Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
• An Alabama author who struck up a relationship with Neil Armstrong nearly two decades ago is behind a new movie about the first person to walk on the moon. The best-selling biography First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by Auburn University professor emeritus James Hansen has been made into First Man, which debuted recently at the Venice Film Festival. Hansen, a co-producer of First Man, said his relationship with the Apollo 11 astronaut who stepped on the moon in 1969 began after he wrote a letter to the famously private Armstrong, who died in 2012, at the urging of students in 1999. The astronaut responded to the letter, to Hansen's surprise. Hansen later spent hours interviewing Armstrong as he wrote the only authorized biography of the astronaut. "After the book was done, the nicest compliment he gave me was, 'Jim, you wrote exactly the book you told me you were going to write.' For him, that was a big deal, because so many people in his life after Apollo 11 would say one thing and actually do another, try to manipulate things to their advantage," Hansen said in a release. While some have complained the movie fails to portray the unfurling of a U.S. flag on the lunar surface, Hansen and Armstrong's sons said the story celebrates both an American achievement as well as an achievement 'for all mankind'."
• For the debut of The Conners -- the ABC sitcom formerly known as Roseanne until its namesake star was chucked for making racist remarks on Twitter -- don't expect one potential critic to weigh in. The usually sharp-tongued Roseanne Barr, whose firing from the show was a drama-filled saga that played out on social media, says she's staying "neutral" about the re-rebooted show and won't be paying much attention, anyway. In an interview with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on the celebrity rabbi's podcast, the comedian said she'll be in Israel when the spinoff debuts in October. "I have an opportunity to go to Israel for a few months and study with my favorite teachers over there," she said. "It's my great joy and privilege to be a Jewish woman." The Twitter rant that got Barr fired included a comparison of top President Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett to an ape. Barr offered various excuses -- including that she was under the influence of Ambien -- and although she apologized, the network fired her in May. While the show will still feature the core Conner family, Barr will have no financial or creative ties to the series, ABC has said. And, Barr insists that she's not going "to curse it or bless it," she said. "I'm staying neutral. That's what I do. I'm staying neutral. I'm staying away from it. Not wishing bad on anyone, and I don't wish good for my enemies."
A Section on 09/04/2018