Hello there, everybody, and welcome back to the disc Connected. I am here with a very special guest for me, and that is the esteemed Sam Degan. Sam, how are you good? How are you doing well? I have always admired your work, and I don't want to lay it on too thick or anything right now, but there are so many people out there that just the name Sam Degan being associated with a piece of physical media of
any sort lately is almost a reason to pick it up by itself. So first of all, from the community, a humble thank you, and for me personally, thank you for agreeing to come onto the show. I mean a huge thank you for me for all the support. It's very appreciated. For those that don't know Sam has been involved in it seems like almost everything at this point, from appearing on basically every label from eighty eight Films to
Vinegar Syndrome and Arrow and even some of the more obscure ones. You've done quite a lot for something like Second Run and breaking into some of the other more interesting titles lately, and I appreciate you for that. But you also are a writer. You've put out is it just three books so far on your own yeah. So I did a book on gen Rolin with spectacular optical as an editor, and I co wrote a big chunk of the book.
But then I have done two solo books. One is on Fritzlan's film m and the other is called The Legacy of World War Two and European Art House Cinema, which came out last year. Maybe COVID time is blended or crazy. The other big thing is Sam is always present on Twitch of the Death Nerve, which is a podcast and which has led to a very robust Patreon, and I just the amount of content that gets pushed out there is astonishing.
I don't know how you do it. I don't either, because I do also have a day job, and it's there are definitely days like today where I just it's like I'm excited and I'm actually right now in the middle of researching something for the next book I'm working on. So it's like I'm excited, but I'm tired. Oh yeah, this weather can't help with that at all. No, it is. It is miserable out there, and we just past the fourth of July and I think we got up to ninety
eight here. But I hear out by you in some places got to like one oh five even Yeah, we I think it's like it gets around that temperature here, but it's also just so humid, Like that's the real problem. Step outside feels like you're in a gross shower. Yes, uh so the big thing obviously, I talk about physical media constantly, and obviously with what's behind you and what you contribute the bulk of your life to, you
seem to appreciate it as well. So had you originally get into physical media and appreciating it, Well, I guess it started from a pretty early age. I mean, you know, I've loved weird movies since I was a kid, and pretty much the only way I could watch them was either by finding some weird shit on TV at two in the morning or going to a
video store and running them. And later, when I, you know, had an allowance, I could buy tapes, which I wish I still had those, but same But as you could see, I, you know, have replaced it with plenty of things, and there are still tapes around the house. I've only got a handful left. But man, I really want to try to keep at least one piece from each of the physical media like eras, just to be able to show the evolution and it is exciting to
see you talk about things like that. And I'm curious, how did you originally I mean, you said you liked weird movies from when you were young. Is there a couple that really set that off when you were younger? Definitely Vincent Price. I'm not sure what the first Vincent Price movie I saw was always watching Over Me from Behind? Ah, yeah, it probably was
also on Haunted Hill, but oh nice. I know that there were those like, you know, those great blocks of programming in October where the whole month you could find horror movies on TV, and that I think is how I was introduced to him. But then it just sort of turned into trying to find every Vincent Price movie I could, and classic universal horror as well, and right just sort of went out of con roll from there. So on the contributing side, how did you originally get into contributing to some of
these physical media releases? So? I think my first contribution was for Mondo Maccabre's release of Symptoms. I did an essay for it, and this is probably six years ago, maybe six or seven years ago, and at that point I had been on this crazy project where I had this blog where I started this like monthly challenge for myself to see if I could write a review every day, which is basically how I trained myself to be a writer. Like I went to school. I have a degree in English literature, so
it's like I have formal training. But when you're trying to be really prolific making yourself write every day seen crazy. But it helped so much. And I think even though it was really a project that I started just for myself, it sort of got my name out there and I pitched them at one point blindly and said, hey, if you ever need essays, you know, I'm this dumb idiot who has a blog, and they were like, you know who you are. She's like what. So then they hired me
to do Symptoms. And around that time, I also had just started the Daughters of Darkness podcat podcast with Kat Ellinger, and so she and I kind of got into commentaries and things like essays or right around the same time. Right, and both of you seemingly, I mean, you use the word prolific, and that is to a point, it's kind of understating it, especially when you have a true daytime job. And I mean, if you just look at like Keino Lobert, do you know how many commentaries you've done
for Keno? Offhand? I don't, but when I first started, so my Patreon is a little over a year old. And part of why I started it is because people kept writing me saying like, you don't have a website. Is there a list? Is there somewhere I can go to find all of your work? And I was like, okay, well I'll start this. Probably no one is gonna be interested. And I think I've published maybe two or three versions of the list now. It is very long.
It's kind of embarrassing. But I have this problem where when people ask me like, oh, tell me some things that you've done, I'm like, I don't know, I don't know what my name is. I have to look at the list. It's way too long. I believe the last version is almost exactly a year ago now, was July of last year, and
I've got that linked in the description below. And for the number of titles that you've posted on, I mean, it is astonishing that you're able to keep a straight thought like you just said, is it is beyond prolific and literally just hearing the name Sam Degan on a commentary, I always say on
this channel that that alone is a reason to buy the release. And I'm curious, because the commentaries are so well thought out, can you share even a hint of what your process is, because they appear to be so well researched that it genuinely sounds like film school sometimes, Well, thank you, I really appreciate that, And I do think having academic training helped because I approach doing commentaries the way I like Basically, I set them up like I'm
giving a lecture, and I usually watched the movie and note down like key
scenes that I want to talk about. I'm not a big fan of of the commentary style where you're just like constantly telling people what's on screen a great so I usually it's like, if if something important is happening that I know I want to discuss, Like if at the hour mark, you know, Peter Cushing cuts Christopher Lee's head off, which you know spoilers that never happens, but if it did, it's something I would want to talk about in
a commentary. But generally I just try to frame it the way I would a lecture, So, like, what are the major points I want to cover, like the people involved, the time period, like what other films does this relate to? How is it different? And so I mean they are basically like little mini film classes. They are. And when you're when you're constructing these, are there a handful of sources that you go to or do you genuinely just have all of the stored in your brain because at this
point it can't be that second one now. So it's so I try to like balance it because doing commentaries is a lot of work. And there are some films that I could talk about just like off the cuff because it's a subgenre that I know really well, or maybe it's a director I know super well. And in that case, usually I'll just make notes reminding myself of like names that I have to bring up and dates and things like that. But there are times where I'll take commentaries where I have to do more research
because otherwise it's not fun for me. It's like, if I'm not getting to constantly I'm addicted to doing research. I think it's the problem. A lot of good read excuse me, a lot of good writers are that the same way. So it shows and I just appreciate that approach because really with commentaries, there is that fine line between two scholarly and also entertaining, and that perfect balance in the middle. There's a handful of people that get there.
You get there, and kat Ellinger can get there, and you know that Nathaniel Thompson does really well, and there's a handful of others. But I appreciate that voice that can come in there and make me feel entertained just by listening to things that I'm learning, and I, yeah, it is a wonderful gift on some of these disks. Yeah, I think it's a difficult balance to strike because, like, my brain does tend towards the academic right. But I also like the reason I wound up not and I've been
to grad school like four times. I love grad school. It's very expensive, but I also find academia to be not a very creatively productive place. It is exclusionary. And you know, the way I feel about cinema and film knowledge is like everybody and art in general is everyone should be able to access it. And there are definitely certain things where you know, watching a film or looking at a painting, your appreciation of it might be enriched if
you understand some of the background, which is where commentaries come in. But it's like when it's too dry and academic and you're throwing out jargon that people might not have any context for, it's like you're trying to turn them off, right, which is why I think I enjoy being able to like let my enthusiasm come out sometimes, which sometimes it's difficult to repress. I will say the liner notes that you have contributed to as well, and even there's
been some video essays as well that you've done. That really they give that extra context. But my favorite thing is when they it's hard to explain. It's like they start building a bridge and make me want to go do my own research because they're just that taste into either a certain genre or era of film, and you go, damn, I just want to know more. All she did was make me excited. That's great to hear because that's usually
how I like. I have chronic lifelong insomnia, and there are nights where like I could have gone to sleep early, but instead I went down some like link clicking rabbit hole trying to just you know, read more articles what
I feel like my life is turned into because just glimpsing of me. I've got two special needs kids, so I'm at home a lot and caring for them, and I'll be, you know, one of them falling asleep or something, and I'll put on a commentary and I'll open a tab on something that I need to read later, and then five days later, I've got like seventeen links that I just go through and read for hours at a time.
In a way, I appreciate that so much with the process. One of the things that I try to do on here is sort of bring positivity and quell some of the entitlement in the hobby. And there are a lot of people that are this cost you much, or it didn't get to me fast enough, or why am I seeking out this movie for the fourth time, And just to sort of dive into why this is so important, could you share perhaps how long some of these take, Like if you're doing all
the research for some of these commentaries. A lot of people think that you just go in and record and it's two hours and you're done and you got a paycheck, so why should you be worried about it? But there's a real story behind it. Yeah, it's not like that at all. I mean, there probably are some movies like it hasn't been announced, so I can't say what it is. But I recently did like a dream commentary on a movie that I have watched obsessively for like twenty years now, so I
know everything about this movie. And basically that's what I did. I just like hit record and just talked and was like, okay, well now we're done. It's almost never like that though, right. Sometimes it's easier when you're recording with another person that you're familiar with, because you're basically having a discussion with them. But I prefer to do solo commentaries because they're just easier
to prepare for, right. And I mean, so you watch the movie once or twice, and presumably it's a movie you've already seen a few times, and then it's I don't know, five or six hours to make notes, Like I make one page of notes for every ten minutes of runtime, and that takes a long time. And if it's something that's more obscure, like I recently did two commentaries for Keino's Miklos Young show box Set and Hungarian Cinema. Thing that not a lot of people are familiar with is a niche.
It's an academic specialty. And years ago Kat and I did an episode on one of his films and we wound up going down this rabbit hole and watching like twenty films in a week and a half. And so sometimes that's what happens. It's like you spend the whole week doing research because the thing that you want to talk about is so obscure, and there's very little information online or in libraries, and so it's like you just have to pull from
whatever sources you can. And it's like the more obscure it is, the more work it takes, for sure. And obviously I'm not going to ask you to dive into figures here, but a lot of people are under the assumption that people doing this are loaded now because commentaries make good money, and that's not true. Some of the people I've spoken to behind, you know, off camera, they'll share at least a little bit of what they got paid getting into it. And it is astonishing how how much this art takes
and really can't give. And it's hard because to keep these releases at you know, somewhere between twenty five and fifty dollars per release, Otherwise they'd have to charge almost twice that to pay these people even a living wage. Yeah, So I will say there are a couple, maybe like three or four regular film commentary people who probably can make a living from it because they charge high rates and companies will pay them. They will not pay me that.
So I was thinking about this recently because people ask me all the time, like why do you still have a day job, And the reality is like, we live in an awful society where health insurance is extremely expensive, and you know, the cost of living has shot up, and so it's like a lot of I actually wrote about this recently in my Patreon and people seem
very surprised. But a lot of the people I know who do film commentaries full time either have a spouse who supports them, or they're getting some sort of financial support from family, and it's like, we don't make much money at all. I would say the average price for a commentary is three to five hundred dollars and the work. Certainly, there are companies I work with.
I love working with them, but they don't pay that much and so it's like do I just cut them off entirely and not have the opportunity to speak about certain films that I love or do. I just sort of accept making less money for certain films. So it's like the inconsistency of how often people give you projects where like unlike a day job, where it's like you have generally a consistent amount of work that you know is coming in, and whether it comes in or not, you're getting a paycheck. And this is
just so different. And that's one of the other biggest things is this is a part of an industry that has been told it's dying for fifteen or sixteen years now, so there's always that question mark at the end of next year, who knows. Yeah, But at the same time, you know, I always think about a company like Vinegar Syndrome, who has grown so exponentially
in the last five years. It's like, now they are able to distribute for all these sub labels, and so they're getting all these incredible releases out and facilitating that in a way that likely a lot of these small labels wouldn't be able to afford to do on their own. And so it's like, obviously it's not dying, right, And I, yeah, I'm a firm believer that it's not. I honestly still think that we are in probably either the golden era or maybe trickling down from over the last couple of years.
I almost feel like the pandemic really led to a real golden period because we got some dream titles that people were able to release and more people were buying them. Print runs even doubled for some of these labels. So it's an astonishing time. Yeah, people were trapped at home with nothing to do but watch movies, and they got those stimulus checks and that, and then they
got tired of streaming, so they turned to vinegar syndrome. So one of the ways that we can support people doing this is supporting their other ventures. And one of your other ventures is these books. What can you tell me about this newest book. So years ago I started writing a book with the vague idea that I wanted to talk about World War two and cult cinema.
And this covered everything from like sci fi and horror movies made during the war years to movies later on after the war that dealt with that time period and the subject matter, and it just became so insane and so sprawling that I realized, Okay, this is just like if I am ever actually going to have a book that I can put out in the world, I need to
find a focused topic. So I probably still have a whole second book that could be published after this, but this one focuses on films made from nineteen forty five to about nineteen eighty five, and they're all films that were made in countries who actively purchased painted in the war. So for example, I don't really talk about US cinema. I don't talk about a cinema because it
just the scope would be too broad. It's like those are separate books on their own, of course, and I try to move loosely chronologically from Italian neorealism through to things like Come and See and some of the like the rare
Soviet protest films that came out in the eighties. That is, I mean, obviously a very broad topic, but it leads to so many other feelings, at least in myself when I'm looking at something like this, because of whether you look at as inspiring or terrifying or whatever, that there is so much art that can come out of these tragic times and depressing times and hard times, and that has happened time and time again, and not even just in film. But I mean even for you know, the history of mankind,
there are so many movements that have happened. Yeah, people turn pain and suffering into art, and I think when they don't, then it just turns into more suffering. Right, And a lot of what you seem to deal with and highlight and even talk about in a lot of your commentaries seems to center around this idea of protest cinema. So can you share what that would mean to you if you were explaining it to somebody who's never thought of that? So basically what that means to me. And I didn't really go
in this direction on purpose. I just sort of realized one day, like, oh, I seem to be writing about all of these films that have kind of shared political themes or shared goals. And so a lot of the movies in my World War two book fit under this umbrella as well, where they're basically movies that are made in protest of some sort of political or governmental oppression. And I think sometimes they kick back against things like war and genocide
and public traumas. But also, you know, a lot of the films that I wrote about in the World War two book, the reason I wanted to write about the legacy of the war is because war is so often used as a propaganda tool in media. Oh yeah, so the movies I like, even if you watch the Hollywood movies that came out in the forties, they're just it's like so hard to find a movie that doesn't just reek of propaganda. I mean, even Casablanca, which I love, it's a propaganda
film. And so these movies are generally looking at the ways in which politicians and governments and whole communities use the sort of wartime myth making for their own ends. Like people like Jean Pierre Melville would talk about how like with a film like Army of Shadows, he's basically saying not every person in France was in the resistance, even though that's what people want you to believe in the
sixties and seventies, and really it was terrible. And so I think I tend to gravitate towards those kinds of films that either overtly or sort of more subtly have that message that something just isn't right and it needs to be addressed, and that theme I mean continues through like I said, every art form. There are multiple eras of punk music that have come out through certain levels
of uprising and literal oppression, and it's not just war. And that leads to today that there is still a lot of protests ininema being made, and in recent times the US has been hit with a lot of things that there's
reason a protest. I mean, there's still discrimination across the board, and that is not just based on things like race, but now we are finding this gender gap where women are feeling like they are second class citizens because the Supreme Court has turned over something that has been in place for more than what forty years, forty five years and I think close to fifty. Yeah, people are now losing rights that their grandmother fought for. And it's depressing.
Yeah, I don't even know if depressing is the word for it. It just And that's something that I found really interesting about a lot of these post war films that were ostensibly about World War Two. It's like, really, they're about something else. Really, they're about what's going on in your current time and using this much more dramatic historical event as this sort of parallel to
that. And it just it's also the sort of time where I tend to associate that kind of protest cinema with really daring transgressive directors, like in my book, I write a lot about Pasolini. He pretty much inspired the whole thing with his film Solo, among others, but also like Reiner Erner Fassbender and Lena Vertmueller and just so many people who are exploring the boundaries of mainstream
cinema but also sexuality and politics and gender roles and things like that. And I just don't know that we're going to get the same quality of protest films today because I think you just don't have the same kind of freedom to be tasteless that you did in the seventies and to be offensive is better and for worse. Is there an example of a fairly modern protest cinema that you would point people towards to really dive into the genre. This is a difficult question
to answer. Yeah, I feel like, off the top of my head, one of the only people whose films have consistently excited me and I don't even know if you could call it protest cinema, but definitely transgressive cinema is somebody like Peter Strickland, the English filmmaker, and his films I think, do something interesting where they're not quite settled into a genre. Like he made this movie called Abarian Sound Studio that's like kind of a horror film but not
totally. And Duke of Burgundy, which is influenced by Jess Franco movies, but it's not euro cult. It's just like clearly thinking about those sorts of films in their humming in the background. But right, honestly, I don't know. I find a lot of contemporary cinema to be pretty disappointing, and usually if I enjoy it, it's in kind of a mindless way, which I know kisses people off. I get that, and it's all I mean
to be blunt, it's all watered down. I mean, even if there is an original voice that they are seeking to portray, it really gets lost, especially if it's associated with the studio, because they seemingly have final say and they don't want something like that going to you know, four thousand screens across the US. Oh totally. And this is something that we talked about
pretty recently on tw to the Death Nerve. Is this idea that you know, people, I think Americans in particular are always sort of fed this line about you know, China is evil, don't go to It's like it's the new replacement for the Cold War rhetoric. It's like, here's this obvious villain. You don't want to go there because we have freedom and they don't. But like, yes, certainly China represses people and doesn't allow certain films or
political protests to happen, but like we don't hear either. We just swipe things under the rug in much more covert ways. And it all has to do with money. So it's like, would I rather be living in a country that says, in a blunt way, you can't do this and you can't make this film or a country that says you can do whatever you want, except that you actually can, and the rules seem to change based on who's involved. And so it's like, if you're white and middle class or
affluent in some way, you could probably get away with more things. But even then, to your point, it's like the stuff coming out in Hollywood is so watered down. It's like we're so far away from some of those new Hollywood films of the seventies and even into the eighties where they felt like daring, an edgy even in the early nineties. It's like, we're so far from that. I agree, Is there, you know, as as a person that's living in society today that is female, that is not an
oligarch or anything like that? Is there? How do you know? Is there a protest cinema revolution that you could point to that you hope is uprising? Because there's I mean to be super there's not a lot of hope for a lot of people right now. No, there's really not. And it's funny because I this hasn't been announced yet, so I'm going to try to find a way to talk about it without like talking about it, which is
a little a little bit challenging. But my next project that should be out hopefully sometime next year, has to do with representations of political violence and cinema, and so the research I'm doing right now is all about the Japanese New Wave and the sort of associated filmmakers, and it's fascinating to me the way that people like Nikisa Oshima and Shoai Imamura and even Koji Wakamatsu, who is like far to the stream, which I'll explain what I mean by that in
a second, they're all basically leftists some more active than others at this very frustrating time when you know, Japan was doing all sorts of awful things to its citizens, like people were getting super sick because of all these unregulated chemicals in the water, and we're basically letting the US trample all over them. And so there's this like wild protest movement that I think felt frustrating for a
lot of people. So the films in the late sixties and early seventies do this interesting thing where they are these amazing protest movies, but a lot of them are also movies that are critical of left wing movements and are sort of they're not afraid to say, here's where you're doing it wrong, and here's where you're getting caught up in bullshit. And it feels strangely hopeful to me. I I'm not sure why, but it's like I think too often movements
get like this whole idea of cancel culture that frustrates people. It's like it comes from a good place, which is people shouldn't be allowed to say whatever racist, sexist bullshit they want on the internet or in person with no consequences, and that idea of entitlement, like well, this is America. It's a free country. I can say whatever horrible thing to you I want. It's like, technically you can, but there should be consequences for that,
even social consequences. And so I just I think people get so narrowly focused on either you're doing the thing or you're not doing the thing, and if you're not doing everything we want you to do, then you're against us. And then it just cuts out so much nuance. And I think nuance is where hope lives. Nuance is what allows people to lead the kind of diversified,
free lives of their choosing right. And so to see these different filmmakers kind of exploring nuance and not being afraid to argue with each other and argue with their own movements, to me, that feels like a really healthy thing. And it's like if some old Japanese dudes can do it in the late
sixties, surely some people can do it now. I wholeheartedly agree. And that was such a beautiful way to explain the nuance because I mean, especially with cancel culture, this is the time for that where everybody is saying, you know, it's time to boycott X, and if you don't and boycott it one hundred percent across the board, you're also a bad person. Not reality, every single thing that we all buy from and support, there's a
piece of shit behind it somewhere. Yeah. Period, It is nearly impossible to find a company that is, you know, morally true through and through. And this nuance that can allow somebody to call out something that seemingly aligns with their beliefs on their own bullshit, that's where the genuine side of things can really shine. Yeah, And it just I think placing blame is this
thing that makes people feel better. And so it's like, rather than actually trying to figure out who, who or what is the cause of some sort of misfortune or suffering or what have you, it's way easier to just like point your finger and say, you know, I was reading I read some headline and was like, no, I can't go down this rabbit hole. But I saw some headline today that this musician who was popular like twenty years
ago was trying to blame trans women for women's rights being taken away. And it was like like, basically she was saying that now that we can't just say women, we have to say people with uteruses or people who can give birth that somehow has has stripped away my ability to be a woman. It's like, it just means that being a woman isn't this like narrow nineteen fifties box where you can't get a job, you can't have your own bank account,
you can't buy property. It's like pointing the finger at some person that you don't understand or some sort of group that you're afraid of for whatever reason. I don't know why. That seems to be such a human impulse, but it's like, this is not helpful, this is just making things worse. Also, it's so illogical. Yes most of the time, as always about to say, it's astonishing to me that it's not bringing about a shared celebration like others around you are just trying to be treated as good as you
are. That's something that we should celebrate. And I think if you ask people flat out like, well, maybe this is too optimistic of me, But I assume if you ask most people flat out like does everyone deserve to live life the way they want and have the same sort of basic rights, I have to think that most people would say yes, unless they have some
like real extreme conservative views. But for some reason. It's like there's a disconnect and people forget that core thing and they try to like twist and turn it into like, well, it's this person's fault that I can't get an abortion. It's like, no, I think we all know whose fault it is, and it's not all women. I also feel like some of these people are thinking that because they're getting equal rights, they're viewing it as this
person having more rights than them, which doesn't make any sense. Yes, yeah, I definitely read some kind of reactionary thought like that in the nineties, where it was along the lines of like women having equal rights, especially in terms of equal pay, and it was like, well, if they start paying women equally, then they're going to pay me less. And it's like that, how did your brain? How did your brain make that leap.
It's not like it's anyone's saying, well, in order for me to be paid equally, it's not that you set some sort of company policy. It's that I want you to take money out of Joe's paycheck and give it
to me, exactly. And that's that's where this entitlement that we're seeing today and the employment culture is so astonishing to me as well, because you know, just because they're offering starting positions at McDonald's for sixteen dollars an hour and you're only making nineteen, that doesn't mean that you're supposed to be mad at the guy at McDonald's, be mad at your employer. They should be paying
you more. But this is capitalism. This is how it works and how it functions is instead of people clearly looking at the source of their suffering, they view other working class people as competition exactly. It's like, no, I don't understand why so many people are willing to punch below them when in all reality, if you're looking for help, those people aren't gonna be able to do anything for you because they're treated worse than you. You should be
punching up. Yeah, but punching below you is safe and easy, and do this dopamine. Why do you think people become cops right? Punching below you is absolutely on that note. This is a great time to go back to protest cinema. And I'm curious, what are a handful that you would recommend for people now, not just contemporary, just something that can strike emotion and have somebody really grab onto a movement. I would say, definitely, Battle of Algiers is a good one, the Patakorvo film. There are so
many Pasolini films that fit under this. Definitely something so Something that I think is one of his more underrated films. Like if you're a Pasolini film you
probably already will have seen this. But Teorema, which is usually translated as theorem, is this like wild anti capitalist protest allegory about this really hot guy who infiltrates this like bourgeois factory owner businessman's family and proceeds to seduce everyone in the household, from the husband to the wife, to his two adult children to the maid, and he makes them sort of radically rethink their lives,
which has different outcomes for each of the characters. But it's like it's that sort of thing that it's just like, yes, there are plenty of protest cinema movies where it's literally about a protest, Like there are some goodar films that you could watch like that, and those I think are great too, But the films that really excite me are the ones that do it in more subtle ways where you sort of get yet like holed into the film before you
really realize what's happening. Like, I don't think political messaging is as effective when you're just beaten over the head with it. It's like you want someone to tell you a good story. Definitely, a lot of Fastbenders films are like this. Certainly, I would say I don't even know where to start
with Fastbender. He made like forty five films, they're all masterpieces. I would say Fox and his Friends is a great one to start with because it also has all these themes about class and how money makes people terrible, and even if you love someone and have a relationship with them, that doesn't mean that class isn't still gonna win out in the end, or class ideology.
Definitely, all kinds of history. Yeah, all kinds of his stuff just came out through Arrow, and that is seemingly the best way to get most of those right now. Yeah, Criterion put out a bunch, but I think those two Arrow sets are so far the biggest collections. Ye, So are there any that not that those are, you know, not great? Are there any that are more geared towards women and what we seem to be fighting as a culture in society in America right now? With the news OFO
V. Wade just a couple of weeks ago. Because obviously a lot of people will go to the easy answer of black Christmas. It was so progressive of talking about abortion before others would. Is there anything that you would point to? I mean, Rough Cut Cinema just made a great dirty dancing shirt, which people are gonna think I'm crazy. I wish I could pick up my camera. It won't it probably won't pick up. I have a tie movie poster for dirty Dancing in this like Dark Corner in the Far other Remove
My House. But it's a movie that I think you would never think of as a protest movie. It has obvious class themes, but it's another one that brings up this issue of abortion. And there are some great more obvious ones like Born in Flames. Weirdly, also, these might not all specifically be abortion themed. But most people know Paul Verhoven from his Hollywood movies like
Showgirls, for example, which I think is extremely feminist. But a lot of Verhoven's early Dutch films are really interesting and like super relevant for right now. A lot of them are films about headstrong women who just don't fit in with society, or they're about sex workers who want to live by their own
terms, and they're incredibly well written, well acted, super sensitive. Like it's clear that he was making feminist cinema from an early age, and that I think whenever I tell people to check out those early movies, they're always like, we're hoven, like Starship Troopers and like, yes, that one, which is also a protest movie, a very good one and seems to be wreaking a propaganda But when you really look into it, the subtlety is
there, and it's so much of that subtlety is so important for things that bring out empathy when people if they win in the movie, knowing that they wouldn't give that empathy, but when you're invested in it and it's oh shit, I'm sixty four minutes into this and suddenly I really care what happens to
this character. Yeah, that's where we find that humanity. Yeah, And I do think there are a lot of filmmakers who through the use of like more transgressive themes, like andre Juwabski is another great one, the Polish director who wound up working in France for most of his career. Most people know Possession, which he made, but he made many other incredible films that just look at how awful society is and how difficult of a time women have just
trying to live, which still true, unfortunately. Well, happy to be here. Well, speaking of happiness, let's branch out to one more really quick happy topic, and that is I put out the beacon to people on my Patreon that I was going to have you on and they could ask some questions, and I got some interesting ones for you, and I knew at least one or two of my patrons are also patrons of yours, so some that we got. One says I've only ever heard you talk about movies that
are at at least thirty years old. Are there filmmakers who started working like in the mid nineties or later that you are really associated with or a fan of somebody that you find true value in. Definitely Peter Strickland, who I mentioned. I'm trying to think I like a lot of Ben Wheatley's films that they've worked together before. I think Ben Wheatley has actually produced some of Peter
Strickland's films. Trying to think of other recent filmmakers. I am a little sleep deprived, and this is these sorts of questions I almost never get, so I don't have I don't have like an obvious answer. I mean, I saw Crimes of the Future and I'm kind of obsessed with it. So I feel like, even though David Cronenberg was not born thirty years ago, he just made a movie and I was shocked that I loved it. This is a thing that really frustrates me, Like I wish there were younger filmmakers
whose work I was excited about. And some of it is it's difficult for me to find the time to see new movies that are harder to seek out, like where I might have to actually make it to an in person screening just with my work schedule, Like so much of what I watch revolves around either what I'm being hired to talk about or something for book research. And so it's like when I have a day off watching a new movie that very well might make me angry, it's usually not a gamble I want to take.
I feel like there have to be more people though, like Brandon Cronenberg, I like his movies nice. As soon as we get off this call, I'm going to think of things and be like, god, damn it. Well, one thing I would say about that subject, which we don't really hear a lot of people talking about, is that now, with the proliferation of cell phone cameras that can shoot in four K, we have this odd like switch of power where everybody can shoot a movie in four K theoretically
with you know, just sitting at home. However, because of the bias in the system, everything is still leaning towards the studio films for mostly established directors or people that are in the system for some other reasons. So now it is easier to shoot a film theoretically, but I almost feel like nowadays
it's much more difficult to break through. Yeah, and I think some of it is like people who are probably making interesting films that I would like are being distributed through small companies and I'm just not seeing the titles or like maybe I'll hear about them later. Like there's this movie that came out a couple of years ago that I wound up introducing at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival called
Blue My Mind. It's a Swiss film that it's a coming of age horror movie about a girl who turns into a mermaid, but in a really grotesque body horror way. And I liked that, but until they said, hey, will you introduce this? I was like, I don't even know what the fuck that is? Right, Yeah, So it's like they're out there. There's also another movie from around that time called The Falling that I really liked, which it has some picnic it hanging rock vibes. So it's like
people are trying to make these more interesting movies. Knife plus Heart I loved so good. Hey, I told you they would come out eventually. They don't get the big distribution exactly. And I will use that as a sort of bat signal moment to say, when you get an opportunity, please take the moment to not only support these labels. I mean, shout Factory gets
a lot of money. I don't need that, but if you have the opportunity things like INDIEGGO, young filmmakers that are doing something and trying to fundraise to support even a short film, it goes a long wait because a lot of these people that you love nowadays, they started as filmmakers that were doing short films and could barely cobble together a couple thousand dollars from friends and family, and you might be supporting the next Fastbender or the next Ben Wheatley or
somebody like that. Yeah, please, people, I need to see the next Deathbed, which is a movie that I genuinely love, but like, nobody's gonna make it if they can't, if they can't get the funding to
buy a four K phone. Well, I would be remiss right now to not shout out another young filmmaker named Michael Keaneho's another YouTuber who has a film that he's trying to fundraise for right now, and his tagline is literally feed the bed and he's going to have a giant bed shaped vagina, I think is how it's gonna be, and it sounds incredible, So please please go seek him out. Next question is you post some one ully in depth articles
on your Patreon. Is there ever a plan to maybe collect all of them and release it as a book. H So, this is an interesting question that I have thought about. It's so I would actually probably have to talk to someone with law experience, like an entertainment lawyer or a publishing lawyer.
But sometimes I post things on my Patreon that are for a book that's going to come out, Like a couple days ago, I posted an essay on men Behind the Sun, which is for a book that I'm working on about extreme Hong Kong cinema, and it's honestly become a really good barometer for me to sort of like balloon test, like what do people think about And it's not even a full chapter, it's just like a section of a chapter.
It's like what do people think about this? And people seem to love it, which, like I ultimately write because I enjoy writing, so it's like I'm writing the fucking book anyway. But it's like if I hear that people are happy about it, it's like, Okay, I sort of have an idea of here's what I did in this chapter. I can do similar things in other later chapters. But there are all these older essays that I've written that just like a lot of them I wrote for Diabolique, which you don't
make any money through them. So like, theoretically, I guess I could collect things and publish them as a book. It I didn't know that people would really have interest in that, but I guess if someone's asking you, maybe they do. Absolutely. I mean I pre order that absolutely just to be able to have it all together. It would be wonderful. I would
have to figure out how to pack, like what theme. That's a good point, Yeah, and that's that's the hard thing is And that leads into the next question, beautifully, is you you have this knowledge for everything, but it seems like throughout a lot of these releases, you're you're simply tied to like euro cult stuff, And I'm curious how you know You're you're diving deep into euro cult after eurocult after euro cult, and then suddenly they announced
Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy and Sam Degan is doing a commentary on there. How how do those you know, beyond genres compared to what your normal titles? How do those come about for you? I mean, I really hate being pigeonholed in euro cult and I love a lot of euro cult movies. But there are two reasons I hate it. The first is I just don't like being pigeonholed. It's only ever researching and talking about one thing is
boring, and boredom is like the ultimate evil for me. Absolutely. The other reason is like not to you know, say anything too off color. But I think among these sort of cult movie label releases, the euro cult titles are in really high demand. And so a lot of film critics are really territorial about it, and so there's just like a lot of drama and cattiness, and like, at the end of the day, I just want to do research and write and talk about movies. I don't want to deal
with people's bullshit. So it's like I would rather not do euro cult movies and not be involved in it. So it's but it's sort of It's also like once I make it clear to people, and not always, but definitely sometimes, when I make it clear to people that I, you know, can do commentaries about hardcore films or about Hong Kong cinema, it's like those opportunities have started to show up, which is great. I mean, Vinegar
Syndrome, they're my favorite company to work with. They've always treated me really well. They usually if I say, you know, I want to do something, or if they ask me, hey, we need a commentary for this, it's like they're you know, I think they're open to me doing different things than euro cult. And part of the reason why I've really enjoyed working with eighty eight Films is because they were the first people to offer me a Hong Kong commentary on the Shaw Brothers Come Drink with Me, which is
like the first sixties Wouja film. And I wrote them back, this is a couple of years ago, and I wrote them back. I was like this, like I grew up watching these movies. I love them, but like this is not my established area of expertise, Like are you sure, And they were like, yeah, go for it. And now now I'm writing a book on Hong Kong movies. So sometimes I think having people show
in you it it like helps you have more confidence in yourself. That's very true, which is a really like reading Rainbow answer, But I mean to a point, it kind of ties into a lot of the stuff that we were talking about too, with the oppression and if you are so hopeless in so many of these situations and you get that opportunity, it can literally change
your life, just one simple opportunity. Yeah, And I think a lot of it is about connection and community and people supporting your work or offering you opportunities or listening to your podcast or you're watching your YouTube show. It's like it. I think a lot of the time it costs people nothing to support each other, to show enthusiasm for what makes someone else excited, But it means so much more than this sort of awful capitalists like individualistic, like I
just have to get ahead of everyone. It's like, do you well there's nothing up there? Yeah, that's that's the biggest thing. And a lot of times nowadays, the biggest thing that you can do is just share so that more people can get eyes on it. And it literally takes ten seconds and not a dime from you. So if you can share some of Sam's work, if you can share you know, excitement about a release, if you can do something to you know, somebody is interested in World War two,
bring up the book that she wrote. It's not that hard just to share good art. Thank you. Yeah. I think in starting my Patreon, I have definitely seen that side of people come out so much more. We started a discord where people are super enthusiastic. And even so, I primarily a couple of years ago, used Facebook as my most frequent form of social media and it just was so toxic right that I left and went on Instagram. And so far, all I've seen is just like people sharing each
other's stuff. And maybe it's just because I'm following movie nerds and not not any like diet or gym culture people. But uh, well, I will leave with one last really cliche easy question here is, I'm sure there's a handful of amazing Grail titles that you would love to do a commentary or a liner essay for other than the one that you said that hasn't been announced yet.
Is there anything out there that you would just love to put in the ether that hopefully someday you can do some work up any single Fastbender film. I've watched them all, I've written about all of them for my old blog. I wrote a big, huge chapter on his work for my World War
two book. But I've never gotten to do anything with an official Fastbender release, And so that's my like, like, yes, there are probably two dozen things that I could list off, but that's like the one reeal And so many of his films don't not even just don't have a release, but they don't have a good release, they don't have anything on recent formats. There's so much out there that still could be done. Yeah. He he
made this totally crazy Western movie called Whitey that I am obsessed with. And so it's like, if I had to pick one, knowing that it hasn't. I don't think it's had a proper release yet. Like, come on, world, people want a fastbender Whitey, a fastbender Western called Whitey on Blu Ray. I would agree with that, and it sounds like something that a lot of people would buy into almost immediately. Uh So that's that's pretty
much it. Sam, Thank you so much for your time. I know that you are extremely busy in doing something like this, take a lot of time and prep and uh negotiating, sleep and sweat and everything for so I appreciate you. Everybody. All of sam links for the Sam's links for Patreon for the book, for anything else that I can find is below. Is there is Instagram You're preferred, everybody should follow you theirs or somewhere else that you would recommend. That's the easiest, got it well as usual. Thank
you everybody for watching and tune in next time. Thanks for everything. Have a good night. You me