The Friendship Dilemma

Remake is often a dirty word among cinema purists, but not only are Erik Childress and Morgan Gire discussing one of the best they have found a genuine friendship at the center. Donald Sutherland’s Matthew and Brooke Adams’ Elizabeth are work colleagues but clearly have become great friends. She tells him about her distant boyfriend and he takes shots at him in kind. Naturally anyone who knows thi...

Penny Marshall was at the peak of her directorial career with her 1992 film about the first professional female baseball league. When she pushed back against the powers that be to take Dottie Hinson and Jimmy Dugan past a platonic level, she may have preserved just the kind of friendship that Morgan Gire and Erik Childress are searching for on this podcast. The center of this episode explores what...

Some Kind of Wonderful was John Hughes’ rebuttal to how Pretty In Pink played out, but who is doing the rebutting now as Erik Childress and Morgan Gire dig into the 1987 drama? Are Keith’s attempts at romantic gestures an insane overreach or are sometimes the simplest acts the most revealing? Is Watts an icon of the time or just a passive-aggressive thorn? Is Amanda just another unattainable beaut...

From looking at whether a friendship can persist without further relations to how outsiders can band together, Morgan’s first choice is Frank Oz’s 2004 remake of The Stepford Wives. Big city Nicole Kidman finds new friends in Connecticut with Bette Midler and Roger Bart in an all-too perfect little town. Morgan and Erik discuss if the move from science-fiction to satire was a wise one and how the...

Episode 1: When Harry Met Sally… The inaugural episode of The Friendship Dilemma looks back at the question Nora Ephron posed in 1989. Can men and women be friends without the sex part getting in the way? Erik & Morgan delve into the query and whether the film contradicts its own theory. Has the film contributed to a generation of romantic comedies where friendship is a consolation prize? Do true...