Dubbed 'America's foremost humorist' by The Chicago Tribune, Roy Blount, Jr. takes a trip down the mighty Mississippi River in this intimate look at American life. In. The Main Stream with Roy Blount Jr. Humorist Roy Blount Jr. leaves the familiar tensions of uptown Manhattan to seek downstream America in The Main Stream. . 30 of 57 results for Roy Blount Jr. in All Products. Sort by: View: Page. The Main Stream with Roy. DVD $14.99. It Grows on You: A. Roy Blount Jr. Roy Blount Jr., Self: The Main Stream. Roy Blount Jr. was born on October 4, 1941 in Indianapolis. Roy Blount Jr. was born on October 4, 1941 in Indianapolis. You mean there's Pie. Humorist Roy Blount Jr. visits Key West Kitchen host Kerry Shelby. THE MAIN STREAM: Roy Blount Jr.'s America. Robot Check. Enter the characters you see below. Sorry, we just need to make sure you're not a robot. For best results, please make sure your browser is accepting cookies. Roy Blount Jr, Main Stream. Press release from. PBS: Two- Hour Film By Award- Winning. Filmmaker Roger Weisberg - - Produced In High Definition Television. HDTV) And Presented By Thirteen/WNET New York - - Premiered December. On PBSphoto. Don Young"The Mississippi. River flows right down the middle of the country. Maybe along this. I can discover what holds this wildly diverse. Roy Blount. Jr. The beloved humorist and celebrated. Roy Blount, Jr. takes an offbeat journey down the Mississippi. River, the literal and metaphorical "main stream" of America. Thirteen/WNET New York. Blount's unpredictable. American eccentricity, from an off- the- rack wedding. Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, to a "guts- and- glory". Angola, Louisiana. Produced and directed by the. Roger Weisberg, and shot and mastered. THE MAIN STREAM premieres Tuesday, December. ET) on PBS (check local listings). In the spirit of. Weisberg's earlier work, ROAD SCHOLAR, which has become a cult classic. THE MAIN STREAM is an entertaining potpourri of American life, adding. The 2. 0 public affairs. I've made for PBS leave little room for levity,". Weisberg said. "But, every once in a while, I need a good laugh. I think our audience deserves one as well. Ever since I made ROAD. SCHOLAR about a decade ago, I've been eager to take another offbeat. American. life. I can't imagine a more quintessential American journey than. Mark Twain's river or a host more affable and amusing. Roy Blount Jr." Like Mark Twain, Blount is a. Southerner with the wit and wisdom to capture contemporary. Twain immortalized over a century ago. While. floating downstream on an assortment of vessels - - including a canoe. Blount introduces. Blount throws himself into unusual. Mississippi River events such as National Tom Sawyer Days, which LIFE. King Biscuit. Blues Festival; the Cleveland, Mississippi Annual Barbecue Contest. Great Mississippi River Balloon Race. Viewers meet such memorable. Garrison Keillor. Blount to a stone- skipping contest; Winona La. Duke. an Ojibwe activist who twice ran for Vice President of the United. States; Kenny Salway, a reclusive environmentalist who spent 2. Leonard Kuhnert, a fisherman who catches. Leslie Eaton, a hippie nomad who. Wilbert Rideau, an award- winning. Many of the communities and. There are Native Americans. African Americans. Greenpeace to fight environmental racism, and homesteaders. Many have distinctly. Mark Twain impersonator. Voodoo Priestess, a Native- American spiritual healer who manages. French chef who touts swamp rats as a gourmet delicacy. Delta, an Elvis. impersonator who curates the "Elvis is Alive Museum," and. Louis Armstrong. As one self- proclaimed river. Mississippi River needs the backwaters.". Blount comes to realize that the unconventional and embattled characters. America's backwaters are critical. Ultimately, the film celebrates. Blount concludes. America is not nearly as homogeneous as he feared. THE MAIN STREAM is a production. Public Policy Productions, Inc. Thirteen/WNET. New York. Over the past two decades, Thirteen has presented 2. PBS. documentaries by Roger Weisberg on subjects ranging from health care. These documentaries have won more. Peabody, Emmy, and du. Pont- Columbia Awards. Academy Award nomination. Funding for THE MAIN STREAM. PBS, the Silverweed Foundation, the Ira W. De. Camp Foundation. Herman Goldman Foundation, and the Charlpeg Foundation. LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI WITH ROY BLOUNT. JR. For author and humorist Roy Blount. Jr., life on the Mississippi is a reflection of American culture. On a more personal note, it was an adventure he won't. Blount recently traveled the length of the Mississippi. River for a new documentary by Roger Weisberg, produced by Public. Policy Productions, Inc. Thirteen/WNET New York. THE MAIN STREAM - - chronicling the literal and metaphorical "main. America - - premiered Tuesday, December 1. PBS. In the following article, Blount recalls that memorable journey. As the host of THE. MAIN STREAM, I started out where I live, in New York City, which is. America and yet is home to the mainstream. The end of what has been called the American Century was at. I was myself a bit more than half a century old; and I felt. I still hadn't come to grips with the U. S. of A. Since I was a teenager I had been holding. American food and music and politics and heroes, in newspapers. I had driven across the country; visited forty- eight. Yankee Stadium; reported on. Civil Rights Movement; spent a year with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Ray Charles and Martin Luther King and Billy Carter and. Loretta Lynn and Willie Mays and Reggie Jackson; watched Ku Klux Klansmen. Presidents and created a fictional one. U. S. Army; gotten a degree from Harvard; sung (badly). Bruce Springsteen and Steven King and Dave Barry; sired. American children; dated a TV star; been married to. Texan and a Massachusettsean; swapped quips with Johnny Carson. Bill Murray takes an. Missouri to California. I still felt that there was. I had to learn about America. After brushing up on Huckelberry Finn. I took off through a. America, the Mississippi River, which cuts right through. I rode in a towboat. Coast Guard cutter, an oyster- fishing boat, a racing dragonboat. Lake Itasca, with a man who was determined to paddle. Gulf), a big rubberized Zodiac, an air boat, a. I caught catfish by feeling around in. I caught another catfish weighing 2. Memphis skyline; I gathered wild rice in the traditional. Ojibways; I patrolled "Cancer Alley" with Greenpeace. I fired live ammunition from pistols and a shotgun at simulated gunmen. I sort- of wrestled a baby alligator; I hauled a nutria. I ate another nutria. French chef; I ate live oysters whacked open with a. I interviewed a man (who sang me. Batista as a covert- ops Marine) over a rigged- up intercom while he. Japan and breathing through a helmet he made out of a 2. I interviewed old hippies who were waging. I argued with Garrison Keillor about. I sat on the riverbank. Kermit Ruffins while he talked about Louis Armstrong and played. Down by the Riverside" on his horn; I talked to John Barry. Army Corps of Engineers. Corps workers lay huge concrete mats along the banks. I got the Rev. Fred Kyles reminiscing about the. Martin Luther King as we looked at the Lorraine Motel. I threw out the first pitch of a minor- league. Illinois, played catch with the proprietor of the Field. Dreams (as opposed to the neighboring proprietor of the Left and. Center Field of Dreams) ballpark in Iowa, and bowled (in the Bowling. Hall of Fame and Museum in St. Louis) with the second greatest bowler. I caught three- legged frogs with environmentally concerned. Minnesota; I conducted a musical interview with. Clarkesville, Mississippi; I grilled candidates vying to. Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher in Hannibal. Missouri; I judged a barbecue contest in Cleveland, Mississippi; and. I participated in rituals with two voodoo priestesses in Louisiana. And those are. just the things I did that occur to me off the top of my head. I saw. the river in Minnesota where it was so narrow that I could walk quickly. I saw where it was so strong and wide that it. New Orleans; and I saw it empty out into the Gulf of Mexico. I started out not knowing what I was. I learned that if you cover a crab's eyes with your fingers. I learned that a nutria will rear. I learned that. when you stick your hand in a catfish's mouth the catfish will always. I learned that a pig will eat coal. Along the way I asked people - - conservatively. I would say about l. Mississippi meant to them. I learned a great deal about bygone, fading, and flourishing ways. I asked people what they thought the. America,". "mainstream values." A banker said the mainstream was people. Someone even older than I am said it was senior. A machinist said it was the everyday working Joe. Some people. pointedly expressed a desire to stay out of the mainstream. For instance. a third generation cotton farmer in Mississippi turned his nose up. He pointed to the rows of cotton we were harvesting. This is my honky- tonk." Several people didn't know what I was. Those people were probably the most mainstream of all. Wilbert Rideau, who is serving life without parole at Angola State. Prison, told me that you don't know what freedom is until you lose. Maybe you don't know what the mainstream is until you are out. Elvis, coming from outside the mainstream, created a whole. According to the graffiti. Elvis. That may be the mainstream right there: love of Elvis. But it didn't do Elvis any good - - the mainstream swallowed him up. However much you influence the mainstream. But once you start. If you let the river be the river, it will. That's freedom for you. People build upon freedom. Some. people, when I asked them what "mainstream" meant to them. Freedom" - - a premise that will always be. The river, John Berry said, is "perfect,". There. is something chilling about that notion, because - - it's a little. Indian horse that the "swamp blues" musician Coco. Robicheaux told me about, which kept walking into a post, over and. What are you doing, trying to sell a blind horse?". He ain't blind," said the man who was trying. He just don't care." The river is perfect because it doesn't. In making its way across human territory, it would just as soon. But people, being imperfect, want to believe. People call the Mississippi "Old Man River,". The Father of Waters." A reclusive backwoodsman named Kenny. Salwey, who traps and fishes and lives along the river, took me out. You can't have the mainstream. What. I want to do is spend as much time as I can in the backwaters of America. I can. I have followed the Mississippi from. I have reached this conclusion. It starts out little and clean, gets. I guess. I knew that from the beginning. I just wanted to keep on learning.
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