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Dave Dixon
Biography
Dave Dixon was known as the Culture Czar. His last job was broadcasting from the "Tesla Center in beautiful downtown Southfield." He was once the lead DJ of the legendary "Air Aces" on Detroit's rock station WABX. Dixon was a major influence on Detroit's FM revolution in the late 1960s. Dixon was a radio pioneer in Detroit who was among the first to play The Doors, Hendrix, Blind Faith, Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and many other artists now taken for granted in pop culture. Dixon also had a co-writing credit on Peter, Paul and Mary's hit tune "I Dig Rock & Roll Music."
Dixon left WABX in 1974. He spent ten years in Miami; where he hosted a popular overnight movie program (The Dave Dixon Show). His television show was on Channel 51 which broadcast from Hollywood, Florida. Dixon would introduce the movies each night (usually two movies and one fill-in episode of any number of old television shows) with a little critique of what he saw as the highlights and the flaws of the particular movie. Then he would take phone calls after the commercial breaks and he would discuss the movies with the callers. Often he would have some animated discussions with the callers regarding the movies or almost any other issue that came up. In effect, Dixon was hosting a talk show about movies! Sometimes callers would receive prizes such at radios, television sets, or other merchandise from The Dave Dixon Show's sponsors.
In 1985, he landed at the Detroit public radio station (WDET) where his gruff, cynical radio persona won him a loyal audience. However, his frequent confrontations with management led to his eventual firing.
In 1996, AM talk station WXYT hired him to host "Dave Dixon's Radio Magazine" where he talked about Detroit's arts community. He transferred his gruff, no-nonsense attitude to a good-vibes community forum, where he often reminisced with his friends from the 1960s rock music scene. Dave Dixon died of a heart attack on Memorial Day in 1999.
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Dennis Thompson
Biography
Dennis Thompson (born September 7, 1948 in Detroit, Michigan, United States) was the drummer with the 1960s/1970s Detroit proto-punk/hard rock group MC5, which had a #82 US single with "Kick Out The Jams" and a #30 US album with the same name. Thompson was given the nickname "Machine Gun" because of his "assault" style of fast, hard-hitting drumming that sonically resembles the sound of a Thompson machine gun (commonly referred to as a "Tommy Gun"). His powerful drumming pre-figured and influenced punk, metal, and hardcore punk drumming styles. After the MC5 broke up, Thompson was a member of the 1975–1976 Los Angeles based super-group The New Order, the 1981 Australia based super-group New Race, The Motor City Bad Boys, and The Secrets. In 2001, he guested for Asmodeus X on the song, The Tiger (St. Thomas Records).
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Michael Davis
Biography
Michael Davis (June 5, 1943 – February 17, 2012) was an American bass guitarist, singer, songwriter and music producer, best known as a member of the MC5. After dropping out of the fine arts program at Wayne State University, Davis became the bassist for the MC5 in 1964, replacing original bassist Pat Burrows when singer Rob Tyner and guitarist Wayne Kramer decided that they liked Davis's style and wanted him in the band. He played on the band's three original albums, including their debut Kick Out the Jams, and remained in the group until 1972.
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John Sinclair
Biography
As an emerging young poet in the mid-1960s, Sinclair took on the role of manager for the Detroit rock band MC5. The band's politically charged music and its Yippie core audience dovetailed with Sinclair's own radical development. In 1968, while still working with the band, he conspicuously served as a founding member of the White Panther Party, a militantly anti-racist socialist group and counterpart of the Black Panther Party. Arrested for distribution of marijuana in 1969, Sinclair was given ten years in prison. The sentence was criticized by many as unduly harsh, and it galvanized a noisy protest movement led by prominent figures of the 1960s counterculture. He was freed on March 9, 1972, by the Michigan Supreme Court when the possession of marijuana law was declared unconstitutional.
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Jiří Menzel
Biography
Jiří Menzel (Czech: [ˈjɪr̝iː ˈmɛntsl̩] was a Czech film director, theatre director, actor, and screenwriter. His films often combine a humanistic view of the world with sarcasm and provocative cinematography. Some of these films are adapted from works by Czech writers such as Bohumil Hrabal and Vladislav Vančura.
Menzel, a member of the Czech New Wave, became internationally famous in 1967, when his first feature film, Closely Watched Trains, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. His controversial film Larks on a String was filmed in 1969, but was initially banned by the Czechoslovakian government. It was finally released in 1990 after the fall of the Communist regime. The film won the Golden Bear at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival.
Menzel was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film again in 1986 with his dark comedy My Sweet Little Village. In 1987, he was a member of the jury at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1989 he was a member of the jury at the 16th Moscow International Film Festival. In 1995 he was a member of the jury at the 19th Moscow International Film Festival. He would be conferred with IIFA Lifetime Achievement Award in November 2013.
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Ellen Greene
Biography
Ellen Greene (born February 22, 1951) is an American singer and actress. Greene has had a long and varied career as a singer, particularly in cabaret, as an actor and singer in numerous stage productions, particularly musical theatre, as well as having performed in many films (notably in Little Shop of Horrors) and television programs. She starred as Vivian Charles on the ABC series Pushing Daisies.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Ellen Greene, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 - October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer who won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award.
Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On October 31, 2020, it was announced that Connery had died at the age of 90.
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Gilbert Melendez
Biography
Gilbert "El Niño" Melendez is a Mexican-American mixed martial artist who has fought at Featherweight and currently fights at Lightweight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). He is a two-time Strikeforce Lightweight Champion and a former WEC Lightweight Champion. He also competed in PRIDE FC, Shooto, and Rumble on the Rock. Melendez holds the distinction of being one of a select group of fighters who have ever been ranked #1 in the world in two weight classes in MMA, among the likes of Anderson Silva, Dan Henderson, Randy Couture, Kazushi Sakuraba, and BJ Penn. Melendez was nicknamed after the infamous El Niño storm that wreaks havoc across the Pacific Rim. It was given to him by a Japanese broadcaster describing his fight-style and the manner in which he stormed through the Shooto Featherweight division
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Jon Campling
Biography
Since his appearance in Harry Potter And the Deathly Hallows (2010) as a handraising, trainstopping, carriageboarding, kidscaring Deatheater! Jon has been pursuing much darker film roles. Born In Yorkshire and originally an Aerospace engineer Jon has developed a compelling, unique and very striking look, and a style that has brought a string of excitingly unusual and very challenging roles. From the violently iconic Diggs in the soon to be released 'Hard Shoulder' to the Drunken desperation of Father Lawrence in 'The Zombie King' working with Corey Feldman and Edward Furlong. Jon has also been very fortunate to be involved with several ground breaking projects like 'The Underwater Realm', 'Bloody Cuts' and 'Sleeping Dogs'. During early 2012 Jon worked with Former 2 times WBO world champion Steve Collins, playing the lead in the highly anticipated 'Tax City' a no holds barred tale of life in London's notorious cardboard City. may 2012 saw splitting his time between London and Pisa where he filming on 'Zombie Massacre' playing Doug Mulligan an up-in-your-face trailer trash/hippy yank trying to save the his dog, his girl, and the world. Jon's easy going nature, striking appearance, on-screen intensity and eagerness to embrace the unusual and the demanding make him a top choice for directors, writers and producers and he looks forwards to the challenges to come. If you can work with him... do!
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Jill Schoelen
Biography
Jill Marie Schoelen (born March 21, 1963) is an American actress. A more unconventional husky-voiced "scream queen" heroine of the 1980s was Jill Schoelen, daughter of well-known fashion designer Dorothy Schoelen. Born and raised in Burbank, she studied at the Acting for Life Theatre in Burbank and started off on TV as a teen in the Fame-influenced TV pilot called Best of Times (1981) (TV) starring the up-and-coming Nicolas Cage and Crispin Glover. She gained in experience with a number of innocuous films geared mostly toward the young, including D.C. Cab (1983), Thunder Alley (1985) and Hot Moves (1984). The dark-eyed, black-haired pretty with the trademark bangs wouldn't find her horror niche until hooking up with Wes Craven and his TV movie Chiller (1985) (TV). From there she scored big with the cult shocker The Stepfather (1987) wherein she played the resourceful stepdaughter terrorized by the lecherous, meek-appearing Terry O'Quinn as the title monster.
The sleeper hit put Jill on the map with a seemingly solid future, continuing on with The Phantom of the Opera (1989), this time keeping company opposite Freddy Krueger inhabiter Robert Englund as her deranged pursuer. But a few bumps in the road with such lowgrade fodder as Curse II: The Bite (1989), Cutting Class (1989) and Popcorn (1991) put a permanent damper on her career, despite coming back with a bit of grit in the thriller TV movie When a Stranger Calls Back (1993) (TV). Her object-of-a-stalker days behind her after filming Not Again! (1996), she settled comfortably back and raised two children with husband/musician/composer Anthony Marinelli.
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