Brian De Palma's soaring 1987 crime drama The Untouchables nearly went in some very different directions. Jack Nicholson as Eliot Ness? Bob Hoskins as Al Capone? And what's more, the film's legendary sequence on the steps of Chicago's Union Station was pretty much made up on the fly.

The story is told in this episode, as well as the brief attempt to get a prequel movie - Capone Rising - off the ground as well.

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Director Angel Manuel Soto has just brought Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista together on the big screen, in the Prime Video hit THE WRECKING CREW.

Growing in Puerto Rico, he was some way away from the man who'd direct BLUE BEETLE for Warner Bros and DC. And in this special interview, he tells his incredible film story. And it involves loo roll!

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Quite the double dose in this episode of Film Stories.

Firstly, the story of how Fatal Attraction came from the roots of a short film at the start of the 1980s. How directors such as John Carpenter turned it down. And how the infamous battle over its ending led to one of the iconic movie thrillers of the 1980s.

Then! It's only Sam Raimi! Chatting about Send Help, movie frame rates, For Love Of The Game and futuristic prison movies...

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Ric Roman Waugh has directed films such as the newly-released Shelter, along with Greenland, Greenland: Migration, Kandahar and more. And in this far-reaching conversation with Simon Brew, he takes us through his latest film and body of work.

Not least the unusual connection between Simon and Ric's fathers, thanks to Paint Your Wagon. A tenuous link, surely, but one the pair get into!

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Two very different films in this latest episode of film history podcast Film Stories. Firstly, it's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, an infamously difficult production that saw director Gareth Edwards fashion a war tale in the Star Wars universe - and then reshoots become Hollywood trade press fodder.

Coming off the back of two James Bond films meanwhile, director Lewis Gilbert reckoned he might be able to get interest in a film take on hit play Educating Rita back in the early 1980s. He got a short, sharp shock - but a dinner party offered him a very welcome stroke a luck.

Stories of both films are told in this episode. Please do the like and subscribe and leaving a nice review thing. Thank you!

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One of the more bizarre projects to come out of a Hollywood studio in the late 1960s, Paint Your Wagon felt like a turning point movie. Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood - and they're both singing? How did that happen? Turns out it's quite a story.

Then, ahead of an appearance at the BFI to talk about his work in David Lynch's The Elephant Man, Dexter Fletcher joins Simon for a chat about it. That, and a bit of Alan Rickman, and inviting Christopher Walken over for dinner...

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She's a comedian, writer, actor and film nerd, and Tiff Stevenson also is a go-to for hosting things on boats, it turns out! In this Film Stories special, she talks about her role in a film called Slotherhouse. A horror slasher movie, with a sloth in it.

As the pair discuss, it sounds like both an intriguing and terrible idea, yet it somehow works! It's one of the many movie discussions that come up in this chat...

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Regular episodes of Film Stories with Simon Brew resume for 2026, with two very different films in the spotlight.

First up there's Cameron Crowe's superb Almost Famous, a film he got the greenlight to make in the aftermath of Jerry Maguire's success. A hugely personal story, here's how it stumbled at the box office, but found new life.

Then, from the same brain that gave us Phone Booth comes Collateral. There aren't many film you could bill Chris Evans, Oscar-winner Kim Basinger and Jason Statham in, all from the director of Snakes On A Plane. How, then, did this one end up a treat?

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To celebrate Film Stories turning 500 episodes old (and then some!), a very special live recording took place in London in November 2025. Long-time Film Stories supporter Romesh Ranganathan joined Simon Brew on stage to go through his, er, 'storied' cinema career and talk movies.

This show is rated 15 for language. You probably could have guessed that.

A video version of this show is available on YouTube: www.youtube.com/filmstories

Please subscribe. Please leave a nice review. And thank you for all your help and support in getting us to episode 500!

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