DVR Alert: The New York Times' Frank Rich to Appear on Letterman on Friday

Set your DVRs. David Letterman and CBS are having quite a week. Last night found Bill Clinton in the guest chair and this Friday, Former New York Times chief theater critic, Frank Rich, who was once known as "the Butcher of Broadway" will appear on the Late Show with David Letterman (Friday night at 11:30 pm on CBS). Clinton was on the show to promote his new book Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, as well as his support of Hillary Clinton for the White House and the two shared triple bypass surgery stories.  

Rich will be on the show to discuss the paperback release of his popular book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth in Bush's America which was released in hardcover in September 2006.

Frank Rich became a New York Times op-ed columnist in 1994 after serving for thirteen years as the newspaper's chief drama critic. These days, he covers politics and also serves as an adviser on the paper's overall cultural news report. Two of his previous books are MUST-HAVES for theatre fans everywhere. Hot Seat: Theater Criticism for The New York Times, 1980-1993 contains a collection of all of his New York Times theatre reviews, which provide insight into thirteen years of Broadway including many of its big hits and misses. He is the also author of the childhood memoir Ghost Light, which is filled with many tales of the start of his love of theatre. Rich is married to Alex Witchel, who also writes for the Times.

Ghost Light's film rights have been optioned by the film producing team of Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (HAIRSPRAY, Chicago, The Music Man, The Bucket List, Cinderella, Annie, Gypsy, A Raisin in the Sun, Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows).

Amongst many great articles which showed his great influence while occupying the chief theatre position at the Times, Rich is deservedly credited for inviting Disney to Broadway with a December 29, 1991 piece which sparked Disney's interest in bringing Beauty and the Beast to stage. Rich wrote that "The Hit That Got Away -- The best Broadway musical score of 1991 was that written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman for the Disney animated movie Beauty and the Beast."

Press notes describe Rich's book as "New York Times columnist Frank Rich examines the trail of fictions manufactured by the Bush administration from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina, exposing the most brilliant spin campaign ever waged When America was attacked on 9/11, its citizens almost unanimously rallied behind its new, untested president as he went to war. What they didn't know at the time was that the Bush administration's highest priority was not to vanquish Al Qaeda but to consolidate its own power at any cost. It was a mission that could be accomplished only by a propaganda presidency in which reality was steadily replaced by a scenario of the White House's own invention—and such was that scenario's devious brilliance that it fashioned a second war against an enemy that did not attack America on 9/11, intimidated the Democrats into incoherence and impotence, and turned a presidential election into an irrelevant referendum on macho imagery and same-sex marriage."