Legends Podcast

We're celebrating summer by heading to the drive-in! Over the next two weeks, we're bringing you a double bill of blockbuster movies from last summer. Maybe you saw them, maybe you missed them, but we think you'll enjoy Last Summer's Drive-In Movie Double Feature! Hit the restroom, refill your popcorn, and settle in for a late night… our second feature is starting now! Marvel's first family has ha...

We're celebrating summer by heading to the drive-in! Over the next two weeks, we're bringing you a double bill of blockbuster movies from last summer. Maybe you saw them, maybe you missed them, but we think you'll enjoy Last Summer's Drive-In Movie Double Feature! Grab a corndog, tune in your radio, or hang that weird staticky speaker in your window… our first feature is starting now! In 2022, aft...

Director James Whale brought Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the big screen in 1931, and followed it up with classics like The Invisible Man, The Old Dark House, and Bride of Frankenstein. Throughout his Hollywood career, Whale lived as an openly gay man, something quite rare in the '20s and '30s. Along with his horror pictures, Whale directed Remember Last Night?, Show Boat, and The Man in the Iro...

This week, we're celebrating Pride with the movie that brought the drag queen road trip genre to America! Hot on the high heels of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert from 1994 Australia comes this 1995 American release starring Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes, and John Leguizamo. When their car breaks down in small-town Nebraska, three drag queens must win the hearts and minds of the l...

This week, we're spending time with Melvin James Kaminsky, better known to the universe as comedy icon and director Mel Brooks! After lampooning westerns, monster movies, and world history, Brooks turned his signature sense of humor to the cinematic sci-fi outings of Star Wars, Alien, 2001, and Planet of the Apes. With an all-star cast including Rick Moranis, John Candy, Joan Rivers, Bill Pullman,...

Aside from the release of Christopher Nolan's period piece magician caper The Prestige, the year 2006 had one more trick up its sleeve in the form of Neil Burger's adaptation of Steven Millhauser's short story "Eisenheim the Illusionist." Set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, Austria, the film stars Edward Norton as a poor magician who falls in love with a countess (Jessica Biel) while rivals Crown P...

Nineteen Sixty-Four was a huge year for cinema, especially for movie musicals. Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady went one and two at the annual box office, with the French film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Beatles' first film, A Hard Day's Night, becoming breakout hits. But for his birth year pick, Rum Daddy didn't play along with the band. He went with Bond. James Bond. Yes, the third outing fo...

In 2011, director Tate Taylor adapted Kathryn Stockett's bestselling novel into a feature film with an all-star cast including Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain, Allison Janney, Cicely Tyson, and Sissy Spacek all getting a piece of the pie. Set among upper-class white families in early 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, aspiring journalist Skeeter (Stone) chr...

Around the same time that cinematic universes began to dominate every multiplex, one satire landed like a live grenade tossed directly into Hollywood's lap. Co-written, directed by, and starring Ben Stiller, the movie follows the catastrophically doomed production of an over-budget Vietnam War epic whose cast of self-absorbed actors - including Stiller's fading action hero, Jack Black's substance-...

Thirty-five years ago, Steven Spielberg released his updated take on the classic children's story Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. Arriving in theaters in 1991 with enormous expectations, the film was toplined by four actors at the height of their fame: Robin Williams stars as an aged-up Peter, fresh off Dead Poets Society and Awakenings - and just a year away from Aladdin and Mrs. Doubtfire; Dustin Hof...

Chris Condon is an acclaimed comic book writer known for his gritty, atmospheric storytelling and neo-Western themes. He is currently writing major titles for Marvel and DC Comics while continuing his celebrated creator-owned work at Image Comics and Oni Press.    You may know him as the writer of: That Texas Blood & The Enfield Gang Massacre (Image Comics) Far Down Below (Mad Cave Studios); Hell...

On September 13, 1979, animators Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy left the feature animation department at Walt Disney Productions to set up their own independent animation studio. Their first feature, directed by Bluth, was based on the 1971 children's book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien. The book had originally been rejected by their former employer as "too dark" t...

This week, we have a special treat for you, as we are joined by Legendary makeup artist Ve Neill! After being inspired by Planet of the Apes cosplayers at a sci-fi convention, Ve began her career and has worked with makeup and effects artists like Fred Phillips, John Chambers, Rick Baker, Greg Cannom, and Stan Winston. Ve has collaborated with directors like Tim Burton, Chris Columbus, Ron Howard,...

Robin Williams was already a comedy and TV star based on his stand-up and starring role in Mork & Mindy. He'd also ventured into film with the films Popeye, The World According to Garp, and Moscow on the Hudson as modest successes. It wasn't until 1987 when he starred in a Vietnam War-era comedy that propelled him to mega-stardom. Based on the true-life experiences of Armed Forces Radio Service DJ...

Director Christopher Nolan made his mark in the mid-2000s with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne. But between these two blockbusters, Nolan and Bale teamed up on another project, an adaptation of Christopher Priest's 1995 epistolary novel about two rival magicians in late 1800s England, with Hugh Jackman playing Bale's frenemy. In the mix are Michael Caine,...

We're hitting the road with actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (playing fictionalized versions of themselves) to the North of England. Exploring the immortal poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and ABBA, the film combines gastro-tourism, mid-life crises, impressions, song, and more impressions in a road-trip odd couple buddy comedy that somehow always keeps its foot on the laugh...

Legends Podcast is heading to Korea for Netflix's most successful original release ever! Based on - holy moley - this is an original I.P.?! It's not a comic or video game? Wow! Based on an original idea by co-director Maggie Kang, this 2025 film from Sony Pictures Animation centers on an all-girl trio of K-pop superstars who also happen to be their generation's protectors from an ever-present inva...

Court is in session on this 2001 Reese Witherspoon star vehicle, based on the book by Amanda Brown, who channeled her own real-life experiences as a blonde Stanford law student into a book that sparked a studio bidding war. Reese Witherspoon faced her own struggles landing the lead role after being typecast as Tracy Flick from Election. However, with her turn as Elle Woods, a fashion-forward Harva...

Today on LEGENDS PODCAST, we're diving into a visually driven, dialogue-free sci-fi story set entirely to Daft Punk's Discovery. Directed by Leiji Matsumoto, it's a masterclass in music-led storytelling and stylized world-building. Quick note—our guy Lobster is out this episode, holding it down at South by Southwest. We'll carry on without him. Let's get into Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ec...

We're dropping our first listener pick of 2026, and it comes from twenty-five years ago, courtesy of Listener Bryan. In 2001, actor-turned-director Peter Howitt released his sophomore film (following 1998's Sliding Doors), a techno-thriller with a hot young cast including Ryan Phillippe, Claire Forlani, and Rachael Leigh Cook. In the film, tech mogul Gary Winston (played by Tim Robbins) aims to re...

Aspiring screenwriter Max Frye wrote a spec script in film school about a straitlaced yuppie's "best worst night ever," which his agent later told him would be perfect for either Martin Scorsese or Jonathan Demme to direct. Since Scorsese was busy on another "yuppie's best worst night ever" movie, After Hours, Demme ended up getting the nod. Demme cast Jeff Daniels as the yuppie Charlie Driggs, wi...

Nineteen Seventy-Six. America's bicentennial was a great year for cinema, with films like A Star is Born, King Kong, All the President's Men, Carrie, and The Omen heating up the box office, and instant classics Rocky and Network earning the most accolades. After a six-decade career in the director's chair, Alfred Hitchcock released his last film, Family Plot, around the same time that an up-and-co...

One of the breakout hits of 2016 was this based-on-a-true-story tale of the first manned missions to outer space. Focusing on the black women at NASA - mathematicians, engineers, and computers - who made these early spaceflights a reality through sheer brainpower while often going unrecognized for their contributions, Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe star in this adaptation of...

Nineteen Eighty-Three was a great year for cinema. Scarface. The Big Chill. The Outsiders. Risky Business. The Right Stuff. Videodrome. Return of the Jedi. And to represent the year he was born, Lobster picked… this movie. Based on their breakout characters from the sketch comedy show SCTV, Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis star as Canadian brothers Bob and Doug McKenzie in this take (off, eh?) on Haml...

Director Guillermo del Toro has been making movies about monsters his entire career, from Mimic to Hellboy to Pan's Labyrinth to The Shape of Water. His most recent film, an adaptation of Mary Shelley's ultimate monster story from 1818, is the culmination of del Toro's long-held dream to breathe new life into his favorite novel and film subject. Drawing inspiration from John Milton, Bernie Wrights...