BILL & TED's Alex Winter Talks Frank Zappa Movie On Tom Needham's SOUNDS OF FILM

ZAPPA director, Alex Winter, editor Michael J. Nichols, and author of CAN'T PAY, WON'T PAY, Thomas Gokey, are Tom Needham's special guests this Thursday at 6 pm on WUSB.

There has yet to be a film about the life and times of the brilliant and genuinely maverick musician Frank Zappa. Director Alex Winter and editor Michael J. Nichols have crafted a documentary from over a thousand hours of mostly unseen material from Zappa's personal vault. ZAPPA is an expansive and intimate portrait of an extraordinary artist who was also fully engaged with the turbulent politics of his day.

In 2019, Winter released two new documentary feature films; The Panama Papers, about the biggest global corruption scandal in history and the journalists who worked in secret and at great risk to break the story and Trust Machine, about the rise of bitcoin and the blockchain.

Previous documentary work includes Deep Web, about the online black market Silk Road, and the trial of its creator Ross Ulbricht. Winter's next feature documentary, Showbiz Kids, premiered on HBO to widespread critical acclaim in July, 2020, garnering a Critics Choice nomination for Best Score.

Tom Needham's conversation with Alex and Michael was originally recorded for the Port Jefferson Documentary Film Series who are screening the film virtually on November 15th at 7 pm. For more information go to: https://www.portjeffdocumentaryseries.com/anniversary-series/.

CAN'T PAY, WON'T PAY, written by the Debt Collective, is a powerful guide to action for people in debt. Filmmaker, Astra Taylor, is the writer of the book's introduction.

The book makes the case that debtors have been mocked, scolded and lied to for decades. We have been told that it is perfectly normal to go into debt to get medical care, to go to school, or even to pay for our own incarceration. We have been told there is no way to change an economy that pushes the majority of people into debt while a small minority hoard wealth and power.

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed that mass indebtedness and extreme inequality are a political choice. In the early days of the crisis, elected officials drew up plans to spend trillions of dollars. The only question was: where would the money go and who would benefit from the bailout?

The authors believe the truth is that there has never been a lack of money for things like housing, education and health care. Millions of people never needed to be forced into debt for those things in the first place.

Armed with this knowledge, the authors think that a militant debtors movement has the potential to rewrite the contract and assure that no one has to mortgage their future to survive.

THE SOUNDS OF FILM is the nation's longest running film and music themed radio show. For the past 30 years, the program has delivered a popular mix of interviews and music to listeners all over Long Island, parts of Connecticut and streaming live worldwide on the internet. Past people interviewed for the show include Jim Breuer, Cheech & Chong, Alec Baldwin, Billy Joel, William H. Macy, John Debney, Howard Shore, Kurtis Blow and Ralph Macchio.

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