Tom Roston
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Journo. Kombucha/coffee/lager. Author of The Writer's Crusade: Kurt Vonnnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five and lots of other nonfiction.
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Articles by Tom Roston
The Missing Pieces We Carry After 9/11 Original
Early dawn. A slice of last night’s chocolate cake. Watching the rays of the sun spread over the city. Stealing a moment like this was a coveted morning ritual for some of the breakfast staff at Windows on the World, the restaurant that was on the 107th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. This was the meeting place where New Yorkers and out-of-towners went to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries; to revel with food and drink and to mark life milestones.
How Playing a Soldier Takes More Than Basic Training
It takes more than a strong jawline and sharp salute to successfully play a soldier on the big screen. Consider Tom Cruise as a Navy Air Force pilot in “Top Gun,” Mark Wahlberg as a Navy SEAL in “Lone Survivor,” Martin Sheen in “Apocalypse Now,” or Tom Hanks in “Saving Private Ryan.” You just believe these actors have gone beyond the wire. So, how do they do it? There are many paths to glory, but here are just a few tricks of the trade.
Big Budgets, or Big Ideas? An Optimistic Look at the Future of Blockbusters
At this year’s Academy Awards, first-time winner Cord Jefferson made heads turn when he accepted the award for best adapted screenplay for “American Fiction,” his directorial debut that he’d struggled to get greenlit. His speech was part plea, part call-to-arms, imploring studio executives and other Hollywood gatekeepers to take more chances. “I understand that this is a risk-averse industry. I get it. But $200 million movies are also a risk.
Truth Actually | Tom Roston
There’s a chilling irony in the subtitle of the first feature documentary film, 1922’s Nanook of the North: A Story of Life and Love in the Actual Arctic. With those words, director Robert Flaherty was clueing audiences in to how he was telling a romantic tale about his subject, while presuming it was fair game to refer to the Arctic setting as the “actual” part, as unmovable and fixed as a glacier, or what we might call factual today.
What Is Human Energy | Richard Cohen
William Ewart Gladstone was Britain’s prime minister four times between 1868 and 1894, a member of Parliament for more than sixty years, a brilliant and passionate orator, an accomplished writer, and an indefatigable social reformer. Lord Kilbracken, his private secretary, estimated that if a figure of 100 could represent the energy of an ordinary man and 200 that of an exceptional one, Gladstone’s energy would be represented by a figure of at least 1,000. That’s some multiple.
Power Outage | Lewis H. Lapham
Because civilization is not natural, sustaining it entails a continuous input of matter, energy, and morale, without which it would necessarily decline or even collapse. —William Ophuls Signs of civilizational “decline or even collapse” show up in every morning’s headline, every evening’s newscast: mass killings in big cities and suburban shopping malls; children gunned down in elementary and high school classrooms.
‘The Documentary Film Industry Is in Crisis’: The Unspoken Traumas of the Filmmaking Community Original
Documentary film editors are like crash test dummies, according to Alexis Johnson. You keep letting yourself crash, assuming the seatbelts will work, over and over again just to see what impact a scene is having on you. “If I am going to harness a feeling, I have to feel it myself,” she said, recalling working on director Alex Gibney’s powerful 2021 documentary “The Forever Prisoner,” about the CIA’s interrogation treatment of prisoner Abu Zubaydah.
‘We Give a Sh*t’: Gun Safety Defines the John Wick Franchise as Much as the Weapons Do Original
Of the many weapons that mythic assassin John Wick has used to kill hundreds of bad guys over the span of four movies (a book, a pencil, a wire, a car door, a horse, an axe, drums), a gun still best defines him — and the series. “No one does guns more than we do,” said “John Wick” director Chad Stahelski, a former stuntman.
The Ugly American Passport Fiasco
By Tom Roston The State Department told me to fly to Puerto Rico to renew my passport. There's something wrong here. For those of you who have yet to absorb recent news alerts about unprecedented delays at the State Department's passport renewal offices, please let my experience be a cautionary tale. Everyone who has placed "renew passport" a few notches below "research 529's" and one above "write out a will" on their...
‘We Give a Sh*t’: Gun Safety Defines the John Wick Franchise as Much as the Weapons Do
‘We Give a Sh*t’: Gun Safety Defines the John Wick Franchise as Much as the Weapons Do 03 April 2023 by Tom Roston Indiewire Of the many weapons that mythic assassin John Wick has used to kill hundreds of bad guys over the span of four movies, a gun still best defines him — and the series. “No one does guns more than we do,” says “John Wick” director Chad Stahelski, a former stuntman.
Was "Slaughterhouse Five" Vonnegut's PTSD Novel?
; SOURCE: Washington Post 1/7/2022 Breaking News tags: Dresden, literature, PTSD, World War 2, Kurt Vonnegut “Listen: ‘Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.” These lines, which begin the second chapter of Kurt Vonnegut’s iconic “Slaughterhouse-Five,” echo through Tom Roston’s new book, “The Writer’s Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five.” When I picked up Roston’s book, I expected one part literary biography and one part literary analysis.
Holiday Gift List: Books for Book Lovers
Photo: Sven Hagolani / GettyImages 10 books for bibliophiles about reading, writing and the literary life / BY Nathalie Atkinson / November 25th, 2021 Bookmark this list of 10 great new books about reading, writing and the literary life – because a bibliophile can always make room on the shelves for a few more titles. Obsessive Book Buyers: Zoomer editors have carefully curated our book coverage to ensure you find the perfect read.
What Early Drafts of 'Slaughterhouse-Five' Reveal About Kurt Vonnegut's Struggles
In the first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 anti-war masterpiece about a hapless American soldier who becomes “unstuck in time,” the author indicates that he wrote more than five thousand pages by 1965. But he threw all of those pages out, before arriving at his final draft. At his archive in the Lilly library in Indiana, there are at least five hundred pages that appear to come from Slaughterhouse-Five drafts.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Prescient Insight Into Veterans’ Trauma
Well before PTSD became an official diagnosis, his classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five described the psychic wounds of war. fb tw mail Print msg wa sms Bookmark November 11, 2021 Kurt Vonnegut, 1992. (Douglas Elbinger / Getty) Subscribe to The Nation Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week.
Tom Roston on Kurt Vonnegut and "The Writer's Crusade"
Kurt Vonnegut, when the living got easier. Kurt Vonnegut’s notes and early drafts provide the missing link between his fictional characters and his own personal life November 10, 2021 Reading Time: 3 minutes In the first half of the 20th century, those persnickety New Critics referred to the analysis of authors’ personal lives in literary criticism as “a biographical fallacy.” And they were mostly right.
On Slaughterhouse-Five, the “Ultimate PTSD Novel”
“Rereading Slaughterhouse-Five taught me two things about the novel: how great it really is, and what it’s really about. It’s not about time travel and flying saucers, it’s about PTSD,” wrote William Deresiewicz, an author and critic, in The Nation magazine in 2012. Readers have been looking at the book through the psychological trauma prism since the novel first came out. In 1974, literary critic Arnold Edelstein wrote, “‘So it goes’ . . .
Writer's Crusade Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five
The story of Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five, an enduring masterpiece on trauma and memory Kurt Vonnegut was twenty years old when he enlisted in the United States Army. Less than two years later, he was captured by the Germans in the single deadliest US engagement of the war, the Battle of the Bulge.
Food Allergies Remain a Mystery. Why?
The rise in food allergies has been weighing on the health system for a couple decades now — with little understanding of where it came from and where it’s headed During a grocery run long before the Covid-19 pandemic, Michael Pistiner, MD, a second-year pediatric allergy fellow at Children’s Hospital Boston, was standing in a Boston Whole Foods aisle basking in the glow of how darn cute his son Scott was.
An Oral History of Wikipedia, the Web’s Encyclopedia
It’s hard to imagine the internet without Wikipedia. Just like the air we breathe, the definitive digital encyclopedia is the default resource for everything and everyone — from Google’s search bar to undergrad students embarking on research papers.
“About 95% of the people who died in the World Trade Center were at the impact zones or above them. Most of those who were below the impact sites were able to get out. It appears that greeter Beatriz… - GEN
Sign up for Flux By GEN A weekly newsletter about the powerful forces reshaping America. Take a look By signing up, you will create a Medium account if you don’t already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices. Check your inbox Medium sent you an email at to complete your subscription. Culture writer; Author of THE MOST SPECTACULAR RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD [https://amzn.to/2YSavt0]. What matters now. A Medium publication about politics, power, and culture.
What's Behind The Subway Bread Smell?
The fast food chain's bread smell, dissected With more than 35,000 Subway franchises in the world (and close to 25,000 in the U.S.), it’s hard to avoid the bread-y aroma emanating through the streets. You know the smell. It billows for a good hundred yards from seemingly strategically placed vents. It’s a sweet-sour odor that doesn’t smell like any other bread ever baked in an oven, but it’s undeniably bread-like. I’ve seen children swoon at the smell. Most adults I know say it’s putrid and plastic.
MOVIE OBJECTS (8)
By: Tom Roston April 22, 2020 One in a series of 25 nonfiction narratives about significant objects spotted in movies. Presented to HILOBROW’s readers by Project:Object. * CALCULATOR WATCH | THE BREAKFAST CLUB | d. JOHN HUGHES | 1985 A brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal.
“We Are Going to Get Through This as a Group”: New Yorkers Learn to Stand Together, Six Feet Apart
Don’t tell the governor, but some of his MTA contract workers are still showing up to a job here in Brooklyn. I had been cursing them from my window for over a year as they tore up my street and never seemed closer to completing construction. But now they feel like my last connection to a normalcy that I know is gone. Really, they should stop. I don’t see how this is essential work. But I can’t help feeling relieved every morning they start banging away.
What's Really In Your Orange Juice?
Hey, fellow juice drinkers, gather round. It’s time we had a talk. I imagine you are like me, and you drink a lot of juice. Every morning, I exclusively drink Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice and Tropicana Pure Premium Ruby Red Grapefruit juice, both of which are 100% pure and natural juice. They’re all juice, man. They’re not just not from concentrate, they’re never from concentrate. How badass is that?
The Building of the World Trade Center Restaurant Windows on the World
There are few New York City restaurants more storied than Windows on the World. The restaurant made its debut on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower in 1976, offering sweeping views of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and New Jersey — the earth itself peppered with the buildings, the bridges, the Statue of Liberty; the sky with tourist helicopters.
September 10, 2001 at the World Trade Center's Windows on the World
Monday, September 10, was looking to be a miserable day, with torrential rain and wind. The day before, Australian tennis upstart Lleyton Hewitt had aced American Pete Sampras, and, on Saturday, Venus Williams had beaten her sister Serena in the finals of the US Open.
The Restaurant That Died on 9/11
Credit: Owen Franken — Corbis/Getty Images “I don’t mean to break in on the fun, but this is a serious news story,” Howard Stern said on the radio. “A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.” Glenn Vogt, Windows on the World’s general manager, was listening as he drove down the West Side Highway. He couldn’t believe it. Unaware of the gravity of the situation, he parked near the World Trade Center and walked toward the North Tower lobby, glass crunching under his feet.
Spectacular | Tom Roston
“Much more than a history of a restaurant spectacular for its views, Roston has woven together a riveting history of New York City since its near collapse in the 1970s and intriguing stories about the restaurant business. The terrible tragedy of 9/11 looms, but there is also a heartening theme of how even the worst architectural excrescence can be transformed by people and imagination.
‘The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World’ Book Excerpt
features Sept. 10, 2019 Inside Windows on the World, New York’s most spectacular restaurant. Photo: Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos Photo: Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos Photo: Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos “America is a gooood country.” It was a joke, but not really. It’s what the Windows on the World crew said to one another after a heavy night, after turning and burning a station of eight tables with more guests waiting at the door.
The Story of Undocumented Immigrant Family Torn Apart by 9/11
Ana Soria had known Luis Alfonso Chimbo since she was a child. They grew up 8,000 feet above sea level in the mountains of Ecuador in the church-filled city of Cuenca. Their families made pork fried rice and sold it together on the streets during holidays. After Soria and Chimbo were married in 1988, he went to work in New York for a couple of years before coming back to Ecuador to bring her to America. They moved to Queens to raise their son.
There’s a Reason the Ketogenic Diet Has Staying Power, and It’s Not Ketosis
Julie Smith, the Utah-based mother of four behind the popular Instagram account @ketomadesimple, neatly organized her plate and crafted her caption: “Camping, day 1. Lunch. Pork rinds, snap peas with ranch, lettuce wrapped turkey, bacon, mayo, mustard, and cheese. Yes, snap peas are carby, but I’m okay with it! K, off to be with my cute family.
THE MOST SPECTACULAR RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD
A detailed, inspiring, and horrifying account of the restaurant that sat atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Former Premiere senior editor Roston (I Lost It at the Video Store: A Filmmakers' Oral History of a Vanished Era, 2015) returns with a rich, complex account of Windows on the World, a story the author begins by discussing the many immigrants who worked there—later, he includes one of Donald Trump’s many clueless comments about 9/11.
Weird Science Archives - Food Republic
Food Coloring From Avocado Pits? One Startup Says It Can Be Done. Food Coloring From Avocado Pits? One Startup Says It Can Be Done.
Author Ben Mezrich on the Winklevoss Twins and Cryptocurrency Hype
In ‘Bitcoin Billionaires,’ Mezrich reinvents the Winklevoss twins as savvy tech investors Money as a social network. That was how a stranger first pitched Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the 6’5” twins, on bitcoin at a lavish pool party in 2008. The sibling investors, who were depicted in The Social Network as uber-jocks who found themselves thwarted in their tech ambitions by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, had never heard of cryptocurrency. But they knew an opportunity when they saw one.
John Cleese has some good recommendations for how to deal with a**holes
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that there is an emerging intellectual field best described as “asshology”: the study of the assholes who seem to be suddenly all around us, from the assholes who tried to pay their kids’ way into college to the assholes who harass mass-shooting victims and all the way up to, of course, our asshole political leaders.
‘They Thought It Was Black Magic’: An Oral History of TiVo
How the original DVR paved the way for Netflix and the cord-cutter movement It’s hard to believe, but a scant 20 years have passed since viewers were unshackled from their televisions. For decades, NBC told us Thursday nights were “Must See TV” and ABC insisted it was “TGIF” Friday, so we did as we were told and stayed home to watch Friends, Seinfeld, and Full House.
How Jose Andres is creating a Spanish food mecca in New York’s newest neighborhood
By Tom Roston5 minute Read You can’t blame a New Yorker for assuming that a recently installed Marra Forni Italian brick oven is destined to produce an endless parade of gourmet pizzas when he sees it while walking through midtown Manhattan Hudson Yards’s Mercado Little Spain, the 35,000-square-foot food hall that opens on March 15. But he would be wrong. “Only Italians would waste an oven like that on pizza.
Home Page is being rereleased, like a time capsule from the internet’s early days
By Tom Roston4 minute Read You have to be over 30 to remember a time when the internet felt like an infinite horizon free from corporate malfeasance. Justin Hall, dubbed by the New York Times as possibly “the founding father of personal bloggers,” sure does. He was there in 1994 when just several hundred websites existed, and the first web browser, Netscape Navigator, had yet to debut. To Hall, the web was a big party to which he wanted to invite people. Or a group therapy session.
A “peaceaholic” and haunted soul, Padraig O’Malley is the subject of “Peacemaker”
Samuel Beckett did a darn good job distilling the human condition with his words, “You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.” But the sentiment really hits the nail on the head when applied to Padraig O’Malley, a troubled, recovering alcoholic Irishman who dropped out of Harvard when he gambled his college scholarship fund on the Muhammad Ali-Joe-Frazier fight in 1971, and went on to dedicate his life to mediating seemingly intractable, international conflicts.
Kelly Macdonald talks to Salon about stepping into a starring role with “Puzzle”
It’s been 22 years since actress Kelly Macdonald lightened our hearts with her presence in the groundbreaking, boys-will-be-boys romp, “Trainspotting." After all that time, she is now finally the sole center of a feature film, “Puzzle,” which is now in theaters. Not that she hasn’t had a host of great, supporting roles, from an unforgettable turn in "No Country for Old Men" to her recurring role in "Boardwalk Empire." But now, an entire story hangs on her. It’s been worth the wait.
Docu-Series 'America Divided' is the Latest to Chronicle New York's Housing Crisis
Netsanet Negussie is a fall 2016 intern with Production & Programming and Isaac Steinmetz is a fall 2016 intern with America ReFramed. Housing and displacement are longstanding issues that have prompted exploration of how economic and racial divides continue to shape cities. Because it is a place where the extremes of housing are so readily apparent, New York City has been a focal point for this discussion.
What do your neighbors talk about? “There’s definitely a darkness that comes up in small talk”
Salon welcomes the Nantucket Film Festival as a guest curator for this month’s Salon Films slate. The following film is one of eight short documentaries in the Salon Films program, now airing in full on Salon’s Premium app. Each film has appeared at the festival in prior seasons. Learn more about the 2018 edition of the Nantucket Film Festival.
“Cleveland, it’s your time”: Flash back to the city’s 1986 tragic attempt to break a world record
Salon welcomes the Nantucket Film Festival as a guest curator for this month’s Salon Films slate. The following film is one of eight short documentaries in the Salon Films program, now airing in full on Salon’s Premium app. Each film has appeared at the festival in prior seasons. Learn more about the 2018 edition of the Nantucket Film Festival. Director Nathan Truesdell has a warped perspective on the world. Or heck, maybe he sees things more clearly than the rest of us.
The human costs of the Olympics: Inside the community displaced by the 2016 Rio games
Salon welcomes the Nantucket Film Festival as a guest curator for this month’s Salon Films slate. The following film is one of eight short documentaries in the Salon Films program, now airing in full on Salon’s Premium app. Each film has appeared at the festival in prior seasons. Learn more about the 2018 edition of the Nantucket Film Festival.
“Eyes of Exodus”: Humanizing the Syrian refugee crisis through one Greek island’s dynamic
Salon welcomes the Nantucket Film Festival as a guest curator for this month’s Salon Films slate. The following film is one of eight short documentaries in the Salon Films program, now airing in full on Salon’s Premium app. Each film has appeared at the festival in prior seasons. Learn more about the 2018 edition of the Nantucket Film Festival.
Go inside a teen LARPer’s mind in the documentary “Raj and the Rebellion”
Salon welcomes the Nantucket Film Festival as a guest curator for this month’s Salon Films slate. The following film is one of eight short documentaries in the Salon Films program, now airing in full on Salon’s Premium app. Each film has appeared at the festival in prior seasons. Learn more about the 2018 edition of the Nantucket Film Festival.
“Johnny Physical Lives”: A brother’s documentary love letter to a rock myth cut short
Salon welcomes the Nantucket Film Festival as a guest curator for this month’s Salon Films slate. The following film is one of eight short documentaries in the Salon Films program, now airing in full on Salon’s Premium app. Each film has appeared at the festival in prior seasons. The 2018 edition of the Nantucket Film Festival takes place June 20-25. Learn more about NFF film screenings and find out how to attend here.
Watch the documentary “Bad Dog,” a true crime tale about Pep, the felonious pup
Salon welcomes the Nantucket Film Festival as a guest curator for this month’s Salon Films slate. The following film is one of eight short documentaries in the Salon Films program, now airing in full on Salon’s Premium app. Each film has appeared at the festival in prior seasons. The 2018 edition of the Nantucket Film Festival takes place June 20-25. Learn more about NFF film screenings and find out how to attend here.
Documentary “Bedside Manner” humanizes the doctor-patient relationship
Salon welcomes the Nantucket Film Festival as a guest curator for this month’s Salon Films slate. The following film is one of eight short documentaries in the Salon Films program, now airing in full on Salon’s Premium app. Each film has appeared at the festival in prior seasons. The 2018 edition of the Nantucket Film Festival takes place June 20-25. Learn more about NFF film screenings and find out how to attend here.
Eight Independent Documentaries To Stream for Free This Spring
Spring has arrived! A new set of POV documentaries will be available to stream starting Monday, April 10, 2017 at pov.org/video and the POV channel on your PBS app. Here’s a preview of the eight films: Beats of the Antonov (2015) Sudan has been in an almost constant state of civil war since it achieved independence in 1956, and it split into a pair of sovereign states in 2011.
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