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Interview with Rick Moody

Rick Moody and NBT host Dean Olsher talk about the genesis of "Alamo: A Radio Play," and about Rick’s reflections on this very big cube.

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Alamo: A Radio Play

The play revolves around an existing work of contemporary art, Tony Rosenthal’s Alamo (known to New Yorkers as “the cube”), which sits on a traffic island in Astor Place in downtown Manhattan. Irving Paley, a middle-aged doctoral candidate in English, is obsessed with the cube and the ways in which it affects passersby. On an answering machine ("Call 1-900-555-CUBE"), he collects the voices of cab drivers, students, drug dealers and conspiracy theorists, all of whom find some sort of meaning in the cube.

Dean Olsher and Rick Moody in front of Alamo

The cast features Scott Shepard as radio producer Doug Haines; John Hadden as doctoral candidate Irving Paley; Tirlok Malik as a taxi driver; Miranda July as a Midwestern college student; James Harry as a conspiracy theorist, Larry Pine as artist Tony Rosenthal, Ethan Hawke as a purveyor of federally scheduled substances, and Diane Salinger as an art historian. Alamo’s actors were recorded on location in cafes, on street corners and over answering machines throughout New York.

The play was written by Rick Moody and produced by Bruce Odland for The Next Big Thing. A print version was published in The Paris Review, Summer 2002, #162.

Alamo - Part I


Alamo - Part II


Alamo - Part III

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