Two Directors With a Shared Voice for Horror Directing duos are rare, but it may be a completely unique situation to have a directing duo be an aunt/nephew pair. That’s the case with Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, the writers/directors of Goodnight Mommy . When they realized they shared a love for horror films, this duo decided to pursue it and to date have three horror features under their belt. They certainly found a strength in their tone and style, which was clear right out of the gate wi...
Sep 16, 2021•1 hr 20 min•Season 11Ep. 12
"We’re never going to leave this place, are we?” While Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck were writing the script for American Graffiti for their USC chum George Lucas, they were working on a low budget horror film that they would produce, write, and direct together. This film was Messiah of Evil and, unfortunately for them, was taken away by the producers before they could finish filming. The producers hastily cut the project together and released a version in 1973, hoping it would make its money ba...
Sep 09, 2021•59 min•Season 11Ep. 11
"So you’re the one that’s been kicking me.” How Does Heckerling’s Biggest Hit Hold Up 30+ Years Later? It’s funny looking back on writer/director Amy Heckerling’s 1989 romantic comedy Look Who’s Talking now and thinking that studios thought it was too sexual for the genre or that women couldn’t carry a comedy like this. Heckerling has said that she had to pitch the film as a talking baby voiced by a hot male comic because of that fact. Remembering that it was the 80s perhaps is all the reminder ...
Sep 02, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Season 11Ep. 8
“Compared to you, most people have the IQ of a carrot.” We're Fans of Martha Coolidge's 1985 Film Real Genius The producer of Real Genius , Brian Grazer, approached director Martha Coolidge a number of times, trying to convince her to direct the film. From Coolidge’s perspective, the script just wasn’t there. It was a juvenile, teen male-oriented comedy and just wasn’t her thing. But Grazer wouldn’t give up. He wanted Coolidge as director for Real Genius so the two of them talked and he agreed t...
Aug 26, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Season 11Ep. 7
“You fargin sneaky bastige!” Director Amy Heckerling obviously did something right with her first feature film, Fast Times at Ridgemont High . For Heckerling’s second feature film, she had almost double the budget that she had before. Considering her second film was a period film, that likely helped. Now it may seem that Johnny Dangerously was a strange choice after her first film captured modern teens so well, but she clearly was tuned into young audiences. Perhaps the producer and studio felt ...
Aug 19, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Season 11Ep. 5
"I’m so sure!” The story of Valley Girl is simply another Romeo & Juliet type of tale, but director Martha Coolidge captured a lot more in her film. The movie depicts an authentic look at life as a teenager in the early 80s, particularly the culture that grew out of Valley Speak and the whole concept of what a ‘valley girl’ represented, not just in the San Fernando Valley but anywhere in the country. Because of this sense of authenticity, Coolidge’s film has stood the test of time. Join us –...
Aug 12, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 11Ep. 4
"What are you waiting for? You’re 15 years old!” Cameron Crowe already had success as a writer when he went undercover and posed as a high school student to write his book “Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story.” Of course, he was high school age so it made perfect sense. Perhaps that’s why the film adapted from his book feels so authentic of the time and of these youths portrayed. And perhaps part of that is because of how first-time director Amy Heckerling approached the subject matter – ...
Aug 05, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Season 11Ep. 3
"As I was going up the stair,I met a man who wasn’t there.He wasn’t there again today.I wish, I wish he’d go away.”Identity was James Mangold’s first opportunity to direct a film based on a script he didn’t write. The screenplay, written by Michael Cooney, was inspired by Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None,” but adds some twists to the story that take it in a new direction. Mangold was immediately attracted to the material because he relished the opportunity to tell what is essentially ...
Jul 01, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 10Ep. 61
"You can’t trust a man’s life to your little notes and pictures.”Christopher Nolan’s second film, Memento from 2001, caught a lot of attention on its release because of the clever screenplay structure where the story unfolds both forward and backward in time, in a way creating an experience much like our protagonist Leonard Shelby (wonderfully played by Guy Pearce), a man suffering from anterior grade memory loss. Some people said Memento was too clever for its own good or that it was all style ...
Jun 24, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 10Ep. 60
“This is definitely how people die.” With Sword of Trust , writer/director Lynn Shelton continued her exploration of low budget, independent comedies while stepping a bit outside her comfort zone by filming a story in Alabama instead of the Pacific Northwest. It gave her another opportunity to work with her partner at the time Marc Maron. In the film, she skewers conspiracy theorists and clearly is having fun with it. But how does her improvisational style work as the film builds to its third ac...
Jun 17, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 10Ep. 58
“How could you possibly know that it’s me that you want?” Outside In comes after a big box office failure from writer/director Lynn Shelton with her film Laggies . That film never found its audience and lost a lot of money, so it makes sense that Shelton returned to her ‘even more indie’ roots, teaming up with Mark and Jay Duplass again to make this film with a lower, indie-sized budget. Outside In features Edie Falco as a high school teacher who worked for years to help free a former student, p...
Jun 10, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 10Ep. 57
Laggies was Lynn Shelton’s chance to step up and make a film for a bit more money than she’s had before. She’s not working with the Duplass brothers. She’s directing an original script that she didn’t write. So how does it fare compared to her earlier work? Join us – Pete Wright and Andy Nelson – as we hit the midpoint of our Lynn Shelton series with her 2014 film Laggies , starring Keira Knightley, Sam Rockwell, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ellie Kemper, Mark Webber, and Kaitlyn Dever. Here’s a hint at ...
Jun 03, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 10Ep. 55
"You have great taste in life and terrible taste in men.” Once Lynn Shelton and her producers had locked in plans to make Your Sister’s Sister , they cast Mark Duplass, Emily Blunt and Rachel Weisz in the three lead roles. They worked on the script and concepts over eight months and then they had to push the production back. When they did this, they lost Weisz due to scheduling conflicts she had with Deep Blue Sea . With only two days before they started shooting, Shelton cast Rosemary DeWitt to...
May 27, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 10Ep. 54
“I guess that the way I like to think of myself and the way I actually am are, um, maybe more different than I’d like them to be.” Lynn Shelton sadly passed away about a year ago at the age of 54, but left a mark on the independent film scene with the personal stories she created. Her third theatrical feature film, Humpday , got a lot of attention when it premiered at Sundance, and that gave Shelton the boost she needed to get more of her storytelling out into the world. Join us – Pete Wright an...
May 20, 2021•58 min•Season 10Ep. 52
"What the hell were those tentacles even attached to?” Frank Darabont wanted to adapt Stephen King’s novella “The Mist” as his directorial debut, but obviously that didn’t happen. It took him 13 years and three feature films, not to mention all the TV writing he was involved in, before he’d finally get around to adapting the story and making the film. What’s great about it is that he went dark with the story and took the original story even further than King took it. It worked for some people bu...
May 13, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Season 10Ep. 51
"I’m tired of people being ugly to each other.” When Stephen King published “The Green Mile,” it was quite a novelty as he chose to release it in six serialized segments, each releasing a month apart. It was inevitable that it would get adapted as a film, as so many other of King’s works, but perhaps because of its popularity, its subject matter, and because of Frank Darabont’s connection to King after making The Shawshank Redemption , it came as no surprise that Darabont was adapting and direct...
May 06, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Season 10Ep. 49
"Put your trust in the Lord. Your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank!” Frank Darabont may not have been Stephen King’s first Dollar Baby, but he certainly was one of the earliest. And according to King himself, Darabont’s short film The Woman in the Room is his favorite of the bunch. The story Darabont really wanted to adapt of King’s, however, was “Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption.” It wouldn’t be until much later in his career, after he’d already established himself as a screenwri...
Apr 29, 2021•1 hr 20 min•Season 10Ep. 48
"God gave me the talent to pose for pictures.” For Mary Harron’s third feature film, she went back to the biopic well. For this film, she focused on the rise of pornographic images told through the lens of the life of Bettie Page, one of the top pin-up models of the time. Having a woman direct the film helps ensure the male gaze won’t dominate in a film about this subject, but that doesn’t mean the film works as well as it should. Join us – Pete Wright and Andy Nelson – as we wrap up our short M...
Apr 22, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 10Ep. 47
“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman. Some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me. Only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there.” Bret Easton Ellis’ book “American Psycho” was published in 1991 under much controversy. The initial publisher cancelled the contract because of “aesthetic differences” with the content. Th...
Apr 15, 2021•1 hr 25 min•Season 10Ep. 46
"That’s that man hater. I don’t know what Andy sees in her.” Mary Harron started as a music journalist before moving into PBS documentaries. When she first learned about Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy Warhol, she thought the subject would make an interesting documentary. Unfortunately, the lack of footage and disinterest in being interviewed from people who knew her led Mary and her producing team to realize a feature film may make more sense. Even Warhol himself apparently pushed for ...
Apr 08, 2021•54 min•Season 10Ep. 45
“Thou shalt not kill, Mom. Thou shalt not kill women and children!” It was originally Al Pacino and his producing partner Martin Bregman who optioned Ron Kovic’s autobiographical book “Born on the Fourth of July” in 1977 so Pacino could play the role. They hired a young Oliver Stone to adapt it but after a few years of not getting anywhere, they dropped it. Stone told Kovic that if he made it, he’d circle back to get it made. True to his word, after the success of Platoon , Stone reached back ou...
Apr 01, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 10Ep. 43
Oliver Stone had been planning on starting Born on the Fourth of July after finishing Wall Street but had to wait for Tom Cruise to finish making Rain Man . While doing so, his producer Ed Pressman introduced him to a new play he’d optioned called “Talk Radio.” Stone agreed to help adapt the script with Eric Bogosian, one of the original writers and performer, and in the process took to the project. He ended up signing on to direct it and in the process, turned out one of his most interesting fi...
Mar 25, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Season 10Ep. 42
Platoon was Oliver Stone’s autobiographical movie, but Wall Street was a bit of a biographical story as well as his father had been a stock broker and Stone grew up a bit in that world. That being said, the movie doesn’t really reflect Stone’s father (unless you look at Hal Holbrook’s character). What Stone and co-writer Stanley Weiser did is attack the Reagan era growth of greed and used the insider trader scandals of the era to paint a portrait of this high stakes world. Join us – Pete Wright ...
Mar 18, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 10Ep. 41
"There’s the way it ought to be and there’s the way it is.” Oliver Stone had written his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam shortly after his return to the US but he wouldn’t get a chance to direct it for nearly 20 years. In that time, he wrote other scripts and started his directing career. When Platoon was finally made and released in 1986, it became the first film about the Vietnam War made by an actual veteran of it. The film was received well and set Stone on his career path as a director ...
Mar 11, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Season 10Ep. 40
Hal Ashby was behind several seminal films from the 60s and 70s, but by the time the 80s rolled around, his addictions made him unreliable. For his last feature film, he tackled novelist Lawrence Block’s famous character Matthew Scudder, and initially it sounded like it could be promising. Oliver Stone adapted the novel, and he’d proven he had a gritty edge to his work as a writer through the first half of the decade. Unfortunately the producers and Ashby wanted to move the story from New York t...
Mar 04, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Season 10Ep. 38
"Nobody just disappears in El Salvador.” News of the civil war in El Salvador certainly was prevalent in the early 80s when Oliver Stone returned to the director’s chair. For his return, he joined forces with photojournalist Richard Boyle to tell Boyle’s own stories of his time in El Salvador during the US’s transition from Carter to Reagan and how US aid to the military junta running the country was fueling the death squads and atrocities. The political angle seemed ripe for Stone and the types...
Feb 25, 2021•1 hr 26 min•Season 10Ep. 37
As a writer-director, Oliver Stone can maintain a clear vision and deliver the story he wants. When he’s working as a writer for hire, it’s often difficult to clearly get his story across. This certainly was the case when he worked on Year of the Dragon with director Michael Cimino, who wanted to add a Vietnam vet element to the story that wasn’t in the original source material. Stone did that and wrote an effective script, but between the two of them (both credited writers), they seemed to lose...
Feb 18, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 10Ep. 36
When Oliver Stone was hired to write the adaptation of Howard Hawks’ 1932 film Scarface , Sidney Lumet was on board to direct the film. Lumet wanted to update the story with a modern angle using colorful Miami in the early 80s as its backdrop focusing on the Cuban refugees coming in on the Mariel boatlift, specifically the criminal element. Stone loved the idea and took the job for that reason alone. Dealing with his own cocaine issue, Stone researched heavily for the film and wrote a gritty sto...
Feb 11, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Season 10Ep. 35
Oliver Stone had written his draft for the script of Conan the Barbarian before John Milius was on board, but even then everyone knew it was too grand and extravagant. With an estimated $40 million budget, they knew they had to thin it down quite a bit. Milius tossed quite a bit of Stone’s work though the two men clearly had similar masculine sensibilities so Milius’ tone still feels very much like Stone’s. So does the end result feel like something that Stone had helped develop? Join us – Pete ...
Feb 04, 2021•1 hr 22 min•Season 10Ep. 33
Oliver Stone had already made an indie feature film in 1973 and had written the adapted screenplay for Midnight Express which garnered him an Oscar. These elements put him in the position to write and direct his first feature film, albeit one still relatively under studio control. He found the book “The Lizard’s Tail” by Marc Brandell and really enjoyed the psychological angle of the story. He decided to adapt it as The Hand and he set to work. But for Stone’s debut directing a studio feature, d...
Jan 28, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 10Ep. 32
