Night Waves - 30/06/2008

Bidisha talks to Lou Reed about his bleak 1973 album Berlin which is the subject of a new film and his latest tour. He discusses the agony of writing, which books he was reading when he wrote it and how what he really wanted to do was act. Critic Michelle Roberts talks about the posthumous publication of New Zealand author Janet Frame's 1963 book Towards Another Summer, which at the time of writing was deemed too personal for public consumption. French tightrope walker Philippe Petit and filmmaker James Marsh tell Bidisha about the new film telling the story of Petit's walk between the towers of New York's World Trade Center in 1974. It shows how he stepped out onto a wire he and a gang of his friends had strung between the Twin Towers before walking back and forth without a harness or a net, to the wonderment of the city below. And playwright Roy Williams discusses the new film of his play Fallout, detailing the aftermath of the murder of a teenage boy by a gang in London to television.