Junk Filter

Latest Episodes:

TEASER - 143: Miami Vice: Ripped from the Headlines (with Matthew Kinkaid) Aug 12, 2023

Show notes

Access this entire 90 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes, including the entire Miami Vice sidebar series) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/143-miami-vice-87557729

Friend of the show and Miami Vice head Matthew Kinkaid joins us from San Antonio, Texas for the sixth episode in our summer sidebar series.

We discuss selected Vice episodes from Seasons 3 and 4; when Michael Mann departed from the production to work on Manhunter and Crime Story, Wolf took over as show runner and started to change the way Vice looked and felt, eschewing the pastel color scheme for harder neon lighting and a flatter visual look. The plots were now based on current events and tabloid fare, a new “ripped from the headlines” approach Wolf would soon bring to his next show Law & Order. Crockett wore a long mullet and Tubbs grew a beard. These changes, plus the newer earlier timeslot on Friday nights (up against Dallas) led to the slow decline of the popularity of the series.

Matthew and I discuss three representative episodes of this period in the series, with Crockett and Tubbs up against a sleazy lawyer who is trafficking in stolen Colombian babies, crooked televangelists, and a scary porn director / artiste who may have made a snuff film, in a disturbing case that sets off the unravelling of Sonny Crockett throughout the rest of season 4.

Currently most Miami Vice episodes are available for streaming in the US on Tubi.

Episodes discussed on this show:

Baby Blues - Season 3, Ep 9

Amen…Send Money - Season 4, Ep 2

Death and the Lady - Season 4, Ep 3

Follow Matthew Kinkaid on Twitter.

Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas accepting the 1986 People’s Choice Award for Miami Vice.

142: Breathless ’83 (with Aaron and Carlee from Hit Factory) Aug 06, 2023

Show notes

Aaron and Carlee from the Hit Factory podcast return from San Francisco for a deep dive into the underrated 1983 American remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s landmark film Breathless, directed by Jim McBride.

Assailed at the time of release for being a shallow exercise in style, to watch Breathless 40 years later is to see a work arguably as influential on the next generation of American filmmakers as Godard’s original had been on the New American Cinema of the 1970s; the remake’s cocktail of retro cool, fast cars and meta-textual pop culture references mark it as a clear influence on Tarantino, Lynch and Paul Thomas Anderson among others.

In an inversion of the original plot, Richard Gere plays Jesse Lujack, a petty criminal in Vegas obsessed with Jerry Lee Lewis and Silver Surfer comics who steals a Porsche, shoots a highway patrolman on his way to LA and as the manhunt develops, hides out with a French architecture student he’d recently had a fling with named Monica, played by the 19-year-old actress Valérie Kaprisky.

Breathless ’83 is extremely sexy so at the constant risk of being thrown in Horny Jail, the three of us discuss the intense on-screen chemistry between Gere and Kaprisky, McBride’s use of vivid color, rear-screen projection and music to heighten the cinematic experience, what the film has to say about toxic masculinity and male narcissism, and we discuss the Silver Surfer-obsessed Jesse Lujack as a cautionary tale about becoming Marvel-poisoned.

Breathless is currently streaming on Criterion Channel and Tubi.

Become a patron of the podcast to access to exclusive episodes every month, including this summer's entire Miami Vice sidebar series. Over 30% of Junk Filter episodes are exclusively available to patrons. To support this show directly please subscribe at ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow Aaron and Carlee on Twitter.

Subscribe to the Hit Factory podcast; you can also support the show directly through Patreon.

‘Breathless’ (1983): A Stylish Remake of Godard’s 1960 Film as an Accurate Portrayal of Male Narcissism - by Koralika Suton, for NeoText

Flat open matte 35mm trailer for Breathless (Jim McBride, 1983)

X performing “Breathless” on Late Night with David Letterman, 1983

141: Miami Vice: Captain Real Estate (with Jeb Lund) Aug 01, 2023

Show notes

On the fifth episode of this podcast’s summer sidebar series on NBC’s crime drama Miami Vice, the writer and podcaster Jeb Lund joins me from Tampa, Florida for a look at the two-season story arc that pitted Bob Balaban against G. Gordon Liddy. Balaban’s Ira Stone, an Army reporter who served with Sonny Crockett in Vietnam, shows up in Miami 10 years later tracking down his sworn enemy, the mysterious drug trafficker turned private militia financier “Captain Real Estate”, played by the Watergate burglar and convicted felon in his acting debut.

Jeb wanted us to add a Season 4 episode to our agenda, The Rising Sun of Death, a sleazy one where Vice goes up against the Yakuza with the help of a Japanese PI who is after the murderous head of the Sumiroshi-gumi clan. This episode also features R. Lee Ermey as a dirty cop and a strip club that plays The Smiths.

These three episodes offer sharp critiques from the left of the treatment of Vietnam Veterans and US military involvement in drug trafficking in Southeast Asia, America’s intervention in Central America and willingness to work with fascists in the global fight against communism, and the political interference that renders law enforcement pointless.

Episodes discussed on this show:

Back in the World - Season 2, Ep 11

Stone’s War - Season 3, Ep 2

The Rising Sun of Death - Season 4, Ep 9

Become a patron of the podcast to access to exclusive episodes every month, including this summer's entire Miami Vice sidebar series. Over 30% of Junk Filter episodes are exclusively available to patrons. To support this show directly please subscribe at ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow Jeb Lund on Twitter.

Music video for Crockett’s Theme - Jan Hammer, 1986

TEASER - 140: Miami Vice: The Glamorous Life (with Sean Armstrong) Jul 29, 2023

Show notes

Access this entire 87 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes, including the entire Miami Vice sidebar series) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/140-miami-vice-86864671

The Miami Vice sidebar series continues with returning guest Sean Armstrong, a Toronto-based veteran boom operator for film and television (Star Trek: Discovery, Hannibal)

For this episode we discuss the influence Vice had on the city of Miami itself, how the city conformed to the image the program had of it, which had implications for tourism and Miami as a major production hub for film and television.

But we also talk about how the program was eventually a victim of its success, and the aspirational tones of the series degraded over the course of five years as the drug war accelerated, the creatives left and popularity waned, with the show finally chasing after trends where once it set them.

We sample episodes throughout the series to illustrate this, from Abel Ferrara’s season 1 episode The Home Invaders(which has major elements Michael Mann would later return to in Heat and the upcoming Heat 2) to mid-series episodes about miscarriages of justice and the paranoid world of surveillance and counter-surveillance, and what the show looked like in its final days (including one of the worst episodes of the series, a backdoor pilot for a potential ripoff of 21 Jump Street).

Follow Sean Armstrong on Twitter.

Episodes discussed on this show:

The Home Invaders - Season 1, Ep 20

Forgive Us Our Debts - Season 3, Ep 11

Lend Me An Ear - Season 3, Ep 18

Leap of Faith - Season 5, Ep 20

Music video for Sheila E.’s The Glamorous Life, 1984

The classic NBC Miami Vice promo, 1987

TEASER - 139: Oppenheimer (with Corey Atad) Jul 26, 2023

Show notes

Access this entire 115 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/139-oppenheimer-86689014

The film writer Corey Atad returns to the show for a deep dive into Christopher Nolan’s historical epic Oppenheimer.

Beyond a discussion of the film itself we review the several film formats Oppenheimer has been released in theatrically, how this movie reflects and departs from the source material (the biography American Prometheus: ), and compare the film to its major stylistic influences (including Oliver Stone’s JFK, There Will Be Blood and The Man Who Fell To Earth.

We also discuss the Christopher Nolan redemption arc in general; how he uses the IMAX screen to create intimate horror, his fantastic cast of actors, the callbacks to his earlier works (Memento and even the Batman trilogy) and how some of the bozo decisions he often takes as director somehow don’t take away from this film’s power.

Follow Corey Atad on Twitter.

Trailer for Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023)

Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy in the aisles of Vidéo Club in Paris.

138: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (with Scout Tafoya) Jul 12, 2023

Show notes

The writer and filmmaker Scout Tafoya, author of the new book But God Made Him a Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century, joins the show to discuss one of Ford’s greatest films, the 1962 western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, starring John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Lee Marvin.

Made in the twilight of Ford’s career, the downbeat Liberty Valance is an example of what we would now call a filmmaker’s Late Style: a veteran director taking stock of their own legacy in their final works. Liberty Valance is a preview of the conclusion of the classic era of the Western genre in the tumult of the sixties, the end of the Old West as represented by Wayne, the cowboy archetype finally replaced by constitutional order and modern progress as embodied by Stewart, as a young eastern lawyer who travels west to the town of Shinbone, intending to introduce education and order to a lawless place approaching statehood, and is soon targeted for death by feared local outlaw Liberty Valance (Marvin).

Scout has seen every one of John Ford’s surviving films; we discuss Liberty Valance in the context of Ford’s career and worldview, grapple with the ongoing question in our age of assessing the art of the problematic artist, and consider what this film has to say about the consequences of violence and the media’s role in reinforcing the official version of historical facts.

Become a patron of the podcast to access to exclusive episodes every month, including this summer's entire Miami Vice sidebar series. Sign up at ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow Scout Tafoya on Twitter and support his work on Patreon.

Scout’s book, But God Made Him a Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century is available now.

Trailer for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)

137: Shatner in the Seventies (with Jessica Ritchey) Jul 07, 2023

Show notes

The writer and critic Jessica Ritchey returns to the show for a look at the strange body of work William Shatner put together in the 1970s, the wilderness years in between the end of the Star Trek TV series and the start of the Star Trek film series.

We focus on four of his films, all currently available to watch on YouTube:

The Horror At 37,000 Feet (1973), a TV movie that combines The Exorcist with the Airport series, with Shatner as a defrocked priest fighting against the demonic possession of a transatlantic flight.

Pray for the Wildcats (1974), also made for TV, with Shatner as a depressed ad executive forced to go with his partners on a motorcycle ride through Mexico with a rich client (Andy Griffith) who turns out to be a psychotic monster looking for consequence-free thrills.

Impulse (1974), a deranged regional grindhouse feature by scholckmeister William Grefé starring Shatner as a murderous gigolo, the ultimate Florida Man depicted on screen.

Disaster on the Coastliner (1979), an all-star TVM starring Shatner as a charming conman who gets swept up in the takeover of a train by a deranged engineer determined to smash it into an oncoming train (with the Vice President’s wife on board!)

We also discuss the notorious video of Shatner’s spoken-word version of “Rocket Man” at the 1978 Saturn Awards for science fiction, and other highlights from this very strange and adventurous period in his long career.

Become a patron of the podcast to access exclusive episodes every month, including this summer's entire Miami Vice sidebar series. Sign up at ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow Jessica Ritchey on Twitter, and support her work on Patreon.

Jessica’s YouTube mixtape “Shatner’s Wilderness Years” with links to the programming we discuss in this show.

You can order the Grindhouse Releasing limited edition blu-ray restoration of Impulse here!

Trailer for Impulse (William Grefé, 1974)

William Shatner Loblaws commercial for Canadian TV, 1972

The “Rocket Man” clip from the 1978 Saturn Awards, AI-remastered

TEASER - 136: Miami Vice: Castillo (with Sarah Kurchak) Jul 01, 2023

Show notes

Access this entire 102 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/136-miami-vice-85397729

Our Miami Vice series continues with Sarah Kurchak, a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared in Time and Hazlitt, to discuss one of the greatest tv characters of all time, the commander of the Metro-Dade Organized Crime Bureau, Vice Division, Lt. Martin “Marty” Castillo.

Edward James Olmos, who won the Best Supporting Actor Emmy for his work in season one, had a unique agreement with executive producer Michael Mann to play the part, including a non-exclusive contract and full creative control of his character, and over the course of the five episodes featured on this show we discover increasingly incredible facts about Castillo’s life history and skill sets that climax midway through season two in a mind-blowing episode Olmos also directed, Bushido.

We discuss Olmos’ fascinating process to build and expand upon his character, the only episode of the show Mann ever wrote, and Sarah’s regard for Castillo in her autistic headcanon.

Miami Vice is currently available to watch for free on Tubi.

Episodes discussed on this show:

One-Eyed Jack - Season 1, Ep 6

Golden Triangle Parts 1 & 2 - Season 1, Ep 13 & 14

Whatever Works - Season 2, Ep 2

Bushido - Season 2, Ep 8

Follow Sarah Kurchak on Twitter.

Sarah has two books!

I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder: A Memoir

Work It Out: A Mood-Boosting Exercise Guide for People Who Just Want to Lie Down

“Imagining A Fuller Spectrum of Autism on TV”, by Sarah Kurchak, for Pacific Standard, Feb 22, 2018

135: The Flash (with Adam Jackson) Jun 23, 2023

Show notes

Returning guest Adam Jackson joined me to bear witness to the box office failure The Flash, on track to lose Warner Bros 200 million dollars after opening with a dismal box office take that was less than half of what was originally projected.

The Flash was caught up in several nightmares, including the public meltdown of its star Ezra Miller and three regime changes at WB/DC that led to several reshoots and a strange marketing plan that played down Miller and played up the various Batmans featured in this multiverse time-travel adventure (Michael Keaton, Ben Affleck and a cameo from George Clooney) and unconvincing hyperbole from the studio heads about how massive it was going to be (James Gunn even described it the best superhero movie ever made).

Why did it bomb so hard? Adam and I discuss the convoluted plot, the troubled lead actor, the crude visual effects (rationalized as a deliberate choice by director Andy Muschietti) the questionable resurrection of Christopher Reeve as Superman, and the creative dead end this series has found itself in as WB/DC prepares for a franchise reset.

Become a patron of the podcast to access to exclusive episodes every month, including this summer's entire Miami Vice sidebar series. Sign up at ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow Adam Jackson on Twitter.

Trailer for The Flash (Andy Muschietti, 2023)

TEASER - 134: Miami Vice: Dark Vice (with Morgan Richter) Jun 19, 2023

Show notes

Access this entire 90 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus episodes) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/134-miami-vice-84809752

To continue our summer sidebar on NBC’s Miami Vice, we’re joined from Seattle by the author and pop-culture expert Morgan Richter, creator and host of Miami Vice Changed Everything on YouTube.

Michael Mann once referred to the tone of Miami Vice as “Sunset Noir” and the three episodes we are discussing on this show are some of the bleakest in the series, with femme fatales, unreliable narrators, hidden secrets and mysteries with devastating conclusions that epitomize the show at its best, pushing boundaries for network television in terms of both style and content.

Morgan and I discuss why we prefer sad and depressing Vice, and lament the current absence on streaming of Evan, our favourite episode of the series.

Follow Morgan Richter on Twitter, and check out her comprehensive guide to every episode of the show on YouTube, Miami Vice Changed Everything.

Miami Vice is currently available to watch for free on Tubi.

Episodes discussed on this show:

Out Where The Buses Don’t Run - Season 2, Ep 3

Junk Love - Season 2, Ep 6

Evan - Season 1, Ep 21