Tune in Tuesday, July 13th at 7PM (PST) as KXLU Los Angeles proudly presents Center Stage with Mark Gordon featuring special guests:
With COUNTDOWN TO ZERO, acclaimed filmmaker Lucy Walker takes us on a fascinating and frightening exploration of the dangers of nuclear weapons, exposing a variety of present day threats and featuring insights from a host of international experts and world leaders who advocate total global disarmament.
In the documentary WINNEBAGO MAN, Ben Steinbauer searches for RV salesman Jack Rebney whose hilarious, foul-mouthed outbursts circulated on VHS tapes in the 90s before turning into a full-blown Internet phenomenon.
Every town has its peculiar urban legends - scary stories passed down through the generations that warn children not to wander into dark alleys or abandoned woods. But what if these urban legends become real? Joshua Zeman's documentary CROPSEY looks for answers to that question by peeling back the layers of fact and fiction behind one of America's most disturbing unsolved mysteries.
Vampires meet Hamlet in Jordan Galland's new film ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE UNDEAD!
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During the Cold War, nothing loomed as large in the public mind as the bomb. When the Iron Curtain fell, the bomb became a symbol of another era. Naively we felt the danger had passed. In recent years, the threat of nuclear proliferation has grown more urgent, and the political will to eliminate nuclear weapons is greater than ever in our history.
We have now entered a second nuclear age. Nuclear weapons have proliferated to nine nations, and that number could continue to grow as over 40 nations have the knowledge to construct nuclear weapons. Terrorists are actively securing nuclear weapons and fissile material, not to use as political leverage, but rather as tools of mass destruction. Equally as great a threat is human error; the possibility of an accident increases every day.
COUNTDOWN TO ZERO is a fascinating and frightening exploration of the dangers of nuclear weapons, exposing a variety of present day threats and featuring insights from a host of international experts and world leaders who advocate total global disarmament.
Jack Rebney is the most famous man you've never heard of - an RV salesman whose hilarious, foul-mouthed outbursts circulated on VHS tapes in the 90s before turning into a full-blown Internet phenomenon in 2005, seen by 20 million people worldwide.
Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer goes in search of Rebney - and finds him living alone on a mountain top, unaware of his fame. WINNEBAGO MAN is a laugh-out-loud look at viral culture and an unexpectedly poignant tale of one man's response to unintended celebrity.
Every town has its peculiar urban legends - scary stories passed down through the generations that warn children not to wander into dark alleys or abandoned woods. But what if these urban legends become real? The spine-tingling documentary Cropsey looks for answers to that question by peeling back the layers of fact and fiction behind one of America's most disturbing unsolved mysteries.
In Cropsey, filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio present a riveting true-crime drama with a personal investigation of a well-known local myth, uncovering a reality more terrifying than any urban legend. Growing up on Staten Island, New York, Zeman and Brancaccio had often heard the legend of "Cropsey" - the escaped mental patient who lived in the abandoned tunnels of the local mental hospital and came at night to snatch children off the streets. "Cropsey" remained just that, an urban legend, until the summer of 1987 when a 13-year-old girl with Down syndrome disappeared from her neighborhood. Five weeks later, she was found buried in a shallow grave on the grounds of Willowbrook, a psychiatric ward that was shuttered after its abuses were profiled in Geraldo Rivera's 1972 expose.
Investigators soon linked Jennifer's case to four other missing children in the area - none of which had been found. Cropsey follows the filmmakers as they return to Staten Island to undertake their own investigation, connecting the dots on the unsolved cases and examining the startling parallels between the legend of "Cropsey" and the real-life boogeyman linked to the missing children-convicted kidnapper Andre Rand.
Living in the back room of his father's doctors office, broke, frustrated ladies man Julian (Jake Hoffman) scores his big break when he lands the job directing an off Broadway version of Hamlet. Except it's a bizarre adaptation written by a pale Romanian impresario named Theo (John Ventimiglia) who is actually a master vampire! Theo hopes to lure the real Hamlet (Kris Lemche) out of hiding so the two can end a century's long feud over Shakespeare's Ophelia. Meanwhile, Julian pines for his ex-girlfriend, Anna (Devon Aoki) who is dating a Mobster Bobby Bianchi (Ralph Macchio) who is intent on creating the next great invention - "Whack a Germ". Added into the mix is a dimwitted Detective (Jeremy Sisto), the Holy Grail, the Rosicrucian Society, a bunch of Sexy Vamps, God and a score by Sean Lennon.
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