Legendary film producer, director, and documentarian Frank Marshall is my guest on the show today to talk about his working relationship with Steven Spielberg, a creative partnership that goes back to Raiders of the Lost Ark and continues on to this day. Marshall co-founded Amblin with Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy. We talk about what necessitated Spielberg creating his own production company, how they split up their duties to produce some of the best geeky flicks of the '80s, and eventually ge...
Jun 30, 2025•55 min
Frequent Steven Spielberg collaborator David Koepp is our guest this week. Koepp is the screenwriter behind Jurassic Park, The Lost World, War of the Worlds, and Spielberg's upcoming UFO/UAP flick as well as the director of the criminally underrated Stir of Echoes. Koepp also penned the script for the upcoming Jurassic World Rebirth, which hits cinemas July 2nd. We talk about his work in the Jurassic realm, the Spielberg phone call that got him back into the franchise for the new movie, and the ...
Jun 24, 2025•47 min
Director Jonathan Entwistle (Karate Kid: Legends, The End of the F***ing World, I Am Not Okay With This) joins Vespe to talk about the incredibly divisive Spielberg film, Hook. Spielberg's Hook is a bonafide classic for a whole generation, but if you're not part of that younger Millennial generation it has the reputation of leaving you cold. The story is about a world where Peter Pan is real and he grew up to be Robin Williams. Peter marries Wendy's granddaughter and starts his own family, forge...
May 27, 2025•1 hr 16 min
It might come as a surprise to some folks that Steven Spielberg directed the pilot for Columbo, titled Murder By The Book, but that he did and it turned out to be one of the most important projects of his early career as his success with this episode is what got him the gig directing Duel. If you're going to talk about Columbo and Spielberg then you're going to need a guest who knows their whodunnits and howcatchems. Writer/Director Rian Johnson has made a name for himself in the murder mystery ...
May 20, 2025•1 hr 7 min
The Spiel co-host, Josh Robert Thompson, is stepping away from the show, but before he leaves to pursue his own creative endeavors he and Vespe take a look back at his time on the show, discuss our favorite episodes, guests, and experiences while he was behind the mic. You'll hear plenty of behind the scenes stories, more Spielberg, Lucas, and Morgan Freeman impressions, some Scott Wampler anecdotes and even a rant about Uwe Boll being terrible. In short, it's a hell of a send off for Josh Rober...
May 13, 2025•1 hr 34 min
Veronica Cartwright joins The Spiel hosts to talk about her incredible career, from The Twilight Zone to The Birds to Alien and Witches of Eastwick, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and, yes, even Scary Movie 2. Cartwright also shares her thoughts on Steven Spielberg's career, including an incredible anecdote of watching Jaws for the first time with Richard Dreyfuss. There are so many great stories packed into this chat that it's hard to hint at them all, but you will get her memories on working ...
Apr 29, 2025•46 min
Charles Soule (author of the Star Wars: The High Republic series as well as some of the best Star Wars comic books) joins the show to talk all about one of the most controversial and heavily debated Steven Spielberg films: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We all know co-host Josh Robert Thompson goes to bat for this one, but does Soule? We dive into the George Lucas of it all, a topic that Soule has a lot of insight into considering how closely he has studied Lucas's output wh...
Apr 22, 2025•1 hr 40 min
Incredible composer Bear McCreary (God of War, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Battlestar Galactica, Happy Death Day) knows a thing or two about composing badass scores. Vespe challenged him to come up with top 5 favorite John Williams/Steven Spielberg collaborations and the resulting episode sees McCreary putting his Top 5 against Vespe' Top 5. Originally only available on the show's Patreon, this wonderfully nerdy chat is now available for all to hear. What comes out on top? Does Jurass...
Apr 07, 2025•1 hr 18 min
The Spiel welcomes Anthony Breznican, Vespe's Kingcast co-host and entertainment reporter extraordinaire at Vanity Fair, to talk about Amblin's Innerspace. This weird-ass movie was directed by Joe Dante and produced by Spielberg and is all about a shrunk down Dennis Quaid getting injected into Martin Short's butt and that's just the start of this crazy '80s flick. Bond-esque villains, mini-Kevin McCarthy, a pissed off screenwriter and a who's who of very famous people that almost made this movie...
Mar 31, 2025•1 hr 17 min
I think we can all agree that Steven Spielberg knows how to end a movie. He's got some all-timer endings in his filmography, but he also has some divisive endings. We're talking about War of the Worlds, A.I., Munich, and more. Noted filmmaker, podcaster, entertainment host, and professional geek Clarke Wolfe (Malum, Torn Hearts, Sending in the Wolfe podcast) joins JRT and Vespe to examine some of these endings and, surprise surprise, there isn't always agreement about how well these more divisiv...
Mar 17, 2025•1 hr 18 min
The Goonies is an important movie for folks of a certain generation, including the absolute madman who is this week's guest. You know him from Pitch Perfect 2, The Suicide Squad, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Silicon Valley and now he's here to talk about The Goonies, Richard Donner's coming-of-age adventure story produced by Steven Spielberg. We bounce around a lot in this episode, going from behind-the-scenes trivia to random Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions to a serious discussion about the auth...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 14 min
Leave it to Vespe and JRT to turn a conversation about the 1995 Amblin family adventure story CASPER into a lewd, R-rated talk about ghost titties. In our defense, bad influence (and James Beard award-winning author) Mallory O'Meara is our guest and despite all of our best efforts when we three get together things get chaotic and talk quickly turns to horniness. Does Casper hold up? Which of the three Uncle ghosts do you most relate to? Is it possible that '90s Bill Pullman and '80s Alec Baldwin...
Mar 03, 2025•1 hr 13 min
Celebrated genre author Stephen Graham Jones (The Indian Lake Trilogy, Mongrels, I Was A Teenage Slasher) is a huge fan of both Twister and Twisters, produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, and shows up this week ready to talk about what made him laugh, cry, and jump for joy in both the 1996 original film and its 2024 sequel. Topics include: An all new patented crazy wildlife story from Mr. Jones, how scary mother nature is, the frequent references to The Shining in Spielberg's work...
Feb 24, 2025•1 hr 19 min
Spielberg has been working towards making a musical for his entire career, so it shouldn't be a surprise that when he finally got to make an all-out musical he brought not only his A-game, but also his deep love and understanding of Old Hollywood musicals with him. This resulted in 2021's West Side Story, an incredibly smart and charming reinterpretation of the Robert Wise film and the Stephen Sondheim original stage play starring Rachel Zegler, Ansel Elgort, Ariana DeBose, and the original's Ri...
Feb 10, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 29
This week's topic: 1985's Amazing Stories, an NBC anthology series overseen by Steven Spielberg himself. Not only did he produce the whole thing, but he also directed two episodes. Those two episodes are the focus of the show as we welcome director Josh Ruben (this weekend's rom-com slasher HEART EYES). We talk a bit about marrying those two radically different genres into one super fun movie before we dive into Spielberg's episodes of Amazing Stories. The episodes are titled Ghost Train and The...
Feb 03, 2025•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 28
It's a heavy topic, but we somehow found the perfect guest to balance a serious topic with a little humor in noted critic, pop culture journalist, and author Jordan Hoffman (Vanity Fair, New York Daily News, The Times of Israel). Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a German Industrialist who worked from within the Nazi party to save over 1100 Jews from the concentration camps under the guise of needing their labor. Spielberg's movie was a massive hit, won tons...
Jan 27, 2025•1 hr 42 min•Season 1Ep. 24
The one and only Ariana Richards, Lex Murphy from Jurassic Park, joins Vespe and JRT to talk dinosaurs, Graboids, Martians, and even her ludicrous haircut in 1989's Prancer. This is Ariana's very first podcast appearance and she comes loaded for bear, y'all. She has stories about working on all her big movies including Jurassic Park. Hear about how she got noticed by Spielberg in the first place, what it was that set her apart from the other girls who auditioned to play Lex, how Spielberg treate...
Jan 13, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Today's guest is the self-described World's Smallest Stuntman who has doubled everybody from Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings to Christopher Reeve's Superman and James Cameron's Aliens. Kiran Shah is also a poet and an actor who played a not so small part in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark before going on to double Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Kiran looks back on his time working with Spielberg, how he had to lie to get his job on Raiders, as well as stor...
Dec 30, 2024•53 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Today we have a conversation with Ian Malcolm's Daughter, Kelly, herself, Ms. Vanessa Chester. Despite being plagued by tech issues, this deep-dive interview about Vanessa's experience working with Spielberg, Goldblum, Vaughn, and Moore while making The Lost World: Jurassic Park is funny, illuminating, and is guaranteed to brighten your day. Chester most recently appeared in a cameo for the currently out Spielberg parody film THE INVISIBLE RAPTOR. We talk about that, and just about everything yo...
Dec 23, 2024•1 hr 38 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Steve Agee (Peacemaker, The Sarah Silverman Program, Superstore) joins the Spiel boys to talk about the very festive, very zany, and incredibly dark family film Gremlins, produced by Steven Spielberg, directed by Joe Dante, and starring Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates. The trio discuss the film's reception upon release, why it still holds up today, how it helped usher in the PG-13 rating, how devastatingly gorgeous Phoebe Cates is, and how Gremlins grew out of the famous unmade Spielberg evil ali...
Dec 16, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 23
The very talented actor, comedian, and voice performer John Mariano has played a part in a lot of your favorites, from Married with Children and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia to Fallout 4 and Baldur's Gate. But one of his most recognizable performances is as Bobby the pigeon in Steven Spielberg's oddly raunchy '90s cartoon series Animaniacs. Bobby was the leader of the Goodfeathers, a trio of birds who sound a lot like the lead characters of Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. John joins us to tal...
Dec 09, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 22
We're forcing author, comedian, and actor DC Pierson to cover all the Transformers films with us here at The Spiel and he finally returns for the second film in the franchise: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a film that is inexplicably nearly 3 hours long, is even more incoherent than the first, and filled with giant robot testicles. Still, this film has its fans and at least one of them is in on this chat. Listen to us go over the weird politics of the movie, try to make sense of the varyi...
Dec 04, 2024•1 hr 33 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Is the Back to the Future Trilogy the culmination of what we think of as the Amblin Experience? Did you know that the original thought was to have Doc and Marty travel back to the groovy '60s? And what exactly happened with all that Crispin Glover stuff? All those questions and more are discussed as Vespe is joined by his Ain't It Cool compatriot and incredibly film writer Drew McWeeny as we dive into Back to the Future Part 2, a film that set the template that's still being followed to this day...
Nov 25, 2024•1 hr 28 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Live from Corey Feldman's recording studio comes this in-person sit down interview with Corey and director Eugenio Mira, whose long lost collaboration, The Birthday, is finally getting a second life thanks to Drafthouse Films in theaters and on streaming. Corey welcomed Josh and Vespe into his home for this interview where some pretty strict limits were put on us, but we rolled with it and get a very insightful chat about Feldman's creative process, his appreciation of pop culture art, and his b...
Nov 18, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 19
David Dastmalchian is one of our best character actors (LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL, THE DARK KNIGHT, DUNE, OPPENHEIMER, THE SUICIDE SQUAD) and now he's joining Vespe and JRT to talk about the controversial INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. Our time with Dave was limited, so we run through this movie at a breakneck pace, much like the back half of the film itself, talk about its place among the other Indiana Jones films, why we loved it so much growing up, and why it remains a favorite entry i...
Nov 11, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 18
The writer/producer/director team behind A Quiet Place, 65, and The Boogeyman have a new movie out this week called Heretic, starring Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, and Chloe East, so they decided to stop by and chat about one of their favorite Spielberg films: A.I. That's right, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods are our guests and we dive into the nitty gritty of Spielberg's controversial masterpiece, A.I. We all have different interpretations of the ending, so of course we talk through that. We talk to...
Nov 04, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Chaos ensues as the wonderful, and James Beard award-winning, author Mallory O'Meara (Girly Drinks, The Lady from the Black Lagoon) comes on the show to discuss the extremely odd Amblin flick Joe Vs. The Volcano, starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan (three Meg Ryans, believe it or not), and directed by the famous writer John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck). This movie is a favorite of Vespe's, but both other folks in the chat are newbies to it. We get personal, talk about what we'd do if we were diagnosed ...
Oct 21, 2024•1 hr 45 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Germain Lussier (head movie nerd writer at Gizmodo and I09) joins Vespe and JRT for a wide-ranging discussion on Steven Spielberg's Hook starring Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, and a very pissed off Julia Roberts. How much does nostalgia come into play when discussing this film? Did everybody who was a child when they saw it love it and all the adults hated it? Or is the answer more complicated than that? We cover that, plus go into the troubled production and where Hook falls in Spielberg's ov...
Oct 14, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Jurassic Park is not only one of the best popcorn films ever made, it's also the catalyst for the largest shift in Hollywood production and storytelling in recent cinematic history. It changed movies forever. To dive into that and just how awesome and fun Jurassic Park is, we are joined by one of the most in-demand screenwriters in the business, Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight, The Umbrella Academy, Godzilla x Kong). We talk about Jurassic Park's impact, how different it would have been if any of the...
Oct 07, 2024•1 hr 43 min•Season 1Ep. 14
The Spiel co-creator Scott Wampler passed away before the show debuted and the hunt was on to find someone that could step in to the immense void he left behind. After months of searching, Vespe made his choice. Now you get to meet the new co-host. What are their dreams? Aspirations? Deepest, darkest wishes? And how good is their Morgan Freeman impression? You'll have to listen to find out! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 30, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 13
