First, turnabout is fair play: Neil LaBute responds (in part) to my post “Work Made for Hire” at the Guardian theatre blog, where Andrew Haydon included it in his weekly “Noises Off” roundup yesterday. That Mr. LaBute also reveals that there were “certain limitations in language and topics,” though, only reinforces my point about the Los Angeles Times — especially that topic restrictions bit. While one doesn’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill, I’ll only point out that philosopher Theodor Adorno also believed that even seemingly harmless newspaper features like the astrology column (and, ironically, Adorno was writing specifically about the astrology column published in the Los Angeles Times) said a great deal about the culture in which they’re disseminated. Not that I was trying to be Adorno, either.

With that out of the way, today’s Friday video: A few years ago Michael Riedel and Susan Haskins sat down for a rare television interview with Arthur and Barbara Gelb, authors of the first major biography of Eugene O’Neill, in which they discussed the origins of the biography and a host of other issues relating to the playwright. It first aired as part of CUNY’s Theatre Talk series on 10 March 2006.