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What great horror looks and sounds like, with the makers of The Terror and A Quiet Place May 24, 2018

Show notes

Sometimes, the scariest thing is what you don’t see onscreen. It’s a lesson taken to heart by the folks behind two of the best horror projects of the first half of 2018 — the AMC miniseries The Terror and the gigantic hit movie A Quiet Place. In this special horror showcase episode, Todd talks to Soo Hugh and David Kajganich, the showrunners and head writers of The Terror; and then with Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn, the sound designers of A Quiet Place. All four talk about how to build horror unconventionally — The Terror by starting from a real, historical event that didn’t actually involve supernatural interference (though the TV show adds a fearsome creature to chow down on stranded sailors) and A Quiet Place by stripping out almost all spoken dialogue. It’s a great time for horror, and Soo, David, Erik, and Ethan bring unique perspectives to what’s made the genre boom so much and where it might be headed.

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Veteran comedy writer Nell Scovell on 30 years of being "the only woman in the room" May 17, 2018

Show notes

Writer Nell Scovell has worked for some of the best, most popular TV shows of the past 30 years. She wrote for David Letterman. She wrote for The Simpsons. She created the '90s show Sabrina the Teenage Witch. She wrote on NCIS. And at too many of those jobs, she was the only woman working in the writers’ room, countering Hollywood’s endless boys’ club. Scovell’s new memoir, Just the Funny Parts, is an excellent chronicle of her time in the TV trenches, as well as the times she’s branched out into writing books (she co-authored the massive bestseller Lean In with Sheryl Sandberg) and writing jokes for President Obama. Above all else, the book makes the argument that having more diversity in Hollywood writers' rooms will make movies and TV shows funnier. Scovell joins Todd for a frank and funny conversation about all those famous shows she’s worked on, her push for better representation of women behind the scenes in Hollywood, and her best Simpsons memories.

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The Magicians' Sera Gamble on making great fantasy TV without Game of Thrones money May 09, 2018

Show notes

“This shit should not be cheesy,” Sera Gamble says. She’s talking about the visual effects and production design on the terrific Syfy fantasy series The Magicians, which just completed its third season, a cinch to make Todd’s top 10 of the year. While the show is one of TV’s most inventive, it has a fraction of the budget of something like Game of Thrones, which makes finding interesting ways to present otherworldly scenarios without breaking the bank a creative challenge. Fortunately, Gamble is up to the task. Her work on the long-running CW series Supernatural won her fans, thanks to her affinity for deeply creepy but deeply affecting monsters. And The Magicians, while a fantasy show, is one of TV’s most thoughtful shows about mental illness and the tough choices you have to make in your 20s when you’re still trying to figure out just who you are. Gamble joins Todd for the first installment of a series of episodes with writers Todd loves. They talk about producing great fantasy TV on a budget, what makes a great monster and how The Magicians became an unlikely but timely show about women's anger.

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Thanos and Roseanne: how two mad titans took over pop culture May 02, 2018

Show notes

This week on I Think You’re Interesting, we’re trying something different, by dissecting two of the biggest pop culture stories of the spring. First, Vox culture writer Alex Abad-Santos joins Todd to talk about the fallout from Avengers: Infinity War. The conversation is full of spoilers, particularly when it comes to the film’s controversial ending, which some love and some hate. If you haven't seen the movie and want to avoid spoilers skip ahead to 24:29 to hear Todd's conversation about the Roseanne revival with Vox culture writer Caroline Framke and Vox deputy culture editor Genevieve Koski. After being off the air for more than 20 years, Roseanne debuted with huge ratings and solid reviews but the show has quickly become better known for its star’s politics. As one of the most famous Trump supporters in the entertainment industry, has Roseanne the actress overwhelmed Roseanne the show? Todd, Caroline and Genevieve tackle that question and more.

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Why 2001: A Space Odyssey is still one of the greatest films ever made, 50 years later Apr 25, 2018

Show notes

Even if you haven’t seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s mind-melting 1968 science fiction epic, you probably know at least something about it. It’s one of those movies, like Star Wars or Citizen Kane, that has become so thoroughly dissolved into our pop culture that you’ll have heard of the villainous computer HAL or know the famed music cue (Richard Strauss' “Also sprach Zarathustra”) that plays over its most indelible images. But how were those moments created? The story of 2001 is the story of an almost obsessive attention to detail, of a budget that almost completely destroyed the film’s studio, of an initial wave of terrible reviews that might have killed a lesser movie. At every step of the way along its production process (and even after its release), 2001 is a fascinating example of big-time moviemaking gone right. This week, Todd is joined first by Vox film critic Alissa Wilkinson to talk about 2001’s long legacy, then by author Michael Benson, whose book Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece is the definitive account of the making of the film, to talk about how this titanic achievement came to be.

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How Jean Smart beat Hollywood's age biases to build a nearly 40-year career Apr 18, 2018

Show notes

Designing Women, Frasier, 24, Fargo, Legion, some of the best TV shows of the past 30-plus years have one terrific actress in common: Jean Smart. Tall, striking, and bold, Smart has carved out a path in Hollywood that involves never doing the same thing twice — to the degree that her immediate follow-up to the sitcom Designing Women was a role as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in a made-for-TV movie. Smart is currently one of FX’s Noah Hawley players, bouncing between the TV producer’s Fargo (where she played an unlikely Midwestern crime boss in 1979) to his X-Men series Legion (where she plays the head of a secret program investigating mutants). Just watching Hawley write for Smart makes clear how versatile she is. He keeps tossing new challenges her way, and she keeps landing them with precision. But, needless to say, there are plenty of actresses who haven’t managed to build nearly 40-year careers. What’s unique about Smart is how she seems to never stop working, even as she’s never content to be pigeonholed into a “Jean Smart role” (whatever that would mean). She joins Todd this week to talk about building such a long career, her memories of Designing Women, and her attempts to understand just what’s happening on Legion.

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Wonderful Midwestern moms, explained by comedian Louie Anderson (who plays his own mom on TV) Apr 11, 2018

Show notes

One of the most sympathetic, compelling portraits of motherhood on television centers on a performance by a man. On FX's Baskets, which recently completed its third season, comedian Louie Anderson plays Christine Baskets, mother of twins Chip and Dale (both played by Zach Galifianakis), and he describes the experience not as trying to put on a character but, instead, as channeling his own mother, Ora, a South Dakota native who spent most of her life in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota. When he steps out of his trailer, Louie says, it's as if he opens up a conduit to his mother (who has passed away), wherever she might be. He's also used his fond memories of his mother to write a new book, Hey Mom: Stories for My Mother, But You Can Read Them Too, in which he reminisces about how she protected him from a dangerous, abusive situation during his childhood and prepared him for his long career in comedy, which has included highly acclaimed standup work, the 1990s animated series Life With Louie, and a gig hosting Family Feud. His standup is notable for pivoting between gently poking fun at himself (usually via his vast roster of self-directed fat jokes) and telling more emotionally risky stories about his life growing up with his large family. Louie joins Todd this week to talk about learning to play his mother, wondering just what was in her chocolate frosting recipe, and what it takes to tell a good fat joke that's not needlessly cruel.

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The 5 best coming-of-age movies about teen girls Apr 04, 2018

Show notes

Lady Bird was one of the surprise hits of 2017, with its bittersweet, deeply funny depiction of teen girl adolescence. And that got Todd to thinking: Why is it so rare to see good movies about teen girls coming of age? To answer that question, he brought in Kay Cannon, director of the new comedy Blockers, a very funny gross-out raunchfest, which just so happens to be about teen girls figuring out their sexuality while their parents wrestle with the sexist double standards we apply to young women in that very situation. (We assure you it’s a comedy.) Kay also wrote the screenplay for Pitch Perfect and was part of the writers' rooms on both 30 Rock and New Girl. Kay joined Todd to talk about making Blockers, but also to run down her five favorite teen girl movies of all time. (And, yes, one of them is Lady Bird.)

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Jason Katims, showrunner of Friday Night Lights and Rise, on why teens make great TV Mar 28, 2018

Show notes

Few TV heavyweights have done as much to tell thoughtful, moving stories about teenagers as Jason Katims. While he was a young playwright, Katims broke into the television industry as a staff writer for My So-Called Life — ground zero for realistic depictions of adolescence on TV — then quickly went on to work on any number of iconic teen shows, culminating in his five-season stint as the showrunner of the gorgeous small-town drama Friday Night Lights, following football players in a Texas town. Katims has, of course, written about non-teenagers too. For six seasons, his Parenthood told thoughtful stories about people struggling with very mundane, very real problems. (It was great.) But he’s gone back to high school with his latest series, Rise. The NBC drama follows teenagers involved with a drama program in a dying Pennsylvania steel town. Todd has been hoping to talk to Katims for years now, which made this discussion all the better. Katims touches on the differences between high school football coaches and high school drama directors, the lessons he learned from the legendary creator and producers of My So-Called Life, and how he learned to be judicious in using Friday Night Lights’ most famous catchphrase.

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How to write a joke for President Obama Mar 21, 2018

Show notes

How do you write a joke for the president of the United States? How do you come up with something that will seem perfectly cutting but not too cruel, silly but not stupid? How do you not denigrate the highest office in the land with — sniff — comedy? Those were all questions David Litt, a speechwriter for President Obama and one of the folks most instrumental to Obama’s comedy monologues at the White House Correspondents Dinner, had to face when he worked in the White House. And after he left, he wrote his memoir Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years, a whole book about his time working for the president, complete with lots of advice on how to write jokes for the president. Todd talks with Litt this week about the strengths and limitations of political comedy, the joke he wrote for Obama that he’s most proud of, and the similarities between working at the White House and his new gig at Funny or Die.

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