Junk Filter

Latest Episodes:

TEASER - 55: Observe and Report (with Bryan Quinby) Oct 07, 2021

Show notes

Access the entire 80 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/57121333

Street Fight Radio’s Bryan Quinby joins the show from Columbus, Ohio to discuss Jody Hill’s black comedy Observe and Report.

Misunderstood in 2009 as a mean-spirited comedic spin on Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, it is clearer to see in 2021 that Observe and Report was intended as a vicious satire not only of the American police state, but also of the kinds of toxic males that want to be cops, presented as a Judd Apatow-style laff riot.

Bryan and I talk about our appreciation for anti-comedy and harsh satire, how this film anticipated the kinds of guys who populate the alt-right, the bad timing of this film being released right after the smash hit comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and how Jody Hill went on to be one of the great modern satirists of American life through his subsequent work for HBO.

Follow Bryan Quinby on Twitter.

Patrons of the Junk Filter podcast receive at least two additional exclusive episodes a month: some of our notable previous guests include Jared Yates Sexton, David Roth, Karen Geier, Will Sloan, Zach Vasquez and Jacob Bacharach. More to come! Sign up at https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

Check out Bryan's great podcasts Street Fight Radio and The P.O.D Kast.

Trailer for Observe and Report (Jody Hill, 2009)

54: The Card Counter (with Will Menaker) Sep 27, 2021

Show notes

Chapo Trap House’s Will Menaker joins us from Brooklyn to discuss the career of veteran writer-director Paul Schrader, whose latest work The Card Counter is the latest iteration of a story Schrader has told many times over his long career, in true Auteurist tradition: an immersion into a dark subculture from the anguished perspective of God’s Lonely Man.

To set the table, Will and I also discuss two important concepts of understanding modern cinema, both of which strongly apply to this podcast and The Card Counter: Movie Mindset™ and Dudes Rock Cinema. Along the way we discuss previous Schrader films that specifically relate to this latest work including Rolling Thunder, Blue Collar, Light Sleeper, Auto Focus, The Walker and First Reformed.

Plus we review Schrader’s use of Facebook to communicate takes so hot that he is often told by his distributor to log off!

Consider supporting the podcast directly by becoming a Junk Filter Patron and receive access to additional premium episodes every month: sign up at Patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow Will Menaker on Twitter and Letterboxd.

Paul Schrader’s Facebook posts are documented on Twitter at @paul_posts

Music Video for Tight Connection To My Heart - Bob Dylan (Schrader, 1985)

Trailer for The Card Counter (Schrader, 2021)

53: Cutter's Way (with Dan Boeckner) Sep 15, 2021

Show notes

Dan Boeckner of Operators and Wolf Parade and co-host of The Bottlemen podcast returns to Junk Filter for an episode about one of the great underseen films of the eighties, Ivan Passer’s 1981 California neo-noir Cutter’s Way, based on the crime novel Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg.

One rainy night in Santa Barbara, Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) witnesses a man dumping the corpse of a young girl; when he later recognizes a local captain of industry as the man who could be the culprit, his unhinged and physically shattered Vietnam veteran buddy Alex Cutter (John Heard) takes this ball and runs with it, launching an ill-advised blackmail scheme against the tycoon.

Dan and I discuss the joys of what we'd call the Ambient Mystery genre, this film’s relationship not only to the seventies paranoia genre but also to The Big Lebowski, the brilliant performances from two actors who should have had bigger careers (John Heard and Lisa Eichhorn), how Cutter’s Way was mishandled by United Artists on the way to becoming a cult classic, and how we are all Alex Cutter now.

Plus! An extended chat about next week's Bad Vibes Election in Canada!

Follow Dan Boeckner on Twitter, and consider supporting Operators' Biblioteka Patreon!

Trailer for Cutter’s Way (Ivan Passer, 1981)

TEASER - 52: American Movie (with Sean Armstrong) Sep 13, 2021

Show notes

Access the entire 82 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/56088312

Veteran boom operator Sean Armstrong (who worked on every episode of Hannibal!) joins the podcast to discuss Chris Smith’s 1999 film American Movie, a work by a determined documentary filmmaker about a determined independent filmmaker: it tells the story of Wisconsin’s Mark Borchardt and his determination to finally finish his abandoned short horror film Coven and sell enough copies of it on VHS to finance his long-planned feature film Northwestern.

Plus: Sean tells us what it was like to work on Hannibal with tha god Mads Mikkelsen!

Follow Sean Armstrong on Twitter.

Patrons of the Junk Filter podcast receive at least two additional exclusive episodes a month: some of our notable previous guests include Jared Yates Sexton, David Roth, Karen Geier, Will Sloan, Sooz Kempner and Jacob Bacharach. More to come! Sign up at https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

51: The Films of Andrew Dominik (with Ashley Naftule) Sep 06, 2021

Show notes

The writer and playwright Ashley Naftule returns to the pod from Scottsdale Arizona for a look at the work of the ambitious Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik, who has made only 4 films so far, each of high quality, each in their own way about outlaws.

Chopper (2000), a comedic biopic of the notorious and unrepentant Aussie criminal / tabloid folk hero Mark “Chopper” Read, with a starmaking performance from Eric Bana

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), a revisionist epic Western starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck (badly mishandled by Warner Bros.)

Killing Them Softly (2012), a crime drama that serves as an allegory for the 2008 financial crisis and one of the first mainstream films to offer any kind of leftist critique of the Obama era

One More Time With Feeling (2016), a music documentary about Nick Cave made in the wake of the death of Cave’s son

We also discuss Dominik’s upcoming film Blonde, and the fights he is currently having with Netflix over final cut.

Plus: Tony Leung joins the MCU!

Consider supporting the podcast directly by becoming a Junk Filter Patron and receive access to additional premium episodes every month: sign up at Patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow Ashley Naftule on Twitter.

"Andrew Dominik on 20 Years of Chopper: 'Ethics have nothing to do with it'" - Luke Buckmaster, for the Guardian, August 18, 2021

Trailers for

Chopper (2000)

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Killing Them Softly (2012)

One More Time With Feeling (2016)

50: Val Kilmer (with Aaron and Carlee from Hit Factory) Aug 30, 2021

Show notes

The hosts of the Hit Factory Podcast, Aaron Casias and Carlee Gomes, join us from San Francisco to discuss two Val Kilmer films.

Made as David Mamet was getting redpilled post-9/11, his bizarre 2004 thriller Spartan has a stripped-down screenplay comprised mostly of jargon and commands and features a terrific performance from Kilmer as an army ranger sent to rescue a high-value target (the President’s daughter) kidnapped by sex traffickers (a scenario that has new meaning in our modern political age).

The new documentary Val is assembled from hundreds of hours of video captured by Kilmer over the course of his life, and although there is much candor to the film in terms of how Kilmer has been living with loss, certain notorious aspects of his life are downplayed: Kilmer’s well-earned, career-long reputation as “difficult” for example. Val is available on Amazon Prime.

Follow Aaron Casias and Carlee Gomes on Twitter.

Subscribe to the Hit Factory podcast and you can also support them through Patreon.

Trailer for Spartan (David Mamet, 2004)

Trailer for Val (Leo Scott, Ting Poo, 2021)

TEASER - 49: Being There (with Jacob Bacharach) Aug 25, 2021

Show notes

Access the entire 93 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/55330993

Author Jacob Bacharach returns to the pod to discuss Hal Ashby’s evergreen social satire Being There (1979), adapted from the novel by Jerzy Kosinski. featuring Peter Sellers in his greatest performance as Chance, a simple-minded gardener raised by television who becomes a respected political thinker in Washington through sheer circumstance, luck and misunderstanding.

Along the way we discuss the amazing run of great films Hal Ashby made through the 1970s, Being There’s (mostly) successful themes of racial unfairness, media saturation and sexual dysfunction in Washington, and how this film was used as a somewhat tired metaphor during the Trump era to “explain” his Presidency.

Plus we discuss the flawed 2004 HBO movie The Life and Death of Peter Sellers starring Geoffrey Rush, which includes a depiction of the making of Being There and in so doing reveals the perils of a great actor attempting to play a great actor... with a sidebar about our mutual enjoyment of Predator 2 (by the same director!)

Patrons of the Junk Filter podcast receive at least two additional exclusive episodes a month: some of our notable previous guests include Jared Yates Sexton, David Roth, Karen Geier, Will Sloan, Sooz Kempner and Zach Vasquez. More to come! Sign up at https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

48: Ghost World (with Violet Lucca) Aug 20, 2021

Show notes

Violet Lucca, web editor for Harper's Magazine and the host of the publication's podcast, is the special guest for an in-depth discussion of Terry Zwigoff’s 2001 comedy Ghost World, based on a running segment within Daniel Clowes’ comic book series Eightball. The screenplay by Clowes and Zwigoff was the first comic book adaptation to be nominated for an Academy Award.

Violet and I discuss the experience of feeling Extremely Seen watching a movie (in both positive and critical ways), how the film depicts the decline of a close friendship between two young girls as they transition into adulthood, the film’s critique of what Zwigoff termed “contrived consumerism”, and how the story arcs of Enid and Rebecca parallel the subsequent careers of Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson.

Plus: speaking of 20th anniversaries... the Taliban is running Afghanistan again.

Consider supporting the podcast directly by becoming a Junk Filter Patron and receive access to additional premium episodes every month: sign up at Patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow Violet Lucca on Twitter.

Violet hosts The Harper’s Podcast.

Trailer for Ghost World (Zwigoff, 2001)

TEASER - 47: Welcome to Me (with Karen Geier) Aug 09, 2021

Show notes

Access the entire 87 minute episode (and additional bonus episodes) by becoming a patron of Junk Filter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/54704122

Toronto-based writer and content strategist Karen Geier (The Guardian, Vice, The Cut) joins the podcast to discuss Shira Piven’s 2015 comedy-drama Welcome To Me, about a mentally ill woman obsessed with television and Oprah (Kristen Wiig); she wins a staggering amount of money in the California lottery, goes off her meds and bankrolls an expensive and strange syndicated daytime talk show about herself, where she re-enacts traumatic events in her life using actors for an increasingly attentive television audience.

Patrons of the Junk Filter podcast receive at least two additional exclusive episodes a month: some of our notable previous guests include Jared Yates Sexton, David Roth, Will Sloan, Sooz Kempner and Zach Vasquez. More to come! Sign up at https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

46: Phantom Thread (with Zandy Hartig) Aug 02, 2021

Show notes

Los Angeles-based writer actor and producer Zandy Hartig joins the pod for a conversation about Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 historical romance Phantom Thread.

Anderson's first film shot entirely outside of the United States, Phantom Thread is a hybrid of his detailed historical recreations like There Will Be Blood and The Master fused with Punch-Drunk Love's absurdist romantic sensibility. The film was said to be the final screen performance of the great Daniel Day-Lewis but it is also a generous showcase for the relatively unknown Luxembourgian actress Vicky Krieps. Zandy and I also talk about the film’s extraordinary visual design and tone, what it has to say about adapting with the times, the challenges of living with a creative person and the role of the muse, and how Phantom Thread might be a secret comedy!

Also Zandy talks about her ongoing collaboration with Oklahoma’s prolific DIY filmmakers Mickey Reese and Jacob Ryan Snovel.

Consider supporting the podcast directly by becoming a Junk Filter Patron and receive access to additional premium episodes every month: sign up at Patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow Zandy Hartig on Twitter and check out zandyhartig.com

Trailer for Phantom Thread (Anderson, 2017)

Mickey Reese directs funny Instagram commercials for George's Liquors in Oklahoma City, and Zandy’s in the latest one!

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