House Of Crouse

This week on the Richard Crouse Show: In January 1985, at the age of eighteen, Logathasan (Das) Tharmathurai left his home in Sri Lanka in a desperate bid to build a new life for himself and his family abroad after a deeply traumatic encounter with a group of Sinhalese soldiers. The story of his terrifying and often astonishing journey includes a refugee camp, being smuggled across international borders, living with drug dealers, being imprisoned, and more… the entire story is in his new book The Sadness Of Geography.

This week on the Richard Crouse Show: Joanne Vannicola is an Emmy award-winning actor and writer, who has been working in film, television, and theatre since they were eight years old. They have also been nominated for a Genie, a Gemini, and an ACTRA award. Joanne is a long-time advocate for the LGBTQ community and is the Chair of the first LGBTQ+ committee for the actors union, ACTRA, and sits on the sexual assault ad-hoc committee at ACTRA for women in film and television. Joanne’s memoir, All We Knew but Couldn’t Say (Dundurn Press) is available now.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show podcast writer and theatre creator Graham Isador joins the show. He trained as a part of the playwright unit at Soulpepper Theatre. Isador's first person journalism--pieces on spending a week living like Joe Rogen or searching for the worst bar in Niagara Falls--has appeared at VICE, The Risk Podcast, and the punk rock satire site The Hard Times, and many other places. Richard and Graham discuss his new Summer Works show White Heat, how seriously people should take online abuse, and the late, great Spalding Gray.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show, Richard welcomes Damhnait Doyle a Juno-nominated songwriter and performer who serves on SOCAN’s board of directors. In April, she released her solo album, Liquor Store Flowers. Recently she also wrote an opinion piece on how the music industry needs to support musicians who quit drinking.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show, Richard welcomes “Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up” author Dave Meslin. From the publisher: “He has been called a “wizard,” a “mastermind,” “the ultimate ideas guy,” a “mad scientist,” and a “start-up genius.” As a social and political entrepreneur and community organiser he promotes the message: We’re stronger and smarter when we’re all involved. His latest project is a book called Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up. It is a recipe for change. A cure for cynicism. A war on apathy.”

This week on the Richard Crouse Show: “Listen Up!” is the new book by my guest Grammy-award winning producer Mark Howard. An album-by-album account of working with iconic artists such as Anthony Kiedis, Michael Stipe, Gord Downie, and Bono the book is a backstage pass into the lives of some of the planet’s most iconic musicians. Along with the inside stories, each chapter gives recording and producing information and tips with expert understanding of the equipment used in making the world’s most unforgettable records and explanations of the methods used to get the very best sound.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show, Richard welcomes four very special guests, “Midsommar” director Ari Aster and star Jack Reynor, “The Lion King” co-star Billy Eichner and travel guru Rick Steves.

This week on the Richard Crouse Show: With three GRAMMY® nominations and 11 albums to his name, Donny McCaslin is one of music’s most respected saxophonist and band leaders on the scene today. As the bandleader on David Bowie's final album Blackstar he pushed his boundaries even further. McCaslin brings his daring fusion of vibrant electronica and illuminating art-rock across Canada this June.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show, Richard has an in-depth look at “Toy Story 4.” To talk about the creation of Pixar’s first ever Canadian character, the patriotic daredevil Duke Caboom, Richard chats with Greg Mason, Vice-President of Marketing for Walt Disney Canada and Ben Su, one of the Canadian animators who helped create the character. Keanu Reeves also chimes in on why he wanted to play Caboom. Then Tony Hale, who plays the new character Forky in the film, swings by to talk about his character’s existential crisis.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show: A new documentary called “There Are No Fakes” explores what the filmmaker says could be the largest art fraud scam in Canadian history. What begins as a document of a court case and its countersuits turns into something more important, more vital, as it underlines how Indigenous artists, even world-famous ones, have been exploited. Joining me in studio are director Jamie Kastner and one of the film’s subjects, Barenaked Ladies member Kevin Hearn.

This week on “The Richard Crouse Show”: You know Randall Park as Eddie Huang’s father, American restaurateur Louis Huang, in “Fresh Off the Boat,” for which he was nominated for the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series. He was Danny Chung on “Veep,” Kim Jong-un in the 2014 film “The Interview” and you’ve seen him on “The Office,” in “Trainwreck” plus the superhero movies “Ant-Man and the Wasp” and “Aquaman” among many others. He co-wrote and co-stars with Ali Wong in his latest Netflix movie “Always Be My Maybe.” In the romantic comedy they play childhood friends who have a falling out and don’t speak for 15 years. They reconnect as adults when Sasha runs into Marcus in San Francisco. Although the old sparks are still there, the couple live in different worlds.

I love this so much. I interviewed director Jamie Kastner and Barenaked Ladies member Kevin Hearn this morning about a fantastic film they have coming out on June 14 called "There Are No Fakes." The whole interview will air in a week or so but I wanted to share this great clip of Kevin talking about working with Lou Reed. Reed was his friend and musical hero. He was also Reed's musical director and keyboardist from 2007 until his passing in 2013.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show author Anthony De Sa. He grew up in Toronto’s Portuguese community and attended The Humber School for Writers and now heads the English department and directs the creative writing program at a high school for the arts. His latest novel is "Children of the Moon," an historical drama set in Tanzania and Portuguese-controlled Mozambique. He lives in Toronto with his wife and three sons.

Richard Crouse interviews Mena Massoud, the Canadian star of the Disney live action remake of "Aladdin." They talk about working with Will Smith, why he switched from neuroscience to theatre school and supporting ethnically diverse Canadian artists.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show: Woman Enough: How a Boy Became a Woman and Changed the World of Sport is the account of a human rights battle with global repercussions for the world of sport; it's a challenge to rethink fixed ideas about gender; and it's the extraordinary story of a boy who was rejected for who he wasn't, and who fought back until she found out who she is. It’s written by my guest today Kristen Worley.

In 1976, Ian McEwan’s first collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham award; his first novel, The Cement Garden, was published two years later. He won the Booker prize in 1998 with Amsterdam. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of British Empire) in the 2000 Queen's Millennium Honors List for his services to Literature. His novels Atonement, On Chesil Beach, Enduring Love and The Children Act have been made into films. His new book Machines Like Me is in bookstores now.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show: "In This Dark Chest of Wonders: 40 Years of Stephen King's The Stand," Andy Burns ("Wrapped In Plastic: Twin Peaks," BiffBamPop.com) tells the story behind the story of King's enduring opus and delves deep into its various incarnations — the unfilmed George A. Romero adaptation; the 1994 ABC mini-series; the audiobook; and Marvel Comics' adaptation. Included are exclusive interviews with Stephen King experts Bev Vincent, Robin Furth, Mick Garris, Jamey Sheridan, WG Snuffy Walden, Grover Gardner, Ralph Macchio, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Mike Perkins.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show we welcome one of Canada's favourite performers, Mary Walsh. She became famous on the sketch comedy show CODCO, created CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and is a versatile actress appearing in the Gemini Award-winning Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, which she wrote and starred in. She is a Member of the Order of Canada and has received a Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.

NewsTalk 1010 morning host John Moore and Richard discuss the passing of Chewbacca portrayer Peter Mayhew. “Peter Mayhew was a kind and gentle man, possessed of great dignity and noble character. These aspects of his own personality, plus his wit and grace, he brought to Chewbacca. We were partners in film and friends in life for over 30 years and I loved him. He invested his soul in the character and brought great pleasure to the Star Wars audience," Harrison Ford said in a statement.

This week on the Richard Crouse Show director Larry Weinstein stops by to discuss his latest documentary "Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies." A timely look at what activist Astra Taylor calls, “political brainwashing,” the film details the reasons why we are so often sucker punched by the use and abuse of the media.