Uncut Gems Podcast

In this episode of the show we are concluding the main part of our Elaine May May with her last directorial outing to date, the 1987 Ishtar . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk, again, about the uphill struggle of getting this movie made, how it may have been out of step with the 80s milieu and maybe how it tried to fit in the landscape of newly reborn comedy. We also talk a...

In this episode of the show we are adding the third instalment into our Elaine May May where we talk about her 1976 Mikey and Nicky . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about the arduous and crisis-laden production history of this movie, how Elaine May channeled the spirit of rogue indie filmmaking and how her movie works as a bridge between Cassavetes and Scorsese. We also...

In this podcast we are looking back at the Summer of 95 to talk about the Tony Scott-directed Crimson Tide . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about what makes this movie so immersive and compelling, how an intersection between performance, writing and production design may be the key to its magic and how Tony Scott flawlessly found balance between authenticity and preposte...

In this episode of the show our Elaine May May continues with her sophomore directorial effort The Heartbreak Kid . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us dig deep into the movie to find how it subverts the genre and works as a polar reversal of The Graduate , how the many production woes surrounding this movie proved that Hollywood was a hostile environment for female filmmakers at...

In this episode of our Mike Nichols Marathon we are moving onto the 1973 The Day of the Dolphin . Over the course of our conversation we will attempt to understand how a movie about George C. Scott talking to dolphins fits in the catalogue of someone who brought Hollywood into the new age with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate , whether this movie had a chance of succeeding in t...

In this episode of the show we are beginning a whole new month with a brand new director. In May we will be talking about the entire filmography of Elaine May and are beginning with A New Leaf . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about the many ways in which this movie is in conversation with the legacy of Hollywood, how it stands as an oddball against the backdrop of New Ho...

In this special episode of our show we had the immense pleasure to sit down for a conversation with Jon Raymond, who is a novelist short fiction writer and a screenwriter. He is also a lifelong collaborator with Kelly Reichardt, with whom he co-wrote six movies (including three out of four we talked about this month). We talk about his process and his inspirations as a writer and a prominent champ...

In this episode of the show we are formally closing our conversations about Kelly Reichardt and her collaborations with Michelle Williams with a great chat about Showing Up . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about how Reichardt's movie touches on the unspoken horrors of life as a creative, how mundanity creeps in to undermine creative process and how life is a struggle...

In this podcast we are tying into our April conversations about the cinema of Kelly Reichardt with a conversation about a seminal work of another great female director Agnès Varda titled Vagabond . Over the course of our chat you will hear us try to break down this complex tapestry of episodic fiction and isolate its many meanings. We talk about visual symbolism in support of feminist expression,...

In this episode of the show our conversations on the minimalist cinema of Kelly Reichardt continue with Certain Women . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about whether the anthology format modifies Reichardt's cinematic language, how the theme of loneliness ties the three stories together and how they are all subtly permeated with a feminist gaze. We also talk about the...

In the April instalment of our 2025 50-30 series where we talk about notable movies from 1975 and 1995 we are turning our attention to Apollo 13 , a Ron Howard-directed account of the unfortunate mission to the Moon cut short by a series of malfunctions that left the trio of astronauts stranded in space. Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about what we think this movie touch...

In this episode of the show we continue our journey West together with Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams as we discuss her 2010 anti-western Meek's Cutoff . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about Reichardt subverting the expectations of a typical western and how critics at the time clearly didn't get it, how the movie gives its women protagonists agency and how...

THIS EPISODE OF OUR PATREON-ONLY MARATHON SERIES IS AVAILABLE TO LISTEN IN FULL HERE! MORE EPISODES ON PATREON.COM/UNCUTGEMSPOD !! In this episode of our Mike Nichols Marathon we are joined by a very special guest, Neil LaBute, who is here with us to talk about the fourth movie in this filmmaker's catalogue, namely the 1971 Carnal Knowledge . Over the course of our conversation you will hear u...

In this episode of the show we are making a sudden shift, after five months of discussing action directors, and begin a month of quiet reflection with the cinema of Kelly Reichardt, and we begin with her 2008 masterpiece Wendy and Lucy . Over the course of our great chat you will hear us talk about the many ways Reichardt tackles the strife of displaced people, the pursuit of a better tomorrow els...

In this episode we are closing our March debates on Andrew Davis movies with his 2002 Arnie vehicle Collateral Damage . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about the troubled history of this movie's release, how it was slightly out of step with the changing times and how it looked like a 90s movie released a few years too late. We also talk about Schwarzenegger's fadi...

In this show we are tying into our March conversations about the cinema of Andrew Davis with a great debate on his biggest success, which is The Fugitive . Over the course of our chat you will hear us talk about how an action movie made its way to the Oscar conversation, how Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford shared some great chemistry and whether Ford himself was at the time more of a blockbuster...

In this episode of the show our March Madness with Andrew Davis continues with a conversation about his 1996 outing Chain Reaction . Over the course of our chat you will hear us talk about Davis going back to the well to recapture the success of The Fugitive and why we think it was a bad idea. We talk about how this movie fits into the shifting landscape of star-driven action entertainment, Morgan...

In this show we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about how The Forman movie treats Ken Kesey's book, how the filmmaker uses his kitchen sink realism lens in support of authenticity and why this movie earned its many accolades. We also try to diagnose McMurphy, wonder if Nurse Ratched was corr...

In this episode of the show we are discussing one of the most successful movies Andrew Davis Directed and one that most definitely was the biggest success in Steven Seagal's acting career, the 1992 Under Siege . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about the peculiar place Steven Seagal holds in the canon of 80s and 90s action heroes, how Under Siege slots into the post- D...

In this episode of the show, we are continuing our March with Andrew Davis and we are talking about his 1989 conspiracy thriller The Package . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about how Davis was possibly enamored with the 70s, both in terms of aesthetic and thematic aspirations, and how this movie owes a whole lot to the post-Nixon wave of paranoid thrillers. We also talk...

In this month's instalment of our Mike Nichols marathon, we are putting our thinking caps on as we discuss his first official box office disappointment, which is the adaptation of Joseph Heller's irreverent post-war novel Catch-22 . You will hear us talk about how this movie came together with its lavish production, editing woes and having to deal with Orson Welles on set, how it was a tru...

In this episode of the show we are beginning a brand new month, which means we are switching gears and biting into the work of a new director. In March, we will spend some time talking about Andrew Davis and we begin with his 1985 Chuck Norris vehicle Code of Silence . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us try to position Chuck Norris in the canon of action heroes as well as attempt...

In this episode of the show we are putting a finishing touch on our February with Antoine Fuqua with a conversation about Shooter . Over the course of our chat you will hear us talk about the many years it took to adapt this story into a movie, how Mark Wahlberg and Antoine Fuqua made it happen and how (and perhaps why) the movie left a minimal cultural footprint behind it. We also talk about Mark...

In this podcast we are tying into our February theme surrounding the early cinema of one Antoine Fuqua and we are discussing his most highly acclaimed feature Training Day . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us talk about how Denzel Washington may have helped Fuqua make this movie, how David Ayer's script is brimming with authenticity and how some people find this brand of writ...

In this episode of the show Fuqua February continues with a discussion about his 2003 outing Tears of the Sun . Over the course of our conversation you will hear us try to understand what the mission behind this movie was, whether it was appropriate to transplant a real story into a whole new setting and whether the story in this new setting deserved to be treated as a cross between a prestige war...