Peter Crimmins

Pastor Keenan Roberts designs “Hell Houses” which gruesomely display the consequences of sin. Last year, a secular group of artists staged a Hell House in New York City. It got Pastor Roberts' stamp of approval. Produced by Peter Crimmins.

Deep in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Amish country, there’s a small town with a theater with shows that rival the glittery productions you'd find on Broadway. Last year, more than 800,000 people came through town to see them. We sent producer Peter Crimmins to find out what’s ...

Peggy Diggs believes that the “inconvenient truth” is true: rising tides and severe storms will wreak havoc. If someday whole cities of people are forced to live like refugees (like Katrina’s victims), Peggy thinks they’ll need somewhere to put whatever belongings they salvage. She told

Every year around Halloween, thousands of Americans go to their churches to meet the devil. These "Hell Houses" - designed by Pastor Keenan Roberts - are kind of like haunted houses, but each room gruesomely displays the consequences of sin. Now a secular group of artists and actors have staged ...

In the late 1930s, Edgar Kaufmann told the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright he wanted him to design a country home by a waterfall in Pennsylvania. Wright informed Kaufmann he intended to build the house over the waterfall — and an icon of American architecture was born.

They feed off our blood, they live forever, and they don't pay taxes. Peter Crimmins explains why no stake to the heart can kill off the public's thirst for the fashionably undead.

Turning Jerry Springer, the infamous American TV talk show, into an opera for the London stage was an artistic gamble in its own right. But it got more complicated recently when the opera aired on the BBC. A Christian group tried to take legal action against the BBC, ...

One of the most notorious art forgeries of the 20th century happened in England in the 1990s when two men were arrested for spectacularly exploiting the vulnerabilities of the art market. Art dealer John Drewe handled the paperwork, and John Myatt handled the paintbrush — and they almost ...

Luis Valdez has written and directed such films as "La Bamba" and "Zoot Suit" for Hollywood. But in the late 1960's he didn't even have a theater, just a flatbed truck, a few costumes and fake moustaches, and the drive to bring theater to Mexican-American laborers. Valdez founded ...

When Mel Gibson was making The Passion of the Christ, he modeled the Crucifixion scene on paintings by Caravaggio. Caravaggio, the Baroque master, made the sufferings of Jesus and the saints vividly believable. But Caravaggio didn't live like a saint — or even like Mel Gibson. Peter Crimmins learned how ...

Barcelona is filled with historic landmarks, but one of the most popular tourist destinations is a 120 year old construction site — the church of the Sagrada Familia, designed mostly by Antonio Gaudí. The maverick architect got the commission when he was a young hotshot, but when Gaudí died at 74, ...

Luis Valdez has written and directed such films as La Bamba and Zoot Suit for Hollywood. But in the late 1960's he didn't even have a theater, just a flatbed truck, a few costume moustaches, and the drive to bring theater to Mexican-American laborers. Valdez founded Teatro Campesino — the ...

The filmmaker Kia Simon wanted to pay tribute her late stepfather Dan Skarry and his passion for skydiving. Her video is called The Dive and she figured out a way to complete it without ever boarding an airplane. Produced by Peter Crimmins.

Technology continues to develop sophisticated recording equipment that allows us to capture and save pictures and sound, perhaps to immortalize them. That sense of immortality is betrayed in a new multimedia performance called Decasia. Its creators use de-tuned instruments and deteriorating celluloid to orchestrate the aesthetics of ...

In 1966 — at the height of the Beach Boys' popularity — the band released a record called Pet Sounds. But their record label, Capitol, buried it because nobody knew what to do with its strange arrangements and harmonies. Then, in the 1990s Pet Sounds began building a new following ...

Technology continues to develop sophisticated recording equipment that allows us to capture and save pictures and sound, perhaps to immortalize them. That sense of immortality is betrayed in a new multimedia performance called Decasia. Its creators use de-tuned instruments and deteriorating celluloid to orchestrate the aesthetics of decay.