sec. 4014: Exempts banks from relatively new reporting requirements on their credit losses from March 27, 2020 through the end of the emergency declared on March 13 or December 31, 2020. Sec. 4015: Allows the Treasury Department to use its Exchange Stabilization Fund (which had $93.7 billion in it as of February 2020) to get around needing Congressional appropriations to cover any losses the Federal Reserve may need to absorb through its lending programs that allow unusual collateral to be offered like money market funds, corporate bonds, and securities. Sec. 4017: Increases the President’s power to use the Defense Production Act by waiving the requirement for Congressional authorization for projects that cost more than $50 million for two years and waives the requirement that Congress needs 30 days advanced notice before a Defense Production Act project can start for 1 year. Sec. 4018: Creates an Inspector General within the Treasury Department who will be appointed by the President. Says that when the Inspector General requests information, the agencies “shall, to the extent practicable” give him the information or else they will be reported to Congress. Sec. 4019: Prohibits loans or payments originating from the Treasury and Federal Reserve authorized by Section 4003 from going to any company in which the President, Vice President, an executive department head, member of Congress or their spouses, children, or son/daughter in laws own over 20% of the voting stock. Sec. 4020: Creates a Congressional Oversight Commission whose job is to conduct oversight of the implementation of this law by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. The commission will have five members: 1 appointed by the Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi), 1 appointed by the House minority leader (Kevin McCarthy), 1 appointed by the Senate majority leader (Mitch McConnell), 1 appointed by the Senate minority leader (Chuck Schumer), and 1 Chairperson co-appointed by the Speaker and Majority Leader (Pelosi and McConnell). Sec. 4021: Companies that allow customers to adjust their payment schedules have to report that the customer is current on their payments unless their accounts are already delinquent. This is valid from January 31, 2020 through either the end of July 2020 or 4 months after the emergency declared on March 13th ends Sec. 4022: People with Federally backed mortgages who have been affected by COVID-19 “directly or indirectly” can request and must be granted for a pause in loan payments for a maximum of about a year, but you have to request it twice (again after the first 180 days). Interest and fees will still accrue but they can’t charge any extra interest, penalties, or fees. Customers have to provide no proof of hardship. Prohibits the banks that manage Federally backed loans from moving forward with any foreclosure processes until mid-May 2020 (60 days after March 18, 2020). Sec. 4023: People/companies that own multifamily housing with 5 or more units with Federally backed mortgages who have been affected by COVID-19 “directly or indirectly” can request and must be granted for a pause in loan payments. The forbearance (pause) can be for a total of 90 days as long as the building owner requests it three times with at least 15 days notice. People who get this pause are not allowed to evict their tenants or charge them any late fees during the mortgage payment pause. Sec. 4024: Starting on March 27, 2020 and ending in late July 2020, landlords can not begin eviction proceedings for non-payment of rent or charge fees or penalties for not paying rent. Sec. 4025: Prohibits the government from attaching a string to a loan or loan guarantee that requires the business to negotiate with unions over worker pay or conditions of employment. This is valid starting on the day the business is first issued the loan and ending a year after the loan is paid off. Sec. 4026: Within 72 hours of each transaction, the Treasury Secretary must publish on the Treasury Department website a description of the transaction, the date, and the “identity of the counterparty”, the amount of the loan/guarantee/investment, how the price was determined, the interest rate, conditions, and a copy of the final term sheet. The Treasury Secretary also has to report any contracts entered into for the administration of loans or guarantees within 24 hours after the contract is entered into. The Federal Reserve has to issue reports to Congress that will have to be made public on their website within 7 days of the report being delivered to Congress. Sec. 4027: Appropriates $500 billion Sec. 4029: The authorities given to the Treasury Secretary and Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve to make loans, loan guarantees, and “investments” in businesses and banks will expire on December 31, 2020. Subtitle B - Air Carrier Worker Support Sec. 4112: The Secretary of the Treasury “shall” give money to airlines and the contractors that work with them which “shall exclusively be used for the continuation of payment of employee wages, salaries, and benefits”. Passenger air carriers will get $25 billion, cargo airlines $4 billion, and contractors will get $3 billion. Sec. 4113: The employees will have to be paid whatever rate they were paid from April 1, 2019 through September 30, 2019. Steven Mnuchin will decide all terms and conditions, other than the ones set by section 4114, 4115, and 4116. The payments have to start to be made within 10 days of enactment. The Inspector General of the Treasury Department will have to audit the certifications made by the companies about employee salary and benefit rates. Sec. 4114: Airlines or contractors that take the money can’t furlough their workers or reduce their wages or benefits until September 30, 2020, they can’t buy stock in their company or parent company, or pay out dividends. The Secretary of Transportation is also given authorization until March 1, 2022 to require only airlines or contractors that take the money to continue service to anywhere that they served as of March 1, 2020. Sec. 4115: Prohibits the government from attaching a string to a loan or loan guarantee that requires the airline or contractor to negotiate with unions over worker pay or conditions of employment. This is valid starting on the day the business is first issued the loan and ending on September 30, 2020. Sec. 4116: From March 24, 2020 through March 24, 2022, any airline or contractor that takes the money has to agree that no employee who made more than $425,000 in 2019 will be paid more than what they were paid in 2019, or will receive more than double their 2019 pay as a severance package. Employees that were paid more than $3 million can’t be paid more than $3 million plus half of the amount they were paid over $3 million in 2019. This includes salary, bonuses, stock awards and “other financial benefits”. Sec. 4117: The Treasury Secretary is allowed, but not required, to accept stock and securities and other “financial instruments” from the airlines and contractors. Sec. 4120: Appropriates $32 billion. TITLE V - Coronavirus Relief Funds Sec. 5001: Appropriates $150 billion for State, tribal and local governments. Amounts will be determined by population but each state will get at least $1.25 billion. Washington D.C. is treated as a territory and all territories will split $3 billion. Tribal governments will split $8 billion. Steven Mnuchin will decide how the tribal government money will be divided. The Inspector General of the Treasury must investigate the receipt, disbursement, and use of funds. TITLE VI - Miscellaneous Provisions Sec. 6001: Allows the Postal Service to borrow $10 billion from the Treasury Department. Division B - Emergency Appropriations for Coronavirus Health Response and Agency Operations Bureau of Prisons Sec. 12003: The Secretary of Health and Human Services “shall appropriately consider” distributing personal protective equipment and test kits to the Bureau of Prisons for use by inmates and staff. Sec. 12005: Authorizes and appropriates $300 million that the Secretary of Commerce can use for direct payments to subsistence, commercial, and charter fishery businesses. Department of Energy Sec. 14002: Extends the authority for the Secretary of Energy to sell oil from the strategic petroleum reserve and gives the Department of Energy the authority to sell $900 million worth of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, $450 million in 2021 and 2022, on top of the $450 million they can sell in 2020. The Judiciary Sec. 15002: Allows for criminal proceedings to be conducted via video teleconferencing until 30 days after the national emergency declaration terminates. It will only be allowed with the consent of the defendant or juvenile after they talk to a lawyer. Election Security Grants Provides $400 million to prepare for the 2020 Federal election cycle, domestically or internationally. The money must be given by the Election Assistance Commission to the states within 30 days. There is no direction on how the money is divided among states. The states have to submit reports on how they use the money. Money not used by December 31, 2020 has to be returned to the Treasury. Pandemic Response Accountability Committee Sec. 15010: Creates a Pandemic Response Accountability Committee that will investigate and report on the use of COVID-19 funds through September 2025. The committee will be operated by two full time paid employees and the other members will be inspectors generals from at least 9 federal agencies. The committee will have enforceable subpoena power. The committee is allowed, but not required, to hold public hearings. The committee will have a public website that is required to provide their findings, data, some contracting information, division of COVID-19 funds by state and congressional district, agency plans for use of funds, all recommendations made to the agencies, etc. Department of Homeland Security Sec. 16004: Prohibits the Department of Homeland Security from transferring War on Terror funds for the COVID-19 efforts. Sec. 16006: The Secretary of Homeland Security must extend the REAL-ID deadline until at least September 30, 2021. Department of Health and Human Services Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund Provides an additional $27 billion for “developing necessary countermeasures and vaccines, prioritizing platform-based technologies with US based manufacturing capabilities, the purchase of vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and necessary medical supplies”. Products purchased by the Federal government must be purchased in accordance with regulations on fair and reasonable pricing, ensuring affordability in the commercial market is optional. The HHS Secretary can not take any action that would slow down the development of the products. $16 billion can be spent on purchasing items for the Strategic National Stockpile. Funds can be used to construct or renovate “US based next generation manufacturing facilities, other than facilities owned by the United States government” in addition to the authority to construct or renovate private facilities that manufacture vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. Adds an additional $100 billion to reimburse health care providers - public, private, and for profit - for COVID-19 expenses. Sec. 18115: Every lab that performs or analyzes a COVID-19 test must report the result of each test to the Secretary of Health and Human Services until the end of the HHS Secretary’s public health declaration with respect of COVID-19. State Department Sec. 21012: Provides $3 billion for the International Development Association (World Bank), $7.3 billion for the African Development Bank, and authorizes the Treasury “to make loans in an amount not to exceed the dollar equivalent 28,202,470,000 of Special Drawing Rights (which is approximately $38.5 billion as of April 21, 2020) OTC Drugs Bill Information Article: H.R.3443 - Over-the-Counter Monograph Safety, Innovation, and Reform Act of 2019, Congress.gov Article: S.2740 - Over-the-Counter Monograph Safety, Innovation, and Reform Act of 2019, Congress.gov Article: Roll Call Vote 116th Congress - 1st Session On Passage of the Bill (S. 2740), United States Senate, December 10, 2019 Bill Profile: H.R.3443: Clients Lobbying on H.R.3443: Over-the-Counter Monograph Safety, Innovation, and Reform Act of 2019, OpenSecrets.org Bill Profile: H.R.3443: Lobbyists lobbying on H.R.3443: Over-the-Counter Monograph Safety, Innovation, and Reform Act of 2019, OpenSecrets.org Sen. Johnny Isakson - Georgia: Top Industries 1995 - 2020, OpenSecrets.org Sen. Lamar Alexander - Tennessee: Top Industries 1995 - 2020, OpenSecrets.org Articles/Documents Update: Message from Jennifer Roberts, CEO of Chase Business Banking Chase Banking, April 23, 2020 Article: Hard-hit restaurants, gyms and other businesses are battling insurers over the coronavirus, sparking a new Washington lobbying war By Tom Hamburger and Tony Romm, The Washington Post, April 22, 2020 Article: Pelosi says Shall will stay on oversight commission after failure to disclose stock sales by Jeremy Herb and Lauren Fox, CNN, April 22, 2020.  Article: Vaccine Chief Says He Was Removed After Questioning Drug Trump Promoted The New York Times, April 22, 2020 Article: Highlights of the Nearly $500B Coronavirus Relief Bill The New York Times, April 21, 2020 Article: Publicly traded firms get $365M in small-business loans By REESE DUNKLIN, JUSTIN PRITCHARD, JUSTIN MYERS and KRYSTA FAURIA, Associated Press, April 21, 2020 Article: Restaurants’ bailout problem: Unemployment pays more By IAN KULLGREN, Politico, April 20, 2020 Article: Medical Staffing Companies Cut Doctors’ Pay While Spending Millions on Political Ads By Isaac Arnsdorf, ProPublica, April 20, 2020 Article: The coronavirus could force more doctors to sell — or shutter By Bob Herman, Axios, April 20, 2020 Article: Chase and other banks shuffled Paycheck Protection Program small business applications, lawsuit says By Dalvin Brown, USA Today, April 20, 2020 Article: Shake Shack returning $10 million government loan meant for small businesses By Stephanie Ruhle and Alex Johnson, NBC News, April 20, 2020 Article: WTI crude price goes negative for the first time in history By Cameron Wallace, World Oil, April 20, 2020 Article: In Race for Small-Business Loans, Winning Hinged on Where Firms Bank By Ruth Simon and Peter Rudegeair, The Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2020 Article: Zoom's Security Woes Were No Secret to Business Partners Like Dropbox By Natasha Singer and Nicole Perlroth, The New York Times, April 20, 2020 Article: A raw deal By Judd Legum, Popular Information, April 20, 2020 Article: The Trickle-Up Bailout By Matt Taibbi, Taibbi, April 17, 2020 Article: Donna Shalala Selection Makes a Mockery of Bailout Oversight Panel by David Dayen, The American Prospect, April 18, 2020.  Press Release: Pelosi Appoints Congresswoman Donna Shalala to Congressional Oversight Commission of the CARES Act, April 17, 2020.  Article: Ruth’s Chris Steak House Gets $20 Million From Coronavirus Aid Program By Charity L. Scott, The Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2020 Article: The COVID-19 Bailout That’s Left Every Hospital Unhappy In Its Own Way By Rachana Pradhan and Lauren Weber, Kaiser Health News, April 16, 2020 Article: I’m Overseeing the Coronavirus Relief Bill. The Strings Aren’t Attached. By Bharat Ramamurti, The New York Times, April 16, 2020 Article: House lawmakers indefinitely postpone return to Washington By Mike Lillis and Scott Wong, The Hill, April 16, 2020 Article: Paycheck Protection Program out of money: Thousands of small businesses shut out By Stephen Gandel, CBS News, April 16, 2020 Article: Here Are the Contracts Showing How $4.5 Trillion in Stimulus Was Outsourced to Wall Street By Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wall Street on Parade, April 16, 2020 Article: Most Patients Undergoing Ground And Air Ambulance Transportation Receive Sizable Out-Of-Network Bills By Karan R. Chhabra, Keegan McGuire, Kyle H. Sheetz, John W. Scott, Ushapoorna Nuliyalu, and Andrew M. Ryan, HealthAffairs, April 15, 2020 Article: Renters Are Being Forced From Their Homes Despite Eviction Moratoriums Meant to Protect Them By Alana Semuels, Time, April 15, 2020 Article: One Person is Overseeing Congress's Bailout Loans. He Wants Answers. by Alan Rappeport, New York Times, April 15, 2020.  Article: Policy Memo: Federal Reserve Lending Facilities for Private Companies and Securitizations Americans for Financial Reform, April 15, 2020 Article: Hedge Fund Managers Claiming Bailouts as Small Businesses By Katherine Burton and Joshua Fineman, Bloomberg, April 14, 2020 Article: Rural hospitals shut out of stimulus loans face financial crisis By Rachel Roubein, Politico, April 14, 2020 Article: Tax change in coronavirus package overwhelmingly benefits millionaires, congressional body finds By Jeff Stein, The Washington Post, April 14, 2020 Article: WHITEHOUSE, DOGGETT RELEASE NEW ANALYSIS SHOWING GOP TAX PROVISIONS IN CARES ACT OVERWHELMINGLY BENEFIT MILLION-DOLLAR-PLUS EARNERS Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Senator for Rhode Island, April 14, 2020 Article: Your Coronavirus Check Is Coming. Your Bank Can Grab It. By David Dayen, American Prospect, April 14, 2020 Article: Tax change in coronavirus package overwhelmingly benefits millionaires, congressional body finds By Jeff Stein, The Washington Post, April 14, 2020 Article: How Some Rich Americans Are Getting Stimulus ‘Checks’ Averaging $1.7 Million By Shahar Ziv, Forbes, April 14, 2020 Article: Stimulus Oversight Panel Has One Person Trying to Watch $2.2 Trillion Alone By Joshua Green, Bloomberg, April 14, 2020 Article: Coronavirus antibody testing must be covered free of charge, feds say By Stefan Becket, CBS News, April 13, 2020 Article: Unsanitized: Meet The Corporate Bailout’s First Policeman By David Dayen, American Prospect, April 13, 2020 Article: Who's getting these hundreds of billions in government aid? For now, the public may be in the dark By Peter Whoriskey and Heather Long, The Washington Post, April 13, 2020 Article: CARES Act Package Ushers in Changes to OTC Drug Review Process Duane Morris, April 13, 2020 Article: Commission calls for review of election security standards By Tom Temin, Federal News Network, April 13, 2020 Article: Medical Staffing Companies Owned by Rich Investors Cut Doctor Pay and Now Want Bailout Money By Isaac Arnsdorf, ProPublica, April 10, 2020 Article: Furor Erupts: Billions Going To Hospitals Based On Medicare Billings, Not COVID-19 By Jay Hancock and Phil Galewitz and Elizabeth Lucas, Kaiser Health News, April 10, 2020 Article: Providers Begin Receiving $30B in Emergency Funding from HHS, Plus Newly Suspended State Regs Home Care Association of New York State Blog, April 10, 2020 Article: The Colleges Getting The Most Money From The Stimulus Bill By Wesley Whistle, Forbes, April 10, 2020 Article: It is Not All About the Coronavirus: The CARES Act Brings Long-Awaited Over-the-Counter (OTC) Monograph Reform By Genevieve Razick and Carolina Wirth, Arnall Golden Gregory LLP, JDSUPRA, April 10, 2020 Article: Unsanitized: Federal Reserve Rescue Is the Best Rescue By David Dayen, The American Prospect, April 10, 2020 Article: The Fed’s ‘Main Street’ Mistake Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2020 Article: Exclusive: These for-profit colleges could reap up to $1 billion in federal bailout money By Matt Smith, Market Watch, April 9, 2020 Article: Fed's balance sheet swells to record $6.13 trillion By Jonnelle Marte and Ann Saphir, Reuters, April 9, 2020 Article: 'Extremely Alarming': Coronavirus Stimulus Law Allows the Federal Reserve to Hold Secret Meetings on Corporate Bailouts By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, April 9, 2020 Article: Congress Must Have Skipped the First Three Seasons of Trump Reality Show By Eleanor Eagan, The American Prospect, April 9, 2020 Alert: U.S. CARES ACT ENABLES LONG-AWAITED OTC DRUG REGULATORY MODERNIZATION: KEY HIGHLIGHTS By Brian Burgess and Julie Tibbets, Goodwin, April 8, 2020 Article: Coronavirus: CMS approves nearly $34 billion in accelerated/advance payments to healthcare providers By Keith A. Reynolds, Medical Economics, April 8, 2020 Article: Trump removes inspector general who was to oversee $2 trillion stimulus spending By Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post, April 7, 2020 Article: Welfare for Wall Street By Nomi Prins, The Nation, April 7, 2020 Article: Congress fixed tax code “retail glitch” and gave real estate a tax windfall By Rich Bockmann and Kevin Sun, The Real Deal, April 7, 2020 Article: Trump removes inspector general who was to oversee $trillion stimulus spending By Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post, April 7, 2020 Article: Big Restaurant, Hotel Chains Won Exemption to Get Small Business Loans By Bob Davis and Heather Haddon, The Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2020 Article: CARES Act Contains Significant New Over-The-Counter (OTC) Drug Provisions by Charles Andres, Wilson Sonsini, April 6, 2020 Article: Trump’s Aggressive Advocacy of Malaria Drug for Treating Coronavirus Divides Medical Community By Peter Baker, Katie Rogers, David Enrich and Maggie Haberman, The New York Times, April 6, 2020 Article: Private Flights Getting Cheaper Thanks to Stimulus Tax Relief By Katherine Chiglinsky and Tom Metcalf, Bloomberg, April 6, 2020 Article: 2020 CARES Act—FAQs for Nonprofit Organizations and Donors By James P. Joseph Bridget M. Weiss Dana O. Campos, Arnold & Porter, April 6, 2020 Article: What does the CARES Act mean for net operating losses and non-corporate business losses? By Douglas Charnas and Paul Leonard, JDSUPRA, April 3, 2020 Article: Trump announces intent to nominate White House lawyer Brian Miller as inspector general for $2 trillion coronavirus law by Jeff Stein, The Washington Post, April 3, 2020 Letter: Addressed to Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar By Alexander Sammon, American College of Emergency Physicians, April 3, 2020 Article: Unsanitized: Why Banks Don’t Want to Help Small Businesses By David Dayen, The American Prospect, April 3, 2020 Article: Unsanitized: Aid Package Status Update By David Dayen, The American Prospect, April 2, 2020 Article: It’s Steve Mnuchin’s Economy Now By Alexander Sammon, American Prospect, April 1, 2020 Article: US aims to lease space in emergency oil stockpile, after buying plan canceled, sources say Reuters, April 1, 2020 Article: Trump may rent Strategic Petroleum Reserve storage to U.S. drillers By ARI NATTER, JENNIFER A. DLOUHY AND STEPHEN CUNNINGHAM, World Oil, April 1, 2020 Article: Temporary Waiver of Required Minimum Distribution Rules By Jean McDevitt Bullens, Baker Newman Noyes, April 1, 2020 Article: Unsanitized: It’s the First of the Month By David Dayen, The American Prospect, April 1, 2020 Article: Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat says bank is 'working around the clock' on small business relief program By Hugh Son, The CNBC, April 1, 2020 Article: Tax Savings Opportunities from the CARES Act By John Werlhof, CLA, March 31, 2020 Article: The Relief Package Ushers In Trump's Planned Economy By Matt Stoller, Wired, March 31, 2020 Article: Federal COVID-19 Economic Relief and Its Impact on the Energy Sector: An Overview Energy Alert, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, March 31, 2020 Article: Boeing Will Take Aid, Won’t Give Equity Banking Exchange, March 31, 2020 Article: Bailing Out the Bailout By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone, March 31, 2020 Article: US Banks Welcome $2trn Stimulus Package By David White and Zachary Kribs, Kidney News Online, March 30, 2020 Article: CARES Act to Improve Options for People on Home Dialysis By David White and Zachary Kribs, Kidney News Online, March 30, 2020 Statement: FDA on Signing of the COVID-19 Emergency Relief Bill, Including Landmark Over-the-Counter Drug Reform and User Fee Legislation Commissioner of Food and Drugs - Food and Drug Administration - Stephen M. Hahn M.D., U.S. Food & Drug Administration, March 30, 2020 Article: Key Provisions in the CARES Act for Health Care Providers By Health Law Practice - von Briesen & Roper, s.c., The National Law Review, March 30, 2020 Article: CARES On Campus: Stimulus Program & Higher Education By Anne Cartwright and Julie Miceli, JDSUPRA, March 30, 2020 Article: Inside the CARES Act: Changes to the Bankruptcy Code Under the CARES Act By Melissa Anne Peña, The National Law Review, March 29, 2020 Article: Lawmakers Pack Federal Stimulus Bill With Pet Provisions By Brody Mullins and Ted Mann, The Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2020 Press Release: Trump Suggests He Can Gag Inspector General for Stimulus Bailout Program By Charlie Savage, The New York Times, March 27, 2020 Press Release: Statement by the President The White House, March 27, 2020 Article: Unsanitized: The Federal Reserve Loads the Cannon By David Dayen, The American Prospect, March 27, 2020 Article: Inside the talks on the largest U.S. bailout: frantic negotiations, partisan tensions and a Trump tweet By Seung Min Kim, Mike DeBonis, Erica Werner and Paul Kane, The Washington Post, March 27, 2020 Article: Over-the-Counter (OTC) Drug Monograph Process U.S. Food & Drug Administration, March 27, 2020 Article: The Health Care Industry and the CARES Act: Insight and Next Steps Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, March 27, 2020 Article: Bank Regulatory Provisions in the CARES Act By Robert Klinger, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, JDSUPRA, March 27, 2020 Article: Fed Releases Details of BlackRock Deal for Virus Response By Matthew Goldstein, The New York Times, March 27, 2020 Article: Stimulus Bill Allows Federal Reserve to Conduct Meetings in Secret; Gives Fed $454 Billion Slush Fund for Wall Street Bailouts By Pam Martens and Russ Martens, CounterPunch, March 27, 2020 Document: Terms of Assignment for BlackRock on Behalf of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Regarding Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility New York Fed, March 27, 2020 Press Release: Acting Secretary Chad Wolf Statement on the REAL ID Enforcement Deadline Homeland Security, March 26, 2020 Article: How the Fed’s Magic Money Machine Will Turn $454 Billion Into $4 Trillion By Jeanna Smialek, The New York Times, March 26, 2020 Article: Unsanitized: The Essential Imbalance of the 2020 Bailout By David Dayen, American Prospect, March 26, 2020 Article: Bonanza for Rich Real Estate Investors, Tucked Into Stimulus Package By Jesse Drucker, The New York Times, March 26, 2020 Article: Funding to refill U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve cut from stimulus plan By STEPHEN CUNNINGHAM, ARI NATTER AND JENNIFER A. DLOUHY, World Oil, March 25, 2020 Article: Stop the $6 Trillion Coronavirus Corporate Coup! By Matt Stoller, BIG by Matt Stoller, March 25, 2020 Article: Unsanitized: Bailouts, A Tradition Unlike Any Other By David Dayen, American Prospect, March 25, 2020 Article: Fed taps BlackRock to run emergency programs By Dawn Lim, Market Watch, March 25, 2020 Article: Avoid Taxes, Receive Federal Bailouts By Alexander Sammon, American Prospect, March 25, 2020 Document: INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT AGREEMENT New York Fed, March 25, 2020 Article: Fine Print of Stimulus Bill Contains Special Deals for Industries By Eric Lipton and Kenneth P. Vogel, The New York Times, March 25, 2020 Article: Congress to bail out firms that avoided taxes, safety regulations and spent billions boosting their stock By Jonathan O'Connell, The Washington Post, March 25, 2020 Article: 'Completely Dangerous and Unacceptable,' Ocasio-Cortez Says of Impending Senate Recess in Midst of Coronavirus Crisis By Eoin Higgins, Common Dreams, March 25, 2020 Article: Senate leaving DC until April 20 after coronavirus stimulus vote By Jordain Carney, The Hill, March 25, 2020 Article: Senate stimulus bill extends funding for abstinence education By Tyler Olson, Fox News, March 25, 2020 Article: Oil purchase to fill strategic reserve dropped from stimulus By Benjamin J. Hulac, Roll Call, March 25, 2020 Article: U.S. Fed hires BlackRock to help execute mortgage-backed securities purchases By Pete Schroeder and Michelle Price, Reuters, March 24, 2020 Article: What is the Exchange Stabilization Fund? And how is it being used in the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis? By Sage Belz and David Wessel, Brookings, March 24, 2020 Press Release: Federal Reserve announces extensive new measures to support the economy Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, March 23, 2020 Article: COVID-19 Update: Federal Reserve Launches TALF (Again) By Scott A. Cammarn and Mark Chorazak, The National Law Review, March 23, 2020 Article: Trump's coronavirus eviction freeze won't keep a roof over our heads, advocates say By Tim Fitzsimons, NBC News, March 21, 2020 Article: Addressed to Speaker Pelosi, Leader McConnell, Leader McCarthy, and Leader Schumer By Ben Lane, America's Health Insurance Plans, BlueCross BlueShield Association, March 19, 2020 Article: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HUD suspending all foreclosures and evictions By Ben Lane, Housing Wire, March 18, 2020 Press Release: Federal Reserve Board announces establishment of a Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) to support the flow of credit to households and businesses Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, March 17, 2020 Article: Federal Reserve cuts rates to zero and launches massive $700 billion quantitative easing program By Steve Liesman, CNBC, March 15, 2020 Article: How the drug industry got its way on the coronavirus By Sarah Karlin-Smith, Politico, March 5, 2020 Article: How Much Of Boeing’s Revenues Comes From The U.S. Government? By Trefis Team, Great Speculations, Forbes, January 2, 2020 Article: Funding Legislation Delays $4B in Medicaid DSH Payment Cuts By Jacqueline LaPointe, Revcycle Intelligence, December 20, 2019 Article: Southwest Airlines reaches confidential settlement with Boeing for some of its 737 Max losses By Lori Aratani, The Washington Post, December 13, 2019 Article: Boeing 737 Max Factory Was Plagued With Problems, Whistle-Blower Says By David Gelles, The New York Times, December 9, 2019 Article: How Much Income Puts You in the Top 1%, 5%, 10%? By Julia Kagan, Investopedia, November 21, 2019 Article: Senator Seeks Last Win In Over-the-Counter Drug Bill (Corrected) By Alex Roff, Bloomberg Law, October 31, 2019 Article: Boeing’s 737 Woes Aren’t Hurting Its Pursuit of Military Contracts, Exec Says BY Marcus Weisgerber, Defense One, October 15, 2019 Article: What Percentage of Americans Owns Stock? By Lydia Saad, Gallup, September 13, 2019 Article: FDA Chief of Staff Calls OTC Monograph Reform a Top Priority By Michael Mezher, Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society, May 21, 2019 Article: These 30 companies, including Boeing, get the most money from the federal government By Samuel Stebbins and Michael B. Sauter, USA Today, March 29, 2019 Article: Boeing Was ‘Go, Go, Go’ to Beat Airbus With the 737 Max By David Gelles, Natalie Kitroeff, Jack Nicas and Rebecca R. Ruiz, The New York Times, March 23, 2019 Article: Agencies reporting proposal for the implementation of Current Expected Credit Losses (CECL) Deloitte, January 22, 2019 Article: FDA Opens the Door for a Broader Range of Over-the-Counter (OTC) Drugs by Charles Andres, Wilson Sonsini, August 2, 2018 Article: Jared Kushner Paid No Income Tax for years By Jesse Drucker and Emily Flitter, The New York Times, October 13, 2018 Guidance for Industry: Innovative Approaches for Nonprescription Drug Products U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), July 2018 Article: HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES: Action Needed to Improve Participation in Education's HBCU Capital Financing Program Office of Public Affairs, GAO, July 26, 2018 Article: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Alex Azar By Katelyn Newman, U.S. News, January 29, 2018 Article: The Richest 10% of Americans Now Own 84% of All Stocks Rob Wile, Money, December 19, 2017 Article: Why the newest sunscreens still haven't hit the U.S. market By Brady Dennis, The Washington Post, May 11, 2015 Article: Washington’s Skin Canc

Analog Jones celebrates Stuart Gordon by watching one of his lesser-known movies when we review Space Truckers from 1996.  Directed by Stuart GordonWritten by Ted Mann and Stuart Gordon Starring: Dennis Hopper as John CanyonStephen Doriff as Mike PucciDebi Mazar as CindyCharles Dance as Babel/MacanudoGeorge Wendt as KellerBarbara Crampton as CarolReleased in April 1997 in the USA budget of $25 million How to find Analog Jones Discuss these movies and more on our Facebook page. You can also listen to us on iTunes, Podbean, and Youtube! Email us at analogjonestof@gmail.com with any comments or questions!

Someone is trying to put the SQUEEZE on Castillo and the team is having none of it. But that’s not what we’re focused on. With one of the corniest villains ever in Miami Vice. The Bond knockoff is desperate to find out who stole his drugs and is willing to frame a Congresswoman to force her son to turn them over. The Vice team is hot on his trail but no one suspects Edwina. We have a lot of fun with this episode, right up until John has to go John Wick on everyone that worked on the show. Melissa is concerned about the attitude of the hospital staff working on Castillo. Dominic is all caught up in Sonny’s therapy sessions and John… John is a little upset at Vice (massive understatement) and loves Edwina. Show notes and more: http://gowiththeheat.com Early show access, a custom newsletter & a free mustache! https://www.patreon.com/gowiththeheat Episode Information Miami Vice – Season 05 Ep. 11 – Miami Squeeze Premiered Feb. 17, 1989 Writer: Robert Ward (This is his 6th. writing credit, 2 more coming. Also the shows co-producer), Peter McCabe (4 & last writing credit) and Ted Mann (aside from his funny name he wrote for a lot of stuff, won an Emmy for writing on NYPD Blue & also wrote something called “Disco Beaver from Outer Space in 1978”) Director: Michelle Manning (also directed Fruit of the Poison Tree) Guest Stars Robert Joy as Sebastian Ross Justin Lazard as Detective Joey Hardin/Joey Chandler Paul Provenza as Ricky DeMaria Conrad Roberts as Commissioner Henry Williford Peter Nelson as Dan Shaw Rita Moreno as Congresswoman Madelyn Woods Rita has for real won the EGOT. Sup PMT… Music Working on It by Chris Rea Hard Left by Tackhead Feedback Got some feedback? Contact Us. Twitter, Insta & Facebook @gowiththeheat Email: gowiththeheat[@]gmail[.]com Dom Twitter: @domcorriveau John Twitter: @corriveau_john Melissa Twitter: @mrsmelcorriveau Intro & transition music provided by: Cuban Sandwich, Voice Over Under Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Someone is trying to put the SQUEEZE on Castillo and the team is having none of it. But that’s not what we’re focused on. With one of the corniest villains ever in Miami Vice. The Bond knockoff is desperate to find out who stole his drugs and is willing to frame a Congresswoman to force her son to turn them over. The Vice team is hot on his trail but no one suspects Edwina. We have a lot of fun with this episode, right up until John has to go John Wick on everyone that worked on the show. Melissa is concerned about the attitude of the hospital staff working on Castillo. Dominic is all caught up in Sonny’s therapy sessions and John… John is a little upset at Vice (massive understatement) and loves Edwina. Show notes and more: http://gowiththeheat.com Early show access, a custom newsletter & a free mustache! https://www.patreon.com/gowiththeheat Episode Information Miami Vice – Season 05 Ep. 11 – Miami Squeeze Premiered Feb. 17, 1989 Writer: Robert Ward (This is his 6th. writing credit, 2 more coming. Also the shows co-producer), Peter McCabe (4 & last writing credit) and Ted Mann (aside from his funny name he wrote for a lot of stuff, won an Emmy for writing on NYPD Blue & also wrote something called “Disco Beaver from Outer Space in 1978”) Director: Michelle Manning (also directed Fruit of the Poison Tree) Guest Stars Robert Joy as Sebastian Ross Justin Lazard as Detective Joey Hardin/Joey Chandler Paul Provenza as Ricky DeMaria Conrad Roberts as Commissioner Henry Williford Peter Nelson as Dan Shaw Rita Moreno as Congresswoman Madelyn Woods Rita has for real won the EGOT. Sup PMT… Music Working on It by Chris Rea Hard Left by Tackhead Feedback Got some feedback? Contact Us. Twitter, Insta & Facebook @gowiththeheat Email: gowiththeheat[@]gmail[.]com Dom Twitter: @domcorriveau John Twitter: @corriveau_john Melissa Twitter: @mrsmelcorriveau Intro & transition music provided by: Cuban Sandwich, Voice Over Under Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

“Visual search has become table stakes.” Ted Mann is the CEO of Slyce, the market leader in image recognition and visual search. Slyce has created the first computer vision system for visual product search and has led to customers like Macy's, Home Depot, JC Penney, Neiman Marcus, Best Buy, and Urban Outfitters to deploy image recognition in their apps. Before Slyce, Ted founded SnipSnap, the first mobile app to let consumers save printed coupons to their smartphone and redeem in store. At the time SnipSnap was acquired, it was profitable and the app had five million users, who redeemed more than 250 million coupons. Prior to starting SnipSnap, Ted was digital development director at Gannett, where he led the development of the company's first hyper-local network, daily deal websites, and blog operations, in addition to managing the core news websites. Listen And Learn: How he has differentiated Slyce’s technology in a noisy and very competitive marketplace. Visual search and its impact on human behavior. How even small retailers can adapt and incorporate a visual and voice search strategy that works for them. It’s more than the technology; it’s about solving customers’ problems. How product recognition technology is transforming the whole self-checkout, scan-and-go experience in grocery stores.   TO LEARN MORE ABOUT SLYCE, CLICK HERE. TO FIND  TED MANN  ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

Episode #5 of the Agents of E-Commerce Podcast brings a conversation on Computer Vision with Ted Mann, founder of SnipSnap and CEO of Slyce. With the incredible power of the advanced cameras that everyone carries around in his or her pockets (your phone), new experiences and engagement opportunities await retailers and customers.  We discuss Ted's history as a founder and CEO and how Visual Search fits within the context of computer vision developments over the past decade.  Check out Ted's company, Slice.it or experience Slyce firsthand powering the Home Depot, Macy's, and Tommy Hllfiger visual search within their apps. You can also follow Ted on twitter @turkeymonkey. I probably should have asked him about that twitter handle...Next time.

Chris interviews Ted Mann, CEO of Slyce in the first of our Spotlight Series on innovators shaping the future of retail. More on Slyce: www.slyce.it More on Omni Talk: www.omnitalk.blog -- Music from HookSounds.com

The Trial is done. The guilty verdicts are in. So in an effort to turn the page on this chaotic chapter in New Jersey's history, we present Bridgegatepalooza - - a wrap-up of the political retribution scheme that derailed the rising star of the national Republican party, and ended – we thought – the political future of Chris Christie. Host David Furst is joined by a group of reporters who covered the Bridgegate saga as it unfolded. Shawn Boburg, formerly with the Record now with the Washington Post… Heather Haddon and Ted Mann with the Wall Street Journal... Tom Moran, the Star-Ledger's Editorial Page Editor... and of course, WNYC's Andrea Bernstein and Matt Katz. Looking back after the trial, Ted Mann says, "These are people who didn't think they were gonna get caught. And when they didn't think they were gonna get caught, they weren't weeping and they weren't appealing to you to consider their backgrounds in public service… They were speaking very nastily about their fellow human beings and they were doing things that they would never justify in the light of day."  

Douglas Tirola's outrageous documentary DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD: THE STORY OF THE NATIONAL LAMPOON, is an inside look at the rise and fall of the legendary humor magazine that launched dozens of careers and broke thousands of taboos. From the 1970s thru the 1990s, there was no hipper, no more outrageous comedy in print than The National Lampoon, the groundbreaking humor magazine that pushed the limits of taste and acceptability - and then pushed them even harder. Parodying everything from politics, religion, entertainment and the whole of American lifestyle, the Lampoon eventually went on to branch into successful radio shows, record albums, live stage revues and movies, including ANIMAL HOUSE and NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION, launching dozens of huge careers on the way, including John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Christopher Guest, Richard Belzer, Gilda Radner, Brian Doyle-Murray, Bill Murray, Joe Flaherty, Harold Ramis, Michael O'Donoghue, Doug Kenney, Henry Beard, George W. S. Trow, Chris Miller, P. J. O'Rourke, Michael O'Donoghue, Chris Rush, Sean Kelly, Tony Hendra, Brian McConnachie, Gerald Sussman, Ellis Weiner, Danny Abelson, Ted Mann, Chris Cluess, Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Jeff Greenfield, and John Hughes. As well as cartoonists, photographers and illustrators appeared in the magazine's pages, including Neal Adams, Gahan Wilson, Michael Sullivan, Ron Barrett, Peter Bramley, Vaughn Bode, Bruce McCall, Rick Meyerowitz, M. K. Brown, Shary Flenniken, Bobby London, Edward Gorey, Jeff Jones, Joe Orlando, Arnold Roth, Rich Grote, Ed Subitzky, Mara McAfee, Sam Gross, Charles Rodrigues, Buddy Hickerson, B. K. Taylor, Birney Lettick, Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, Marvin Mattelson, Stan Mack, Chris Callis, John E. Barrett, Raymond Kursar and Andy Lackow. Director Tirola tells the story of its rise and fall through fresh, candid interviews with its key staff, and illustrated with hundreds of outrageous images from the magazine itself (along with never-seen interview footage from the magazine's prime). Director Tirola stops by to talk about the supernova of comedic satire that was The Lampoon and its influential legacy. For news and updates go to: magpictures.com/nationallampoon

Jim Mann is a Washington-based author who has written a series of award-winning books about American foreign policy and about China. He is a former newspaper reporter, foreign correspondent and columnist who wrote for more than twenty years for the Los Angeles Times. He is now an author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Mann has also been a contributor to National Public Radio and to several magazines, including The Atlantic, The New Republic and The American Prospect. Mann was born in Albany, New York, and graduated from Harvard College. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife Caroline Dexter, who teaches classics at Howard University. He has a daughter, Elizabeth Mann, and a son, Ted Mann.

Jim Mann is a Washington-based author who has written a series of award-winning books about American foreign policy and about China. He is a former newspaper reporter, foreign correspondent and columnist who wrote for more than twenty years for the Los Angeles Times. He is now an author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Mann has also been a contributor to National Public Radio and to several magazines, including The Atlantic, The New Republic and The American Prospect. Mann was born in Albany, New York, and graduated from Harvard College. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife Caroline Dexter, who teaches classics at Howard University. He has a daughter, Elizabeth Mann, and a son, Ted Mann.

Canadian TV writer and producer Ted Mann, joined me to talk about his time making comics, working for National Lampoon and more. We also discuss his film work and how that all connects together. You can read Ted’s first comic … Continue reading →

Reporter Patrick Healy of "The New York Times" discusses the lawsuit between the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, and the musical's former director, Julie Taymor. We then pay tribute to the late producer Theodore Mann.

Our next stop on the Meditation Now tour, 2002, takes us to Ted Mann Hall, St Paul, MN, where S.N. Goenka discusses Vipassana meditation. Meditation Now Talk with Q&A Ted Mann Hall Recorded July 12, 2002 Listen to Audio Download Audio (23 MB)   Meditation Now: Copyright, 2002 Vipassana Research Institute There is more information about vipassana meditation at Dhamma.org, and books and audio resources available for purchase in the Pariyatti bookstore. May all beings be happy!