Alan Weisman, a longtime producer for “60 Minutes” known for his work with Morley Safer, died Thursday at his home in New Jersey of natural causes. He was 68.
Weisman produced some of Safer’s most memorable “60 Minutes” segments, including the 1984 profile of Jackie Gleason and the 1989 jailhouse interview that brought national attention to the plight of Joyce Ann Brown, whose conviction for murder was set aside shortly after the segment aired. Weisman also produced Safer’s interviews with such showbiz notables as Jack Lemmon, Woody Allen and violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg.
Weisman worked on the “60 Minutes II” series that aired on CBS from 1999 to 2005. Most recently he produced segments for the Showtime series “60 Minutes Sports.”
“Alan Weisman was a brilliant writer and sophisticated storyteller. He was also a brutally honest and funny colleague,” said Bill Owens, executive producer of “60 Minutes.” “I have never met anyone prouder to have worked at CBS and ’60 Minutes.
Weisman produced some of Safer’s most memorable “60 Minutes” segments, including the 1984 profile of Jackie Gleason and the 1989 jailhouse interview that brought national attention to the plight of Joyce Ann Brown, whose conviction for murder was set aside shortly after the segment aired. Weisman also produced Safer’s interviews with such showbiz notables as Jack Lemmon, Woody Allen and violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg.
Weisman worked on the “60 Minutes II” series that aired on CBS from 1999 to 2005. Most recently he produced segments for the Showtime series “60 Minutes Sports.”
“Alan Weisman was a brilliant writer and sophisticated storyteller. He was also a brutally honest and funny colleague,” said Bill Owens, executive producer of “60 Minutes.” “I have never met anyone prouder to have worked at CBS and ’60 Minutes.
- 2/24/2019
- by Variety Staff
- Variety Film + TV
President Obama's call for Anthony Weiner to resign may have been unavoidable, but it kept what has to be history's least sexually satisfying sex scandal in the headlines for another day-and it won't push the congressman out the door. After all, he's got nothing to gain by going, says Eric Alterman.
"I can tell you that if it was me, I would resign,'' President Obama told Today's Ann Curry-thereby ensuring that we would spend at least another day discussing Anthony Weiner's not-so-private parts and the implications thereof.
Related story on The Daily Beast: The Media's Selective Sex Scandal Savagery
This may have been unavoidable. Ducking the question would have looked like a kind of endorsement of Weiner's weird behavior, so instead Obama made sure that his agenda would be buried beneath, um, Weiner's you-know-what for one more day.
It was a rare misstep in a scandal that,...
"I can tell you that if it was me, I would resign,'' President Obama told Today's Ann Curry-thereby ensuring that we would spend at least another day discussing Anthony Weiner's not-so-private parts and the implications thereof.
Related story on The Daily Beast: The Media's Selective Sex Scandal Savagery
This may have been unavoidable. Ducking the question would have looked like a kind of endorsement of Weiner's weird behavior, so instead Obama made sure that his agenda would be buried beneath, um, Weiner's you-know-what for one more day.
It was a rare misstep in a scandal that,...
- 6/15/2011
- by Eric Alterman
- The Daily Beast
Photograph by Dan Winters
An Iraqi Kurdish soldier stands guard at the Tawke oil field in the Dohuk province of Iraqi Kurdistan. | Photograph by Muhannad Fala'ah/Getty Images
In their haste to tap Kurdish reserves, dozens of oil companies -- several fronted by former Bush officials -- have undercut U.S. policy and fanned sectarian tensions in Iraq. They may also lose a fortune.
Map by Mike Reagan
Infographic: Combustible
The Tawke oil field, just south of Iraq's mountainous border with Turkey, is a bare, windblown patch of hills in one of the Middle East's most isolated corners.
Three hundred miles north of Baghdad, it is also four hours by road from the nearest international airfield and hundreds of miles from the nearest seaport. But on April 12, 2005, more than 100 dignitaries from around the world trooped up to this bleak turf to observe a bit of history. One year earlier, a...
An Iraqi Kurdish soldier stands guard at the Tawke oil field in the Dohuk province of Iraqi Kurdistan. | Photograph by Muhannad Fala'ah/Getty Images
In their haste to tap Kurdish reserves, dozens of oil companies -- several fronted by former Bush officials -- have undercut U.S. policy and fanned sectarian tensions in Iraq. They may also lose a fortune.
Map by Mike Reagan
Infographic: Combustible
The Tawke oil field, just south of Iraq's mountainous border with Turkey, is a bare, windblown patch of hills in one of the Middle East's most isolated corners.
Three hundred miles north of Baghdad, it is also four hours by road from the nearest international airfield and hundreds of miles from the nearest seaport. But on April 12, 2005, more than 100 dignitaries from around the world trooped up to this bleak turf to observe a bit of history. One year earlier, a...
- 4/5/2010
- by Joshua Hammer
- Fast Company
Sony Pictures Classics has acquired North American rights to Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for documentaries at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Inspired by President Eisenhower's farewell speech in which he coined the phrase "military industrial complex," the film examines American foreign policy and its reliance on military rather than diplomatic solutions. It includes interviews with such figures as Gore Vidal, William Kristol, Chalmers Johnson, Richard Perle and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
- 5/25/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
PARK CITY -- The term "military-industrial complex" was coined by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address to the nation at the end of his second term as president in 1961. In ensuing years the phrase has become so commonplace, it has ceased to have any meaning. Now Eugene Jarecki's shattering documentary Why We Fight examines the extent to which the military-industrial complex not only profits from war, but also becomes a force that makes war happen. Winner of the best American documentary prize at Sundance, the thoughtful and extremely well-made film could find a sizable audience of concerned citizens in theaters and later on video.
Before the credits are over, the film jumps to life with the surprising presence of the grandfatherly Eisenhower, the five-star general who led allied forces in Europe during World War II, warning the nation of "the grave consequences" of creating a permanent arms industry. Using that as a starting point, Jarecki argues that the wars of the last 50 years -- Korea, Vietnam and now Iraq -- have been motivated more by profits than policy. Interviews with Eisenhower's son John and granddaughter Susan highlight the president's growing concern that the military build-up following World War II was a dangerous precedent for the country. Weighing in from two sides of the political spectrum are Sen. John McCain, who notes that "the complex is so pervasive, it's become invisible," to William Kristol, head of the neo-con think tank the Project for the New American Century, an architect of American foreign policy. Chalmers Johnson, an ex-CIA operative and critic of current developments, and Richard Perle, former adviser to the Bush administration, square off for and against.
Jarecki, who directed the revealing The Trials of Henry Kissinger, has learned to allow the material to speak for itself, so when Perle simplistically argues that pre-emptive strikes are akin to defending yourself against personal attack, he seems merely foolish. Summing up American foreign policy of the last 50 years, author Gore Vidal says this is "the United States of Amnesia," where everything is forgotten by Monday morning.
But the impact of Why We Fight, a title taken from the name of Frank Capra's WWII propaganda films for the State Department, goes well beyond a collection of talking heads. Jarecki personalizes the effects of war by including individual stories. One of them is Wilton Sekzer, a retired New York City cop who lost a son on Sept. 11 and petitioned the government to put his son's name on a bomb destined to be dropped on Iraq. When President Bush finally admits that Iraq had no hand in the terrorist attacks, Sekzer is disillusioned and feels that the government "exploited my feelings of patriotism for the death of my son."
Jarecki captures the price of the military-industrial complex in human terms, but sometimes the film's focus seems to wander to presenting arguments against the war. It is necessary to accept Jarecki's premise that the Iraq war is the result of America's imperialistic agenda in order to see corporate greed as the underlying cause.
But he makes his case convincingly, pointing out that we spend more on defense than all other parts of our budget combined. When war becomes that profitable, we have seen and will continue to see more of it. Jarecki uses graphic war footage, a visit to a weapons trade show and interviews with retired military officers -- stitched together seamlessly by editor Nancy Kennedy -- to dispel the notion advanced by presidents Johnson, Reagan and Bush, that America has been a force for peace in the world. Instead, what we see is a militaristic nation in which capitalism is at war with democracy -- and capitalism is winning.
WHY WE FIGHT
A BBC Storyville presentation of a Charlotte Street film in association with BBC and Arte
Credits:
Director: Eugene Jarecki
Writer: Jarecki
Producer: Susannah Shipman, Jarecki
Executive producers: Roy Ackerman, Nick Fraser, Hans Robert Eisenhauer
Directors of photography: Etienne Sauret, May-Ying Welch, Brett Wiley, Foster Wiley, Chris Li, Sam Cullman
Music: Robert Miller
Editor: Nancy Kennedy
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 90 minutes...
Before the credits are over, the film jumps to life with the surprising presence of the grandfatherly Eisenhower, the five-star general who led allied forces in Europe during World War II, warning the nation of "the grave consequences" of creating a permanent arms industry. Using that as a starting point, Jarecki argues that the wars of the last 50 years -- Korea, Vietnam and now Iraq -- have been motivated more by profits than policy. Interviews with Eisenhower's son John and granddaughter Susan highlight the president's growing concern that the military build-up following World War II was a dangerous precedent for the country. Weighing in from two sides of the political spectrum are Sen. John McCain, who notes that "the complex is so pervasive, it's become invisible," to William Kristol, head of the neo-con think tank the Project for the New American Century, an architect of American foreign policy. Chalmers Johnson, an ex-CIA operative and critic of current developments, and Richard Perle, former adviser to the Bush administration, square off for and against.
Jarecki, who directed the revealing The Trials of Henry Kissinger, has learned to allow the material to speak for itself, so when Perle simplistically argues that pre-emptive strikes are akin to defending yourself against personal attack, he seems merely foolish. Summing up American foreign policy of the last 50 years, author Gore Vidal says this is "the United States of Amnesia," where everything is forgotten by Monday morning.
But the impact of Why We Fight, a title taken from the name of Frank Capra's WWII propaganda films for the State Department, goes well beyond a collection of talking heads. Jarecki personalizes the effects of war by including individual stories. One of them is Wilton Sekzer, a retired New York City cop who lost a son on Sept. 11 and petitioned the government to put his son's name on a bomb destined to be dropped on Iraq. When President Bush finally admits that Iraq had no hand in the terrorist attacks, Sekzer is disillusioned and feels that the government "exploited my feelings of patriotism for the death of my son."
Jarecki captures the price of the military-industrial complex in human terms, but sometimes the film's focus seems to wander to presenting arguments against the war. It is necessary to accept Jarecki's premise that the Iraq war is the result of America's imperialistic agenda in order to see corporate greed as the underlying cause.
But he makes his case convincingly, pointing out that we spend more on defense than all other parts of our budget combined. When war becomes that profitable, we have seen and will continue to see more of it. Jarecki uses graphic war footage, a visit to a weapons trade show and interviews with retired military officers -- stitched together seamlessly by editor Nancy Kennedy -- to dispel the notion advanced by presidents Johnson, Reagan and Bush, that America has been a force for peace in the world. Instead, what we see is a militaristic nation in which capitalism is at war with democracy -- and capitalism is winning.
WHY WE FIGHT
A BBC Storyville presentation of a Charlotte Street film in association with BBC and Arte
Credits:
Director: Eugene Jarecki
Writer: Jarecki
Producer: Susannah Shipman, Jarecki
Executive producers: Roy Ackerman, Nick Fraser, Hans Robert Eisenhauer
Directors of photography: Etienne Sauret, May-Ying Welch, Brett Wiley, Foster Wiley, Chris Li, Sam Cullman
Music: Robert Miller
Editor: Nancy Kennedy
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 90 minutes...
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