The Good, The Pod and The Ugly

Send us Fan Mail 4X4: UWE BOLL PT. 1 OF 2: TRAMP STAMP   ALONE OF THE DARK and POSTAL   Is Uwe Boll a transgressive genius who has consistently subverted conventional film language and genre expectations time and time again over the course of his career? Is he an angry hack who churns out straight to video mud pies twice (on average) a year? Is he both- or maybe all three? Join the boys (Ken, Jack...

Send us Fan Mail 4X4: HARMONY KORINE PT. 2 OF 2: HARM FLORIDA   LOOK AT MY SHIT   FLORIDA MAN, SHARK, WOMEN, ALIEN   SPRING BREAKERS & THE BEACH BUM   Spr-ee-ee-ee-ing Br-ea-ea-ea-ea-k. The three little chickies hatching this week’s mayhem are not your regular indica blend of calm when host Ken taps out and frequent guest to the show Ryan, the original Arizona Man, rejoins Jack and a well(whis...

Send us Fan Mail 4X4: HARMONY KORINE PT. 1 OF 2: BEAUTIFUL LOSERS PEANUT BUTTER SISTER F*CKER GUMMO & JULIEN DONKEY-BOY You must out-plastic them this episode: Jack “The Jammin' Jabber” along with regional chair-wrestling champion Ken join Thomas (it’s just Thomas) for the second director in our 4x4 series Harmony Korine (1973 – 4ever) covering not just why angels ain’t got no hooves but...

Send us Fan Mail JOHN FRANKENHEIMER PT. 2 OF 2: DRINKER BANKER SOLDIER SPY SECONDS & RONIN John Frankenheimer (1930-2002) was one of the hardest working A-list directors of his generation. Sometimes referred to as a "technical director", Frankenheimer's skill in drama is occasionally undervalued. From early work at the forefront of the golden age of live TV to a series of classi...

Send us Fan Mail JOHN FRANKENHEIMER PT. 1 OF 2: TRAINWASHING (or TRAIN CONTROL; or LOCO-MOTIVE) SEASON PREMIERE! THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE & THE TRAIN John Frankenheimer (1930-2002) was one of the hardest working A-list directors of his generation. From early work at the forefront of the golden age of live TV to a series of classic films in the 1960s, he continued working through the 1970s and...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT: LINCOLN *SPIELBERG FINALE* For the last two years co-host Jack has insisted that LINCOLN is the worst movie ever made and Spielberg is the worst director of all time. What began as a joke, "let's do a Spielberg season just so we can make Jack watch Lincoln again, hur hur," slowly became the impetus for our strangest season yet. Here we are, the finale...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT: CLOSE EMPIRES OF THE THIRD SUN Theme song maestro and cinema expert Ryan joins us to talk two of his favorite Spielbergs. One is about a man willingly leaving his family and the other is about a kid unwillingly leaving his family.  1977's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND was Spielberg's big swing after the cachet JAWS bought him. After numerous versions...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT: SPIELBERG AND SPECIAL EFFECTS Digital artist John Blalock joins Jack to discuss Spileberg's evolving use of state-of-the-art special effects; from Bruce-the-robot in JAWS to the groundbreaking digital work in JURASSIC PARK to the stifling airless digital environs of READY PLAYER ONE, to everything in-between. Spielberg has always utilized technology, sometimes...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT: MUNICH, MUNICH & WAR HORSE MUNICH was to be Spielberg's winter Oscar film to 2005's WAR OF THE WORLD's Jurassic Park-level summer event film. It didn't really work out that way but the one for them/one for me summer/winter dynamic may have worked as well in '05 as any other time Beardo did it, other than Jurassic Park/Schindler's Li...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT: THE COLOR PURPLE AND INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE THE COLOR PURPLE (1985) was Spielberg's first big swing at the legitimacy he so desperately craved after a series of certified sensations (plus 1941).  Adapted from Alice Walker's best seller, the legendary cast of future all-stars was a middling critical and commercial success. In 1985 you could have...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT: BROKEN ROBOTS  Co-host Ken is joined this episode by saucy songstress Andi to talk her favorite and least favorite Spielberg. JAWS (1974) is about a broken robot shark hungry for love. You all know the story. Spielberg was in full-on genius mode as a twelve-year-old (sourcing needed) directing JAWS and is famous for a broken mechanical shark necessitating making it...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT: E.T.  E.T. was made for children so why would you want to hear adults discussing it? You don't and we agree! Jack is joined by this week's special guest, his 8-year-old cousin Cadence, all the way from Mississippi, to discuss the little film that toppled Star Wars as the highest grossing film of all time, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial Released in 1982 , ET ma...

Send us Fan Mail *SPECIAL CAGE UNCAGED*  THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT The CAGE UNCAGED FINALE we deserve. We return to the subject of our fourth season, with THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT, a very -2022 movie where Nic Cage plays Nick Cage and stuff happens because he is a crazy actor people love, including drug lords! The guys who made it love Cage as much as the next podcast...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT: HOOK Q:  IF STAR TREK FANS ARE TREKKERS, WHAT ARE HOOK FANS? Hook! Spielberg's 1991 fantasy/antiworkaganda-fest is one, in Spielberg's own estimation, that does not work. Fam, this is the guy who once said "there is time to be human and have an opinion and a time to sell cars" about his movies. I don't think he even said anything bad about M...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT: DUEL & CATCH ME IF YOU CAN We are joined once again by podcast fave Rick Patt to discuss Spielberg's two chase movies made at two very different points in his career. 1971's TV movie DUEL effectively served as Spielberg's calling card. Written by Richard Matheson from his own short story, Duel is the deceptively simple story of an everyman from th...

Send us Fan Mail *MANN AGED SPECIAL* TOKYO VICE PILOT We return to Michael Mann and our completist review of his directorial works with a discussion of his brand-new HBO Max program, TOKYO VICE, which premiered on on 4/7/22. Mann executive produces the series and directed the pilot, his first directorial credit since the criminally underrated Blackhat from 2015.    Based on the 2009 memoir of the...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT #6: THE SPIELBERG MYSTERY HOUR With his contract at Universal yielding uneven results (Spielberg was not asked back to the series' he directed episodes for because he did not stick to the visual style they'd established), Spielberg was tasked with directing one of the first episodes of Columbo after it became a series. MURDER BY THE BOOK (1971) was filmed s...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT: POLTERGEIST & ALWAYS Jack and Thomas are joined by Ryan to discuss Spielberg and two seemingly opposing views on the afterlife. In 1982s POLTERGEIST (credited director: Tobe Hooper) Spielberg was so hands-on with the story and film rumors have followed since that he, in fact, directed a fair portion. But so what? It's a classic with his fingerprints all ove...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT E4: WEST SIDE STORY AND OSCAR PICKS Jack and Ken watched West Side Story , Spielberg's 2021 passion project and ode to the  "conservative" musicals of his youth (not in the political sense). It flopped! Big time! Why? Because it is terrible? Or is it good and simply failed to connect in the current theatrical market of multiverses and reboots? Ken and...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT: DO NOT TRUST YOUR AUDIENCE For this week's episode we talk to film expert, screenwriter and 80s connoisseur Erik Van Der Wolf about Spielberg's growing cultural impact as the predominant name director on the planet. We talk his filmography from 1981's Raiders  to 1989's Always along with his extensive executive producing and imprimatur-bestowing...

Send us Fan Mail A BIGGER BOAT: THE ERAS OF BEARDO We are joined once again by cinema expert Rick Patt to discuss Spielberg's three eras, along with the successes and errors within each. 1. ASCENDENT: 1971-1993. DUEL - SCHINDLER'S LIST Spielberg's blatant need to be respected and lauded had a lot of speed bumps in the 1980s and early 1990s but Jurassic Park AND Schindler's List...

Send us Fan Mail S6 PREMIERE OF "A BIGGER BOAT" Season six will focus on the SSCU, the Steven Spielberg Cinematic Universe. Spielberg,  a director who once reigned over Hollywood but has since directed himself into respectable obsolescence has had as many cinematic lives as Batman, a new version trotted out every so often with mixed results. Our guests will walk us through their experien...

Send us Fan Mail ONE IN THE HOPPER - DENNIS HOPPER'S MADMAN ERA    Between 1969 and 1980 Dennis Hopper directed three movies he also starred in. The first, EASY RIDER (1969) , is one of the great Hollywood success stories. Made for peanuts by a studio who didn't know what kids wanted, it tapped into the zeitgeist and remains one of the all-time great road movies and soundtracks with inde...

Send us Fan Mail NEON & SHADOWS We have reached the endpoint in Season Five! We have watched every Michael Mann project he directed. We even watched his episodes of Police Woman and Crime Story so you know we went further than those *other podcasts*,  who just covered the stuff they found on one random list on Letterboxed. Amateurs! We end with LA TAKEDOWN (1989), the retooled TV Pilot for HAN...

Send us Fan Mail BROTHER, YOU ARE GOING DOWN   The one where they talk about Heat. HEAT (1995) is about two middle-aged men looking for something to give their lives meaning. They have their conflicts, of course, buts pend one special night in a diner. You want to see them as partners having adventures after the movie ends. Maybe solving crimes on the open road in an RV with dogs named Val and Caa...