Film School

That'll be the day... Widely considered to be one of--if not THE--best westerns ever made, we're watching the John Ford, John Wayne classic this week. After a brutal attack on his family's farm, Ethan Edwards sets off in search of his abducted niece...an odyssey that takes him year and deep, deep into obsession and darkness. So, how does it hold up in 2021? We discuss!

When resistance is CHOKING you . . . how do you deal with that? When you're absolutely paralyzed, stuck, adrift without hope, what worked? How did you pull yourself out of it? And if you're in that place right now with no answers to those questions, have no fear. Josh and Ira have been in the same place, and managed to turn it around. They share takeaways from their own experience. Also, Josh reco...

It's a trap! Sequels are hard. Endings are harder. It was probably an impossible task to out-do the magic trick Empire pulled when it outdid Star Wars, but Jedi still manages to hold its own. The visuals are top notch, the adventures are edge of your seat thrilling, the Ewoks are probably a mistake, and the actual ending between Luke, Darth Vader, and the Emperor is surprisingly effective. The sag...

What's a scene that got under your skin? You can't stop thinking about it, you'll always remember it, it will stick with you for the rest of your life? Josh and Ira share some top movie moments this week. Also, Josh recommends The Movies That Made Us on Netflix, and Ira recommends The Olympics, which are now done, but happen every two years!

No, Luke . . . I am your father. It's so rare that a sequel outdoes the original. A hundreds times moreso when the original is an instant classic, which is what  Star Wars  was. But, here lies  Empire, the film that built a  universe . There would be no Star Wars like there is today without Empire. It took the campiness and rough-around-the-edges thrill of the first film and grew it the hell up. E...

How much of success is effort and how much is luck? Or talent? Being lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time certainly has SOMETHING to do with success...but probably far, far less than anxiety or insecurity would like us to think. We may need to adjust our definition of success as well. We talk about all of it! Also...Josh recommends  The OA on Netflix, and Ira talks about  Tenet...

May the Force be with you! You know the AFI list is getting real when  Star Wars shows up. For the Gen X and Millennial generations, there's no bigger film that this. It's the most popular, the most influential, the most defining of an era. There was the world before  Star Wars , and then there was the world after. This week, we break down George Lucas' classic, and figure out what makes it tick....

We all learn differently. Visually. Auditory. Verbal. Social. How do you learn best? Do you know? Turns out, Ira didn't even realize how he learned best until this episode, so it's a super valuable question to ask! Also, Josh recommends  True Detective and Ira recommends (specifically for Josh, but you're welcome to go along for the ride:)  Forgetting Sarah Marshall and (a very early) Danny Boyle'...

A boy's best friend is his mother. In the period between 1954 to 1960, Hitchcock made every single one of the four of his films that appear on the AFI's Top 100 list. Psycho, the last of those four films, might be the best of them all. It was shot for nothing, it was almost never released, and it went on to be the most profitable film of his career. Psycho, quite literally, invented a genre of fil...

What are your bad habits? We hate them. They hold us back. But, we all have them, and identifying what they are can help to keep on top of them. This week, Josh and Ira dish on their own bad habits, and how they deal with them.

Good morning, Dave . . . It's hard to overstate just how influential this film is, Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, a touchstone of the 60s psychadelic movement, and arguably the best--or at least most  artistic --Science Fiction film ever made. We've been trying to re-do what this movie does ever since, and I'm not sure anything  has . Story by Arthur C. Clarke. Visuals by Stanley Kubrick. I mean,...

Life, frequently, is chaos. And if its true that we must fit creativity into our lives, not vice versa, then how do we stay consistent in the midst of the craziness? The answer is: flexibility. A rigid structure falls in an earthquake; a flexible structure survives. So how do we apply that to our schedules, our goals, and our creativity? Also, Josh recommends Denis Villeneuve's  Enemy , and Ira re...

Mister DeMille . . . I'm ready for my closeup! Director Billy Wilder would all like us to know: there was an era of movies before the talkies, and we did those silent stars  dirty . Gloria Sawnson is glori ous  (see what I did there?) as the cast-aside Norma Desmond living in a dilapidated mansion doing her best to re-live her glory days and slowly losing her mind. William Holden is Joe Gillis, th...

This isn't a topic on 'voice,' or an artistic point of view. Rather, literally, concretely, how do you approach writing your scenes? Are there particular entry points you like to use? How do you like to indicate thoughts and feelings and actions? What pacing do you like to use? How do you translate thoughts and images into words? Literally, what kind of language do you like to use when you're writ...

Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me . . . aren't you? It's the movie that made Dustin Hoffman a star, and rightly so. He plays the naive, uptight and awkward Benjamin Braddock who masks a disenchanted with his parents' rich, vacuous, meaningless lives, with a frozen mask for a face that says 'I'm screaming on the inside.' But, then the wife of one of his father's friends propositions him wit...

Truth is what we're seeking in art. We're not looking for structure, or technique, or skill, or three acts, or crises, or backstory, or any of the stuff we spend so much time talking about on podcasts like these. What we're looking for is something that FEELS REAL. So…is all that craft stuff the same thing? Or is this verisimilitude something else to consider all on its own? We discuss! Also, Josh...

Buster Keaton brings the ACTION! Charlie Chaplin gets most of the attention from the physical comedy corner in silent film, but Buster Keaton was certainly a master in his own right. This film is almost 100 years old and it brings the action non-stop. Keaton can certainly construct a breath-taking gag . . . but can he deliver a story with the pathos that his better-known contemporary could? We wat...

"Step outside your comfort zone." "Do something new." Okay…but  how ? HOW do you do something that you've never done before? Stepping outside the comfort zone is, by definition,  uncomfortable . Luckily, there are some tried and true methods. We discuss! Also, Josh recommends  The Wire , and Ira recommends  Mare of Easttown .

I coulda been a contender! Marlon Brando stars in, perhaps, his most iconic role as the washed-out boxer-turned-mob-tool Terry Malloy. He unwittingly plays a part in a murder, an old crush comes back to town, and things unravel for him. Will he stand up for what he knows is right, or will he take the dive, like the night that ended his career as a boxer?

It can be so easy to get lost in creating backstory/worldbuilding/brainstorming/etc. for our plot and characters...but where does the rubber actually meet the road where that kind of work shows up in our finished product? Also, Josh recommends Richard Linklater's Before series, and Ira recommends For All Mankind  on AppleTV+.

Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings! It's become a Christmas classic, but it didn't start out that way! This film is yet another example of a movie that found second life on television and became a cultural touchstone. Jimmy Stewart is wonder, as always, the story is cozy through and through, and it pioneered a whole new method of filming fake snow. Merry Christmas, everyone!

It takes energy–a lot of it–to create. So, how in the heck do you maintain the kind of energy it takes to get stuff done? What keeps you motivated to put in the time and do the work? And once you've got some momentum going, how do you maintain it? We discuss! Also, Josh recommends  Army of the Dead  on Netflix.

Trigger warning: this podcast discusses sexual assault. In 1977, Polanski was arrested and charged with  drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl . As a result of a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of unlawful sex with a minor. In 1978, after learning that the judge planned to reject his plea deal and impose a prison term instead of probation, he fled to Paris.  A number of othe...

"Just write the bad version! Get it out of your head, then it's real and you can actually start to fix it. A 'vomit draft.' It doesn't matter if it's good or bad, just WRITE IT." It's good advice. …Usually. But not always. Sometimes, the advice to just write and turn off the "is this good or bad" filter can actually be a TRAP. Josh and Ira talk about their own personal experience with it! Also, Jo...

Well, nobody's perfect! Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon are a special kind of magic, and in '59 those two were firing on all cylinders. Lemmon and Tony Curtis are hard-luck musicians on the run from the mob, posing in drag as part of an all-female jazz band, and falling in love with Marilyn Monroe . . . what's not to love?!