S05E12 @Reunion newsletter dropped today. Podcast will now be on Substack, with only previews here. Sign up at: reunionwattba.substack.com Sam Wasson just released The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story , which completes a trilogy of sorts following The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywoo d and Hollywood: The Oral History. The books traverse the full history of the Hollywood studio system, bookended (literally wow haha so fun to say that) by the dive deep into the l...
Jan 12, 2024•39 min
Ryan Czerwonko @ryanczerwonko runs Adult Film @adultfilm.nyc an NYC collective of actors, writers, and directors focusing on theater, actor training, filmmaking, and film screenings. He's an example of a contemporary actor who the industry didn't hand everything to...so he took his own control. We're excited to host an improv and film event this Friday November 10 to exhibit multiple facets of that work and the community he built. Hope to see you there. RSVP...
Nov 10, 2023•51 min
Fernando Reinaldos @fernandoreinaldos will show his short film The End Monday November 6 with Reunion at Alamo Drafthouse. It's one of the film's he's made as part of his Columbia MFA film program. I'm really excited that the actresses in the movie will be present to watch with an audience. It's a meditative piece that can spark conversation, with a few aspects requiring interpretation that those from different walks of life will bring significantly divergent takes to. RSVP here ....
Nov 06, 2023•41 min
Arthur Gay @arthur.elias.gay will show his latest short Sunshine City on November 6th at Reunion shorts night at Alamo Drafthouse. This is his third and he's working on his fourth, which will be his Columbia grad school thesis. Feature might come first. We talk a lot about the state of collaboration in the arts today. Hope to see you Monday. Tickets free with RSVP here ....
Nov 05, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Mateen Stewart @mateenstewart is a comedian, standup producer and host of Late for Work, a weekly comedy night in Los Angeles that will have their NYC debut tomorrow night, Sunday November 5th with Reunion cohosting. The lineup is great, should be a fun time. We talk a lot about the comedy industry, how development on late night shows has been replaced by viral video pursuits. Similar to film, the bottom line is putting butts in seats. Hope to see you tomorrow night. https://wl.seetickets.us/eve...
Nov 04, 2023•35 min
Sophie Compton @sophietaracompton & Reuben Hamlyn @urghreub released their debut feature SXSW Special Jury Award winning doc Another Body last week. It’s a real life horror movie. We actually talked to some genre fests about playing it in horror blocks, didn’t work out because of timing. It bears down on a specific aspect of the AI conversation—deep fake porn. At the heart of it is an investigation into the psychological torment that brings the perpetrators to commit these acts on victims th...
Oct 29, 2023•1 hr 11 min
Demian Rugna @demianrugna drops his latest When Evil Lurks on Shudder Friday October 27th. Perfect Halloween watch. Damien is one of few working today who, in my view, do horror right. This guy just goes for it. Horror is its own layer of cinema, it sends us to places within ourselves that other film does not. Analysis is cool, but the sensation horror derives is its own experience. Nothing generates our repressed feelings and connects our fight or flight processes in their most effective usage ...
Oct 27, 2023•33 min
DW Young ( https://www.dwyoungfilm.com/ ) premiered his latest short Dancing on the Silk Razor at Woodstock Film Fest shortly before playing at last week’s Reunion night at Alamo Drafthouse NYC. It gifts us 20 minutes of Wallace Shawn narration (including the word ‘conceivable’!) telling a story built off a single line written years ago by a friend of DW’s. The story reminds me of the particular existential dread of Paul Auster. It’s a very New York and Jewish and male existential dread in my se...
Oct 25, 2023•58 min
Justin timms @justin_timms is the Creative Director of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival and Co-Founder of Yellow Veil Pictures. BK Horror kicked off last night beginning its annual survey of the genre at Nitehawk. This is NYC’s preeminent genre fest, akin to Fantastic, Fantasia, Beyond, Sitges. Justin saw this gap ten years ago and filled it beautifully. The festival has packed screenings and after parties every night. They cover all the ground, prems and favs from festivals like Sundance, features...
Oct 12, 2023•36 min•Season 5Ep. 4
Sonia Kennebeck @soniakennebeck opens her new documentary Reality Winner this week at IFC Center. I'll be moderating Q+A on October 12th hosted by @reunion . You may know Reality's story from the news or from Sydney Sweeney's portrayal in Tina Satter's HBO film based on the play. Sonia goes deeper into the full story and brings us up to date on what this girl still only in her mid twenties is experiencing. We talk a lot about where journalism and film meet and the state of documentary distributi...
Oct 09, 2023•1 hr 27 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Anna Biller @msannabiller became a hero with The Love Witch a few years ago. @reunion has the pleasure of celebrating her follow up on Tuesday with a launch party for her debut novel Bluebeard's Castle . It came about as a pseudo happy accident, when pandemic stalled film development, but as Anna explains, the novel form allowed her to represent the characters' internal feelings in ways her films never allowed. The book, like Love Witch , is beyond camp. Her work is pretty peerless. We tried to ...
Oct 08, 2023•1 hr
David Farrier @davidfarrier opens his new movie Mister Organ on Friday at Roxy Cinema Tribeca co-hosted by @Reunion . I was at David's Sundance premiere of Tickled , which was the first of multiple screenings where audience members who were subjects in the film caused very fun chaos. The movie and the whole experience was awesome. This movie puts his lens on regular sociopathy. He explores what a person can be like who would cause another to want to commit suicide. Spoiler alert, there's no holo...
Oct 05, 2023•48 min
Dustin Waldman @dustinwaldman will show his SXSW premiered short Never Fuggedaboutit May 2 @reunion @alamonyc. The story pulls from his experience working as an editor, creating what is effectively an imagined hypothetical version of himself in 2001, working in a post house given a controversial task around September 11th. I remember how charged rhetoric and creative decisions were around this time. It reminds me of our current moment, where every decision is potentially a career ender. This one...
May 02, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Season 4Ep. 35
Kevin Ralston @kevinralton will show his recent Slamdance premiered short Hubbards @reunion @alamonyc on May 2. Kevin has a certain brand of humor. It’s meditative and strangely whimsical rather than dark. There’s a lot of comparisons we talk about like the whole Adult Swim world, Tim & Eric, etc. but I find that a lot of those deliver this underbelly of a bleak world view, whereas Kevin’s writing and tone feels sentimental and hopeful, connected to people through the disconnects he’s invest...
Apr 28, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 4Ep. 34
Nira Burstein @nira.isanalog will show the opening of her debut doc feature Charm Circle May 2 @reunion @alamonyc. We talk a lot about Judaism in the arts, NYC, family, and the difference between narrative and doc work. Lotsa parent talk. I’m interested in what audiences will make of it next week. To me, a big topic we got into was how people identify with her parents as characters and their tendencies. We see them as very, very Jewish, but many others less familiar with this culture don’t reall...
Apr 27, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 4Ep. 33
Noam Argov @noamargov12 just premiered her short Sulam at Aspen Shorts Fest and we’ll show it May 2 at @reunion Alamo Drafthouse NYC. Noam was born in Israel, raised in Disneyworld, and now lives in NYC. There’s this wild Kyrgyzstan doc she made a couple years ago that Mailchimp put out, worth watching. Another world. Sulam features a tough mother-daughter dynamic that is autobiographical for Noam. I’d say it’s unintentionally imbued with anxiety-horror cinema. Maybe like in the way Krisha does ...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Season 4Ep. 32
Dion Costelloe @dion_costelloe is an actor featured most recently in God’s Time, which we showed in January before its IFC theatrical release. May 2 at Alamo Drafthouse, we’ll show his first short as director, Waking Up, as well as a rough cut of his latest, Haters. Dion’s a Bensonhurst guy, where my family’s from, so I’m especially invested in his voice. We talk about these characters that are going to disappear if we don’t continue to make art of their lives. I recently rewatched Once Upon a T...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Season 4Ep. 31
Frank @putitfrankly + JP @jp_canal won Slamdance 2023 Animation prize for Hot Dogs. We'll show tomorrow / Friday March 31 @reunion @arri_rental. It's a sweet, sensitive, wacky vision of life in the vein of the Up opening. An under 10 minute rollercoaster of emotions that delivers sincerity in a sea of cynicism. Why is it so hard for people to openly feel things? I'm happy these guys do. Excited for an audience to feel this together tomorrow night. https://reunion3242023.splashthat.com...
Mar 23, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Season 4Ep. 30
David Kolbusz @davidkolbusz is a creative ad exec turned film writer, whose short film Claudio’s Song will screen @reunion Friday March 24 @arri_rental NYC. David and I talk a lot about the arts in general, our fandom, and formation of taste. I like hearing his perspective on how advertising and creative mandates in general are shaped by social movements. Claudio’s Song and Nimic , his previous film with Yorgos Lanthimos, represent his prioritization of open minded big ideas. The short is full o...
Mar 22, 2023•1 hr 49 min•Season 4Ep. 29
Mike @mike.m.donahue made Troy as a response to theaters being closed thx to the mangy 2019 thing. @reunion shows it this Friday after a recent Sundance screening, following Tribeca premier and a highlight screening of thousands watching at Out Fest. We talk a lot about how theater and film worlds interact and where his focus is upcoming. I like this movie because, well, pretty simply, there's a ton of people talking in apartment movies made over the last few years that suck, and this one is sma...
Mar 21, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Season 4Ep. 28
Jalena @jalena.kl and her team of Writer/director @crystalkayiza + producer @britfry just won Sundance shorts Jury price for their short film Rest Stop, and we’ll have the pleasure of screening it this Friday March 24th @reunion @arri_rental. Rest Stop is Jalena‘s first producorial dip into narrative, but is a documentary filmmaker in her own right with multiple shorts out and a feature coming soon years in the making. We talk a lot about the filmmaking journey today, as Jalena has been through ...
Mar 20, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Season 4Ep. 27
Ben Brewer @brewerfilms has had a nice year so far. A Folded Ocean , his new short, premiered at Sundance and will show March 24th @reunion @arri_rental, and Everything Everywhere All at Once , which he did VFX for, won every award ever. He was also featured on @lecinemaclub, a beautifully curated site with one film a week curated by Marie Louise Khondji. We're both grads of the same era of Emerson College, along with what's become now a really strong group of indie filmmakers like Daniels Schei...
Mar 19, 2023•1 hr 31 min•Season 4Ep. 26
Tiger Ji is an NYC based filmmaker by way of Hong Kong. We’re going to show his latest short Death & Ramen @reunion March 20 @alamonyc @drafthouse. It stars comedian Bobby Lee and Breaking Bad’s Matt Jones. Prior to that he made Wuhan Driver , a slice of what became for some Asians in America during Covid. It reminds me a lot of the post September 11th American Islamaphobia. Death & Ramen is more personal and universal, something anyone can relate to. He tells how he put it together and ...
Mar 18, 2023•1 hr 47 min•Season 4Ep. 25
Emma Swider @ispysvvi is a filmmaker and editor I met through Beth B (recently on the show and retrospective'd at Metrograph) at our Lydia Lunch screening a few years ago. She's sent me a few of her shorts, including the much more robust The Marinn Company , but it was really this short montage she made that got me. We're going to screen All for You on March 20th at Alamo Drafthouse Lower Manhattan @Reunion. We talk about the kind of tactics she uses to get these really important points across, ...
Mar 17, 2023•54 min•Season 4Ep. 24
Joe Meyerson @josephsamuelmeyerson ‘s first short film Out Patient will show @reunion @alamonyc @drafthouse Lower Manhattan on March 20. We talk about what it takes to put together a movie like this in the burgeoning stages of a career, particularly how to cast and deal with actors. We also talk a lot about what it’s like to be a straight white cis guy making movies today at all, but particularly about other white guys. https://reunion3242023.splashthat.com
Mar 16, 2023•1 hr 27 min•Season 4Ep. 23
Leah Shore @leahsh0re is a filmmaker and multimedia artist known for live action and animation work. We're going to show one of their animated films and another live action x animation short on March 20th at Alamo Drafthouse Lower Manhattan @reunion. Leah recently made a really fun short in advance of the Nitehawk Shorts Fest. Come see us next week! https://reunion3202023.splashthat.com
Mar 15, 2023•33 min•Season 4Ep. 22
Rachid Hami just showed his second feature POUR LA FRANCE ( For My Country ) at Film at Lincoln Center's Rendezvous with French Cinema. He explains in this episode why the title changes from 'For France' to 'For My Country' in the US. Toward the end is the most striking point to me about assimilation vs. integration. We speak of our upbringings, his being French by way of Algeria (as portrayed in the film) and mine being a New York Jew. The story told is about his real life family, done as a cha...
Mar 11, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Season 4Ep. 21
Beth B is an NYC arts legend returning Friday for a retrospective at Metrograph. I was at her previous retrospective at MoMa, and we showed her Lydia Lunch documentary at my place last year. That hang was amazing, the crowd kept Beth and Lydia talking for longer than the film runtime and nobody left. She's got incredible stories from my favorite era of NYC arts and a beautiful personal arc to show for it. It's nice to be able to receive her perspective on something that a lot of other people can...
Mar 09, 2023•56 min•Season 4Ep. 20
Eugene Kotlyarenko, Lea Rose Sebastianis, Nate Wilson, Morgan Krantz collaborated to create The Straightball , which we’ll show on Thursday February 16 @reunion. This is like a film school episode in a way, and also kinda heartwarming friendship tale. Eugene had a retrospective in Toronto, and Nate and Lea tell us of the vibrant film community who came out. That turned into hangs, and eventually collaboration. It’s a cool walk through of how things can come together. Take notes, do it yourself!!...
Feb 14, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 4Ep. 19
Lucy McKendrick @lucy_elizabeth_mckendrick premieres her short film Fuck Me Richard @sxsw in March and will show some of her work @reunion this week on February 16th At Wonderland Dreams. We actually had a long tea hang the other day which we aimed to post but because of the subject matter of Lucy’s film, we both got super raw and went in depth on a lot of topics that we decided to let disappear into the ether. We talked about trolls. About our shared anxiety. About covid zoom acting classes. Fu...
Feb 14, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 4Ep. 18
