Pop Culture Happy Hour #161: Captain Phillips and What's Making Us Cry

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OBSESSION! One of Juan Ortiz's posters for each of the 80 episodes of Star Trek, the original series. 

Naturally I thought of a theory about why one of the songs I mentioned affects me so profoundly as soon as producer Nick Fountain turned off the mics in NPR's Studio 46 and episode #161 of Pop Culture Happy Hour -- on which I was honored to be a guest -- wrapped. But fortunately for you, dear listener, the three regulars -- Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson, and Trey Graham -- were all on top of their games. My pal-for-life Glen Weldon, their usual fourth man, was on top of a raft or something, vacationing in Grand Cayman.

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ou can hear the episode in a web browser here or download it from iTunes here. 

A couple of items I forgot to mention:

• Captain Phillips director Paul Greengrass was set to direct Watchmen at one time. Given his documentary roots, I think it would've been fascinating to see what he would've done with this ultimate tearing-down of superhero tropes. We can't know, but I strongly suspect his take would've been more interesting than Zack Snyder's, which was simply to apply 90s Image Comics-style superhero tropes -- This is awesome! Bloody slow-mo violence is awesome! -- to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' thoughtful book.

• Production Designer Dante Ferretti's work, which is celebrated in the current Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Design and Construction for the Cinema, has won him three Oscars, most recently for Hugo in 2011.
• And here's piece on Juan Ortiz, the artist who made the Star Trek poster at the top of this post, along with 79 others -- one for each episode of the original 60'sTrek.

Finally, a correction: Paul Auster, the novelist/poet/screenwriter/memoirist/etc. who wrote and co-directed with Wayne Wang the movie Smoke, did not write The Sheltering Sky, even though I said that he did on the show. The author of The Sheltering Sky is Paul Bowles. I got my literary Pauls confused. Sorry.