Jenna Schnuer

American Way: The Geek Shall Inherit the EarthJanuary 1, 2010

At first glance, Sheldon Cooper, PhD—Jim Parsons's character on CBS's runaway hit The Big Bang Theory—appears to be your average neighborhood hipster. He's got the lanky frame, the long-sleeved shirt layered under a cool logoed tee—the whole shebang. But as soon as Sheldon opens his mouth, you realize a hipster he isn't. In fact, he's an awkward, geeky überscientist who easily earns a spot among TV's least socially skilled characters in history.

Parsons, 36, so completely inhabits the character that it's hard to believe a conversation with him would be easy. Luckily, he's just that good of an actor. 

Read the interview.

American Way: Laugh TrackingJanuary 1, 2009

It was early 2004, and the heated November presidential election was inching closer by the day. Michael Kantor and Laurence Maslon had just wrapped the PBS documentary series about the history of New York theater called Broadway: The American Musical, and they realized that America was tense. “There was something about the moment in time and the country being polarized that made me think, ‘We could use a good joke right now,’ ” Kantor says. Better yet, he thought, a century of good jokes. So Kantor and Maslon set about chronicling the history of humor in the United States for a new book, Make ’Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America (Twelve Books, $45), and its accompanying six-part documentary series of the same name, which will air on PBS in January. The duo gave us the scoop on their entertaining new project.

Read the article.

American Way: The Hardest Working Man in PublishingSeptember 1, 2008

Yeah, Justin Timberlake is doing all right for himself. He can sing, dance, and act. But when it comes to crowning the king of crossover in the entertainment industries (and with their audiences), author James Patterson gets the nod. And, actually, stack another crown on his head for his productivity.

Don't believe the hype? Well, prepare to be exhausted. By the end of 2008, Patterson, 61, will have published seven new books, including this month's The Dangerous Days of Daniel X, a title that targets young adults as well as older action aficionados; and in October, his first nonfiction story, Against Medical Advice. He will also see two of his books start their travels toward the big screen.

Read the story on the American Way site.

American Way: No Place for Too LongJune 15, 2006

There are sections of Anderson Cooper's Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival (HarperCollins) that make it hard to believe the anchor of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360° went into TV reporting in the first place. The man has a knack for writing. But TV it was: Less than two years after his 1989 graduation from Yale, Cooper quit his job as a fact-checker at the news-for-high-school students station, Channel One, borrowed a Hi-8 camera from the station's director, flew off to Thailand, snuck into Burma, and interviewed students who were fighting the military dictatorship. "There's an immediacy to television that I like," says Copper. "I like writing. It's something that's always been important to me but I grew up watching a lot of television and a lot of television news. There's nothing more interesting to me than sort of figuring out where to point the camera lens and how to tell the story both in words and in pictures."