Out Takes

Before Hamilton, Lin Manuel Miranda brought the story of Usnavi & Washington Heights (a.k.a ‘In The Heights’) to Broadway in 2008 and now it’s on the big screen as a movie musical in 2021. For this very special Out Takes, we dedicated the entire program to this joyous film with exclusive interviews from the fantastic trio of actresses who make up the lead ‘Salon Ladies’ (pictured from clockwise top left: Daphne Rubin-Vega, Dascha Polanco, Conrad from Out Takes and Stephanie Beatriz) and the film’s incredibly talented choreographer Christopher Scott. We also looked at what made this movie queer, the controversy behind the casting and why it’ll have you singing and dancing for days afterwards.

This week on Out Takes, 3/4 of the team did our first broadcast live from JOY’s new home at the Victorian Pride Centre (we missed you Gina!). So as winter settles in outside, we warmed up in the new JOY studios by exploring some of the latest and greatest pride filled winter warmers that are perfect fare for the next few months ahead. From new Disney classics to brand new LGBTIQ stories, we took a good look at some of the best new content to keep you warm this winter.

ACMI has launched its new exhibition, Disney: the Magic of Animation. It’s the first time the exhibition, which brings together over 500 Disney artworks, is showing in the Southern Hemisphere. So this week on Out Takes, we celebrated the exhibition by queer reading the wonderful world of Disney.

Our guests were Disney: the Magic of Animation curator, Fiona Trigg, and Eleanor Byrne, who amongst her many works published Deconstructing Disney some 20 years ago. Deconstructing Disney paves new ways of queer reading some of the most iconic Disney films.

St Kilda Film Festival is Australia’s largest and longest-running short film festival and it’s back bigger than ever for 2021. The Out Takes team were excited to welcome Festival Director Richard Sowada back to tell us all about this year’s festival highlights and what we can expect to see on the big screen and virtually during this years season from May 20 – 29. We were also delighted to have one of Australia’s most prominent film and entertainment lawyers and dedicated local film supporter Shaun Miller in the studio with us to let us know about the fantastic Big Picture Intensive initiative he is hosting again this year which delivers a series of free panel discussions and presentations to help emerging and ‘submerging’ filmmakers navigate the good, the bad and the ugly of the film industry. We also welcomed back Kylie Eddy to talk about her involvement in the Big Picture Intensive as the co-founder of Lean Filmmaking and to get her honest and timely advice for filmmakers everywhere on how to get your project off the ground and on people’s screens.

This week on Out Takes, we’re paying our respects to the many incredible people from the cinematic universe behind the scenes and in front of the camera who left us in the past 12 months. Saddened by the recent passing of Moonstruck star Olympia Dukakis, and confused by a bizarre and bungled “In Memoriam” segment at this year’s Oscars, we took the opportunity to look back at and celebrate some of the icons of Queer Cinema who passed away over the last year.

This week on Out Takes, we looked back at an awards season like no other – the Golden Globes, the Razzies, the GLAAD Media Awards, the Oscars, and the diverse pool of films that garnered acclaim and condemnation this year. It’s all here on this indepth look at the big award winners to the films that missed the mark and the ones that you may have missed but should definitely check out.

“I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television” – Gore Vidal.

This week on Out Takes, we’re not talking about our sex lives but we did turn our attention to some of the best new short format fare that has graced our TV screens over the past 12 months, including Ryan Murphey’s ‘Ratched’, the incredible Spanish short series ‘Veneno’, the coming of age sci-fi tale ‘I am Not Okay With This’ and more. These are TV series that push the boundaries of queer representation; series that depict nuanced and diverse LGBTIQ stories. We share why they stood out for us from the hours of television we watched during COVID times and why we highly recommend you check them out too.

JOY’s Radiothon is back for another year and the Out Takes team geared up to fully #EmbraceJOY!

Out Takes is proud to be part of the JOY family and we’re proud to support LGBTIQ cinema and television every week. For this Radiothon special, we put the spotlight on the local film industry and spoke to one of our favourite guests from one of our favourite Melbourne cinematic institutions,  Cinema Nova Chief Executive Officer Kristian Connelly.

We also looked back at our time on air for the past five years and reminisced about when we all first embraced JOY. It’s pretty obvious we’ve embraced JOY and we think you should too so don’t forget to support JOY this Radiothon and beyond by becoming a member, making a donation and listening to Out Takes every week!

The Out Takes team are back together again!

It’s been nearly a year since the last episode of Out Takes hit the air so with all of us back together in the studio we took this time to reflect on the past 12 months in film – the good, the bad and the controversial.

For fresh new content tune into Out Takes every Saturday at 4pm on JOY 94.9 and to access over 200 Out Takes podcasts, including interviews with iconic film makers like Barry Jenkins, John Waters and John Cameron Mitchell,  check out www.joy.org.au/outtakes

This week on Out Takes, we celebrated the launch of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival looking at two films that showcase the quality cinema featuring in this years virtual festival.

First up is ‘Keyboard Fantasies – the Beverly Glenn Copeland Story’, a fascinating look at Glen’s life, his journey as a trans elder and his music that has been rediscovered after 30+ years and is now being acclaimed worldwide. We spoke to London based director Posy Dixon about how this incredibly beautiful film came about and the powerful story behind this musical genius.

We also looked at ‘Out of the Closets, Into the Streets’, a short film looking at the birth of Melbourne’s Gay Liberation movement in the 1970’s. We chatted with producer Lucinda Horrocks about how this piece of queer history came to be and the story behind the individuals who were there when it all started.