Michael May

When prohibition ended, the Mafia was well-poised to maintain a grip on the country's burgeoning nightclubs, which featured comedians between the big band music and jazz. Shecky Green, Kaye Ballard and Larry Storch — some of the comics who worked those clubs in the '50s — recall what it was ...

Director Albert Maysles makes documentaries by taking long, unhurried looks at the subject matter. He tells us how he developed his eye, and then walks us through a moment in Gimme Shelter, his 1970 film about the Rolling Stones. 

Machine designer Chalo Colina explains how his true inspiration came from a gift he got when he was a teenager: a bicycle.

In the 1990s Houston-based DJ Screw took popular hip-hop mixes and slowed them down to half their playing speed. The resulting sound has cast a spell over Texas. 

Millions of Star Wars fans were lukewarm about 1999's prequel, The Phantom Menace, but one disappointed fan actually did something about it. Mike J. Nichols calls himself the Phantom Editor, and armed with a personal computer, he entirely re-cut the movie on video and started giving it away. 

A business designed to exploit amateur songwriters winds up making lots of them really happy.

A secret life provides few clues in the search for the true identity of the cult-musician Jandek.

(Originally aired: July 21, 2001)

Historian Larry May slips into one of his favorite places — the movie theater.

Design expert Ann Glickman soaks in the design of a popular household luxury: the bathtub.

A secret life provides few clues in the search for the true identity of the cult-musician Jandek.

There's a dust-kicking, foot-stomping new exhibit at the Bob Bullocks Texas State History Museum in Austin Texas, celebrating the fashion icon of rugged American individualism: cowboy boots.  

Producer Michael May discovers prototype designs for washing machines from the 1800s, which not only scrubbed clothes, but churned butter and made sausage, too.