The Film Stage Presents

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we discuss America’s Sweetheart: Julia Roberts! Our B-Sides include: I Love Trouble, America’s Sweethearts, Full Frontal, and Larry Crowne. Our lovely guest is Joe Reid of Vulture and the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast.

We discuss Julia’s frequent career peaks and valleys, that ridiculous People Magazine cover in 1993, the tumultuous production of I Love Trouble, and the aftermath of a difficult Hook shoot.

There’s talk of the giant comeback that was My Best Friend’s Wedding and Julia’s knowing, clever subversion of the rom-com leading character in it. We make time for the rise and fall of Revolution Studios, Joe Roth’s passion project that had a tumultuous first seven years.

Scooter gangs and the 2008 Recession come up in talking about Larry Crowne (naturally), and there’s debate over how successful Julia has been over these last couple of decades in her “legend era.”

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we discuss one of the greatest film directors to ever live: Steven Spielberg! Our B-Sides are 1941, Hook, Amistad, and The Adventures of Tintin.

Our guest is dear friend and incredible writer Bilge Ebiri! As of this writing, he just published his piece The Raider of a Lost Art, an oral history about Spielberg in conjunction with the release of his new film Disclosure Day. He’s also discussed Spielberg with The Film Stage before!

We chat about Spielberg’s early start and the difficult production of 1941, his stratospheric ‘80s, the successful failure of Hook, and his underrated Amistad. There’s a celebration of Spielberg’s improbable millennium run of films, from Saving Private Ryan through Munich.

The three of us dig into why Bilge loves Hook so much, he speaks on some additional, unpublished gems from his oral history piece, we appreciate the genius of John Milius, and the impossible camera that injects so much energy into The Adventures of Tintin.

The thing about filmmaker John Sayles is that he has done everything. Do you love Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial or Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist? Sayles' unmade screenplay Night Skies is a piece of the source code for both classics. How about The Big Chill? Sayles' lovely Return of the Secaucus 7 (which he wrote and directed) investigated the curdling of the baby boomers' American dream long before Lawrence Kasdan took a crack at it. The man has been essential to the evolution of nearly every genre of American film, in one way or another.

Ahead of TIFF Cinematheque's retrospective Declarations of Independence: The Cinema of John Sayles (curated by Adam Nayman and beginning this Thursday), we spoke with Sayles about this series and how they selected which films to screen. We also touch on his (hopefully) next film I Passed This Way, working with James Cameron, and which noir classics he's caught up with recently.

Read more: https://thefilmstage.com/the-hard-work-is-in-the-screenwriting-john-sayles-on-resourceful-filmmaking-james-cameron-and-his-tiff-retrospective/

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. 

Today we discuss perhaps the most likeable movie star alive: Goldie Hawn! Our B-Sides include: Butterflies Are Free, The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox, Seems Like Old Times, and Deceived. Our guest today is dear friend Jen Johans, host of the superb Watch With Jen Podcast!

We chat about Goldie’s hot start on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and the early Oscar she won for her dynamic, engaging performance in Cactus Flower. It was her first film role and she was still on Laugh-In! Hawn quickly became a commercially-friendly representation of the counterculture movement, as evidenced in Butterflies Are Free.

There’s debate about Goldie on the production of Jonathan Demme’s ultimately troubled Swing Shift (though she did officially meet Kurt Russell on set, so a huge silver lining!) and how much it hurt her reputation. We celebrate the TV Specials, how Goldie Hawn is her given name, and her autobiography. 

We enjoy the absurdities of Deceived, posit that maybe Protocol was a proto-Ishtar, and admire the shagginess of the stars in 1970s movies. There’s mention of Goldie’s 1972 album! Her charity comes up! How huge of a star Neil Simon was in the ‘70s and ‘80s comes up! There’s a lot to chew on in this episode. Enjoy!

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. 

Today we talk about a truly underrated star: Laurence Fishburne! Our B-Sides include: Bad Company, Fled, Hoodlum, and Biker Boyz. Conor and guest host Mitchell Beaupre discuss Fishburne’s early work, his movie star run (the mid-90s, of which three of our B-Sides are a part of!), and the roles he passed on over the years. 

They debate whether or not Kevin Hooks’ Fled (a ‘90s take on The Defiant Ones) is worth the watch, if Oliver Parker’s Othello works as a movie, and that other time Fishburne played a character based on famous gangster Bumpy Johnson (that would be Francis Ford Coppola’s underrated The Cotton Club).

There’s a celebration of Bill Duke’s directorial career (the legendary actor made Hoodlum and also Deep Cover, both starring Fishburne) and a conversation about Biker Boyz internal conflict in being a Fast & Furious movie.