One of the many special things in Train Dreams, directed by Clint Bentley, is the production design. Nearly every element of each setting feels like it was just sitting there, waiting to be captured. Of course, this is not the case. It was meticulously, carefully planned and built. The Film Stage's Dan Mecca was lucky and honored to speak with Alexandra Schaller, the film’s production designer, about the agonies and ecstasies of bringing Train Dreams to life, as well as some earlier, accomplished work in her career. Additional thanks to Schaller, who provided The Film Stage access to mood boards and behind-the-scenes photos from the project. Explore here: https://thefilmstage.com/train-dreams-production-designer-alexandra-schaller-on-finding-beauty-in-the-land-and-making-small-films-feel-big/

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we discuss Richard Linklater! He’s an American indie legend who we recently just spoke to! With two new films out here at the end of 2025 (Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague), we discuss his B-Sides: SubUrbia, The Newton Boys, Me and Orson Welles, and Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood. Our guest is Ryland Aldrich, our dear friend, an accomplished producer and experienced writer on film, as well as the creator of FYCit App,“the number one smartphone app for awards voters and guild members to find awards screenings, events, and content for all the season’s top contenders.” Conor, Ryland, and I dig into our love for Linklater, the highs and lows of his long, accomplished career, and his continued improvement as a stylist. We debate Ethan Hawke’s chances of getting an Oscar nomination for his Blue Moon performance, the lasting cultural relevance of School of Rock, and Orson Welles’ famous response to a question about Elia Kazan many years ago. There’s also mention of the Mercury Theater’s famous 1938 broadcast of “The War of the Worlds,” the documentary Chasing Chasing Amy, and those real-life clips of The Newton Boys.

A world-cinema fixture who's earned the support of Martin Scorsese, M. Night Shyamalan, Olivier Assayas, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Béla Tarr, Claire Denis, Christian Petzold, Tilda Swinton, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi––among many others––Carlo Chatrian reshaped the festival landscape with his work as artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival and Berlinale, his influence such that an abdication of his position at the latter in 2023 caused an honest-to-God outcry. He is now serving as director of the National Cinema Museum in Turin and, for the last couple weeks, also acted as head of the international competition jury at the Tokyo International Film Festival. While we were both there, I sought the opportunity to ask him about these responsibilities, and found myself engaged in a rigorous serious conversation about where he sees cinema culture at the moment, where it might be headed, and––amidst all this––reasons to be hopeful.

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.  Today we discuss David Cronenberg, one of the truly great Canadian geniuses and the filmmaker credited with the advent of “body horror” (a distinction he bristles against, for what it’s worth). Our B-Sides today include Fast Company, The Brood, M. Butterfly, and Spider. Our guest today is the incomparable Veronica Fitzpatrick, professor at Brown University and Editor-at-Large and Podcast Co-Host at Bright Wall/Dark Room.  We talk about how handsome Oliver Reed is in The Brood, how Cronenberg’s films often start with a bang, how misguided M. Butterfly is, and how Fast Company was, in fact, a movie directed by David Cronenberg. There’s talk of his novel Consumed, his multiple collaborations with certain great performers like Jeremy Irons, and his incredible, intellectual mind. This is a man who has adapted Stephen King, William Burroughs, Don DeLillo, J.G. Ballard, and Patrick McGrath. What range! There’s the real-life French diplomat on which M. Butterfly is based, as well as the metatextual nature of both Cronenberg’s adaptation of David Henry Hwang and his later picture A Dangerous Method. It’s Cronenberg taking stock of the psychology of his own films! Fascinating. Veronica mentions B.D. Wong’s Tony speech, we all marvel at the fact that Adrian Lyne remade Lolita (with Jeremy Irons!) in 1997 and it barely got a release! There’s a lot in here! Happy Halloween!

Given her work in and around cinema, it’s no surprise that Stephanie LaCava would write a novel that is, no small feat, cinematic. Said novel is Nymph, a slim and elliptical and fully satisfying character piece about a young woman, Bathory––called “Bat” for short––whose parents’ strange lifestyle, either involving spy craft or assassinations or just being out-and-out weirdos, brings her down dark corners. Having known Stephanie for a little bit, I already knew she was worth talking to. (An important quality for any podcast guest.) But when she sent me the book last month, I read it with enough speed and relish that it was no question we should talk about Nymph, the Chantal Akerman and Abel Ferrara films that inspired it, and the complex personal feelings these things can raise. While I hope you like our conversation, I mostly hope it drives one to reading Stephanie's novel. Order Nymph here: https://www.versobooks.com/products/3384-nymph?srsltid=AfmBOorlFqrsPmUBBXZkib0EKTKrXwvCfSY0sCRZ1mooAPre-6aOgVfw

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we talk about a performer that we lost far too soon: Bill Paxton. Our B-Sides today include Brain Dead, Indian Summer, Traveller, and Frailty. Our guest is Billy Ray Brewton, and we cover a lot of ground. We dive into Paxton’s Roger Corman origins (Crazy Mama getting reamed out by legend Stella Adler in New York, his ultimate move to Los Angeles, James Cameron, etc.), his love of movie-making and being on set, his tragic death, and much, much more. We mention his first directing gig (“Fish Heads” by Barnes & Barnes on SNL), his last directed feature (The Greatest Game Ever Played), and his recent podcast appearances before his death. There is also this charming late night appearance.

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.  Today we talk about maybe the greatest actor who ever lived: Philip Seymour Hoffman. But seriously, did Hoffman ever give a bad performance? We talk about it! Conor and I are back and our Philip Seymour Hoffman B-Sides are Leap of Faith, Owning Mahowny, Pirate Radio, and Jack Goes Boating. We go through his whole filmography, spot-checking the crucial moments throughout his career. We briefly discuss his Oscar-winning performance in Capote, his iconic supporting turn in Along Came Polly, and his Oscar-nominated role in Charlie Wilson’s War. There’s also an admiration at the power he wielded with silence, and an examination into why The Master is his acting masterpiece. Additionally, we remain astonished by the career of John Patrick Shanley (writer/director of Doubt), we celebrate the upcoming Greenland 2: Migration, and the ability of Richard Curtis to squeeze earnest sentimentality out of garish manipulation. There’s also chat about Seth Rogen, who lost out to Hoffman for the role of The Count in Pirate Radio and was approached by Hoffman to star in Jack Goes Boating, until Hoffman played the role himself. Rogen discussed these things himself on a recent Blank Check podcast episode.

Ed Wood died the better part of a half-century ago, and to this day his reputation as the world's worst filmmaker persists. Even in this era when seemingly everything can be reclaimed, few have made the effort for Plan 9 from Outer Space, Glen or Glenda, or Night of the Ghouls, making all the more compelling a new book that does so without necessarily making the case for Wood as a strictly speaking good filmmaker. The author is Will Sloan and the book Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA, which studies Wood's filmography as a genuinely dream-like and ideologically... if not driven, then at least somewhat occupied with major questions of identity. The work shows in Sloan's book, which contains key biographical information, rundowns of Wood's novelistic career, and a larger consideration of what constitutes a bad movie. I was extremely pleased to speak with him about these and sundry other subjects.

If you live in New York and care about movies, the beginning of the New York Film Festival—this year, specifically, on Friday, September 26—is perhaps the most exciting moment of any year. Though he served on the committee for a number of years, since 2020, Dennis Lim has shepherded the festival, his dispensation as a journalist and critic carrying naturally to his inclinations as a programmer. On the eve of the New York Film Festival’s kick-off, I spoke to Dennis about his role as a programmer, how seemingly disparate films make nice pairings, what it feels like watching eight-to-ten-hours of films a day, and the role of a festival in a consensus-heavy moment.

In remembrance of the legendary Robert Redford, we're resharing this conversation from 2024 on his extraordinary career and most overlooked performances. Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we talk about the movie star. The person who if you looked up “movie star” in the dictionary there would be a picture of him. Robert Redford!  Today we talk the esteemed career of the quintessential movie star. Our B-Sides include: The Hot Rock, The Great Waldo Pepper, Havana, and The Last Castle. Our guest today is Blake Howard, podcast producer, host, and really good guy. Check out One Heat Minute Productions for everything new and relevant in Blake’s world.  We discuss a million things, from why The Hot Rock is so hard to find, to the airplane stunts in The Great Waldo Pepper, to why Havana doesn’t work. There’s an investigation into the politics of The Last Castle, a brief celebration of Lena Olin, and a quick rave for Jordan Harper’s searing short story “My Savage Year.” Additional topics include that upcoming City of Hope release, why Peter Yates is “slow vibes central,” why great screenwriter William Goldman knew why The Great Waldo Pepper underwhelmed at the box office (from his book Adventures in the Screen Trade), and how exactly the A-Side The Natural literally looks like nostalgia. Finally, we mention why Raul Julia didn’t take a credit on Havana, we reference that superb Scott Frank New Yorker profile, proclaim ourselves defenders of Hollywood Homicide, and discuss the end of Redford’s career.

With exposure to Brazilian cinema being so pitiful, I thought it would be past due to host both an episode and screening that put a bit of spotlight on their rich cinematic history. One of my favorite films I’ve seen in recent years is Carlos Reichenbach’s Movie Dementia, which is both the cinema-induced madness its title suggests and a gritty view of national disaffection circa the 1980s––think Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou peppered with more gritty realism and a greater dose fantasy. I’ll be showing it at the Brooklyn Center for Theater Research on Wednesday, August 27th, for which tickets are now on-sale: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/amnesiascope-filme-demencia-tickets-1579316059849?aff=oddtdtcreator There is quite literally nobody I’d rather discuss that film, Reichenbach’s corpus, and Brazilian cinema than Filipe Furtado, whose work as a critic has been a north star for myself and countless cinephiles. I was glad to have this discussion with Filipe, who called in from São Paulo. I hope you enjoy it and can make the screening on the 27th.

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we discuss John Frankenheimer, a true expert of the craft and a man who could make any kind of film. Our B-Sides today include Prophecy, 52 Pick-Up, Dead Bang, and the HBO Film Against the Wall (for which Frankenheimer won an Emmy!) Our guest today is the great Blake Howard of One Heat Minute Productions. He’s just wrapping up his podcast series Romin, in which Blake discusses Frankenheimer’s late-period action masterpiece (and certified A-Side) Ronin with incredible film minds (and also two schlubs from The Film Stage). In this episode, I tell a fairly interesting first-hand story about original Ronin screenwriter J.D. Zeik! The superb interview book John Frankenheimer: A Conversation With Charles Champlin is referenced quite a bit throughout, as is this interview with Ben Affleck (which includes a funny memory of the temperamental Frankenheimer on the set of Reindeer Games). Frankenheimer’s BMW Films short with Clive Owen comes up, as does underrated character actor Tim Reid. We admire the nastiness of 52 Pick-Up, the way that Against the Wall looks, and the ambitions of Prophecy, failed though they may be. Then there’s Dead Bang, a deeply troubled production with a supremely strange William Forsythe performance. Additionally, Frankenheimer made his bones in live television, specifically being the lead director of Playhouse 90. One episode we talk about a bit is “Forbidden Area.”

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars, movie directors, and sometimes––sometimes––movie writers! Today, we speak with author and screenwriter Jordan Harper, whose novel She Rides Shotgun got made into a movie of the same name, directed by Nick Rowland and starring Taron Egerton and Ana Sophia Heger. The film is in theaters this Friday, August 1, 2025. We spoke with Harper about adapting his novel for the big screen, his reaction to watching the final cut of the film, and those superb lead performances from Egerton and Heger. There’s mention of his other books The Last King of California and Everybody Knows, as well as B-Sides that reminded us of She Rides Shotgun, which include One False Move, Flesh & Bone, A Perfect World, and Lone Star. Harper mentions Freeway as well, which is a great call. Harper brings up his new novel due out next year: A Violent Masterpiece. There’s also appreciation for Shogun Assassin (a direct inspiration for She Rides Shotgun) and a discussion of genre and genre tropes and why they are so effective when used well.

Few people have contributed more to cinema and cinephilia in the last 50 years than Dave Kehr. He’d have some claim to this title solely as a major critical voice, his work remaining currency decades hence––just look at the popular Not Dave Kehr Letterboxd account for a symbol of his enduring prominence. As a film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, however, Kehr has emboldened one of the world’s foremost cinema cultures with year-round programming that combines classic titles with far-flung finds. With the third edition of Silent Movie Week beginning at MoMA on July 30, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dave about their lineup, the major advancements made in digital restoration, a discussion of how exactly one puts together a series like this, and (lest you think this is all about my ego) why a presumption of mine was, in fact, incorrect. Plus: his pick––surprising to some, not to me––for the best film to premiere in recent years.

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars, movie directors, and sometimes - sometimes - the companies that made the movies those stars and directors made! We were lucky to speak with Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler of Killer Films in honor of Metrograph’s 30th Anniversary program, with screenings starting on August 2, 2025. Vachon and Koffler speak on curating the celebratory program, which includes Office Killer. We also dish on myself and Conor’s time as interns at Killer many years ago, some B-Sides (including A Home at the End of the World, The Safety of Objects, Dark Waters), and how Killer has survived this ever-changing industry of independent film. There’s a wonderful discussion about wigs in film (prompted by Colin Farrell’s bad wig in the first act of A Home at the End of the World), an appreciation of Dark Waters getting made and getting discovered to this day, and line producers “carrying the burden of the budget.” Vachon mourns The Safety of Objects being swallowed by the tragedy of 9/11 while Koffler suggests why the independent ensemble drama has gone by the wayside. There’s discussion on the dangers of saying “good enough” during pre-production as well as Vachon and Koffler shouting out Killer Films B-Sides they personally love (The World to Come, Vox Lux, Dirty Girl). I shout out She Came to Me, an underrated, recent gem.

You'd have to be very bad at interviews, or really just conversations, to not get something from Abel Ferrara, who's the perfect combination of endearing and pugnacious, amenable to ideas while unable to entertain even a hint of bullshit. He's especially verbose discussing Turn in the Wound, his most recent documentary, which premiered at last year’s Berlinale and is now streaming on the Criterion Channel and parallels the effect of Russia’s war on the citizens of Ukraine with, in a slightly opaque but ultimately wise manner, concerts conducted by Patti Smith. Like many of Ferrara’s documentaries––Mulberry St., Chelsea on the Rocks, or Piazza Vittorio––it wrings pathos from a concern for people and the places they live. I was only too happy to talk with him about this film and its endless concerns. I also want to note that myself and Instagram sensation Rohmer Fits will be screening Éric Rohmer's A Summer's Tale on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week’s posting. Tickets are here and we hope to see you there: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/amnesiascope-a-tale-of-summer-tickets-1488838077769?aff=oddtdtcreator

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars and movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Sometimes we are lucky enough to even speak with them about their work. And sometimes, they are both a movie star and a movie director. Today that’s Embeth Davidtz, director of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, now in theaters and expanding this weekend. Our B-Sides include Feast of July, The Gingerbread Man, Mansfield Park, and Bicentennial Man. We speak with Davidtz about her directorial debut, her incredibly diverse acting career, and adapting from the memoir by Alexandra Fuller. There’s extended discussion of Robert Altman’s direction of actors, the underrated qualities of Feast of July (a Merchant Ivory production!), and the ambitions of Bicentennial Man. Not to mention the incredible high-wire act by Davidtz’s in her dual performance in that Chris Columbus sci-fi epic. There are reflections on working with B-Side friend and frequent guest Alessandro Nivola, the legacy of the Miss Honey character from Matilda, and the “trickery” involved in directing a child like Lexi Venter to an incredibly natural performance.

Raise the subject of documentaries about filmmaking and you'll probably first go to Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. Or the film you’re thinking about instead was directed by somebody was thinking about Hearts of Darkness. Or, assuming the film came out earlier, it was perhaps directed by someone who later saw Hearts of Darkness and wishes they made a film as good. Which is no disrespect to any other film that fits into its genre––just to say that no other such documentary seems to mirror and match the subject. Though long available, the film has––very much contra Apocalypse Now––only just been restored by American Zoetrope and is now rolling out in theaters. The effort was overseen by James Mockoski, who has served as a guiding hand for the recent spate of Coppola restorations and recuts. I was accordingly pleased to speak with him and Hearts' co-director, Fax Bahr, about the film’s legacy, its restoration, and what Francis Ford Coppola has planned after Megalopolis.

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we sometimes talk about movie stars! We sometimes talk about movie directors! Today, we talk about both! Specifically, the B-Sides of the Mission: Impossible franchise. It’s just Conor and I today folks, waxing poetic on Tom Cruise’s legendary franchise and the B-Sides that we were inspired to discuss. We’ve chosen one for each of the Mission movies. It’s also July 3rd on the day this episode is published, so happy 63rd birthday Tom Cruise! For the first Mission: Impossible, we speak on The Avengers from 1998. An adaptation of the popular British television series from the ‘60s, director Jeremiah S. Chechik’s film was dismantled in post-production, slashed to ribbons following bad test screenings. The final product runs well under ninety minutes and is hard to understand. It sits on the other end of blockbusters in the ‘90s adapted from hit televisions from yesteryear. We also discuss the last five films Sean Connery made (animated film Sir Billi not included), as well as the ones he turned down. For Mission: Impossible II, we chose another John Woo American motion picture: Paycheck, starring Ben Affleck and The Avengers star Uma Thurman. This is a true B-Side, and the beginning of Affleck’s now-infamous lost half-decade as a fledgling movie star. For Mission: Impossible III, we return to television inspiration. In honor of director J.J. Abrams, Conor and I go long on No Man’s Land, one of the first produced screenwriting credits of Dick Wolf, who would go on to create the, ahem, Law & Order universe of shows. This Charlie Sheen/ D.B Sweeney vehicle walked so Point Break and The Fast and the Furious could run. There’s chatter about David Ayer, that scene from Fire in the Sky, and how Charlie Sheen is always better when he plays the villain. For Ghost Protocol, we debate the Brad Bird B-Side Tomorrowland. We discuss libertarianism (for like two minutes) and the misbegotten message of the George Clooney blockbuster. For Rogue Nation we honor the Hitchcock homage of the opening and discuss one of Hitch’s most underrated films: Topaz. Truly a can’t-miss picture, which spurns a talk about the ideal Hitchcock leading man. For Fallout, there’s Michael Mann’s Blackhat. We appreciate the still underseen hacker epic, and make the claim that Chris Hemsworth is the best movie star of the original Avengers (Marvel this time, not British) not named Robert Downey Jr. For Dead Reckoning Part 1, Conor goes long on Hayao Miyazaki’s Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, from the little yellow car to the action to the animation. And, finally, for The Final Reckoning, we celebrate John Sturges’ Ice Station Zebra. The second act of the final film in the series is a reimagining of sorts of the 1968 submarine epic, with way more stunts and underwater photography. There’s also mention of the Billy Crystal 1997 Oscars opening, this lovely promo for the Albert Brooks movie Mother (ok it’s not mentioned I just love it), and the Oliver Stone episode of the Light the Fuse podcast.

Perhaps no line of dialogue better encapsulates lived experience than this bon mot offered by John Huston’s Noah Cross: “Of course I'm respectable. I'm old! Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” I thought about this line––granted, a line I think about at least once a week––while watching Alex Ross Perry’s Videoheaven, which is perhaps the closet a movie can come to putting us back in the four walls of a video store, a concept so old that some people reading this will have never directly experienced that once-commonplace, even disreputable home of cinephilia. Building off Daniel Herbert's book Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store, Perry spins a history through film, television, and documentary clips overlaid with a soothing narration from Maya Hawke, who happens to play a video store clerk on Stranger Things and whose father is featured in Videoheaven's very first sequence. This is a movie of both choice and coincidence, assembled carefully but perhaps with a certain kind of kismet tying it all together. With Videoheaven beginning a limited run––you’ll hear more about its exact New York venue herein––I spoke to Perry and Clyde Folley, his editor on the film and an editorial voice at Criterion.