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Fresh Air Weekend: Robert Zemeckis And Ken Tucker

Acclaimed writer-director-producer Robert Zemeckis has worked on more than 30 films, including the <em>Back to the Future</em> series and <em>Forrest Gump</em>, for which he won an Oscar for best director.
Robert Zuckerman
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Paramount Pictures
Acclaimed writer-director-producer Robert Zemeckis has worked on more than 30 films, including the Back to the Future series and Forrest Gump, for which he won an Oscar for best director.

Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, and new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors, and musicians, and often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:

'Flight' Takes On Questions Of Accountability: In the Robert Zemeckis film starring Denzel Washington, a pilot with a secret substance-abuse problem successfully crash-lands an airplane while high on drugs and alcohol. He must then ask himself some tough questions about whether his act of heroism is undermined by his addiction.

'Buddy And Jim': Friends In Life And Songwriting: Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale just released a new album of duets. Critic Ken Tucker says Buddy and Jim recalls an earlier era of country music. The pair's voices, Tucker says, connect through "shared emotion in a song."

Mantel Takes Up Betrayal, Beheadings In 'Bodies': Hilary Mantel is the first woman to win the Man Booker Prize twice, first for her 2009 novel, Wolf Hall, and now for that book's 2012 sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. The novels are part of a historical fiction trilogy about Tudor England and the events surrounding the reign of King Henry VIII.

You can listen to the original interviews here:

  • 'Flight' Takes On Questions of Accountability
  • 'Buddy And Jim': Friends In Life And Songwriting
  • Mantel Takes Up Betrayal, Beheadings In 'Bodies'
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