The Pink Smoke podcast

“The more you struggle, the more new passages you make in the labyrinth, the more the box is like another layer of outer skin that grows from the body, and the inner arrangement is made more and more complex.” On this episode, hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg climb into a corrugated cardboard nightmare and explore Kobo Abe’s delightfully bizarre The Box Man. Best known for his work with...

Join hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg for a deep dive into Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and its cinematic adaptations. The story of a naive governess & her innocent charges is the quintessential ghost story, a metaphorical exploration of abuse, theodicy and the ways in which adults let down the children around them. Some of the adaptations discussed include Jack Clayton’s 1961 mast...

“Nostalgia is one of our saving graces.” On the latest episode, hosts John Cribbs and Christopher Funderburg take things back to their heroic bloodshed drenched pasts to discuss John Woo’s ne plus ultra of Hong Kong action cinema, Hard Boiled. Like many a greasy teenage malcontent in the early 90s, their exposure to the films of John Woo was key in setting them on a life-path of undeviating film n...

Hosts Christopher Funderburg & John Cribbs are joined by filmmaker Bill Teck to discuss RICHARD JEWELL. The latest film director by Clint Eastwood, it's the true story of an Atlanta security guard falsely accused by the FBI and Atlanta-Journal Constitution of planting bombs at the 1996 Olympics. The discussion turns from Paul Walter Hauser's astounding performance (and checkered Juggalo history) t...

This is a deeply personal episode, so indulge us. For their 50th wedding anniversary, we’re joined by host Christopher Funderburg’s parents to discuss the film that brought them together: Mike Nichols’ 1967 countercultural comedy, The Graduate. Along with co-host John Cribbs, they get into it all: the history of both their relationship and the film itself. We discuss what the film meant to their g...

Abel Ferrara has been making films for nearly 50 years without compromising his unique, provocative, unflinchingly autobiographical vision. In this episode we invited special guests Marcus Pinn and John Frankensteiner to discuss Ferrara's four narrative films from the last decade: his farewell to New York City in 4:44 Last Day on Earth, his return to a very different kind of city in Welcome to New...

On this episode of The Pink Smoke podcast, host John Cribbs is joined by Amanda Gilbert to discuss Alex Garland's Annihilation. The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com/ The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke PSP theme music by Marcus Pinn: http://www.pinnlandempire.com/

On the inaugural episode of The Pink Smoke podcast, we tackle Michael Haneke's semi-sequel to Amour & discuss whether the filmmaker is entering a new phase of his career. Join hosts Christopher Funderburg & John Cribbs as they enter a new phase of their professional lives. One in which they have a podcast. The Pink Smoke site: http://www.thepinksmoke.com/ The Pink Smoke on Twitter: https://twitter...

"The rat had taken some pleasure in attacking a member of the human race, one with the same smell as the big ones." We’re joined by regular guest & noted animal-lover Wendy Mays to discuss Patricia Highsmith’s THE ANIMAL-LOVER’S BOOK OF BEASTLY MURDER! This collection of short stories follows a series of creatures from elephant to cat to rat to cockroach that find themselves wrapped up in murder,...

Of all the overlooked, misunderstood films directed by Tobe Hooper, Spontaneous Combustion remains one of the most overlooked and misunderstood. There are few viewing experiences as shocking and tragically poetic as watching human nuclear meltdown Brad Dourif expel flames from his body as smoke pours out of him like the tip of a lit cigar. On this episode, hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderbur...

It was inevitable that our decade-spanning reappraisal of the James Bond franchise would hit the Pierce Brosnan period, but rather than return to die another day host John Cribbs and special guest John Arminio go full-tilt into all four films running from 1995 to 2002. Following Bond's evolution in an era of megalomaniacal media moguls, invisible cars and Dr. Christmas Jones, they question whether...

Hosts John Cribbs and Christopher Funderburg discuss Patricia Highsmith’s 1960 crime novel, This Sweet Sickness. The novel follows a stalker who constructs a perfect marriage in his mind and goes to horrifying extremes to make that vision of domestic bliss a reality. It’s a book about the psychosis of a romantic worldview, about the insanity lurking behind the ideas of a One True Love. The Pink Sm...

Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg sit down to pay tribute to one of the greatest screenwriters who ever lived, Jean-Claude Carrière. When Carrière recently passed away the hosts decided to pick a handful of the writer’s films to discuss as a way of exploring his long and incredibly varied career. From his career-defining work with Luis Buñuel to his long-running associations with filmmake...

“Who speaks of realism here?” This is it: our mammoth exploration of the work of Japanese iconoclast Seijun Suzuki. Hosts Christopher Funderburg & John Cribbs are joined by poster illustrator and peerless cinephile Tony Stella to examine the legendarily idiosyncratic and uncontrollable director. From Suzuki’s start as an impossibly lazy assistant director at Shochiku to his his period as a relentl...

Host John Cribbs is joined by John Arminio to discuss the James Bond films of the 60s. Looking at what many fans consider the series’ untouchable golden age, Cribbs & Arminio go film by film through every cinematic portrayal of Bond in the decade, not even skipping over 1967’s Casino Royale! Starting with Dr. No and Ursula Andress (as iconic as Venus de Milo) emerging from the ocean, touching on t...

On this month's pulp fiction episode, Funderburg & Cribbs discussed former cop Joseph Wambaugh's brutal, depressing & hilarious Hollywood conspiracy thriller, The Glitter Dome. It's a masterpiece of the "sleazy cop" genre that depicts a world of casual racism, violence, and depravity in a chaotic story about cops wildly failing to live up their duty.

“Most great art has been commission work. Bernini didn’t sit around making statues because he liked making statues, he did it because Pope So-and-so wanted a bust of himself on his elaborate tomb… Rembrandt, I’m sure, would’ve been happier doing something other than painting fat businessmen most of his life.” No name is as synonymous with the art of novelization as “Alan Dean Foster,” known for hi...

“We’re tigers, the three of us, but who the hell are we to make decisions for the world just because we’re compulsive?” For this special international episode, we’re joined by Nicolás Virviescas and Daniel Castro, founders of the Colombian online film criticism portal Filmigrana. Our guests selected Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination to discuss for the occasion, the story of a stranded astro...

Host John Cribbs is joined by Emmy-winning editor/producer & longtime Pink Smoke contributor Eric Pfriender to discuss the soundtrack work of Tangerine Dream, the experimental music conglomeration best known for their scores for films like Risky Business, Sorcerer, Thief and Near Dark. Inspired by the recent re-release of Sorcerer’s soundtrack (featuring cover art by the great Tony Stella!), this...

Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg are joined by filmmaker, podcaster & critic Martin Kessler to discuss his new book, Maya Non Grata. An exploration of Apocalyto’s bizarre relationship to history, historicism and art, Kessler’s authorial debut is available for only $2 via our Patreon: patreon.com/posts/44478461 The group discusses this a deeply strange Hollywood action flick set at the da...

“There wasn’t a word for the way he felt about Melinda, for that combination of loathing and devotion.” Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg discuss Patricia Highsmith’s 1957 novel, Deep Water, a cruel and curious marital thriller about a shamelessly philandering housewife and the seemingly meek husband who not only puts up with her affairs but invites her paramours into their home. Highsmit...

Hosts John Cribbs and Christopher Funderburg turn their attention to one of the most mysterious films from the golden age of Jean Renoir’s filmmaking career: 1932’s La Nuit du Carrefour. Despite being championed by André Bazin and described by Jean-Luc Godard as “the only great French detective film,” this film remains possibly the most obscure work produced by Renoir in the 1930’s. Adapted from a...

"She is all merciless night animal...yet with a wisdom that goes back to Egypt and beyond - and which is invaluable to me. For she is my spy on buildings, you see, my intelligencer on metropolitan megastructures. She knows their secrets and their secret weaknesses, their ponderous rhythms and dark songs. And she herself is secret as their shadows. She is my Queen of Night, Our Lady of Darkness." I...

Hosts Christopher Funderburg & John Cribbs are joined by filmmaker & professor Mtume Gant (Whiteface, Spit) to discuss Elem Klimov's shattering WWII phantasmagoria, Come & See. The conversation touches on the function of even the best war films as righteous propaganda, extreme cinema, the film's relationship to post-War cinema in Japan & Germany as well as Tango & Cash's deep connections to Andrei...

We’re joined by screenwriter Tom Vaughan (Winchester, Unstoppable) to discuss his picks for the 10 greatest horror screenplays ever written. From consensus classics like Dan O’Bannon’s script for Alien and Joseph Stefano’s work on Psycho, to offbeat choices like the remake of The Blob, the conversation digs into what makes for brilliant writing in a genre where the art of the screenplay often gets...