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The Capote Tapes director Ebs Burnough: “When you go back and think of Truman interviewing Marlon Brando. Marlon Brando was like, I’ll never give another interview, as a result.”

Ebs Burnough’s The Capote Tapes, co-written with Holly Whiston, features the interviews recorded by George Plimpton of Lauren Bacall, Norman Mailer, Lee Radziwill, Slim Keith, and Gore Vidal, along with recent on-camera remembrances and interpretations of Truman Capote from Kate Harrington, Jay McInerney, Colm Tóibín, Dick Cavett, André Leon Talley, John Richardson, Dotson Rader, Lewis Lapham, Sally Quinn, and Sadie Stein.

Ebs Burnough with Anne-Katrin Titze on a Truman Capote Swan: “I have to say Slim Keith was the most gutsy, direct, honest of the group.”

Capote’s “Swans”, Babe Paley, Cz Guest, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Lee Radziwill, and Slim Keith, the stylish socialites who used him more or less for their amusement and to alleviate their boredom,...

By 1968, despite, or maybe because of, their huge popularity and success, the Beatles found themselves spiritually exhausted. “We’d been the Beatles, which was marvelous,” Paul McCartney later recalled in The Beatles Anthology. “We’d tried for it not to go to our heads and we were doing quite well – we weren’t getting too spaced out or big-headed – but I think generally there was a feeling of: ‘Yeah, well, it’s great to be famous, it’s great to be rich – but what it’s all for?'”

The...

Lapham's Quarterly Editor and Publisher Lewis Lapham announced today their annual gala, the Decades Ball The 1950s, was held last night, June 3 at Capitale 130 Bowery at Grand Street. The evening, emceed by Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, included performances and readings by Tom Hanks and Patricia Clarkson, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Martha Plimpton, Tony Kushner, Ari Graynor, Steven Pasquale, Francois Battiste, Paul Muldoon, Nellie McKay, and a toast by Editor and Publisher of Lapham's Quarterly, Lewis Lapham. Kevin Philips received the 2013 Janus Prize, presented by benefit co-chair Morley Safer.Check out photos from the event below...

Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, Brian DArcy James, Richard Thomas, Bryce Pinkham, Jay O. Sanders, Ari Graynor, Katherine Waterston, Emily Young, Oliver Platt, Justin Levine and Heath Calvert and Laphams Quarterly Editor Lewis Lapham celebrated the release of Laphams Quarterlys new Politics issue on Monday, October 15 at Joes Pub at The Public. The evening featured songs and selected readings centered on politics, money and power. Below is a clip of Brian d'Arcy James reading Mark Twain's A Presidential Candidate from 1879. Click to watch...

Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, Brian DArcy James, Richard Thomas, Bryce Pinkham, Jay O. Sanders, Ari Graynor, Katherine Waterston, Emily Young, Oliver Platt, Justin Levine and Heath Calvert and Laphams Quarterly Editor Lewis Lapham will celebrate the release of Laphams Quarterlys new Politics issue on Monday, October 15 at 700 Pm at Joes Pub at The Public. The evening will feature songs and selected readings centered on politics, money and power. Limited tickets to the one-night-only event are 20 and on sale now at 212 967-7555 or httpwww.joespub.com.

Netflix has revolutionized the home movie experience for fans of film with its instant streaming technology. Netflix Nuggets is my way of spreading the word about independent, classic and foreign films made available by Netflix for instant streaming.

This Week’s New Instant Releases…

Promised Lands (1974)

Streaming Available: 04/19/2011

Cast: Documentary

Director: Susan Sontag

Synopsis: Set in Israel during the final days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, this powerful documentary — initially barred by Israel authorities — from writer-director Susan Sontag examines divergent perceptions of the enduring Arab-Israeli clash. Weighing in on matters related to socialism, anti-Semitism, nation sovereignty and American materialism are The Last Jew writer Yoram Kaniuk and military physicist Yuval Ne’eman.

Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen (2009)

Streaming Available: 04/19/2011

Cast: Barbara Sukowa, Heino Ferch, Hannah Herzsprung, Gerald Alexander Held, Lena Stolze, Sunnyi Melles

Synopsis: Directed by longtime star of independent German cinema Margarethe von Trotta, this reverent...

With the news that Roger Hodge will cease editing Harper’s Magazine next week, some mediaphiles are already speculating about what the next move will be for the “Sexy Cowboy Editor,” as Gawker dubbed him (he’s the son of a Texas rancher and graduated from Sewanee). Two whispers gathering steam: either he’ll slide into Andy Ward’s literary editorship at GQ or, perhaps more appropriately, he’ll fill the editor’s chair at The Paris Review, which will be vacated by Philip Gourevitch in April. Either way Hodge would find himself in fitting surroundings. George Plimpton’s esteemed literary quarterly would be the perfect landing pad for an editor with Hodge’s highbrow chops, and GQ editor-in-chief Jim Nelson started his magazine career as a Harper’s intern (as did Hodge). Hodge took the helm of Harper’s in 2006, when Lewis Lapham departed after 28 years as editor. He...

Brash and obsessive, tech tycoon Tom Siebel believes that keeping teens off crystal meth is largely a matter of educating and scaring them. Could he be right?

As you might expect of a self-made billionaire, Tom Siebel exudes inexhaustibility. It's tiring just being around him. One afternoon last fall, Siebel bounds into the kitchen of his sprawling ranch house in central Montana, and after he takes very firm hold of my hand -- "Tom! Good to see you," he announces, shaking away, as if I might not have learned the name of the man whose 72,000-acre property I am visiting -- he asks, "Want to see some elk?" Siebel is wearing jeans, a plaid work shirt, and nerdy wire-rim glasses. He is out of breath because, in the hour since he stepped off a private jet from California, he has destroyed a round of clay pigeons on his shooting range.

Friends and family of Tim Russert are saddened by a piece in Harper's magazine by Lewis Lapham, who characterizes the late host of NBC's "Meet the Press" as a toady of the establishment and asks, "Why a requiem Mass for a pet canary?"

Russert died June 13 of a heart attack at age 58, and soon "the story was being wrapped up in the ribbons of a national tragedy, up there in lights with the death of President Ronald Reagan and the loss of Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer...

NEW YORK -- Maitland Primrose Group is launching a film distribution arm with its first acquisition, John Kirby's satirical documentary-musical The American Ruling Class, featuring appearances by Walter Cronkite, Mike Medavoy, Kurt Vonnegut and the late Robert Altman.

Maitland, parent company of Moving Pictures Media and its Moving Pictures Magazine, acquired worldwide rights to the film and will give it a theatrical release via Maitland Primrose Distribution.

Harper's Magazine's recently retired editor Lewis Lapham wrote and appears in the unconventional docu, which follows two fictional Yale students as they question various notable names about the U.S. class system Stylized musical numbers are included , as are appearances by Pete Seeger, Bill Bradley, James Baker and other top political figures.

The film, which screened at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival, will be launched Mar. 23 in Tempe, Arizona with other dates set to follow.

Roman Polanski created an atmosphere of "shock and awe" in the restaurant where he allegedly propositioned a woman before his murdered wife Sharon Tate's funeral, the London court in the director's libel trial heard yesterday. The Rosemary's Baby maverick is suing publisher Conde Nast over a Vanity Fair article in which he's accused of seducing a woman on the way to the burial of Tate, who was murdered by followers of Charles Manson in 1969. But the writer of the controversial feature, Lewis Lapham, claims he was at New York restaurant Elaine's, where the alleged incident took place, and was shocked when he overheard the 71-year-old chatting-up a "Swedish beauty" so soon after Tate's death. And Lapham claims a "hushed silence" fell upon the eaterie because of the "notoriety and horrible circumstances of his wife's murder and general sympathy for a man having suffered that sorrow". He told jurors Polanski had pulled up a chair between him and his friend Edward Perlberg's girlfriend Beate Telle and then began to talk to her in a forward way, praising her beauty. Lapham said, "He began to romance her and at one point had his hand on her leg and said, 'I could put you in the movies. I could make you the next Sharon Tate' He was attempting to impress her and express admiration for her looks. I was impressed by the remark not only because it was tasteless and vulgar and because it was a cliché." The 71-year-old gave evidence from France via video link to avoid extradition to America, where he's wanted for questioning on child sex charges dating back to 1977.