Podcasts about WGA

We have returned! And with some changes in tow inlcuding a new addition to the co-hosting chair. That's it for the show notes! Once We've gotten back into the flow of things, they will be more informative. ENJOY! Love and Rockets, Corey, Freddy, and Joseph ------------------ If you'd like to show your support for members of WGA, SAG, IATSE, as well as other workers in the entertainment industry, please take a look at the link below and maybe make a donation: Entertainment Community Fund https://entertainmentcommunity.org/support-our-work ------------------ As always, and maybe even more than ever, here are some mental health resources for North America: United States  https://www.mentalhealth.gov/get-help/immediate-help https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ The Suicide Hotline phone number has been changed. Now, just text or call 988. Canada https://www.ccmhs-ccsms.ca/mental-health-resources-1 1 (833) 456-4566 Even though we don't say it in this episode, more NOW than ever before: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take care of yourselves and those around you. Be mindful of your surroundings. Karate in the Garage Linkages 

Send us a textEpisode 550"The War", Fried Green Tomatoes" and "The Last Rodeo" Director: Jon AvnetJon Avnet has directed some fantastic films that include "The War", "Fried Green Tomatoes" and his most recent film, "The Last Rodeo"."The War" is one of the most underrated movies of the last 30+ years.  It features a very underrated performance by Kevin Coster. He produced Paul Brickman's "Risky Business" for David Geffen and Warner Brothers, which launched the career of Tom Cruise and was a major box office and critical success.Jon is best known for directing producing and co-writing (uncredited,) Fried Green Tomatoes, which garnered multiple Academy Award nominations (for writing and for Jessica Tandy, who co-starred with Kathy Bates, Cicely Tyson, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Mary Louise Parker) and BAFTAs. Fried Green Tomatoes was nominated for Best Picture by the Golden Globes and was one of the top grossing films in the year of its release for Universal Pictures. Filmed in Juliette Georgia, Production Designer Barbara Ling recreated a 1920's small town Alabama Whistle stop. Thomas Newman composed the music. Geoffrey Simpson shot the film, Debbie Neil-Fischer was the editor and David Rubin cast it, winning the Artios award for best casting.Avnet was an executive producer of Fox Searchlights "Black Swan", starring Natalie Portman (winner of the Oscar for Best Actress) and directed by Darren Aronofsky. Black Swan received five Oscar nominations in total (including Best Picture) as well as multiple nominations and wins from the DGA, PGA, WGA, SAG, BAFTA, AFI, and the Golden Globes.We talk about "The Last Rodeo", his filmography and much more.Welcome, Jon Avnet.#thewar #kevincostner #friedgreentomatoes #movies #tomcruise #waltongoggins #angelstudio #director #justified www.mmcpodcast.comReach out to anytime!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mondaymorningcritic/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mondaymorningcritic/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mondaymorningcriticMondaymorningcritic@gmail.com

EPISODE 451-- To commemorate both good Star Wars and Pedro Pascal's rapid ascent to stardom, we decided to take on the 2018 indie sci-fi film, PROSPECT from Zeke Earl and Chris Caldwell. It's not a great movie, but it's a fun one to think about. TIME STAMPS (approximately): 19:30-- We talk briefly about WARFARE (2025). 22:00-- Raymond Chandler mentioned. 42:30-- PAPER MOON (1973) and Ryan O'Neal being a massive, abusive scumbag discussed. 48:30-- We talk about ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959) and the origins of the "simple southern lawyer." 50:35-- Cruz recommends SOLARIS (1972). Tartovsky supremacy continues! 54:40-- James recommends THE ORDER (2024)-- the film, not the order. 56:00-- Cruz mentions CARVER HER NAME WITH PRIDE (1958) and James talks about the Leo Marks book BETWEEN SILK AND CYANIDE. 60:00-- James talks briefly about Denzel Washington's precious little coffee cups in THE EQUALIZER 3 (2023). OTHER LINKS: Join the cause at Patreon.com/Quality. Follow the us on on Bluesky at kislingconnection and cruzflores, on Instagram @kislingwhatsit, and on Tiktok @kislingkino. You can watch Cruz and show favorite Alexis Simpson on You Tube in "They Live Together." Thanks to our artists Julius Tanag (http://www.juliustanag.com) and Sef Joosten (http://spexdoodles.tumblr.com). The theme music is "Eine Kleine Sheissemusik" by Drew Alexander. Also, I've got a newsletter, so maybe go check that one out, too. Listen to DRACULA: A RADIO PLAY on Apple Podcasts, at dracularadio.podbean.com, and at the Long Beach Playhouse at https://lbplayhouse.org/show/dracula And, as always, Support your local unions! UAW, SAG-AFTRA, and WGA strong and please leave us a review on iTunes or whatever podcatcher you listened to us on!    

Filmmaker Eli Craig (CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD, TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL, LITTLE EVIL) joins Adam and Joe to discuss his career journey. From growing up in a Hollywood family and wanting to get as far away from Los Angeles and the film industry as possible… to his adventures climbing mountains and shoveling snow… to making the brief decision to try out life as an actor and the advice Clint Eastwood gave him on set… to going to USC grad school and creating his own film festival to showcase his short film… to the uphill battle he faced getting his 2010 horror/comedy TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL made and why there has yet to be a sequel to the beloved film… to the reality check every filmmaker faces coming off of a run of glowing film festival responses and into the world of “mainstream” critics and distributors who simply can't afford a proper marketing strategy… to how Adam Cesare's “Clown in a Cornfield” novel first came onto his radar and how the looming WGA strike almost derailed the project… to how shooting the film in Canada afforded him the luxury of casting exactly who he wanted to cast and elevate stars like Katie Douglas to #1in the cast… Eli is a fellow cinematic traveler who's story is sure to inspire you! CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD opens in theaters this weekend (May 9th)! Also, Dr. Arwen provides “Hollywood Therapy” for an indie filmmaker looking to avoid the dangers of “Hollywood Accounting” and losing creative control of his project, THE MOVIE CRYPT turns 12, and Arwen turns 14! 

EPISODE #450-- Just in time to miss May the 4th, but just in time for George Lucas' birthday (happy birthday, George!), we've got STAR WARS from 1977. It's a good one, this flick. You should check it out.  We also chat about WARFARE (2025), STALKER (1979), ANDOR (2025), and THE GREATEST NIGHT OF POP (2024). Also, RIP the Pope, I guess. Join the cause at Patreon.com/Quality. Follow the us on on Bluesky at kislingconnection and cruzflores, on Instagram @kislingwhatsit, and on Tiktok @kislingkino. You can watch Cruz and show favorite Alexis Simpson on You Tube in "They Live Together." Thanks to our artists Julius Tanag (http://www.juliustanag.com) and Sef Joosten (http://spexdoodles.tumblr.com). The theme music is "Eine Kleine Sheissemusik" by Drew Alexander. Also, I've got a newsletter, so maybe go check that one out, too. Listen to DRACULA: A RADIO PLAY on Apple Podcasts, at dracularadio.podbean.com, and at the Long Beach Playhouse at https://lbplayhouse.org/show/dracula And, as always, Support your local unions! UAW, SAG-AFTRA, and WGA strong and please leave us a review on iTunes or whatever podcatcher you listened to us on!

EPISODE #449-- We're almost there! To whet your appetite for the big 4-5-0 and to commemorate the life of leading man and weird-energy-haver, Val Kilmer, we're talking Ron Howard's WILLOW from 1988. It's not a good movie! I think it's a pretty good episode, though. You all know Willow. You know what's up. We also rap quizotically about Sidney Lumet's BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD (2007), Tony Gilroy's ANDOR, Season 1 (2022), Apple TV's THE STUDIO (2025), and Yang Fengliang and Zhang Yimou's JU DOU (1991). A solid spread of cinematic splendor, I say! Join the cause at Patreon.com/Quality. Follow the us on on Bluesky at kislingconnection and cruzflores, on Instagram @kislingwhatsit, and on Tiktok @kislingkino. You can watch Cruz and show favorite Alexis Simpson on You Tube in "They Live Together." Thanks to our artists Julius Tanag (http://www.juliustanag.com) and Sef Joosten (http://spexdoodles.tumblr.com). The theme music is "Eine Kleine Sheissemusik" by Drew Alexander. Also, I've got a newsletter, so maybe go check that one out, too. Listen to DRACULA: A RADIO PLAY on Apple Podcasts, at dracularadio.podbean.com, and at the Long Beach Playhouse at https://lbplayhouse.org/show/dracula And, as always, Support your local unions! UAW, SAG-AFTRA, and WGA strong and please leave us a review on iTunes or whatever podcatcher you listened to us on!

A voice actor for Genshin Impact is reportedly receiving threatening letters from their union, SAG-AFTRA, for apparently... not being as pro-strike during the video game voice actor strike as she needs to be? And the WGA is literally calling out its members and putting them ON TRIAL for crossing the picket line. They're also demanding that they narc on their peers. Just like McCarthy. And one of the biggest proponents of this? Adam Conover. He really DOES ruin everything...

EPISODE #448-- We return to the wild world of 1990's indie cinema with the sit-around-and-chat-based movie SMOKE (1995), staring Harvey Kietel, Forest Whitaker, and, like, ten other 1990's guys. It's a real who's-who of That Guys. We also chat about the documentary SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D'ETAT (2024), David Lean's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962), DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA (2025), Netflix's THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT (2020), and David Mamet's HOUSE OF GAMES (1987). A solid little episode with some solid little movies. Join the cause at Patreon.com/Quality. Follow the us on on Bluesky at kislingconnection and cruzflores, on Instagram @kislingwhatsit, and on Tiktok @kislingkino. You can watch Cruz and show favorite Alexis Simpson on You Tube in "They Live Together." Thanks to our artists Julius Tanag (http://www.juliustanag.com) and Sef Joosten (http://spexdoodles.tumblr.com). The theme music is "Eine Kleine Sheissemusik" by Drew Alexander. Also, I've got a newsletter, so maybe go check that one out, too. Listen to DRACULA: A RADIO PLAY on Apple Podcasts, at dracularadio.podbean.com, and at the Long Beach Playhouse at https://lbplayhouse.org/show/dracula And, as always, Support your local unions! UAW, SAG-AFTRA, and WGA strong and please leave us a review on iTunes or whatever podcatcher you listened to us on!

Tulsi Gabbard, the new Director of National Intelligence, says she has over 100 people working “around the clock” to prepare the RFK files for release. What will they find? • FRESH PRESSED OLIVE OIL – Olive oil packs the most flavor and healthiest nutrients when it's fresh. Don't settle for stale supermarket olive oils – get it direct from small, award-winning farms! Get your free $39 bottle for just $1 shipping & taste the difference at https://GetFreshDrDrew.com/ Chris Moritz tells Newsmax: “The unraveling of California is a case study in the perils of unchecked oligarchy where concentrated wealth, political corruption, and mass migration are weaponized to dissolve national cohesion.” Newsmax reports that in 2022, LA had a “crime rate of 36 for 1,000 residents. That's one of the highest in the nation.” Mark Groubert is a writer, editor, producer, publisher, and screenwriter. He has written for LA Weekly, edited National Lampoon magazine, produced for HBO, published MTV Magazine, and worked as a screenwriter with the WGA. He co-hosts America's Untold Stories on YouTube. More at https://americasuntoldstories.com and https://x.com/lordbuckly Chris Moritz, a corporate attorney, investment researcher, and M&A executive, authored Failed State: A Portrait of California in the Twilight of Empire. A third-generation Santa Monican, he graduated from UCLA, holds an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and earned a JD from NYU School of Law. He served as a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Commerce under President Trump. More at https://x.com/chrisgmoritz 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors  • FRESH PRESSED OLIVE OIL - Olive oil packs the most flavor and healthiest nutrients when it's fresh. Don't settle for stale supermarket olive oils – get it direct from small, award-winning farms! Get your free $39 bottle for just $1 shipping & taste the difference at https://GetFreshDrDrew.com/ • HEART FACTORS PLUS - A powerful formula packed with L-arginine, a key amino acid that's been shown to enhance nitric oxide physiology and could play a key role in supporting healthy blood flow and circulation. Get a FREE bottle with your order at https://heartfactorsplus.com/drew • ACTIVE SKIN REPAIR - Repair skin faster with more of the molecule your body creates naturally! Hypochlorous (HOCl) is produced by white blood cells to support healing – and no sting. Get 20% off at https://drdrew.com/skinrepair • FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at https://drdrew.com/fatty15 • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tonight we're chatting with Nick Roth, writer and co-director of the bloody horror comedy Hanky Panky, which just came out on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and Google Play, and which Kristy Puchko of Mashable recently called a "gleefully absurd avalanche of silliness," and which a random person on Letterboxd described as "an extremely dumb movie that I enjoyed immensely." We also talk about the WGA strike and getting Hollywood back to work-- and what you can do to create your own projects when you need to.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/castle-of-horror-podcast--4268760/support.

This week, the boys stay positive as they take a look at Ridley Scott's first proper film, “The Duelists,” from 1977! Starring Keith Carradine, Harvey Keitel, and Albert Finney, this self-funded film is stunning to watch, but is it interesting to endure? We drink and discuss! John and Dave also caught “The Amateur” (2025) in the cinema and offer a mini-review before John discusses some upsetting WGA hiring statistics. Grab a drink and give us a listen! Our phone number is 646-484-9298. It accepts texts or voice messages.  0:00 Intro; 10:39 “The Amateur” mini-review; 16:13 Gripes; 18:52 1977 Year in Review; 37:57 Films of 1977: “The Duelists”; 1:14:34 What You Been Watching?; 1:22:23 Next Week's Movie Announcement Additional Cast/Crew: Joseph Conrad, Gerald Vaughan-Hughes, Edward Fox, Cristina Raines, Robert Stephens, Diana Quick, Frank Tidy, Tom Rand, James Hawes, Robert Littell, Gary Spinelli, Ken Nolan, Rami Malek, Rachel Brosnahan, Jon Bernthal, Nick Mills, Tiffany Gray, Hold McCallany, David Mills, Laurence Fishburne. Hosts: Dave Green, Jeff Ostermueller, John Say Edited & Produced by Dave Green. Beer Sponsor: Carlos Barrozo Music Sponsor: Dasein Dasein on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/77H3GPgYigeKNlZKGx11KZ 
Dasein on Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/dasein/1637517407 Additional Tags: France, The War of 1812, Napoleon, Russia, Russian History, Aristocracy, Dueling, Swans, Ducks, Chickens, Generals, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Black Mirror, Slow Horses, The First Look, Ben Mendelsohn, French Accents, The Monuments Men, George Clooney, The Stock Market Crash, Bear Market, Trains, Locomotions, Museums, Fuhrermuseum, Nazis, WWII movies, WWI Shows, Plastic ExplosivesThe Crusades, Swedish Art, Knights, Death, MGM, Amazon Prime, Marvel, Sony, Wicked, All Quiet on the Western Front, Wicked, Conclave, Here, Venom: The Last Dance, Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, Oscars, Academy Awards, BFI, BAFTA, BAFTAS, British Cinema. England, Vienna, Leopoldstadt, The Golden Globes, Past Lives, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, The Holiday, Sunset Boulevard, Napoleon, Ferrari, Beer, Scotch, Travis Scott, U2, Apple, Apple Podcasts, Switzerland, West Side Story, Wikipedia, Adelaide, Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Melbourne, Indonesia, Java, Jakarta, Bali, Guinea, The British, England, The SEC, Ronald Reagan, Stock Buybacks, Marvel, MCU, DCEU, Film, Movies, Southeast Asia, The Phillippines, Vietnam, America, The US, Academy Awards, WGA Strike, SAG-AFTRA, SAG Strike, Peter Weir. 

EPISODE #447-- After much hooting and hollering, we are back on the podcastin' trail with Jim Jarmusch's seminal DEAD MAN (1995) starign Gary Farmer, Robert Mitchum, and that guy from Pirates of the Caribbean. You know the one. The one with the texts. Anyways, fun movie. An important movie. We also ramble about the Oscar-winning documentary NO OTHER LAND (2024) (now available to rent and stream), BROOKLYN (2015), Michael Mann's BLACKHAT (2015), and the legacy sequel BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F (2024). A solid bunch of movies. A strange bunch of movies. Join the cause at Patreon.com/Quality. Follow the us on on Bluesky at kislingconnection and cruzflores, on Instagram @kislingwhatsit, and on Tiktok @kislingkino. You can watch Cruz and show favorite Alexis Simpson on You Tube in "They Live Together." Thanks to our artists Julius Tanag (http://www.juliustanag.com) and Sef Joosten (http://spexdoodles.tumblr.com). The theme music is "Eine Kleine Sheissemusik" by Drew Alexander. Also, I've got a newsletter, so maybe go check that one out, too. Listen to DRACULA: A RADIO PLAY on Apple Podcasts, at dracularadio.podbean.com, and at the Long Beach Playhouse at https://lbplayhouse.org/show/dracula And, as always, Support your local unions! UAW, SAG-AFTRA, and WGA strong and please leave us a review on iTunes or whatever podcatcher you listened to us on!

NATALIE MARGOLIN (Playwright) is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her plays have been developed with Broadway Video, The WP, The Hearth, Colt Coeur, and Fault Line Theatre. Her play The Party Hop, written for Zoom, was published by Dramatist Play Service and produced in high schools and colleges across the country during the pandemic. Currently, she is developing projects with Lorne Michaels' Broadway Video and Mark Gordon Pictures. JAKI BRADLEY (Director) is a director for theater and film. She has directed at Berkeley Repertory, NYTW, Ars Nova, NYSAF, CTG, Denver Center and Arena Stage, among others. In film, she has written for Netflix, Paramount, AGBO and FX, directed music videos and the short films Spa Day, The Big Ask, and Chow, and is preparing her feature directorial debut, The One. Jaki is a Fulbright Scholar and a proud member of SDC and WGA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

EPISODE #446-- We return from Spring Break and mark the end of Black History Month with a journey back into our BS. That's right, we're talking a Yukio Mishima adaptation from the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema. Today we're rapping about Kon Ichikawa's CONFLAGRATION (1958), a beautiful look into post-War masculinity, obsession, disability, and religion. Good episode of a great movie. We also talk about WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL (2025), RUNAWAY JURY (RIP Gene Hackman), THE TERMINATOR, HBO's THE PITT, Amazon's REACHER, and another Ichikawa banger, FIRES ON THE PLAIN. Good stuff. Join the cause at Patreon.com/Quality. Follow the us on on Bluesky at kislingconnection and cruzflores, on Instagram @kislingwhatsit, and on Tiktok @kislingkino. You can watch Cruz and show favorite Alexis Simpson on You Tube in "They Live Together." Thanks to our artists Julius Tanag (http://www.juliustanag.com) and Sef Joosten (http://spexdoodles.tumblr.com). The theme music is "Eine Kleine Sheissemusik" by Drew Alexander. Also, I've got a newsletter, so maybe go check that one out, too. Listen to DRACULA: A RADIO PLAY on Apple Podcasts, at dracularadio.podbean.com, and at the Long Beach Playhouse at https://lbplayhouse.org/show/dracula And, as always, Support your local unions! UAW, SAG-AFTRA, and WGA strong and please leave us a review on iTunes or whatever podcatcher you listened to us on!

Welcome to Decorating the Set: From Hollywood to Your Home with Beth Kushnick! This week on Decorating the Set, Beth and Caroline sit down to chat with Rosemary Rodriguez, the prolific director of some of your favorite television shows from the last 20 years, including The Walking Dead, Your Honor, and The Good Wife! Rosemary is also the writer, director, and producer on 2 feature films, Acts of Worship and Silver Skies. Rosemary's passion for the work shines through in this interview and we are so excited for you to hear it. The Interview with Rosemary begins at Time Code: 5:27 Join the Decorating the Set Community by subscribing to our Official Facebook Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/decoratingthesetpodcast)! Interact with Beth, Caroline, Producer Mike, and all of the DTS listeners! GUEST BIO: Rosemary Rodriguez Rosemary's upcoming feature Hail Mary, starring Jack Huston and Angela Sarafyan, had its world premiere at SXSW, where it was named one of the Best Horror Films. It was Opening Night film at the DTLA Film Festival, taking home Best Director and Best Actor prizes. Rosemary also wrote and directed the Sundance feature Acts of Worship, which was nominated for 2 Independent Spirit Awards and received a glowing New York Times review. Her second feature, Silver Skies, executive produced by Fred Roos (The Godfather) and Arthur Sarkissian (Rush Hour), went on to many festival awards, including the Audience Award at FLIFF. Rosemary directed TV episodes of Elsbeth; the series finale of Showtime's Your Honor with Bryan Cranston; and James Gunn's Peacemaker, with John Cena for HBOMax. Past episodes include The Walking Dead, Dickinson with Hailee Steinfeld, Marvel/Netflix series Jessica Jones with Krysten Ritter, Apple's Truth Be Told, starring Octavia Spencer, The Tick, The Good Wife (18 episodes, including the 100th). She was Executive Producer/Director on Apple's Home Before Dark, with Brooklynn Prince, and Producer/Director on Jason Katim's Rise with Auli'i Cravalho. Upcoming films are The Wonder Yard, starring Jacki Weaver, Tony Shaloub and Kate Mara; and Gated, produced by Rick Telles (A Million Miles Away). Rosemary is an active member of the DGA, WGA and an Icon Member of Alliance of Women Directors. She lives in LA and NYC with her husband Nestor Rodriguez. Follow Rosemary on Instagram: @rosemarydirects Rosemary's Website: https://www.rosemaryrodriguez.com/ ### For over 35 years, Beth Kushnick has created character-driven settings for countless award-winning television series and feature films. As a Set Decorator, she's composed visuals that both capture and enhance any story. Now, she wants to help you capture and enhance YOUR story. Join Beth and her co-host, Caroline Daley, each week as they go behind the scenes of Hollywood's magic, and give you approachable, yet sophisticated tips to realize the space that best expresses who you are. ### Follow Beth Kushnick on Social Media:  Instagram: @bethkushnick Twitter: @bethkushnick Website: BethKushnick.com Beth is the Decorator By Your Side and now, you can shop her Amazon Store! CLICK HERE! Follow Caroline Daley on Social Media: Twitter: @Tweet2Caroline Website: PodClubhouse.com ### Credits: "Giraffes" by Harrison Amer, licensed by Pod Clubhouse. This is an original production of Pod Clubhouse Productions, LLC. Produced, engineered and edited at Pod Clubhouse Studios. For more information, visit our Website.

Mike Drucker is an Emmy-nominated and WGA-winning writer and comedian living in New York. Drucker's comedy career really began with an internship at Saturday Night Live, where …

In this episode, Hilliard and comedy writer Myles Warden sat down for a super fun conversation with Co-Executive Producer VINCENT BROWN.Vincent recently wrapped up as co-executive producer for the FOX animated series HOUSEBROKEN, starring Lisa Kudrow. Prior to that, he served as a Co-Executive Producer on Apple TV's series LIFE BY ELLA, winner of the Humanitas Award, a WGA Award and the Emmy Award for writing.Vincent began as a teen theatre performer, moving behind the scenes after graduating from Yale and becoming Dramaturge at San Francisco's Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, which mounted his first play: a stage adaptation of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.He began in television on the Emmy-winning PBS children's show, WISHBONE. After moving to Los Angeles, he joined MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE as Writer's Guild Trainee, and his first network shows were COMMITTED (NBC-Universal) and GIRLFRIENDS. He haswritten for numerous family sitcoms, including Disney series such as A.N.T. FARM and K.C. UNDERCOVER, as well as adult sitcoms like the acclaimed Latino reboot of Norman Lear's ONE DAY AT A TIME. His work on A.N.T. FARM won both a WGA Award and NAACP Image Award. He wasnominated again for a WGA award for his work on LIFE BY ELLA (AppleTV+) and won the Emmy award for the same show.He has developed shows for Disney, Nickelodeon, and Kapital Entertainment in partnership with Cedric the Entertainer's Bird and Bear. He's currently working with producers trying to bring multiple projects based on IP to market because that's where we are now.Our motto: "Keep it Game All Day!"For information, Merch (T-SHIRTS/HOODIES), and all things Rant Room!www.Screenwritersrantroom.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@Hilliard Guess on all social media@Hilliardguess.bsky.socialIG: @ScreenwritersRantRoomGuests:@VincentBrownLA@ReallyMightyWE ARE NOW OPEN TO SPONSORSHIPS AND BRANDING OPPORTUNITIES⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Screenwritersrantroom@gmail.com

Episode #233 hosts Dave Bossert and Aljon Go share part two of their chat with Theodore (Ted) Thomas about Walt & El Grupo. Thomas is an Emmy and WGA award-winning filmmaker and historian. He is the director of Frank and Ollie (1995), Walt & El Grupo (2008), and Growing Up with Nine Old Men (2013). Join us for a special screening of "The Puppetoon Movie" Newly Restored at the Fine Arts Theatre, Beverly Hills, April 20, 2025, 1 PM Special 88th Anniversary Celebration as we salute the dazzling Oscar®-winning George Pal Puppetoons™. Special 25¢ admission! Tickets - Fine Arts Theatre Beverly Hills.We are now on Patreon! Click this link to support the show -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Skull Rock Podcast | Join our crew! | Patreon. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Skull Rock Podcast is powered by Riverside.fm. Click⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and start making great podcasts today! Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠theoldmillpress.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Faceboook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠|⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠-⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aljon Go (aljongo) - Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Aljon's ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Dining at Disney Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Sorcerer Radio - All Disney Music, All Day Long⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SRSounds.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - E-mail: aljon@skullrockpodcast.com ||⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Dave Bossert (@dave_bossert) • Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Email dave@skullrockpodcast.com. For behind-the-scenes stories and articles, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠davidbossert.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Shop using our Amazon affiliate ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. The Skull Rock Podcast is one of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠best Disney podcasts you must follow (feedspot.com)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. LISTEN to Dave's ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠"Tunes Behind the Toons" segment on Sirius/XM's Disney Hits channel 133⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

The history of the West has always been defined by water. Long before settlers arrived, Indigenous peoples designed complex water management systems to cultivate the arid land. In the 19th and 20th centuries, large-scale engineering projects redistributed water across the West, enabling the region's rapid growth. Today, western water resources are stretched thin, and as rivers and streams dry up, so too does the environmental resiliency that's provided by healthy riparian zones.   To help address this issue, many western states are looking to beavers – long known as nature's engineers – to ensure more water is retained on the landscape. New research shows that this will help restore biodiversity and mitigate the effects of prolonged drought, unexpected flooding, and catastrophic wildfires.     In this episode of Out West, WGA policy advisors Jonah Seifer and Zach Nowak spoke with beaver experts from around the region about how these aquatic rodents can help us restore balance to the West's water systems.   For these discussions they were joined by Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist, beaver researcher, and Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Minnesota; Chris Jordan, a Fisheries Biologist with NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center; Alexander Funk, the Director of Water Resources and Senior Counsel at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership; Marshall Wolf, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission; and Jerry Altermatt, a habitat biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.        

Joshua Lastine, an entertainment lawyer, returns to the podcast to break down the rapidly changing legal and business landscape of the film industry. As AI tools reshape content creation, streaming platforms redefine distribution, and independent filmmakers leverage new technology, Joshua explains how contracts, intellectual property, and revenue models are evolving. He dives into the legal implications of AI in filmmaking, from WGA and SAG-AFTRA's new protections to the ethical and financial risks of content licensing for AI training. He also discusses how major studios are adapting to these shifts and what it means for the future of traditional and independent production. The conversation highlights how cutting-edge technology is empowering low-budget filmmakers to create studio-quality content without massive resources. Joshua explores the impact of real-time rendering, virtual production, and AI-driven tools on independent filmmaking, making it easier than ever to produce high-end visuals on a fraction of the budget. He also breaks down the shifting economics of streaming vs. theatrical releases, how tax incentives influence production locations, and why smart distribution strategies are more critical than ever. Packed with expert legal insights and industry analysis, this episode offers a roadmap for navigating the intersection of law, technology, and the evolving film industry.

Episode #232 hosts Dave Bossert and Aljon Go chat with Theodore (Ted) Thomas about being in a Disney family, and the legacy of the 9 Old Men. Thomas is an Emmy and WGA award-winning filmmaker and historian. He is the director of Frank and Ollie (1995), Walt & El Grupo (2008), and Growing Up with Nine Old Men (2013). We are now on Patreon! Click this link to support the show -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Skull Rock Podcast | Join our crew! | Patreon. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Skull Rock Podcast is powered by Riverside.fm. Click⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and start making great podcasts today! Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠theoldmillpress.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Faceboook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠|⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠-⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aljon Go (aljongo) - Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Aljon's ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Dining at Disney Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Sorcerer Radio - All Disney Music, All Day Long⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SRSounds.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - E-mail: aljon@skullrockpodcast.com ||⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Dave Bossert (@dave_bossert) • Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Email dave@skullrockpodcast.com. For behind-the-scenes stories and articles visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠davidbossert.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Shop using our Amazon affiliate ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. The Skull Rock Podcast is one of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠best Disney podcasts you must follow (feedspot.com)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. LISTEN to Dave's ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠"Tunes Behind the Toons" segment on Sirius/XM's Disney Hits channel 133⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

EPISODE #445-- Once more into the breech for Black History Month. Today Cruz and James attempt to understand the impressionistic, indie cult horror classic, GANJA & HESS from 1973.  We also mourn the passing of Gene Hackman, talking about THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971), as well as Kon Ichikawa's THE BURMESE HARP (Cruz has been on an Ichikawa kick-- we can't blame him). This is also our last film fro Black History Month, so we hope we did okay by the films, if nothing else. Join the cause at Patreon.com/Quality. Follow the us on on Bluesky at kislingconnection and cruzflores, on Instagram @kislingwhatsit, and on Tiktok @kislingkino. You can watch Cruz and show favorite Alexis Simpson on You Tube in "They Live Together." Thanks to our artists Julius Tanag (http://www.juliustanag.com) and Sef Joosten (http://spexdoodles.tumblr.com). The theme music is "Eine Kleine Sheissemusik" by Drew Alexander. Also, I've got a newsletter, so maybe go check that one out, too. Listen to DRACULA: A RADIO PLAY on Apple Podcasts, at dracularadio.podbean.com, and at the Long Beach Playhouse at https://lbplayhouse.org/show/dracula And, as always, Support your local unions! UAW, SAG-AFTRA, and WGA strong and please leave us a review on iTunes or whatever podcatcher you listened to us on!

EPISODE #444-- We're talking Black History Month. We're talking Dad Cinema. That means only one thing: We're talking Mr. Denzel Washington, America's dad. Today that also means we're talking Anton Fuqua's THE EQUALIZER from 2014. It's a good one. Solid movie. Fun episode. We also talk the latest season of REACHER on Amazon, the Coen Bros' TRUE GRIT (2010), as well as A THOUSAND BLOWS (2025) on Disney+ and THE PITT (2025) on HBO Max. As always: A solid little spread. Join the cause at Patreon.com/Quality. Follow the us on on Bluesky at kislingconnection and cruzflores, on Instagram @kislingwhatsit, and on Tiktok @kislingkino. You can watch Cruz and show favorite Alexis Simpson on You Tube in "They Live Together." Thanks to our artists Julius Tanag (http://www.juliustanag.com) and Sef Joosten (http://spexdoodles.tumblr.com). The theme music is "Eine Kleine Sheissemusik" by Drew Alexander. Also, I've got a newsletter, so maybe go check that one out, too. Listen to DRACULA: A RADIO PLAY on Apple Podcasts, at dracularadio.podbean.com, and at the Long Beach Playhouse at https://lbplayhouse.org/show/dracula And, as always, Support your local unions! UAW, SAG-AFTRA, and WGA strong and please leave us a review on iTunes or whatever podcatcher you listened to us on!

By Walt HickeyDouble feature today!Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.This week, I spoke to Alissa Wilkinson who is out with the brand new book, We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine.I'm a huge fan of Alissa, she's a phenomenal critic and I thought this topic — what happens when one of the most important American literary figures heads out to Hollywood to work on the most important American medium — is super fascinating. It's a really wonderful book and if you're a longtime Joan Didion fan or simply a future Joan Didion fan, it's a look at a really transformative era of Hollywood and should be a fun read regardless.Alissa can be found at the New York Times, and the book is available wherever books are sold.This interview has been condensed and edited. All right, Alissa, thank you so much for coming on.Yeah, thanks for having me. It's good to be back, wherever we are.Yes, you are the author of We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine. It's a really exciting book. It's a really exciting approach, for a Joan Didion biography and placing her in the current of American mainstream culture for a few years. I guess just backing out, what got you interested in Joan Didion to begin with? When did you first get into her work?Joan Didion and I did not become acquainted, metaphorically, until after I got out of college. I studied Tech and IT in college, and thus didn't read any books, because they don't make you read books in school, or they didn't when I was there. I moved to New York right afterward. I was riding the subway. There were all these ads for this book called The Year of Magical Thinking. It was the year 2005, the book had just come out. The Year of Magical Thinking is Didion's National Book Award-winning memoir about the year after her husband died, suddenly of a heart attack in '03. It's sort of a meditation on grief, but it's not really what that sounds like. If people haven't read it's very Didion. You know, it's not sentimental, it's constantly examining the narratives that she's telling herself about grief.So I just saw these ads on the walls. I was like, what is this book that everybody seems to be reading? I just bought it and read it. And it just so happened that it was right after my father, who was 46 at the time, was diagnosed with a very aggressive leukemia, and then died shortly thereafter, which was shocking, obviously. The closer I get to that age, it feels even more shocking that he was so young. I didn't have any idea how to process that emotion or experience. The book was unexpectedly helpful. But it also introduced me to a writer who I'd never read before, who felt like she was looking at things from a different angle than everyone else.Of course, she had a couple more books come out after that. But I don't remember this distinctly, but probably what happened is I went to some bookstore, The Strand or something, and bought The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem off the front table as everyone does because those books have just been there for decades.From that, I learned more, starting to understand how writing could work. I didn't realize how form and content could interact that way. Over the years, I would review a book by her or about her for one publication or another. Then when I was in graduate school, getting my MFA in nonfiction, I wrote a bit about her because I was going through a moment of not being sure if my husband and I were going to stay in New York or we were going to move to California. They sort of obligate you to go through a goodbye to all that phase if you are contemplating that — her famous essay about leaving New York. And then, we did stay in New York City. But ultimately, that's 20 years of history.Then in 2020, I was having a conversation (that was quite-early pandemic) with my agent about possible books I might write. I had outlined a bunch of books to her. Then she was like, “These all sound like great ideas. But I've always wanted to rep a book on Joan Didion. So I just wanted to put that bug in your ear.” I was like, “Oh, okay. That seems like something I should probably do.”It took a while to find an angle, which wound up being Didion in Hollywood. This is mostly because I realized that a lot of people don't really know her as a Hollywood figure, even though she's a pretty major Hollywood figure for a period of time. The more of her work I read, the more I realized that her work is fruitfully understood as the work of a woman who was profoundly influenced by (and later thinking in terms of Hollywood metaphors) whether she was writing about California or American politics or even grief.So that's the long-winded way of saying I wasn't, you know, acquainted with her work until adulthood, but then it became something that became a guiding light for me as a writer.That's really fascinating. I love it. Because again I think a lot of attention on Didion has been paid since her passing. But this book is really exciting because you came at it from looking at the work as it relates to Hollywood. What was Didion's experience in Hollywood? What would people have seen from it, but also, what is her place there?The directly Hollywood parts of her life start when she's in her 30s. She and her husband — John Gregory Dunn, also a writer and her screenwriting partner — moved from New York City, where they had met and gotten married, to Los Angeles. John's brother, Nick Dunn later became one of the most important early true crime writers at Vanity Fair, believe it or not. But at the time, he was working as a TV producer. He and his wife were there. So they moved to Los Angeles. It was sort of a moment where, you know, it's all well and good to be a journalist and a novelist. If you want to support yourself, Hollywood is where it's at.So they get there at a moment when the business is shifting from these big-budget movies — the Golden Age — to the new Hollywood, where everything is sort of gritty and small and countercultural. That's the moment they arrive. They worked in Hollywood. I mean, they worked literally in Hollywood for many years after that. And then in Hollywood even when they moved back to New York in the '80s as screenwriters still.People sometimes don't realize that they wrote a bunch of produced screenplays. The earliest was The Panic in Needle Park. Obviously, they adapted Didion's novel Play It As It Lays. There are several others, but one that a lot of people don't realize they wrote was the version of A Star is Born that stars Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. It was their idea to shift the Star is Born template from Hollywood entities to rock stars. That was their idea. Of course, when Bradley Cooper made his version, he iterated on that. So their work was as screenwriters but also as figures in the Hollywood scene because they were literary people at the same time that they were screenwriters. They knew all the actors, and they knew all the producers and the executives.John actually wrote, I think, two of the best books ever written on Hollywood decades apart. One called The Studio, where he just roamed around on the Fox backlot. For a year for reasons he couldn't understand, he got access. That was right when the catastrophe that was Dr. Doolittle was coming out. So you get to hear the inside of the studio. Then later, he wrote a book called Monster, which is about their like eight-year long attempt to get their film Up Close and Personal made, which eventually they did. It's a really good look at what the normal Hollywood experience was at the time: which is like: you come up with an idea, but it will only vaguely resemble the final product once all the studios get done with it.So it's, it's really, that's all very interesting. They're threaded through the history of Hollywood in that period. On top of it for the book (I realized as I was working on it) that a lot of Didion's early life is influenced by especially her obsession with John Wayne and also with the bigger mythology of California and the West, a lot of which she sees as framed through Hollywood Westerns.Then in the '80s, she pivoted to political reporting for a long while. If you read her political writing, it is very, very, very much about Hollywood logic seeping into American political culture. There's an essay called “Inside Baseball” about the Dukakis campaign that appears in Political Fictions, her book that was published on September 11, 2001. In that book, she writes about how these political campaigns are directed and set up like a production for the cameras and how that was becoming not just the campaign, but the presidency itself. Of course, she had no use for Ronald Reagan, and everything she writes about him is very damning. But a lot of it was because she saw him as the embodiment of Hollywood logic entering the political sphere and felt like these are two separate things and they need to not be going together.So all of that appeared to me as I was reading. You know, once you see it, you can't unsee it. It just made sense for me to write about it. On top of it, she was still alive when I was writing the proposal and shopping it around. So she actually died two months after we sold the book to my publisher. It meant I was extra grateful for this angle because I knew there'd be a lot more books on her, but I wanted to come at it from an angle that I hadn't seen before. So many people have written about her in Hollywood before, but not quite through this lens.Yeah. What were some things that you discovered in the course of your research? Obviously, she's such an interesting figure, but she's also lived so very publicly that I'm just super interested to find out what are some of the things that you learned? It can be about her, but it can also be the Hollywood system as a whole.Yeah. I mean, I didn't interview her for obvious reasons.Understandable, entirely understandable.Pretty much everyone in her life also is gone with the exception really of Griffin Dunn, who is her nephew, John's nephew, the actor. But other than that, it felt like I needed to look at it through a critical lens. So it meant examining a lot of texts. A lot of Didion's magazine work (which was a huge part of her life) is published in the books that people read like Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album and all the other books. What was interesting to me was discovering (I mean, not “discovering” because other people have read it) that there is some work that's not published and it's mostly her criticism.Most of that criticism was published in the late '50s and the early '60s when she was living in New York City, working at Vogue and trying to make it in the literary scene that was New York at that time, which was a very unique place. I mean, she was writing criticism and essays for both, you know, like National Review and The Nation at the same time, which was just hard to conceive of today. It was something you'd do back then. Yeah, wild stuff.A lot of that criticism was never collected into books. The most interesting is that she'd been working at Vogue for a long time in various positions, but she wound up getting added to the film critic column at Vogue in, '62, I want to say, although I might have that date slightly off. She basically alternated weeks with another critic for a few years, writing that until she started writing in movies proper. It's never a great idea to be a critic and a screenwriter at the same time.Her criticism is fascinating. So briefly, for instance, she shared that column with Pauline Kael. Pauline Kael became well known after she wrote about Bonnie and Clyde. This was prior to that. This is several years prior to that. They also hated each other for a long time afterward, which is funny, because, in some ways, their style is very different but their persona is actually very similar. So I wonder about that.But in any case, even when she wasn't sharing the column with Pauline Kael, it was a literal column in a magazine. So it's like one column of text, she can say barely anything. She was always a bit of a contrarian, but she was actively not interested in the things that were occupying New York critics at the time. Things like the Auteur Theory, what was happening in France, the downtown scene and the Shirley Clark's of the world. She had no use for it. At some point, she accuses Billy Wilder of having really no sense of humor, which is very funny.When you read her criticism, you see a person who is very invested in a classical notion of Hollywood as a place that shows us fantasies that we can indulge in for a while. She talks in her very first column about how she doesn't really need movies to be masterpieces, she just wants them to have moments. When she says moments, she means big swelling things that happen in a movie that make her feel things.It's so opposite, I think, to most people's view of Didion. Most people associate her with this snobbish elitism or something, which I don't think is untrue when we're talking about literature. But for her, the movies were like entertainment, and entering that business was a choice to enter that world. She wasn't attempting to elevate the discourse or something.I just think that's fascinating. She also has some great insights there. But as a film critic, I find myself disagreeing with most of her reviews. But I think that doesn't matter. It was more interesting to see how she conceived of the movies. There is a moment later on, in another piece that I don't think has been republished anywhere from the New York Review of Books, where she writes about the movies of Woody Allen. She hates them. It's right at the point where he's making like Manhattan and Annie Hall, like the good stuff. She just has no use for them. It's one of the funniest pieces. I won't spoil the ending because it's hilarious, and it's in the book.That writing was of huge interest to me and hasn't been republished in books. I was very grateful to get access to it, in part because it is in the archives — the electronic archives of the New York Public Library. But at the time, the library was closed. So I had to call the library and have a librarian get on Zoom with me for like an hour and a half to figure out how I could get in the proverbial back door of the library to get access while the library wasn't open.That's magnificent. That's such a cool way to go to the archives because some stuff just hasn't been published. If it wasn't digitized, then it's not digitized. That's incredible.Yeah, it's there, but you can barely print them off because they're in PDFs. They're like scanned images that are super high res, so the printer just dies when you try to print them. It's all very fascinating. I hope it gets republished at some point because I think there's enough interest in her work that it's fascinating to see this other aspect of her taste and her persona.It's really interesting that she seems to have wanted to meet the medium where it is, right? She wasn't trying to literary-up Hollywood. I mean, LA can be a bit of a friction. It's not exactly a literary town in the way that some East Coast metropolises can be. It is interesting that she was enamored by the movies. Do you want to speak about what things were like for her when she moved out?Yeah, it is funny because, at the same time, the first two movies that they wrote and produced are The Panic in Needle Park, which is probably the most new Hollywood movie you can imagine. It's about addicts at Needle Park, which is actually right where the 72nd Street subway stop is on the Upper West Side. If people have been there, it's hard to imagine. But that was apparently where they all sat around, and there were a lot of needles. It's apparently the first movie supposedly where someone shoots up live on camera.So it was the '70s. That's amazing.Yes, and it launched Al Pacino's film career! Yeah, it's wild. You watch it and you're just like, “How is this coming from the woman who's about all this arty farty stuff in the movies.” And Play It As It Lays has a very similar, almost avant-garde vibe to it. It's very, very interesting. You see it later on in the work that they made.A key thing to remember about them (and something I didn't realize before I started researching the book)was that Didion and Dunn were novelists who worked in journalism because everybody did. They wrote movies, according to them (you can only go off of what they said. A lot of it is John writing these jaunty articles. He's a very funny writer) because “we had tuition and a mortgage. This is how you pay for it.”This comes up later on, they needed to keep their WGA insurance because John had heart trouble. The best way to have health insurance was to remain in the Writers Guild. Remaining in the Writers Guild means you had to have a certain amount of work produced through union means. They were big union supporters. For them this was not, this was very strictly not an auteurist undertaking. This was not like, “Oh, I'm gonna go write these amazing screenplays that give my concept of the world to the audience.” It's not like Bonnie and Clyding going on here. It's very like, “We wrote these based on some stories that we thought would be cool.”I like that a lot. Like the idea that A Star is Born was like a pot boiler. That's really delightful.Completely. It was totally taken away from them by Streisand and John Peters at some point. But they were like, “Yeah, I mean, you know, it happens. We still got paid.”Yeah, if it can happen to Superman, it can happen to you.It happens to everybody, you know, don't get too precious about it. The important thing is did your novel come out and was it supported by its publisher?So just tracing some of their arcs in Hollywood. Obviously, Didion's one of the most influential writers of her generation, there's a very rich literary tradition. Where do we see her footprint, her imprint in Hollywood? What are some of the ways that we can see her register in Hollywood, or reverberate outside of it?In the business itself, I don't know that she was influential directly. What we see is on the outside of it. So a lot of people were friends. She was like a famous hostess, famous hostess. The New York Public Library archives are set to open at the end of March, of Didion and Dunn's work, which was like completely incidental to my publication date. I just got lucky. There's a bunch of screenplays in there that they worked on that weren't produced. There's also her cookbooks, and I'm very excited to go through those and see that. So you might meet somebody there.Her account of what the vibe was when the Manson murders occurred, which is published in her essay The White Album, is still the one people talk about, even though there are a lot of different ways to come at it. That's how we think about the Manson murders: through her lens. Later on, when she's not writing directly about Hollywood anymore (and not really writing in Hollywood as much) but instead is writing about the headlines, about news events, about sensationalism in the news, she becomes a great media critic. We start to see her taking the things that she learned (having been around Hollywood people, having been on movie sets, having seen how the sausage is made) and she starts writing about politics. In that age, it is Hollywood's logic that you perform for the TV. We have the debates suddenly becoming televised, the conventions becoming televised, we start to see candidates who seem specifically groomed to win because they look good on TV. They're starting to win and rule the day.She writes about Newt Gingrich. Of course, Gingrich was the first politician to figure out how to harness C-SPAN to his own ends — the fact that there were TV cameras on the congressional floor. So she's writing about all of this stuff at a time when you can see other people writing about it. I mean, Neil Postman famously writes about it. But the way Didion does it is always very pegged to reviewing somebody's book, or she's thinking about a particular event, or she's been on the campaign plane or something like that. Like she's been on the inside, but with an outsider's eye.That also crops up in, for instance, her essays. “Sentimental Journeys” is one of her most famous ones. That one's about the case of the Central Park Five, and the jogger who was murdered. Of course, now, we're many decades out from that, and the convictions were vacated. We know about coerced confessions. Also Donald Trump arrives in the middle of that whole thing.But she's actually not interested in the guilt or innocence question, because a lot of people were writing about that. She's interested in how the city of New York and the nation perform themselves for themselves, seeing themselves through the long lens of a movie and telling themselves stories about themselves. You see this over and over in her writing, no matter what she's writing about. I think once she moved away from writing about the business so much, she became very interested in how Hollywood logic had taken over American public life writ large.That's fascinating. Like, again, she spends time in the industry, then basically she can only see it through that lens. Of course, Michael Dukakis in a tank is trying to be a set piece, of course in front of the Berlin Wall, you're finally doing set decoration rather than doing it outside of a brick wall somewhere. You mentioned the New York thing in Performing New York. I have lived in the city for over a decade now. The dumbest thing is when the mayor gets to wear the silly jacket whenever there's a snowstorm that says “Mr. Mayor.” It's all an act in so many ways. I guess that political choreography had to come from somewhere, and it seems like she was documenting a lot of that initial rise.Yeah, I think she really saw it. The question I would ask her, if I could, is how cognizant she was that she kept doing that. As someone who's written for a long time, you don't always recognize that you have the one thing you write about all the time. Other people then bring it up to you and you're like, “Oh, I guess you're right.” Even when you move into her grief memoir phase, which is how I think about the last few original works that she published, she uses movie logic constantly in those.I mean, The Year of Magical Thinking is a cyclical book, she goes over the same events over and over. But if you actually look at the language she's using, she talks about running the tape back, she talks about the edit, she talks about all these things as if she's running her own life through how a movie would tell a story. Maybe she knew very deliberately. She's not a person who does things just haphazardly, but it has the feeling of being so baked into her psyche at this point that she would never even think of trying to escape it.Fascinating.Yeah, that idea that you don't know what you are potentially doing, I've thought about that. I don't know what mine is. But either way. It's such a cool way to look at it. On a certain level, she pretty much succeeded at that, though, right? I think that when people think about Joan Didion, they think about a life that freshens up a movie, right? Like, it workedVery much, yeah. I'm gonna be really curious to see what happens over the next 10 years or so. I've been thinking about figures like Sylvia Plath or women with larger-than-life iconography and reputation and how there's a constant need to relook at their legacies and reinvent and rethink and reimagine them. There's a lot in the life of Didion that I think remains to be explored. I'm really curious to see where people go with it, especially with the opening of these archives and new personal information making its way into the world.Yeah, even just your ability to break some of those stories that have been locked away in archives out sounds like a really exciting addition to the scholarship. Just backing out a little bit, we live in a moment in which the relationship between pop culture and political life is fairly directly intertwined. Setting aside the steel-plated elephant in the room, you and I are friendly because we bonded over this idea that movies really are consequential. Coming out of this book and coming out of reporting on it, what are some of the relevances for today in particular?Yeah, I mean, a lot more than I thought, I guess, five years ago. I started work on the book at the end of Trump One, and it's coming out at the beginning of Trump Two, and there was this period in the middle of a slightly different vibe. But even then I watch TikTok or whatever. You see people talk about “main character energy” or the “vibe shift” or all of romanticizing your life. I would have loved to read a Didion essay on the way that young people sort of view themselves through the logic of the screens they have lived on and the way that has shaped America for a long time.I should confirm this, I don't think she wrote about Obama, or if she did, it was only a little bit. So her political writing ends in George W. Bush's era. I think there's one piece on Obama, and then she's writing about other things. It's just interesting to think about how her ideas of what has happened to political culture in America have seeped into the present day.I think the Hollywood logic, the cinematic logic has given way to reality TV logic. That's very much the logic of the Trump world, right? Still performing for cameras, but the cameras have shifted. The way that we want things from the cameras has shifted, too. Reality TV is a lot about creating moments of drama where they may or may not actually exist and bombarding you with them. I think that's a lot of what we see and what we feel now. I have to imagine she would think about it that way.There is one interesting essay that I feel has only recently been talked about. It's at the beginning of my book, too. It was in a documentary, and Gia Tolentino wrote about it recently. It's this essay she wrote in 2000 about Martha Stewart and about Martha Stewart's website. It feels like the 2000s was like, “What is this website thing? Why are people so into it?” But really, it's an essay about parasocial relationships that people develop (with women in particular) who they invent stories around and how those stories correspond to greater American archetypes. It's a really interesting essay, not least because I think it's an essay also about people's parasocial relationships with Joan Didion.So the rise of her celebrity in the 21st century, where people know who she is and carry around a tote bag, but don't really know what they're getting themselves into is very interesting to me. I think it is also something she thought about quite a bit, while also consciously courting it.Yeah, I mean, that makes a ton of sense. For someone who was so adept at using cinematic language to describe her own life with every living being having a camera directly next to them at all times. It seems like we are very much living in a world that she had at least put a lot of thought into, even if the technology wasn't around for her to specifically address it.Yes, completely.On that note, where can folks find the book? Where can folks find you? What's the elevator pitch for why they ought to check this out? Joan Didion superfan or just rather novice?Exactly! I think this book is not just for the fans, let me put it that way. Certainly, I think anyone who considers themselves a Didion fan will have a lot to enjoy here. The stuff you didn't know, hadn't read or just a new way to think through her cultural impact. But also, this is really a book that's as much for people who are just interested in thinking about the world we live in today a little critically. It's certainly a biography of American political culture as much as it is of Didion. There's a great deal of Hollywood history in there as well. Thinking about that sweep of the American century and change is what the book is doing. It's very, very, very informed by what I do in my day job as a movie critic at The New York Times. Thinking about what movies mean, what do they tell us about ourselves? I think this is what this book does. I have been told it's very fun to read. So I'm happy about that. It's not ponderous at all, which is good. It's also not that long.It comes out March 11th from Live Right, which is a Norton imprint. There will be an audiobook at the end of May that I am reading, which I'm excited about. And I'll be on tour for a large amount of March on the East Coast. Then in California, there's a virtual date, and there's a good chance I'll be popping up elsewhere all year, too. Those updates will be on my social feeds, which are all @alissawilkinson on whatever platform except X, which is fine because I don't really post there anymore.Alyssa, thank you so much for coming on.Thank you so much.Edited by Crystal Wang.If you have anything you'd like to see in this Sunday special, shoot me an email. Comment below! Thanks for reading, and thanks so much for supporting Numlock.Thank you so much for becoming a paid subscriber! Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.numlock.com/subscribe

EPISODE 61. UFDP re-interviews writer/ director Maggie Levin (VHS:99, INTO THE DARK: MY VALENTINE) — new WGA Board Member and now on the Board for The Women's List, a script competition accessible to all female-identifying writers—* returns to discuss life post-strike, how her advice for new writers have changed and what she wishes writers new about the WGA board— plus all about who The Women's List is looking for! (hint: it's probably you!)*Listen up, uh, listeners! UFDP will sponsor someone's entry fee for The Women's List, so make sure you heed our instructions!And the sexy new resource we mention to help whip your script into shape: https://www.plotandpage.com/

EPISODE #443-- We continue our celebration of black cinema with the 1996 indie darling, THE WATERMELON WOMAN written, directed, and staring Cheryl Dunye. It's on the Criterion Channel and Collection, so what's your excuse for avoiding this one? Do you hate cinema? We also talk about Oscar nominated pictures WICKED: PART I (2024) and FLOW (2024) (which actually won), as well as the classic medical drama from Cinemax, THE KNICK (2015). ALSO: Sorry if we're a bit out of our element with this one, but why come to us if you want a graduate-level discussion on contemporary black and African American issues. This is a dumb movie podcast! Join the cause at Patreon.com/Quality. Follow the us on on Bluesky at kislingconnection and cruzflores, on Instagram @kislingwhatsit, and on Tiktok @kislingkino. You can watch Cruz and show favorite Alexis Simpson on You Tube in "They Live Together." Thanks to our artists Julius Tanag (http://www.juliustanag.com) and Sef Joosten (http://spexdoodles.tumblr.com). The theme music is "Eine Kleine Sheissemusik" by Drew Alexander. Also, I've got a newsletter, so maybe go check that one out, too. Listen to DRACULA: A RADIO PLAY on Apple Podcasts, at dracularadio.podbean.com, and at the Long Beach Playhouse at https://lbplayhouse.org/show/dracula And, as always, Support your local unions! UAW, SAG-AFTRA, and WGA strong and please leave us a review on iTunes or whatever podcatcher you listened to us on!

Jim Vallely Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Sitting down with Emmy and WGA award winner, Jim Vallely was a cozy, comfortable, fun, and funny hang. He even told us a joke joke, on request. It's one he's been “testing” as part of a sociological experiment of sorts. Win/win, we got a laugh with a lesson. Who knew that having a seizure in 6th grade would lead to a career as a TV comedy writer. Jim takes us through and it makes perfect sense. This accountant studying student just happened to sit next to the right guy at an NYU audition, ask his mother the right question on the right day, marry the right girl, move into the right apartment, partner with the right actor/comedian, Jonathan Schmock, become 1/2 of The Funny Boys comedy team, appear on Johnny Carson, co-star on the sitcom, Double Trouble, and then write on The Golden Girls, one of the most successful sitcoms of all time. Brotherly Love, Ladies Man, Action, Two and a Half Men, My Wife and Kids, The John Larriquette Show, Till Death, Extended Family, as well as Arrested Development, for which he garnered 4 Emmy nominations, and the aforementioned awards, followed. Jim was an executive producer and co-creator with Will Arnett and Michael Hurwitz of Running Wilde on Fox. There's more. Jim tells a great Carl Reiner/Alan Brady story, tells us how the real Kramer, Larry David, Bill Maher, Callie Khouri, Chris Thompson, Don Reo, Mitchell Hurwitz, Will Arnett, and Jay Mohr factor into his story, gives us the before, during, and after of his career milestones, and speaks with great pride and tenderness about the great loves and joys of his life, his talented wife, Maggie, and his successful daughter, Tannis. We talked about our friends, Taylor Negron and Ron Zimmerman. There is no friend like Jim. His love, devotion, and care for Ron, was a gift he gave all of us who loved him. Jim's a tender-hearted, special man. And boy, is he funny. A very funny boy, indeed! Jim Vallely Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Wednesday, 3/12/25, 5 PM PT, 8 PM ET Streamed Live on my Facebook & YouTube Replay here: https://bit.ly/4iCKgPq YouTube https://www.facebook.com/vickiabelson/videos/937526015211102

This week we have a look at the 1974 horror film THE BEAST MUST DIE.  This is Episode #455! The Beast Must Die is a 1974 British horror film directed by Paul Annett. The screenplay was written by Michael Winder, based on the 1950 short story "There Shall Be No Darkness" by James Blish, originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories. The film stars Calvin Lockhart, Peter Cushing, Marlene Clark, Charles Gray, Anton Diffring, Ciaran Madden, Tom Chadbon, and Michael Gambon. The plot involves a millionaire big game hunter who gathers six people at his remote English mansion, announcing that he suspects one of them is a werewolf. The viewer is invited to unfold the mystery along with the characters.Also once more we are joined by a very special guest. This writer received the Tony award for his play Red and wrote the book for the Tony award-winning Moulin Rouge. As a screenwriter, he has been nominated for the Oscar three times and has received Golden Globe, BAFTA, WGA and Edgar awards. His film work includes Skyfall, Gladiator, The Aviator, Hugo, Rango, Sweeney Todd, They/Them, The Last Samurai, and Any Given Sunday. He also created the television series Penny Dreadful for Showtime. This November his musical Swept Away opens on Broadway and next year will see the release of his movie Michael, about Michael Jackson. We are joined tonight by JOHN LOGAN.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/castle-of-horror-podcast--4268760/support.

Hollywood Unions (Rutgers UP, 2024) is a unique collection that tells the stories of the unions and guilds that have organized motion picture and television labor: IATSE, the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and the WGA. The Hollywood unions represent a wide swath of the workers making media: from directors and stars to grips and makeup artists. People today know some of these organizations from their glitzy annual awards celebrations, but the unions' actual importance is in bargaining with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on behalf of 331,000 workers in the motion picture and television industry. The Hollywood unions are not neutral institutions but rather have long histories of jurisdictional battles, competitions with rival unions, and industry-altering strikes. They have supported the industry's workers through the Great Depression, World War II, the McCarthy era, the collapse of the studio system, the rise of television, runaway production, fights for gender parity, the digital revolution, and a global pandemic. The history of these unions has contributed to making media work sustainable in the long term and helped shape the conditions and production cultures of Hollywood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Hollywood Unions (Rutgers UP, 2024) is a unique collection that tells the stories of the unions and guilds that have organized motion picture and television labor: IATSE, the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and the WGA. The Hollywood unions represent a wide swath of the workers making media: from directors and stars to grips and makeup artists. People today know some of these organizations from their glitzy annual awards celebrations, but the unions' actual importance is in bargaining with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on behalf of 331,000 workers in the motion picture and television industry. The Hollywood unions are not neutral institutions but rather have long histories of jurisdictional battles, competitions with rival unions, and industry-altering strikes. They have supported the industry's workers through the Great Depression, World War II, the McCarthy era, the collapse of the studio system, the rise of television, runaway production, fights for gender parity, the digital revolution, and a global pandemic. The history of these unions has contributed to making media work sustainable in the long term and helped shape the conditions and production cultures of Hollywood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Hollywood Unions (Rutgers UP, 2024) is a unique collection that tells the stories of the unions and guilds that have organized motion picture and television labor: IATSE, the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and the WGA. The Hollywood unions represent a wide swath of the workers making media: from directors and stars to grips and makeup artists. People today know some of these organizations from their glitzy annual awards celebrations, but the unions' actual importance is in bargaining with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on behalf of 331,000 workers in the motion picture and television industry. The Hollywood unions are not neutral institutions but rather have long histories of jurisdictional battles, competitions with rival unions, and industry-altering strikes. They have supported the industry's workers through the Great Depression, World War II, the McCarthy era, the collapse of the studio system, the rise of television, runaway production, fights for gender parity, the digital revolution, and a global pandemic. The history of these unions has contributed to making media work sustainable in the long term and helped shape the conditions and production cultures of Hollywood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Hollywood Unions (Rutgers UP, 2024) is a unique collection that tells the stories of the unions and guilds that have organized motion picture and television labor: IATSE, the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and the WGA. The Hollywood unions represent a wide swath of the workers making media: from directors and stars to grips and makeup artists. People today know some of these organizations from their glitzy annual awards celebrations, but the unions' actual importance is in bargaining with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on behalf of 331,000 workers in the motion picture and television industry. The Hollywood unions are not neutral institutions but rather have long histories of jurisdictional battles, competitions with rival unions, and industry-altering strikes. They have supported the industry's workers through the Great Depression, World War II, the McCarthy era, the collapse of the studio system, the rise of television, runaway production, fights for gender parity, the digital revolution, and a global pandemic. The history of these unions has contributed to making media work sustainable in the long term and helped shape the conditions and production cultures of Hollywood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Hollywood Unions (Rutgers UP, 2024) is a unique collection that tells the stories of the unions and guilds that have organized motion picture and television labor: IATSE, the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and the WGA. The Hollywood unions represent a wide swath of the workers making media: from directors and stars to grips and makeup artists. People today know some of these organizations from their glitzy annual awards celebrations, but the unions' actual importance is in bargaining with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on behalf of 331,000 workers in the motion picture and television industry. The Hollywood unions are not neutral institutions but rather have long histories of jurisdictional battles, competitions with rival unions, and industry-altering strikes. They have supported the industry's workers through the Great Depression, World War II, the McCarthy era, the collapse of the studio system, the rise of television, runaway production, fights for gender parity, the digital revolution, and a global pandemic. The history of these unions has contributed to making media work sustainable in the long term and helped shape the conditions and production cultures of Hollywood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-west

Hollywood Unions (Rutgers UP, 2024) is a unique collection that tells the stories of the unions and guilds that have organized motion picture and television labor: IATSE, the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and the WGA. The Hollywood unions represent a wide swath of the workers making media: from directors and stars to grips and makeup artists. People today know some of these organizations from their glitzy annual awards celebrations, but the unions' actual importance is in bargaining with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on behalf of 331,000 workers in the motion picture and television industry. The Hollywood unions are not neutral institutions but rather have long histories of jurisdictional battles, competitions with rival unions, and industry-altering strikes. They have supported the industry's workers through the Great Depression, World War II, the McCarthy era, the collapse of the studio system, the rise of television, runaway production, fights for gender parity, the digital revolution, and a global pandemic. The history of these unions has contributed to making media work sustainable in the long term and helped shape the conditions and production cultures of Hollywood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Maggie Admire is an LA-based writer and producer, nominated for a 2025 WGA Award and a CrimeCon Clue Award, with features in The New York Times. Over nine years, she's created 40+ podcast series, many for Spotify, including Serial Killers and Coinspiracy Theories, reaching millions. She helped build Parcast as its first hire before its Spotify acquisition.Beyond podcasts, she's been a Pack Theater sketch writer, crafted tweets for Funny or Die, and even ghostwrote Tinder replies—before being replaced by a younger, hotter AI. She's currently writing a romantasy-comedy novel and fostering a dog.Today we're getting into how putting yourself and your ideas out there can land you a prestigious nomination like one at the WGA Awards, how to balance long term strategy with short term opportunity when deciding what career decisions to make next, and how to take calculated risks when pitching new ideas.BREAKDOWN:2:15 - Maggie's favorite “Serial Killers” episode, which was nominated for a 2025 GA Award12:00 - how to find balance when working with very dark material13:30 - the decision to do audio-only for a podcast episode vs. video podcast16:00 - proactively submitting for a WGA award nomination19:49 - First Deadline mention by name20:07 - WGA Awards experience!31:43 - How to stand out in a comptitive industry34:30 - Other Spotify shows: “Dog Tales,” “Tales,” “Mind's Eye”39:00 - advice for screenwriters considering podcasts43:50 - Balancing writing podcasts with other writing passions including sketch comedy and novels49:40 - Early jobs: ghostwriting people's responses on Tinder51:20 - Getting paid to write individual jokes on the now-defunct “Pitch” app54:50 - Thoughts on TikTok & comedy57:30 - Advice for persevering in this career + not wanting to be a manager1:06:12 - TIME CAPSULEKEEP UP WITH MAGGIE:TikTok: @MaggieAdmireIG: @secret___admireListen to Maggie's work: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3MH80XPwH4UdpQxXon2obn

EPISODE #442-- We finally get around to celebrating Black History Month with the formative SET IT OFF from 1996. Directed by F. Gary Gray and staring Vivica A. Fox, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinket, and the mean doctor from Scrubs, SET IT OFF tells the story about four black women in LA pushed to their limit, who decide to start robbing banks. It's pretty fun, I don't know. We also talk about ANUJA (2024) on Netflix, Michael Mann's THIEF (1981) and MANHUNTER (1986), SAMURAI REBELLION (1967) on the Criterion Channel, PROBLEMISTA (2023), and THE KNICK on HBO Max. Good stuff, all around. Sorry if we're a bit out of our element with this one, but why come to us if you want a graduate-level discussion on contemporary black and African American issues. This is a dumb movie podcast! Join the cause at Patreon.com/Quality. Follow the us on on Bluesky at kislingconnection and cruzflores, on Instagram @kislingwhatsit, and on Tiktok @kislingkino. You can watch Cruz and show favorite Alexis Simpson on You Tube in "They Live Together." Thanks to our artists Julius Tanag (http://www.juliustanag.com) and Sef Joosten (http://spexdoodles.tumblr.com). The theme music is "Eine Kleine Sheissemusik" by Drew Alexander. Also, I've got a newsletter, so maybe go check that one out, too. Listen to DRACULA: A RADIO PLAY on Apple Podcasts, at dracularadio.podbean.com, and at the Long Beach Playhouse at https://lbplayhouse.org/show/dracula And, as always, Support your local unions! UAW, SAG-AFTRA, and WGA strong and please leave us a review on iTunes or whatever podcatcher you listened to us on!

On the sixty-sixth episode of The Cinematic Odyssey, Tristen and Max run through all categories for the 97th Academy Awards with their picks and predictions for how the night might go. The episode includes a heated debate about the use of AI in film, a shoutout to longtime Cinematic Odyssey listener Bowen Yang, and the most predictable Best Picture choice coming from the both of them. They also discuss snubs, techno, and Denis Villeneuve, in a semi-thorough awards preparation. 

WGA Award-Winner Daniel O'Brien shares his thoughts on the importance of the WGA despite the aesthetic appeal of the award itself. Then it's time for the 2nd installment of our semi-or-maybe-it's-bi-weekly analysis of The Bachelor, where Soren follows the journey of a speech therapist acquaintance who received a first impression rose but may not be destined for victory according to Bachelor experts.Follow the guys on Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.social/https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.social

On episode 1151 of Daytime Confidential, Luke Kerr, Jillian Bowe and Joshua Baldwin dive into the latest Beyond the Gates, The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives, General Hospital and The Young and the Restless headlines and storylines, including: CBS teases soap fans with snippets of Beyond the Gates' opening credits, scenes fromthe pilot and much more. Cady McClain and Jon Lindstrom join BTG. Jillian has tea from the NYC Paley Center event.  Steffy finds out more about Finn's past on The Bold and the Beautiful. Are Hope and Carter even interesting anymore?  Ava is rescued on Days of Our Lives. Belle and EJ are steaming up our screens, but so are Jada and Shawn. Who should Gabi be with, EJ or JJ? Hank Northrop joins DAYS. Cyrus is dead on General Hospital. Guy Wilson fills in as Lucky Spencer at the climax of the Cyrus serial killer storyline. Josslyn shoots Cyrus, but could now be a WSB agent? Does Joss have the temperament to be a superspy or is Brennan out of his mind?  Damian and Amy reconnect on The Young and the Restless. Christel Khalil holds her own opposite Eric Braeden and Melody Thomas Scott. Y&R wins this year's WGA award.  All this and more on the latest Daytime Confidential podcast! Bluesky: @DCConfidential, LukeKerr, JillianBowe, Josh Baldwin, and Melodie Aikels. Facebook: Daytime Confidential Subscribe to Daytime Confidential on iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify.  

The WGA writers' strike is over, but A.I. is still a big conversation among writers. From the WGA strike and screenwriters' concerns about A.I. infiltrating writers' rooms to the recent class action lawsuit including former podcast guest Paul Tremblay against OpenAI and ChatGPT, A.I. and writers are on a collision course.  Steve and Tananarive talk about the good and bad uses of A.I. for writers and how to prepare for the future.  Also: an invitation to join our social media platform on Circle!  www.lifewrite.com  LEAVE US A VOICEMAIL at https://www.speakpipe.com/LifewritingPodcast (We might play your message!) Join Tananarive's mailing list at https://tananarivelist.com Join Steve's mailing list at https://stevenbarneslist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For episode 228, I'm joined once again by my co-host Myles Hughes, with producer Steve Prusakowski behind the scenes preparing for Emmys and a new season of TV Topics, so look out for that. This week, we recap the BAFTA and WGA awards, while previewing the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Namely, we're looking at how SAG could swing the Best Actress race between Mikey Madison and Demi Moore, as well as if Conclave has any chance of overtaking Anora in Best Picture. Throw in some more discussion of The Monkey (raved about here, while my interview with Theo James and Osgood Perkins is here), Myles chiming in on Heart Eyes (reviewed here by yours truly), and Sonic the Hedgehog 3, alongside some questions. Throw in a mini game and there's plenty to dig into here...As always my friends and faithful listeners/readers, I do hope you all enjoy the latest episode of the Awards Radar Podcast, our 228th one to date (here's to many more). Of course, feel free to revisit the previous installments by clicking the Podcast tab (here) on the top of the page. Plus, listen to us on Apple Podcasts (iTunes), Spotify, and other platforms. More to come each and every single week, so from the bottom of my heart, thank you for listening!

Episode #441 Dheepan. Just in time for awards season, we look back at everyone's favorite French director Jacques Audiard and his previous work about Tamil refugees in Paris. We also talk Severance, Johann Sacre Bleu, Treasure Island and Gate of Hell.  Join the cause at Patreon.com/Quality. Follow the us on Ton Bluesky at kislingconnection and cruzflores, on Instagram @kislingwhatsit, and on Tiktok @kislingkino. You can watch Cruz and show favorite Alexis Simpson on You Tube in "They Live Together." Thanks to our artists Julius Tanag (http://www.juliustanag.com) and Sef Joosten (http://spexdoodles.tumblr.com). The theme music is "Eine Kleine Sheissemusik" by Drew Alexander. Also, I've got a newsletter, so maybe go check that one out, too. Listen to DRACULA: A RADIO PLAY on Apple Podcasts, at dracularadio.podbean.com, and at the Long Beach Playhouse at https://lbplayhouse.org/show/dracula And, as always, Support your local unions! UAW, SAG-AFTRA, and WGA strong and please leave us a review on iTunes or whatever podcatcher you listened to us on!

For Episode 430, I am joined by Nadia Dalimonte, Cody Dericks, and Giovanni Lago as we react to the 2024 BAFTA Film Award winners during the recording. We discuss the WGA, ADG, MUAHS, and VES winners and give our predictions for who we think will win at the SAG and Film Independent Spirit Awards. We also reveal the winner of last week's poll, asking, "Which Film Do You Want To See Become The Next Best Picture Oscar Winner?" and ask this week's poll question, "Which Categories Do You Think Are The Hardest To Predict For The 97th Academy Awards?" We also answer your fan-submitted questions and give our reactions to the trailers for "The Accountant 2," "G20," "Friendship," "The Friend," "The Penguin Lessons," announce the winners for the 2024 NBP Film Awards, and more. As always, thank you so very much for listening, supporting, and subscribing. Our final Oscar winner predictions episode is coming next week!! Until then, enjoy! Check out more on NextBestPicture.com Please subscribe on... Apple Podcasts - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/negs-best-film-podcast/id1087678387?mt=2 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7IMIzpYehTqeUa1d9EC4jT YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWA7KiotcWmHiYYy6wJqwOw And be sure to help support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month at https://www.patreon.com/NextBestPicture and listen to this podcast ad-free Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to The Following Films Podcast, where we explore the minds behind the movies that move us.On today's episode, I'm joined by Emmy and WGA-winning writer and filmmakerPhilip Gelatt to discuss his latest project,FIRST WORD ON HORROR—a fifteen-part documentary series that delves into the lives, inspirations, and writing philosophies of five of the most celebrated horror authors working today.This season, the series spotlightsStephen Graham Jones, Paul Tremblay, Elizabeth Hand, Laird Barron, and Mariana Enriquez, taking us on a journey from the icy peril of the Iditarod to the shadows of Argentina's past, from the raw energy of the early DC punk scene to the eerie isolation of the Montana wilderness. Along the way, these authors share their stories—both real and imagined—blurring the lines between fact and fiction and offering a rare glimpse into the alchemy of storytelling.Philip, whose work includesThe Spine of Night, Europa Report, They Remain, andLove, Death + Robots, brings his unique vision to this literary love letter to horror, writing, and the sheer power of a well-told tale.So sit back, listen in, and join me as I talk withPhilip Gelatt about the making ofFIRST WORD ON HORROR.For more information, visithttps://etchstudio.substack.com/

In this super fun episode, Hilliard & guest co-host actor/writer/dir Denzel Whitaker sit down for an in-depth conversation with award-winning writer-dir-producer LISA FRANCE. If you ever had questions about how to become an Episodic Director, this might be the podcast for you!Lisa France is an entertainment vet with over 25+ years in the business as a writer, director and producer. She began her film and TV career from the ground up. PA, AD, set dec, camera operator, props, 2nd AD, driver, stand-in, extra, etc.  She attributes her extensive entertainment job resume to her ability to think quickly in difficult production situations.  Eventually she landed a stunt gig with Spike Lee in He Got Game and a stunt acting job on The Summer of Sam and did stunts on a variety of other TV shows and films, most notably, The Sopranos. France directed, co-wrote and produced her first feature film, "Anne B. Real" in 2003, which won more than 40 film festival awards and nominations around the world, including two Independent Spirit Award nominations.She then directed two more award-winning independent films in rapid succession, both were distributed on Netflix, Starz and AMC theaters. Her first documentary, "Roll with Me", also garnered numerous awards, debuted at The Woodstock Film Festival and was a 2018 Slamdance Official Selection later acquired and distributed by Ava DuVernay's ARRAY Releasing. France has directed numerous thrillers and Christmas movies for Lifetime, BounceTV, OWN Hulu and Tubi. During the height of the pandemic, France directed and produced on Season 5 and 6, the critically acclaimed, award winning series "Queen Sugar" by creator Ava DuVernay. France recently directed episodes of the hit FOX series "The Cleaning Lady" and "Naomi" which is currently streaming on HBO MAX. France produced "The Herricanes" which just debuted and won a Special Jury Prize and the Audience Award at SXSW and is actually playing in theaters this month. France is a proud member of AWD, the LGBTQ+ community, the DGA, WGA, and SAG-AFTRA.Our Motto: "Keep it GAME all day!"For information, Merch (T-SHIRTS/HOODIES), and all things Rant Room!www.Screenwritersrantroom.comhttps://screenwriters-rant-room.printify.me/productsSubscribe, like, follow, share & 5-star review!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@Hilliard Guess on all social media@Hilliardguess.bsky.socialIG: @ScreenwritersRantRoom@Lisafrance2067@DenzelWhitakerWE ARE NOW OPEN TO SPONSORSHIPS AND BRANDING OPPORTUNITIES⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Screenwritersrantroom@gmail.comWe invest countless hours per week to deliver the actionable content that goes into this podcast. We appreciate your support!THEME SONG: Jack SpadeWEBSITE: MQL2,Abigail Bloom & Laura HuieLOGOS: Rachel MusikanthRANT ROOM TEAM:Richard Scott - Creative ProducerTyler Musikanth - Assoc ProducerBrooke Baltimore - MarketingTogo - Marketing

Welcome to Multiverse News, Your source for Information about all your favorite fictional universes Last Wednesday morning, Marvel Television treated fans to the long awaited first official teaser trailer for Daredevil: Born Again. The trailer was met with universal praise for its dark tone and brutal depictions of violence, elements that it shares with the beloved Netflix series. The nine-episode first season premieres March 4 on Disney Plus. In some Captain America news, it was confirmed that Brave New World will have a total runtime of one hour and 58 minutes, which ties it with Ant-Man & The Wasp as the seventh shortest MCU flick to date. It will also be the first Captain America film under two hours long. It's brand new news today, Ryan Gosling is in negotiations to star in Shawn Levy's future Star Wars film. Levy's film has been in development with Lucasfilm since 2022, and getting Gosling seems like it could be a major step in getting the film truly off the ground and into the galaxy far, far away. Last we knew, the film was not to be set within the Skywalker saga The use of AI has been a frequent hot topic for Hollywood in recent years, reaching a seeming fever pitch during the 2023 WGA and SAG AFTRA strikes as a major point of negotiation. While the dust seemed to have settled a bit with the resolution of those strikes, new controversies plaguing high profile films and filmmakers have brought the discussion back to the forefront. First, Taxi Driver writer and First Reformed director, Paul Schrader, opined, in a since much lambasted Facebook post, the benefits of using a platform like ChatGPT for film ideas, in contrast to waiting the months it can take writers to ideate. Elsewhere, awards season favorite and Oscar hopeful, The Brutalist, has come under fire after an editor revealed generative A.I. was used to enhance the authenticity of the lead performers Hungarian accents. Emily Beecham and David Krumholtz have signed on to Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, portraying the parents of Kara Zor-El. Production on the DC Studios film commenced last week. Sony Pictures has released the first trailer for “Until Dawn,” the live-action adaptation of the popular 2015 PlayStation horror game. The film is currently set to be released on April 25th. After nearly 15 years of shaping Spider-Man's adventures at Marvel Comics, Eisner Award winner Dan Slott is making the move to DC. The acclaimed writer will make his DC debut on Superman Unlimited, a new monthly series featuring art by American Vampire co-creator Rafael Albuquerque. Westworld star Thandiwe Newton and Silo's Steve Zahn have joined Paul Rudd and Jack Black in Columbia's comedy reboot of Anaconda. Nintendo has revealed its Switch 2 console with first look images and a teaser trailer, confirming a 2025 release. Uma Thurman has joined the cast of Dexter series Dexter: Resurrection and will star alongside Michael C. Hall. Filmmaker David Lynch, who created celebrated counterculture classics like Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and co-created Twin Peaks, has died at 78. A24 and Picturestart are teaming with director Charlie Polinger for a revisionist and darkly comedic take on The Masque of The Red Death, based on the short story of the same name by Edgar Allen Poe. Sydney Sweeney is currently in negotiations to star. After extensive negotiations, IMAX has secured a deal to exclusively screen Greta Gerwig's Netflix adaptation of "Narnia" in theaters worldwide for two weeks, beginning Thanksgiving 2026, before its streaming debut that Christmas. Joel McHale has joined the cast of Scream 7 and will play Mark Evans, the husband to Neve Campbell's Sidney Prescott. A24 has released the first trailer for upcoming horror film Opus, which hits theaters on March 14th. The film stars Ayo Edebiri, John Malkovich, Murray Bartlett, Juliette Lewis, and Amber Midthunder.

With over 40 years of experience in theater, film, television, and prose, Bart's career began in theater, where he has had eight plays produced around the world. The film rights to his play, RELAY, were bought by Warner Bros., leading him into screenwriting. He has had two feature films and 14 movies for television produced, including the BRIDE trilogy for CBS, LOVE AND SUNSHINE for Hallmark, and most recent TERRY MCMILLAN PRESENTS: FOREVER, starring Taye Diggs and Meagan Good, for Lifetime which Bart was nominated for a 2025 best screenplay for a motion picture in streaming or television by the WGA. Bart has also written for four television series, including DIRT, starring Courtney Cox. Bart has written ten novels including HONEYMOON WITH HARRY, the movie rights bought by New Line Cinema. Bart has a movie shooting this spring - still untitled - starring Taye Diggs and Lesley Anne Brandt, and it will also be executive produced by Terry McMillan, under her banner. The film will premiere in June  on the Lifetime Network.

Via a Cold Open, we explain how BAFTA & WGA nominations will hopefully offer a distraction for listeners as we all have heavy hearts amidst the wildfires in the Los Angeles area. Heavy hearts, but we're grateful friends of our show are safe - 2:38 An update on the scope of the natural disaster - 3:38 Awards Season Delays thus far & good people stepping up to help - 5:53 BAFTA NOMINATIONS (+ WGA) Best Film & Overall Tallies - 13:42 Director - 16:45 Actor - 20:44 Actress - 23:10 Supporting Actor - 32:45 Supporting Actress - 36:00 Casting - 41:27 Adapted Screenplay + WGA - 42:34 Original Screenplay + WGA - 46:29 Cinematography - 49:57 Editing - 52:29 Costume Design - 55:18 Makeup & Hair - 58:51 Production Design - 1:02:46 Original Score - 1:05:18 Sound - 1:08:18 VFX - 1:10:22 Documentary - 1:13:01 Animated - 1:15:20 Film Not in the English Language - 1:17:40 OUTRO: do please support CA wildfire relief funds if you are able. Here's a link to the California Community Fund https://www.calfund.org/ … Oscar Nomination Predictions are coming next from us, maybe with some PGA Nominations to help us. So as always, thank you for listening.

John welcomes Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Homeward Bound) to talk about her experience writing animated features, from the parallel processes of writing and production to her paltry paycheck for Beauty and the Beast. They consider the blurring lines between live-action and hyperrealistic CGI, as well as the history of animation writers' exclusion from the WGA. We also answer listener questions about whether there is such a thing as a bad character want and how to manage story days within a screenplay, which prompts exploration of wardrobe changes, thinking in terms of color rather than time and Linda's penchant for naked characters. In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Drew look back on their goals for 2024 and discuss how to make New Year's resolutions you'll actually accomplish. Links: Linda Woolverton Episode 92: The Little Mermaid Shanghai Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. This POV video of the ride is definitely a spoiler. Climate Central Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt! Check out the Inneresting Newsletter Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription! Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram John August on BlueSky, Threads, Instagram, and Mastodon Outro by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!) This episode was originally produced by Megan McDonnell. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Email us at ask@johnaugust.com You can download the episode here.