Columns
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“There’s No Good Acting Without a Sense of Truth”: Michael Imperioli, Back To One, Episode 373
Michael Imperioli is best known for his Emmy-winning portrayal of Christopher Moltisanti onThe Sopranos, a role that made him one of the most recognizable faces of prestige television. Some of his other credits include Goodfellas, Jungle Fever, Summer of Sam (which he also co-wrote), The White Lotus, and his latest, Song Sung Blue, the real-life story behind Neil Diamond tribute performers, where he plays Mark Shrilla, opposite Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson. On this episode he talks about the technical mountain he had to climb before he allowed himself to take on that role. Then he takes us back to his early days and two giant, back-to-back acting […]
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“Red is Always Surprisingly Challenging on Focus”: DP Caleb Heymann on “Stranger Things,” Season Five
The fifth and final season of Stranger Things required a full calendar year of production in Atlanta, a marathon of 240 shooting days that will bring the beloved Netflix series to a close with eight super-sized episodes. A job of that scale and duration is an arduous undertaking that could rightfully intimidate any crewmember. For Caleb Heymann, it’s kind of his thing. The cinematographer has spent much of the last five years shooting color contrast-laden Netflix feats of endurance in Georgia. That association began with the 100 days Heymann toiled on the trio of Fear Street films that the streamer […]
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The 8th Annual Kevin Corrigan Episode, Back To One, Episode 372
Kevin Corrigan, the consummate actor, true student of the craft, friend of all actors, the best friend of Back To One, the very first guest of this podcast, returns for the 8th time in what might be his most vulnerable and relatable episode yet. He generously details a crisis he had acting on a series this past year, ponders what he would do with power, asks the question he thinks every actor should ask themselves, reads a moving instagram tribute to Diane Keaton by Jarrod Allan, shares his own wonderful memories of working with Keaton, delivers a couple wonderful impersonations, […]
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The Screen in the Sky: Drone Shows as Cinema
After I put my kid to sleep, I found myself standing by the window, looking out over the valley of apartment buildings. The house went quiet; the city softened into an arrangement of distant lights. As I stared into the sky, a bright purple word snapped into view over the horizon. At first, I thought there was something wrong with my eyes. Then, the letters sharpened: “VERSACE,” spelled out by hundreds of synchronized drones floating above Istanbul. I had never seen an advertisement suspended in the sky before. Billboards, phone screens—the daily flood of images is, today, expected visual noise. […]
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Scott Macaulay’s Final Editor’s Letter as Filmmaker Editor-in-Chief
The following is Filmmaker co-founder and editor-in-chief Scott Macaulay’s final Editor’s Letter, from the Winter 2026 print issue. Edit a magazine for 33 years and by the time you must write a final editor’s letter, you have plenty of examples to draw from. Knowing that some day I’d be writing this send-off, I’ve found myself taking note of all the departing missives that have come across my coffee table and screens—quite a few, given the tumult across the film, non-profit and journalism worlds these past decades. There’s the most common type of farewell: plucky, somewhat anodyne, with the promise not […]
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CCR (Claustrophobic Control Rooms): DP Barry Ackroyd on “A House of Dynamite”
In Netflix’s A House of Dynamite, the United States’ government and military chain of commands scramble to respond as a ballistic missile of unknown origin speeds toward the Midwest. The non-linear narrative replays the final 20 minutes before impact from different perspectives, taking the viewer into the White House Situation Room, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, U.S. Strategic Command and an Alaskan missile defense battalion. It’s certainly not cinematographer Barry Ackroyd’s first time lensing a room full of analysts staring worriedly into a bank of monitors. “Someone actually said to me once, ‘Is that the only thing you do? You’re […]
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Diane Kruger, Back To One, Episode 371
Diane Kruger is a German actress known for her verticality in roles and languages, from Hollywood blockbusters like Troy and National Treasure, to Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and international gems like In the Fade, for which she won Best Actress at Cannes. Currently she stars in two television series, The Seduction, a French-language period drama for HBO MAX, in which she plays Madame de Rosemonde, and Little Disasters, a psychological thriller for Paramount+ where she plays a complex, fiercely devoted new mother whose world collapses around her. On this episode, she gives us a peek inside her acting process and the ingredients in the “sauce” that help her do her work, […]
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“It’s the Essence That Does the Job”: Cassandra Freeman, Back To One, Episode 370
Cassandra Freeman has made her mark in everything from drama to laugh out loud comedy across film, television, and the stage. She is best known for her feature roles in Spike Lee’s Inside Man and Chris Rock’s I Think I Love My Wife. She has also starred in The Last O.G., NBC’s The Enemy Within, and Marvel’s Luke Cage. And now she just finished her four-season run as Vivian Banks (Aunt Viv) on the hit Peacock show Bel Air. On this episode, she explains how she came to trust her intuition, how research into African traditions of performance shifted her paradigm, the “thievery” of over-direction and how it robs […]
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“It’s Difficult to Separate the Craft from the Career Sometimes”: Feodor Chin, Back To One, Episode 369
Few actors have been able to consistently make a living dipping their toes in as many different mediums and genres as Feodor Chin has—film, television, theater, gaming, animation, audio books—he’s done it all. He just ended his run as “China” in the remarkable and timely play Kyoto at the Lincoln Center Theater in New York City. We use that experience as a jumping off point to explore his approach to this crazy endeavor called acting. He talks about the importance of knowing exactly how your character serves the story, explains how he got into voiceover work, details the one medium he […]
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“You Are the Character — Stop Questioning That”: Michael Chernus, Back To One, Episode 368
From Orange Is The New Black and Severance to Spider-Man:Homecoming and Inez & Doug & Kira, Michael Chernus has been consistently delivering performances that place him as one of the most cherished character actors working today. His latest happens to be the first time he’s staring in a television series—Devil In Disguise: John Wayne Gacy—and it’s bringing him some of the best reviews of his career. On this epic episode, he talks about the freedom he felt in knowing he would never truly know that character, and why it took every tool in his “toolkit” to depict him. He takes […]
