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Swimming To Cambodia
''Swimming to Cambodia'', also known as ''Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia'', is a 1987 American concert film written by and starring Spalding Gray, and directed by Jonathan Demme. The performance film is of Gray's play and monologue, which centered on such themes as his trip to Southeast Asia to create the role of the U.S. Ambassador's aide in the film ''The Killing Fields'', the Cold War, Cambodia Year Zero, and his search for his "perfect moment". It was nominated for Best Feature, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay at the 1988 Independent Spirit Awards. Background Over a period of two years, Gray originally developed ''Swimming to Cambodia'' as a theatre performance piece. The original running time of the performance was four hours, and it was presented over two nights. Gray received a Special Citation for this work at the 1985 Obie Awards. In 2001, Gray revived ''Swimming to Cambodia,'' performing it on stage in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Alb ...
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Jonathan Demme
Robert Jonathan Demme ( ; February 22, 1944 – April 26, 2017) was an American filmmaker. Beginning his career under B-movie producer Roger Corman, Demme made his directorial debut with the 1974 women-in-prison film ''Caged Heat'', before becoming known for his casually humanist films such as ''Melvin and Howard'' (1980), '' Swing Shift'' (1984), '' Something Wild'' (1986), and ''Married to the Mob'' (1988). His direction of the 1991 psychological horror film '' The Silence of the Lambs'' (1991) won him the Academy Award for Best Director. His subsequent films earned similar acclaim, notably ''Philadelphia'' (1993) and ''Rachel Getting Married'' (2008). Demme also directed numerous concert films such as ''Stop Making Sense'' (1984), '' Neil Young: Heart of Gold'' (2006), and ''Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids'' (2016), and worked on several television series as both a producer and director. Early life Demme was born on February 22, 1944, in Baldwin, New York, the s ...
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estim ...
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Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory is an American home video and music company founded in 2002 as Retropolis Entertainment. Its video releases include previously released feature films, classic and contemporary television series, animation, live music, and comedy specials. Shout! Factory also owns and operates Shout! Studios, Westchester Films, Timeless Media Group, Biograph Records, Majordomo Records, and Video Time Machine. History Retropolis Entertainment was founded in April 2002 by Bob Emmer, Garson Foos, and Richard Foos, three principals from Rhino Records, as the company was negotiating with the five majors for distribution. After selling Rhino to Warner Bros., the three set out to launch a new retro pop culture label. The company's first product was ''Red, White & Rock'', a joint release with PBS station WQED-TV that was produced with Warner Strategic Marketing. In August 2002, Retropolis acquired Biograph Records. Other early releases included blues and jazz CDs from the Biograph label ...
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Ira Wheeler
Ira or IRA may refer to: *Ira (name), a Hebrew, Sanskrit, Russian or Finnish language personal name *Ira (surname), a rare Estonian and some other language family name *Iran, UNDP code IRA Law *Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, US, on status of Native Americans *Individual retirement account, in the US, giving tax benefits *Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a US budget reconciliation bill *Internal Revenue Allotment, a local share of Philippines government revenue Music *Ira (Polish band), a Polish heavy metal band *Ira!, a Brazilian rock band *I.R.A. (band), a Colombian punk band *One part of an Andean wind instrument, the siku (instrument), siku Organizations *Indian Reunification Association * Indian Rationalist Association * Indian Rights Association, US, for Native Americans * Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA), a Mauritania anti-slavery group * Insurance Regulatory Authority (Kenya), the authority charged with regulation and supervision of Keny ...
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Sam Waterston
Samuel Atkinson Waterston (born November 15, 1940) is an American actor. Waterston is known for his work in theater, television and, film. He has received a Primetime Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award, and has received various award nominations including an Academy Award, Tony Award, and a British Academy Film Award. Having starred in over 80 film and television productions during his 50-year career, he is also known for numerous stage productions on Broadway and Off-Broadway. AllMovie historian Hal Erickson characterized Waterston as having "cultivated a loyal following with his quietly charismatic, unfailingly solid performances." Waterston received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2012. Waterston studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and the American Actors Workshop. He started his career in theater on the New York stage, appearing in multiple revivals of Shakespeare. In 1975, he st ...
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Strange Angels (Laurie Anderson Album)
''Strange Angels'' is the fifth album overall and fourth studio album by performance artist and singer Laurie Anderson, released by Warner Bros. Records in 1989. With this release, Anderson attempted to move away from her previous image as a performance artist into a more musical realm. Although music had always been part of her performance, it was never brought to the fore as much as it was on ''Strange Angels''. Anderson did more singing on this album than she did on previous albums. As a result, completion of this album was delayed for nearly a year when Anderson decided that she needed to take singing lessons; in the process she discovered that she was a soprano. The album includes contributions from vocal artist Bobby McFerrin. Its cover photo was shot by Robert Mapplethorpe, who died several months before the album's release. One of the songs on this album, "The Dream Before" (also known as "Hansel and Gretel Are Alive and Well") had been introduced several years earlier in ...
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What You Mean We?
''What You Mean We?'' is a 1986 American made-for-television musical short film starring the performance artist Laurie Anderson, who also wrote and directed the piece. Overview Originally produced as a segment of the PBS arts series ''Alive from Off Center'', the film runs a little less than a half-hour and is broken into several segments. The film begins with Anderson being interviewed on a faux talk show (the interviewer's voice is provided by Spalding Gray), talking about how her popularity and workload has become too much for one person to handle. So, after speaking to some scientists, she has cloned herself. The Clone is introduced: due to some complications in the process, however, the Clone is only about half the size of Anderson, and has distinctive male characteristics (like a mustache) and an electronically distorted voice. Anderson plays a dual role as the Clone, and the voice distortion she uses is the same as that which she often used in her early 1980s performance ...
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Monster In A Box
''Monster in a Box'' is a monologue originally performed live on stage by the writer Spalding Gray then subsequently made into a 1992 film starring Gray and directed by Nick Broomfield. A follow-up to Gray's earlier work, '' Swimming to Cambodia'', the work consists of a long-form monologue by Gray detailing the trials and tribulations he encountered while writing his first novel, ''Impossible Vacation'' (the titular "monster"). He also relates the sudden fame afforded him after the release of '' Swimming to Cambodia''. The soundtrack for the film was composed by Laurie Anderson. An extended version of the monologue was published in book form prior to the release of the film. Parody This monologue – or at least its title – was parodied on ''Sesame Street'' in an installment of "Monsterpiece Theater ''Monsterpiece Theater'' is a recurring segment on the popular children's television series ''Sesame Street'', a parody of '' Masterpiece Theatre''. Format While using Muppet ...
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Cambodian Genocide
The Cambodian genocide ( km, របបប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍នៅកម្ពុជា) was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Communist Party of Kampuchea general secretary Pol Pot, who radically pushed Cambodia towards an entirely self-sufficient agrarian socialist society. It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population in 1975 ( 7.8 million). Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had long been supported by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its chairman, Mao Zedong; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which the Khmer Rouge received came from China, including at least US$1 billion in interest-free economic and military aid in 1975 alone. After it seized power in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge wanted to turn the country into an agrarian socialist republic, founded on the policies of ultra-Maoism and influenced by the Cultura ...
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Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge (; ; km, ខ្មែរក្រហម, ; ) is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the regime through which the CPK ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name was coined in the 1960s by then Chief of State Norodom Sihanouk to describe his country's heterogeneous, communist-led dissidents, with whom he allied after his 1970 overthrow. The Khmer Rouge army was slowly built up in the jungles of eastern Cambodia during the late 1960s, supported by the North Vietnamese army, the Viet Cong, the Pathet Lao, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Although it originally fought against Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge changed its position and supported Sihanouk on the advice of the CCP after he was overthrown in a 1970 coup by Lon Nol who established the pro-American Khmer Republic. Despite a massive American bombing campaign (Operation Freedom Deal) against them, the Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian C ...
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Operation Menu
Operation Menu was a covert United States Strategic Air Command (SAC) tactical bombing campaign conducted in eastern Cambodia from 18 March 1969 to 26 May 1970 as part of both the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War. The targets of these attacks were sanctuaries and base areas of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN — commonly referred to during the Vietnam War as the North Vietnamese Army VA and forces of the Viet Cong (VC), which used them for resupply, training, and resting between campaigns across the border in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). The impact of the bombing campaign on the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, the PAVN, and Cambodian civilians in the bombed areas is disputed by historians. An official United States Air Force record of US bombing activity over Indochina from 1964 to 1973 was declassified by US President Bill Clinton in 2000. The report gives details of the extent of the bombing of Cambodia, as well as of Laos and Vietnam. According to the data, the ...
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The Performing Garage
The Performing Garage is an Off-Off-Broadway theater in SoHo, New York City. Established in 1968, it is the permanent home of the experimental theater company originally named The Performance Group (under Richard Schechner) that morphed in 1980 into The Wooster Group (under Elizabeth LeCompte), and their primary performance venue. Since 1978, it also hosts their annual "Visiting Artist Series" or "Emerging Artist Series". Located at 33 Wooster Street, it seats approximately 60. Actors such as Willem Dafoe debuted in earnest here and regularly come back.For instance, Dafoe played at the Garage in ''LSD'', ''Just the High Points'', ''The Road to Immortality'', ''North Atlantic' up to 2001 in ''To You, the Birdie!! (Phèdre) History The location was originally not a garage but a metal stamping/flatware factory,Wooster Group, "The Performing Garage". back when SoHo was an empty warehouse district being colonized by artists. It was acquired in 1968 by its first artistic and theater di ...
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