Radio Times; Single Sex Education and Artscape: Films In Philadelphia

And you can hear that report this afternoon at 4 o'clock right here on 91 FM, WHY. Good morning and welcome to Radio Times. I'm Tracy Tannenbaum in Fr. Mardi Mascoyne. In 1992, a landmark report released by the American Association of University Women showed how girls got short-changed in the classroom. This revelation led to several experiments in single sex education, like girls only math and science classes. The association has just issued a new report that says separating by gender may not be the solution. We'll talk about it in the first hour of the show. Then in the second hour, 12 monkeys, Philadelphia,

the age of innocence, beloved. Is Philadelphia becoming a favorite town among directors? Join us for art escape on Radio Times. That all comes your way after the news from National Public Radio. I'm National Public Radio News in Washington. I'm Carole Castle. Thousands of ethnic Albanians took to the streets today in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, to protest Serbian police repression in the province. In PR's Sylvia Pogoli reports. Today's demonstration was organized by the youth forum of the Democratic League of Kosovo, the leading Albanian party. Demonstrator shouted, we will never give up independence and announced recent Serbian police operations that have claimed at least 80 lives, including those of women and children. The demonstration coincided with a flurry of diplomatic activity, with the West cranking up pressure on the regime of Serbian strongman Slobodomilosevic. The great powers have given Milosevic until tomorrow to open a dialogue with the Kosovo Albanians

or else face another round of economic and diplomatic sanctions. In Sofia, under Secretary of State Stroke Talbot, currently on a Balkan tour aimed at preventing the Kosovo crisis from spilling over to neighboring countries, accused Belgrade of carrying out ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Sylvia Pogoli, NPR News, Belgrade. President Clinton is flying to Las Vegas today to meet with labor leaders and to discuss job training. The president will meet with the AFL-CIO's executive council and then tour a training facility for apprentice carpenters. White House aide, say Mr. Clinton, will speak about the urgent need for American workers to update their job skills to compete in the 21st century economy. He is pushing in Congress his GI bill for workers, which would concentrate federal training programs in the one-stop job centers. The measures before the Senate, it passed the House last fall. The jury is expected to start deliberations today at a Muncie, Indiana second-hand smoke trial. The estate of Milford Wiley is suing the tobacco industry for manufacturing and

promoting what it says is a defective product. Wiley never smoked, but worked around others who did. She died in 1991 of lung cancer. Indiana Public Radio's Tom Shek reports. After six weeks of evidence and testimony, the judge says the jury will get the case by late afternoon. Lawyers for the estate of Milford Wiley reminded the jury that they believe the tobacco industry knew about the dangers of second-hand smoke and covered it up. They contend Wiley's death from cancer was caused by her exposure to second-hand smoke at work. The plaintiffs are asking the jury for $13.3 million in compensatory damages and an even larger amount in punitive damages. But lawyers for the tobacco industry say second-hand smoke has nothing to do with Wiley's death. And they say even if it did, it would not matter in this case. They believe Wiley died of pancreatic cancer. For NPR News, I'm Tom Shek in Muncie, Indiana. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average is down 28.90 to 87.21.09 trading as moderate volume 55 million shares. The NASDAQ is down 7.03 to 1772.27. This is NPR News.

At the White House today, Vice President Al Gore will release a report outlining 200 steps that the internal revenue service can take to improve customer service. Craig Wyndham has this report. The report was prepared as part of Gore's reinventing government campaign. It calls for simplifying IRS forms, increasing electronic filing and payment options, and overhauling the procedures used to handle taxpayer complaints. One of the most far-reaching proposals would change how IRS employees are evaluated. Incentives based on the number of cases processed would be scrapped, and workers would instead be rewarded for rendering good service to taxpayers. The report says many of the improvements can be made within the IRS's existing budget, but others will require new funding. A number of the report's recommendations were first presented last fall, when President Clinton announced several customer service initiatives for the IRS, including the creation of citizen advisory

boards. Craig Wyndham and NPR News, Washington. Gasoline prices continue their decline. The average price of gasoline and the United States is at a nearly 10-year low. It is now 23 cents a gallon cheaper than it was in September. Mike Morris is with the American Automobile Association. We've had falling prices now for six consecutive months, and certainly people will be paying less for gasoline this summer than they did a year ago. Whether prices continue to fall or not, that's going to be hard to say. With the increased demand of summer driving, we generally see increased prices, but it's been a wild year for gas prices, so it's very hard to say just where they're going to end up. The Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers says prices also have been affected by competition between local gasoline stations. I'm Carl Castle, NPR News in Washington. Support for NPR comes from T. Row Price Investment Services, offering its complete college planning kit. Investors are advised to read the enclosed

prospectus before investing, 800-541-6428. Next Sky Tour is Thursday night. Rainer Shine will be at Episcopal Academy in Lower Marion. For directions called 215-351-3310-351-3310, we'll talk about the most fascinating parts of the spring sky and catch up on the latest Astronomical News. Join us Thursday night at Episcopal Academy or here on 91 FM-WHY-Y. Sky Tour is made possible in part by Lockheed Martin, Management and Data Systems. Good morning and welcome to Radio Times. I'm Tracy Tannenbaum, Infermati, Moscow.

In 1992, the American Association of University Women came out with a report that shook educators. Entitled how school short-change girls. It highlighted the subtle and not-so-subtle ways sexism followed girls attending public schools into the classroom. As a result of that report, many educators turned to single-sex education as a way to level the playing field. Single-sex classes in schools were established in New York, Virginia, Maine, New Hampshire, Illinois and California. But a new report issued by the Association just last week challenges that solution. According to the latest research, it says there's no evidence in general that single-sex education works or is better for girls than co-education. Joining me to talk about the report and single-sex education are Maggie Ford, Sarah Allen and Tim Blankenhorn. Maggie Ford is the president of the American Association of University of Women Education

Foundation and her organization issued that report. She joins me by phone. Maggie Ford welcome to Radio Times. Good morning. Thanks for being here. Sarah Allen is a teacher at the Springside School, which is a private all-girl school. She's also part of a research team that assesses how girls perform in different kinds of classroom settings. She joins me in the studio and thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. And also in the studio is Tim Blankenhorn. He's the assistant headmaster of have referred school and that's a private all-boy school. Welcome to you, Tim. Thanks for having me. And of course, for our listening audience, we hope that you join in the conversation, the numbers 215-923-2774-215-923-2774. We're particularly interested in hearing from those of you who have gone through or who are going through maybe single-sex education. Well, Maggie Ford, I'd like to start with you. The notion that's gained wide acceptance

in recent years is that girls learn better in school when they're separated from boys. And I think that idea was really bolstered by your 1992 report, which was called How Schools Short Change Girls. Before we talk about the new report and its implications, can you just briefly summarize the findings of that 1992 report? Thank you. That report looked at a variety of classroom settings across the country and the single outstanding piece that was the pervasive gender bias that was found in public schools, whether it was teachers, class scheduling, the instruction components of a variety of elements. And that report was intended to just bring awareness to the public that we needed more gender fair teaching, gender fair textbooks, and testing. I think even those of us who have been teachers and who try very hard to be fair find ourselves

now and again, acting in ways that are not necessarily gender fair. So this was a good wake-up call, as we saw it, to just say we need to attend to those kinds of issues. And as I recall, one of the findings, and again, this really points to some of the subtle effects of sexism, was that unwittingly teachers called on girls less? Was that one of the findings? Yes, and just the behaviors in classrooms. Teachers for the most part are not aware of until you've actually been sensitized to those sorts of things and how you could then modify your behavior to be more equitable. Now I remember that first report really did make an impact on people's minds. What kinds of reactions did it spawn among educators in terms of creating these single sex options? It appears to have been the trigger, as you pointed out earlier, on for a lot of these kinds of experiments, because what it said was that basically that girls were not being

treated in an equitable fashion within the classrooms, and maybe an answer as some people thought was to move the girls out. What this report shows us is that that is the gender segregation is not the key, but the things that one finds in those kinds of settings are the smaller classes, the gender fair teaching, the academic and rigorous academic challenges that students face in those single sex settings that are not typically found in the public classrooms because those classes are bigger and so on. So what we're hoping that this report separated by sex will point out is that if we could take some of those good practices that are found in the single sex settings and apply them to the public school of classrooms for 95% of the country's girls are learning, students are learning, and use those very good techniques and apply them to the public education setting. So basically you're not saying that it's girls going to school separate from boys which is the key. It's the kind of resources that are available and the kind of characteristics

that characterize this kind of classroom, that it's small, that the teaching is more individual or more egalitarian. Is that what the report is saying? That's generally what the report is saying because there are opportunities afford there that have not simply been tried out in many public school class settings at this point. So take those good learning experiences and those good experiments and apply them to the larger settings so that all students, girls and boys can benefit from those learnings. Well, I'm wondering then how some of these educators who took the report and used it as a trigger to establish single sex classes are now reacting to this report which is saying, wait, that might not be the solution. We haven't really addressed any of the public policy issues that might be in place here, but we're trying to focus on the educational outcomes that are what is it that is good

for girls and I think we can benefit by learning from those experiments wherever they might be and take those good pieces and apply them more broadly so that everyone has an opportunity to succeed at whatever level he or she chooses and take what makes a good education, which is the good teachers, the small classes, a shared code of behavior and expectations, the high academic standards or strong curriculum, leadership opportunities, all those elements and translate them into the public school setting, the co-educational setting. Well Sarah Allen, let me turn to you. As someone who's dedicated yourself really to working to educate girls, how do you feel about the idea that girls may fare no better than boys in all girls' schools? In looking at the report, I don't see that there's any total evidence one way or the other that this is so.

They're looking at a variety of research experiments that they've had, projects that they've had over 20 years really throughout the world and it seems to me that this has been turned into something else. Somehow it seems to be a political issue now, a kind of a polemic on the virtues of single sex education in public school and extended by implication to single sex schools in general. I don't think the report is also saying that there isn't evidence that single sex education is a panacea and it isn't a panacea, I don't think there was ever a claim that single sex schools were a panacea for sexism. Well in recent years we've learned that when boys and girls are together in school, particularly in middle and high schools, girls are called on less as we were speaking about earlier. They may be more reticent in speaking out in class.

Do girls in your school report somehow feeling safer or freer to be themselves and to speak their mind? By virtue of the fact that they are with girls and not with boys. In our school we have both single sex classes, we have classes single sex all the way through 10th grade and we studied those girls in those classes and they do feel that they have a chance to speak and it's obvious because they're in a class only with girls and then with an 11th grade when they're going to co-educational classes with boys across the street, they do not lose those voices, they maintain those voices. So that we like the sense that with the increased awareness around gender and the power of girls' voices that they can speak in both single sex and co-ed situations. But are you saying that when they start out they are more among themselves and they establish a certain sense of self-esteem or inner strength that they then can take with them when they

finally do interact more with boys than academic sitting. But we're not saying that that's the only way to have that happen. I just want to take a moment to reintroduce my guest today on Radio Times. Sarah Allen is a teacher at the Springside School, which is a private all-girl school. Maggie Ford joins us by phone and she's the president of the American Association of University Women Education Foundation that just released a report that challenges the notion that single sex schooling is best for girls and in a moment I'll be speaking with Tim Blankenhorn and he is the assistant headmaster at Haberford School. My name is Tracy Tannenbaum and I'm sitting in this morning from Marty Moskowane. We're looking forward to hearing from those of you in our listening audience who may want to contribute to the conversation. The number is 215-923-2774. That's 215-923-2774. A researcher who visited Philadelphia's Girls High commented that there was a certain

emotional expressiveness that she didn't see in co-ed schools. A feeling tone was a phrase she used and I'd like each of you sitting here with me to describe the tone of your school and do you think it's based on the fact that it's populated by just boys or just girls, Tim Blankenhorn, let me start with you. There is a clear difference in an all-boys school in just the emotional tenor. When people come to visit the school, it's very obvious to them that there's a sense of warmth and expressiveness that you just don't see in a co-ed environment. It's not uncommon for a boy to come up to me and just grab me from behind and hug me. It's just unspoken. It's not something you make big deal out of but there's a very market sense of openness and freedom of expression that reveals something about boys that a lot of people run aware of or would just assume forget.

Wow, that's really surprising to me. So part of what you're saying, I guess, is that when boys and girls are in school together, it's not just the girls that can feel constrained but that there's something that boys don't get to express either. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Review gender is kind of unitary and it's something when it's misused that robs both girls and boys of their voices. The so-called voices that are referred to in these studies are not boys' selves. These are personas that they take on as part of a stereotypic gender sorting process that goes on. We believe that gender is one thing and that the thoughtful use of gender is beneficial for girls and boys. What about you, Sarah Allen?

I would agree with that. What's that point? The tone in my school is, it's interesting. It's very similar to what Tim is talking about. It's friendly. It's a small community. The girls are friends but they're also the very strong sense in the classroom of intellectual challenge that is accepted, that is part of what the school is about and that kids are not mocked for thinking deeply. Their sense is that the students are very much part of the discussion that's going on in the classroom and that oftentimes the attempt is, and this is something that's part of what our research is about, that the attempt is to turn the talk over to the students as much as possible, so that there's a very strong sense that the girls are active, engaged, involved, and intellectually challenged. Well, I want to turn to Maggie Ford for a moment about that. Maggie, would you say that that is a function then of the kind of school that Sarah teaches

that or is that also a function of the fact that it's some, all girls are at least up until 11th grade? The research would tell us that it is not a function of there being a single six school, but as Sarah said, they're a small school. They have high academic expectations, they have small classes, they have common expectations as they presume is the case in Tim's school and they have opportunities for the students in those schools to behave in certain ways and have leadership opportunities and involvement to the communities to the extent that they wish to do so. Those are the kind of things that obviously work very well in those schools and are the kind of things that we would like to see translated into the co-educational setting so that the 95% of the kids who are in those co-ed settings have similar opportunities to the ones in these two schools. They're very valuable learning experiences for those kids that are going through them

and we applied both schools for providing that. We would like to see that good learning extended to the rest of the student population. Sarah, can you just comment on Maggie Ford's last comment? I would agree. I think in part of what our research has also said is that if the kinds of things that we see in these schools and in these classrooms could also be applied to be models for other kinds of schools. After all, as Maggie said, 95% of kids are educated in co-ed settings. Before we go to the phones, I want to ask you one or two questions specifically about the report, Maggie Ford. I'm sorry, I can barely hear you. Oh, I can. Somehow we've lost connection here. Okay. Can you hear me now? I better thank you. Okay, great. Before we go to the phones, I want to ask you one or two questions about the report. Real specifics that I found really interesting. One was that girls in single sex environment had less aversion and fear of math that they felt more confident about it, but that they didn't necessarily do better.

What do you make of that? It was rather interesting. Most of those reports were anecdotal rather than pure research reports, as you would say, that the girls feel better about math and science when they're in the single sex classes, but in the classes there's really no difference in the substantial difference in the achievement scores when they, when you look at single sex schools, there is some correlation between achievement and those anecdotal reports. But again, we would go back to the notion that it's the kind of educational opportunities that the girls have in those single sex schools that, that, that afford from the opportunity to learn and feel more comfortable with a math and science subject matter. And the other question I have specifically is that the report said that children from less advantage, that are less advantaged, do better in single sex schools. Yes, one of the researchers in particular looked at that angle of things and said that for some, some children in some settings, that is a most appropriate way for them to learn

at that particular point in time. But again, what they're, what they're looking at are the very specific kinds of educational opportunities in those classrooms that he was studying. Right. Well, let's go to the phones. We've got a lot of people who want to join the conversation. Let's first go to Molly, who's on her car phone, Molly. Well, I guess we won't go to Molly. Let's go to Shanu, who is calling from Radner High School. Shanu, are you with us? Hi. Hi. Welcome to Radio Times. I was just talking to you before about how, when the kids go through the single sex schools up until 11th grade, and then they go to co-ed and how you see the differences and their learning and how they're reacting to their environment, you really don't want to just make them go through a single sex school, all through high school, and then have what you're seeing in those schools in 11th grade happen when they go to college to co-ed college and like, what's going to happen then is they're not going to be ready for the

real world. I think that they should be brought up how they're going to have to face reality, especially the girls because they're going to get more and more competitive, and if they're not used to that from young grades, then I think that they're going to have problems further on. I mean, a different issue altogether is the smaller class sizes and the higher expectations and the level of the classes, but I don't think that the way that the girls do should be attributed to the fact that it's a single sex school, I think it's more class size and how much attention that they're getting. Chenu, I'm going to let you go just because your phone line is not very good, but I think you raise a great point and I want to bring this up with the guest. Part of what Chenu is saying, I think, is this idea of separatism, and I think that may go for race as well, and I want to direct this to you, Tim Blankenhorn. Are boys and girls perhaps missing something, missing a way to negotiate with the other gender that they need because this world is not made up of single sexes?

What do you feel about that? Well, it's a trade-off, Tracy, frankly. I mean, there are disadvantages. The judgment that we make is that the advantages of being brought up in a more and a safer and emotionally safer environment has broad-ranging benefits, and I don't think that anyone would deny that there would be advantages to a co-educational environment in that way, but only I think when the boys and girls have attained their voices and when they've reached an age where they can be themselves and comfortable being themselves. So it's really about trade-offs, and then are you saying that a boy who goes to a single sex school may be able to express himself more fully as you were suggesting earlier, and then he takes out with him as an adult, with his interactions with women.

That's right, and that's supported by the evidence that we have, yeah. What would you say about that, Sarah Allen? I would say that girls, when they're separated like this, also have it, it doesn't mean that they're not competitive, and it doesn't mean that they're not challenged in school. What it does mean is that they do sharpen some of those skills, and after all, they are living in a co-ed world all their lives. This is predominantly a co-educational world at home in the world that they are in. The single sex experience is unusual rather than usual. All those signals around gender are there from the moment they're born, and that this is a way to deal both educationally and socially really with issues of gender in a society that is reluctant to deal with them in schools that are reluctant to deal with them.

If in the ideal world all the gender issues were there from the beginning, this wouldn't be so difficult. Well, what would you say then about a parent who is raising a child without the other gender, say a woman raising her child on her own, where she may not be getting, that child may not be getting as much male role modeling. Do you think it makes a difference then in terms of the kind of school that she gets sent to? I would still, obviously, being committed to girls' education, I would still think there would be enormous strengths in her going to a single sex school for development of her own consciousness and her own strengths. I really can't speak about the benefits of having a man there to help you. There are men in single sex schools, we have men teachers that serve as models as well.

Good point. My guest today on radio times are Sarah Allen. She's a teacher at the Springside School, which is a private all-girl school. She's also part of a research team at the school that looks at the types of classroom environments in which girls learn best. Tim Blankenhorn is the assistant headmaster at Haverford School, and that's an all-private boy school. We've also been joined this half-hour, and I think we have to say goodbye to you, Maggie. Yes, I do. I'm just about trying to figure out where to fit that in, but I do approve of how I'm going to discuss this with both you and the teachers there, and look forward to listening to some of the other calls that can make. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, Maggie Ford. Maggie is the president of the American Association of University Women Education Foundation, and they just released a report which challenges the notion that girls learn best when they are in single sex environments. Tim Blankenhorn, I wonder if you can give us a little history lesson on boys and girls

schools, on single sex education. And I'd imagine that it's an older form of schooling than co-ed education? Yeah, it's an interesting fact that single sex schooling was very much the norm a century ago, and there's been some good academic work done to say that the vast tendency for schools to go co-ed in the last century was dictated not by educational concerns but by financial concerns, and there's really been no really elaborate pedagogies to justify co-education. You know, that's historically so, and we find ourselves in Sarah's school and my school, we find ourselves in the position of being single sex schools and remaining single sex schools, and we have grown very much to argue and to feel that it's an important strength in our program.

Is it a challenge for you? Do you feel as though you have to defend yourself at any point? Well I think that parents of boys find it very appealing to find a school where we like boys, where we specialize in boys, we know boys, and it's something that they like to hear, and we find we have a very satisfied constituency because we do that, and that's the nature of our school, and it has been for 114 years. Well Sarah Allen, to me it's kind of a paradox that single sex education, which is, as Tim said, is more traditional, has in recent years become somehow radical, that it is almost radical, it's a real conscious decision, especially I think in private school, to send your girl to a single sex school, almost as though you're making a political statement. Yes, right. Yes, it feels like that there's a commitment on the part of parents to single sex education and to certain kinds of ideas and values that they have about how their children should

be educated. Well let's go back to the phones, we have Susan calling from Copley, and she went to an all-women's college, Susan. Hi. Hi. Hello. Hi. I had sort of the best of both worlds, I started off in a small private day school where I went my entire elementary to high school, had a great experience there, and I grew completely with the thing about the class size as being the number, in addition to obviously good teachers, but having friends that I grew up with, male and female, small class size, even sitting in the front row, that kind of thing started me on my way to feeling very positive in terms of my academics in self-esteem, but then I made the choice, even though I applied to co-ed colleges, I made the choice to a really decision at an all-women's college, which

is now co-ed, very glad I made that choice, and I really believe particularly at the college level, though, I have nothing to compare it with, except that I did go, I spent half it, my junior year abroad, co-ed, that I took with me after that experience, permanent, emotional, positive bonds, the women that I was in school as intellectual and their interest as I was, and there was absolutely such a strength to have that experience. The party thing was sort of pathetic, lacking, and not particularly wholesome, but I kind of, much of us kind of winged it and did fine when we have to be graduated and married and all that stuff, but I really think that intellectually it absolutely is strengthening, and I still feel that, in the afterlife of college, you do take that with you.

Susan, what informed your decision? First of all, we're thinking that you went to Vassar, but we're not sure, where did you go to school? I went to Wheaton College, which had a, we actually wore black armed bands when they went co-ed. Right. But having gone back several times to reunions, I see what really a fabulous place it still is academically, and they've really made sure to uphold the, you know, respect for women's ideas, and actually, you know, very respectful of both chenders to say what they feel and all that stuff. Well, real quickly because we need to move on, what informed your decision to go to in a single-sex school? And basically, Wheaton was one of the ones that came to our, my school, it was also very small. I definitely wanted a small school. I've always had very tight women friends, and I always knew that it was very important

for me to especially have that. And I really wanted to, I guess, buckle down for four years academically and grow, and they really made that possible for me. You do have, I mean, you do have male professors, you know, you do have that kind of banner that goes on, and that's certainly also, you know, it's not like you're completely no males on campus. So there is that availability, and you can take juniors abroad, you have internships, which put you out into the real world where there are men. So I don't think it's completely ivory tower, though, nothing wrong with a partial ivory tower for four years. Not at all, well Susan, thank you for calling Intermediate Times. Thank you. Bye. Let's go to Mandy, who's calling from the University of Pennsylvania, Mandy. Hello. Hi. Hi. Well, I graduated. Well, I don't want to feel like I don't appreciate my education. I think I received a good education.

I went to the Baldwin School, and I graduated seven years ago, but I think I had more of a negative experience, I went to Baldwin for high school, so I went to public school before that, and I think I was a normal child, and there's things in life that you, you know, you have to filter out there personally in my life. But then when I went to Baldwin, I became pretty withdrawn. And I really didn't compare it, and then I went to Penn for college, I don't really see a difference between me being able to speak out more, and when I was in Baldwin, you know, there were more aggressive girls who were just like the guys in school. Let me turn to Sarah Allen for your thoughts about what Mandy's saying. Well, I think you're going to find the wide range of behavior among girls in classrooms as you would in any co-ed classroom, and certainly among boys as well. And I think that the academic competition would possibly encourage that.

I'm not saying single-sex school is great for everybody, but the other thing that I find that's interesting is that her perception that single-sex school, she already had these attitudes, that she wasn't put down in her co-ed school, and I think that the talk from this report and the earlier report, all the concerns about sexism in the schools and about girls having voices have led to a lot of talk and a lot of interest, studies now like the one I'd have referred about boys, so that the benefits are much broader in society now and in the schools, and that's part of the point. But Mandy, do you think that this idea of single-sex education is in some way romantic and part of what you're saying is that it's about what you as a person come in with? I mean, I guess I have to agree that it may be good for some people and not for others,

but just from my experience, when you talk about education at that age, you also have to really consider social education, and I mean, maybe it's just my class or my school, but we also have a lot of, like, bulimia and anorexia problems, and it seems the girls think together escalated that, and whereas, you know, the girls that I knew that went to co-ed school weren't so concerned about things like that, I mean, it still exists in co-ed school, but it just seemed like the girls together, you know, I know this is an academic education, but it's sort of, I don't know, escalated into that kind of behavior. That's a really interesting point, Sarah Allen, because basically one of the things the report said was that girls who go to single-sex schools feel more confident about their performance and academics, and that girls who go to co-ed schools feel more confident about their looks

and are a little more preoccupied with them, so this is kind of Mandy's experience seems a little bit like the reverse of what we're going to find both kinds of situations in both kinds of schools. After all, the schools are still in the real world, and the issues around girls' health are serious and they are, but they also tend to be more noticed and dealt with in the single-sex schools. Mandy, I want to thank you for calling in. Thank you. Bye-bye. Hi. Sarah Allen is my guest today on Radio Time. She's a teacher at the Spring Side School, which is a private all-girls school, and also I'm joined by Tim Blankenhorn, and he is the assistant headmaster at Haverford School in, well, in Haverford, and that's a private all-boy school. Our name is our address, yeah. My name is Tracy Tannenbaum, and I'm sitting in this morning for Marty Moss going. There are still a few lines open here, the number, if you'd like to join the conversation

in is 215-923-277-4. Tim, in reading through the report, I found something that caught my eye, and it said that, unlike girls, fewer boys prefer same-sex education. Based on your experience, do you think that's true or are you dealing with kind of a biased population? Well, what we find is if you ask someone with no experience and no exposure, no knowledge of an all-boy school, if you ask a boy, yeah, their initial reaction will be negative. What we find we have an overwhelming success with boys once they visit campus and see really with their own eyes what it's all about, and it's just a question of there being making an informed decision, and a lot of them don't know much about boys' schools until they actually set foot on one. Do you think all boys' education has a more negative rap among boys? I don't think among boys so much.

No, it's just not something that they think of hard until they're faced with their own decisions. Interesting. And what about in terms of the way boys and girls learn? Do you think that they have different styles of learning? Yeah, there's no question about that. Boys buy about the eighth grade are a year behind girls in there and their academic development. They have a much higher level, a higher probability of having some kind of learning difference. You know, anecdotally, and there's not a teacher in the world who hasn't noticed this, the boys tend to be more physical, more fidgety. There are various other differences. Language acquisition for boys is something that takes a little longer and we think takes a little bit more effort. You know, there are issues about girls in science and math, and you know, these are differences to show up again and again. They're not, again, huge differences, but there's something that you can hardly talk to a teacher who won't tell you the differences between the boys and the girls in terms of their

learning styles. Yeah. So do you think then as someone who works at an all-boys school that the school really looks at those differences, pays attention to them and has the leisure and the luxury to address them? That's exactly right. I mean, in the days before we talked about this stuff explicitly, it was part of the culture of the school to serve boys in ways that made sense to them. And now we're a little more articulate and thoughtful about it, but it's an ongoing process. Ellen, what about you? I agree. People in the world are gendered. They learn differently. Boys, what we've discovered in our research is the boys like lecture format more. They like the competitive kind of fast talk, fat quick answer, classrooms, and girls prefer more open-ended, more kind of process-oriented, more extended talk, thinking about mulling over problems, thinking aloud in the classroom.

And what we try to encourage in the 11th grade classrooms where their co-ed is to have all of those kinds of teaching going on and the learning so that when we have the boys from CHA coming over, there's a kind of educational process in which we ask them to participate in the learning process in which they, that is a different style of learning than they're used to. They tend to be a little reluctant about it, but then because of our self-consciousness around these kinds of teaching strategies, they tend to join in later on. But it doesn't happen automatically. And that's part of our point is that what we've learned, and part of Tim's point too, is that what we've learned in single sex schools as teachers about the students in front of us are applicable in all kinds of schools. But what happens then when boys and girls come together and boys are used to learning more in that lecture format, they appreciate that, they appreciate the quick question

and answer in that kind of banter. And girls then, as you suggest, are more process-oriented. It is, then it's very much up to the teacher to be conscious of this, to be as articulate as possible with the students. What we found happening in our 11th grade classes is the teachers are saying, this is how it's going to go. Here's an answer to the math problem, figure out the process. The boy said, well, you know what the process is, and the teacher says, no, this is the kind of thinking I want you to do. So that talking about thinking, talking about learning, talking about what happens in this educational process is what teachers' jobs are and what we're engaged in with students so that they're increasingly self-conscious, and this is something that can't be measured. Well, let's go back to the phones. We have Andre, who's calling from Center City, Andre. Hello. Hello. I find this very interesting, and to some level, quite disturbing, and I'm pretty, on some

levels, pretty perturbed by it. One of the things that I am quite perturbed by is that, in the 80s, I lived in Detroit, and in the late 80s, they tried to have, or to begin, single sex, all-male schools, grade schools, for young black males, and every point to support that choice has been enunciated by your two guests in the last five to ten minutes. Even the one that the woman guest made, oh, about maybe ten, fifteen minutes ago, that disadvantaged students did better in single sex schools than, say, white students did. All of that was brought forth. No, it was not accepted, and the leading power that prevented that school from going online was a national organization of women.

The very group that stands, starward, for the protection of all women's schools, wouldn't allow all male schools. Their reasoning was, well, we don't want them, we want all women to have equal opportunity. But the thing is, is that you've shown, and you've enunciated, that there are different learning styles, there are different things that are effective in one educational setting than in another. Quite frankly, you're talking against yourselves. Your information and your research and your data shows that the schoolings should be sexually segregated, yet you still want to put them together. If you feel that women and men being in, or boys and girls being in the same class, can somehow encourage each other in their different learning styles for boys to be, to pick up processing, and for girls to be better and lecturing, then show me or mention studies that show that that actually happens, that boys and girls help each other. I haven't heard that today.

I'm just really angered that when efforts are made, particularly for young black men, to give them educational opportunities that would allow them to excel, people who supposedly want progress, come along and shoot it out of the sky. Well, Andre. And the National Organization of Women is one of the major ones that killed that project and destroyed it. Well, Andre, I just want to say that I was actually surprised when Tim Blankenhorn had said that he thought boys kind of express parts of themselves and what we would traditionally deem more female parts of themselves in a single sex setting and that, in fact, there was something that allowed them to blossom because some of the research that I had read had said that when boys are together in school and they don't have the, quote, feminizing effect of having girls there as well, that they tend to get more aggressive.

So I'm wondering if that's part of what informed the National Organization for Women. No, no, Sarah, you're shaking your head now. No, I think that the AAUW report also is running into a tough political issue in the public schools because what they're talking about is the public schools and whether there should be separated education and they seem to be very strong in saying there should not. And I would agree with this young man that there should. I think that there have been experiments for young African-American boys and that they have been very successful. I think that it's too bad that these options and opportunities aren't given, but it then has become a political issue that's a different thing from a pedagogical issue. Well, then if it's a political issue, then why not state it as such? Why are young black men?

Why is the education of young black men being held hostage for the politics of white women? Well, I don't know if it's solely the politics of white women. They work as if they're not allowing the thing is why not just allow single sex and co-educational opportunities to be available and allow the students and the families to make the choice for themselves to see which one works best for their child. Andre, I couldn't agree with you more. Let me just make the point that a lot of this has to do with being a man and being a boy and having a better understanding of what that means because my sense is it's a lot more complex than is generally understood in sort of debates and op-ed pages. I take your point very much. This report to the American Association of University Women basically it says that it doesn't make sense in their eyes to do a lot of single sex experimentation when there

are a lot of prior priorities that have to be dealt with first. And I think that's a reasonable point of view, but I agree with what you're saying and I think that the bottom line is that families and children and students have to make up their own minds and they have to be exposed to a lot of choices. That's exactly right. Andre, thanks for calling in and expressing your opinion. Take care. Let's go to Sarah from Chestnut Hill. Sarah? Good morning. Good morning. Well, just fine. Thank you. I am a parent of two girls in an all-girl school and a son in an all-boys school. So therefore I'm a supporter of single sex education. One of the things that I find that's been so important to me is the role that faculty plays in not only the academic development of my children, but in their social development because I think the two walk hand in hand, particularly when we're talking about issues of self-esteem and the performance that comes out of that sense of self-confidence.

And one of the things that I wanted your guest to speak about is the role of faculty in helping children understand their social world, which is tied to their academic world and their performance in that academic world. Sarah Allen, how do you do that? Do you do that suddenly or do you actually speak about that? Well, we do it both ways. We have advising programs. Elementary and secondary schools are integrally involved with the lives of the whole life of the student. They aren't just sort of going in and teaching a class and going out again. So it happens in the interactions between teachers as students. It happens in advising programs. It happens in the classroom. It happens in the kinds of choices you make, especially in English and history classrooms about the subject matter. So that the education is going on all the time. And in a small school, that is part of what we're expected to do. How do you do that specifically, say, in history class, which I think most of us would acknowledge.

I certainly remember that when I was going to school, I was taught mainly about men's contributions to American history. Right. So how do you work with that? So part of it is that it's integrated into the curriculum where you're talking about roles of women. You're noticing what's left out. You're also talking about various kinds of history other than political history, maybe talking about social history, broadening what you call history, approaching also talking about documents, original sources, and making choices about what kinds of sources you'll read. As an English teacher, I'm just finishing Jane Ayer, for instance. So that the kind of literature I would choose would make a huge difference. Do both of you find that we know about this bias, that girls either have more problems in math and science, or they're more reticent about it. And likewise, boys tend to be less verbally interested.

Do you find yourselves trying to almost push the boys and the girls to learn subjects that are opposite to what, at least our culture says, boys and girls learn. So in other words, is there an emphasis in your school, Sarah, for girls to learn math? And is there an emphasis in your school, Tim, for boys to push along more in English, Tim? I would say yes. And I think it's, again, part of the tradition of the school that we spend a lot of time in language arts and then in English. There's always been a premium on the school for self-expression, for public speaking, for writing in particular. And just to pick up on what Sarah was talking about, yeah, our teachers are very, our faculty is noted for being very close to the students we care. One factor, one reason why I think this is true, and this is something that's mentioned in the report, it talks about the degree of peer culture that exists in a school.

And of course, in any school, in any healthy school, there's a substantial amount of peer culture. But in a school like ours, the adults and the kids, the teachers and the students, form close relationships. And there's not the chasm that one imagines too often in other schools. And Sarah, I want to thank you for your call. You're welcome. Thank you. Sarah, let me put that question to you. The question of whether you really, quote, push or emphasize math and science. Yes, we have a very strong math program. We have a very interesting and strong science program. We emphasize it across the board. We're interested in academic excellence, and that includes all the subject areas. Well let me go to one more call. I think we have time for, and that's Zoe from South Philadelphia. Zoe. Hi. Hi, welcome to Radio Times. How are you? Well, I'm calling because I'm actually not a proponent of single-sex schooling, although I did go to a single-sex high school in the city.

And one of the benefits that I noticed is that immediately following high school and during high school, a lot of us were able to come out as lesbians. And I was wondering if that's being discussed at all. I think that the social setting allowed for a lot of girls and women to kind of figure that out maybe prior to other people. But you think it would come later if girls were in schools with boys that it would kind of cloud or confuse the issue? Yeah, I think that that's true. I've noticed that in my own life. I mean, that's just the generalization that I'm making in terms of my own experience. But I'm just wondering if that's discussed at all, or if that's something that people have noticed? That's a great question, Sarah Allen. It is discussed. The issue is discussed is something we're concerned about as we're concerned about issues around heterosexuality as well. It's not that I notice that any more people come out or not come out because that issue is a complex issue and that goes across many other concerns as well.

It may be that girls have closer and greater friendships and are more willing to talk about the issue and feel less hidden and less closeted in that way. And very quickly, Tim Blankenhorn, I have this gender stereotype bias in my mind, which is that in single sex boys education, there's more homophobia. And that in single sex girls education, there is less or among those campuses that when boys get together, there's more homophobia that gets unleashed. And I don't know where that bias comes from, but I seem to have it. My sense is that the boys, no matter what the school, there's a degree of homophobia. And that's just the way it is. And it's not something that we're in a place that we can, in terms of our understanding and our growth where we can talk about it really at all. Well, I want to thank you very much for calling in Zoe.

Bye-bye. Bye. And that's about all the time we have for today's show. It's been a very interesting discussion. My guests have been Sarah Allen and Tim Blankenhorn. Sarah Allen is a teacher at the Springside School, which is a private all-girl school. And Tim Blankenhorn is an assistant headmaster at the Haverford School, an old boys school, also a private school. Earlier we heard from Maggie Ford and she is the president of the American Association of University Women Education Foundation. And just a reminder that tomorrow at noon, on the program talking about kids, host Dr. Murner Shore will be continuing this exploration of single-sex education. Well, Scotty Williams and Audrey Bentham have been the engineers for this hour of the show. Eric Galbally is our intern. Devor Elisick is a production assistant, Jackie Posey produces radio times. And Tamika artist is the senior producer of this show.

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This is the second round of four-party talks in Geneva between the main participants in the Korean War, China and the North on one side, the South and the United States on the other. And they're the first negotiations since President Kim took office. Although these four-party talks are likely to continue, even if the two Koreas do start to negotiate directly. The BBC's Andrew Wood reporting from Seoul. A study in the latest journal of the National Cancer Institute suggested vitamin E supplements may help protect against prostate cancer. In P.R. David Barron reports. Researchers in Finland studied almost 30,000 male smokers. Some men were given 50 milligrams of vitamin E every day. Some were given beta carotene, a form of vitamin A. After more than five years of study, the scientist found that the men who took vitamin E had a one-third lower risk of prostate cancer compared to those who didn't take the supplement, and they had a 41 percent lower risk of dying from prostate cancer. Beta carotene supplements did not appear to protect against the cancer. Medical researchers call the new report potentially important, but they say more studies are needed

in other ethnic groups and in non-smokers to confirm this apparent benefit of vitamin E. David Barron in P.R. News Boston on the New York Stock Exchange at the Sauron, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 3.24 to 87 53.23, trading is heavy, volume 174 million shares. The NASDAQ composite index is up 2.22 to 1781.52. This is in P.R. News. Federal investigators say that they're merging the investigation of January's deadly bombing of a women's clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, with the probes of three bombings in Atlanta. Joshua Leves with member station W-A-B-E reports. The announcement came from U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, FBI Director Lewis Free, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Director John McGaw. They said a new Southeast bombing task force will encompass the investigations currently going on in Birmingham, Atlanta, and parts of North Carolina where investigators are still

looking for Eric Rudolph, a suspect in the Birmingham bombing. The task force will oversee investigations of the 1996 explosion in Centennial Olympic Park, the double bombing of an Atlanta Women's Health Clinic last year, an explosion at an Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Nightclub, and most recently, the bombing Birmingham. Authorities have said that the Atlanta attacks appear related, but they're still studying evidence from Birmingham to determine whether it could have been part of the same chain. For NPR News, I'm Joshua Leves in Atlanta. Vice President Al Gore plans to unveil today a package containing ways to improve the Internal Revenue Service. The proposal includes 200 ways to improve customer service. It envisions new technology to deal with the taxpayer phone calls, so they'll be answered faster and more accurately. It will also give the agency's field executives authority to issue one day executive emergency tax refunds in hardship cases.

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Before you sponsor a child, you should know where your money's going. One charity reportedly recruited sponsors for kids in Mali who were already dead. Another bought dance classes instead of bread. We'll look at the myths of child sponsorship on the next talk of the nation from NPR News. Today at 2 on 91 FM. Good morning and welcome to Artscape on Radio Times. I'm Tracy Tannenbaum in for Marty Moscowine. Having Sylvester Stallone conquered the stairs to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the 1976 movie Rocky, may instill a sense of hometown pride to those of us who live here. Likewise watching Harrison Ford race through 30th Street Station in the 1984 film Witness may also spark a satisfying feeling of recognition. But for my guess, seeing images of Philadelphia on film is more like a mission. They want to put Philadelphia on the map as a mecca for the film industry.

And after a dry spell of sorts, this town has been home to a series of high-profile movies starting with Philadelphia shot in 1992. Sharon Pinkinson is the executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office. She was appointed to the position in 1992. And under her tenure, such films as 12 Monkeys, Age of Innocence, Fallen, Up Close and Personal, Wide Awake, and Beloved have been shot here. Sharon joins us in the studio. Thank you so much for being here on Artscape on Radio Times. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And M. Night Shyamalan is a writer-director who lives and works in Philadelphia. His credits include Praying with Anger and Labor of Love. His new film, Wide Awake, starring Rosie O'Donnell and Dennis Leary, is due out in less than two weeks. And it was filmed in suburban Philadelphia. He's about to direct another film, which he also wrote.

And that is called The Sixth Sense. It stars Bruce Willis. And this film will also be made right here in Shyamalan's hometown. Welcome Shyamalan. Hi. How are you doing? I'm doing well. How are you? Good. Good. How are you doing? I'd like to join in the conversation. We're talking about filmmaking in Philadelphia and about what attracts directors and filmmakers to this town and why films should be shot here. The number is 215-923-2774, that's 215-923-2774. Well, Night Shyamalan, I want to start with you. It's so funny, but when I see Philadelphia depicted in film, and I was watching your film Wide Awake the other night, I get this real burst of excitement. There are scenes that I see on the big screen that somehow become meaningful to me. And when I encounter these scenes in my daily life, they mean absolutely nothing.

So what is it about seeing your hometown on film that's so exciting? Well, you sense pride, I think, and Philadelphia has a so much tradition that we all take for granted, because we live here, day in and day up, but when we see it through the eyes of the rest of the world, which is what you do when you sit down in front of a movie screen, you know, you certain sense of pride comes through and you say, yeah, that's my hometown, that's where I used to go there and hang out with my friends, and it's a very different thing to see it through other people's eyes. So somehow the fact that someone has captured it and almost frozen it and given it back to you is exciting, it's rejuvenating in a way. Yeah, it is. I mean, you would probably be like talking about a family member, you know, a third person, you would become very proud of them as opposed to when they're sitting next to you, you don't sit there and you compliment them, but you do it in third person a lot. I know that experience well. I love that night. That's great.

That's a great way to describe it. Sharon, I didn't know this, but a number of older Native Philadelphians have told me that Philadelphia used to be a real filmmaking mecca, and that of course changed and has, it's re-emerged as a great place to shoot movies within the last few years. Can you tell me anything about the early history of movie making in this town, what some of the movies that were shot here maybe? Actually, I wish I could tell you that I knew a lot about the very old history of filmmaking my personal experience really is just the knowledge that I have from Rocky and before. Most of the movies, there were movies like, I think the blob, I wonder if, maybe you can help me with this one, but I think that there were a lot of movies that had the name Philadelphia and the man were set in Philadelphia. We have a very charming video that we showed visitors from Philadelphia, called Philadelphia in the movies, and I actually don't know the names of all the movies that are listed

in there, but I know there's Fred Astaire, they mentioned Philadelphia for the most part, but they weren't necessarily shot here. Well, it's very interesting because Philadelphia had a reputation of being a movie site that was so bad that screenplays that were set here were actually shot in places like Pittsburgh and Chicago. What was the problem with Philadelphia? Philadelphia had a reputation, I think, for not having an important film community that there weren't a lot of crew here or actors, and we had a reputation for not having an infrastructure of sound stages and people thought that it was too expensive to shoot here, that the unions were difficult. So there were a lot of elements of our infrastructure that needed to be turned around and at least that reputation. Now, where the opposite has happened, now we're making movies in Philadelphia that are set in other places. So that's a very exciting turn of events. We now not only make movies that are set in Philadelphia thanks to filmmakers like Knight,

but we're also making movies that are set in Chicago or New York. Or Cincinnati, like we love it. Or Cincinnati, precisely, at historical locations, most particularly. Well, I want to talk money and I want to turn to you Knight in a minute to talk about this, but first Sharon, of course one of the reasons why it's great for films to be made here is that it spreads revenue throughout the city and it also attracts tourism. I know that beloved costs somewhere between $30 and $50 million to make. Tell me specifically about how Pennsylvania's economy was bolstered by the making of that film. And other films, perhaps, as well. Well, first of all, I think beloved, I think that's a very conservative estimate of what it costs to make beloved. I think it costs at least $50 million and closer to $65 million, quite frankly. And the film affects the region economically because, first of all, the filmmakers who come

from out of town stay in our hotels. They eat our food, the production uses our lumber and our hardware. They hire our local actors and local crew. There were several hundred people who were hired for Philadelphia crew and thousands that actually had jobs as extras. So that one movie alone left behind over $15 million in hard cash that they spent while they were in this region. That doesn't include any multipliers that a lot of economic development people put into their figures. So this is just direct dollars. Night, what about making a wide awake, which was set in suburban Philadelphia? Did you feel, or let me rephrase this, as a born and bred Philadelphia person? Do you feel a certain kind of responsibility to make films here and to spread the wealth within this city?

I do. I mean, it doesn't come fundamentally from that kind of mentality, but I do feel that responsibility where I'm mostly driven by is the sense of story, that when I make movies about a character that's in trouble or something, I always picture some place that I've been in Philly. And so I'm trying to be true to the storytelling and be as genuine as I can. You know, I don't picture New York, I don't picture Los Angeles, I picture Philadelphia. And so whatever the plot is, I'm always trying to serve as a genuine storytelling. And so Philadelphia, that's where I have all my memories in the Spielberg. When he first started writing and stuff, he'd always imagine his suburban, you know, New Jersey home. And you know, a movie like Poeter Guys was set almost exactly where he saw it. And those communities in ET are how he remembered his home, you know, in that kind of cluster communities. And I try to do the same thing to bring a certain truth, a ring of truth to the movie so that you get lost in it.

So it basically comes out of your experience and then wide awake, which is about a young boy who goes to a Catholic school and basically searches for God in spirituality after his grandfather dies. And it seems as though there's some autobiographical elements to your life in terms of the two parents both being doctors. You feel as though the story wouldn't have resonated for you, had you shot a school say in the suburbs of Chicago. Right. I mean, you try as much as you can to put as little between, I try to put as little between my emotions and the screen as possible. And so I try to keep all those factors out of it and would have moved you like wide awake especially because it was so much, the setting of it was so much my life that I, you know, it was crucial. I came to Miramax and they said, we have to shoot it in Philadelphia, there's just no other way to do it.

Was there any conflict with the studio about that? Did they want to shoot it elsewhere? Sure. This is the instinct is always to go to the cheapest place on the planet that you can shoot the movie, you know, and so you better have good reasons for why you want to shoot in a particular place. But I think that once we shot wide awake here, that opened the door for me completely. So for example, I'm going to be doing a movie for Hollywood Pictures next and that budget is five times as much as wide awake and there's just no argument they can give me because I've done, I've made wide awake successfully here and it showed the city and its beauty and all that stuff and there's just no argument they can give me if I can make a film five times as small, then I can make all of my films here. That and money I guess is the best argument. That is M Night Shyamalan. He is a writer director who lives and works in Philadelphia, who, his new film Wide awake stars Rosie O'Donnell and Dennis Leary and it's due out in less than two weeks. It was also filmed in suburban Philadelphia.

My other guest is Sharon Pinkinson and she is the executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office during her tenure as executive director. Such films as 12 monkeys wide awake, age of innocence fallen and beloved have been shot here. We're talking about filmmaking on artscape on radio times. My name is Tracey Tannenbaum. I'm sitting in for Marty Moscowane. We would love you to join in the conversation. Your favorite Philadelphia film or perhaps you were dislocated by the filming of a movie here. The number is 215-923-2774-215-923-2774. If you're out of the area, please feel free to call collect. Part of your job is to sell Philadelphia to directors and producers. First of all, I guess that means that you need to keep up with the news in Hollywood and know what films are on the horizon before tape is even rolled.

That's absolutely true. How do you do that? Well, that's not so hard to do. I mean, we, one of the things that I'm obligated to do in order to get that information is to read the trades, the Hollywood trade papers, list films that are in production and now it's very easy for me to get that information on an ongoing basis off the internet. So I do also stay in touch with producers and the studios themselves. People do call me and tell me about projects that they have in development long before it even makes the trade. So there is a network out there. Give me an example of how you sell a film. How you sell Philadelphia to a film maker. The key thing to sell Philadelphia to a filmmaker always has to do with the story, the script, the locations in the script. If a filmmaker has a movie that takes place on a beach with palm trees, they're not going to come to Philadelphia. We don't have that. But if we have a location, if we can turn the filmmaker on to a location that we have in Philadelphia and show them, or in the region, because I'm sure that you know Tracy

that we represent the entire area, officially five counties. So we have a tremendous number of resources in terms of locations here. So what we do is we first take a copy of the script. We read it and we find locations that we think are unique to Philadelphia that will really turn a director on. If we can't turn the director on with the locations, there's no point in going any further. So it's location location location location location. Once we have that location, then it becomes a business deal like all others. And then we have to convince the filmmakers that they can make their movie here, not only because it will look best and tell a story best here. But because they can do it cheaper, faster, better with the resources that we make available to them. Well this is something night that you brought up, which I'm curious about, which is that with all the filmmaking apparatus in place like locations and in locations like Hollywood and New York, lots of the actors are there, the lots for building sets, a large number

of crew people. Why leave that city for a city that is not already made to handle the challenge? I mean, it must be a pretty difficult sales job at times. Oh, it's definitely, I mean, it's night. Yes. Good, please go ahead. Yeah, I think it's definitely, they had to take it first, you know, when you first bring up the idea of shooting outside Los Angeles and New York. But in a certain extent, there's not, you can't duplicate on location photography. I mean, you can do so many things, but there's just something inherent that's there when you're on location in a park in Philadelphia that you can't duplicate on a sound stage in Los Angeles. It's just there's something about it, you know. And then there's the, then there'll be the actual cost of, oh, how do we build, written out square in Los Angeles and how much with that cost? Well, let's just fly out there and shoot it in written out square. And you know, I find that they're becoming more and more receptive to shooting outside

Los Angeles, New York because we've seen every street and seen every corner in Los Angeles New York in movies and in countless movies and Philadelphia is fairly, fairly new on the screen and there's so many wonderful, wonderful places that nobody's ever seen in the movies. But as a filmmaker, you can say that Chicago or New York doesn't, quote, resonate for you because your experience in Philadelphia is in Philadelphia and that it doesn't, to shoot New York doesn't look as real when what you're trying to do is shoot Philadelphia. But then I could see a production house coming back to you and saying, well, a viewing audience isn't necessarily going to get that. Yeah, I mean, you have to be able, I mean, that part of it is choosing the right people to work with. You know, I actually even argue for time periods of year because I believe that the sky looks different, you know, the sky looks different right now and you look up the window

and it has a certain feeling to it that it's very different in the summer. You just know it's a different time period and so you can put everybody in long coats in the summer but it'll still, it'll something will be off. It won't feel like winter. So the goal is always for authenticity? Yes, definitely. And so when someone argues that other side of, oh, we can get away with it, you get this stare from the director and, you know, it's going to end unpleasantly. Now, don't you think that it really affects the performances you get from your actors as well when you give them a reality? I believe so. You know, it goes to the, it even into the basics of if you're sitting there, you know, imagine there's a chair there. You know, if we give them the chair to sit in, they don't have to worry about that and they can perform that. You know, concentrate on specific things and now if we put, you know, Rosie O'Donnell in a classroom, in a private school, in Philadelphia, you know, there's a certain thing that happens and then they can go deeper and deeper. I believe that completely. It just makes it more real. We were listening, we're talking today on ArtScape on Radio Times about making film in Philadelphia. We've got a lot of people on the line, so why don't we go right to the phones?

We have Joan from Old City who lives through the filming of Beloved Joan. Yes. Hi. First of all, I want to say that Sharon's office, we've dealt with her during the filming of Beloved. They were very professional and helpful, however, I think something that needs to be addressed is the negative effect of having one of these movies in your neighborhood. If the production company is very unprofessional and not necessarily considered of the people who live there, and many of us really, it was a real nightmare for many, many people here, that particular shooting and a lot of people lost money. There was no positive economic impact on the neighborhood, the restaurants, you know, the restaurants that were patronized by whoever was in the movie were not in the neighborhood, the retail stores lost money. It was quite a disaster and it had a lot to do with the production company, not being necessarily considered and not living up to the promises they'd made to the neighborhood prior to the filming.

And the other thing, Joan, is that as I recall, it was filmed during the height of the holiday. Absolutely. And that's when merchants, obviously, do their best, Sharon, any of you have any feelings about that? Joan, I'm sure that you also remember that we, although we realized that there were some problems that were unsolvable, when such a big movie comes into your area, and that the producers decided that they had to shoot in the winter just the way. Night was describing he needed to have very special kind of climate for certain scenes. They just couldn't fake the Christmas or cold season or snow by doing it in August or September. But I think that it's only fair to point out that the producers really went out of their way as did we to try to attract additional business into the area by placing a number of full-page ads in the Philadelphia newspapers, as well as to provide free parking for hundreds of vehicles, 300 vehicle parking spaces, right in the neighborhood for the period of the

entire month of December, so that merchants could get their customers' residence. The restaurants could get their visitors to come and have dinner there and have free parking at a time and a place where there had never been free parking before. So we really did go the extra mile in working with individual businesses and residents to try to respond to their needs and to get them as much as we possibly could. Now, Joan, here's a counter-argument, and I wonder if this works for you, which is that now third street in Old City will be known, will become known as the street on which beloved was shot, and that somehow that would attract visitors from maybe suburban Philadelphia and elsewhere down because of the movie making that took place there and that money would be poured into that street on a later date.

I have to say that. I have to say that. Pardon me? Do you buy that at all? I have to say that I realized that efforts were made to bring business. It didn't, the fact is it didn't happen with the business, and the fact I don't think that's going to happen either because it was such a, the street was so different. It was transformed. That was part of the problem with those of us who were trying to just go about our business was we had to wait through manure and mud, and it was really, it was insane, and I don't think it has any relation to the street as it is now. It was a lovely set, it looked like they did a beautiful job on it. We just wish that we had been told the extent to which would be inconvenienced, the extent of the money we would have all lost, and actually the film crew were outrageously rude, and I've written a share and knows this, I've written to her office, they were making comments like, well, you don't understand lady, this is a multi-million dollar film by an Oscar

winning director, in other words, their money and concerns were more important than our money and concerns. Joan, if I could just interrupt you, you know I did take your letter very seriously, and I passed that in, that was one individual in a crew of 200 people who was reprimanded and ultimately fired as a result of that, and you know that one of the things that the film office does is that we have a code of conduct, which is a two-page long document that each and every person and every film crew must get a copy of, the producers are obligated to give that to the crew, and anybody who does not follow the code of conduct needs to be fired by the producers, that's an agreement we have with them, so I can't really respond to any individual behaving rudely, except to say that certainly it's something that we've thought about in advance and that we do take action against. Joan, I'm going to let you go, and I'm going to thank you very much for calling into artscape on radio times.

I think Joan does bring up a, an interesting problem, particularly in Center City, Philadelphia, this is a very dense area, there's not a lot of room, it's not spread out, how do you negotiate that? I know that a lot of white awake was made in suburban Philadelphia, but you do have scenes in Center City, how, how, how did you deal with that and how did you deal with, um, trying to accommodate and trying not to disrupt the lives of, of everyday people going about their business? Here's, here's what I try to do, and you know, and I can't speak for Jonathan Demi or whoever else comes in, what I try to do, um, it's fine people that are, fine locations and the people that live there and, and that own those, those places that are thrilled to be a part of the movie making process because it's an effort, I mean like anything else it's an effort and it's a point of view, for example, there was a house that we were going to shoot at that was going to be our main house for our family and it was beautiful,

but I was getting these kind of vibes that they were, that you know, they didn't want to be bothered and so I said, you know what, let's find another house, we ended up finding a house that was so thrilled, I mean they were like giving, making food for the crew and so excited and I was signing their kids' books and, I mean, to this day they all they talk about is that we shot that film there and I keep coming up to people and they go, you shot next to our neighbors, they loved it and they, they brought champagne every night to watch, you know, it's, it's how your point of view is and that they were thrilled to have this crew traipsing around their house and excited, you know, it's like, it's all about how you perceive it, like for example, I play basketball every Wednesday night. If I asked my mom to come play basketball, she would hate it. She would say, it's all this running and sweating and that's not what it's about, it's something totally different so it's all about your point of view and when you make films, I try to find those people and those locations that are absolutely out of their mind thrilled to have the stars, the crew be a part of this and you know, and all the inconvenience and all the wonderfulness about it and all the magic and that comes along with movie making.

And of course, sometimes you will find these locations that people are inconvenienced. I don't, I try to avoid those locations. It's really, it's another house, there's always another building and Philadelphia, it's a big city. A historical film is, is fought with problems automatically, you can't help it. I, I'd also like to point out that that third street was not a negative experience for all of the people and I think that, that most of the people really enjoyed the experience and I think when the film comes out, you're going to hear the exact opposite story from most people about how great it was and how wonderful the street looks. That, that was definitely an isolated incident. I mean, I, on our crew, we just had, I mean, they just love the people that we shot with and the people loved our crews. I, you know, I, I know that that's not indicative of film shooting in general. That's M. Knight, Shyamalan, he's a writer-director who lives and works in Philadelphia. I'm also joined today on art-scape on radio times by Sharon Pinkinson and she is the executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office and we're talking about making films in

Philadelphia. I'm Tracy Tannenbaum sitting in today for Marty Moscowine. We hope you join in the conversation. The number to call is 215-923-2774-215-923-2774. Knight, I'm wondering if you ever feel as though you're out of the loop. Most of the deals are made in Hollywood. Most of the professionals in this business or in Hollywood or New York, do you feel like you're missing out on something? Yes and no, I feel it's intentional, you know, it's intentional that I'm out of the loop. I'm trying, I'm trying to do something very personal. These movies are very personal and trying to do it in a slightly off-the-beaten pathway and it's just my own version of these movies and so it's a very intentional isolation but it is isolation for sure, you know, and so every, every, you know, to become successful and move up the tiers of, you know, your career in the Hollywood, you know, it's so small

the parameters that you have of success, you know, the hoop that you have to go through is so small, even if you live in Los Angeles and now you live away from Los Angeles and it's even that much smaller and I was willing to take that risk from my family and for the type of films that I wanted to make and to remain the type of person and storyteller that I want to be, you know, and so inevitably you become a different person in different places in the world where you live and, you know, I have certain values from living in Philadelphia and that's why I'm raising my family here and I wanted to maintain those and have those in the films that I make and so for me, that's an important trade off and it's, I've gotten over that hump I think in my career where that risk was a problem but it was a definite risk and I was definitely out of the loop and, you know, so people hear about you a little less, you know, it's okay. And not just in terms of opportunity but I guess I'm also thinking about intellectual

energy around filmmaking that when you're among other filmmakers there's more of an exchange of ideas. Actually, I think it's the opposite. I think it's the opposite. I think that if all my friends were in filmmaking, you know, trying to make films and every, all I did is eat, even drink film, you know, there's a certain kind of rhythm that happens and you get into the loop and so if Pulp Fiction comes out, everyone starts writing like Pulp Fiction and you will start writing like Pulp Fiction because everybody wants that and that's the hot thing and you start going, I don't know what the hot thing is. My friends, none of them are in film, my family, none of them are in film and so what do I make pictures about people and it seems to resonate over there in Los Angeles because they'll get the pile of 100 screenplays and 99 of them sound exactly the same and then they get this one about this kid in Philadelphia and they go, wow, this is really different and they keep reading and reading and they get to the end of the script and they go call

him and it's a, I find it an advantage because you get to have original thoughts. Yeah, so they don't so basically when you're among other filmmakers it's more like your thoughts get tainted or you lose your sense of self in a way. Sharon, let's talk about some of the nuts and bolts. How do you go about getting clearances on certain films? I'm thinking of the age of innocence when the Academy of Music was used to shoot those wonderful opera scenes or city hall during the filming of Philadelphia, are those difficult things to clear? Well, certainly they are and that's really what our job is is to take care of the details. For example, the Academy of Music is a very, very busy institution and finding a slot of three days where you could shoot in there was a bit of a trick and coordinating closing Broad Street, our main drag during the Memorial Day holiday, laying down dirt once again and

bringing in horses and carriages and fake snow. That was again, that's what we have to do in our office in order to create the magic of filmmaking, city hall for the movie Philadelphia. We had to provide a courtroom, probably one of the most beautiful courtrooms in city hall which is filled with gorgeous courtrooms and clear it for Jonathan Demi for a period of five or six weeks so that he could have complete access to it to make Philadelphia. That's what we do. It's the reason why those movies come to Philadelphia and spend millions of dollars. So someone like Knight and I and the film office really partner on those projects in order to make them happen. Well, let's go back to the phones we have Laura and she's from West Philadelphia. Laura? Hi. Hi. Obviously Sharon, you've done a marvelous job of selling the beauty of the city. I think my question for you is how do you sell Philadelphia's technical capacity?

Are there facilities for editing, production, post-production, studios, that type of thing here in Philadelphia or are we simply selling the streets and the beautiful buildings? Sounds like a set up that question. So thank you for asking. One of the things that we need to do as a film office is to really have a handle on what our resources are and to grow them so that we have more and more to attract the business. One of the ways we do that is we publish a directory of all of the goods and services and people in the region that have something to offer the industry and that includes everything from equipment companies to production facilities, trucks that are specially designed for filmmaking. You name it, all of the things that you need in order to produce film and television product. And that's called the Greater Philadelphia Film and Video Guide. As I said, we publish it annually and it lists about 700 different companies and individuals

that do exactly that in the region. We give that production guide to each and every prospective filmmaker that calls us on the phone and says, we're thinking possibly about doing a project in Philadelphia, tell us what you have. We also publish all of that information on our website and the address is www.film.org. Org.org.org, so you're welcome to check us out. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you for calling, Laura. Are there enough independent and major studio films along with commercials, music videos and industrial films made here to keep the people who work in this business employed? Most of the business that is done in the film and video industry in Philadelphia is outside of the feature film business. The feature film business is the feature films that are made here are what people hear about.

That's what makes the news. However, the hundreds of people, thousands of people who are employed in this area are really making television commercials and industrial films and music videos. That's what they earn their living on from day to day for the most part. So yes, that is the main thrust of what we do is to help coordinate those kinds of projects. And when a feature film comes here, Sharon, do you feel as though you have to be an advocate for the legions of people who work, say, as grips or camera people, et cetera? Do you negotiate with the filmmakers who may want to bring their own people here? Absolutely. That's one of the main things we do. It's all about getting jobs for local people. So that's why we publish this directory. That's why when there is a film coming into town, we put information on our hotline and we make sure that the producers know that we want to collect resumes locally. And frankly, the producers want to bring in as few people as possible because every time they find a grip or a gaffer or anybody to work on a project that comes from out of

town, they have to bring them here, they have to put them up in a hotel and they have to pay them per diems. They want to find local people. So it makes more economic sense to find local people and that's something that you can sell. Absolutely. Let's go back to the phones we have Cecilia calling from Princeton. Hi Cecilia. Good morning. Good morning. I simply wanted to counter an earlier call. I was an extra in the film beloved and I observed both as an extra and observing the people around us while we were filming a great amount of courtesy and calm on the part of the crew, the woman that called me have had an instance but I think that Sharon then said it was one instance of rudeness. I bring it up because I had not been in a film before, I had been in television but not a film and I was really impressed by that fact that we were at sixth and arch I think if I remember correctly.

And the stories were the forefathers were changed, that's true. But shoppers were permitted to go in during the day. In fact, we were told that we shouldn't be surprised if people dressed differently from the way in which we were dressed were crossing the streets and going into stores. They did that and then the other thing that the crew did was set up barricade so the people could watch the filming and my observation was that after they watched and got a little tired they did go into stores. The stores may have lost but I'm not sure that it was a total loss. So the stores weren't closed down? They were not closed. So we were very surprised when we went in at 4 a.m. that morning to discover they were not going to be closed. Now this may be an area different from the one that the other woman was talking about but I say I think I was at sixth and arch. I don't know if there would be a very well but I think that's where we were. I also wanted to say that many of the actors who had much more experience than I in films said that this was a crew and this was an operation that was really of a very impressive level, well run and well conducted I certainly saw that from the point of view on costume

and so forth. I don't want to go on about that but I did want to make that point that if there were one or a few instances in which there was this courtesy my observation and the observation or the other people I worked with because we discussed this really was that it was really quite the opposite. They seem to be a great deal of courtesy and concern. When you have horses and animals there must be manure. When there are horses and animals there is manure. No one of us enjoy stepping over it but we made jokes and we raised our skirts and we get our little extra job. We'll Cecilia thank you very much for calling in. Thank you Cecilia. I want to direct a question to you Sharon that I then like Knight to comment on. Senator Vince Fumo helped give the Greater Philadelphia Film Office a very nice grant through the Delaware River Port Authority and he said that what your office does is to help promote Philadelphia in a positive light.

Now I think when he said that he was referring to the movie Rocky and there's this beautiful scene. That's what a that's what an article in a paper said and you know I mean there is this beautiful scene where Sylvester Stallone is running up the stairs of the Art Museum and it really shows the museum and of course Sylvester in this wonderful state of exhilaration. But what came up in my mind were films like 12 Monkeys where there's this scene of animals roaming through a post apocalyptic center city or up close and personal in which there's a staged riot at Homesburg Prison and then I have to ask myself hmm you know is Philadelphia really presented in a great light well it's fiction you're you're talking about Rocky was fiction 12 Monkeys was a story about an apocalyptic future event which is obviously fiction.

None of these stories are true and I'm sure that people are sophisticated enough to realize that I mean unless you're telling a true story about Philadelphia then if it's fiction it doesn't matter what the light is it only matters really that the name of the city is getting out there to hundreds of millions of people worldwide and that people are working and getting paid for their work doing it here. So you don't you don't think that negative or unappealing images of Philadelphia are getting out there because you think that people understand this is fiction and it's all fabricated and manufactured. Absolutely not it is not my job by any means to censor the kinds of stories that are made in Philadelphia that's the last thing in the world that I want to do. Night what about you do you feel a desire or even a responsibility to portray Philadelphia in in a lovely light or to or to show the best parts of it. Again I don't know about responsibility that's just my opinion of the city you know it's

a positive one and so it inherently comes out in the movies I make you know and I do I do feel that that sequence in Rocky had a tremendous effect on people's opinion of the city that running of the and just Rocky himself and what he represented in that first Rocky I think it had a tremendous effect on the world and the country and what they what Philadelphia represented and certainly tourism as well. Oh definitely and so you know it's it's a powerful you know it's a powerful thing and I you know so to be honest if there was the opposite of that which I don't think has happened and felt up at all I think the films you've mentioned have been really responsible and really great I think the opposite of that if for example I made a movie about how everyone in Philadelphia was racist and that was what my movie was about it would have an effect it would have an effect I mean even though I made a fictional story about that I think it would have an effect now here's the here's the so I think that there's a positive

and negative to it but I think that almost every one of the movies that we've that has been made and felt up he has been tremendously positive witness and everything and even films close to Philadelphia like Depot Society and you know wide awake again and everything is a very positive nature hugely positive and I and with regard to Sharon statement about 12 Monkeys true I mean you know 12 Monkeys really it doesn't have a direct effect of Philly because it's totally totally fictional you know the apocalypse and all that stuff and but you know what you've got to look at is a city like New York you know a bigger a bigger city like New York who had that has you know 20 times as much filmmaking going on in New York and 90 percent of it is bad you know people killing each other and any mug and all that and yet it continually you know ads and ads and bills and bills and so I think you know overall it's a good thing to have people aware of your city in very you know dynamic ways and it's a good thing that's M Night Shyamalan he is a writer and

director who lives and works in Philadelphia his new film is called wide awake and it stars Rosie O'Donnell and Dennis Leary and I'm also joined in the studio today by Sharon Pinkinson she is the executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office if you'd like to join in the conversation today on artscape on radio times there are still a few open lines and our numbers 215 9232774 that's 215 9232774 Sharon let's talk for a moment or two about TV I read that a TV pilot which is about sports agents in Philadelphia is in the works and may shoot in Philadelphia now given that TV comes to people's homes in such a regular constant way how much impact could a successful TV program set here where that even carries the suggestion of Philadelphia how much could that benefit the

economy well we were certain that a that if the television series shoots here that the impact is going to be similar to a mega budget movie because there'd be consistent work for Philadelphia crew and actors however even as you say even if the show is set in Philadelphia and just a limited amount is shot in the area it could have a similar effect to say cheers had in Boston where they never shot the show there and yet the the bar cheers is a wonderful tourist attraction in Boston people just associate it with Boston even though it never shot there so it's it's going to be a win-win situation so it was just in cheers it was just the opening shot it was that same shot over and over again of Boston and then of the exterior of the of the pub that's correct but with the television series the game we know that at least a portion of the series will be shot here and we think we have a very very good

shot at getting the whole show now do you know whether programs like 30 something which I think parts of that were filmed in Philadelphia and of course it very very small and it did profile the lives of upwardly mobile people living in Philadelphia do you have any numbers or any sense of what impact that had on the city did I don't know I'm sure that that was very positive that was a very popular show people really knew that it was set in Philadelphia even though it was not really shot here at all and I think that it had a very positive impact but one that's very difficult to measure well let's go back to the phones done is calling from his car phone done yes hi good morning good morning I would just like to know what needed to be done for Terry Gilliam jury of city hall the way he did I thought he used the building really beautifully not negatively at all and I don't think there are many directors

that can fill a screen quite the way he can and I just was wondering what needed to be done so that he could shoot those exterior I'll hang up and take the answer off here thank you for calling Don Sharon thanks Don the the answer is that we needed to shoot there was one really critical scene that was done post apocalypticly if you will where it's the entire northeast corner of city hall had to be dressed to look like it would have 18 years or so after no humans actually roamed the earth but only animals so there was a tremendous amount of set dressing we had to get all of the convince all of the judges and all the city council people to move their cars out of the way and not park there let us tie up that whole corner of of the street around city hall and in fact I'll recall that we had to close people's windows black them out if they were going to be working on that Saturday that we shot there so it wouldn't look like people were working inside the building it was a really fun project and some of the things that we had to do were

even to get a menagerie license so that we could bring those animals into the state so there were there was a lot that had to be worked on that was a very challenging and very fun project and what made Terry Gilliam decide to shoot post apocryphal world in Philadelphia why didn't he choose another city to do that what was it about Philadelphia that made him think god this is a good place for this kind of fiction lots of reasons the first reason is because Philadelphia was in the script so that's clearly one of the first reasons then once he got here to see if in fact it would be a suitable place to make this story and to be convinced we were able to find for him locations that already had a post apocryphal look to them such as the old met on north broad street which you see prominently in the film and some alopeco power stations which are not really used anymore which are incredible looking inside so we did find some wonderful locations and we got the cooperation of city

government and individuals who owned or had control over some of those buildings to cooperate with us now night has said that what attracts him to Philadelphia is basically his experience and and feeling that the films that he makes here are are truer that they're more authentic what do people like say Jonathan Demi say to you and other directors that that attracts them to this city why do they think that this is a a film friendly city for example well I think Jonathan's a perfect example of somebody who's become a filmmaker almost as if he lived here the way night does he's fallen in love with the city he really knows that now having made two movies here and he has the experience of working with the city working with city government state government in the film office and knowing that we don't make promises that we can't keep and we will do the best job and it will be economical for them to work here.

Well let's take another call we have Ron Mesh from Philadelphia. Yes. Hi. Thanks for coming on call. I had a question from Manage Knight I read your article in front of an inquire and in that it mentioned that your movie prayer with anger was not received well by the critics in New York and that's why he didn't do well by the critics in Philadelphia. In that movie and I thought it was a very good movie and I'd like to know your comment about it. I'll hang up and listen. Ron Mesh I'm glad you asked that question Knight. I didn't quite understand. I'm afraid to say. Okay. Well what Ron Mesh had said he was alluding to the profile on you in the Philadelphia inquire magazine and how basically your hometown gave a very lukewarm review to your first film praying with anger and I think and I think that that actually stopped the potential for national distribution if I'm not wrong. And I guess his question and he liked the film and his question and mine too is how did

it make you feel that your hometown that you've been very loyal to didn't really go for the film crushing crushing well I mean I you know there's no political answer to it devastated. Tears was awful but that's life that's the business you know what can you do and this time we made wide awake and from what I hear the reviews are stellar here in Philadelphia and maybe the next one they won't like it again you know I mean it but that that's what I've learned that that's that's the business and that's life and I just have to make absolutely best films I can and I can't expect to be any different than any other city with regard to how they receive my films you know I just make the best films I can and I hope that they I hope they love them you know I really do and it hurts but what can you do I mean that's the job. See lovey you now you said initially you were crushed which makes a lot of sense how did that affect your work did you feel any paralysis or were you able to just get back on the

course you know I think that you know it for example I you know it literally had a definitive effect on the release you know because Philadelphia was the praying language was a very very small film and it we opened in Philadelphia and it required a great review from Philadelphia to bring people to the red so that it would play for five six seven eight weeks and then from that you could call all the other cities and then they would put more and more the distributors but more and more money in and slowly you would build it and you would gather a full release around the country but the review was was a not it was it was not a bad one it was just a not one that would drive you to the theater you know what I mean it was just it was very lukewarm and and any and ironically we had a hundred reviews from the country it was the lowest review we got for the film you know a lot of people were really generous with the film and wonderfully supportive of the film in Los Angeles New York and other cities and so it just it just felt bad that that was you

know where it where it began where it needed to to establish that the film had a strong life out of it for the distributors it didn't do that and so then they pulled out the majority of their money in the in the put in the promotion of the film and so it was sentenced to a very small release and then it did it was on cable for years and some millions of people got to see it on cable but yeah it was sad but you know you learn you live and you learn and you got it you got to take it good with the bad you know right right well you've certainly recovered and just just one last question before we go for you Sharon what are what are your hopes or what do you see for Philadelphia in terms of its potential to become even more of a filmmaking region well we think that the fact that we now have the only municiply own soundstage in the United States adds to our stable of product so that we could attract films like like beloved and like a night's new film that's coming in the sixth sense so

I'm sorry I need to cut you off I'm really sorry but I want to thank both of my guests for just out of time and I also want to say that the premiere of wide awake will be tomorrow night and if you want you can call the film office Sharon Pinkinson at the film office for that thanks to both Sharon and night and our engineer for this hour has been Audrey Bentham Aaron Galbally is our intern Devor Elisick is our production assistant Jackie Posey produces radio times to Mika artist is the senior producer thank you all for calling in and listening I'm Tracy Tannenbaum in from Arty Moscow and you're tuned to 91 FM WHY Y FM in Philadelphia you remember supported NPR station serving Pennsylvania New Jersey and Delaware support for 91 FM is provided by the Delaware Valley Volvo dealers who would like to remind everyone that drinking and driving are a deadly mix drive sober and drive

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