Blog: 'American Masters: Philip Roth' Premieres On PBS Friday March 29th At 9 P.M.

Whether you were first introduced to his work with Goodbye Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint, or I Married A Communist, there's no arguing that literary icon, Philip Roth, is deserving of this new documentary airing on PBS this Friday (check local listings). 

American Masters explores the life and career of Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning novelist Philip Roth (b. March 19, 1933), often referred to as the greatest living American writer. Reclusive and diffident, Roth grants very few interviews, but for the first time, allowed a journalist to spend 10 days interviewing him on camera, both at his Upper West Side apartment in New York City and his 18^th-century farmhouse in rural Connecticut. The result is American Masters Philip Roth: Unmasked, a 90-minute documentary that features Roth freely discussing very intimate aspects of his life and art as he has never done before.

In the film, Roth is candid about his unliterary upbringing in Newark, New Jersey, his writing process, his psychoanalysis, and the inspiration behind his most famous characters -- Nathan Zuckerman, David Kepesh, Alexander Portnoy, and Mickey Sabbath -- and his historical novels such as I Married a Communist (1998) and The Plot Against America (2004). Set against the backdrop of his times, the film shares scenes from Roth's daily routine, using images from his personal archives. Interviews include some of Roth's oldest friends - Mia Farrow, who inspired part of his last novel Nemesis (2010), high school friend Dr. Bob Heyman, college friend Jane Brown Maas, and army comrade Martin Garbus -- as well as The New Yorker's literary critic and staff writer Claudia Roth Pierpont, and younger American writers Jonathan Franzen, Nicole Krauss and Nathan Englander.

Sandi Berg is also a freelance journalist and writes about television for several magazines including Written By (Writer's Guild of America), Life After 50 and Whole Life Times Magazine.