We talk to Hannah Olson about her new documentary, Baby God , which looks at Dr. Quincy Fortier, a fertility specialist who used his own sperm to impregnate patients without their consent or knowledge. The movie is focused on the effects that discovering this information has had on his many biological children. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
We talk to Scott Barber, co-director of The Orange Years , a great documentary about the rise and enduring influence of Nickelodeon. What started as a local TV project in Columbus, Ohio became an international cultural phenomenon that forever changed the aesthetics and business of kids entertainment. The movie focuses on the story of Geraldine Laybourne, a former teacher who became the key executive and creative visionary behind the network. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more inform...
We talked to the great Errol Morris about his latest documentary, My Psychedelic Love Story . The movie is built around two days' worth of interviews with Joanna Harcourt-Smith, a Swiss woman who dated Timothy Leary in the early '70s and whose life's adventures seemed to include every single interesting person and crazy thing that happened during that era. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Writer/director Tara Miele's new movie, Wander Darkly , stars Sienna Miller and Diego Luna as a couple with a new baby and a rocky relationship. A traumatic car accident sets off a story that ruminates on reality, memory, and how love changes over time. We talked to Miele about the events in her her own life that inspired the screenplay and how she's staying creative in challenging times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
The Glorias , the new Gloria Steinem biopic from Julie Taymor, features Alicia Vikander as the feminist hero in early life, and Julianne Moore in later life. We talked with Taymor about leaving home early, seeing (and learning) from people all over the world, and figuring out how to tell a story that spans decades, but remains urgent. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Director Jesse Dylan (whose films include How High and the Will Ferrell kids soccer comedy Kicking and Screaming ) sets out in his new film Soros to strip away the conspiracy theories and suspicion surrounding billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Dylan, host of the Jesse's Office podcast, also talks about the hardest parts of interviewing Soros, who doesn't like to sit down for questions, and how he conducts interviews in general. And he and host Eric Steuer discuss the nature of truth at a ...
In Archenemy , the new film from Adam Egypt Mortimer ( Daniel Isn't Real), Joe Manganiello plays Max Fist, a homeless alcoholic who may also be a former superhero. When an aspiring reporter names Hamster (Skylan Brooks) seeks out his story, he suddenly becomes invested in our world. We talk about Egypt, addiction, and how Manganiello narrowly losing out on his chance to play Deathstroke in the Ben Affleck Batman movie helped fire him up for Archenemy . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for ...
Legion M bills itself as the first fan-owned entertainment company, and has invested in beloved films like Colossal and Mandy , as well as the upcoming Archenemy . But how does Legion M work, exactly? We talk with Legion M co-founders Paul Scanlan and Jeff Annison about how you can get involved for zero dollars — or go all in – and the company's strategy to make money and return it to investors. Who knows? Maybe Joe Manganiello will drive your car in a movie. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/priva...
Dear Santa , the new film from Dana Nachman, reveals the secret team of helpers who make children's wishes come true. When a child sends a letter to 123 Elf Road North Pole, 88888 — or pretty much any address that comes close — the US Postal Service swings into action, gathering the letters and sharing them with an army of helpers who make children's wishes come true. You can become a helper here. In this episode, Nachman explains how she went from making films about dangerous chemicals and wron...
Collective director Alexander Nanau joins us to discuss his incredible new documentary about corruption in the wake of a deadly nightclub fire in Bucharest, Romania. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Actors Michael Shannon and Jacob Alexander join us to talk about Echo Boomers, a new heist movie about a gang of millennials who lash out at the system by breaking into super rich people's houses and stealing expensive art. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Cucalorus Film Festival , out of Wilmington, North Carolina (home of David Lynch's Blue Velvet !) is a film festival that loves inclusion — but not competition. In this episode, chief instigating officer Dan Brawley and host and curator Aaron Hillis talk about the origins of the festival, how to get into it, and how to watch some fantastically weird movies from Hillis' secret vault, for free. You can watch Wednesday, Nov. 18's Secret Convulsions screening here . And Sunday, Nov. 22's Secret ...
The Half of It director Alice Wu says her Netflix hit — imagine an '80s teen comedy with a gay Chinese-American girl as the hero — came from her college relationship with a straight guy. "In best friendships, there is kind of a romance in it," she says. Her effort to understand the complicated feelings around that dynamic were the first seeds of the film. Wu, who enrolled in MIT at age 16, talks about growing up in the Bay Area before it was a tech Mecca, red states and blue states, and the year...
Let Him Go , the new film from Thomas Bezucha, stars Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as George and Margaret, a couple who travel from Montana to North Dakota to retrieve their grandson from a notorious family called the Weboys. Bezucha talks about how he came across the source material of the film, how this film feels a little bit to him like a sequel to Costner's The Bodyguard , and why he never considered working with CGI fire. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Amy Seimetz’s second feature film, She Dies Tomorrow , is about a young woman named Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) who holds the inescapable certainty that she will die in one day. When she confides in her friend Jane (Jane Adams), the prophecy begins to spread, igniting a chain reaction of existential dread. Seimetz knew she wanted to bring her characteristic "dark sense of humor" to the film, and bend genre conventions. That meant shooting it in chunks, and funding it herself. "I didn't want to have to ...
His House , the bold new Netflix horror film from writer-director Remi Weekes, is a very scary haunted house story that is also a moving and empathetic story about immigration. It stars Wunmi Mosaku and Ṣhop-pe Dìrísù as a couple who flee war in South Sudan, and make a harrowing escape to the UK. But there, they encounter new horrors. Weekes also talks about debuting at Sundance and the short films that helped him hone his craft as a filmmaker. He co-founded Tell No One, a production company tha...
Ashland, Oregon is a small-town film mecca that draws Hollywood expats with its mix of a thriving film scene, proximity to big cities, and sprawling wide open spaces. This year, Southern Oregon's Ashland Independent Film Festival has persevered and innovated through not only a pandemic, but fires that have destroyed homes and blackened acreage surrounding a beautiful town in the foothills of two mountain ranges. AIFF artistic director Richard Herskowitz told us about what's its like to live in A...
12 Hour Shift writer-director Brea Grant ( Friday Night Lights, Heroes, Dexter ) set her horror comedy in the late '90s because she wanted to portray a time when people spoke their minds a little more — and were more susceptible to urban legends. The film follows a gruff Arkansas nurse (Angela Bettis) with a tidy side hustle as an organ harvester. But one night, things start to go wrong, cops start sniffing around, and loyalties are tested. Y2K lurks in the near future. She talks with us about h...
Radium Girls , co-directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler and starring Joey King, is based on the true story of a group of young female factory workers in the 1920s who worked with radium — which was seen at the time as an almost miraculous element. But the women soon began developing mysterious, terrible illnesses. After a medical mystery — that included a misdiagnosis of syphilis for some of the victims — the women banded together to fight for their health, safety and rights. Hosted on...
Jim Cummings is the writer director and star of The Wolf of Snow Hollow, in which a small mountain town is hit by a series of killings that seem like the work of a wolf. Or is it a werewolf? The film stars Cummings as a deputy in meltdown, and Robert Forster plays the head of the department in one of his final roles. Cummings talks about how he broke into DIY indie filmmaking, how he mines real-life public freakouts for laughs, and the movies that Forster recommend to an unsuspecting co-star bef...
Brandon Cronenberg looked to real life horror — from data mining to election meddling — to inspire the sci-fi/horror hybrid Possessor . Andrea Riseborough stars as Tasya Vos, a woman who carries out assassinations by taking control of other people's bodies using brain-implant technology. Cronenberg talks to Eric Steuer about how his team used practical effects because skin and blood are particularly difficult to achieve realistically through CGI. He also talks about the real-life scientist who c...
Yellow Rose , from director Diane Paragas, is about a Filipina girl who fell in love with country music while growing up in Texas. But her dreams of music stardom come under threat when her mother, who is undocumented, is taken in the night by an ICE raid. Like her protagonist, Paragas grew up Filipina-American in Texas. To tell the story of Rose Garcia (played by Eva Noblezada), she relied on her firsthand experience and research that included visits to ICE detention facilities. She shot the fi...
Radha Blank is the writer, director and star of The 40-Year-OId version, about a struggling playwright who is determined to make it by age 40 — and does. But as a rapper. Under the name RadhaMUSprime, she raps bluntly about aging, sexuality, and her back pain. The film is a throwback to the '90s rap videos of Digable Planets, LL Cool J, Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest, among others, as well as the classic New York black-and-white indie films Blank grew up with. The film, executive produced...
Gregory Kallenberg says COVID-19 has forever changed indie filmmaking — in some ways for the better. The founder and executive director of the Louisiana Film Prize, which is in the process of awarding $25,000 to the best short film shot this year in Louisiana, says filmmakers have gotten more personal than ever before. He also talks about his Austin roots, how a documentary led him to Louisiana, and how the idea for the Louisiana Film Prize is expanding. You can watch this year's entries — and v...
Director Jenny Popplewell made a strong decision for her Netflix documentary American Murder: The Family Next Door : She didn't care about the killer. She didn't want to understand how Chris Watts' mind worked, or explain his rationale for the atrocious crime he committed: murdering his wife, Shanann Watts, and their two young daughters, Bella and CeCe. Eschewing interviews and re-enactments, Popplewell's documentary only uses pre-existing footage, such as police body cams, security cameras, and...
Action Park was a northern New Jersey water park, open from the 1970s through 1990s, where many kids had their first kiss, their first beer, their first taste of adventure. But as Class Action Park directors Chris Scott and Seth Porges tell interviewer Eric Steuer, it was also a place where dangerous, poorly designed rides and waterslides resulted in many kids being injured, and even caused a few deaths. When people over 40 say kids today could never do the things they did "when we were growing ...
Film critic Glenn Kenny went to see a struggling Martin Scorsese at his New York office around Christmas 1989, and found him working on a new, tabloid TV-inspired gangster movie about a mobster named Henry Hill. The film, of course, became Goodfellas , one of the greatest movies of all time. To mark its 30th anniversary, Kenney just released the excellent Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas . Treat yourself to it right here . In this episode, Kenny quickly wins us over with a reference to the clas...
Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, writers and directors Antebellum, left luxury advertising years ago to focus on films that can make a difference. Antebellum , they explain, is intended to move not just audiences, but voters. The film, starring Janelle Monae, is one of many politically and historically aware projects they have in the works. We can't tell you much of anything about the film without some major spoilers, but as the trailer shows, it merges images of modern life with the horrors of...
Years ago, filmmaker Alan Bailey's friend Charlotte married an airline pilot. She died, tragically, and Alan thought it would be a good idea to make a documentary about "Christian," the widowed pilot, searching for love on Tinder. That movie turned into the new documentary DTF. Because Christian had no intention of finding love. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Boys State , the compulsively watchable new documentary from Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, follows four boys who run for governor in a mock-government program sponsored by the American Legion. Their competition comes to resemble a real political race thanks to sometimes disingenuous candidates, dubious internet memes, and even impeachment talk. Guest host Eric Steuer talks with McBaine and Moss about how the conservative Texas boys surprised them, and how a new generation of boys is coming to c...
