The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood

On this week’s supersized episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, I’m rejoined by Matthew Ball to discuss his epic examination of the state of the video game industry and how its growing pains reflect what we’ve seen in other entertainment industries like film. I’d recommend at least scanning his report (you can download the pdf here ) even if you’re not a gamer—I am, as discussed in the opening...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Bill Ryan and Dennis Cozzalio to discuss their contribution to the new Arrow Limited Edition release of Inglourious Basterds on 4K. The booklet features a blog-era (remember blogs?) conversation about the film that occurred when it was initially released, in addition to, among other things, a postcard with a recipe for apple strudel (whip cream NOT optional)....

This week I’m joined by Richard Rushfield and Katey Rich of The Ankler to discuss the state of the awards season post-Golden Globes and in the midst of the Los Angeles fires. (Indeed, Los Angeles resident Richard is in the city to give us an on-the-ground update of the state of things from his perspective. Please excuse any background noise/distortion that you may hear as a result!) We talked abou...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Steven Hyden, who—in addition to being the author of books on Bruce Springsteen , Pearl Jam , and Radiohead , and a prolific author at Uproxx —served as the story producer on HBO’s new film, Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary . In addition to discussing just what it means to be a story producer on a documentary, we discussed the making of this film, the evolution of t...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Brandon Wainerdi to discuss DK’s hefty and handsome new reference book, Star Wars Encyclopedia: The Comprehensive Guide to the Star Wars Galaxy . We discussed how he broke into writing about Star Wars, researching his entries for the book, and why so much of what we obsessives know about Star Wars comes not from the films but the surrounding products. Brandon’...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by novelist and Broadway producer Michael Wolk to discuss his new interactive novel, Devil’s Game. You can check it out yourself here ; it’s an interesting mix of web-first design and apocalyptic airport thriller. We talked about what drove him to write this novel and also discussed the state of Broadway and live theater more generally. If you enjoyed this episod...

On this week’s episode, I talked to Alex Reisner about his pieces in The Atlantic highlighting the copyrighted material being hoovered into large language models to help AI chatbots simulate human speech. If you’re a screenwriter and would like to see which of your work has been appropriated to aid in the effort, click here; he has assembled a searchable database of nearly 140,000 movie and TV scr...

This week I’m rejoined by Sean McNulty of The Ankler’s morning roundup newsletter, The Wakeup , to discuss the big news in cable land: ComcastNBCUniversal’s decision to spin (most of!) their cable properties into a new, separate company, called SpinCo for now. What does this mean for MSNBC, USA, and the rest of the impacted channels? Why is Bravo staying under the Comcast umbrella? What impact wil...

This week I’m thrilled to be joined by Jacob Navok, the CEO of Genvid Entertainment, to discuss his company’s new partnership with DC Comics, DC Heroes United. A combination mobile game and Justice League television show, DC Heroes United is a fascinating hybrid entertainment experience, one that Navok has been working on in various forms for years now.  The first 20 minutes or so of the show are...

This week I’m joined by Russell Hainline, the screenwriter of the forthcoming Netflix original Hot Frosty as well as a whole bunch of Hallmark original Christmas movies (including last year’s The Santa Summit and the forthcoming The Santa Class ). I asked him on today to talk about the burgeoning market for Christmas movies on channels like Hallmark and streaming services like Netflix, and we had...

This week I’m joined by Mark Cousins, the writer and director of the new documentary, My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock . We talked about his movie’s unorthodox presentation, why Hitchcock remains eternally relevant, and how he puts together his incredible video essays. (If you’ve never seen his The Story of Film: An Odyssey , you really should.) And then he turned the tables on me with some closing que...

Good show, long show today with the Entertainment Strategy Guy (subscribe to his Substack here ). I’m going to offer up timestamps here, which I don’t usually do, because there’s a ton of stuff covered in this podcast.  Amongst the topics we discussed: Marvel vs. DC in the TV realm (:40); Tulsa King’s status as a surprise hit for Paramount+ (11:40); what the data about Netflix’s second season of M...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Thomas Negovan, who oversaw the reconstruction of Caligula: The Ultimate Cut . Combing through 96 hours of the original negatives, Tom rebuilt the film from the ground up in order to bring it closer in line with the vision of writer Gore Vidal, director Tinto Brass, and star Malcolm McDowell. We discussed some of the technical challenges of tracking down sourc...

I’m joined by Gabriel Sherman, the writer of The Apprentice , on this week’s episode. Sebastian Stan plays Donald Trump in this movie in theaters now about the future president’s relationship with noted legal fixer and possible evil supervillain Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). The movie’s path to distribution is almost as interesting as the film itself: following production and a decent response at Cann...

On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Parrot Analytics’s Brandon Katz to discuss a vexing issues for streaming channels and audiences alike: why do the services have such a difficult time helping people find more things on the service to watch? Our chat is based in part on his column in the Observer , and you should read it if you have a second. But the long and the short of it is that streaming...

This week I’m talking to a friend here in Dallas, Bart Weiss, about the Ernie Kovacs Award taking place this weekend at the Texas Theatre. This year’s honoree is Jerry Casale from the band Devo, and we’re discussing his work both with the band and as a pioneer of the music video artform. Check out the links above for tickets to the various events (the screening tonight is going to be pretty fun, I...

NOTE: This is the correct audio file! Apologies, crossed my Audioboom streams the first time around. On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Jason Pargin to discuss his latest novel, I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom , a standalone comic adventure about life in the age of interconnectivity . It’s out Tuesday; you can preorder it now . And I really hope you do: Pargin is among the...

This week I’m joined by Amy Nicholson, the director of the documentary Happy Campers , which is now available for rental or purchase on VOD at Apple. We discussed the ragtag oceanside community Amy documented, how she came to find herself in a position to tell their story, and some of the stranger reactions to the film’s decision to be less didactic and more emotionally compelling. If you’re intri...

This week I talked to Steven Watts about his new book, Citizen Cowboy: Will Rogers and the American People . Rogers was a fascinating figure, one who straddled America’s status as a largely agrarian, frontier-expanding nation to the more urban, cosmopolitan nation we have today. He helped people manage the cultural change with his humor and became one of the most famous (and beloved) men in Americ...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by John Magary, editor of the new film Between the Temples . We discuss how he got into the editing business, the role of the editor in building the rhythm and flow of a picture, the aesthetic choices an editor can make in shaping the meaning of a movie, and a little about his work with the Criterion Channel. If you enjoyed this episode, try to find a theater pla...

My guest this week is Valentina El Harizi, an 18-year-old first-time filmmaker who has an entry at the DIFF Shorts Film Festival. (If you get this email early enough and happen to live in the Dallas area, you can head over to the Angelika Film Center Dallas on Mockingbird Lane and catch the film; the “High School Shorts” program starts at 3PM local time. ) We discussed her film, “Behind the Scenes...

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Robbie Whelan, who covers the wide world of Disney for the Wall Street Journal . We talked about all the stuff Disney rolled out at D23 (Sequels! Theme park additions! New Cruise ships!) and discussed the ways in which the softness in Disney’s “Experiences” division (which includes, among other endeavors, the theme parks) may suggest general economic softness...

This week I met with novelist (and Bulwark+ member!) Brad Thor in a shadowy location (upstairs at Dallas’s magnificent flagship Half Price Books ) to discuss his latest book of international intrigue, Shadow of Doubt . We also talked about the idea that men don’t buy novels, smuggling real-world ideas into the universe of his fiction while maintaining their entertainment value, and a potential ada...

I’m joined this week by Thomas Doherty, Brandeis professor and author of Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939 , and Maria Elena de las Carreras, lecturer in film studies at the UCLA School of Film and Television, at the CSUN Department of Cinema and Television Arts,* to talk about the recent restoration and Blu-ray release of two documentaries by Herbert Kline: Crisis: A Film of ‘The Nazi Way’ and Ligh...

This week I’m being rejoined by the Los Angeles Times ’s Ryan Faughnder to discuss the sale of Paramount to David Ellison. What does this mean for the various arms of Viacom? Then we discussed the collapse of Redbox and the state of the box office. If you enjoyed this episode, please sign up for Ryan’s newsletter, The Wide Shot, here . It’s free! And if you enjoyed this episode, share it with a fr...