On this week’s episode, Scott Mendelson returns to the show to discuss how 2023 shook out at the box office, why niche films and niche audiences became more important than ever to movie theaters, and whether or not studios are hiding that Wonka, The Color Purple, and next year’s Mean Girls remake are musicals because they’re worried about the impact on box office. Make sure to check out Scott’s new Substack, The Outside Scoop. I’ve long loved his breakdowns of the weekend box office and look forward to seeing what he’s putting together here on Substack. And if you enjoyed thispodcast, I hope you share it with a friend!

This week I’m joined by Zach Schonfeld to discuss his new book, How Coppola Became Cage. Zach’s look at the early years of Nicolas Cage’s career is deeply researched, featuring interviews with directors like David Lynch (Wild at Heart), Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas), and Cage’s own brother, Christopher Coppola (Deadfall). We talked about Cage’s mythmaking, his anger at being accused of benefitting from nepotism, and his befuddlement at becoming a meme, among other topics. If you’re a fan of the Raising Arizona star or need a Christmas gift for the Vampire’s Kiss fan in your life, How Coppola Became Cage is a must-have. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend!

This week, I’m rejoined by Scott Eyman, author of Charlie Chaplin Vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided. We discussed the great silent star’s exile from America, how the press and the government conspired against Charlie Chaplin, the personal and professional perils of being prematurely anti-fascist, and why Buster Keaton seems to be more fashionable than The Tramp these days. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to check out Scott’s book, available at all fine booksellers now. And please share it with a friend!

This week I’m joined by Glenn Gordon Caron, the creator and showrunner of Moonlighting, to talk about that series’s long-awaited arrival on streaming. We discussed the show’s creation, the discovery of Bruce Willis, how he and costar Cybil Shepherd kept up with the show’s trademark rapid-fire patter, the difficulty in clearing music rights (and how Moonlighting was one of the first shows to heavily incorporate pop music into the show), working with legends like Orson Welles and Stanley Donen, and so much more.  If you’ve never watched the show, I highly recommend checking it out on Hulu; the folks at Disney have done an amazing job restoring the episodes. A handful of highlights, if you’re trying to figure out where to start: Season 1, Episode 1: The Pilot. Tonally this is a bit different from what would follow, but it’s genuinely kind of wild to see Willis show up onscreen fully formed as Bruce Willis, Star in what was almost literally his first role. Season 1, Episode 2: Gunfight at the So-So Corral. Again, the show is still finding its footing, but it’s a pretty good representation of the combination of smart dialogue, great casting, and clever resolutions to the onscreen mysteries. Season 2, Episode 4: The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice. Orson Welles introduced this episode—which is structured with a mysterious intro and then two dream sequences (one dreamt by Shepherd’s Maddie Hayes as a sort of MGM musical; the other by Willis’s David Addison as a sort of 1940s noir)—in part because the network was terrified no one would want to watch a black-and-white episode of TV. Season 2, Episode 18: Camille. Whoopi Goldberg and Judd Nelson co-starred, and their mystery is all well and good, but it’s the closing sequence in which the (fourth) walls of reality come crashing in on the cast that makes this second season finale a must-watch. Season 3, Episode 6: Big Man on Mulberry Street. The mid-show dance sequence was done by Stanley Donen, and, again, I just can’t imagine what it was like to have this sequence pop up in the middle of network TV in the 1980s. Wild stuff. Season 3, Episode 10: Poltergeist III — Dipesto Nothing. One of the show’s episodes focusing on the adventures of Ms. Dipesto (Allyce Beasley) and Mr. Viola (Curtis Armstrong), who make for a delightful pairing. Season 4, Episode 2: Come Back Little Shiksa. Shepherd had to leave the show for a while due to her pregnancy, which led to a series of episodes that separated her and Willis. But the creators used some clever ways to get them in the same room. Plus: John Goodman’s in this one!

This week I’m joined by Terri Davies. Terri heads up the Motion Picture Association’s Trusted Partners Network, which helps studios and other partners develop best practices for avoiding leaks of films and TV shows pre-release, from pre- to post-production. We discussed her time at Sony Pictures from 2000 to 2015, a period of time during which the business of distribution was revolutionized (and digitized), how the MPA helps studios reduce the likelihood of a movie leaking before its release date, and how different solutions are tailored for content creators of different sizes. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend!

This week I’m joined by Walt Hickey, the author of You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything. Among the many topics discussed on this show: the surprisingly durable effect of Warner Bros.’s merchandising efforts aimed at adults; how identity and pop culture become hopelessly (and negatively) intertwined; and how violent movies can help stop violence from occurring. If you find this podcast interesting, I hope you check out Walt’s book; it has tons of charts (one of which is reproduced above) and many fascinating nuggets I simply did not have time to dig into with him today. And make sure to share this episode with a friend!

This week I’m rejoined by Jason Pargin to discuss his new novel, Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia, and the ways in which the futuristic panopticon he envisions for Zoey and the other citizens of Tabula Ra$a is a little like now, but moreso. We talk for a bit about how book marketing has evolved over the last decade-plus, why TikTok became a must for novelists like himself, and why despite the word “dystopia” being in the title of the book, he doesn’t necessarily think of his vision of the near future as a downer.  Unpaid endorsement: I really enjoy Jason’s novels (he is also the author of the John Dies at the End series), and the Zoey Ashe books (the first two of which are available on Kindle Unlimited) are pretty compulsively readable, a pleasing melange of ideas and imagery and just enough suspense from moment to moment to activate the “okay, just one more chapter” portion of my brain. Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia is understandable if you’ve not read the other books in the series, but you can’t go wrong by picking up copies of the previous entries. And if you want a signed copy of his latest, you can get one from Parnassus Books in Nashville, but you have to order by Monday.

I’m joined by Matt Singer this week, author of Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel and Ebert Changed Movies Forever. The book, out this Tuesday, is a wide-ranging look at the myriad ways in which Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel’s seminal show—or, really, three shows, which ran across multiple networks over multiple decades—changed not only film criticism but film marketing as well. We talked about the introduction of the thumb system—which, shockingly, was not with the duo from the beginning—and why their genuinely antagonistic relationship hasn’t really translated to the YouTube/podcast era of film criticism. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to share it with a friend!

This week, I’m thrilled to be joined by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker to discuss their new oral history, Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! In this episode we discuss, among other topics, what set the ZAZ style apart from other titans of the 1970s/1980s comedy boom, how the serious actors on set nailed their deadpan comic patter, trying to nail comic timing in test screenings that weren’t generating many laughs, and how Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner helped change the face of comedy by championing the movie during their tenure at Paramount. I cannot recommend this book enough if you love Airplane! and it’d make a great gift for the person in your life who never stops telling you they picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. If you enjoyed this episode please share it with a friend!

This week I’m joined by Elaine Low of The Ankler and its Strikegeist newsletter to talk about the end of the WGA strike and what the writers won, from performance-based residuals on streaming originals to minimum writers room sizes to AI protections. We also discussed how the picket line and social media helped maintain solidarity and, briefly, how things are looking in the SAG-AFTRA strike. Make sure to sign up for Strikegeist if you haven’t already: it’s free and a great digest of what’s happening on the lines on a day-to-day basis. And if you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend!

Before we get started: apologies for the downgrade in my audio quality about 10 minutes into this episode. My computer, unappreciative of the coffee I spilled on it earlier in the week, decided to restart itself mid-recording in protest. It shall be punished greatly. —— This week I’m joined by Brian Abrams, author of “You Talkin’ to Me?”: The Definitive Guide to Iconic Movie Quotes. We discussed how he pared his list down, the research that went into making this more than a mere list of his personal favorites, and the evolution of the iconic movie quote into a versatile form of meme-creation. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to share it with a friend!

This week I’m rejoined by Jonathan Taplin, author of The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto, to discuss the ways in which popular culture may be leading the public down a dark road. Mr. Taplin has previously been on the show to talk about his career in the entertainment business, from tour manager for Bob Dylan to producer of early Martin Scorsese classics Means Streets and The Last Waltz to his early efforts to introduce video streaming, so he knows a thing or two about the ways in which politics is downstream from culture. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to share it with a friend!

This week I talk to Ben Dreyfuss, formerly in charge of audience acquisition at Mother Jones and currently the author of the Calm Down Substack, about the promise and the peril of complete data transparency. Ben watched what happened firsthand as data about what readers wanted became more and more available to journalists: how it shaped what was written, and how, and for whom, and how this race for virality wound up decimating the advertising market that newsrooms relied on.  I wanted to talk to Ben about this because I remember living through this data revolution and, while I'm supportive of the labor unions and their desire to get more data about what is successful in order to divvy up a more equitable share of streaming revenue, I’m also nervous about some of the knock-on consequences of full data transparency. Besides, more creatives really should be asking themselves if they want everyone to know precisely how many—or, more likely, how few—people are watching the vast majority of streaming offerings.  If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend! And sign up for Ben’s Substack; it’s a hoot.

This week I’m joined by Anthony Penta, director of We Kill for Love, a documentary/film essay about the erotic thriller and its place in the history of cinema. Drawing parallels to film noir and gothic romances, among other genres, Penta traces not only the artistic legacy of We Kill for Love but also the role they played in the early days of home video rentals and pay cable. Hundreds of films melding sex, violence, and sexy violence were produced, yet many of them have all but disappeared, critics dismissing them as little more than softcore pornography and viewers moving on to other forms of titillation. The erotic thriller lives on, but you’ll be a little surprised to see precisely where. We Kill for Love is available on VOD now. Make sure to rent it after the kiddos have gone to bed, as this is a return to the world of Cinemax After Dark. But I don’t want to leave you thinking it’s lurid: We Kill for Love is a tasteful, informative, and empathetic look back at the genre filled with new interviews with the actors, actresses, producers, and directors of the genre, as well as the critics and academics attempting to impart it with a bit more respectability. I didn’t know I needed a two-and-a-half-hour documentary about erotic thrillers in my life, but I’m glad I have it. As always, if you enjoyed this episode or learned something about the business of film, please share it with a friend!

This week I’m joined by Chris Yogerst to discuss The Warner Brothers, his fascinating new look at the life of Jack, Harry, Sam, and Albert Warner, who collectively formed the Warner Bros. studio. From the technological innovations such as sound pursued by Sam, to the moral case for cinema made by Harry, to the classic mogul behavior of Jack, the journey of the brothers Warner makes for an interesting glimpse into the world of Hollywood. Amongst the topics discussed: how Warner Bros. went to war against the Nazis; labor strife in the 1940s; and the ugly breakup of the family dynasty. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend!

This week I’m rejoined by The Entertainment Strategy Guy to talk about his two-part series on streaming flops (TV shows here; movies here). If hits pay for the misses, and we know what the hits are, shouldn’t we know what the misses are as well in order to make fewer of them? We discuss his methodology and then examine one buzzy title, Hijack, to see if it’s a hit or a flop and how to think about those terms. We also discuss why sports documentaries tend to underperform and why most mid-to-large-budget movies should either be released theatrically or not made at all. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend!

This week I’m joined by Roy Price, the founder of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, to discuss what it would look like in 2023 to start a brand-new movie studio. Which genres are under-served? What price points should budgets be aimed at? And which audiences are looking for something they aren’t getting from the big studios? We also talk a bit about streaming networks and audience acquisition/retention, and why low-budget horror might wind up being a crowded space in the coming years. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it with a friend! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some backstory to this episode: last month I bought a ticket for Sound of Freedom because I was curious about the year’s most unexpected box office sensation. As the credits rolled, star Jim Caviezel came on the screen and gave a speech to the audience about the importance of theatrical exhibition; it’s the sort of thing you typically see at the start of movies these days, actors and directors thanking audiences for coming to the theater. Here’s the wrinkle: during his speech, Caviezel tells audience members they can “pay it forward,” buy a ticket for someone who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to go. When the QR code allowing audiences to do this came on the screen, a woman who had lingered by the exit when she heard Caviezel talking pulled out her phone, scanned the code, and bought a ticket. I’ve never seen anything like that in a movie theater. Ever. So I asked Jeffrey Harmon, Angel Studios’s Chief Content Officer, on the show to talk about his studio’s unique business model, how they decide what to fund, and whether or not the pay-it-forward model could work for other types of movies like civil rights dramas. We discussed how the pay-it-forward system impacts the box office (briefly: only tickets that are requested and redeemed count toward the total, which as of this writing stands at $156 million domestic) and what their plans are for international distribution. As always, if you learned something, I hope you share this episode with a friend. Finally: I know there’s a lot of controversy swirling around this movie. For reasons I lay out here, I think it’s a fairly serious misstep to describe this as “the QAnon movie,” though I understand why some have misgivings given Jim Caviezel’s statements in the past. But this episode is about the film’s box office business, and as such I hewed pretty closely to that topic. If you’re not interested in that aspect of Sound of Freedom, I understand, but I’d ask you to keep comments on topic if you’d like to discuss this week’s episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I’m rejoined this week by The Wall Street Journal’s Erich Schwartzel, author of Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy, to talk about Hollywood’s disastrous summer in China, where virtually every American movie released so far has underperformed. We also talk briefly about why Meg 2: The Trench may end up being one of the lone bright spots for Hollywood this year. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to share it with a friend! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this week’s episode Ryan Faughnder, author of the Wide Shot newsletter, returns to the show to talk about Netflix’s softer-than-expected earnings report, the momentary bright spot at the box office, and the possibility that this strike is going to be going on for quite some time. If you enjoyed the episode, share it with a friend! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices