Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Writers on Film

I'm joined by Walter Chaw to talk Walter Hill and his book A Walter Hill Film as well as look back on the year of 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Terrence Malick's 6th film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and starred Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko as a pair of lovers watching their relationship fall apart. My biography of Terrence Malick The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick is available from all good book shops and online sources, including here. Camille Saint-Saëns: Le Carnaval des Animaux Performers Pianos: Neil and Nancy O'Doan Orchestra: Seattle Youth Symphony, conducted by Vilem Sokol. Composed 1886; recorded c. 1980. Source The Al Goldstein collection in the Pandora Music repository at ibiblio.org. Used under the license. Get NordVPN 2Y plan + 4 months extra here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/fspn It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Terrence Malick's fifth film was a culmination of decades of work: The Tree of Life. It won the Palme d'Or and boasted his most intimate and cosmic vision. Shane Hazen worked on the film, first as an intern before finishing the film as one of the last editors on board. My biography of Terrence Malick The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick is available from all good book shops and online sources, including here. Camille Saint-Saëns: Le Carnaval des Animaux Performers Pianos: Neil and Nancy O'Doan Orchestra: Seattle Youth Symphony, conducted by Vilem Sokol. Composed 1886; recorded c. 1980. Source The Al Goldstein collection in the Pandora Music repository at ibiblio.org. Used under the license. Get NordVPN 2Y plan + 4 months extra here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/fspn It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Die Hard - is it a Christmas movie? or not? Do we care? Did we ever? But it's a good excuse to talk to Brian Abrams about his brilliant book Die Hard: an Oral History, available here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Joseph McBride - film historian and one time actor for Orson Welles - talks about his new book George Cukor's People: Acting for a Master Director. It is available as an e-book now and will be published the first week of January, 2025, in hardback. For more information click HERE. From the publisher: "The director of classic films such as Sylvia Scarlett, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Adam’s Rib, A Star Is Born, and My Fair Lady, George Cukor is widely admired but often misunderstood. Reductively stereotyped in his time as a “woman’s director”—a thinly veiled, disparaging code for “gay”—he brilliantly directed a wide range of iconic actors and actresses, including Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, and Maggie Smith. As Katharine Hepburn, the star of ten Cukor films, told the director, “All the people in your pictures are as goddamned good as they can possibly be, and that’s your stamp.” "In this groundbreaking, lavishly illustrated critical study, Joseph McBride provides insightful and revealing essayistic portraits of Cukor’s actors in their most memorable roles. The queer filmmaker gravitated to socially adventurous, subversively rule-breaking, audacious dreamers who are often sexually transgressive and gender fluid in ways that seem strikingly modern today. McBride shows that Cukor’s seemingly self-effacing body of work is characterized by a discreet way of channeling his feelings through his actors. He expertly cajoled actors, usually gently but sometimes with bracing harshness, to delve deeply into emotional areas they tended to keep safely hidden. Cukor’s wry wit, his keen sense of psychological and social observation, his charm and irony, and his toughness and resilience kept him active for more than five decades in Hollywood. George Cukor’s People gives him the in-depth, multifaceted examination his rich achievement deserves." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Terrence Malick's third film The Thin Red Line (1998) was a stunning return after a hiatus of 20 years. Writer Jeremy Arnold joins me to talk through the film. My biography of Terrence Malick The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick is available from all good book shops and online sources, including here. Camille Saint-Saëns: Le Carnaval des Animaux Performers Pianos: Neil and Nancy O'Doan Orchestra: Seattle Youth Symphony, conducted by Vilem Sokol. Composed 1886; recorded c. 1980. Source The Al Goldstein collection in the Pandora Music repository at ibiblio.org. Used under the license. Get NordVPN 2Y plan + 4 months extra here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/fspn It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Jack Fisk was Terrence Malick's production designer for almost his entire career. The two first met on Badlands and here Jack talks with me about his first two films with Malick. The second part of the interview will be released soon. The interview has been edited and condensed. My biography of Terrence Malick The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick is available from all good book shops and online sources, including here. Camille Saint-Saëns: Le Carnaval des Animaux Performers Pianos: Neil and Nancy O'Doan Orchestra: Seattle Youth Symphony, conducted by Vilem Sokol. Composed 1886; recorded c. 1980. Source The Al Goldstein collection in the Pandora Music repository at ibiblio.org. Used under the license. Get NordVPN 2Y plan + 4 months extra here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/fspn It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terrence Malick's second film Days of Heaven (1978) was an immersive and visionary piece of work. Writer and documentary filmmaker Ian Nathan joins me to talk through the film. My biography of Terrence Malick The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick is available from all good book shops and online sources, including here. Camille Saint-Saëns: Le Carnaval des Animaux Performers Pianos: Neil and Nancy O'Doan Orchestra: Seattle Youth Symphony, conducted by Vilem Sokol. Composed 1886; recorded c. 1980. Source The Al Goldstein collection in the Pandora Music repository at ibiblio.org. Used under the license. Get NordVPN 2Y plan + 4 months extra here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/fspn It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zombies want brains. Vampires want blood. Cannibals want human flesh. All monsters need feeding. Horror has been embraced by mainstream pop culture more than ever before, with horror characters and aesthetics infecting TV, music videos and even TikTok trends. Yet even with the commercial and critical success of The Babadook, Hereditary, Get Out, The Haunting of Hill House, Yellowjackets and countless other horror films and TV series over the last few years, loving the genre still prompts the question: what's wrong with you? Implying, of course, that there is something not quite right about the people who make and consume it. In Feeding the Monster, Anna Bogutskaya dispels this notion once and for all by examining how horror responds to and fuels our feelings of fear, anxiety, pain, hunger and power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Terrence Malick's first film Badlands (1973) introduced the world to a new visionary talent. Tom Shone joins me to talk through the film. The biography The Magic Hours is available from all good book shops and online sources, including here. Camille Saint-Saëns: Le Carnaval des Animaux Performers Pianos: Neil and Nancy O'Doan Orchestra: Seattle Youth Symphony, conducted by Vilem Sokol. Composed 1886; recorded c. 1980. Source The Al Goldstein collection in the Pandora Music repository at ibiblio.org. Used under the license. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sheri Chinen Biesen is Professor of Film History at Rowan University and author of Through a Noir Lens: Adapting Film Noir Visual Style (Columbia University Press, 2024), Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), Music in the Shadows: Noir Musical Films (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), and Film Censorship: Regulating America’s Screen (Columbia University Press, 2018). She received her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, M.A. and B.A. at the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television and has taught at USC, University of California, University of Texas, and in England. She has contributed to the BBC documentary The Rules of Film Noir, Turner Classic Movies’ Public Enemies, NPR, Warner Bros. Gangster Collection, Film Criticism, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Film and History, Film Noir: The Directors, The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century, Hollywood on Location, Literature/Film Quarterly, Netflix Nostalgia, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Film Noir: The Encyclopedia, Gangster Film Reader, Film Noir Reader 4, The Historian, Television and Television History, Popular Culture Review, served as Secretary of the Literature/Film Association, Founding Chair of the ‘Stars & Screen’ Film & Media History Conference, serves on the editorial board of Film Criticism, and edited The Velvet Light Trap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The best horror film ever made? The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for me is certainly the most unnerving and scariest to this day. Leatherface and his family wreak terror on a group of unsuspecting teenagers as they stray onto the family farm. James Rose's monograph for Devil's Advocate is a superb introduction, explication, and an in depth history of the making and reception of the film. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steven Cohan talks about his new book: On Audrey Hepburn: an Opinionated Guide Provides an original take on fashion in her films and shows how it was key to her popularity Focuses on Hepburn's abilities and craft as an actress; Offers a substantive and critical analysis of her “Cinderella” films as a discernible cycle; Argues that her striking success and popularity as a movie star was not only due to her unique physical features but to specific factors of postwar culture in the 1950s. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I talk to Professor Jie Li, the winner of the Kraszna-Krausz Prize Moving Image Book Award. Please note she will be delivering a lecture in London later in November, details below. Friday 29th November, 6pm Venue: BLOC, ArtsOne, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road London E1 4NS Free to attend, booking essential Click here to book The Foundation is delighted to be collaborating with Queen Mary University, London to present an evening celebrating the winner of this year’s Moving Image Book Award Professor Jie Li, for her book ‘Cinematic Guerrillas Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China‘ (Columbia University Press). Featuring: Jie Li, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University and Dr. Kiki Tianqi Yu, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In all his films, Wes Anderson turns the mundane into magic by building distinctive and eccentric worlds. But how well do you know the man behind the camera? Discover the inspirations of one of our most revered auteurs with The Worlds of Wes Anderson. Anderson’s playful and vibrant aesthetic is universally admired – but how has he managed to create such a recognisable identity? From Hitchcock and Spielberg to Truffaut and Varda, there are countless homages and references scattered throughout Anderson’s filmography, while his cultural anchor points go far beyond film and into the worlds of art and literature. Evocations of place and time underpin his work, from mid-century Paris in The French Dispatch to grand pre-war Europe in The Grand Budapest Hotel, while cultural institutions – such as Jacques Cousteau and The New Yorker magazine – are other touchstones. For Wes Anderson fans and cinephiles alike, this is an essential insight into the creative process of one of the world’s most unique filmmakers. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Benjamin Halligan joins John Bleasdale to talk about Hotbeds of Licentiousness, the first substantial critical engagement with British pornography on film across the 1970s, including the “Summer of Love,” the rise and fall of the Permissive Society, the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, and beyond. By focusing on a series of colorful filmmakers whose work, while omnipresent during the 1970s, now remains critically ignored, author Benjamin Halligan discusses pornography in terms of lifestyle aspirations and opportunities which point to radical changes in British society. In this way, pornography is approached as a crucial optic with which to consider recent cultural and social history. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The first major biography of the French filmmaker hailed by Martin Scorsese as “one of the Gods of cinema.” Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any female filmmaker, Agnès Varda (1928–2019) wrote and directed some of the most acclaimed films of her era, from her tour de force Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), a classic of modernist cinema, to the beloved documentary The Gleaners and I (2000) four decades later. She helped to define the French New Wave, inspired an entire generation of filmmakers, and was recognized with major awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals, as well as an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards. In this lively biography, former Philadelphia Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey explores the “complicated passions” that informed Varda’s charmed life and indelible work. Rickey traces Varda’s three remarkable careers―as still photographer, as filmmaker, and as installation artist. She explains how Varda was a pioneer in blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, using the latest digital technology and carving a path for women in the movie industry. She demonstrates how Varda was years ahead of her time in addressing sexism, abortion, labor exploitation, immigrant rights, and race relations with candor and incisiveness. She makes clear Varda’s impact on contemporary figures like Ava DuVernay, Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins, the Safdie brothers, and Martin Scorsese, who called her one of the Gods of cinema. And she delves into Varda’s incredibly rich social life with figures such as Harrison Ford, Jean-Luc Godard, Jim Morrison, Susan Sontag, and Andy Warhol, and her nearly forty-year marriage to the celebrated director Jacques Demy. A Complicated Passion is the vibrant biography that Varda, regarded by many as the greatest female filmmaker of all time, has long deserved. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jason Solomons has been a film critic, one of the first film podcasters, an author and is now moving into a new role as a film producer with his company Movie Love Productions. He's currently working on adapting and bringing the brilliant best-selling memoir A Waiter in Paris to cinemas; and on the folk horror comedy The King of the Witches, based on a true story that’s never been told. His book Woody Allen: Film by Film is available where all good books are sold. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jez Conolly is the author of the Devil's Advocate edition of his book The Thing (available here) as well as an essay in Volume 3 of Scarred for Life (see here). Consigned to the deep freeze of critical and commercial reception upon its release in 1982, The Thing has bounced back spectacularly to become one of the most highly regarded productions from the 1980s 'Body Horror' cycle of films, experiencing a wholesale and detailed reappraisal that has secured its place in the pantheon of modern cinematic horror. Thirty years on, and with a recent prequel reigniting interest, Jez Conolly looks back to the film's antecedents and to the changing nature of its reception and the work that it has influenced. The themes discussed include the significance of The Thing's subversive antipodal environment, the role that the film has played in the corruption of the onscreen monstrous form, the qualities that make it an exemplar of the director's work and the relevance of its legendary visual effects despite the advent of CGI. Topped and tailed by a full plot breakdown and an appreciation of its notoriously downbeat ending, this exploration of the events at US Outpost 31 in the winter of 1982 captures The Thing's sub-zero terror in all its gory glory. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Bleasdale talks about Paul Verhoeven, the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher and film bros with Adam Nayman, author of Paul Thomas Anderson Masterworks and The Coen Brothers. Adam talks about his beginnings as film critic in Toronto. He also tells John his thoughts on the current state of film criticism, including the impact on social media on the film discourse. Adam's recommended film book is Un-American Psycho: Brian De Palma and the Political Invisible by Chris Dumas. Buy Adam's latest book here. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Euronews journalists David Mouriquand and Amber Bryce are joined by Sarah Bradbury of the UpComing to talk the 81st Venice Film Festival with myself, John Bleasdale. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joker: Folie à Deux hits Cannes and I am joined by David Mouriquand and Amber Bryce of EuroNews to talk about Todd Phillips' sequel starring Lady Gaga and joaquin Phoenix, and if it can live up to expectations. Live from the 81st Venice Film Festival. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Day 6 or 7 of the Venice Film Festival and David Mouriquand and Amber Brice from EuroNews join me to talk about The Brutalist, The Room Next Door and Queer. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman are on the Lido with two new films which are going to put them back in the headlines. David Mouriquand from EuroNews joins me to discuss the films Maria and Babygirl in the second of our Venice reports. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Mouriquand from EuroNews and Nicholas Bell from Eye on Cinema join John Bleasdale to talk about Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the opening film of the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chris Calogero became a viral sensation with his videos skewering movie clichés, so I had to get him on the podcast to talk police lieutenants and filthy coroners. His new comedy album HUSKY BOY can be ordered here and all the information you want is available from his site, here. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Bleasdale talks to Michael Benson on his book Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C Clarke and the Making of a Masterpiece. Buy the Book Here. The definitive story of the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey , acclaimed today as one of the greatest films ever made, and of director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke- "a tremendous explication of a tremendous film....Breathtaking" ( The Washington Post ). Fifty years ago a strikingly original film had its premiere. Still acclaimed as one of the most remarkable and important motion pictures ever made, 2001: A Space Odyssey depicted the first contacts between humanity and extraterrestrial intelligence. The movie was the product of a singular collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and science fiction visionary Arthur C. Clarke. Fresh off the success of his cold war satire Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick wanted to make the first truly first-rate science fiction film. Drawing from Clarke's ideas and with one of the author's short stories as the initial inspiration, their bold vision benefited from pioneering special effects that still look extraordinary today, even in an age of computer-generated images. In Space Odyssey , author, artist, and award-winning filmmaker Michael Benson "delivers expert inside stuff" ( San Francisco Chronicle ) from his extensive research of Kubrick's and Clarke's archives. He has had the cooperation of Kubrick's widow, Christiane, and interviewed most of the key people still alive who worked on the film. Drawing also from other previously unpublished interviews, Space Odyssey provides a 360-degree view of the film from its genesis to its legacy, including many previously untold stories. And it features dozens of photos from the making of the film, most never previously published. "At last! The dense, intense, detailed, and authoritative saga of the making of the greatest motion picture I've ever seen ... Michael Benson has done the Cosmos a great service" (Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks). Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ehsan Khoshbakht, curator of the Retrospective: “How to tell the story of a leading Hollywood studio while both teasing out the nuances and stressing the significance of canonical titles worthy of continued celebration? This has been the main challenge for our 40-title retrospective mapping Columbia Pictures’ glorious rise from Poverty Row to major force in Hollywood. ‘Lady with the Torch’ is an unofficial history of Columbia Pictures that celebrates big names, Oscar winners, and era-defining films but pays equal attention to the B-unit and yet to be discovered masters. Think the fast-talking career women of screwball comedies or think existentialist cowboys, prophetic anti-fascist quickies or unsettling ‘problem pictures’. Sony's generosity means we will bring to Locarno new restorations of films by John Ford and Phil Karlson, among many other gems. Once upon a time there was a brilliant exchange between art and commerce, between the system and the artist, and this Retrospective will celebrate that.” Visit the site here. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lawrence Kasdan has created some of the most influential films in Hollywood history. He is the screenwriter of such beloved blockbusters as The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Bodyguard (1992), and The Force Awakens (2015). Simultaneously, he has gained critical acclaim as the director of pictures that dissect contemporary American society: Body Heat (1981), The Big Chill (1983), The Accidental Tourist (1988), and Grand Canyon (1991). Brett Davies is Associate Professor of English at Meiji University, Tokyo Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Bleasdale talks to Julie Salamon the author of The Devil's Candy, The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood. The book is available here. The book was also the basis for the podcast series The Plot Thickens which you can listen to here. “So much better, so much more fun, than the movie it is about that one must be thankful to the filmmakers for producing such a spectacle, if only so that this book could be written.”—Vogue   When film director Brian De Palma invited author Julie Salamon to follow him on the set of The Bonfire of the Vanities, he had no idea that the fifty-million-dollar movie would become one of Hollywood’s biggest flops. The Devil’s Candy is the juicy, bestselling exposé that sent Hollywood honchos running for cover. Who was responsible for the last-minute casting change that cost four million dollars? Who knew that Melanie Griffith would show up halfway through the filming with a new set of breasts? Settle down in your front-row seat for a story that has more drama, hilarity, greed, folly, and ego than the movie that eventually ended up on the screen. Expertly reported and elegantly written, The Devil’s Candy is irresistible fun, a classic insider’s look at the movie business. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Bleasdale talks to author Mark Harris about his books Pictures from the Revolution and his recent biography of Mike NIchols. Mark's recommended book is Jason Bailey's Fun City Cinema, available here. Here's the blurb to Mark's most recent book: An instant New York Times Bestseller! A magnificent biography of one of the most protean creative forces in American entertainment history, a life of dazzling highs and vertiginous plunges--some of the worst largely unknown until now--by the acclaimed author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back Mike Nichols burst onto the scene as a wunderkind: while still in his twenties, he was half of a hit improv duo with Elaine May that was the talk of the country. Next he directed four consecutive hit plays, won back-to-back Tonys, ushered in a new era of Hollywood moviemaking with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and followed it with The Graduate, which won him an Oscar and became the third-highest-grossing movie ever. At thirty-five, he lived in a three-story Central Park West penthouse, drove a Rolls-Royce, collected Arabian horses, and counted Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Leonard Bernstein, and Richard Avedon as friends. Where he arrived is even more astonishing given where he had begun: born Igor Peschkowsky to a Jewish couple in Berlin in 1931, he was sent along with his younger brother to America on a ship in 1939. The young immigrant boy caught very few breaks. He was bullied and ostracized--an allergic reaction had rendered him permanently hairless--and his father died when he was just twelve, leaving his mother alone and overwhelmed. The gulf between these two sets of facts explains a great deal about Nichols's transformation from lonely outsider to the center of more than one cultural universe--the acute powers of observation that first made him famous; the nourishment he drew from his creative partnerships, most enduringly with May; his unquenchable drive; his hunger for security and status; and the depressions and self-medications that brought him to terrible lows. It would take decades for him to come to grips with his demons. In an incomparable portrait that follows Nichols from Berlin to New York to Chicago to Hollywood, Mark Harris explores, with brilliantly vivid detail and insight, the life, work, struggle, and passion of an artist and man in constant motion. Among the 250 people Harris interviewed: Elaine May, Meryl Streep, Stephen Sondheim, Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Tom Hanks, Candice Bergen, Emma Thompson, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Lorne Michaels, and Gloria Steinem. Mark Harris gives an intimate and evenhanded accounting of success and failure alike; the portrait is not always flattering, but its ultimate impact is to present the full story of one of the most richly interesting, complicated, and consequential figures the worlds of theater and motion pictures have ever seen. It is a triumph of the biographer's art. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Movies Go Fourth is a celebration of the fourth movies in the most popular film franchises of all time. It offers behind-the-scenes stories of fourth films from such beloved series as Star Wars, Star Trek, and James Bond. It also explores infamous fourth films, including Jaws: The Revenge, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, and Batman & Robin. This riveting book reveals the inside scoop on some of the biggest films in horror (Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street), sci-fi (Highlander, Terminator, Planet of the Apes), action (James Bond, Die Hard, Rambo) and comedy (Police Academy, Home Alone). Author Mark Edlitz also examines notable unmade fourth films, such as Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather: Part IV and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 4. Film trilogies used to signify a movie's success. Today, studios prefer to make never-ending stories. So what happens when the trilogy is over and the filmmakers or the studios want to make a fourth movie? Do they stick with the original story or create invent new characters who chart a new story? How do they honor what came first while inventing something new? And what happens when the artist and the studio come into conflict? This book answers those questions and many others. Through exclusive and revealing interviews, Movies Go Fourth delves deeply into making some of the most popular film franchises of all time. Based on candid interviews from the filmmakers themselves, Movies Go Fourth reveals what happens when art and commerce collide. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I talk to esteemed film critic and friend Rafa Sales Ross (find her work here), Noaz Deshe about his new film Xoftex and Christos Nikou about Apples, Apple and Fingernails. The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is the largest film festival in the Czech Republic and the most prestigious such festival in Central and Eastern Europe. It is one of the oldest A-list film festivals (i.e., non-specialized festivals with a competition for feature-length fiction films), a category it shares with the festivals in Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, San Sebastian, Montreal, Shanghai, and Tokyo. Among filmmakers, buyers, distributors, sales agents, and journalists, KVIFF is considered the most important event in all of Central and Eastern Europe. Every year, the festival presents some 200 films from around the world, and regularly hosts famous and important filmmakers. The Karlovy Vary festival is intended for both film professionals and the general public, and offers visitors a carefully designed programme, excellent facilities and a broad range of other services. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I speak with the the co-director of the Bologna Cinema Ritrovato festival Ehsan KhoshBakht and film restoration expert MIchael Dawson whose restorations of Stanley Kubrick's shorts showed at the festival. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Roger Lewis comes back to the pod to talk about his small masterpiece of biographical investigation, and fitting testament to a comic genius whose place in British cultural history is now assured. Charles Hawtrey, the skinny one with the granny glasses, was everybody's favourite in the Carry Ons - but who exactly was he? Up to now the man has remained a mystery. Examining Hawtrey's origins as a child star and performer in revue and the Will Hay films, this wonderful little book looks at his career in radio and television, and then to the sad and slow decline of a belligerent recluse on the Kent coast. The high camp exuberance of his acting gave way to bitterness and alcoholism and if you asked Hawtrey for an autograph he'd be more likely to call the police instead. Roger Lewis's short life of Hawtrey opens out like a Chinese box to address such issues as the nature of fame, neglect, loss, sexual confusion, Drambuie, betrayal, marine bandsmen, and fine cambric knickers trimmed with lace and blue ribbon. Its moral would seem to be that you don't necessarily turn out as the person you thought you'd become. Buy HERE. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awards. Three of his novels have been adapted into films. He is also the author of Ramsey's Rambles, a book of film criticism and Six Stooges and Counting, a study of the famous comedy team the 3 Stooges. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ian Christie FBA is a British film scholar whose work on Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Martin Scorsese and the development of cinema has made him one of the most respected film writers today. He is a regular contributor to Sight & Sound magazine and a frequent broadcaster as well as being the Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck, University of London. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bilge Ebiri is one of the finest critics currently working. He was the critic for the Village Voice and is now writing for New York Magazine and Vulture. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Siddhant Adlakha Talks All We Imagine as Light and more Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Cannes nears a close we have predictions and trends to discuss and ask is it time for the titans of cinema to give way? Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hugo Emmerzael from FilmKrant joins me to talk about Kevin Costner’s Horizon: an American Saga, chapter one. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Substance directed by Coralie Fargeat, and starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid, is the most talked about film of the Cannes Film Festival, so here we go. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thomas Schultze from German trade website Spot (click here) talks the latest film by dissident Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tokumbo Salako, EuroNews culture editor, joins me to review the latest films on the Croisette in the third of my special Cannes Reports. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the second of our special reports from the Cannes Film Festival, Christina Jeurling Birro talks Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film and her highlights from her first ever Cannes. She also coins the term Plemmon-heads. our conversation on Megalopolis is available to hear here. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fred Ponsard and David Mouriquand from EuroNews join John Bleasdale to talk Wild Diamond and the Cannes Film Festival. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The behind-the-scenes story of the iconic film, featuring new interviews with the cast and crew. An unflinching confrontation of humanity’s dark side, Brian De Palma’s crime drama film Scarface gave rise to a cultural revolution upon its release in 1983. Its impact was unprecedented, making globe-spanning waves as a defining portrait of the gritty Miami street life. From Al Pacino’s masterful characterization of Tony Montana to the iconic “Say hello to my little friend,” Scarface maintains its reputation as an unwavering game changer in cult classic cinema. With brand-new interviews and untold stories of the film’s production, long-time film critic Glenn Kenny takes us on an unparalleled journey through the making of American depictions of crime. The World Is Yours highlights the influential characters and themes within Scarface, reflecting on how its storied legacy played such a major role in American culture. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices