The Next Reel Film Podcast

“I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe I’m in a graveyard with a strange man hunting for vampires on a school night.” Fran Rubel Kuzui seems like an odd choice to end up helming a vampire comedy. Her only other film was Tokyo Pop , a drama about a young American woman trying to make it in Tokyo. But she and her husband, producer Kaz Kuzui, had found the script for Buffy the Vampire Slaye...

“You can’t just run our lives in your sick head.” It’s clear from our two films in our current series that Susanne Bier enjoys films with complex characters dealing with complex situations. Open Hearts had two families whose lives are upturned after a car accident affects both of them. In After the Wedding , it’s a revealing toast at the wedding that turns lives upside down and forces several peop...

“I didn’t mean for this to happen.” The Dogme 95 movement started in 1995 with the first two films made under its manifesto released in 1998. By the time Susanne Bier made her film Elsker dig for evigt – or Open Hearts as it was released in English – it was the 28th film certified as a Dogme 95 film. Join us – Pete Wright and Andy Nelson – as we look a Bier’s 2002 film Open Hearts . What does Dogm...

“In chess, the small one can become the big one. That’s why I like it.” Mira Nair seemed the perfect director to bring the true story of Phiona Mutesi to the big screen. She started her career with Salaam Bombay! , looking at the lives of children growing up in Mumbai in the late 80s. She lived in Uganda where the story took place. So when she was asked to be a part of it, it was an easy ‘yes’ fro...

“We’re on a mission from God.” Great car chases? Check. For this month’s member bonus episode, our members voted for a return to great car chases, and of the movies on the list, The Blues Brothers shot to the top. Is it nostalgia that draws us all back to this film over and over again? The great musical performances? Is it that strong a comedy? Join us – Pete Wright and Andy Nelson – as we return...

“This wave breaks 24 hours a day every day.” Dogtown and Z-Boys was a successful documentary when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001, and did great for itself in its theatrical release afterward. That success spurred Stacy Peralta, the director of the film and one of the Z-boy skateboarders featured in the doc, to write a fictional telling of the story to be made as a feature film....

“All these years, you just looked right through me.” It was after learning to box that Karyn Kusama became interested in making a film set in the world of boxing, specifically focused on a woman learning to box. After writing the script, she found it very difficult to finance. People said it wouldn’t work unless she changed the Latina protagonist to a white woman. They said having a female protago...

“What I always admired was the fight in you.” Gina Prince-Bythewood looked at her first film as a When Harry Met Sally... type of story that followed a pair of young people – Monica and Quincy – as they both worked on furthering their basketball careers. The film was supported by The Sundance Institute and Spike Lee came on as an executive producer to help get it made. We’re glad everything came t...

“I’m a golden starfish!” Olivia Wilde has long been working as an actress before stepping her foot into directing. She made a few short films and music videos, then locked her sights on the Blacklist script Booksmart by Emily Halpern & Sarah Haskins. She had screenwriter Katie Silberman rework the script (that Susanna Fogel had already changed ) into something that painted the vision she was l...

“I think this makes me officially an adult. Right?” Marielle Heller’s sister had gifted her the diaristic graphic novel “The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures” by Phoebe Gloeckner, and Heller instantly connected with it. She adapted it into a play and then, with Gloeckner’s blessing and film rights, into a script. With the help of The Sundance Institute, Heller built the ca...

“Hit me! I’m serious, I can’t feel anything. Hit me!” Catherine Hardwicke had worked as a production designer for nearly two decades, crafting the look for such diverse films as I’m Gonna Git You Sucka , Tombstone , Tank Girl , and Three Kings, before shifting her focus to directing. It’s not often the path people take, but clearly Hardwicke knew what she wanted and came at it with a unique story...

“Cecilia was the first to go.” Sofia Coppola had made a few short films in the mid nineties, but it was reading Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1993 novel “The Virgin Suicides” that convinced her she wanted to be a director. She wrote the adaptation on spec after reading it because she saw so clearly how she wanted to tell it, and despite some challenges with the rights, got it made. Join us – Pete Wright and...

“Goodbye, Snowball.” With several short films under her belt, Lynne Ramsay got her first feature film made and released in 1999. The film tells the tale of a young boy growing up in a poor neighborhood during a period in Scotland when the binmen were on strike, leaving thousands of pounds of garbage lying in the streets, yards, and roads. Growing up a child in Glasgow, Scotland, in the 70s, it mak...

“It’s not unusual to move every three months.” The story of Tamara Jenkins’ Slums of Beverly Hills feels very lived in with authentic characters and situations. It makes sense that there’s a semi-autobiographical element to her film. How well does it hold up over two decades after its release? Join us – Pete Wright and Andy Nelson – as we continue our Coming of Age Debuts series with Jenkins’ 1998...

“Like a rose in the gutter...” Mira Nair got her start with documentary projects, so it makes sense that her first feature, Salaam Bombay! , is a gritty and realistic depiction of life on the streets for a kid in the slums of Bombay. It also feels logical that Nair would use real street kids as her cast to imbue the story with a more authentic sense. Should she have just made a documentary though?...

“I’m curious, Rose. I’m very curious.” Coming of age stories come in all shapes and sizes. The adaptation of Calder Willingham’s 1972 semi-autobiographical novel ‘Rambling Rose’ into Martha Coolidge’s 1991 film of the same name was one that captured a slice of life of a teenager and his family growing up in the South during the Great Depression. His coming of age largely happens when the new house...

“You want there to be a connection. That doesn’t mean there is one.” Penny Marshall came on to Awakenings after Steven Spielberg stepped off the project apparently. Perhaps that’s why it feels a bit different for a Marshall film. But how well does this pseudo-true story work as it recounts Dr. Oliver Sacks’ experiments on patients with encephalitis lethargica in 1969? Join us – Pete Wright and And...

“This doesn’t just happen. This guy — this doesn’t happen. He doesn’t just come to a meeting and say ‘bugs.’” The script came easily to Gary Ross & Anne Spielberg, but finding the right team and cast to make Big still took some time. By the time the film released in theatres, it was the fourth body-switching comedy to come out in a few years, even though it had been the first to be greenlit. B...

“Why didn’t I meet you first?” After working with John Heard on her 1977 film Between the Lines , writer/director Joan Micklin Silver knew that she wanted to cast him in her next feature Chilly Scenes of Winter . He plays a fairly complex, lovestruck character that dances right on the edge of being a bit too crazy, but he pulls it off with an authenticity that leaves you rooting for him, even when...

“We are still about telling the truth. We are still about something big here, and not many people can say that, man.” After her success with Hester Street , it seemed fitting that director Joan Micklin Silver would make an ensemble film about a group of journalists at an alternative paper. She’d worked at The Village Voice, so clearly knew that world. Her writers did as well. Join us – Pete Wright...

“I thought you were snapping a few photographs, not reopening the whole case.” We’re not sure how Kathryn Bigelow came to direct the adaptation of Anita Shreve’s book “The Weight of Water” for the big screen, but it feels a bit odd in her body of work. It’s arguably the least masculine film she’s made, and is a mystery told between two time periods, so it feels different for her. But what did we t...

“Gentlemen, I give you the holy state of matrimony, modern style! Single lives, twin beds, and triple bromides in the morning!” Dorothy Arzner is a filmmaker we want to look at more closely. It’s surprising and a tad shameful to learn this late in the game about Dorothy Arzner. There had been other female filmmakers in the early days of the Hollywood system, but Arzner was largely the only woman r...

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"The government doesn’t let us mix with foreigners. You’ll get us into trouble if you take photos here.” Ann Hui had been working on a documentary for a Hong Kong network when she interviewed a number of ‘boat people,’ people fleeing Vietnam from the rule of China. This piqued her curiosity in the subject and defined her next two films, The Story of Woo Viet and Boat People . This ‘Vietnam Trilogy...

“See you after the victory.” As a filmmaker in Hong Kong, there’s an inevitable balancing act they need to do with their stories and how they depict China. This story portrays an interesting element of World War II that wasn’t often taught in Western history classes – the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. Having it told from the Hong Kong perspective is also unique to us. That being said, the film...