Why Is This Not a Movie?

Boston Globe comedy critic Nick Zaino is back to tell us why America's love affair with cute, cuddly sloths should come to a violent end! Should an all-star cast of oddball actors get torn to pieces very, very slowly? Or should every role be played by Nicolas Cage? Either way, it's the campy, ridiculous horror movie America needs right now!

Quick, guest-free episode this week, as I wanted to tell the story of 14-year-old Edward Jones. Disguised as a chimney sweep, broke into Buckingham Palace. He’s caught, chased away, and arrested by the police, but not before stealing a regimental sword, and when the bobbies apprehend him, he has Queen Victoria’s knickers stuffed down his pants. Why Is This Not a Movie?!?

In 1971, Monte Hellman cast young unknown Laurie Bird in Two Lane Blacktop , thrusting the orphaned teenager into a Hollywood milieu of opportunists and phonies she wasn't emotionally prepared for. The year before, fellow nonactor Mark Frechette was cast in Michaelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point , and his minor fame and naivete made him the perfect target for cultists looking for a meal ticket....

In 2007, Michael Chabon published an alternate-history novel about Jewish state formed after WWII in Alaska instead of Israel. The Coen Brothers snapped up the movie rights... and then never made the movie. Scott Bunn, co-host of Steve Sax Syndrome on ashevillefm.org, is on hand to discuss why the Coens' love of dialect and language makes them the perfect directors for this story.

For decades now, four meddling kids and their dog have been unmasking a series of villains. Someone's been making a lot of masks! National Book Award- and Eisner-nominated author Colleen AF Venable ( Kiss Number 8 , Mervin the Sloth is About to Do the Best Thing in the World , The Oboe Goes Boom Boom Boom ) joins the show and we learn that we both think way too much about the mechanics of Scooby D...

General William Howe led British forces against George Washington in 1776, but was he trying to lose on purpose? Horror writer Dustin Koski pitches us on a Revolutionary War conspiracy theory, and why it would make a terrific farce. Why is this not a movie?!?

Tom Waits' songs are loaded down with darkness, weirdness, and colorful characters, so why not have Waits—who's also acted in a string of indie films through the years—as a hard-boiled detective exploring the weirdness that lurks in the dark? Nick Zaino, who covers the comedy beat for The Boston Globe , and hosts long-running interview podcast Department of Tangents , joins us to talk about why Wa...

1863. The Confederate White House. An illiterate former slave tidies up Jefferson Davis' office. Except this maid is in fact a well-educated woman with a photographic memory... and the most important spy in American history. Why Is This Not a Movie?!?

For my money, the moment moment rock and roll began, the moment lightning struck: the drummer couldn’t play the intro right. The singer made him play it again, and play it again, until finally, in frustration, he shouted the drum part at him: a wop bop a loo bop, a wop bam boom .

1942. Adolf Hitler sends a U-boat dangerously close to the shore of Long Island. Four Nazi saboteurs emerge. Their mission? Break into the secret sub-basement below Grand Central Station to destroy the generators that power every train going in and out of New York. Why is this not a movie?!? Every week, A.V. Club  writer Mike Vago pitches stories that Hollywood needs to throw up on the big sc...