‘Life’ before your eyes
Ira Glass brings American tales to radio, TV and now the big screen
PROFILE. Ira Glass doesn’t necessarily try to make people cry. “Oh my God,” he says when he learns of a particular Metro writer’s blubbering at his hand. “That’s so nice.”
Glass has every right to take such an emotional outpouring as a compliment — moving viewers to tears is a testament to just how masterfully crafted and poignant scenes from the second season of his Showtime series, “This American Life,” are.
Of course, “This American Life” is best known as an award-winning public radio program, one that has been sharing the sometimes funny, often moving and always interesting tales of everyday people since 1995.
“It’s lucky to get into a situation where people [we are interviewing] are going through something [emotional] and they’ll all be frank about it. We make them really explain it,” Glass says of the show’s ability to so deftly tap into the human condition.
Though heard on more than 500 radio stations and consistently one of the most popular podcasts in the country, last year Glass chose to add pictures to his program, leaping out of the radio darkness to premiere six half-hour episodes of “This American Life” on Showtime.
“We definitely have a lot of skeptical radio fans. I think people feared we would go on television and the show would turn into something tawdry and lowbrow,” Glass admits.
“But my experience has been that if people actually just see the show, they understand that we’re doing exactly the same thing in another form.”
Glass experiments with formats yet again tonight when he hosts a live version of the show in New York City, which will be simulcast via satellite to over 300 movie theaters around the nation. Perched from a mixing console, Glass will direct radio stories, introduce tales and outtakes from the TV series, and conduct a Q&A with fans.
“[Doing a simulcast] seemed like a way to get out to hundreds of cities that we couldn’t travel to and a way to reach our radio audience to really show them our TV stuff,” Glass says.
“The stories that we have are really funny and moving, and the stories from the TV show are beautiful; they’re shot to be projected on a wide screen. Then in terms of just the weirdness of the event, I’m excited about the novelty of it. I think it’s gonna be a nice show.”
We’ll be sure to bring tissues. Though we may not be the only ones… Glass himself may get a little misty.
“Yes, oh yeah. Of course I get choked up [by people’s stories],” he says.
“It wouldn’t be possible to make the stories so they would get through to anybody else if they didn’t get through to me.”
‘This American Life — Live!’
Various movie theaters in the metro area; visit the Web site 
www.fathomevents.com for more info.
The second season of ‘This American Life’ premieres Sunday at 10 p.m. on Showtime