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Show Notes
Since I contain multitudes, have run out of ideas, and since I aspire the podcast to embody Paul Krassner's iconic satirical magazine The Realist's motto of "Irreverrance is our only sacred cow", I am debuting the first in a series of occasional episodes where I revisit those films so firmly ensconced in our collective filmgoing conscience that we can be forgiven for forgetting if they're actually, you know...any good. So let's start with one of the odder films to achieve cinematic immortality: Frank Darabont's adaptation of a Stephen King short story (not that you'd know that from the films marketing materials) 'The Shawshank Redemption". This film has so entrenched itself that one forgets that it was a bomb upon release, that audiences didn't know what to make of the title nor the trailer, that it was unloved by the Academy despite 7 nominations, and that six months after its release you'd be forgiven for thinking that it would disappear forever as a weird but understandable failed experiment. Except. The film became one of the most-rented video store films of all time, in the time of video stores. And when cable TV really took off in the 90's, there again was The Shawshank Redemption, appearing nightly somewhere. Steven Speilberg called it his "Chewing gum movie" meaning that when you encounter it (step in it), you can't get rid of it and you end up watching the entire thing. Others have posited it as the primary example of a Relationship Movie For Me. Master & Commander being the other one. Does Shawshank exist to allow men to cry? Or just to indulge their fear/fascination with prison rape? Or both? There's plenty of evidence to support all theories, so let's all get locked up with Shawshank, Andy, Red and the fellas and see whether this enduring, schmaltzy, effective weeper deserves a filmic pardon. The hard-to-peg (no pun intended) original Trailer for Shawshank. Margaret Heidenry's excellent history of Shawshank for Vanity Fair
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Would you believe I've never actually seen Friday The 13th before? I surprised even myself with this realization. Since the Peacock prequel series Crystal Lake has become the highest-rated F13 spinoff in the franchise's history, and is omnipresent on social media in a blanket marketing campaign rivaling Crystal Lake in size and depth...I decided to wade in tentatively. What emerged was a nuanced appreciation for the film's deft stitching-together of the horror and film tropes that inspired it, and a confused awareness that Pamela Vorhees, and not Jason, is the real star of the film. I enjoyed this film more than I thought I would, even as it causes me to question everything I thought I knew about myself. Send help!
Episode 300: The Lives of Performers. I followed a line from Fame to the documentaries Every Little Step and Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened. Together, they cover so many of the joys and challenges of pursuing a life onstage, and present compelling and hard-won perspectives about the work's peculiar and demanding mix of talent, luck on the audition day, and self-belief in the face of a thousand no's to every yes. It was @bradcalebkane who suggested Fame as an episode. While revisiting the film, I learned its origin story: In 1976, talent manager David De Silva saw A Chorus Line and noticed that one of the songs made a reference to the New York City High School of Performing Arts. This led him to playwright Chris Gore, and the creation of a story detailing how ambition and rejection influence the lives of adolescent students. From Fame I found my way to Every Little Step. The film weaves the struggle to cast the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line with the history of the original 1975 production. It features rare, original audio of creator Michael Bennett interviewing Broadway dancers about their lives and careers and follows several prospective 2006 cast members through the physical, psychological, and emotional gauntlet of the 8-month-long audition process. In a way, the film takes kids who could have (and probably did) come from the High School for the Performing Arts and shows the reality of trying to do this for a living. And finally, the documentary about the infamous 1981 Sondheim/Prince production Merrily We Roll Along, which dizzyingly went from sure-fire career-making hit to an overnight flop that closed after only 16 shows. 35 years later, the film's director, Lonny Price, a former cast member, interviews his colleagues about life, lessons learned, and paths taken and not taken. This film takes our earnest and ambitious performers on another, crucial stop on the performer journey: perspective and how the dreams of youthful ambition shape themselves around different kinds of lives on and off the stage.
"I dare you to do an episode about bearer bonds!" -Fraser Rice, Host, 'Wealth Actually' Podcast CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! Many thanks to my guest, Kiah Lau Haslett for her insightful, funny, and (very important for a guy who counts on his fingers) easy-to-understand bearer bond background. You can read her excellent piece on the history of bearer bonds here. Also, I've changed the name of the podcast. More on that in a future episode.
In this installment of Sacred Cows, I take a fresh and possibly first look at 'Die Hard', John McTiernan's action classic that I can't remember if I ever actually saw before. It turns out there is plenty of subversive stuff going on beneath all the action, and it's no wonder that the film did such boffo box office...and also all the more disappointing that it went on to spawn such apparently uninspired sequels; something all the more ironic given the original film's general distaste for Capitalism, greed, and middle-manager icompetence. It ALSO turns out that the love story at the center of 'Die Hard' might just be a little more surprising than the film would at first blush own up to. Join me, won't you?? You know all the famous lines, but let's kick the tires on 'Die Hard' and find out if it's GOATed status is deserved...or deserving of a 40-story free fall off the Nakatomi Tower.
SEQUELS... In this episode, I take a look at one of the most infamous film debacles of all time: John Boorman's ill-advised, poorly conceived, crowd-displeasing follow-up to one of the greatest and most popular horror films ever made. How could it go wrong? From the start, throughout, and even after release. Let me count the ways. Also, a bit on our current moment of performative reclamation of movies that are just demonstrably awful. Resist!