Kurt Vonnegut - Appearances

Appearances

• Vonnegut played himself in a cameo in 1986's Back to School, in which he is hired by Rodney Dangerfield's Thornton Melon to write a paper on the topic of the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. Recognizing the work as not Melon's own, Professor Turner tells him, "Whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut."
• Vonnegut also made brief cameos in the film adaptations of his novels Mother Night and Breakfast of Champions.
• Vonnegut appears in the opening sequence of Showtime's 1991 anthology series "Kurt Vonnegut's Monkey House," based on his short stories.
• He made a guest appearance on the 2002 DVD released by 1 Giant Leap, leading the producers of the film to say, "Probably the most unbelievable result in our whole production was getting Kurt Vonnegut to agree to an interview". In the film, Vonnegut states, "Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough times of my life I can listen to music and it makes such a difference".
• Vonnegut narrates and wrote the narrative of two oratorios with composer Dave Soldier recorded by the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, A Soldier's Story based on the execution of Private Eddie Slovik and Ice-9 Ballads, adapted from Cat's Cradle.
• Vonnegut recorded a number of first-person voice-overs for Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War and included one of a young soldier reflecting on a visit with a prostitute.
• Vonnegut appears briefly in the 2005 dramatic documentary The American Ruling Class playing himself.
• Vonnegut appears briefly in the 2005 Dutch release of the three part BBC documentary D-Day to Berlin. The allies journey to victory, telling about his memories of the bombing of Dresden
• In August 2006, Kurt Vonnegut was interviewed on the national, weekly public radio program, The Infinite Mind, from inside the 3-D virtual on-line community Second Life. The program made broadcast history as the first to be taped inside a virtual world, and it was the author's last face-to-face sit-down interview. The host was The Infinite Mind's John Hockenberry, who was with Vonnegut in the studio as the program was taped. Vonnegut's virtual interview was taped in front of a virtual audience of 100 people from around the world at the 16-acre (65,000 m2) virtual broadcast center created by producer Bill Lichtenstein and Lichtenstein Creative Media which produces The Infinite Mind.
• In 2007 Vonnegut is featured in the film Never Down as Robert and appears in several scenes.