Join three very different storytellers with three very different personalities, as we bring each other stories to break apart and celebrate. In every episode, we're having the best time exploring what makes a story work, why it moves us, and why we can't stop talking about it. It's not analysis. It's not review. And it's something more than just a conversation about one of the things that makes life worth living... stories.
Site
RSS
Apple
Recent rankings
Latest chart positions across Apple Podcasts and Spotify rankings.
Shared links between episodes and podcasts
Links found in episode descriptions and other podcasts that share them.
The Princess Bride - How Has Anyone Not Seen This Fairytale Masterpiece?
Season 1 · Episode 1
Monday, September 1, 2025 • Duration 40:19
The greatest craft of the Princess Bride isn't its superb writing, but is in fact its unwavering sincerity masquerading as a bedtime story.
EPISODE SUMMARY
The Princess Bride (1987), starring Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, and Mandy Patinkin, is a fairy tale, a comedy, and — on The Arc (thearc.fm) — an argument about how a film can be technically clumsy (visible dummies, obvious green screen) and still be a masterclass in storytelling. Robby has seen it thirty times since he was sixteen and even teaches it in his storytelling class; Jaclynn had never seen it at all, having been too scared of it as a kid; and Cole, certain he'd seen it dozens of times, realizes mid-episode that he actually hadn't. The case we build: the callbacks, the nested grandfather-grandson frame story, and sheer sincerity do more work than any budget ever could.
New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — good news, though: this is Episode 01, so you're already at the beginning.
The Princess Bride (1987), Rob Reiner's fairy tale about a farm boy, a kidnapped bride, a Spanish swordsman avenging his murdered father, and a giant, is the kind of movie people will end a friendship over if you say you don't like it. We know this because two of us walked in without the childhood nostalgia that protects it — Robby has seen it thirty times and can quote the first third by heart; the rest of us were on our second-ever viewing, having lied for years about having seen it at all. What we found underneath the "as you wish" and the six-fingered man and the rodents of unusual size (which, on close inspection, are stunt guys in rat costumes making sounds voiced by Rob Reiner himself) is a movie that is, by any production standard, kind of poorly made — dummies visibly strapped to Andre the Giant, hands in seats, continuity that a high school film class could out-shoot — and completely, disarmingly perfect anyway.
That tension is the whole episode. We spend a good while arguing about what "well made" even means, using Top Gun: Maverick as the foil: a movie grown in a laboratory from perfect parts, the food science of the ultimate crunch, versus a $16-million storybook that strapped three dolls to a rope in front of a green screen and earned real, sloppy tears anyway. The thing that carries it — the thing you could close your eyes and follow — is a story so tightly built out of callbacks and seeded payoffs that Dad found himself getting defensive on its behalf mid-sentence: it's not good, and that's exactly what's good about it. There's a real conversation in here about how the grandfather-and-grandson frame, maybe seven minutes of screen time total, sneaks a full character arc past you and lands the ending.
If you searched this film out, you already suspect it's smarter than it looks. What you'll get from us is the honest version of arriving at it late — one of us didn't like it the first time and made herself watch it again, changed her whole mind, and then had to sit with why she'd denied herself decades of a shared thing everyone else already had. That's where it lands: a movie is scaffolding people build relationships on, the reason a grandfather says "as you wish" and a kid stops rolling his eyes, and the reason we couldn't quite fire ourselves as each other's friends over it either.
CREATIVES
Rob Reiner — Director & Producer — also: This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Stand by Me (1986)
William Goldman — Screenwriter
Andrew Scheinman — Producer
Adrian Biddle — Cinematographer
Mark Knopfler — Composer
CAST
Cary Elwes — Westley / The Dreadful Pirate Roberts — also: Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), Days of Thunder (1990), Saw (2004)
Robin Wright — Buttercup / Princess Buttercup — also: Forrest Gump (1994), House of Cards (2013–2018), Wonder Woman (2017)
Mandy Patinkin — Inigo Montoya — also: Homeland (2011–2020), Evita (1979), Sunday in the Park with George (1984)
Chris Sarandon — Prince Humperdinck — also: Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Fright Night (1985), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Christopher Guest — Count Rugen — also: This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003)
Wallace Shawn — Vizzini — also: Clueless (1995), Toy Story (1995), The Incredibles (2004)
André the Giant — Fezzik — also: WrestleMania III (1987), WWF World Heavyweight Championship win (1988)
Fred Savage — The Grandson — also: The Wonder Years (1988–1993), Crumbs (2005), Friends from College (2017)
Peter Falk — The Grandfather — also: Columbo (1968–1978), The In-Laws (1979), Wings of Desire (1987)
Carol Kane — Valerie — also: Hester Street (1975), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Annie Hall (1977)
Billy Crystal — Miracle Max — also: Soap (1977–1981), When Harry Met Sally... (1989), City Slickers (1991)
AWARDS
Academy Awards — Best Original Song ("Storybook Love") — NOMINATION
Writers Guild of America — Best Adapted Screenplay (William Goldman) — NOMINATION
Saturn Awards — Best Fantasy Film — WIN
Saturn Awards — Best Costume Design (Phyllis Dalton) — WIN
Saturn Awards — Best Writing (William Goldman) — NOMINATION
Saturn Awards — Best Actress (Robin Wright) — NOMINATION
Hugo Awards — Best Dramatic Presentation — WIN
Toronto International Film Festival — People's Choice Award — WIN
Youth in Film Awards — Best Young Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama (Fred Savage) — WIN
Artios Awards (Casting Society) — Best Feature Film Casting, Comedy — NOMINATION
Grammy Awards — Best Score for a Motion Picture (Mark Knopfler) — NOMINATION
Avoriaz International Fantastic Film Festival — Grand Prize (Best Film) — NOMINATION
American Comedy Awards — Funniest Supporting Male Performer (Billy Crystal) — NOMINATION
The film did not receive Academy Award nominations in any major categories (Picture, Director, Screenplay, or acting), nor was it recognized by the Golden Globes, BAFTA, or the Directors Guild of America.
SOURCE MATERIAL
The Princess Bride is based on William Goldman's 1973 fantasy romance novel The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The "Good Parts" Version, which Goldman then adapted into the screenplay himself. You can read more about the novel here.
Cary Elwes broke his big toe six weeks into filming after André the Giant dared him to take a spin on his all-terrain vehicle — Elwes hit a rock, his toe got wedged between the gear pedal and the ground, and it snapped backward. Terrified of being fired, he hid the injury from Rob Reiner and finished the movie on a badly swollen foot. [Source]
The moment Count Rugen knocks Westley unconscious is real: Christopher Guest was pulling his sword-hilt blow too gently to look convincing, so Elwes told him to actually hit him. Guest connected harder than either expected, knocking Elwes out for real, and that take — the one where he's genuinely unconscious — is what made the final cut. [Source]
Mandy Patinkin's only injury on the entire shoot came from trying not to laugh: during the Miracle Max scene, Billy Crystal improvised different period-appropriate jokes for three days straight without repeating a single line, and Patinkin bruised his rib muscles from holding in his laughter take after take. [Source]
André the Giant almost wasn't Fezzik at all — William Goldman's first choice back in
Amores Perros - A Maximalist Masterpiece That Does Not Mean "Love Dogs"
Season 2 · Episode 14
Thursday, July 9, 2026 • Duration 01:04:38
Did you know people HATE Alejandro González Iñárritu's films, walked out of Amores Perros during its Premiere, and stopped being friends with Cole because of it? And on that note: we dig into why a movie this technically towering is so hard to actually love.
EPISODE SUMMARY
Amores Perros (2000), starring Gael García Bernal and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is Cole's birthday pick this season on The Arc (thearc.fm), and it does not go the way birthday picks are supposed to go. The film is a landmark of Mexican cinema, told in three interlocking stories connected by a single car crash — but we spend most of the episode arguing about whether its dog-as-metaphor structure is a stroke of genius or almost embarrassingly literal. Robby gets attached to the wrong story and never recovers, Jaclynn spends two years thinking the title meant "I Love Dogs," and Cole realizes live, on mic, that the film is basically about his parents.
WHERE TO WATCH
Streaming availability as of 2026-07-08 (GOOD LUCK//SORRY)
New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.
Amores Perros is Alejandro González Iñárritu's 2000 debut, three interlocking Mexico City stories bolted together by a single car crash — a dog-fighting kid trying to run away with his brother's wife, a supermodel whose lapdog vanishes under the floorboards of her new apartment, and El Chivo, an ex-guerrilla turned assassin with a pack of strays and a daughter he abandoned. It's the film that put Iñárritu, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto on the map, and, as Cole puts it, nearly every "raw, visceral, authentic" film made since has been speaking its language whether it knows it or not. You cannot legally stream or even buy it in the United States, which is how Cole ended up getting a library card specifically to check out a DVD, and how one very kind librarian stopped talking to him the moment she saw what he'd put on hold.
WHAT WE DISCUSSCHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS
Airplane! - The Greatest Comedy of All Time is Not a Mel Brooks Movie
Season 2 · Episode 13
Thursday, July 2, 2026 • Duration 54:49
This episode argues that Airplane isn't a joke machine bolted onto a plot but a plot that never once stops being played straight — the "clothing line" every single joke hangs from — and that's precisely why deadpan dramatic actors, not comedians, were the only people who could have made it work.
EPISODE SUMMARY
Is Airplane! (1980) actually the funniest movie ever made — and does it hold up? In this episode, three hosts break down the disaster-parody classic joke by joke, arguing that its real genius isn't the gags (though by their count there's a new one every 20 seconds) but the fact that it plays a completely straight, lifted-from-a-real-drama plot dead serious underneath all of them. They also dig into which of its dated jokes still land and which ones don't. You don't need to have seen the film to follow along — though you'll probably want to watch it after.
WHERE TO WATCH
Streaming availability as of 2026-07-04.
Paramount+ (subscription)
MGM+ (subscription)
Peacock (Premium tiers)
Kanopy (free with library card)
Tubi (free with ads)
Pluto TV / fuboTV (free with ads)
Rent or buy: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Google Play
This one's not hiding from you — it's on basically every platform, free tier, paid tier, and rental storefront simultaneously, which feels appropriate for a movie built on the philosophy of throwing every joke technique at the wall at once. If you don't already have a library card for Kanopy, honestly, that's the real crime here — free is free, Shirley.
CTA
New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning because you do not have to have seen the film we're talking about to enjoy the episode — heck, sometimes some of us haven't even watched the film we're talking about.
Spotify (link needed)
Pocket Casts (link needed)
EDITORIAL OPENERWHAT WE DISCUSSCHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPSCREATIVES
The Straight Story - David Lynch's "Most Experimental" Film & The Only One He Didn't Write Himself
Season 2 · Episode 3
Thursday, February 5, 2026 • Duration 50:53
THE ARC'S TAKE
We argue that David Lynch made his most experimental film by removing every tool he usually relies on — no surrealism, no dread-tricks, just a man on a lawnmower — and dread showed up anyway, because it turns out the weirdness was never the trick, it was him.
EPISODE SUMMARY
Lynch is the master of the eery, absurd, surreal dream film, but he himself says that his most "experimental" film is "The Straight Story," a film that's ostensibly about a kind, elderly gentleman slowly riding his lawn mower across the country to see his brother. It is a G-rated Disney film about a real man who rode a lawnmower 300 miles to reconcile with his dying brother, and, according to Lynch himself, his most experimental movie ever made. The hosts unpack how a film with no surrealism, no non-linear tricks, and none of Lynch's usual chaos still manages to be the "Lynchiest" thing he's ever done, from a deer-crash scene that hooked all three of them instantly to the quiet horror lurking under its sweetness. If you've ever wondered what David Lynch looks like with all his usual tools taken away, this is the episode for you.
A Disney G-rated existential-horror movie sitting on Disney+ next to Marvel and Moana is exactly the kind of tonal joke the algorithm will never understand but Lynch absolutely intended — the deer lady is one row over from a talking raccoon.
New To The Show?
New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning to get to know the show and find your new favorite film to pretend you've watched.
A Long SummaryCREATIVESCASTAWARDSGolden GlobesCannes Film FestivalIndependent Spirit AwardsNew York Film Critics CircleBritish Independent Film AwardsEuropean Film AwardsChicago Film Critics AssociationLos Angeles Film Critics AssociationGolden Frog (Camerimage)Bodil Awards (Denmark)Guldbagge Awards (Sweden)San Diego Film Critics SocietySOURCE MATERIAL
Mulholland Drive - The Diner Scene - A Five Minute Intro To David Lynch And His Producer & Editor Mary Sweeney
Season 2 · Episode 2
Thursday, January 29, 2026 • Duration 25:51
Everything you need to know about David Lynch's style in five minutes! You really should watch the whole film eventually, but a five minute scene that appears fifteen minutes into David Lynch's masterpiece "Mulholland Drive" is all you really need.
That said, you really should also know about Lynch's producer, editor, and sometimes screenwriter of twenty years, Mary Sweeney!
Please, note: this scene is a little bit scary, but aren't almost all thing David Lynch?
Producers: Neal Edelstein, Tony Krantz, Michael Polaire, Alain Sarde, and Mary Sweeney
Composer: Angelo Badalamenti
Cinematographer: Peter Deming
Editor: Mary Sweeney
Production Designer: Jack Fisk
Costume Designer: Amy Stofsky
CAST:
Naomi Watts as Betty Elms / Diane Selwyn
Laura Elena Harring as Rita / Camilla Rhodes
Women Talking - Sarah Polley Makes Perfect, Difficult Films
Season 1 · Episode 16
Thursday, January 22, 2026 • Duration 48:58
Content & Trigger Warning: this episode discusses sexual assault in the film and in real life.
THE ARC'S TAKE
We argue that "Women Talking" only looks plotless if you're measuring plot by what happens on screen instead of what it costs to decide anything at all — and that the film's real subject isn't the assault but the coerced forgiveness that lets it keep happening.
EPISODE SUMMARY
Women Talking, Sarah Polley's quiet, devastating film about the women of a Mennonite colony who discover they've been drugged and assaulted by the men in their community — and who spend two days in a barn deciding whether to do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. Cole and Robby dig into the film's craft, its late-in-editing narration switch, and why "plotless" might be the wrong word for a story built entirely around the fact that Jaclynn didn't watch it — and the reasons behind that choice is essentially the episode — it is one of the more personal episodes The Arc has put out. Content warning: this film discusses sexual assault directly, both in the film and in real life.
Women Talking is Sarah Polley's 2022 adaptation of Miriam Toews' novel, and its premise is almost aggressively unpromising as cinema: the women of an isolated Mennonite colony, drugged and assaulted by the men of their own community, are given two days to decide whether to forgive their attackers, stay and fight, or leave. The men are away in town posting bail. The women gather in a hayloft. They talk. Roll credits. Cole, who brought the film to us, will tell you it has zero plot — "we gather in a barn, we talk, roll credits" — and he means that as the highest compliment, since he has a long-running and, per Robby, possibly incoherent theory that plot is just Mad Libs and story is the thing underneath it. The film looks like a Dorothea Lange photograph, it never once puts violence on screen, and it takes a decision most viewers assume is obvious and makes you sit inside how genuinely impossible it is — when you can't read or write, when leaving means forfeiting heaven, when forgiveness that's demanded of you starts to look a lot like permission.
CREATIVESCASTAWARDS
Carol - Happy Holidays & Happy New Year Because Two Women Are In Love and Two Guys Are Mad About It
Season 1 · Episode 15
Saturday, January 3, 2026 • Duration 38:40
THE ARC'S TAKE
We spend most of Carol braced for the tragic, closeted ending 1950s convention demands, so when Highsmith and Haynes hand the women the reins instead, it recasts everything we just watched as an argument that withholding psychology isn't distance — it's trust.
Carol takes place in the "liminal space" that floats between Christmas and the start of the new year, and it occupies the space held for best films ever made that didn't win and weren't even nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards... possibly because it is a classic story told in a slightly unconventional manner or because of the same conscious or unconscious prejudices that the characters in the story itself must live through. You can and should watch this film any (and arguably multiple) times per year: once for the holidays, once for the visual story, and once for every time you you want to feel like you're falling in love but it's complicated.
If you love the film already, then please, also listen to Subtextual's episode about "Carol" because they do an even longer breakdown and find it to be a warm Christmas hug and they're one of the best film review podcasts in general as well!
We watch Todd Haynes' Carol and find a movie so visually perfect it borders on distracting — gorgeous, glacial, and quietly radical for giving its women an ending where nobody has to hide. They dig into Patricia Highsmith's original pseudonymous novel, the 1950s photographers who shaped the film's look, and why an ending they expected to be tragic turned out to be the twist of the whole thing. No familiarity with the film required — just bring patience for a debate about gloves left behind "on purpose."
We argue Michael Caine playing Scrooge dead straight, like Shakespeare, is exactly why the Muppets around him are allowed to be so funny — and why this version, not the somber ones, earns its ending.
EPISODE SUMMARY
The Muppet Christmas Carol is, against all odds, one of the most emotionally sincere adaptations of Dickens ever put to film — and this week on The Arc, we figure out why. Michael Caine plays Scrooge dead straight, like he's doing Shakespeare, while Gonzo narrates as Charles Dickens and Beaker somehow steals the whole movie with a scarf. It's a conversation about villain origin stories, Dutch angles, and why letting the Muppets play it sincere makes the sad parts sadder and the redemption actually land. You don't need to have seen it since childhood, or ever, to enjoy this one.
Here's the detail worth knowing before Robby cues this one up: Disney+ isn't just streaming the movie, it's quietly streaming two versions of it. The service added the "full-length version" of Brian Henson's 1992 film, though unlike some other new releases, it's not that easy to find. Even if you search for the title, you'll first land on the edited cut — you have to scroll down and click "Extras" to find the 89-minute full-length version. That's the one with "When Love Is Gone" back in it, the Belle breakup song the episode spends real time mourning. The song plays during Scrooge's scenes with the Ghost of Christmas Past and his fiancée Belle, and Disney originally cut it for being a bit too adult. So if we want the cut they actually wished existed, it's already sitting on their own Disney+ app, buried one tab deeper than default.
New To The Show?A Long SummaryCREATIVESCASTAWARDSSOURCE MATERIALFUN FACTS / PRODUCTION TRIVIA
"The" GameCube Vine - The Perfect Six Second Story
Season 1 · Episode 13
Thursday, December 4, 2025 • Duration 17:35
We put a six-second Vine of a guy falling outside a 7-Eleven up against Hemingway's baby shoes and argue the getting-up is the whole story — the difference between a joke and a hero's journey is one extra beat of dignity.
EPISODE SUMMARY
This week on The Arc, we throw out the usual movie-review format entirely and spend an episode dissecting a six-second Vine — the one with the glitching GameCube logo and a guy falling outside a 7-Eleven. What starts as a joke turns into a genuine argument about why this clip is a perfect piece of storytelling, complete with Hemingway, Lydia Davis, and a Greek chorus acting exercise nobody asked for. If you've ever wondered how much narrative you can pack into six seconds, this one's for you.
If aliens arrive to rummage through our digital bones, let them see this creativity so that they might know what it is to be human.
New To The Show?
New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.
Or since you liked "The" GameCube Vine, try Freaky Friday (1976) — another slice of comedy that ages into pure nostalgia, same way that one Vine somehow still gets us.
A Long SummaryFUN FACTS / PRODUCTION TRIVIADive Deeper into "The" GameCube VineRELATED ARC EPISODESSOUND DESIGN ATTRIBUTION
Hymns To The Obvious - A Play Written by Robert Weinstein
Season 1 · Episode 12
Tuesday, November 25, 2025 • Duration 36:59
Robert Weinstein, our far too humble host and resident storytelling teacher has written yet another play, which was performed by the Barrow Group, and we get to talk about it, celebrate it, and accidentally tear into it.
We dig into a ten-minute play about an angry old woman recording an iPad message instead of just calling her granddaughter, and argue the whole thing works precisely because Robby never decided why — the best writing choices are the ones you don't consciously make.
EPISODE SUMMARY
This week on The Arc, an elderly woman records a message to her granddaughter on an iPad, and somehow that's the whole play — no plot, just a furious 67-year marriage's worth of regret, delivered in ten minutes. Robby wrote it under deadline pressure and still isn't sure it's finished, but we argue it's close to perfect, right down to a running gag lifted from David Mamet. You don't need to have read the script first, though we give you the link if you want to.
New To The Show?
New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.
Robby wrote a ten-minute play called Hymns to the Obvious, and this episode is the three of us sitting inside it — the script, the staging, the drinks after with the performer and the playwright — trying to figure out how a thing with almost no plot ends up being all story. Janice Tenexis is a woman in a nursing home recording a video reply to her granddaughter's letter asking for relationship advice, while the attendant, Teresa, quietly narrates the whole thing and, less quietly, the transfer papers sitting on Janice's desk. Janice was married sixty-seven years to a man whose optimism annoyed the hell out of her, and only now, too late, does she miss him. She hates ducks. She calls people morons and figures they know where she stands. She describes a town singing hymns in the church of the obvious and slinging gin fizzies at the cocktail lounge of heavenly matches — lines so good that one of us threatened to get a tattoo of one.
CREATIVESSOURCE MATERIALFUN FACTS / PRODUCTION TRIVIARELATED ARC EPISODESSOUND DESIGN ATTRIBUTION
This is a birthday-film episode — each of us picks an all-time favorite to revisit, and this one is Cole's, which turns out to be the whole show. Robby found it electric and beautifully shot and was fully in until the story handed off to the second couple, at which point he got genuinely angry, a reaction he almost never has to movies. Jaclynn, who spent two years believing the title meant "I Love Dogs" because she's half Mexican and coasting on overconfidence, was out at the DVD menu and had to switch off her empathy to get through the dog violence at all. And then, somewhere in the third act — the dead father breaking into his daughter's apartment to frame a photo of himself over her bed, the assassin's whole arc — it stops being a movie about a movie and becomes Cole visibly split open, recognizing his own parents in the supermodel and the man who ruined himself caring for her. Watching a friend realize in real time that his favorite film is a diagnosis is not comfortable, and we don't pretend it is.
What we actually argue about is whether the dog-as-metaphor is too on the nose (each animal an externalized organ of its owner's suffering), whether it's just a less pop-culture-poisoned Pulp Fiction or something genuinely its own, and why nearly every shot sits at a strange, low, claustrophobic angle — Jaclynn's theory being that we're often at dog height, Cole's being that a frame taken from the eyeline of an average-height man has added nothing to anything, ever. There's a clip of Iñárritu himself in here talking about the banned bleach-bypass process that gave the film its milky, over-contrasted blue, and a running, affectionate grudge about how Cole's own best camerawork is quietly haunted by this movie's final shot. It ends where it began: Jaclynn asking Cole if he's okay. He isn't, and he'd like a good cry and a full night's sleep. We'd recommend the film, and we'd recommend not watching it alone.
02:12 — Who Brought Amores Perros, and How Do You Describe Amores Perros?
We describe Amores Perros as a maximalist film that mirrors its director's personality, then joke about our shared "killjoy" horoscope sign before comparing how graphically each of our two birthday-film picks handles a dog's death — Robby's film only implies it happens offscreen while Cole's shows the animal's visible suffering in bloody, sound-designed detail — with Cole noting he can tell a long story about what he already knew about the film going in.
04:33 — Robby Actually Reviews The Film!
Robby explains that he watched Amores Perros for the first time because it's Cole's favorite movie, praises how watchable, energetic, and visually striking it is (especially its portrayal of Mexico City), admits the dog violence shocked him but argues it works as a meaningful metaphor for how the characters treat each other, and then Jaclynn teases Cole for being visibly moved before comparing the experience of rewatching a beloved film as an adult to realizing it exposes uncomfortable truths about the person who loves it.
08:46 — How Jaclynn Found Out The Film Showed Dog Fighting
Jaclynn tells a long personal story about how, based on a matching-hat gift from Cole and her mistaken belief that "Amores Perros" translates simply to "I Love Dogs," she spent two years thinking his favorite film was a sweet movie about dog ownership until a friend's horrified reaction clued her in that it actually involves extensive dogfighting and animal death, which leads the group into a discussion of why on-screen animal harm disturbs audiences more than human violence and how convincingly the film's dog-death scenes were faked.
23:19 — When Were You In or Out for Amores Perros?
Jaclynn explains she was "out" on Amores Perros before even watching it (after hearing about the animal deaths and half-jokingly citing writing "the DVD menu" in our shared notes doc as her breakout point), listing the elements she normally likes in a film that this one still didn't win her over with, while the others push back and single out the movie's closing shot as a standout, with one host arguing it visibly influenced Cole's own cinematography (comparing it to a shot he later used), which Cole first denies and then half-admits.
27:19 — Audiences Walked Out of the Film
We rib Cole for picking such an on-the-nose, stylistically maximalist favorite, then play a clip of Iñárritu describing how audiences actually walked out during screenings at Cannes and the New York Film Festival, before comparing our own entry points into his filmography (mostly starting with Birdman, which we disagree about) and debate whether Amores Perros is a weaker, more stylistically derivative cousin of Pulp Fiction.
29:06 — The Original Instagram Filter?
We (joined by a clip of director Alejandro González Iñárritu) discuss how the film's bleach-bypass color processing gave it a high-contrast, blue-tinted look we associate with early Instagram filters, then pivot into analyzing how tightly framed, claustrophobic shots (including ones apparently filmed from a dog's-eye perspective) reinforce the characters' trapped circumstances, before riffing into a personal tangent about hating photographs shot from generic average-adult-eye-level height.
41:03 — The Dogs Are a Metaphor.
We debate whether Amores Perros' dogs function as heavy-handed but effective metaphors for their owners' suffering (using the scorpion-and-frog fable to explain the "rehabilitated killer" dog), then Robby admits he lost investment when the film jumped between its three interlocking stories, while Jaclynn describes being annoyed by the film's self-conscious stylistic flourishes before deciding that "announcing itself" as a film can still be valid craft, and we praise the movie's gritty, lived-in production detail before Cole starts to argue, through tears he can't fully explain, that the film invented the modern raw, visceral style so many later films have chased.
58:06 — The Craziest Thing About The Story
We marvel incredulously at the film's Daniel storyline, arguing it makes no sense that a character would let a dog starve under his floorboards for days rather than immediately tearing them up to save it, one host suggests this is a deliberate Tell-Tale Heart-style literary allusion rather than a plot hole, and we then play a clip of Iñárritu explaining that the dog-under-the-floor detail was drawn from a real story a friend told him about an abandoned family whose floor had to be broken open after their dog died and started to smell.
0:00 - Can a Movie Ruin a Friendship? (natural: 0:23)
2:12 - Who Brought Amores Perros, and How Do You Describe Amores...
Airplane! is the 1980 disaster-movie parody where a traumatized war pilot has to land a passenger jet after everyone in the cockpit gets food poisoning — and where, roughly every twenty seconds for eighty-eight minutes, someone tells a joke. It's the one with "Surely you can't be serious" / "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley." It's the one where the whole ridiculous machine works because the actors — Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, men who'd spent decades playing things dead straight — play it dead straight here too. The dramatic plot is real, and it never wobbles; the film just hangs joke after joke off it like a clothing line. Nearly every comedy that came after it, from Naked Gun to the Farrelly brothers to Family Guy, is standing on this movie's shoulders whether it knows it or not.
We watched it three in a room, laughing harder than usual, and did not fully agree about it — which turned out to be the point. Robby grew up quoting it off a friend's Betamax; it's a foundational text for him. Jaclynn thinks it's a genuine comedy masterclass and also didn't especially like it, because she wants a movie to take her somewhere darker than "here is a joke, here is another joke." Cole spent the entire episode confidently insisting it was a 1976 Mel Brooks film and a sequel to Blazing Saddles, which it is none of — a bit he committed to so thoroughly that when his own landlord (an MIT-and-Wharton-educated woman) correctly told him three guys from Wisconsin actually wrote it, he decided she must be wrong.
So somewhere between counting the jokes (a minimum of 264, we did the math), arguing about whether the film's uglier gags are punching at something or just punching, and Robby quoting himself quoting Seth Rogen on why comedy has to live a little outside of proper society, we ended up talking less about whether Airplane! is funny — it is — and more about what it actually takes to make something look this easy. Turns out it takes a lot, and turns out you can spend two hours finding that out and still keep looking at Dad for approval afterward.
04:47 — Robby Actually Reviews The Film!
Robby, Cole, and Jaclynn drift from talk about how Robby's friend and his tough Michigan girlfriend will react to the podcast into a long tangent about Jaclynn's road trip through Detroit and the Upper Peninsula, then troubleshoot mic/recording noise issues with jokes about head-mounted mic gear, before circling back to note that Robby (with his friend Sean) grew up watching and quoting this movie constantly.
13:34 — DID JACLYNN NOT LIKE AIRPLANE???
Cole, Robby, and Jaclynn get sidetracked joking about casting Allison Williams in a hypothetical remake before untangling a mixed-up back-and-forth over who's supposed to answer the question of what they knew going into Airplane, eventually landing on Robby's take that the film works because its jokes grow directly out of a genuinely earnest story (which is what influenced comedians like Seth MacFarlane and Adam McKay), while Jaclynn admits she thought she'd seen the movie before but realizes she'd only ever caught its most famous clips.
17:24 — Airplane! is a remake? A parody? No?!?!
Jaclynn and Cole compare Airplane!'s serious plot to a "clothing line" that jokes hang on, estimate the film has at least 250 jokes (maybe closer to 480), and Jaclynn recalls specific gags she already knew before seeing the movie—like the inflatable autopilot and "don't call me Shirley"—which leads her into a tangent about how the nun/boy reading joke reminded her of the Australian comedy show Danger 5.
19:36 — It's a Dramatic Movie!
Cole and Robby recommend other spoof comedies like Danger 5 and Inspector Ike as similar in style, then Jaclynn brings up how Airplane's influence shows up in later memes, describing the recurring gif of a woman being repeatedly slapped harder each year as a joke about escalating chaos.
23:30 — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Also Makes Fun of Cole
Robby, Cole, and Jaclynn go back and forth on their differing reactions to Airplane, with Jaclynn admitting she prefers darker, more emotionally complex stories over pure comedy while Robby and Cole push back and needle each other about it, before the three debate whether the film's uncomfortable jokes—especially a running pedophilia gag and moments of misogyny and racial humor—work as self-aware satire or just haven't aged well.
34:29 — Problematic? Not Sooo Much
Cole tells a story about his highly educated landlord insisting Airplane was written by three people from her Wisconsin hometown, which Cole wrongly took as confirmation of his mistaken belief that it's a Mel Brooks movie, and Robby and Jaclynn tease him for not questioning his own error and for dismissing her correct expertise, while also comparing the film's influence to later comedies like Hot Shots and The Naked Gun.
43:11 — Dad Explains Post-Modernism Bit
The three hosts riff on a shared bit of dialogue with lots of overlapping repetition, then veer into a tangent about Alex Jones and InfoWars being bought by The Onion, before settling into a discussion of whether each of them stayed awake through Airplane and how they personally rate it as a comedy versus a drama with jokes layered on top.
53:17 — The Meanest Joke Ever?
Cole, Robby, and Jaclynn go back and forth on whether a joke in the film still lands today, joking about the characters' Jewish identity, and Jaclynn says her real complaint about the "Air Israel beard" joke isn't that it's offensive but that it was shot too cheaply to do the joke justice, a point Cole then repeats back word for word.
0:00 - Can a Movie Ruin a Friendship? (natural: 0:23)
4:47 - Robby Actually Reviews The Film!
9:30 - FUNNIEST MOVIE EVER MADE
11:05 - WHAT JACLYNN KNEW GOING IN
13:34 - DID JACLYNN NOT LIKE AIRPLANE???
17:24 - Airplane! is a remake? A parody? No?!?!
19:36 - It's a Dramatic Movie!
20:46 - Unhinged Mel Brooks Bit
23:30 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Also Makes Fun of Cole
29:00 - Why Robby Loved The Film This Time Around
30:52 - When Was Cole In or Out?
34:29 - Problematic? Not Sooo Much
43:11 - Dad Explains Post-Modernism Bit
53:17 - The Meanest Joke Ever?
53:58 - Jaclynn Flies a Plane
Directors (co-directed, also co-writers) — "ZAZ":
- David Zucker — also known for co-creating The Naked Gun franchise, and directing The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), Ruthless People (1986), and BASEketball (1998).
- Jerry Zucker — went on to direct Ghost (1990) and First Knight (1995).
- Jim Abrahams — later co-created Top Secret! and the Naked Gun series with the Zuckers.
Screenwriters: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker, adapting Zero Hour! (1957), credited to Hall Bartlett and John C. Champion.
Producers:
- Jon Davison (Producer) — also RoboCop (1987), Starship Troopers (1997), The 6th Day (2000).
The Straight Story is the David Lynch film that Disney put its name on: a G-rated, true-to-life road movie about Alvin Straight, an elderly man in ill health who — no driver's license, legally blind, not much money — welds a trailer to his riding lawnmower and drives it over three hundred miles across Iowa and Wisconsin, at roughly three miles an hour, to make peace with the brother he hasn't spoken to in ten years. Lynch called it his most experimental film, which sounds like a joke until you sit with it: it's the one film he directed that he didn't write (the screenplay is Mary Sweeney's, his editor and producer of twenty years), it strips away every surreal tool he's known for, and what's left is somehow the most unmistakably him. Richard Farnsworth plays Alvin, and it's especially heartbreaking to learn afterward that he was carrying real cancer through the shoot and never disclosed it — a piece of information one of us admitted we wish we didn't have, because it blurs the line between what's performance and what's a man near the end of his life.
We came at this one from three different angles and, mercifully, three different opinions. Robby had seen every Lynch film except this one and was quietly hoping it would be the one that finally made him like Lynch — a genuinely funny confession to open with, and the tension the whole conversation pays off. Cole saw it in 35mm at some absurdly boutique Brooklyn screening and would very much like you to know that (Dad's regular life is just extremely artsy). And the moment that hooked all of us was the woman who's hit fourteen deer in seven weeks, standing over a fresh one in an open field with nowhere for a deer to have possibly come from, wailing where do they all come from — a line that, it turns out, is lifted straight from real life, which makes it the single most Lynchian thing in the movie. That scene became a whole bit; ask Robby, who mimed it at strangers on the subway.
What the conversation circles back to, and what we think earns the two hours, is one small true thing about the storytelling: Alvin doesn't change. He makes one choice decades before the film starts and one more to begin it, and every other beat flows from that — so the movie isn't about a man being transformed by the road. We're the ones who change, watching each person he meets slowly reveal what's at stake, until the reunion (his brother says only "sit down, Alvin," then looks up at the stars) lands as earned as anything you'll see. We also spend real time on Mary Sweeney, who wrote, edited, and produced this and edited most of Lynch's canon, and got a fraction of the flowers — because editing was once dismissed as unimportant, which is precisely why women so often did it. If you've heard the take that Lynch is always just messing with his audience, we'd push back on that here, on the record, and probably lose a few Lynch purists in the process. Sweet.
David Lynch — Director — also: Blue Velvet (1986), Mulholland Drive (2001), Twin Peaks (1990)
Mary Sweeney — Screenwriter — also: Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
John Roach — Screenwriter — also: The Straight Story (1999)
Mary Sweeney — Producer — also: Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
Neal Edelstein — Producer — also: Mulholland Drive (2001), The Ring (2002), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
Freddie Francis — Cinematographer — also: The Elephant Man (1980), Glory (1989), Cape Fear (1991)
Angelo Badalamenti — Composer — also: Blue Velvet (1986), Twin Peaks (1990), Mulholland Drive (2001)
Richard Farnsworth — Alvin Straight — also: The Grey Fox (1982), Misery (1990), Comes a Horseman (1978)
Sissy Spacek — Rose Straight — also: Carrie (1976), Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), In the Bedroom (2001)
Harry Dean Stanton — Lyle Straight — also: Paris, Texas (1984), Alien (1979), Repo Man (1984)
Best Actor (Richard Farnsworth) — NOMINATION
Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama (Richard Farnsworth) — NOMINATION
Best Original Score (Angelo Badalamenti) — NOMINATION
Palme d'Or — NOMINATION
Straight Story was nominated for four Independent Spirit Awards for Best Film, Best Director (Lynch), Best Actor (Farnsworth) and Best First Screenplay (John Roach & Mary Sweeney).
- Best Feature — NOMINATION
- Best Director (David Lynch) — NOMINATION
- Best Male Lead (Richard Farnsworth) — WIN
- Best First Screenplay (Mary Sweeney & John Roach) — NOMINATION
Richard Farnsworth won Best Actor and Freddie Francis won best Cinematography for Straight Story in the New York Film Critics 1999 Awards.
- Best Actor (Richard Farnsworth) — WIN
- Best Cinematography (Freddie Francis) — WIN
Winner British Independent Film Award, Best Foreign Independent Film - English Language
- Best Foreign Independent Film (English Language) — WIN
At the European Film Awards on Saturday, December 4 1999, The Straight Story won the Best non-European film award.
- Best Non-European Film (Screen International Award) — WIN
Best Picture — NOMINATION
Best Actor (Richard Farnsworth) — NOMINATION
Best Director (David Lynch) — NOMINATION
Best Actor (Richard Farnsworth) — NOMINATION
Best Cinematography (Freddie Francis) — NOMINATION
2000 Winner Bodil, Best American Film
Best Foreign Film — NOMINATION
David Lynch won the 1999 San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Director for Straight Story.
- Best Director (David Lynch) — WIN
The film received no nominations from BAFTA, the Writers Guild, or the Directors Guild, and was not selected for the National Film Registry.
The Straight Story is based on a true story: in 1994, 73-year-old Alvin Straight rode a...
What this episode became was not the tidy storytelling-craft conversation Cole had planned. He'd pitched it, by his own accounting, mostly to tee up nine reasons to praise and gently torment the two people he does this with — number nine being that Jaclynn gets "so effing excited about Sarah Polley" and had, at that point, never actually watched a Sarah Polley film. She still hadn't. Jaclynn tried to watch Women Talking several times and couldn't; her body wouldn't let her, and partway through the episode she says why, plainly and without flinching, in a way that reframes everything Cole thought he was assembling. So we ended up doing something closer to an experiment than a review: two of us who saw it walking a third of us — and you — through what it does and why it lands, while the person who couldn't watch it turns out to have the sharpest read in the room on forgiveness, complicity, and why people get so defensive about this movie in the first place. Robby, who watched it twice, is the one insisting there's a plot in here after all, and the argument the three of us have about that is the spine of the whole thing.
There is a content warning at the top for a reason — this episode discusses sexual assault, in the film and in real life. It is also, somehow, warm, and funny, and full of the kind of care that only shows up when people trust each other completely. Dad, as ever, brought something beautifully gift-wrapped and slightly impossible, and got called pretentious as fuck for his trouble, and was thanked for it sincerely by the end. If you found this looking for whether Women Talking is worth your time, or whether you can handle it, the honest three-way conversation we had about exactly that question is the reason to stay.
Sarah Polley — Director — also: Women Talking (2022), Away from Her (2006), Stories We Tell (2012)
Sarah Polley — Screenwriter — also: Women Talking (2022), Away from Her (2006), Alias Grace (2017)
Dede Gardner — Producer — also: Women Talking (2022), 12 Years a Slave (2013), Moonlight (2016)
Jeremy Kleiner — Producer — also: Women Talking (2022), 12 Years a Slave (2013), Moonlight (2016)
Michelle McLeod — Mejal — also: Don't Talk to Irene (2018), My Spy (2020)
Kate Hallett — Autje — also: Women Talking (2022)
Liv McNeil — Neitje — also: Women Talking (2022)
August Winter — Melvin/Nettie — also: Women Talking (2022)
Emily Mitchell — Miep — also: Women Talking (2022)
Vivien Endicott-Douglas — Clara — also: Women Talking (2022)
Kira Guloien — Anna — also: Women Talking (2022)
Shayla Brown — Helena — also: Women Talking (2022)
Here's the film's real awards history:
Academy Awards — Best Picture — NOMINATION
Academy Awards — Best Adapted Screenplay — WIN (Sarah Polley) — at the 95th Academy Awards the film was nominated for Best Picture and Polley won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Golden Globes — Best Screenplay — NOMINATION (Sarah Polley)
Golden Globes — Best Original Score — NOMINATION (Hildur Guðnadóttir) — the film was also nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Original Score at the 80th Golden Globe Awards
BAFTA — the film received no nominations; Sarah Polley had a notable response when one person suggested her film was snubbed by the BAFTA Film Awards
Writers Guild of America Awards — Best Adapted Screenplay — WIN (Sarah Polley) — the film won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Critics' Choice Awards, Writers Guild of America Awards, and the Academy Awards
Directors Guild of America — no nomination found for this film
Screen Actors Guild Awards — Best Ensemble Cast — NOMINATION — the film was nominated for Best Ensemble Cast of a Motion Picture at the 29th Screen Actors Guild Awards
Critics' Choice Awards — Best Picture — NOMINATION
Critics' Choice Awards — Best Director — NOMINATION (Sarah Polley)
Critics' Choice Awards — Best Acting Ensemble — NOMINATION
Critics' Choice Awards — Best Score — NOMINATION (Hildur Guðnadóttir)
Critics' Choice Awards — Best Adapted Screenplay — WIN (Sarah Polley) — 2023 Winner Critics Choice Award · Best Adapted Screenplay · Sarah Polley · 2023 Nominee Critics Choice Award · Best Acting Ensemble · 2023 Nominee Critics Choice Award · Best Score · Hildur Guðnadóttir · 2023 Nominee Critics Choice Award · Best Director · Sarah Polley · 2023 Nominee Critics Choice Award · Best Picture
Independent Spirit Awards — Best Feature — NOMINATION
Independent Spirit Awards — Best Director — NOMINATION (Sarah Polley)
Independent Spirit Awards — Best Screenplay — NOMINATION (Sarah Polley)
Somehow the movie about repressed feelings and things left unsaid has landed on Netflix without anyone making a fuss about it — no farewell tour, no expiring-soon countdown clock, just sitting there in the queue like it's always been there. For a film so obsessed with what people don't announce out loud, that feels almost on brand.
New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.
Carol (2015, directed by Todd Haynes) is a love story told in the liminal week between Christmas and New Year's — that no-man's-land of time when nobody quite knows what year it is or who they're supposed to be. Adapted from Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, a novel she first published under a pseudonym and only put her own name to decades later, it follows Therese (Rooney Mara), a young shop girl who can't decide her own lunch, and Carol (Cate Blanchett), an upper-class New Jersey woman who is, in Jaclynn's words, gay as the day is long and about to lose custody of her daughter over it. Carol leaves her gloves behind at the department store — accidentally or on purpose, though we spend a good while settling firmly on on purpose, on purpose — and the whole thing unspools from there. It's a movie that was passed over entirely at the Oscars, which feels like either a coincidence or exactly the kind of quiet punishment the film itself is about.
What we actually spent the hour on is the strange trick at the center of it: this is a film where almost nothing is said out loud, where the characters announce they want to ask questions and then don't ask them, and yet none of us ever felt lost for a second. Robby came in ready to argue that the constant shifts in perspective stretched the story too thin — a Brechtian "you are watching something, not living it" — while Cole and Jaclynn pushed back that the whole structure is a con that pays off, a fake-out opening scene we all misread completely until the ending rewrote it into a genuine plot twist. Robby also, at some length, describes the movie he actually wanted (Sarah Paulson's Abby, a cigarette, and the drive home nobody filmed), which is a movie that does not exist. Somewhere in there Cole confesses to a war story about handing off a camera rig in shame after trying to shoot a wobbly B-cam himself, which is the closest this show gets to a director's commentary track.
The honest thing we keep circling is whether something being beautiful makes it interesting — because Carol is shot like Vivian Maier and Esther Bubley photographs come to life, every frame a still you'd hang on your wall, and two of us cheerfully admit we didn't much like either lead and mostly just wanted to stare at them and get to the sex scene. If you want a warm-Christmas-sweater reverence, that's not quite us; if you want three people taking a gorgeous movie apart to figure out how it knows so much while showing so little, and disagreeing honestly about whether that's a feat or a limitation, this is the conversation. As always, you don't need to have seen it — though about five minutes in, you'll want to.
Todd Haynes — Director — also: Far From Heaven (2002), I'm Not There (2007), Carol (2015)
Phyllis Nagy — Screenwriter — also: Carol (2015), Mildred Pierce (2011)
Elizabeth Karlsen — Producer — also: Carol (2015)
Stephen Woolley — Producer — also: Carol (2015)
Christine Vachon — Producer — also: Carol (2015), Far From Heaven (2002)
Edward Lachman — Cinematographer — also: Far From Heaven (2002), I'm Not There (2007), Carol (2015)
Carter Burwell — Composer — also: Carol (2015)
Cate Blanchett — Carol Aird — also: Blue Jasmine (2013), The Aviator (2004), Elizabeth (1998)
Rooney Mara — Therese Belivet — also: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), The Social Network (2010)
Sarah Paulson — Abby Gerhard — also: American Horror Story (2011–), Ocean's 8 (2018)
Kyle Chandler — Harge Aird — also: Friday Night Lights (2006–2011), Argo (2012), Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Jake Lacy — Richard Semco — also: The Office (2012–2013), The White Lotus (2021)
John Magaro — Dannie McElroy — also: Not Fade Away (2012), First Cow (2019)
Cory Michael Smith — Tommy Tucker — also: Gotham (2014–2019)
Best Supporting Actress (Rooney Mara) — NOMINATION
Best Adapted Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) — NOMINATION
Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman) — NOMINATION
Best Original Score (Carter Burwell) — NOMINATION
Best Costume Design (Sandy Powell) — NOMINATION
(Carol received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, and Best Adapted Screenplay.)
Golden Globes
- Best Motion Picture – Drama — NOMINATION
- Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama (Cate Blanchett) — NOMINATION
- Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama (Rooney Mara) — NOMINATION
- Best Director (Todd Haynes) — NOMINATION
- Best Original Score — NOMINATION
(It led the Golden Globe Award nominations with five, for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Actress for Blanchett and Mara, Best Director, and Best Original Score)
BAFTA Awards
- Best Film — NOMINATION
- Best Direction (Todd Haynes) — NOMINATION
- Best Leading Actress (Cate Blanchett) — NOMINATION
- Best Supporting Actress (Rooney Mara) — NOMINATION
- Best Adapted Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) — NOMINATION
- Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman) — NOMINATION
- Best Production Design — NOMINATION
- Best Costume Design (Sandy Powell) — NOMINATION
- Best Makeup & Hair — NOMINATION
(Steven Spielberg's war drama Bridge of Spies and Todd Haynes' Carol led all nominees with nine nominations each, including nominations across Best Film, acting, screenplay,...
New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) is Michael Caine playing Ebenezer Scrooge with total, unblinking sincerity opposite a cast of felt puppets — Gonzo narrating as Charles Dickens, Kermit as Bob Cratchit, a tiny crutched Kermit-nephew as Tiny Tim — in a version of Dickens' story so faithful it lifts language verbatim while still finding room for a joke about business being "the American way," then correcting itself to "the British way." It's the movie a lot of people absorbed so young they stopped seeing it, which is exactly the thing we found so worth talking about: it tricks you into paying attention to the original again. Robby brought it because he loves the Muppets and because he'd rewatched it as an adult and been genuinely shocked at how good it is, and about ninety seconds in he tried to declare "end of podcast" on the grounds that there's no story reason — we just love the Muppets. That did not hold.
What we actually got into is why this Scrooge lands harder than the George C. Scott or Scrooged versions most of us grew up on. Caine, by his own account, plays the human rock the Muppets bounce off — the more real he is, the funnier and sadder everything around him gets — and the argument here is that he changes gradually, with each ghost, rather than only when confronted with his own grave. Jaclynn's point is that the usual "oh no, I die, better change" beat is narcissistic, and that this version earns something quieter: a man realizing he has an effect on people and belongs to the world. Cole, who came in assuming he'd seen this a thousand times and had not, gets the film's structure (three ghosts announced up front, and you still feel every beat), clocks the relentless Dutch angles, and learns mid-episode that the poignant, careful writer he'd been praising as "the Muppets" is, in fact, Gonzo. Along the way: the line "darkness was cheap and Scrooge liked it," a cut song called "When Love Is Gone" that most broadcast versions quietly remove, a serious case for Caine deserving a 1992 Oscar nomination (the field was Pacino, Denzel, Eastwood — we ran the math), and a scene where a child freezes under newspaper that the film refuses to soften.
Cole scared the dickens out of everyone, apologized, and did it again. Somewhere in there we all admitted we cried — Tiny Tim, the schoolroom, the red scarf Beaker hands over to a man who's clearly never been given anything in his life — and then wished aloud we could haunt every billionaire on Christmas Eve and wake up to a world full of generosity. If you searched this film hoping someone would take a puppet movie as seriously as it takes itself, that's the whole show.
Brian Henson — Director, Producer — also: Muppet Treasure Island (1996), The Happytime Murders (2018)
Jerry Juhl — Screenwriter — also: The Great Muppet Caper (1981), The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), Muppet Treasure Island (1996)
Martin G. Baker — Producer — also: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Frank Oz — Executive Producer — also: Little Shop of Horrors (1986), The Great Muppet Caper (1981), The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
John Fenner — Cinematographer — also: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Miles Goodman — Composer (Score) — also: Footloose (1984), Big (1988), Muppet Treasure Island (1996)
Paul Williams — Composer (Songs) — also: The Muppet Movie (1979)
Michael Caine — Ebenezer Scrooge — also: The Dark Knight (2008), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Alfie (1966)
Dave Goelz — Gonzo (as Charles Dickens) — also: The Muppet Movie (1979), The Great Muppet Caper (1981), Muppet Treasure Island (1996)
Steve Whitmire — Kermit the Frog (as Bob Cratchit) / Rizzo the Rat / Beaker — also: Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Muppets from Space (1999), The Muppets (2011)
Frank Oz — Miss Piggy (as Emily Cratchit) / Fozzie Bear (as Fozziwig) / Sam the Eagle / Animal — also: The Muppet Movie (1979), The Great Muppet Caper (1981), Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
Jerry Nelson — Ghost of Christmas Present / Statler / Robin the Frog (Tiny Tim) — also: The Muppet Movie (1979), The Dark Crystal (1982), Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
David Rudman — Bunsen Honeydew / Additional Muppet Performer — also: Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Muppets Most Wanted (2014), The Muppets (2011)
Meredith Braun — Belle — also: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Robin Weaver — Young Belle — also: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Steven Mackintosh — Fred — also: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Underworld (2003)
Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children (soundtrack/story album) — NOMINATION
Beyond that, no Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA, Writers Guild, Directors Guild, or National Film Registry recognition turned up in the film's awards record. The film's story album of the movie was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children in 1994, but no wins or nominations from the major film ceremonies exist for this title.
The Muppet Christmas Carol is adapted from the 1843 novella A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, with the screenplay taking artistic license to suit the aesthetic of the Muppets while otherwise following Dickens' original story closely. You can find the original novella here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46 and search for it on Bookshop.org here: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=A%20Christmas%20Carol
Michael Caine wasn't just serious on set — he actually didn't realize until halfway through filming that this was Brian Henson's directorial debut, an oversight that speaks to how confidently the 28-year-old Henson carried himself despite privately calling the shoot "completely terrifying" [Source] and admitting he'd begged other people to direct it instead [Source].
Before shooting began, Caine told Henson he intended to play the role completely straight — "I will never wink, I will never do anything Muppety" — treating it as if he were performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company rather than acting opposite puppets.
Vine was a social app that lived and died on a single constraint: six seconds, looping, no more. It's gone now — folded, absorbed, outlasted by TikTok and YouTube and everything else that figured out how to get monetized by an algorithm. Cole brought us one specific Vine to sit with for a whole episode, promising it would be the most relatable, lowbrow thing he'd ever made us watch. It is neither of those things, which is the joke. What actually happens is this: the GameCube startup logo begins its little purple cube-snake assembly, hiccups partway through the way a real GameCube does, and cuts hard to a man tripping in front of a 7-Eleven and dropping his Big Gulp. Then he starts to get up. Then it loops.
That last detail is the whole thing, and Robby is the one who names it — the getting up is what turns a man falling down into a story rather than a joke at a stranger's expense. From there we end up somewhere none of us planned: Robby describing an exercise he did studying theater in Italy, the verticality of a Greek chorus, a person shouting a line to the gods and being shoved back to the ground and rising and being shoved again, which is apparently also what's happening to a guy and his Big Gulp outside a 7-Eleven. Jaclynn quotes Hemingway's "For sale, baby shoes never worn" at Cole, as she reportedly does often, and Cole finally has an excuse to talk about Lydia Davis. Somewhere in here we make fun of Cole for scratching his neck beard like a pretentious Italian theater student, and Cole insists it isn't pretentious if you mean it in your heart.
If you came here looking for a straight explanation of what a Vine is, you now have one, and you can leave. What you'd be leaving is the more interesting question underneath it — whether the shortest possible story is a lesser form or just a harder one, and what it means that a whole medium built entirely around telling stories in six seconds couldn't survive while the ones built around holding your attention did fine. Cole says short-form storytelling has been quietly killed while long-form has never been healthier, cites the four-hour Brutalist without a trace of irony, and Robby brings up Laurence Olivier walking behind his own camera in a Shakespeare film to show you he knows it's a camera. It's the same argument, really: a thing made perfectly for the medium it's on, and the small talent it takes to see that and pull it off. We spend an entire episode proving you can take six seconds of a man and his soda as seriously as anything else, right up until Robby has to go and we throw him out the door.
Vine's founders actually spent weeks testing different clip lengths — including ten, nine, and five seconds — before landing on six. [Source]
The looping playback that makes a fall-and-recovery clip like this one feel like a complete arc wasn't part of the original plan — it was a fix for a problem the founders noticed almost by accident. "The next thing that we noticed was that the videos start quickly but they also end very quickly and that felt anti-climactic," said Hoffmann. "It didn't feel right." That's when the founders added a loop. [Source]
The recording mechanism itself was built for exactly the kind of stop-motion or matched-cut editing we point out in the copycat Vines — to record, users held their finger on the screen and took it off to pause. The ability to quickly pause and resume filming allowed users to easily record stop-motion animation. [Source]
The very first Vine ever posted wasn't a comedy bit at all — Dick Costolo, the then-CEO of Twitter, created the first Vine. It was a video of someone preparing steak tartare at a French restaurant in NYC called Les Halles. [Source]
Vine: Six Seconds That Changed the World (Global Player / all major podcast apps) — this eight-part documentary series, hosted by Benedict Townsend, digs into the genius, chaos and betrayal behind Vine's rise and its sudden collapse, and features exclusive interviews with Vine's co-founder Rus Yusupov, prominent Vine creators, and the Twitter executives who ran the meeting that signaled the app's unraveling — worthwhile if you want the real backstory on why a medium built entirely around six-second storytelling could rise and vanish so fast.
Know Your Meme's entry on Gamecube Intro Remixes — a reference page tracing the video meme based on the Nintendo GameCube startup screen, useful as a quick primer if you want to see how widely that specific visual gag got remixed beyond the fall-and-recovery format the episode focuses on.
We also covered Freaky Friday (1976) — another slice that ages into pure nostalgia, same way that one Vine somehow still gets us.
New to The Arc? Start with Episode 02: The Fantastic Four if you like Marvel movies — and want to hate us forever and tell your friends how lame we are.
What the conversation is actually about is where writing comes from and when you're allowed to stop. Robby says he writes characters the way he wishes people existed — more patient, more articulate — and that the best line in the play arrived because he heard Janice say it, not because he built it. There's a running device where every mention of the senior center drags along the name of the town and its elementary school and a mandatory "Go Hooks," which the actress found nearly impossible to perform and which Robby refused to cut, because some things feel too good to let go. Cole calls that bit the closest the play gets to the Platonic form of a play itself; Jaclynn, who's realized she can only ever write in her own voice and has made peace with it by embodying the cruel voices in her head instead, keeps circling how you get the picture in your head out into the world without losing it.
The best part, and the reason to spend the time, is Cole asking why Janice records a video instead of just calling — a question so pointed it plays like a profound story choice, until Robby admits, flatly and repeatedly, that he never thought of the other options at all. Cole cannot stop making it worse. It becomes a small essay on the difference between what an artist intends and what an audience swears they meant, complete with a Phoebe Waller-Bridge appearance and Dad digging the hole several feet deeper before anyone can get him to put down the shovel. If you found this searching for the film, know that we treat ten minutes of it more seriously than most people treat features — and that Robby blushes on tape at least once.
Robert Weinstein — Playwright
The Barrow Group — Producing Theater
Full cast and director information was not available for this production.
Hymns to the Obvious is an original short play written by Robert Weinstein — our far too humble host and resident storytelling teacher — performed by The Barrow Group. Read the play here.
The recurring "Go Hooks" civic-pride tic that drives Janice crazy is explicitly modeled on a device from David Mamet's State and Main — that film's fictional town of Waterford has its own nonsensical all-purpose chant, connected to the town's history, with "Go you Huskies!" serving as the town's all-purpose rallying cry. Critics have noted this is a hallmark of how Mamet builds comedy through repetition, misdirection, and his own unique dialogue rhythm rather than punchlines — precisely the mechanism Robby borrows for the "Palmer McKinney" refrain.
The Stephen Colbert/Phoebe Waller-Bridge anecdote we use to describe Robby's unintentional depth is also real. During a 2020 remote interview, Colbert asked Waller-Bridge what the fox in Fleabag means, and she declined to answer, then asked Colbert what he thought it meant. Colbert offered that he thought the fox was the "Hound of Heaven," then recited the Francis Thompson poem of that title as his evidence, and Waller-Bridge said she was "completely blown away," responding "Yes, that's what it is!" — she then asked him "Can you do that whenever anyone asks what I said the fox was?", essentially adopting his reading as her own on the spot, which is the exact dynamic we are pointing to when we compare it to Robby's iPad choice.
New to The Arc? Start with Episode 02: The Fantastic Four if you like Marvel movies — and want to hate us forever and tell your friends how lame we are.
Discover shows related to the arc.fm, based on actual content similarities. Explore podcasts with similar topics, themes, and formats, backed by real data.
