The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood

The Oscar nominations dropped yesterday morning and I grabbed our favorite Oscar prognosticators, Katey Rich and Christopher Rosen of The Ankler’s Prestige Junkie , to chat about what it all means. Does Sinners ’s 16 nominations mean it could upset One Battle After Another for best picture? What does it mean that Wicked: For Good took home zero nods? Perhaps most importantly: Will Delroy Lindo get...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Chuck Klosterman to discuss all things football and his new book, aptly titled Football . ( Please buy a copy for yourself and your friends ; you’ll thank me, and then your friends will thank you.) We hit on an array of topics, including but not limited to the potential demise of the sport, the ways in which television and football are a perfect match, why str...

On this week’s episode, I’m pleased to be joined by W. David Marx, author of the new book Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century . Alongside Marx’s Status and Culture , this book is one of the key texts to understanding how and why the culture has shifted so radically so quickly: the combination of “poptimism” (we discuss what, precisely, this is early on) and cultural omnivor...

On Monday, Sam Stein DMed me and asked if we could put together a little livestream event celebrating the work of Rob Reiner; he described it as sitting shiva, and I was happy to take the lead on putting this group of mourners together. I was joined by my colleague Bill Kristol, The Ankler ’s Richard Rushfield (whose great column on Reiner you can read here ), and Semafor ’s Dave Weigel (whose boo...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Vulture’s Nicholas Quah to discuss his and Savannah Salazar’s piece on what Netflix might do with Warner Bros.'s tie-ins with Universal Studios and Six Flags, and then expanded the conversation to consider the vast universe of WB’s entanglements. The studio also owns an enormous video game company, the second-biggest comic book company in DC Comics, and all so...

On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Scott Mendelson of The Outside Scoop , whom I’ve tasked with answering a very simple question: Is there a good business case to be made for rebooting the Rush Hour franchise or is it merely a (very odd) sop to Donald Trump and his wife’s chronicler, Brett Ratner? (:47). Then we discussed Zootopia ’s crazy popularity in China. (14:16) We taped this episode be...

On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by David Coggeshall (previously on to discuss Orphan: First Kill and the first Family Plan ) to discuss his sequel to the surprise 2023 hit for AppleTV+. We talked shooting in London and Paris, the inspirations this holiday-season film, and what might come next for this series (and his career!). If you enjoyed this episode—or need a “drunk uncle movie” to watch...

For a goofy franchise that started with gangsters stealing DVD players and wound up with a Pontiac Fiero going into space, The Fast and the Furious movies are a pretty fantastic lens through which to view the last quarter-century of Hollywood economics. From the DVD boom and bust to the internationalization and diversification of ticket-buyers to questions of propriety surrounding the digital resu...

On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Chris Yogerst, author of the new book from the University of New Mexico’s “Reel West” series on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. We discussed the making of the film, its place in the western canon as a sort of natural ending point for the traditional westerns made by John Wayne and John Ford, and the surprisingly political nature of the film’s central strug...

I’m joined by Dave Itzkoff on this week’s episode to discuss Paddy Chayefsky’s classic film, Network . Dave literally wrote the book on Network in his history of the film, Mad As Hell , and had lots to say about the making of the movie, the minds behind it, and its ongoing relevance to our daily lives. I know what you’re thinking, I can practically hear your thoughts: A movie about corporations ta...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Tom Nichols—staff writer at the Atlantic, professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College, and all-around nuclear arms expert—to discuss Kathryn Bigelow’s new nuclear war film A House of Dynamite . On this episode, we discuss how his students reacted to previous nuclear panic films like The Day After and Threads , what the new film from Bigelow and writer Noa...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Katey Rich and Christopher Rosen of The Ankler to preview the awards season and give you tips on what to check out (spoiler: Hamnet ’s gonna be a big one this year) and discuss the exquisite art of Oscar prognostication. (If you enjoy this episode, make sure to check out The Ankler’s Prestige Junkie newsletter and show.) For the record, you can see my nominati...

Hey, so, I wanted to pull an episode from the archive this week because it’s relevant to the big movie hitting theaters this weekend: Black Phone 2 follows up the surprise 2022 hit, The Black Phone , resurrecting The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) and his iconic mask. Back before that movie came out, I talked to Jason Baker of Callosum FX Studios about helping design the mask for that movie (as well as for...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Raoul Peck ( I Am Not Your Negro ) to discuss his new documentary, Orwell: 2+2=5 . We talked about his upbringing in Haiti and having to flee a dictatorial regime there, how social media and AI manipulations help degrade the idea of objective truth, and what can be done to combat this scourge. If you enjoyed the episode, I hope you check out his documentary: i...

Hey, before you listen to this week’s episode, do me a favor and watch the short film we’re going to be discussing. It’s only 17 minutes long, and if you’re between the age of 31 and 45 or so, I think it’ll trip a lot of your nostalgia circuits. (It’s fun for all ages, but Yourgo said this was the age range that best responded to the movie.) Here's a link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snpT2i7B...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Nate Soares to talk about his new book, cowritten with Eliezer Yudkowsky, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All . It’s a fascinating book—some will say fearmongering and sensationalist; I, frankly, think they’re overly optimistic about our ability to constrain the development of general intelligence in AI—in large part because...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Matt Roller, the creator and showrunner of the new Netflix animated show Haunted Hotel . We discussed his background in television, how it helped prepare him for the long (shockingly long!) process of creating a full season of animated television, and why he is reading the comments. The show is live on Netflix now and I hope you check it out … and give it the...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Tony Gilroy to discuss his work on Andor , the hit Disney+ series that’s a prequel to Rogue One but has ambitions beyond telling the backstory of the Death Star. It is, in a very real way, a TV show about our moment and the mounting tension felt throughout the political order: from Imperial troops on the streets of civilian cities attempting to provoke conflic...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Rep. Laura Friedman, the congresswoman from the area we colloquially refer to as “Hollywood,” to discuss her push for a national film tax credit of the sort used by the United Kingdom and other countries to lure production of movies back to the United States.  We discuss her career in the TV and film industry before her move into politics, how DC is not unlike...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Tim League, one of the founders of the Alamo Drafthouse and the man behind Metro Private Cinemas in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. It’s a pretty cool concept—half fine dining, half private cinema auditorium—and I was excited to discuss the evolution of movie theaters as both viewing and gastronomic experiences. League is planning to open the theater in a few...

On this week’s episode, I’m thrilled to be joined by Toby Huss, star of the summer’s most surprising smash hit, Weapons , as well as the rebooted King of the Hill on Hulu and Americana , in theaters and VOD now. We talked about all those, plus his weird and lovely photography book, American Sugargristle , which you can (and should!) order here . Toward the end of the episode, I went full Chris Far...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by New York Magazine ’s Bilge Ebiri, who has an enormous, career-spanning interview with Ron Howard in the latest issue. We discussed what makes a Ron Howard movie a “Ron Howard Movie,” the incredibly under-appreciated Thirteen Lives , and that movie about J.D. Vance. And then we talked a bit about his fascinating history of a key element of film technology in th...

I asked David Poland (read his Substack !) to come on this week to pick his brain about the state of the big studio comedy, a genre that has diminished in recent years as international grosses became more important and a lot of comedy releases shifted to streaming in an effort to reduce advertising costs. Which led to us talking about the states of various genres (including horror and superhero pi...

On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Puck media correspondent Julia Alexander to discuss the absurdities of Jubilee. You might not recognize the name of the company but you’ve probably seen some of their clips; most recently, Mehdi Hasan went up against 20 self-described far-right conservatives that resulted in at least one of the participants losing his job after he proudly declared himself an...

On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Crunchyroll EVP Mitchel Berger to talk about anime’s increasing popularity with those yearning for community. We reference a report on the state of anime several times; you can read it here . The long and the short of it, though, is that anime is increasingly popular with Gen Z and Gen Alpha, which will likely come as no surprise to anyone who has seen the w...