Feeling Seen

Stand-up comedy. YouTube stardom. Male modeling. Will Hunting. A precocious wannabe pirate with super-stretch powers. What do these things have in common? Listen and find out how they all come together in the form of German-born comedian Mario Adrion, as he and Jordan discuss his affinity with Monkey D. Luffy and Will Hunting. Then Jordan has one quick thing about the great Kyle Gallner and his ne...

Comedian Jen Kober always knew why she felt an affinity with Mindy Cohn's Natalie on The Facts of Life. Natalie was the rare bigger girl on TV in the 1980s, and yet that wasn't a huge part of her character -- she was smart, goofy, and beloved by her friends. As for Jodie Foster's tomboy teen in the original Freaky Friday movie? Sure, it was good to see a rough-housing girl at odds with her mom for...

When writer/director Justin Simien ( Dear White People , Haunted Mansion ) first saw William Greaves' groundbreaking 1968 film, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One . He was mad. Not about the film's avant-garde style (part fiction, part documentary, part  performance art) but about the fact that he hadn't seen it sooner -- it might've saved him a lot of trouble as he found his way in a challenging, se...

Director Jennifer Phang has helmed episodes of some major shows -- THE BOYS, RIVERDALE, THE EXPANSE, RESIDENT ALIEN, THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT, and more. Her latest film is Disney's DESCENDANTS: THE RISE OF RED. In this conversation, themes of humanity, mother/daughter relationships, and robots of all stripes abound in this episode, and no wonder, when Jennifer's brought us the rich dual Grace Park rol...

Before Bill Burke founded The Optimism Institute and started hosting the podcast Blue Sky , he had a major career in entertainment business -- the first GM of Turner Classic Movies, former CEO of the Weather Channel, ghostwriter of Ted Turner's memoir, just to name a few. Now, as someone devoted to the cause of seeing the positivity in the world with clear eyes, he's brought a character who seems...

First time feature director Sean Wang wanted a story that only he could tell, specific yet relatable. And so, with his new film 'Dìdi,' (a Sundance hit this year) he chose the coming-of-age genre and a semi autobiographical narrative. He was inspired in his filmmaking by a movie he'd seen in the theaters when he was around the same age as its protagonist, Mason, is at the end of the film: 'Boyhood...

Sequoia Holmes, host of the Webby Award-winning BLACK PEOPLE LOVE PARAMORE grew up idolizing Raven-Symoné...or was the real inspiration Raven's character, the self-assured and big-dreaming Galleria Garibaldi in 2003's THE CHEETAH GIRLS ? Jordan and Sequoia celebrate the surprising depth of this DCOM classic. Then, Jordan has one quick thing about TRIGGER WARNING (the movie). *** With Jordan Crucch...

Actor (and director, writer, producer) Devery Jacobs might be most familiar to folks from her role on RESERVATION DOGS, but she's carving out her own space in Hollywood with projects like the new movie BACKSPOT (executive produced by Elliot Page and directed by D.W. Waterson). And even as she's playing her part in making sure Native actors feel seen on screens, she's still battling to be herself o...

This episode originally aired in April of 2023, but has been edited to include a new and updated "One Quick Thing" at the end! Season 2 of  Manzoor's We Are Lady Parts is now streaming on Peacock in the US. Balancing the dark and the light sides of coming of age, womanhood, and navigating the social order is something filmmaker Nida Manzoor always strives for in her projects (like  WE ARE LADY PAR...

Whether he's starring in major movies like ELEMENTAL or JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION, or sinking his teeth into roles like his his latest (in Yorgos Lanthimos' new KINDS OF KINDNESS), actor Mamoudou Athie follows his gut and ignores the algorithms. When Dev Patel's directorial debut, MONKEY MAN hit theaters earlier this year, Mamoudou found new depths of admiration for Patel as an actor and director --...

June Squibb was born an actor, and had a rich career on stage for years before becoming an on-screen performer in her sixties. It’s not your typical trajectory, sure, but then neither is being 94 and carrying your first feature film – which, by the way, is an action comedy. With her new movie THELMA new in theaters this weekend, the singular June Squibb joins us to talk about how the role of Kate...

The movie CLUE may not have been an instant hit, but it has an enduring legacy. And maybe everyone has a favorite character.  But for Adam Goldman, creator and writer of The Outs and Hot White Heist , Mr. Green (Michael McKean) is more than just a fave. He's a first example of what it means to be a "gay dipshit" (his words, we promise).   Then Jordan has quick thing about a couple of queer movies...

Actor, director, and writer Megan Rosati was not a child vampire. But from first watch, she so identified with Eli, the 12-year-old vampire in LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, the modern horror classic from Sweden, that she would show the film to people to help them understand her. In this episode, she and Jordan dig into the ways we can feel like we're different -- especially in adolescence -- and the power...

New Yorker cartoonist and writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert , Asher Perlman, related to Charlie Kaufman's self-deprecating self-portrait in Spike Jonze's 2002 film Adaptation - a movie we discussed here in one of our earliest episodes, with author Susan Orlean. As he's grown up -- both as a person and a creative -- has he gotten more in touch with his inner Donald, Charlie's (fully fic...

You definitely know DeWanda Wise from somewhere. She's made a splash on the big and the small screen, in titles like SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT (the Netflix series) and JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION. Now she's starring in the horror film IMAGINARY, which just landed on VOD after being in theaters earlier this year. But if you didn't realize that was the same DeWanda in all of those projects, you're not alone -...

With CHALLENGERS, screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes tapped into what he really wanted to know about his favorite athletes: what are they REALLY playing for? Beyond the game? That's a glimpse we get into Brad Pitt's Billy Beane in the 2011 film MONEYBALL. What's more, we see Beane trying to do something anyone who's tried to get a movie or a play off the ground knows well: hustling to make magic with l...

Sierra Katow is an Asian-American woman in stand-up comedy, but those parts of her identity are surface-level. What you might not know about Sierra (unless you watch her new special, FUNT) is that she's also a little sister. That's not the only point of recognition she has with Lilo and Mei, heroes of Lilo & Stitch and My Neighbor Totoro , but it's certainly first on the list. She and Jordan discu...

Drag superstar Latrice Royale has been in the game since before Ru Paul's Drag Race was a phenomenon. She won Miss Congeniality on her season of that show, and went on to appear on All-Stars and Drag U. An actor and performer, Latrice is one of the co-hosts of the just-launched Season 4 of HBO's We're Here . And if you know anything about Latrice, just a few moments with Della Reese's character, V...

This episode originally aired on  May 18, 2023. From her roles in a semi-autobiographical sitcom in 1996 ( Life's Work ) to The Parent Trap to Abbott Elementary , Lisa Ann Walter has played a lot of different kinds of strong, brassy women. And even though standards of beauty and acceptance in Hollywood are always changing, those winds haven't always blown in her favor. But what makes an icon iconi...

Larry Fessenden is almost a kind of mythic figure in the world of indie filmmaking. He's a filmmaker behind dozens of his own independently produced projects, an actor, an editor, and a producer who's helped give directors from Ti West to Kelly Reichart their start. His new film is BLACKOUT, which focuses on a different kind of mythic figure: the werewolf (with Larry's signature thoughtful touch)....

Avril Speaks, independent filmmaker and co-host of the film advice podcast DISTRIBUTION ADVOCATES PRESENTS tells us why J from AWKWARD BLACK GIRL was such a revelation -- even more so than when the successful web series morphed into INSECURE, and J became Issa. Plus, she shares her affinity with Summer, a teen girl coming of age as her mother converts to Islam, in her film JINN . Then, Jordan has...

THE SAVAGES (directed by Tamara Jenkins, who also directed SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS, and starrring Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman) is an often poignant comedy about adult siblings trying to get care for their elderly father, who suffers from dementia. That might not be the most expected pick from a director whose new horror film, IMMACULATE , now has  the distinction of being NEON's highest...

It's the final week of #MaxFunDrive! Thanks to everyone who has joined or upgraded so far; if you've been putting it off, now's thie time! maximumfun.org/join It's been a long time since comedian Jackie Kashian (co-host of MaxFun's own Jackie and Laurie Show ) has been a industry newb like Benji (Mark Linn Baker) in 1982's MY FAVORITE YEAR. But she felt really seen by Benji's journey into the worl...

This podcast is part of the #MaxFunDrive! If you’d like to help this podcast continue and get great gifts in the process, go to maximumfun.org/join and become a MaxFun Member for as little as $5 a month. You can also upgrade or boost your membership for as little as $1 more a month to help the show out even more and earn gifts and certain levels. COLOR OF NIGHT is one of the wildest, most surprisi...

Susie Banikarim has been a freshman journalist. She's also been a boss. Now, she's the co-host and EP of the podcast In Retrospect , along with her friend, New York Times editor Jessica Bennett. Over the years, Susie has kept watching the 2006 modern classic The Devil Wears Prada , and she's noticed a funny thing happen. Where once she (obviously!) identified with the put-upon lead, Andy Sachs (An...