podcasts
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From the Filmmaker Newsletter: Spending Time with Raúl Ruiz and Caveh Zahedi
Each week I write a free Filmmaker newsletter that’s normally not published on this site. Letters range from links and recommendations to longer-form pieces and article first passes. Here’s a newsletter that was sent out June 18 that received a lot of response. With Caveh Zahedi finishing his Kickstarter campaign with a 24-hour telethon, and Jaime Grijalba’s Ruiz Diaries continuing, I thought I’d post it here. You can subscribe to the Filmmaker newsletter at the link. — SM I’ve recently been spending time each day with Raúl Ruiz and Caveh Zahedi. Not literally, of course — Raúl died in 2011, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 9, 2021 -
New Paths Forward: The Immersive and Interactive Works at Tribeca 2021
As the first major festival to return in person as the pandemic recedes, Tribeca gave us one more sign that New York is coming back. In the Heights, which opened the festival at the United Palace on June 9, was a joyful celebration of community (even for those of us who watched at home), and even in a reduced capacity the festival was a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with the movies. It also seemed that after shuttering the 2020 festival, this year’s event was fairly bursting at the seams with new types of content—of course the short and feature films […]
by Randy Astle on Jun 30, 2021 -
Back to One, Episode 103: Haley Bennett
Haley Bennett has given us some great work in films like The Woman On The Train and The Magnificent Seven, but her performance in Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s Swallow is so fully-realized, so ground-shaking, so important, it feels like an artistic re-birth. In this half-hour, she talks about facing the doubts and fears she had with revealing herself in the role of Hunter, the importance of the fruitful and freeing collaboration process with Mirabella-Davis, and how this truly emancipating experience changed her approach to the work. Plus much more! Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Mar 13, 2020 -
Back to One, Episode 102: Skylar Astin
He got his big Hollywood break with Pitch Perfect, but Skylar Astin had already made it to Broadway in the musical sensation Spring Awakening. Lately, it seems he’s been in every television show that features people breaking into song — Glee, My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and now the NBC hit Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, where he plays Max, Zoey’s best friend, who is secretly in love with her. On this episode, he talks about the hard work that goes into making that show, being bribed into his first audition as a kid, and how his stage experience continues to pay dividends in […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Mar 12, 2020 -
S. Craig Zahler and the Art of the Podcast
“We have a solution to Hollywood’s ‘development hell’ which I am pleased to share with everyone.” This was how Dallas Sonnier, or at least his marketing department, announced the introduction of “the original audiostate,” the neologism Cinestate (Sonnier’s Dallas-based indie production company) coined to avoid the dread word “podcast.” Through marrying the “grandiosity of Hollywood films with the intimacy of audio,” the audiostate is meant to transform that most beloved of objects, the unproduced screenplay, into multi-platform pitchable content. Since Sonnier’s 2017 statement, only one audiostate has been produced: the same year’s The Narrow Caves, a story of eldritch horror, […]
by Brendan Byrne on Mar 4, 2020 -
Back to One, Episode 67: Kevin Corrigan
Kevin Corrigan will always have a special spot in the Back To One pantheon, not just because he was the very first guest, but because he set the stage for the discussions on the craft of acting that were to come—personal, steeped in the work, confessional at times, often inspirational, always educational. In this hour, he shares some more inspiring personal experiences from a life in acting, and also talks about the work of those who’ve inspired him, from his friend Natasha Lyonne and his current co-star Pete Davidson, to Marlon Brando, Glenda Jackson, Taylor Negron, the actor Bob Dylan, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 23, 2019 -
Back to One, Episode 42: Imogen Poots
If you didn’t know Imogen Poots was British, it is understandable. Few young actors transform so chameleon-like, role-to-role, applying accents so skillfully. I was first wowed by her in Peter Bogdanovich’s She’s Funny That Way and then I actually didn’t even know it was her in Green Room until I saw the credits. She floored me again in Frank and Lola opposite Michael Shannon, in an entirely different kind of role. Now she plays a drifter with questionable parenting skills, who steers into escalating trouble in Mobile Homes, and by the end of the movie her performance wrecked me. In […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Jan 22, 2019 -
Back to One, Episode 27: Thunder Road‘s Jim Cummings
Jim Cummings’ performance in the Sundance winning, one-shot short film Thunder Road was the talk of the indie film world in 2016. Then he turned it into a feature, and it won the Grand Jury Prize at the SXSW Film Festival. Now Cummings has decided to turn down less than thrilling distribution offers and make the risky decision to distribute Thunder Road himself. It was the right move. The film has not even hit American screens yet and it has already made its money back and more. He talks to me about “performing” the script into existence, mastering the long […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Oct 23, 2018 -
“We Can Do Whatever We Want”: The Makers Of The Podcast Mission To Zyxx On Doing Indie Sci-Fi Comedy On The Cheap
Sound-only projects got an entire day at IFP Week 2018, which may irk sticklers wondering what podcasts are doing in a seminar once dedicated solely to film. Well, as more and more filmmakers consider themselves some-kind of cross-platform storyteller, podcasts are natural medium for their work. (See, for example, this Filmmaker article on filmmakers embracing that medium.) And, IFP itself added audio storytelling as one of its main areas of interest earlier in the year. To boot, independent aural projects and independent cinema share a lot of similar concerns, aesthetic as well as financial. Take Mission to Zyxx, an improvised […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 26, 2018 -
“Audio Is A Very Visual Medium”: The Makers Of ESPN’s 30 For 30 Podcast On Working Without Images
The team behind the ESPN podcast 30 for 30 hate the word “podcast.” They think “audio documentaries” is a better fit. “The word podcast is just so unhelpful,” said Jody Avirgan, the show’s host and executive producer. “A lot of people hear ‘podcast’ and think two people in a room talking. I like those podcasts. But we’re trying to do stuff that’s much more akin to a short film than to that kind of podcast.” Of course, the 30 for 30 audio documentary series only exists because of film. They’re a spin-off of the 30 for 30 films, which began […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 20, 2018
