Movie Nights with Dad

In 1938 the industry literally labeled Joan Crawford "box-office poison." Five years later MGM let her go after eighteen years. Everyone had written her off. Then she made Mildred Pierce, won the only Oscar of her career, and forced Hollywood to take her seriously again.

This week we continue our August theme, Classic Standout Performances by Women, with a noir about a mother who claws her way from waitress to restaurant empire for a daughter who despises her.

New episodes every Sunday at 5PM CT.

Gloria Swanson was the biggest star of the silent era — and then the movies moved on without her. In Sunset Boulevard she plays Norma Desmond, a faded silent star clinging to a comeback that's never coming. She barely had to reach for it. Between 1934 and 1950 she'd made exactly one film. In a very real sense, she was playing herself.

Billy Wilder's 1950 masterpiece earned 11 Oscar nominations and remains one of the sharpest, cruelest things Hollywood has ever said about itself. Real silent-era faces fill the frame, even Cecil B. DeMille, who actually directed Swanson in her prime, appearing as himself.

This week we continue our August theme, Classic Standout Performances by Women, with a performance that blurs the line between the actress and the role until you can't find it anymore.

All About Eve earned 14 Oscar nominations in 1950 — a record that stood over 40 years — and it's still the only film ever to land four female acting nominations. Two went to Bette Davis and Anne Baxter for the same Best Actress prize. They split the vote. Both lost.

This week we kick off a new August theme, Classic Standout Performances by Women, with maybe the definitive one: Bette Davis as Margo Channing. Sharp, brutal, endlessly quotable.

New episodes every Sunday at 5PM CT.

The same man who created James Bond also gave the world a flying car for children. Ian Fleming wrote the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang novel, and Bond producer Cubby Broccoli brought it to the screen in 1968 with Dick Van Dyke, Roald Dahl on the screenplay, and the Sherman Brothers on the songs.

This is the finale of our Summer From the Stage series, and it's the one film that breaks the pattern. Every other movie this summer started on stage. This one went novel to film to stage. Mark played Baron Bomburst on stage, so he's reviewing a role he performed himself.

New episodes every Sunday at 5PM CT.

Rosalind Russell doesn't play Auntie Mame so much as she detonates in every scene she's in. She originated the role on Broadway, then brought it to the screen in 1958, and the result is one of the great comic performances in classic Hollywood.

This week we take on a film about a woman who's decided that living timidly is the only real failure. And Mark's got a personal way in — he played Beau on stage, so he's breaking down the role from the inside.

New episodes every Sunday at 5PM CT.

Every week we find something to love. This week we didn't.

Don't Drink the Water (1969) stars Jackie Gleason as an American tourist trapped in an embassy behind the Iron Curtain, and it may be the roughest film we've sat through in 41 episodes. But Mark played Krojack in a stage production of this — and the play works. So what happened between the stage and the screen?

New episodes every Sunday at 5PM CT.

On Golden Pond gave Henry Fonda the only Oscar of his career — and he died just five months later. Katharine Hepburn won her fourth. Jane Fonda produced it as a way back to her own father. It's a quiet film about aging, distance, and the things fathers and children never quite manage to say to each other.

This week Mark and Riley dig into all of it — but with a twist you won't get anywhere else: Mark directed On Golden Pond, so he's breaking this one down from the director's chair, not the actor's.

The Odd Couple (1968) pairs Jack Lemmon's neurotic, freshly divorced Felix against Walter Matthau's slovenly, exasperated Oscar, and the chemistry between them is the entire engine of the film. Neil Simon wrote the script, and more than fifty years later the comedic timing still lands. This week continues our Summer from the Stage series, and Mark played Murray the cop, one of the regulars at Oscar's poker table, in a theatrical production of the show. Riley and Mark get into what makes Lemmon and Matthau's pairing feel so effortless, whether Felix or Oscar is genuinely the harder roommate, and what changes in the conversation when you've actually performed inside this world.

New episodes every Sunday at 5PM CT. Find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere you listen.

Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986) adapts Neil Simon's own semi-autobiographical play about a cramped, struggling Brooklyn household during the Great Depression. Jonathan Silverman plays Eugene, the teenage narrator caught between adolescence and his family's hardships, and Bob Dishy plays Jack Jerome, the father quietly exhausted from trying to hold everything together. This week's episode continues our Summer from the Stage series, and Mark played Jack in a theatrical production of the show, bringing firsthand experience inside the role to the conversation. Riley and Mark get into what Neil Simon's voice does differently on screen versus on stage, how Bob Dishy keeps Jack sympathetic even while barely holding it together, and what it means to watch someone else perform a role you've lived inside yourself.

New episodes every Sunday at 5PM CT. Find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere you listen.

The Rainmaker (1956) stars Burt Lancaster as Starbuck, a charming, larger-than-life con man who rides into a drought-stricken town promising rain, and Katharine Hepburn as Lizzie, the rancher's daughter who slowly, reluctantly lets herself believe in something for the first time. This week is the second episode in our Summer from the Stage series, and Mark played Starbuck in a theatrical production of the show. Reviewing a film when you've lived inside its central character is a completely different experience, and that comes through in the conversation. Riley and Mark get into what Lancaster brings to Starbuck that makes him so magnetic, how Hepburn finds the emotional truth in Lizzie without ever playing for sympathy, and what the play gets right that the film has to work harder to earn. Mark brings his personal experience inside this role alongside his theater lens.

New episodes every Sunday at 5PM CT. Find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere you listen.