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Latest Episodes:

10: Welcome To New York (with Will Sloan) Dec 29, 2020

Show notes

On this week’s episode, Toronto-based writer and podcasting magnate Will Sloan returns to the pod to discuss Abel Ferrara’s 2014 film Welcome To New York, a dramatization of IMF chief (and presumptive future French President) Dominque Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in Manhattan in 2011 for the sexual assault of a hotel chambermaid, starring Gerard Depardieu as the thinly-disguised DSK figure. Not only was it Ferrara’s best film in years, but it was also very ahead of the curve, a drama centred around issues that would become central cultural themes in the second half of the decade: the #MeToo movement, the abuse of power and privilege, and the sexual predation of powerful political figures. The film was released in Europe in Ferrara’s explicit version, but the American distributor imposed shocking and drastic cuts to the film for its US release, removing 17 minutes and altering the meaning of the film. Ferrara spoke out against the mutilation of his work and threatened to sue the distributor, and the noise over the creative interference blunted the film's impact stateside, in a stunning example of corporate censorship of an artist.

Perhaps critics and audiences were not ready to listen to what Welcome To New York had to say in 2014 but it’s a fascinating film to consider now.

Plus a discussion of the unpromising trailer for the upcoming Scorsese documentary for Netflix about Fran Leibowitz.

The full 125-minute version of Welcome To New York is available on Apple TV (and through torrenting) - steer clear of the 109-minute American cut, the one most commonly available in North America.

Happy New Year!

Follow Will Sloan on Twitter.

A very good interview with Abel Ferrara about the film, from when it screened during the Cannes Film Festival (out of competition), from Daniel Kasman for Mubi, June 2014

9: The Astrologer (with Peter Kuplowsky) Dec 21, 2020

Show notes

Toronto-based film producer and TIFF Midnight Madness programmer Peter Kuplowsky comes on the pod to talk about The Astrologer (1975), a one of a kind vanity production / ego trip by first time filmmaker (and con artist) Craig Denney, briefly screened after being rediscovered decades later but then pulled from circulation over music licensing issues too complex to untangle. But before the clampdown it did play theatrically in Toronto, thanks to Peter Kuplowsky. And I got to see it.

This episode goes down the rabbit hole: what The Astrologer is, how it was made, and why you currently can’t see it. Don’t worry that you need to see this film before you listen to the show because it could be a long time before it is seen again, and besides this crazy film is impossible to ruin and just part of an incredible overall story. Our conversation also covers vanity films, the numerous comparisons that can be made between The Astrologer and Citizen Kane, the horseshoe theory of when incompetence becomes genius, and the mysteries around director Craig Denney, who disappeared from the world in the years following the film’s completion and near-erasure.

Plus Peter and I chat about how George Lucas could be the subject of the next Citizen Kane remake, and Peter recommends a newly rediscovered vanity film you CAN see right now.

Follow Peter Kuplowsky on Twitter.

The Astrologer - “re-release” trailer

"Who Is The Astrologer?” - the most comprehensive article on Craig Denney & the film, by Sean Welsh for Matchbox Cine Club

The American Genre Film Archive rescued The Astrologer and does great work restoring and scanning rare film prints, find out more at their website.

Peter Kuplowsky produced two films that will be available in January 2021:

Climate of the Hunter

Psycho Goreman

8: Viridiana (with Justine Smith) Dec 14, 2020

Show notes

Our subject today is nuns in the movies in general, and in particular the 1961 Luis Buñuel masterpiece Viridiana. Buñuel left Spain over the Franco dictatorship and forged a great filmmaking career in Mexico. Surprisingly. Buñuel accepted an invitation from Franco to return to Spain to make whatever film he wanted. He delivered Viridiana, one of the great “Fuck You” movies, a vicious satire of both Franco’s dictatorship and the Catholic Church. It was condemned by the Vatican and banned in Spain for 17 years. It also won the Palme d’or and vaulted Buñuel into the top rank of world cinema.

Justine Smith is a Montreal-based film writer and programmer with a longtime fascination with nuns in cinema: she and I also talk about our mutual dislike of The Sound Of Music, the problems with Quebec’s “secularist” policies, and life in Montreal during the pandemic.

Follow Justine Smith on Twitter.

“When Hard Meets Soft: The Painful Pleasures of Nunsploitation Cinema” by Justine Smith (for Cléo)

American trailer for Viridiana

Um Mundo Catita: “As minhas coisas favoritas”

7: Bigger Than Life (with Ashley Naftule) Dec 11, 2020

Show notes

An overworked family man suddenly facing a terminal health crisis is given what appears to be a miracle cure, an experimental steroid treatment. But as the man’s health returns, he becomes addicted to the steroids and gets increasingly deranged and delusional, his mania escalating into a full blown domestic rampage that threatens to destroy him and everyone around him. This is what likely cost President Trump his re-election, but it’s also the plot of Nicholas Ray’s 1956 masterpiece of melodrama Bigger Than Life, starring James Mason.

Phoenix-based playwright, writer and extremely funny Twitterer Ashley Naftule joins host Jesse Hawken for a discussion of Bigger Than Life, it’s thematic similarities to Trump’s Coronavirus meltdown, and how the film’s social critique of labor conditions, healthcare costs and middle class anxiety still resonate strongly today.

Plus: a discussion of sexy Walter Matthau, Phoenix’s indie film scene, Joe Arpaio at the movies, and the new Wong Kar Wai restorations.

Follow Ashley Naftule on Twitter.

Ashley wrote about Zazie Dans Le Metro’s 60th anniversary, for Bright Wall Dark Room

Bigger Than Life (Cough Syrup Remix) - DO NOT watch this before seeing the movie properly, for repeat viewers only

6: Body Snatchers and BBQ (with Daniel Reynolds) Dec 07, 2020

Show notes

Today’s extremely Toronto Politics Twitter episode concerns the ongoing #BBQAnon clownshow in town. A barbecue restaurant got a lot of media attention recently when they defiantly refused to cooperate as the province imposed new public health restrictions on indoor dining during a new COVID-19 lockdown: the local right wing press hailed the restauranteur as a “barbecue revolutionary” fighting for “the little guy” but this spectacle wound up giving media oxygen to some of the darkest forces in the city, including the anti-mask/anti-vaccine brigade and the far right.

Guest Daniel Reynolds is a writer and critic who also works for the City of Toronto as a traffic planner: he and host Jesse Hawken discuss this dystopian story of civic paranoia and media gaslighting and frame it within the context of a classic science-fiction parable, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a tale told four times so far by Hollywood, most notably in the masterful 1978 version by Phillip Kaufman, starring Donald Sutherland as a public health inspector!

Plus: Jesse runs an exciting local heritage proposal past Daniel for the redevelopment of the Dufferin & Dupont area that no resident of downtown Toronto will want to miss!

Find out more about what Daniel Reynolds is up to here:

https://www.akareynolds.com/

5: The 15:17 to Paris (with Matt Christman) Nov 30, 2020

Show notes

Chapo Trap House’s Matt Christman joins host Jesse Hawken for an in-depth conversation about Clint Eastwood’s 2018 Dudes Rock drama The 15:17 To Paris, a re-enactment of the 2015 incident where three young American tourists stopped a terror attack on a European high-speed train... but starring The Boys as themselves, and telling the whole story that led to this decisive moment, going back to their childhood.

Part After School Special, part aimless travelogue, starring non-actors but strangely featuring sitcom actors in supporting roles, this is a film about millennials made by an 87 year old man. It’s one of the most bizarre modern film experiments to get a wide release from a major studio, and a great example of the beguiling Late Style of God Clint, where distinctions can be drawn between Eastwood’s personal ideology and what motivates him as a film artist.

And yes, we do provide analysis of the Gelato Scene.

Follow Matt Christman on Twitter.

3: Punch-Drunk Love (with Adam Nayman) Nov 23, 2020

Show notes

Host Jesse Hawken is joined by Toronto-based author and film critic Adam Nayman, who has written a new pictorial monograph “Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks”, for an in-depth discussion of Anderson’s singular romantic comedy Punch-Drunk Love. The film won the Best Director prize at Cannes but despite some great reviews, audiences weren’t quite sure what to make of it in 2002, as the long-anticipated followup to the epic Magnolia turned out to be a 90 minute (arthouse-adjacent) Adam Sandler comedy. But time has revealed Punch-Drunk Love to be the film that marked a new trajectory in Anderson’s career, a generous and complex work, and one hugely influential on other filmmakers, especially a recent feature-length simulation of an anxiety attack starring Sandler, Uncut Gems.

Adam & I discuss, among other things, the pure pleasure Punch-Drunk Love offers viewers, how the film is related to later Anderson works, how it is situated right on the precipice of a major technological shift in the culture, what it has to say today about Incels and Dream Girls, and a look at some of the Extremely Online takes it has inspired over the years.

Plus Adam & I talk about the David Fincher / Orson Welles battle being waged on Film Twitter as Mank approaches.

“Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks”, by Adam Nayman, is available now from Abrams Books:

Follow Adam Nayman on Twitter

Here’s the fan video that puts forward the theory that Punch-Drunk Love is secretly the story of Superman:

2: Al Goldstein (with Will Sloan) Nov 18, 2020

Show notes

Toronto podcasting magnate and author Will Sloan was also, improbably, one of the last people to see Al Goldstein alive. Goldstein, for better or worse, was a trailblazing First Amendment crusader who embodied a particular time and place in American cultural history as the publisher of Screw magazine and the host of the long running New York public access program Midnight Blue, both indelibly scuzzy documents of the city’s sex trade in the 70s and 80s. Things didn’t end particularly well for Al, as two documentaries we discuss, 1996’s Screwed and 2005’s Porn King: The Trials of Al Goldstein, make abundantly clear.

We discuss our mutual long-term fascination with this complicated creep, discuss the ultimate fate of most psychopaths, and draw parallels between Goldstein’s downfall and the current collapse of another monstrous creation of New York City’s media ecosystem, the soon-to-be ex-President.

Plus a discussion about the upcoming Netflix prequel to Citizen Kane, the story of a screenwriter known to friends and foes alike simply as...Mank.

Follow Will Sloan on Twitter.

Al Goldstein & Jerry Lewis together on New York morning television, 1976

Al’s immortal battle with the host (and studio audience) of the Wally George show, 1988

Will wrote a great piece for Hazlitt about the life of Al Goldstein shortly after his death.

Will Sloan & Justin Decloux’s new book about Matt Farley & Motern Media.

Amazon (Canada)

Amazon (USA)