A Piece of Pie: The Queer Film Podcast

Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson are two of their generation's most celebrated filmmakers. But, everyone starts somewhere and The Queer Film Podcast is taking a look back at two auteur's debut films. Academy Awards and Palme d'Ors were in both men's future, but they announced themselves to the world in the 1990's with two movies about criminals with daddy issues....

This week we're finally covering two of queer cinema's most famous road trips; To Wong Foo and Priscilla Queen of the Desert! (We know these aren't the full titles of these films, but brevity is everything when you have a character count.) One film beautifully showcases the Australian outback, features Oscar winning costume designs and three characters with secrets and their own her...

We’re back! After a month off, we’re joined by activist Len DeWilde, who brings with him the transgender German rom-com you didn’t know existed, Romeos , and we pair it with Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In. One is a harmless coming out story, the other is about an evil scientist and a sadistic quest for revenge. We play Almodovar drinking games, discuss trans representation in modern media, b...

We're wrapping up Pride 2020 with a long look back, way back, to the sixteenth century with Mary, Queen of Scots. The film features great performances from Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie and some great beards from David Tennant and Guy Pierce. We pair it with the The Favourite, starring Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone and Best Actress winner Olivia Coleman. Two revisionist modern takes on the polit...

Continuing our celebration of Pride Month, this week we take a look at a couple of 1980's classics, each starring the one and only Dolly Parton. Brian is joined by his friend and Dolly Parton expert, Zack Hudson. In addition to sharing a star in Dolly, the films share a director, Colin Higgins. He was an out gay man, making an unapologetically feminist film with three of the early 80's b...

Pride events are canceled all over the world; but pride can never truly be canceled. To celebrate our community, we're covering queer films all month long. We start with the Oscar winning documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk  and pair it with the 2008 biopic starring Sean Penn. The documentary helped introduce the world to the first openly gay city councilman, who was assassinated after just...

We’re heading to Broadway this week, as we cover two queer classics based on plays. First, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton team up to host the worst dinner party of all time in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Not to be outdone, the unabashedly gay leads of The Boys in the Band throw a birthday party for one of their friends, and learn a few secrets while they’re at it. Two iconic films, but ha...

This week, Max and Matt join Brian to discuss films about queer filmmakers! Ed Wood tells the tale of the titular director, giving us Tim Burton's finest film and Johnny Depp's best performance, tracing Wood's struggle to make it in Hollywood alongside his queer family. On the other hand, we have queer filmmaker Bill Condon telling the story of the last days of James Whale's li...

Our celebration of fifty episodes continues into our 51st! To commemorate the milestone, Brian reached out to his contributors to check in, and find out what everyone's watching while under quarantine. This week we're joined by contributors Lauren, Rob and Stephen. Once again, no stone is left unturned. We talk movies, like A Simple Favor, Onward, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and touch on...

It's our 50th official episode!!! To celebrate, Brian used Zoom to get a hold of every single contributor to check in on how they're doing and what pop-culture they're consuming to pass the time while stuck at home under quarantine. The result is two hours of our queer film experts discussing all their favorite things right now. No stone is left unturned across the two episodes! In...

Just before our home state put us on Shelter in Place orders, Max and Brian got together to talk about the movie on everyone's mind: Contagion. Not content with with a fictional pandemic amid our real one, we paired it with Todd Haynes' 1995 feature, Safe! A young, but always incredible, Julianne Moore begins coughing and hyperventilating near any chemicals. Or is she just suffocating fr...

With the coronavirus putting the world in lockdown, it was only appropriate that we cover two horror films with isolated protagonists. But we'd be lying if we said we had that in mind. Instead, we planned to release this one to coincide with the release of A Quiet Place Part 2, but that film has since been delayed. But no matter! Contributors Lauren Whalen and Steve Moore drop by to discuss t...

This week, contributor Matt returns and we discuss two of the 21st centuries most iconic queer stories, 2019's Portrait of a Lady on Fire and 2017's Call Me By Your Name. Two epic, beautifully shot tales of couples falling in love, seemingly in exile from the outside world.  Questions or comments about what we talked about? Click here to let us know!

Contributor Max Bever returns to talk the most recent Best Picture winner, Parasite, and we've paired it with the year's second most unconventional horror film, Jordan Peele's Us. Are these films two sides of the same coin? What does each film have to say about their respective countries, or are they both just responding to capitalism? Two of the year's best movies, by two of t...

For the first episode of 2020, A Piece of Pie brings you our first ever live recording! We sat down to watch the Oscars and during commercial breaks, we paused and commented on the awards. Who won, who lost, and who made the best impression. Recorded as we watched, this is a live, unedited, unpolished episode with off the cuff remarks, long awkward pauses, not to mention our thoughts on the winner...

In our final episode of 2019, we finally review the queer cult horror classic Nightmare on Elm Street 2! The gayest horror film of all time stars Mark Patton as Jesse, a suburban teen with his own demons, who crosses paths with the legendary Freddy Krueger. Thirty years later, Mark Patton's documentary Scream, Queen: My Nightmare on Elm Street tales his story of navigating 1980's Hollywo...

This week, since James showed Brian one of his favorite films, we've switched roles and now Brian introduces James to Gus Van Sant's To Die For. The 1995 film stars Nicole Kidman as a ruthless woman looking for fame and fortune at any cost - even murder. We take a look at how the film holds up, discuss Van Sant's queer gaze and lament the lack of roles for the actress Illeana Dougla...

For this very special of A Piece of Pie, Brian and James sit down with actor Mark Patton, of Nightmare on Elm Street 2! He has a new documentary making the festival rounds: “Scream, Queen: My Nightmare on Elm Street” The night before the film’s Chicago debut, Mark sat down with us to talk about his journey through Hollywood in the 1980’s, his quest to make this documentary and tell his story. It w...

We're trying out a new format for this one! Instead of our usual 2 movies, James' talked Brian into watching John Waters' camp classic, Serial Mom! As Brian discovers this cult queer staple, we also discuss Waters' legacy, Homer Simpson, and the great Kathleen Turner! This film skewers the 1990's in John Waters' unique voice, join us as James' revisits it via the...

For our 40th episode, we're joined by Matt and Ryan, hosts of ExRated Movies! So of course these four gay men tackled the lesbian crime drama, Bound, the first film from the Wachowski's, starring Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly. We paired it with the lesbian-adjacent 90's campy thriller, Wild Things, starring Neve Campbell and Denise Richards. Who's the best actress among these...

We have Beatlemania this week at a Piece of Pie! Max returns this week to talk the messy Across the Universe , Julie Taymor's disjointed Beatles movie musical. Meanwhile, Brian gets to gush over the first movie starring his favorite band, the. Why does Julie Taymor take the Beatles' more seriously than the Beatles do? How many cliche's did Richard Lester's classic invent? And w...

It's Halloween in July as Brian and James revisit two vampire tales, Interview with the Vampire and Only Lovers Left Alive. Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt play gay-adjacent vampires in the 90's goth classic, with Kirsten Dunst in her debut role. We talk Anne Rice's lurid prose, Antonio Banderas' accent and Brad Pitt's boredom. Then we discuss Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left...

With Pride Month 2019 winding down, James and Brian take a look at two queer films that share more than just an actress in Julianne Moore. For the first time, we're talking two queer films from two queer filmmakers! Each film takes a look back at where we've been with Far From Heaven taking place in the 1950's. In the era of Leave It to Beaver and Donna Reed, Todd Haynes' film...

For the second part of our 2-part X-Men special, we start with Matthew Vaughn's "First Class," all the way to this year's "Dark Phoenix." Is the new flick as bad as you've heard? Is James McAvoy a better or worse Professor X? Is Logan a masterpiece of comic book films or just a straight-up masterpiece? How much screaming does it take to play Wolverine? All these...

With the release of the long-delayed Dark Phoenix, and the Fox X-Men movies essentially coming to an end, we decided to go back and revisit 19 years of films! From it's humble beginnings in the year 2000, with a cast of unknowns, to its conclusion years later starring Oscar winners, we go all the way back to the beginning. We discuss the problematic Bryan Singer and behind the scenes drama. M...