Summary: Download Standard PodcastWallace Shawn is perhaps best known for his roles in commercial blockbuster films like The Princess Bride (where he played the conniving Vizzini) or the Toy Story movies (where he's the voice of Rex the dinosaur). The more refined among you may know him from Woody Allen's Manhattan or the film My Dinner With Andre. Shawn is also a playwright and an essayist. His essays—all of them—are collected in a book published last year by Haymarket Books and called, rather succinctly: Essays. The late historian Howard Zinn called the book "deceptively simple, fiercely honest ... and provocative." Shawn is a radical, and his essays are blunt critiques of class and power. I talked to him about his essays and the evolution of his politics.
