Page 23 - Program 2018

“Live from New York, It’s Sleepless Nights Custer’s Trials: A Life on the
Saturday Night” Benjamin Reiss Frontier of a New America
James Andrew Miller Thursday 8:30–9:15 am T.J. Stiles
Thursday 8:30–9:15 am Anne Rice Room Thursday 8:30–9:15 am
Walt Disney Room Joan Didion Room
Why is sleep frustrating for so many people? Why do
Going into their fifth decade of cutting edge satire, we spend so much time and money managing and Join David Bryant and T.J. Stiles as they talk about
SNL continues to hilariously capture the zeitgeist of medicating it, and training ourselves and our children the life and adventures of George Armstrong Custer.
American culture. Lucie Arnaz and James Andrew to do it correctly? Professor Benjamin Reiss will Stiles’ new biography presents a radically different
Miller will revisit some of the cast of characters from share some answers in sleep’s hidden history —one that view of Custer and his turbulent times. Custer and
the beloved Gilda Radner to Melissa McCarthy’s leads to our present, sleep-obsessed society, its tacitly his wife Libbie were figures on the frontier when
spot on Sean Spicer, the former White House Press accepted rules, and their troubling consequences. the United States was moving into the modern era.
Secretary. Miller will share some of the unfiltered Their personal struggles reflected the larger struggles
and uncensored on-camera antics and off-camera of the American people over emancipation, racial
escapades from each of SNL’s five decades. equality, the rights of women and much more.
In a wide-ranging career, Custer worked to bring
about this new America—yet could not adapt to the
modernity that he helped to create.

“So much of what Saturday
Night Live wanted to be, or what “Why do so many of us feel that,
I wanted it to be when it began, despite all our efforts to tame our

was cool. Which was something sleep, it’s fundamentally beyond
television wasn’t except in a our control?”
retro way.” — Benjamin Reiss, Wild Nights

— Lorne Michaels

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