Filmwax Radio

The animator, filmmaker, actor and podcaster Jack Dunphy is the guest. Jack has recently launched a very bold new podcast called REVELATIONS WITH JACK DUNPHY where he talks very frankly and as honestly as one can, with his guests. These are sometimes highly intense confessional conversations about addiction, mental illness, sexuality, and more. You can find Jack’s films on various platforms as well as his podcast. This is his first appearance on Filmwax Radio.

Actors Eric Roberts (“The Pope of Greenwich Village”, “Runaway Train”) and Eliza Roberts (“Animal House”) are the guests. They are both involved in a new indie genre film called “Hippo” which hits theaters Friday, November 8th. Directed by Mark H. Rapaport, the film is about a girl who loves classical music and Jesus and who grows up with a video-game addicted stepbrother who embraces the art of war and chaos. Currently screening in select theaters.

Also, on this episode the team behind a new documentary “American Coup, Wilmington 1898”, filmmakers Yoruba Richen and Brad Lichtenstein return to Filmwax Radio. Discover the story of the deadly 1898 race massacre and coup d’état in Wilmington, North Carolina, when white supremacists overthrew the multi-racial government of the state’s largest city through a campaign of violence and intimidation. “American Coup: Wilmington 1898” premieres Tuesday, November 12, 2024, 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) on American Experience on PBS, PBS.org and the PBS app.

The indie filmmaker Alan Rudolph (“Choose Me”, “Trouble in Mind”) makes his first appearance on the podcast. His 1999 film, originally written for his mentor Bob Altman to direct but ended up in his hands some years later. That film is”Breakfast of Champions” and, after 25 years, is returning to theaters. The film was adapted from the unadaptable novel by Kurt Vonnegut, and stars Bruce Willis and Albert Finney. In this special conversation, Rudolph reflects on his year as Altman’s assistant director and his career at large. “Breakfast of Champions” tells the story of a fictional town in the mid west that is home to a group of idiosyncratic and slightly neurotic characters. Dwayne Hoover is a wealthy car dealership owner that’s on the brink of suicide and is losing touch with reality.

Carrie Rickey is a film journalist and author. Her new book is a biography of the French New Wave filmmaker Agnès Varda called “A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda” (W.W. Norton, 2024).

Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any female filmmaker, Agnès Varda (1928–2019) wrote and directed some of the most acclaimed films of her era, from her tour de force “Cléo from 5 to 7” (1962), a classic of modernist cinema, to the beloved documentary “The Gleaners and I” (2000) four decades later. She helped to define the French New Wave, inspired an entire generation of filmmakers, and was recognized with major awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals, as well as an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards.

In this lively biography, former Philadelphia Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey explores the complicated passions that informed Varda’s charmed life and indelible work. Rickey traces Varda’s three remarkable careers—as still photographer, as filmmaker, and as installation artist. She explains how Varda was a pioneer in blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, using the latest digital technology and carving a path for women in the movie industry. She demonstrates how Varda was years ahead of her time in addressing sexism, abortion, labor exploitation, immigrant rights, and race relations with candor and incisiveness.

In this special episode, I welcome documentary filmmaker Lee Hirsch (“Bully”) and producer Houston King (“The Hero”, “Computer Chess”) who together founded the political action committee —or PAC— Local Voices. In our conversation we discuss the Local Voices’ vision that goes into their impactful campaigns, produced and aired in battleground states like Pennsylvania. I’m including a couple of their ads here as well, though audio from a number of them are included in this episode.

Politician and voter suppression activist Stacey Abrams is joined by her co-producer Kristi Jacobson regarding a new documentary they have, along with Selena Gomez, made called “Louder: The Soundtrack of Change” which is available on Max. The documentary is a celebration of music and rallying cry across generations, genres, anchored by female icons whose songs and activism inspired the fight for equality, empowering all. The film also includes appearances by Melissa Ethridge, Linda Ronstadt, Chaka Kahn, H.E.R., Kathleen Hanna and many other musical artists.

Also on this episode the documentary filmmaker Mark Cousins (“The Story of Film: An Odyssey”) with his latest film “My Name is Alfred Hitchcock”, Cousins’ documentary re-examine the vast filmography and legacy of one of the 20th century’s greatest filmmakers, Alfred Hitchcock, through a new lens: through the auteur’s own voice. It premieres theatrically on Friday, October 25 in NYC and L.A.

The documentary filmmaker Dan Partland makes his first appearance on the podcast. From the filmmakers of the critically-acclaimed blockbuster “#Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump”, which grossed over $2.5 million, has been viewed by millions, and was nominated for the IDA Documentary Awards Video Source Award Director, producer, and writer Partland and producer Art Horan are back with “#Untruth: The Psychology of Trumpism” examines the psychology of Trumpism and the authoritarian strain that it seeded in the American political landscape. The film is currently available on VOD platforms.

Rebecca Richman Cohen is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker who teaches courses on media theory and advocacy at Harvard Law School. Through her work, she has examined a range of topics, including the prosecution of war crimes in Sierra Leone, responses to sexual violence in the US, cannabis legalization, and biodynamic winemaking. Her most recent film, “Weed & Wine” follows the story of Kev Jodrey —joining her in this segment— and his son Cona, descendants of outlaws who labored to make themselves legal purveyors of sun-grown, craft cannabis in Humboldt County, California. In the south of France, Hélène and her son Aurélien produce renowned, biodynamic wines on a vineyard that they’ve fought for centuries to keep in their family. In this sumptuous and moving film, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, Rebecca Richman Cohen, parallels the profound joys and deep uncertainties of two farming families as they fight to protect their legacy, their craft, and their land. Executive produced by Berner. The film is currently available on VOD platforms.

Walk with Me is the journey of Charlie Hess and his wife, episode guest Heidi Levitt, as they learn to live with his Early-Onset Alzheimer’s disease. Over four years of filming with Heidi as director and care partner, they crisscross the country, redefining how life will be lived to its fullest. Charlie’s charm, warmth, and appeal take center stage, illuminating a story of love and a reminder that life is really about our relationships. “Walk With Me” will screen at the Woodstock Film Festival on Saturday, October 19, 5:15PM at the Bearsville Theater. The post-screening Q&A will be moderated by Filmwax host Adam Schartoff.

The iconic filmmaker Kevin Smith (“Clerks”, “Mallrats”) makes his first appearance on Filmwax Radio to briefly discuss his latest film “The 4:30 Movie” which is available on digital platforms. During the summer of 1986, three 16-year-old buddies spend their Saturdays sneaking into movies at the local cineplex. When one of the guys invites the girl of his dreams to see an R-rated film, all hilarity breaks loose as a self-important theatre manager and teenage rivalries interfere with his best-laid plans.

Also, the film producer Jonathan Burkhart (“Do The Right Thing”, “Dazed and Confused”) discusses his career in a personal conversation. This interview was conducted in the Radio Free Rhinecliff studios.

Returning to the podcast filmmaker Julia Loktev (“The Loneliest Planet”, “Day Night Day Night”) and the editor Michael Taylor. The two have a new documentary project called “My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 — Last Air in Moscow” which is broken into 5 episodes and is screening as part of the New York Film Festival’s main slate.

This from the New York Film Festival website: American filmmaker Loktev, born in the Soviet Union, returned to Moscow in 2021 to make a documentary on the persistence of independent journalism in Putin’s Russia—just months, as it turned out, before the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. With her friend Anna Nemzer, a talk show journalist for TV Rain, Russia’s last remaining independent news channel, Loktev ends up immersing herself with a group of young women fighting to ensure the vocalization of dissent and outspoken criticism of the country—even as they are branded by the government as “foreign agents,” their careers and lives increasingly at risk as the country creeps toward war. Structured in five chapters, Loktev’s film, the climactic days of which were filmed in Moscow during the first week of the invasion, when most independent journalists fled the country, is an extraordinary vérité document of a moment of immense change and anxiety, as well as a vital depiction of the eternal hope that so many in Russia hold for living in a democratic state. Screening in two parts: Chapters 1–3 (198m), Chapters 4–5 (124m).

The filmmaker Erik Nelson is the guest in the first segment. Erik has a new documentary coming out about called “Daytime Revolution“. For one extraordinary week beginning on February 14, 1972, the Revolution was televised. “Daytime Revolution” takes us back in time to the week that John Lennon and Yoko Ono descended upon a Philadelphia broadcasting studio to co-host the iconic “Mike Douglas Show”, at the time the most popular show on daytime television with an audience of 40 million viewers a week. What followed was five unforgettable episodes of television, with Lennon and Ono at the helm and Douglas bravely keeping the show on track. Acting as both producers and hosts, Lennon and Ono handpicked their guests, including controversial choices like Yippie founder Jerry Rubin and Black Panther Chairman Bobby Seale, as well as political activist Ralph Nader and comic truth teller George Carlin. Their version of daytime TV was a radical take on the traditional format, incorporating candid Q&A sessions with their transfixed audience, conversations about current issues like police violence and women’s liberation, conceptual art events, and one-of-a-kind musical performances, including a unique duet with Lennon and Chuck Berry and a poignant rendition of Lennon’s “Imagine”. A document of the past that speaks to our turbulent present, “Daytime Revolution” captures the power that art can have when it reaches out to communicate, the prescience of that dialogue, and the bravery of two artists who never took the easy way out as they fought for their vision of a better world. The film will have a nationwide theatrical screening in 50 cities on October 9th, the day that would have been John Lennon’s 84th birthday.

The filmmaker Emily Packer graces the podcast in this episode’s second segment. In “Holding Back the Tide“, an impressionist hybrid documentary, Packer traces the oyster through its many life cycles in New York, once the world’s oyster capital. Now their specter haunts the city through queer characters embodying ancient myth, discovering the overlooked history and biology of the bivalve that built the city. As environmentalists restore them to the harbor, Holding Back The Tide looks to the oyster as a queer icon, entangled with nature, with much to teach about our continued survival. The film had its world premiere at DOC NYC 2023, a New York theatrical at DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema and will have a theatrical in Los Angeles beginning October Check the website for details.