Weekend Update

Legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman passed away on July 30th at the age of 89. The man dubbed "the world's greatest living filmmaker" by Time magazine in 2005 and whose career spanned 60 years, often had high praise for contemporary directors such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Soderbergh, and for the films American Beauty and Magnolia, but no public mention, ironically, of his most famous fan: Woody Allen. Bergman had retired from filmmaking in 1984 and theatre direction in 2003.


Tom Snyder, on whose colorful 1973-82 talk show Tomorrow John Lennon gave his last televised interview (April ‘75); U2 and "Weird Al" Yankovic made their first respective American television appearances in 1981; Plasmatics lead singer Wendy O. Williams blew up a TV set in the studio (1980); and was the stage for infamous interviews with both John Lydon nee Rotten, and Kiss, passed away on Sunday, July 29th of complications from leukemia. He was 71.

28-year-old Trevor Butler, bassist for Bottom of the Hudson, was killed on Sunday when, after a blowout, the band’s van went off I-40 in central North Carolina. Drummer Greg Lytle, also seriously hurt in the accident, is hospitalized in critical condition.

In less tragic news, Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox and guitarist Lockett Pundt were held up at gunpoint in their hometown of Atlanta on Friday evening after a gig. Thankfully, they escaped unharmed albeit a little poorer.