“Transsexuals are the stormtroopers of the future.” So says Genesis P-Orridge, the iconic, visionary musician who has fronted influential bands like Psychic TV and Throbbing Gristle. While P-Orridge isn’t transgender — they* call themselves a pandrogyne — their partner in this Talkhouse Music Podcast, Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace, came out as transgender in 2012. Still, as P-Orridge points out, both musicians have done something very brave: they’ve transitioned, in one way or another,...
Aug 25, 2015•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dan Zanes has long been one of the biggest names in the still-exploding genre of so-called "kindie-rock" — music made especially for kids. As the leader of the Grammy-winning Dan Zanes and Friends, he’s made over a dozen hugely popular and acclaimed albums and played concerts for adoring audiences all over the world. And Bill Sherman has not only won a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmmy, he's the music director of the iconic children's show Sesame Street. As a songwriter and orchestrator, he's responsi...
Aug 18, 2015•1 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, acclaimed English composers Geoff Barrow (Ex Machina) of Portishead fame, and Clint Mansell (Noah, Black Swan) discuss their creative processes, working with filmmakers, Ennio Morricone's low opinion of modern composers, the questionable quality of most films today, and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.
Aug 18, 2015•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Lower Dens leader Jana Hunter is a frequent Talkhouse contributor and a fine writer — in April of 2015, she wrote a widely read piece for Cosmopolitan titled "What It's Like to Be a Female Musician When You Don't Identify as a Woman." And Perfume Genius, aka Mike Hadreas, has said he's pretty fluid with gender too. But that was only one reason why we invited these two to sit down and chat for the Talkhouse Music Podcast. Lower Dens and Perfume Genius make some of the most interestingly beautiful...
Aug 11, 2015•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Gayby's writer-director Jonathan Lisecki talks about the best new TV show of the summer, UnREAL, with Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, its co-creator, writer and supervising producer. The pair discuss Shapiro's background, her inspirations, how she turned an award-winning short film into a hit TV show in record time, getting over "the Lifetime of it all," and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/...
Aug 07, 2015•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the late '70s, Andy Gill and Jon Langford were schoolmates at the University of Leeds in England. That was where Andy co-founded a band called Gang of Four and Jon helped start a band called the Mekons. Those bands went on to great things, such as helping to invent post-punk — and becoming iconic bands in the process. The Mekons are possibly the longest-running and certainly the most beloved post-punk band. Their music has encompassed punk rock, country music and dub reggae, and they've relea...
Aug 06, 2015•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Joe Swanberg becomes the first person to make a return appearance, here talking to Kris Swanberg, his wife and the writer-director of the recently released Unexpected. In a really frank and revealing conversation, they discuss the Sundance experience, selling a film, finding the right distributor, dealing with agents, taking meetings, shaping a career, and the challenges of being in a two-filmmaker household. For more filmmakers talking film ...
Jul 31, 2015•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast You might think that Chicago rapper Vic Mensa and Samuel Herring, the frontman of Baltimore synth-pop band Future Islands, don't have much in common. But you'd be wrong. And it's not because Mensa used to rap in a rock band and Herring has been a hip-hop fan since he was a kid. And it's not because Mensa is a fan of the Beatles and Nirvana, and Herring is about to drop a hip-hop EP he recorded with Stones Throw producer Madlib. No, it's because Mensa and Herring are both musicians and they enjoy...
Jul 31, 2015•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chvrches was playing a great set at the 2015 Pitchfork Music Festival when we noticed all three members of Haim rocking out by the side of the stage. Clearly, they're big Chvrches fans. When our producer bumped into Este Haim in the VIP area, he asked if she'd like to do a podcast with Lauren Mayberry, Chvrches' lead singer (and a regular Talkhouse writer). She absolutely did. Then Danielle Haim wanted in. And then Alana Haim wanted in too. So we wound up with Lauren chatting with all three Haim...
Jul 27, 2015•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, writerdirector Mary Harron sits down with Rose McGowan, the actress turned director who last year moved behind the camera for the acclaimed Sundance short, Dawn. Their wideranging discussion touches on everything from punk, religious cults and pyromania to Harron's experiences making American Psycho, McGowan's past as a teenage runaway and the ingrained sexism of Hollywood. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at ta...
Jul 24, 2015•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Belle & Sebastian co-founder Stuart David is the author of the critically acclaimed In the All-Night Café: A Memoir of Belle and Sebastian's Formative Year, which came out this year, and the Pogues' longtime accordionist James Fearnley is the author of the candid, vivid and appropriately rip-roaring Here Comes Everybody: The Story of the Pogues (2012). The two author-musicians discuss the tricky matter of writing about your bandmates, the vagaries of memory and taking out the bits that make you ...
Jul 14, 2015•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you’re a pop musician of South Asian descent, not many like you have yet reached the toppermost of the poppermost. Some really famous ones include M.I.A., Norah Jones and Tony Kanal from No Doubt. Soundgarden lead guitarist Kim Thayil, whose folks came from India, was among the first. As a kid, acclaimed new singer-songwriter Bhi Bhiman, whose family emigrated from Sri Lanka, looked to Thayil as something of a role model. Which was wise, because Thayil is one of the brightest, coolest rock mu...
Jul 09, 2015•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of The Talkhouse Music Podcast, two great rock songwriters, Courtney Barnett and Kim Deal — of iconic alt-rockers the Breeders — get together, have a few laughs and talk about hearing the sound of your own voice, obsessing in the studio, the relationship between drugs and creativity, touring and seeing the world, what it's like to be 27, and playing guitar upside down. Don't miss Kim's imitations of English people speaking French. And she just may have come up with the title of C...
Jul 01, 2015•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the Talkhouse Music Podcast, Philip Selway (Radiohead drummer and outstanding solo artist) has a really lovely conversation with one of his favorite new musicians, Ghostpoet, who weds vivid poetry with flowing grooves. (Offstage, he's Obaro Ejimiwe, and he happens to be a big Radiohead fan.) The two had never met before, but you can hear them hit it off, as they get deep into their processes in a really candid and insightful way, and get to places that only two musicians can g...
Jun 27, 2015•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the Talkhouse Music Podcast, Philip Selway (Radiohead drummer and outstanding solo artist) has a really lovely conversation with one of his favorite new musicians, Ghostpoet, who weds vivid poetry with flowing grooves. (Offstage, he's Obaro Ejimiwe, and he happens to be a big Radiohead fan.) The two had never met before, but you can hear them hit it off, as they get deep into their processes in a really candid and insightful way, and get to places that only two musicians can g...
Jun 25, 2015•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Erika Wennerstrom sings and plays guitar and keyboards with the great Heartless Bastards, whose new album Restless Ones came out June 15th. Her band has threads of garage rock, blues and country — and the music of the great Texan singer-songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard shares some of those same sounds. Wennerstrom and Hubbard are also fans of each other’s music, so we put them together for a Talkhouse Music Podcast and they dug deep into their songwriting process and had some laughs… and maybe a cry...
Jun 18, 2015•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Acclaimed singer-songwriter Matthew E. White and Delta Spirit lead singer Matt Vasquez had never met before they recorded this Talkhouse Music Podcast, but they just fell right into a great conversation, and they covered a whole lot of ground: their path into a career in music, the new music industry, the future of music, why they are musicians, and why and how they do what they do, and who is the greatest American rock & roll band.
Jun 12, 2015•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the second part of their conversation for the Talkhouse Music Podcast, Janet Weiss discusses her talent crush on Nick Cave and Meredith Graves talks about making music as a solo artist.
Apr 04, 2015•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this edition of the Talkhouse Music Podcast, Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney and Meredith Graves, formerly of Perfect Pussy, talk about creating safe spaces for women to feel empowered, crashing with your fans, and fist fights.
Apr 01, 2015•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Big-time Gang of Four fan Annie Clark (St. Vincent) talks with the band’s guitarist Andy Gill about distortion pedals, soccer tricks and the Grateful Dead.
Mar 08, 2015•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, husband-and-wife filmmaking team (and regular Talkhouse Film contributors) Lawrence Michael Levine and Sophia Takal discuss with Hollywood screenwriter Larry Karaszewski their Brooklyn-set screwball comedy Wild Canaries, plus the art of writing dialogue, acting in your own movies, mysteries, the movies of Milos Forman and Blake Edwards, and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.
Feb 27, 2015•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Daniel Schechter, the writer/director of Life of Crime and also a Talkhouse Film regular, is in conversation with actor/writer/director Desiree Akhavan about her debut feature Appropriate Behavior, plus women in film, bad actors, "director jail," finding your voice, and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.
Jan 26, 2015•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, legendary actresses Isabelle Huppert and Kim Cattrall -- who first met on the set of Otto Preminger's 1975 suspense drama Rosebud -- look back on their friendship and discuss such topics as achieving longevity in their careers, Sex and the City, Cattrall's new TV series Sensitive Skin, and the joys of producing. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.
Nov 14, 2014•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, two Academy Award-winning filmmakers are in conversation as Errol Morris talks with James Marsh about his new Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, plus Morris' own Hawking film, A Brief History of Time, Frederick Wiseman, cinematic misanthropy, Ed Gein, beating Donald Rumsfeld with a brick, and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.
Nov 07, 2014•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week's episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, James Marsh — the Oscar-winning director of Man on Wire and a regular Talkhouse Film contributor — sits down with Laura Poitras to discuss her gripping and revelatory Edward Snowden doc, CITIZENFOUR. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.
Oct 31, 2014•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Joshua Marston, the director of the Oscar-nominated Maria Full of Grace, talks with his longtime friend Jesse Moss about Moss' surprising and compelling Sundance documentary hit The Overnighters, a portrait of a smalltown priest in North Dakota who houses incoming oil workers in his church. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.
Oct 10, 2014•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Music podcast, Merrill Garbus from Tune-Yards talks with the iconic performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson. By turns funny and poignant, and always insightful, the conversation between these two affable powerhouses ranges from coping with sudden fame, "the art police," the healing power of puppetry, their upcoming projects, dehydrated kale bars, nutritional pantyhose and… hotel hotdogs. For more musicians talking music, visit Talkhouse Music at the...
Oct 07, 2014•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Gareth Evans, director of the awesome martial arts thrillers The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2, talks with fellow fan favorite Ben Wheatley (Kill List, A Field in England), with their wide-ranging conversation touching on everything from fight choreography and their upcoming projects to musicals and gonzo filmmaking. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.
Oct 03, 2014•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week on the Talkhouse Film podcast, Savage Steve Holland, writer-director of the classic '80s movies Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer, talks with filmmaker (and Talkhouse Film contributor) Michael Tully about Ping Pong Summer, Tully's heartfelt homage to '80s teen movies. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.
Sep 26, 2014•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rian Johnson, the writer-director Brick and Looper, talks with Terry Gilliam on the occasion of the U.S. theatrical release of Gilliam's new movie, The Zero Theorem. In the concluding part of their two-part conversation for the Talkhouse Film podcast, Johnson and Gilliam touch on such disparate subjects as piracy, directing opera, Star Wars, magic, the horror of nature and Gilliam's long-delayed Don Quixote project. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/f...
Sep 19, 2014•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
