Listener-supported KSUT delivers NPR News and Music Discovery for the Four Corners, on-air and online, from its studios on Southern Ute lands in Ignacio, Colorado.

KSUT is an independent, non-profit organization governed by a Board of Directors and is not a tribally owned station or service.

© 2026 KSUT Public Radio

NPR News and Music Discovery for the Four Corners

Donate

Play Live Radio

Next Up:

0:00

0:00 0:00

Available On Air Stations

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Movie Industry Slang

NPR | By Susan Stamberg

Published March 1, 2006 at 7:42 AM MST

Who's Alan Smithee and why is he the director of so many movies? When is a martini not a martini? Who is the best boy anyway?

Camera operator and film industry veteran Dave Knox talks to Susan Stamberg about these terms and other movie industry mysteries as a run-up to the 78th Academy Awards ceremony on March 5. Knox is the author of an insider's guide to film slang, Strike the Baby and Kill the Blonde.

Susan Stamberg

Susan Stamberg was one of NPR's "founding mothers" (she also coined the phrase). She joined the network at the time of its inception in 1971, and her career at NPR spanned more than five decades.

See stories by Susan Stamberg