Posts by Live Talks Los Angeles
Maria Semple with Gigi Levangie
in conversation with Gigi Levangie
William Turner Gallery
Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 Michigan Avenue,
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS
$43 Reserved Section seat + Book
$20 General Admission Seat
$65 Two Reserved Section Seats + 1 book
Maria Semple is the author of This One Is Mine and Where’d You Go, Bernadette, which has been translated into eighteen languages. Her TV credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Mad About You, Saturday Night Live, Arrested Development, Suddenly Susan, and Ellen. She graduated from Barnard College with a degree in English. Today Will Be Different is her third novel.
“Today Will Be Different is so unique, so smart, so funny, so beautifully humane, so utterly of our times, it’s astonishing. I’ve scribbled exclamation points and underlined passages on almost every single page so I can go back and savor. I’ve started quoting it as if it’s already a classic—which, no doubt, it will be.” —Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl and Dark Places
Artistic madness, brilliant satire, inventive plotting, and most of all heart. Today Will Be Different takes all the best parts of her national bestseller from 2012, Where’d You Go, Bernadette and kicks it up a notch. Set in Seattle, New Orleans, Aspen and New York City, the book is a day in the life of Eleanor Flood, famed animator of a beloved TV show, mother of Timmy, her precocious makeup-wearing son, and wife of the star Seattle Seahawks hand surgeon, Joe. Early on in the day, a graphic memoir, a real illustrated story within the story, resurfaces from her past and threatens to reveal a buried family secret.
Gigi Levangie is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels. Her novel, Maneater, was made into a Lifetime miniseries, The Starter Wife was made into a USA Emmy-Award winning miniseries and series, starring Debra Messing. She wrote the original screenplay for the Julia Roberts blockbuster, Stepmom. Many of her screenplays and pilots have been optioned by NBC, ABC, Sony, and more. Levangie spent eight years as the head of television development for the legendary NBC head, Fred Silverman, where she began writing for film and tv.
Jane Alexander with Terrence McNally
8pm
in conversation with Terrence McNally
discussing her upcoming book,
Wild Things, Wild Places: Adventurous Tales of Wildlife and Conservation on Planet Earth
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS
$20 General Admission Section Seating (on sale July 1)
$45 Reserved Section seat + a copy of Wild, Wild Places
$95 Reception (6:30-7:30pm) + Reserved Section Seat
+ copy of Wild, Wild Places
Terrence McNally, a strategic communications consultant who helps organizations tell better stories, hosts a weekly interview show on the Progressive Voices Network on TuneIn and a monthly podcast with Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. All podcasts can be found here. For 17 years he hosted an interview show, Free Forum, on KPFK.
Julissa Arce with America Fererra
in conversation with America Ferrera
My True Story as an Undocumented Immigrant Who Became a Wall Street Executive
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404
This event is part of our Newer Voices Series.
General Admission tickets are complimentary, but we encourage you to support these newer authors and purchase their books.
PURCHASE TICKETS
Comp General Admission Tickets RSVP HERE
$30 Reserved Seat + Book
$35 Two Reserved Section Seats + 1 book
Julissa Arce is a writer, speaker, and social-justice advocate. She is the cofounder and chairman of the Ascend Educational Fund, a college scholarship and mentorship program that assists immigrant students, regardless of their immigration status, ethnicity, or national origin. Julissa is also a board member for the National Immigration Law Center and for College Spring. Prior to becoming an advocate, she built a successful career on Wall Street, working at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. Visit her website.
There are so many moments in Julissa’s journey that numbed my body and transported me fully into her harrowing experience. Her story broke my heart and then made it jump for joy.
―America Ferrera, actor, producer
What does an undocumented immigrant look like? What kind of family must she come from? How could she get into this country? What is the true price she must pay to remain in the United States?
Julissa Arce knows first hand that the most common, preconceived answers to those questions are sometimes far too simple-and often just plain wrong.
On the surface, Arce’s story reads like a how-to manual for achieving the American dream: growing up in an apartment on the outskirts of San Antonio, she worked tirelessly, achieved academic excellence, and landed a coveted job on Wall Street, complete with a six-figure salary. The level of professional and financial success that she achieved was the very definition of the American dream. But in this brave new memoir, Arce digs deep to reveal the physical, financial, and emotional costs of the stunning secret that she, like many other high-achieving, successful individuals in the United States, had been forced to keep not only from her bosses, but even from her closest friends.
From the time she was brought to this country by her hardworking parents as a child, Arce-the scholarship winner, the honors college graduate, the young woman who climbed the ladder to become a vice president at Goldman Sachs-had secretly lived as an undocumented immigrant. In this surprising, at times heart-wrenching, but always inspirational personal story of struggle, grief, and ultimate redemption, Arce takes readers deep into the little-understood world of a generation of undocumented immigrants in the United States today–people who live next door, sit in your classrooms, work in the same office, and may very well be your boss. By opening up about the story of her successes, her heartbreaks, and her long-fought journey to emerge from the shadows and become an American citizen, Arce shows us the true cost of achieving the American dream-from the perspective of a woman who had to scale unseen and unimaginable walls to get there.
America Ferrera is an award-winning actress and producer who is perhaps best known for her breakthrough role as “Betty Suarez” on ABC’s hit comedy, Ugly Betty, for which she was recognized with a Golden Globe®, Emmy® and Screen Actors Guild Award®, as well as ALMA and Imagen Awards.
Ferrera currently produces and stars in the new NBC workplace comedy, Superstore, in it’s second season.
Upcoming, she will Executive Produce Refinery 29’s Behind the Headlines, a multimedia experience comprising video, text and images dedicated to humanizing the conversations around the issues that matter to women and Only Girl, which is a docu-series investigating what it means to be a female in a male-dominated field, ranging from baseball players to airplane pilots.
Ferrera can most recently be seen on Ricky Gervais’ satirical film, Special Correspondents, on Netflix, opposite Ricky Gervais, Vera Farmiga, and Eric Bana. Her recent film credits also include Ryan Piers Williams’ drama X/Y, which she produced and starred in opposite Amber Tamblyn. The film premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.
In 2014, Ferrera starred in Diego Luna’s biopic, Cesar Chavez, opposite Michael Peña and alongside John Malkovich and Rosario Dawson. Ferrera received an ALMA Award for her portrayal of Cesar Chavez’s wife, “Helen Chavez.” The film premiered at the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival and SXSW Film Festival.
Ferrera continues to lend her vocal talents to the DreamWorks’ Oscar® nominated franchise films How to Train Your Dragon.
Other film credits include The Dry Land opposite Melissa Leo and Jason Ritter; End of Watch, the crime thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Anna Kendrick, and Michael Peña; the drama-comedy It’s a Disaster alongside Julia Stiles and David Cross; Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (parts 1 and 2); the critically acclaimed biographical drama film Lords of Dogtown directed by Catherine Hardwicke, and the 2005 Sundance Film Festival entry How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer, among many others.
On stage, the actress starred in Terrence McNally’s off-Broadway production, Lips Together, Teeth Apart in the fall of 2014. In 2013, she appeared as “Crystal” in Laura Marks’ off-Broadway play Bethany. In November 2011, Ferrera starred as “Roxie Hart” in the West End production of the hit musical, Chicago, for an eight week run. She also appeared off-Broadway in Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, directed by Trip Cullman.
In October 2012, Ferrera appeared as an activist and correspondent in Showtime’s Emmy® Award-winning Years of Living Dangerously, which explores the acts, science, and human cost of climate change. In the same year, Ferrera joined reporter Nicholas Kristof and actresses Diane Lane, Eva Mendes, Meg Ryan, Gabrielle Union and Olivia Wilde in the four-hour, internationally broadcasted television series for PBS Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. The social documentary series, an inspiring program that captivates the struggling and empowering stories of females fighting for change, was shot in ten underprivileged countries.
In tandem with her work on the Half the Sky series, Ferrera served as ambassador on the campaign, “America4America” joining Voto Latino, the leading non-partisan national youth
Bryan Cranston with Jay Roach
in conversation with Jay Roach
discussing his memoir,
A Life in Parts
Barnum Hall
Santa Monica High School
600 Olympic Blvd,
Santa Monica, CA 90405
PURCHASE TICKETS
$45 General Admission Seat + 1 copy of Cranston’s memoir
$55 Reserved Section Seat + 1 copy of Cranston’s memoir
$39 Purchase signed book only, ships anywhere in the US
$75 Premium section Seat (first four rows) + 1 copy of Cranston’s memoir
(also includes a Live Talks Los Angeles tote bag)
—Jane Kaczmarek
–Aaron Paul.
Jay Roach is the director of All The Way, based on the Tony-Award winning play by Robert Schenkkan. Bryan Cranston reprises his role as President Lyndon B. Johnson alongside Melissa Leo, Anthony Mackie and Frank Langella.
Roach was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, graduated with an economics degree from Stanford University in 1980 and later went on to receive his masters degree in film production from the University of Southern California in 1986.
Roach was awarded a total of four Emmy’s for his directing on the made for television movies Recount in 2008 and Game Change in 2012. As a director, his most recent film, Trumbo, stars Bryan Cranston as Dalton Trumbo, one of Hollywood’s blacklisted screenwriters in the 1940s. The film, which also stars Elle Fanning, Helen Mirren and Diane Lane, was released by Bleecker Street on November 6, 2015. In addition, Roach is known for directing movies such as Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers, the Austin Powers trilogy and The Campaign.
Along with directing, Roach has also spent time as a producer on a number of moves including 50 First Dates, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Borat, Little Fockers and Sisters.
iO Tillett Wright with Sue Naegle
in conversation with Sue Naegle
William Turner Gallery
Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 Michigan Avenue,
Santa Monica, CA 90404
This event is part of our Newer Voices Series.
General Admission tickets are complimentary, but we encourage you to support these newer authors and purchase their books.
PURCHASE TICKETS
Comp General Admission Tickets RSVP HERE
$30 Reserved Seat + Book
$35 Two Reserved Section Seats + 1 book
iO Tillett Wright is an artist, activist, actor, speaker, TV host and writer. iO’s work deals with identity, be it through photography and the Self Evident Truths Project/We Are You campaign or on television as the co-host of MTV’s Suspect.
iO has exhibited artwork in New York and Tokyo, was a featured contributor on Underground Culture to T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and has had photography featured in GQ, Elle, New York Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. iO is a regular speaker at universities, discussing expanding one’s circle of normalcy and embracing those that are different than you. A native New Yorker, iO is now based in Los Angeles.
“It’s already a rare and wonderful thing to have a great story—but a unique and compelling voice to tell it with is even rarer. With Darling Days, iO Tillett Wright takes us right to where great storytelling lives. A terrific, terrific book.” — Anthony Bourdain
“iO Tillett Wright is nothing short of a force of nature-an artist, an activist, and a survivor. iO has packed a lot in his young years and in this extraordinary memoir has created something brave and true, as devastating as it is inspiring.” –Jill Soloway
Born into the beautiful bedlam of downtown New York in the eighties, iO Tillett Wright came of age at the intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art. This was a world of self-invented characters, glamorous superstars, and strung-out sufferers, ground zero of drag and performance art. Still, no personality was more vibrant and formidable than iO’s mother’s. Rhonna, a showgirl and young widow, was a mercurial, erratic glamazon. She was iO’s fiercest defender and only authority in a world with few boundaries and even fewer indicators of normal life. At the center ofDarling Days is the remarkable relationship between a fiery kid and a domineering ma—a bond defined by freedom and control, excess and sacrifice; by heartbreaking deprivation, agonizing rupture, and, ultimately, forgiveness.
Darling Days is also a provocative examination of culture and identity, of the instincts that shape us and the norms that deform us, and of the courage and resilience it takes to listen closely to your deepest self. When a group of boys refuse to let six-year-old, female-born iO play ball, iO instantly adopts a new persona, becoming a boy named Ricky—a choice iO’s parents support and celebrate. It is the start of a profound exploration of gender and identity through the tenderest years, and the beginning of a life invented and reinvented at every step. Alternating between the harrowing and the hilarious, Darling Days is the candid, tough, and stirring memoir of a young person in search of an authentic self as family and home life devolve into chaos.
Sue Naegle started her career at United Talent Agency where she quickly moved up the ranks to partner and co-head of the TV Lit Department. In 2008, she became President of HBO Entertainment, and was instrumental in shepherding such shows as Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, True Blood, Treme, East Bound and Down, Enlightened, Veep and Girls. In 2013, Naegle left her post at HBO to start her own television and film production company, Naegle Ink. She is currently an executive producer of Robert Kirkman’s Cinemax series, Outcast, and has numerous other projects in development at HBO and other cable networks. Most recently, Naegle joined Annapurna Pictures as President of their television division.
Michael Ovitz, Ron Meyer & James Andrew Miller
8pm
in conversation with James Andrew Miller
POWERHOUSE: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency
The Director’s Guild Theatre
7920 Sunset Blvd,
Los Angeles, CA 90046
SOLD OUT
This event is completely sold out. There will be no tickets available at the door, and there is no wait list. Visit our other events.
$35 General Admission Seat
$60 Premier Seating (first 5 rows)
*a bookseller will be on site selling the book which James Andrew Miller will sign after the event
** Proceeds from the evening support the Motion Picture and Television Fund.
Michael Ovitz was a co-founder of CAA, and served as its chairman until he left the agency in 1995 to become president of The Walt Disney Company. He later launched AMG, Artists Management Group, and is now a businessman and investor.
Ron Meyer was a co-founder of CAA, and served as its president before being named president and chief operating officer of Universal Studios in 1995. He is now Vice Chairman of NBCUniversal.
James Andrew Miller is an award winning journalist and co-author of the New York Times bestseller Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN; Live from New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests, which spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list; and Running in Place: Inside the Senate, also a bestseller. He has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and many others. He is a graduate of Occidental College, Oxford University, and Harvard Business School, all with honors.
POWERHOUSE: The Untold Story of Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency unveils an astonishing—and astonishingly entertaining—history of Hollywood’s transformation over the past five decades as seen through the agency at the heart of it all. Launched in 1975, when five bright and brash employees of a creaky William Morris office left to open their own, strikingly innovative talent agency, CAA would come to revolutionize the entertainment industry, and over the next several decades its tentacles would spread aggressively throughout the worlds of movies, television, music, advertising, investment banking, and sports. Drawing on unprecedented and exclusive access to the men and women who built and battled with CAA, as well as financial information never before made public, author James Andrew Miller weaves a story of prophetic brilliance, singular genius, and entrepreneurial courage. It is also a tale of boundless ambition, ruthless egomania, ceaseless empire building, greed, and personal betrayals. Here are the real Star Wars—complete with a “Death Star”—all told through the voices of those who actually fought in the arena.