Welcome to The B-Side! Here we sometimes talk about movie stars! We sometimes talk about movie directors! Today, we talk about both! Specifically, the B-Sides of the Mission: Impossible franchise. It’s just Conor and I today folks, waxing poetic on Tom Cruise’s legendary franchise and the B-Sides that we were inspired to discuss. We’ve chosen one for each of the Mission movies. It’s also July 3rd on the day this episode is published, so happy 63rd birthday Tom Cruise! For the first Mission: Impo...
Jul 03, 2025•2 hr 34 min
Perhaps no line of dialogue better encapsulates lived experience than this bon mot offered by John Huston’s Noah Cross: “Of course I'm respectable. I'm old! Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” I thought about this line––granted, a line I think about at least once a week––while watching Alex Ross Perry’s Videoheaven, which is perhaps the closet a movie can come to putting us back in the four walls of a video store, a concept so old that some peopl...
Jul 02, 2025•37 min
When people call music cinematic, I think they just mean it sounds like it could be in a movie. About which, fair: being in a movie would do so. But the term is a little frivolous and unevocative. So take me at my word when I say U.S. Girls, the band fronted by American ex-pat Meg Remy, evokes such in its grand, powerful, barreling, vivid sound. I’ve loved her music for years––a super-aggressive start in ambient, atonal sounds that segued almost seamlessly into a kind of furious disco pop that’s...
Jun 26, 2025•46 min
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we discuss Mike Leigh, one of our greatest living filmmakers. Born in England in 1943, Leigh remains an artist for the everyday person more than most. And this descriptor is quite reductive, as the writer/director’s aesthetic is deceivingly simple and incredibly effective. Our B-Sides are Life is Sweet, Career Girls, All or Nothing, an...
Jun 20, 2025•1 hr 40 min
I've spent my offline hours producing The Jag, a new play that runs from June 21 to July 6 at the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research. Even without some of my fingerprints, this makes a curiously cinema-centered creative team: directed by Paul Felten (Slow Machine) and written by Robin Schavoir (The Plagiarists), it combines the lo-fi grittiness and observant humor that have defined either's output. (To say nothing of a certain beloved actress lending her voice, uncredited.) If you’re listening...
Jun 19, 2025•49 min
The release of a new Tom Cruise film is less about the film than it is about Tom Cruise. Ceaseless junket and red-carpet interviews with supposed journalists who were perhaps invented on the spot to ask him questions, clips of these interviews that quickly go viral, endless rankings of the movies, and between all of it the… acknowledgement, perhaps, that Cruise is connected to (or currently participates in) the horrific doings of Scientology. It doesn’t take much to discern that our collective f...
Jun 13, 2025•38 min
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we return to one of our earlier subjects: Ryan Gosling! Our B-Sides are The Ides of March, Gangster Squad, Only God Forgives, and First Man. Our guest is our dear friend Cory Everett, creator of Cinephile: A Card Game! We talk about Gosling’s television career as a young man, his quick rise to stardom, and surprise nomination for Half Nels...
Jun 06, 2025•2 hr 5 min
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we discuss Clint Eastwood, the director and the movie star. Our B-Sides are Breezy, White Hunter Black Heart, Blood Work, Flags of Our Fathers, and The Mule. Our guest is the impeccable Mitchell Beaupre, Managing Editor at Letterboxd. We talk about Clint’s Casper cameo and how that was probably the first thing all three of us saw him in a ...
May 23, 2025•2 hr 37 min
In a city where the rents are too high, the subways are too slow, and morale barely hovers above cope, repertory options might make such troubles worthwhile. So one thinks while looking over Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us, a career-spanning, 35mm-rich, two-cinema retrospective that began last weekend at Japan Society and will continue at Metrograph. It was my pleasure to sit down with those theaters' respective programmers, Alexander Fee and Edo Choi, for a discussion of Naruse's necessity i...
May 12, 2025•45 min
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. It’s a day to celebrate! We discuss the legend Maggie Cheung! Our B-Sides include Lost Romance (a.k.a. Story of Rose), Full Moon in New York, Green Snake, and Sausalito. Our esteemed guest for this episode is Nick Newman, host of the Emulsion podcast for The Film Stage. We talk about the Hong Kong New Wave, Maggie’s aborted performance in Inglou...
May 09, 2025•2 hr 2 min
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we talk about the great Debra Winger! Our B-Sides include Legal Eagles, Betrayed, The Sheltering Sky, and Forget Paris. Our guest is the inestimable Murtada Elfadl, Culture Writer, Critic, and Film Curator. We discuss Winger’s stratospheric rise to stardom, her indescribable performance in Terms of Endearment, and her (unfair?) reputation ...
May 02, 2025•2 hr
Amalia Ulman has followed El Planeta, one of this decade's most auspicious debuts, with the equal-parts caustic and sincere Magic Farm. With its limited release beginning today, Nick Newman had the fortune of speaking with her and Chloë Sevigny in an interview that highlights the particular relationship between a writer-director-actor and her co-star.
Apr 25, 2025•26 min
Hello everybody and welcome to The B-Side podcast for The Film Stage, here we talk about movie stars; not the films that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones they made in between! And today, with The Accountant 2 out in theaters, we thought we’d revisit our episode on the B-Sides of Ben Affleck! Originally recorded in March 2020, at the time of the release of The Way Back, our friend Marie Bardi joins us to talk about our love for a sad Ben Affleck performance, and his ups and down...
Apr 24, 2025•2 hr 3 min
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we talk about two American icons: Joel and Ethan Coen. Our guest is an icon all his own: Stephen Sajdak from the We Hate Movies podcast! We discuss the B-Sides The Hudsucker Proxy, The Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty, and Burn After Reading. There’s also time given to their remake The Ladykillers. We make many references to A...
Apr 11, 2025•1 hr 56 min
Alexander Horwath's Henry Fonda for President stands among the most notable releases of a still-young year, is certainly the most lauded essay film in recent memory, and was assuredly of personal interest when my friend Zach Lewis offered his approval. As adventurous and open-minded a cinephile as any I know, Zach has equal-parts interest in both the films of Henry Fonda and essayistic, landscape-centered cinema––some Thom Anderson or Harun Farocki come to mind with the former, James Benning the...
Apr 09, 2025•50 min
An essential document of a moment in time for a story very much still unfolding, The Encampments is a thorough, engrossing portrait of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Beginning in April 2024, the protest was formed by Columbia University students who called for their university to divest from U.S. and Israeli weapons companies that are aiding in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of Palestinian people. Following an opening weekend that resulted in the highest-grossing per-theater average for...
Apr 08, 2025•19 min
The restoration and release of Shinji Somai's Love Hotel is no small occasion, and dovetails nicely with this show's ambition to speak with people outside the well-known confines of film culture. Thus this new episode is an interview with Edward McCarry, whose work at Cinema Guild has made the Japanese master, by leagues and bounds, more accessible than was ever thought possible. In our conversation, McCarry shares his passion for Somai, the thrill of sharing his films with larger audiences, som...
Apr 02, 2025•39 min
In honor of the legendary Val Kilmer, who has passed away at the age of 65, we're sharing The B-Side's episode from 2022 discussing his career and most overlooked films. Subscribe to The B-Side: https://pod.link/520164968 See the original description below: Today, we discuss one of the most intriguing actors of his generation: Val Kilmer! To tackle such an enigma, we bring in the legendary Katie Walsh! A must-follow on Twitter, a co-host of the insatiably-entertaining Miami Nice Podcast, and an ...
Apr 02, 2025•2 hr 9 min
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we talk about two legends: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger! Our B-Sides include I Know Where I’m Going!, The Small Back Room, Gone to Earth, and The Elusive Pimpernel. Our guest is the legend Katie Walsh, podcaster and film critic at the Tribune News Service & LA Times. We talk about her lovely experiences watching Powell &am...
Mar 23, 2025•1 hr 53 min
This week consecrates a major turn in the 50-year career of Alan Rudolph, which began as an assistant to and screenwriter for Robert Altman before transitioning into decades writing and directing original, romantic, occasionally unnerving American cinema at a time parallel to (if never quite reaching the fame or acclaim of) Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, Terrence Malick, and David Lynch. The turn is not a new film, but Criterion anointing 1984’s Choose M...
Mar 23, 2025•1 hr
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk to movie stars! About a movie that people love and the hidden gems they've also made! Dan Mecca and Conor O'Donnell were lucky enough to speak with Amy Irving and Peter Riegert, on the occasion of the Criterion release of Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey. We discuss the legacy of the film nearly forty years later. With Irving we touch on Honeysuckle Rose, Carried Away, and her new music album. With Riegert we talk about Chilly Scenes of Winter (also dir...
Mar 13, 2025•1 hr 16 min
We love speaking with filmmaker Andrew Davis. In late 2023 The Fugitive director came on our podcast The B-Side to discuss a slew of hidden gems as well as the 4K release of the Harrison Ford blockbuster. Davis is back to talk about his novel Disturbing the Bones, a political thriller that reads like an entertaining, extrapolated version of some of his best films. The plot concerns an archaeological dig in Illinois wherein a body is discovered. It leads to a murder investigation amidst a global ...
Mar 11, 2025•35 min
Presenting Nick Newman's Emulsion, a new podcast from The Film Stage. “WHY on EARTH is there another film podcast?” Is the question you, the reasonable listener, are asking while nevertheless hitting play on this pilot-of-sorts for yet another entry in perhaps the seventh art’s most undignified progeny. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: here is a show that strives to stand outside its peers. This is not a show informing you that the week’s big new release is pretty good, actually or a gro...
Mar 06, 2025•40 min
In honor of the legendary Gene Hackman, who has passed away at the age of 95, we're sharing The B-Side's episode from 2022 discussing his career and most overlooked films. Subscribe to The B-Side below: https://open.spotify.com/show/4EJFEQMTuLFPIDTbsrbL62 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-b-side-a-film-stage-podcast/id1490472263 See the original description below: Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them...
Feb 25, 2025•2 hr 29 min
Welcome to a special new podcast episode from The Film Stage. Here at the site we’ve long been fans of the work of Bill Morrison, who you may best know from his astounding 2016 archival documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time. The New York-based filmmaker received his first-ever Oscar nomination this year for his short film Incident, which reconstructs a 2018 police shooting in Chicago, reassembling the event and its immediate aftermath from a variety of sources, including surveillance, CCTV, dashb...
Feb 04, 2025•33 min
As a special holiday gift to The Film Stage podcast feed, listen to a new Box Office Bonanza! Here we talk about random box office weekends and where they fit into our lives. The movies, the memories! This episode features Dan Mecca, Conor O’Donnell, Mitchell Beaupre, Jordan Raup, and Cory Everett. The box office weekend in question is July 21, 2000. The number one movie in the country was the Robert Zemeckis-directed, Clark Gregg-scripted, Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer-starring supernatur...
Nov 29, 2024•1 hr 11 min
For the 550th episode of The Film Stage Show, Brian Roan and Robyn Bahr have a major announcement: after over 12 years, hundreds and hundreds of guests, and thousand-plus hours of discussions, The Film Stage Show is coming to an end. We bid farewell with a discussion of a film in the works decades before the podcast began: Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis. Thank you to all of our dedicated listeners! The Slack channel will still continue and be sure to follow Brian Roan and Robyn Bahr on their...
Oct 14, 2024•2 hr 15 min
Welcome to a new episode of The Film Stage Show! Brian Roan and Robyn Bahr are joined by Trace Sauveur to discuss Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, now in theaters. Enter our giveaways, get access to our private Slack channel, and support new episodes by becoming a Patreon contributor. All new Patreon supporters receive a free 4K UHD or Blu-ray upon joining. The Film Stage Show is supported by MUBI, a curated streaming service showcasing exceptional films from around the globe. Every day, MU...
Sep 26, 2024•1 hr 58 min
Welcome to a new episode of The Film Stage Show! Brian Roan and Robyn Bahr are joined by George W. Myers to discuss Annie Baker's directorial debut Janet Planet, now on VOD. Enter our giveaways, get access to our private Slack channel, and support new episodes by becoming a Patreon contributor. All new Patreon supporters receive a free 4K UHD or Blu-ray upon joining. The Film Stage Show is supported by MUBI, a curated streaming service showcasing exceptional films from around the globe. Every da...
Sep 20, 2024•2 hr 15 min
Welcome to a new episode of The Film Stage Show! Brian Roan and Robyn Bahr are joined by Jen Johans to discuss Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, now on Max. Enter our giveaways, get access to our private Slack channel, and support new episodes by becoming a Patreon contributor. All new Patreon supporters receive a free 4K UHD or Blu-ray upon joining. The Film Stage Show is supported by MUBI, a curated streaming service showcasing exceptional films from around the globe. Ever...
Sep 04, 2024•2 hr 15 min
