The Next Reel Film Podcast

"You raised an artificial spirit in the lad unbecoming to his station in life. This would never have happened if you kept him on gruel." Film adaptations of Charles Dickens’ works almost seem as common as Shakespeare’s works. It’s even quite possible that certain stories of his may have been adapted for the screen more frequently than some from the Bard. When Carol Reed brought Lionel Bart’s music...

"What family doesn’t have its ups and downs?" British royalty is full of fascinating tales of power, conspiracies, distrust, and greed. They make such great characters that actors relish the opportunities to play them, sometimes even playing the same character more than once. Peter O’Toole certainly jumped at the chance when he read the script for The Lion in Winter based on the play. Having alrea...

"I’m the German Ethel Merman, don’tcha know!?"Adapting a non-musical into a Broadway musical into a film musical takes a lot of work, but Mel Brooks clearly had the gumption to do it, and was successful most of the way along. His Broadway adaptation of 1968’s The Producers was a massive hit with records that still haven’t been broken. The question, then, is why the film adaptation of that hit flou...

"How could this happen? I was so careful! I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast – where did I go right?"Mel Brooks got his start doing stand-up comedy and as a TV writer, but he finally got his chance to direct a feature film when he read his script The Producers to producer Sidney Glazier, who wanted to make it right away. Once the film was made, however, the backers were ne...

"You really think there’s ‘happy ever after’ for people like us?"With his successful start as James Bond, Pierce Brosnan thought he’d try his hand at producing, and after a small film for their first test outing, he and producing partner Beau St. Clair opted to remake the McQueen/Dunaway heist classic The Thomas Crown Affair. For many people, it’s the definitive version of the story. But how well...

"Do you play?"Norman Jewison had worked with Steve McQueen on the film The Cincinnati Kid, so it was natural for him to immediately think of McQueen in the title role of The Thomas Crown Affair when he got the script. Luckily for him, McQueen was interested, as the part was vastly different from other types of people he’d played in the past. He worked opposite Faye Dunaway in her second major lead...

"I like the stink of the streets. It makes me feel good." By the time Sergio Leone got the cameras rolling on what would turn out to be his last film, nearly thirteen years had passed since he last sat behind the camera. If anyone expected a filmmaker with rusty skills however, they certainly didn’t get that. Leone was as masterful a filmmaker as he was in decades past. Join us – Pete Wright and A...

"If it’s a revolution, it’s confusion. Where there’s confusion, a man who knows what he wants stands a good chance of getting it." Sergio Leone really wanted to produce his next film after his western opus Once Upon a Time in the West, but unfortunately, no one would have it. They wanted him in the director’s chair. His reticence, paired with his delay in taking the reins, perhaps reflect in the o...

"You don’t sell the dream of a lifetime." Sergio Leone didn’t want to return to westerns after his Man With No Name trilogy – he already felt like made his western epic and wanted to move on to something else. When Paramount offered him a three picture deal with a big budget AND Henry Fonda though, he couldn’t pass it up and he found himself returning to the well once again. But would it work as w...

"Choke on ‘em! Choke on ‘em!" When George Romero set out to make his final film in his original zombie trilogy, he had to cut his script back quite a bit to fit the budget he was given. While he said he still told the story he set out to tell, it leaves you wondering what elements of his story might have fallen by the wayside. Join us – Pete Wright and Andy Nelson – as we wrap up our the 50th anni...

"They’re after the place. They don’t know why, they just remember – remember that they want to be in here." It took George A. Romero 10 years to get back to the world of zombies that he’d created in 1968, and largely that was because he wasn’t that interested to return initially. It took a tour of a new local shopping mall and a call from Dario Argento to push him in the right direction. With his...

"Kill the brain and you kill the ghoul." Zombies are commonplace nowadays, but in the mid 60s, they were more connected to voodoo stories. It wasn’t until George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in 1968 when zombies as we know them today became firmly established. But how well does the film hold up when watching through today’s zombie-filled goggles? Join us – Pete Wright and Andy Nelson – as...

"Don’t come near, honey. Molten gold wouldn’t suit your skin."Creating a movie from a comic book has obviously become a huge way to make money at the box office these days, but back in the late 60s, it seemed a bit riskier. Dino de Laurentiis wanted to make a film out of the incredibly popular Italian comic “Diabolik”, but the first try was bad and not worth finishing. It took a bit for people to...

"I believe in live and let live."Frank Sinatra and his rat pack are found in specific types of films, so seeing him in this dark, realistic detective story seems like a bit of surprise. When you think back to his performances in films like From Here to Eternity and The Manchurian Candidate, however, it’s easier to see how Sinatra might fit in a film like Gordon Douglas’ 1968 The Detective. But how...

"Well, well, well, what have we got here? Buffalo Bill with the fancy hat!"Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood worked with each other on five films, but before they first started, neither of them had heard of the other. Luckily, with a little homework, they both realized they enjoyed each other’s work and agreed to sign on to do Coogan’s Bluff together. Unfortunately for us, the film doesn’t hold up ver...

"My kind of horror isn’t horror anymore."One of Roger Corman’s claims to fame is that he’s never lost money on a movie, and one of the reasons that holds true is because he never spends much money on any of them. For beginning filmmakers looking to learn their craft and hopefully make it big, this is something they work with. Like many great filmmakers who got their start with Corman (another of h...

"Ape never kills ape." Twentieth Century Fox had found great success with their Planet of the Apes franchise, but they also were learning that a continuous run of sequels would bring less and less money back in. So by the time they got to the fifth entry in the series, the budget was a pittance compared to that of the first film. This time, however, it really feels like the cheap end of a franchis...

"The savage must be shackled in chains. You are that beast, Caesar." J. Lee Thompson was meant to direct the original Planet of the Apes film but wasn’t able to due to project conflicts. By the time the franchise got to the fourth film, Thompson was invited back to finally make his mark. The budget was lower than it had been previously, but he still did his best with what he had, and he made the d...

"I did it because I like chimpanzees best of all apes, and you the best of all chimpanzees." Twentieth Century Fox had found that cheap sequels could turn healthy profits so immediately booked Paul Dehn, the writer of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, to write a third in the series. Unfortunately, the second film ended with the planet being blown up. For Dehn, that was just a thrilling challenge to...

"May the blessing of the Bomb Almighty and the fellowship of the Holy Fallout descend on us all this day and forevermore." With the success of the first Planet of the Apes film, 20th Century Fox rushed a sequel into production, something that was usually reserved for b-run serials. That first film, however, was a good crossover property – it had the genre elements but was made on an A-list level....

"Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" Rod Serling discovered the strength of writing science fiction as a way to disguise commentary on society of the day which led to The Twilight Zone. His contributions to Franklin J. Schaffner’s science fiction film Planet of the Apes allowed him to do the same on a cinematic scale. With political, religious and social commentary, as well as comm...

"My God, it’s full of stars!" After reading Arthur C. Clarke’s sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s film, director Peter Hyams was very interested in transforming it into a film. After getting the blessing from Clarke and Kubrick, he set to work. But inevitably, he was fighting an uphill battle – making a sequel to a film that many people consider to be one of the greats. In the end, the film was received...

"Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye." Before 1968, science fiction films were largely genre films that didn’t take themselves too seriously. The general consensus is that the change that allowed filmmakers to take science fiction seriously was Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Upon its initial release, critics and audiences were very split on the film but it...

"A Him gets noticed. A Her gets ignored. And for once, we’d like to be ignored." Steven Soderbergh never wanted to return to the helm for the Ocean’s franchise, but he was more than happy to get behind any future films, so when Warner Bros. said they wanted to return to the franchise with an all-woman cast in a spin-off, he signed on board as producer. Gary Ross and Olivia Milch were hired to writ...

"There’s a code amongst guys that shook Sinatra’s hand!" Even though Ocean’s Twelve was financially successful, it was largely disliked by audiences who saw it as a misfire. When the studio decided to make a follow-up, they returned the story to Vegas where the first film took place and made a film that largely feels like a return to form. But that doesn’t mean the film isn’t without its problems....