Events

One-of-a-kind filmmaker Barry Sonnenfeld tells stories only he can tell, from his blockbuster career with iconic actors, studio execs, and producers. His humor and insight provide an inside glimpse into how Hollywood really works, or how it doesn’t.
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Barry Sonnenfeld is a filmmaker and writer who broke into the film industry as the cinematographer on the Coen Brothers’ first three films: Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, and Miller’s Crossing. He also was the director of photography on Throw Mamma from the Train, Big, When Harry Met Sally, and Misery. Sonnenfeld made his directorial debut with The Addams Family in 1991, and has gone on to direct a number of films including Addams Family Values, Get Shorty, and the first three Men in Blacks. His television credits include Pushing Daisies, for which he won an Emmy, Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and most recently Apple TV+’s Schmigadoon! He is the author of Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother.
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Rob Reiner first came to fame as a two-time Emmy Award-winning actor in the landmark television series All In The Family. He went on to become an acclaimed director whose credits include the satire This is Spinal Tap to dramas Stand By Me, Misery, A Few Good Men, and Ghosts of Mississippi, to romantic comedies When Harry Met Sally and The American President, to the enduring classic, The Princess Pride. His now 20 films also include The Bucket List, Flipped, LBJ, Shock and Awe, and most recently, the documentary Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, and a sequel to This is Spinal Tap.  Reiner is also a dedicated political activist.
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Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time delivers a cavalcade of sometimes baffling, often enlightening, and always funny stories about Sonnenfeld’s many films and television shows. From battling with studio executives and producers to bad-script-solving on set to coaxing actors into finding the right light and talking faster, Sonnenfeld provides an entertaining master class in how to make commercial art in the face of constant human foible. Over four decades in Hollywood, the mega-franchises include The Addams Family and Men in Black movies; the critical favorites, Get Shorty and Pushing Daisies; and working with Will Smith, John Travolta, and Michael Jackson; and the projects that got away, Forrest Gump, Ali, and anything starring Jim Carrey.

The true stories escalate from surreal to outrageous to unbelievable. And then there’s magic hour. But you’ll never see Hollywood the same way again.

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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Friday, October 18, 2024, 6pm PT/9pm ET
TICKETS:
$50 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on October 18 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days.
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You devour his delicious parody videos as soon as they drop. Now, see Randy Rainbow in person.
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Randy Rainbow is a comedian, producer, actor, singer, writer, satirist, host and best-selling author known for his web series, The Randy Rainbow Show.  His musical parodies and political spoofs have garnered him worldwide acclaim and four consecutive Emmy nominations for Outstanding Short-Form Variety Series. His debut solo album, A Little Brains, A Little Talent, earned him a 2022 Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album. He lives in New York City.
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Pamela Adlon is an Emmy Award-winning creator, actor, writer, producer, and director. Her groundbreaking, Peabody Award-winning & Critic’s Choice Award nominated comedy series, FX’s Better Things, showcases her raw, insightful point of view and an unapologetic, elevated commentary on motherhood, feminism and the complexity of modern life. Better Things marks Adlon’s  shift into directing, showrunning, writing, producing and more, all at the highest level of her craft. In addition to her screen work—both in front of and behind the camera—Adlon also leads her own all-female production company, Slam Book Inc., where she currently oversees more than a dozen projects in development, each focused on unique characters sharing their own personal stories. She has been vocal in her support of women and many other under-represented groups, putting her activism into practice at Slam Book by elevating these stories and empowering others to use their own voices as well.
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“Discovering Randy is one of my happiest memories. I don’t toss around the word ‘genius’ often, but there’s no other word to describe him. After being in touch with each other, I’m thrilled to call him my friend. He’s as nice as he is talented. Wow.” ―Carol Burnett
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“Randy Rainbow is a wicked wit, an unparalleled musical master of parody and a national treasure, full stop. Every time I think he can’t top himself, he does it AGAIN.” ― Mark Hamill
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As a savvy social commentator tuned into the public discourse, comedian Randy Rainbow has a few things on his mind. .

Low-Hanging Fruit, his new book of essays, is a bold manifesto for a nation desperately in need of a makeover—filled with sparkling whines, a few flutes of Champagne problems and a Birkin bag of the most pressing issues facing the United States, from dancing TikTok grandmas to Elon Musk to the GOP, and, of course, Donald Jessica Trump. 
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Randy knows that what the country needs to get back on its high heels is a hard-hitting gay agenda. Come laugh out loud as he shares his thoughts on the Live Talks stage. 

A comprehensive and engaging oral history of the decade that defined the feminist movement.
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Award-winning journalist Clara Bingham is a former Washington, DC, correspondent for Newsweek whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Guardian and The Daily Beast. Her previous books include Witness to the Revolution and Women on the Hill.
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Elise Loehnen is a New York Times bestselling author and the host of the podcast, Pulling the Thread, where she interviews cultural luminaries about the big questions of today.  She’s the author of the New York Times bestselling On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be Good.  Elise has also co-written 12 books, including five New York Times Best Sellers. Previously, she was the chief content officer of goop. While there, Elise co-hosted The goop Podcast and The goop Lab on Netflix, and led the brand’s content strategy and programming, including the launch of a magazine with Condé Nast and a book imprint.
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“Clara Bingham’s The Movement gives us such fascinating personal revelations, the unvarnished views of how the women’s movement got started in the actual voices of the women (and men) who began it all. There is so much insight and explanation here, from the historic Presidential campaign of black Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, to how Title IX got slipped into an education bill to the feuds among the ‘purists’ versus the pragmatists that sheds light on why women today still have a long way to go to achieve real equality.”
—Maureen Orth, Special Correspondent, Vanity Fair
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Clara Bingham’s The Movement: How Women’s Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973 is the first oral history of the decade that built the modern feminist movement. 

Through the captivating individual voices of the people who lived it, Bingham tells the intimate inside story of what it felt like to be at the forefront of the modern feminist crusade. She artfully weaves together the fragments of an explosive ten years, bringing to life the emotions of this personal, culture and political revolution—when women insisted on being treated as first class citizens and changed the fabric of American life. 
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The Movement traces women’s awakening, organizing, and agitating between the years of 1963 and 1973, when a decentralized collection of people and events coalesced to create a spontaneous combustion. From Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, to the underground abortion network the Janes, to Shirley Chisholm’s presidential campaign and Billie Jean King’s 1973 battle of the sexes, Bingham artfully weaves together the fragments of that explosion person by person, bringing to life the emotions of this personal, cultural, and political revolution. Artists and politicians, athletes and lawyers, Black and white, The Movement brings readers into the rooms where these women insisted on being treated as first class citizens, and in the process, changed the fabric of American life.

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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Monday, October 21, 2024, 6pm PT/9pm ET
TICKETS:
$46 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on October 21 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days.
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Twenty-five years after the publication of his groundbreaking first book, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a brand-new volume that reframes the lessons of The Tipping Point in a startling and revealing light.
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Malcolm Gladwell is the author of seven New York Times bestsellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, David and Goliath, Talking to Strangers, and The Bomber Mafia. He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, an audio production company that produces audiobooks like Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon, as well as podcasts including Revisionist History, Broken Record, The Happiness Lab, Against the Rules, and Medal of Honor: Stories of Courage. Gladwell has been included in the Time 100 Most Influential People list and touted as one of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers. Previously, he was a staff writer for The New Yorker. Gladwell was born in England and grew up in rural Ontario. 
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Michael Gervais is host of the Finding Mastery podcast, and is one of the world’s top high performance psychologists and leading experts on the relationship between the mind and human performance. Finding Mastery helps innovative companies and leaders solve the most dynamic and complex human-performance challenges.
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The Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell’s most personal and urgent book yet, as he examines with new eyes the phenomenon of social epidemics in light of the events and lessons of the last twenty-five years. Published in 2000, Gladwell’s seminal work, The Tipping Point launched the global “big idea” publishing phenomenon—a hugely popular genre blending social science, history, pop culture, and business to revolutionize the way we view ourselves and the world.  In his new book, Gladwell draws on completely fresh case studies to rethink and expand on his original models from The Tipping Point about how trends are born, catch on, and spread.

Why is Miami…Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in twenty-five years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena.
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Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world’s most successful bank robbers, rediscovers a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visits the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis. Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell’s most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of modern world. It’s time we took tipping points seriously.

From beloved Saturday Night Live alum Kate McKinnon comes a madcap new adventure about three sisters, a ravenous worm, and a mysterious mad scientist.
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Kate McKinnon is an award-winning performer and writer, known for her work in film and television. Young readers will recognize her voice role as ‘Ms. Frizzle’ in The Magic School Bus Rides Again for Netflix. She recently played ‘Weird Barbie’ in Greta Gerwig’s worldwide blockbuster hit, Barbie. She was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2012 to 2022, where she became known for her character work and celebrity impressions.
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Awkwafina is an Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress, writer, and producer born as Nora Lum in Queens, New York. She is currently appearing in Jackpot and Quiz Lady, which she also produced. Among her many other credits is Renfield, Crazy Rich Asians, Shang Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings and her Comedy Central series, Awkwafina is Nora From Queens. She is the author of a travel guide to New York City published by Penguin Random House. 
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“It comes as no surprise that Kate McKinnon writes with the same unique sense of humor and heart that has made audiences fall in love with her time and again. Her quirky and unforgettable characters in The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science will have readers laughing out loud and plotting experiments for many generations to come.”―Chris Colfer, New York Times bestselling author of the Land of Stories series.
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The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science is McKinnon’s debut novel for young readers.
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So, you want to be a young mad scientist. Congratulations! Admitting it is the first step. The second step is reading the (definitely true) tale of the Porch sisters…
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Gertrude, Eugenia, and Dee-Dee Porch do not belong. They don’t belong in the snooty town of Antiquarium, where all girls have to go to etiquette school and the only dog allowed is the bichon frise. They don’t belong with their adoptive family, where all their cousins are named Lavinia and their Aunt has more brooches than books. And they certainly don’t belong at Mrs. Wintermacher’s etiquette school—they’re far more interested in science. After getting kicked out of the last etiquette school that would take them, the girls expect to be sent away for good… until they receive a mysterious invitation to new school.
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Suddenly the girls are under the tutelage of the infamous Millicent Quibb—a mad scientist with worms in her hair and oysters in her bathtub. At 231 Mysterium Way, the pizza is fatal, the bus is powered by Gerbils, and the Dean of Students is a hermit crab.  Dangerous? Yes! More fun than they’ve ever had? Absolutely! But when the sisters are asked to save their town from an evil cabal of nefarious mad scientists, they must learn to embrace what has always made them stand out, and determine what side they’re on—before it’s too late!