Some Like It Unauthorized

Join us for a discussion of the life and work of one of Italy’s most well known and most controversial filmmakers, whether you’ve seen all his films or never even heard his name. We touch on the history of italian cinema post-WWII, the nature of celebrity and scandal, and some of Pasolini’s films about pimps (Accattone), prophets (The Gospel According to Matthew), and the depraved (Salò, or the 12...

The ‘70s saw a new explosion of horror in the US, where the kinds of excessively violent and grotesque films previously restricted to small regional releases were seeing greater national success. The gulf was closing between a studio release like The Exorcist, and independent releases like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Dario Argento’s Deep Red, his first crossover success in the US in ‘76. His...

and Obsession (2025) from Curry Barker Two horror films from first-time filmmakers are topping the box office, and we convened to compare them and discuss where contemporary horror succeeds and fails. Do we think Kane Parsons is poised to take over hollywood, or be a flash in the uncanny pan? Spoilers for Backrooms throughout, spoilers for Obsession after 42:10 You can now find us on substack Unau...

When Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky were serving in WWII, television had yet to become the ubiquitous sight in every living room. Back home, folks were still going to the newsreel theaters to follow the war effort abroad, and in the UK, Chayefsky was putting on plays to entertain the fellow troops (Lumet had acted all through childhood but found himself stationed in SE Asia repairing radios inst...

Despite being a director phenom that won awards straight out of film school with her first film Heat (1963), Larisa Shepitko would soon learn that her conviction for telling grounded stories about ambivalent characters would not make her popular with state production committees and censorship boards in those soviet times. She was only in her early 30’s when she suffered a severe spinal injury and,...

It’s time to talk about Travis Bickle. Paul Schrader, fresh out of film school and freshly divorced, wrote a script about what can happen to the isolated american man, and when paired with the maestro Martin Scorsese, this strange film about our assassination nation became a box office hit and a Best Picture nominee. We talk about the film’s cultural legacy, why it became canonized in the decades...

Heeeere’s Barry! We last left Kubrick after his nuclear comedy blew critics and audiences away, and in the ‘70s we find him continuing to tackle hefty subjects with a devilish glee and a love of irony. His adaptation of a canonical English novel is garnering him critical focus and oscar nominations once again, but for decades after, Barry Lyndon will be one of his less acknowledged films. On this...

A veteran of WWII and a veteran of film and television by the time the hays code was lifted, Robert Altman only became a director of note in 1970 when he took full advantage of the changing attitudes at the studios, the burgeoning ‘new hollywood’ era, and made the most cynical and degenerate comedy about the US military anyone had yet seen, a surprising s-M*A*S*H hit. Overnight, he had a calling c...

The big question since the 2022 BFI Sight and Sound Top 250 List was published, that no one has answered satisfyingly, is simply: why Jeanne Dielman? We watched Chantal Akerman’s film for the first time, and now, we’re talking about whether it lives up to expectations, and trying to answer the big question by examining how the gender politics of the ‘70s recontexualized film history and laid the g...

Though he was present in the heyday of Cahiers du Cinema, that contrarian film review mag where the biggest names in french new wave would ferment and develop their eclectic taste, Jacques Rivette had a lot more false starts on his way to directing films full time. Rather than endearing himself to wide audiences, he endeared himself to actors, and fostered an improvisational style almost akin to C...

Filmmaking genius or fraud provocateur? The work of John Cassavetes has been the subject of unending adoration and extensive dissection ever since the actor picked up a camera in NYC in the late ‘50s and joined the likes of Jonas Mekas and Shirley Clarke in the burgeoning independent film scene. Almost instantly, he became a cult figure to cinephiles in the know, and while he would go on to make s...

30-some feature films. 24 plays. 3 tv miniseries. Many drugs, many relationships. Dead at 37. Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a chaser (in more ways than one), and remains among that rare class of film artists that turned cinema into a verb, into an ongoing process and processing of the world around him. What’s astounding is that his films, while so specific to postwar german society, have a universa...

If Godard and Truffaut busted down the door for a new generation of french filmmakers, Jean Eustache followed them in and stood in the corner and received little attention. After making a few docs and shorts, he finally made a bid for cinematic immortality with this first-person-epic (longer than Jeanne Dielman!), La Maman et la Putain. It stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, the avatar-du-jour for many autob...

George Lucas’s breakout Best Picture nominated film reanimated a time barely a decade past, 1962, before a generation of boys went to Vietnam, before rock and roll went psychedelic, and before baby boomer nostalgia was an entire industrial complex. Less melodramatic and more laid back than the teen films of his youth, American Graffiti was exactly realistic enough, misogynist warts and all, to cat...

It’s time to talk Víctor Erice. It’s time to talk bees. On this episode, we examine this legendary spanish film’s reputation and the filmmakers that influenced ‘70s dream cinema, and we consider what the Frankenstein and beehive metaphors have to say about social rigidity and childhood fluidity. In addition, we dive into some albums coming out in 1973, from funk to krautrock to reggae, and everywh...

Early 1971, young upstart director Francis Ford Coppola, who had already founded his own independent production company to sidestep studio meddling and had recently produced George Lucas’s debut feature THX 1138, was weighing the offer to direct the adaptation of Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel, a project that was ostensibly Paramount’s, and particularly the vainglorious Robert Evans’s, baby. It wa...

We react LIVE to the 2026 Oscar Nominations, giving you our honest, unauthorized opinions on all the nominated films and the shameful snubs. Next episode: The Godfather (1972) by Francis Ford Coppola UnauthorizedPod.com for more. Hosted by  Zachary Domes  and  J Brooks Young . 

EndadaYear! Hosts Zach Domes and J Brooks Young reveal each of their Top Ten Films of 2025, and the 1st ever cumulative Some Like It Unauthorized Top Ten Official Official Best Films of the Year. In a year of aliens and monsters, political radicals and ping pong players, which film will be crowned the totally not arbitrary best of the best? Listen to find out! Or watch on youtube! Additionally, we...

The year ended not with a bang, but with the ping and the pong of that little ball of energy Timmy Chalamet bouncing across the silver screen in Josh Safdie’s new film. Topics include: the rise of the Safdie/Bronstein anxiety wave of films, the adoption of these films by the awards voters, and a segue into the 60s avant-garde and what radical filmmaking looks like today. Next episode: Top Ten List...

Filmmaking was a mid-life discovery for Sarah Maldoror: she made her first short film at the age of 39, after making waves in Paris as part of a black theater troupe, advocating abroad for african independence and supporting the fight in places like Algeria and Angola, and crucially, studying film in the USSR before assisting on The Battle of Algiers. As she witnessed Gilles Pontecorvo’s film beco...

We’re joined by Werner Herzog to discuss his early career film imagining the search for El Dorado by the spanish conquistadors, starring Klaus Kinski, and we explore post-colonial art, unexpected comedy, and the legacy of white dudes making their own epic jungle movies. Next week: Sambizanga (1972) by Sarah Maldoror Watch the trailer for our short film Suggest a film to be added to our Film Histor...

Garbage man John Waters witnessed the explosion of specialty theaters in the 60s that offered all manner of forbidden fruit, from nudie european films to gross-out gore films, and with natural business savvy, he catered to that growing audience with his own ultra out-there amateur films. He made out with a nice profit, but his films really persisted in public consciousness because of their smart s...

Larry McMurtry, the author of the novel that he and Peter Bogdanovich adapted into this smash success film, made it his life project to reconcile the popular image of the american west with the reality he grew up in post WWII. His novel “Horseman, Pass By” became the Paul Newman starring Hud, as defeatist as a film western can get, and The Last Picture Show is no sunnier. We explore how the film d...

As fate would have it, young divorcée Elaine May would move across the country, leaving her baby daughter with her parents, to pursue higher education at one of the only colleges that admitted people without a high school diploma: the University of Chicago. Only there would she befriend Mike Nichols, with whom she would become a nationally known comedic performer, before they quit while they were...

Bernardo Bertolucci has us thinking about World War 2 and the effects wrought by loser fascists like our protagonist Clerici, and the generation that came after, Bertolucci’s own baby boomers. We talk about his influences in hollywood and the french new wave, the legacy of this era of italian cinema, and queer readings of the film. 9:25 - The Conformist discussion begins Next week: A New Leaf (197...