Full Cast And Crew

"Hyper-specific, pointedly particular, rarified to the point of being incomprehensible"...these words from co-host Chris define our dear friend and two-time guest Paul Kaup's love of a very narrow band of films. For years, co-host Jason has tried to get Paul to explain exactly what they are and aren't. They're not movies you would go to the movies to see, they're not movies you'd even rent back in...

A prettily-wrapped early Christmas present for movie fans, Quentin Tarantino's epic yet human-scale 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood' both rewards and upends your expectations from "a Quentin Tarantino movie". Chris' signature intro (00:00), NO SPOILERS in this episode & Chris' favorite Tarantino movies (2:00), Jason loves 'Jackie Brown' (4:00), broad plot strokes of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood &...

Chris' signature thematic intro (00:00), the intricate plot of Hal Needham's Smokey and the Bandit (04:30), Coors Beer in the New York Times (06:00), Sally Field's memoir is fantastic (10:00), Bandit & The Bride meet cute scene (12:30), Sally & Burt's relationship (14:00), Burt & Dom DeLuise on The Match Game (17:30), CB Culture in pop culture (18:00), Jonathan Demme, Paul LeMat and Bruce McGill i...

Steven Spielberg's 1977 masterpiece "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" stands out as a deeply weird major-studio picture and, for many movie fans and directors like J.J. Abrams and Denis Villenueve, their favorite Spielberg movie of them all. Podcast Notes: Chris intro (00:01), putting Close Encounters Of The Third Kind in movie context (2:15), Being a Star Wars kid vs. a Star Wars kid (3:00), A...

In this rollicking and laugh-filled episode, Jason and Chris have an unreasonable amount of fun talking about 'Highlander', one of the strangest movies of the 1980's and one of the least likely franchise-spawning movies ever, still going strong 30 years later with innumerable sequels, prequels and spinoffs.   Chris' intro of 'Highlander' and its many accents (1986) @ 00:00   Co-Hosts Intro (@ 1:45...

Middle-aged, simple-minded Chance lives in the townhouse of a wealthy old man in  Washington, D.C. . He has spent his whole life tending the garden and has never left the property. Other than gardening, his knowledge is derived entirely from what he sees on television. When his benefactor dies, Chance naively tells the lawyers that he has no claim against the estate and is ordered to move out. Cha...

Chris and Jason are joined by inflatable co-pilot Young Nick Blake, who shares his love for 1980's iconic, seminal Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker movie 'Airplane'.  The intrepid trio covers: Chris' inventive comedic introduction to the episode (00:01) The number of jokes in the entirety of "Airplane" (9:00) Airplane origin story (10:00) Bizarro scenes from 'Zero Hour', the film the ZAZ guys based Airplane...

Norman Jewison's film of John Patrick Shanley's FIRST EVER screenplay was a little movie that nobody, even the studio and the actors and filmmakers, ever thought would enter the culture like a couple of well-delivered slaps to that face, that FACE!  In this episode, Chris and Jason jump into 'Moonstruck' like a big apizza pie: Read Nic Cage's amazing  NY Times INTV cited in the pod (2:00). Cher is...

In this special episode of the Full Cast And Crew Podcast, we interview Lee Wilkof, an actor and director whose career on stage and screen has spanned more than 42 years.  He graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1972 and has more than 101 IMDB credits as an (and counting) and has garnered Obie and Drama Desk Awards and a Tony nomination on Broadway.  Lee is a charming and self-effacing g...

This week on the Full Cast And Crew Podcast we cruise the rain-slicked early 90's NYC streets and track down Paul Schrader's (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, American Gigolo) 1992 film 'Light Sleeper'. Fittingly, we're releasing this one at 2:43am on a Thursday morning, with our ears still ringing from the sound system at Area and our noses numbed with bad decisions. A Manhattan drug dealer with a wealt...

Accompanied by their children (Dana Barron, Anthony Michael Hall), Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his wife, Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo), are driving from Illinois to a California amusement park. As Clark increasingly fixates on a beautiful woman driving a sports car, the Griswolds deal with car probl ems and the death of a family member...and a dog. They reach Los Angeles, but, when Clark worries t...

The understated, minimalist 'Flash Gordon' showed admirable restraint in scenery, costuming, and acting.  JUST KIDDING, it's a completely over-the-top circus spectacle of indulgence and various aspects of a film crew working on movies with vastly different tones except they're all working on the same movie.  But FLASH means a lot to a lot of people, notably middle-aged white men who were 6 in 1980...

Local Hero  is a 1983 Scottish comedy-drama film written and directed by Bill Forsyth and starring Peter Riegert, Denis Lawson, Fulton Mackay and Burt Lancaster. Up-and-coming Houston oil executive "Mac" MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) gets more than he bargained for when a seemingly simple business trip to Scotland changes his outlook on life. Sent by his colorful boss (Burt Lancaster) to the small vil...

We turned 40!  OK, 40 episodes but still, from the comfortable vantage point of wisdom and jaded experience, we look back on Bob Fosse's groundbreaking autobiographical takedown of the myths of himself, 1979's 'All That Jazz'.  Featuring the innovative "Fosse Time" editing, more iconic imagery (or "pretty pictures" as Fosse would call snapshots of his choreography) than you can shake a bowler hat...

More cigarettes were consumed during the filming of Barbet Schroeder's 'Reversal Of Fortune' than during the filming of George Clooney's 'Goodnight And Good Luck'.  And that's saying something! Also: WOW that Felicity Huffman cameo hasn't aged well, has it?  Oh the irony.  Ron Silver acts the hell out of a pair of  eyeglasses, and Glenn Close is unreasonably good in a movie that's often as odd as...

Public Enemy's churning, propulsive 'Fight The Power" was like a Batman logo swirling in the air across America in 1989 as Spike Lee's 3rd feature 'Do The Right Thing' hit theaters to the kind of fearful white fright and tut tutting from "thinkers" and reviewers too hidebound in their own bubble to receive this transmission from a filmmaker perfectly formed to speak in his films in a way no mainst...

1987's 'Robocop' is a brilliantly dark and funny social satire about a far-off time when powerful corporations have undue influence over society and overly-militarized police forces terrorize innocent civilians.  GOOD THING THAT NEVER HAPPENED!  We dive into Paul Verhoeven before Joe Ezsterhas got his hooks in him and 'Showgirls' became synonymous with 'career-ending bomb', and not in a good way. 

2004's 'Mean Girls' was a 'Heathers' for a new generation and was directed by the brother of the guy who wrote 'Heathers' which is so weird, right?  Featuring a star performance by LiLo, SNL alum Tim Meadows' best film work, and Tina Fey's brilliant script, 'Mean Girls' redefined the High School Movie and we give it its due with return Friend Of The Pod Alex Potter, who comes back for her 2nd LiLo...

Jonathan Demme's 1991 'Silence Of The Lambs' is one of only three films to ever win "The Big Five" Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.  It was an unconventional film in so many interesting and unique ways: female protagonist navigating two violently dangerous serial killers but also the male-populated world that looks down on and is d...

Jack Finney's 1955 science-fiction novel 'The Body Snatchers' is maybe the only underlying intellectual property (aside from, like, the Bible or Shakespeare) to inspire FOUR feature film versions across 6 decades.  So we start at the beginning with the fantastic Don Siegel (Escape From Alcatraz, Dirty Harry, Charlie Varrick) directed 1956 version, morph into uncanny likenesses of ourselves as we g...

It's been called "a perfect movie. I can't think of literally one thing that could be changed or improved".  OK, our guest Frank DeRuggiero said that, but he has only one tattoo and its a Jaws tattoo so he knows from whence he speaks.  Not only do we get into all the great moments from THE iconic scare-movie of all time, but we also discuss the waterlogged giant paperback of Jaws every family on v...

Well now we got bad blood, cause CHRIS, see...he's one of those people who LOVES 'Ishtar' and thinks it's a misunderstood classic of epic comedic proportions, and Jason is one of those rational, thinking humans who understands intuitively (ok after watching only 45 minutes of it) that it's a colossal failure.  Also, Chris quotes Hamlet in defense of the also-maligned 1970's failed musical '1776' o...

When a movie pitch contains the words "Based on the popular board game" you KNOW you're either in for a debacle of 'Battleship' (sorry, Peter Berg) proportions OR for the brilliantly subversive 1985 film that has become a cult classic and features the brilliant comedy performances of Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Martin Mull, Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Brennan, Michael McKean, and Lesley Ann Warren.  T...

'Grease' is the word, it's got groove it's got feeling, and so does this in-depth podcast about the 40-years-and-counting worldwide phenomenon.  Why does this weird movie (and it's deeply weird) stand the test of time?  Easy: TRAVOLTA, SONGS, and KITSCH.  And so many other reasons. So yes; we'll get into Sandy and Danny and the gang and the great performances from Didi Conn, Stockard Channing, and...

James L. Brooks' feature directorial debut 'Terms Of Endearment' has been soiling hankies for 36 years.  ELEVEN Academy Award nominations.  Stellar performances from Jack Nicholson, Shirley MacClain, Debra Winger, and John Lithgow.  We also get into the haunting brilliance of the theme to Brooks' tv masterpiece 'Taxi', his surprising involvement in some of the most distinctive American film comedi...