The Frame

After the 2016 Presidential election, the singer/songwriter took a cross-country train trip and then wrote a song cycle of character sketches and personal reflections; Taylor Swift's recording contract is about to expire, giving her a world of options; Boots Riley's "Sorry to Bother You" is one of the year's biggest critical hits.

Director Chris Weitz's film 'Operation Finale' tells the amazing story of the capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann; fans begin to pay their respects to the Aretha Franklin at the Museum of African American History in Detroit; and Cuban jazz pianist Dayramir Gonzalez is a rising star.

Breaking down the scene between Michelle Yeoh and her would be daughter-in-law, Constance Wu; documentary filmmaker Steve James spent a year inside a Chicago high school for the series, “America to Me”; remembering playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon, who died at the age of 91.

The former "Gilmore Girls" co-star has an Emmy nomination for her role in the dystopian world of "The Handmaid's Tale"; Harvey Weinstein's legal woes seem to be mounting; Aneesh Chaganty, director and co-writer of the film, "Searching," has created a hyper-modern day thriller.

On Today's Show:

The co-star and Emmy nominee says she isn't daunted by challenges being faced by the cast; ever seen James Corden and friends performing a musical on the streets outside CBS on Fairfax? That's the work of Emmy-nominated choreographer Chloe Arnold.

The Emmy-nominated director of "Atlanta" talks about his collaborations with Donald Glover, his love of the Coen brothers and how the show set out to accurately portray life in urban Georgia; in the documentary, "What Haunts Us," Paige Goldberg Tolmach examines multiple suicides at her prep school alma mater; director Jesse Peretz and actor Chris O'Dowd talk about their movie, "Juliet, Naked."

Sarah Paulson has a lead actress Emmy nomination for "American Horror Story: Cult" — the seventh season of the anthology series; Bing Liu's videos of his skateboarding pals turned into the intimate documentary, "Minding the Gap."

Wayne Kramer, guitarist and leader of the Detroit rock band MC5, discusses his new memoir, "The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities"; Amazon is in the running to buy Landmark Theatres.

The iconic singer has died at the age of 76. We hear from her longtime bass player, Chuck Rainey; why has a documentary about her landmark 1972 performance at a Baptist church in Los Angeles never been released?; Daphne Brooks, a professor of African American Studies and Theater Studies at Yale University on the transcendent power of Aretha's voice.

From his hideaway studio in Northeast L.A., Younge creates modern music that's inspired by classic R&B and film scores from the '70s.

In the 1960s, Dolores Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers union with Cesar Chavez. But for years, Huerta didn't get nearly the same recognition as Chavez for leading the farm worker movement. The documentary, “Dolores,” aims to set the record straight.

The FX series "Trust" explores the characters and circumstances surrounding the 1973 kidnapping of J. Paul Getty III. Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy who won Oscars for "Slumdog Millionaire" re-team for their first American TV series.

"On the Exhale" is a play that's told from the perspective of a mother whose child was a victim at Sandy Hook Elementary; "Roxanne, Roxanne" charts the unlikely rise of rapper Roxanne Shonte; incentivizing diversity in the state’s film & TV tax credit program could help change the industry’s biased hiring practices.

In his new HBO series, Hader plays an assassin who doesn’t find his career totally satisfying. When he accidentally walks into an acting class, a whole new world opens up for him.

Actress Lola Kirke talks about her new noir thriller, which is set in Los Angeles; in The Actors' Gang's "The New Colossus," the audience votes on which characters should be allowed to stay in the U.S.; The Weinstein Co. releases employees from the non-disclosure agreements that kept them silent.

"Wild Wild Country" tells the story of an Indian guru who in the 1980s tried to transform an Oregon town into a massive utopia of enlightenment. But friction and violence ensued; "Rise" revolves around a group of high school drama kids in a struggling, working-class Pennsylvania town.

In “Sell/Buy/Date," playwright and performer Sarah Jones explores empowerment, sex and culture by inhabiting a variety of characters; the film and TV industries are undergoing a reckoning with #MeToo, but the music business has certain barriers that have kept women silent.

Filmmaker Rebecca Miller takes on a tough documentary subject: her iconic playwright father; Merrill Garbus addresses cultural appropriation on Tune-Yards' new album; Aaron Sorkin’s Broadway adaptation of "To Kill a Mockingbird" hits a legal roadblock from the estate of author Harper Lee.

Playwright Lauren Yee play is inspired by Cambodian psychedelic rock of the '70s, before Pol Pot singled out the nation’s artists; CherryPicks will aggregate movie, music and video game reviews from female critics; Ludwig Göransson dissects a song from his score for "Black Panther."

Taylor Mac is the theater artist, drag performer, MacArthur fellow and creative mind behind a 24-hour-long retelling of American history through popular songs; was James Levine allowed to remain in power at the Metropolitan Opera because of "maestro worship"?

Boots Riley of the hip-hop group The Coup talks about his directing debut, "Sorry To Bother You" – a satire about race in America; “High Maintenance” co-creator Katja Blichfeld says she and fellow co-creator Ben Sinclair kept the show intact despite their breakup; the massive SxSW tech, film and music fest is underway in Austin.