The Pink Smoke podcast

“I don’t know where that ham came from, she thought. And I’m not going to think about it. Ever.” We’re joined by writer Steven Sheil to discuss a book of his own selecting: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding’s The Blank Wall. Sheil is the screenwriter and director of Mum & Dad, Dead Mine and Unmade as well as the co-curator of The Mayhem Film Festival in Nottingham. Holding’s “domestic noir” provided the ba...

In Part Two of our look at “James Bond in the 80's" the focus shifts to the unjustly-maligned Timothy Dalton films that wrapped up the decade. We welcome back John Arminio to discuss the real-life inspirations for The Living Daylights, why a more humorless tone was rejected by audiences with the Dalton films but celebrated in the Daniel Craig era, why it was for the best that Sam Neil wasn’t cast...

On this episode, hosts Christopher Funderburg & John Cribbs are joined by Lisi Russell to discuss her husband Ken Russell’s BBC biopic of Richard Strauss, The Dance of the Seven Veils. The controversial film, suppressed since its premiere in 1970, recently screened for the public for the first time in five decades. Russell’s angry and uncompromising film mixes a Monty Python-esque sense of satire...

In this episode, we take a look at a double-bill of classic Florida pulp fiction: John D. MacDonald’s Darker Than Amber (the seventh novel in his Travis McGee series) and Charles Willeford’s Miami Blues (the first novel in his Hoke Moseley series). We’re joined by director and "Mr. Miami" Bill Teck to discuss the novels, the sense his Cuban heritage gives him of the the state’s history, the change...

From crossbow bolt-ruined dives to detective-dispatching poison-tipped butterflies, the final run of Roger Moore as Commander James Bond was infused with the thrilling drive of 1980's action cinema. We welcome back John Arminio to tackle this transitional era of the 007 franchise: Moore's last three movies (For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy and A View to a Kill) as well as the rival Bond film Never Sa...

Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg welcome Flixwise: Cananda host Martin Kessler to the program to discuss the hardships of being a god, psychedelic science-fiction, translations of Faust done by pseudo-arachnids & whether the spider spinning its web in the bottom of a mug it can't escape experiences a sense of hopelessness. The only possible contexts for these subjects: Philip K. Dick. In...

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of its publication, hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg dig into Johhston McCulley's THE CURSE OF CAPISTRANO, the serialized swashbuckling tale that spawned one of the genre's immortal heros - Zorro! Strap in for an episode that covers the swashbuckling genre on the whole, from Douglas Fairbanks leaving his mark on Zorro to the Swishbuckler parodies of the...

In this episode hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg are joined by Zebras in America's Marcus Pinn to discuss the trio's most anticipated films of the year, Zama & Let the Sunshine In! Zebras in America: https://soundcloud.com/zebras-in-america The Pink Smoke: http://thepinksmoke.com/ PSP theme-song by the same damn guy, Marcus Pinn!

Just in time for Halloween, hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg are joined by board-certified Cryptologist Stephanie Crawford (of The Screamcast & Dread Central) to count down their Top 5 favorite Tales from the Crypt episodes! The discussion covers everything you would expect: Morton Downey Jr., Bruce Boxleitner's hair replacement system, Dick Donner and Vanity's two best films. Follow us...

This month's episode looks at documentary filmmaker Errol Morris' new book, THE ASHTRAY. The book looks at the philosophical schism between Morris and Thomas Kuhn which caused Morris' then-professor Kuhn to throw an ashtray at the legendary documentary filmmaker's head. Support our Patreon:
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Episode 2 welcomes Brian Saur of the "Rupert Pupkin Speaks" blog and Pure Cinema Podcast to discuss Joe Dante's use of character actors! An enthusiastic look at what these performers bring to classic films like Gremlins, The 'Burbs and Innerspace. From Dick Miller to Robert Picardo to Rance Howard and everyone in between, it's a look at the some of the most beloved cult favorites in the history of...

For Halloween. Just in time for Halloween. A Halloween treat. The first episode of The Pink Smoke podcast to focus on pulp fiction, John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg explore the Frankenstein continuation novels written by none other than the greatest screenwriter of all-time, Jean-Claude Carrière! Carrière is best known as the writer of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Tin Drum, The U...

The immortal Casca, the solider cursed by Jesus to remain as he is until the Second Coming. This month's pulp fiction-oriented episode takes a look at the blood-and-vileness-soaked military fantasy from Barry Sadler, best known as the one-hit wonder behind the 1966 tune The Ballad of the Green Berets. Hosts Christopher Funderburg & John Cribbs are joined by Martin Kessler of Flixwise: Canada to di...

Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg are joined by (who else?) Wendy Mays of the Pet Cinematary podcast to discuss both Stephen King's novel and the recent adaptation of Pet Sematary! The conversation features a discussion of why filmmakers always attempt to "fix" King's work, the nature of grief in horror cinema and an all-hamster remake of The Virgin Suicides.

On this episode of The Pink Smoke podcast, hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg cover a fictionalized take on the Manson Family, a beautiful actress caught in a web of violence & the seedy side of Hollywood. That’s right: we’re going deep on Columbo: The Helter Skelter Murders. This continuation novel from 1994 by author William Harrington surprisingly manages to eschew total tastelessness a...

On this Pulp Fictions episode, hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg discuss five short stories from Japanese writer Edogawa Ranpo, the master of "ero guro nansensu" or "erotic, grotesque nonsense." One of the true masters of the murky border where horror fiction bleeds into crime fiction, Ranpo is one of the 20th century's greatest genre fiction writers whose name deserves to be spoken along...

Martin Kessler, who previously brought books about an immortal centurion and an omnipotent alien god to the podcast, returns to discuss The Ninth Configuration by William Peter Blatty. A reworking of the Exorcist author's 1966 novel Twinkle Twinkle Killer Kane! and basis for his 1980 movie, Configuration is set at Center Eighteen, a military sanitarium in an isolated castle deep in the Washington...

"Had she asked him to lie down and die for her then and there, he would have been glad to do it, and glad of her having asked it, as well." Amour fou is the flavor of this episode, in which hosts John Cribbs and Christopher Funderburg delve into the longest and most experimental novel written by crime fiction legend Cornell Woolrich. The book, 1947's Waltz Into Darkness, begins as the straight-for...

On this episode hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg are joined by filmmaker & historian Bill Teck to discuss their shared love of Philip Kaufman’s cult classic The Wanderers - a coming-of-age comedy about teenage gangs in the Bronx in 1963. The conversation explores the film’s singular tone, how Kaufman remained an outsider even among the New Hollywood mavericks of the 70’s, and the ways in...

With the tedious inevitability of an unloved season, host John Cribbs returns with special guest John Arminio to continue their decades-spanning reappraisal of the James Bond franchise one film at a time. That means moving from the mud clone/gorilla transforming/Sausage King madness of Diamonds Are Forever into the Roger Moore era that took cinema's favorite secret agent from Bond... to beyond. Wh...

For what would’ve been the filmmaker’s 75th birthday, hosts John Cribbs and Christopher Funderburg are joined by editor/producer Eric Pfriender to discuss the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. They’ve each picked a film to discuss from the notoriously volatile director, a Triple Feature of Fassbinder’s work that serves as a jumping off point for exploring the legendarily prolific filmmaker’s philo...

A remembrance of Stuart Gordon, who passed away earlier this week. Gordon is one of the Patron Saints of The Pink Smoke, a fearless, risk-taking artist who refused to be confined to any particular corner of genre filmmaking. This episode covers the essential viewing in Gordon’s filmography, the films that resonated on a personal level with the hosts & the wildcards in an unpredictable career lined...

On this episode of The Pink Smoke podcast, we dig into Charles Portis’ classic Western, True Grit. Portis is a favorite author of hosts Christopher Funderburg & John Cribbs, a sui generis talent whose oddball humor & low-key weirdness defied easy categorization. The discussion focuses, naturally, on the how the novel defines “true grit” in a moral context: the line separating “righteousness” from...

“The artist alone is the final judge of his work.” Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg discuss Charles Willeford's twisty thriller set in the hip, commercialized art world of Miami in the early 70's. It's a funny, cynical and self-critical book about the relationship between artists and critics, but at the same time a typically outrageous & unpredictable work of Willeford pulp crime fiction...

Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg discuss the upcoming reprint of Donald E. Westlake’s Enough, a pair of novellas that have been given the much more appropriate title Double Feature in conjunction with the re-release. The two works, A Travesty and Ordo, have been out of print for nearly 40 years despite ranking among Westlake’s very best work. The breathless episode touches on everything...