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This episode on The Cartoon Pad the guys welcome Too Much Coffee Man, Shannon Wheeler to share his colorful stories of his career- creating legendary underground comics, operas, books, and loads more! Pick up some of his work at http://www.tmcm.com
For this special bonus episode, we gathered everyone on the This Movie Changed Me team to talk about the role movies have played in our lives, and what we’ve learned from working on this podcast. We’re grateful to all the listeners and guests who have joined us across three seasons of this podcast and have shared their own stories of transformation through movies. Thank you, movie friends!Eddie Gonzalez — is director of engagement at The On Being Project and is a journalist, teacher, and chaplain interested in story and its role in individual and social healing. He was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, and now lives and works in Queens, New York.Chris Heagle — is a producer and technical Director for On Being Studios. He has long been a passionate listener and creator in the space where story and music combine to help us understand and embrace our shared humanity. When he’s not in front of a screen, he is learning about the world through his two teenage kids.Liliana Maria (Lily) Percy Ruíz — is executive producer of On Being Studios and the host of This Movie Changed Me. She was born in Cali, Colombia, and immigrated to Miami with her family at the age of four. She proudly serves on the board of Centro Tyrone Guzman, the oldest and largest multi-service Latine organization in Minneapolis.Gautam Srikishan — is a producer for On Being Studios, a composer, and a lover of all things creative. He was born in the United Arab Emirates, raised in Illinois, and now calls Queens, New York his home. He’s a proud first-generation Indian-American immigrant.Lilian Vo — is an associate art director at The On Being Project. She thrives at the intersection of community building and collaborative design. With academic roots in international studies and anthropology, she seeks out projects that challenge and explore how to deepen human connection within and across communities.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
What does it mean to be good? What does it mean if we aren’t good? Whose fault is it? These are just some of the questions that animate Amadeus, a fictional portrayal of famed composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his musical rival Antionio Salieri. These questions also inspire Sue Phillips, a Unitarian Universalist minister. She first watched the movie in the late ’80s, just as she was coming out and understanding her place in the world.Sue Phillips is the co-founder of Sacred Design Lab. She was also the first Director of Strategy as part of the Impact Lab here at the On Being Project. An ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, Sue is the co-author, with colleagues Angie Thurston and Casper ter Kuile, of “Design for the Human Soul.”
Contact takes the sometimes opposing forces of science and religion and puts them in conversation. The movie is based on a 1985 novel by Carl Sagan about Ellie Arroway, a SETI scientist who discovers a radio signal that could suggest extraterrestrial life. During her search she encounters Palmer Joss, a Christian philosopher who challenges her convictions as a scientist. Ellie’s pursuit of meaning outside of religion — an oftentimes lonely endeavor — was an experience Drew Hammond had never seen portrayed in a movie before. A high school teacher, Hammond says the movie granted him permission to stay curious and pursue the questions he has about the world — and it continues to shape how he interacts with his students.Drew Hammond is an English teacher at Eagan High School in Eagan, Minn. He’s also an award-winning public speaking coach, a published playwright, and a former stand-up comedian. He is featured in the documentary “Figures of Speech,” which is out on Netflix.Find the transcript at https://onbeing.org/series/this-movie-changed-me/Subscribe to our weekly newsletter at https://onbeing.org/tmcmletter/
The guys talk about everything from controlling women to politics and citizenship.
You don’t see many Asian leads in Western cinema, that’s why The Joy Luck Club’s all-Asian cast was so radical. Its portrayal of complicated mother-daughter relationships and the immigrant experience spoke to Amy Choi as a child — and again as a mother. Visit onbeing.org/series/this-movie-changed-me to find other episodes and more.
Movie characters can rewrite the possibilities for our lives. That’s what Uma Thurman’s role as The Bride did for Lauren Wilford. The character redefined Lauren’s idea of femininity — helping her find her inner strength, determination, and persistence.
For Oscar-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla, the classic German film Wings of Desire transformed how he makes music. It showed him the value of silence and space in sound — qualities he embraced in his music for movies like Brokeback Mountain and Babel.
As an Indian-British-American girl, Rajpreet Heir didn’t feel like she fit anywhere. But Bend It Like Beckham spoke to her across continents. The movie helped her embrace an important truth — that she was never defined by a single identity.
Complex portrayals of women with mental illness are rare. But that’s what Vulture’s Angelica Jade Bastién saw in the Bette Davis feature Now, Voyager. Angelica says the movie saved her life, giving her hope and encouraging her own healing.
Looking for some chill in your life? For the 20th anniversary of The Big Lebowski, Scott Oliver talks about how the movie helped him keep perspective in a time of chaos. In typical Dude fashion, he remembered “nothing is f***ed,” even if it felt that way.
Siblings. Love them or hate them, if you had one — or many — odds are they played a big role in your life. Song Exploder’s Hrishikesh Hirway talks about his relationship with his sister, and how You Can Count On Me shaped the type of brother he wanted to be.
From bodybuilding to thriving in the male-dominated Goldman Sachs, Jacki Zehner turned to Wonder Woman to become the leader she is today. In leading a campaign to bring her hero to the big screen, Jacki embodied the power of women to change the world.
Movies can fundamentally shape the course of our work. That’s how the 1940s noir-Western “The Ox-Bow Incident” transformed salsa musician-activist-lawyer Rubén Blades. It taught him that it wasn’t enough to speak about justice — he had to defend its ideals.
What movie helps you reckon with the loss of a loved one? Jamie Berube turned to “Interstellar” to cope with the death of her father. Matthew McConaughey’s character showed that her father’s love was still alive, beyond the dimensions of time and space.
“Toy Story” helped Monsignor Charles Pope through a time of personal crisis. From ego to failure to self-acceptance, Charles Pope embraced his inner Buzz Lightyear and in the process, himself.
For Samantha Powell, the pressure to be the perfect adult felt like a stranglehold. But this all changed with “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” The movie loosened the grip of perfectionism, and taught her she didn’t need to be flawless to be happy.
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What movie mirrors your life so perfectly you think it was made about you? For Entertainment Weekly’s Anthony Breznican, that film is “Avalon.” The story of a Jewish immigrant family reminds him that families are so much more alike than they are different.
Naomi Shihab Nye uncovers poetry in the everyday, an art practiced in Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age classic, “Boyhood.” Naomi found herself “living inside” the movie — seeing her daydreaming-childhood-self and life as a mother on screen.
Love is an ability, not just a feeling. “Dan in Real Life” brought this lesson home for meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg. The story of Steve Carell’s flawed but loveable character echoed Sharon’s own work — to realize love as a capacity within ourselves.
Sexual tension? Romance? Teen angst? Sounds like a typical ’80s movie. But The Guardian’s Hadley Freeman says “Say Anything” is different, even radical, in its portrayal of women and men as friends.
If you could, would you erase memories of past lovers? This idea is at the heart of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” and Chaitanya Kumar says he wouldn’t. Still, the movie made him rethink the way we experience and remember love.
Harry Potter and the Sacred Text’s Casper ter Kuile talks about this classic Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks movie, one he always watches with a pint of ice cream. It shaped the world he longed for as a 14-year-old, and later on, even the kind of man he would marry.
Movies delight and inspire and repel. They’re places the big questions we take up at On Being land in the heart of our lives. They change our lives and our life together. Get out the popcorn for this show, and immerse yourself in film scores and iconic movie moments — with David Greene on how “Star Wars” changed him, Ashley C. Ford on “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” Rubén Blades on the 1943 noir Western “The Ox-Bow Incident,” and more.
The Nightmare Before Christmas helped writer Ashley C. Ford accept life’s imperfections. As a kid, the movie taught her that it was okay to be different and to embrace the weird and the creepy.
David Greene, co-host of NPR’s Morning Edition and Up First, shares how Star Wars: Episode IV instilled a sense of wanderlust and adventure in his life and ultimately made him want to become a foreign correspondent.
A sneak peek into This Movie Changed Me, a new podcast from On Being Studios hosted by Lily Percy.
It's late-night podcast-action with cartoonist Shannon Wheeler! We get into the history of his Too Much Coffee Man comics and his new book, Sh*t My President Says: The Illustrated Tweets of Donald J. Trump (Top Shelf), learning the language of cartooning at The New Yorker (and learning to work with a new editor there), the ways his architecture training informs his storytelling, his discovery of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers at WAY too young an age, the cartooning trick that made him want to draw, his dream project on the history of northern California, and the redemption of the guy who used to dress up as TMCM at conventions! It's coffee-fueled! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal