Burt Reynolds: ‘Boogie Nights’ and the Comeback That Didn’t Stick

An assessment of Reynolds’s Oscar-nominated performance in the Paul Thomas Anderson film:

Reynolds fired his agent before the acclaim for the film and his performance started rolling in; he had seen the rough cut and hated it, and his contentious relationship with Anderson throughout the shoot and promotional campaign deepened his regret. Cinema history is littered with examples of perceived disasters turned canonical classics, and it seems likely that Boogie Nights simply wasn’t to Reynolds’ taste. Whatever the case, there are two important things to consider about the casting of Burt Reynolds in the movie.

Source: The Dissolve
Published: May 15, 2014
Length: 6 minutes (1,670 words)

The Rise of Nintendo: A Story in 8 Bits

An account of Nintendo’s rise from a playing card manufacturer in 1889 to a video game industry giant in the ’80s and ’90s. Adapted from Console Wars, out this month:

After several decades of staggering success, Fusajiro Yamauchi retired in 1929 and was succeeded by his son-in-law Sekiryo Yamauchi, who ran Nintendo efficiently for nineteen years, but in 1948 he had a stroke and was forced to retire. With no male children, he offered Nintendo’s presidency to his grandson, Hiroshi, who was twenty-one and studying law at Waseda University. It didn’t take long for Hiroshi Yamauchi to make his presence known. He fired every manager that had been appointed by his grandfather and replaced them with young go-getters who he believed could usher Nintendo beyond its conservative past.

With innovation on his mind,Yamauchi branched out into a number of other, less lucrative endeavors, including an instant-rice company and a pay-by-the-hour “love hotel.” These disappointments led Yamauchi to the conclusion that Nintendo’s greatest asset was the meticulous distribution system that it had built over decades of selling playing cards. With such an intricate and expansive pipeline already in place, he narrowed his entrepreneurial scope to products that could be sold in toy and department stores and settled upon a new category called “videogames.”

Source: Grantland
Published: May 14, 2014
Length: 20 minutes (5,168 words)

Dating in the 21st Century: A Reading List

This week’s picks from Emily include stories from GQ, The Toast, Infinite Scroll, and The Atlantic.

Source: Longreads
Published: May 15, 2014

Object Lessons

Photographer Nina Berman, a professor at Columbia’s Journalism School, on the evolving state of photojournalism:

There are stylistic trends in art and in literature, and everyone acknowledges them. But rarely are they cited in photojournalism, perhaps because people still cling to the idea of photography as an objective or neutral medium that captures a shared truth. There is nothing remotely objective about photography. Where I stand, how I got to that spot, where I direct my lens, what I frame, how I expose the image, what personal and cultural factors influence these decisions — all are intensely subjective.

Published: May 12, 2014
Length: 6 minutes (1,556 words)

The Undefeated Champions of Defeat City

A Little League is helping transform a city plagued by drugs, addiction and violence:

For Bryan, baseball is a multipurpose tool: It can unify the neighborhood, and it pits the diamond against the corner. Since the dealers recruit kids at about the same age as the coaches do, Bryan’s in a tug-of-war for the souls of these 12-year-olds, some of whose parents are out there slinging, too. “Look,” Bryan says, “we can all agree on children, you know? That they should be free to be kids. And if Dad or Mom is at a game for a few hours a week, they’re not hustling. They’re at a game.”

Bryan’s philosophy in a nutshell: Don’t let circumstances dictate your behavior. Reverse that dynamic. Fill the parks with kids and families and eventually the junkies and the dealers will drift away. Pretend that you live in a safe place and maybe it will become one.

Source: GQ
Published: May 13, 2014
Length: 25 minutes (6,333 words)

How I Met Edward Snowden

An excerpt from Greenwald’s new book, No Place to Hide, on how he first came into contact with the NSA whistleblower:

It was at that point that C., as he later told me, became frustrated. “Here am I,” he thought, “ready to risk my liberty, perhaps even my life, to hand this guy thousands of Top Secret documents from the nation’s most secretive agency – a leak that will produce dozens if not hundreds of huge journalistic scoops. And he can’t even be bothered to install an encryption program.”

That’s how close I came to blowing off one of the largest and most consequential national security leaks in U.S. history.

Source: TomDispatch
Published: May 13, 2014
Length: 15 minutes (3,953 words)

‘West Wing’ Uncensored

An oral history of the beloved political series:

Aaron Sorkin: Kivi knew about the meeting and said, “Hey, you know what would make a good series? That.” He was pointing at the poster for The American President. “But this time you’d focus on the staffers.” I told him I wasn’t going to be doing a series and that I was meeting with John to meet John — I wanted to hear stories about China Beach and ER, and I especially wanted to hear about his years as stage manager for A Chorus Line. The next day I showed up for the lunch, and John was flanked by executives from Warner Bros. and agents from CAA. John got down to business and said, “What do you want to do?” And instead of saying, “I’m sorry, there’s been a misunderstanding. I don’t have anything to pitch,” I said, “I’d like to do a series about staffers at the White House.” And John said, “We’ve got a deal.”

Published: May 13, 2014
Length: 27 minutes (6,858 words)

Why Did AIDS Ravage the U.S. More Than Any Other Developed Country?

Examining the methods of AIDS treatment and prevention in the U.S. in comparison with the U.K. and Germany where fewer people die of the disease:

No one knew how severe the epidemic was among drug users until 1984, when the still-under-development antibody test found that 50 percent of drug users in New York City and Edinburgh and 30 percent in Amsterdam were already infected. (Des Jarlais says genetic tests have since shown that the epidemic in Amsterdam originated in New York.)

Here’s where the differences come in. Almost immediately after those first tests, Western European countries installed needle-exchange programs, gave out free syringes, and established opiate-substitution treatment. Germany even got needle vending machines. By 1997, England and Wales were giving out 25 million free syringes per year. Anything to keep the virus from spreading, even if it meant making it a little easier to be a heroin addict that day.

The United States, on the other hand, refused to provide federal funds for needle exchanges or even fund research into whether they were effective.

Published: May 12, 2014
Length: 15 minutes (3,893 words)

My Day as a Robot

The reporter spends a day as a telepresent robot:

When I hit a clearing, a friendly young woman comes up to me, introduces herself as Leila, and asks where I am. I am very briefly confused by the question: We’re in Toronto, of course! But when I catch her drift and admit I am actually in New York, she doesn’t seem to hear me. Before long, it becomes clear that the volume on the People’s Bot just doesn’t go loud enough to carry my voice in this noisy hallway. To hear what I’m saying, Leila has to put her face right up against mine. This seems to work, and after a bit of basic back and forth, I ask her what it feels like to be talking to me. “Do I seem like a human or a robot to you?” Leila thinks this over, and after a moment, says something thrilling: “It’s like a hybrid of both. Like a cyborg!”

Source: Boston Globe
Published: May 11, 2014
Length: 13 minutes (3,450 words)

On Being Gay in Medicine

A leading Harvard pediatrician’s story:

During medical school, I was on the admissions committee. Two people interviewed each applicant and then presented to the rest of the committee. There was an applicant who was outstanding in every category; I gave him a 10 out of 10. The other committee member who in- terviewed him, a doctor at Children’s, gave him the worst score we’d seen. His record at one of the top schools in the country meant that he would have had to have confessed to murder, or worse, preferring Yale to Harvard, to get such a low score. We waited to hear the explanation. He said that he just didn’t feel “comfortable” with the applicant.

The committee was baffled. I wasn’t, because I had met the applicant. He was a man who was effeminate. I didn’t know if he was gay, but I did know that he was someone who was likely to have been called names or to have been roughed up because people thought he was. The doctor who had interviewed him already had a reputation at Harvard College, where he helped premeds put together their applications for medical school. Gay students knew to avoid being assigned to him.

Published: Mar 30, 2012
Length: 16 minutes (4,105 words)