On Demand
Survival Kit Archive
July 2004
A.S. Byatt
Sunday, July 25, 2004
A.S. Byatt has said that her books “try to be about the life of the mind, as well as of society and the relations between people.” Critics have called her a “dazzling storyteller”, a “celebrated polymath”, and the “patron saint of bookworms.” In works like the best-selling Possession (which won the 1990 Booker Prize and was adapted into a popular film), The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Angels and Insects (which was also made into a film), and A Whistling Woman, she weaves science, history, philosophy and other scholarly pursuits into stories both timeless and modern. Let’s find out what this intellectually curious writer would consider the essential components of her survival kit.
Ken Burns
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Ken Burns is no stranger to the idea of enforced isolation. He spent five and a half years working on his epic documentary "The Civil War," longer than the war itself, and for much of that time he was holed up in a tiny apartment away from his family. He has celebrated all things American in his series on Baseball and Jazz, and in his shorter films "The Brooklyn Bridge," "The Statue of Liberty," "Mark Twain," "Huey Long," and others. He’s even retraced the steps of Lewis and Clark and documented the first cross-country car trip in "Horatio’s Journey." Let’s find out what he would do with an unbroken stretch in a remote place, and what he’d put in his cultural Survival Kit.
James Lipton
Sunday, July 11, 2004
For more than a decade, James Lipton has been getting actors and directors to tell him things they’ve never told anyone else before, and as a result, his show Inside the Actor’s Studio has become required viewing for drama students and anyone else interested in understanding the craft of acting. An actor himself, he’s also produced, directed, choreographed and written plays, TV specials, films, musicals and ballets and he’s spent many years as dean of the Actor’s Studio Drama School in New York. Let’s see if we can turn the tables and find out what makes him tick, by taking a look into his survival kit.
Don Novello
Sunday, July 04, 2004
You may know him as Father Guido Sarducci, the chain smoking Vatican gossip columnist and rock critic who cracked up viewers on Saturday Night Live, or maybe as Lazlo Toth, concerned American, who has corresponded with world leaders and published their replies in a series of hilarious books (the latest is From Bush to Bush:The Lazlo Toth Letters). But the man behind these two outrageous characters is actually comedian Don Novello. Maybe we can find out who he really is when we take a look at his survival kit.