The Spiel

Spielberg has been working towards making a musical for his entire career, so it shouldn't be a surprise that when he finally got to make an all-out musical he brought not only his A-game, but also his deep love and understanding of Old Hollywood musicals with him. This resulted in 2021's West Side Story, an incredibly smart and charming reinterpretation of the Robert Wise film and the Stephen Son...

This week's topic: 1985's Amazing Stories, an NBC anthology series overseen by Steven Spielberg himself. Not only did he produce the whole thing, but he also directed two episodes. Those two episodes are the focus of the show as we welcome director Josh Ruben (this weekend's rom-com slasher HEART EYES). We talk a bit about marrying those two radically different genres into one super fun movie befo...

It's a heavy topic, but we somehow found the perfect guest to balance a serious topic with a little humor in noted critic, pop culture journalist, and author Jordan Hoffman (Vanity Fair, New York Daily News, The Times of Israel). Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a German Industrialist who worked from within the Nazi party to save over 1100 Jews from the conce...

The one and only Ariana Richards, Lex Murphy from Jurassic Park, joins Vespe and JRT to talk dinosaurs, Graboids, Martians, and even her ludicrous haircut in 1989's Prancer. This is Ariana's very first podcast appearance and she comes loaded for bear, y'all. She has stories about working on all her big movies including Jurassic Park. Hear about how she got noticed by Spielberg in the first place,...

Today's guest is the self-described World's Smallest Stuntman who has doubled everybody from Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings to Christopher Reeve's Superman and James Cameron's Aliens. Kiran Shah is also a poet and an actor who played a not so small part in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark before going on to double Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Kiran looks b...

Today we have a conversation with Ian Malcolm's Daughter, Kelly, herself, Ms. Vanessa Chester. Despite being plagued by tech issues, this deep-dive interview about Vanessa's experience working with Spielberg, Goldblum, Vaughn, and Moore while making The Lost World: Jurassic Park is funny, illuminating, and is guaranteed to brighten your day. Chester most recently appeared in a cameo for the curren...

Steve Agee (Peacemaker, The Sarah Silverman Program, Superstore) joins the Spiel boys to talk about the very festive, very zany, and incredibly dark family film Gremlins, produced by Steven Spielberg, directed by Joe Dante, and starring Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates. The trio discuss the film's reception upon release, why it still holds up today, how it helped usher in the PG-13 rating, how devas...

The very talented actor, comedian, and voice performer John Mariano has played a part in a lot of your favorites, from Married with Children and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia to Fallout 4 and Baldur's Gate. But one of his most recognizable performances is as Bobby the pigeon in Steven Spielberg's oddly raunchy '90s cartoon series Animaniacs. Bobby was the leader of the Goodfeathers, a trio of...

We're forcing author, comedian, and actor DC Pierson to cover all the Transformers films with us here at The Spiel and he finally returns for the second film in the franchise: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a film that is inexplicably nearly 3 hours long, is even more incoherent than the first, and filled with giant robot testicles. Still, this film has its fans and at least one of them is i...

Is the Back to the Future Trilogy the culmination of what we think of as the Amblin Experience? Did you know that the original thought was to have Doc and Marty travel back to the groovy '60s? And what exactly happened with all that Crispin Glover stuff? All those questions and more are discussed as Vespe is joined by his Ain't It Cool compatriot and incredibly film writer Drew McWeeny as we dive...

Live from Corey Feldman's recording studio comes this in-person sit down interview with Corey and director Eugenio Mira, whose long lost collaboration, The Birthday, is finally getting a second life thanks to Drafthouse Films in theaters and on streaming. Corey welcomed Josh and Vespe into his home for this interview where some pretty strict limits were put on us, but we rolled with it and get a v...

David Dastmalchian is one of our best character actors (LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL, THE DARK KNIGHT, DUNE, OPPENHEIMER, THE SUICIDE SQUAD) and now he's joining Vespe and JRT to talk about the controversial INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. Our time with Dave was limited, so we run through this movie at a breakneck pace, much like the back half of the film itself, talk about its place among the...

The writer/producer/director team behind A Quiet Place, 65, and The Boogeyman have a new movie out this week called Heretic, starring Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, and Chloe East, so they decided to stop by and chat about one of their favorite Spielberg films: A.I. That's right, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods are our guests and we dive into the nitty gritty of Spielberg's controversial masterpiece, A.I...

Chaos ensues as the wonderful, and James Beard award-winning, author Mallory O'Meara (Girly Drinks, The Lady from the Black Lagoon) comes on the show to discuss the extremely odd Amblin flick Joe Vs. The Volcano, starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan (three Meg Ryans, believe it or not), and directed by the famous writer John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck). This movie is a favorite of Vespe's, but both other...

Germain Lussier (head movie nerd writer at Gizmodo and I09) joins Vespe and JRT for a wide-ranging discussion on Steven Spielberg's Hook starring Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, and a very pissed off Julia Roberts. How much does nostalgia come into play when discussing this film? Did everybody who was a child when they saw it love it and all the adults hated it? Or is the answer more complicated t...

Jurassic Park is not only one of the best popcorn films ever made, it's also the catalyst for the largest shift in Hollywood production and storytelling in recent cinematic history. It changed movies forever. To dive into that and just how awesome and fun Jurassic Park is, we are joined by one of the most in-demand screenwriters in the business, Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight, The Umbrella Academy, Go...

The Spiel co-creator Scott Wampler passed away before the show debuted and the hunt was on to find someone that could step in to the immense void he left behind. After months of searching, Vespe made his choice. Now you get to meet the new co-host. What are their dreams? Aspirations? Deepest, darkest wishes? And how good is their Morgan Freeman impression? You'll have to listen to find out! Learn...

The Spiel rings in its very first live show at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX. Vespe is joined by guest co-host Nick Preuher (co-founder of the Found Footage Fest) and special guest Nacho Vigalondo (director of Timecrimes, Colossal, and Daniela Forever) to talk about Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Does Close Encounters act as a spiritual sequel to Jaws? What about shared DNA with David Lynch's...

We celebrate the final episode of The Spiel with Scott Wampler as co-host with this rowdy chat with our dear friend, podcaster, and advisor to the stars Wynter Mitchell about a top tier Spielberg entry: Catch Me If You Can. This is a special episode in that it is the very first thing we recorded for the show. This was our test run to see if a podcast about Spielberg's movies would work and two hou...

The very talented writer/director Brian Duffield (Spontaneous, No One Will Save You) joins Wampler and Vespe to discuss Spielberg's War of the Worlds. We go through all the set pieces, talk about the 9/11 parallels, how awesome it is that Tom Cruise plays a glorious screwup, and so much more. War of the Worlds is one of Wampler's favorites, so it's very cool that we got to talk about this title wh...

Director Greg Mottola (Superbad, Paul, and Confess, Fletch) joins Wampler and Vespe to talk about a very early outing for Steven Spielberg as producer: Used Cars. Written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, produced by Spielberg and John Milius, and directed by Zemeckis, this raunchy, cynical, absurd early '80s comedy starring Kurt Russell, Jack Warden, and Gerrit Graham seems made in a lab to be one...

The time has come. The All-Spark is up for grabs and that can only mean one thing: We gotta talk about Transformers, executively produced by one Mr. Steven Spielberg. Wampler and Vespe couldn't do it alone, though, so they called in the calvary in the form of the very funny comedian, author, and actor, DC Pierson (Mystery Team, The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To, Captain America: Winter S...

Comedian Josh Gondelman (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) joins us to talk a little about the very first Men In Black. How does the film hold up? Is it okay to like Will Smith again? How good was Barry Sonnenfeld at making this type of goofy genre movie? Why won't Hollywood just give Rick Baker a trillion dollars to keep making movie magic? All these questions and mor...

The incomparable Dee Wallace joins The Spiel to discuss her work on Steven Spielberg's E.T. Wallace takes us behind the scenes of the making of the movie, including stories about how she got the part of Mary, what it was like the first time she saw E.T., the one time she had a disagreement with Spielberg on the set, her beliefs on what real life aliens are like, and the legacy of the film some 40+...

Model, Streamer, and Kingcast favorite guest Laura Lux makes her first appearance on The Spiel and she brings a hell of a title with her. This is our very first time talking about a movie that Spielberg produced, but didn't direct. That's right, it's 1990's Arachnophobia directed by Spielberg's longtime producer Frank Marshall and starring Jeff Daniels, John Goodman, and Julian Sands... and a shit...