One of my very favorite films and featuring one of Paul Newman's favorite performances, Sidney Lumet's 'The Verdict' has grown in stature and appreciation since its premiere in 1982.  

With a brilliantly adapted screenplay by multi-hyphenate David Mamet, a tortured development process encompassing stars like Redford and other directors named Sidney (Pollack), and a first-rate cast, 'The Verdict' is one of the greatest courtroom dramas of all time.

I'm thrilled to be joined once again by author and editor Keir Graff, who once again turns in an excellent appearance as a well-prepared guest on the pod. 

We dive deep into the making of this film, play some iconic scenes, and discuss the nuances and joys of the performances, the writing, the directing and the production elements that make this wonderful film such a standard of the form.

Keir Graff's author website.

Keir's previous appearance on the Full Cast and Crew Podcast discussing "The Color of Money".

Watch "The Verdict"

Playlist of Official "The Verdict" clips.

Watch the Paul Newman/Joanne Woodward documentary 'The Last Movie Stars', directed by Ethan Hawke.

Buy Sidney Lumet's indispensable guide to making movies, called, magically enough 'Making Movies'.

Listen to Sidney Lumet's indispensable Director's Commentary to 'The Verdict' in podcast form.

Bennett Miller was the 3rd director attached to the adaptation of Michael Lewis' classic baseball non-fiction book 'Moneyball', after Steven Soderbergh was replaced by Sony, who got nervous over his plan for interspersing interviews with real-life characters from the book like Lenny Dykstra and Darryl Strawberry throughout the film. His rewrite of Steve Zaillian's script made the studio nervous when paired with the $50 million dollar budget.

Some of that technique remains in Miller's use of real baseball scouts and former players in the film, but it's blended seamlessly with the fantastic performances by Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill (who replaced Dmitri Martin in the role of Paul Brand/Paul DePodesta), Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Chris Pratt.

Pitt and Sony exec Amy Pascal and producer Mike DeLuca stuck with the project, reduced the budget, and luckily, the film got made.  On the face of it, it's an audacious undertaking: no less than an art-house take on baseball. Or is it a crowd-pleasing writer's film with a decidedly 70's bent?  Or is it a treatise on the limitations of collective conventional wisdom?  It's all these things and more. 

Some Articles About 'Moneyball':

https://www.looper.com/593376/the-untold-truth-of-moneyball/  https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/making-moneyball-272655/

Roundtable with Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Bennett Miller:  https://youtu.be/r9g2Bk2GQYY?t=199

84th Academy Awards Nominees and Winners.

I'm joined by frequent FCAC Guest Star Richard Brown as we explore the many possible reactions to Robert Altman and Joan Tewksbury's 'Nashville'...a film that polarized pretty much everyone when it came out but that has settled into a comfortable middle-age of generally accepted masterpiece status.  But...is it?  

In this episode Rick and I explore the fruits of Altman's decision to have entirely new country music songs written for the movie, in many cases BY his stars, many of whom were not musicians. We discuss Lily Tomlin's exerted influence on her character's key scenes, and how her warmth and humanity contributes much-needed heart to the proceedings.

There was much backstage drama during the shoot, and of course we're not above handling the better of those stories with class and dignity...

Watch 'Nashville' on YouTube.

Read about 'Nashville' on Wikipedia.

Some 'Nashville' clips.

A few of Rick Brown's other recent FCAC appearances:

Bobby Darin Beyond the Song

Broadcast News

Our 'Weird Christmas' Special

Watch the 'Payday' trailer here.

 

The 2003 episode that David Letterman devoted entirely to a single guest, Warren Zevon, stands out as one of Dave's signature episodes and the frank and revealing conversation they had about Zevon's terminal lung cancer diagnosis is but one of many fascinating layers to that appearance that this episode of the podcast explores.

Issues of ambition, ego, addiction, self-medication and recovery were shared by both of these talented and tortured entertainers.  Zevon's life and career were shadowed by his alcoholism, his brief period of 12-Step sobriety, and the abstinence from alcohol and drugs he would give up upon receiving his terminal cancer diagnoses.  Letterman has spoken openly about his own father's alcoholism and sobriety in AA, and his own decision to stop drinking in 1984 and how his life and work has been altered by that decision. In their many meetings on Letterman's shows, these issues and many others would be crackling in the fore and background.

This episode was inspired by Crystal Zevon's incredible, heart-wrenching oral biography of her ex-husband Warren Zevon, a contemplation of Zevon's many appearances on the David Letterman shows over the years, and a lifelong fascination with reading between the lines of rock biographies.

Sources:

Zevon songs

'Werewolves Of London' Video

'Keep Me In Your Heart' Lyric Video

'Desperados Under The Eaves' Video

'Searching For A Heart' Video

Dr. Demento

'They're Coming to Take Me Away'

'Fish Heads'

'Dead Puppies'

Paul Nelson's 1981 Profile of Zevon

Zevon's Appearances on Letterman

Jesse Thorn's revealing 2020 podcast interview with David Letterman

Buy Crystal Zevon's excellent biography of Zevon on Amazon.

Watch Letterman's Netflix INTV series.

Sean Penn's committed, beyond-his-years performance as Jeff Spicoli is one of the great and most-storied American film acting performances, full stop. 

After last week's episode about 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High' opened my eyes anew to how astoundingly complete Sean Penn made Spicoli, I simply had to do something I've never done on the pod before: devote an entire episode to appreciating and deconstructing the 22 times Jeff Spicoli appears onscreen in the film.

Craig Brown's excellent book which gave this episode its title.

And Craig Brown's excellent book about The Beatles which is also an inspiration.

Here's a bizzaro Fast Times Coloring Book I really need to own.

 

Amy Heckerling and Cameron Crowe's 1982 adaptation of Crowe's book 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High' is a classic that rises above the low-brow teen-sex comedy that Universal executives probably expected when they green lit the Valley-set film with a bunch of no-name actors (outside of Mr. Hand, of course), a soundtrack of artists who just so happened to mostly be represented by the film's executive producer, and a first-time director who couldn't sound or be more "New York" in Heckerling.

Frequent FCAC guest Ted Jessup joins me to run through all the things that make this film exceptional and iconic.  We pay respects to Mr. Hand, Spicoli, Stacy, Linda, Brad, The Rat, Damone, Mr. Vargas, Jefferson and many more.

So, please, say "Aloha" to the pod and join us, won't you? There's nothing wrong with a little information feast on OUR time, is there??

 

Following his 1995 crime epic 'Heat', Michael Mann was in a position to do most any film he desired to do. So when Disney Studios ponied up north of 90 million dollars to help him bring a thorny, wordy, action-free journalism picture to life, they probably reasonably expected a 'All The President's Men' for a new generation.  And while their efforts garnered 7 Oscar nominations, the film disappointed at the box office in part due to the difficulty in communicating to prospective viewers exactly what the film was about.

And pointedly, Mann cast Pacino and Crowe exactly BECAUSE he planned to use them as they'd never been seen before. Audiences expecting Crowe to break apart a desk as he'd done in 'LA Confidential' or for Pacino to embody Satan a la 'The Devil's Advocate' were instead confronted with something quite different. Pacino as facile, intelligent man of the media. Australian-born Crowe playing a man 23 years older than him, a man with a complex speaking voice equal parts The Bronx, Japan, and Kentucky..but no part Australian.

A fictionalized account of a true story, 'The Insider' is based on the battle surrounding a 60 Minutes segment about Jeffrey Wigand, a whistleblower in the tobacco industry, in particular covering his and CBS producer Lowell Bergman's struggles as they defend his testimony against efforts to discredit and suppress it by both inside business interests within CBS and by Wigand's former employer, the powerful Brown & Williamson tobacco company.

In this episode, I talk about the making of this film, its extraordinary technical accomplishments, and the fantastic leading performances from Crowe, Pacino, and Christopher Plummer as 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace. We hear from Mann and Crowe about the film, and play some surprising sound drops highlighting some of the twists and turns that the film presents.  

Also covered: 'Miami Vice', WKRP In Cincinnati's Andy Travis and his unlikely cameo in 'The Insider', Animal House's D-Day in maybe the best scene in the whole of 'The Insider', supporting work from Colm Feore, Gina Gershon, Phillip Baker Hall, and MORE!

After a two-week hiatus...and a hilariously unexpected detour in our attempt to do "The Manchurian Candidate" on this episode, my guest Keir Graff and I pivoted to 'The Color of Money' and I'm so glad we did.

This episode features a lot of great stories about the making of the film, and also includes plenty of necessary discussion about 'The Hustler', specifically Piper Laurie, Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, and George C. Scott's performances in that original film, the shared origin of the novels by the prolific, alcoholic, (and ultimately recovered) novelist Walter Tevis, who ALSO wrote the books turned into the film 'The Man Who Fell To Earth' and the Netflix series 'The Queen's Gambit'. 

We talk about the gentle arc of Newman's life and career, viewed a bit through the lens of recent materials (materials it seems he never intended to make public) that shed light on what he was thinking and feeling during various important moments throughout his life. 

And we talk about the curious reception that 'The Color of Money' continues to have among cineastes...and we play the famous Siskel & Ebert two thumbs down review of the film upon its release in 1986.  Hey, nobody's perfect! But it's funny in retrospect how so many of us at the time missed the undercurrents of connection to the Fast Eddie character in 'The Hustler'...connections Newman made sure that Scorsese and screenwriter Richard Price (who also has a great and brief cameo in the film) laced throughout the script and that he also included in his performance. Newman won his first Academy Award for 'The Color of Money'.

LINKS

Keir Graff's author website.

Fast Eddie Felson is back.

A funny Marty Scorcese interview from 1986.

A great clip of a very Method Newman baiting Jackie Gleason's Minnesota Fats in 'The Hustler'

Some clips from 'The Color of Money':

Diner Clip/Newman   HALLWAY CONFRONTATION   Manipulating Vincent at Toy World   500 a Rack   DINNER SCENE   MOSELLE/DOOM:   FOREST WHITAKER:    Some of Robbie Robertson and Gil Evans' great incidental music from 'The Color of Money' score.   SISKEL AND EBERT:     Steve Mizerak Miller Lite commercial:  

In the late 90s three 28-year-olds with zero documentary filmmaking experience re-ignited a college dorm room pipe dream about making a documentary about the life and career of singer/songwriter/actor/activist Bobby Darin. 

What followed was equal parts kismet and catastrophe and might serve as a useful blueprint and cautionary tale for anyone contemplating stepping into the unknown of a dream and ambition.

With a combination of naive conviction and a blessed unawareness of the stop signs in their path, these two (one dropped out along the way, his story is in the pod) kids ended up making their documentary for PBS, interviewing heavy hitters like Dick Clark and Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun while having some gonzo adventures along the way with colorful characters like Monkees co-creator and New Hollywood film studio BBS principle Steve Blauner. 

In this Very Special Episode of the Full Cast and Crew Podcast, we'll unfold this funny and heart-felt tale with plenty of anecdotes and lessons learned by our two filmmakers.

LINKS:

Buy the 'Bobby Darin: Beyond The Song' DVD from Amazon.

Or, watch it on YouTube

Buy Al DiOrio's great book about Bobby Darin, referenced in the podcast, here.

Get Dodd Darin's excellent book about his parents 'Dream Lovers' here.

Support podcast guest and 'Beyond The Song' co-director Henry Astor's UK farm shop Bruern Farms.

Thanks for listening! Please hit FCAC with a 5-star review on Apple, it helps more people discover your favorite little film podcast.

James Cameron has made 3 of the top 4 highest-grossing films of all time, with a collective box office of more than EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS.

Recently I had the occasion to watch both 'Avatar: The Way of Water' (currently the #3 highest-grossing film) and the 4K 3D re-release of 1997's 'Titanic' (#4). Collectively, that's about 7 or 8 hours in the Cameronverse.   In this ruminative episode, I share the existential crisis thus unleashed upon my cinema-going Avatar, a crisis of conscience and consciousness in equal measures.

Also in this episode, I recommend the Bob Lefsetz Podcast and Lefsetz Letter...so...join me, won't you??

LINKS:

'Titanic' alternative ending.

The Bob Lefsetz Podcast.