Stay ConnectedEvery week, author and pop culture writer Mike Vago pitches stories that Hollywood needs to bring to the big screen, with guests from the pop culture writing world.
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Copyright: © Mike Vago
Boo Morcom was heavily favored to win the gold in pole vault at the 1948 Olympics. But he was playing hurt, in the rain, and missed his shot at the gold. So he tracked down the competitors who beat him, and challenged them all to rematches, just to prove he was the best. Morcom's grandson, former editor-in-chief of Gameological Society and The A.V. Club, and current host of the delightful podcast Pop Mom, where he and his mom discuss pop culture, joins us to talk about how you can't get back a moment in time, but you can still be stubborn enough to challenge the Olympics to a rematch.
Mark Olmstead found out he had HIV at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, when the disease was a death sentence. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he pulled off a string of scams including credit card fraud, insurance fraud, dealing crystal meth, and faking his own death, assuming he’d be dead for real before any of the consequences caught up to him. Except he didn’t die.
Kim Daly, whose book The True Crime File hits bookstores May 10 and is available for pre-order now, brings us a movie idea that brings us both the dizzying highs and lows of a charming con man, and an unflinching look at the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s.
For forty years, police in Saskatchewan, Canada were in the habit of arresting Ingdigenous men for minor offenses, or sometimes no reason at all, leaving them to freeze to death. And to this day, the police haven't been held accountable. Comedy writer and performer Tom Murphy joins us with a deadly serious story; the drama behind Canada's deadly "Starlight Tours" and the fight to bring the story to light.
In 1966, an El Paso theater actor bet his screenwriter friend he could produce a horror movie all on his own. The result was Manos: The Hands of Fate, an incoherent, no-budget movie considered one of the worst films ever made. And yet, it did somehow get made, and 50 years later, people are still watching it. Pop culture writer and bad movie evangelist Nathan Rabin (The A.V. Club, The Dissolve, and several books including My Year of Flops, You Don't Know Me But You Don't Like Me, The Weird Accordion to Al) joins us to talk about why the story of how a terrible movie got made would make for a great movie. Also, look for his new book The Joy of Trash, and read more of his writing at Nathan Rabin's Happy Place (nathanrabin.com).
Legendary Old West lawman Wyatt Earp fought at the O.K. Corrall, and then rode off into the sunset... but the story doesn't end there. Scott Bunn, who co-hosts the sports podcast Run That Back and authors the Bob Dylan blog ReclinerNotes.com, joins us to talk about Wyatt Earp resurfacing in 1910's Hollywood, where he worked as a bounty hunter and mingled with stars of the silent film era.
Also, one show note: we lamented that we hadn't heard much from director Curtis Hanson after his masterful one-two punch of L.A. Confidential and Wonder Boys 20 years ago. I forgot that Hanson passed away in 2016; his last film was 2012's surfing biopic Chasing Mavericks.
Robert Smalls was an enslaved sailor on a Confederate ship, until late one night, he hijacked the ship, picked up his family and his crew's, and sailed into enemy lines. He went on to be a naval captain, a war hero, and a Congressman, but most importantly, a free man.
In the 1870s, traveling by train through Palisade, Nevada was a heart-stopping experience. It was a Wild West hive of scum and villainy, with a constant tumult of fistfights, gunfights, and robberies in broad daylight. Except it was all fake — a show put on by the townspeople because they were bored and thought it would be funny.
No guest this week, as we're adjusting the format — we'll continue to do longer episodes with a guest every other week, but we'll alternate with shorter, just-me episodes, as now that people are gradually re-entering society, I have less time to edit the longer episodes, and I have fewer guests who are stuck at home dying to talk about movies.
DC Comics has had a mixed record at the movies, but Boston Globe writer Nick Zaino, host of the podcast Department of Tangents, and first-ever WITNAM guest, returns to tell us why long-running, lesser-known DC title The Spectre is a better bet for the big screen than yet another take on the Joker.
In 2020, a local TV host from Nebraska gained internet fame for a montage of her hilariously blunt interviews with A-list actors from the '70s and '80s. But her story goes far beyond one viral clip, as Drake burst into a male-dominated field and succeeded on her own terms, hosting and producing two TV shows that ran for decades, and interviewing everyone from local children and retirees to Hollywood stars. Artist and photographer Tony Cava joins us to about Drake's quintessentially Midwestern no-nonsense interviews, and why the juxtaposition of a small-city interviewer and Hollywood big shots needs to be a movie.
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, so this week we have a true-life story from Kate Ranta, author of Killing Kate: A Story of Turning Abuse and Tragedy into Transformation and Triumph. Her seemingly happy marriage turned into a nightmare of abuse and attempted murder, but she survived and became and activist who's devoted her life to speaking out about how abuse victims are failed by the systems designed to help them.
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