Film School

A boy's best friend is his mother.

In the period between 1954 to 1960, Hitchcock made every single one of the four of his films that appear on the AFI's Top 100 list. Psycho, the last of those four films, might be the best of them all. It was shot for nothing, it was almost never released, and it went on to be the most profitable film of his career. Psycho, quite literally, invented a genre of film that still plays today. So, how does the original slasher film hold up? We break it down!

What are your bad habits? We hate them. They hold us back. But, we all have them, and identifying what they are can help to keep on top of them. This week, Josh and Ira dish on their own bad habits, and how they deal with them.

Good morning, Dave . . .

It's hard to overstate just how influential this film is, Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, a touchstone of the 60s psychadelic movement, and arguably the best--or at least most artistic--Science Fiction film ever made. We've been trying to re-do what this movie does ever since, and I'm not sure anything has. Story by Arthur C. Clarke. Visuals by Stanley Kubrick. I mean, it's not a perfect film, but what else do you really need than those two?

Life, frequently, is chaos. And if its true that we must fit creativity into our lives, not vice versa, then how do we stay consistent in the midst of the craziness? The answer is: flexibility. A rigid structure falls in an earthquake; a flexible structure survives. So how do we apply that to our schedules, our goals, and our creativity?

Also, Josh recommends Denis Villeneuve's Enemy, and Ira recommends Every Frame a Painting, a series of video essays about filmmaking on YouTube.

Mister DeMille . . . I'm ready for my closeup!

Director Billy Wilder would all like us to know: there was an era of movies before the talkies, and we did those silent stars dirty. Gloria Sawnson is glorious (see what I did there?) as the cast-aside Norma Desmond living in a dilapidated mansion doing her best to re-live her glory days and slowly losing her mind. William Holden is Joe Gillis, the young up-and-coming screenwriter that serves as a catalyst for it all to fall apart. Is this Wilder's best film? We discuss!

This isn't a topic on 'voice,' or an artistic point of view. Rather, literally, concretely, how do you approach writing your scenes? Are there particular entry points you like to use? How do you like to indicate thoughts and feelings and actions? What pacing do you like to use? How do you translate thoughts and images into words? Literally, what kind of language do you like to use when you're writing? We discuss, nuts and bolts, how we like to write.

Also, Josh recommends Punch Drunk Love, and Ira recommends Mare of Easttown.

Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me . . . aren't you?

It's the movie that made Dustin Hoffman a star, and rightly so. He plays the naive, uptight and awkward Benjamin Braddock who masks a disenchanted with his parents' rich, vacuous, meaningless lives, with a frozen mask for a face that says 'I'm screaming on the inside.' But, then the wife of one of his father's friends propositions him with an affair . . . and he proceeds to fall in love with her daughter. It's a scathing portrayal of the upper class, a brutally cynical take on whether or not 'love' even exists, and most importantly . . . it's hilarious. Enjoy!

Truth is what we're seeking in art. We're not looking for structure, or technique, or skill, or three acts, or crises, or backstory, or any of the stuff we spend so much time talking about on podcasts like these. What we're looking for is something that FEELS REAL. So…is all that craft stuff the same thing? Or is this verisimilitude something else to consider all on its own? We discuss!

Also, Josh recommends Evangelion, and Ira recommends Bo Burnham's Inside.

Buster Keaton brings the ACTION!

Charlie Chaplin gets most of the attention from the physical comedy corner in silent film, but Buster Keaton was certainly a master in his own right. This film is almost 100 years old and it brings the action non-stop. Keaton can certainly construct a breath-taking gag . . . but can he deliver a story with the pathos that his better-known contemporary could? We watch and discuss!

"Step outside your comfort zone." "Do something new." Okay…but how? HOW do you do something that you've never done before? Stepping outside the comfort zone is, by definition, uncomfortable. Luckily, there are some tried and true methods. We discuss!

Also, Josh recommends The Wire, and Ira recommends Mare of Easttown.