Mr. Showbiz Contributors
Grant Alden was managing editor of The Rocket, a Northwest music magazine, during the, um, "grunge years" (1989-1994). He is now a Seattle-based freelance writer whose work occasionally appears in Rolling Stone, Spin, Request, Musician, huH?, and RayGun. He is also co-owner of Vox Populi Gallery (where "the visual equivalent of punk rock" adorns the walls), and is co-founder of No Depression, an alternative country 'zine.

Joan Anderman writes about music and the arts for the San Francisco Chronicle and countless others.

Tim Appelo is the film critic for The Oregonian. He lives in Portland.

Harriet Baskas is a radio producer and writer who's always on the look-out for unusual museums. She's the co-author, with Adam Woog, of Atomic Marbles and Branding Irons: A Guide to Museums, Collections and Roadside Curiosities in Washington and Oregon, published by Sasquatch Books. If you know of a museum she should check out, send us a letter to the editor, and we'll have her look into it.

Charles Bermant writes the "CD Plus/What?" column for the Washington Post, and has covered music, technology, and multimedia for a variety of publications. His 1992 book 101 Windows Tips and Tricks was recently translated into Romanian.

Tom Bodett is a very multimedia kind of guy. He began his media career writing newspaper columns, but quickly moved into other areas: he worked as a commentator for NPR's All Things Considered, wrote and hosted his own radio show (The End of the Road), and published several books of stories and humorous essays. In 1992, he found his way onto the compact disc format. In 1996, he published a novel, The Free Fall of Webster Cummings. He is perhaps most famous for being the voice of the man in the Motel 6 commercials who promises to "leave the light on for you." Now, with his first foray into the online world, Tom seems poised to appear on every medium known to man. For the last couple of decades, Tom has lived in Homer, Alaska.

Jack Boulware was the founding editor of The Nose, a satirical investigative magazine that USA Today once cruelly dismissed as "astonishingly offensive." He now contributes to many publications, including HotWired, Playboy, and British Esquire. Since 1990 he has been a columnist and features writer for S.F. Weekly in San Francisco. He is at work on a book for Feral House.

Chris Bowen is editorial researcher for Star Magazine. He developed his sleuthing abilities at the Long Island Press and New York Post libraries. Chris currently lives in Connecticut with his wife and three teenagers.

Mary Brennan is a critic and filmmaker. She has written for the BBC, for PBS, and for a wide variety of newspapers and periodicals.

Frank DeCaro writes frequently about popular culture, entertainment, fashion, and life. His work has appeared in such magazines as Entertainment Weekly, Martha Stewart Living, Visionaire, and Out. He is a former columnist for New York Newsday. His humorous memoir, A Boy Named Phyllis, is a Viking book.

Alex Demyanenko is the executive editor of Los Angeles View. He is currently producing a documentary on the history of Los Angeles's black gangs. He has never punched or kicked anyone.

Jill Eisenstadt has written for The New York Times, Elle, New York magazine, and Vogue, among other publications, and is the author of two novels, From Rockaway and Kiss Out. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, writer Michael Drinkard, and her daughter, Jane Starr.

F.X. Feeney is a Los Angeles-based writer whose work has appeared in American Film, Movieline, People, and L.A. Weekly. He has also written a number of screenplays, including Frankenstein Unbound, on which he shared screen credit with Roger Corman.

Charles Fleming is a former Newsweek and Variety columnist who writes about the entertainment industry for Vanity Fair, TV Guide, and a host of other publications.

Michael Fleming is an entertainment columnist for Variety and The New York Daily News.

Gary Graff is the music writer, currently on strike, of the Detroit Free Press. A native of Pittsburgh, he has won the A.S.C.A.P. Deems Taylor Award and the Music Journalism Award for excellence in music writing. He lives in suburban Detroit with his wife, daughter, and two stepsons.

Bob Gulla, former managing editor at CD Review magazine, writes for a number of national publications, including Guitar, Audio, and Request. He resides in New Hampshire with his wife, Kathleen, and two children, Grant and Mariclaire. During his time off, Bob enjoys staring at the walls and taking deep, cleansing breaths.

Alex Heard is an editor at The New York Times Magazine and a dauntless voyager into the unknown. He is currently working on a book, for W.W. Norton & Co., about millennial, utopian, and futuristic subcultures. His work has appeared in The New Republic, Vanity Fair, and Outside.

Kitty Bowe Hearty is the editor of Independents, a quarterly magazine that covers the independent film business.

Tony Hendra has been the editor of The National Lampoon and Spy, and has edited or co-written several best-selling books, including Not the New York Times, The 80s: A Look Back, and Off the Wall Street Journal. He has also worked in television: he co-created and wrote the British series Spitting Image. He wrote the screenplay to 1996's The Great White Hope. You may know him best, however, as Ian Faith, the band manager in This Is Spinal Tap.

Wm. Steven Humphrey is an associated editor for the Seattle-based weekly paper The Stranger. He enjoys television and still has a lot of growing up to do.

Ruth Hunter is a journalist, political consultant, and California native. She currently resides in Los Angeles.

Richard T. Jameson has been the editor of Film Comment magazine since 1990. His writing on film has appeared in Film Quarterly, The Velvet Light Trap, Steadycam, American Film, Pacific Northwest, and 7 Days, among others, as well as the Seattle Film Society journal, Movietone News, which he edited for most of its history (1971-81). He also edited the National Society of Film Critics' 1994 anthology They Went Thataway: Redefining Film Genres. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York, on a street with big trees.

Louisa Kamps, a freelance writer in New York, has written for many important publications, including The New Yorker and Mr. Showbiz.

Todd Krieger is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Wired, The New York Times, and Spin.

Irv Letofsky has worked as an entertainment editor of The Los Angeles Times and managing editor of Entertainment Daily Journal for Fox Television. He is a regular contributor to the Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide, and The Washington Post.

Reginald McKnight's short stories have won the O. Henry Award, the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and two Kenyon Review New Fiction Prizes, and he is a 1995 Whiting Award recipient. Also the author of the novel, I Get on the Bus, McKnight teaches at the University of Maryland and is the editor of the anthology African-American Wisdom.

John Martin writes a television column for The New York Times syndicate, and writes about media and TV for the Providence Journal in Rhode Island. He has previously worked as a radio talk show host, a television and home-video critic for the Florida Radio Network, a TV sportscaster, and an election-coverage anchor for WNED-TV in Buffalo.

David Mermelstein writes about the arts and lives in Los Angeles. He believes that manners count above all else.

Jean Oppenheimer writes regularly about film and television for American Cinematographer, Boxoffice, and Los Angeles View. She lives in Southern California with her dog, Liberty.

John Papageorge lives in San Francisco and writes about the arts.

Michael Payne was born in Los Angeles and raised in Fresno, California, the raisin capital of the world. He's back in L.A. now, where he is a screenwriter and a Golden Reel Award-winning sound effects designer.

Roberta Penn is an award-winning journalist and radio producer and host. Born in Texas and raised in North Carolina, she currently resides in Seattle, where she contributes to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and hosts a weekly radio show, Seattle Blues.

Robert Plunket is the author of two novels, My Search for Warren Harding and Love Junkie, and is at work on a third. He lives in Sarasota, Florida, where he is Mr. Chatterbox, the town's most prominent gossip columnist. He also writes for publications like the New York Times, and in an earlier life had a co-starring role in Martin Scorsese's After Hours.

Jonathan B. Pont recently graduated from the master's-degree program in journalism at Columbia University. He's a longtime contributor to The Rocket in Seattle, and his work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Backstreets, and on Addicted to Noise.

Joe Queenan has written for many publications, including GQ, The Washington Post, The New York Times and Movieline. He is the author of Imperial Caddy: The Rise of Dan Quayle in America and the Decline and Fall of Practically Everything Else, and If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble: Movies, Mayhem and Malice. His latest book, The Unkindest Cut: A Hatchet Man Film Critic Makes a Movie for $7,000 and Puts It All on His Credit Card was published by Hyperion in February 1996. He lives in Tarrytown, New York.

Bob Remstein edits the music section of the weekly newspaper Los Angeles View, and has written about music for a variety of publications, including BAM. A composer and working musician, he recently scored an independent feature film, and is currently producing an album for a Los Angeles singer-songwriter. His favorite album of all time is Tom Waits' Rain Dogs.

Jane Wollman Rusoff is a Los Angeles-based entertainment writer who has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, In Style, and USA Today, among numerous other publications. She is managing editor of National Lampoon and Ability magazines, and has authored five books.

Rick Schultz is the book review editor for the weekly newspaper LA Village View, and has written about literature and movies for a variety of publications, including The Los Angeles Times. A former story analyst at Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount, he lives with his wife and dog in Westwood. His favorite kind of bagel is cinnamon raisin.

Matt Zoller Seitz is a pop culture critic for the New Jersey Star-Ledger. He lives in New York City.

Jerry Tallmer has been reviewing theatre, films, and art in New York since the founding of the Village Voice. He created off-Broadway's Obie Awards.

David Wallis is a freelance writer based in New York City who has written about travel, entertainment, and politics for The New York Times, Details, George, and other reputable publications.

Philip Weiss writes regularly for The New York Times Magazine. His first novel, Cock-A-Doodle-Doo, was recently published by Farrar Straus & Giroux.

Jeffrey Welles writes a weekly column about Hollywood for the L.A. Times syndicate and is a regular contributor to Entertainment Weekly.

Kim Williamson, the managing editor of Boxoffice magazine, has covered the entertainment industry for more than a decade. He has written about film for The Los Angeles Times syndicate, The Hollywood Reporter, and a bevy of other publications. He lives in Los Angeles, and goes to the movies an average of five times a week.





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