The Rewind Project

In the same year that sitcom star Ellen DeGeneres landed on TIME Magazine for daring to come out of the closet, Hollywood made a movie about coming out. Kevin Kline, Joan Cusack, Tom Selleck, Matt Dillon and lots of other straight people star in IN & OUT, and we're here to talk about it. #BeKindRewind

In Quentin Tarantino's third film, a flight attendant who smuggles cash out of Mexico for an American gun runner must evade both her boss and the Feds who want to use her to trap him. Pam Grier shines as JACKIE BROWN, who is always the smartest one in the room. #BeKindRewind

This week, we're talking about the First Amendment, cancel culture, big hair, and flatulence. The center of this particular Venn diagram is Howard Stern and the movie adapted from his autobiography, PRIVATE PARTS. Baba Booey! #BeKindRewind

You know what else is big, long, and uncut? 2022's first regular episode of The Rewind Project, that's what! This week, we're celebrating Paul Thomas Anderson's porn opus BOOGIE NIGHTS, which is basically The Brady Bunch with lots and lots of cocaine, and a little bit of butter. #BeKindRewind

The Rewinders are ready to dive into our first mini-season of Season 4, celebrating the films celebrating their Silver Anniversary this year. If you'd like to watch along with us, just add these movies to your watch list for the next seven weeks. Regular episodes begin next Friday. #BeKindRewind

Are you ready for another year of this? Ally, Eric, and Matt are back for another year of new takes on old movies, and we're proud to announce our Season 4 slate here. Also, Ally has a few choice words for all your Wordlers out there. You know who you are. #BeKindRewind

Season 3 of The Rewind Project ends with a conversation about the most lauded film of 1946: THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. Winner of Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor, this realistic depiction of three veterans returning home from World War II feels so modern, it's hard to believe it was made 75 years ago. (We're taking a short bre...

In what has turned out to be a very sexy end to our Season, Rita Hayworth gives perhaps the sexiest performance yet, in her best-known film, GILDA. She's the wife of the casino owner, and Glenn Ford is the ex-boyfriend who is now assigned to be her bodyguard. Awkward ... but hot. #BeKindRewind

There's a holiday classic out there that seems both cherished and loathed in equal measure. And no, we're not talking about Love, Actually - we're going back 75 years to discuss Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life ... but how wonderful is it, really? "Good friend of the podcast" Joe Prince returns to talk about this ubiquitous holiday chestnut. Hot dog! #BeKindRewind

Continuing our foray into movies that are 75 years old and star impossibly gorgeous people, this week the Rewinders are discussing THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, the sweet story of a boy and a girl who want to own a small diner together ... after they bump off the dame's old man. Lana Turner and John Garfield smolder in the noir classic, based on the novel by James M. Cain.

In 1946, Orson Welles released his most commercially successful film, the story of a federal agent searching for a Nazi war criminal (and killer of household pets) in a small Connecticut town. Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, and Orson Welles star in THE STRANGER. #BeKindRewind

Seventy-five years ago, a musical film told the story of THE HARVEY GIRLS, adventurous women who moved West, and the gamblers, drunkards, and showgirls they met there. Featuring a winning performance by Judy Garland and a wicked supporting turn by our favorite, Angela Lansbury, it's a delightful romp with one really good song. Fay Jacobs joins the Rewinders to discuss this, as well as the disturbi...

In 1946, a film was released with actors so gorgeous, movie screen across the country simultaneously burst into flames. Okay, that didn't really happen - but it COULD HAVE. Ingrid Bergman stars as a Miami party girl who is recruited by a mysterious federal agency to seduce rich expatriate Nazis, and Cary Grant is her dapper handler who hates himself for falling in love with her. Also, the evil mot...

It's our last mini-season of the year, celebrating films that were made in 1946 and are 75 years old this year. We've got lots of film noir, a holiday classic, a post-war drama, and a Technicolor Judy Garland musical for the gays. Thanks for listening! #BeKindRewind

Seventy years ago, Washington DC was visited by an alien emissary with a message of peace, and all the white men who ran the place just assumed that he wanted to colonize the place and blow things up. GO FIGURE. The Rewinders met in the new recording labs at DC's MLK Library with our favorite connoisseur of geek, "Downtown" Marcus Brown, to discuss THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.

Sixty-five years ago, director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Tennessee Williams made "just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited." Naturally, we couldn't wait to watch this putrid pile of smut, and .. well? Let's just say we didn't clutch our pearls quite so tightly. Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, and Eli Wallach star in BABY DOLL, featuring Rip Torn as...

Sixty years ago, Roger Corman made a low-budget film adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM that had exactly two things in common with the short story. One of these things was a pit. The other was a pendulum. But we had a pretty good time talking about it anyway. #BeKindRewind

Fifty-five years ago, one film nearly singlehandedly signaled the end of the Hays Production Code and changed Hollywood forever. It's the story of a professor and his wife who invite a young couple to their home for drinks, conversation, humiliation, and betrayal. Violence, violence! #BeKindRewind

From the twisted mind of children's author Roald Dahl, WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY is the tale of a young innocent child who dreams of seeing the inside of the mysterious factory, his deadbeat grandfather who encourages Charlie to steal, refuses to get out of bed to work, but dances around with wild abandon once Charlie wins that ticket, and a candy impresario who somersaulted his way into...

In 1972, THE FRENCH CONNECTION swept the Oscars, nabbing trophies for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Editing. Set in the gritty, grimy New York of the early 70's, two police officers attempt to thwart a gigantic shipment of heroin from France. And in between conversations about bad cops, racism, and an amazing chase sequence, we discuss the better chicke...

Fifty years ago, three orphaned kids and the mangiest cat who ever drew breath went to live with "Patron Saint of the Project" Dame Angela Lansbury, and what followed was deeply weird. Come for the cigar-smoking fish and stay for Elizabeth Taylor's gay BFFs, Ally's new drag name, and a dash of substitutiary locomotion. #BeKindRewind

A half-century ago, an actor got behind the camera for the very first time. That actor was Clint Eastwood, and the film he made was the stalker-lady-from-hell thriller PLAY MISTY FOR ME, featuring a fantastic dramatic performance by Jessica Walter (Arrested Development, Archer). Are these movies inherently sexist? Was young Clint hot, or not? And why was there so much jazz? We answer these questio...

Six years before he would change movies forever with the STAR WARS franchise, an unknown filmmaker named George Lucas repurposed a student film into his debut feature with THX 1138, a vision of a dystopian future where sexual desire is against the law and everyone is bald for some reason. Join us as we discuss this movie, and why dystopia is still a favorite cinematic destination, fifty years late...

A half century ago, the film version of one of Broadway's favorite musicals, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, was released. The story of a poor Jewish milkman trying to hold on to his community's traditional way of life amid social upheaval and political oppression somehow hits everyone where they live. In this episode, we talk about why that is, and also spend a few moments talking about Olympia Dukakis, Sta...

Ready for a little ultra-violence? Grab a glass of milk-plus and put on the Ludwig Van, because we're headed back 50 years with Malcolm McDowell and his band of "droogs" to wreak a little havoc and discuss the essential nature of good and evil. #BeKindRewind