Podcast appearances and mentions of annette benning

In this episode, we wind the clock back to the start of the 90s to pay a visit to the world of crime dramas with Jason's next pick. Backed up by Martin Scorcese and featuring a star-studded cast led by John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, and Annette Benning, come join us as we check out Stephen Frears' The Grifters from 1990. Prepare for two drastically different takes as Jason finds himself charmed by the flick and Dustin serves up a buffet of quibbles and hangups. But before all that, Jason dishes on some new Shudder watches and Dustin caps off the rest of his AVP franchise rewatch. And so much more! Part of the Prescribed Films Podcast Network (www.thepfpn.com) What We've Been Watching: -Jason: Last Straw (2023) & The Coffee Table (2022) & Heroes Shed No Tears (1984) -Dustin: Prometheus (2012) & Alien: Covenant (2017) & Alien (1979) & Alien: Romulus (2024) & Aliens (1986) & Alien 3 (1992) & Alien Resurrection (1997) Show Notes: -The Grifters Trailer -Go check out all the other fine shows on the Prescribed Films Podcast Network -Related Film: Blood Diner -Related Film: Milk & Serial -Related Short: The Chair -Related Film: Predator -Related Topic: Miramax -Related RPG: Alien The Roleplaying Game -Related Game: Alien: Isolation -Related Film: Terminator 2: Judgment Day -Related Film: The City of Lost Children -Related Franchise: Witchcraft -Related Film: Miracle Mile -Related Film: The Reflecting Skin -Related Film: Ghostbusters -Related Film: Airplane -Related Film: An American Werewolf in London -Related Film: Cape Fear -Related Film: Lady and the Tramp -Related Film: Phantom of the Paradise -Related Film: The Sting -Related Film: Psycho -Related Film: Air Force One -Related Film: Candyman -Related Film: Dangerous Liasons -Related Film: The Big Heat -Related Film: Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool -Related Film: The Lady Vanishes -Related Artist: Cher -Related Film: Misery -Related Film: Ghost -Related Film: The Dead Thing -Related Film: Reversal of Fortune -Related Film: Dead Ringers -Related Film: The Shrouds -Related Author: Alexandre Dumas -Related Novel: The Three Musketeers -Related Novel: The Count of Monte Cristo -Related Film: The Count of Monte Cristo (2024) -Related Film: The Three Musketeers: Milady -Related Film: The Three Musketeers (1973) -Related Film: The Man in the Iron Mask -Related Film: Titanic Next Time: The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan (2023)

Holy Tony Stark it's raining lots of Apples on episode 147 of The Horror Stans Podcast! For this one we are diving into 1999's little talked about Annette Benning/Robert Downey Jr. starring In Dreams! Listen as we talk about how such a well made movie could maybe be oh so bad (boom mic jump scares!), if Annette Benning's lead character Claire is too much to handle, aggressive apple imagery, if we want Tony Starks autograph, if this is a more dumb A Nightmare on Elm Street for adults and is this horror's Showgirls?! We hope you enjoy! Please give us a follow and 5 star rating! Instagram and Twitter: @horrorstans TikTok: horrorstanspodcast Steve: @screamsteve/@stesta621 Matt: @mcavo92

Who else in literature today could be more interesting to interview than Brandon Taylor, the author of Real Life, Filthy Animals, and The Late Americans, as well as the author of popular reviews and the sweater weather Substack? We talked about so much, including: Chopin and who plays him best; why there isn't more tennis in fiction; writing fiction on a lab bench; being a scientific critic; what he has learned working as a publisher; negative reviews; boring novels; Jane Austen. You'll also get Brandon's quick takes on Iris Murdoch, Jonathan Franzen, Lionel Trilling, György Lukács, and a few others; the modern critics he likes reading; and the dead critics he likes reading.Brandon also talked about how his new novel is going to be different from his previous novels. He told me:I no longer really want to be starting my books, quote unquote, in media res. I want my books to feel like books. I don't want my books to feel like movies. And I don't want them to feel like treatments for film. And so I want to sort of bring back all of what a novel can do in terms of its structure and in terms of its form and stuff like that. And so it means starting books, you know, with this sort of Dickensian voice of God speaking from on high, sort of summing up an era. And I think also sort of allowing the narrators in my work to dare to sum up, allowing characters in my work to have ideologies and to argue about those ideologies. I feel like that is a thing that was sort of denuded from the American novel for a lot of millennials and just sort of like trying to put back some of that old fashioned machinery that was like stripped out of the novel. And seeing what of it can still function, seeing, trying to figure out if there's any juice left in these modes of representation.I have enjoyed Brandon's fiction (several people I recommend him to have loved Real Life) and I think he's one of the best critics working today. I was delighted to interview him.Oh, and he's a Dickens fan!Transcript (AI produced, lightly formatted by me)Henry: Today I am talking to Brandon Taylor, the author of Real Life, Filthy Animals, and The Late Americans. Brandon is also a notable book reviewer and of course he writes a sub stack called Sweater Weather. Brandon, welcome.Brandon: Yeah, thanks for having me.Henry: What did you think of the newly discovered Chopin waltz?Brandon: Um, I thought, I mean, I remember very vividly waking up that day and there being a new waltz, but it was played by Lang Lang, which I did not. I don't know that, like, he's my go-to Chopin interpreter. But I don't know, I was, I was excited by it. Um, I don't know, it was in a world sort of dominated by this ethos of like nothing new under the sun. It felt wonderfully novel. I don't know that it's like one of Chopin's like major, I don't know that it's like major. Um, it's sort of definitively like middle of the road, middle tier Chopin, I think. But I enjoyed it. I played it like 20 times in a row.Henry: I like those moments because I like, I like it when people get surprised into realizing that like, it's not fixed what we know about the world and you can even actually get new Chopin, right?Brandon: I mean, it felt a little bit like when Beyonce did her first big surprise drop. It was like new Chopin just dropped. Oh my God. All my sort of classical music nerd group texts were buzzing. It felt like a real moment, actually.Henry: And I think it gives people a sense of what art was like in the past. You can go, oh my God, new Chopin. Like, yes, those feelings are not just about modern culture, right? That used to happen with like, oh my God, a new Jane Austen book is here.Brandon: Oh, I know. Well, I mean, I was like reading a lot of Emile Zola up until I guess late last year. And at some point I discovered that he was like an avid amateur photographer. And in like the French Ministry of Culture is like digitized a lot of his glass plate negatives. And one of them is like a picture that Zola has taken of Manet's portrait of him. And it's just like on a floor somewhere. Like he's like sort of taken this like very rickety early camera machinery to this place where this portrait is and like taken a picture of it. It's like, wow. Like you can imagine that like Manet's like, here's this painting I did of you. And Zola's like, ah, yes, I'm going to take a picture to commemorate it. And so I sort of love that.Henry: What other of his photos do you like?Brandon: Well, there's one of him on a bike riding toward the camera. That's really delightful to me because it like that impulse is so recognizable to me. There are all these photos that he took of his mistress that were also just like, you can like, there are also photographs of his children and of his family. And again, those feel so like recognizable to me. He's not even like a very good photographer. It's just that he was taking pictures of his like daily life, except for his kind of stunt photos where he's riding the bike. And it's like, ah, yes, Zola, he would have been great with an iPhone camera.Henry: Which pianists do you like for Chopin?Brandon: Which pianists do I love for Chopin? I like Pollini a lot. Pollini is amazing. Pollini the elder, not Pollini the younger. The younger is not my favorite. And he died recently, Maurizio Pollini. He died very recently. Maybe he's my favorite. I love, I love Horowitz. Horowitz is wonderful at Chopin. But it's obviously it's like not his, you know, you don't sort of go to Horowitz for Chopin, I guess. But I love his Chopin. And sometimes Trifonov. Trifonov has a couple Chopin recordings that I really, really like. I tend not to love Trifonov as much.Henry: Really?Brandon: I know it's controversial. It's very controversial. I know. Tell me why. I, I don't know. He's just a bit of a banger to me. Like, like he's sort of, I don't know, his playing is so flashy. And he feels a bit like a, like a, like a keyboard basher to me sometimes.Henry: But like, do you like his Bach?Brandon: You know, I haven't done a deep dive. Maybe I should do a sort of more rigorous engagement with Trifonov. But yeah, I don't, he's just not, he doesn't make my heart sing. I think he's very good at Bach.Henry: What about a Martha Argerich?Brandon: Oh, I mean, she's incredible. She's incredible. I bought that sort of big orange box out of like all of her, her sort of like masterwork recordings. And she's incredible. She has such feel for Chopin. But she doesn't, I think sometimes people can make Chopin feel a little like, like treacly, like, like a little too sweet. And she has this perfect understanding of his like rhythm and his like inner nuances and like the crispness in his compositions. Like she really pulls all of that out. And I love her. She has such, obviously great dexterity, but like a real sort of exquisite sensitivity to the rhythmic structures of Chopin.Henry: You listen on CD?Brandon: No, I listen on vinyl and I listen on streaming, but mostly vinyl. Mostly vinyl? Yeah, mostly vinyl. I know it's very annoying. No, no, no, no, no.Henry: Which, what are the good speakers?Brandon: I forget where I bought these speakers from, but I sort of did some Googling during the pandemic of like best speakers to use. I have a U-Turn Audio, U-Turn Orbital record player. And so I was just looking for good speakers that were compatible and like wouldn't take up a ton of space in my apartment because I was moving to New York and had a very tiny, tiny apartment. So they're just from sort of standard, I forget the brand, but they've served me well these past few years.Henry: And do you like Ólafsson? He's done some Chopin.Brandon: Who?Henry: Víkingur Ólafsson. He did the Goldbergs this year, but he's done some Chopin before. I think he's quite good.Brandon: Oh, that Icelandic guy?Henry: Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the glasses? That's right. And the very neat hair.Brandon: Yes. Oh, he's so chic. He's so chic. I don't know his Chopin. I know his, there's another series that he did somewhat recently that I'm more familiar with. But he is really good. He has good Beethoven, Víkingur.Henry: Yeah.Brandon: And normally I don't love Beethoven, but like—Henry: Really? Why? Why? What's wrong with Beethoven? All these controversial opinions about music.Brandon: I'm not trying to have controversial opinions. I think I'm, well, I'm such a, I'm such, I mean, I'm just like a dumb person. And so like, I don't, I don't have a really, I feel like I don't have the robust understanding to like fully appreciate Beethoven and all of his sort of like majesty. And so maybe I've just not heard good Beethoven and I need to sort of go back and sort of get a real understanding of it. But I just tend not to like it. It feels like, I don't know, like grandma's living room music to me sometimes.Henry: What other composers do you enjoy?Brandon: Oh, of course.Henry: Or other music generally, right?Brandon: Rachmaninoff is so amazing to me. There was, of course, Bach. Brahms. Oh, I love Brahms, but like specifically the intermezzi. I love the intermezzi. I recently fell in love with, oh, his name is escaping me now, but he, I went to a concert and they sort of did a Brahms intermezzi. And they also played this, I think he was an Austrian composer. And his music was like, it wasn't experimental, but it was like quite, I had a lot of dissonance in it. And I found it like really interesting and like really moving actually. And so I did a sort of listening to that constantly. Oh, I forget his name. But Brahms, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, love Rachmaninoff. I have a friend who says that Rachmaninoff writes Negro spirituals. And I love that theory that Rachmaninoff's music is like the music of the slaves. It just, I don't know. I really, that really resonates with me spiritually. Which pieces, which Rachmaninoff symphonies, concertos? Yeah, the concertos. But like specifically, like I have a friend who said that Rach II sounded to her like the sort of spiritual cry of like the slaves. And we were at like a hangout with like mostly Black people. And she like stopped playing like Juvenile, like the rapper. And she put on Rach II. And we just like sat there and listened. And it did feel like something powerful had entered the room. Yeah, but he's my guy. I secretly really, really love him. I like Liszt, but like it really depends on the day and the time for him. He makes good folk music, Liszt. I love his folky, his folk era.Henry: What is it that you enjoy about tennis?Brandon: What do I enjoy about tennis? I love the, I love not thinking. I love being able to hit the ball for hours on end and like not think. And like, it's the one part of my life. It's the one time in my life where my experience is like totally unstructured. And so like this morning, I went to a 7am drill and play class where you do drills for an hour. Then you play doubles for an hour. And during that first hour of drills, I was just like hitting the ball. I was at the mercy of the guy feeding us the ball. And I didn't have a single thought about books or literature or like the status of my soul or like the nature of American democracy. It was just like, did I hit that ball? Well, did I hit it kind of off center? Were there tingles in my wrist? Yes or no. Like it was just very, very grounding in the moment. And I think that is what I love about it. Do you like to watch tennis? Oh, yeah, constantly. Sometimes when I'm in a work meeting, the Zoom is here and the tennis is like playing in the background. Love tennis, love to watch, love to play, love to think about, to ponder. Who are the best players for you? Oh, well, the best players, my favorite players are Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Stanislas Wawrinka, love Wawrinka. And I was a really big Davydenko head back in the day. Nikolai Davydenko was this Russian player who had, he was like a metronome. He just like would not miss. Yeah, those are my favorites. Right now, the guy I'm sort of rooting for who's still active is Kasper Rud, who's this Norwegian guy. And I love him because he just looks like some guy. Like he just looks like he should be in a seminary somewhere. I love it. I love, I love his normalness. He just looks like an NPC. And I'm drawn to that in a tennis player.Henry: It's hard to think of tennis in novels. Why is that?Brandon: Well, I think a lot of people don't, well, I think part of it is a lot of novelists. Part of it is a lot of novelists don't play sports. I think that they, at least Americans, I can't speak for other parts of the world, but in America, a lot of novelists are not doing sports. So that's one. And I think two, like, you know, like with anything, I think that tennis has not been subjected to the same schemes of narrativization that like other things are. And so like it's, a lot of novelists just like don't see a sort of readily dramatizable thing in tennis. Even though if you like watch tennis and like listen to tennis commentary, they are always erecting narratives. They're like, oh yeah, she's been on a 19 match losing streak. Is this where she turns it around? And to me, tennis is like a very literary sport because tennis is one of those sports where it's all about the matchup. It's like your forehand to my backhand, like no matter how well I play against everyone else, like it's you and me locked in the struggle. And like that to me feels incredibly literary. And it is so tied to your individual psychology as well. Like, I don't know, I endlessly am fascinated by it. And indeed, I got an idea for a tennis novel the other day that I'm hopefully going to write in three to five years. We'll see.Henry: Very good. How did working in a lab influence your writing?Brandon: Well, somewhat directly and materially in the case of my first book, because I wrote it while I was working in the lab and it gave me weirdly like time and structure to do that work where I would be pipetting. And then while I was waiting for an assay or a experiment to run or finish, I would have 30 minutes to sit down and write.Henry: So you were writing like at the lab bench?Brandon: Oh, yeah, absolutely. One thousand percent. I would like put on Philip Glass's score for the hours and then just like type while my while the centrifuge was running or whatever. And and so like there's that impression sort of baked into the first couple books. And then I think more, I guess, like spiritually or broadly, it influenced my work because it taught me how to think and how to organize time and how to organize thoughts and how to sort of pursue long term, open ended projects whose results may or may not, you know, fail because of something that you did or maybe you didn't do. And that's just the nature of things. Who knows? But yeah, I think also just like discipline, the discipline to sort of clock in every day. And to sort of go to the coalface and do the work. And that's not a thing that is, you know. That you just get by working in a lab, but it's certainly something that I acquired working in a lab.Henry: Do you think it's affected your interest in criticism? Because there's there are certain types of critic who seem to come from a scientific background like Helen Vendler. And there's something something about the sort of the precision and, you know, that certain critics will refuse to use critical waffle, like the human condition. And they won't make these big, vague gestures to like how this can change the way we view society. They're like, give me real details. Give me real like empirical criticism. Do you think this is — are you one of these people?Brandon: Yeah, yeah, I think I'm, you know, I'm all about what's on the page. I'm all about the I'm not gonna go rooting in your biography for not gonna go. I'm not I'm not doing that. It's like what you brought to me on the page is what you've brought to me. And that is what I will be sort of coming over. I mean, I think so. I mean, very often when critics write about my work, or when people respond to my work, they sort of describe it as being put under a microscope. And I do think like, that is how I approach literature. It's how I approach life. If there's ever a problem or a question put to me, I just sort of dissect it and try to get down to its core bits and its core parts. And and so yeah, I mean, if that is a scientific way of doing things, that's certainly how I but also I don't know any other way to think like that's sort of that's sort of how I was trained to think about stuff. You've been to London. I have. What did you think of it? The first time I didn't love it. The second and third times I had a good time, but I felt like London didn't love me back. London is the only place on earth I've ever been where people have had a hard time understanding me like I like it's the only place where I've like attempted to order food or a drink or something in a store or a cafe or a restaurant. And the waiters like turned to my like British hosts and asked them to translate. And that is an entirely foreign experience for me. And so London and I have like a very contentious relationship, I would say.Henry: Now, you've just published four classic novels.Brandon: Yes.Henry: George Gissing, Edith Wharton, Victor Hugo and Sarah Orne Jewett. Why did you choose those four writers, those four titles?Brandon: Oh, well, once we decided that we were going to do a classics imprint, you know, then it's like, well, what are we going to do? And I'm a big Edith Wharton fan. And there are all of these Edith Wharton novels that Americans don't really know about. They know Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence. And if they are an English major, they maybe know her for The House of Mirth. Or like maybe they know her for The Custom of the Country if they're like really into reading. But then they sort of think of her as a novelist of the 19th century. And she's writing all of these books set in the 1920s and about the 1920s. And so it felt important to show people like, oh, this is a writer who died a lot later than you think that she did. And whose creative output was, you know, pretty, who was like a contemporary of F. Scott Fitzgerald in a lot of ways. Like, these books are being published around the same time as The Great Gatsby. And to sort of, you know, bring attention to a part of her over that, like, people don't know about. And like, that's really exciting to me. And Sarah Orne Jewett, I mean, I just really love The Country of the Pointed Furs. I love that book. And I found it in like in a 10 cents bin at a flea market one time. And it's a book that people have tried to bring back. And there have been editions of it. But it just felt like if we could get two people who are really cool to talk about why they love that book, we could sort of have like a real moment. And Sarah Orne Jewett was like a pretty big American writer. Like she was a pretty significant writer. And she was like really plugged in and she's not really read or thought about now. And so that felt like a cool opportunity as well to sort of create a very handsome edition of this book and to sort of talk about a bit why she matters. And the guessing of it all is we were going to do New Grub Street. And then my co-editor thought, well, The Odd Women, I think, is perhaps more relevant to our current moment than New Grub Street necessarily. And it would sort of differentiate us from the people, from the presses that are doing reissues of New Grub Street, because there's just been a new edition of that book. And nobody in America really knows The Odd Women. And it's a really wonderful novel. It's both funny and also like really biting in its satire and commentary. So we thought, oh, it'll be fun to bring this writer to Americans who they've never heard of in a way that will speak to them in a lot of ways. And the Victor Hugo, I mean, you know, there are Hugos that people know all about. And then there are Hugos that no one knows about. And Toilers of the Sea was a passion project for my co-editor. She'd read it in Guernsey. That's where she first discovered that book. And it really meant a lot to her. And I read it and really loved it. I mean, it was like Hugo at his most Hugo. Like, it's a very, it's a very, like, it's a very abundant book. And it's so wild and strange and changeful. And so I was like, oh, that seems cool. Let's do it. Let's put out Toilers of the Sea. So that's a bit of why we picked each one.Henry: And what have you learned from being on the other side of things now that you're the publisher?Brandon: So much. I've learned so much. And indeed, I just, I was just asked by my editor to do the author questionnaire for the novel that I have coming out next. And I thought, yes, I will do this. And I will do it immediately. Because now I know, I know how important these are. And I know how early and how far in advance these things need to be locked in to make everyone's life easier. I think I've learned a bit about the sometimes panicked scramble that happens to get a book published. I've learned about how hard it is to wrangle blurbs. And so I think I'm a little more forgiving of my publishers. But they've always been really great to me. But now I'm like, oh, my gosh, what can I do for you? How can I help you make this publication more of a success?Henry: Do you think that among literary people generally, there's a lack of appreciation of what business really involves in some of the senses you're talking about? I feel like I see a lot of either indifferent or hostile attitudes towards business or commerce or capitalism, late stage capitalism or whatever. And I sometimes look at it and I'm like, I don't think you guys really know what it takes to just like get stuff done. You know what I mean? Like, it's a lot of grind. I don't think it's a big nasty thing. It's just a lot of hard work, right?Brandon: Yeah, I mean, 1000%. Or if it's not a sort of misunderstanding, but a sort of like disinterest in like, right, like a sort of high minded, like, oh, that's just the sort of petty grimy commerce of it all. I care about the beauty and the art. And it's just like, friend, we need booksellers to like, sell this. I mean, to me, the part of it that is most to me, like the most illustrative example of this in my own life is that when I first heard how my editor was going to be describing my book, I was like, that's disgusting. That's horrible. Why are you talking about my race? Why are you talking about like my sexuality? Like, this is horrible. Why can't you just like talk about the plot of the book? Like, what is the matter with you? And then I had, you know, I acquired and edited this book called Henry Henry, which is a queer contemporary retelling of the Henry ad. And it's a wonderful novel. It's so delightful. And I had to go into our sales conference where we are talking to the people whose job it is to sell that book into bookstores to get bookstores to take that book up. And I had to write this incredibly craven description of this novel. And as I was writing it, I was like, I hope Alan, the author, I hope Alan never sees this. He never needs to hear how I'm talking about this book. And as I was doing it, I was like, I will never hold it against my editor again for writing this like, cheesy, cringy copy. Because it's like you, like, you so believe in the art of that book, so much that you want it to give it every fighting chance in the marketplace. And you need to arm your sales team with every weapon of commerce they need to get that book to succeed so that when readers pick it up, they can appreciate all of the beautiful and glorious art of it. And I do think that people, you know, like, people don't really kind of, people don't really understand that. And I do think that part of that is publishing's fault, because they are, they've been rather quick to elide the distinctions between art and commerce. And so like publishing has done a not great job of sort of giving people a lot of faith in its understanding that there's a difference between art and commerce. But yeah, I think, I think there's a lot of misapprehension out there about like, what goes into getting bookstores to acquire that book.Henry: What are the virtues of negative book reviews?Brandon: I was just on a panel about this. I mean, I mean, hopefully a negative book review, like a positive review, or like any review, will allow a reader or the audience to understand the book in a new way, or to create a desire in the reader to pick up the book and see if they agree or disagree or that they, that they have something to argue with or push against as they're reading. You know, when I'm writing a negative review, when I'm writing a review that I feel is trending toward negative, I should say, I always try to like, I don't know, I try to always remember that like, this is just me presenting my experience of the book and my take of the book. And hopefully that will be productive or useful for whoever reads the review. And hopefully that my review won't be the only thing that they read and that they will in fact, go pick up the book and see if they agree or disagree. It's hopefully it creates interesting and potentially divergent dialogues or discourses around the text. And fundamentally, I think not every critic feels this way. Not every piece of criticism is like this. But the criticism I write, I'm trying to create the conditions that will refer the reader always back to the text, be it through quotation, be it through, they're so incensed by my argument that they're going to go read the book themselves and then like, yell at me. Like, I think that that's wonderful, but like, always keeping the book at the center. But I think a negative review can, you know, it can start a conversation. It can get people talking about books, which in this culture, this phase of history feels like a win. And hopefully it can sort of be a corrective sometimes to less genuine or perceived less genuine discourses that are existing around the book.Henry: I think even whether or not it's a question of genuine, it's for me, it's just a question of if you tell people this book is good and they give up their time and money and they discover that it's trash, you've done a really bad thing to that person. And like, there might be dozens of them compared to this one author who you've been impolite to or whatever. And it's just a question of don't lie in book, right?Brandon: Well, yeah. I mean, hopefully people are honest, but I do feel sometimes that there is, there's like a lack of honesty. And look, I think that being like, well, I mean, maybe you'll love this. I don't love it, you know, but at least present your opinion in that way. At least be like, you know, there are many interpretations of this thing. Here's my interpretation. Maybe you'll feel differently or something like that. But I do think that people feel that there have been a great number of dishonest book reviews. Maybe there have been, maybe there have not been. I certainly have read some reviews I felt were dishonest about books that I have read. And I think that the negative book review does feel a bit like a corrective in a lot of ways, both, you know, justified or unjustified. People are like, finally, someone's being honest about this thing. But yeah, I think it's interesting. I think it's all really, I think it's all fascinating. I do think that there are some reviews though, that are negative and that are trying to be about the book, but are really about the author. There are some reviews that I have read that have been ostensibly about reviewing a text, but which have really been about, you don't like that person and you have decided to sort of like take an axe to them. And that to me feels not super productive. I wouldn't do it, but other people find it useful.Henry: As in, you can tell that from the review or you know that from background information?Brandon: I mean, this is all projection, of course, but like there have been some reviews where I've read, like, for example, some of the Lauren Oyler reviews, I think some of the Lauren Oyler reviews were negative and were exclusively about the text. And they sort of took the text apart and sort of dissected it and came to conclusions, some of which I agreed with, some of which I didn't agree with, but they were fundamentally about the text. And like all the criticisms referred back to the text. And then there were some that were like projecting attitudes onto the author that were more about creating this sort of vaporous shape of Lauren Oyler and then sort of poking holes in her literary celebrity or her stature as a critic or what have you. And that to me felt less productive as like a book review.Henry: Yes. Who are your favorite reviewers?Brandon: Ooh, my favorite reviewers. I really love Christian Lawrence. And he does my, of the critics who try to do the sort of like mini historiography of like a thing. He's my favorite because he teaches me a lot. He sort of is so good at summing up an era or summing up a phase of literary production without being like so cringe or so socialist about it. I really love, I love it when he sort of distills and dissects an era. I really like Hermione Hobie. I think she's really interesting. And she writes about books with a lot of feeling and a lot of energy. And I really love her mind. And of course, like Patricia Lockwood, of course, everyone, perhaps not everyone, but I enjoy Patricia Lockwood's criticism. You don't?Henry: Not really.Brandon: Oh, is it because it's too chatty? Is it too, is it too selfie?Henry: A little bit. I think, I think that kind of criticism can work really well. But I think, I think it's too much. I think basically she's very, she's a very stylized writer and a lot of her judgments get, it gets to the point where it's like, this is the logical conclusion of what you're trying to do stylistically. And there are some zingers in here and some great lines and whatever, but we're no longer, this is no longer really a book review.Brandon: Yeah.Henry: Like by the, by the end of the paragraph, this, like, we didn't want to let the style go. We didn't want to lose the opportunity to cap that off. And it leads her into, I think, glibness a lot of the time.Brandon: Yeah. I could see that. I mean, I mean, I enjoy reading her pieces, but do I understand like what's important to her at a sort of literary level? I don't know. I don't, and in that sense, like, are they, is it criticism or is it closer to like personal essay, humorous essay? I don't know. Maybe that's true. I enjoy reading them, but I get why people are like, this is a very, very strong flavor for sure.Henry: Now you've been reading a lot of literary criticism.Brandon: Oh yeah.Henry: Not of the LRB variety, but of the, the old books in libraries variety. Yes. How did that start? How did, how did you come to this?Brandon: Somewhat like ham-fistedly. I, in 2021, I had a really bad case of writer's block and I thought maybe part of the reason I had writer's block was that I didn't know anything about writing or I didn't know anything about like literature or like writing. I'd been writing, I'd published a novel. I was working on another novel. I'd published a book of stories, but like, I just like truly didn't know anything about literature really. And I thought I need some big boy ideas. I need, I need to find out what adults think about literature. And so I went to my buddy, Christian Lorenzen, and I was like, you write criticism. What is it? And what should I read? And he gave me a sort of starter list of criticism. And it was like the liberal imagination by Lionel Trilling and Guy Davenport and Alfred Kazin who wrote On Native Grounds, which is this great book on the American literary tradition and Leslie Fiedler's Love and Death in the American Novel. And I, and then Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle. And I read all of those. And then as each one would sort of refer to a different text or person, I sort of like followed the footnotes down into this rabbit hole of like literary criticism. And now it's been a sort of ongoing project of the last few years of like reading. I always try to have a book of criticism on the go. And then earlier this year, I read Jameson's The Antimonies of Realism. And he kept talking about this Georg Lukács guy. And I was like, I guess I should go read Lukács. And so then I started reading Lukács so that I could get back to Jameson. And I've been reading Lukács ever since. I am like deep down the Lukács rabbit hole. But I'm not reading any of the socialism stuff. I told myself that I wouldn't read any of the socialism stuff and I would only read the literary criticism stuff, which makes me very different from a lot of the socialist literary critics I really enjoy because they're like Lukács, don't read in that literary criticism stuff, just read his socialism stuff. So I'm reading all the wrong stuff from Lukács, but I really, I really love it. But yeah, it sort of started because I thought I needed grown up ideas about literature. And it's been, I don't know, I've really enjoyed it. I really, really enjoy it. It's given me perhaps terrible ideas about what novels should be or do. But, you know, that's one of the side effects to reading.Henry: Has it made, like, what specific ways has it changed how you've written since you've acquired a set of critical principles or ideas?Brandon: Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is, part of it has to do with Lukács' idea of the totality. And, you know, I think that the sort of most direct way that it shows up in a sort of really practical way in my novel writing is that I no longer really want to be starting my books, quote unquote, in media res. Like, I don't want, I want my books to feel like books. I don't want my books to feel like movies. And I don't want them to feel like treatments for film. And so I want to sort of bring back all of what a novel can do in terms of its structure and in terms of its form and stuff like that. And so it means starting books, you know, with this sort of Dickensian voice of God speaking from on high, sort of summing up an era. And I think also sort of allowing the narrators in my work to dare to sum up, allowing characters in my work to have ideologies and to argue about those ideologies. I feel like that is a thing that was sort of denuded from the American novel for a lot of millennials and just sort of like trying to put back some of that old fashioned machinery that was like stripped out of the novel. And seeing what of it can still function, seeing, trying to figure out if there's any juice left in these modes of representation and stuff like that. And so like that, that's sort of, that's sort of abstract, but like in a concrete way, like what I'm kind of trying to resolve in my novel writing these days.Henry: You mentioned Dickens.Brandon: Oh, yes.Henry: Which Dickens novels do you like?Brandon: Now I'm afraid I'm going to say something else controversial. We love controversial. Which Dickens? I love Bleak House. I love Bleak House. I love Tale of Two Cities. It is one of the best openings ever, ever, ever, ever in the sweep of that book at once personal and universal anyway. Bleak House, Tale of Two Cities. And I also, I read Great Expectations as like a high school student and didn't like it, hated it. It was so boring. But now coming back to it, I think it, honestly, it might be the novel of our time. I think it might accidentally be a novel. I mean, it's a novel of scammers, a novel of like, interpersonal beef taken to the level of like, spiritual conflict, like it's about thieves and class, like it just feels like like that novel could have been written today about people today, like that book just feels so alive to today's concerns, which perhaps, I don't know, says something really evil about this cultural stagnation under capitalism, perhaps, but I don't know, love, love Great Expectations now.Henry: Why are so many modern novels boring?Brandon: Well, depends on what you mean by boring, Henry, what do you mean? Why?Henry: I mean, you said this.Brandon: Oh.Henry: I mean, I happen to agree, but this is, I'm quoting you.Brandon: Oh, yes. I remember that. I remember that review.Henry: I mean, I can tell you why I think they're boring.Brandon: Oh, yes, please.Henry: So I think, I think what you said before is true. They all read like movies. And I think I very often I go in, I pick up six or seven books on the new book table. And I'm like, these openings are all just the same. You're all thinking you can all see Netflix in your head. This is not really a novel. And so the dialogue is really boring, because you kind of you can hear some actor or actress saying it. But I can't hear that because I'm the idiot stuck in the bookshop reading your Netflix script. Whereas, you know, I think you're right that a lot of those traditional forms of storytelling, they like pull you in to the to the novel. And they and they like by the end of the first few pages, you sort of feel like I'm in this funny place now. And to do in media res, like, someone needs to get shot, or something, something weird needs to be said, like, you can't just do another, another standard opening. So I think that's a big, that's a big point.Brandon: Well, as Lukasz tells us, bourgeois realism has a, an unholy fondness for the, the average, the merely average, as opposed to the typical. And I think, yeah, a lot of it, a lot of why I think it's boring echoes you, I think that for me, what I find boring, and a lot of them is that it feels like novelists have abandoned any desire to, to have their characters or the novels themselves integrate the sort of disparate experiences within the novel into any kind of meaningful hole. And so there isn't this like sense of like things advancing toward a grander understanding. And I think a lot of it is because they've, they are writing under the assumption that like the question of why can never be answered. There can never be like a why, there can never be a sort of significance to anything. And so everything is sort of like evacuated of significance or meaning. And so you have what I've taken to calling like reality TV fiction, where the characters are just like going places and doing things, and there are no thoughts, there are no thoughts about their lives, or no thoughts about the things that they are doing, there are no thoughts about their experiences. And it's just a lot of like, like lowercase e events in their lives, but like no attempt to organize those events into any sort of meaningful hole. And I think also just like, what leads to a lot of dead writing is writers who are deeply aware that they're writing about themes, they're writing about themes instead of people. And they're working from generalities instead of particularities and specificities. And they have no understanding of the relationship between the universal and the particular. And so like, everything is just like, like beans in a can that they're shaking around. And I think that that's really boring. I think it's really tedious. Like, like, sure, we can we can find something really profound in the mundane, but like, you have to be really smart to do that. So like the average novelist is like better off like, starting with a gunshot or something like do something big.Henry: If you're not Virginia Woolf, it is in fact just mundane.Brandon: Indeed. Yeah.Henry: Is there too much emphasis on craft? In the way, in the way, in like what's valued among writers, in the way writers are taught, I feel like everything I see is about craft. And I'm like, craft is good, but that can just be like how you make a table rather than like how you make a house. Craft is not the guarantor of anything. And I see a lot of books where I think this person knows some craft. But as you say, they don't really have an application for it. And they don't. No one actually said to them, all style has a moral purpose, whether you're aware of it or not. And so they default to this like pointless use of the craft. And someone should say to them, like, you need to know history. You need to know tennis. You need to know business. You need to know like whatever, you know. And I feel like the novels I don't like are reflections of the discourse bubble that the novelist lives in. And I feel like it's often the continuation of Twitter by other means. So in the Rachel Kong novel that I think it came out this year, there's a character, a billionaire character who comes in near the end. And everything that he says or that is said about him is literally just meme. It's online billionaire meme because billionaires are bad because of all the things we all know from being on Twitter. And I was like, so you just we literally have him a character as meme. And this is the most representative thing to me, because that's maybe there's craft in that. Right. But what you've chosen to craft is like 28 tweets. That's pointless.Brandon: 28 tweets be a great title for a book, though, you have to admit, I would buy that book off the new book table. 28 tweets. I would. I would buy that. Yeah, I do think. Well, I think it goes both ways. I think it goes both ways. I somewhat famously said this about Sally Rooney that like she her books have no craft. The craft is bad. And I do think like there are writers who only have craft, who are able to sort of create these wonderfully structured books and to sort of deploy these beautiful techniques. And those books are absolutely dead. There's just like nothing in them because they have nothing to say. There's just like nothing to be said about any of that. And on the other hand, you have these books that are full of feelings that like would be better had someone taught that person about structure or form or had they sort of had like a rigorous thing. And I would say that like both of those are probably bad, like depending on who you are, you find one more like, like easier to deal with than the other. I do think that like part of why there's such an emphasis on craft is because not to sort of bring capitalism back in but you can monetize craft, you know what I mean? Like, craft is one of those things that is like readily monetizable. Like, if I'm a writer, and I would like to make money, and I can't sell a novel, I can tell people like, oh, how to craft a perfect opening, how to create a novel opening that will make agents pick it up and that will make editors say yes, but like what the sort of promise of craft is that you can finish a thing, but not that it is good, as you say, there's no guarantor. Whereas you know, like it's harder to monetize someone's soul, or like, it's harder to monetize like the sort of random happenstance of just like a writer's voice sort of emerging from from whatever, like you can't turn that into profit. But you can turn into profit, let me help you craft your voice. So it's very grind set, I think craft has a tendency to sort of skew toward the grind set and toward people trying to make money from, from writing when they can't sell a book, you know. Henry: Let's play a game. Brandon: Oh dear.Henry: I say the name of a writer. You give us like the 30 second Brandon Taylor opinion of that writer.Brandon: Okay. Yeah.Henry: Jonathan Franzen.Brandon: Thomas Mann, but like, slightly more boring, I think.Henry: Iris Murdoch.Brandon: A friend of mine calls her a modern calls her the sort of pre Sally Rooney, Sally Rooney. And I agree with that.Henry: When I'm at parties, I try and sell her to people where I say she's post-war Sally Rooney.Brandon: Yes, yes. And like, and like all that that entails, and so many delightful, I read all these like incredible sort of mid century reviews of her novels, and like the men, the male critics, like the Bernard Breganzis of the world being like, why is there so much sex in this book? It's amazing. Please go look up those like mid-century reviews of Iris Murdoch. They were losing their minds. Henry: Chekhov.Brandon: Perfect, iconic, baby girl, angel, legend. Can't get enough. 10 out of 10.Henry: Evelyn Waugh.Brandon: So Catholic, real Catholic vibes. But like, scabrously funny. And like, perhaps the last writer to write about life as though it had meaning. Hot take, but I'll, I stand by it.Henry: Yeah, well, him and Murdoch. But yeah, no, I think I think there's a lot in that. C.V. Wedgwood.Brandon: Oh, my gosh. The best, a titan, a master of history. Like, oh, my God. I would not be the same without Wedgwood.Henry: Tell us which one we should read.Brandon: Oh, the 30 Years War. What are you talking about?Henry: Well, I think her books on the English Civil War… I'm a parochial Brit.Brandon: Oh, see, I don't, not that I don't, I will go read those. But her book on the 30 Years War is so incredible. It's, it's amazing. It's second to like, Froissart's Chronicles for like, sort of history, history books for me.Henry: Northrop Frye.Brandon: My father. I, Northrop Frye taught me so much about how to see and how to think. Just amazing, a true thinker in a mind. Henry: Which book? Brandon: Oh, Anatomy of Criticism is fantastic. But Fearful Symmetry is just, it will blow your head off. Just amazing. But if you're looking for like, to have your, your mind gently remapped, then Anatomy of Criticism.Henry: Emma Cline.Brandon: A throwback. I think she's, I think she's Anne Beattie meets John Cheever for a new era. And I think she's amazing. She's perfect. Don't love her first novel. I think her stories are better. She's a short story writer. And she should stay that way.Henry: Okay, now I want you to rank Jane Austen's novels.Brandon: Wait, okay. So like, by my preference, or by like, what I think is the best?Henry: You can do both.Brandon: Okay. So in terms, my favorite, Persuasion. Then Mansfield Park. Sense and Sensibility. Pride and Prejudice. And then Emma, then Northanger Abbey. Okay.Henry: Now, how about for which ones are the best?Brandon: Persuasion. Pride and Prejudice. Mansfield Park. Emma,.Sense and Sensibility. Northanger Abbey.Henry: Why do people not like Fanny Price? And what is wrong with them?Brandon: Fanny Price is perfect. Fanny Price, I was just talking to someone about this last night at dinner. Fanny Price, she's perfect. First of all, she is, I don't know why people don't like her. She's like a chronically ill girl who's hot for her cousin and like, has deep thoughts. It seems like she would be the icon of literary Twitter for like a certain kind of person, you know? And I don't know why they don't like her. I think I'm, I am becoming the loudest Mansfield Park apologist on the internet. I think that people don't like Fanny because she's less vivacious than Mary Crawford. And I think that people are afraid to see themselves in Fanny because she seems like she's unfun or whatever. But what they don't realize is that like Fanny Price, Fanny Price has like a moral intelligence and like a moral consciousness. And like Fanny Price is one of the few Austen characters who actually argues directly and literally about the way the world is. Like with multiple people, like the whole, the whole novel is her sort of arguing about, well, cities are this and the country is this. And like, we need Parsons as much as we need party boys. Like, like she's arguing not just about, not just about these things like through the lens of like marriage or like the sort of marriage economy, but like in literal terms, I mean, she is so, she's like a moral philosopher. I love Fanny Price and she's so smart and so sensitive and so, and I guess like maybe it's just that people don't like a character who's kind of at the mercy of others and they view her as passive. When in fact, like a young woman arguing about the way the world should be, like Mary Crawford's, Mary Crawford's like kind of doing the above, not really, not like Fanny. But yeah, I love her. She's amazing. I love Fanny Price. And I also think that people love Margaret Hale from North and South. And I think that when people are saying they hate Fanny Price, what they're picturing is actually how Margaret Hale is. Margaret Hale is one of the worst heroines of a novel. She's so insufferable. She's so rude. She's so condescending. And like, she does get her comeuppance and like Gaskell does sort of bring about a transformation where she's actually able to sort of like see poor people as people first and not like subjects of sympathy. But Margaret is what people imagine Fanny is, I think. And we should, we should start a Fanny Price, like booster club. Henry, should we? Let's do it. It begins here. I just feel so strongly about her. I feel, I love, I love Fanny.Henry: She's my favorite of Austen's characters. And I think she is the most representative Austen character. She's the most Austen of all of them, right?Brandon: Yeah, I mean, that makes great deal of sense to me. She's just so wonderful. Like she's so funny and so observant. And she's like this quiet little girl who's like kind of sickly and people don't really like her. And she's kind of maybe I'm just like, maybe I just like see myself in her. And I don't mind being a sort of annoying little person who's going around the world.Henry: What are some good principles for naming literary characters?Brandon: Ooh, I have a lot of strong feelings about this. I think that names should be memorable. They should have like, like an aura of sort of literariness about them. I don't mean, I mean, taken to like hilarious extremes. It's like Henry James. Catherine Goodwood, Isabelle Archer, Ralph Touchett, like, you know, Henry had a stack pole. So like, not like that. But I mean, that could be fun in a modern way. But I think there's like an aura of like, it's a name that you might hear in real life, but it sort of add or remove, it's sort of charged and elevated, sort of like with dialogue. And that it's like a memorable thing that sort of like, you know, it's like, you know, memorable thing that sort of sticks in the reader's mind. It is both a name, a literary, a good literary name is both a part of this world and not of this world, I think. And, yeah, and I love that. I think like, don't give your character a name like you hear all the time. Like, Tyler is a terrible literary name. Like, no novel has ever, no good novel has ever had a really important character named Tyler in it. It just hasn't. Ryan? What makes a good sentence? Well, my sort of like, live and let live answer is that a good sentence is a sentence that is perfectly suited to the purpose it has. But I don't know, I like a clear sentence, regardless of length or lyric intensity, but just like a clear sentence that articulates something. I like a sentence with motion, a sense of rhythm, a sense of feel without any bad words in it. And I don't mean like curse words, I mean like words that shouldn't be in literature. Like, there's some words that just like don't belong in novels.Henry: Like what?Brandon: Squelch. Like, I don't think the word squelch should be in a novel. That's a gross word and it doesn't sound literary to me. I don't want to see it.Henry: I wouldn't be surprised if it was in Ulysses.Brandon: Well, yes.Henry: I have no idea, but I'm sure, I'm sure.Brandon: But so few of us are James Joyce. And that novel is like a thousand bodily functions per page. But don't love it. Don't love it.Henry: You don't love Ulysses?Brandon: No, I don't… Listen, I don't have a strong opinion, but you're not going to get me cancelled about Ulysses. I'm not Virginia Woolf.Henry: We're happy to have opinions of that nature here. That's fine.Brandon: You know, I don't have a strong feeling about it, actually. Some parts of it that I've read are really wonderful. And some parts of it that I have read are really dense and confusing to me. I haven't sort of given it the time it needs or deserves. What did you learn from reading Toni Morris? What did I learn? I think I learned a lot about the moral force of melodrama. I think that she shows us a lot about the uses of melodrama and how it isn't just like a lesion of realism, that it isn't just a sort of malfunctioning realism, but that there are certain experiences and certain lives and certain things that require and necessitate melodrama. And when deployed, it's not tacky or distasteful that it actually is like deeply necessary. And also just like the joy of access and language, like the sort of... Her language is so towering. I don't know, whenever I'm being really shy about a sentence being too vivid or too much, I'm like, well, Toni Morrison would just go for it. And I am not Toni Morrison, but she has given me the courage to try.Henry: What did you like about the Annette Benning film of The Seagull?Brandon: The moment when Annette Benning sings Dark Eyes is so good. It's so good. I think about it all the time. And indeed, I stole that moment for a short story that I wrote. And I liked that part of it. I liked the set design. I think also Saoirse Ronan, when she gives that speech as Nina, where she's like, you know, where the guy's like, what do you want from, you know, what do you want? Why do you want to be an actress? And she's like, I want fame. You know, like, I want to be totally adored. And I'm just like, yeah, that's so real. That's so, that is so real. Like Chekhov has understood something so deep, so deep about the nature of commerce and art there. And I think Saoirse is really wonderful in that movie. It's a not, it's not a good movie. It's maybe not even a good adaptation of The Seagull. But I really enjoyed it. I saw it like five times in a theater in Iowa City.Henry: I don't know if it's a bad adaptation of The Seagull, because it's one of the, it's one of the Chekhov's I've seen that actually understands that, like, the tragic and the and the comic are not meant to be easily distinguishable in his work. And it does have all this lightheartedness. And it is quite funny. And I was like, well, at least someone's doing that because I'm so sick of, like, gloomy Chekhov. You know what I mean? Like, oh, the clouds and the misery. Like, no, he wants you, he wants you to laugh and then be like, I shouldn't laugh because it's kind of tragic, but it's also just funny.Brandon: Yeah. Yes, I mean, all the moments were like, like Annette Bening's characters, like endless stories, like she's just like constantly unfurling a story and a story and a story and a story. Every scene kind of was like, she's in the middle of telling another interminable anecdote. And of course, the sort of big tragic turn at the end is like, where like, Kostya kills himself. And she's like, in the middle of like, another really long anecdote while they're in the other room playing cards. Like, it's so, it's so good. So I love that. I enjoy watching that movie. I still think it's maybe not. It's a little wooden, like as a movie, like it's a little, it's a little rickety.Henry: Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure. But for someone looking to like, get a handle on Chekhov, it's actually a good place to go. What is the best make of Fountain Pen?Brandon: That's a really good, that's a really, really, really good question. Like, what's your Desert Island Fountain Pen? My Desert Island Fountain Pen. Right now, it's an Esterbrook Estee with a needlepoint nib. It's like, so, I can use that pen for hours and hours and hours and hours. I think my favorite Fountain Pen, though, is probably the Pilot Custom 743. It's a really good pen, not too big, not too small. It can hold a ton of ink, really wonderful. I use, I think, like a Soft Fine nib, incredible nib, so smooth. Like, I, you could cap it and then uncap it a month later, and it just like starts immediately. It's amazing. And it's not too expensive.Henry: Brandon Taylor, thank you very much.Brandon: Thanks for having me. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk/subscribe

Today's show opens with a reminder to our two obstructionist Senators, Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) that the New Media is more than happy to play the game of dredging up dirt and getting you primaried in the next election cycle. While Sen. Richard “Griphook” Blumenthal (D-CT) thinks there are as many as 10 Republican senators who will not vote for Pete Hegseth, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) thinks they will have to support the will of the electorate that voted for Trump and his agenda. The Trans-mafia are bringing a case to the Supreme Court. The state of Tennessee has banned all puberty blockers and related surgeries for minors. We get to take a sneak peek at the arguments being made by the Left and how the more Constitutional minded justices are poking gaping holes in those arguments. Ultimately, we may be going through a version of Transmunchausen by proxy, as demonstrated by a comment from Annette Benning. We discovered a wonderful exchange between MSNBC's Joe Reid and then Rep. Adam “Lying Piece of” Schiff (D-CA) regarding pardons. It seems in 2020 they concluded that pardons are never given to innocent people. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) ruined The View's Joy Bahar's day when she didn't get the answer she wanted. Fetterman said both the Hunter Biden case and Trump's NY case were both politically motivated. Finally, actor James Woods put out a tweet today seeming to indicate there may be trouble brewing inside the Emhoff house. Rumors are circulating that the 2nd hubs may have been playing house with a few of Kamala's campaign staffers. While I haven't seen anything concrete, I did find it fun to dive into a bit of tabloid gossip to close out the show. Please take a moment to rate and review the show and then share the episode on social media. You can find me on Facebook, X, Instagram, GETTR and TRUTH Social by searching for The Alan Sanders Show. You can also support the show by visiting my Patreon page!!

About This Episode: Mars Attacks!: Episode 313 - ACK, ACK, ACK! Sep-Tim-Bur-Ton continues as your hosts take a trip beyond the stars to talk about the sci-fi B-movie flop Mars Attacks! The Tops trading card adaptation is as campy as it is fun, but did this lead to Tim Burton's downfall? Tune in to find out! We Pod in peace. Insta: @NormiesLikeUs https://www.instagram.com/normieslikeus/ @jacob https://www.instagram.com/jacob/ @MikeHasInsta https://www.instagram.com/mikehasinsta/ https://letterboxd.com/BabblingBrooksy/ https://letterboxd.com/hobbes72/ https://letterboxd.com/mikejromans/

Your reader doesn't have to like the protagonist but she does have to empathize with him because if empathy is absent, your story is in trouble. In this episode Melanie and I study conflict triangles and narrative drive, but we also have an interesting side conversation about empathy and likeability. If you're writing an unlikeable character, or if you're writing a quiet, character-driven story, this episode is for you. -V"The protagonist does not have to be likable, but you've got to be careful that you don't place the reader's empathy on another character." - Valerie Francis  For access to writing templates and worksheets, and more than 70 hours of training (all for free), subscribe to Valerie's Inner Circle.To learn to read like a writer, visit Melanie's website.Follow Valerie on X, Instagram and Threads @valerie_francisFollow Melanie on X, Instagram and Facebook @MelanieHillAuthor

John Candy just wants to take his family to the lake for a summer vacation, the last thing he needs is Dan Ackroyd tagging along, humiliating him, and stealing his money. But that's family for you. This feels like an unused National Lampoon's Vacation script, and it turns out, thats exactly what it is. Starring John Candy, Dan Ackroyd, Stephanie Faracy, and Annette Benning. Written by John Hughes. Directed by Howard Deutch.

On the 374th episode of Piecing It Together, Joe Black joins me to talk about Poolman. Chris Pine's directorial debut about a pool guy turned detective was shunned by critics and audiences alike... But we kinda loved it. Puzzle pieces include Inherent Vice, The Big Lebowski, Cisco Pike and The Beach Bum.As always, SPOILER ALERT for Poolman and the movies we discuss!Written by Chris PineDirected by Chris PineStarring Chris Pine, Danny DeVito, Annette Benning, Jennifer Jason Leigh, DeWanda Wise, John OrtizVertical Entertainmenthttps://www.poolmanmovie.com/Joe Black is a filmmaker. Check out his work at https://www.bluemeanspregnantfilms.com/My sixth album, MORE CONTENT is available NOW on iTunes, Bandcamp and all other digital music stores! Make sure to check it out!My latest music is the 24 for 2024 series in which I'm releasing a new single on the 1st and 3rd Fridays of every month in 2024. 24 new songs total. Follow along on the Spotify Playlist at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4PDKoUQ1CoFpiogLu2Sz4D?si=3cb1df0dd0384968My latest music video “Burn" which you can watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxKAWFm0gAoThe song at the end of the episode is from my comedy album The Pup Pups - "Who Wants Din-Din?" and is a song called "Wet Dog."Make sure to “Like” Piecing It Together on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/PiecingPodAnd “Follow” us on Twitter @PiecingPodAnd Join the Conversation in our Facebook Group, Piecing It Together – A Movie Discussion Group.And check out https://www.piecingpod.com for more about our show!And if you want to SUPPORT THE SHOW, you can now sign up for our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/bydavidrosenYou can also support the show by checking out our Vouch store where we're selling a bunch of great products at https://vouch.store/piecingittogetherShare the episode, comment and give us feedback! And of course, SUBSCRIBE!And of course, don't forget to leave us a 5 star review on Goodpods, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Podchaser! And most important of all… Keep going to the theater to see new movies!Mentioned in this episode:Furiosa AdCheck https://www.piecingpod.com for more details on how to win tickets or buy tickets to our LIVE podcast coming up on Thursday, May 23rd at 6pm at Maya Cinemas on FURIOSA with guests Sam Novak, Shahab Zargari and Toni Gonzales!

Its a quick one with 3 Body Problem, Cabrini, Nyad, and Apples Never Fall. It's just Lauren and Kevin this week and they make swift work of their respective topics. Lauren kicks it off with the biopic, Nyad, about Diana Nyad, the 60 year old woman who swam from Cuba to Florida - a distance of well over 100 miles. It's a fascinating documentary about a woman's battle against the odds and the triumph of her spectacular achievement. Kevin uses Annette Benning as the springboard to transition to Apples Never Fall, the Gone Girl-esque family drama on Peacock. It's a show with all the potential in the world, between Benning, Same Neil, and the writers of Big Little Lies, but it fails a bit in the execution. Lauren then takes us in her way back machine to turn of the century New York with Cabrini. It's a tale of a nun who travels from Italy to America, only to discover that her people are being treated worse than anyone could have imagined. Her battle to improve conditions for these people makes for a compelling story that everyone should see. Kevin closes out the show with this springs big Netflix blockbuster series, 3 Body Problem. Adapted from a Chinese science fiction novel of the same name (and the first book in a trilogy) by the creators of the Game of Thrones series, Benioff and Weiss, it does suffer from some of the pacing that the latr seasons of Thrones did, but is overall a very good series. As always, thank you for watching. If you haven't already, don't forget to Like & Subscribe. We love new viewers! Also, leave us comments and let is know how we are doing and what we can be doing better. Enjoy the episode and have a great week! Facebook: @apncpodcast Twitter: @APNCPodcast Instagram: AllPopNoCulture

Joe and Jared sit down with 21 year old, Kyah Vaught, to discuss the film that spoke to her soul. Listen in to understand why Annette Benning in 20th Century Women impacted Kyah so deeply. This is a chance for us older people to get a glimpse at how the rising generation sees the world, their parents, and the joys and pains of growing up.Thank you for listening! You can find and follow us with the links below!https://fixateandbingepodcast.com/https://www.instagram.com/fixateandbingepodcast/?hl=mshttps://www.tiktok.com/@fixateandbingepodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb7Y74-_IZxRLPvV1tzY4OQ

NYAD Love her or hate her, know her or don't, NYAD (2023) and Diana Nyad herself have been in the news lately with the Academy Award nominations of Annette Benning and Jodie Foster for said film. But who is she?  Athlete Diana Nyad sets out at 60 to achieve a nearly impossible lifelong dream: to swim from Cuba to Florida across more than 100 miles of open ocean. (Sourced from Letterboxd) That's right, controversial swimmer and sometime pathological liar Diana Nyad is being covered and whether she swum assisted or unassisted, there's one thing for certain, Annette is giving it her ALL in this performance. From the very first shot she is blazing intensity. But is the movie any good? Will you need multiple attempts to watch this movie like Diana Nyad needed to swim from Cuba to Florida? How deep can your voice go? And has your mind never been clearer?

Tara did a thing! She went to the Sapphic World Book Club's event featuring Lee Winter and is here to spread the good word.  Kris and Tara talk about Facebook reels for a bit. Now that Tara has finished Love is Blind, she and Kris have their own reunion show to discuss the fallout. Spoilers around 14:50 - 30:42. Official Recommendations From Kris: Nyad (2023) This week Kris recommends the 2023 biographical film Nyad. Starring Jodie Foster and Annette Benning, Nyad follows Diana Nyad's multiple attempts to swim the straits of Florida in the 2010s. Sports movies get us where we live and when they have excellent performances? They get recommended. From Tara: London Ever After by Clare Lydon This week Tara recommends London Ever After by Clare Lydon, the 9th and final book in her London Romance series. Tara appreciated the laughs and the journey of seeing someone become a drag king in this one, describing it as a "lovely, happy" book. Works/People Discussed Vengeance Planning for Amateurs by Lee Winter Sapphic World Book Club The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live (AMC) Apples Never Fall (Peacock) Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty The Resident (Fox) RuPaul's Drag Race, season 16 (MTV) RuPaul's Drag Race: UK vs. the World, season 2 (BBC Three) Love is Blind, season Six (Netflix) Firebugs by Nino Bulling Cover Story by Rachel Lacey Support & follow the show Buy us a Ko-fi Sign up for our newsletter on Substack Twitter: @queerlyrec Facebook: @QueerlyRecommended Instagram: @queerlyrecommended Blusky: @queerlyrec.bsky.social Get all our links on Linktr.ee Support local animal shelters by joining Kris's Patreon

Arthur the King is an okay movie with a pretty emotional center that makes you feel good.  There's nothing wrong with that.  0:07:00 - Box Office and upcoming releases. 0:12:45 *** What's Streaming  *** DISNEY+ CHRISTOPHER ROBIN, Dir. Marc Forster – Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, 2018. RAYA THE LAST DRAGON, Dir. Don Hall – Kelly Marie Tran, Awkwafina, Gemma Chan, Daniel Dae Kim, Sandra Oh, Alan Tudyk, Izaac Wang, Benedict Wong, Feature. 2021. THOR: RAGNAROK – Chris Hemsworth, Cate Blanchette, Tom Hiddleston, Mark Ruffalo, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Anthony Hopkins, Benedict Cumberbatch, Taika Waititi, Clancy Brown, Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Sam Neil, Luke Hemsworth, Feature.  2017. 0:25:30 - Trailers:  POOLMAN – Chris Pine, Annette Benning, Jennifer Jason Leigh, DeWanda Wise, Danny DeVito, Jack Ortiz, Ray Wise, DIRECTED BY CHRIS PINE ALIEN: ROMULUS – Isabel Merced, Caliee Spaeny, Archie Renaux, David Jonsson, Feature. SWEET DREAMS – Johnny Knoxville, Bobby Lee, Kate Upton, Jay Mohr, Brian Van Holt, Theo Van, Feature.   0:38:30 - ARTHUR THE KING, Dir. Simon Cellan Jones ( Grayson 5.5 / Roger 6.5 / Chris 5.5 )   Hosted, produced and mixed by Grayson Maxwell and Roger Stillion.  Guest appearance by Christopher Boughan.  Music by Chad Wall. Quality Assurance by Anthony Emmett. Visit the new Youtube channel, "For the Love of Cinema" to follow and support our short video discussions.  Please give a like and subscribe if you enjoy it.   Follow the show on Twitter @lovecinemapod and check out the Facebook page for updates.  Rate, subscribe and leave a comment or two.  Every Little bit helps.  Send us an email to fortheloveofcinemapodcast@gmail.com

Whether it's Jodi Foster's no-makeup look or Annette Benning's busted “I'm going to die” face, the two get raw for their Oscar-nominated performances in NYAD. Check out the siblings' discussion on the movie about Diana Nyad's miraculous swim from Cuba to Florida at www.orwhatevermovies.com. Contains spoilers. Thank you for listening! 818-835-0473 orwhatevermovies@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From El Capitan in Yosemite to Tham Luang Nang Non cave in northern Thailand and Meru Peak in the Indian Himalayas, Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (her partner in filmmaking and in life) have captured the imagination of audiences worldwide with intimate, non-fiction portrayals of outdoor athletes pushing themselves to extremes. Free Solo, their 2018 film, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Their first scripted project, Nyad, boasts Oscar-nominated performances from Annette Benning and Jodie Foster. The film that blew Chai's mind? Michael Winterbottom's 2002 In This World, which blurs the lines of fiction and documentary to convey the story of an Afghani boy's journey from a Pakistani refugee camp to London. She joins Cooper and Tabitha to explore the finer points of Winterbottom's film and dives into questions of truth vs fiction, the nuances of working with real-life characters, and how the relationships she cultivates with her participants are essential to her filmmaking craft. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

PopaHALLics #117 "Unpleasant People"They're self-centered ... pushy ... arrogant ... and sometimes murderous. But difficult people—an orchestra conductor, a marathon swimmer, two battling cops, even a serial killer—can make for great pop culture, as this episode attests. Streaming:"Maestro," Netflix. Bradley Cooper cowrote, directs, and stars as conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein and Carey Mulligan plays his actress wife in this drama about their relationship. The film received 7 Oscar nominations."Nyad," Netflix. In this true story, Annette Benning plays marathon swimmer Diana Nyad, who decides at age 60 to swim from Cuba to Florida. Jodie Foster is her long-suffering best friend and coach. Both received Oscar nominations. "True Detective: Night Country," Max. In the spooky 4th season of the series, a sheriff (Jodie Foster) and state trooper (Kali Reis) frequently butt heads as they investigate the strange disappearance of 7 men from an  Alaska research station."Boston Strangler," Hulu. In this 2023 movie based on a true story, reporter Loretta McLaughlin  (Keira Knightley) is the first to connect the murders of 13 women and report on the notorious serial killer. With Carrie Coon."Zorro," Prime. This 2024 Spanish TV series reinterprets the avenging vigilante in black, first created in 1919.  Miguel Bernardeau plays the swordsman in a show with lots of action and a greater emphasis on indigenous and Mexican characters."The Man From Nowhere," Netflix. In this intense South Korean action flick, a little girl befriends her next door neighbor, a reclusive pawn shop owner. When bad guys take her, they quickly discover he's much more than he appears.Books:"Shuggie Bain," by Douglas Stuart.  In this acclaimed novel, young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain is a sweet, lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow. "A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love" (Goodreads)."The Music Shop," by Rachel Joyce. In London in 1988, a music shop owner has the gift of connecting people with just the music they need. A beautiful young woman asks him to teach her about music—but she's not what she seems. Named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post and The Times (UK).

Greetings programs! It's that time of year when the Oscar nominees are announced! This week, we're breaking down our preferences and predictions for (almost) every category of the 96th Academy Awards. Some of our choices line up, and some don't, so listen to see if you agree with Matthew, Simon or both.  Join us!BONUS CONTENT:     Staying on theme with the Academy Awards, we look back at the best picture winners of our lifetimes and try to choose a favourite, and then attempt to pick out the year that makes us each say, "Wait, that film won best picture? Really?"It's a fun conversation, so join us! All Patreon supporters get access, starting at as little as CAD 2 per month. Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/january-28th-97403284SUPPORT:             Patreon    Ko-Fi EPISODE HOMEPAGE:     On this week's episode homepage, you'll find both Matthew & Simon's Oscar Ballots, so you can hold them to account when the day comes.   You will also find JustWatch-powered links on the episode homepage for all ten Best Picture nominees. Seven of the ten are available now, but the links will update as availability changes, so check back frequently. Use those links to watch the films and help us keep the lights on!Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2024/01/podcast-the-2024-academy-awards-nominations/CONNECT WITH US:        Awesome Friday: https://awesomefriday.ca        Matthew: https://stretched.ca/ Simon: https://temporarypen.com/ SHOW LINKS: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/awesome-friday/id480100293 Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/18daf305-2c59-4718-bd5c-0dc393173353 Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/en/show/2775782 Goodpods: https://goodpods.app.link/ulvugeHonjb IHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/85390621/ Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes480100293/the-awesome-friday-movie-podcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4kwPQGeBvVFVtewkCbrbA9 Meanwhile, relax and enjoy your flight. 

Suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer charged with additional killing; Annette Benning discusses intense swimming prep for new role. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carmen spills the beans about the Annette Benning movie “Nyad" (SPOILER ALERT: In real life, Diane Nyad today resembles the dashing Roger Daltrey). The duo also discusses Carmen's desperate attempts to score spots on Spanish podcasts to promote her Spanish special. [BTW, Carmen's English special “Queef Week” is available on Mark Normand's YouTube channel @MarkNormand!] Then Carmen recounts her latest Mel Robbins lesson and John dives into the Spiderverse movie so, yes, there are TWO movie reviews in this episode. ANOTHER BTW, Carmen had to bail mid-Spiderverse due to an unexpected disco inferno of flashing lights which started to “Mary Hart” her brain (all is explained when you listen, so listen).

Today joining me in studio is Jake Monaco, a maestro of melodies, who has left an indelible mark on the world of film composition both of the animated and 2 d variety. Jake has worked on some amazing projects from studios like Pixar and Disney. Jake's journey has taken him from rocking in a band during his college years to taking a deep dive into music through intensive music study programs and mentorship that has led to an impressive career. He has orchestrated the musical landscapes for hit animated and other movies, from Brian Cranston and Annette Benning to my fave AbFab Girls, to talking Cars and Forks. So Let's get into my need for unnecessary puns and delve into the rhythm of Jake's journey, exploring the notes that have shaped the cinematic experiences we all can now cherish, and welcome to the Left of Str8 show for the first time, the handsome and talented Mr. Jake Monaco. Summary Jake Monaco, a composer known for his work in film and television, discusses his journey in the industry, his personal life, and his approach to scoring different projects. He shares his experiences working on LGBTQ-themed projects and the challenges he has faced. Jake also talks about his creative process and the importance of being involved early in the production process. He offers advice for aspiring musicians and composers. In this conversation, Jake Monaco discusses his passion for helping the world and providing for those less fortunate. He also shares his ideal date day at Disneyland or Disney World. Takeaways Being involved early in the production process allows for better collaboration and understanding of the project's vision. Working on LGBTQ-themed projects provides an opportunity to contribute to the community and create meaningful stories. The creative process in composing for film and television involves navigating feedback and finding the right balance between different creative inputs. Technology has made the recording process more convenient, but there is a lack of social interaction compared to in-person sessions. Aspiring musicians and composers should consider pursuing education in film scoring and gaining real-world experience through internships or assistantships. Jake Monaco believes in using his talents to make a positive impact on the world. He envisions a future where he can help food grow and provide for those in need. Jake Monaco's perfect date day would be experiencing all that Disneyland or Disney World has to offer. He values taking the time to absorb the amazingness of the Disney Parks. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Background 03:30 Coming Out and Personal Life 06:35 Meeting His Husband and Adoption 10:04 Using Social Media as a Memory Box 12:38 Composing for Film and Television 19:13 Creative Process and Approaching Different Projects 22:41 Challenges in the Industry 24:07 Working on LGBTQ Projects 26:16 Scoring the Short Film 'Out' 30:46 Scoring the Documentary 'Through the Windows' and the Animation 'Pete' 35:49 Advice for Aspiring Musicians and Composers 44:17 Helping the World and Providing for Others 45:08 Perfect Date Day at Disneyland or Disney World

Dois lançamentos recentes do streaming trazem grandes atores de cinema em filmes lançados diretamente no streaming por aqui. Em NYAD, Annette Benning vive a lendária nadadora que conseguiu atrevassar de Cuba até a Flórida depois dos 60 anos. Jodie Foster vive sua melhor amiga e técnica (0:00).Na Apple TV+, NA PONTA DOS DEDOS traz Jessie Buckley num mundo em que um teste com as unhas decreta se você é compatível com seu namorado. Mas o amor não obedece a nada, e ela vao desenvolver sentimentos inesperados por um colega de trabalho. Riz Ahmed ("O Som do Silêncio) e Jeremy Allen White ("O Urso") estão no elenco (9:28). A série sobre Anderson Silva estreia na Paramount+ com Seu Jorge e grande elenco (19:27).Na entrevista da semana: Eugênio Puppo e Matheus Sundfeld, idealizadores da Mostra de Cinema de Gostoso, falam sobre os dez anos do festival, e a nona edição que começa no próximo dia 24 (37:07).

We are busy with lots to talk about this week, starting with the return of David Fincher was Netflix release 'The Killer', acting heavyweights Jodie Foster & Annette Benning team up to do the impossible in 'Nyad' also on Netflix. We get to the cinema to see new Eli Roth horror flick 'Thanksgiving', the thirty something flick in the MCU 'The Marvels' and French courtroom drama 'Anatomy Of A Fall' and we finish with tragic/uplifting documentary 'David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived'

The first film the “Captain Marvel” series is also the 21st film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck and stars Brie Larson, Jude Law, Annette Benning, Ben Mendelsohn, Lashana Lynch & Gemma Chan. Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, Lee Pace & Djimon Hounsou all return from their previous MCU characters. The film follows an American fighter pilot who suffers from amnesia and is now a member of intergalactic space force known as The Kree. With no memories of her life on Earth, Vers is caught in between a war and soon begins to realize she may be on the wrong side. This film came out after “Avengers: Infinity War” and has us all in anticipation for the final chapter for the Infinity Saga.

With the holidays rapidly approaching, films related to Thanksgiving and Christmas can an offer a touch of nostalgia while telling an emotional story. Think "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" and "A Christmas Story." This year, directory Alexander Payne ("Election," "Sideways," "Nebraska") brings us "The Holdovers" starring Paul Giamatti as teacher Paul Hunham, Dominic Sessa as student Angus Tully and Da'Vine Joy Randolph as school cook Mary Lamb. The story centers on students that can't go home for Christmas break and a teacher that is forced to chaperone the group. Co-host Bruce Miller gives his thoughts on the film, and we have interview clips with Payne, Randolph, Sessa, writer/producer David Hemingson and producer Mark Johnson. Miller also shares his thoughts on the Netflix film "Nyad," starring Annette Bening as endurance swimmer Diana Nyad and Jodie Foster as her coach, Bonnie Stoll. It tells the story of Nyad's swim through shark-infested waters between Havana, Cuba and Key West, Florida. The film is directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin. The pair co-directed the Oscar-winning documentary "Free Solo." Where to watch and more coverage "The Holdovers" in theaters Nov. 10 "Nyad" on Netflix Contact us! We want to hear from you! Email questions to podcasts@lee.net and we'll answer your question on a future episode! About the show Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Headliner and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Holiday Films for Families Streamed and Screamed podcast about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises Terry Lipshetz: Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Streamed and Screened an entertainment podcast about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises. I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee and co-host of the program with Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal and a longtime entertainment reporter. Bruce Miller: I'm a holdover. Terry Lipshetz: You're a holdover. You've been here forever. You are a holdover. Bruce Miller: I am. I remember when Alexander Payne wasn't making movies. How's that for a connection? But, yeah, we are getting into Thanksgiving season. So this means that you're going to get films that maybe the whole family would go to. Because, come on, what else is there to do over Thanksgiving holiday? Eat and go to the movies, right? Terry Lipshetz: Yeah. Bruce Miller: And so you're going to start seeing some of those ones that are a little more like Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Back in the day, that was a big kind of holiday. Let's go see it because it's entertaining, and that's what we'll be getting now. I think you'll be seeing some of those before the Christmas rush and then the Oscar run, so look for the fun ones. And one that I really loved was the Holdovers. That's the newest Alexander Payne film. It's set in 1970, and it's set at a private boys' school in the East Coast. And, apparently all kids didn't go home. Some had a reason. Their parents were off on a ski trip and they didn't want to take the kid home or they didn't have the ability to get them home or whatever. And so those kids were called the Holdovers. They stayed at school, and then as a result, they had to put up with whoever they threw in their face. There was usually a teacher who got punished to be with those kids because who wants to be at home during the holidays? Nobody. Terry Lipshetz: Nobody. Bruce Miller: So, the one who gets stuck, even though he did it the year before, is played by Paul Giamatti, and he plays an ancient history teacher that nobody likes. They just hate him. He gives them all F's. He thinks that they're lazy and they don't really live up to their expectations. And this is 1970. Remind you. And so the Kids that are left back think, oh, God, this is going to be just terrible. And he plans classes for them, exercise, situations for them. And then they have all the bad food that's left over, and the cook is there, and she is going to keep him occupied over the holidays when he isn't. So it's like the worst situation you could think of. And then a group of them gets the opportunity to go on a ski trip. Except one student, he's stuck at the school with the bad teacher and the cook. And so the three of them have what they call their holiday experience. Terry Lipshetz: Sounds almost like my college. I went to a smaller private university in New Jersey. so you couldn't stay over during the winter break. They closed the dorms. They basically kick you out unless you were basically stuck there because you were, let's say, a foreign exchange. Bruce Miller: Foreign students. Terry Lipshetz: Yeah, that was it. That was it. They were the holdovers, and they got to stay in the dorms through the holidays. But that was it. Bruce Miller: I never was a holdover. God, it was, like, icy as hell. And I would still force somebody to come and pick me up because I thought, the last thing I want to do is be stuck here. So I was good. I got out. But I can imagine it would be dreadful because you see this? And this was during my time. It's set during the. That's about my period. And you go, oh, my God. They have captured so many things that are so specific. They have a pinball machine. And, the young man who is stuck back wants to play the pinball machine. Now, what they did was they put their order, their dime, whatever it cost, on the top of the pinball machine. And then that meant they were next. And the kid gets in a big fight with this guy who says, no, you're not next. My friend is next. And you think, oh, that is. I remember that. Who would have thought that that would be a part of it? But they've done a great job of capturing all those little things, even down to the clothes. And Alexander Payne said that when he was casting, he was particularly looking for young actors who had the right haircuts because he didn't want them to look like they were contemporary. They needed those 70s haircuts. And they do have those 70s haircuts. Terry Lipshetz: Kind of the moppy. Bruce Miller: Yeah, it's not quite mullet yet, because that wasn't in style. Terry Lipshetz: That's more 80s. Bruce Miller: Yeah. This was just kind of a head of hair that's post-Vietnam, where you just wanted to grow your hair out in those days. Can I tell you? I had hair that was down to the back of my shoulders. I had long, long hair because I didn't want to cut it. And my dad would always make a huge stink about that hair. He says, when are you going to cut this hair? And so I pull my hair back and hide it in the collar of my shirt. And every night at dinner, he would pull the hair out and say, you got to cut this. That kind of sentiment. That hair was a big issue for people back in those days. Terry Lipshetz: It was, yeah. I've seen photos of my parents back in the. It was an interesting time with hairstyles. Now, in 1970, that would have made me, let's see, about negative five years old. So I wasn't present at that time. Bruce Miller: You were not breaking any of those rules? Terry Lipshetz: No, I was not. Bruce Miller: But I was edging into the college years. It was a different world, a much different world. And you notice that, too, how social media and the Internet and all that has changed so much here. The kids have to look things up. And do they want to look things up? No, they do not. I think that the attitudes are still the same. You still press up against authority. But it's fascinating to see how the friendships develop. And I don't know that I would ever have been friends with a teacher of mine, but when you're forced to do it, you become a little closer. Adversity breeds friendship. Maybe that's the moral of the story. Yeah. Terry Lipshetz: and it's diverse, too. You've got different people of different eras. Bruce Miller: Da'Vine Joy Randolph, she plays the head cook at the thing. And her son, you find out early on, her son went to school there. She agreed to be the cook at the school so that her son would be able to get a good education, which is what she was hoping for. And when the movie begins, you learn very quickly that her son has died. And so she's dealing with grief over the holidays. The young man is upset because his parents aren't taking him home. And the teacher is, not liked, as they openly. Nobody likes you, so why should we? So they all have a reason to fight for something. Terry Lipshetz: But ultimately, the odd couple comes together. I can only presume. Bruce Miller: I enjoyed it so much. It has been kind of testing the market throughout. Okay. And so it has had pre screenings or previews or whatever before it actually opens this week. So you can see the audience. It kind of had a little taste of what it was all about, how they react. And I think the reaction is good. It's heartfelt. And it reminded me a lot of Green book. Terry Lipshetz: Okay. Bruce Miller: Where kind of unlikely people are thrust together and how they build a friendship out of that. You remember that with, the driver and the musician. And the musician couldn't go in certain restaurants. He wasn't allowed in certain hotels. So there was definitely a different time. And you see that same reflection here in the holdovers. Terry Lipshetz: Interesting. So you mentioned at the top of this podcast, planes, trains, and automobiles, which is to me, one of my favorite movies of all time. And we did a whole episode on John Hughes movies to begin with quite a ways back. But that one in particular is one that it's almost like a tradition in the family. Got to throw planes, trains, and automobiles on. And it's in some ways because there's not a whole lot of Thanksgiving specific movies tend to get Christmas movies, not necessarily Thanksgiving, but it was that kind of story where Steve Martin's character, John Candy's character, are two very different people, but they're put in a very strange circumstance together, and they kind of come together. It almost feels like this movie takes some of that as well. Bruce Miller: Very much so. The other thing that's interesting is that those were people who wanted to get home, right. And here's ones who can't. There isn't a home, so they have to create a home, and they bring a tree, they do presents. It's very, touching how they kind of make a family, even though there isn't a family. All three of the actors are potential Oscar nominees. That's why. Terry Lipshetz: Wow. Do you see this becoming like a traditional holiday classic? The one that we pop on Christmas. Bruce Miller: Story, playing Dominic Sessa, who plays, the young man, has never acted in films before. Terry Lipshetz: Right. Bruce Miller: Found him at a school, and we're looking for somebody who kind of fit. Again, the hair was a big thing fit the identity that they were looking for. And they were blown away by how good he was at kind of capturing that attitude that's kind of there. And, you see it. He is easily the glue that holds this together and a really good young actor. I think someday we'll look back and we'll say that was his first film and look at how good he was. Terry Lipshetz: This film is directed by Alexander Payne, and he's, of course, known for doing a lot of kind of quirky movies like Nebraska. Bruce Miller: Yeah. Do you remember? Election was kind of the one that put him on the map, with Reese Witherspoon as that kind of dreadful girl who wanted to be student body know. She was determined. And the advisor to the student council, played by Matthew Roderick, did not want her to win and did whatever he could to try and derail her campaign by putting another student in her way. Chris Klein played that role. He shot it all in Omaha, which is where he's from. And it was very similar to this, where he went looking for real people to play these parts and look what happened to their careers. Reese Witherspoon, she won an Oscar. And Chris Klein had a long career. Look at American Pie. I mean, he has some pretty good credits behind. She wasn't necessarily, but the other ones that fill in the film. And if you go back and look at election, you'll see actor, young actors in that that have had lots of work. Terry Lipshetz: Right. Bruce Miller: It was supposed to be a two hander between Reese Witherspoon and, Matthew Broderick. And some of those other ones are making a real big splash in that first film. So I wouldn't doubt that we'll see the same thing happen with this one. Terry Lipshetz: Yeah. And even like a movie like Sideways, there's another one where. And he did it with Paul Giamatti, and that was Paul Giamatti. He's done so many movies and he's always so good in what he does, but it almost took until sideways to really get him out there. Bruce Miller: He was a great character actor who had bit parts or small parts in films and then suddenly blew up. And he was in John Adams and he was in, sideways. And. Yeah, now he's kind of your go to. If you want one of those kind of erudite people that are in your film, we'll call Paul. Terry Lipshetz: I know you weren't able to get any interviews with this film, but through the magic of you and the promotion, I happen to have know just out of the box right here. So we're going to go now to, Alexander Payne, the director of the film. Alexander Payne: Christmas break is upon us. And every year there's a number of boys with nowhere to know. The kids from foreign countries and the ones with divorced parents and stuff like that. And this year there's a boy, he's a junior and kind, of a troublemaker, kind of troubled. Damaged and troubled, but a smart kid underneath. And, his mother calls him last minute to say she's widowed, has been widowed. She has just remarried and they want to use this Christmas vacation as their honeymoon. You understand, don't you, darling? Stanley's been working so hard. The teacher selected this year to stay behind with the boys is a very disliked, curmudgeonly, ancient history teacher, Paul Giamatti. Through a kind of Deus ex machina, script, device, all the other boys find somewhere else to go at some point. And it's down to just this teacher played by Paul Giamatti and this boy and the head cook at the school. She's a single mom, and her, son attended this very same school on a charity scholarship. But did not have the wherewithal to go to college and has just been killed in Vietnam. So this movie is about the adventures of these three kind of shipwrecked people during a very snowy two weeks in Massachusetts in 1970. I've been an admirer of school, movies, loneliness of the long distance Runner and if and Peter Weir's movie. And I had seen a companion of those films, a somewhat underknown French film by a great director, but, from 1935 or 36 called Merloose by Marcel Panol. And it had that same basic premise. I saw that ten or twelve years ago and it never left me. I thought, you know, that's a pretty good premise for a film. But I personally didn't have the wherewithal to actually, I didn't have the life experience of a private school and so forth. I'm from Omaha. Nor did I have really the discipline to go research it. But a pilot came my way, set in a prep school, and it was a very fine pilot. And I called up the writer and said, thank you for sending me this wonderful script. I don't want to read it. Would you consider taking on an idea of mine? And so it was David Hemingson. That's how David Hemingson, the fine screenwriter, came into my life. So, typically I've written my own scripts and certainly I was involved in rewriting this one and conceiving it. But David Hemingson really, did an outstanding job writing it. That's what attracted me to it. It sounds hyperbolic and I'm sure it is, but I just think Paul Giamatti is the greatest actor. There's nothing he can't do. From the moment I first met him when he auditioned for sideways for me going on 20 years ago, I thought, this guy can make even bad dialogue work and he can, no matter what the dialogue. I had him in Omaha, for a public interview, and I said, you know, Paul Giamani, you can really make bad dialogue work. I'll bet you could even read the phone book. Like they say, read the phone book and make it compelling. And he laughed. And I leaned over and I pulled out the Omaha phone book and I handed it to him. I said, would you please just open up to a page? He started reading it and brought the house down. That's why I like Paul Giamatti. And he's just a lovely guy, brilliant guy, most well-read human I know and, a delight to work with. Terry Lipshetz: Up next, let's hear from Da'Vine Joy Randolph about her role. In this film. Da'Vine Joy Randolph: It's wonderful working with Paul Giamatti. He has such character as a human being, but also with what he brings to the table. And, he's so great because, know, when you work with actors, those who you really revere, for being so talented, can be very serious sometimes and stuffy. And, what is so amazing, and I think speaks even more to his talent is that he's able to snap in and out of the character. It's very seamless. But I love right before they say action, I'll peek a look, and you'll see him just, like, morph and fall into place into his character. Dominic is quite special, for having never done it before. I would say what's more impressive, even outside of his talent, which is quite natural and just very present, and non-stereotypical, I don't know if I could have done it to play this hurt, damaged teenager. Right. And it not just be this one dimensional screaming kid every 5 seconds. He's really found, the nuances, to all of it. But I would say what I'm the most impressed with is the human being that he is. He's so kind and gentle and, very intelligent. And there's an old soul about him where it feels as if he's been here before. You can tell there's a real desire to learn this industry and how things work, and he's very quick. I remember in the very beginning when we were just doing table reads, and we still had at least two, if not three weeks before filming, he was already off book. I was not off book, so I was very impressed. We're just seeing two, three individuals, which I wonder, if they weren't, under these circumstances, if they would have had the opportunity to really get to know one another and to be an unpredicted vessel of support for one another. And I think what's beautiful about that is, in this movie, in a way, it transcends ageism, racism, genDer, and that these three individuals, due to the loss and pain that they have, it's like sometimes when you've hit rock bottom, you're open to anything to seek relief wherever you can. Terry Lipshetz: We also have another star from the film, Dominic Cessa, talking about what turned into his first major film appearance. Dominic Sessa: I went in for my first audition, and, I was pretty relaxed because I wasn't expecting much out of it. And they called me back later that day, and I did some more reading. And, eventually Alexander came to my school to come meet me and audition, with him. And yeah, for the next two months it was a lot of just touch, and go email, Zoom calls and all that stuff. And by the time I had my last audition, I didn't know it was my last audition. I thought it was going to know do that two weeks later for the next one. But we sat there and it was me, Paul and Alexander on a Zoom call. And we just read the whole script through. And Paul would read the parts, know, in a scene where I was in, but he wasn't in. I would read parts for him in other scenes and by the end I got the role that day. So, yeah, it was really surreal and exciting and didn't really know what to think or what to expect. But, it was nice. The biggest challenge for me, working on a film for the first time would be, the turnaround on notes, personally, because I've done a lot of live theater before. It's all I've done before is the shows at my school. And we have after school, like two, three hour rehearsals. And you receive your notes at the end and you have your journal and you can go back to your room and internalize them and think about them for the next rehearsal or the show or whatever's coming. But in this, it's really a matter of coming in, knowing your lines and not really knowing. Maybe having an idea of how the scene may pan out, but not having the clarity that you might have in a theater setting. So, yeah, I mean, that was the hard, that's the hardest part for me, really doing this the first time doing something, receiving a note and then okay, rolling, go. So, yeah, for me, but I think I've adjusted pretty well to it. And obviously I have a lot of people around me who have been helping me prepare for that sort of thing. Being in a film with Alexander and working on one of his movies, it's incredible working with him personally. Having, the director who's sitting right there at the camera and sitting right next to you and comes up to you after every take and is in your ear. You can feel his presence and it's comforting in that sense. But I think. I don't know, outside of that, he just attracts a lot of professionalism to his movies and his work. I think, just him being a part of it. Everyone around him, sort of is extra professional and is extra hard at work and is really on top of it and more so excited about working on it because of the type of person he is. My character, Angus Tully, say, definitely very damaged kid. He's been through a lot. Yeah. Being at a boarding school, I can understand, how heartbreaking that would be to be ready for break and then have your own parents tell you that you can't come home for Christmas. I feel like, for him, he's got a lot of these, things in the past that have happened to him and, these experiences, obviously, with his father and his mother and his mother's boyfriend. And it's not explicitly said what goes on. But you can sort of understand that there's a broken family dynamic there that's going on behind the scenes for him. And yeah, I think that really comes out with his character and his daringness to say some of the things he says and to pull off some of the things he tries to pull off. But at the same time charming and innocent. And it's one of those people you love to hate because you love them. Terry Lipshetz: Up next, we have writer producer David Hemingson. David Hemingson: Alexander read a pilot that I wrote about four years ago that, was set in a prep school in 1980. And he kind of called me up out of the blue and having read it and was like, I love this pilot. And I was like, incredibly flattered because he's like a personal hero of mine, he's a brilliant director. So I was like, blown away. And then he said, but I don't really do TV. But I have this feature I want to do that's set in that world in 1970. I said, okay, sure. And I said, what is he? Well, basically I really want to do this sort of optically challenged, kind of odiferous professor, that gets stuck, at a prep school, over Christmas break, 1970 to 71, with a group of students, one of whom has sort of been stranded by his family, most definitely. And this relationship kind of evolves over the course of the movie. And so that was sort of. The genesis of the whole thing. He's a brilliant, brilliant director. And I kind of feel like I went to film school on Alexander's back in that he would make these references. He'd, want something kind of tonally or visually or he'd kind of want a narrative moment that as opposed to try to unpack it verbally, he'd just be like, John Garfield. All right, Michael Curtis pointed overturn 1950, midpoint. Forward click. Like what? Hello? And I'd have to figure out, oh, okay. He wants sort of tonally, this kind of thing. He wants to be able to, evoke certain moods, and I think for him, it's got to be the organic evolution of the characters over the course of the narrative. And so I think the reason he doesn't get specific in terms of distinct turns he wants is because he wants me to find it and then for him to reflect upon it, I mean, that's been our working relationship, and I hope to God it continues for many, many decades to come, because I would kill to work with him again. I think he's a brilliant guy. We're so blessed. I mean, Alexander can cast. I mean, he topped the bottom. The actors in this show are amazing. I love my holders. I love all those kids. Those kids are all amazing, and funny and genuine and real. I think reality is sort of one of the hallmarks of an. You know, it just feels real, and it's heightened. And he takes you on a journey, and there's a fun narrative. I mean, you have a good time. And I think that's one of his imperatives. Like, he wants people to be entertained, but he wants people to be entertained by the human comedy, by the reality of it, by the landscape of people's souls. Like, he wants you to take that journey. And that's kind of what we do. In this movie, I think. Terry Lipshetz: And now let's hear from producer Mark Johnson. Mark Johnson: I think it was very much a story about family. It's a very clever script. It's deceptive. It's deceptive. And then it's about much more than you would think at first. And it's also extremely funny. And for me, as a, time Alexander Payne Fan, I think it is arguably his most emotional movie to take what he does with his characters, sort of, the uniqueness of his characters and to put them in this situation, it was an undeniable script. Paul Giamatti is one of those wonderful actors, is really a chameleon. And he can play any number of people. So we've seen him a bunch of movies and television shows, but I don't know that I've ever seen Paul Giamatti play, the same character twice. And so he is somebody who can both put you off and yet bring you in at the same time. Dominic Cessa, who plays Angus. This is his first movie. He had been a drama student or in school, in boy school, but, didn't have an agent, didn't have a manager. We had this wonderful casting director, Susan Shopmaker, who decided to go out and find a discovery. And one of the smart places she went was the private boys school's drama department and say, all right, who do you have? Who do you offer up? And that's how Dominic came in. He didn't come in through any orthodox means. It was really from out of nowhere. And I don't know what the number is. She probably saw 600, 700 boys for this part. And Dominic, early on, we said, well, wait a minute. This is somebody to pay attention to. And Alexander put him through the paces. He had him, sort of try out and test a number of times. And finally he tested with Paul, Giamatti. And I think Alexander, Paul, all the rest of us said, no, this is the guy. I think Dominic's a good choice to play this part because he has no tricks. He's a very honest actor. He's playing it as honestly as he can. And consequently, he's completely believable. I never, in looking at the finished film and quite frankly, in all the dailies, I don't see any false moments. I don't see him at some point pretending to be something. He always seems to be that divine. Mark Johnson: Joy Randolph is an actress who's been around for a while. That makes it sound like she's been doing it for years. She's just somebody who is doing features and television right now at, quite a clip. And the interesting thing is she normally plays a comedic character. And not that she's very funny in the holdovers, but I wouldn't describe her character as Mary, lamb, as somebody who's comedic. She actually has quite a, quite amount of sorrow in her. And, is a mother who's gone through a real tragedy. We knew she had the acting chops not just because she'd gone to the Yale School of drama. But as soon as we tested her, it was clear that she knew how to play this character. And, it was great to watch her because as an actress, she discovered who Mary Lamb was. She started at one place and built the character. And you could see her do it. And she ended up with an accent that was quite original to divine, but also quite true to where her character came from. Terry Lipshetz: All right, Bruce. So we had an. Bruce Miller: You know, I got a chance to talk to Alexander Payne and David Hemingson and also some of the, behind the scenes people about this. It's based sort of, on the writer's life, sort of. It was not written by Alexander Payne, just directed by him. And he kind of understood the sensibility of this, but there is a tie. And if you look at this on a shelf, there is a statue that was also in sideways. And so it's one of those little spoiler things. If you look, it's on a shelf in, I believe it's Paul Giamatti's office. And you'll also remember that it was in sideways if you look very carefully. They had one hell of a time trying to find enough blazers that were from the 70s for all the boys in the film. Terry Lipshetz: Double knit only goes so far. Bruce Miller: A big challenge. Yeah, they have a big challenge. And so they look the right way. Yeah. So for them, a lot of them have worked with Alexander Payne for a number of films, and they kind of know his shorthand and what he's looking for, so they can anticipate what a potential problem might be or what might be looming. Wow. Terry Lipshetz: Good stuff. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to this. It wasn't really on my radar until I saw it was probably during the summer. One of the movies I saw at least had a trailer to it. It looked pretty interesting, but I wasn't sure. Is this going to be good? Isn't it? But now that you're singing its praises. Bruce Miller: Watch the ads for it, because the ads are done in 70s style. Terry Lipshetz: Okay. Bruce Miller: See them? It's like, is this an old film that they're just throwing up whenever you see those on TCM? Oh, look at the trailers they used to do for these things. Well, they want it to look like that so it looks like the 70s. So you get that whole vibey feeling. And there's one shot in the film that reminds me. Exactly. Of the graduate. Exactly. And you'll see that shorthand that he uses, and you'll think, yes, I get what you're. Gail. I see it. I understand what's happening here. There's another one I'd like to talk about is called Nyad. Okay. And this is going to be one of those ones that you'll hear the names bandied about for acting prizes. Annette Benning plays Diana Nyad. If you remember her, she was a long distance swimmer who wanted to swim from Cuba to Florida. And, everybody said, oh, you're crazy. You can't do it. You're in your 60s. You're not going to be able to do this. And she was determined that she needed to make her mark, so she got a crew together and tried it and failed. And she tried it again and failed. And she tried it again and failed. And you think after this many times, give up. It's not going to happen. But you see in the film, which will be on Netflix, the kind of drive and fortitude she had and determination, and a lot of that is fueled by her best friend, who serves as kind of the coach, so that she's in the boat while Diana is swimming by the side of the boat, and she's, like, feeding her, giving her any kind of, if she gets sick, if she needs medicine, hydrating her, and then when she starts to kind of wane, she's giving her those pep talks. And, Jodie Foster plays that role, and Jodie is. Where has she been all these years? It's like, let's get back to work. I want to give her that kind of a pep talk because she steals the film right out from underneath. Annette Benning. Fascinating, fascinating partnership. And the film was directed by the people behind Free Solo, if you remember free solo. it was about the mountain climber. Terry Lipshetz: Right. Bruce Miller: Won the Oscar for Best documentary. Yeah. Now, they're trying, the same kind of feel, but with a fictional film or dramatization. Yeah. With actors. And they do take, risks, and they also do take some liberties, with the reality of the Diana Nyad story, but they still are able to capture those beats that you're looking for. It's kind of fascinating to see how they can make swimming really interesting, because when you're just watching somebody swim laps near the side of a boat, are you interested? Do you care? You got to give it to Ned Benning for just being able to do the swimming that you need to do to pretend like you're falling. Diana, Nyad, is not a person that you could hug. I really do not think she's embraceable, even though she has that drive that you see in a lot of athletes. But, boy, Annette Benning captures that aspect really well. You think, why would I work with you? I don't want to do anything with you if you're going to be this kind of obnoxious and mean and kind of self-centered. Terry Lipshetz: Sure. Bruce Miller: And yet it works. And at the end of the film, they do show you actual footage, of her. And, man, she captures her. She's right there. Terry Lipshetz: Now, was this film mostly in the water, then? Bruce Miller: If there's a lot in the water, could it be in a pool? It could have been in a pool, because a lot of the scenes take place at night, and you realize that they had to worry about sharks because she did not want to be in a shark cage. She didn't feel that was bare. But there was a red light that apparently sharks know this for the future, if you need this. Terry Lipshetz: Okay. Bruce Miller: Sharks do not come near red light. They somehow see that as a warning to them. And so this red light kind of helped guide her along where they were going, but it also kept the, sharks away. Terry Lipshetz: Yeah. The most knowledge I have about avoiding sharks comes from the 1960s, Adam west classic Batman, the movie Shark, where he used Bad shark repellent. Bruce Miller: And Jaws. Terry Lipshetz: Yes. Bruce Miller: Jaws taught us so much about sharks. Were you really scared of sharks before Jaws? No, it was just another fish in the ocean. But now they can get a sharknado going like nobody's business. Right? Dominic Sessa: Yeah. Terry Lipshetz: Now, how does this film stack up to a film like Free Solo, which is a documentary? Because I always find it fascinating when you get, like, you take Peter Jackson, for instance, who's known for Lord of the Rings and all these big epics, and then he goes and directs a documentary about the Beatles. Bruce Miller: The thing that was so surprising about free solo was the cinematography. They were up on the mountains with him and the idea that they were able to get some of that stuff. Well, I got to rethink this. If I can't do it with the telephoto lens, I don't think I'm going up there. But I think that was what was so remarkable. Yes. his story, Alex Honnold, I think it is, his story is remarkable, but also remarkable is the idea that people would follow him, shoot his trek, and not get, you know, anytime. Terry Lipshetz: I see those mountain movies like that, whether it's mountain climbing or scaling Everest or going deep into the wilderness, I'm thinking to myself, you know, what if I'm the director of this film, my first hire is a really good second unit director. And you're going to go take care of these? I'm going to just handle. Bruce Miller: Yeah, I'll do from the ground. Terry Lipshetz: We'll be. Bruce Miller: Yeah, I think they do a great job of kind of making you feel that claustrophobia in the water. But because they're not dealing with huge visuals like they were before, that becomes, a different challenge. But you feel like you're in the water with her. So I guess that's the goal. But I don't know, do they want to do this? Is this the goal? Or maybe it was just one of those athlete films that they hadn't tried, and so that was the challenge for them. Terry Lipshetz: Well, it sounds good. It sounds like an interesting one. I'm not sure. I'm going to race out to the theaters to see it. But at the very least, it might be one where as soon as it hits streaming on. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Anything else of note coming up is, Bruce Miller: Can I tell you what I'm going to tease? What? Maybe we'll talk about next week. Terry Lipshetz: Okay. Bruce Miller: And that's Fargo. Terry Lipshetz: Oh, yes. Bruce Miller: Fargo is coming. And Fargo, we are not holding off with anything, but I'm going to talk to people that you wouldn't necessarily talk to again. We're doing this because we don't have the access to the actors because of the actor strike, which, knock on wood, should be ending soon, we hope. Terry Lipshetz: Please. Bruce Miller: But I'm hoping to talk to the special effects and makeup people and also the costume people and how they are able to pull off, because this has a lot of those special effects that you're going to go, wow, I can't believe it. And it's very home alone, taken to extremes and scary. Okay, so that's next week. Fargo. Alexander Payne: Fargo. Terry Lipshetz: I can't wait. There's the two shows that I've been waiting for the most recently, Fargo. And then also true Detective, which is. Coming back soon on. Bruce Miller: Well, we'll be there, hopefully, and we'll get to talk to real people. Terry Lipshetz: Hopefully. That's all we can hope for. All right, Bruce, thanks again for another great episode. And we will be back again next week. Bruce Miller: Be a holdover next week.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Angel y Victor analizan 2 peliculas en este episodio: The Holdovers con Paul Giamatti y Nyad con Annette Benning y Jodie Foster. Grabado el 5 de noviembre, 2023.

In this episode, we tackle one of the cringiest best picture winners we've covered so far: American Beauty. We pick apart this dark look at the monotany of suburban America in the late 90s and talk about the few things that worked for us and the many that don't.

For this week's episode, Jamelle and John were joined by Isaac Chotiner of the New Yorker magazine to watch and discuss 1995's GoldenEye, the first James Bond film of the 1990s and the first James Bond film of the post-Cold War era. GoldenEye is the seventeenth film in the James Bond series and the first to star Pierce Brosnan, who would go on to star in three subsequent pictures, all of which we will eventually cover on the podcast: Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day.Directed by Martin Campbell and starring, in addition to Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen, Alan Cumming, Judi Dench and Joe Don Baker, Goldeneye was something of a reboot for the Bond franchise, which had been on a six-year hiatus since the previous entry, License to Kill starring Timothy Dalton. The plot of GoldenEye is as straightforward as one of these movies can manage: Bond is tasked with stopping the mysterious Janus syndicate from stealing and using a Soviet-era space weapon capable of causing an electro-magnetic pulse blast anywhere on the planet. Complicating this mission is the fact that the leader of Janus, Alec Trevelayn, is a former MI6 agent who was supposed to have died on a mission with Bond, nine years earlier. There's the usual adventures and explosions and casual sexual encounters, culminating in a final showdown between Bond and Trevelayn on a massive satellite.GoldenEye, if you've somehow never seen it, is available for rental and purchase on iTunes and Amazon.For our next episode, we're covering the 1995 romantic-political comedy, “The American President,” starring Michael Douglas and Annette Benning.Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieUnclearPodAnd join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. The most recent episode of the Patreon is on the 1970 Italian political drama, “The Conformist.”

The latest movie news, discussion, and more with Joe from Guy At The Movies and Sean from Math Teacher Movies! In this episode: Trailers: Ferrari, What Happens Later, Saltburn, Rustin, The Killer What We've Been Watching: Bottoms News: Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour Film, Marvel shows delayed, Annette Benning's new film stirs controversy Rants & Raves Be sure to subscribe and rate the pod! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/guyatthemovies/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/guyatthemovies/support

A24's last film of 2016 was 20th Century Women, a slice of life drama featuring a star-studded cast that included Annette Benning, Billy Crudup, Greta Gerwig (director of Barbie), and Elle Fanning. Writer and Director Mike Mills was nominated for Best Original Screenplay for this film. It revolves around a teenager named Jamie (played by Lucas Jade Zumann), his single mom Dorothea (played by Annette Benning), and their unconventional life in Santa Barbara, California where they live in a charming old house with two other tenants. Taking place in 1979, 20th Century Women features one of the greatest soundtracks in A24 history, using music to juxtapose the generations of each of its characters. What will these A24 film reviewers think of the final film A24 distributed in 2016? Caution: movie spoilers. Next two episodes: Mt. Rushmore of 2013-2016 A24 Films The 2016 A24 Oscars --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/a24otr/support

This might be one of Agatha Christie's best known mysteries, but does it work for a modern audience? This week, Valerie and Melanie analyze Sir Kenneth Branagh's version of Christie's classic tale, and discuss just how far into a story the inciting incident can be. And don't miss Melanie's super sleuth skills in action as she uncovers a major plot hole that has to do with Poirot's famous moustache.For access to writing templates and worksheets, and more than 70 hours of training (all for free), subscribe to Valerie's Inner Circle: www.valeriefrancis.ca/innercircleFor information about Valerie's upcoming webinars, visit: www.valeriefrancis.ca/webinarsTo learn to read like a writer, visit Melanie's website: www.melaniehill.com.auFollow Valerie on Instagram, Threads and X (Twitter) @valerie_francisFollow Melanie on Instagram, X (Twitter) and Facebook @MelanieHillAuthor

We conclude our look at the Resurrection Appearances of Jesus, as part of the Justin Martyr Series. Host Chris Palmero looks at the common elements of these legends from the point at which Jesus appears to his disciples, all the way up to his ascension at the end. The versions of the Resurrection as told by Celsus, the ancient pagan critic of Christianity, as well as the lost book called the Preaching of Peter, are also explored. Finally, Justin Martyr's version of the Resurrection story is examined, to see whether he is in fact using the New Testament Gospels as his source.Anyone who listens to this episode of BORN IN THE SECOND CENTURY can learn about the earliest evidence for Christians in the city of Rome; about why Jesus and the disciples are sometimes said to eat a meal during the Resurrection Appearance; about why Jesus invites the disciples to touch him in some stories; about how Celsus' story of the Resurrection clashes with that of the New Testament; about the Preaching of Peter and its possible links to Mark's Gospel; and about the true source of Justin's strange "account" of the Resurrection.Opening reading: the Roman poet Martial, from the turn of the second century, grumbles about his neighbor in the manner of Annette Benning from American Beauty.Support the showPatreon: www.patreon.com/borninthesecondcenturyWebsite: facebook.com/BornInTheSecondCenturyE-mail: secondcenturypodcast@gmail.comMusic: Pompeii Gray on Apple Music, Spotify, SoundCloud

What does it look like to never give up on your dreams? At age 64, endurance swimmer Diana Nyad inspired the world by becoming the first person to swim the 110.86 miles from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage, accomplishing the “Mount Everest of swims.” It was a dream 35 years in the making and accomplished only after four crushing failures. This fall, Netflix will bring her story to the screen in the feature film Nyad starring Annette Benning and Jodie Foster. In our conversation today, Diana opens up about what it means to commit to big goals, face your fears, and live each day with no regrets.  

We continue Mike White May with one of Milos Forman's biggest missteps in his career, but critically and by his own admission: Valmont. The Projection Booth's Mike White and Mondo Heather's Heather Drain join the show to pile on Colin Firth's misscasting, Forman's disinterest in his final film, and the other adaptations of Dangerous Liaisons. Starring Colin Firth and Annette Benning, the two play Valmont and the Marquise, two rich assholes intent and content to ruin both their lives and the lives of the royals around them in 18th century France. High intrigue, underage sex, and terrible wigs abound!For more Kulturecast episodes and many more podcasts that are guaranteed to be your new favorite audio obsession, check out Weirding Way Media at weirdingwaymedia.com.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/2883470/advertisement

As the candy-colored clown they call March is pulled off stage by the Sandman, we bring you our final Neil Jordan film for the time being. In Dreams (1999) can hold it's own against most other 90's supernatural thrillers, plus it's got Jordan on it's side. Annette Benning flexes as an otherwise ordinary white, American, middle class woman who is haunted by dreams, visions, premonitions of little girls being kidnapped and a little boy drowning. Things escalate as our abductor takes her daughter and the visions intensify. +++++ Intro: by Professor Ping available on BandcampOutro: Dreams performed by Easy Choir --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/zandkmoviepod/support

On this episode: The unexpected passing of a Hollywood heavy and Guillermo Del Toro's next project… PLUS! Joseph's Oscar payoff,  what's the deal with black and White movies, and how Papa Ford helped River Phoenix fill his shoesIn news: Holidays, Jehovah, Arbor Day, Boxing Day, Flag Day, 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Labor Day, Indigenous People's Day, Columbus Day, Vince Guaraldi's Trio, New Years, Lance Reddick, John Wick, The Wire, Thomas Wayne, Batman Unburied, Horizon, Destiny, Monster Party, American Horror Story, Search Party, Keys and Peele, The Blacklist, The Guest, Brooklyn 99, Andre Braugher, Eric Andre, Sam Neill, Leukemia, Bryan Bishop, The Film Vault, Guillermo Del Toro, Pinocchio, Netflix, Frankenstein, Andrew Garfield, Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, Igor, Mary Shelley, Dune, The Cardcounter, Scenes from a Marriage, X, Pearl, Maxxxine, Bruce Purkey, Cinnemaddicts, Infinity Pool, Brandon Cronenberg, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Oscar predictions, Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephanie Hsu, Hong Chau, Angela Bassett, Cate Blanchett, Michelle Yeoh, Wheel of Punishment, Police Academy, Hot Pursuit, Simon Sea, Dennis Rodman, Saturday Night Fever, Staying Alive, House of the Dead, Codename: The Cleaner, Cedric the Entertainer, Gotti, National Lampoons: Gold Diggers, Baby Geniuses, Avengers 1998, Ralph Fiennes, Albert Pyun, Sylvester Stallone, Frank Stallone, John Travolta, Paramount+, PlutoTV, Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant, Tom Hardy, The Dark Knight Rises, Christian Bale, American Psycho, Jared Leto, Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks, The Polar Express, Michael Jeter, Air Bud, Bill Cobb, That Thing You Do, Se7en, Kevin Spacey, American Beauty, Mina Suvari, Annette Benning, Thora Birch, Chris Cooper, The Hole, Rainn Wilson, Don't Tell a Soul, Keira Knightly, Verotika, The Lighthouse, Robert Pattinson, Twilight, Kristen Stewart, Boondocks Saints, Babel, Babylon, Blues Brothers, Nebraska, Parasite, Nomadland, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Pleasantville, Dead Man, Jim Jarmusch, Johnny Depp, The Man That Wasn't There, Eraserhead, Pi, Begotten, Mad Max: Fury Road, Chrome edition, Logan, The Noir cut, Roma, The Artist, The Tragedy of Macbeth, River Phoenix, Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Temple of Doom, Club Obi Wan, James Bond, Young Indiana Jones, The Mosquito CoastVisit the Indie GoGo for Joseph's new project: Raven's Landing https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/raven-s-landing#/ http://www.MCFCpodcast.comhttp://www.facebook.com/MCFCpodcasthttp://www.twitter.com/podcastMCFChttp://www.tiktok.com/middleclassfilmclasshttp://www.instagram.com/middleclassfilmclassEmail: MCFCpodcast@gmail.comLeave us a voicemail at (209) 730-6010Merch store - https://middle-class-film-class.creator-spring.com/ Join the Patreon:www.patreon.con/middleclassfilmclassPatrons:Javier  Listener Stephen: The Maple Syrup Don  Joel Shinneman  Linda McCalister  Heather Sachs  https://twitter.com/DorkOfAllDorks  Ryan  CorbinJason  https://www.forcefivepodcast.com/  Brendan BealChris GeigerJoseph Navarro    Pete Abeytaand Tyler Noe    Streaming Picks:History of the World Part 2 - HuluScream 6 - Only in TheatersJoyride - PlexTár - PeacockPopcorn - Shutter, AMC+LOTR: Return of The King - HBO MaxPrometheus - Hulu

This week, we come in with some spicy takes, discussing the 53rd entry in our countdown* of Best Picture winners. The movie is American Beauty, the somewhat polarizing suburban satire starring Kevin Spacey and Annette Benning, and directed by Sam Mendes. *What is this list? We explain it in more detail in our Trailer and its Description, but as a high-level answer: we aggregated several different lists that rank the ninety-four winners of the Best Picture Academy Award in a rough attempt to get a consensus. It is not intended to be rigorous or definitive. It's just a framework to guide our journey through cinema history.

In this week's episode, we take a look at Mars Attacks! Based upon the Topps Trading Card series, this 1996 comedy is an anarchist at heart in all the best ways. Tune as we talk the film's journey to screen, it's links to the crazy Ed Harris film Walker, it's incredible cast and so much more.

It's time for another staple in the cinematic year of 1999. A year that will go down in history as releasing some of the most culturally relevant films of the modern age. For this episode we're talking American Beauty by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. This is one of me and Charles' essential 90s films and it was good to really examine all the aspects we enjoyed as teenagers and cringe at what didn't age well at ALL. We chat about the perfect casting of Wes Bentley, the color red, and the incredible script.Off-topic rants include: Loveline, lusting after Peter Gallagher, Six Feet Under, Charles' college class on natural disasters, and our favorite year in music---Get OVER 80 BONUS episodes on 90s TV and culture (Freaks & Geeks, My So Called Life, Buffy, 90s culture documentaries, and more...) and to support the show, join the PATREON for $5 a month! www.patreon.com/fashiongrungeHosts: Lauren @lauren_melanie & Charles @charleshaslamMusic by Den-Mate @imdenmateFollow Fashion Grunge PodcastInstagram @fashiongrungepodTwitter @fgrungepodLetterboxd Fashion Grunge PodcastTikTok @fashiongrungepod

"Don't take life too seriously because you'll never get out alive". That's a quote from one of my favorite movies, Van Wilder starring Ryan Reynolds. Many of us take life very seriously and at times it doesn't feel very enjoyable. We focus on challenges, shortcomings, and obstacles. Today, my guest shares insights on how we can enjoy life, laugh in the face of adversity and embrace challenges using humor.  Robert King is a NYC-based writer/actor. He has had numerous scripts produced, including his award-winning solo show Halfrican-American, and his first film, which was produced by Four Times Films. He was a senior writer/performer for Lorne Michaels' Above Average, where he created and hosted the popular web series Your Biggest Fan where he worked with celebrities like Jane Lynch, Alan Alda, and Russell Brand. Robert has created various web-series, and scripts of his have been finalists in the Austin Film Fest, and both the New York and Hollywood Screenplay Contests. He was also a recipient of NBC's Diversity Award for writing and performing. As an actor Robert recently performed in Billy Crystal's stage show, Have A Nice Day, alongside Kevin Kline, Annette Benning, and others. Robert has also worked on various television shows from Law & Order: SVU to The Blacklist, and films such as Don't Think Twice with Mike Birbiglia and Can You Keep A Secret opposite Alexandria Daddario. Show Notes: www.thedadedge.com/395

From housebound to pop superstar, Taylor Dayne is most well-known for her hit “Tell It to My Heart,” which made her an overnight sensation in 1987. Listen in as she tells Gabe that before her rise to stardom, she struggled with anxiety and agoraphobia so severe, she was often housebound. Taylor explains when her symptoms started, how she treated them, and how she is doing now. To learn more -- or read the transcript -- please visit the official episode page. Guest Bio Taylor Dayne is an American pop icon with a career spanning 3 decades. Taylor's groundbreaking debut single “Tell It To My Heart” turned her into an overnight star in 1987. She followed the smash hit with seventeen Top 20 singles over the course of her career. Taylor has sold over 75 million albums and singles worldwide, earned three Grammy nominations, an American Music Award, multiple New York Music Awards, received New York Music Hall of Fame honors, and ranked as the Number 18 Female Dance artist of all time by “Rolling Stone” magazine. She is one of the very few artists in musical history to successfully cross over into almost every musical genre and chart with hit singles in Pop, Dance, R&B, Adult Contemporary, and Rock. Taylor has appeared in film, TV and stage, from Broadway favorites like Elton John's award-winning production of “Aida,” and Mel Brooks' “Archie” and “Mehitable,” to working with legendary composer Jule Styne to reprise the role of Fanny Brice on Broadway. Taylor also appeared in movies including “Love Affair” with Warren Beatty and Annette Benning and co-starred in Denis Leary's TV drama “Rescue Me.” She also starred in the HBO film “STAG” and co-starred on Showtime's original series “Rude Awakening.” Her growth as an artist was enhanced by the birth of her twins in early 2002. Her voice became stronger and more meaningful as she took on single motherhood, empowerment, surrogacy, and parenthood head-on, becoming a voice and an advocate for working woman, same sex marriage, parenting and fertility. Her 2016 TEDWomen talk opened her career to more speaking engagements, inspirational and monumental moments, and paved the way to her memoir. This past summer she released a new single called “Please” and is working on anticipated new music. In addition, in September 2020, she competed in the Fox hit show “The Masked Singer” for the 4th season. She competed as PopCorn and made it to the semifinals. For updates and tour dates please visit www.taylordayne.com. Inside Mental Health Podcast Host Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, "Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations," available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. Gabe makes his home in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. He lives with his supportive wife, Kendall, and a Miniature Schnauzer dog that he never wanted, but now can't imagine life without. To book Gabe for your next event or learn more about him, please visit gabehoward.com.

You might recognize today's guest as Josh from the hit Nickelodeon show Drake and Josh, or maybe you've seen his hilarious, viral social media videos. Josh Peck has recently added another accolade to the list: published author! We discuss the inspiration behind his memoir Happy People Are Annoying and why he wanted to write a self-help book from the perspective of someone who is still trying to figure it all out. He reflects on some pivotal moments in his life, how his relationship with acting has changed since his days as a child star, and how he nurtures a sense of curiosity and gratitude in his everyday life.    IN THIS EPISODE, WE TALK ABOUT: What keeps Josh motivated and present, particularly as an actor  Accepting that everything will work out, just maybe not in the way that you thought it would  How Josh has redefined what confidence looks and feels like to him  The importance of working hard, but also taking care of yourself in the process  Josh's go-to tools for combatting his need for certainty    RESOURCES Get your copy of Josh's book, Happy People Are Annoying Thanks to Issuu for supporting Earn Your Happy. Sign up for a premium account and get 50% off issuu.com/podcast and use promo code LORI.   Shout out to Beis for sponsoring the show. Go to beistravel.com/lori to get 15% off your first purchase.  Sign up for The Spritz newsletter at litepink.com! Text PODCAST to 310-496-8363 for updates and a chance to be featured on the show!   CONNECT WITH JOSH Follow Josh on Instagram: @shuapeck Follow Josh on Tiktok: @joshpeck Subscribe to Josh on Youtube: Josh Peck Follow Josh on Twitter: @ItsJoshPeck   CONNECT WITH LORI Follow me: @loriharder Follow Lite Pink: @drinklitepink Follow Earn Your Happy: @earnyourhappy Follow Girlfriends & Business: @girlfriendsandbusiness Listen to Girlfriends & Business   GUEST BIO Josh Peck has established himself as one of Hollywood's rising talents, making the seamless transition from child actor to leading man. He's starred in feature films such as Mean Creek alongside Rory Culkin (2004), The Wackness beside Ben Kingsley (2008), Red Dawn alongside Chris Hemsworth (2012), Danny Collins with Al Pacino, Annette Benning, and Jennifer Garner (2016), Take The 10 with Andy Samberg and Fred Armisen (2017), Netflix's The Musical, co-starring Debra Messing, out later this year, and much more.   He has guest starred on The Big Bang Theory and appeared as a recurring guest on The Mindy Project in 2014. In 2016, Peck starred as John Stamos' son in the Fox series Grandfathered. Currently, Josh is in Disney Plus' Turner and Hooch series, a continuation of the 1989 Tom Hanks film of the same name. You can next see Josh Peck in the highly anticipated Hulu series, How I Met Your Father, and in the iCarly Reboot on Paramount+. Josh is best known for his role on the Nickelodeon phenomenon Drake & Josh (2004-2007) for which he received a Kids' Choice Nomination. The series premiere was watched by 3.2 million viewers, Nickelodeon's highest-rated series premiere in nearly 10 years. In 2006, Drake & Josh ranked consistently among the 10 most-watched cable shows of the week. It averaged three million viewers at the time.

The Mixed-Review House rolls on with Kenneth Branagh's second outing as Hercule Poirot, Death on the Nile. It's a character he seems committed to playing, despite seemingly having no particular understanding or affinity for the source material. But hey, at least he's keeping the CGI pyramids industry in business!Wikipedia entry for Death On the NileMovies recommended in this episodeMad GodMiami ViceHorror Express

Hey Ya, don't want to meet your daddy, just want you to listen to this episode of the podcast. First up, the guys talk Paramount Plus's newest family friendly flick, Jerry and Marge Go Large starring Bryan Cranston and Annette Benning. Then, after news, they talk the newest Pixar film, Lightyear with the voices of Chris Evans and Taika Waititi. They a good time. Still, don't want to meet your mama.

Every Friday, JJ Gordon and Amy Iler weigh in on what you should SEE in theaters, STREAM from the comfort of your own home or SKIP and save the time/money. This week, a Toy Story spinoff hits the big screen - is it just for the kiddos or will adults go to infinity and beyond? Plus, a truly wonderful and fun Paramount+ release in the true story of Jerry and Marge Go Large. Bryan Cranston and Annette Benning have undeniable chemistry in this streaming original! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Here are some of my thought on the new film Death on the Nile directed by Kenneth Branagh. Starring Branagh, Gal Gadot, Annette Benning, Tom Bateman, Letitia Wright , Armie Hammer , Russell Brand , Dawn French, Emma Mackey, Sophie Okonedo , Jennifer Saunders , Ali Fazal  , & Rose Leslie. THANK YOU TO ALL THE SUPPORTERS ON PATREON!... The post Ignorant Bliss: Death on the Nile Review first appeared on Ignorant Bliss.

In this ep we answer a few questions including; 'how do I parent a dandelion and an orchid?', 'how much support is enough?' and 'how can I support my kid in a Lord of the Flies type playground?' and much, much more.

Thank you for listening to our Finding Brave show, ranked in the Top 100 Apple Career Podcasts! “I knew that if it was between becoming a movie star but staying that size, or just becoming a civilian who had a normal job and was healthy, I would have picked that in a second.” - Josh Peck Our special guest is back today for Part Two of our fascinating conversation, where he dives deeper into his very personal story of weight loss, overcoming addiction, growing up on TV, what he's learned about being a father, and how he reacted to the breakdown of a relationship that played out in a dramatic way in the public eye.  Josh Peck has established himself as one of Hollywood's rising talents, making the transition from child actor to leading man, and social media influencer. Best known for his role on the Nickelodeon phenomenon Drake & Josh (2004-2007) for which he received a Kids' Choice Nomination, Josh has starred in feature films such as Mean Creek alongside Rory Culkin, The Wackness beside Ben Kingsley, Red Dawn alongside Chris Hemsworth, Danny Collins with Al Pacino, Annette Benning, and Jennifer Garner, Take The 10 with Andy Samberg and Fred Armisen, and Netflix's The Musical, co-starring Debra Messing, out later this year. In 2023, Josh will co-star in Christopher Nolan's new movie, Oppenheimer. Currently, Josh is featured in Disney Plus' Turner and Hooch series, a continuation of the 1989 Tom Hanks film of the same name, and stars in the highly anticipated Hulu series, How I Met Your Father, and in the iCarly Reboot on Paramount+. With 32.8 million fans across numerous social media platforms, Josh successfully leveraged his talents from acting, to podcasting and more, and is the author of the new memoir Happy People Are Annoying, out in bookstores March 15th.  His book is a candid memoir sharing Josh's reflections on the many stumbles and silver linings of his life and traces a zigzagging path to redemption. Again, I was so pleased to have this opportunity to speak with Josh and to bring him on the podcast to share his wise and refreshing insights on happiness and a life well-lived.  To learn more about today's guest, visit: https://www.instagram.com/shuapeck/ 

Thank you for listening to our Finding Brave show, ranked in the Top 100 Apple Career Podcasts! “The whole book is about me finding happiness in my own way, and what it looked like for someone like me to walk through what I did, be it losing 100 pounds, or facing drug and alcohol addiction and then eventually pivoting in my career. It was all of these things that allowed me to find what happiness was for me, and then redefine it.” - Josh Peck  Today's Finding Brave guest shares his view that happiness is beside the point, and life is really all about finding contentment through relationships, curiosity, and connection. He is ready to chip away at the glitz and glamor to expose the highs and lows of his journey as an actor and influencer, and I could not be more excited to share this candid and thought-provoking conversation with you today.  Josh Peck has established himself as one of Hollywood's rising talents, making the transition from child actor to leading man, and social media influencer. Best known for his role on the Nickelodeon phenomenon Drake & Josh (2004-2007) for which he received a Kids' Choice Nomination, Peck has starred in feature films such as Mean Creek alongside Rory Culkin, The Wackness beside Ben Kingsley, Red Dawn alongside Chris Hemsworth, Danny Collins with Al Pacino, Annette Benning, and Jennifer Garner, Take The 10 with Andy Samberg and Fred Armisen, and Netflix's The Musical, co-starring Debra Messing, out later this year. In 2023, Josh will co-star in Christopher Nolan's new movie, Oppenheimer. Currently, Peck is featured in Disney Plus' Turner and Hooch series, a continuation of the 1989 Tom Hanks film of the same name, and stars in the highly anticipated Hulu series, How I Met Your Father, and in the iCarly Reboot on Paramount+. With 32.8 million fans across numerous social media platforms, Peck successfully leveraged his talents from acting, to podcasting and more, and is the author of the new memoir Happy People Are Annoying, out in bookstores March 15th.  His book is a candid memoir sharing Josh's reflections on the many stumbles and silver linings of his life and traces a zigzagging path to redemption. I have a great deal of gratitude for Josh for the very happy memories I have – of the hours of hilarity my children and I experienced together, watching Drake & Josh. Those are precious memories for me. His unique style of humor - with such exuberance, joy and insight - is a gift to the world. Check out the full 2-part series with Josh, as he gives us a deep look at what he's learned about the true meaning of happiness.  To learn more about today's guest, visit: https://www.instagram.com/shuapeck/

This week Zach and Sloane unwrap 1996's sci-fi box office bomb / cult classic: Mars Attacks! You're in luck cinephiles because the duo actually discuss the movie this week! Of course their train quickly derails into discussion about the afterlife, the insane amount of episodes in mid 2000's shows (every season was 4,000 episodes long), White House/ Black Market, sexy civics teachers and suicidal houseplants. All this and not much more on this week's episode of Mummy Dearest! 

We revisit “The Siege”, an action movie involving terrorist cells in New York City from 1998, starring Denzel Washington, Annette Benning, and Bruce Willis and we couldn't in good conscience […]