The Juggernaut

We welcome critic Tina Hassannia to discuss the films of Kelly Reichardt. Reichardt is an uncompromisingly personal and idiosyncratic director whose movies take their time but land like sledgehammers when you least expect it. From "Meek's Cutoff" to "Wendy And Lucy" to 2016's acclaimed "Certain Women," Reichardt's films are empathy-producing machines worth catching up with. Notes: Follow Tina - @t...

After 20 years of trying, Michael O'Shea finally is an overnight success: his micro-budget indie horror teen drama, "The Transfiguration," unexpectedly found its way into the Cannes Film Festival. It's Mike's first feature after decades of writing and working countless side jobs, and there's no question he brings a unique story and refreshing (and professional) sensibility to his ascendancy. Notes...

John Munson is in Semisonic, and yes, you do know that one song they had. Yet his music career has spanned many more bands and eras, and he's become one of Minneapolis's most-connected and best-liked musicians. Hearing him spin yarns is a blast, as is his perspective on where the recording industry has been and where it's going, if anywhere! Notes: Follow John - @munsongs Check out John's work - S...

Eli Horowitz is more than a writer who distributes his stories in non-traditional packages. Mostly: he's an entertainer seeking to land the occasional philosophical haymaker simply by writing himself out of the wild parameters he sets for himself. Along with Micah Bloomberg , he's also one-half of the team who created the smash podcast "Homecoming," and you'll love listening to him tell stories, i...

As a novelist, Matt Ruff skirts the fine line between literary and genre fiction, and his books are always surprising. He's inventive, he's funny, and he's highly moral as a writer: even in his wild, fantastic scenarios, conflicts come down to good/evil schisms that Matt excavates even as he's making you laugh. Where does this exploration of ethics come from? And what level of bravery does it take...

Micah Bloomberg was always a writer, but he spent years not showing the results of his labors to anyone, and instead made a living doing sound production. When he finally made a bet on himself, his screenwriting career took off, and now he's at the epicenter of a popular serialized podcast called "Homecoming" starring Catherine Keener and Oscar Isaac, which may help kick off a new era of storytell...

It's impossible to list the best songs from an entire year. But that doesn't stop us from trying! Bill Childs joins as our guest this week, and talks about a new David Bowie tribute album he just co-produced called "Let All The Children Boogie" benefiting the It Gets Better Project. And then we get down to it: what are Bill's favorite songs of 2016 so far? Get ready for some fun, and to get introd...

Quiet Company is our podcast's house band: theirs is the music you hear throughout all our shows. We thought it was about time you hear the story behind the band, so we invited Taylor and Tommy aboard. They're living through the consolidation of the music industry -- where having a ton of fans doesn't necessarily translate into being able to survive off your music -- plus share a fascinating histo...

"Atlanta," Donald Glover's show on FX, snuck up on us. Instead of a one-note, grim'n'gritty look at the world of an up-and-coming rapper, "Atlanta" turned out be an ambitious, weird, complex, funny, strange show more interested in the idiosyncrasies of its characters than making generalizations about race. In short: it's terrific. Critic Michael Arceneaux joins us to discuss what made "Atlanta's"...

You've heard Chris mention "Clouds Of Sils Maria" a few times as one of his favorite films in recent years, and maybe you've thought, "Oh, he's just saying that to sound smart." Today's episode should convince you otherwise! This is a great film, and we brought in film critic and professor Christopher Llewellyn Reed to talk about its pleasures and its significance. We think it's fun to hear two sm...

Open Mike Eagle is a rapper whose music spans genres and reveals more about himself than almost any musician we know. Generally on the Juggernaut, we talk about art that is fully itself, and that's Open Mike: nothing is a pose, he's painfully self aware, and he's a brilliant writer. When you listen to OME, you laugh and you lose your breath and you understand what it means to *become* your art. (A...

How does the cultural sausage get made? Eric Garcia knows. Eric is a successful novelist who's pivoted to movies and TV and has been involved in the adaptation of four of his novels. The results have sometimes been terrific and sometimes been frustrating. In this episode, Eric discusses what it's like to be in the belly of Hollywood's "corner-sanding" beast, and why he keeps putting himself throug...

Chris Harris's new novel, "War On Sound," is out, and we thought it would be fun to turn the tables have have *him* for an interview subject. So Chris Walsh joins as temporary host and asks Chris about the new book, his writing in general, and the sources of his creativity and frustration. Please check out WarOnSoundBook.com if you'd like to learn more! Notes: Follow Chris Walsh - @ChrisWalsh2013...

Today Cousin Josh Fischberg joins the Juggernaut and we count down our top 10 favorite movies of the 2010s. How much P.T. Anderson and Coen Brothers made the list? Our goal for this show is to share films that mean a lot to us, that have taught us something about empathy and about what it means to be a person. And hopefully you can get a few movies to check out while you're at it! NOTES: Follow Jo...

Tom Scott was discovered early in his acting career and cast as the drummer in Tom Hanks's directorial debut, "That Thing You Do." That was  20 years ago, and Tom has been a working actor since. But why? Why is he comfortable in the skins of other selves, and what feeling is he chasing in a difficult, frustrating profession? Tom has been in great stuff like "Southland" and "Boiler Room," and (he a...

The Lobster is a perfect example of the kind of film we'd like to champion: it's unexpected and dystopic and strange, and so it bears the veneer of an "artsy-fartsy" film that's not for everyone. But that's hogwash! If *only* more movies had such a strong and complex point of view about one of the bedrock assumptions that underpins most of our lives! There's nothing abstract or difficult to unders...

Michael Azerrad is one of the great rock journalists of the past 25 years. He wrote dozens of cover stories for Rolling Stone, he's written for SPIN, for the New York Times, and for lots of other esteemed institutions. He also wrote two of the great rock books ever written: "Come As You Are," a biography of Nirvana before Kurt Cobain died, and "Our Band Could Be Your Life," a survey of the America...

"'Watchmen' changed everything." This isn't exactly a revolutionary statement: people have been opining about the significance of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's dystopic superhero graphic novel for 30 years. But the story of Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias didn't just help launch the "grim-'n-gritty" take on the superhero genre we're still experiencing today. It also helped change many folk...

Mr. Robot is the kind of rightly acclaimed television we should be watching. It's a meditation on identity, alienation and storytelling dressed up as a thriller about hackers attacking capitalism. It's smart and beautiful and idiosyncratic in a way that mainstream culture rarely gets. So today, we'll (a) try and convince you -- spoiler-free -- to start watching; and/or (b) talk about the stuff roi...

Jim Byrkit put in the hard work of building a Hollywood career from the ground up: he was a commercial storyboard artist for years, a gig he eventually parlayed into a friendship with Gore Verblinski and a major role in the look and feel of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. But his dreams guided him to a parallel track, where he was a feature director making idiosyncratic films. Finally, in...

Chris Collingwood was the frontman for one of the great power-pop bands in history, Fountains of Wayne. Of course, even ​*he*​ doesn't really know what "power pop" even means, other than being kind of a dismissive description. Now Chris has broken away and taken his music in a new direction with Look Park, a more idiosyncratic musical offering. But what rewards does today's music industry hold for...

Garrett Lerner is an honest-to-goodness working TV writer who's worked on one bonafide monster hit -- HOUSE -- and wrote several of that excellent series' most compelling and emotional episodes. Yet Garrett doesn't think he's tapped into all the emotion he has to give in his writing, and he's found life after HOUSE to be partly frustrating, if only because at times he's felt pigeonholed. What does...

Adam Kempenaar is even-keeled and professional in a culture that often rewards snark, and he's made Filmspotting -- which he's hosted for 11 years -- one of the best and most popular movie podcasts in the world. We dive into what makes Filmspotting such an institution, and also crack open Adam's top 10 films of all time, taking an up-close look at three you might not have seen. NOTES: * Follow Ada...

Saul Bellow was one of the lions of American literature in the 20th century, and Chris Walsh served as his student, friend, mentee and amanuensis for several years late in Bellow's life. What was it like to be so close to someone who produced such amazing works as "The Adventures Of Augie March," "Henderson The Rain King," "Humboldt's Gift," "Herzog" and many more? Bellow is the only writer to win...

Talia Osteen can do just about anything. She was a child actress, she's directed a documentary, she was a Hollywood feature film producer and now she's one-half of a great indie-rock band called The Wellspring. But being good at a wide array of things comes with a cost. Which one should she stick with? Which one is a path to commercial success and/or personal fulfillment? Should one *have* to choo...