A Brief Conversation with Armistead Maupin

The legendary author of the essential Tales of the City series joins us from London, where a pot roast awaits him, to talk about whether the magic of ‘70s San Francisco can ever exist again, why Breaking Bad and Six Feet Under are his current comforts, the PBS gay kiss that rocked the world, the Early Frost/Our Sons/Consenting Adults TV movie moment that examined gay life strictly in terms of how hard it is on your mom, and whether his character Brian’s 1976 prediction that he and his friends would be 50-year-old libertines in a world full of 20-year-old Calvinists has actually come to pass.