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Fresh Air Weekend: Brad Pitt, Maurice Sendak

September 24, 2011
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Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, and new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors, and musicians, and often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:

Brad Pitt: 'Moneyball,' Life And The Stalkerazzi': The veteran actor has played a Nazi-hunter, a vampire, a cowboy hitchhiker and the outlaw Jesse James. In his latest film, Brad Pitt plays the manager of baseball's Oakland A's. He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross why the part interested him and what it's like to live life in the public eye.

Roger Ebert: A Critic Reflects On 'Life Itself': Roger Ebert tackles lowbrow and highbrow topics alike in his memoir; critic John Powers says the chronicle is sunny and hopeful — just like Ebert himself.

This Pig Wants To Party: Maurice Sendak's Latest: Bumble-ardy is a deeply imaginative tale about an orphaned pig who longs for a birthday party. Sendak, who is 83, wrote and illustrated the book while caring for his longtime partner, who died of cancer in 2007. "I did Bumble-ardy to save myself," Sendak says. "I did not want to die with him."

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