"I've been accused of being the hangout movie guy, and that's fine. Because cinema can do that really well," says Richard Linklater, whose latest film is the beautiful Apollo 10 1/2. Richard Linklater is one of our all-time favorite filmmakers, and Apollo 10 1/2 may be the most Richard Linklater of all Richard Linklater movies. He amicably fields our questions about how his beloved Austin has changed, the importance of '70s cartoons, the dumbest conspiracy theory, and the state of movies. He als...
Apr 01, 2022•55 min•Ep. 131
Kat Coiro went from acting to directing, becoming a very in-demand director of shows like Modern Family and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia , and directing the pilots of Girls5Eva and the upcoming Marvel series She-Hulk . She's also the director of four films, including the brand-new music-packed rom-com Marry Me, starring Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson. We talk about how working on her own smaller-budget films led to efficient problem-solving on Marry Me , how she made time for small moments,...
Feb 18, 2022•30 min•Ep. 129
We had the honor of speaking with one of our greatest directors just days after his film Dune earned 10 Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture. Our favorite part is hearing him talk about the interconnected shots in Dune , "trying to create a melody" in the story, and watching Lawrence of Arabia in an empty theater when no one else showed up. He ends the interview with some excellent advice for anyone who wants to make films. Here are some highlights: on Best Director Oscar Snub (1:50) -C...
Feb 11, 2022•20 min•Ep. 128
Therapy Dogs is one of the highlights of the latest Slamdance Film Festival, and Ethan Eng made it during his senior year of high school. He and his friend Justin Morrice enlisted their classmates in the class of 2019 to tell a stunning and beautiful story of teenagers who feel invincible, but aren't. They brilliantly combine real and staged moments — including strapping Morrice to the roof of a car — for a film that makes us question what really happened, what didn't, and whether it matters. It...
Feb 04, 2022•29 min•Ep. 127
Mija starts at a party store, to celebrate a birthday. It's one of many milestones in the life of Doris Muñoz that director Isabel Castro captures with charm and relatability as we see Muñoz suffer a huge career setback, then rebuild. Rejecting the tropes of depressing documentaries, she tells a story filled with incredible challenges, but also joy, hope and love. Mija has all the calling cards of a great music movie, but it's also a magnificent story about immigration and two families' paths to...
Jan 27, 2022•32 min•Ep. 126
The Nicholl Fellowship is one of the most important and prestigious screenwriting competitions. There are countless articles online about how to win — but we thought it would be best to just ask the 2021 Nicholl Fellows about their achievement. Here are their names and some details about their winning scripts: Haley Hope Bartels (Los Angeles), Pumping Black : After a desperate cyclist takes up a team doctor’s dangerous offer, he seems on course to win the Tour de France. But as the race progress...
Jan 13, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 125
Dasha Nekrasova is the director, co-writer and star of The Scary of Sixty-First, a horror story about two roommates (Madeline Quinn, Betsey Brown) who discover that their affordable new Manhattan apartment was previously owned by Jeffrey Epstein. She talks about Hollywood's "self-imposed code," why she kept the harsh language in, Epstein enabler Ghislaine Maxwell (played briefly in the film by Anna Khachiyan), and the wonderful name of her beleaguered Succession character, Comfrey Pellets. You c...
Dec 22, 2021•38 min•Ep. 124
In Red Rocket , the latest from Sean Baker, a washed-up porn star named Mickey Saber (Simon Rex) returns to his Texas town and begs his wife (Bree Elrod) and her mother (first-time actor Brenda Deiss) to let him move in. They're skeptical, with good reason. He soon devises a secret plan to weasel his way back into the porn industry with help from a 17-year-old donut shop employee named Strawberry (Suzanna Son). Your host hasn't seen every movie released in 2021, but of the ones he has seen, Red ...
Dec 10, 2021•45 min•Ep. 123
House of Gucci went through several writers before the project found one who could do justice to the surreally messy story of the feuding Guccis. Married producers Ridley Scott and Giannina Facio finally found the right writer for the job in Roberto Bentivegna, who said the key to cracking the story was not approaching it too seriously. In this episode, he talks about the role of comedy in the film, and the ruthless and elegant changes he had to make to the Gucci saga to tell his fun, breezy and...
Nov 25, 2021•28 min•Ep. 122
Robert Weide, perhaps best known for his Emmy-winning work on Curb Your Enthusiasm , first reached out to Kurt Vonnegut in 1982, asking if he could interview the Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse-Five writer for a documentary. His new film, Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, explains what has happened since, while chronicling Vonnegut's life of struggle and truth-telling. This is a short but wide-ranging interview that includes: —Vonnegut's fondness for this symbol: * —Why he was often igno...
Nov 19, 2021•32 min•Ep. 121
In The Beta Test , PJ McCabe and Jim Cummings play struggling Hollywood agents trying to project a veneer of success. When Cummings' Jordan receives an interesting offer in the mail, his job and engagement are threatened. McCabe ( pictured, left ) and Cummings ( right ) tell us that interviews with real Hollywood agents — and their spouses — helped inform The Beta Test . They also talk about some of the sharp twists in their story, inspired in part by Eyes Wide Shut . And they talk about why the...
Nov 05, 2021•31 min•Ep. 120
Spencer director Pablo Larraín was drawn to Princess Diana — played by Kristen Stewart in the film — as both a mother and an unknowable cinematic figure. He didn't realize he was making a movie about motherhood at the beginning, but discovered it when he saw Stewart's interaction with the young actors who play princes Harry and William (Freddie Spry and Jack Nielen). Larraín also talks with us about not treating the royal family as caricatures, why the film used real food in its opulent dining s...
Nov 04, 2021•29 min•Ep. 119
A lot of Krysty Wilson-Cairns' life makes its way into Last Night in Soho — she even used to work at the Toucan, the pub where lead character Eloise (Thomason McKenzie) pours pints. Maybe it's because her life is fascinating. She explains how she went from hanging around a film set in Scotland to fetching coffee for the crew to writing the Oscar-nominated screenplay for 1917 with Sam Mendes. And how a night of drowning her sorrows with Edgar Wright led to her co-writing Last Night in Soho , whic...
Oct 27, 2021•30 min•Ep. 118
German-born Sandra Lipski was a teenager when she (somewhat accidentally!) landed her first acting job. From there, she moved to L.A. to become an actress and filmmaker, and decided to submit one of her films to to a film festival in Mallorca, the gorgeous Spanish island where she had spent much of her youth. The only problem? Mallorca didn't have a film festival. So she started one. A decade later, the Evolution! Mallorca International Film Festival is stronger than ever, luring Oscar-winning t...
Oct 20, 2021•40 min•Ep. 117
Vanessa Block produced and co-wrote the simmering story of Pig , in which Nicholas Cage plays a man who goes into the big city of Portland in search of his beloved truffle pig. We talk about how her background in chemistry and pre-med led her to the Congo, and making the Oscar shortlisted documentary "The Testimony." We also talk about the misimpression that some audiences had about Pig , and what our presumptions say about us as moviegoers. And she tells us where to get the best salted baguette...
Oct 11, 2021•37 min•Ep. 116
The Heartland International Film Festival, like every film festival, weathered a very hard 2020 for the entire film world. But this year, it comes roaring back with one of the greatest lineups you'll find anywhere in the world. We talk with Greg Sorvig about how he and the Heartland team brought films like Spencer , King Richard , Belfast and The French Dispatch home to Indianapolis — and explains a little bit about the festival's history with the great Jimmy Stewart. And we talk about the festi...
Oct 05, 2021•43 min•Ep. 115
Director Alan Taylor had a unique challenge making the Sopranos prequel film The Many Saints of Newark : He had to make a film that worked for the millions of Sopranos fans worldwide, and for people who may never have seen a frame of the HBO series. He talked with us about his first days working for Sopranos mastermind David Chase, Ray Liotta's very Sopranos performance, and the "fucking jaw-dropping" opening of The Many Saints of Newark . This one is filled with spoilers. Photo: Alessandro Nivo...
Oct 01, 2021•30 min•Ep. 114
Dan Delgado is the host of The Industry , a documentary podcast focused on lesser-known or forgotten movie history. On every episode he tells stories of Hollywood's weirdest decisions — and has a special place in his heart for the industry heroes who tried, and usually failed, to make something great. On this special crossover episode of MovieMaker and The Industry, Dan talks about his VHS-shaped 1980s childhood, and how it led him to create the curious world of The Industry . Hosted on Acast. S...
Aug 21, 2021•31 min•Ep. 113
Beckett stars John David Washington as an American tourist traveling with his girlfriend, played by Alicia Vikander. When things take a turn, he's caught up in intrigue he doesn't understand. Director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, our guest in this episode, is well aware of the conventions of stories like this — and subverts them repeatedly. We talk about how Beckett got its name and came to be, Washington's very specific line readings, and Filomarino's professional dynamic with Luca Guadagnino ( ...
Aug 12, 2021•23 min•Ep. 112
Down with the King stars rapper Freddie Gibbs as a rapper named Money Merc who disappears for a while to a rural farmhouse to work on his new album. But even as he saws lumber and butchers pigs, he can't escape the pressures of the rap game. Our guests on this episode, director Diego Ongaro and cinematographer Daniel Vecchione, explain how they achieved the documentary-like feel of the film — and how they created a seemingly packed concert scene while following strict COVID-19 protocols. (Vecchi...
Aug 09, 2021•33 min•Ep. 111
James Gunn is the director of the highly anticipated, very well-reviewed The Suicide Squad , starring Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, Joel Kinnaman and many more. It will almost certainly be one of the biggest films of the weird summer of 2021. But he can remember working on scrappy New York productions where he had to choose between yelling and being yelled at. And a childhood outside St. Louis, Missouri that he would change if he could. We talk about Gunn's being fired and rehired from Guardians of...
Aug 03, 2021•41 min•Ep. 110
Calgary is sleek and modern enough to double for any city in the world, but surrounded by pristine plains and mountain ranges that drew productions like The Revenant and Brokeback Mountain . It has a film-friendly local government, bustling production schedule, and it's one of MovieMaker Magazine 's Top 10 Cities to Live and Work as a Moviemaker. It may also be the most livable city in the Western Hemisphere — it was in the Economist Intelligence Unit's top 5 cities in the world for a decade, an...
Jul 27, 2021•40 min•Ep. 109
Manjari Makijany's film Skater Girl is about an Indian girl named Prerna (the excellent newcomer Rachel Sanchita Gupta, pictured), who crosses paths with a woman named Jessica (Amrit Maghera) visiting from the UK. Prerna's life path soon changes from housework to practicing ollies at a new skatepark. Before she could make the film, Makijany first had to build a real skatepark. It remains today in the Rajasthan village where the film takes place. To make the film — and build the skatepark — Makij...
Jul 21, 2021•26 min•Ep. 108
Michael Waldron, creator of the Disney+ series Loki , got his big break as an intern for Dan Harmon — when he started a softball team that would get him more face time with the creator of Community and Rick & Morty . Things have gone well since — besides running Loki, he's writing Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and a secret Star Wars project led by Marvel chief Kevin Feige. He also created the upcoming Starz wrestling drama Heels . His influences range from Nora Ephron to Quenti...
Jul 09, 2021•24 min•Ep. 107
If you're a fan of Iliza Shlesinger from her standup specials — including Elder Millennial and Unveiled — you'll love her new Netflix film Good on Paper, which she wrote, executive produces, and stars in. You might also like Good on Paper if you've ever dated a compulsive liar. Shlesinger talks about the journey from dating a very dishonest person to making a movie about it, the moment when the whole thing almost fell apart, and how she finally got one of those rare fuck yeah moments in Hollywoo...
Jun 24, 2021•36 min•Ep. 106
Sabrina Doyle, who grew up working class in London, was determined to create a blue-collar fable with her debut Lorelei —a film that avoids both idealization and tragedy. Pablo Schreiber plays a biker who gets out of prison and reunites with his ex, played by Jena Malone. She has three kids now, none of them his. The couple wonder what became of their youthful dreams of getting out of their small Oregon town and heading to Los Angeles. Doyle elicits excellent performances from Schreiber and Malo...
Jun 18, 2021•50 min•Ep. 105
In Coast , directed by Jessica Hester and Derek Schweickart, a teenage girl (Fatima Ptacek) sees a way out of her small Central Coast town when the singer in a band invites her out on the road. The film, inspired by screenwriter Cindy Kitagawa's teenage years in Santa Maria, Calif., explores all she would leave behind. With a great cast that includes Cristela Alonso, Melissa Leo and Ciara Bravo, Coast may give you hope about the future of live music. We also talk with Hester and Schweickart abou...
May 25, 2021•45 min•Ep. 104
Mare of Easttown has gotten an almost uniformly positive response, which is a new experience for director Craig Zobel — his films sometimes make people lose it. His film Compliance sparked anger at Sundance, other film festivals, and screenings nationwide. And last year's The Hunt was denounced by none other than Donald Trump. But he really wants people to see each other as people, and hopes his stories — including Easttown — help them do that. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more inf...
May 14, 2021•27 min•Ep. 103
Darren Lynn Bousman had been fired from a string of assistant jobs and even told he would never work in Hollywood again when he came up with a Jigsaw-level plan to break into movies. By age 25, he had made Saw II — which opened at No. 1 at the box office. Then he repeated the feat with Saw III , and again with Saw IV . The Kansas native decided he'd done all he could with the franchise. And then he got a call that Chris Rock wanted to meet him. The result is the new Spiral: From the Book of Saw ...
May 11, 2021•28 min•Ep. 102
Actor David Oyelowo is acclaimed for his roles in projects like Selma and Les Miserables , but his directorial debut, T he Water Man , is a kid-focused fantasy drama that draws from influences like Stand by Me and The Goonies . The much-praised film tells the story of a boy named Gunner (Lonnie Chavis) who sets off in search of a possibly mythical being who may be able to heal his leukemia-stricken mother (Rosario Dawson). Alfred Molina and Maria Bello also play key roles, and Oyelowo plays Gunn...
May 07, 2021•56 min•Ep. 101
