November/December 2010
Around the Quads
Alumni in the News
The College has been all over the silver screen this fall. Anna Boden ’02 teamed up with Ryan Fleck to direct It’s Kind of a Funny Story, which is about a suicidal teenager who checks into an adult psychiatric ward where he meets bizarre characters, learns life-lessons and even finds love. Another teen comedy, directed and distributed by Linda Appel Lipsius ’93 and her husband, shows that a small independent movie can still make waves. Their film, Smash, starring Lindsey Shaw of 10 Things I Hate About You, tells the story of a tennis champion who suffers an injury that keeps her out of the game but brings romance in the form of Chandler Massey of Days of Our Lives. James Franco played the iconoclastic Allen Ginsberg ’48 in Howl, a biopic of the Beat poet that focused on the obscenity trial waged over his masterpiece about gay love, drugs and disillusionment. George Clooney will direct Farragut North, a political drama adapted from the play written by Beau Willimon ’99, ’03 Arts. CCT profiled Willimon in May/June ’09, soon after the play came out.
Tristan Perich ’04 has reduced music to its bare minimum. His 1-Bit Music features a CD case containing not a CD but an electronic circuit that plays a five-movement symphony specially written in one-bit programming code. The Wall Street Journal reports that these robotic sounds have “an intense, hypnotic force and a surprising emotional depth.” Perich is an experimental musician as well as a visual artist who has had solo exhibitions in New York, Copenhagen and Spoleto. He received the Prix Ars Electronica in 2009 and will be featured at Sonar 2010 in Barcelona. He also has produced Machine Drawings and 1-Bit Video.
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich ’01Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich ’01 has been awarded The 2010 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award
for woman writers of exceptional talent in the early stages of their career.
Marzano-Lesnevich plans to use the $25,000 award to take the time to finish her
first book, Any One Of Us, described by the foundation as a “personal
narrative that combines memoir with an inquiry into a murder and a murder’s
past.” She draws on her personal trauma and professional experience as a
Harvard Law student defending murderers and a sex offender in Louisiana.
Brandon Kessler ’96, ’07 Business’ Internet startup is proving that economic crisis and economic opportunity may be synonymous, according to an article in Crain’s New York Business. His company, ChallengePost, is an online marketplace where users can post challenges and pledge money to motivate one another to solve problems. Kessler previously founded a record label, Messenger Records, which he launched as a senior at the College. According to Crain’s, ChallengePost already has raised $775,000 and is nearing an institutional round of funding worth “several million dollars.”
The Republican Party’s hottest trendsetter, Meghan McCain ’07, was featured in an extensive profile in The New York Times Style section in September. In an interview conducted near her Arizona home, McCain dished about her new book, Dirty Sexy Politics, her blogging and how she thinks young people can become more connected to the political process. Her first attempts as a blogger, writing about her father’s unsuccessful run for President, were met with hostility by some readers but McCain says she has learned from her mistakes and now is a tweeter with 86,000 followers as well as a featured writer for The Daily Beast. The next step for her growing media empire may be television, according to the article.
Atti Viragh ’12 GS