Is it a movie if half of the scenes only have one line of dialogue? This and other philosophical issues about the art of filmmaking are considered as Rena and Sara reluctantly reenter the chaotic, tax-dodging world of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in 2012’s barely-a-movie Lifetime teleplay Liz and Dick.

Is there a world where Lindsay Lohan was on Ambien the entire time she was making this movie? Did Creed Bratton and David Eigenberg need credits for their SAG insurance eligibility, or did the director of this film help them bury a body? Where exactly is the black box that Liz and Dick are in, watching their relationship unfold? Did Liz’s dog have to poop out a piece of priceless jewelry, and what effect does that have on that piece of jewelry’s value? Was Sara’s college production of Hamlet the actual worst?

So many questions. So few answers.

Liz and Dick stars Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor, Grant Bowler as Richard Burton, David Eigenberg as Ernest Lehman, Creed Bratton as Richard Zanuck, Harry XX as the Butler, Theresa Russell as Sara Taylor, and a bunch of people we’ve never seen or heard from again. 

Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Follow us!

Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory https://www.instagram.com/biopicapodcaststory/ 

Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/

Contact us: [email protected]

It’s time to dissect one of the reasons for this podcast’s existence: The Oscarbatory biopic of the life of one Ray Charles, as told by director and co-writer Taylor Hackford (aka Mr. Helen Mirren) and featuring a dynamite performance by Jamie Foxx.

Picture it: 2004, peak “I am going to imitate this famous person and I am going to get awards for it” filmmaking. Sara and Rena have a few problems with this movie, however: mainly that while the state of Georgia has committed, and continues to commit, countless sins, they never exactly banned and then asked for forgiveness from Charles—a pretty vital plot point to this film. Also discussed: when an artist writes a hit song by sitting down at the piano and banging it out flawlessly, the first not-disappointed-in-their-genius-artist-child mother, and the very real fear of being looked at in disappointment by Regina King.

No corpse talk this week, however, the age-old debate of “who would you rather watch a bad movie with, Craig Robinson or Wendell Pierce” achieves a resolution.

Ray stars Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, Kerry Washington as Della Bea Robinson, Regina King as Margie Hendricks, Clifton Powell as Jeff Brown, Harry Lennix as Joe Adams, Bokeem Woodbine as Fathead Newman, Sharon Warren as Aretha Robinson, Curtis Armstrong as Ahmet Ertegun, Richard Schiff as Jerry Wexler, Larenz Tate as Quincy Jones, Terrence Howard as Gossie McGee, and Wendell Pierce as Wilbur Brassfield.

References: 

SNL “Black Jeopardy” skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7VaXlMvAvk

Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Follow us!

Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory https://www.instagram.com/biopicapodcaststory/ 

Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/

Contact us: [email protected]

Hooray! We have a bonus episode: our 12th edition of Irrelevant Host Banter.

These are some outtakes that were cut for running time, and/or because we were digressive or repetitive.

Think of it as Sara and Rena having a conversation in non sequiturs. We jump around in a senseless, context-deprived manner, and you should definitely skip this episode and download any normal episode from “Episode 10: Cobb” onwards if this is your first time listening.

Includes material cut from:

Highlights include:

Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Our theme music is by Ben Patch: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5BB01QpPE7HBGacGAlullu?si=gp_6jbvsThWXg_sSLVcv6Q

Follow us!

Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory 

Bluesky: @biopic-podcast.bsky.social

Threads: @biopicapodcaststory

Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/biopicapodcaststory

Contact us: [email protected]

Rena and Sara find themselves in complete agreement on Saint Joan, the 1957 Otto Preminger adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. 

Find out about Rena’s secret passion for time traveling historical characters and learn more about Sara’s weird catholicism, along with the timeless visuals of a young woman being emotionally destroyed in a courtroom filled with men fighting over who gets to hurt her the worst.

Prepare yourself for wild 14th and 15th century history, including Henry VI’s “Loveday,” a solution better suited for siblings than warring countrymen, a brief look at Otto Preminger’s monstrousness, a bonus moment of Corpse Capers, and the a FOUR-Pete for our friend Sir John Gielgud. 

Saint Joan stars Jean Seberg as Joan of Arc, Richard Widmark as Charles VII, Richard Todd as the Bastard of Orleans, and John Gielgud as the Earl of Warwick. 

Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Follow us!

Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory https://www.instagram.com/biopicapodcaststory/ 

Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/

Contact us: [email protected]

Our 1+ hour journey into our oldest film yet, 1942’s The Pride of the Yankees, leads us to ask, who is history’s greatest monster? Probably Sara, for the giant tank of haterade she dumps all over this painfully “and-then” film featuring far-too-old actors that covers the life and times of the nevertheless honorable man and incredible athlete Lou Gehrig. 

We discuss Lou Gehrig’s miraculous birth to elderly parents, his hip-breaking fist-fights with the beloved fraternity Alpha Alpha AARP, Walter Brennan’s role as a third party in Lou Gehrig’s marriage, and whether there’s anything more upsetting than people playing themselves in films (there isn’t, but there probably is).  We also discuss that one time that Cal Ripken Jr. maybe got into a fistfight with Kevin Costner and almost destroyed his perfect attendance streak.

Pride of the Yankees stars Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig, Teresa Wright as Eleanor Gehrig, Walter Brennan as Sam Blake, and Babe Ruth as himself.

Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Follow us!

Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory  https://www.instagram.com/biopicapodcaststory/ 

Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/

Contact us: [email protected]

Hooray! We have a bonus episode: our 11th edition of Irrelevant Host Banter. These are some outtakes that were cut for running time, and/or because we were digressive or repetitive.

Think of it as Sara and Rena having a conversation in non sequiturs. We jump around in a senseless, context-deprived manner, and you should definitely skip this episode and download any normal episode from “Episode 10: Cobb” onwards if this is your first time listening.

Includes material cut from:

Highlights include:

Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Follow us!

Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory 

Bluesky: @biopic-podcast.bsky.social

Threads: @biopicapodcaststory

Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/biopicapodcaststory

Contact us: [email protected]

Finally, a proper costume drama! We are surprised that it took this long. In the 2008 film The Duchess, we travel to the days where it really sucked to be a woman (as opposed to every other time in history) and meet the captivating, delightful, ahead-of-her-time Duchess of Devonshire, her dull-as-dishwater, dog-obsessed husband, and her “he looks like a member of Oasis” partner in cuckolding.

Despite the hangovers of Cleopatra and Gandhi, Rena and Sara actually want this tidy, 1 hour, 50 minute film to be longer as they discuss the positives and negatives of gambling addiction, rotten boroughs as a metaphor for the electoral college and vice versa, giant skirts, giant hair, and whether children should be used for blackmail. It’s WAY more fun than it sounds. Tragically left on the cutting room floor: Your two moms arguing for 30 minutes about the Royal Family.

The Duchess stars Keira Knightley as Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, Ralph Fiennes as The Duke, Dominic Cooper as Charles Grey, Charlotte Rampling as Lady Spencer, Hayley Atwell as Bess Foster, and Simon McBurney as Charles James Fox. 

Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Follow us!

Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory 

Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/

Contact us: [email protected]

Remember that time we pretended that Blade Runner, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The King of Comedy, ET, and Rocky III were inferior to the movie Gandhi? The 1980s were fun.

Rena and Sara take a journey back to their teen years to re-watch this beloved teaching aid for high school history instructors and it was … not fun. Gandhi remains a bloodless but well-executed hagiography that also happens to be beautifully shot and eighty-nine hours long. So many train rides and speeches and marches and beatific jailings, so much clothing-weaving and platitude sharing. Oh, and dust. Plentiful dust.

Between analyzing whether this movie is rightfully putting on airs, Rena and Sara also take pity on Gandhi’s wife—who definitely didn’t sign up for this, discuss the issues that come up when one speed-walks in a diaper and sandals, and speculate on the wild array of white actors who were ALMOST cast as Gandhi.

Gandhi stars Ben Kingsley as Gandhi, Rohini Hattangadi as Kasturba Gandhi, Rosha Seth as Nehru, Candice Bergen as Margaret Bourke-White, Edward Fox as Reginald Dyer, Biopic threepete-r John Gielgud, and Martin Sheen as Vince Walker. 

Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Follow us!

Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory 

Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/

Contact us: [email protected]

We recorded around three hours of material for “Episode 20: Reagan” back in August of 2024. That movie was torture to endure and we wound up cutting about half of what we recorded. We assert that the right to free assembly allows us, the much-loathed coastal media types, the right to seek hope, comfort, and the mutual salving of wounds among the like-minded. So, this bonus episode is not for everybody. If you are broken-hearted about the horrible thing that happened in Washington, DC on Monday, January 20 of 2025, and you would rather not be told “F— your feelings, pronoun person,” here is nearly 50 minutes of us hating on Ronald Reagan and the Reagan biopic that came out in 2024 and stars Dennis Quaid. We hope that you feel better. You are not alone.

Including:

Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Follow us!

Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory 

Threads: @biopicapodcaststory

Bluesky: @biopic-podcast.bsky.social

Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/

Contact us: [email protected]

Hooray! We have a bonus episode: our ninth edition of Irrelevant Host Banter. These are some outtakes that were cut for running time.

Think of it as Sara and Rena having a conversation in non sequiturs. We jump around in a senseless, context-deprived manner, and you should definitely skip this episode and download any normal episode from “Episode 10: Cobb” onwards if this is your first time listening.

This bonus episode consists of material cut from Episode 19: And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself. Subjects include:

Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

Follow us!

Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory 

Bluesky: @biopic-podcast.bsky.social

Threads: @biopicapodcaststory

Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/

Contact us: [email protected]