Some Like It Unauthorized

What does it mean to be an artist in a fascist country? Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film starring Leonardo DiCaprio appears to be less about revolutionary politics and more about the universal experience of two generations of a family struggling to relate. The politics are timely, but is there something untoward about an overtly political film, especially in the Trump era, that wants to frontline its emotional family drama and sideline, or altogether avoid, a tangible call to action? We put our heads together to examine the role of film in politics, and what One Battle After Another has to say about idealism, political unrest, and America’s #1 weirdo, Sean Penn.

UnauthorizedPod.com for more. Hosted by Zachary Domes and J Brooks Young. Music by hetchy

Do yourself a favor, and watch this Toshio Matsumoto film. It’s made by a playful and original filmmaker, whom was almost certainly versed in the work of Godard, Resnais, and every other new wave voice in that moment, but whom brought his own eye and his own inventions to film and made something totally new. It stars strikingly beautiful trans and queer actors that you’d otherwise never see on film, whom perform in daring roles with aplomb, and get to speak for themselves in documentary interludes. And it captures a world in flux, when a booming postwar Japan is seeing young people stand up and rebel against all of society’s traditions. In this episode, we discuss the film’s legacy, the Oedipus myth, and our own experiences navigating gender.

UnauthorizedPod.com for more. Hosted by Zachary Domes and J Brooks Young. Music by hetchy

A new generation of cinephilic filmmakers have arrived on the scene in the US; raised on Hitchcock and Godard, these youngsters know what makes a film feel exciting, and they know how to get their kicks in real life too: with drugs and women. But, as we examine on this episode, Easy Rider is not just a hangout film. Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson are out to explore why they’ve hit the road and why this generation is so rebellious, and that means examining both the country and themselves. Throw in some gorgeous photography and an innovative rock and roll soundtrack, and you’ve got the formula for one of the biggest box office hits of 1969.

UnauthorizedPod.com for more. Hosted by Zachary Domes and J Brooks Young. Music by hetchy

Jean-Pierre Melville’s look back at the perilous times of France’s occupation during WWII arrived while the French were trying to look forward; protests and workers’ strikes throughout ‘68 had attempted to spur change in de Gaulle’s government, and that man, who had made a political career of his role in the campaign to free France from nazi occupation, was the last person that young audiences wanted to see celebrated. Army of Shadows was a box office failure as a result, but more recent reevaluations have heralded the film as one of Melville’s best. We examine how the genre filmmaker confronted the audience with impossible questions and avoided propagandistic pitfalls, and we lose our minds over some of the more shocking scenes in cinema history.

And at the end (51:33), Zach shares his top 5 albums to check out from the year 1969!

UnauthorizedPod.com for more. Hosted by Zachary Domes and J Brooks Young. Music by hetchy

Pier Paolo Pasolini described his 1968 film with young star Terence Stamp as the story of when “a young man, maybe god, maybe the devil, that is to say, authenticity, visits this bourgeois family,” and the aftermath that follows. It’s a boldly provocative work from a gay catholic marxist that never failed to speak his mind, even when it meant defying those whom might otherwise identify with him. It’s also a work that skirts many lines: comic and tragic, flippant and earnest, indulgent and austere. We had to break down the film character by character, and get at the heart of Pasolini’s persona, to decide how we feel about the one and only Teorema!

UnauthorizedPod.com for more. Hosted by Zachary Domes and J Brooks Young. Music by hetchy

What do you know about Free Cinema? Not much, Lindsay Anderson would presume, as he and his group of british outsider filmmakers put on screenings of their films in the 50’s and did not set the world on fire like they hoped. Some of his cohorts would make the biggest films of the kitchen-sink genre that followed in the 60’s: gritty, working-class portraits of modern discontentment in Britain. But while those filmmakers left for Hollywood, Anderson stayed in Britain and produced a truly scandalous takedown of the british school system, “if…”. It won the top prize at Cannes whilst being denounced by the UK’s ambassador to France, and it began the career of a young phenom, Malcolm McDowell.

We talk about how the film combines the naturalism of 60’s/70’s filmmaking with the surreal, the way real world trends informed how homosexuality is depicted in the film, and other stand-out boarding school films. 

UnauthorizedPod.com for more. Hosted by Zachary Domes and J Brooks Young. Music by hetchy

Jacques Tati enjoyed great critical and commercial success as the director and star of comedies in the 50’s, but like Chaplin or even Fellini, he wouldn’t dare repeat himself twice. He dreamt of going above and beyond, and it would take a decade to finally realize the giant, genre-bending Playtime. The gentle, conservative satire did not capture the attention of the young radicalized french audience that was about to embark on widespread protest throughout ‘68, but Playtime’s reputation has continually risen in the decades since. 

We discuss how its pastoral nostalgia is rooted in a worldview that’s less nationalistic and more radically inclusive, and how the film defies cinematic convention and forces you to watch it in a novel way that reorients how you see the wider world altogether. 

UnauthorizedPod.com for more. Hosted by Zachary Domes and J Brooks Young. Music by hetchy 

Like in hollywood with the bloated roadshow musical, the italian film industry faced a crisis of identity in the 60’s as their investment in huge historical epics drew in smaller and smaller crowds. Sergio Leone had the antidote. The son of a director, Leone worked his way up to that vaunted role and started making westerns that borrowed liberally not just from his favorite Ford or Hawks films, but also samurai films and new bloody, edgy horror films like those of Mario Bava. The resulting films were so fresh and exciting that they reinvigorated the italian box office, and when the Dollars trilogy released in the US over the course of 1967, they made Clint Eastwood a top movie star and made the hollywood studios come calling to Leone.

This week we talk about his hollywood western, Once Upon a Time in the West, and what we love about the meticulous production design, seeing Henry Fonda turn heel, and falling for the old gun-in-the-boot trick on a train.

UnauthorizedPod.com for more. Hosted by Zachary Domes and J Brooks Young. Music by hetchy

They don’t make ‘em like Luis Buñuel anymore, a true blue iconoclast whose career charted across continents and spanned the last days of silent film up to cinema’s heyday in the 70’s. We catch up with the serial offender of catholic and bourgeois sensibilities in his late career team-up with an adventurous movie star, Catherine Deneuve, in this fantastical exploration of taboo sexuality among the Paris elite. We talk about how the Venice Golden Lion winner toes the line between sexual liberation and exploitation, and how it reflects the shifting landscape of european art cinema.

UnauthorizedPod.com for more. Hosted by Zachary Domes and J Brooks Young. Music by hetchy

The only artists Michael Snow wanted to model his career after defied categorization, mixing mediums and blowing out boundaries of what was or wasn’t fine art. Artists like Dalí and Warhol loomed large, and each had also deigned to touch the lowly cinema when it was still thought to be below painting or sculpture. Snow saw the camera as a tool that had not yet been utilized to its full potential, not by conventional narrative cinema nor by the avant-gardists he rubbed elbows with in NYC. His best known film, Wavelength, astounded everyone in that scene, and today in 2025, it hits us just as hard. Its celluloid is seemingly ready to disintegrate before our eyes, and it draws forth nostalgia and makes us ponder the subjectivity of memory, personal and collective.

Zach and J Brooks gathered in a Chicago loft beside a busy train yard to watch Wavelength for the first time and record their immediate reactions, and they discuss nuclear destruction, Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage, how the film was personal to Michael Snow, and the greater history of experimental film.

UnauthorizedPod.com for more. Hosted by Zachary Domes and J Brooks Young. Music by hetchy