Director Aaron Schimberg takes us under the hood of his fascinating new film, which follows Sebastian Stan as a man with a condition that causes tumors to grow in the skin of his face. The story takes us through black comedy, thriller, and explores the streets of New York in an honest, gritty way we haven't seen since the films of the 70s. And Aaron opened up about his personal relationship to the story and actor Adam Pearson, who has the condition in real life. Around 48:00 we ask Aaron about his screening series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and he breaks down how each film inspired "A Different Man." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The creators of the hit HBO series join Chris O'Falt on Toolkit to discuss the season finale. They get surprisingly candid about the ways they needed to improve as writers and show runners after the first two seasons, and dive into the many choices that made season three a titanic leap forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re joined by writer-director JT Mollner, here to talk about his audacious new thriller STRANGE DARLING - which IndieWire has called “the best horror film in years.” JT talks about finding an unusual structure for his tale, working with first-time feature cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, and why shooting on 35mm film should remain a priority. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As his hit show enters its final season on HBO, Bill Hader returns to Toolkit to break down his newest, weirdest ideas from the director's chair. As director for every episode this season, Hader's control over the artistic vision of the show has never been stronger, which comes with even more pressure and expectations. Hear how he found ways to improve on his previous work on the series, and what he hopes the future holds for Bill Hader, movie director. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The cast and filmmakers behind Showtime’s “George & Tammy” break down the creative choices that went into bringing two country music legends to life. Jessica Chastain, Michael Shannon and others discuss the decision to record all the musical performances live, explaining how it was accomplished and why it was crucial to telling the stories of these icons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For her adaptation of a beloved novel, the 'Edge of Seventeen' director understood a gentle hand was needed when approaching the nostalgia around this story. Kelly explains how she applied that gentle touch to period detail, as well as how she captured a truly authentic sense of childhood awkwardness. From the writing process to the edit room, Kelly shares many fascinating insights into this fantastic and much anticipated film. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the preeminent American horror auteurs is back with his third feature, and for the director of Hereditary and Midsommar, it's no small thing to say this is his most ambitious film to date. Hear Aster discuss how he leveled up his craft, convinced Joaquin Phoenix to trust him, and stepped beyond the horror genre to encompass the bizarre totality of Beau's mind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The co-creator of The Knick joins us to talk about stepping onto Perry Mason as a showrunner for Season 2. Hear how he achieved the team's ambitious goals to expand the scope of the story, deepen the already fantastic characters, and craft a beguiling mystery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With this horror classic getting a 20 year anniversary Blu-Ray release this year, we sat down with Rob Zombie to reflect on the making and impact of his debut film. He recalls wild stories from getting the movie made, and opens up about his journey since then finding his artistic voice within the industry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"I just want those old version to die forever," director Gregg Araki told us during our discussion of the release of the long awaited restoration. Twenty eight years since the film was last properly seen at its Sundance debut, hear Araki unpack his long emotional journey with the film, and what it took for this restoration to bring his original vision back to the big screen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The director of all four John Wick movies sat down to discuss the secrets behind the stunning action and stylistic flare of his iconic series. Stahelski goes deep on the many influences he drew from to keep pushing the boundaries of what Wick can be in this third sequel. With the scope of the film drawing from epics like Lawrence of Arabia, and the fight scenes inspired by Gene Kelly and Bob Fosse musicals, hear how the franchise stays engaging by rooting itself in classic cinematic language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Showrunners Nora & Lilla Zuckerman discuss how they built ten "all killer" mysteries for "Poker Face," even in episodes where no one actually, as well as how their work in the genre space helped them understand Charlie Cale and the importance of building stories that use every part of the Buffalo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After years as the star of the Creed franchise, Michael B. Jordan makes his directorial debut in this emotional third sequel. Jordan opened up with us about the challenges of directing intense physical scenes while maintaining his energy as an actor, and the trust and grace he received from his cast that made it possible. He also goes deep on how his passion for anime revamped the visual style an emotional storytelling of the fight scenes, and how real life fathers Muhammad Ali, Jamie Fox, Kobe Bryant, and his barber inspired the girl-dad relationship between Adonis and his young daughter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zaillian's adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel was some of the best, most carefully considered TV we've seen this year. On the podcast he discusses his approach, including why it was essential the show be presented in rich black and white cinematography. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1987, Robert Townsend co-wrote, directed, starred in and self-financed (using his savings and credit cards) “Hollywood Shuffle” as a reaction against the lack of opportunities for black actors at the time. 36 years later, the film stands alongside “Stranger Than Paradise,” “She’s Gotta Have It,” and “sex, lies, and videotape” as a classic of the independent film movement and has been newly released on Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection. Townsend sat down with Toolkit to talk about the “dark ages” of 1980s independent film, how he turned his frustrations into the raw material of hilarious farce, and how the lessons learned on “Hollywood Shuffle” continue to fuel his successful directing career. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Acclaimed cinematographer Mandy Walker sat down with us to talk about filming the life and art of one of the most iconic performers of all time. Mandy reflects on her long partnership with director Baz Luhrmann, and gives an inside look at what it takes to bring a massive crew in line with his unique creative vision. Capturing Elvis on film the way Baz envisioned meant extensive research into period-accurate cameras and lighting, developing a way to track the story through changing film stocks, and even teaching her camera operators Elvis's dance choreography. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The seminal teenage hangout movie is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and Criterion has released a 4K restoration packed with insight into the making of this classic. To celebrate, we sat down with Linklater and discussed what exactly makes Dazed and Confused so endearing and enduring to audiences a generation later. From stories of casting, struggling with the structure of the script, and battles for the rights to the iconic soundtrack, hear the now established director reflect back on being a young filmmaker looking to find his voice in the face of the hollywood system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The body-horror satire Infinity Pool is one of the best films to premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and Cronenberg sat down with Toolkit to get into all the grisly details. Hear about the difficulty directing actors when the basic nature of the scenes may be up to interpretation, and the many creative challenges that come from making an ambiguous movie that still has an impact on the audience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The director of the newest horror film from Blumhouse joined us to discuss her disturbing tale of the intense impact children have on a relationship. Banjamin breaks down her strategies for directing the child actors in terrifying scenes, how her story fits into the legacy of scary child movies, and why it was important to make a great movie about relationships before the horror even began. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alice Diop, director of "Saint Omer," discusses why the film sits at an intersection between fiction and documentary, how sound and editing each influence the way the viewer understands what happens and connects the film's two protagonists, and the powerful, political impact of centering black women in the camera frame. Note: a French version of this conversation with Diop's answers presented without translation begins at 16:03. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us for a double interview this week, as we go deep with the Director and Editor of the box office sensation. With the actors and action all happening for real in fighter jets thousands of feet in the air, hear how the filmmaking team managed to direct the action from the ground, and how they turned hundreds of hours of cockpit footage into some of the most thrilling sequences of the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer and Director Damien Chazelle sits down with us to explain how he pulled off the huge swing that is Babylon. Hear which silent filmmakers and stars most influenced his epic of Hollywood excess, what it was like working with lead actors with wildly different levels of fame, and how he managed to make that ambitious ending a reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer and Director Rian Johnson joins us to chat about crafting the second cinematic mystery in the Knives Out series. Rian discusses the pressures of delivering on the satisfaction of the original while striking out in new thematic directions with Glass Onion, and how he tackled the challenge of developing another group of memorable characters while balancing the on-set staging and blocking of the all-star cast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Luca Guadagnino returns to talk with us about his entrancing new film, the coming-of-age cannibal romance Bones and All. Luca opens up about his experiences on the road in the American midwest, and why this tale of disenfranchised youth was a perfect beginning to him making films in the States. Also hear how he deepened his creative partnership with lead actor Timothée Chalamet, and how his performance became an even more vital part of the filmmaking process than their collaboration on Call Me By Your Name. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Martha Coolidge appears on the podcast to talk about her debut feature, “Not a Pretty Picture,” which is newly restored and available from Criterion. The movie, an audacious documentary/narrative hybrid, depicts Coolidge’s own sexual assault with power, intelligence, and sensitivity. Coolidge discusses why she chose this unusual form to tell her story, how it informed her later work, and what it led to in terms of a Hollywood career. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Academy Award winning director of The Revenant sat down with us to discuss his return to Mexico, and how he delved into his character's subconscious to create an intimate epic of the mind. Iñárritu explains how making radical decisions in every department was key to capturing the feeling of a dream that resists literal interpretation, and why it was crucial to embrace fiction as a way of unpacking personal reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join our discussion with visionary filmmaker James Cameron as he walks us through the cutting edge technology he and his team developed for this long awaited return to the world of Avatar. Learn how he once again pioneered new performance capture technology, allowing actors to perform underwater and giving them much more creative freedom than a live action filmmaking approach. Cameron unpacks how motion capture shapes the creative process at every step, impacting the writing and editing as much as what happens on set. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn about the making of one of the year's most powerful films from Laura Poitras, the award winning director of Citezenfour, and her editor Amy Foote. The two filmmakers explain how they met photographer Nan Goldin, and how they combined her voice with her incredible photographs to tell the story of her challenging the powerful Sackler family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert discuss the collaboration that allowed them to make "Everything Everywhere All At Once" maximalist AF. From the summer camp vibes on their set to their poetic relationship with sound design, hear how this duo crafted their incredible journey through the multiverse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The crafts team behind Prime Video's "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" discuss the creative choices that went into making a series that is by and for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Daniel Roher takes us behind the scenes of making his thrilling documentary, the story of the fearless opposition leader to Vladimir Putin's oppressive regime. A social media master and fierce public speaker, Alexei Navalny was so effective at rallying the people of Russia against the Kremlin, they attempted to assassinate him in the summer of 2020. Roher describes what it was like to film Navalny while he recovered in Germany and planned his fateful return, and why making this movie felt as much like a thriller as his subject's life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Creator Tony Gilroy and editor John Gilroy join Toolkit to discuss the joys of worldbuilding inside the Star Wars universe, structuring the first season of "Andor," and how score influenced the show's writing and editing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Ryan White takes us inside the making of this delightful documentary chronicling the journey of Mars rover Opportunity, which had a planned 90 day mission but ended up surviving fifteen years. Hear how the crew brought Oppy's groundbreaking mission to life using hundreds of hours of archival footage from NASA, and partnering with the VFX powerhouse Industrial Light and Magic to create a digital Mars from scratch. And learn about the deep bonds that formed between this intrepid rover and her human operators millions of miles away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Mark Mylod discusses channeling Ralph Fiennes' character to create the look and feel of his "eat the rich" satirical thriller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The director of the Netflix limited series “Unorthodox” talks about adapting New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s book to the big screen. Schrader discuss how her experience telling the real life story of “Unorthodox” and being an actress in Germany helped her tackle the all-too-real story of reporting the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal, and why she doesn’t buy the media’s comparisons between “She Said” and other journalist classics like “All The Presidents Men” and “Spotlight.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Set during a weekend backpacking trip in the Catskills, "Good One" is a gorgeous coming of age film that focuses more on interiority than dramatic plot. Director India Donaldson walks us through the struggle of filming outside in the woods, and gives a fantastic lesson on modern independent filmmaking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Shaunak Sen goes inside how he found and created the most innovative visual language of any film this year. A process that involved throwing away a year’s worth of footage, and starting over, all in an effort the avoid to pitfalls that so many films with touch upon ecological or political issues fall into.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Sara Dosa and producer Shane Boris join Filmmaker Toolkit to discuss the formal and tonal choices they made in order to capture the adventurous spirits of Katia and Maurice Krafft in "Fire of Love."  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Film scholar and public radio fixture Elvis Mitchell speaks about directing "Is That Black Enough for You?!?" and why the 1970s were the greatest decade ever for Black film. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Directors Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes join Toolkit discuss the creative pillars holding up their documentary "The Janes," why it was important to make Chicago a character in the story, the extensive challenge and surprising finds of using archive material from the period, and their and the film's relationship to the modern politics of abortion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, Field talks about how he turned his unusual script about a famous conductor in personal and professional free fall into a riveting character study, with help from star Cate Blanchett, collaborating during the height of the pandemic, thematic ideas like the corrupting nature of power and practical concerns like casting the other parts, and both Field's and Blanchett's delight in sharing their growing excitement about the milieu in which the film takes place. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"DIG!" and "We Live in Public" director Ondi Timoner joins Toolkit to discuss the unintentional road to "Last Flight Home" and the work of making the cameras that documented her father's last days as invisible as possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In James Gray's new film "Armageddon Time," he returns to the kind of intimate, precise character study with which he made his name. Gray speaks about visual style, memory, and why he loves movies to begin with. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Margaret Brown discusses the cinematic and narrative choices that helped shape the story of "Descendant" – from building the sounds of the South to collaborating with the film's subjects to resurfacing the filmmaking of Zora Neale Hurston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charlotte Wells joins the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast to talk about the evolution of her first feature: creating anchor points for memory within the story of the film, the joys of working with DV camcoder footage and the liminal place it sits between objective and subjective points of view, refining perspective and the sense of memory in editing "Aftersun" together, finding immediacy within a specific time period through the look of the film, and even more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Series creator Armando Iannucci discusses the benefits of satire while working in genre, building a future out of our ridiculous present, and how the pandemic influenced the HBO comedy's second season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Curb Your Enthusiasm" director and showrunner Jeff Schaffer joins the podcast to talk about bringing the show to a satisfying conclusion, working with non-actors like Bruce Springsteen and Willie Geist, and whether or not this is really the end. Plus, a special guest makes a surprise appearance! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you were an action fan in the 1970s, ’80s, or ’90s, one of the great pleasures of filmgoing was the experience, every year or two, of a new Walter Hill movie. No one else was really making movies like him, and no one had before; Hill created a body of work that spoke to American culture both past and present where the jokes are funny but the bullets are real. On this episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, Hill speaks about returning to his favorite genre, the Western with his new film "Dead for a Dollar." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Nicholas Stoller, of "Neighbors" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" fame, joins Filmmaker Toolkit to discuss his process developed on some of the best comedy films of the last couple decades and how he applied it to his latest film, 'Bros.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer-director Andrew Dominik wrote his adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' novel "Blonde" in about four weeks — and then waited 12 years for the opportunity to bring it to the screen. The "Killing Them Softly" director joins Filmmaker Toolkit to talk about his decade-plus-long journey to bring Joyce Carol Oates' fictionalized portrait of Marilyn Monroe to the screen, and the epic study of trauma and Hollywood's exploitation of it that he created. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices