Feeling Seen

It's our final show of MaxFunDrive 2023, and we're breaking out the big guns and weird masks to bring you this thoughtful conversation with director Brandon Cronenberg. Eschewing our usual movie character framework, Jordan and Brandon dig into the very idea of why and how we see ourselves, in film and in our daily lives. A special time of year means special episodes! Head over to maximumfun.org/jo...

Join, upgrade, or boost your Maximum Fun membership at maximumfun.org/join to get access to this full episode and over 500 hours of bonus content from MaxFun shows. And thank you! Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinfeelingseen   Feeling Seen is hosted by Jordan Crucchiola and is a production of Maximum Fun.   You can watch video...

MaxFunDrive 2023 is comin'atcha like CGI Spidey slinging and swinging from rooftop to flagpole!  Become a member and support FEELING SEEN directly by visiting maximumfun.org/join We're celebrating by getting the current Jordans of Maximum Fun together. It's Jordan, Jesse, Go! host and Bubble creator Jordan Morris, talking about Sam Raimi's 2002 Spider-Man , featuring future Babylon star Tobey Magu...

Producer's note: When we prepped Jordan's new intro to this amazing interview from April of '22, I had jotted something down like, "who could have dreamed back then that he'd go on to win all the awards." Jordan rightly called this out, because (as she says here) she, and other critics, DID dream that. What I'd meant was: it seemed like one of those performances and films that you hope will be bot...

Daniela Taplin Lundberg has made her mark in Hollywood doing something that’s become increasingly rare: creating authentic and artful films that are made for adults and appeal to a wide audience. These are movies like The Kids are All Right, Beast of No Nation, Nanny, Harriet , just to name a few. Today she talks with Jordan about Thelma and Louise – and in particular the affinity that she felt wi...

After Bring it On , before Ant-Men, Peyton Reed directed a cheeky little period/genre parody called Down with Love. Its stars (Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor) were what brought 10-year-old Kyle Turner to the DVD rental house, but it was supporting character Peter McMannus (David Hyde Pierce) that he identified with, even years before he truly clocked what it was he was identifying. Sounds like...

Director and  production designer (and former child actor) Francesca Maldonado shares how Rebecca (aka Tank Girl) from 1995's TANK GIRL was formative in her life, and offers perspectives on Hot Girl Representation, Valley Girl pride, and what's missing from movies now and in the past. Then, Jordan has one quick thing about an upcoming Amazon series called Class of '07 . *** With Jordan Crucchiola...

Throughout the much-lauded, jam-packed runtime of EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, Stephanie Hsu shapeshifts from depressed, suffering Joy Wang to countless iterations of the fabulous big-bad Jobu Tupaki. But the flashy confidence of Jobu Tupaki might be a misdirect from the pain she's feeling -- Joy's pain. Cyrus Cohen, film critic and programmer for NewFest, gets into it with Jordan on this we...

There are a lot of fantastic women in Women Talking , but when Jordan first saw the film in theaters, she was immediately  struck by the powerful performances of the movie's matriarchs, one of whom is played to hilarious, heartbreaking perfection by today's guest, Sheila McCarthy. Sheila tells us about identifying with Liza Minnelli's Pookie Adams in The Sterile Cuckoo — a feeling that she had whe...

As co-creator and showrunner of the show YOU, Sera Gamble knows that one way to fight the gender and romance stereotypes that we've been taught by popular media is to subvert them. In WALL-E, she saw a movie relationship that  offered not only a relatable "female" character, but a relationship paradigm that was worthy of celebration. She and Jordan talk about robots, TV writing, and fighting the p...

Comedian Gianmarco Soresi is brutally honest with us this weeks: he deeply relates to Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham!) in Milos Forman's 1984 classical classic, Amadeus . But while Gianmarco can own his Salieri-like insecurities, he can't let it keep him from pursuing virtuosity.  Then, Jordan has one quick thing about... Gianmarco on James Corden His half hour, "Shelf Life" *** With Jordan Cr...

Before writer, producer, and director Roxanne Benjamin was making V/H/S shorts or directing shows like Nancy Drew   and The New Adventures of Sabrina the Teenage Witch , she was a disaffected youth who was so recognizable as a Daria that classmates called her by the famous MTV character's name. Now, she joins us  fresh off the streaming release of her new movie, There's Something Wrong With the Ch...

If you needed proof that '90s movies were built different, look no further than TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT. It's a practical effect-driven spinoff of a horror comedy anthology from a Black director, sprinkled with bare-breasted ladies, centered around a mixed-race cast, set in the Southwest,  and starring Billy Zane as an ooze-filled demon and Jada Pinkett as a quietly brooding Final Girl....

Director/production designer Ariel Vida (VIDE NOIR, Rustic Films) has seen RRR many, many times. In this conversation with Jordan, she talks about the ways the movie makes her feel seen not only through the characters themselves, but through its unabashed celebration of abiding friendship  -- and the enthusiastic reception that message has gotten around the world. #RRRforOscars Then, Jordan has on...

Happy New Year! We're celebrating the end of 2022 by replaying a favorite early episode of the show. Enjoy, and here's to great things in 2023. This episode originally aired in November 2021. This week’s show could be titled “A Very Special Episode.” We actually have the wonderful Susan Orlean on to talk about watching Meryl Streep her in the movie ‘Adaptation.’ She takes Jordan through the proces...

This one is for everybody working to strike that balance between caring for yourself and caring for your "family of origin." A forgotten and surprisingly dramatic SNL spinoff directed by Harold Ramis in 1995, Stuart Saves His Family spoke to a younger Kevin Maher as an adult from a family where alcoholism was an issue. It even factors thematically into Kevin's new humor book, Santa Doesn't Need Yo...

Today, director David Bruckner talks with Jordan about feeling seen by Holly Hunter's character, Jane Craig, in the 1987 classic, BROADCAST NEWS. Directed by James L. Brooks, it's a journalism....satire? rom-com? dramedy?... starring Hunter, Albert Brooks, and William Hurt. It's one of those movies that is so prescient about what news media would become. And for David Bruckner -- whose latest film...

Film critic Amy Nicholson (whose ' Unspooled ' podcast with Paul Scheer is currently in its fourth season) first encountered 'Click' as a budding young critic and USC student. She didn't love it, but it did make her cry. This conversation with Jordan is an exploration of why that might be, alongside the ways things have improved and devolved in the years since the movie's 2006 release. Then, one q...

Actor Noah Segan -- or, should we say, writer/director/producer/actor Noah Segan -- is the star and creative force behind his directorial debut, BLOOD RELATIVES . In it, he plays a century-old, lone-wolf vampire who suddenly has a teenage daughter to think about. Segan, a dad himself, chose another suddenly-a-father character for today's epsiode: H.I. McDonnough (Nicolas Cage) from the 1987 Coen B...

Sometimes our co-hosts really struggle to come up with a character to discuss for our show. But actor Raúl Castillo ( The Inspection , Cha Cha Real Smooth , Looking , and much more) went with his gut, and what came to mind immediately was The Outsiders , and especially Matt Dillon's character of lead "greaser" Dallas "Dally" Winston. Jordan, Raúl, and you the listener will all learn at the same ti...

Rahul Kohli is a working actor -- and thanks in part to the prolific Mike Flanagan, he's been working a lot lately.  In this episode, Rahul (whose latest film is NEXT EXIT, directed by Mali Elfman) tells us the many ways that he feels seen by Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) in the KARATE KID films, and does so with a scrappy spirit that Daniel would approve of.  Then, Jordan's one quick thing is an...

We're celebrating our First Birthday with the one and only Paul Feig, writer/director/producer behind stuff like FREAKS AND GEEKS, BRIDESMAIDS, SPY, THE HEAT, A SIMPLE FAVOR, and lots more stuff. Starting off with his deep identification with the singularly obsessed Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, Paul shares stories of his childhood as a sci-fi loving movie ner...

David Bizzaro has had a long and varied career in front of and behind the camera, but his newest role is Mochi on Netflix's Waffles and Mochi's Restaurant. Mochi is...well, a mochi. He talks a lot, but doesn't say words. He's a tiny pink ball. He's friends with Michelle Obama. This week, David shares his journey into puppetry, his family background raised by an immigrant mother, seeing neurodivers...

“Tell me a tale of yourself, so that I might know thee,” King Arthur asks Dev Patel’s Gawain in The Green Knight (2021). At a time in her life when she was struggling with illness and her own creative ambitions, Nyla Innuksuk heard the question as if she were the one being asked. She’ll tell us all about it – and lots of great behind-the-scenes stories of her tale of Indigenous girls in the Canadi...

Lucky McKee's new film, Old Man, is the latest in a career of character-driven horror favorites like May, The Woman, and All Cheerleaders Die . And in this episode, he's sharing his personal resonance with Charlie, the main character in Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973). In a powder keg of rough men always threatening to go off in a burst of violence, Charlie (played by Harvey Keitel) is a mediator w...