James Peaty is film maker and writer. He's written for publishers including Marvel Comics, DC Comics and Dark Horse Comics in the US as well as Rebellion Publishing and Titan Comics in the UK. During that time he has written for titles including The Batman Strikes!, X-Men Unlimited, Green Arrow. Supergirl, Justice League Unlimited and Doctor Who. For 2000AD he wrote and co-created Skip Tracer (with artist Paul Marshall), while for The Judge Dredd Megazine he wrote and co-created Diamond Dogs (wi...
May 03, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 105
Melanie Williams is Professor in Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. A specialist in British cinema, her publications in this area include British Women’s Cinema (2009), Ealing Revisited (BFI, 2012), David Lean (2014), Female Stars of British Cinema: The Women in Question (2017) and Transformation and Tradition in 1960s British Cinema (2019). A Taste of Honey (1961) is a landmark in British cinema history. In this book, Melanie Williams explores the many, extraordin...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 104
Ethan Warren is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and is the writer and director of the film West of Her. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Apr 19, 2023•58 min•Season 1Ep. 103
Adrian Martin was film reviewer for The Age between 1995 and 2006. For his numerous books, essays and public lectures he has won the Byron Kennedy Award (Australian Film Institute) and the Pascall Prize for Critical Writing, and his PhD on film style won the Mollie Holman Award. He is the author of ten books and hundreds of essays on film, art, television, literature, music, popular and avant-garde culture. His site can be reached here. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com...
Apr 12, 2023•1 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 102
Al Clark is an Australian film producer. He is best known for his producer role on The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and his executive producer role on the film, Chopper . Clark is also the author of four books. Time Flies and Time Flies Too are Clark's memoirs, which merge the early days of punk and new wave popular music with the truncated British film renaissance of the 1980s and the world of international film finance, and later chronicle his move to Australia and his work the...
Apr 05, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 101
Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com. He is also the TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. His writing on film and television has appeared in The New York Times , Salon.com, The New Republic and Sight and Sound . Seitz is the founder and original editor of the influential film blog The House Next Door, now a part of Slant Magazine, and the co-founder and original editor of Press Play, an IndieWire blog of film a...
Mar 29, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 100
George Stevens Jr. has had a long and illustrious career in the entertainment industry, passing over five generations. In his new book, " My Place in the Sun ," Stevens Jr. provides a rare glimpse into the private lives of some of America's most famous first ladies, presidents, and celebrities. He shares personal stories and anecdotes about the Kennedys, Barack and Michelle Obama, Yo-Yo Ma, Elizabeth Taylor, Cary Grant, Bruce Springsteen, James Dean, Sidney Poitier, and many others. With humor a...
Mar 22, 2023•55 min•Season 1Ep. 99
In a burst of creativity unmatched in Hollywood history, Preston Sturges directed a string of all-time classic comedies from 1939 through 1948― The Great McGinty , The Lady Eve , Sullivan’s Travels , The Palm Beach Story , and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek among them―all from screenplays he alone had written. Cynical and sophisticated, romantic and sexually frank, crazily breakneck and endlessly witty, his movies continue to influence filmmakers and remain popular to this day. Yet despite this a...
Mar 15, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 98
Graham Skipper is a writer, actor, director, and producer, known for writing/directing the sci-fi/horror feature film Sequence Break , as well as his essays on horror cinema published in Fangoria and My Favourite Horror (Black Vortex Publishing, 2018). Most recently his work can be found in Simon & Schuster's Video Palace: In Search of the Eyeless Man (2020). Graham is a lifelong Godzilla fan, and was honoured work with Toho developing their Godzilla Tales series of comedic short films in 20...
Mar 08, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 97
Will Scheibel is associate professor of English at Syracuse University, where he teaches film and screen studies. He is the coauthor of Twin Peaks, a volume in the TV Milestones Series (Wayne State University Press, 2020), with Julie Grossman. His articles have appeared in numerous journals, including Camera Obscura, Film Criticism, Journal of Gender Studies, and Celebrity Studies. Here's the blurb from the book: Gene Tierney may be one of the most recognizable faces of studio-era Hollywood: she...
Mar 01, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 96
The course of events is predetermined and cannot be changed. Forces beyond our control—or even our comprehension—shape our fates. Such is the deterministic worldview embedded in a wide swath of contemporary cinema, from arthouse experiments to popular genre films, through both thematic concerns and narrative structures. These films, especially the recent spate of “elevated” science fiction and horror, tap into this deep-seated anxiety by focusing on characters who ultimately fail to transcend th...
Feb 22, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 95
Rahul Desai is a freelance critic who writes regularly for The Hindu among many other publications. His columns often look at film from a personal perspective and he is also the host of his own podcast. You can find some of his writing here and follow him on twitter here . Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Feb 15, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 94
Charles Bramesco is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The Guardian and many. many others. Taking you from the earliest feature films to today, Colours of Film introduces 50 iconic movies and explains the pivotal role that colour played in their success. The use of colour is an essential part of film. It has the power to evoke powerful emotions , provide subtle psychological symbolism and act as a narrative device . Wes Anderson’s pastels ...
Feb 08, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 93
Paul Williams is a key figure in New Hollywood and cinema generally. Along with Ed Pressman, he formed Pressman Williams Productions which brought to the screens the likes of Brian de Palma and Terrence Malick. He directed a number of films beginning in 1969 with Out of It starring Barry Gordon and Jon Voight and going on with such cult underground films as The Revolutionary and Dealing . His new memoir Harvard, Hollywood, Hitmen and Holy Men is a fascinating and at times hilarious chronicle of ...
Feb 02, 2023•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 92
An illustrated critical survey of Academy Award–winning writer and director Sofia Coppola’s career, covering everything from her groundbreaking music videos through her latest films In the two decades since her first feature film was released, Sofia Coppola has created a tonally diverse, meticulously crafted, and unapologetically hyperfeminine aesthetic across a wide range of multimedia work. Her films explore untenable relationships and the euphoria and heartbreak these entail, and Coppola deve...
Jan 25, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 91
A chance to listen to the FIRST EVER episode of Writers on Film. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jan 18, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 90
Recommended books: Andrew Killen 1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America J. Hoberman The Dream Life: Movies, Media, And The Mythology Of The Sixties Buy We Are the Mutants book. Visit We Are the Mutants website. Here's their blurb: If you haven’t heard, we wrote a book! And it’s out right now ! If you’ve followed us over the last six plus years, you know our MO: we get deep down into the berserk array of popular and outsider media produced during the Cold...
Jan 11, 2023•1 hr 32 min•Season 1Ep. 89
The epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussolini's Italy to 1940s Los Angeles—a timeless story of love, deceit, and sacrifice from the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena . “Crackling with wit and suffused with insight, Mercury Pictures Presents explores the endless give-and-take between life and art, the cost of integrity, and the ways we must make peace with the past in order to move forward toward...
Jan 04, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 88
From the moment Bette Davis served up a dead rat to Joan Crawford in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? a subset of camp horror films was born. The ‘Hag Horror’ genre exploited the former Oscar-winners and glamour queens who had effectively built Hollywood, transforming them into grotesque caricatures that revealed a cultural disdain for older women. In Crazy Old Ladies: The Story of Hag Horror , Caroline Young traces the development of this genre, from its origins in Sunset Boulevard and All Abou...
Dec 28, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 87
In September 1941, a handful of isolationist senators set out to tarnish Hollywood for warmongering. The United States was largely divided on the possibility of entering the European War, yet the immigrant moguls in Hollywood were acutely aware of the conditions in Europe. After Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), the gloves came off. Warner Bros. released the first directly anti-Nazi film in 1939 with Confessions of a Nazi Spy . Other studios followed with such films as The Mortal Storm ...
Dec 21, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 86
A Walter Hill Film is the first critical biography of Walter Hill, the legendary writer-director producer whose filmography includes 48 HRS. films, The Warriors, The Long Riders, Southern Comfort, Geronimo, Streets of Fire, Wild Bill, Broken Trail, the Alien films, and the pilot for Deadwood. The author is Walter Chaw, film critic for Film Freak Central and a contributor to The New York Times, Vulture, NPR and many other publications. The James Joyce of crime fiction James Ellroy wrote the intro...
Dec 14, 2022•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 85
A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away provides a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most influential films of the last fifty years as seen through the eyes of Paul Hirsch, the Oscar-winning film editor who worked on such classics as George Lucas’s Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back , Brian De Palma’s Carrie and Mission: Impossible , Herbert Ross’s Footloose and Steel Magnolias , John Hughes’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Planes, Trains & Automobiles , Joel Schumacher’s Fallin...
Nov 30, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 84
Ten years ago, Rachel Abramowitz began interviewing the most powerful women in the movie-making business in an effort to discover how they had infiltrated this male-dominated world. From superstar actors to independent directors, women in all arenas opened up to her, and the result is extraordinary—together, these stories comprise the most comprehensive history to date of women in Hollywood. Here, in their own candid and provocative words, are Jodie Foster, Penny Marshall, Dawn Steel, Sherry Lan...
Nov 23, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 83
The real story of Hollywood as told by such luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Harold Lloyd, and nearly four hundred others, assembled from the American Film Institute’s treasure trove of interviews, reveals a fresh history of the American movie industry from its beginnings to today. From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly...
Nov 16, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 82
This week I'm talking to Jake Cunnigham and Michael Leader of Ghibliotheque about their new guide to Anime. There are a ton of film recommendations in here for the beginner and some great depth for the devoted fan. I've just launched a substack related to the podcast John Writes on Film: click here for the first post. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Nov 09, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 81
As one of the world’s most dynamic and recognised celebrity icons, Eddie Murphy has been present in comedy and music for the last five decades and has dominated our big screens since his debut feature film, action comedy, 48hrs. some forty years ago. Delivered from a never-seen-before viewpoint, ‘Eddie Murphy; Deliriously Funny’ is an immersive account of Murphy’s entire comedy genius that spans the highs and lows of his career, touching on his childhood, exploring his influences, his stand-up c...
Nov 02, 2022•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 80
Scotland’s greatest export. The world’s first super spy. Voted the sexiest man on the planet. Sir Sean Connery was a titanic figure on screen and off for over half a century. Author A. J. Black delves into Connery’s life for more than mere biography, exploring not just the enormously varied pictures he made including crowd pleasing blockbusters such as The Untouchables or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, serious-minded fare in The Hill or The Offence, and his strange sojourns into eclectic fa...
Oct 26, 2022•1 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 79
A review of Meg Gardiner and Michael Mann's Heat 2 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 19, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 78
Alistair Owen is author of Smoking in Bed: Conversations with Bruce Robinson (one of David Hare’s Books of the Year in the Guardian), Story and Character: Interviews with British Screenwriters , Hampton on Hampton (one of Craig Raine’s Books of the Year in the Observer) and The Art of Screen Adaptation: Top Writers Reveal Their Craft . He has written original and adapted screenplays and stageplays, on spec and to commission; contributed filmmaker interviews to Creative Screenwriting and film boo...
Oct 12, 2022•1 hr 52 min•Season 1Ep. 77
I speak to Gian Piero Brunetta, author of The History of the Venice Film Festival and Jack King, the GQ writer who is the Harry Styles to my Chris Pine. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 08, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 76
