title: Fran Drescher

text: She wrote about her experiences in her second book, "Cancer Schmancer". Her purpose for this book was to raise consciousness for men and women "to become more aware of the early warning signs of cancer, and to empower themselves". Drescher says, "I was going to learn what I needed to learn, ask questions, become partners with my doctor instead of having some kind of parent/child relationship."


title: Fran Drescher

text: On June 21, 2007, the seventh anniversary of her operation, Drescher announced the national launch of the Cancer Schmancer Movement, a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all women's cancers be diagnosed while in Stage 1, the most curable stage. She celebrated her tenth year of wellness on June 21, 2010.


title: Fran Drescher

text: She says her goal is to live in a time when women's mortality rates drop as their health care improves and early cancer detection increases.


title: Fran Drescher

text: Her efforts as an outspoken healthcare advocate in Washington DC helped get unanimous passage for (also known as Johanna's Law) and she is acknowledged in the Congressional Record.


title: Fran Drescher

text: In September 2008, Drescher, a Democrat, was appointed as a U.S. diplomat by George W. Bush administration's Assistant Secretary of State Goli Ameri. Her official title was Public Diplomacy Envoy for Women's Health Issues. In traveling throughout the world, she supported U.S. public diplomacy efforts, including working with health organizations and women's groups to raise awareness of women's health issues, cancer awareness and detection, and patient empowerment and advocacy. Her first trip was in late September and included stops in Romania, Hungary, Serbia, and Poland.


title: Fran Drescher

text: In 2008, Drescher supported Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. She attended a Super Democrat rally for Clinton. Drescher said that she had been considering a run for the United States Senate in 2008 to succeed Hillary Clinton, but ultimately decided against it. She endorsed Barack Obama for re-election in 2012. In 2017, she said in an interview she was explicitly anti-capitalist and was happy to see the Green Party gaining some traction.


title: Fran Drescher

text: In 2022, Drescher described vaccine mandates as “infringement on the Disabilities Act, the Freedom of Religion Act, and body sovereignty”, warning that fear may “lead to fascism.”


title: Fran Drescher

text: In April 2014, Drescher presented at Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Easter Bonnet Competition with Bryan Cranston, Idina Menzel and Denzel Washington, after raising donations at her Broadway show "Cinderella". Drescher became an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church Monastery so that she could legally officiate LGBT wedding ceremonies.


title: Fran Drescher

text: Drescher has been the recipient of the John Wayne Institute's Woman of Achievement Award, the Gilda Award, the City of Hope Woman of the Year Award, the Hebrew University Humanitarian Award, and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine's Spirit of Achievement Award. In 2006, she was honored with the City of Hope Spirit of Life Award, which was presented to her by Senator Hillary Clinton. On April 10, 2010, she was guest of honor at the "Dancer against Cancer" charity ball held at the Imperial Palace, Vienna, Austria, where she received the first "My Aid Award" for her achievements in support of cancer prevention and rehabilitation. In 2021, Drescher was awarded the LifeSaver Award by ELEM/Youth in Distress.


title: Kari Lake

text: Kari Ann Lake ( ; born August 23, 1969) is an American politician and former television news anchor who was the Republican nominee in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election.


title: Kari Lake

text: Beginning her media career in the early 1990s, Lake was the anchor for the Phoenix television station KSAZ-TV from 1999 to 2021. She stepped down from her anchor role shortly before announcing her gubernatorial candidacy and won the Republican nomination with the endorsement of former president Donald Trump. Her campaign was marked by various controversies, including promoting false claims of Trump winning the 2020 presidential election and advocating for the imprisonment of those who accepted Trump's defeat, including her Democratic opponent, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. Lake lost the gubernatorial election to Hobbs, but refused to concede and filed a lawsuit in an attempt to overturn the results and be declared the winner.


title: Kari Lake

text: Lake was born in 1969, in Rock Island, Illinois, to Larry A. Lake, a teacher and football and basketball coach from Richland Center, Wisconsin, and Sheila A. Lake (née McGuire), a nurse from Appleton, Wisconsin. She is the youngest of nine children.


title: Kari Lake

text: Lake grew up in Iowa. She graduated from North Scott Senior High School in Eldridge, Iowa, and then received a Bachelor of Arts in communications and journalism from the University of Iowa.


title: Kari Lake

text: In May 1991, Lake began working at KWQC-TV in Davenport, Iowa, as an intern while attending the University of Iowa. She later became production assistant before joining WHBF-TV in Rock Island, Illinois, to be a daily reporter and weekend weathercaster in 1992. In August 1994, Lake was hired by KPNX in Phoenix, Arizona, to be the weekend weather anchor. She later became evening anchor at KPNX before relocating to work for WNYT in Albany, New York, in the summer of 1998, when she replaced Chris Kapostasy.


title: Kari Lake

text: Lake returned to Arizona in 1999 and became an evening anchor for KSAZ-TV (Fox 10 Phoenix). While at KSAZ, Lake interviewed President Barack Obama in 2016 and President Donald Trump in 2020.


title: Kari Lake

text: In her last years working in the media, Lake shared false and unverified information on social media, prompting criticism and acquiring a reputation as a provocateur. In 2018, she opposed the Red for Ed movement, which sought more funding for education through strikes and protests, claiming that movement was a "big push to legalize pot"; she later apologized for the statement (saying that she "made an incorrect conclusion") and, according to the station's regional human resources director, subsequently took an unexpected month-long leave from her position at the station. In July 2019, Lake was caught on "hot mic" footage promoting her account on the web platform Parler. She shared COVID-19 misinformation on Twitter and Facebook in April 2020. Lake's statements and actions made her a divisive figure among colleagues in her last years at the station.


title: Kari Lake

text: In March 2021, she announced her departure from KSAZ, one day after FTVLive, a television news industry site, published a video clip of Lake at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando; the website questioned whether Lake was there as a journalist or as a member of a movement. In June 2021, she announced her campaign for governor.


title: Kari Lake

text: Lake was a member of the Republican Party until November 3, 2006, when she changed her registration to become an independent. She registered as a Democrat on January 4, 2008, the day after the Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses were won by Obama. Lake returned to being a Republican on January 31, 2012. She explained leaving the Republican Party in 2006 as a reaction to the then-ongoing Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She had supported John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008. She also made several donations to Democratic presidential candidates. After launching her campaign for governor in 2021, Lake cited Trump, Ronald Reagan, and Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli Ward, all former Democrats, as precedent for her party-switching.


title: Kari Lake

text: Lake filed paperwork in June 2021 to seek the Republican nomination for governor of Arizona in the 2022 election to succeed incumbent governor Doug Ducey, who is term-limited. Four candidates sought the Republican nomination: Lake; former real estate developer and Arizona Board of Regents member Karrin Taylor Robson; Paola Tulliani Zen, and Scott Neely. Lake and Robson were the front-runners, leading in polling and fundraising. A fifth Republican candidate, ex-congressman Matt Salmon, dropped out of the race after trailing in polls and endorsed Robson.


title: Kari Lake

text: Throughout her campaign, Lake was described as "a champion of the far-right" movement in the United States. Lake received Donald Trump's endorsement in September 2021. The primary was seen as a "battle" between Republicans aligned with Trump and establishment Republicans. Robson was supported by figures such as former Vice President Mike Pence, governor Ducey, and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie. By the end of 2021, Lake had raised $1.4 million from 12,000 sources. Lake centered her campaign on promoting the false claim that the 2020 presidential election in Arizona and nationwide was "rigged and stolen"; Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump White House aide who promoted Trump's efforts to overturn the election results, attributed her victory in the Republican primary, despite being "outspent 10-to-1," on her stance. Lake won the Republican primary in Arizona on August 2, 2022, winning in all counties.


title: Kari Lake

text: After winning the Republican primary, Lake said that "we're all big boys and big girls", urging people to "come together"; however, within a week of that victory, Lake said: "We drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine". Later in early November, Lake participated in a campaign event where she told "McCain Republicans" to "get the hell out!" Lake also called the traditional Republican party as "the party of McCain", and then stated: "Boy, Arizona has delivered some losers, haven't they?" Her statements were in contrast to her past description of John McCain (Arizona's former Republican Senator) four years earlier, after his death, as "courageous", "a war hero, icon and a force to be reckoned with".


title: Kari Lake

text: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs refused to debate Lake during the election. However, both attended a gubernatorial candidate forum in September 2022, held by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, where they separately answered questions.


title: Kari Lake

text: In August 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lake led anti-mask rallies, calling on Arizona State University students to go against the university's mask mandates. Lake said that as governor she would not tolerate mask and vaccine mandates of the COVID-19 pandemic. In November 2021, Lake told a group of Republican retirees that she was taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19 infection. She stated that, as governor, she would work to have hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin produced in the state to "make it easier for us to get these lifesaving drugs." Lake questioned the science behind COVID-19 vaccines and said that she had not been vaccinated.


title: Kari Lake

text: Lake identifies as a conservative Republican and described herself in 2022 as a "Trump candidate." During her 2022 gubernatorial campaign, she attracted support from right-wing extremists. She accused President Joe Biden and Democrats of harboring a "demonic agenda." In 2021 and 2022, Lake attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual meeting of conservatives and Republicans, in Orlando.


title: Kari Lake

text: Lake said in 2022 that she considers abortion to be "the ultimate sin" and praised the Supreme Court decision in "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization", which held that there was no federal right to abortion under the U.S. Constitution, and overturned "Roe v. Wade." She expressed support for banning both surgical abortions and medication abortions in Arizona. In an op-ed for the "Independent Journal Review", Lake wrote that as governor she would deport illegal immigrants that enter Arizona without seeking federal approval and complete unfinished portions of the Trump wall on the Mexico–United States border.


title: Kari Lake

text: Lake has opposed legislation to create non-discrimination protections for people based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and opposing restrooms accommodating transgender people. She has referred to LGBTQ rights and people as being a part of the "alphabet mafia." Lake claimed that she and "and most of my gay friends are appalled with the 'BTQ+' [bisexual, transgender, and queer plus] everything they keep adding to it." She has criticized "drag queens" as being potentially harmful to children despite having attended and supported drag queen events herself. After her election loss, she was listed as an honoree and presenter at Mar-a-Lago for the December 15, 2022 "Spirit of Lincoln Gala," an event held by the Log Cabin Republicans, a political action committee for LGBTQ Republicans.


title: Kari Lake

text: In an interview with "60 Minutes Australia" journalist Liam Bartlett, Lake asserted that Australians "have no freedom" due to strict Australian gun laws; in a tweet four months later, Lake said that if elected governor, she would not "recognize" federal gun laws.


title: Kari Lake

text: Lake had been a leading proponent of the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" from Trump. During her campaign, she aligned herself with Trump and centered her candidacy on promoting election lies.


title: Kari Lake

text: Lake claimed President Joe Biden did not receive 81 million votes and that Arizona (which was won by Biden in the 2020 presidential election) was actually won by Trump. After the 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit found no evidence of election fraud, she demanded the election be "decertified"—a legal impossibility, as such a process does not exist. She endorsed a false assertion by Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington that Democrats use mail-in ballots to rig elections. Lake tweeted quotes made by Sidney Powell on "Lou Dobbs Tonight" falsely asserting there was a sweeping election fraud conspiracy. She has advocated imprisoning Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, her Democratic opponent in the gubernatorial race, on baseless and unspecified allegations of criminality related to the 2020 election. Lake also called for imprisoning journalists. Lake repeatedly claimed that defendants arrested in connection with the January 6 United States Capitol attack were "being held in prison without being charged."


title: Kari Lake

text: Trump endorsed Lake's candidacy, as did pro-Trump Republican figures such as Arizona congressman Paul Gosar and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. By contrast, Lake's main primary opponent, Robson, was endorsed by outgoing Republican governor Doug Ducey, as well as Arizona Senate president Karen Fann and Americans for Prosperity. Lake attacked Robson for failing to endorse false claims of election fraud. Lake attended events headed by My Pillow founder Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims regarding fraud in the 2020 election. During her 2021 campaign for governor, she said that she would not have certified Biden's 2020 election victory in Arizona if she had been governor at the time. During a June 2022 debate among candidates for the Republican nomination, Lake continued to insist the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" and "corrupt."


title: Kari Lake

text: Fox News reported in July 2022 that nine days before the 2017 Inauguration of Donald Trump, Lake had posted a meme on Facebook that declared the inauguration a "national day of mourning and protest", in which she asked her followers how they would react to Trump's inauguration. She asked "Will you be protesting the inauguration?" and how they might protest. The post was deleted after Fox News asked Lake's campaign about it.


title: Kari Lake

text: After Lake posted remarks critical of drag queens performing in front of children, Rick Stevens, who performs professionally under the name Barbra Seville, published photos and text messages purportedly demonstrating a professional relationship and personal friendship with Lake. Stevens said that he has performed at Lake's home and in front of Lake's then "9 or 10 years old" daughter at Lake's invitation. Lake described Stevens' allegations as "defamatory lies," specifically denying they had been friends and denying that he had ever been in her home. Lake has threatened litigation against both Stevens and outlets that pursued the story.


title: Kari Lake

text: Lake endorsed Jarrin Jackson, a far-right online streamer, in his campaign for State Oklahoma Senate. Jackson was subsequently scrutinized for his past record of making antisemitic comments, including claims that "the Jews" are evidence that "evil exists"; "Jews will go to hell"; and "Jews [are] taking over the world." These prompted groups such as Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix to call on Lake – and other Arizona Republicans who endorsed Jackson – to rescind their endorsements. Lake denounced Jackson's comments and said, "I looked at Jarrin's resume as (a) Combat Veteran in Afghanistan. It is impossible to dig into everything someone has said in their life. If his reported comments are true, I obviously rescind my endorsement."


title: Kari Lake

text: On November 7, 2022, Lake's campaign stated that on November 6, a campaign staffer "opened an envelope delivered to our campaign office that contained suspicious white powder. It was one of two envelopes that were confiscated by law enforcement" for testing. On November 11, the Phoenix Police Department said that the Arizona state laboratory had tested the items turned over to them by Lake's campaign, and found "no substance" inside. After this revelation, Lake's campaign stated that there actually had been three envelopes, with the first envelope being opened by the staffer having "a white powdery substance along with a hateful letter", but that the staffer threw the first envelope away, and that the trash was emptied before police were informed, with police being handed the other two envelopes.


title: Kari Lake

text: In October 2022, Lake twice refused to say that she will accept the result if she lost the election: "I'm going to win the election, and I will accept that result."


title: Kari Lake

text: Multiple media outlets projected on November 14, 2022, that Lake had lost the gubernatorial election to Hobbs. Lake's reaction to this was tweeting that "Arizonans know BS when they see it." On November 17, Lake still refused to concede her loss, and announced she was assembling a legal team to challenge the results. Vote counting ended on November 21. Arizona's election results were certified on December 5, with Lake losing to Hobbs by a margin of over 17,000 votes: Lake received 1,270,774 votes, while Hobbs received 1,287,891 votes.


title: Kari Lake

text: Lake alleged voter disfranchisement due to ballot printing problems and long waiting lines in Maricopa County, which had elections run by local Republican officials. In 70 out of 223 Maricopa County polling sites, voting machine ballots were printed too lightly to be read by tabulators; the problem was caused by a printer setting which had not shown widespread issues during prior testing. If voters did not want to wait in line for the issue to be fixed, they could leave to vote at another Maricopa County polling site, with wait times for polling sites being shown online, and many polling sites had little to no waiting lines, stated Maricopa County election officials. Alternatively, voters could drop their ballots into a secure box ("Box 3"), with these ballots being later tabulated at Maricopa County's elections headquarters, under monitoring from observers from both parties; ultimately, around 17,000 Maricopa County ballots were dropped into Box 3. The Arizona secretary of state’s office spokesperson said that "Every voter who went to one of the voting locations affected was still able to cast their ballot", and voting rights experts agreed.


title: Kari Lake

text: Bill Gates, the Republican chair of Maricopa's Board of Supervisors, partially blamed the long lines on Arizona Republican Party chairwoman Kelli Ward for discouraging voters from using Box 3; she had claimed that Box 3 should not be used as "Maricopa County is not turning on their tabulators downtown today". Lake herself told her supporters to stay in line to vote, while a lawyer for Lake's campaign assuaged concerns about using Box 3 to vote. Lake's campaign filed a lawsuit on Election Day to extend voting for another three hours, but Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Tim Ryan declined to do so, stating: "The court doesn't have any evidence that any voter was precluded from their right to vote".


title: Kari Lake

text: While Lake alleged that Republican-dominated areas in Maricopa County were disproportionately affected by the printing problems, "The Washington Post" found that the percentage of registered Republicans in affected precincts (37%) was very close to the percentage of registered Republicans across Maricopa County (35%), and also found that some Democrat-dominated areas also faced the printing problems. Meanwhile, "The New York Times" analyzed 45 claims of irregularities reported by voters, finding that in 34 of these 45 claims, the voters were able to cast their vote despite an inconvenience; while for the others, three raised problems with voter registration; seven gave unclear accounts as to what exactly happened; and only one said she had been denied the opportunity to vote, though she acknowledged she had arrived at her polling place at the time it closed. On December 18, 2022, Lake continued to refuse to concede, calling for the arrest of Maricopa County election officials and said "My pronouns are: I won."


title: Kari Lake

text: In April 2022, Lake and Mark Finchem initiated a lawsuit intending to ban electronic voting machines from being used in her 2022 election. In August 2022, judge John Tuchi dismissed Lake and Finchem's lawsuit, writing that they "lack standing because they have articulated only conjectural allegations of potential injuries". Tuchi also cited the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as the "Purcell" principle for his ruling. In December 2022, Tuchi sanctioned Lake's lawyers in this suit, including Alan Dershowitz, for making "false, misleading, and unsupported" assertions during the case, and for having "claims for relief [that] did not have an adequate factual or legal basis grounded in a reasonable pre-filing inquiry." Tuchi further stated that the sanctions were intended to show that the court does not tolerate litigants “furthering false narratives that baselessly undermine public trust at a time of increasing disinformation about, and distrust in, the democratic process".


title: Kari Lake

text: On December 9, after Arizona certified the election, Lake initiated a lawsuit seeking a court order to either overturn Hobbs' victory and declare Lake as the winner of the election, or redo the election in Maricopa County. Lake's complaint alleged that there were hundreds of thousands of illegal votes in the election, but no evidence was provided. On December 19, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson dismissed eight of ten counts of Lake's lawsuit, regarding invalid signatures on mail-in ballots, incorrect certification, inadequate remedy, as well as violations of freedom of speech, equal protection, due process, the secrecy clause, and constitutional rights. The judge allowed the remaining two counts to go to trial, these being allegations that election officials intentionally interfered with Maricopa County ballot printers and with the chain of custody of Maricopa County ballots. The judge ruled that Lake needed to prove during the trial that the above allegations were true, and that the alleged actions "did in fact result in a changed outcome" of the election.


title: Kari Lake

text: Lake has been married to Jeff Halperin since August 1998. She was previously married to Tracy Finnegan, an electrical engineer. She previously identified as a Buddhist before 2015 according to her friends, but as of 2022, she identified as a Christian. Lake has described her Christian faith and the church she attends as evangelical.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The series, which ran for twenty-six episodes (dubbed "sessions"), is set in the year 2071, and follows the lives of a traveling bounty-hunting crew aboard a spaceship, the "Bebop". Although it incorporates a wide variety of genres, the series draws most heavily from science fiction, Western, and noir films. Its most prominent themes are existential ennui, loneliness, and the inability to escape one's past.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The series was dubbed into English by Animaze and ZRO Limit Productions, and was originally licensed in North America by Bandai Entertainment (and is now licensed by Crunchyroll) and in Britain by Beez Entertainment (now by Anime Limited); Madman Entertainment owns the license in Australia and New Zealand. In 2001, it became the first anime title to be broadcast on Adult Swim.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: "Cowboy Bebop" has been hailed as one of the greatest animated television series of all time. It was a critical and commercial success both in Japanese and international markets, most notably in the United States. It garnered several major anime and science-fiction awards upon its release, and received unanimous praise for its style, characters, story, voice acting, animation, and soundtrack. The English dub was particularly lauded, and is regarded as one of the best anime dubs. Credited with helping to introduce anime to a new wave of Western viewers in the early 2000s, "Cowboy Bebop" has also been called a gateway series for anime as a whole.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In 2071, roughly fifty years after an accident with a hyperspace gateway which made Earth almost uninhabitable, humanity has colonized most of the rocky planets and moons of the Solar System. Amid a rising crime rate, the Inter Solar System Police (ISSP) set up a legalized contract system, in which registered bounty hunters (also referred to as "Cowboys") chase criminals and bring them in alive in return for a reward. The series' protagonists are bounty-hunters working from the spaceship "Bebop". The original crew are Spike Spiegel, an exiled former hitman of the criminal Red Dragon Syndicate, and Jet Black, a former ISSP officer. They are later joined by Faye Valentine, an amnesiac con artist; Edward, an eccentric child skilled in hacking; and Ein, a genetically-engineered Pembroke Welsh Corgi with human-like intelligence. Over the course of the series, the team get involved in disastrous mishaps leaving them without money, while often confronting faces and events from their past: these include Jet's reasons for leaving the ISSP, and Faye's past as a young woman from Earth injured in an accident and cryogenically frozen to save her life.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: While much of the show is episodic in nature, the main story arc focuses on Spike and his deadly rivalry with Vicious, an ambitious criminal affiliated with the Red Dragon Syndicate. Spike and Vicious were once partners and friends, but when Spike began an affair with Vicious's girlfriend Julia and resolved to leave the Syndicate with her, Vicious sought to eliminate Spike by blackmailing Julia into killing him. Julia goes into hiding to protect herself and Spike, while Spike fakes his death to escape the Syndicate. In the present, Julia comes out of hiding and reunites with Spike, intending to complete their plan. Vicious, having staged a "coup d'état" and taken over the Syndicate, sends hitmen after the pair. Julia is killed, leaving Spike alone. Spike leaves the "Bebop" after saying a final goodbye to Faye and Jet. Upon infiltrating the syndicate, he finds Vicious on the top floor of the building and confronts him after dispatching the remaining Red Dragon members. The final battle ends with Spike killing Vicious, only to be seriously wounded himself in the ensuing confrontation. Looking up to the sky, Spike sees Julia. The series concludes as Spike descends the main staircase of the building into the rising sun before eventually falling to the ground.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: Watanabe created a special tagline for the series to promote it during its original presentation, calling it "a new genre unto itself". The line was inserted before and after commercial breaks during its Japanese and US broadcasts. Later, Watanabe called the phrase an "exaggeration". The show is a hybrid of multiple genres, including westerns and pulp fiction. One reviewer described it as "space opera meets noir, meets comedy, meets cyberpunk". It has also been called a "genre-busting space Western".


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The musical style was emphasized in many of the episode titles. Multiple philosophical themes are explored using the characters, including existentialism, existential boredom, loneliness, and the effect of the past on the protagonists. Other concepts referenced include environmentalism and capitalism. The series also makes specific references to or pastiches multiple films, including the works of John Woo and Bruce Lee, "Midnight Run", "", and "Alien". The series also includes extensive references and elements from science fiction, bearing strong similarities to the cyberpunk fiction of William Gibson. Several planets and space stations in the series are made in Earth's image. The streets of celestial objects such as Ganymede resemble a modern port city, while Mars features shopping malls, theme parks, casinos and cities. "Cowboy Bebop"s universe is filled with video players and hyperspace gates, eco-politics and fairgrounds, spaceships and Native American shamans. This setting has been described as "one part Chinese diaspora and two parts wild west".


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The characters were created by Watanabe and character designed by Toshihiro Kawamoto. Watanabe envisioned each character as an extension of his own personality, or as an opposite person to himself. Each character, from the main cast to supporting characters, were designed to be outlaws unable to fit into society. Kawamoto designed the characters so they were easily distinguished from one another. All the main cast are characterized by a deep sense of loneliness or resignation to their fate and past. From the perspective of Brian Camp and Julie Davis, the main characters resemble the main characters of the anime series "Lupin III", if only superficially, given their more troubled pasts and more complex personalities.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The show focuses on the character of Spike Spiegel (voiced by Kōichi Yamadera), an iconic space cowboy with green hair and often seen wearing a blue suit, with the overall theme of the series being Spike's past and its karmic effect on him. Spike was portrayed as someone who had lost his expectations for the future, having lost the woman he loved, and so was in a near-constant lethargy. Spike's artificial eye was included as Watanabe wanted his characters to have flaws. He was originally going to be given an eyepatch, but this decision was vetoed by producers.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: Jet (voiced by Unshō Ishizuka) is shown as someone who lost confidence in his former life and has become cynical about the state of society. Spike and Jet were designed to be opposites, with Spike being thin and wearing smart attire, while Jet was bulky and wore more casual clothing. The clothing, which was dark in color, also reflected their states of mind. Faye Valentine, Edward Wong (voiced by Aoi Tada), and Ein joined the crew in later episodes. Their designs were intended to contrast against Spike. Faye was described by her voice actress Megumi Hayashibara as initially being an "ugly" woman, with her defining traits being her liveliness, sensuality and humanity. To emphasize her situation when first introduced, she was compared to Poker Alice, a famous Western figure.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: Edward and Ein were the only main characters to have real-life models. The former had her behavior based on the antics of Yoko Kanno as observed by Watanabe when he first met her. While generally portrayed as carefree and eccentric, Edward is motivated by a sense of loneliness after being abandoned by her father. Kawamoto initially based Ein's design on a friend's pet corgi, later getting one himself to use as a motion model.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: "Cowboy Bebop" was developed by animation studio Sunrise and created by Hajime Yatate, the well-known pseudonym for the collective contributions of Sunrise's animation staff. The leader of the series' creative team was director Shinichirō Watanabe, most notable at the time for directing "Macross Plus" and "". Other leading members of Sunrise's creative team were screenwriter Keiko Nobumoto, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, mechanical art designer Kimitoshi Yamane, composer Yoko Kanno, and producers Masahiko Minami and Yoshiyuki Takei. Most of them had previously worked together, in addition to having credits on other popular anime titles. Nobumoto had scripted "Macross Plus", Kawamoto had designed the characters for "Gundam", and Kanno had composed the music for "Macross Plus" and "The Vision of Escaflowne". Yamane had not worked with Watanabe yet, but his credits in anime included "Bubblegum Crisis" and "The Vision of Escaflowne". Minami joined the project as he wanted to do something different from his previous work on mecha anime.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: "Cowboy Bebop" was Watanabe's first project as solo director, as he had been co-director in his previous works. His original concept was for a movie, and during production he treated each episode as a miniature movie. His main inspiration for "Cowboy Bebop" was "Lupin III", a crime anime series focusing on the exploits of the series' titular character. When developing the series' story, Watanabe began by creating the characters first. He explained, "the first image that occurred to me was one of Spike, and from there I tried to build a story around him, trying to make him cool." While the original dialogue of the series was kept clean to avoid any profanities, its level of sophistication was made appropriate to adults in a criminal environment. Watanabe described "Cowboy Bebop" as "80% serious story and 20% humorous touch". The comical episodes were harder for the team to write than the serious ones, and though several events in them seemed random, they were carefully planned in advance. Watanabe conceived the series' ending early on, and each episode involving Spike and Vicious was meant to foreshadow their final confrontation. Some of the staff were unhappy about this approach as a continuation of the series would be difficult. While he considered altering the ending, he eventually settled with his original idea. The reason for creating the ending was that Watanabe did not want the series to become like "Star Trek", with him being tied to doing it for years.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The project had initially originated with Bandai's toy division as a sponsor, with the goal of selling spacecraft toys. Watanabe recalled his only instruction was "So long as there's a spaceship in it, you can do whatever you want." But upon viewing early footage, it became clear that Watanabe's vision for the series did not match Bandai's. Believing the series would never sell toy merchandise, Bandai pulled out of the project, leaving it in development hell until sister company Bandai Visual stepped in to sponsor it. Since there was no need to merchandise toys with the property any more, Watanabe had free rein in the development of the series. Watanabe wanted to design not just a space adventure series for adolescent boys but a program that would also appeal to sophisticated adults. During the making of "Bebop", Watanabe often attempted to rally the animation staff by telling them that the show would be something memorable up to three decades later. While some of them were doubtful of that at the time, Watanabe many years later expressed his happiness to have been proven right in retrospect. He joked that if Bandai Visual had not intervened then "you might be seeing me working the supermarket checkout counter right now."


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The city locations were generally inspired by the cities of New York and Hong Kong. The atmospheres of the planets and the ethnic groups in "Cowboy Bebop" mostly originated from Watanabe's ideas, with some collaboration from set designers Isamu Imakake, Shoji Kawamori, and Dai Satō. The animation staff established the particular planet atmospheres early in the production of the series before working on the ethnic groups. It was Watanabe who wanted to have several groups of ethnic diversity appear in the series. Mars was the planet most often used in "Cowboy Bebop" storylines, with Satoshi Toba, the cultural and setting producer, explaining that the other planets "were unexpectedly difficult to use". He stated that each planet in the series had unique features, and the producers had to take into account the characteristics of each planet in the story. For the final episode, Toba explained that it was not possible for the staff to have the dramatic rooftop scene occur on Venus, so the staff "ended up normally falling back to Mars". In creating the backstory, Watanabe envisioned a world that was "multinational rather than stateless". In spite of certain American influences in the series, he stipulated that the country had been destroyed decades prior to the story, later saying the notion of the United States as the center of the world repelled him.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The music for "Cowboy Bebop" was composed by Yoko Kanno. Kanno formed the blues and jazz band Seatbelts to perform the series' music. According to Kanno, the music was one of the first aspects of the series to begin production, before most of the characters, story, or animation had been finalized. The genres she used for its composition were western, opera, and jazz. Watanabe noted that Kanno did not score the music exactly the way he told her to. He stated, "She gets inspired on her own, follows up on her own imagery, and comes to me saying 'this is the song we need for "Cowboy Bebop", and composes something completely on her own." Kanno herself was sometimes surprised at how pieces of her music were used in scenes, sometimes wishing it had been used elsewhere, though she also felt that none of their uses were "inappropriate". She was pleased with the working environment, finding the team very relaxed in comparison with other teams she had worked with.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: Watanabe further explained that he would take inspiration from Kanno's music after listening to it and create new scenes for the story from it. These new scenes in turn would inspire Kanno and give her new ideas for the music and she would come to Watanabe with even more music. Watanabe cited as an example, "some songs in the second half of the series, we didn't even ask her for those songs, she just made them and brought them to us." He commented that while Kanno's method was normally "unforgivable and unacceptable", it was ultimately a "big hit" with "Cowboy Bebop". Watanabe described his collaboration with Kanno as "a game of catch between the two of us in developing the music and creating the TV series "Cowboy Bebop"". Since the series' broadcast, Kanno and the Seatbelts have released seven original soundtrack albums, two singles and extended plays, and two compilations through label Victor Entertainment.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The guns on the show were chosen by the director, Watanabe, and in discussion with set designer, Isamu Imakake, and mechanical designer, Kimitoshi Yamane. Setting producer, Satoshi Toba said, "They talked about how they didn't want common guns, because that wouldn't be very interesting, and so they decided on these guns."


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: "Cowboy Bebop" debuted on TV Tokyo, one of the main broadcasters of anime in Japan, airing from April 3 until June 26, 1998. Due to its 6:00 PM timeslot and depictions of graphic violence, the show's first run only included episodes 2, 3, 7 to 15, 18 and a special. Later that year, the series was shown in its entirety from October 24 until April 24, 1999, on satellite network Wowow. The full series has also been broadcast across Japan by anime television network Animax, which has also aired the series via its respective networks across Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The first non-Asian country to air Cowboy Bebop was Italy. There, it was first aired on October 21, 1999, on MTV, where it inaugurated the 9:00–10:30 PM "Anime Night" programming block.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In the United States, "Cowboy Bebop" was one of the programs shown when Cartoon Network's late night block Adult Swim debuted on September 2, 2001, being the first anime shown on the block that night at midnight ET. During its original run on Adult Swim, episodes 6, 8, and 22 were skipped due to their violent themes in wake of the September 11 attacks. By the third run of the series, all these episodes had premiered for the first time. "Cowboy Bebop" was successful enough to be broadcast repeatedly for four years. It has been run at least once every year since 2007, and HD remasters of the show began broadcasting in 2015. In the United Kingdom, it was first broadcast in 2002 on the adult-oriented channel CNX. From November 6, 2007, it was repeated on AnimeCentral until the channel's closure in August 2008. In Australia, "Cowboy Bebop" was first broadcast on pay television in 2002 on Adult Swim in Australia. It was broadcast on Sci-Fi Channel on Foxtel. In Australia, "Cowboy Bebop" was first broadcast on free-to-air-TV on ABC2 (the national digital public television channel) on January 2, 2007. It has been repeated several times, most recently starting in 2008. "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie" also aired again on February 23, 2009, on SBS (a hybrid-funded Australian public broadcasting television network). In Canada, "Cowboy Bebop" was first broadcast on December 24, 2006, on Razer.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In Latin America, the series was first broadcast on pay-TV in 2001 on Locomotion. It aired again on January 9, 2016 on I.Sat.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The first release was sold in VHS format either as a box set or as seven individual tapes. The tapes were sold through Anime Village, a division of Bandai.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The second release was sold in 2000 individually, and featured uncut versions of the original 26 episodes. In 2001, these DVDs were collected in the special edition "Perfect Sessions" which included the first 6 DVDs, the first "Cowboy Bebop" soundtrack, and a collector's box. At the time of release, the art box from the Perfect Sessions was made available for purchase on The Right Stuff International as a solo item for collectors who already owned the series.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The third release, "The Best Sessions", was sold in 2002 and featured what Bandai considered to be the best 6 episodes of the series remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS surround sound.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The fourth release, "Cowboy Bebop Remix", was also distributed on 6 discs and included the original 26 uncut episodes, with sound remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1 and video remastered under the supervision of Shinichiro Watanabe. This release also included various extras that were not present in the original release. "Cowboy Bebop Remix" was itself collected as the "Cowboy Bebop Remix: The Complete Collection" in 2008.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In December 2012, newly founded distributor Anime Limited announced via Facebook and Twitter that they had acquired the home video license for the United Kingdom. Part 1 of the Blu-ray collection was released on July 29, 2013, while Part 2 was released on October 14. The standard DVD Complete Collection was originally meant to be released on September 23, 2013 with Part 2 of the Blu-ray release but due to mastering and manufacturing errors, the Complete Collection was delayed until November 27. Following the closure of Bandai Entertainment in 2012, Funimation and Sunrise had announced that they rescued "Cowboy Bebop", along with a handful of other former Bandai Entertainment properties, for home video and digital release. Funimation released the series on Blu-ray and DVD on December 16, 2014. The series was released in four separate editions: standard DVD, standard Blu-ray, an Amazon.com exclusive Blu-ray/DVD combo, and a Funimation.com exclusive Blu-ray/DVD combo.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: Netflix acquired the streaming rights to the original anime, with all 26 episodes available worldwide as of October 21, 2021. The series is also available on Hulu and Funimation in the United States. On March 1, 2022, the anime became available on Crunchyroll to consolidate both Funimation and Wakanim into the service.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: Two "Cowboy Bebop" manga series adaptations have been released, both published by Kadokawa Shoten and serialized in "Asuka Fantasy DX".<ref name="DX 10/1997"></ref><ref name="DX 11/1998"></ref> The first manga series, titled "Cowboy Bebop: Shooting Star" and illustrated by Cain Kuga, was serialized from October issue 1997, before the anime series' release, to July issue 1998. It was collected into two volumes in 1998, the first one in May and the second one in September. The second manga series, simply titled "Cowboy Bebop" and illustrated by , was serialized from November issue 1998 to March issue 2000. It was collected into three volumes, the first two in April and October 1999 and the third one in April 2000. Both manga series were licensed by Tokyopop for release in North America.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: A "Cowboy Bebop" video game, developed and published by Bandai, was released in Japan for the PlayStation on May 14, 1998. A PlayStation 2 video game, "", was released in Japan on August 25, 2005, and an English version had been set for release in North America. However, in January 2007, IGN reported that the release had likely been cancelled, speculating that it did not survive Bandai's merger with Namco to Bandai Namco Games.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In 2022, Cowboy Bebop made its premier in the mainline Bandai Namco crossover game Super Robot Wars T, which is traditionally focused on turn based mecha combat


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: An anime film titled known in English as "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie", was released in Japan in September 2001 and in the United States in August 2002.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: On July 22, 2008, "If" published an article on its website regarding a rumor of a live-action "Cowboy Bebop" movie in development by 20th Century Fox. Producer Erwin Stoff said that the film's development was in the early stages, and that they had "just signed it". Keanu Reeves was to play the role of Spike Spiegel. "Variety" confirmed on January 15, 2009 that production company Sunrise Animation would be "closely involved with the development of the English-language project". The site also confirmed Kenji Uchida, Shinichirō Watanabe and series writer Keiko Nobumoto as associate producers, series producer Masahiko Minami as a production consultant, and Peter Craig as screenwriter. This was lauded by various sources as a promising move for the potential quality of the film. At the time it was slated to release in 2011, but problems with the budget delayed its production. The submitted script was sent back for rewrite to reduce the cost and little has been heard about it since an interview with producer Joshua Long on October 15, 2010; the project currently languishes in development hell. On October 25, 2014, series director Watanabe was asked about the live-action film at the MCM London Comicon. He stated: "I'm afraid I don't know what they're thinking in Hollywood. Apparently the project hasn't come to a stop but I don't know how it's going to progress from here on. I hear that there are a lot of 'Hollywood' problems."


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In 2017, it was announced that an American live-action adaptation of the series was being developed by Tomorrow Studios, a partnership between Marty Adelstein and ITV Studios, with executive production by Sunrise Inc. Christopher Yost was to write the series, and Netflix announced that it would distribute it. On April 4, 2019, Variety reported that John Cho, Mustafa Shakir, Daniella Pineda and Alex Hassell had been cast. Production was shut down in October 2019 due to a knee injury sustained by Cho, setting production back by more than six months. On April 17, 2020, it was revealed that the episodes would be an hour long. On May 19, 2020, Adelstein revealed that there were three finished episodes and that they had shot at least six episodes before Cho's knee injury. In the same interview it was revealed that the director of the anime series, Shinichirō Watanabe, had been hired as a creative consultant. Production, in New Zealand, resumed on September 30, 2020, following a COVID-19 lockdown in the country. The series was released on November 19, 2021 to negative reviews. On December 9, 2021, it was announced that it would not be renewed for a second season, with Netflix cancelling it entirely.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: An official side story titled "Cowboy Bebop: UT" tells the story of Ural and Victoria Terpsichore (V.T. from the session "Heavy Metal Queen") when they were bounty-hunters. The story was available in its own official site, however the website was closed and is currently available at the site mirror.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: "Cowboy Bebop" received unanimous acclaim, beginning at the time of its initial broadcast. Beginning in 1998, Japanese critic Keith Rhee highlighted the series as a standout in an otherwise "run-of-the-mill" season, praising its overall production values, and singling out Kanno's soundtrack as "a much-welcome change from all the sugary J-pop tunes of most anime features". Rhee also highlighted the show's Japanese "all-star cast", which his colleague Mark L. Johnson described as being filled with "veteran voice talent", turning in even greater performances than those of their "above average" US counterparts. In 1999, Australian magazine "Hyper" reviewed the anime and rated it 9.5 out of 10.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: Anime News Network's Mike Crandol gave the series an 'A+' rating for the dubbed version, and an 'A' rating for the subbed version. He characterized the series as "one of the most popular and respected anime titles in history", before adding that it was "a unique television show which skillfully transcends all kinds of genres". Crandol praised its characters as "some of the most endearing characters to ever grace an anime", and commended the voice acting, especially the "flawless English cast". He also complimented the series' "movie-quality" animation, "sophisticated" writing, and its "incredible" musical score. Crandol hailed "Cowboy Bebop" as a "landmark" anime "that will be remembered long after many others have been forgotten", and went on to call it "one of the greatest anime titles ever". Additionally, Michael Toole of Anime News Network named "Cowboy Bebop" as one of the most important anime of the 1990s.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: T.H.E.M. Anime Reviews gave the entire series a perfect score of 5 out of 5 stars, with reviewer Christina Carpenter believing "Cowboy Bebop" as "one of the best [anime]" and touting it as a masterpiece that "puts most anime...and Hollywood, to shame". She described it as a "very stylish, beautifully crafted series that deserves much more attention than it gets". Carpenter praised the animation as "a rarity and a marvel to behold" and that it was "beyond superb", and the plot and characterization as having "a sophistication and subtlety that is practically one-of-a-kind". She also praised the soundtrack, and hailed the opening theme as one of the best intro pieces she had ever heard. Carpenter went to say that "Bebop" was a "must-have for any serious collector of Japanese animation".


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In his article "Asteroid Blues: The Lasting Legacy of "Cowboy Bebop"", "The Atlantic" writer Alex Suskind states, "On paper, "Cowboy Bebop", the legendary cult anime series from Shinichirō Watanabe, reads like something John Wayne, Elmore Leonard, and Philip K. Dick came up with during a wild, all-night whiskey bender." He goes on to write, "The response from critics and fans may have sounded hyperbolic—the word 'masterpiece' was thrown around a great deal—but the praise was justified. First-time solo director Watanabe had created a gorgeous tale of morality, romance, and violence–a dark look at the lives of outlaws that's shot like an independent film."


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In January 2015, television writer Kyle Mills of DVD Talk awarded the series five stars upon review. He stated, "Regardless of the medium, be it live action television, film, or animation, "Cowboy Bebop" is simply one of the finest examples of storytelling ever created." In his review, he describes the finale as "one of the best in television history", referring to it as a "widely revered" ending that "still sparks fan conversation, resonating with viewers 15 years on". He closes by writing, ""Cowboy Bebop" ends with a bang."


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In his 2018 review of the series, "Paste" critic John Maher wrote, "It feels like a "magnum opus" produced at the pinnacle of a long career despite being, almost unbelievably, Watanabe's first series as a director. It is a masterwork that should justly rank among the best works of television of all time." It was also placed at #1 on the publication's list of the "50 Best Anime Series of All Time".


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the series has an approval rating of 100% based on 23 reviews, with an average rating of 8.00/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Blending a head-spinning array of genres and references, "Cowboy Bebop" is an anime television classic that must be experienced."


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In an April 2019 interview with Diego Molano, creator of "Victor & Valentino", he said that Cowboy Bebop was the first anime he "obsessed over", as he spent time tracking down VHS tapes of the show in high school. He also argued that this series showed him "how cinematic and emotional animation can be".


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In the 1999 Anime Grand Prix awards for the anime of 1998, "Cowboy Bebop" won two 1st place awards: Spike Spiegel was awarded the best male character; and Megumi Hayashibara was awarded the best voice actor for her role as Faye Valentine. "Cowboy Bebop" also received rankings in other categories: the series itself was awarded the 2nd best anime series; Faye Valentine and Ed were ranked the 5th and 9th best female characters respectively; "Tank!" and "The Real Folk Blues" were ranked the 3rd and 15th best songs respectively; and "Ballad of Fallen Angels", "Speak Like a Child", "Jamming with Edward" and "Mish-Mash Blues" were ranked the 2nd, 8th, 18th and 20th best episodes respectively.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In the 2000 Anime Grand Prix awards for the anime of 1999, "Cowboy Bebop" won the same two 1st place awards again: best male character for Spike Spiegel; and best voice actor for Megumi Hayashibara. Other rankings the series received are: 2nd best anime series; 6th best female character for Faye Valentine; 7th and 12th best song for "Tank!" and "Blue" respectively; and 3rd and 17th best episode for "The Real Folk Blues (Part 2)" and "Hard Luck Woman" respectively. In the 2000 Seiun Awards, Cowboy Bebop was awarded for Best Media of the Year.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: A 2004 poll in "Newtype USA", the US edition of the Japanese magazine "Newtype", asked its readers to vote the "Top 25 Anime Titles of All Time"; "Cowboy Bebop" ranked 2nd on the list (after "Neon Genesis Evangelion"), placing it as one of the most socially relevant and influential anime series ever created. During that same year, "Cinefantastique" listed the anime as one of the "10 Essential Animations", citing the series' "gleeful mix of noir-style, culture-hopping inclusiveness and music". In 2007, the American Anime magazine "Anime Insider" listed the "50 Best Anime Ever" by compiling lists of industry regulars and magazine staff, and ranked "Cowboy Bebop" as the #1 anime of all time. In 2012, Madman Entertainment compiled the votes of fans online for "The Top 20 Madman Anime Titles" and ranked "Cowboy Bebop" at #7.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: "Cowboy Bebop" has been featured in several lists published by IGN. In the 2009 "Top 100 Animated TV Series" list, "Cowboy Bebop", labelled as "a very original – and arguably one of the best – anime", was placed 14th, making it the second highest ranking anime on the list (after "Evangelion") and one of the most influential series of the 1990s. In 2011, "Bebop" was ranked 29th in the "Top 50 Sci-Fi TV Shows" list, once again being the second highest ranking anime on the list (after "Evangelion"). In 2006, "Cowboy Bebop"s soundtrack was ranked #1 in "Top Ten Anime Themes and Soundtracks of All-Time" list, with the series being commented as "one of the best anime ever and certainly is tops when it comes to music." Spike Spiegel was ranked 4th place in the "Top 25 Anime Characters of All Time" article. IGN Movies also placed "Cowboy Bebop" in their list of "10 Cartoon Adaptations We'd Like to See".


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: The series has been subject to study and analysis since its debut, with the main focus being on its style and mixture of genres. Miguel Douglas, describing the series style in a review, said that "the series distinctly establishes itself outside the realm of conventional Japanese animation and instead chooses to forge its own path. With a setting within the realm of science fiction, the series wisely offers a world that seems entirely realistic considering our present time. Free from many of the elements that accompany science fiction in general—whether that be space aliens, giant robots, or laser guns—the series delegates itself towards presenting a world that is quite similar to our own albeit showcasing some technological advances. Certainly not as pristine a future we would see in other series or films, "Cowboy Bebop" decides to deliver a future that closely reflects that of our own time. This aspect of familiarity does wonders in terms of relating to the viewer, and it presents a world that certainly resembles our very own." Daryl Surat of "Otaku USA", commenting on the series' appeal, said that it was "that rare breed of science-fiction: 'accessible'. Unlike many anime titles, viewers weren't expected to have knowledge of Japanese culture—character names, signs, and the like were primarily in English to begin with—or have seen any other anime series prior." Michelle Onley Pirkle, in her book "Science Fiction Film, Television, and Adaptation: Across the Screens", said that ""Cowboy Bebop" is taking a new take on genre, not by creating unique images and sounds, but by playing 'freely' with, 'remixing', or adapting the images and sounds of other familiar genres in a dynamic way." Robert Baigent, writing for the "Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies", said that the series' appeal likely stemmed from the trend in anime to emulate Western fiction.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In March 2009, the print and web editions of "The Onion"'s "The A.V. Club" called "Cowboy Bebop" "rightly a huge hit", and listed it as a gateway series to understanding the medium of anime as a whole. Suskind said: "It was unlike anything the genre had seen before. It even approached its music differently. The show kicked off with a wormhole of a theme song, and the soundtrack moves so seamlessly through genres, from rock to country to pop to jazz to funk, it's shocking to learn that one set of musicians is behind it all". In an interview, producer Sean Akins also states that the series "created a whole new world". "It's hard for me to quantify the impact that I think it has had. It changed anime. I think people began to think about what shows would be cool. I think it redefined cool within animation, not only in Japan but in the States". One of the series' main animators, Tensai Okamura, went on to create his own anime in 2007: "Darker than Black". Okamura used his experience from "Cowboy Bebop" to write the screenplay of "Darker than Black", leading to narratives composed of two episodes similar to Japanese dramas.


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: American film director, screenwriter, and producer Rian Johnson has cited "Cowboy Bebop" as a visual influence on his films, most notably "Brick". "Ender's Game" writer Orson Scott Card also praised the series. He states that the series is "better than most sci-fi films out there". He goes on to say that he "found this series brilliant, but what held me was a combination of strong relationship-based storytelling, a moody visual style that never got old and really smart dialogue".


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: After the creation of the series, an interviewer asked Watanabe if he had any plans to create more "Cowboy Bebop" material. Watanabe responded by saying that he does not believe that he "should just keep on making "Cowboy Bebop" sequels for the sake of it". Watanabe added that ending production and "to quit while we're ahead when people still want more" is more "in keeping with the "Bebop" spirit". In a more recent interview from 2006 with "The Daily Texan", Watanabe was asked if there would ever be more "Cowboy Bebop". Watanabe's answer was "someday...maybe, someday".


title: Cowboy Bebop

text: In May 2020, composer Mason Lieberman, who has never actually seen Cowboy Bebop, partnered with Sunrise and Funimation to produce an official "Cowboy Bebop" charity track for COVID-19 relief. This track was released on vinyl and featured the return of original series composer Yōko Kanno, original recording band The Seatbelts, and a collection of forty other special musical guests.


title: Rockstar Games

text: Rockstar Games, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in New York City. The company was established in December 1998 as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, using the assets Take-Two had previously acquired from BMG Interactive. Founding members of the company were Terry Donovan, Gary Foreman, Dan and Sam Houser, and Jamie King, who worked for Take-Two at the time, and of which the Houser brothers were previously executives at BMG Interactive. Sam Houser heads the studio as president.


title: Rockstar Games

text: Since 1999, several companies acquired by or established under Take-Two have become part of Rockstar Games, such as Rockstar Canada (later renamed Rockstar Toronto) becoming the first one in 1999, and Rockstar Dundee the most recent in 2020. All companies organized under Rockstar Games bear the "Rockstar" name and logo. In this context, Rockstar Games is sometimes also referred to as Rockstar New York, Rockstar NY or Rockstar NYC. Rockstar Games also sports a motion capture studio in Bethpage, New York.


title: Rockstar Games

text: Rockstar Games predominantly publishes games in the action-adventure genre, while racing games also saw success for the company. One of such action-adventure game franchises is "Grand Theft Auto", which Rockstar Games took over from BMG Interactive, which published the series' original 1997 entry. The most recent main game in the series, "Grand Theft Auto V", has sold over 170 million copies since its release in September 2013, making it the second-best-selling video game of all time. Other popular franchises published by Rockstar Games are "Red Dead", "Midnight Club", "Max Payne" and "Manhunt".


title: Rockstar Games

text: On March 12, 1998, Take-Two Interactive announced its acquisition of the assets of dormant British video game publisher BMG Interactive from BMG Entertainment (a unit of Bertelsmann). In exchange, Take-Two was to issue 1.85 million shares (around 16%) of its common stock to BMG Entertainment. Through this acquisition, Take-Two obtained several of BMG Interactive's former intellectual properties, including DMA Design's "Grand Theft Auto" and "Space Station Silicon Valley". The deal was announced to have closed on March 25. Three BMG Interactive executives—Dan Houser, Sam Houser, and Jamie King—as well as Gary Foreman of BMG Interactive and Terry Donovan of BMG Entertainment's Arista Records record label, subsequently moved to New York City to work for Take-Two Interactive. In a restructuring announced that April, Sam Houser was appointed as Take-Two's "vice president of worldwide product development". In December 1998, the Houser brothers, Donovan and King established Rockstar Games as the "high-end" publishing label of Take-Two. The formation was formally announced on January 22, 1999.


title: Rockstar Games

text: In January 2007, Take-Two announced that Donovan, until then managing director for Rockstar Games, had left the company following a four-month leave of absence. He was succeeded by Gary Dale, who became chief operating officer. Dale previously worked with the Houser brothers and King at BMG Interactive, but left the company when it was acquired by Take-Two Interactive, and joined Capcom's European operations as managing director in 2003.


title: Rockstar Games

text: As of February 2014, Rockstar Games titles have shipped more than 250 million copies, the largest franchise being the "Grand Theft Auto" series, which alone has shipments of at least 250 million as of November 2016. "Grand Theft Auto V" shipped the highest number of units within the series' and the company's history, with over 170 million copies, making it the second best-selling video game of all time.


title: Rockstar Games

text: At the 10th British Academy Games Awards in March 2014, Rockstar Games was honored with the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award for "creating intricately layered interactive worlds that have kept the company at the forefront of the gaming industry for over a decade, both critically and commercially". Jennifer Kolbe, who started at the front desk of Take-Two, acts as Rockstar Games' head of publishing and oversees all development studios. Simon Ramsey is the company's head of PR and communications.


title: Rockstar Games

text: In May 2019, Rockstar Games announced that they were acquiring Dhruva Interactive from Starbreeze Studios for , with the sale being finalized later that month and the Dhruva team merged into Rockstar India.


title: Rockstar Games

text: In September 2019, Rockstar Games announced that they had released their own game launcher, a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications service. After having taken an extended break following the release of "Red Dead Redemption 2" in early 2019, Dan Houser left Rockstar Games on March 11, 2020.


title: Rockstar Games

text: The company acquired the Scottish studio Ruffian Games in October 2020, rebranding the studio as Rockstar Dundee.


title: Rockstar Games

text: In September 2022, Rockstar was the target of a data breach in which 90 videos from the development of the upcoming "Grand Theft Auto" game were leaked. Rockstar described the leak as a "network intrusion", and noted that it was "extremely disappointed" by the manner in which the game was first demonstrated, but that it did not anticipate long-term effects on development.


title: Rockstar Games

text: In October 2011, Dan Houser told "Famitsu" that Rockstar Games was intentionally avoiding developing games in the first-person shooter genre, because "it is in our DNA to avoid doing what other companies are doing ... the goalpoint of Rockstar is to have the players really feel what we're trying to do." Houser went on to say "Our games up to now have been different from any genre that existed at the time; we made new genres by ourselves with games like the "GTA" series. We didn't rely on testimonials in a business textbook to do what we've done. ... If we make the sort of games we want to play, then we believe people are going to buy them."


title: Rockstar Games

text: The company has been involved with charitable work ranging from supporting Movember and offering appearances in games as a raffle prize, to charity live streams.


title: Rockstar Games

text: In 1999, Donovan and Sam Houser cooperated with John Davis to establish the Rockstar Loft club night. Davis had co-founded and been the promoter for Body & Soul, a "no-guestlist, no velvet rope party" held weekly at Tribeca's Club Vinyl. When Rockstar Games' founder originally arrived in New York City, former DJ Donovan was particularly impressed with Body & Soul, and they became close with the club night's team, including Davis and its other founder, DJ François K. Davis had sought to establish further such events, while Donovan and Houser wanted to get publicity for the young Rockstar Games, thus they established Rockstar Loft. According to Donovan, the event was to serve as an alternative those that were overly expensive or had attendees "bulldozed by security". He precluded video game installations at the venue to focus on the music and highlight the artists.


title: Rockstar Games

text: As it could not afford frequent television advertisements, Rockstar Games resorted to guerrilla marketing teams distributing fly posters and stickers. Tickets for Rockstar Loft were not sold in advance. Instead, potential guests were to call a phone number and face seven questions regarding their personality. If answered to the liking of the operator, the caller would receive their entry ticket in the mail. The first Rockstar Loft was held in western Chelsea, Manhattan, on October 30, 1999, with Andi Hanley (a regular of Body & Soul), Bob Sinclar, and Dimitri from Paris as headlining DJs. Thereafter, it was held "every few months", with one happening on February 19, 2000. Later that year, Rockstar Loft was wound down.


title: Rockstar Games

text: Kirk Ewing—a friend of the Houser brothers who had worked with Rockstar Games on "State of Emergency"—stated that, around the release of "Grand Theft Auto III" in 2001, Rockstar Games had been offered for a film based on the "Grand Theft Auto" franchise. He had received a phone call from a producer in Los Angeles requesting the rights for a film to be directed by Tony Scott of "Top Gun" and starring rapper Eminem. When he relaid this proposal to Sam Houser, Houser said that he was not interested. In 2004, Rockstar Games produced the sports drama film "The Football Factory". Based on the book of the same name by John King, the film revolves around organized football hooliganism in the United Kingdom. The company also produced "Sunday Driver", a documentary about the Majestics Lowrider Club in Compton, California, and "The Introduction", an animated film that details the events leading up to "". Both were bundled with the game's special edition released in 2005.


title: Rockstar Games

text: In May 2021, Rockstar Games launched the record label CircoLoco Records in collaboration with Circoloco, an Ibiza-based dance party. The collaboration grew from a friendship between Sam Houser and Circoloco's promoter, Antonio Carbonaro. According to Nick Benedetti, the party's manager, Rockstar Games and Circoloco intended to "contribute something new and meaningful" to the dance music scene, which had faced hardships because of the lockdowns brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. CircoLoco Records' first release, "Monday Dreamin"', was released as a series of extended plays starting in June 2021.


title: Rockstar Games

text: Outside of its New York City headquarters, Rockstar Games operates nine subsidiary studios. All studios use the Rockstar Games logo with individual colors. As of 2018, the company employs more than 2,000 people across all offices. The studios frequently collaborate and are sometimes collectively credited as Rockstar Studios, as is the case in "Max Payne 3" and "Red Dead Redemption 2".


title: Rockstar Games

text: Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) is a game engine developed by the Rockstar San Diego-internal RAGE Technology Group, created to facilitate game development on all platforms since 2006.


title: Rockstar Games

text: Rockstar Games Social Club is an online gaming service created by Rockstar Games for authentication and multiplayer applications within their games.


title: Rockstar Games

text: Rockstar Games released its own games launcher for Windows on September 17, 2019. The launcher integrates with the user's Social Club account, allowing them to download and buy games that they have previously purchased through Rockstar's store, as well as launch Rockstar games available from other services, like Steam, from the launcher.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist who pioneered rock and roll. Nicknamed the "Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive with songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958). Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship, Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Born into a middle-class black family in St. Louis, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student, he was convicted of armed robbery and was sent to a reformatory, where he was held from 1944 to 1947. After his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of the blues musician T-Bone Walker, Berry began performing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955 and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. With Chess, he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching number one on "Billboard" magazine's rhythm and blues chart.


title: Chuck Berry

text: By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star, with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis nightclub, Berry's Club Bandstand. He was sentenced to three years in prison in January 1962 for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines for the purpose of having sexual intercourse. After his release in 1963, Berry had several more successful songs, including "No Particular Place to Go", "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine". However, these did not achieve the same success or lasting impact of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgia performer, playing his past material with local backup bands of variable quality. In 1972 he reached a new level of achievement when a rendition of "My Ding-a-Ling" became his only record to top the charts. His insistence on being paid in cash led in 1979 to a four-month jail sentence and community service, for tax evasion.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986; he was cited for having "laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance." Berry is included in several of "Rolling Stone" magazine's "greatest of all time" lists; he was ranked fifth on its 2004 and 2011 lists of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll includes three of Berry's: "Johnny B. Goode", "Maybellene", and "Rock and Roll Music". "Johnny B. Goode" is the only rock-and-roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Born in St. Louis, Berry was the youngest child. He grew up in the north St. Louis neighborhood known as the Ville, an area where many middle-class people lived. His father, Henry William Berry (1895–1987) was a contractor and deacon of a nearby Baptist church; his mother, Martha Bell (Banks) (1894–1980) was a certified public school principal. Berry's upbringing allowed him to pursue his interest in music from an early age. He gave his first public performance in 1941 while still a student at Sumner High School; he was still a student there in 1944, when he was arrested for armed robbery after robbing three shops in Kansas City, Missouri, and then stealing a car at gunpoint with some friends. Berry's account in his autobiography is that his car broke down and he flagged down a passing car and stole it at gunpoint with a nonfunctional pistol. He was convicted and sent to the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa, near Jefferson City, Missouri, where he formed a singing quartet and did some boxing. The singing group became competent enough that the authorities allowed it to perform outside the detention facility. Berry was released from the reformatory on his 21st birthday in 1947.


title: Chuck Berry

text: On October 28, 1948, Berry married Themetta "Toddy" Suggs, who gave birth to Darlin Ingrid Berry on October 3, 1950. Berry supported his family by taking various jobs in St. Louis, working briefly as a factory worker at two automobile assembly plants and as a janitor in the apartment building where he and his wife lived. Afterwards he trained as a beautician at the Poro College of Cosmetology, founded by Annie Turnbo Malone. He was doing well enough by 1950 to buy a "small three room brick cottage with a bath" on Whittier Street, which is now listed as the Chuck Berry House on the National Register of Historic Places.


title: Chuck Berry

text: By the early 1950s, Berry was working with local bands in clubs in St. Louis as an extra source of income. He had been playing blues since his teens, and he borrowed both guitar riffs and showmanship techniques from the blues musician T-Bone Walker. He also took guitar lessons from his friend Ira Harris, which laid the foundation for his guitar style.


title: Chuck Berry

text: By early 1953 Berry was performing with Johnnie Johnson's trio, starting a long-time collaboration with the pianist. The band played blues and ballads as well as country. Berry wrote, "Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering 'who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?' After they laughed at me a few times they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it."


title: Chuck Berry

text: In 1954, Berry recorded the tracks "I Hope These Words Will Find You Well" and "Oh, Maria!" with the group Joe Alexander & the Cubans. The songs were released as a single on the Ballad label.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Berry's showmanship, along with a mix of country tunes and R&B tunes, sung in the style of Nat King Cole set to the music of Muddy Waters brought in a wider audience, particularly affluent white people.


title: Chuck Berry

text: In May 1955, Berry traveled to Chicago, where he met Muddy Waters who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. Berry thought his blues music would interest Chess, but Chess was a larger fan of Berry's take on "Ida Red". On May 21, 1955, Berry recorded an adaptation of the song "Ida Red", under the title "Maybellene", with Johnnie Johnson on the piano, Jerome Green (from Bo Diddley's band) on the maracas, Ebby Hardy on the drums and Willie Dixon on the bass. "Maybellene" sold over a million copies, reaching number one on "Billboard" magazine's rhythm and blues chart and number five on its Best Sellers in Stores chart for September 10, 1955. Berry said, "It came out at the right time when Afro-American music was spilling over into the mainstream pop."


title: Chuck Berry

text: When Berry first saw a copy of the "Maybellene" record, he was surprised that two other individuals, including DJ Alan Freed had been given writing credit; that would entitle them to some of the royalties. After a court battle, Berry was able to regain full writing credit.


title: Chuck Berry

text: At the end of June 1956, his song "Roll Over Beethoven" reached number 29 on the "Billboard"s Top 100 chart, and Berry toured as one of the "Top Acts of '56". He and Carl Perkins became friends. Perkins said that "I knew when I first heard Chuck that he'd been affected by country music. I respected his writing; his records were very, very great." In late 1957, Berry took part in Alan Freed's "Biggest Show of Stars for 1957", touring the United States with the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and others. He was a guest on ABC's "Guy Mitchell Show", singing his hit song "Rock 'n' Roll Music". The hits continued from 1957 to 1959, with Berry scoring over a dozen chart singles during this period, including the US Top 10 hits "School Days", "Rock and Roll Music", "Sweet Little Sixteen", and "Johnny B. Goode". He appeared in two early rock-and-roll movies: "Rock Rock Rock" (1956), in which he sang "You Can't Catch Me", and "Go, Johnny, Go!" (1959), in which he had a speaking role as himself and performed "Johnny B. Goode", "Memphis, Tennessee", and "Little Queenie". His performance of "Sweet Little Sixteen" at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 was captured in the motion picture "Jazz on a Summer's Day".


title: Chuck Berry

text: The opening guitar riff of "Johnny B. Goode" is surprisingly similar to the one used by Louis Jordan in his "Ain't That Just Like a Woman" (1946). Berry acknowledged the debt to Jordan and several sources have indicated that his work was influenced by Jordan in general.


title: Chuck Berry

text: By the end of the 1950s, Berry was a high-profile established star with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had opened a racially integrated St. Louis nightclub, Berry's Club Bandstand, and invested in real estate. But in December 1959, he was arrested under the Mann Act after allegations that he had had sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old Apache waitress, Janice Escalante, whom he had transported across state lines to work as a hatcheck girl at his club. After a two-week trial in March 1960, he was convicted, fined $5,000, and sentenced to five years in prison. He appealed the decision, arguing that the judge's comments and attitude were racist and prejudiced the jury against him. The appeal was upheld, and a second trial was heard in May and June 1961, resulting in another conviction and a three-year prison sentence. After another appeal failed, Berry served one and one-half years in prison, from February 1962 to October 1963. He had continued recording and performing during the trials, but his output had slowed as his popularity declined; his final single released before he was imprisoned was "Come On".


title: Chuck Berry

text: When Berry was released from prison in 1963, his return to recording and performing was made easier because British invasion bands—notably the Beatles and the Rolling Stones—had sustained interest in his music by releasing cover versions of his songs, and other bands had reworked some of them, such as the Beach Boys' 1963 hit "Surfin' U.S.A.", which used the melody of Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen". In 1964 and 1965 Berry released eight singles, including three that were commercially successful, reaching the top 20 of the "Billboard" 100: "No Particular Place to Go" (a humorous reworking of "School Days", concerning the introduction of seat belts in cars), "You Never Can Tell", and the rocking "Nadine". Between 1966 and 1969 Berry released five albums for Mercury Records, including his second live album (and first recorded entirely onstage), "Live at Fillmore Auditorium"; for the live album he was backed by the Steve Miller Band.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Although this period was not a successful one for studio work, Berry was still a top concert draw. In May 1964, he had made a successful tour of the UK, but when he returned in January 1965 his behavior was erratic and moody, and his touring style of using unrehearsed local backing bands and a strict nonnegotiable contract was earning him a reputation as a difficult and unexciting performer. He also played at large events in North America, such as the Schaefer Music Festival, in New York City's Central Park in July 1969, and the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival in October.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Berry returned to Chess from 1970 to 1973. There were no hit singles from the 1970 album "Back Home", but in 1972 Chess released a live recording of "My Ding-a-Ling", a novelty song which he had recorded in a different version as "My Tambourine" on his 1968 LP "From St. Louie to Frisco". The track became his only number-one single. A live recording of "Reelin' and Rockin'", issued as a follow-up single in the same year, was his last Top 40 hit in both the US and the UK. Both singles were included on the part-live, part-studio album "The London Chuck Berry Sessions" (other albums of London sessions were recorded by Chess's mainstay artists Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf). Berry's second tenure with Chess ended with the 1975 album "Chuck Berry", after which he did not make a studio record until "Rockit" for Atco Records in 1979, which would be his last studio album for 38 years.


title: Chuck Berry

text: In the 1970s Berry toured on the strength of his earlier successes. He was on the road for many years, carrying only his Gibson guitar, confident that he could hire a band that already knew his music no matter where he went. AllMusic said that in this period his "live performances became increasingly erratic, ... working with terrible backup bands and turning in sloppy, out-of-tune performances" which "tarnished his reputation with younger fans and oldtimers" alike. In March 1972 he was filmed, at the BBC Television Theatre in Shepherds Bush, for "Chuck Berry in Concert", part of a 60-date tour backed by the band Rocking Horse. Among the many bandleaders performing a backup role with Berry in the 1970s were Bruce Springsteen and Steve Miller when each was just starting his career. (Springsteen related in the documentary film "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll" that Berry did not give the band a set list, and expected the musicians to follow his lead after each guitar intro. Berry did not speak to the band after the show. Nevertheless, Springsteen backed Berry again when he appeared at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.) At the request of Jimmy Carter, Berry performed at the White House on June 1, 1979.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Berry's touring style, traveling the "oldies" circuit in the 1970s (often being paid in cash by local promoters), added ammunition to the Internal Revenue Service's accusations that Berry had evaded paying income taxes. Facing criminal sanction for the third time, Berry pleaded guilty to evading nearly $110,000 in federal income tax owed on his 1973 earnings. Newspaper reports in 1979 put his 1973 joint income (with his wife) at $374,982. He was sentenced to four months in prison and 1,000 hours of community service—performing benefit concerts—in 1979.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Berry continued to play 70 to 100 one-nighters per year in the 1980s, still traveling solo and requiring a local band to back him at each stop. In 1986, Taylor Hackford made a documentary film, "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll", of a celebration concert for Berry's sixtieth birthday, organized by Keith Richards. Eric Clapton, Etta James, Julian Lennon, Robert Cray, and Linda Ronstadt, among others, appeared with Berry on stage and in the film. During the concert, Berry played a Gibson ES-355, the luxury version of the ES-335 that he favored on his 1970s tours. Richards played a black Fender Telecaster Custom, Cray a Fender Stratocaster and Clapton a Gibson ES 350T, the same model that Berry used on his early recordings.


title: Chuck Berry

text: In the late 1980s, Berry bought the Southern Air, a restaurant in Wentzville, Missouri. In 1982, Berry performed a television special at The Roxy in West Hollywood with Tina Turner as his special guest. The concert was released a year later on home video.


title: Chuck Berry

text: In November 2000, Berry faced legal issues when he was sued by his former pianist Johnnie Johnson who claimed that he had co-written over 50 songs, including "No Particular Place to Go", "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Roll Over Beethoven", that credit Berry alone. The case was dismissed when the judge ruled that too much time had passed since the songs were written.


title: Chuck Berry

text: In 2008, Berry toured Europe, with stops in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Poland, and Spain. In mid-2008, he played at the Virgin Festival in Baltimore. During a concert on New Year's Day 2011 in Chicago, Berry, suffering from exhaustion, passed out and had to be helped off stage.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Berry lived in Ladue, Missouri, approximately west of St. Louis. He also had a home at "Berry Park", near Wentzville, Missouri where he lived part-time since the 1950s and was the home in which he died. This home, with the guitar-shaped swimming pool, is seen in scenes near the end of the film "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll".


title: Chuck Berry

text: He regularly performed one Wednesday each month at Blueberry Hill, a restaurant and bar located in the Delmar Loop neighborhood of St. Louis, from 1996 to 2014.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Berry announced on his 90th birthday that his first new studio album since "Rockit" in 1979, entitled "Chuck", would be released in 2017. His first new record in 38 years, it includes his children, Charles Berry Jr. and Ingrid, on guitar and harmonica, with songs "covering the spectrum from hard-driving rockers to soulful thought-provoking time capsules of a life's work" and dedicated to his wife Toddy.


title: Chuck Berry

text: In 1987, Berry was charged with assaulting a woman at New York's Gramercy Park Hotel. He was accused of causing "lacerations of the mouth, requiring five stitches, two loose teeth, [and] contusions of the face." He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of harassment and paid a $250 fine.


title: Chuck Berry

text: In 1990, he was sued by several women who claimed that he had installed a video camera in the bathroom of his restaurant. Berry claimed that he had had the camera installed to catch a worker who was suspected of stealing from the restaurant. Although his guilt was never proven in court, Berry opted for a class action settlement. One of his biographers, Bruce Pegg, estimated that it cost Berry over $1.2 million plus legal fees. His lawyers said he had been the victim of a conspiracy to profit from his wealth. During this time, Berry began using Wayne T. Schoeneberg as his legal counsel.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Reportedly, a police raid on his house found intimate videotapes of women, one of whom was apparently a minor. Also found in the raid were 62 grams of marijuana. Felony drug and child abuse charges were filed. The child abuse charges were eventually dropped, and Berry agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana. He was given a six month suspended jail sentence, placed on two years unsupervised probation, and was ordered to donate $5,000 to a local hospital.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Later, videos Berry recorded of himself urinating on a woman and another of her defecating on him would surface.


title: Chuck Berry

text: On March 18, 2017, Berry was found unresponsive at his home near Wentzville, Missouri. Emergency workers called to the scene were unable to revive him, and he was pronounced dead by his personal physician. TMZ posted an audio recording on its website in which a 911 operator can be heard responding to a reported cardiac arrest at Berry's home.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Berry's funeral was held on April 9, 2017, at The Pageant, in Berry's hometown of St. Louis. He was remembered with a public viewing by family, friends, and fans in The Pageant, a music club where he often performed. He was viewed with his cherry-red Gibson ES-335 guitar bolted to the inside lid of the coffin and with flower arrangements that included one sent by the Rolling Stones in the shape of a guitar. Afterwards a private service was held in the club celebrating Berry's life and musical career, with the Berry family inviting 300 members of the public into the service. Gene Simmons of Kiss gave an impromptu, unadvertised eulogy at the service, while Little Richard was scheduled to lead the funeral procession but was unable to attend due to an illness. The night before, many St. Louis area bars held a mass toast at 10 pm in Berry's honor.


title: Chuck Berry

text: One of Berry's attorneys estimated that his estate was worth $50 million, including $17 million in music rights. Berry's music publishing accounted for $13 million of the estate's value. The Berry estate owned roughly half of his songwriting credits (mostly from his later career), while BMG Rights Management controlled the other half; most of Berry's recordings are currently owned by Universal Music Group. In September 2017, Dualtone, the label which released Berry's final album, "Chuck", agreed to publish all his compositions in the United States.


title: Chuck Berry

text: A pioneer of rock and roll, Berry was a significant influence on the development of both the music and the attitude associated with the rock music lifestyle. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics successfully aimed to appeal to the early teenage market by using graphic and humorous descriptions of teen dances, fast cars, high school life, and consumer culture, and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music. Thus Berry, the songwriter, according to critic Jon Pareles, invented rock as "a music of teenage wishes fulfilled and good times (even with cops in pursuit)." Berry contributed three things to rock music: an irresistible swagger, a focus on the guitar riff as the primary melodic element and an emphasis on songwriting as storytelling. His records are a rich storehouse of the essential lyrical, showmanship and musical components of rock and roll. In addition to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, a large number of significant popular-music performers have recorded Berry's songs. Although not technically accomplished, his guitar style is distinctive—he incorporated electronic effects to mimic the sound of bottleneck blues guitarists and drew on the influence of guitar players such as Carl Hogan, and T-Bone Walker to produce a clear and exciting sound that many later guitarists would acknowledge as an influence in their own style. Berry's showmanship has been influential on other rock guitarists, particularly his one-legged hop routine, and the "duck walk", which he first used as a child when he walked "stooping with full-bended knees, but with my back and head vertical" under a table to retrieve a ball and his family found it entertaining; he used it when "performing in New York for the first time and some journalist branded it the duck walk."


title: Chuck Berry

text: He has been cited as a major reference to a variety of some of the most influential acts of all time:


title: Chuck Berry

text: On July 29, 2011, Berry was honored in a dedication of an eight-foot, in-motion Chuck Berry Statue in the Delmar Loop in St. Louis right across the street from Blueberry Hill. Berry said, "It's glorious--I do appreciate it to the highest, no doubt about it. That sort of honor is seldom given out. But I don't deserve it."


title: Chuck Berry

text: Rock critic Robert Christgau considers Berry "the greatest of the rock and rollers", and John Lennon said, "if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'." Ted Nugent said, "If you don't know every Chuck Berry lick, you can't play rock guitar." Bob Dylan called Berry "the Shakespeare of rock 'n' roll". Bruce Springsteen tweeted, "Chuck Berry was rock's greatest practitioner, guitarist, and the greatest pure rock 'n' roll writer who ever lived."


title: Chuck Berry

text: When asked what caused the explosion of the popularity of rock 'n roll that took place in the 1950s, with him and a handful of others, mainly him, Berry said, "Well, actually they begin to listen to it, you see, because certain stations played certain music. The music that we, the blacks, played, the cultures were so far apart, we would have to have a play station in order to play it. The cultures begin to come together, and you begin to see one another's vein of life, then the music came together."


title: Chuck Berry

text: Among the honors Berry received were the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2000. He was ranked seventh on "Time" magazine's 2009 list of the 10 best electric guitar players of all time. On May 14, 2002, Berry was honored as one of the first BMI Icons at the 50th annual BMI Pop Awards. He was presented the award along with BMI affiliates Bo Diddley and Little Richard. In August 2014, Berry was made a laureate of the Polar Music Prize.


title: Chuck Berry

text: Berry is included in several of "Rolling Stone" magazine's "Greatest of All Time" lists. In September 2003, the magazine ranked him number 6 in its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". In November his compilation album "The Great Twenty-Eight" was ranked 21st in "Rolling Stone"s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In March 2004, Berry was ranked fifth on the list of "The Immortals – The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time". In December 2004, six of his songs were included in "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time": "Johnny B. Goode" (#7), "Maybellene" (#18), "Roll Over Beethoven" (#97), "Rock and Roll Music" (#128), "Sweet Little Sixteen" (#272) and "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" (#374). In June 2008, his song "Johnny B. Goode" was ranked first in the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time".