Podcast appearances and mentions of Anne Meara

Meg investigates the multiple kidnappings of Curtis Sliwa, founder of The Guardian Angels. Jessica discovers the year women in comedy turned the tide…for themselves: 1983.Please check out our website, follow us on Instagram, on Facebook, and...WRITE US A REVIEW HEREWe'd LOVE to hear from you! Let us know if you have any ideas for stories HEREThank you for listening!Love,Meg and Jessica

Heavyweights Released February 17th, 1995 Starring Ben Stiller Gerry (Aaron Schwartz) is not looking forward to his summer vacation, since he'll be spending it at a camp for overweight boys in order to shed pounds. Fortunately, a kindly couple, the Bushkins (Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara), run the camp and make the process fun and relaxed. However, they're soon forced to declare bankruptcy and sell the camp to Tony Perkis (Ben Stiller), a fitness fanatic who turns the camp into a living nightmare of over-the-top training. But the kids plan to fight back.

Actor and filmmaker Ben Stiller feels…hmmm…about being Conan O'Brien's friend. Ben sits down with Conan once more to discuss the process of enlisting Tom Cruise for Tropic Thunder, producing a documentary about his parents Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, and bringing the question of what he'd like to see on TV to the second season of Severance. Later, Conan responds to a voicemail regarding a burglar who was wearing his merch. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: (669) 587-2847. Get access to all the podcasts you love, music channels and radio shows with the SiriusXM App! Get 3 months free using this show link: https://siriusxm.com/conan.

ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz explains how the outgoing and incoming presidential administrations shaped the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement and key moments from Biden's speech. After Pres. Biden delivered his farewell address where he reflected on his political career and issued a stark warning to the nation, the co-hosts weigh react. After "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" shared nasty texts sent about each other to work through their issues, #TheView co-hosts weigh in. Ben Stiller, director and executive producer of the mind-bending series "Severance," discusses the highly anticipated new season and reflects on his hilarious film roles. Plus, he opens up about rekindling his marriage with Christine Taylor and working on a documentary about the 60-year marriage and working relationship of his parents Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"Shut up, you ugly bitch!" The Boys From Brazil (1978) directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and starring Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen, Steve Guttenberg, Anne Meara, Bruno Ganz and Jeremy Black Next Time: The Addams Family Values (1993)

You may know William Atherton from Day Of The Locust, The Hindenburg, Looking For Mr. Goodbar, and Real Genius or you may better remember him for vigorously questioning the environmental safety of ghost busting or for receiving a blow to the face which rings in a very Merry Christmas in Die Hard.  Bill began his career on the stage, performing in Broadway plays by David Rabe, John Guare and Arthur Miller. The Ghostbuster and Die Hard franchises brought him to Hollywood and he joins us to discuss his fascinating history, his heroes and influences and his range of experiences with such performers as Anne Bancroft, George C. Scott, Donald Sutherland, Karen Black, and Diane Keaton. Did you know that Bill sings What'll I Do in Nelson Riddle's Great Gatsby score!? He tells us all about it and talks about recognizing the greatness of Stephen Spielberg even as a baby director when Bill stared in Sugarland Express. He remembers how Anne Bancroft would not stop talking about Mel Brooks on the set of The Hindenburg, he shares what he learned from the casts of Lost and Desperate Housewives and he addresses the internet's most time-honored question, is Die Hard a Christmas movie?Plus, Fritz and Weezy are recommending Will & Harper and Nobody Wants This on Netflix.Path Points of Interest:William AthertonWilliam Atherton on WikiWilliam Atherton on IMDBGift of DemocracyMedia Path PodcastNobody Wants This on NetflixWill and Harper - Netflix

Send us a textThis week we talk about Heavyweights from 1995. Our creator profile this is Kenan Thompson!https://www.instagram.com/thebonsaimoviecrew/https://twitter.com/bonsai_crewhttps://www.tiktok.com/@thebonsaimoviecrewhttps://discord.gg/8jCPe8T2kT

February 26 - March 3, 1972 RETURNING guests to the show comedians Irene Bremis (watch her special Sweetie) and TV's Frank Conniff join Ken this week. Ken, Irene and Frank discuss growing up in New York, the horrors of Staten Island, good pizza, racism, Mary Tyler Moore, Sherlock Holmes cigarettes, Doral Cigarettes, True Cigarettes, killing women, Rain Barrell, questionable protein stains, fabric softener, The Old Man Who Cried Wolf, movies vs tv series, where Irene and Frank met, Brian Denehy, the map of Ireland on Frank's face, Maureen O'Hara, psychic detectives, Saturday night death slots, MTM productions, strong women, Maude, how awful Bill Cosby is, dying on stage, Bob Hope, Dana Gould, Bing Crosby and Friends, women's lib, Ear Stoppies, wigs, Rowan & Martin, Gene Hackman, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, comic comradery, Sid & Marty Kroft, Hart to Hart, the show with the woman, James Garner, Left Behind, Kirk, Christians, losing your mind, cycle cell anemia, Greeks, Cannon, William Conrad, MeTV, It Takes a Thief, Carson, Serling, meeting Dick Cavet, Adam 12, Dick Clark, Hellzapoppin the TV series, Dom DeLuise, George Wallace, working on Sabrina, That Girl, Cannonball Run, Eddie Murphy, Red Foxx, Sandford and Son, Soap, Room 222, and watching MeTV at 2am. 

Host Meg Wolitzer presents three works about idealized lives, and ideas about what constitutes an “ideal” life.  “Boy Meets Girl” is Jen Kim's humorous version of a Hollywood love story.  It's read by Tony Hale.  In the John Cheever classic “The Worm in the Apple” a couple have the perfect life—but no one can believe it.  It's read by Anne Meara.  And a harried mother fantasizes about a brand new life in Vanessa Cuti's “Our Children,” performed by Claire Danes, followed by an interview with Danes..

TVC 644.2: Greg Ehrbar discusses the Kino Lorber Blu-ray release of A Fish in the Bathtub (1998), an offbeat comedy starring Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, Phyllis Newman, Bob Dishy, and Judy Graubart that also marks one of the few times that Stiller and Meara performed together on film (other than their series of commercials for Blue Nun wines). Want to advertise/sponsor our show? TV Confidential has partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle advertising/sponsorship requests for the podcast edition of our program. They're great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email sales@advertisecast.com or click the link below to get started: https://www.advertisecast.com/TVConfidentialAradiotalkshowabout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Be advised: Adult language is used during this podcast Those of you who are fans of the TV show -Amerca's Got Talent - will recognize my guest this week. Maureen Langan was a semi-finalist on Season 18 of AGT where her performance landed her a standing ovation and four "Yeses" from the judges. Maureen is an internationally acclaimed standup comedian, broadcaster, Tedx Talk speaker and corporate event host. She has performed with entertainment, literary and cultural icons that include Robin Williams, Jay Leno, Rosie O'Donnell, Jack Canfield, Joy Behar, Gloria Steinem, Danny Glover and Gladys Knight ­– and she roasted comedy royalty Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. As a broadcaster, Maureen created and hosted Bloomberg Television and Radio's award-winning entertainment programming, where her most memorable moments were interviewing Joan Rivers and George Carlin. Her astute observations and interviewing style earned her the title of “Best Female Commentator” by the Newswomen's Club of New York. Her TEDx Talk, “The Business of Fun,” is inspired by her time performing in South Africa at the first ever Johannesburg International Comedy Festival. Maureen's message of inclusion had 600 people on their feet when first presented at Monmouth University. Maureen and I talk about her broadcasting career, her solo show "Daughter of a Garbageman", her Tedx Talk, what it's like being talent on AGT, her comedy tour "Don't Make Me Hate You", hosting corporate events and a TV pilot she'd like to make. Sit, relax and enjoy the story behind appearing on AGT and the differences between what you say on TV and in a comedy act.

Neal Marshad joins me to talk about his father, a graphic artist for Look Magazine; living near a movie theater; learning how to film high school football games; 16 mm vs. the split 8 cameras; going to film school with Leonard Maltin; his editing and documentary professors at NYU; is first documentary, "Sculpture by Isaac Witkin"; working friendship with Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara; creating commercials for NYC with comedians; meeting Tom Schiller; having Bill Murray in his office to tape the track of "Perchance to Dream"; shooting "Java Junkie"; shooting "Falling in Love" with Jon Lovitz and Victoria Jackson; "Love is a Dream" with Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks; "The Land Before Television" with Dana Carvey; "Linden Palmer - Hollywood's Forgotten Director"; shooting "Bar Mitzvah 5000" and getting it nixed by the censors; shooting a concert film for Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes; winning an Emmy for cinematography for the 1982 Super Bowl; producing the Johnny Walker Comedy Search for the Comedy Channel; discovering Steve Harvey, Judd Apatow, Brian Kiley, Ellen Cleghorne, Mark Brazill, and Ray Romano; BBC hires him to be the first network to stream video on their website; Mr. Blobby

Set sail on Episode 48, Season 2 of the Love Boat, the worlds greatest romantic comedy drama television series of all time! In this episode we follow an all star cast that includes Charo, Cyd Charisse, Anne Meara, Craig Stevens, Jerry Stiller, Cory Feldman, and Johhny Disco as they deal with career conflicts, parental predicaments, soldier sagas, maternal mayhem, singer side hustles, remarkable reunions and baked Alaska! So leave the kids at home and say bon jour to episode 48 of Lovin' The Loveboat. We also encourage everyone to find our podcasts Instagram page ⁠⁠Lovin' The Love Boat⁠⁠ to enjoy the super cool video messages from Isaac himself Mr. Ted Lange! And much more. Thanks for listening to the podcast and joining us on this voyage and by all means consider subscribing to the show as well as Paramount+ so you can watch the episode with us. We promise you'll be glad that you did.

  David Saint is in his 25th season as Artistic Director of George Street Playhouse. He has directed 43 mainstage productions at GSP, having most recently helmed Ken Ludwig's Dear Jack, Dear Louise. Additional productions include Fully Committed and Tiny Beautiful Things for the GSP virtual season, Midwives, and Conscience, in addition to The Trial of Donna Caine, American Hero, American Son, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change and An Act of God starring the legendary Kathleen Turner in the 2017-18 season. His time here has been marked by collaborations with such artists as Keith Carradine, Tyne Daly, Rachel Dratch, Sandy Duncan, Boyd Gaines, A.R. Gurney, Uta Hagen, Jack Klugman, Dan Lauria, Kathleen Marshall, Elaine May, Anne Meara, David Hyde Pierce, Chita Rivera, Paul Rudd, Stephen Sondheim, Marlo Thomas, Eli Wallach, and many others including a remarkable partnership with Arthur Laurents. In addition, many new award-winning works have begun their life here during his tenure such as The Toxic Avenger, Proof, The Spitfire Grill, Joe DiPietro's Clever Little Lies, and It Shoulda Been You. He has directed Final Follies at Primary Stages, Clever Little Lies at Guild Hall in East Hampton, NY and off-Broadway at West Side Theatre, as well as the National tour of West Side Story. In July 2016, he directed a two-night concert performance of West Side Story at the legendary Hollywood Bowl. In Summer 2019, he directed a revolutionary new production of West Side Story for IHI Stage Around in Tokyo and served as Associate Producer for the new film version of West Side Story directed by Steven Spielberg. 

Chicago-based critic and author of the new book "Talk 90s with Me: 23 Unpredictable Conversations with Stars of an Unforgettable Decade" Matt Pais joins us to discuss the kids cult classic 'Heavyweights'.After a conversation about Matt's new book, we talk through the film's empathetic and nuanced portrayal of fatness (notably featuring an ensemble of actors of size), its place within the canon of 90s anti-conformity comedies, and why this might be Ben Stiller's most pitch-perfect performance. Follow Matt Pais on Twitter. Check out Matt's new book "Talk 90s with Me: 23 Unpredictable Conversations with Stars of an Unforgettable Decade".Get access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.....Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish. 

Get access to this entire episode as well as all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.

On this exciting new episode of Comedy Gold Minds, Kevin is joined by actor, director, and comedic powerhouse Ben Stiller. The two discuss all things comedy, including growing up with comedic parents Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, creating The Ben Stiller Show, what it's like to act and direct a film at the same time, and why he thinks his movie Tropic Thunder would never get made today.Like Comedy Gold Minds? SiriusXM subscribers get it a day early, plus Kevin Hart's Laugh Out Loud Radio, his 24/7 comedy channel, with great talk shows and stand-up. Learn more / check it out for 3 months at siriusxm.com/comedygoldminds.

This week Victoria and Chelsea are riding with THE DAYTRIPPERS (1996) Directed by Greg Mottola.Shop the Store: http://tee.pub/lic/bvHvK3HNFhkTheme Music "A Movie I'd Like to See" by Al Harley. Show Art: Cecily Brown Follow the Show @freshmoviepod YouTube Channel abreathoffreshmovie@gmail.com

0:00 - Intro & Summary2:00 - Movie Discussion51:50- Cast & Crew/Awards1:00:54 - True Crime/Pop Culture1:03:19 - Music1:11:10 - Rankings & Ratings To see a full list of movies we will be watching and shows notes, please follow our website: https://www.1991movierewind.com/Follow us!https://linktr.ee/1991movierewind Theme: "sunrise-cardio," Jeremy Dinegan (via Storyblocks)Don't forget to rate/review/subscribe/tell your friends to listen to us!

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 606, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 606, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: The 18Th Century 1: This man was hanged for murder and piracy May 23, 1701. Captain Kidd. 2: Name of 3 French kings in the century, and of a gold French coin of the time. Louis. 3: Sweden's major power status ended with defeat by this czar in the 1709 battle of Poltava. Peter the Great. 4: Tiradentes, or "tooth puller", lead a revolt against Portugal in this South America colony. Brazil. 5: 1787 Mozart work often called a serenade; the "New Oxford Companion to Music" says it's, aptly, a nocturne. "A Little Night Music" ("Eine kleine Nachtmusik"). Round 2. Category: All Stars 1: This Cardinal slugger hit his 500th career homer in 1999. Mark McGwire. 2: Nicknamed "The Rocket", this pitcher won 3 Cy Young Awards with the Red Sox and 2 with the Blue Jays. Roger Clemens. 3: Flags at Dodger Stadium flew at half-staff after this '50s all-star died Aug. 14, 1999. Pee Wee Reese. 4: One of the 2 all-stars who reached the 3,000-hit mark in 1999. Wade Boggs or Tony Gwynn. 5: This Minnesota Twin inspired the Kirby Bear, a stuffed doll wearing his No. 34 jersey. Kirby Puckett. Round 3. Category: The League Of Nations 1: Of the 63 members the league had over the years, this was the only one expelled, for attacking Finland. Soviet Union/USSR/Russia. 2: After Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, this emperor made a vain plea for the league's help. Haile Selassie. 3: The committee that drafted the league's covenant included this U.S. president. Woodrow Wilson. 4: On September 5, 1929 Aristide Briand presented a plan to create a "United States Of" this. Europe. 5: In March 1920 the U.S. Senate did not ratify this treaty that created the League of Nations. the Treaty of Versailles. Round 4. Category: "A.m." 1: When Phonemate introduced the first commercially successful one in 1971, it weighed 10 pounds. Answering machine. 2: At age 9 Ben Stiller made his TV acting debut on "Kate McShane" starring this actress, his mom. Anne Meara. 3: Hail Schubert who came up with this composition so "full of grace" in 1825. "Ave Maria". 4: Marilyn Monroe's last movie, "The Misfits", was written by this playwright, her then-husband. Arthur Miller. 5: Once home to the Hittites, today this region is occupied by Turkey. Asia Minor. Round 5. Category: Russian Literature 1: The last words spoken in this novel are "Hurrah for Karamazov!". The Brothers Karamazov. 2: In this last Chekov play, the character Trofimov says, "All Russia is our orchard". The Cherry Orchard. 3: This 1957 Pasternak novel was finally published in the USSR in 1987. Doctor Zhivago. 4: His 1863 novel "The Cossacks" grew out of his service in the Russian Army in the Caucasus. Tolstoy. 5: He was expelled from the Soviet Writer's Union in 1969; in 1970 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Solzhenitsyn. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with filmmaker Eric Mendelsohn, who revisits the lessons he learned while making his debut feature film, “Judy Berlin.”LINKSJudy Berlin Trailer: https://youtu.be/23PlEaTy9WAEdie Falco Interview about Judy Berlin: https://youtu.be/AoC5q5N-6kYA Free Film Book for You: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12Another Free Film Book: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/Eli Marks Website: https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/Albert's Bridge Books Website: https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast***TRANSCRIPT -EPISODE 106Eric Mendelson Interview [JUDY BERLIN SOUNDBITE] JohnThat was a soundbite from “Judy Berlin,” which was written and directed by today's guest, Eric Mendelsohn. Hello and welcome to episode 106 of The Occasional Film podcast -- the occasional companion podcast to the Fast, Cheap Movie Thoughts Blog. I'm the blog's editor, John Gaspard. Judy Berlin, starring Edie Falco, as well as Madeline Kahn, Bob Dishy, Barbara Barrie and Julie Kavner, was Eric Mendelsohn's feature film debut. The film was an Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival … won Best Director at Sundance … Best Independent Film at the Hamptons Film Festival … and was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards. Eric is currently the Professor of Professional Practice, Film, at Columbia University. I first spoke to Eric about Judy Berlin years and years ago, for my book, Fast Cheap and Under Control: Lessons Learned from the Greatest Low-Budget Movies of All Time. In the course of that interview, Eric laid out a handful of really smart filmmaking lessons – lessons that, if followed, might be the difference between making a successful film … or making no film at all. I was curious: What did Eric think about those lessons, all these years later? Before we got into that, though, we talked about the origins of Judy Berlin … [MUSIC TRANSTION] John What was the impetus that made Judy Berlin happen? Eric It's answerable in a more general way. When I get interested in making a script or making a film, it's because a group of feelings and images almost in a synesthesia kind of way, come together and I get a feeling and I say, oh, yeah, that would be fun. And for Judy Berlin, the set of feelings were definitely having to do with melancholy, hopefulness, the suburbs and my intimate feelings about them being a fresh place that I hadn't seen, represented in the way I experienced them. Things as abstract as how everyone feels in autumn time, I guess, maybe everyone does. I don't know. Maybe there are some people who are just blissfully unaware of all those sad feelings of you know, autumn, but I felt like they were worth reproducing if maybe they hadn't been in that particular locale. I think this is a funny thing to say but against all of that sadness, and kind of hope against hope, being hopeful against hopelessness, I had this sound of a score to a Marvin Hamlisch score to Take the Money and Run. And I actually asked him to do the music and he said he didn't understand such sadness that was in the movies that this isn't something I do. Which is really true and I didn't get it and I wanted to persist and say no, but that score for Take the Money and Run, that has such like almost like a little kids hopefulness about it. That's what I wanted. It was like a river running underneath the ground of the place that I had grown up with. And I think the other inspiration for the movie was pretty, I don't know, maybe it's called plagiarism. Maybe it's called inspiration, the collected feeling that you can distill from the entire works of Jacques Demy, and I loved Jacques Demy 's films. They gave me a license. I saw them and said, Well, if you can mythologize your own little town in the northwest of France that maybe seems like romantic to Eric Mendelsohn from old Bethpage, Long Island, New York but truly is a kind of a unremarkable place at the time it was made, that I can do it with my town. I can mythologize everybody, and love them and hate them and talk about them and so those are some of the feelings that went into it. John But they all came through. So, what I want to do is just go through the handful of lessons that you told me X number of years ago, and let's see what you think about them now. So, one of the big ones that turns up again and again, when I talked to filmmakers was the idea of write to your resources. And in the case of Judy Berlin, you told me that that's a great idea and you thought you were: It takes place over one day with a bunch of characters in one town. When in fact you were really making things quite difficult for yourself by having middle aged people with homes and cars and businesses and professional actors who all had other things going on. Eric 03:35And multiple storylines is a terrible idea for low budget movie making. Each actor thought oh, I'm in a little short film. I, however, was making a $300,000 movie about 19 characters. What a stupid guy I was. John 03:53Do you really think it was stupid? Eric 03:54It was. You know, everyone says this after you have graduated from that kind of mistake or once you've done it, you look back and say I would only have done that because I didn't know any better. I know you haven't finished your question. But I also want to say that writing or creating from ones' resources also includes what you are able to do, what you are able to manufacture. In other words, I didn't have enough writing skill to concentrate on two characters or one character in house, like Polanski, in his first endeavors. I didn't I had small ideas for many characters. It's much more difficult to write a sustained feature film with two people. So, I was writing to my resources in a number of ways, not just production, but in my ability as a writer at that point. John 04:53Yeah, you're right. It is really hard. I don't know why they always say if you're gonna make a low budget movie, have it be two people in a room. That's really hard to do. The idea of let's just tell a bunch of stories does seem easier and I've done that myself a couple times and it is for low budget easier in many respects. My stuff is super low budget, no one's getting paid. We're doing it on weekends, and you can get some really good actors to come over for a couple days and be really great in their part of the movie and then you put it all together. Another advantage is if you have multiple stories, I learned this from John Sayles in Returns of the Secaucus Seven, he said I couldn't move the camera. So, I just kept moving the story. It allowed him to just, I can't move the camera, but I can move to the next scene, I can move to these people, or I can move to those people there. And it also allows you an editing a lot of freedom, because you can shift and move and do things. So, the downside you had of course was on just a strictly production shooting day level, very hard to do what you were doing. But it did allow you to grow a bit as a writer because you're able to write a lot of different kinds of characters and different kinds of scenes. Eric 05:57Remember, I always say this, you know, you sit in your room, and I believe you need to do this as a writer, you sit in your room and you say to yourself, she slams a car door harder than usual. And then you realize later she drives a car, where am I going to get a car from? She enters her house. How am I going to get a house and if I have seven characters, and they all have cars, that's a job in itself. One person could spend their summer looking for seven cars. But that's the least of your problems. When it's houses, cars, clothing, handbags, all of it. John 06:30Yeah, when you're starting out, you don't necessarily realize that every time you say cut to something in your script, that's a thing. You've got to get it. I did a feature once that had four different stories and there are four different writers and a writer came to me with his finished script, which was brilliant, but it was like 14, 15 locations that I had to shoot over two days. So, how do you do that? Well, you end up spending four days on it. But the other hand, another writer who understood screenwriting, handed me a script that was four locations, but brilliantly combined and figured out. So, in two days, you could shoot them all because he knew what he was doing. And that's something you don't necessarily learn until you're standing there at six in the morning with a crew going, I don't know what I'm doing right now, because I screwed myself up and I wrote it and that's sometimes the only way you can learn it. Eric 07:16I think it's the only way. The only way. Look, you can be precautious, you can, it's no different than life, your parents can warn you about terrible, ruinous, stupid, love affairs that are going to wreck you for a year. Are you really going to just not get into them because of what smart older people said? You throw yourself at a film in the way that hopefully you throw yourself at love affairs. You're cautious and then you've just got to experience it. And I think the difference obviously is in film, you're using lots of people's time, effort money, and you do want to go into it with smarts and planning. I still say that you should plan 160%. Over plan in other words. And then the erosion that naturally happens during production, this crew member stinks and had to be fired a day before. This location was lost. This actress can't perform the scene in one take because of memory problems. All of that is going to impact your film. Let's say it impacts it 90%. Well, if you plan to 160%, you're still in good shape in the footage that you get at the end of the production. John 08:29Yeah, I'm smiling, because you're saying a lot of the things you said last time, which means it's still very true. Alright, the next lesson was, and this is one that I've embraced forever: No money equals more control. You spoke quite eloquently about the fact that people wanted to give you more money to make Judy Berlin if you would make the following changes. Looking back on it did you make the right decisions on that one? Eric 08:51Yes. I'll tell you something interesting. Maybe I didn't say this last time. But I remember my agent at the time saying to me, we could get you a lot of money. Why don't you halt production? We'll get you so much money that will get you--and this is the line that always stuck in my head-- all the bells and whistles you want. Now, I'm going to be honest with you what he said scared me for two reasons. One, I had worked in production for a long time in my life and I knew that if you stall anything, it just doesn't happen. It just doesn't. That the energy of rolling downhill is better than sitting on the hill, potential energy and trying to amass funds. But another thing and I was scared privately because I said to myself, I don't even know what the bells and whistles are. I'm afraid to tell him that I don't know what they are. And I'd rather I think that's those bells and whistles are for some other savvy filmmaker that I'll maybe become later. But right now I have the benefit of not knowing enough and I'm going to throw myself and my planning and my rigorous militaristic marshalling of people and props and costume names and locations and script. I'm gonna throw that all at the void and do it my cuckoo way because once I learned how to make a movie better, I'll have lost a really precious thing, which is my really, really raw, naive, hopeful, abstract sense of what this could be. And that thing that I just said with all those words was not just a concept. I didn't know what I was making, in the best sense possible. I was shooting for something, shooting it for an emotional goal, or a visual goal for a dramatic goal but I didn't put a name on it. I didn't put a genre to it. So much so that by the time I got to the Sundance Film Festival, and I read the first line of a capsule review, and it said, A serio-comic suburban. I almost cried, I felt so bad that I didn't know what I was making in an objective sense. In a subjective sense, obviously, I knew exactly what I was trying to do. But objectively, I didn't know it could be summed up by a review. And it hurt me so badly to think I was so mockable and now I'm going to embarrass myself by telling you what I thought I was making. I didn't think I was making something that could have a boldface thing that said, serio comic, multi character, suburban fairy tale. I didn't know that. I really thought I was like writing in glitter on black velvet or I don't know, I didn't even know that it could just be summed up so easily. And I think I've written a lot of scripts since that one, and many haven't gotten made, but each time I reject and issue an objective determination of what the thing is that I'm working on, prior to sitting down. Is that the best way to work? It is a painful way to work. My friends will tell you that. I have my great friend and filmmaker Rebecca Dreyfus always says that I have creative vertigo, that I don't know what I'm doing for months and years on end and then I looked down and I say, Oh, God, I think it's a horror film. Or I think I've rewritten a Dickens story. And I get a nauseated kind of, you know, dolly in rack, focus thing. It's not, I'm telling you, I'm not describing a creative process that is painful for me to realize, always later on what I'm doing. And I still hold, that's the only way I can do it. I will not go into a screenplay and then a film saying this is a serio comic black and white, multi character, suburban, who wants that? I go in thinking, I'm making something that I don't know, that no one's seen before and then we'll see what they think. John 12:54You know, we were very similar, you and I in that regard. In addition to low budget, filmmaking, as I've gotten older, I've gotten into novel writing and mystery writing, which I enjoy. And the parallels between independent publishing and independent filmmaking are really close. One of the things that people say all the time in independent publishing that I back away from is you have to write to market. You have to know who your audience is, what they like, and write a book for them. And I can't do that. I can write a book for me that, you know, if I slip into dementia in 20 years and read it, I won't remember writing it, but I would enjoy it because all the jokes are for me and all the references are for me... Eric 13:32I think you and me, doing the exact right thing, according to me. And you'll be happy to know, because I teach at Columbia Columbia's film grad school, we have an unbelievable group of alumni people, you know, like, you know, Jennifer Lee, who created Frozen and the people behind Making of a Murderer and Zootopia. And all they ever say when they come back to speak to our students is nobody wants a writer who is writing to the industry. They want something they haven't seen before that is new, fresh, odd, and still steaming be you know, out of the birth canal. John 14:14Yep. The corollary to that, that I tell people who are writing and also people who are filmmakers who want to work that way is the more you can take economics out of the process, the more you're able to not need to make money from what you're doing, the happier you're going to be. Because every movie I've ever made has never made money and it didn't matter. It wasn't the purpose. The purpose was, oh, this is interesting idea. Let's explore this with these 12 actors and see what happens. But if you can take economics out of it, you completely free. Eric 14:41You free and I'll tell you what, I know. Again, it's just a perspective, one person's perspective. But everyone, you know, you want to leave on the earth some things that you felt good about, whether they're children or ethics or some civic thing you did for your town, or a movie. And all the people I know who made tons of money always are talking about coming back to their roots because they're so unhappy. Like, I get it. I get it. And all these actors who want to do work for no money, it's because they feel like well, I sure I made a ton of money, but I didn't get to do any of the stuff I really care about. I remember in my first real attempt at filmmaking after film school, a short half hour film that starred the late Anne Meara and Cynthia Nixon in an early film role and F Murray Abraham did the voiceover. And I was 20 something years old, and the film did very well and it was just a half hour movie and we showed it at the Museum of Modern Art. And after the screening, a woman came up to me and I don't remember what language she was speaking. She was Asian, and she tried to explain to her to me, what the movie meant to her, but she spoke no English and she kept tapping her heart and looking at me. Anne Meara was standing next to me and she kept pointing like and then making a fist and pounding her chest and pointing to like a screen in the air, as if she was referencing the movie. And then she went away. Anne Meara said, listen to me now, it will never get better than that. I understand completely. For the movie I made after Judy Berlin, which is called Three Backyards and a movie I produced and cowrote after that, called Love After Love. I didn't read the reviews. Who cares? John 16:27Yeah, that's a pretty special experience and good for her to point that out to you. Eric 16:31Her husband in a bar after a production of The Three Sisters told me that--this is pretty common. This is Jerry Stiller, the late great comedian said to me, I was about to tell him what the New York Times had said about his performance. He said, no, no, no, don't. Because if you believe the good ones, then you have to believe the bad ones. And I've since known that that is something that's said a lot. But if a review isn't going to help you make your next movie, then don't read it. Marlena Dietrich, in my favorite last line, paraphrased from any movie, gets at why criticism is unimportant for the artist. In the end of Touch of Evil, she says, “what does it matter what you say about other people.” It's just, you either do or they did to you or you experience all that garbage of what people say it goes in the trash, no one except for maybe James Agee's book, there's very few film criticism books that people are desperate to get to, you know, in 50 years. But you take a bad movie, I watched some summer camp killer movie the other night, and I thought I'd rather watch this than read what somebody said about this movie. I'd rather watch somebody's earnest attempt to fling themselves at the universe than a critics commentary upon it. Yeah. Anyone who gets up at five in the morning to go make a movie has my respect and I don't even you know, on the New York Times comments online commentary site, I refused when it's about artwork to come in even anonymously. Nope! John 18:05Okay. You did touch on this. But it's so important and people forget it. I phrased it as time is on your side. You talked about being prepared 160% and having Judy Berlin, every day, there were two backups in case for some reason, something didn't happen and the advantage you had was you had no money. But you had time and you could spend the time necessary doing months of pre-production, which is the certainly the least sexy part of filmmaking, but is maybe the most important and is never really talked about that much. How much you can benefit from just sitting down and putting the schedule down? I mean, we used to, I'm sure with Judy Berlin, you're using strips and you're moving them around and when we did our 16-millimeter features, we didn't even spend the money on the board. We made our own little strips, and we cut them out and did all that. You can do it now on computers, it's much easier, but it's having that backup and that backup to the backup. You don't really need it until you need it and then you can't get it unless you've put it in place already. Eric 19:06Well, I'll say this, I have to disabuse some of my students at Columbia by telling them that there is no like effete artist who walks onto a set-in filmmaking with no idea about scheduling. That character fails in filmmaking. That every single director is a producer, and you cannot be stupid about money, and you cannot be stupid about planning and in fact, Cass Donovan who is an amazing AD and one of my good friends. She and I sometimes used to do a seminar for young filmmakers about scheduling your movie and I always used to say, you know, a good schedule is a beautiful expression of your movie, where you put your emphasis. And it comes out in the same way that people say like oh, I just like dialogue and characters. I'm not good at structure. There's no such things. You need at least to understand that a good structure for your story can be a beautiful, not restrictive, rigorous device that's applied to your artistry, a structure and a story is a beautiful can be a beautiful thing and the expression of the story and the same thing is true with the schedule. The schedule is an expression of your story's emphases. If your story and your resources are about actors, and you've got an amazing group of people who are only doing the project and lending their experience and talent, because they thought this was a chance to act and not be hurried. Well, that expresses itself in how many days and how many shots you're going to schedule them in. And I love how a schedule expresses itself into an amount of days and amount of money and allocation of funding. I love it. There is no better way to find out what your priorities were and I love it. And in terms of planning, one of the reasons I don't understand or have an inkling to investigate theater is I don't want something that goes on every evening without my control, where the actors sort of do new things or try stuff out and the carefully plotted direction that you created can get wobbly and deformed over time. Instead, I like the planning of a script and now I'm not talking about pre-production. I'm talking about I like that, with screenwriting, you go down in your basement for as long as you need. So, maybe I'm afraid of shame and I don't like to present stuff that is so obviously wrong to whole groups of people. I like to go down in the basement for both the writing and the pre-production and get the thing right. You know, there are so many ways to make a movie that I'll also I want to place myself in a specific school of filmmaking. To this point in my directing life, I've created scripts that are meant to be executed in the sense that not as disciplined in execution as what Hitchcock or David Lean, we're shooting for, but not as loose an experiment as Cassavetes, or let's say, Maurice Pilar. We're going for, everyone has to find their own expression. In other words, if you are Maurice Pilar or Cassavetes, or Lucrecia Martel, you have to find your own equation, you have to find your own pre-production/production equation where the room for experimentation. I haven't really wanted to experiment on set, I know what shots I want, and I get them. The next film I make may be different. But everyone has a different equation and every script and every director are going to find their own priorities that are expressed in the project and then the execution. The fun thing was, the last movie I worked on, was something I've produced and co-wrote ,called Love After Love. And that was directed and co-written by Russ, and Russ and I spent years writing a script that we knew that was intended to be elastic, and to be a jumping off ground for the kind of impromptu directing he does. Now, a lot of what we wrote ended up in the movie, but sometimes he would call me from the set and say, this isn't working and that was exciting, because we knew that would happen. And he told the cast and the crew before they went into the project, before they went into the short film he made before that called Rolling on the Floor Laughing. This is intended to be a porous experiment ,with a firm spine of drama that is not porous. So, we've created a drama and interrelations in that script that then he went off, and those couldn't budge. Those were fixed the dramatic principles and dynamics. But he worked as a director in a completely different way than me and I was very happy to loosen my own way of working and then as a producer, make sure that he had what he needed on the set, and that the pre-production, production and even editing--we took a year to edit that film--was based in an idiosyncratic methodology of his particular artistry, not mine. John 24:34And why I think is so interesting about that is that you know, you made sure that everybody involved knew going in we're doing this kind of movie and this kind of movie has … I remember talking to Henry Jaglom, about I don't know which movie it was, you know, Henry has a very loose style of what he does. But it's still a movie, and he was talking about, he was shooting a scene and an actress either jumped into a swimming pool or push somebody into a swimming pool. And he said, Why did you do that? She said, I was in the moment. Yeah, and he said, yes, this is a movie and now I have to dry these people off and I have to do the coverage on the other side. So, you need to know where the lines are, how improvised is this really. Eric 25:15And everyone has different lines, and you make movies to find out how you make movies. You write screenplays to find out what that feeling is and whether or not you can interest an audience in it. You don't write a screenplay to execute Syd Fields, ideas about story or the hero's journey. I'm not a hero. I don't have a hero's journey. I have my journey. The task, the obligation is to see if I can take that and still make it dramatic and interesting to a group of hostile strangers, normally called an audience, John 25:52As Harry Anderson used to say, if you have a bunch of people all seated facing the same direction, do you owe them something. Eric 25:58Yeah, it's unbelievable. A friend of mine who works in theater saw a terrible show and he works on Broadway, and he works on all the big shows that you have heard of. So, I can't give the title of this one particular production. And he said, you know, I feel like telling these people because he works in lighting. He said, I feel like telling these people who create these shows that every single audience member who comes to see the show at eight o'clock that night, woke up at seven in the morning, and they're tired, and they worked and you better provide something at eight that night. John 26:33Exactly. I remember talking to Stuart Gordon, the guy who made Reanimator, and he was big in theater before he got into horror films. And he said we had one patron who always brought her husband, and I'll say his name was Sheldon, I forget what the name was. And he would consistently fall asleep during the shows. And my mandate to the cast was our only job is to keep Sheldon awake. Yeah, that's what we're there to do is to keep Sheldon alert and awake. And I think at all the time as you're watching something on film, you're going is that going to keep Sheldon awake, or is that just me having fun? Eric 27:01No, he didn't ask this question, so it's probably not. But a lot of students are not a lot, actually but some students will say to me like, well, what I have to know the history of movies? Why do I have to know that when I'm going to create something new? And I just think because you're not. Because there is a respect for a craft. Forget the art of people who have been doing this for ages. And to not know it puts you in the position of the only person on set who doesn't realize that. Every single crew member is a dramatist: the script supervisor is a dramatist, the set decorator is a dramatist, the costume designer, the cinematographer, the producer. So sometimes my students in directing will say to me, well, I thought this shot was interesting and I said, Okay, you may think that's interesting. But I'm going to tell you something scary right now: your producer, and your editor will know immediately that you don't know what you're doing and that that won't cut. It is not a secret this thing you are doing, this skill. Learn what other people, what the expectations of the art form are, please, and then build from them and break rules and expand but don't do it naively. John 28:06Yeah. When I wrote the first book, it was because I had done an interview with a couple guys who made a movie called The Last Broadcast, which came out right before Blair Witch, which had a similar project process to it. And one of them said to me, he said in talking to film students, one thing I keep seeing is everyone wants to reinvent the wheel. And so I put the book together, because here's all the different lessons, you can you're going to end up learning in one way or another, you might as well read them now and like you say, not find out that that won't cut because it won't cut. It just won't cut. Alright, you did touch on this lesson earlier just in passing, but it's a good one and it's sometimes a tough one. I just called it Fixed Problems Quickly and it was about if there's a crew member who's not part of the team, it's easier to get rid of them two weeks out, then two hours into the shoot. Eric 28:54Yep, it still holds, and it happened on the film I made after Judy Berlin as well. Someone who had worked on Judy Berlin came on to the new production of Three Backyards, and I tried my best to keep this untenable relationship working. But like a rotten root on a plant, it started to rot everything around it, and everyone would like to be the well-liked captain of the ship. But that also means firing crew members sometimes. We had a very, very big key position on that film, and we had to lose them a week before we shot. I'll tell you something else about Three Backyards. It was a week before we shot it. Is it okay that I talked about that? John 29:39Absolutely. We're talking about what you've learned. Eric 29:42Yeah. So, after Judy Berlin I made a film called Three Backyards with Edie Falco and Elias Kotes and host of other people. A very strange movie it was, I am not joking. I haven't said this. So, not that this is some big reveal that anyone gives a shit about but before, a week before we shot it was called Four Backyards. I've never told that because I didn't want anyone to watch it with that mindset and start to say, and we even kept the crew quiet and said, please, we don't want this to get out that it's you know. And I cut out an entire storyline a week before shooting. Now, when I tell you that it was an actor, a very amazing actor in that storyline, the fourth backyard, who I had to call, who was already doing driving around on his motorcycle in the location, going to visit places that had to do with his storyline, costume fittings, everything had been done locations we had gotten, I had to call them and say we're cutting, that your character and that storyline. It was still to this day unbearable. I don't expect you know, the guy is very well known and successful, and you know, has done far more important things than my little movie. But I still feel guilty to this day. I feel nauseous to this day that I did that, that I had to do it. We got to a point where it was clear, the expression of the film called Four Backyards would be running through one take per shot, per setup and running through with no time to work on the characters, no time to give these amazing actors, you know what they wanted. We'd be run and gun and I just said, I'm not this old, you know, to making this movie so that I can re-learn terrible lessons and put these actors through that kind of experience. So, I cut an entire storyline that was dragging down this buoy, let's say in the water and then once we cut it off, and I of course I don't mean the actor or the performance, the potential performance. I mean, the production. Once that fell to the bottom of the sea, the buoy lifted and bounced and righted itself. And I lived with that decision knowing I did the right thing, but that it was hard. We also lost one of the key, we lost our production designer I would say about 15 days before shooting, and that was another one of those kinds of decisions where I said get it done now. I will say this offline on Three Backyards. There was a crew member who had, the minute I shook hands with them, I knew this is that kind of poisonous sniping inconsolable person. But I leave those decisions to department heads and that's not my job to get in and say this person seems awful to me. But that's my feeling. They worked for about, let me say this carefully, they worked and it and became exactly the problem that I had predicted. They initiated a work stoppage that was uncalled for, unprofessional, and everyone was aware. They pretended not to know what location we were going to next and didn't show up. We were delayed I think 40 minutes. On a low budget movie, 40 minutes is unsustainable. And I will just say this, I had to make the decision because we were so deep into the film, whether or not firing that person would cause such bad feelings in the remaining crew or free us up in a way that was similar to what I described earlier. I decided to keep the person and it was I believe the right decision because we were close enough to finishing the film that I believed I would no longer reap benefits from firing them and that leads me to a sentence that I probably told you when I was 20 or whatever how old I was when I spoke to you. I'm now 57. On a movie, you want to be effective not right. In other words, a decision that is morally right on a film which is a temporary, collapsible circus tent where people strangers get together and work for a month, being morally right can hit the main pole of that circus tent really hard and collapse. You want to be effective not right. The right decision in a movie. It is the one that gets forward motion. In that particular case, I took my revenge out later, I kept the person, I bit my tongue and swallowed my pride and said I'm so sorry, let's negotiate. How can we make you happier? However, after we finished production, my more powerful friends in the industry never hired that person again. That person was fired from large TV productions that they were on and given no reason and I felt absolutely thrilled with that. John 34:48Well, it does catch up with you. The next one is one that I use all the time and you just put it very succinctly you said, Fewer Takes, More Shots. Eric 34:57So, I can talk about that. I want to be specific though, that it's for my kind of filmmaking. If you're shooting every scene in one shot, this cannot apply. But in the edit room generally, is a very broad stroke comment, generally, if you're a more conventional visual director who tells stories with shots, you get stuck on one shot in one setup, especially if it's a master and you're trying to get it right. You have no other storytelling ability. You don't have the move in. You don't have the overhead shot. You don't have the insert shot of the finger of the character touching a teaspoon nervously. You don't have any other storytelling ability if you get stuck in one setup. So, a lot of people always say, you know, remember, your first take is probably your best take. That's a good truism. There's an energy that you get from nervous actors, nervous camera operators in a first take. So, sometimes your first take has a great spontaneity about it. Sometimes it lingers for a second or third take. The idea that you are going to beat that dead horse into the ground with subsequent takes going up through 13, 15, 19 to get something perfect flies in the face of the actuality, which is that editing, performance, the rhythm of the eventual scene through shots and takes creates what the audience experiences. That the idea of perfection is a great way to flatten your actors, kill your dialogue, ruin your scene. It's like when I first made a pie ever in my life, nobody taught me and I didn't really look at a book. I was preparing a meal for a woman who was coming up to her country house and I was upstate using the house. And I thought to myself as I carefully cut the butter into the flour and created a little pebbly, beautiful texture, and then gently gathered those pebbles of flour and butter and sugar together into a ball. I mistakenly thought that if I took the rolling pin and roll the life out of it, I would be making the best crust possible. And it tasted it was inedible. It tasted like shoe leather. And I said what did I do wrong? And they said, the object she said to me when she arrived, the object is to gather those delicate, beautiful pebbles together and lightly make it into a crust that retains the little particles, the delicate interstitial hollows. Not to flatten the life out of it. And the same is true about shots. The more angles you have, if that's the way you shoot, create a sense of life. That's about as good as I can say it. John 37:49Well, you know, I want to add just a couple of things. When I did the book, originally, I talked, had a wonderful long conversation with Edie, Falco about Judy Berlin. She was trying to get her brand-new baby to go to sleep while we talk and so it's very quiet recording of her talking. Eric 38:04That's my godson Anderson. John 38:05Oh, that's so sweet. She said about multiple takes. She said there's a perception sometimes with filmmakers that actors are this endless well. And she said, I'm not, I'm just not. Unless you're giving me direction to change something, it's going to be the same or worse. Again, and again. And so you know, of all the lessons from the book that I tell people when I'm making presentations, fewer takes more shots. The thing, a corollary of attitude, is if you're going to do another take, tell them to do it faster, because you're gonna want a faster version of it. You don't realize that right now, but you're gonna want one. Eric 38:38Here's a great way of saying it. I feel people mistake, directors mistakenly think that they are making the film on set. The filming of a movie is a shopping expedition for, drumroll please, ingredients. If you are shooting one take per scene, sure, get it right, you have your own methodology. But if you're going to be telling a story in the traditional narrative way, where a bunch of angles and performances in those shots, setups angles, will eventually tell the story of a scene that let's say for example, goes from pedestrian quotidian to life threatening, remember that you need the ingredients to then cook in the edit room of quotidian, seemingly boring escalating into life threatening. Making a movie on set in production is shopping for the ingredients and you come home and then you forget the recipe and say, what did I get? What was available? What was fresh? What does that mean if you're not talking about food? Well, this actor was amazing, and I lingered on them and I worked on their performance because it's going to be great. That's one of the ingredients you have to work on. In the edit room, this actor was less experienced, and I had to do more setups because they couldn't carry a scene in one shot. That's what I have to work with now in the edit room. When you're in the edit room, you're cooking with the ingredients you got in the fishing expedition called shooting. That's why my students say to me, well, why am I going to get extra footage? Why am I going to get anything but the bare minimum? Why am I going to overlap in terms of, well, you think you're only going to use that angle for two lines, we'll get a line on either side of the dialog, so that you have it in case. And they say, that's not being professional. That's not being precise and accurate. And I'd say it's a fishing expedition, especially if you're starting to learn film. You don't go shopping for a party and say, I think everyone will have about 13 M&Ms. You're buy in bulk, because you're getting like, oh, it's a Halloween party, I'll need a lot of this, a lot of that and a lot of this, and then you cook it later. John 41:04You know, one of the best examples of that is connected to Judy Berlin, because as I remember, you edited that movie on the same flatbed that Annie Hall was edited on... Eric 41:18I still have it, because the contract I made with Woody Allen was that if no one ever contacted me for it, and I bore the expense of having to store it, I would keep it. And so I got it and nobody ever asked for it. Nobody uses it anymore. John 41:34But the making of that movie is exactly that. They had a lot of ingredients and they kept pulling things away to what was going to taste the best and all of a sudden, this massive thing … You know, I was just talking to another editor last weekend, o, I pulled out this, the Ralph Rosenblum's book, but... Eric 41:49Oh, yeah, I was just gonna mention that. The best book on editing ever. John 41:51Although Walter Murch's book was quite good. But this is much more nuts and bolts. Eric 41:56And much more about slapping stuff together to make art. John 42:00That one lesson of: don't spend all day on that one take over and over and over. Let's get some other angles is … Eric 42:06I'll tell you what happens. I may have said this in our first interview, but I will tell you from the inside, what happens. It's terrifying and if you start with a master, a director can get terrified, because to move on means more questions about what's next. Was it good? And you can get paralyzed in your master shot if you're shooting in that manner. And then the actors aren't doing their best work in the master, especially if it's a huge master, where there's tons of stuff going on. They're going to give you some better performance, if you intend to go in for coverage and you by the time you do that you may have lost, you know, their natural resource. They might have expended it already. I've been in that situation where I got lost in my master and you almost have to take a pin on set and hit your own thigh with it and say, wake up, wake up, move on, move on. John 42:58Yeah. All right, I got one more lesson for you, because I'm keeping you way too long. It's a really interesting one, because it's when I talked to Edie about it, she didn't know you had done it and she thought, well, maybe it helped. But Barbara Barrie played her mother in Judy Berlin, they had never met as actors, as people. And you kept them apart until they shot, because you wanted a certain stiffness between them. I just call that Using Reality to Your Advantage. What do you think about that idea now? Eric 43:25Edie isn't someone who requires it, you know, she's one of the best actresses in the world. John 43:30And Barbara Barrie wouldn't have needed it either. I'm sure. Eric 43:32She wouldn't have but I do think there's a … look. This is a funny thing about me and my evolution from Through an Open Window, which is the half hour film, to what I'm writing today. I always thought that film was interesting in the same way that I thought military psyops were interesting: that you could control or guide or influence an audience's experience of the story in ways they were unaware of. So, I always liked those hidden influencers. Even in advertising, I thought they were interesting. You see how this company only uses red and blue and suddenly you feel like, oh, this is a very, this is an American staple this product. I love that shit and after I'm done with a script, I know what I'm intending the audience's experience to be I want to find anything to help me to augment that and if you're a fan of that kind of filmmaking, would the shots have a power outside of the audience's ability to see them? They know that the story is working on them and they think the audience thinks, oh, I was just affected by the story in that great performance. They have no idea that the director has employed a multitude of tricks, depth of field to pop certain actor's faces out as opposed to wider shots that exclude are identifying with other characters, moving shots that for some reason, quote unquote some reason meaning every director is aware of how these techniques influence an audience, suddenly make you feel as if that moment in the story of the character are moving or have power have influence while other moments have nothing. In Three Backyards, funnily enough with Edie, I had a scene where Edie was, the whole, Edie's whole storyline was about her desperate, unconscious attempt to connect with this other woman who was a stranger to her. And I refused to show them in a good two shot throughout the entire film. I separated them. I made unequal singles. When their singles cut, they were unequal singles tighter and wider, until the moment that I had convinced the audience now they're going to become best friends. And I put them into their first good, easy going two shot. And that kind of manipulation is done every moment by every filmmaker directing. In one aspect it is a mute, meaning silent in an unobtrusive, persuasive visual strategy for enhancing the story. So, whether you're keeping two actors away from each other during the course of the day before their first scene, because the scene requires tension, or whether you're separating them visually until a moment late in the movie, where they come together, and they're coming together will suddenly have tension because they're in the same shot. Those kinds of persuasive manipulations are what visual storytelling, otherwise known as directing is about. John 43:33Yep, and there's a lot of tools. You just got to know about them because a lot of them you're not going to see, you won't recognize, though until somebody points out, do you realize that those two women were never really in the same shot together? Eric 47:06Every well directed movie has a strategy. Sometimes they're unconscious, but you don't want to be unconscious. As the director, you want to be smart. You want to be informed about your own process, and I think smart directors … Here's what I always say to my students: learn a lot, know a lot, then feel a lot. So, what does that mean? It's just my way of distilling a whole bunch of education down into a simple sentence. Understand what has been done and what you can do, and what are the various modes of directing and storytelling. And then when you get into your own script, feel a lot. What do I want? Why isn't it working? Add a lot of questions marks to the end of sentences. Why can't this character be more likeable? Why isn't this appealing? Why haven't I? How could I? And it's a combination of knowing a lot and being rigorously intellectual about the art form that you want to bow down before you want to bow down before what works and what doesn't work. I would say that you want to bow down before the gods of what works and what doesn't work. You know, you don't want to look them in the eye and say, screw you, I'm doing what I want. You bow down and say, I don't even understand why that didn't work. But I'll take that lesson. You want to feel a lot. You want to be open on the set. One of the hardest things to learn is how to be open on the set. You want to be open when you're writing. You want to be open when you're editing. It's a real juggling act of roles that you have to play, of being naive, being smart, being a businessperson, being a general, being a very, very wounded flower. You know, I remember reading, as a high school student, Gloria Swanson's autobiography. And then it's so many years since I read it that I might be wrong. But I remember they said what are you proudest of in your career. And she said without hesitation that I'm still vulnerable. And I didn't even know if I understood it at the time, but I get it now. You want to be smart. You want to be experienced. You want to have a lot of tools and know the tools of other directors and still be naive and vulnerable and hearable and have your emotional interior in tech. Those are hard things to ask of anyone, but if you want to be in this industry, an art form that so many greats have invested their life's work toiling in, then you owe it to yourself to be all of those things. [MUSIC TRANSTION] JohnThanks to Eric Mendelsohn for chatting with me about the lessons he learned from his debut feature, Judy Berlin. If you enjoyed this interview, you can find lots more just like it on the Fast, Cheap Movie Thoughts Blog. Plus, more interviews can be found in my books -- Fast, Cheap and Under Control -- Lessons Learned from the greatest low-budget movies of all time ... and its companion book of interviews with screenwriters, called Fast, Cheap and Written that Way. Both books can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google and Apple Books. And while you're there, check out my mystery series of novels about magician Eli Marks and the scrapes he gets into. The entire series, staring with The Ambitious Card, can be found on those same online retailers in paperback, hardcover, ebook and audiobook formats. And if you haven't already, check out the companion to the books: Behind the Page: The Eli Marks podcast … available wherever you get your podcasts. That's it for episode 106 of The Occasional Film Podcast, which was p roduced at Grass Lake Studios. Original music by Andy Morantz. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you … occasionally!

It's 'Summer Camp Month' on Late to the Movies! Ben, Robbie, and Will start our month-long look at movies set at summer camps with 1995's Heavyweights! Directed by Steven Brill, written by Brill and Judd Apatow, and starring Ben Stiller, Tom McGowan, Aaron Schwartz, Shaun Weiss, Tom Hodges, Leah Lail, Paul Feig, Kenan Thompson, Jeffrey Tambor, Jerry Stiller, and Anne Meara.

Andrew Guerdat joins me to talk about growing up in Birmingham, Alabama; loving cowboy shows; Andy Griffith; Ed Scharlach teaches comedy writing and introduces him to his partner Stuart Kreinberg; MASH script got them representation; wrote an episode of The Jeffersons that turns up in the background of Basic Instinct; writing an episode of the forgettable comedy Me and Maxx; moving to Mork & Mindy; ABC ruined a hit by adding too many characters; Robin shoots a scene, does improv, shoots a scene, does improv; all lines were written; particular favorite episode "Mindy, Mindy, Mindy"; moving to Archie Bunker's Place; silly vs grounded comedy; pitching to Carroll O'Connor; Denise Miller; Celeste Holm; Anne Meara; writing the controversial episode "The Red Herring"; "Death of a Lodger" with Don Rickles; "Bunker Madness"; Whiz Kids and McGruder & Loud allowed him to work while sitcoms "were dead"; streaming allows his daughter to find a Sister, Sister she was in in minutes; It's A Living; Paul Kreppel; Marian Mercer; Richard Staahl; TV movie "Dance 'Til Dawn"; Head of the Class hard because cast was too large but smart in that it taught a fact every week; 5th season adding Billy Connolly; "Dead Men Don't Wear Pocket Protectors" - Arvid brings a gun to school; Brian Robbins; Rain Pryor; gets a job running Saved by the Bell: The College Years after never seeing original; tries to grow it up and and is told not to; tapings are out of control; idea for Herman's Head comes to Andrew and his partner in 1983; having it be picked up in 1991 and not allowed to really be involved; how finished product, while funny, was not what he and partner intended; the similarities between "Inside Out" and Herman's Head; Empty Nest; Richard Mulligan allows supporting cast to get the laughs; writing for The Parent 'Hood and Boy Meets World; transitioning to animation with The World of Tosh; Higglytown Heroes; Sherriff Callie's Wild Wild West; Paw Patrol

On this exciting new episode of Comedy Gold Minds, Kevin is joined by actor, director, and comedic powerhouse Ben Stiller. The two discuss all things comedy, including growing up with comedic parents Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, creating The Ben Stiller Show, what it's like to act and direct a film at the same time, and why he thinks his movie Tropic Thunder would never get made today.Like Comedy Gold Minds? SiriusXM subscribers get it a day early, plus Kevin Hart's Laugh Out Loud Radio, his 24/7 comedy channel, with great talk shows and stand-up. Learn more / check it out for 3 months at siriusxm.com/comedygoldminds.

Fame! It's gonna live forever!! But should it, or should it be flung into the sea? Paul and Erika get into it and figure out how this classic aged. Also, it's Musical March and Fame is not a musical…such is the danger of neither host ever having seen a movie. A bamboozlement has occurred!

We are just over the moon for this week's guest, Anna Maria Horsford. You Might Know Her From Friday, Pose, The Wayans Brothers, The Bold & the Beautiful, Hacks, Minority Report, How High, St. Elmo's Fire, The Fan, The Last O.G. and Amen. Anna Maria just gave it all to us. We talked about her playing Ice Cube's (and Method Man and Redman's) mom in iconic stoner fare, talking shit about The Wayans Brothers before she realized she was a series regular, sinking her teeth into a daytime soap as Hollywood vet, and renegotiating her Amen contract amidst network pushback. But that's not all! We also got into the landmark series Soul; her guest appearance on Pose opposite Janet Hubert and Jackée Harry; and how (why?) Steven Spielberg loves pregnant women. This one was just beyond. RIP to that extra in The Stone Pillow! Follow us on social media @damianbellino || @rodemanne  Discussed this week:  Special thanks to our intern, Ronette the Pit So many deaths this week: Sidney Poitier, Bob Saget, and of course Bob Durst  Bob Saget in Half Baked: “have you ever sucked dick for coke?” Bob Saget emceed Anne Meara's funeral Bob Durst posed as a deaf mute then killed and dismembered his neighbor and got off Documentary about Bob Durst Maria Ewing, mother of Rebecca Hall just passed away Nella Larsen's novel, Passing  Passing (directed and adapted by Rebecca Hall) on Netflix Ruth Negga is a movie star holy smokes Rebeca Hall's Fresh Air interview Let's turn the SAG awards into the new Golden Globes JoBeth Williams used to produce the SAG broadcast (YMKHF Ep #99 JoBeth Williams) First job was with Joe Papp at Harlem Shakespeare Festival Went to Sweden to meet Ingmar Bergman. Didn't meet him but did meet Sven Nykvist Lee Grant directed Anna Maria and Marlo Thomas in Nobody's Child Worked as a PA on the WNYC Soul (go watch on Amazon Prime now!) Anna Maria reading a poem on Soul!  Played Craig's mom in Friday (1995) and Friday After Next (2002) Played Thelma Frye on Amen! “The oldest living virgin” (1986-1991) the Sherman Hemsley sitcom  Ed Weinberger (Taxi, The Cosby Show, Amen) Plays Vivian Avant on The Bold and the Beautiful (TV daughter is trans) Had 2 eps on Grey's Anatomy and was SO GOOD as Liz Fallon (1x04, 03x17) Mike Nichols (Heartburn), Steven Spielberg (Minority Report) F. Gary Gray (Set it Off, Friday), Joel Shumacher (St Elmo's Fire), Alan Pakula (Presumed Innocent), Louis Malle (Cracker) Page Six in the New York Post Played Dee Baxter, security guard on The Wayans' Brothers sitcom William Friedkin was a screamer (C.A.T. Squad) Plays moms in stoner comedies: Friday (Ice Cube's mom), How High (Redman's mom), Method and Red (Method's mom) “Stephen loves pregnant women”  Played a prostitute in St. Elmo's Fire opposite Andrew McCarthy Plays Pray Tell's mom on last season of Pose (Jackee Harry on 227 and Janet Hubert from Fresh Prince also star) Bill (opp Mickey Rooney, 1981),  The Fan (opp Lauren Bacall, 1981), and Stone PIllow (opp Lucille Ball, 1985) Went out with Christopher Reeve (co-starred with him in Street Smart) and Corbin Bernsen  How many pregnant women are in Steven Spielberg's movies? Anne will compile a list Anna Maria doing 8 episodes on the CBS sitcom, B Positive (starring former guest of this show, Annaleigh Ashford YMKHF ep #40) Celia Weston YMKHF ep #66 Crazy Days & Nights have revealed their Sex and the City blind item from 20 years ago!

Special Guest, Carly Levy, joins your hosts Nathan Lutz and Russell Guest for the Retro Movie Roundtable as they revisit The Out of Towners (1970) [G] Genre: Comedy, Road Trip Comedy   Starring: Jack Lemmon, Sandy Dennis, Sandy Baron, Anne Meara, Robert Nichols, Ann Prentiss, Ron Carey, Philip Bruns, Graham Jarvis, Carlos Montalban, Robert King, Johnny Brown, Dolph Sweet, Thalmus Rasulala, Jon Korkes, Robert Walden, Richard Libertini, Paul Dooley, Anthony Holland, Billy Dee Williams   Director: Arthur Hiller Recoded on 2021-10-31

Husband-wife team Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller play former Yiddish theater stars who steal the show at a memorial service in the THE BURIAL SOCIETY, a comic play by Susan Sandler. Also featuring George Morfogen* (“Oz”) and David Margulies (Ghostbusters). Directed by Playing on Air Producing Artistic Director Claudia Catania. Playing on Air is honored to share the work of this all-star cast, the members of whom have passed away since BURIAL SOCIETY's recording in 2011.

Gerald Isaac Stiller was an American comedian, actor, and author. He spent many years as part of the comedy duo Stiller and Meara with his wife, Anne Meara, to whom he was married for over 60 years, until her death in 2015. RIP Jerry Stiller.

Visit our website, What Are Travis and Elaine Watching?, for lots of videos, pix, links, and extras!Oz: the one that kicked it all off!Before The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Wire, or any of the great shows known as the Television Renaissance, there was Oz. And now, 24 years after it first debuted as HBO's first original drama, the entire series is available on HBO Max!If you have never seen Oz, now is the time! Six full seasons, ready to binge. You'll see so many of your favorite actors on this show; you won't be able to keep count!It's brutalIt's a social commentaryIt's romanceIt's comedyIt's musicalFor Elaine, it's Tim McManusFor Travis, it's Ryan O'ReilyAnd just for shits and giggles, it's Claire Howe!And... Shirley Bellinger(video on our webpage)If you've never seen Oz, lucky you!  If you haven't seen it in decades, go back!  You won't regret it. It was a game-changer.  Still on the fence? Here's a PARTIAL cast list! Come on!!!Ernie Hudson, J.K. Simmons, Lee Tergesen, Dean Winters, George Morfogen, Terry Kinney, Rita Moreno, Harold Perrineau, Eamonn Walker, Luna Lauren Velez, Granville Adams, Tom Mardirosian, BD Wong, Chuck Zito, Scott William Winters, Christopher Meloni, Robert Clohessy, R.E. Rodgers, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Zeljko Ivanek, David Zayas, Anthony Chisholm, Edie Falco, Betty Buckley, Kathryn Erbe, John Lurie, Luis Guzmán, Rick Fox, Mark Margolis, Luke Perry, Tony Musante, Patti LuPone, Joel Grey, Kevin Conway, Edward Herrmann, Method Man, Frederick Koehler, Bobby Cannavale, Peter Criss, Anne Meara, Casey Siemaszko, Jonathan Demme, Gavin MacLeod, Frankie Faison, Roy Thinnes, Joyce Van Patten, Ally Sheedy, Ken Leung, Richard Bright, Eric Roberts, Elaine Stritch, L Cool J, Ben Vereen, Clarke Peters,   Peter Dinklage,

Many times the expression ‘jack of all trades’ is followed with ‘master of none’ but this could not be further from the truth when referring to the legendary actor, writer, comedian, producer, and director, Ben Stiller. He’s been delivering impressive artistic projects for over four decades and is one of the most recognized names and faces in the entertainment industry. The son of iconic comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Stiller was around showbusiness his entire life. He and his sister Amy were well-known in the comedy circuit at places like The Improv and ‘The Mike Douglas Show’. He would later enroll as a film student at University of California, Los Angeles, but dropped out after nine months to pursue an acting career in New York, which, as we all know, paid off enormously for him and his hundreds of millions of fans. For the video version of this article, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGwNiXgEiAU Hollywood Insider is a trusted media network, across multiple channels, covering the business, substance and meaningful side of global entertainment/culture and its major players. We strive to present in-depth coverage of the factors affecting and of interest to readers and viewers around the World. By being focused on factual and reliable coverage, rather than rumor, gossip and sensationalism, we are able to present information ignored elsewhere. As such, it continues to be a network for the concerns/observations about cultural, psychological, political, environmental, ecological, social and philanthropic matters from the thousands of personalities who relish the opportunity. In their normal world, except for a privileged few, interviews and profiles are constrained by ‘showbusiness’ only agendas. We will continue to be the network that shows that they have the same serious concerns, interests and views as many of their constituencies. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Many times the expression ‘jack of all trades’ is followed with ‘master of none’ but this could not be further from the truth when referring to the legendary actor, writer, comedian, producer, and director, Ben Stiller. He’s been delivering impressive artistic projects for over four decades and is one of the most recognized names and faces in the entertainment industry. The son of iconic comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Stiller was around showbusiness his entire life. He and his sister Amy were well-known in the comedy circuit at places like The Improv and ‘The Mike Douglas Show’. He would later enroll as a film student at University of California, Los Angeles, but dropped out after nine months to pursue an acting career in New York, which, as we all know, paid off enormously for him and his hundreds of millions of fans. For the written version of this article, click here: https://www.hollywoodinsider.com/ben-... For the video version of this article, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VMXXb0FaGg Hosted and Written by Armando Brigham Hollywood Insider is a trusted media network, across multiple channels, covering the business, substance and meaningful side of global entertainment/culture and its major players. We strive to present in-depth coverage of the factors affecting and of interest to readers and viewers around the World. By being focused on factual and reliable coverage, rather than rumor, gossip and sensationalism, we are able to present information ignored elsewhere. As such, it continues to be a network for the concerns/observations about cultural, psychological, political, environmental, ecological, social and philanthropic matters from the thousands of personalities who relish the opportunity. In their normal world, except for a privileged few, interviews and profiles are constrained by ‘showbusiness’ only agendas. We will continue to be the network that shows that they have the same serious concerns, interests and views as many of their constituencies. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Jeffrey Sweet’s Something Wonderful Right Away, an oral history of The Compass Players and Second City was first published in 1978 and it’s arguably still one of the definitive works about the rise of Chicago improvisation and maybe the defining actor training method of the second half of the 20th-century. Jeffrey discusses how the book came to be and talks about his encounters with such greats as Barbara Harris, Sheldon Patinkin, Jules Feiffer, Mike Nichols, Anne Meara, and Elaine May; how specific movies and plays revealed to him a specific style; reveals the joy and wonder of shared realities; what it means to have gotten a B from Martin Scorcese; gives a shout-out to oral history pioneer Studs Terkel; how poverty can be theatre’s friend; how the only two essential elements to theater are actors and audiences (not playwrights!); the devastating truth that playwriting is not literature; and finally, further proof that following your passion can frequently lead you to a career. (Length 20:45) The post Something Wonderful Now appeared first on Reduced Shakespeare Company.

This week The TV Boys sit down to discuss Bob Odenkirk. From outstanding performances on screen in shows like Breaking Bad to superb writing for programs such as SNL, it seems everything he works on is gold.

Welcome back to Backtrack! New episodes every WEDNESDAY! SPOILERS AHEAD This week we review Heavyweights! Heavyweights (1995) Gerry (Aaron Schwartz) is not looking forward to his summer vacation, since he'll be spending it at a camp for overweight boys in order to shed pounds. Fortunately, a kindly couple, the Bushkins (Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara), run the camp and make the process fun and relaxed. However, they're soon forced to declare bankruptcy and sell the camp to Tony Perkis (Ben Stiller), a fitness fanatic who turns the camp into a living nightmare of over-the-top training. But the kids plan to fight back. Host: Conner Norton (Twitter/Instagram @mrconnernorton) Co-host: Julian Alvarez (Instagram @julian.alvarez45) Support us: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/backtrack Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/backtrackpodcast/

TVC 496.3: Tony, Donna, and Ed discuss the many incarnations of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, both as a comedy duo as well as their individual acting careers. Jerry Stiller passed away on Monday, May 11 at age 92. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before Ben Stiller became one of the most famous actors and directors in Hollywood, he was a kid growing up in New York City with a pair of comedy legends for parents: Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. In this week's "Sunday Sitdown," Willie Geist gets together with Stiller over Zoom to talk about his beloved father, Jerry, who passed away in early May at the age of 92.

Actor and comedian Jerry Stiller, who died May 11, was part of a comic duo with his wife Anne Meara and later played George Costanza's hot-headed father on 'Seinfeld.' He spoke to 'Fresh Air' in 1993. Also, we remember award-winning cellist Lynn Harrell. He joined the the Cleveland Orchestra when he was 18 and went on to perform as a soloist with orchestras around the world. He spoke with Terry Gross in 1987.TV critic David Bianculli reviews the genre-bending series 'The Great' on Hulu.

In light of the passing earlier this week of comedian Jerry Stiller, we thought we'd post this clip from a conversation that Greg Ehrbar and Ed had in June 2015 about the career of Anne Meara, including her years performing stand-up alongside her husband as the landmark comedy team Stiller and Meara, as well as her solo effects on television, including The Corner Bar and the short-lived legal drama Kate McShane. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gary, who was the former west coast entertainment reporter for the Howard Stern show, goes deep into his treasure trove of interviews and plays classic interviews with Walter Cronkite, Raquel Welch, Magic Johnson, Gary Coleman, Martin Lawrence, Ric James and the late Jerry Stiller, with his wife of 61 years, Anne Meara.Gary Garver- 'Controlled Chaos' Radio Show is broadcast live at 12AM ET Tuesday - Saturday on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). This podcast is also available on Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com).

In 2012 Caraid O'Brien interviewed actor Jerry Stiller for WABI radio. She joins us on The Shmooze to talk about that interview and her friendship with the actor. In conversation with Caraid, we learn about Stiller's life on and off the stage and how he pursued acting at a very early age at the Henry Street Playhouse. We also hear about the Jewish and Yiddish roots that may have informed some of his work, and about Anne Meara, Stiller's wife and collaborator of sixty years. Episode 0258 May 12, 2020 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

The passing of Jerry Stiller brought to light a trove of commercials he made with his wife and comedy partner Anne Meara, everything from Windex to horse racing. You want a piece of Stiller?! YOU GOTTT IT!

The Overnight Underground Podcast, now the headlines: Obama and Trump sling mud. China and the WHO sling BS. Covid has eyes for you. Chicago keeps the rate up. Iran blows up its own warship and Alaska is having a beaver boom. These stories & more coming up on today’s Overnight Underground News. I’m John Ford.   Former President Obama had a private conversation with his former staffers, which turned out to not be so private, seeing that everyone now knows about it. The talks were engaged specifically to help drum up support for Joe Biden’s campaign. With an election creeping closer and closer, Obama is taking off the gloves and starting to swing hard at Trump. During the call, Obama called the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic "an absolute chaotic disaster". Uncle Joe responded, of course, with something that sounded like this. The White House retorted that President Trump's "unprecedented" action had "saved Americans' lives" and later lambasted the Obama response to  swine flu during his administration. I say, lock them all in a room, and the enlightening confabulation between these two warring factions would sound something like this. Me, I’m voting for bullwinkle.  China and WHO collusion? And while everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else, a new report dug up by the German magazine of record Der Spiegel and reported now by numerous sources, says that China pressured the World Health Organization to delay a global coronavirus warning. The report cites intelligence from Germany’s federal intelligence service that Chinese President and all around great guy Winnie the Xi Jinping urged the WHO chief to “delay a global warning” about the pandemic, and holding back data on human-to-human transmission of coronavirus. Not to be outdone, the World Health Organization has called the allegations “unfounded and untrue.”  The eyes have it for Covid-19 Oh great, now they’re saying you can catch coronavirus through your eyes. The Daily Mail reports that scientists at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine found that Covid-19 can latch onto receptors in your eye balls. If Covid droplets land on your eye, the virus can begin running riot through your wretched and infected body.  Wait, does this mean we’ll have to start wearing eye patches along with face masks?  Shopping with Nazi’s Last week in Santee, California we had the man shopping at the grocery store with a KKK hood. This week, it’s a pair of shoppers with Nazi swastika on their masks shopping in the same California town. KUSI San Diego reports the couple were spotted and photographed by shoppers at the Food 4 Less in Santee. According to the article, Diego Sheriff’s deputies arrived and forced the shopper to remove the swastika from his mask. Look, these people are either idiots or attention whores, but wearing a swastika isn’t against the law. Honestly, you may not like it but what right do the police have to tell you what kind of sticker or tee-shirt you can wear or have on your car? Do they have the right to tell you you can’t wear a tee-shirt that says “f*ck Trump” or “the white man is the devil”? No. You may have to deal with the consequences of wearing such attire, but your right to wear it is your own damn business and my responsibility. But how is it people are allowed to walk around with this kind of offensive crap and not get arrested? I believe it has something to do with the first amendment of the US constitution. I know, you were offended.  Chicago keeps murder rate up The Covid-19 lockdown hasn’t stopped Chicago from keeping that stellar murder rate up. Yea, even though the streets are supposed to be barren, there’s still plenty of gun fire in the windy city. So much so that even the French have noticed.  France 24 is reporting that fifty six murders were committed last month, despite stay-at-home orders in the city, and just last weekend, four people were killed and forty six others were shot and wounded. On the West Side of the city, there’s not a lot of social distancing taking place, with crowds gathering on the streets to dance to the music and of course shoot each other. A senior research director at the University of Chicago Crime Lab is stating that most of the shootings and the subsequent murders have occurred outdoors and both shooters and victims have ignored stay-at-home orders.  Iran blows up own warship Worry over war with Iran has faded into the background with the advent of the global pandemic. Now it appears that the US and its allies probably have even less to worry about from the autocratic islamic state. It seems they are doing just fine waging war on themselves. Forbes and other sources are reporting that Iranian state media and the army say nineteen are dead in a friendly fire incident in the Sea of Oman. The Iranians were conducting live-fire exercises with anti-ship missiles when one of the missles slammed into one of their own warships. Well, at least they know their missiles work, command and control, not so much. Alaska booming with beaver Alaska is booming with beaver. Up in Northwest Alaska they are indeed experiencing a massive beaver boom. In the last couple of decades the Baldwin Peninsula has seen a massive increase in beavers, and that means more dams. To make a long story even longer, more dams mean big impacts on everything from fish populations to permafrost. University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Ken Tape tells KOTZ radio that there are so damn many dams, you can actually see them from space. You heard that right, beavers in space. OK, that’s enough of that.  Little Richard dead  One of the last of the original rock and rollers had passed away over the weekend. Little Richard’s family have confirmed to Rolling Stone magazine that the eighty seven year old rocker has died. The cause of Richard’s death has not been released.  Jerry Stiller, father of Ben Stiller and husband of Anne Meara, with whom he formed the married comedic duo of Stiller and Meara, died over the weekend at the age of 92. Jerry Stiller may be best known these days as the frenetic father of Frank Costanza on the “Seinfeld” show.  Toilet frogs invading England In England residents of Derbyshire are being invaded by toilet frogs. Nope, it’s not a new species, at least we don’t think so, the frogs in question seem to be coming up through the pipes and are quite often, found doing the backstroke in the toilet. Yea, having to head the call of nature in the wee hours of the morning and having a slimy frog hop up and whack your rectum, I don’t think so. One resident told the Derbyshire Telegraph that she now has to, “stand and squat now." Still others are taking the latrine amphibians in stride. One retired pensioner said, "I saw two of them, one on the wall of the toilet, the other on the seat. I put them in a plastic container and took them into the garden." Thankfully, no one has croaked yet. 

After two months of sheltering in place, people are seeking comfort with bird watching and playing chess. Tom and Scott are bird glancers, but Tom's cat Oliver is super into staring at them because he views them as the enemy. And we pay tribute to Jerry Stiller, who brought us comfort every day, as did his wife Anne Meara, with their incredible talent on stage and screen, and their warmth and kindness in everyday life. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/tom-saunders9/support

The Scott Thompson Show Podcast When will we know more about the school year? The Ontario government says the answer will come this week. Meanwhile, the Ontario government wants to extend the state of emergency until June 2nd. Sabrina Nanji joins Scott Thompson to discuss. Guest: Sabrina Nanji, Queen’s Park Today - Peter Bloemendal, Director of Clinical Services for CMHA Hamilton joined the show to talk about new data from the CMHAthat shows the majority of Ontarians are worried about an oncoming mental health crisis once the pandemic is over. Guest: Peter Bloemendal, Director of Clinical Services, CMHA Hamilton - Several members of the White House have tested positive for COVID-19, including a spokesperson for Vice President Mike Pence. Even with a close associate testing positive, the VP does not plan going into quarantine. Reggie Cecchini, Washington Producer and Correspondent with Global News Guest: Reggie Cecchini, Washington Producer and Correspondent with Global News - A motion is being brought forward to Hamilton council that would allow shared outdoor eating districts in the city to be temporarily installed. If passed, it would allow restaurants and other food businesses to open up a bit more while physical distancing measures are still in place. Guest: Jason Farr, Ward 2 Councillor for the City of Hamilton - Actor Jerry Stiller has passed away at the age of 92. Scott welcomed Elissa Freeman to the show, to chat about Stiller’s impact on comedy, his fame before Seinfeld and King of Queens, and his legacy. Guest:  Elissa Freeman. Public Relations Consultant, Huffington Post, Canada.com and PR Daily

Welcome back to another episode of the Cookbook Love Podcast. Today Rick and I send our love and prayers to everyone during this global pandemic of coronavirus. Rick grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. Rick’s consciousness was raised by the region’s great ethnic restaurants and local farms. He began in the food business in high school, and after graduating in Theater from San Francisco State University, Rick moved to New York, where he was instantly immersed in the restaurant and catering world. His catering firm, Cuisine Américaine broke new ground when, as a young American chef, he created events for the Services Culturels of the French Embassy’s offices in New York City. It was there that he initially entertained the food editors and executives who would commission his first books and recipe development jobs. Through his work as a personal chef to Jerry Stiller and the late Anne Meara, he met and catered for many of New York’s show business elite. These relationships paved the way for his career helping celebrities and chefs tell their own stories. A number of Rick’s projects have landed on The New York Times Best Seller list or gone on to win Beard, IACP, and Gourmand Awards and nominations. In addition to his own book such as Comfort Food, Big Book of Side Dishes, Thanksgiving 101, and Kaffeehaus, Rick has worked with many renowned personalities including chefs Alfred Portale (Gotham Bar and Grill), Richard Sandoval (Maya), and Jeffrey Nathan (Abagael’s). He counts iconic baker Dan Leader and the late fashion guru, Lilly Pulitzer, among his clients, as well as Oprah Winfrey’s former chef Art Smith and two “Real Housewives” from the Bravo TV series. Things We Mention In This Episode: Rick Rodger’s Website Thanksgiving 101 Big Book of Sides Apply for next session of Hungry For a Cookbook Mastermind Group Download a copy of my Cookbook Writing Roadmap Please join our Confident Cook and Writer Facebook Group Let’s connect on Instagram @greenapron    

This week we run back the 1995, Disney movie, Heavyweights! We explore if fat camps actually exist, talk about out kicking your coverage, and how children are little terrorists. InstagramTwitterFacebook

The Pogues cofounding tin whistle player discusses the legendary Anglo-Irish folk punk band’s formation and long career as well as his residence in New Orleans and collaborations with the Lost Bayou Ramblers. With Spider’s background, it’s no surprise he fits right in with the Troubled Men. Topics include infrastructure failure, a misunderstanding, gender-reveal disasters, The Joker, garbage popcorn, an advertisement, filming “Straight to Hell” with Alex Cox in Spain, Joe Strummer stories, the English punk scene, Shane MacGowan, a fanzine, a first meeting, early bands, a first gig, a soldier story, the tin whistle, the New Republicans, Poguetry, Cait O’Riordan, a shoutout, folk-punk commonalities, Shane’s departure, Ulcer/Ulster Says No, the Sweet and Low Orchestra, La Bamba, Fairytale of New York, the Sunset Marquis, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Seinfeld, hands, boxing, a tribute, Sinéad O’Connor, a leather jacket, and much more. Support the Cocktail Fund in the links. Subscribe, review, and rate on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast aggregator. Follow on social media, share with friends, and spread the Troubled Word. Intro music: Styler/Coman Outro music: “If I Should Fall from Grace with God” by the Pogues

The Pogues cofounding tin whistle player discusses the legendary Anglo-Irish folk punk band's formation and long career as well as his residence in New Orleans and collaborations with the Lost Bayou Ramblers. With Spider's background, it's no surprise he fits right in with the Troubled Men. Topics include infrastructure failure, a misunderstanding, gender-reveal disasters, The Joker, garbage popcorn, an advertisement, filming “Straight to Hell” with Alex Cox in Spain, Joe Strummer stories, the English punk scene, Shane MacGowan, a fanzine, a first meeting, early bands, a first gig, a soldier story, the tin whistle, the New Republicans, Poguetry, Cait O'Riordan, a shoutout, folk-punk commonalities, Shane's departure, Ulcer/Ulster Says No, the Sweet and Low Orchestra, La Bamba, Fairytale of New York, the Sunset Marquis, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Seinfeld, hands, boxing, a tribute, Sinéad O'Connor, a leather jacket, and much more. Support the Cocktail Fund in the links. Subscribe, review, and rate on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast aggregator. Follow on social media, share with friends, and spread the Troubled Word. Intro music: Styler/Coman Outro music: “If I Should Fall from Grace with God” by the Pogues

Rachel Brosnahan won for Best Actress at the Golden Globes for her portrayal of the Mrs. Maisel. On this episode, we dive into Part Two of the real-life comedy influences on the fictional Mrs. Maisel - and cover such legendary comics as Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller, Anne Meara, Moms Mabley, Elaine May, Totie Fields, and Jean Carroll. Please subscribe and ‘like” use on iTunes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kate's mom drops by and she's A.) played by comedy legend Anne Meara, and B.) even more annoying than ALF.  Mr. Matt makes an unprecedented third appearance on the podcast to discuss bipolar moms, passive-aggressive family dynamics, and the fact that ALF has now most assuredly watched Kate and Willie have intercourse.

In this bonus minisode, we play another round of everybody’s favorite Robert Pine based game Pick Your Pine. This time, Rick tries to guess what show from the BOTNS era featured both Robert Pine and the great Anne Meara.

Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman are famous for creating iconic TV characters on two beloved sitcoms, "Will & Grace" and "Parks and Recreation." But they also have a life together off screen. They've been married since 2003, and Playboy magazine compared their comic chemistry to "that of a hyper-sexualized Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara." They talk to Here's the Thing host Alec Baldwin about struggling to launch their careers, why it took them so long to kiss, and how jigsaw puzzles, audio books, and carpentry keep their marriage strong.

It's Episode 9! All the things in the tags are discussed but I ran out of room for: Kevin Sorbo, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Evil Dead 2, Sam Raimi, Horror Comedies, Highway to Hell, Ben Stiller, Amy Stiller, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, Gilbert Gottfried, Hitler, Fangoria, Evil Dead spoilers, Parody Sequels, Lion King 1 and 1/2, Night of the Living Dead, Return of the Living Dead, George A. Romero, John Russo, Dan O'Bannon, Ridley Scott, Prometheus 2: Electric Boogaloo, The Alien Franchise, The Predator Franchise, Margarine, The Alien Universe, Predators, Adam Scott , How Did This Get Made?, The Fast And The Furious Franchise, The Child's Play series and The Leprechaun Films

Just in time for Halloween, Dan and Vicky discuss the 1978 horror thriller based on the Ira Levin novel, The Boys From Brazil.  Notorious death camp doctor Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) has come out of hiding in South America and gathered a group of Nazi colleagues for a nefarious plot that only famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) can stop.  James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen, Rosemary Harris, Anne Meara, John Rubinstein and a young Steve Guttenberg round out the cast.   In addition to the film -- their second Hot Date movie based on an Ira Levin novel --Dan and Vicky discuss Frankenstein leggings, the Paris catacombs, the inflammatory Samsung 7 and three week's worth of film and TV viewing.  They'll talk about recent Marvel heroes Luke Cage and Deadpool, the new Magnificent Seven, border thriller Sicario, the classic horrors of The Witchfinder General, Rituals, What Have You Done to Solange? and Victor Frankenstein and the new HBO series Westworld.  The Boys From Brazil on Hot Date 38!  Na-zi average podcast.  Leave us some feedback on our iTunes page.      

Bienvenidos al episodio 48 de Mi Gato Dinamita, el podcast que se ríe de los comediantes y llora con los gatos. Duración total: 1:09:21.0:00:01-0:01:54 Susanette no puede dormir y molesta a los demás integrantes del podcast con mensajes de audio. Inadmisible. Al menos termina prometiendo leer un libro de Stephen King. Algo es algo.0:01:55-0:03:41 Música: "New" de Paul McCartney por Willow.0:03:43-0:09:32 Susanette culpa de su cansancio (y de su mal karma) a todos los gatos de la galaxia, desde los suyos hasta el pobre Maneki Neko. Lo inesperado: se declara antigato. Guillermo intenta salvar el honor felino del podcast hablando del video filmado por Yoko pero nos gana la risa y la acidez y el humor negro y se va todo al demonio.0:09:33-0:13:23 Música: "Just like starting over" por John Lennon.0:13:24-0:24:40 Salimos rápido del tema de Lennon y nos adentramos en algo que sí nos tomamos en serio: el cine. Willi cuenta una experiencia muy extraña que vivió con uno de sus cortos y rápidamente nos sumergimos en un asunto álgido: la idealización. Finalmente comprendemos que en esta vida no comprendemos nada, ni las películas que miramos.0:24:55-0:38:35 Como no podía ser de otro modo, nosotros tenemos nuestra propia versión de la teoría de los seis grados de separación y para demostrar que estamos muy pero muy cerca de Ben Stiller, nuestro ídolo, llamamos a María Petrarca a Necochea para que nos cuente cómo fue el día que ella conoció a Ben. Ni lentos ni perezosos, planeamos invitar a la familia Stiller a Neco para celebrar nuestra amistad y convidarles con un asado vegano. Riquísimo.0:38:36-0:42:44 Música: "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" por Radiohead.0:43:41-0:47:45 Entintado, en el momento más romántico del podcast, homenajea a Jerry Stiller y Anne Meara. Glorioso.0:47:45-0:50:25 Música: "Jackson" por June Carter Cash y Johnny Cash.0:50:27-0:52:40 Recibimos un cálido mensaje de nuestro amigo Muxi Butinina desde la playa.0:52:41-0:56:13 Música: "Rata de dos patas" por Paquita la del Barrio.0:56:17-1:06:41 Estamos muy sensibles y con ganas de pelear. Hasta el momento más zen sirve para sacar a flote a nuestra fiera interior. Por suerte nos olvidamos rápido de todo y es como si nada de esto hubiera pasado. El momento más polémico: cuando Willi cree que Susanette miente al asegurar que las cosas se rompen solas. ¡Qué nervios! ¿Lo dejamos ahí?1:06:42-1:09:21 Música: "When i'm 64" por The Beatles.Ilustramos este episodio, como corresponde, con imágenes alusivas: La inefable Curni Love, póster de Stuck in love; Stephen King sonriente con un gato amigo en brazos; "It" en un momento de Stuck in love; Ben Stiller tirándonos un beso; John y Yoko; póster de "While we're young"; Ben Stiller con nuestras amigas María, Vicky y Clara en Roma; Fontana delle Tartarughe; Ben y Owen vestidos de Valentino para Zoolander II; Anne Meara y Jerry Stiller de jóvenes; Anne y Jerry de grandes.

When Morris the fishmonger and Minnie the hat seller fall in love, Morris comes up with a wedding plan designed to deliver the very best for his beloved bride-to-be . . . with unexpected consequences.

Live from the Punchline in San Francisco, Greg attests to Arthur C. Clarke, AT&T Park and Anne Meara.

Ryan and Jason pay tribute to a fallen Lady: star of stage and screen, half of the indomitable duo Stiller & Meara in life and work, Anne Meara.

Young men and women audition for coveted spots at the New York High School of Performing Arts. Those who make the cut discover that it takes a lot of hard work to become a star and sometimes difficult decisions have to be made. The youngsters grapple with heavy issues such as homosexuality, abortion, attempted suicide and illiteracy. On top of their unique struggles, the students must deal with the mundane pressures of adolescence like homework, heartbreak and rejection. Stream online: https://amzn.to/34MASnt Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/mfrbooksandfilm?fan_landing=true

Young men and women audition for coveted spots at the New York High School of Performing Arts. Those who make the cut discover that it takes a lot of hard work to become a star and sometimes difficult decisions have to be made. The youngsters grapple with heavy issues such as homosexuality, abortion, attempted suicide and illiteracy. On top of their unique struggles, the students must deal with the mundane pressures of adolescence like homework, heartbreak and rejection. Stream online: https://amzn.to/34MASnt

In the second part of our not-to-be-missed interview with Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, the couple discusses moving separately into successful "legit" careers while keeping their marriage of fifty-seven years together.

Stiller and Meara, Part 1 of 2. We welcome the great Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, who discuss their early careers in improv and comedy, leading up to their big break on TV’s “Ed Sullivan Show.”

The "Anna Christie" production team - scenic designer John Lee Beatty, O'Neill biographer Barbara Gelb, Artistic Director of Roundabout Theatre Todd Haimes, actors Anne Meara, Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson, and Rip Torn, and lighting designer Marc B. Weiss -- discuss in-depth the 1993 Tony Award-winning revival, including the scenic and lighting design, how the characters relate to contemporary lives, the actors' differing acting styles, and Eugene O'Neill's early career.

The Anna Christie production team -- scenic designer John Lee Beatty (1980 Tony Award winner for Best Scenic Design for Talley’s Folley), O'Neill biographer Barbara Gelb, Artistic Director of Roundabout Theatre Todd Haimes (who has scored multiple Tonys while serving as Artistic Director for Roundabout Theatre Company), actors Anne Meara, Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson (winner of Tony Award in the 1998 revival of Cabaret), and Rip Torn, and lighting designer Marc B. Weiss -- discuss in-depth the 1993 Tony Award-winning revival, including the scenic and lighting design, how the characters relate to contemporary lives, the actors' differing acting styles, and Eugene O'Neill's early career.

The multi-disciplined panelists -- director/choreographer Jeff Calhoun ("Busker Alley"), director/playwright Michael Leeds ("Swinging on a Star"), actor/playwright Anne Meara ("After-Play"), director Mike Ockrent ("Big, Crazy For You, Me and My Girl"), director/choreographer Lee Roy Reams ("Hello, Dolly!" revival), director Lloyd Richards ("Fences"), and director John Tillinger ("Deathtrap") -- discuss the director's role in relationship to the playwright, the differences in developing of musicals and plays, directing revivals, the challenges of auditions, and the pros and cons of workshops.

The multi-disciplined panelists -- director/choreographer Jeff Calhoun (Busker Alley), director/playwright Michael Leeds (Swinging on a Star), actor/playwright Anne Meara (After-Play), director Mike Ockrent (Big, Crazy For You, Me and My Girl), director/choreographer Lee Roy Reams (Hello, Dolly! revival), Tony Award winning-director Lloyd Richards (for Fences), and director John Tillinger (Deathtrap) -- discuss the director's role in relationship to the playwright, the differences in developing of musicals and plays, directing revivals, the challenges of auditions, and the pros and cons of workshops.

The Pogues cofounding tin whistle player discusses the legendary Anglo-Irish folk punk band's formation and long career as well as his residence in New Orleans and collaborations with the Lost Bayou Ramblers. With Spider's background, it's no surprise he fits right in with the Troubled Men. Topics include infrastructure failure, a misunderstanding, gender-reveal disasters, The Joker, garbage popcorn, an advertisement, filming “Straight to Hell” with Alex Cox in Spain, Joe Strummer stories, the English punk scene, Shane MacGowan, a fanzine, a first meeting, early bands, a first gig, a soldier story, the tin whistle, the New Republicans, Poguetry, Cait O'Riordan, a shoutout, folk-punk commonalities, Shane's departure, Ulcer/Ulster Says No, the Sweet and Low Orchestra, La Bamba, Fairytale of New York, the Sunset Marquis, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Seinfeld, hands, boxing, a tribute, Sinéad O'Connor, a leather jacket, and much more. Support the podcast [here](https://www.paypal.me/troubledmenpodcast). Subscribe, review, and rate on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast aggregator. Follow on social media, share with friends, and spread the Troubled Word. Intro music: Styler/Coman Outro music: “If I Should Fall from Grace with God” by the Pogues