Adam McKay's new podcast, Death at the Wing , investigates why so many young basketball stars he loved in the '80s and '90s died suddenly and tragically. He was surprised, again and again, by how drugs, tragedy, and the Reagan Revolution defined a decade of basketball. We also talk about his upcoming series about the Showtime-era Lakers, the next season of Succession , and his upcoming comedy, Don't Look Up , with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as scientists trying desperately to be hea...
Apr 30, 2021•38 min•Ep. 100
Youngstown, Ohio was once a booming steel and mining town, but now epitomizes the kind of post-industrial US city dominated by unemployment and poverty. In her new documentary, The Place That Makes Us , director Karla Murthy shows us a new generation of people who have refused to give up on Youngstown and are staying put so they can build a brighter future there. They're rebuilding houses, bringing in business, and cultivating a community of local makers and creators and artists. We talk to Murt...
Apr 22, 2021•21 min•Ep. 99
Yasmin Fedda's harrowing documentary Ayouni tells the stories of two men who were "disappeared" in Syria. When a person is disappeared, they have been forcibly taken by military, police, or militia forces who do not admit to having them. Bassel Khartibal was an open internet activist who was arrested, kept in a secret prison, and ultimately killed. Father Paolo Dall’Oglio is an Italian Jesuit priest who led an interfaith group out of a Syrian monastery and became an activist against oppression—h...
Apr 16, 2021•25 min•Ep. 98
Moffie, the outstanding fourth film from South African Director Oliver Hermanus, portrays a teenager (Kai Luke Brummer) who is forced to serve in the South African Army in 1981, during the last days of apartheid. Though he is white, he is still hated: He's secretly gay, in a time and place where homosexuality is a crime. We talk with Hermanus about growing up under apartheid, the quietly haunting middle sequence in the film, and how he really wasn't trying to critique Stanley Kubrick or the voll...
Apr 09, 2021•26 min•Ep. 97
Hunger Ward , from director Skye Fitzgerald, introduces us to two of the youngest victims of a humanitarian disaster in Yemen, brought on by a Saudi-led coalition and backed by the United States. The film takes us inside medical facilities where two heroic women struggle daily to rescue innocent children from desperate malnutrition. You can learn how to get involved — and give directly to the medical facilities — at HungerWard.org . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Apr 08, 2021•29 min•Ep. 96
Director David Fincher and production designer Don Burt have collaborated since Zodiac . For their latest film, Mank, they talk about the process of deciding what to include and subtract from every scene. In Mank, that meant re-creating Hearst Castle, the realm of media baron William Randolph Hearst... and the guests Fincher describes as his "captives." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Mar 31, 2021•27 min•Ep. 95
Adam Wingard is the director of Godzilla vs. Kong , the best Godzilla or Kong movie in quite some time. Here are some highlights with timestamps: 1:40: Adam Wingard rejects the premise of our first question ("Why is Godzilla such a dick?" 3:30: He explains how those ridiculously fun action sequences were planned out. 4:32: "Credibility is not necessarily... in terms of believing this is real, the highest priority. But we didn't want to do things that were so absurd that it would take people out ...
Mar 30, 2021•42 min•Ep. 94
Most people know Mississippi has great food, music, and tax benefits. But it also offers a wealth of other opportunities to moviemakers, including authenticity, diversity, reasonably priced homes, and the chance to be noticed. Mississippi Film Office Director Nina Parikh talks with us about the tremendous film community growth in places like Natchez, Mississippi's rich film history, and how she convinced Joel and Ethan Coen to shoot O Brother, Where Art Thou in her state, very early in her caree...
Mar 24, 2021•27 min•Ep. 93
Coming 2 America director Craig Brewer shot the last day of the joyful comedy on the John Singleton sound stage at Tyler Perry studios — 15 years after Singleton gave him his big break, and made him promise to always "hire some Black people." Brewer's other films include Hustle & Flow , Black Snake Moan , the new Footloose , and Dolemite Is My Name . We talk with him about '80s movies that might not be green lit today, dodging the potential pitfalls of sequels, and being in the service of Af...
Mar 08, 2021•30 min•Ep. 92
Florian Zeller's stunning debut film stars Anthony Hopkins as a father with dementia and Olivia Colman as his worried daughter. Zeller describes the film as a puzzle that can't be solved. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 04, 2021•31 min•Ep. 91
David Shields has given hundreds of interviews to promote his 22 books on everything from race to sports to sex to J.D. Salinger to Donald Trump. He's kept a record of every question, and uses those questions in the literary collage of his 23rd book, The Very Last Interview . Director Nick Toti and screenwriter Rachel Kempf (who are married) set out to turn the book into a movie, and succeeded. "The Very Last Interview" arrived late last year, and is set around Christmas — though the book has no...
Mar 03, 2021•51 min•Ep. 90
Amanda Idoko's first two screenplays made The Black List, the highly esteemed annual survey of best unproduced scripts. Her first screenplay was made into the new film Breaking News in Yuba County , which features an ensemble cast that includes Allison Janney, Mila Kunis, Regina Hall, Awkwafina, Wanda Sykes and others. Amanda is also known for starting the #showusyourroom social media campaign, which encouraged showrunners and writers' rooms to post photos of their writing staff to show how they...
Feb 26, 2021•25 min•Ep. 89
Portland Film Festival co-founder Joshua Leake went from accepting an award from Hugh Jackman while on the phone with his mom to co-founding the Portland Film Festival — one of MovieMaker's 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee. We talk about the joys of Portland, how to get into the lovingly curated festival, and some of the great ideas he's borrowed from other festivals to make sure Portland is always filmmaker first. Along the way we talk about pandemic-safe pod viewing, making a theater in a...
Feb 25, 2021•57 min•Ep. 88
Andre Gower's documentary Wolfman's Got Nards looks at another movie—1987's Goonies-esque kids horror/comedy The Monster Squad—and the vibrant fan community that has developed around it over the years. The Monster Squad (co-written by a young Shane Black) was a bomb upon release, but thanks to video rentals and cable TV, it slowly built a massive following. It eventually became the kind of cult classic that tours internationally, with fans showing up in costume to shout every line of dialogue at...
Feb 19, 2021•33 min•Ep. 87
Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby star in Mona Fastvold's The World to Come, about two pioneer women who fall in love. Casey Affleck, who produces and acts in the film, tells the story of how lunches at a "weird restaurant by the airport" helped lead to the creation of the Sundance and Venice film festival darling. Fastvold also talks about shooting on film in the mountains of Romania, and she and Waterston describe the complex and original way they plotted out Waterston's narration of the f...
Feb 12, 2021•39 min•Ep. 86
Slamdance is a film festival for filmmakers, by filmmakers. In this episode, festival president and co-founder Peter Baxter and festival manager Adele Han Li share some intel on how it chooses films, what it values, and how it's changing. Rather than retreat in the face of the pandemic, Slamdance — like many other festivals — has seized on the opportunity to innovate. This year one of its biggest additions is a new showcase called Unstoppable that focuses on films by moviemakers with disabilitie...
Feb 10, 2021•38 min•Ep. 85
Gary Oldman, simply one of the best actors ever, stars in Mank as Herman J. Mankiewicz, the brilliant but alcoholic screenwriter whose achievements include Citizen Kane . In this interview, Oldman quickly shoots down the notion that he used to deliberately seek out wild roles, and explains how he utilized elements of his own past to play Mank. He also tells us where Citizen Kane ranks among his favorite movies. If you like this episode, please subscribe, write a review, or ask Charles Foster Kan...
Feb 08, 2021•16 min•Ep. 84
Wild Indian follows two young cousins on an Ojibwe reservation who suddenly become involved in something terrible. Thirty years later, one of them (Michael Greyeyes) is living what seems, on the surface, to be a perfect life on the West Coast. The other, Ted-O (Chaske Spencer), finds himself in a very different place. Wild Indian writer-director Lyle Mitchell Corbine, Jr. and producer Thomas Mahoney join us to talk about the film's origin, why Corbine doesn't think the film's title is provocativ...
Feb 05, 2021•36 min•Ep. 83
Early in her career, Trina Wyatt launched the Tribeca Film Festival with Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal, and was the festival's Founding Director. She was a film producer and a studio executive before founding Conscious Good, a media company that produces and distributes entertainment aimed at raising people's consciousness. We spoke with Wyatt about CGOOD TV, which is a new streaming platform dedicated to conscious entertainment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Feb 03, 2021•21 min•Ep. 82
The Reckoning , directed by Neil Marshall ( Dog Soldiers, The Descent, Game of Thrones ) follows a woman named Grace (Charlotte Kirk) who loses her husband during a plague, becomes the target of her landlord's advances, and is accused of witchcraft when she rejects him. Then things get worse. Marshall and Kirk talk about whether real-life events motivated them to make a story about a witch hunt, whether they changed anything because of COVID-19, and what it's like to work with someone who is als...
Feb 03, 2021•43 min•Ep. 81
Fisher Stevens' career in film has spanned four decades as an actor, writer, producer, and director. His latest movie as a director is Palmer , a very good indie drama in which ex-con Palmer (Justin Timberlake) returns to the small Louisiana town where he grew up and, through a series of events, ends up caring for 7-year-old Sam (Ryder Allen), a boy who is bullied for liking princesses, dresses, and dolls. You can see Palmer now in select theaters and on Apple TV+. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com...
Feb 01, 2021•24 min•Ep. 80
Richard Kelly released his debut feature Donnie Darko in 2001 when he was just 25 years old. Five years later he brought an unfinished version of his follow-up, a sprawling sci-fi dark comedy called Southland Tales , to the Cannes Film Festival. It didn't go well. Roger Ebert called it one of the worst screenings in Cannes history. Sony eventually released the finished cut of Kelly's movie, but barely promoted it and only distributed it to a handful of theaters. Southland Tales bombed and mostly...
Jan 28, 2021•30 min•Ep. 79
For the third consecutive year, Albuquerque is the No. 1 Big City on MovieMaker's list of the Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker. Nearby Santa Fe is No. 2 on the list of smaller cities and towns. How is the Land of Enchantment drawing powerhouses like Netflix and NBCUniversal? Alicia J. Keyes, Cabinet Secretar of New Mexico's Economic Development Department, tells us why they love it — and why you just might love it, too. She knows firsthand, after moving to New Mexico from California....
Jan 27, 2021•19 min•Ep. 78
Derek DelGaudio and Frank Oz stop by to talk about In & Of Itself , the film adaptation of their much beloved stage show. Frank Oz is a legendary director, an actor, and the puppeteer who brought to life characters like Yoda, Miss Piggy, and Grover. Derek DelGaudio is a storyteller, performance artist, and illusionist. He wrote In & Of Itself and has performed it onstage more than 700 times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jan 22, 2021•22 min•Ep. 77
Veteran editor, director, and producer Sam Pollard joins us to discuss his new documentary, MLK/FBI , which examines the FBI's relentless surveillance of Martin Luther King, Jr. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover hoped to discredit MLK by uncovering and revealing details of the civil rights icon's private life. The surveillance campaign became Hoover's obsessive pursuit. The movie utilizes a trove of newly declassified documents, as well as a wealth of archival footage—much of which will be new to mos...
Jan 20, 2021•25 min•Ep. 76
Travon Free is an acclaimed standup comedian who has won Emmys for The Daily Show and Full Frontal With Samantha Bee . But his debut film, Two Distant Strangers , is anything but funny. In a horrific twist on time-loop films like Groundhog Day and Palm Springs , Joey Bada$$ plays a man who keeps being racially profiled and shot by the same police officer. Free wrote the film and co-directs with Martin Desmond Roe. We talk about the impressive lengths Free went to to get hired on The Daily Show ,...
Jan 18, 2021•48 min•Ep. 75
Regina King's One Night in Miami imagines a historic night in 1964 when Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke and Cassius Clay (who will soon change his name to Muhammad Ali) gather together to celebrate one of Clay's biggest wins. But the gathering doesn't go as everyone expected. King takes us through her incredible career as an Oscar, Golden Globe, and four-time Emmy winner, with stories about watching films with John Singleton, a Tom Cruise prank on the set of Jerry Maguire, and learning how to pl...
Jan 15, 2021•41 min•Ep. 74
In Pieces of a Woman , Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó and writer Kata Wéber explore their own tragedy, in the hopes that it will make it easier for other couples to heal. The film stars Vanessa Kirby as a woman who suffers a terrible loss, and includes a 24-minute birth scene astonishing in both its empathy and virtuosity. Mundruczó's explanation of whose point of view we're seeing adds another layer of emotion to a powerful, beautiful film. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more i...
Jan 08, 2021•23 min•Ep. 73
Deon Taylor and Roxanne Avent are the husband and wife duo behind Hidden Empire Film Group. The “first generation” moviemaker pair have worked together for 15 years and are entirely self-taught in the directing and producing realms. Their latest is Fatale , a throwback to the erotic thrillers of the ’80s and ’90s, which stars Hilary Swank as a femme fatale who snares a sports agent played by Michael Ealy in her web. Italian cinematographer Dante Spinotti ( Heat , L.A. Confidential ) bathes this ...
Jan 07, 2021•31 min•Ep. 72
A few years ago, filmmakers Charles Beale and Jess Jacklin felt like the film festival circuit wasn't working for them, so they thought about what their perfect festival would look like — and then started it. It's called StudioFest, and it's already released one award-winning film. As you'll gather, Jess and Charles are incredibly transparent about what they're doing — and they get into a lot of specifics, and numbers, in their web series and podcast Demystified , presented by MovieMaker . You c...
Jan 05, 2021•37 min•Ep. 71
