Blog
Jerry West (at Live Talks Oct 18) debates Magic Johnson on greatest Lakers team..
Next Tuesday with Jerry West in conversation with Peter Guber should be fun. The whole NBA contract issues getting to you? Come get your fix.
Magic Johnson and Jerry West, in a Los Angeles Times piece debate their favorite all time Lakers teams. Video in the Los Angeles Times link also. Here’s an excerpt:
Even if it didn’t mark his first NBA title or even first one against the Celtics, Magic Johnson cherishes the 1987 NBA Finals the most. His junior hook that clinched Game 4 against the Boston Celtics never escapes his memory.
Even if he didn’t even play on this championship team, Jerry West cherishes the 1985 NBA Finals the most. That team accomplished for the first time what no other Lakers team, including his own, could ever do: beat the Boston Celtics.
Jerry West at Live Talks on Oct 18…In the LA Times…
We’re pleased to be hosting Jerry West on October 18 at Track 16 at Bergamot Station. He’ll be in conversation with Peter Guber discussing his memoir West by West. Ticket info here.
Video below from the Los Angeles Times, and here’s an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times:
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that West’s autobiography, “West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life,” sheds light on his complex and torn personality. As noted by the San Jose Mercury News’ Tim Kawakami, who received an advance copy, the book apparently features West’s blunt honesty about his relationships within the NBA and on his own psyche.
–West expressed concerns about Phil Jackson dating executive vice president Jeanie Buss, daughter of owner Jerry Buss. Jackson apparently never greeted West at work. And West confirmed Roland Lazenby’s reporting in the Chicago-Sun Times that detailed Jackson kicking West out of the locker room during the 1999-2000 season.
“So one of the problems I had with Phil was this,” West wrote. “His office was right near mine and when he would arrive in the morning, he would walk right past and never even bother to wave or duck his head in to say hello.
“He would later say that he felt the need to stake out his territory, that on top of that he was ’a wack job,’ but I am sure it was more than that.”
“Phil and I had no relationship,” West writes. “None. He didn’t want me around and had absolutely no respect for me–of that, I have no doubt.”
–West felt his relationship with Buss changed when the Lakers moved out of the Forum in 1999 to Staples Center, and Buss was around less and less.
“The close nature of our relationship began to change, and not only did I feel more and more unappreciated, or under-appreciated,” West wrote, according to Kawakami, “but my own personal demons, rooted in my childhood, were threatening me.”
–West laments “how unwilling Kobe was to defer to Shaq in any way.”
Contest: Win a signed poster from our Tina Fey, Jane Lynch, John Lithgow, Hal Holbrook events
Here’s a chance for you to win a signed poster from one of or events. We partner with artists to create great collectible posters from some of our events. It’s real simple to enter our contest. We will have eight winners. We will randomly pick four from folks who LIKE us on Facebook, and all new LIKEs as of this posting will be eligible for the other four posters. And you get to take your pick of which signed poster you would like. All posters are signed by the participants in the Live Talks events — Tina Fey & Steve Martin; Jane Lynch & Adam Scott; Hal Holbrook & Robert Patrick and John Lithgow. It’s LIKE, that easy. Contest runs ends Oct 31. Do it now. The Tina Fey one was designed by Beverly Laxa, and the others were designed by our friends at The Half and Half. Enjoy the posters:
Harry Belafonte feature in USA Today. We host him Nov 28 at Live Talks Los Angeles
We host Harry Belafonte at Live Talks Los Angeles on November 28. His memoir, My Song, comes out Oct 11. USA Today had a feature on him today. Here’s an excerpt:
But when this octogenarian sits down to discuss his new projects — a memoir titled My Song (Knopf, $30.50), out Tuesday, and the related documentary Sing Your Song, premiering on HBO Oct. 17 at 10 p.m. ET/PT — he acquires an unmistakable vigor. His diction crisp, his language articulate and urgent — and playful, on occasion — Belafonte explains why he was compelled to capture his multifaceted, still-unfinished journey for posterity.
“For a long time, people had told me that I should write a book,” he says. “But celebrity books are usually buried in self-serving narcissism. So I resisted the idea.”
Then in 2004, Marlon Brando, Belafonte’s pal and fellow social crusader, died. “And he took with him stories of all the remarkable things he had done. That upset me. So I decided to take a camera and see how many others were left from my generation.” That paved the way forSing Your Song, which includes archival footage and additional interviews. (A companion CD, with the same title, was released Tuesday.)
“After I’d done all that research,” Belafonte says, “the book,” written with author and Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Shnayerson, “just fell into place.”
Just a few of Harry Belafonte’s recordings and movie credits:
MUSIC
Calypso (1956). Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) helped make Belafonte Elvis Presley’s biggest rival on the charts.
Belafonte at Carnegie Hall (1959). The live album reveals his easy grace as a performer and his affinity for folk songs from various cultures.
An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba (1965). Belafonte and the fluid-voiced South African singer/activist earned a Grammy Award for their collaboration.
We Are the World (1985). The mother of all American charity singles is Belafonte’s brainchild. He also sang in the chorus, behind a few guys named Michael, Bruce and Stevie.
FILM
Carmen Jones (1954). Belafonte didn’t sing in his second pairing with Dorothy Dandridge — operatic vocals were dubbed in — but he smoldered.
Island in the Sun (1957). Romantic tension between characters played by Belafonte and white actress Joan Fontaine made this film controversial in the South.
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Belafonte broke ground again as the leading man in a film noir produced by his own company, HarBel.
Kansas City (1996). Belafonte won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for supporting actor for playing a ’30s gangster in this Robert Altman film.
Deepak Chopra on War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality….we host him & Leonard Mlodinow Oct 11
We host Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow at Live Talks Los Angeles on Oct 11 at All Saints Church in Pasadena. Click here for event details and tickets. From a column in the October 3 San Francisco Chronicle. Here are some excerpts:
“Cosmos” used to mean God, or the gods, sitting in Heaven looking down on Earth; now it means billions of galaxies expanding into a unknown void. As explanations go, there seems to be no contest. Because science dominates our lives and religion is a waning force, most people see a future that will have much more technology and a lot less God. The scientific worldview is triumphant, no doubt. The campaign of some noisy atheists like Richard Dawkins, who know a great deal about science but much less about spirituality, has reinforced the illusion that a single worldview is our only choice.
It’s not. In fact, if science was the only choice that faced us in the 21st century, the outcome would be terrifyingly bleak. On all the great questions that face us, including the survival of a healthy planet, the future depends on another worldview, spirituality, to expand upon science and give us alternatives that are often better.
He adds that there is a coming struggle for the future, and how that struggle turns out will depend on answering some tough issues:
- Do we live in a universe with purpose and meaning or a universe that is random and without meaning?
- What lies beyond the horizon of the stars and galaxies we can see and measure?
- If the cosmos emerged from a void before time and space emerged, is that invisible source also our own?
- Could the cosmos be a living entity?
- Are we conscious beings because the entire universe is conscious?
Review of John Lithgow (and Hal Holbrook’s) memoirs in today’s NYT. We host Holbrook on Oct 6 at Live Talks Los Angeles…
In todat’s New York Times is a review of Hal Holbrook’s memoir — whom we hosted on September 7 — and John Lithgow’s memoir, Drama: An Actor’s Education, whom we host on October 6. Ticket info here...
An excerpt from the review on Lithgow’s book:
“Drama” is a brisk book, packed with funny stories. Lithgow returns to America from a Fulbright grant in London as “an insufferable Shakespeare snob” with a British accent. “Wot acksnt?” he asks when called on it. After he botches the job as curtain puller for Marcel Marceau, “predictably, the famous mime said nothing.” Especially entertaining are the stories of Lithgow’s encounter with an amorous dog while trying to impress a powerful casting director, his micromanagement of a costume for his third-grade production of “The Sleeping Beauty” and a catalog of the devious scene-stealing tricks of an older co-star named “Rock Masters.” (Masters and other anonymous figures in this book are delightfully easy to unmask through a little online sleuthing.)