Screen Slate Podcast

Projectionist Genevieve Havemeyer-King joins us to talk about recent articles on theatrical film exhibition in The New York Times, Vulture, and n+1. Along with co-host John Klacsmann of Anthology Film Archives, we get into how pre-digital trends toward multiplex automation, corporate union busting, and studios stacking the deck in their favor with the DCP specification have shaped the current state of theatrical film presentation. We also talk about 35mm projection, 70mm blow-ups, the projectionist as mechanic vs. magician, and how the repertory experience is changing.

A full-length bonus episode about Regal Union Square, Peter Kubelka's Invisible Cinema, ChatGPT, and New York slasher movies is coming soon for our Patreon subscribers.

Hosts: Jon Dieringer & John Klacsmann; Editor: John Klacsmann; Producer: Marielle Ingram

Links:

Genevieve Havemeyer-King website
Digital Rocks (Will Tavlin, n+1)
Why New Yorkers Still ❤️ Film (Ted Alcorn, New York Times)
Bad Projection Is Ruining the Movie Theater Experience (Lane Brown, Vulture)
Avant-garde film preservation (Klax & JD in discussion on Screen Slate)

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Five years ago Kyle Edward Ball started making short horror videos inspired by people’s nightmares and posting them on YouTube. His debut feature Skinamarink—shot for just $15,000 in his childhood home in Edmonton, Canada—was the breakout hit of last year’s Fantasia Film Festival, and came from out of nowhere to become one of the most anticipated upcoming horror films.

Ahead of the film’s theatrical release this Friday, Ball joined the Screen Slate pod over Zoom to talk about getting started as a filmmaking, finding his unique voice, the YouTube analog horror movement, straddling the line between narrative and dream logic, and his response to the film going viral before its release.

Links
Skinamarink trailer
Bitesized Nightmares
Heck (Skinamarink proof-of-concept short)

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The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

For the final episode of Pod Year 1, animator Jodie Mack visits Screen Slate HQ to spread holiday cheer and talk about ghosts, spiritualism, ecoplasm, orgasms, and favorite Christmas movies. Midway thru we take a break to call up filmmaker Michael M. Bilandic for a live report from the East Village on SantaCon 2022. Plus chatter on the Sight & Sound and the yet-to-be-released superior Screen Slate poll.

Thank you to our listeners for a great first year!

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The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

Aftersun director Charlotte Wells and editor Blair McClendon visit Screen Slate HQ to talk about the remarkable new film, opening this weekend from A24. We get into the genesis of the father-daughter story, casting the remarkable young actress Frankie Corio, how MiniDV is the look of childhood memories for a certain generation, and constructing a turn-of-the-millennium period piece without overplaying it. Plus Wells and McClendon discuss the needle drops that did and didn’t make it into the film, and Blair ignites beef with Liam Gallagher.

Aftersun trailer

Support the show

The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

Support the show

The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

Extended discussion of "Pervert King" Ken Russell from Caroline Golum, Criterion '80s Horror curator Clyde Folley, and the rest of the Screen Slate gang. Plus Clyde and Jon on other series deep cuts The Fan and Dream Demon. Full episode: 27 min.

To listen to the full episode sign up for our Patreon, which not only supports the pod, but the whole Screen Slate operation including paying writers, maintaining our listings platform, and the daily email.

Support the show

The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

The whole gang returns to the pod to welcome Clyde Folley, curator of the Criterion Channel's '80s Horror series. Folley, who is also a video editor at Criterion, chats with us about programming for streaming, how the video store and special effects advances defined the era, and getting elusive titles like Michael Mann's The Keep. We also learn about his personal points of entry into the genre, from being cast as the child star of a shot-on-video 1990 Thai horror film to renting A Nightmare on Elm Street II: Freddy's Revenge as a  four-year-old in Soldotna, Alaska.

Then we do a deep dive into three films in the series: Strange Behavior (Michael Laughlin, 1981), Wolfen (Michael Wadleigh, 1981) and Lair of the White Worm (Ken Russell, 1988). The later is highlighted by an soliloquy by Caroline Golum rhapsodizing about the film she considers to be one of the "top five Russell" movies.

The episode continues on Patreon, with a bonus episode with extended discussion of Ken Russell, and short takes on other series deep cuts such as The Fan (Ed Bianchi, 1981) and Dream Demon (Harley Cokeliss, 1988).

Guest: Clyde Folley; Hosts: Jon Dieringer, Caroline Golum & John Klacsmann; Audio: C. Spencer Yeh

The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

Support the show

The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

Filmmakers Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer visit Screen Slate HQ to talk about their new feature God’s Creatures, a disquieting family drama set in a tightly knit seaside Irish fishing community. Our discussion included working with actors Emily Watson and Paul Mescal, the influence of dance and choreography on their visual storytelling, and how a last-ditch trip to Google Earth helped them find the perfect coastal fish processing plant location.

Hosted by Jon Dieringer. Audio post by C. Spencer Yeh

The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts, event invitations, and more.

God’s Creatures opens today at Angelika Film Center

Support the show

The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

Sam Barlow is the designer of the acclaimed independent games Her Story (2015), Telling Lies (2019), and Immortality (2022). Often cited as reviving interest in live-footage games, Barlow takes the cinematic underpinnings of his earlier titles to new extremes in Immortality, which tasks the player with assembling rushes, behind-the-scenes, and rehearsal footage from three incomplete films in order to piece together the fate of their enigmatic actress. To create each of these movies, Barlow enlisted writers Allan Scott (Don't Look Now, The Witches), Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart, Lost Highway) and Amelia Gray (Mr. Robot, Maniac).

On the pod, Barlow and Screen Slate editor Jon Dieringer discuss the cinematic legacies of unfinished films, the influences of filmmakers like Peter Greenaway and Krzysztof Kieślowski, the complex writing and production processes of shooting—and dicing up—three period genre pieces, and how “auteurism” functions in the games industry.

Hosted by Jon Dieringer. Audio post by C. Spencer Yeh.

The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts, event invitations, and more.

Support the show

The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

Screenwriter Larry Karaszewski and his career-spanning collaborator Scott Alexander reinvited the modern biopic with films like Ed Wood, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Man on the Moon, and Dolemite is My Name. On the eve of a trip to NYC for Film Forum’s Miloš Forman retrospective, Karaszewski spoke to Screen Slate editor Jon Dieringer about working with the great Czechoslovak filmmaker, subverting the Great Man cliché, and discovering the essence of a character. An inexhaustible cinephile, Karaszewski also fills us in on LA’s booming film culture, the new Academy Museum, and how he never lets an opportunity to rope a famous actor into a screening of their most obscure movie go to waste.

Miloš Forman 90 runs September 9 through 22 at Film Forum. On Monday, September 12, Karaszewski appears for a Q&A with The People vs. Larry Flynt and an intro for Man on the Moon. Additionally, he’ll do a convo and Q&A with Ed Wood Monday, September 7 and Dolemite Is My Name on Saturday, September 10.

Hosted by Jon Dieringer. Audio post by C. Spencer Yeh.

The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts, event invitations, and more.

Support the show

The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.