Death is a Photograph

This week John Dolan, co-host of Radio War Nerd , joins the DPP boys to discuss Sam Raimi's closer to the Evil Dead trilogy, Army of Darkness (1992). Dr. Dolan regales your co-hosts with tales of late 80s-early 90s masculinity in all its nerdy, machismo-laced infamy. Before the Marvel movie, before 4chan, there was the comic book shop and the 80s-blockbuster action superstar. How did these tropes...

This week, DPP is joined by Jacobin film critic and host of the Filmsuck podcast : Eileen Jones . We gather in the police station break room over coffee and doughnuts to discuss Errol Morris's 1988 film, The Thin Blue Line . Morris's documentary has been incredibly prescient — bringing to the fore big 21st-century questions about 'fake news,' 'polarisation,' and state power. Sam, Chase, and Eileen...

This week DPP is joined by filmmaker William Garcia Bigelow of Sometime the Wolf (2025), Attrition (2013) and The Couple. Chase and Will discuss Danny Boyle's directorial debut Shallow Grave (1994).  Sam, who once briefly lived in a massive flat in Edinburgh as a toddler, (many heinous crimes were committed there), is off sick. In his absence, Chase and Will try to figure out why young profes...

DDP is joined today by cultural historian Shalon van Tine to discuss Martin Bell's Streetwise (1984) and Larry Clark's Kids (1995). As of two months ago — all the hosts of DPP are now on the wrong side of thirty. Consequently, there couldn't be a better time to dive into the archives and explore some youth culture both Chase and Sam are too young to remember — 1980s streetkids in Seattle and 1990s...

This week DPP is outside of linear time entirely — or is it? We're joined by writer, author, and journalist Philip Womack to discuss Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride (1987). Irony, cynicism, earnestness — new sincerity ? Cold war analogy or riff on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels ? We discuss it all through the prism of blockbuster 1980s Hollywood. Womack can be found at @WomackPhilip , he's a...

This week DPP is joined by academic, podcaster, former editor of Sublation Magazine and founding member of the Platypus Affiliated Society: Spencer Leonard to talk about the 1989 Civil War flick Glory .  Leonard briefly taught Sam a course on Indian political history at the University of Virginia in the depths of the 2010s — so this is a homecoming of sorts. Glory marked a high-water mark for...

This week we're joined by podcaster, writer, artist and academic Matthew Ellis to talk about Wes Anderson's 2007 hit-and-miss feature The Darjeeling Limited. Can Gen X find spiritual sustenance in the East, or will they fail like their Boomer forerunners, empty, cold, confused and shivering in some pay-as-you-go ashram? Isn't it more fun to go shopping anyway ? Sam (as a Brit) gets his Indian-hat...

In today's episode Sam & Chase are joined by American novelist, founding editor of the LA Review of Books, and screenwriter Matthew Specktor — who worked directly on the optioning of David Fincher's 1999 classic adapation of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996). Was 1999 the height of human civilisation? Or simply the start of a rage fueled dissent into middle child syndrome? Listen to find out...

Chase & Sam launch DEATHPHOTOPOD with a series of questions: what is Tony Blair? Who is the End of History? Whither Gen X?  Head to our Patreon at [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod] Dedicated to a paragon of Gen X virtue: Giles Alexander Hardyman-Charter (1967-2025).