Streamed & Screened: Movie and TV Reviews and Interviews

Move over Mando, "American Born Chinese" looks to become the next must-watch show on Disney+.

The new series based on the graphic novel comes to the streaming platform on May 24 and includes "Everything Everywhere All at Once" Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan. We have an interview with the show's stars Ben Wang and Sydney Taylor, who talk about winning with the Oscar-winning actors.

And speaking of "Everything Everywhere," Oscar-nominated actor Stephanie Hsu will be starring in this summer's "Joy Ride" film starring Ashley Park, Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu. The film also is the directorial debut for Adele Lim, who is best know for writing "Crazy Rich Asians" and "Raya and the Last Dragon." 

Finally, Bruce talks about the new four-part documentary "The Secrets of Hillsong" on FX and Hulu.

Where to watch

About the show

Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome everyone to another episode of streamed and screened and entertainment podcasts about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises. I'm Terry Lipshetz is senior producer at Lee and co-host of the program with someone who will be starring on Broadway very soon. Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal, longtime entertainment reporter. Bruce, you're hitting the big city soon on the streets of Broadway.

I will not be on Broadway. I'll be in front of the theater. Is looking at shows. Yeah, my sister and I usually spend Memorial Day weekend. This is. I'm giving this to you as a potential thing you could do. We go to New York because nobody seems to be in New York over Memorial Day weekend. They all go somewhere else.

The Hamptons, the, you know, the shore, whatever it would be, the Jersey Shore. But people aren't normally in the city. And so it's a very good time to go to things like plays, like shopping, like eating, because the normal crowd isn't there. So we've done this for at least 30 years. Colbert threw us off because we didn't do it during those years.

Yeah, it's fun. It's fun. It's a chance to get to see what we might be seeing in other venues in years to come. It might be a streaming film, it might be a touring production that comes to your community. There's still there's a lot of stuff there to see. Fun stuff. I'm going to Sweeney Todd attend The Tale of Sweeney Todd.

I'll be there. That sounds fun. I just hit a little Broadway myself this past weekend in traveling Circa, we saw The Lion King came to Madison. Yeah. Second time seeing that. Yeah. It's great show. My wife and I saw it probably around 2008 or nine. We were just married and just kids. Do they go to play?

Yeah, exactly. So we used to go to the theater a lot when we were, you know, before kids. And then we had kids and we stopped going. Of course, But we've gone now. We took the kids to see Hamilton last year, and now we took them to go see Lion King, which is fun. There's an interesting scene. I'm not going to say spoiler alert, because that show has been out on the road for 25 years now.

But there is an interesting scene and I said to my wife, like, they've obviously changed this, but I don't know what it was beforehand. There's this scene where Zazu is being held captive by Scar. The lion and scar is like Entertain me and Zazu starts singing and he starts belting out lines from Let It Go from Frozen. Any scar is like, stop torturing me with that.

But you know, anything but that song. But I'm thinking to myself, Well, what was the other song? Because this show has been out on the road forever. What did that like? They obviously added that in recently, since, Yeah, know, it was probably another show that, you know, I wish I could tell you. Yeah. But there probably was another show they referenced just to be able to see under.

Yeah, it could be, it could be something like that. But what I want to know is did you get out of the this show without buying anything. Yes. Yes. That, that is like merchandise heaven. Yeah. I saw a lot of the parents there with the kids that are of the age where you need to buy something. My kids are not that age anymore.

They're 12. We walk in, we take our seats, we watch the show. We walk out in and out without. Yup, everyone is fine with that. So we've trained them well. We didn't you know, we took them to things like Disney on Ice when they were four or five. We would say to them like, Hey, kids, see, you know, you're going to see a lot of kids with all these toys and stuff that their parents buy them at the show.

They're really, really expensive. And do you really need that? Will you be honest with them? And they be like, no, we're fine. It's it was yeah, we know those are the limits. Those kids are troubled. They're not happy. So giving those toys, that's just trying to solve something that isn't there. And so we don't need that, do we?

Nope. Now, of course, I would be the kind yelling for everything if I don't get it all. I. I'm not. And that's me now. Yeah, now I if I don't come now, When? This next weekend. I'm going to six shows right. If I don't come back with six T-shirts, it's been a wasted trip. I at least have to have the t shirt, get shirts.

Yeah. Hit a bodega, get a buttered roll. Okay. That's a very New York thing to do. Just get a budget roll. It's just a big roll hardball with like a pound of butter on it. And then you have to decide how much of that butter you actually want to eat and then you don't need to eat. So the money that I spent a year would have been money I would have spent out of food.

Yep. The New York Times actually did an article one time called The Ode to the Butter Roll on how like utilitarian it is and how New York it is. So check that out. It's actual reading before you go to New York City. I will do that. Yeah. Yeah. So have fun with your trip. And when I'm wearing T-shirts, just know that you have to be jealous.

I will be okay. I'm just jealous. You're going back to my. My hometown. I was born in New York City, so let's start spreading the news. I know, I know. So kind of getting back to movies and entertainment and that kind of thing. We thought we were done talking about Everything Everywhere all at Once because we're past Oscar season and that kind of did its thing.

And but it's sort of back in the news. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, because many of the people who were involved in that film are also part of a new series on Disney+ called American Born Chinese. And this is based on a graphic novel that won a bunch of awards. And what it is, is it's taking the story of a boy in high school who is Asian-American, who really doesn't feel like he fits in.

He feels like, you know, I am the only one, it seems. And the teachers bring to him the new Asian kid years, a new Asian kid. And you're going to of course, you'll be the one to show them the ropes, right? Well, and what he realized is, is is this other kid is from a different world. He's from a much higher realm.

And he has all these skills and he's able to do all this kind of stuff. And his aunt is actually the goddess of mercy, played by Michelle Yeoh. So there are there's this kind of otherworldly element to this typical high school kind of growing up a story. And you see how he learns about other things that are around him, how the bullies, how do you deal with the bullies?

Will you see that reflected in the the situations that the gods and goddesses have to deal with on a higher level? So and it's very fun. If you've not seen the graphic novel, please read it. It is so fun. The panels are very snarky and they're really very cool. And these are these characters are ones that are just made whole cloth.

They're talked about in Chinese culture quite a bit. So they are gods and goddesses who actually are part of their their lore, their history. And so it's not like something that was just made up. It's like, what happens if these people come to visit? And I got a chance to talk to two of the stars of the film.

And I was really curious because when this was being filmed, it was kind of the the start of everything everywhere, eating up. It became something while they were there and what it was like to be with these people to see through their eyes what is their that whole experience like. And I, they were very forthcoming. Ben Wong, who is the lead in this show he plays Jin Wong, is a young actor from Minnesota, oddly enough, who just kind of made a decision that he was going to go to musical theater school and that Sidney Taylor, who is his costar in this, plays The Lust Object, who he really loves in this school, but doesn't know

that the relationship will ever amount to anything. And they were the two I talked to in conjunction with American born Chinese. All right. So let's go ahead and listen to that interview and we'll come back and talk a little bit about that show, the two of you, when you were making this, I would assume it was the same time that everything everywhere was just blowing up.

Was that true? And it came out while we were filming? Yes. What did you learn from Key and from Michelle about dealing with all of that? Because that was just huge. Well, I don't know. They were every time we so like, we shot the show, that movie came out and then, you know, we all went our ways and we get back together once in a while for pro for promotional stuff.

Right. And I'd see them every month or two. And I feel like every time I see them, they're they're like pedigree just get bigger and bigger and bigger. So but at the same time, they always remain the same people that we've met On day one before that movie had come out, you know, just humbled. No down to earth and kind and generous people.

And so that's what they did. You ask them for acting advice or anything about the business Now? I didn't dare. I was like, if they have, we didn't want to be a**holes. Terry's act. But just like, well, been growing up in Minnesota, how did you even think the idea was going to happen? That you would be in the business?

Oh, I didn't either. But I didn't know about the business. I didn't know what the business meant or was or could be. And I definitely didn't see a place for myself in it. But I kind of took a leap of faith. At the end of high school, I decided I was going to go to New York and and and train and in musical theater at NYU.

And it was sort of a decision that I made kind of on my own. And yeah, it was really only after I came out to New York and started really understanding what the business was. But now growing up, I was like, This is fun, this is cool. And that's all it will probably ever be. But I'm glad I was wrong.

Yeah, always. It's good to be wrong, right? Had you to read the book before this all started to happen? Were you familiar with it or not? No, I wasn't familiar with it at all. I hadn't heard of it, but I read it before our chemistry read. We had one chemistry before the audition process was over and I read the whole thing and in probably under an hour and couldn't put it down myself.

Yeah, same I had. And I didn't have it growing up in Minnesota. It wasn't in our public library, unfortunately. But yeah, I read it for the first time right after I got the audition size, which is the couple of scenes they show you. I was like, I need to find out more about this project because this just just the few scenes they gave me to audition with were incredible, I thought.

And yeah, I ran to the library. I was in Connecticut. I ran. Yes, ran. Not walked, ran, not walked to the to the Stamford, Connecticut public. That's where I was at the time. And I found it and I read it and I was crying and crying on the carpet. And the night guy like the janitor was telling me that we were closing in 6 minutes, You have to leave.

And I was like, Please, I need this to 20 or I need the book, right? Yeah. You're just like, Yeah, well, you know, had you found anything like that before where you said, you know, this I can relate to at all? Never, Never. And that was what was so incredible. It made me realize that it's doing media is not always just sort of an empathetic act, right?

Where you're learning about some something else and relating to something that's not quite like what your experiences are. For the first time, I was like, Oh, you can read something and feel like it's about you. And that was really powerful and it made me, you know, really want to get to work on the show because I know this show is going to be that for you.

Now, during this time, what is that like, that anticipation that this could really be something huge? Yeah, it's we've been sitting on it for a year and I just want people to see it. But I also I don't want like my life to change or I just want people to see it. Exactly. I want people to see it and enjoy it.

Yeah. And doing that kind of there are a lot of special effects in this. I was surprised at how many there actually are. Is that difficult to do? I mean, if you go to acting school, I'm assuming that you go, Well, they didn't talk about this. They didn't tell you about the iron diaper in an acting lifting. That's a that's a that's something you used to fly.

Oh, I let you elaborate. Let me elaborate more. They put on you this, like Kevlar iron, the thing that looks like a giant diaper that they attach wires, suicide. And there's two guys standing on ladders and pulleys. You know, you growing up watching these movies, you think, oh, it's all must be robots and like, high technology. But no, it's just too big.

Do you do on ladders? And then the stunt coordinator goes, okay, action. And they jump off their ladders and you go this way. So it was it was an adventure. It was an adventure. And it was fun, but also kind of terrifying. And Sydney, how did you know that you two were were a real good team together? I we both knew that from like the first day we actually met.

We met for the first time in person during the cast dinner and the whole time we were essentially just talking to each other was like this long table with like desks and Cretton and Kelvin. You had Michelle Yeoh and Qi and, and all of these wonderful, wonderful people and me and better at least a small team of people that, you know, bring everyone.

And I felt bad, but like we really did just like have a really good connection from the start. I think we bonded over a lot of things that our childhood and shared childhood challenges. But yeah, bring us together. Bonded over it. It's fine. Thank you guys so much. I'm dying for the series to be really a huge hit.

So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Bruce, thanks for that interview. Sounds interesting. What's the target audience on this? Have you seen. Yeah, really? They're trying to hit the high school audience and they want to they want to age up a bit so that all Disney shows aren't seen as, oh, they're for kids. They're not Adults can watch it.

It's it has a very Mandalorian kind of vibe to it, if you will, where you can put the whole family in it and they're still going to find something and they're looking to a second season. So it isn't like one and done. I think what it does, though, is it opens us up to a bunch of Asian stories that we've never heard before.

And I think by doing that, we're going to see much richer stories. There's going to be more storytelling that isn't repetitive. And I think there, you know, even now, when you look at some of the summer movies, there are influences that we're seeing that are already starting to appear. Yeah. So there's also that connection too, with everything everywhere now, Michelle Yeoh is in this and she was obviously in everything everywhere you played.

Kwan Yeah, you get it. And then the director of the Shang, she is also involved in this and you'll see a lot of those kind of it's a small community, a lot of those connections, six degrees of separation that come into play in this in this series. And that's kind of fun to see that they got together and they said, you know what?

We should be working on these things together and I think what we'll see is they'll it'll be their own little kind of Marvel Universe where they will create more content that will see their world spread out in other ways. And everything everywhere kind of did the same thing. This this series does is it combines two worlds, an otherworldly kind of thing.

And then the kind of mundane world of a laundromat owner. And you see how those two can swirl around. Just like this boy in high school and his new friend who has this great extensive relative chain, if you will. I think that's I think we're going to see more of that. I think that's this is the sign of things to come.

And why not? You know, if you look back, name Asian age, Asian movies that you really warm to. Are you remember Asian series Fresh Off the Boat was like the last thing I can remember that had any kind of theming like this. Let's see these stories because they're interesting stories. They're fascinating stories. And I think it's it's a brand new world for everybody.

So looking a little bit further now out into the summer, there's another story which also has a little bit of a connection to everything everywhere. Stephanie Hsu, who we saw on Oscar, right? She is an Oscar nominee for that movie. She's going to be in a movie this summer. That was directorial debut by Adele Lim, who co-wrote Crazy Rich Asians.

Joy RIde Yeah, And Joy Ride is like a lot of those girls Trip hang over any of those ones. They were kind of a group of people getting together and getting in trouble. And now we're seeing it in theaters with older actresses. Look at the book club, the next Chapter 84. Brady All these are kind of really takes on Golden Girls.

You look at the Golden Girls, you see they put four people together there. Each one represents a different kind of aspect of a community. And then how do they cope when they get into trouble? And that's joy, right? Right there. Yeah. And it's also, I guess, an opportunity to to kind of break out because it's one of those buddy movies to an extent, but it gets away from the traditional body of just, you know, three or four dudes kind of hanging out together.

It's it's yeah, it's an extension of yet more opportunity to find somebody you like. You know there's a character you can relate to and you always think, which one would I be? I would be the whatever what. So yeah, I think it's going to be big. I think this will be a big film. And I do think that the momentum that we've been seeing with shows like Everything Everywhere and also with now American born Chinese, and I'm not I'm not trying to shine you on with this, but I do think it's going to be huge this summer.

I think it's going to be one of those TV shows that you're going to say, I must watch it. I must see this, because it's fascinating, fascinating to watch. It does look pretty good. I know when you forwarded me the the audio, there was some press materials included. I may have you might have copy. I might have snooped a little bit, looked at a clip here or there.

It looks really good. I'm kind of excited for this. And I, I think as a family, somebody who's looking for family entertainment because it's really getting hard sometimes to find. And my kids are at that age where they're too old for the little kids stuff. But some of the other shows that are out there are just a little too mature for them still.

And it looks like that type of show where as a tween even, they'll be able to kind of get into it. So I'm kind of looking forward to it. With the writers strike going on, I think you need to embrace these things that are written because we are going to have a long stretch of reality shows, game shows, sporting events that will make you glad that you saw something that was scripted.

They've already announced the fall schedules for the networks and they're just packed with game shows. And I don't know, even if it's Jeopardy, I don't know how often I can watch it. I can't take any more of that. I just I have to hope and pray that my New York Mets are going very deep into the playoffs because there you go.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what looks like we're going to be basing. But can I tell you another one that I have been watching and it's coming out this next week. It's called Secrets of Hillsong and I don't know about the Hillsong Church, but the Hillsong Church was the one that Justin Bieber started attending. It's kind of a hip megachurch and the the preacher, there was somebody that, you know, I mean, come on, you think he's hip, he's cool.

This guy, Carl Lentz, is his name. He is just the man. And you can see why celebrities were attracted to him. A lot of basketball players were members of the church. And then he had a fall and he was apparently seeing more of the babysitter then or the nanny then the kids were. And so then he resigned and is no longer at the church.

But he participated in this documentary that talks about Hillsong. And Hillsong is a huge force in the Christian music business because they do a lot of Christian albums. They've won Grammys. I mean, it's they're they're the big deal. But it started in Australia and it goes back and it kind of shows us how this church got going. What spurred the church and what keeps it going.

Now they don't talk to the guy who founded the church and it says at the end of every episode we tried to reach him. He would not return our calls. He is not. So this is not a complete documentary where you go, Oh my God, this is what really is going on because it's still successful. Hillsong is still going.

There are still many ministers who are, you know, doing their thing and bringing in that hipper, younger audience. But that's something that you hear at churches all the time. How do we get the young people? How do we get the young people? Well, here they show you in this documentary how they got the young people to come to their church and what that meant.

And then those young people talk about what the church either did or didn't do for them. But it's a fascinating documentary. And yes, Carl Lentz does talk in this and he talks about his experience and the things that he did wrong. That's on Epix and also Hulu. And you'll see that coming out this next week. All right. So that's another one.

Check out last week's episode that we did. We looked at six movies to watch the summer episodes done very well so far, but we only touched on six movies. So next week, seven, we're going to kind of yeah, we're going to do the top 100 movies that you may now want to watch. Yeah, no, we're we're going to look at there's kind of like, I guess to some degree it's the best of the rest movies that are coming out this summer, but also an opportunity for us to maybe pick out some that we think might just like crash and burn horribly.

It should be fun. So come back next week and we will extend our summer blockbuster preview. And until then, thank you for listening to streamed and screened.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Memorial Day weekend is often viewed as the start of the summer movie season, although several big movies are already in theaters or will be out before then, such as "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3" and "Fast X."

We don't want to do a podcast that will eat up an entire day, so we've thinned the list down to six movies you'll want to put at the top of the list. That's not to say skip the others. No, there are a lot of great options still out there we didn't have time to cover. 

But these six offer a little something for everyone depending on your interests. And we will be back with another pass at the best of the rest (along with a few we think might crash and burn) in two weeks with our episode leading into the long weekend.

So get a big bucket of buttery popcorn and buckle in for the top six films to see this summer.

Bruce Miller's recommendations:

About the show

Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome everyone to another episode of streamed and screened and entertainment podcasts about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises. I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee and co-host of the program with Bruce Wayne. Wait, I am sorry. Not, Bruce Wayne, I've got I've got that right out of the mind. I've got Batman on my mind numbing. Coming in a new film he is has.

Oh, that's right. So I've got Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal, and a long time entertainment reporter. But he is a superhero in my world. Oh, you're so sweet to say that. And that's because we're not in the same room. That's right. It is. And that's it. But, you know, the movie season is starting. This is it.

We had Guardians of the Galaxy come out last week, and that, I think, is the the official kickoff of the summer movie season. Summer movies are huge. And this is when they make big money. And we didn't have summer blockbusters during the COVID years. It really took a toll. So I think this is the year we're going to see things back.

Its its you kind of get back into the theaters, eat a lot of greasy popcorn and watch every kind of movie you could possibly pick up. Yeah, I mean, last year it was basically the summer of of Top Gun being the first real big blockbuster to make it back and do really, really well since since COVID started. And in preparation for this episode, I'm going through the list of movies and I'm thinking, there's no way we could even touch on all these or if we're going to do a 19 hour episode.

So what we're going to do is you just wrote a column on basically six movies to really focus in on for the season. So let's we're going to dive into that and then we're going to do another episode next week and then the following week, which will be in advance of Memorial Day weekend, which is again, like that huge, huge weekend for seeing movies.

We're going to hit like our other ones either to watch that or we think might be duds or just they're going to be just pure popcorn movies where, of course, they'll be terrible, but we will all go and see them because that's just what we're going to do this summer. So. Bruce, why don't you get us moving? I'm going to do it alphabetically if you're already picked.

I'm fine with that. The one you must see if you've been seeing any of the. And you know, right now we're getting all of the trailers. So if you watch any movie in the theaters, Guardians of the Galaxy, I saw so many of the summer movies. I thought, Oh, my God, I got to see that. I got to see that.

I got to see that. I got to see that. There were a lot of them. But the one that has drawn the most kind of curiosity is Barbie. Yeah. Is it like a spoof of Barbie? Is it a real story? Story of Barbie? Is it what? And it's got a lot of big names behind it. Greta Gerwig directed the thing and wrote it, and she has always been kind of a favorite in Hollywood.

These smarter segment of the industry. And she has been able to corral a lot of people. You see Ryan Gosling and you see Margot Robbie in the ads for this, but they are the tip of the iceberg. I think this is going to be like the the musical. The Book of Mormon was back when that first premiered. And nobody knew what it was.

They had no clue what their show was. It was called Book of Mormon. That's the same way with Barbie. You think it's going to be a film about just Barbie and Ken kind of playing around in her pink Ferrari? Is it a Ferrari or is it a Corvette or is it what is Barbie's car? I think it's changed over the years.

My girls had a Barbie. It might have been a beetle, a Volkswagen Beetle. Really? It was changed. It was pink. Yeah. They got well, Barbie and can get kind of drummed out of Barbie land, and they have to try and make their way in the real world. So this is like, okay, let's see how this plays out. Will this land and are people making fun of Barbie and can or are Barbie and can too smart for the real.

And there are multiple Barbies and cans so this is you see all those ones in me in the department store or the, you know, toy toy store. There are a lot of Barbies and a lot of cans. Interesting. Only if there's only one. Alan, by the way, little one. Alan. But I think Barbie is going to be a big, big, big film because the kids will like it and then their their parents will like the kind of snarkiness that comes with it.

I wasn't sure on this movie, but then when I saw that Greta Gerwig was attached to it, I thought, Well, you know, this one might be one that I'm willing to sit through. Now, I'm not sure if my kids will want to see it because they're they're 12 and they're kind of at that point of maybe too old for Barbie, but maybe not.

So we'll see if they want to go see it or not. But I think that Greta Gerwig, you got Ryan Gosling. It's an interesting enough concept. And if it's that alternate reality type thing, is it almost like the Smurfs or the Brady Bunch where they're living? It's it's that fakeness, but it kind of lives in the reality. It's like Whoville, you know, you're living the world.

I think it'll be fun. I'm. I'm waiting to see it. I think it has a real kind of extra quality. And when you look at the people involved, it's not like all were taking a risk. I think they know what they're doing and they're releasing just enough information all along the way so that you are kind of eager for it.

And that's not coming out till July. So we have a time between now and Denver to really become part cold, hot again, lukewarm and then who knows what will happen when it opens. But I still think it's going to open big. So, you know what else is kind of hot and cold and lukewarm, but coming out maybe a little bit earlier than that is elemental.

Another one and this is Pixar's. It's like they're inside out where they want with emotions. This is elements, air, water, land. And when they're all characters and they interact and I think they're trying to teach you a larger lesson, I don't know that that always works for Pixar, though. I think sometimes they go a little too deep. Yeah, I'm not sure on this one.

I love Pixar movies, so like, I love Toy Story, the whole franchise, and I love Monsters Inc, but some of their movies are a little bit of a miss for me, and I don't know where this one's going to fall, so I want to see it. But I also I'm like, You have to go. Yeah. Now I saw that Peterson was directing this one.

He did The Good Dinosaur, which was another one of those Disney cartoon animated movies, which I didn't love when it came out. Like I, I went to it took the kids in. It was fine looking at how grass looked there, I wasn't I wasn't thrilled. But there's a sea change at Pixar, different, different management now. And so you'll see that there's a different maybe mindset, but what they have been doing in recent years is letting you know newcomers to the business get a swing.

They'll put them in to a short subject. They get a chance to kind of tell a story that they want to tell. And maybe this is one of those those situations where we're going to see kind of a different viewpoint, a different voice. Otherwise, this summer is going to be thin for animated adventures. I mean, we've got the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and then Spider-Verse, which I think will be big.

But as far as Disney and Pixar, this is kind of be it again, like when they hit the Toy Story franchise, I ended up Finding Nemo franchise spectacular. But some of these others that are kind of the one offs, they don't necessarily you know, Coco was fine, but it was just it was fine. Like I didn't love it.

I didn't hate it. It was fine. Soul was fine. The reason I love soul, but I don't think my kids loved it as much. But I'm originally from New York and there was a lot of New York, like inside New York references. And they were also poking fun at the New York Knicks multiple times to Lyles, which I love the Knicks, but they've been awful for the last decade or more than that, too.

It's probably going closer to 30 years than than 20. Look how bad light year was. Yeah. You know, that's another one of those. And swing and miss and yeah I a we'll see what happens but I think it could tell them you know let's not go so much over the heads of the the audience. Look at how Mario is doing.

It's like huge and that isn't exactly a master's thesis in anything. Right. So I think if you try too hard to educate and entertain or edgy teen as they like to say, you could miss, you could miss big, We need a cute little character that can be a stuffed animal. There always has to be one of those in every in any animated film.

So elementals out June 16th, another one that's also coming out June 16th, which should be huge. The Flash. Yeah. And there's this one that, you know, they weren't going to release. They had this whole thing like, No, we're just going to bury it. It's going to be in the back and we're not doing anything about it. But then test audiences got to see it and they said, This is like the best superhero film we've ever seen.

And Ezra miller, who plays The Flash, was in some, you know, trouble, and that was kind of the like, could we really have a superhero that has been arrested for something? And then we have to deal with all of that fallout. But I think they realized that there's so much riding on this, particularly for DC Comics, that they have to release it.

What really is surprising about it, Bruce Wayne, is that Batman is in this film in a number of ways and we get to see old Batman, if you will, because he's able to travel through time. So I think it has success written all over it. If it was that good in test screenings, it's got to be great once they, you know, tighten everything up and get it ready for an audience.

So I think is going to be huge. I agree. And it's one where I wasn't sure if I wanted to see it initially because, again, I'm not a huge, huge comic book movie person, but I've always enjoyed Batman movies and Superman movies to an extent. And then, you know, when you found out when we found out that Michael Keaton was going to be coming back in some way, we didn't know exactly how, but Michael Keaton was coming back.

And to me, that's probably the best Batman movie of all time. Between that one and maybe the Christopher Nolan era, the Tim Burton. Christopher Nolan. Those two to me are just spectacular. So to see that trailer where Michael Keaton is back on the screen as Batman, I'm thinking myself, I got to go see this movie. Yeah, I think there's a lot there, too, to digest.

And I think it will be the start of better days for the Warner Brothers series of superheroes. We've been overwhelmed with way too many Superman kind of takes bad Aquaman, bad Wonder Woman. I mean, there's a lot of kind of baggage there. And this could, you know, start a new trend. They've got big people. They've got big, big names that are in there.

And yes, Ben Affleck is in it, too. So exactly. I think the flash will be one of, if not the biggest movie this summer. One of the biggest. Yeah. But it it is crucial for DC to land this one. They got to stick the landing on this because Marvel is just rolling over them right now in terms of universes.

And James Gunn, the director of Guardians of the Galaxy, is moving over to DC ahead of their division. So we'll see what happens with that. That could be really a big sign of things because his latest is good. We're we're halfway through your list of six. The next one, this next one is the one I've just been dying for.

And I'm I'm hoping it's not terrible because the last one in the franchise was not good. Indiana Jones and the Dial Destiny out June 30th. Yeah. And I you know there's a lot riding on it but George Lucas wrote it so if he's putting his hand back in and you've got Harrison Ford, you know, they're going to try and tell some kind of maybe an ending story, I don't know.

But there is something that he wants to say with that, and I think that's what will help this. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who is incredible and is a great writer in her own right, is in this. And she could easily have suggested a line or two that might really make it that kind of, you know, how Indiana Jones always had that kind of odd way of phrasing something or you think it's going in this direction and then he turns it in another direction.

You, you know, there'll be snakes there. It has to be snakes, of course, But it's that whole kind of world of Nazis and all that stuff that during the forties people were like, Oh my God, what is this? And they would go to serials and I think it's going to be good. I think it will be good. And I think they will address the fact that Indiana Jones isn't 30 and running around right there.

I think it'll be a good kind of, if you will, closure to the to the series. I agree. I've seen the trailers now and especially that full one where they gave you a little bit more the two minute one. And it looks like they're going to you know, it's more of a modern thing maybe in the sixties or early seventies, that kind of thing.

And he's he's about to retire as a college professor, so he's older. But then it does the time jump and they've really gotten good at the De-Aging process. We've seen this now in the Star Wars movies where they're able to, you know, have the actors perform but use CGI to make them look like they did as as younger people.

So I think it they'll probably be able to make Harrison Ford look like a younger Harrison Ford, sell it and really hopefully wrap up the series in a good way. Now, it sounds like this is it definitely for Harrison Ford because he's come out and it maybe even thrown a bucket of cold water on hopes from Disney that he might come back in some capacity for a TV series on Disney Plus.

And it just sounds like he is he is done with Indiana Jones forever after this one is done. So let's hope that, you know, we can go out on a high note. That last movie was not good. It's and I've always loved the franchise. So I'm hoping that we can just kind of forget about that one. And maybe it's one of those things, too, where if you look at the series as a whole, Raiders of the Lost Ark was a great movie.

Temple of Doom was kind of and it was fine, but it wasn't a high note. Last crusade. A lot of the the Indiana Jones fan site is back to where it should be. Maybe they kind of missed the mark on the last one. So maybe it's just one of those every other thing they could nail it and we'll go out on a high note.

Fingers crossed I'll be there. So what do we have next, Bruce? Well, then we have you. This is going to be interesting. It's called No Hard Feeling. Okay. Are you good with that? Okay. And this is we haven't seen Jennifer Lawrence in quite a while, right? Right. Act now. And she's going to play this woman who is hired by a wealthy couple to kind of make their son, I don't want to say popular, but maybe not as nerdy just as they expected him to be.

The son is played by Andrew Barr, Feldman and I, Andrew Barr Feldman is kind of a one of those success stories that that New York is able to promote. He was in, I think, called the Jimmy Awards. The Jimmy Awards are high school equivalent of like the Tony Awards. So if your kid he is a star of his high school musical, you know, Fiddler on the Roof, he's playing Fiddler in the show.

And then they take those kids and they put them in a competition in New York City, and one wins the Jimmy Award, one male, one female, and then see what happens. Well, Andrew, Bart Feldman won the Jimmy Award and immediately they put him into Dear Evan Hansen. He did a year with that. He did. He was in High School Musical, The musical, the series he's had, like a lot of stuff, but he's still going to college too, at the same time.

But they cast him in this, and I think this is good. He's also doing a thing with a ratatouille musical, but he you'll be introduced to him in a big way. And oddly enough, this is a lot like Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The dad in this movie is played by Matthew Broderick. So there is it I and you get a little sense of that, but I think that's going to be hugely funny and I think it's going to be one of those ones You go, okay, I'm up for it.

I think this will work. You know, you mentioned Matthew Broderick and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and of course, we did an episode in talking about my affinity for that kind of era of movies to begin with. But the concept of this reminds me a little bit of a movie from that era in 1987 Can't Buy Me Love, where a guess Patrick Dempsey plays kind of that nerdy kid who's a little bit awkward in high school and he's going to spend his lawn mowing money on a really expensive telescope.

But he also, you know, he's got interest because he's he's a he's a young man and he's, you know, trying to impress the ladies. And Amanda Peterson plays a young woman who's need something. I think it was a dress. And he, instead of buying the telescope, helps her out. But under the agreement that she dates him and I can't remember, it's been so long since I've seen the movie, I can't remember every little piece of it, but it has a little bit of that kind of feel to it as well.

Yeah, a little risky business. Yeah. So here's a little about the genre that was very popular in the eighties, I think is now they're looking for how do we bring this back? This would be great. And like I say, you watch Andrew Barr. Feldman remember, that name is going to be big because of it. And Jennifer Lawrence, I think she plays that kind of snarky comedy that she's really good at.

And I think in this case, it'll work. It'll really work. So. And Matthew Broderick, no hard feelings. Look for that one this summer. All right. That one is out June 23rd. And then we have one more that we're going to talk about today. If I were to pick and I only got six, these are my six, but the other one is my first and only real Oscar bait.

I mean, the others, if they got something, you'd see Barbie in costumes or you might see Indiana Jones in the special effects or the flash and special effects, but one that would be a best picture potential, maybe some best acting potential. Is Oppenheimer about J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was the the father of the atomic bomb. And it's it's done by Christopher Nolan.

So you know that there's something more there. And I think it's not going to be just one of those kind of long dredges that you sit and watch. Oh, God. And now they're going to do what, from the the the trailers I've been able to see. It does look like it has a movement and it does have kind of some energy that I didn't think was going to be there.

And the look is just spectacular. Jillian Murphy is the star of this and Kenneth Branagh is in it. I mean, you just go through the list and it's blue chip all the way. Robert Downey Jr. So he's not Iron Man in this one. Yeah. No. Yeah, this one sounds like a one that I definitely want to check out.

Obviously, Christopher Nolan being attached to a huge directing name. It's a little bit of a departure from some of the things that he's done recent. Right. And then I think because it's specifically based on history, he is in kind of free floating with a lot of this depth. Some of those last ones were like, what in the heck is this?

But I think this one, it'll hold up and you'll go, I think that guy's got an Oscar. Come on. Yeah. So that's that's definitely this is a real solid list. Bruce So we haven't touched on everything, though. I mean, there, there is. Think that's my first my first blush, if you will. Okay. By the time I get to the the next, give me a week or so and I can give you a little better picture because some of those ones I will have been able to have seen.

But I think right now those are the ones that I intrigue you the most. They're the ones that you go, Yep, I think I've got to look at that and and there are ones that come on based X and it has to be on a list. Right. But that that's a no brainer. That is not even one that you would hesitate if you are fast and furious fan like I think you are too.

I will be there. Yes I that those movies have just gone off the rails but I don't know. Yeah. The idea that they're going in space and they're going to do all these kind of oddball things and these were street writers, right? They were right. It is work. I almost have to go back to the first one and watch it just to try to figure out what wait, what was this originally about?

Because it has gone so far in the other direction. And every movie, if we're adding in more people more and more characters like who? Wait, who? You're Jason Momoa, you're in it now. It's crazy. It's everybody that is kind of of a larger size, I guess comes into this as a villain at some point. Exactly. But it's also I mean, it's not just Jason Momoa, but Rita moreno is going to be in it.

Well, Brie Larson, Charlize Theron. And then you have Helen Mirren has been in this thing we renewed. It is like a marvel franchise where you figure, I better have that on my resume or else I'm really sunk. All right. So we're going to come back and talk about Fast X mission Impossible Blue Beetle Art Boy, right? Yeah. This is just one.

This is just part one. So we'll we'll be back in Little Mermaid. Oh, yeah. So many. We're going to come back in two weeks and kind of just touch on everything else that that we didn't include in this one. And then next week you've got a bit of an interview scheduled. Can you talk about what that's mean? Yes.

There is a really, really big TV series that's starting this month called American Born Chinese. And if you do any kind of research on this, you'll discover that this was one of those make or break kind of things. Everything everywhere, all at once really cracked a barrier and brought a lot of Asian stories and Asian actors and whatnot into the business.

Well, this actually was made before all of that happened. They started filming American Born Chinese. Well, that was Pop act. And when it did pop, interestingly enough, they are going to be a beneficiary because it has all the big stars at one Oscars or that movie in their series. So it's fascinating and it's a way of opening up a door to stories we haven't heard about.

Now, there are characters in this that, you know, if I threw a party, you'd go, Really? I've never heard of that. The Monkey King. I don't know what you're talking about, but are very popular in Asian culture. And it's a way of trying to introduce an American audience to some of these characters with a very simple story of a boy trying to fit in in a high school.

And we'll talk to the young actor who plays the boy and what he what he has to say about the big stars. So we'll talk about the show a little bit more. Fill you in on that next week, American born Chinese, and we'll have an interview for you as well. Thank you for listening to streamed and screened.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Late night television programs have turned to reruns and soon production on scripted shows may halt as the Writers Guild of America went on strike.

The first Hollywood strike in 15 years meant 11,500 members stopped working with the expiration of their contract as they look for improved pay during the streaming era.

We have several interview clips with celebrities like Jimmy Fallon and Josh Gad weighing in with their support of writers. How long will the strike last? Co-host Bruce Miller suggests 100 days, which could delay the start of the fall season and lead to more reality shows.

In the meantime, we turn our attention to the coming-of-age movie "Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret." The film is based on the 1970 novel of the same name from Judy Blume. The film adaptation stars Rachel McAdams, Abby Ryder Fortson, Elle Graham, Benny Safdie and Kathy Bates.

We then turn our attention to icons. What makes an icon? Philanthropist billionaire David Rubenstein, who is a collector of historical artifcats like the Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence, is the host of "Iconic America: Our Symbols and Stories with David Rubenstein."

Miller talks with Rubenstein about history, iconic items and locations, and collecting. You can also read more:

READ MORE: Icons help tell America's story, says philanthropist David Rubenstein

Finally, Miller and co-host Terry Lipshetz talk about the upcoming summer blockbusters, which we'll preview in next week's episode. Did you know "Jaws" is considered the first summer blockbuster?

Where to watch

About the show

Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

They've got to get a fair deal. So, yeah, I'll do whatever I can to support them. Those are the sounds of picketers as well as a clip of Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon as the Writers Guild of America went on strike. Audio Courtesy The Associated Press. Welcome to another episode of Streamed and screened and entertainment podcasts about movies and TV.

I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee Enterprises and the co-host of the program, along with the iconic Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal and longtime entertainment reporter. Bruce, you are an icon, aren't you? I have been through many writer's strikes in Hollywood and seen different things that they've done over those years. I remember one time actually being in Hollywood when the writers strike began and there were picketers out front of our hotel because producers were in there and they wanted to to let their message be known.So I guess I've seen writer's strikes like you can't believe, you know, the people ask, Well, now are we having no television? Has there been no movies? Is everything going to disappear? This is just terrible. Well, settle down. You'll be okay. This is how we got reality TV. If you may remember, in 2007, it wasn't that big of a deal.

And reality TV is supposed oddly unscripted, even though it is largely scripted. They give them an outline, but they don't have to come up with the lines themselves. So I think what you're going to see are these things where, you know, you don't need any kind of writing done. They don't need to write the questions. It will affect things like Jeopardy because they have to write those questions.

So game shows aren't necessarily immune from this. Some talk shows like the late night shows, are scripted. They will not be around. They'll show reruns. You'll be able to see those things for a while. The stuff that you really don't care about, probably you'll see more of it. Sporting events, they'll do that. Award shows. This will be our first test.

The ACM awards, Country Music Awards that are coming up would probably have some scripted stuff if they haven't written it already. They're going to have to just ad lib. And so I don't know how good Dolly Parton is at ad libbing, but we'll this will be a test of what it's like. She'll be on her toes. Yes, she'll be good.

The Tony Awards are coming up. Are they going to be able to do any kind of writing around those things? Who knows? But it will be interesting. And they're assuming that it'll go at least 100 days. Wow. Because within that 100 days, there are other contracts that would come due and it gives the the companies, the studios, the whatevers an opportunity to end those contracts.

And they they spent a lot of big money buying talent. You know, when streaming came in, it was like, oh, we've got to lock up x, Y and Z because then they'll make product for us for the next ten years. You saw Ryan Murphy got a big contract. Shonda Rhimes got a big contract. So all those people have these contracts that could be affected by that.

And then they can just say, We no longer have that contract, let's renegotiate, let's see what happens. So the 100 day window is kind of awaited. Now, they could end it by this week and then everything all bets are off. But likely there will be a ride out there because they want to see this kind of change. They want to see change because everybody went crazy over streaming and spent a lot of money.

Now, what does this leave us, the viewer, at home? Well, if you noticed, we were seeing a lot of shows from Korea. We were seeing shows from other countries. There's Swedish shows, Norwegian shows, Spanish shows. And they would subtitled them or they would dub them. That's likely that we're going to see a lot of those. And how else did we get things?

Like Parasite was a foreign made film that came over here, did very well. The Squid game, there's another one that you know did well, and that was a foreign product. So I think you would see other shows that we didn't get a chance to see from other countries. That's where they'll look for some of the product. A long time ago, they took old scripts and just rebuild them.

And that was, I think, a bust, a real bad idea because do you want to see new people playing Mission Impossible? You know, with a script written in 1967? I don't think so. They can't make changes and they can't do things. Now. Some scripts are already written and they would be able to film them, but they wouldn't be able to like if they didn't like the way a line landed.

They couldn't fix it. They'd have to just go with the line as it was. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Because really the I mean, we see the immediate impact with late night TV, Saturday Night Live, that kind of thing, because it's live, it's daily or weekly. Right. And obviously this the strike has shut them down. But in reality, anything that was kind of already written and in production is probably okay other than what she said.

You know, if there needs to be changes or rewrites, that would be the biggest problem. Yeah, they wouldn't let them do that. Now, you know, news shows technically are written, but they get a pass because it's the news. And so they would be able to still do those kind of scripts. You know, look at some of Fox News.

A lot of times it's just people sitting around talking so they're not affected by those things. Probably the fall season is where we might run into the biggest. If it goes like you said, three months. If it goes beyond three months or why would even imagine if it went a full three months? Because it's already May right now.

So, you know, those September shows will probably go into production when? In July? August. But August is usually kind of the starting date for many of their if they're coming back, if there are new show they they've made their first episode, they may have made a second episode, but they wouldn't go back into production until August because they figure September would be the start date for all of that.

So, you know, and they could always delay the start of a season if they knew that they'd be done by September with the contracts and all this. They could back it up in the fall season, wouldn't start October or November and then fill in with with, you know, other kind of special programing that they might have or a very special episode of whatever or bingeing.

And I think that's what what hurt all this really is They used to have orders for 22 episodes a year, and that kind of ensured that you were going to get a decent paycheck if you were a writer, because you would be on staff for 22 episodes. That doesn't mean you're writing all 22, but you would be under there under their contract, if you will, and you'd get a paycheck now because there are ten episode shows, eight episode shows.

That's a short run. And they're, you know, the production companies are saving money on this. And so they're not making what they thought they were and they're having to look for another another line of work. So it is, you know, there's a reason for them to strike. Let's go back to some audio. I've got two more clips. One is of Josh Gad.

He's a comic and an actor. You probably know him, of course, as the voice of Olaf in Frozen. But we also have a writer named Sean Crespo, who's I would consider a little bit more of a rank and file writer. This is somebody that is really going to be affected by the writers strike. So let's go and listen to them now.

But as sort of a hybrid here. I'll just speak on on behalf of the actor side of me is we are nothing without their words. We have nothing without them. It's just a pile of abuses that have you know, you can't address them every day. They only negotiate once every few years. So these things have piled on like this.

There's just not there's too much work and not enough pay. Like there's no there's not really a path to middle class living anymore as a writer, I have a friend who just got a job on a series and now won't be writing because they're they're striking. So, you know, what do you do? You have this job, do you all the time open and don't do anything.

Do you go work at a grocery store? What do you do during that interim? So it is a concern and it's a trickle down. If they're not producing shows, that means people who are in the, you know, not non front of the camera jobs are also unemployed. So it just it trickles down. You don't have people who need to do the costumes or do the sheds or whatever it might be.

They're unemployed as well. So it isn't an easy thing and it is a big A you are looking at George Clooney suddenly losing a lot of money or anybody like that. It's it has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with being a little fairer about spreading the wealth around to those who are making it.

A lot of these executives will get huge bonuses and none of it trickles down, even though maybe their network or their their streaming service performed really well. This doesn't save that poor guy is making whatever from doing another kind of job. He isn't going down to the Kroger's and saying, suddenly I'm going to be I'll stack shelves for you, you know.

So and it happens all the time. They should be prepared before it even gets to this point. I mean, I think the misconception, too, is because we heard from, of course, like Jimmy Fallon and he, of course, wrote on Saturday Night Live. So I presume he was a striking guild member at some point. But he's obviously at a point now where he's got a big contract as a TV host.

But he's a small piece of this puzzle. It's you're talking about a lot of gig workers. A lot of folks said, well, not even gig workers. They're contracted workers. And if the show goes off, they're not making a salary. So it's you know, a lot of folks that are just kind of getting by. And it's you've got your your light crews and your audio crews and your camera crews and all of those folks aren't aren't working right now, but they're sticking together.

And I did see that NBC, at least for a short period of time, it sounds like they're going to pay the writers, the crew members, I think like two weeks from The Tonight Show, for instance. And I think Jimmy Fallon is going to pay another week out of his own pocket. So the writers and the crew members, they'll get about three weeks of pay.

But then it's kind of, you know, buckle up for the long haul. We're not going to keep paying you. We won't have to worry about what we're going to watch. There will be content and there probably is content that's in the hopper right now because they've already filmed it and they can just start, you know, sorting it out.

It's a year from now that you'll have to wonder what what are they going to do because they aren't done with that. And technically, writers are prevented from writing. Well, they're on strike, you know, you say, oh, write a movie, just write yourself a little another series or something. You can write all of it. Well, they're not supposed to do that.

So the idea that you would suddenly end the strike and come in with ten episodes of a show, that's not going to happen. Exactly. So we'll move on now from the writers strike to what's going on in the theater. See anything good recently, Bruce? You know, I did see. Are you there? God, it's me, Margaret, not my wheelhouse.

I'll just be honest. It was not a film that I was, you know, excited about. But I do remember vaguely the controversy about Judy Blume's book and that she was writing these very adult books for young people. And now when we hear all this, you know, we've got to ban books because they're telling kids too much stuff. Mhm.

If this was something they were worried about, boy I can give you a list of stuff we should worry about now that it's very benign. If I had a kid, I think it would be even a little too juvenile for somebody who is the same age as the characters in the sixth grader. She's about 12 and they, you know, barely, barely talks about puberty and change of life and things like that.

Barely. It's more like, how do you deal when things happen? She moves, for example, from New York City to New Jersey. And that is a big trauma for a kid. You know, I'm going to have to go to a new school. I'm going to meet new people, where will I fit in? But this being a thing that you would even consider banning is like beyond me.

I thought it was very harmless. I thought the Wonder years as a TV series which covered the same era, was far more adult and far more educational. Maybe in some of those areas, like when I watched The Wonder Years, I go, Oh yes, I remember that kind of situation and what that. And they also played world affairs a little better.

They talked about the Vietnam War. They talked about other things that were happening in the world. Well, they were doing that the the living, if you will, with this idea. There really isn't that much about the world around them. Mom is living in a town where she isn't working. She's a stay at home mom. And that's different for her.

And trying to adjust to that. But for the most part, I thought it was a a pleasant little film, but hardly a controversial one. So Rachel McAdams plays Barbara. The mother thinks she's not given enough credit for the things she's able to do. But even with just a look, she can convey things that weren't in the script at all.

And I think she's really, really talented. And I hope this doesn't mean that now she's just going to play mothers because I think there's a lot more for her to do. Abby Ryder Fortson played the 11 year old Margaret in the movie. How did she perform? Just a sweetheart. She you know, you feel her a more pressing issue with this is religion.

Her father is Jewish, her mother is Christian, or they're from those families. The mom and dad really don't practice religion. And so she really doesn't kind of know where she fits in. Is she Jewish like her grandma? Is she Christian like her grandparents on the other side? Where does she fit in all of this? And she even goes to a priest at one point and goes to confession and thinking maybe that's what she needs.

But it's a more questioning film about religion. And where do you fit in with that? It doesn't answer the question, but it does help you. You know, consider that maybe that's an important question to be asking at that age. This sounds like a movie for me, Bruce. I know my dad is Jewish. It's my dad is Jewish, my mom is Catholic.

I they moved me from New York City to New Jersey when I was five. So not quite 11. Yeah, this sounds like God, it's me, Terry. I think my wife is going to take my daughters to go see it, though. My my girls are they just turned 12. Have twin daughters. They're they're in sixth grade. So this is in their wheelhouse in interesting thing because it is based on the Judy Blume book.

You can't find this book anywhere. So my wife has been checking out like every library in the area. Yeah, Yeah. It's no, it's not bad. You just can't get it because everybody wants it because of the movie. Yeah. So the local library, it's checked out and there's like 12 people in front of us that want to reserve it.

She was checking with another library. She checked her school library. She checked the middle school library. She teaches. She's kind of friendly, of course, at the library and in the school and the library and says, Give me a few minutes. I'll check it out. I'll see if I can find it. And she tracked down a copy at the high school and they were going to pull it over.

So my daughters to read it, you know, in that case, I would buy it. Yeah. That was going to be the next step, you know, like this thing called Amazon I've heard of. Have you heard of it? I've heard, yeah. You know, at the top of the show, I asked you, Bruce, are you an icon? Are you an icon?

I am not an icon. You're not? No, no, no. I. I wish I were. Wouldn't that be fun? Is there anyone here that can identify an icon? Well, and a yes, an icon is something that you can look a picture a if there's a picture of it and you can immediately identify what it is, you can say that is a Coke bottle, for example, that would be an iconic sculpture container, whatever you might want to call that.

But you would look and, you know, as that kind of green glass, it has that kind of ribbed look and it has the Coca-Cola script on it. So that's iconic. Mount Rushmore is iconic because you look at it, you mean identify it, the Statue of Liberty, iconic. Those are things that that stand the test of time. But then there are things that disappear.

I talked to David Rubenstein, who's doing a PBS series on icons, and he wanted to look into this and see what really fit that definition. And he said, you know, sometimes things are like the Ambassador Hotel, the ambassador Hotel was where Bobby Kennedy was, was shot and they closed the hotel. And then it just sat there for a long time.

And now they've torn it down. But, you know, at one point they used it for filming TV shows. I went there and saw a filming of Love Boat, and they were filming inside the hotel like it was a cruise ship. And so it was still used, but it wasn't used as a hotel because it had perhaps a negative connotation and people didn't want that to be kind of the the overriding attention it got.

But that would be considered the Oscar. The Oscar is an icon. You could easily look at that. And there are so many stories about that. You know, where where did it get its name? Even the people who are doing research on it, I don't agree. They don't you know, it's maybe this person, it's maybe that person. It could even be Betty Davis.

And they've all been kind of debunked in terms of who actually gave it the name and why it happened. But icons are things that are around us that we can immediately identify and why are they iconic? And that series is kind of fun to lean into. I had a chance to talk with David and he explained some of the things.

He's a huge collector. Of course he's also a billionaire. So I guess if I were a billionaire, I could be an iconic whatever. But he collects a lot of things and what he loves loves to collect our documents. What would you think immediately you'd have to have a copy of, I don't know, the Declaration of Independence. A declaration?

And he does have the Declaration of Independence. And, you know, and I thought, Well, why do you want this? And he said, it's to be able to give it so that others can see it. He loans these things out, these documents out to libraries, museums, whatever, so that then we all can have a shot at looking at we all can go to the Smithsonian, we all can't go to the White House, we can't go to those places.

But if they tour and travel, you would get an opportunity to look at those things. So icons, He talks about what makes an icon interesting. So let's go ahead and listen to that interview with David Rubenstein. We'll be right back.

Can I ask what what really makes an icon? What is an icon? An icon is something that people no know it. They think they know a lot about, about it. They don't need to know as much as they think. But for example, if I showed you a picture of an icon, you would say, Well, I know what that is.

So I showed you a picture of the White House. You would know what that is. I showed you a picture of the Washington Monument. You know what that is? Those are iconic because they are so well known that everybody kind of has a sense of what they mean. And the purpose of this series, we took iconic symbols that mean some things to people about our history.

So Statue of Liberty means something to people or the Golden Gate Bridge or Hollywood sign, things like that. You look at things like that. Andy Warhol did. He painted a lot of things that he, I think, even had a series called Icons. He did. He he did. And yes, he what he did is when he did the Campbell's Soup thing, he basically was taking something everybody recognized and he made it a work of art.

And yes, you're right. So could those things, though, fall out of favor we look at now when they when statues are taken down. And I'm sure for many people in that area, a statue would be considered an icon for them. Yeah. Yes. Well, nothing is forever. So there may be some iconic buildings that are torn down, You know, let's say in Hollywood or L.A., there was an iconic hotel.

Was that the ambassador or the one that and Robert Kennedy, an ambassador? Yeah, I think that wasn't that torn down. Yes, it was. Right. So there is an iconic building is gone. So sometimes iconic buildings, they don't stay forever iconic things. All the things that we did in the series are probably likely to be around for a while.

When you were making your list then of the ones that you wanted include how long was the list and then how did you winnow it? Well, we went through maybe 25, 30 that we thought were appropriate. And then you have to you want to have a balance. We wanted something from the South, something from the West, something from the Midwest.

So we wanted that. Secondly, we wanted things that we thought would have an interesting story. So, for example, take the Statue of Liberty. Everybody thinks they know what it means, has nothing to do with immigration. When it was put together, it was really for Franco-American friendship and thanking us for getting rid of slavery. Thank you. You know, it's, you know, so we're we're trying to do is have iconic symbols that people think they recognize it, but they don't really know the history of it.

So, for example, take the the American bald eagle. It's many people think that's our national bird. We don't have a national bird. We never had one. There's a old story that Benjamin Franklin wanted to be the turkey over the bald eagle. But that isn't true either. But bald eagle. Why did that become such a iconic symbol of our country, even if it's not officially national?

Bird And what's so unique about the bald eagle? And you know, it's only in the North America, though, there are there are these American bald eagles. So we wanted to educate people about it. Take the American cowboy. American cowboy is an iconic thing. The Marlboro ad is the most famous ad, but turns out that cowboys are not what you probably saw on TV when you were growing up.

It turns out that cowboys were not fighting Indians. They were really hurting cattle to take them to slaughter. Really. That's what their real mission was. And they weren't all white. They were indigenous, they were white Latinos, they were African-Americans, and they weren't even carrying guns. They basically were just dealing with the the cow. And they it's a tough, tough job they have.

But it was not something people think they know something about, but they don't really know as much as they think they do. And that's why we try to educate people about it, where, one, I would think that you would automatically have it would be Mt. Rushmore. But is that too easy? Is that one that people would say, Oh, come on now, everybody knows what that is.

And it isn't to Mt. Rushmore. If we did another eight, probably that'd be a good one to do. Mount Rushmore is one we thought about. It's it's it's it's a good symbol. The controversy was very controversial. Pick who the presidents were giving their person the permission to do it. He had some really controversial things in his background. And interestingly, though, the man that carved that got yeah.

Hudson Borglum you know, he actually carved the was responsible for the initial effort to carve the Confederate symbols in Stone Mountain. And and he was was a member of the Ku Klux Klan at one point. So so some of these stories go much deeper than we would even expect when you take I mean I think I know a reasonable amount about American history for a nonprofessional, but I was astounded to learn some of the things I learned about some of these symbols.

You know, when we look today, though, and things that are happening in politics, people trying to co-opt symbols as somehow they they have a greater hold on it than anything else. And the flag is a real example, a perfect example. Richard Nixon started wearing a little flag here was that means he's more patriotic than I am if I'm not wearing it.

But I think the Republican Party has done a pretty good job of for a while for Democrats going on to having flags in the backdrop when we're on Reagan to make speeches, they put flags behind them. Right. So Democrats finally figured out that's a good thing. But but it wasn't that for a while, Richard Nixon kind of co-opted the idea that the American flag was something that was Republican and he was more American than the Democrats.

Yeah, it's just in, say, how you want to scream at times and you think, wait a minute, now, you don't have the right to this just yourself. But I guess it's first come first gets and well that somebody probably thought up some of these things but think about you know people today they wear symbols on their lapels, you know, Ukrainian Americans or whatever.

And they they're trying to co-opt iconic symbol and make people think that they all kind of own it or they're more Ukraine pro-Ukrainian than I am because I'm not wearing a Palestinian ribbon is when ribbon started coming out. And then it became like, well, what does this color mean and what is this for? And it's it it just keeps going.

You know, if people want to co-opt the iconic symbol because they want people to think about them, a certain thing and a symbol can can do it quicker than a word, than words. Other words. Richard Nixon doesn't have to come out and say, you know, I really I'm more American than George McGovern. Just wears a little lapel here.

The flag and the symbol does it like, you know, pictures worth a thousand words I say. So you're a collector, right? How do you choose what you collect? I collect different types of things. But in the historic documents area, there are a lot of very famous historic documents. And so I want to get the ones that are they're available.

But the most I'd say the most famous one I own is the Magna Carta. But but in this country, people know the Declaration of Independence better. So I own probably more copies of the Declaration, anybody. But I put them all on display so people can see. And my whole effort is to educate Americans about our history on the theory that we have a more educated population, we have a more informed democracy.

When that country was set up, they the theory was that white Christian men who owned property would be the guy People voted, but we wanted them to be educated and that we can educate. Now. All voters are better off. People don't know what they're voting about. That's not good. And we don't teach history or civics as much as we did 40, 50 years ago.

Does it lose value then? Because we know. Sure. So, for example, if you don't know, two thirds of Americans, when asked in a survey, what are the three branch of the federal government cannot answer the question. So is that a good thing? It's probably not a good thing. It's better to have people know a little bit more about the history of your country.

Also know the bad things. The theory about studying history is that you want to learn the bad of the past so you don't repeat it. That's the main point of learning history and you can learn about the good and hopefully get a better. But you want to learn something like, for example, when you went to grade school, were you what?

There was a beat in over your head that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were slave owners? Probably not. I didn't have that when I'm obviously older than you, but when I went to school, I was George Washington, the great man, never told a lie, chop down a cherry tree or his father, all that stuff, which wasn't true. And he didn't emphasize he was a slave owner.

Thomas Jefferson said all men are created equal, and he did that when he had slaves with them and he had 600 slaves in his lifetime. So I think we should educate people about the good and bad and then just make sure people can can make informed decisions about the future. And if you put your collection on on display at all times, well, it's a very is places.

So I have collections on display in lots of places around the country. But I, for example, buy a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln signed the original, which is in the archives. He signed 47 souvenir copies of which 20 are left. I own two of them. I put one in the African-American History and Culture Museum and one tours around the country or the 13th Amendment, which I in end of slavery.

I own four rare copies of that. And I put I put them on display at various museums or or exhibitions that people ask me to. Are there holy grails that you're still looking for, that you're trying to get the Gettysburg Address? There are only five copies of that Lincoln actually brought out five copies of They're hard to get those.

One is owned by Cornell, one of the Lincoln Museum, one in the White House, and two in the Library of Congress. I probably market to better by them. But the problem with being a collector is what do you do with the collection? And you can only do three things for them. In the end, you give it to a museum, you sell it and take the prophecy abuse for yourself or you, you know, make a charitable contribution with it or you give them to your children.

I have three children. They're all well-educated. I went to great schools, Harvard, Stanford and so forth. They have no interest in any of my collections, so they don't want it. They just said, We don't care about it. So I could go to museums and give them my collections and maybe I'll do that. I, you know, I'm the chair of the Library Congress Board, so obviously you invite them and I was the chair of the Smithsonian.

And so I think the Smithsonian is great, but I haven't decided yet. It's in my will if I die tomorrow, there's a way to handle it. But I'm always changing my mind so I know you know who's nice to me today is the person who gets it right? Right. With the Hollywood side. That is such a kind of an interesting choice to be on this bunch.

Well, we wanted to do things on all parts of the country. And this was a poor Southern California. It's an iconic symbol. You can find others. But it's interesting. Most people think it's designed to promote Hollywood. As you may know, it was a land development company, Hollywood land. And then it over the years has been it's almost taken down.

It's been fixed, it's been restored, and it's become a symbol of Hollywood. Now, Hollywood, as you know, is doesn't really exist in a meaningful way. All the Hollywood studios are not in Hollywood, but it's kind of a symbol. So if you go to somebody in Iowa and say, if you let's go to let's go to Hollywood, we'll see some movie stars, they might think that there's actually some movie stars walking around all of that, but there's nobody there.

The idea, though, that they would do a second one on the other side of the mountain I think is a really stupid idea. Maybe that's just my. Oh, that's the other side. Yeah. Another take where you could actually have your picture taken in front of the Hollywood sign and it would be easier to get your picture than it would be to, you know, where do you hike to get the best picture of you and whatnot.

And I find, you know, should there be more than one of some of these things? I don't know. Oh, obviously devalues the currency of you're more of them. But for now. But what I really want do is people talk about history and talk and learn more and and appreciate more about American history. Well, the theory that they will make us a better country.

All right. Thank you, Bruce, for that interview with David Rubenstein. You know, I actually met his ex-wife. Did you know that I was? Yes. Yes. Not nobody, Nothing. Nothing. When I wasn't the cause of their divorce or any money woes, Buzz cries. No, no, no. Alice Rogoff is his ex-wife. And actually, I believe the mother of his children is a media publisher.

She she used to own the Alaska Dispatch. She purchased the Anchorage Daily News in I think it was like 2014 or so and merged them to the Alaska Dispatch News. So she was the publisher of that newspaper paper. And as publisher, it took a few editorial staff members to the Poynter Institute, which is now. It's an organization that helps journalists like you, like myself.

It's training and things like that. And we were in a group together and at the time I was the digital director at the Louisville Courier Journal in Kentucky. She was the publisher of the Alaska Dispatch News. Her paper, my paper, along with the Denver Post and The Virginian Pilot, we were in a group together, so I met her.

We talked a bit. We we were collaborating. Did she say you want to look at the Magna Carta? I've got one in my bag. She didn't know. She did not bring up the Magna Carta at all. But what was funny is this is in 2017 and it was part of a year long program. So we went to Florida, we all met.

We all hung out together for a little bit. And then shortly after we met, the paper went into bankruptcy. Oh, no. And then she was forced to sell. So then when we got back to in 2018, she wasn't there. The newsroom was kind of reorganizing and and that was kind of that. But yeah, that our six degrees of separation are you, you, me, David Rubenstein.

Very small. We didn't even have to get to Kevin Bacon. You know, he said his kids don't want these things. So do you think we could be in the will? Maybe we have a personal connection to the family. He's there right with us. Right. I'll take one of the documents I can bring Mom. Right. Well, Michael's. I'll go to Michael's with my my Declaration of Independence and I'll say, yeah, could you frame it So it looks nice.

It's. It's a gift from a friend. You got to wait, though, with Michael's until they've got that, like, buy one. Yeah. I want 50% of the coupon. Yeah. Yeah. I can't do it unless I can save some money. No, no, no. We're. We're going to do it right. But on a budget to do the, the decorating. Want it to look nice so it hangs in our office and we could point to and say, there's my Declaration of Independence.

There it is. The Magna Carta, though. So just now. So I will take the Magna Carta. You're going to take the declaration I get the number because, you know, I write Big I and I'm sure we get at our names on the bottom if you wanted to, we'll just we'll just add John Hancock to the bottom. We can, but we can put some some tape, some electrician's tape or something, and then we'll write our own names on the bottom.

So if we needed to keep it right, we were B, we'd be okay. Hey, you know what's coming up this next week? What's that? We're getting into the big summer movie season, and yeah, it's not affected at all by the writers strike. It is not going to be stopped. Barbie is coming this summer. Barbie, goodness be with us so we don't have to worry about.

Suddenly she's holding out and saying, No, I'm not going to do a movie. It's done. So next week, let's look at those new kind of summer movies. That should be the it's always considered blockbuster season in the summer. And this week we started with the first one. Really, that'll be a big moneymaker and that's Guardians of the Galaxy Volume three, the last one of the films.

So watch that. We'll talk about that one and then we'll will preview the ones that are coming up next week. That sounds good. So before I let you go, though, why do all the blockbusters come out during the summer? What is is it just because everyone's off from school and they're on vacation? I always wondered that, like why?

Why is it like basically Memorial Day through almost like July 4th is kind of the big drop, too. Why is that? There was a little film back in 1975 that changed the course of history. That little film said that people would flock to the theaters if they weren't in school, if they were, and they wanted to have something fun to see.

And it made a huge amount of money. That movie was Jaws. Jaws considered the first blockbuster, and it did so well that they realized they should program for that. And they looked for those kind of high concept films that would be good to release at those times. There are seasons that are big for this. Memorial Day weekend is always big.

4th of July is always big. Labor Day is Christmas and the fall are considered far more, I don't want to say intelligent pictures, but certainly ones that take a little they're they Oscar bait. They're going to be the films that are going to win awards, but summer ones are usually ones that are fun, exciting and have a lot of action in them.

And get you to eat and drink a lot. And you're more willing to do that when you feel like you're on vacation than any other time. So you can blame Jaws for setting off the concept of blockbusters. It is readily recognized as the first big blockbuster. Oh, I did not know that. So little, little history. Some iconic history.

A little history there. Yeah. And Steven Spielberg has to be the king of blockbusters because he had a lot of them. And yes, was his company is behind a big one this summer. That's right. We'll talk more about that next week. Until then, thank you for listening to streams and screens. We're not going on strike.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

May the 4th be with you! As always, May 4 is the unofficial holiday dedicated to the "Star Wars" franchise.

Co-hosts Bruce Miller and Terry Lipshetz talk about the classic movies and new TV shows, which include the recent end of the third season of "The Mandalorian" and the second season of "The Bad Batch" plus the upcoming "Ahsoka" series. 

They also discuss the three new movies that were recently announced at Star Wars Celebration Europe 2023 in London by Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy. James Mangold, Dave Filoni and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy were selected to direct the films.

There weren't many details, but Mangold’s film will look at the early years of the Jedi. Filoni’s movie is expected to tie together the various Disney+ series he's involved with and Obaid-Chinoy’s movie will feature Daisy Ridley, who returns to the role of Rey from the sequel trilogy.

After "Star Wars," the discussion shifts to the more serious topic of the World War II and the Holocaust. National Geographic launches a new limited series on May 1 called "A Small Light" that follows Miep Gies (Bel Powley) and her husband Jan (Joe Cole), who were critical in the hiding of the Frank family from the Nazis.

REVIEW: 'A Small Light' offers new take on Holocaust experience

The show also stars Liev Schreiber as Otto Frank, Amira Casar as Edith Frank, Billie Boullet as Anne Frank and Ashley Brooke as Margot Frank.

Miller has an interview with Powley and Cole, who talk about taking on the roles and how the themes translate to modern times.

Where to watch

Stars Wars & Lucasfilm Rumors

In the episode we briefly discuss rumors and speculation about the future of shows and movies from Lucasfilm, which is owned by Disney. Further details to read and watch:

About the show

Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to another episode of streamed and screened and entertainment podcasts about movies and TV. I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee Enterprises and the co-host of the program, a Padawan, if you will, to Bruce Miller, Jedi Master of entertainment journalism and editor of the Sioux City Journal. Bruce, it's a little early, but May the Fourth be with you!

You should have said Yoda, because, you know, I'm that old. I had it in the script. I was going to call you Yoda, but I didn't want you to feel that way. I am so Yoda. It's ridiculous. That's it's is apt and it's fitting and it's me. Plus, if I were collecting anything, it would be Yoda. Got to love Yoda.

Always one of my favorite characters. And he didn't show up right away. He wasn't in the first one. The second one? Yeah. Yeah. And I remember now. Okay, so this. This shows you how old I am when they did a big reveal on Yoda for Empire Strikes Back. It was a special press kit that was just about Yoda, and it had a picture and I mean, it was quite the big deal.

I remember getting it in the mail and it's like, Oh, what have we got here? This is really great. But I remember back with Star Wars, we didn't know what it was. We had no clue. You know, they talked about serials, they talked about Westerns. They talked about all these things. But when until you saw Star Wars, you weren't really sure what this thing was.

And I went to a screening of Star Wars back in. Yes, 1977. And I was unsure the place was packed. And I remember a woman in the in the audience screaming out, Ooh, that Wookie. He's really cute. And so that's what I remember about the first time. I also remember that the vehicles didn't look like they had wheels or they touched to the ground.

I thought that was really cool. But it did feel like you were dropped into a world that you had no idea what was going on. It's really amazing when you look back at the Times. I mean, today movies are so overboard with CGI and animation and green screens and everything. The fact that they were able to do a space Western because that's really what it was, you know, you equated it to a Western, but even George Lucas thought of it as a space weren't Western.

And it's amazing that they were able to do what they were able to do back in 1977. When was the last time you've seen the original one? A couple of years, probably. You know, it's one of those things that it shows up on TNT all the time. Or my daughter, who's a really So I've got twin girls, but one of them is just hardcore Star Wars like I am.

So she'll have it on from time to time. So I'll sit down and watch a little bits of it. But what disappoints me though, these days is they effectively retired the original cuts at the movies and they went to the special editions from the 1990s. But even though those were cleaned up, you still have those elements from the original.

Yeah, that the sets are kind of wonky I think when you're running down the hallway and you think, I think I've seen that hallway, it looks very familiar. Well it probably was right when we had it here with a symphony underneath it where they did a live the live score and it's very fascinating. But it was an older version.

So you got a chance to kind of delight in in those kind of simpler things. And I think it works better. I don't think you should have messed with that stuff. I thought you should have left it alone because it is a piece of its time, you know? But hey, if you're George Lucas, you do what you want.

You can you can do that. Absolutely. So it's, you know, with the I guess, the unofficial holiday, May the fourth with Star Wars. Just thought we would talk a little bit. There's there is some news kind of out there with Star Wars. So we just wrapped the third season of The Mandalorian. We do have the new show, Ahsoka coming up in August.

We also wrapped season two, the bad batch, around the same time as Mando. There's another series called The Acolyte, which is due sometime next year. It takes place in what's called the High Republic era, which is is leading into that prequel trilogy that George did in the early turn of the century.

And there's some other things kind of coming along, too. But we also had the Andor series last fall, which did very well, Obi-Wan Kenobi, which was kind of mixed reception on that. So there's there's a lot going on. But they just had the Star Wars celebration in Europe a couple of weeks ago in London. And Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy announced three new films.

One is going to star Daisy Ridley as Rey. So she's going to reprise her role that she brought forth in the three most recent films from that new trilogy. There's going to be one that takes place in The New Republic, which is post Return of the Jedi. But before the the Rey version comes up. So this is basically taking the the shows that we see on Disney Plus now, and they're going to somehow intersect into some sort of film.

And then there's going to be another film that's going to look at the Dawn of the Jedi in the New Republic. So that's kind of what's that's what's on the horizon. There's been some speculation I don't know how much you follow on this, that Disney isn't particularly happy with the direction of Star Wars because the idea originally was they bought it.

They want movies coming out left and right. Some of those did very well. Some of them didn't sit so well with the fans. And there's been some rumors out there in the Star Wars universe that maybe Kathleen Kennedy's job is is on the line. If she doesn't produce another Star Wars movie. Her contract, I guess, is up in 2024 and allegedly an ultimate aim was place that they need to have a movie out by 2025.

So it's an interesting thing. You've got this huge series, this huge enterprise. I mean, it's a it's a behemoth of when you compare it with all these other tent pole type of, you know, DC Marvel and all these that are continuously putting out films and Star Wars, they kind of sputtered a little bit, but they're still doing very well with the TV programs, it seems.

Yeah, I think there are too many things out there. I really do. We waited so long just to get Star Wars films that now they have a glut of them. I, I don't know that that's in their own best interest is I know they want money. I know they're there. There's really we've got to get more money out of this.

How can we get more money out of this? Let's do this. Let's do that. Come on, we'll have it. Yeah, yeah, let's do TV. Let's do a podcast. Or how about, you know, and it's just this whole range of stuff and there is a limit to it because if you are new to any kind of franchise, you may not go in, you may not be interested in that because it's too much to learn.

I know that was the case with Marvel. People thought that they couldn't get into that world if they hadn't started from the beginning and they need to be a little better about their standalone Star Wars films. And I really think that's where you could fall into Quentin Tarantino's The People who are kind of a marquee name, and let's see what they would do with it.

It doesn't necessarily have to follow everything, or it could just be people who were around during the same era but aren't caught up with this this fighting good against evil. Maybe there were people who didn't pay attention at all in Star Wars land to what was going on. You know, was there a PTA meeting going on somewhere? Could that have sparked something?

Who knows? And then, you know, they never really do want to toy with anything beyond a PG 13. Why can't there be an R-rated Star Wars film? Yeah, that would be an interesting one. I mean, you can you can maybe get to I mean, it is it's space war. So you could take up the violence level a little bit and maybe and they did it with with the comic book movies.

You do have a couple that have gone beyond PG. PG 13, right? It's possible. But you see, it's Disney. So there are kind of those those boundaries that are put into play that I think hinder what they can do. So I. Hey, Kathleen, I'm with you. You just sit there and say, you know what, We can't do everything, but let's try something and let it be standalone.

It doesn't shouldn't have to be part of the trilogy for anything that, you know, the how I feel about those I do not want to have to worry about. I've seen too I die and I don't get the third one. That's ridiculous. But you can easily be in that world and still still show us what's what's going on.

I'm with you with the standalone movies. I thought that Rogue One is perhaps one of the best movies, Star Wars movies of all time. And it's because, you know, we knew what was going to happen, because we knew that it led up to the original 1977 Star Wars with the Death Star. So we knew going in the movie is basically about them stealing the plans to the Death Star.

It was a great movie from start to finish and it's kind of followed through now with Andor the series where, you know, you can only do a couple of seasons of that because eventually there's an end point, right? So I think they really did a great job with that. I'm kind of hopeful that with James Mangold, maybe that's that director that they're bringing in, like you suggest, because he's doing the new Indiana Jones movie, The of Destiny.

But he's done Ford versus Ferrari. He did Logan, He did The Wolverine. He did the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. So he's done a lot of different films and he is an A-list director, so they can bring him. He's got that star power, and it's a little bit different than even when they had Ron Howard, who of course, is a giant in directing because he was brought in to rescue the the Han Solo movie, which was kind of fallen apart.

So, you know, here they're going to let him do it from the scratch. I agree to that. I don't want a trilogy every single time, especially after the newer trilogy, which I thought was a bit of a disaster because it was so disjointed. Right, Right. Well, if you look back at the original, the whatever the you call those first three films, George Lucas handed the reins over to Lawrence Kasdan after the the first one and said, You write this thing, let's see what's going on here.

And I think those new ideas are what helped keep it fresh and keep it going instead of this huge book that somebody has to go, Well, wait a minute now, according to chapter 33 here, you're not supposed to do this. It's chaos. And I think that's why I've turned off from for Marvel. I really don't want to have to try and remember something that happened in or films prior to this one.

Yeah, I think Star Trek had a little problem with that as well, where they're, you know, they're trying to many worlds. And now where are they? I really don't know where Remember the the kind of reboot with Chris Pine? Is that going anywhere? Is that going to be something more or are we going back and looking at old characters like Picard?

You know, what is that? And I think it becomes a thing when money people are making decisions and their demanding things by a certain time because they've got to meet a budget or we need to make so much money by this date that it kind of spoils the creativity of the whole thing. Well, that's kind of the thought, too, with where, you know, if those rumors are true, that that Kathleen Kennedy's job may hinge on on a film.

Is it or bringing back more films, is that you've got the money people. It isn't just about the storytelling when when Lucasfilm was that standalone company because even if you go back to that original trilogy, the first Star Wars movie, if that thing bombed, it ended. You didn't need to wait for two more movies because it had a beginning, a middle and an end.

And at that end, you could have been like, okay, we're good. I don't need to see anything ever again. But they came back with Empire and then return. And I think the other piece of it too, is even though he did hand it off to other directors to kind of tell a story, he was still part of the storytelling process.

So it was his concept where he worked with other writers and directors on the finer points, which I think in comparison to the new trilogy, J.J. Abrams was there. I know he was the executive producer on the second one, but he kind of stepped way too far away. And the movie went in a totally different direction. And then he had to come back to kind of rescue the third one, and it just turned into, I guess, a bit of a hot mess.

But yeah, you know, Disney, there were rumors that they were going to do an Indiana Jones series on Disney Plus and that has kind of been put on hold. And Willow, I didn't even get a chance to see this Willow series on Disney Plus. And apparently season two was canceled because they're like going all in with the Lucasfilm stuff back into Star Wars.

And because that is that is the franchise out of Lucasfilm. So it'll be interesting to see where that goes. The interesting selection and directors of these movies is Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. She is a two time Oscar winner because she won Oscars for documentaries, but she's attached to the film. A little bit of an unknown, but I guess her star has been on the rise because she's done some directing work on the Mrs. Marvel series.

Thoughts on her documentaries and short subjects are kind of the gateway to getting into bigger pictures. So she was probably tested through these kinds of things. She has a very female perspective, a feminist perspective that might help play well with something that's seen as a very kind of boys club. And it gives an opportunity for the Star Wars universe to kind of crack open to other stories that could be told, because I think we've kind of worn out our welcome with some of these father son things.

I don't think we need to go into that a little more. But she might bring us a whole new a whole new world of of opportunity. And it would be interesting to see what happens. You know, I want to see what are what people are doing in other parts of that universe. And I don't know that we've necessarily seen that they're also caught up with this rebel forces kind of thing.

And really, though there have to be it's like today there are people that you can't ask anything about the news because they don't watch the news. They don't listen to the news, they don't read the news. And those are people with a story to to tell. And how do they do it? I think sometimes we get a little too caught up in the mainstream of what people are talking about or what influencers are telling us.

We should talk about that. We don't realize that there's a whole subset of people out there talking about nothing that relates to that. So this thing is one of those things. I think he made an interesting point to about a different perspective, because for me, as somebody 47 year old man who grew up on Star Wars when I was a kid, the boys like Star Wars and most of the girls like something completely different.

You know, you had some some girls liked it, but it was a boy's club. And I think they really tried to expand it and attract a much wider audience. Now, I think to my daughter, who's 12, who absolutely loves Star Wars, she wants to watch the shows every single week. And if you ask her who her favorite characters are, it's Rey, it's Ahsoka Tano.

It's these newer characters that they introduced that have expanded the universe to just more than boys and men. And the Jedi can be a girl, you know, A Jedi can be a woman. Look at how animation was largely seen as, you know, female driven. It always has to have a heroine who falls in love and gets out of her situation.

And then they realized, Wait a minute, we've got some boys out there that might be interested in watching animation. And they did do a shift and there were some male kind of dummy and Star Wars was pushed them. They were the ones who said, Get over there, come on, you got to do some male animated films. And we're seeing them now.

So I think same thing could happen with Star Wars. So once again, may the force be with you, Bruce, but we'll turn our attention now to a much more serious job and anybody. I do. Yeah. You also on April 20th, one two on people at 420. Yeah we're not not in Wisconsin. I'm based in Wisconsin. That stuff's not that's not going to talk that way, right?

Yeah, not here. Not at our borders. That is correct. No, but we're we're going to shift over to a little bit more serious topic now and one based in actual reality coming back from science fiction into history. A slight bit of research. Is that sound like enough? No, sir. But there have been Holocaust films since the early 1940s, 1940 was the first time they ever mentioned a concentration camp in a film.

Since that time there has been a Holocaust related film. Every year. It's interesting to see that that's that's lasting like that, but it's one of those things that you need to remind people because otherwise they're going to say it didn't happen. And I think a lot of times you'll see in the documentary categories of the Academy Awards, there will be something about someone.

Now that generation is dying out. There aren't many more Holocaust survivors around who can remember what went on or what happened. But what we're finding now is that people are kind of stretching their their boundaries of what stories they already know. And one of those ones is a diary man. Frank, That was a huge, huge, huge book. And it was taught in schools.

I don't know if it still is because I don't know if it's on a list somewhere. And then they say we can't teach that one in schools. But it was what a girl viewed the Holocaust situation like. She was hidden in an attic over her father's business. And they couldn't leave. They couldn't go anywhere. And they had their own kind of world, if you will, hoping that somebody they could get out because the Nazis wanted to do something with them, i.e. they wanted to kill them.

And so we saw that perspective on the Anne Frank story. We saw her perspective because her father saved the diaries and brought them and said, you know, is this something we could publish? Is there something here so that people know what went on in our world? And now there is a new limited series called A Small Light, which focuses on Miep Gies.

Yes. Miep was a secretary of Otto Frank, who was the one who helped him during all of this. She, he said, would you help me get things to my family? Can you be there for us? And will you promise not to tell anybody? In retrospect, meet said, You know, I didn't do anything. It was a small light that I was able to turn on in a dark room and it what she tells us is that there are things we can do, things that maybe we should be looking at now in our own world, where we can make a difference in somebody's life.

And we see this with bullying in schools. We see this with loudmouth politicians who are shouting each other down and for no good reason. They're they're sideswiped by people who never asked for this kind of attention. And it becomes a very volatile situation that we don't need to live in. And I think what this limited series tells us is that there are little things we can do along the way that can make somebody else's life a little easier.

And why are we doing that? Why am I standing by and not saying, you know what, you're a bully and you need to stop this right now? I always had parents who would stop me and they would say, You are not doing that. We do not do those kinds of things. You are not going to bully somebody. But today it seems like we're a parentless society where nobody tells the people who are in authority or power, you can't do that.

You can't treat people like they're somehow lesser than you. You can't make fun of them because why? What are you gaining by that? You're doing nothing. So this is this miniseries here at Roundabout Way. This was me on a soapbox. Did you see that? Dare you to just get the idea that picked up on it. The series lets us know that there are little things we can do, and I think it reminds us that we don't have to be some Schindler's List rescuer kind of person.

We don't need to be that guy who runs in, saves a bunch of people, and then you're considered, Yeah, that's what we need to do. It can be something as simple as maybe talking to somebody else, maybe comforting someone during a tough situation. Maybe it's bringing food to somebody. You know, it's so, so simple. And this is a very slow kind of building Mini-Series I'm not saying it's a slow miniseries because it's not, but you see how she grows, how meat grows in the process of all of this.

I think it's fascinating. It's one of the best things that we've seen on TV this year. And it starts May 1st, I believe it is is the first first two episodes, and it's eight episodes in all. I got a chance to talk to Bell Powley, who plays Miep Gies, and Joe Cole, who plays her husband, Jan. For them, they were you know, they weren't filled in on what their story was until they started researching it.

And interestingly enough, and you'll hear this is that they did not realize that John didn't talk about it. He really did not want people to know his part because he didn't think it was that important. And Miep didn't write a book until many, many years later talking about what she did in all of this. So it's a fascinating, fascinating story.

I think you'll be really taken in by it. And you'll also see how contempt jury they are. You know, it's not like the when we see a film that's set in another era, you go, oh, they're old timey people and they just do old timey things, right? And they wear old timey clothes. And these are like so contemporary.

You think, I think I could hang with these people. I think these are people that I would like to be around. And that's where sometimes when they do do films about these things, they tend to take away that kind of humanness and they want to set them up on a pedestal and make them something other than real people.

And this is one that shows you the real people behind the story. All right. So let's go to that interview and then we'll come back and wrap up the show during this. When did you guys say, could I do what they did? Was there a point in when in the making of this where you thought, do I have what it takes to do what these two did to hide people, to kind of divert people?

I think that's what's important about the show. Hopefully it's going to make a lot of people think, could I do what they did? Because it's about two very ordinary people. It's not big sweeping historical statement or like larger than life characters. These are literally just two young people who are going about their lives. You ended up doing really, really extraordinary thing, and they have the same attributes that loads of young people have.

I mean, they were newly married. They love going out dancing like she was a big party girl and then their lives were turned upside down when they made this really heroic decision to have hired these eight people. So hopefully it will make lots of viewers think, would I be able to see this Is your answer? Yes. Or is it?

I really would. It's hard to. That's such a hard question to answer because it's so late. You just sound like such an arrogant, provocative. So, yeah, I mean, I think what they did was so extraordinary and so incredible. You know, I, you know, thankfully will never be put in that position, you know? But what one kind of a role models for you.

But, you know, one incredible thing they did is I see today that there are parallels because, you know, and you go, well, why am I not stepping out of my comfort zone and just saying something to people, say, you know, you're wrong. Yeah. But it's also, you know, the show's called a small light because, I mean, famous quote, anyone, no matter who you are, can turn on a small light in a dark room so anybody can do a little something for somebody.

So I'd like to think I could definitely do a little something for somebody. You know. And what they did was was a little something. Somebody turned out to be a huge, huge thing. And they represent a huge number of people also doing that all over all over Europe. You know, they weren't the only ones. I remember seeing another movie about this, and I think I did interview me to really?

Really. Yeah. And I did. Really? Yes. Yeah. It was a TV movie that they had done, and I think Mary Steenburgen played her. Yeah. And I don't remember her being as playful as you are in this. Well, obviously, it's in Tony and Joan's take on her and that and that writing of her. But I read her book and Frank remembered a few times that was kind of my main source of research.

And her voice really does come out in that book and she does talk like you get the sense that she was quite cheeky and playful and she talks about how much she loves going out dancing and partying with her friends and how she found her husband so attractive. And, you know, the funny kind of conversations she had with Ann.

So and then obviously that filtered through Joan Rita, our writer's voice. She very much has those sentiments herself and then filtered through mine. Our take on her is that But I do believe that she was right. That was their relationship a true love thing, or did it grow into a love? It's interesting question, isn't it? I feel that was true.

A true love. Yeah. Because because they there was this huge barriers in that way. You know, y'all was married previously me did was wasn't married at 20 sort of into her mid twenties was read at that time and sort of spoke about how she could have gotten her brother come out and she could have got a man who would that and talks about not wanting family and doing things that, you know, possibly do anything in a very different way to how they would have done things in those in those times.

There's a there's a there's a process of how how you live your life. You have kids early. You get married, you stay at home. So she's doing things very differently. And John was previously married. So I think that I think definitely that it's more romantic because they really wanted to make this work. And and he had to divorce his partner and all the rest of it.

It's like it's a social faux pas. Those things. Did they do all those things in the bathtub? Because I thought, Oh, that's really cool. I mean, I don't know. I know they used to they used to to get away from everybody. They'd go like that. They said that that's a great thing. I think it's a huge, huge idea.

Kids were running the bathroom and Susanna direct and like one of the first conversations I have with her is that she really wanted to make this relationship, even though it's a relationship in the forties feel real. Like we wanted to have those small moments of like them chatting together in the bath or like him asleep in bed and like seeing her get ready for bed and like all of the things that make a relationship feel like a tangible to an audience.

Sure. Because even though it's in the forties, I feel that was know that a lot of guys don't meet like they don't and that was it was the prep for that And so and I think that's the problem that too many people make is that or they think it's a whole different era and it's a whole different thing and it's like they're us.

Exactly. Yeah. What did you two learn from this? What did this teach you? I mean, this is a really good question. I mean, historically, it taught me no end to is, you know, just on on the surface, sort of people have become into this. The prelude is a sort of is the and frank story. Right. So everybody feels like they know I'm frank and they know the story.

And it was a young girl in the annex and the rest of it. But I feel like the reality is people don't know the story. And how many episodes of you said you mention that you've seen two. Okay. So there's so much that you're going to hopefully learn and become aware of what was going on outside the annex, what was going on in the streets of Amsterdam.

Yeah. So on a kind of more superficial level, if you were like historical level, here's a great deal for me. Just, just sort of kindness can, can win over everything and love and love, kindness and compassion, peace, bees, evil and beat hatred. And and just a reminder to everybody, the title of the show know every day you can fight.

You can show the other acts of kindness and they and they feed into one another throughout the day. Sure, you can do that. And so there's always little things you can you can always look good, look for people who look to you. And yeah, I just learned so much about I'm like heroism and bravery on like a small scale from like to ordinary people.

There were so many I've even seen two episodes, but like, as you get like into the depths of this show, there was so many anecdotes and stories that we tell that you will watch and be like, That must be made of what these people did. And we had that literally. Every time we got a new script, we were like, Whoa, Tony, Joe, like, is this really do they actually do this?

Think the lengths that these people went to when they were literally just a secretary and a social worker and a young people was absolutely insane. So, yeah, I learned so much about being brave and also the amount that one human being can actually do so that that the best, most unfathomable stories are often the ones that are real.

Yeah. So we've got it. Well, this Tony's made this up. This is too extravagant and sure and crazy. And it was always true. Thank you guys so much, love. It's amazing. But nice to meet you in great fun and good luck with this. I hope it all turns out to be a huge hit. All right, Bruce, thank you for those interviews.

The show sounds fascinating. I think I'm definitely going to tune in and I think we've talked about this before. But, you know, for me personally, I have some Jewish heritage. So to these types of stories I really like to hear, you know, I enjoyed movies like Schindler's List, but even when I was in college, I took the history of the Holocaust, which was just a fascinating semester, very depressing semester.

But one of the things they did is the professor, who was a retired rabbi, brought in a friend of his who was a Holocaust survivor. So he spoke to the experiences of what he had to go through, you know, in a concentration camp and showed the tattoo on his arm of, you know, how he was numbered. And one of a couple I've seen a couple of survivors in person.

And it's sad because there's really not many of them left. So it's great that we can have stories like this, find ways to to have these stories, to share those experiences, but also, as you said, have a contemporary message as well. And I think there are applications that we can look at. Hopefully, we will never get to the point that our situation today is what it was back then.

I've been fortunate to interview a number of survivors and they all have a different story to tell, different things that happened to them, different kinds of people who came into their lives and were the ones who really helped them through a situation. There is a documentary called Nicky's Family that you must see. It is so good. It's about a British, you know, a businessman who helped these children get to safety during World War Two.

And he would find them places where he could live. They were they could live while they were separated from their parents or if something happened to their parents. And he he kind of he did this very clandestinely. He was a businessman. He was able to go over to places and he would create passports for them. He would do all this stuff.

And he helped kind of get these kids out. It was hundreds that he was able to help. And in this Nicky's family, you must, must, must see it. You see him finally realizing the impact of his work. And they have this kind of, if you will, it's a program, a this is your life kind of thing. And they're introducing that he had done this and telling other people about it.

And again, he thought he really I don't know what I did that was all that great. But when he realizes, you know, that somebody is making something out of this, they say, well, now the person next to you, she was one of the ones you helped, and the person next to her was somebody you helped. And before you knew it, it was everybody in that theater was somebody who he had helped and he had never met them.

Wow. And here was the chance to see how the man was really, really moved by this that, you know, you do things that you think are the right thing to do, but you never see the results of it. And it is so powerful. But that is one of my favorite films of that era. And it shows exactly what somebody did and how.

And children of those Holocaust survivors and how they wouldn't have been around without him helping them out and by just doing what he thought was the right thing to do by creating passports. And you'll see where he cut things out and pictures out and made these passports and got the papers they needed. It was fascinating that this man would do this kind of stuff, and he was knighted for his work.

But it's just fun to see this old man just get really tickled by all these people. It's a really cool thing. So that's that's what I think we're our takeaway is that we can do something. Absolutely. So yeah, that's definitely one I'll put on my list to check out. Bruce What are we looking at in the coming weeks?

Well, you know, I also like talk about getting to talk to people that make a difference. David Rubenstein is a billionaire who's done a lot of different things, but now he's doing a TV series about American icons, things that are iconic in the United States. Now, I said right away, Well, Mount Rushmore, of course, isn't that an icon?

And he said, well, maybe if we do another season there, it might be in there. But he looked at things like the Hollywood sign would be an icon. And it's things that really immediately you identify and you can see something there, but it's a fascinating discussion we have about what is iconic and what does somebody like him with all that money do?

And he does collect things. The Declaration of Independence, He has a couple of those. I think he has the papal papers. He he has a Magna Carta that things I've got lying around the house. I think they're in the basement in my house somewhere. I just had to dig them out. But this is what he is interested in.

And he says he does it because he wants other people to be able to see these things. And so he loans them to libraries and museums so that then we can go there and say, you know what, people did do these things. They did exist. So his Magna Carta is like me owning a couple of copies of like a Mike Piazza baseball card.

Basically, if you kept it in good shape. Or is it near mint? One of those kind of things, you know, because that is there are some guys sitting in a room that says this is a seven. It's just right. Somebody actually gets paid to do that. Yeah, but here's the job I know.

And then, and so we have that coming up and then in a couple of weeks too, we're going to look forward to the summer. The summer, it's the big summer. We're going to do it. So there are movies besides Indiana Jones coming out. That's all. Barbie, Barbie, Barbie movie. We've got to get into that, man. Awesome. So we will come back in a couple of weeks and do that.

All right. Well, until then, thank you for listening. And we'll be back soon with another episode of Streamed and Screened.

Be the small light.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's spring, which means it's time for another season of Major League Baseball. And on this episode of Streamed & Screened, Bruce Miller quizzes co-host Terry Lipshetz on his favorite baseball movies.

Watching the New York Mets isn't always easy, so the list of movies that includes "Bull Durham," "Field of Dreams," "Fever Pitch," "The Bad News Bears," "The Natural," "A League of Their Own," "Eight Men Out," "The Sandlot," "42" and "Sugar" can get you through a long season. 

They also touch on TV programs such as Ken Burns' "Baseball" documentary that originally aired on PBS, the adaptation of "A League of Their Own" for Amazon Prime Video and "Brockmire" that aired on IFC.

The conversation then shifts to the the Amazon Original limited psychological thriller series "Dead Ringers," which is based on the 1988 film by David Cronenberg starring Jeremy Irons.

The new series stars Rachel Weisz and we have an interview with co-star Poppy Liu.

The show wraps with a look ahead to a discussion about "A Small Light," a new series coming to National Geographic on May 1. The show follows Miep Gies, who helped hide Otto Frank and his family, including Anne Frank, from the Nazis during World War II.

Where to watch

About the show

Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome everyone to another episode of streamed and Screened and entertainment podcasts about movies and TV. I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee Enterprises and the co-hosts of the program, along with first ballot Hall of Famer Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal and a longtime entertainment reporter. I set you up. Good, good, good, good. You did good last week.

You were a little disappointed I didn't hold you in high enough esteem. There you go. You know, I called my people. My people said, get him on that. What's going on? This is not right. But that's very good. I'm so thrilled. Baseball movies? Yes. Are you a big fan or not? I am. So, you know, we kind of preview beforehand what we might talk about on the show and I told you yesterday, I am very behind on things right now.

I've been watching a little bit here. I'm a little Mandalorian, a little bit of Barry. Season four is back Succession is back. But I'm squeezing these things in because the New York Mets are in the middle of a West Coast swing. So I'm watching games at like ten, 11, 12:00 at night. I'm a huge baseball fan, Bruce. That's all I like.

I buy the baseball package so I can watch watch the Mets every game. And I pretty much I probably get 120 games in a year easy. The Mets are your team. They are? Yeah. I'm from New York. Just because my dad, he was a he was a Mets fan. Okay, So I grew up in New York. In Jersey.

So it's the jeans. It just. Yeah, do the jeans. That's how that works. And I'm a glutton for punishment, too. Well, you know, it's a lot like being a Cubs fan. It is. When you have that winning gear, it's it doesn't get any better than that. But think of the all the baseball movies then, that you've been able to squeeze in in your lifetime.

Which do you like? Which ones stand out for me? Like every year. I don't do this quite as much now because I've got the kids. I've got a lot of lot of things in my life. But I used to be for the season or between the spring training and maybe that first month of the season, I would make it a point to watch as many baseball movies as I could year after year.

So the ones that I would go to and so and I did it this year. First movie, I always pop on Bull Durham, always Circle Durham. Yep, because it takes place in the minor leagues. So to me it's like I'm getting ready for a full season of baseball and I love it. It's a great comedy. 1988 you've got Kevin Costner playing that aging catcher who should be kind of higher in the minor league system at that point.

You know, he should have been a major leaguer at that point, but he never could quite crack. It wasn't quite good enough for for the big leagues. So they send him down to A-ball to work with a young pitcher who is Tim Robbins. Crazy, crazy. He's off the walls. He doesn't you know, he's a bonus baby and he's got to show him the ropes of both minor leagues of being a professional baseball player.

But it's also kind of life coach as well. So and then I love it. Brandon Come on. Sarandon And of course, Susan and Tim Robbins, it's they ended up they never got married, but they they ended up going into a really long term relationship and they have a child or children, I mean, yeah but yeah so there was a that Bull Durham who's jerk struck something, right.

Yeah. So Bull Durham is is my go to start movie of the baseball season so not field of dreams Field of Dreams is kind of like that Number two which is another you know Kevin Costner Costner's got that trifecta of baseball movies. So that is actually the one that I turned on second. And I watched it. It was a little bit tough to watch this year because it's about relationships.

Is that that relationships between sons and their fathers. It came out a year after Bull Durham, which is kind of funny, but yeah, Field of Dreams, I threw it on. I showed it to the kids for the first time. They enjoyed it this year, but I was like ball in my eyes. Out from start to finish. My my father passed away recently.

He's a huge, huge baseball fan. And it was a little tough to watch, especially in that last scene, you know? Yeah. You know, you can forget the field of dreams if you like. Oh, you have already have, Yeah. And did you run the bases? I did know. So I don't know if you know this, but if you go on Sundays or at least when I went at the time, I don't know if they changed anything, but if you go on a Sunday during the summer, they bring out a collection of ballplayers, they walk out of the cornfield and they put on a little bit of an exhibition right there.

So it was like, Yeah, yeah. Well then did you get you got down on the field though, didn't you, to take pictures and stuff. Yeah. Oh yeah, Yeah. We, we kind of hung out, We sat on the sidelines, we watched the game is a little, a little long in the tooth, you know, they probably could have shortened it up a little bit, but we took the kids into the corn and walked out and saw the house and bought some trinkets and.

And then drove. That was good. Yeah. Do these refreshments or not? They have a concession stand. I believe that you can make some purchases. It's been a few years. I think I was there in 2016, so it's been a while. So this was before they put that big stadium up for. Yeah. Okay. And I know they've I know they've expanded and added in like a more proper concession stand and merch and all that stuff.

Like they had things. Then I bought a shirt and something else. A little field of dreams boss, maybe a little toy, but sitting in a box somewhere that I can't find, you know, that was always our vacation. When I was a kid. We would always go see, I'm sorry, the Minnesota Twins, but we would get there before I think anybody did, you know, because the parents were always making sure that we weren't late.

And we would sit there and the stadium was empty. There was nobody there. So I had already kind of scoured the whole place, looked at every piece of merchandise. There was eight, like nine different things. And then by the time the game came, I was okay. I could go home. Now that park is in the Mall of America.

That's right. Home plate in the Mall of America. But I always remember that. And the twins never won when we were there. So we had to be the bad luck charm for them. Well, I have a little a little Minnesota Twins trivia for you or a fun fact. Okay. So the old days, not super old, but do you remember Tom Kelly, the manager of the twins, in the 1980s?

So Tom Kelly, he grew up in South Amboy, New Jersey, which is kind of the area where I lived. I played Little League with Tom Kelly Jr. You're kidding. Was a kid. He was okay. He was good on the team. And there was a time where we were playing a game when I think the twins were in town to play the Yankees and they had an off day.

This was the year before Tom Kelly was elevated to manager. I think he was the third base coach at the time and he was hanging out on the on the sides and just watching and taking in the game. But Tom Kelly Jr who sadly passed away he's he's about my age. He's in his mid-forties and he he passed away a year or two ago.

Oh no yeah tragically but he had a huge glove which was given to him by a player. So it's like way too big for a 12 year old, ten, ten year old, whatever it was at the time. He had this big puffy jacket that said Hubert Humphrey Metrodome on it. It was fun. Yeah, well, did Dad yell things to him or was he pretty good?

He he stayed as low key as possible. He didn't want to. He didn't. I think he he knew his place and that was not managing ten year olds. Did you have those those bad parents though, that did that. I mine were pretty good with watching. I know there are definitely I've run into him I coached softball now there come on I periodically my my parents are pretty good but I've I've had issues with other parents and yeah I hey I know we're have you speak okay well then what about the A league of Their own?

Did you like that movie? Yeah, that one's another favorite of mine. But Tom Hanks and I, I have yet to watch that remake the Amazon Prime TV series. You know what? I'm very disappointed. They are only going to do a handful of episodes for season two to kind of butt up. But I think it started in one direction and went in a whole different direction.

It was more about, Oh, what's the term I want to use it wanted. It really leaned into the LGBTQ audience and you know, they wanted to somehow say that there were a lot of gay female baseball players back in the day, but it that derailed the whole idea of women being treated equally on the field. And I think it got away from the sports aspect and went into a whole other thing with even like a factory nearby and so I was not as the first episode was fine, but then it started waning and I thought, I don't know if I can watch this anymore.

And it's not that I have anything against anything that they were doing. It's just it seemed like bait and switch. So I still want to maybe go back and watch that. The movie itself with Tom Hanks. I watched did a few months ago with my daughters because I thought it would be a really good one for them. They're about 12 years old now and I, I really think it's important in this day and age to make sure that they see really strong female role models.

Sure. Because if you think about it, I mean, things like even high school sports, they weren't playing high school basketball until like the seventies. I mean, college basketball for women wasn't really a thing until it didn't really break through until the early 1980s. I don't know. Yeah. And it's really taken a long time for for women. And I don't even think they've gotten equal footing to this point.

It's much better than it used to be. So I think it's really important for my daughters to see really strong, positive role models like that in sports. So I it was one that I really wanted to watch with them and they enjoyed it. They did? Oh, good, good. How about how about the natural I'm throwing ones out at you.

Yeah, you can do that. The natural. I like it. I don't love it. I think that's one where a lot of baseball fans absolutely love the natural. I thought it was a little bit over the top and kind of almost unbelievable. I do like a sense of reality with my baseball movies and there's tons of of legendary baseball players who can do extreme things.

I just thought that that was just a little too much for me. I think it was too glossy. I think it didn't have the the the reality that it needed, you know, what, about 40 to 42 with Chadwick Boseman, that. Oh, I did watch it. I have not I'm trying to think when I did it was really good.

I, I think, you know, that's another one of those movies where from a historical standpoint, I love watching that kind of movie I like, especially Jackie Robinson. He, you know, seeing the story the way he broke it. And I love movies that are historically accurate or true. And as somebody who studied history in college, too, and being a huge baseball fan.

So yeah, 42 solid movie. Yeah. Well, Chadwick Boseman, if you go back and look at his list of work he played a lot of people who were who existed and that he was so versatile that he'd play these ones. It's amazing that he wasn't nominated for one of those roles because they were always very inspirational and very, very believable.

I mean, you bottom is any number of people. Yeah, how he dug in and actually did the work to be a baseball player. So you'd buy the the kind of things he'd do on the on the field. It was interesting. Okay. Sandlot love the sandlot, you know. So there there's one where I still haven't shown it to the kids because I think my wife isn't too thrilled with some of the themes in it.

Yeah, it's kind of in that they're, they're 12. They can probably watch it. It's fine. It goes back to I mean, they've already seen it in school. They probably have. I grew up seventies into the eighties. We played so many baseball games in the mid eighties. We would my summers as a 11, 12, 13 year old, we would wake up in the morning, we would walk up to the baseball fields that were at the end of my block.

We would play in to lunch, we would go home and get lunch, and then we go back and finish playing until the parents got home and had dinner. So for me, like The Sandlot was just an extension. It was life. It was life. Yeah, exactly. You're killing me, Smalls. Yes. Isn't it funny how that film did produce lines that you can repeat and have repeated?

I'm sure it was Bad News Bears then. Were you a fan of that? Yeah, and that's probably of the early movies. One of my favorites. Now they did what was it? Bad News Bears did a bunch of them. They were big. Yeah, they were bad. That original, though, is a classic and I think it gets into even if you played Little League, you always and I was on one of those teams where the coach was like, I had a coach one time who the reason why he was coaching was part of community service because he like it through a trunk.

It was like literally the Bad News Bears. We didn't have uniforms. It was really weird. So yeah, the Bad News Bears, I could very much relate to it. It was a fun movie. Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal It's just it's a good one. Well, and they took that template and used it for other other films like The Mighty Ducks.

I mean, you could see the things that they had. It's just let's just switch the sports. They'll never know. It's the same film. It is the same film. Yeah, that's all The Mighty Ducks was showed showed the Mighty Ducks to my kids. They did not enjoy it as much as they didn't like it. Now. Yeah. Yeah. Different sport.

Yep. What other ones do you like? Are there one and out one for me. So I'm a I'm like just a I could be like a crazy fan. I've mellowed out my old age a lot, but fever pitch. Do you remember fever pitch? Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore. So that one, it's it's based on a Nick Hornby movie.

Their book Fever Pitch A Fan's Tale. But it's the book is soccer, Right? And they turned it into a movie where Jimmy Fallon is a crazed Boston Red Sox fan whose team never wins and they fail him every year. And he goes through this whole ritual but at the same time is trying to have like a relationship with with a woman.

And, you know, I always thought it's funny that they were doing it. And then while they were filming that movie, the Red Sox actually were good and they had to shoot a new ending for it to capture the fact that the Red Sox won the world Series. But it's a fun one. It's from the same author of High Fidelity.

So if you're a fan of of his book, High Fidelity or the movie that came out years ago and even there was even a Hulu TV series, but it's a similar theme, I like to think that I was never quite as crazy as Jimmy Fallon's character in that movie, but I probably was a little bit close. You know, I think it shows that Jimmy Fallon isn't really an actor, Right.

But they worked well together. Drew and Jimmy were a good pairing on the screen. It was you know, you don't really need all the extras. I, I do wonder what it's like trying to film something like that, you know? Do you just kind of you're at the park and you do it on the off days and then they bring in the do they have extras or do they just film on a day that, you know, there is a team there?

It's it's fascinating to see how they they might play that whole thing. But one of the ones that I like is a series. Okay. Brockmire Oh, yeah. Brockmire. Hank Azaria Yeah, this kind of washed up. ANNOUNCER Yep. Has to go to this. This I don't even know what league it would be team to be the announcer there. And I always thought it was so funny how they tried to maintain the semblance of, yeah, we're, we're, we're professionals.

We're. Yeah. What do you mean? And they were so bad. Yeah, but. And Hank can really do that. Yeah. Pretty good at playing that. That kind of a role. I love the first two seasons of it. It kind of fizzled out in that last one. I don't know if you made it through the whole way. It was that that last season was in the future, set in the future, and baseball was kind of on the demise and Oh God, no.

It was it was really weird. I enjoyed it. I tried to get if I had another friend that got me into it that he really liked it. We kind of crushed through it one weekend together and it was really good. I've tried to get a few other people into it who just couldn't get into the concept. I think you have to be a certain level too, of baseball fans may be appreciated.

He did. Hank Azaria modeled the character off of a little bit off of Lindsey Nelson, who is a broadcaster for the New York Mets back in the sixties and seventies. So did he. Yeah, I guess he did. Yeah. It was a little bit more of a deadpan approach to broadcasting. Maybe I like those kinds of films because it's about losers.

Yeah, Yeah. And for some reason you want to just cheer because if it's a winning team, think of any movies that were winning teams. I don't know that there were. It's always the come from behind concept that seems to to work. So Major League major League. Oh, my point, which is funny because I love Ted Lasso, but Ted Lasso is nothing but a major league rip off just soccer instead of baseball.

But and I love them both. But but Major League is another one, which I think has all those quotable moments that you can dig out all the time. And it had such a fun ensemble cast of Charlie Sheen. Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Wesley Snipes. It's fine. And it was filmed in Milwaukee, even though it takes place in Cleveland.

That first one. Wow. My grandparents went to one of the filming. They they needed fans to fill the stands at county, State Old County Stadium, which is very similar to Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. And did they say it was fun or do they say they enjoyed it? I really was going back. They went and they spent the night.

They were I guess they were given instructions to like cheer at this moment and then they would have to cheer six times because they had to keep redoing the take. And that it's kind of funny knowing that having that context that it is County Stadium and that they had to cheer at certain moments. If you go back and watch the movie, even though I can't see my grandparents anywhere in the movie, I can kind of envision them being told, okay, like cheer now, don't cheer now look happy, don't look happy, that kind of thing.

Because you can start sort of pick through those moments in that movie a little bit. Yes, yes, yes. Well, somewhere I have baseball cards from Major League. Do you? Yeah. They sent it back in the day. And don't ask me where it is, but, you know, when the vast heap is sorted and multiplied, we'll find it in there and I'll give them to You can have.

I appreciate that. You know, Topps, the baseball card company occasionally has done it was like weird subsets within their annual sets of cards and they did one a few years ago with cards for the it was like the anniversary of Major league. And they did cards for that. And they they've done a couple other movies. I can't think of them all offhand, but they've had they've had a few of those in the past where they were.

Yeah. You know, they're I had to buy them on the secondary market. I had yeah. They weren't crazy price but they, and they included some inserts like, you know, autographs from Wesley Snipes and but how many did he do. Like two. And then you're really a rapper and you can't find one of them. Yeah, exactly. And that one where the honors kid that's where that went you know, from a historical standpoint to eight months out is another good one.

The 1919 Black Sox scandal. Yes, it's a little dense. And I think when I first watched it, when it came out, so that came out in 88 and it was probably around 13 or so when it came out. It was a little dense for me at the time, but I've come to appreciate it now. It's just the audience, you know, you were expecting sandlot and instead more than you cared to know.

Another thing that I do like to pop out, I haven't watched it really this year, but was the documentary Baseball by Ken Burns for PBS, which is just a really deep dive into each inning, is basically a ten year span, more or less in the history of baseball. And you can tell that he's a fan. Yes. Just by the way, that all put together.

And I'll I'll stop because I can't think of the guy's name, but he brought a I'm a Negro League player and he was featured heavily in the in the series. And the guy was the sweetest man you've ever met. He was just it was really fun to talk to because he talked about a game that maybe we didn't realize it was there.

You know, you're out in in Iowa. Yeah. Do you ever see the movie Sugar? Sugar? It's from 2008. It was kind of a low ish budget. I don't know if is made for TV or just one of those that went short term in the theaters and then flew out. But it was really if you if you get a chance, go back and check this one out.

It takes place in Iowa. Okay. It follows a player that gets signed out of the Dominican Republic, which is is a big thing in baseball. And it follows him for basically a season where he goes to spring training. He doesn't speak any English. This player, along with several other players who don't speak English, they go out to breakfast every morning and the only thing they know how to order is pancakes.

So they they get pancakes every single morning. And then he gets assigned to a team in the Quad Cities and he basically lives with the host family for the whole year but is struggling to adapt. And it follows him through this entire season up until kind of like the end where he he runs into, you know, problems. And it's really heartbreaking because I think they tried to make it as accurate as possible to what a foreign born young player who kind of, you know, he signs a bonus.

It's probably you know, it's not a ton of money. It's but but for for a young player who's poor in the Dominican Republic who maybe gets a $10,000 bonus or whatever it was, it's a huge sum of money that he can support his family. But then he's dropped in to America and he doesn't know how to live. He has no connections, he doesn't speak the language.

And it's really heartbreaking. I must see that sugar, sugar. I'll look for it. No, I didn't see it. It was not here. So I didn't have the exposure to that. But that does sound fascinating because, you know, there are kind of tropes that they rely on, which is, you know, the losers becoming winners, the bad boy suddenly deciding that he's not he's not going to go in that direction.

So you don't get to really see what the reality of the of the thing is. And I always wonder, you know, what about those who get cut? What happens to them and what career do they have after that? And do they still talk about their baseball years or are they you know, that's that's in their past or do they live in the past?

And that's all, you know. So there's a good Pete Rose story in there somewhere. So you would I think you would like sugar then because it kind of gets into that check that one out definitely for well, the season has begun. Are you are you as dedicated this year as you were in past years or are you pretty sucked in?

I mean, the Mets 101 games last year and they're looking pretty good this year. So I'm I'm I'm going to be locked in for the better part of the summer and will probably be crushed by the end of it. It's going to make it all the way. Come on, you guys are. I'll be crushed. I'll I'll. It always ends in disappointment for me.

That's that's life of a mets fan. And then you say, well, I'm just wearing this shirt because I'm a rapper. That's right. That's my, my, my phone. Yeah. You know that the League of Their Own is one of those things that we see now with a trend, as I can see it in television, which is rebooting ideas or concepts and putting them out there on the small screen in a different way.

And they did twist that one in a different way. And also the new Greece one, the rise of the pink ladies that goes in another direction as well. And there are other ones down the road, but one that I wish we could talk about is Dead Ringers. The show was a David Cronenberg film with Jeremy Irons, and I remember seeing this thing and it was a scary as you could get because they were two doctors.

And you know, at the time when I saw it, I always believe that you trusted a doctor. A doctor was he was citing gospel. So if he said that you needed to use some weird thing that he had invented, like the Mantel brothers do, I would go for it. Right. And then I guess we're a little savvy or now about all those kinds of things.

But they've changed. They've shifted it. So it's not twin brothers that are in the medical profession. It's twin women. And they're they're still called Beverly and Elliot Mantle, both played by Rachel Weisz. And they are interested in obstetrics and what they can do with that and how they could control life and birth. And I mean, it opens up a lot of areas that the first film never did, and it talks about the the high cost of medical care and how it isn't necessarily a, you know, kind of a what we would consider a public kind of nonprofit kind of thing.

It's a profit center for people. And there are rich people investing in the kind of concepts that the mantles come up with, and they're seeing it as a great revenue stream. And this thing digs into that concept where, you know, they don't really care if they're hurting people in the process. They're going to make some money off of this.

So it's fascinating to see how they go through all that. It's a they open it up to a different world and the cast is largely female and the people behind the cameras are female, too. So they're giving a female perspective of all of all of this. I got to talk to Poppy Lou, who plays the assistant to the Mantles.

I don't want to call her a maid, but she's certainly there all the time with both Beverly and Eliot. And she gets a chance to see how kind of corrupt they are and what they're doing. And the fascinating thing and you'll see this when you listen to the the interview is that Poppy is a dual in real life.

She actually does have birthing experience with other people. And she talks about the life of a dual life. But it is fascinating what she was able to glean from all of this and what she learned from the process. So that's in our interview with Poppy Lou from Dead Ringers.

Poppy, can I ask you about being a do a lot. How does that play with this? Did this give you, like different insight or different a different view of everything that goes on in the film? Yeah, I mean, I was a jeweler before this project happened. It kind of was just like a really serendipitous marriage of like worlds and interests.

But yeah, I like, I think being a doula is something that so near and dear to my heart. I think about sort of the reproductive state of this country a lot and that I think to like encounter a script that is so captivating and compelling as a story and also is very deeply embedded in the themes of, in my mind, reproductive rights, reproductive justice, the the difference in birthing experience for different people based on their background, their race, their class status, on how much the medical system fails us to have that as an undercurrent, a backdrop for this incredibly visually captivating, dark, moody, sexy story.

So cool. I was fascinated by the way the monitor is an aspect of it, how, you know, it's like having a child knowing that we're making money off this and it's like, wow, it literally is, though. Have you seen the documentary called The Business of Being Born? It literally I mean, like even I think this is no shade at all.

It's like doctors or unions, like heroes. Incredible love. But it really is the medical system, you know, like like it's really based off of an industrial factory mentality where, like, people are like the products, like you want them in and out as fast as possible. It's based on efficiency, it's based on cutting costs because that's how everything is based, you know, And it ends up being that like the care and like what people actually need to have, like a holistic and even holistic, but just like a, like a positive experience is it is not is it prioritized by how the system works?

It's really like, get in, get the baby out or like whatever, and like la la la la. And I think you encounter care through like individual people, but not because of like the system. That to me, that was even scarier than all of the kind of other things, especially when we saw the Cronenberg film where they had all those kind of tools and whatnot that scared the hell out of me.

But the idea that everything is so kind of old and calculated, I guess, is what I see it, is that for you, you dealt with both Beverly and Elliot. Yeah. How good is that or how easy was that? Or how fun was that? It's easy and fun cause it's Rachel and she's a genius and it's incredible. But I mean, yeah, we for the scenes where they're where both twins are, and then we just.

We have to sell them twice or twice as many takes everything. She'll play it as one of the twins. Katie Hawthorne was incredible, who is both Rachel's body double and also plays the young version of Rachel's mother in the final scenes is incredible, everybody. And she'll stand in for the other twin and you'll just then, you know, they'll be like a 30 minute or whatever changeover Rachel will get from Beverly to Elliot or Elliot to Beverly come back again.

And like, I think even when you watch it the way that these two characters are so specifically different, like, like there's even a scene where the two twins, like, they play each other as themselves. And the fact that that's done with so much like, like the specificity and realness, like, I think Rachel's a genius, you know, she's playing two different people and then she's playing them play each other.

It's it's fun.

All right, Bruce, thanks for that interview. You know, you were talking a little bit about a lot of program now seems to be remakes of things or maybe stuff that's been sitting in development for a little while. We're in this threat of a writer's strike it I correct right. But what is going on there? Well, and it could really delay the fall season.

It could make content, you know, kind of disappear. They would end up doing a lot of game shows and things that didn't need scripting. But what they also did back the last time I can remember is they took old scripts and reshot them. So they didn't need to have new writers. They just did old shows and I'm sorry I can't get one off the top of my head.

But it didn't work. It was a concept. It didn't work. Reality TV, however, was a good answer to all of that because they said, Well, we really don't need a script there. You know, they're just talking mirror. And so I think they would lean in heavier in that aspect and maybe they would bring back stuff and say, we're going to remake it.

I don't know. Interestingly, next week we're going to talk about a small light, which is a National Geographic miniseries. And they had done a movie about the people that are covered in this, but not in such an extensive way. And it's about the people who helped the Franks hide out during World War Two. MEEP Jeez, does that name ring a bell?

Meep Geese. She was a an assistant or a secretary of sorts to Mr. Frank and he just he said, you know, we've got to get out. Can you help us? And she didn't pause for a minute. She and her husband were very good at keeping their secret, hiding them, bringing them food, doing all this kind of stuff. And they really never got the attention that others thought they should have because they were very courageous in what they did.

Well, now this miniseries opens that up and gives you a real good look at what they actually did and others like them and what kind things they were able to do during World War Two. But I talked to the the stars of that show, and they're a unique perspective, particularly since, you know, they're young and they didn't have a point of reference for a lot of the things that were going on.

So that'll be next week. A small light and we'll talk to the stars of that. I saw that live Schreiber is in that is he's out of frame Yeah yeah he you know he's not in it that much but it is one of those ones where you go I didn't recognize them because it isn't it isn't one of those kind of roles that he's used to playing it is, it is a a leap for him as well.

Okay. Well, I'm looking forward to that one because as I said, I love historical dramas and as somebody who's got Jewish heritage, it certainly will, you know, be a little bit touching for me as well. They went on location to film a lot. They didn't film the Anne Frank House, but they did film nearby a lot of places.

There's one where they jump in the water and what you'll find I thought really interesting about this is that they were far more contemporary. I mean, you know how we think of people in the past, how kind of maybe closed up they are and these are not these people aren't like that. And they were very fun. And Miep is one of those ones who just will.

She's not going to think about it if she should do it, just jumps in and does it. And she's very good when she's dealing with the Nazis and how they want her to talk. So you'll enjoy I think you'll enjoy how it how it spills out. And it also tells us that we too, could make a difference if we only speak out and and do what's right.

Wonderful. Well, we'll we'll dive more into next week. Until then, thank you for listening. Until then, batter up.

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It's the end of the road for an Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning comedy series.

“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is back for its fifth and final season, with episodes dropping weekly starting April 14 on Amazon Prime Video. 

For this episode of Streamed & Screened, hosts Bruce Miller and Terry Lipshetz, provide a (mostly) spoiler-free analysis of the the program, which is a favorite of both. Also hear from the stars, including clips from Rachel Brosnahan (Miriam "Midge" Maisel), Alex Borstein (Susie Myerson), Tony Shalhoub (Abraham "Abe" Weissman) and Kevin Pollak (Moishe Maisel) who reflect on the characters, the series and whether we might see them all reprise their roles in the future as part of a feature-length movie.

Bruce also has an interview with Michael Zegen, who plays Midge's ex-husband Joel Maisel, who offers thoughts of his own on the program.

Whether you're a longtime fan of the show or looking for an introduction before you binge the whole thing over a long weekend, you'll want to give this episode a listen.

About the show

Read more: REVIEW: 'Mrs. Maisel' ends with marvelous update

Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video

Cast:

Created by: Amy Sherman-Palladino

Executive producers: Amy Sherman-Palladino, Daniel Palladino

Producers: Dhana Gilbert, Matthew Shapiro, Salvatore Carino, Sheila Lawrence

About the show

Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

A lot of young women trying standup comedy for the first time, which is so awesome and long overdue. It's been incredible to hear how his legacy has already affected people, and I'm really excited to see how she lives on.

That voice you just heard was Rachel Brosnahan, who stars as Miriam ‘Midge’ Maisel in ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee Enterprises and a co-host of Streamed and Screened, an entertainment podcast about movies and TV. Joining me, as always, is the incomparable Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal and a longtime entertainment reporter.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is back for its fifth and final season with episodes dropping weekly starting April 14th on Amazon Prime Video. Bruce It will be an end of an era for one of the most popular shows on that platform. Certainly big shoes to fill.

First of all, why was it not the marvelous Bruce Miller? This is now this is how this should be. This is how he introduced me. Right. It's interesting because this is a show that I think people lost track of because of the big gaps between seasons. Was it over? Is it over? And when they see this fifth season and I've seen the whole thing, they will go, Oh my God, there's so much in that fifth season because they do a lot of time jumps.

So you're not going to just see one season, one year play out. It goes into the future and you find out things about her children. You find out things about her husband, her ex-husband, her friends, Susie. All of those people come into play at some point. And so it flashes back and forth and it's I think it pays.

It rewards the people who have been loyal. And you get to see a lot of fun. So there is and I you know, I'm really I should say nothing. But there is one kind of cute thing where they're showing, you know, did she have a lot of dresses? And they show the racks of her clothes all. My God, what is this?

She did have it because I don't think she ever wore anything twice. No, I don't remember it. And you also, I think, see growth in Mrs. Maysles comedy career, how she's able to tell, you know, I always thought, is she making this crap up on the fly? And every night, is she not writing this down so that she can, you know, retell it at another place?

It seemed like every every routine she did was just of the moment. And you see how she does all that. And there is a scene in the last episode that is on Be Livable, and that's as much as I can tell you on the spoiler end of things. But okay, no spoilers. You know, when you first watched it, what surprised you most about it?

For me personally, I was sucked in because I'm a native of New York City, okay? And for me, my wife is from just outside of Green Bay, Wisconsin. And it's been an interesting ride because she's she's Catholic. I was raised Catholic, but my dad was Jewish. But for me, it's kind of seeing that cultural the cultural phenomenon of New York, the Jewish culture, even though I'm I didn't grow up in the fifties or sixties, I was born in the mid seventies, but for me I could relate to it.

And I thought that they kept this show like it's fiction, but it's also really easy. And I think it was that reality that kind of kept bringing me back. So a couple of things, if you don't mind me throwing these out, because we're going to be talking a lot about I mean, we're basically going to just talk about the show with Mrs. Basil.

Yes, this is the Mrs. Maisel episode. So first off, the beauty of streaming is if you have not watched this show yet, just go back and watch it. You know, go get Amazon Prime if you don't have it already and start cranking through them. My wife and I didn't start this until the 2020 lockdown. There was already in between season three and seven season for that really long gap they were talking about.

But we had nothing to watch during it. So we're kind of crushing through Netflix and Hulu and anything we could find. And we hopped into Mrs. Maisel and for some reason I didn't know much about it at the time. I was saying, What is this like some superhero thing? Because it kind of played with some of those Marvel titles that you hear.

But it's a it's a comedy. It takes place, I guess, you know, like late 1950s, early 1960s. Rachael Brosnahan plays Miriam Midge Maisel. She's a housewife with very strong Jewish personalities in her life. Between her her husband and her parents and her in-laws. Alex Borstein plays Susie Myerson. She manages The Gaslight Cafe.

Becomes a manager.

She wants to be a manager. She's there. Michael Zegen is Joel Maseil while her husband and there's a Tony Shalhoub is in it as her father. There's a lot of actors you will know. Kevin Pollak is her father in law. It was a Jane.

Lynch turned up as.

Jane Lynch. Yeah. So it's it's an awesome ensemble cast. So and it's also a lot of reality. So Luke Kirby plays Lenny.

Bruce.

Right? So he's a real person, very controversial comic of the time, but becomes Midge's friend over time and helps guide her career. Midge Maisel, a fictional character, but she's based on Joan Rivers, who had a relationship with Lenny Bruce and started at the Gaslight Cafe, which was a real location. It's where, if you've ever heard of a musician named Bob Dylan, you've heard of Bob Dylan before.Bruce Never heard of him. Never heard of him.

So he was a young man. Robert Zimmerman out of Hibbing, Minnesota.

Probably did. Well, is he did.

He did well. So he came to New York City and was kind of brought under the wing of a folk singer named Dave Van Ronk, who is who is the mayor of MacDougal Street down in the village of New York City. They performed at the Gaslight. This is a real location. So it's the beauty of this show is, you know, you're getting a little bit of a history lesson of the time and it but it's still a fictional comedy.

It's hilarious. I love it. It's very you know, some of it is kind of on the surface kind of comedy and you pick it up really quick. But some of it's very deep, too, and it kind of gets into, you know, the place of women at the time in the 1950s and, you know, kind of being you're the housewife.

Take care of the kids. Joel wants to be the comic. He's the one that's going to be the comedian. And of course, the tables get turned. But yeah, you're right. I mean, with the dresses, even as the show progresses and, you know, she's short on cash, sometimes it's like, how can you afford this apartment? Where are all these dresses coming from?

It's ridiculous.

The clothing budget does not suffer. She will always have a great outfit. What I find fascinating was each year it got bigger. You know, you start out and it's kind of like, Oh, this is doing a period show is expensive. And they didn't. They just threw it out there. They went to a summer camp, you know, and that can't be easy to recreate, particularly of that era.

Then they go to a USO show, which is huge in an airplane hangar. They go to Paris, for God's sakes. This season, you're going to see them in New York and you're going to see a lot of landmarks in New York, particularly Rockefeller Center, which they use like a drum. They are around that building all the time. So that's that's fascinating to see.

And the cast, there are so many people over those four seasons that get a return visit in the fifth. So it's it's kind of like a reunion. And you go, Oh my God, That was from remember when they did that? And she was in that. And then there's also a bit of, Oh, how can I how can I say this without saying this?

It reminds you of if you saw my favorite year, if you saw laughter on the 23rd floor, if you saw any of those kind of looks at what Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris did during the early days of television. With your show of shows, there are references to those kinds of things, so you get a real sense of the time.

I think you really get to see what the fifties and sixties were like. There's a sort of Johnny Carson character. They mentioned Jack Paar in the course of the the series. What I love are these time jumps where you find out exactly what happened to Mrs. Maisel. What did she fizzle out and become? Nothing. Did she come a big star?

Was she like Joan Rivers? You know, that is an easy comparison. But there were other female comics of the time, Tony Fields, if you remember that name. I don't know if it moms Mabley, these were all ones who were working that Phyllis Diller. And they kind of had to be aggressive in their approach to comedy because otherwise they were going to just be bulldozed over.

And I think that's what you get out of out of Midge, is that she is not going to take no, but she is going to get knocked down.

I can't wait to dive into this. It's exciting. I always love those just the characters. They even if they're playing such a really small role, it feels like they're playing a much larger role than it actually turns out to be.

There are little in this one, you know. I don't know if you ever remember those kind of industrial shows that used to be big in New York, where it would be like, Oh, soap or whatever. And they do a huge thing for all of their their corporate people around the country. They'd come in for a day or whatever a weekend, and they do an industrial show, which we are.

A lot of Broadway people would get on stage and sing the praises of, you know, Lox or whatever it might have been, or a new car. And they did these elaborate stage shows and fact there's a documentary out about them that is just fascinating because it's a world we don't know. We weren't in that industry. We weren't in that that thing.

But people made a lot of money off that writing those shows. And you get a sense of that as well. There's a big convention of sorts that that Midge happens to be involved in. So you get another you know, it's this history lesson that you're getting a lot of stuff, even though it's not a real person. You know, if she were real, I think you'd look at it differently.

You would say, Oh, well, you've got to have this moment. You've got to have that, and you really don't know what could happen. And Joel does not get shortchanged either. You know, I thought that maybe he would kind of just disappear as the years go by. And he has a very, very strong presence in the final season.

That's great. I always loved his character. I always was afraid that as the ex-husband, estranged husband, he might just kind of slowly walk out of the show. And in the fact that not only has he remained at the forefront and kind of done his own thing, too, he's found his place and kind of escaped the shadow of his very overbearing parents.

But the fact that he's still in it and that his parents are still in it just really makes the whole program him.

And they do interweave those things, too, you know, that he was building a club. He was trying to get a club off the ground. And you'll see more of that in the next season. And his parents are big players with Mrs. Maysles parents. Interestingly, I don't think you see enough of Tony Shalhoub. I think he has a very secondary presence in in this year's show, and that's surprising because he won an Emmy for it, and I would have thought they would have leaned in a little more, maybe he just wasn't available to do a lot more.

That's interesting. I also wonder, too, if it's is it part of character development, too, where they they want to highlight certain characters each season kind of give them because he did seem to have a very prominent role last year.

When he was doing The Village Voice and he's a critic. And now he's getting the reaction to what life is like as a critic, which is I think, just fascinating.

That's your favorite part, isn't it?

Yeah, that's the cool part. Yeah. I lean into the critic aspect. I don't do I care about the comic? I don't know if I do, but I do care about the critic.

You know, you talk a little bit about the characters and the reality and whatnot. One of my favorite things from the series and this is because, you know, and we've talked about this my my fan of of I'm such a huge fan of music. I have a very large record collection and just I feel like I have a pretty solid knowledge and I'm watching I think it was season it was season three when Midge was out on tour, was Shy Baldwin.

Right. So she was doing comedy to open up for his big band performance. So he was performing. He had that ensemble band behind him. There was the one character who kind of became her friend of sorts. Carol Keane, who is a fictional musician. However, she was based on a real person. She played. Carol Kaye, if you at all familiar with her, is a legendary bassist, and she's part of what's known as The Wrecking Crew.

The Wrecking Crew in the 1960s was this group of musicians that would come in and they were studio musicians. So you would have performers who weren't necessarily the best bands. They would go out live. But when it came to actually recording the albums, the producers were like, Let's you guys are in quite good enough. And it was even the Beach Boys, like the Beach Boys, didn't perform their own instruments in the studio.

In a lot of cases. It was a lot of times it was The Wrecking Crew. So Carol Kaye, the real person was the basis to put down the bass line. That famous bass line in In These Boots by Nancy Sinatra. The bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. So that was Carol Kaye and the fictional character in Mrs. May's All, who is also the bassist in the band and a befriended Midge and that season.

So that was for me, another piece that I just really love about this.

That's where rewards you for being astute in other areas, correct?

If you if you know things like if you you know, if you don't if you don't know these things, that's that's totally fine. You're just going to be entertained for for an hour or however long the episode is. But if you if you're familiar with pop culture in any way, you don't need to just know the real people like Lenny Bruce.

But it's knowing little things like The Gaslight Cafe. Carol Kaye, These types of people, you know, they are based on actual folks, even if it's just very loosely.

Yeah, it's fun to see who they might be. You know, Sophie Lennon, Who is she referring to? Who is she trying to be that you would know as a fellow comedian? You know, is she somebody that or is she just whole cloth, a fresh character? And that's I think that's kind of picking the brain of Amy Sherman Palladino, the creator of this show.

If you know her from Gilmore Girls, you know that she loves dance scripts, she loves the idea that there's there are more words there than really you need to do a half hour or 45 minutes of a show, but she packs it and I would assume it would be very difficult to to learn all those lines, particularly when she wants that kind of rapid fire way of talking.

And that's how she is. She's just like that. She usually wears a hat, too. She loves wearing hats. She's short. She's not unlike Susie. I would assume that a lot of Susie's personality comes from Amy, and her husband. Daniel is also a producer on the show, and he writes as well. So they're they're kind of in sync with what this mindset is all about.

And I'm sure she had a grand plan as to where she was going to take this whole thing. Now, you can easily see that they might have gone seven or eight years with this, but I think the idea of cutting it off now opens up other opportunities like a movie. And I think for them, let's let's try and make the fifth season as packed as we can and then we can go on and do those other things and not have to worry about time limitations or we've got to meet a deadline to get this on the air by a certain time because it's it's expensive.

It is hugely expensive.

Bruce, I don't think you know this, but you have just set up the perfect segue way into, oh, wow, some audio here. So we already heard from Rachel. Now we're going to hear from Tony Shalhoub, who plays Midge's father. He talks about how they didn't know how long this series was going to go, but felt that both Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino were able to wrap up the story perfectly the way it was supposed to be.

So let's let's cut ahead to that clip.

From what I understand, even though we didn't know how many seasons it may go or may not go, Amy and Dan always had, they always had the final scene in their heads. They always they didn't know exactly how we were going to get there, but they knew where we were going to land and then I think we all by osmosis, we all felt that cool.

All right, so that was Tony Shalhoub. Bruce, does that sound accurate, like what he's talking about? Does it feel like the series wraps up perfectly?

I think it does for me it did anyway. And I thought, like I say, the last episode is one you can't miss because it's and I, I cheated, all right? Because I was afraid I was doing an interview and I thought I better see the end just in case this character is dead. I don't want to end up asking, Well, like, you know, what about those later years are, well, I'm dead, so I won't be in those later years.

But that wasn't the case. There wasn't anything. But I did watch the last episode before I finished off the other ones before it, and the last episode is a great example of standalone television. You could take that episode out, not see any of the rest of the series, and you would still get a really good sense of a story.

It's like a little mini movie in itself, and it's interesting how they all are able to get friends in. There is a roast at one point that has a lot of comedians that you know, are friends of a lot of the actors that are in the shows. And there are ties. I think Rachel's husband is a character in the show.

There are people that are all people who've been on Gilmore Girls, people who've been on Bunheads, people who have been, if you will, loyal over the years. And they repay that loyalty by giving them a shot in this last season. I mean, it's remarkable. If I sat and made a list of all the people that I saw, I, you know, a character that they introduced last season played by Gideon Glick, he's this magician and kind of an offbeat magician.

And you go, What is this? I love that character. And he returns this season and he has a lot of really goofy things. He's afraid of flying. So that's a fear factor. And there there is a picture that you'll see out there somewhere that is JFK, the the airport. So you'll be able to see what that looks like inside.

And it's just fascinating to see these characters. The last time I saw it was Catch Me if you can, and just to look at that and now there's a hotel there that you can stay at there. It's very commercial where you could go and actually do tourism things there. But it is featured in this season. Again, huge, huge landmarks that they're using in New York.

I think it's fascinating to to realize that somebody didn't say no. Nobody was saying them, No, you can't do that. We can't afford to do that. It's like I'm sure she dreamed it. And very much like Susie, where she's not going to let somebody else tell her no, she's just going to keep going ahead and doing it. And I think that's in a nutshell.

Amy.

Amy Palladino I can't remember the timing of this. Was the JFK airport at the time, or was it still Idlewild?

Yeah, it was, Yeah, it was, but as I know it is.

I know I always wondered because it transitioned.

It was not named. No, it was not named JFK because, you know, and interestingly, I don't remember that they've even mentioned that Kennedy has died at that point. But you'll see the eighties, you'll see the nineties, you'll see the seventies, you'll see various different time frames over the course of the of the of the episodes.

Wow. So another character that was mentioned and we talked briefly about her was that of Alex Borstein. She plays Susie Myerson. You know, you had mentioned the connection with her to Amy Sherman-Palladino and whether it's the connection there. But we have a we have a clip of her also. Now, if you're familiar with her, she's also the voice of Lois on Family Guy.

She's a comedian. She's been around for a really long time. But I think this is kind of like probably her biggest breakthrough screen role that I can think of on screen role. So we have a short clip of her talking about her relationship with Midge. So let's go to that.

For a bit. Like Mutton, Jeff, It makes no sense. And yet there's just this chemistry. There's something that draws these women together and they've got each other's backs and it's not about finding a mate. It's about achieving something in their lives that they want. It's about filling a hole within and they complete each other.

All right, Bruce So that was Alex Borstein talking about the relationship that Susie and Midge have. Is that connection? Because that was always one of my favorite things was the interactions between Midge and Susie and kind of the weird polar opposites that they are, but they have this great presence on screen together. Do we get more of that in this first season?

We do. And you also get fighting. And that's as much as I can say about that. You know how they it's like on a soap opera where they love to put people together and then they like to tear them apart. And I think this falls into that. You know, there's there's a reason for them to be at each other's throats and maybe they both don't pay attention enough to what the needs are of the other person.

But you see how how Susie is just giving her life for this person that maybe she might be a little too protected. You know, Mitch can Mitch has the ability to go and do this because she has her parents to fall back on if she really needs them. Her husband, her ex-husband is still there in the picture for her.

She doesn't have that kind of if I don't do this, I don't know what will happen to my life. There is a safety net for her, and we've seen that over the years where she's taken jobs at other places and done other things and she gets a new job this year. And that's a safety net of sorts, too.

But there's always this comedy where Susie has nothing. Susie is like she's all in and she will do whatever she needs to do to further the career of her client. Hopefully there will be more clients, but you know, you look at it and you say, Oh my God, she's just doing all this for one person. Is that friendship?

Is that is that, you know, just survival? Is it? She's enamored with her. What is the what is the deal for her and why is she doing this? And you get answers to all of that stuff. It's just it's really fascinating. I remember when they went to the to the Catskills and they were staying there and I think she had a hammer or something.

And she was like trying to do things with the hammer. And you go, Oh my God, this is unreal. And she's always treated like dirt by everybody. Everybody sees her as like their batboy for anything that goes wrong. Susie, we're going to go to you.

Yeah, She said that season at the Catskills was just incredible. I mean, they basically took it was pretty much the entire season was more or less on location up there. And you still had to work her in somehow. And she obviously she doesn't dress like somebody that belongs there. So she just walked around with that hammer and like, I think a plunger, too, just looking like a maintenance worker and nobody would question it because that's what she did.

But that relationship, you know, even though we're we're avoiding spoilers for season five, we had that adversarial give and take relationship between them throughout all the seasons. Because you're right, she didn't have anybody. Susie doesn't have anybody to fall back on, so she has to make a living, which meant at times taking on other clients. You know, she didn't want to be Sophie Lemon's manager, but she needed the money and then kind of had to deal with that abuse as well as the abuse of of Midge, who couldn't believe that she would support Sophie Lennon, who is her her nemesis.

Right. Yeah. So, you know, that that to me has been just a great, you know, relationship. But it always comes back to when they meet in the diner, which is such an iconic New York thing. Like, I just love I miss diners so much. Bruce Living in Wisconsin, there's no diners out here. People who think there's diners out here, there is no diners out here that is.

Have a drive thru with it, too, right?

But it's such a it's just such a new York, New Jersey, East Coast cultural thing where you go to a diner and you get that triple decker club sandwich or the pastrami or whatever it is and a pile of food.

You come all the other way, it's on you. Who knows everybody's order.

Yeah. You know, you get that big pickle spear which probably sits on every plate, and they just move it from plate to plate so I don't touch it.

The end. They do. Go back to the diner. You'll be seeing that and you'll be seeing various and sundry combinations of people talking. So it's a it's a key place. And like I say, these sets that they build the apartments, the business places they go to, it's unbelievable. I don't know how I would love to see what the budget was for this because it had to be huge because it looks good.

And I there's a thing and there's this coming season where they mention something as a giveaway, okay? And I thought, oh no, that it's it's wrong. It's not the same time. And I had to look it up to make sure that that was within that time span. It was exactly in that time span. You know how you would say I like a yo I don't want to see what it is because again, this is one of those things.

But if it was a yo yo and you say, well, yo, yo, what year was a Rubik's cube? That would be one a Rubik's Cube. Why are they giving away Rubik's cubes? They weren't available in 62 or 61 were they. I don't I think they didn't come until the seventies, but that's not yet. But there is another thing like that.

And damn, if they didn't nail it. And I looked it up and it was exactly right, it it fit with the time frame. You'll see stuff like that that it just you want to play gotcha with them and they, they already know they're much better than we are at vetting these kinds of things.

Yeah, they, they're really good. It's just nailing history. It is a history. Even though it is fiction, it is a history lesson throughout pop culture, history lesson.

Were there characters that you really like that maybe aren't around or have, you know, dropped in for an episode or two?

Well, you know, the Carol K one was one that I really liked. The magician that was in there in season four when Midge was working at that theater. And, you know, it's kind of the adult content. It's not quite a strip club, but it's that kind of like a doll that the manager of that club was. It's just a lot of those little characters like that.

I really love the characters that I really felt a personal connection to, and we'll kind of kind of move this forward too, with some some clips that we have coming up. So we have Michael Zegen, who plays Joel Maze, all his parents. Kevin Pollack plays Moisi Maisel, his father, and then Caroline Aaron plays Shirley Mays or his mother.

So I had mentioned earlier that that my mom was Catholic, my dad is Jewish. His parents, um, his mother died. My, my paternal grandmother died. I was probably about 15 years old when she passed away. She wasn't a very devout Jewish person.

My grandfather was he was it could be. Yes, it was.

That was probably about it. My grandfather was always a little bit more religious. And then after my grandmother died, he got remarried a year or two later is very quick. And the woman that he married, her name was Mildred. We all called her Millie and they became very devout again. He would go to temple. They kept kosher, but but Millie had a very unique personality.

So when the show started and I started watching it, and when Joel's parents were finally introduced and Shirley Hazel comes on screen, I turned to my wife immediately and I'm like, Oh my goodness, that is Millie.

That's Bella.

Is Millie. Looks like Millie. Sounds like Millie. Acts like Millie. This is not like you can think that that there's there's acting here and we're over the top and there's no way people could be like this in real life. Surely Basil is Millie or Millie was Shirley. Mabel, whichever reality. So it to me there was just that personal connection that that strong, very strong personality with her.

And in the father, I would I don't think my grandfather was any way like my she they had certain crossovers but you know Shirley and Millie were two peas in a pod.

Shirley is a big fan of pop culture, and she knows all the names that Midge might throw out there. She has like she could give you an encyclopedia about the person, and she's so excited about everything. And of course, when Midge invites them to come to various and sundry things, oh, she's right there. She's ready to come. Whereas her own mother is like, well, this interrupt with what I'm doing.

I don't know if I want to come and see you perform in front row is always Shirley. Shirley is there. She's all, This is wonderful. You're doing a great job. I love you, you're great. And you'll see they do a lot with them during this next year, so you'll enjoy that.

I'm looking forward to that because that interaction with them and in some ways to my my maternal grandparents who were Catholic, they never interacted that often with each other. But there is always a very strange relationship between like my mom and her parents and my dad and his parents when they would interact. It was very I don't know if his adversarial is quite the way, but culturally very different.

And I kind of get that with this show, like like Midge and her parents were very much one way, and Joel and his parents are very much another. And there is that that onscreen dynamic that I just love. And it kind of clicks with me a bit.

Yeah, and they're together a lot. The four of them do a lot of things together. You'll be you'll be thrilled.

You know, speaking of Moisi, Mazal, we do have one more clip of Kevin Pollak, and he's talking a little bit about the future of Mrs. Maisel. So let's go to that.

Yeah, we're not going to ever say goodbye. And I predict now for you, in 4.3 years we'll be here talking about the amazing movie. There I said it.

Kevin Pollak leaves a little bit of that door open. Could we see Mrs. May's old movie?

I think it's the door has been cracked. Look, the way they need content these days and you know that it'd be an Amazon film in a minute. And, you know, so they put it in theaters. They could get a lot of attention for it. And then you just put it on streaming again. I think we've seen the model for all of this.

And like I said, it would help pay the bills for all that expensive stuff that they're using because it looks like a Cinemascope film. It's shot. Well, it has great I mean, the scoring, they created original songs for this. Now, really for a half hour you're going to do that. And the sets, the costumes, the whole and, you know, the first season they won a lot of Emmys for those kind of below the line things.

And I think this year they're going to be well rewarded for what they've done because it is so vast and so unbelievable. But, you know, it did not go unnoticed by the actors. I think they believe that they landed into a great situation. And I don't think it was by chance either that they were selected. I think these people, they knew who were the hard workers, they knew who the ones that would deliver for them.

And it it it seems like it's a brutal show to do because it isn't just getting up and saying a line against somebody. You know, what's interesting is you'll see a little a clip of a TV show that stars Hank Azaria and Sutton Foster within the show. It looks it has a bit of Dick Van Dike to the quality of it.

And Sutton Foster kind of seems like a mary Tyler Moore. And you think the idea that they would write this script for a show within a show that really isn't seen that much, you get a couple of lines out of it. And, you know, they did you know, they probably wrote the whole script or this sitcom that they were trying to reference in some way.

And it's done in black and white. And you get all of that that kind of little homage. But clearly they are fans of the medium. They are ones who want to make sure that it comes across and you do get that sense of what the time was like. You know, it was not easy being a female comedian in New York, Hollywood, wherever.

And I don't I think now it just seems too easy because we see comedians all over the place, you know, doing a one hour special on Netflix. But the idea that somebody would have had that or got that an unreal, unreal. And if I was able to interview Joan Rivers Times and she net, you know, as much as she was kind of oh what's the term I want to use not boisterous but she was you know, she seemed like a very like she would just tell it like it is and not worry about the consequences.

That was not Joan. It was a character that she was portraying. She was the most loving, wonderful person who would would take you under her arms and just treat you like a friend. And that's the I think that's the same kind of disconnect you get here with Mrs. Maisel. She is two different people, but I can see easily that she is the the Joan Rivers is the template for Mrs. Maisel, even though their lives are much different.

They don't they don't wind up the same way. They don't have the same dynamics. There aren't the same, you know, cards being played. But there is that kind of idea that I'm alone. I really am alone in this venture and I've got to do what I want to. Another series that it kind of seems similar to is Hacks, because you see Jean Smart showing what a comedian's like after the big days are over and how does she keep that going?

And there's a glimpse of that with this fascinating because I think I think Joan Rivers is the mothership for all these kinds of things because of what she did do and the idea that look at Joan went to QVC and sold crap just to make money, you know, and what she had to do, she alienated Johnny Carson at one point and then she had her own show.

But the one thing that she valued most was The Tonight Show. And there was no way they were going to let her back on with that because she had, you know, went as she had. She'd gone against the master and she wasn't sorry enough for Johnny to make this really work. And I think that was a big failing in Joan's life, is that she felt that somehow that relationship was not really repaired and she never got The Tonight Show.

She didn't get things she wanted, but in the end, she did get a lot. And she is viewed as somebody they all look up to. You know, they say, well, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for Joan Rivers. And I think that's the path that you're looking at with Mrs. Maisel as well.

So with Mrs. May's all leaving Prime Well, not really leaving. It's going to be there, but but this is a big tentpole production for them. What's left for Prime. They do have a lot of shows, but I also don't find myself going to Prime very often for original programing. It feels like a weird, weird platform to me compared some of the others in some ways, maybe a little bit like Apple Tv+, which has several big productions.

But when there's nothing there, you know, when you run out of something like Ted Lasso, it feels like there's a long gap until something else comes. What what's your thinking on on Prime right now?

I think, though, they're doing movies and a lot of those movies will draw the attention. And so I think that's where they'll get whatever. And they also have a lot of limited series that are ten and down or eight and done. And I think that for them is a better model then a series that who knows if you know the the the suits the executives who are in power may not like that series.

And there it's just like network TV. As soon as one regime is out, there's do we have support? You know, unless you're the number one show on television they'll be looking to dump. Yeah.

So we've been sprinkling clips throughout this episode, which has been fun because we don't always have audio from so many different people. But we do have one more and it's a little bit more than just a 1015 second clip. We have an interview. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, I got to talk to it to Michael Zegen, who plays Mr. Maisel. And it's fascinating because I was always under the impression that his job could be gone at any minute. I really thought that Joel is not necessary to this show. He was important in the first year, but would you stick around? And so we got to talk about that and what this last season was like and what, you know, what what comes next.

He is working on the Penguin, which is the new I think his HBO Max series with Colin Farrell, and he's a mobster in that. And so that's an excellent he'll be doing it Fascinating. And he feels very blessed, very blessed that he was a part of this because he knows it's magic in a bottle and you don't get that many times.

Michael, how is it to say goodbye to this? I would think that would be very, very difficult.

It is You're you're correct in you're you're sentiments. Yeah it's it's it's definitely difficult but it's some I don't know it doesn't feel like it's ended just yet especially you know we we still have all this and we're going to France together and I you know we still have this group text chain. So it's I don't think it'll ever quite feel over over.

But I, I, you know, I know the reality of it. And we're not going to be filming anymore, which is devastating.

Well, the last season is so stuffed with information. I mean, there's a lot there to unpack. What was it like when you were doing it? Did you say, Oh, my God, I can't believe this happened? And that happened. And, you know, there's a lot.

There is, but there's always a lot. I feel like, yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of dialog. I actually think this year the scripts, they're always long, you know and I guess in our show is is supposed to be like, you know, 55 to 60 pages, our scripts are like 90 pages to 100 pages. So they're always long.

I do feel like this this season, though, they were longer than most.

And the locations, I mean, you're everywhere, you're doing the years, the whole all of it. That's why I thought it seemed like an awful lot. But maybe it's let's get it done and then move on to something else.

Well, the show is big. It's been big from the beginning. You know, we went to Paris in the in the second season and the Catskills and Miami. So it's it's it's always been very big. And yeah, I mean, there's a lot of stuff, but somehow it just it still flows just as nicely as ever. And it's, you know, it's still.

Mazal.

When it started, did you feel, oh, they're going to get rid of my character at some point.

I, I was just saying this in a in a previous interview. Yeah. In the first episode when I read it, I thought that was it for Joel and I thought it was going to be a guest star. I didn't even I, I looked at the you know, I was auditioning for it. They send you the cast breakdown and it said that he was a series regular.

So I was like, Oh, even better. I had no idea. I really honestly thought this is it for him. And later. But but, you know, luckily that wasn't the case. And they were able to to create this this whole journey for and this evolution for this character.

And there have been so many subplots of his that he just kind of owns. That must be a real cool feeling to have them kind of right for you, if you will.

Yeah, we all get our subplots. But yeah, I mean, I think Joel's is is probably, I guess the most separate from from everybody else is they all kind of I mean, look, he's still in Midge's orbit, obviously, but but I think, you know, he's probably the he's like Pluto as opposed to, you know.

Tony's not Venus. Right. What were you miss about this show? Because you had such a huge cast and of really great people?

Well, that's what I mean. That's in that's it in a nutshell is the cast I, I, I, I'll miss everyone terribly isn't. And really, it's not just the cast, it's the crew. It's it's you know, our writers, Amy and Dan, obviously, I I'll miss everything about this show. Literally everything. This has been the greatest experience of my life so far, you know, work wise.

I don't I was just talking to Tony and Kevin Pollak and they were saying, you know, by the way, no way, you're going to top this. So, like, they felt bad for me because they they were saying they're like, you have like years and years left. We only have like three and, you know, and I'm on it. It's over for me, basically.

But I mean, I don't believe that, but I do I do believe that it's going to be very hard to top something like this.

Do you think it's because of the writing that made it such an iconic show or was it something else? Is it spending a lot of money and doing a lot of things, making it bigger than normal?

I think that the money is certainly helps. You know, luckily we had Amazon behind us and anything really Amy and Dan wanted they got because I think, you know, Amazon loved the show just as much as we did. But what was the first part of the question?

Well, did did you think that it was going to be this this big, this kind of whatever, or was it the writing that really kind of sold all of this thing?

It's really everything. It's the writing. It's like I said before, the crew, I mean, we had, you know, people at the top of their game in every, you know, whether it's lighting or set design or acting. I mean, it was just the whole the whole project was just lightning in a bottle. And and I think that's that's really just what made it so special.

But yeah, did I have any idea I, I didn't know that it was going to be this big. I knew people were going to like it. I liked it. So, you know, I, I think I've got pretty good taste. And, you know, my if you look at my resume like I've done really good shows before and I've done shows that people watch.

But but this was this took it to a new level. And, you know, right out of the gate, we we got nominated for all these awards and we won and we won the Golden Globe, you know, And that that was like, okay, yeah, we were right. Like, this is something special. And and now, you know, then we had to top that.

And you got the Emmy. So there you go.

Yes, We did.

Talk about, though, Amy, as a as a force. I have my views of what she'd be like. I always see her in a hat and I always think she's like, she's marshaling troops. But is it like that or what is she like on on set?

She's honestly just the best. You know, you talked about the writing. It doesn't get better than that. And and honestly, like, I'm a little sore about the fact that for, you know, the past couple of years at the Emmys, she's not even nominated for writing. I mean, this is the best written show on TV, you know. Yes. There's succession.

There's all these other shows. But like in terms of comedy, it doesn't get better than this. And, you know, it's so rare for me to read something, especially when I'm home alone and I laugh out loud. That doesn't happen. And that's been happening on this show from day one. The minute I read the pilot, I was I was laughing.

And and so, yeah, she's she's just, you know, there's there's a level of trust involved with her that that is unparalleled that I haven't I haven't experienced with anybody else. She shows up to set. I mean she's a former dancer, you know, and she thinks like a dancer. So, so even even our background actors, a lot of them are dancers.

I don't know if you know that, but it's true. A lot of them are dancers and it's it's always a dance when we're rehearsing a scene because we don't have rehearsals, like prior to showing up to set and doing the scene. We, we, we get there on the day like, you know, 530 in the morning, whatever it is, and then we start blocking it out.

And sometimes they're huge scenes. But I mean, you know, she's she's obviously in charge and there's this level of trust that I'll just do anything she wants because, you know, she knows what she wants. And to have a director who knows what they want is sometimes I mean, honestly, in my experience, it's rare.

So what is it like watching Rachel do stand up?

I mean, Rachel can do anything. You know, she's she always talks about how nervous she is. Like, I don't buy it. Like she's she's a she can do anything. She she's that type of actor where again, it's that level of trust. Like, I mean, any time I got to work with her was a joy and all of our I think you know all of our scenes that we got to do together were always my favorite.

And yeah, I mean, you know, she talks about how nervous she is, how the audiences keep growing and growing for her character. And honestly, like, that stuff doesn't faze her. She was born to perform. And, you know, I don't I don't know if she would be a standup comedian, but but I'm sure she can handle that as well if she wanted to.

Hey, and you can, too. So that might be even the next step. So. Hey, thank you so much, Michael. I appreciate it. And I thank you for all those years of really great television.

Oh, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Bruce, for that interview with Michael Zegen. What do we have on tap?

Well, I'll tell you, I do. And tell me if you don't agree when you start watching this, this series by, because I think it's going to be in for a lot of Emmys, you know how they come and go. And they kind of had a down year. Never. They weren't getting nominated. And the things I think this year they're coming back with a vengeance.

And I don't know how you could deny Rachel Brosnahan, the Emmy for best actress. Really? There are there is a moment there that you will go, Oh, my God, I'm glad I watch this series because it builds to this moment and it's unbelievable. And you'll, as you heard from Michael, you know, watching her was just unbelievable. But next week, we're going to talk about dead ringers.

Here's another opportunity. And you wondered, where is Amazon going? Well, this is another series they've got, but it's a limited series. It's based off a movie. If you remember the movie by David Cronenberg, starring Jeremy Irons, he played brothers, twin brothers who were odd, to say the least, and they were involved in obstetrics and making all kinds of weird tools and instruments and whatnot.

And they had freaky obsessions. They I mean, watch the movie. You'll see what I mean. It was one of those movies. Take me out for the longest time. Well, they've redone the movie and it's now a limited series, and it features two women as twins. Beverly and Elliot Mantle are now played by Rachel Weisz and Rachel really digs into it.

She's and she has lots of fun. And you'll see a different Beverly and a different Elliot. And then it's at one point they play each other to try and dupe their friends. So it's a fascinating look at characters, but I do think they made a horrible land. I just kind of have that feeling knowing how the movie went.

But that's next. We were talking to people who were involved in Dead Ringers, and that'll be coming as a limited series later this month.

All right, Bruce, thanks again, as always. And tune in again next week for another episode of Streaming & Screened.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of Streamed and Screened, we dive deep into the latest entertainment offerings, from new movies and TV series.

A trio of musicals are dropping, including "Schmigadoon!" on Apple TV+, "Up Here" on Hulua and "Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies" on Paramount+.

New movies like "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" and "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" are in theaters and no gaming knowledge is required.

We also chat about the return of HBO's hit show "Succession," which is back for its forth and final season, discuss the early success of "The Night Agent" on Netflix and talk with actor Jesse Metcalfe about his role in the film "On a Wing and a Prayer," which will get a limited theatrical release and is streaming now on Amazon's Prime Video platform, just in time for Easter.

Where to Watch

About the show

Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Podium.page and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Transcript generated by Podium.page
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0:00:03
Welcome everyone to another episode of streamed and screened and entertainment podcast about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises. Rises. I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee and cohost of the program with Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal and a longtime entertainment reporter. Bruce, Spring is here. Weather is getting better, but it it seems like we might be heading back to the movie soon. A lot of good stuff coming out. You know, we're in that period now. Where you're gonna see new stuff that maybe won't be Oscar bait, and it isn't quite holiday fair, you know, like, or it's lie is big time, Memorial Day is a big time, Labor Day is a big time. They all have tentpole, which are kind of considered the big money grabbers. Features, but there will all be also be a lot of these ones that, you know, there's a place for them and they'll make money. So we're starting to get into that era. And we're also seeing, like because of the holiday period, there will be a lock out there so that everybody has something. You will find something for grandma, something for mom, something for dad, something for the kids, and if you hold a bunch to the theater, you'd say, well, that's just all those separate ways and see what we wanna see. So there are enough enough movies out there to keep us kind of interested, but there are also TV series that are are popping now too. And I don't know why this kind of Third season is rising up, but there are a lot of things that are happening. In fact, it's odd. There are three new musical series. That are popping right now. What what is that a second season? But Schmigadoon!, did you see Schmigadoon! last year? I did not know.

0:01:42
This spoof of Broadway musicals. So last year, they did forties and fifties. This year, they're doing sixties and seventies. And it was supposed to be called Shnicago but they realized that they couldn't change the name without, you know, kind of confusing people. So it's called Schmigadoon!, but it's said in Chicago. Okay.

0:02:02
It spoofs musicals for, like, a pippin, a hair, Jesus Christ superstar, and it's about this couple that kind of wander into this goofy town where they all will act like characters from these shows. He and Michael Key and essentially strong are the are the two who enter into the world. And then it's just a herd of Broadway people. Then the people who are behind the cameras on Broadway or behind the scenes rather have made a thing called up here. And Up Here is kind of a What would it be like if musical set in New York City? And it's big names, the people who did Frozen hamilton, you name it, they are doing something, and it was their big pandemic project. And so they did this whole thing, wrote this whole thing, got it all together, and now it's finally premiering.

0:02:56
And then finally, the the last of the three big musical shows coming out is Grease Rise of the Pink Ladies. And that's a prequel to the grease that you see as a movie. So it set four years earlier and how did those pink ladies kind of come to be a a gang, if you will, and what do they represent? It's a way for them to kind of correct some of the myopic views of the movie. So you're going to see a much more diverse cast. You're not going to hear the songs from Greece except the title song. And then you'll see other characters. And there is hope that at some point you will see Sandy and Danny come into the thing in, like, your three or your four if it lasts that long.

0:03:41
So it'd be, like, freshman kinda coming into Right. So you say who is that one? Yeah. I don't think he would hire John Travolta to come in and play himself as a high school freshman. But, you know, strange or things have happened. Could they bring in John Travolta to play like a teacher, kind of. But it would also be bringing him back kind of because he started on Welcome Back, Kotter. And he could almost turn the tables on him career wise.

0:04:10
I like the way you think. Doesn't matter how that goes. Yeah. And they can get them to do a cameo or a thing. Huge. But I think it's got a built in audience as it is because kids love to sing those songs and it's filled with a lot of original content. A lot of original songs that were written just for this. So those are just three musicals that we've got coming on streaming and television networks.

0:04:36
And then you get all of the the kind of the creepy ones that are out there. There's a bunch of creepy shows HAR does really well. And for some odd reason, at last night, I watched a preview of a horror film that's how do I explain it? It's a gay bachelor party where they go to an old mansion and they are gonna have a say odds to call on a mother who killed her son in the house. The concept. I mean, how do they come up with this stuff? It was another pandemic project, but you're gonna see a lot of horror films around this time as well. So those are the big things itself. And then the big ones that we've got, duchess and dragons, honor among thieves, that's already in theaters. And it'll do really well because it's very adventurous. It's like an Indiana Jones film. So I never play dungeons and dragons. Did you ever Nor will I.

0:05:33
I think it has too many pieces, too many characters, too many things to learn. And this is very good at kind if it's like the the game at all, it pulls you through it, and it makes you understand what they're doing and where they're going. And it's kind of a dumb down version, I would assume. But it does allow you to kind of laugh with them and add them. And then there's a Hugh Grant. Remember how we talked about Hugh Grant at the Oscars and how he was kinda snarky with one of the interviewers? Well, that's That's the character. He was he was probably just coming off the set or whatever because he's very kind of Pattington too in his approach to this, but he's the villain, and he's trying to steal this daughter away from Chris Pine And they've got to try and rescue her. That's all it is. It's just to rescue, search and destroy. So it's some so it almost sounds like even though I'm not a Dungeons and Dragons person and you aren't It's entertaining. It's something that you don't have to be into it. Yeah. And Mario brothers is another game that they are are throwing out there this time.

0:06:41
And I think it's finding how you can make something that really has no plot have a plot. That's the the goal of all these things. Yeah. I could give you, you know, sorry or scrabble or something as a series or a movie. But what's the plot? You know? And at least with these are adventures of some sort where they're getting to somewhere, they're always on levels. We're always going to another level. With this. And I think that's what you'll find with these. They're realizing they've got to have a plot.

0:07:12
Imagine if they did monopoly the the TV show. It would be twenty hours long, and you would just be frustrated and hate yourself at the end of it. At some point, somebody tips the the gameboard. That's how it always I've never finished a game of monopoly ever because somebody gets mad at the person who buys up all of the properties and puts hotels on them and you have no money and so you're just bankrupt. And then they leave and they're mad. They're sitting in another room. And then you've got two people as well. Do we really wanna continue this if it's not we're not having everybody else? And then you just throw the table away. I've never finished it. I've never figured out who is the winner of a monopoly. It's such a frustrating game.

0:07:50
I'll I'll play it. My kids love to play it and then I'll get rope and Sure. Sure. That sounds like a grand idea. And I'll be the banker fourteen hours later. I'm just like, why are we doing this? This is the worst decision of by weekend. Right. You need something like Yatze, where it's done after a few roles, and then you're even gonna move by any more. That'll be a good Yatze, the movie. Yatze, the movie.

0:08:13
So I've been watching some shows too. Were you a fan or a fan at all of succession on HBO that is back? I well, you know, this is the last year. Right? I was not a hardcore succession person because it reminded me too much of reality. It is. It's like what's going on in the media world beyond us, way beyond us. But you see these it's very fox news ish, I think. It's like the the family that's running all of that. And that's all it is. It's you know, Logan Roy, who's played by Brian Cox, is the head of Waystar RoyCo.

0:08:50
And this fourth season just kinda picks up a few months after the end of the third season. So if if you watch the end of the third season, there was a lot of drama his the three younger kids who were looking to kinda up him up end him, the plot was turned, the tables were turned because Shiv's husband, Tom, kind of played the other side, Logan Roy. So it kind of picks up at that point. You know, the three kids are trying to make a deal for a company. The question is, is will they kind of hold him hostage he looks on load, but he's also gonna hold on to his Fox News channel, ATN. He's gonna hold on to that, and he's looking to make a move And then Connor, who's the older son, who's played by Allan Rock, who was Cameron Fry and Ferris Bueller's day off. He's looking to get married, but he's also running for president, and he's polling at, like, one percent. So that's not going well.

0:09:50
You know, we're back in the thick of things to session. It's one of my favorite shows that they've done in recent years. It's part of the reason it it's is is succession the best show ever to come off of HBO. No, but it feels like it's just another in a long line of very good programs. Do you see where I will end? I mean, can you see kind of hints that this is the end. Yeah. I mean, my assumption is that we'll get a resolution on the company in somebody's gotta come out on top. You know, whether he sells and the kids take over or or what.

0:10:25
But who knows? It could be just you know, like, reality is reality, and sometimes it's just, you know, something will happen at the end, and we're gonna be, like, what happened to Tony Saprano? We'll just cut to black really hard. And and like you know something will happen after it, you're just not gonna do a season five. It it could be, you know, if you may remember Rupert Murdoch just stopped a paper in London. It had so many lawsuits and everything and they just said, we're done. And maybe the ones that they do is they just you know, or somebody gets sent to prison. And then, you know, it's left open. So if they wanted to do a movie, they could do a movie, then you figure out who actually is the one that's running the place.

0:11:02
So who knows? Well, I'm glad it's good. It's it's one of those ones that I started watching and I was just too nervous by it because it reminded me too much of everything. And so I just let it go and I'm okay with that. I don't need it, but I know that those who love it are clearly devoted, hopelessly devoted. I am hopelessly devoted. I love it. And I I will I'm gonna be sad when it's off the air because it's just it's one of those programs that It had it even had large gaps in between c's and not just because of the pandemic, but because of the locations they were filming at.

0:11:35
So it always felt like season one ended, when is season two coming? Season two ended, when is season three coming? Because it wasn't on that traditional twelve months later, it's coming back. It's coming back at weird intervals. So it just feels good that it's back, and then I'll I'll be sad to see it go It's just great drama. And, you know, it it is the reality, you know, that that, I guess, you don't like. You you wanna get away from the reality. But I I kind of find it fun in just this context of of media and what's going on in the world today. And it's watching entitled people get annoyed about things that, like, what who how is this even a problem in somebody's life? I would love to have that when you're having.

0:12:17
Do you like the way they just drop an episode or do you really like when you could binge it? I go back and forth. I mean, I I like the binging concept because it just especially if it's a show that I'm watching with my wife, which is kinda going on right now with Netflix in the night age which I'll I'll mention in a moment. But for a show like this, I I just watched it by myself. She watched season one with me and kinda liked it, and then tapped out in season two. Just really didn't want to keep going with it. So from that perspective as a weekly program, I'm fine with it because we'll watch things together during the week. And then, you know, she goes to bed early and I might stay up a little bit. I'll watch it on my own. So I I don't need to have all ten episodes right there. So I like I like both concepts.

0:13:03
It just depends on the program. Do you feel like I've gotta see it right away when they drop it on Sunday night? Or Oh, yeah. Like, kids go to bed. Daddy go to bed. Everybody go to bed. It's Terry Scott. Watching his show now. Right? Everybody leave me alone to tuning into succession. Speaking of, you know, those bingible programs, Netflix dropped one. Kinda out of the blue. I wasn't really looking for it or paying attention for it, but it's called the night agent. And it's trending on Netflix right now. It seems to be pretty popular. It's got some good write ups on rotten tomatoes from from fans and reviewers.

0:13:44
So it takes place, like the concept of this, is that there is a FBI agent. He's played by Gabriel Basso. And at the very beginning of it, he prevents a bunch of deaths on a subway explosion. He finds a bomb. Right? But what happens is there's some accusations by conspiracy nutjobs and, you know, was he involved with it? So he kinda has to take a year off and and they fast forward a year to where he's working in the basement of the White House, sitting in a room with a telephone that probably will never ring, but one day it rings. And it's to to take a call from a like a devout agent in the secret agent and to kinda help them through a situation. Meanwhile, you have this other character Lucy Ann Buchanan, who's kind of a newcomer to acting, doesn't really have a whole lot of credits where whereas Gabe Gabbasa, he played J. D. Vance and Hillbelly, LG. So he's been out there before But Lucy Anne, a little bit more of a newcomer, she plays a cybersecurity person entrepreneur who loses her company, you know, so she's got this company at the start, fast forward a year, and she's staying with her relatives, her her aunt and uncle.

0:14:57
Who are all of a sudden murdered and she has to make the phone call. They're like, you gotta call this number, get help. And that number goes to Gabriel Baso in the basement. So it's it's a spy thriller. It's pretty intense. You know, it's who's playing? Who? There's the the thought that there's, you know, some some bad actors in the White House. What's gonna happen? It also stars Hung Chow. She plays Diane Far, the White House chief of staff. You would of course know her. She was nominated for best supporting actress in the whale.

0:15:30
So we've got a few names in this program. It's pretty good. I I've we've gotten roped in only a couple episodes in I'm not gonna drop any real spoilers. That's just the basic plot development to get you going through the first ten minutes of of episode one. But, yeah, it's it's a pretty good show and and we're gonna keep coming back to it. Did you ever see the Knight Manager Tom Houston. He played the manager of a very high end hotel, and he was also an agent where he was trying to dupe a lot of people that come into the hotel, basically. He had all this access to stuff fascinating series. They're gonna do another season of it. So if you happen to see that floating around, don't confuse the two, but it's very much that kind of duplicity that you wonder about. What's going on here? This is this is kind of fascinating. I'm I'm intrigued.

0:16:22
Let me rail for a minute about Netflix. Because they have the worst way of letting people know about something that's coming on. I mean, until you hear people talking about it, you have no clue that these things are popping. And they just will drop and they'll get foreign language series that were huge hits in, you know, whatever is Slavia. And they'll just drop it on there. And then you'll hear everybody talking about this. And maybe that's their their method. But I find it's really kind of undercutting because then you think, well, I'm missing out on something. How come I don't know about this? And then sometimes they'll do way too much where you'll see Adam Sandler on every talk show there is talking about the movie he did and it's okay. So I really wish they would be either a little more discriminating about what they push or help us through it a bit.

0:17:18
I don't remember ever getting any messaging because I'll get those emails maybe on a weekly basis saying, you know, based on the shows you've watched, hear something coming to Netflix that you might be interested in. I don't remember ever seeing anything for the night agent. You know, I've seen plenty of other things out there, but that one just we're we're literally out of things to watch because we kind of finished up one show looking for something new and we're just skimming through the Netflix and what's out there and we we kinda got sucked in by a trailer and thought, okay, well, let's let's give it a whirl. The categories that they have and that, you know, when you go to that kind of the directory page, you might like. And then you're thinking, what have I watched that they think I would like this crap? And there's a whole bunch of, like, goofy films that you think, I this is not me. Are you profiling me somehow? I don't know what you're doing. I don't know where you came up that I wanted to see elf part three, but, you know, it's on there. So I that's another thing that just throws me. And then you keep scrolling down because they have different different categories for things.

0:18:24
Shows people are talking about. Shows nobody's talking about. Shows you could talk about comedies that you haven't seen in a long time. You want to watch this. Now maybe you want to watch it again. You know what? It just keeps going. You think, oh, please. Please. Please. Please. So be careful what you watch because it might come back to haunt you. Yeah. There's my rant. Was that my rant for the day? That's your that's your rant for the day. But yeah. And, you know, it's funny how Prime Video, which used to be called Amazon Prime, but it's now called Prime Video, have been putting out an awful lot of product. In fact, I've been inundated with a lot of interviews. You'll see as we go along, but they have air coming out this this weekend, which will be huge in theaters. And that's the story of Nike when they pitched Michael Jordan to be their standard bearer for basketball shoes. And fascinating look at a true story with Ben and Matt. That'll be big. But they've got a lot of these other series too where they're remaking things, re kind of molding things.

0:19:31
And one of the things that I actually saw was a what they they consider a faith based film. Faith based film. Now, I don't know what that means to most people. I always think, oh, it's a religious film. You're trying to show me a religious film. Is that what it is? But it's not necessarily that. It's it just says that people believe in some kind of higher power. And this one is called on a wing and a prayer.

0:19:59
And it's a true story about a a businessman who takes a couple of lessons of flying lessons, but doesn't really, you know, think much of it, and then ends up in a plane with his family and the pilot dies. And he's gotta figure out how do I land this plane. Because I really wasn't paying attention that much when I was, you know, in classes. Because I figured I wouldn't need this. Right? So they get the dead body in the back of the plane, and then he gets behind the in the cockpit and starts trying to figure out how do we land this. And they bring in help from the outside. One of the people they find is somebody who actually flew one of those planes and he's played by Jesse Metcalf.

0:20:47
Jesse Metcalfe, you may remember was the gardener, the hunky gardener that Eva Longoria fell for in desperate housewives. And this is his way of trying to move into a different layer of filmmaking. So for him, it was a good move to let people see him as something other than the hunky garter. And then he was on a long time on hallmark channel. He he's been in every Christmas iteration you could find, and he was also in Chesapeake Shores, which was a series that they had on the Hallmark Channel. So I was able to talk to him and we have us his interview, I believe.

0:21:25
And you'll find out about what actually happened with on a wing and a prayer. I guess faith based, there's there's that element of Is there divine intervention to perhaps intercede? I think they're pitch on this is there are angels among us who help us through these kinds of situations. And the angels could be even the person on the ground that tells you what button to press at the right time. Gotcha. And the film also, it stars Dennis Quade. Correct? Dennis Quade, Heather Graham. So there are some some big names in this. Yeah.

0:21:55
Dennis Quinn plays the the guy who has to pilot the plane. Okay. Heather, the name is his wife. I replaced his wife. And, yeah, and you'll find other you know, they do a little bit before we get into the plane, they do a bit of back story. So you get to see what he's kind of a, I think, a very swaggerish businessman. You know, they're kind of or if you will would say they're kind of full of themselves. So I think it's a humbling experience for him when he gets up in the plane and realizes, hey, I don't know how to do this. He thinks he's a big barbecue guy and He wins barbecue contests and but not they have a huge in the film. They have a huge house that looks impressive, very impressive. And if he's going flying private, come on. He's gonna have a buck or two. Right? Right. End of the film, you get to see the real guy and the real people who helped him out. Okay.

0:22:48
So Dennis Quinn, he's it's interesting because he it feels like he's in these types of feel good movies he's done it before. He was in that movie, the rookie, that Disney movie, where he he was a a baseball pitcher. It it was a true story where, you know, he came back at ages like forty, whatever, and made it to the big leagues despite, you know, our injury. So it feels like he likes to do these feel good movies now. He likes to make money too. So I could be behind it. But I'm I'm tired of seeing him in these kinds of roles, to be honest. I'd like to see him as a good old villain because I think he's really good at playing a villain. And you know, maybe he doesn't have to be the star. Maybe he's like the third build, who always is a villain, by the way. If you ever look at a movie, Which one is the villain? Look who's third in the villain? They're always the one who's the villain. So maybe now with your when you're looking at the night agent -- Mhmm. We can see his third build. That's your problem at all right there. But yeah. And he gonna it's it's a feel good one for the holiday weekend and the holiday week.

0:23:56
It will be in some theaters and it will also be on Prime Video. So you'll see it on your Amazon Prime channel if you have that. If you bought enough crap on Amazon and you have the free shipping, you'll get this show. So you'll be able to see it. But it's it's nothing complex. It's something that you could watch while you're doing something else. And then you go, okay, that's good. I I understand what was going on there. It's a happy movie for this time of the season. So We have an interview with Jesse Metcalfe, so let's go ahead and listen to that.

0:24:34
Have you ever been in an emergency like this in any kind of transportation thing or not? I was on a private plane once where there were some concerns. I wouldn't say it had really gotten to this level. I certainly didn't have to crawl into the cockpit and lay on the plane. But I I understand people's fear of flying. I mean, I started flying at a very early age. My mom would ship me off to my grandparents at, like, six or seven. So I I don't have a fear of flying, like, at all. And actually, you know, after the experience I had, the wonderful experience I had on this home. I'm considering getting my pilot's license. I think it'd be really, really amazing.

0:25:18
Yeah. Look how good you are. You can help somebody. Yeah. What is that like when you're going through things and what is this? I don't know what these words are, what they mean. How do you you know, get a grasp on that so that you can convey it in the right way. That's that's a great point. You know, I had to look basically everything up. There's a lot of aviation jargon specifically for my character. And I definitely had to at least have a cursory understanding of what I was talking about. Certainly walked away from this movie with a greater appreciation for aviation and for pilots.

0:25:53
When you're sitting there and you're like giving them instructions, who are you talking to? Is somebody else reading the lines of things to you? Or I mean, because you're very into you're good at being intense in those situations. I'm like, Who is he talking to? I'm sure they're not there. Thank you. That's a that's a high compliment. I appreciate that.

0:26:11
Generally talking to, you know, either the assistant director or sometimes like you're standing. Really, anyone who's available to read the dialogue off camera and You know, I'll be honest with you. Not a lot of care is is taken when, you know, someone's reading this dialogue off camera. It's usually pretty flat and monotone. You know, you can you can ask them to pump it up a little bit. But it's really, you know, it's our job to bring all that emotion and energy to to our performance, you know. I mean, that's that's what we do as active guy.

0:26:46
I didn't get to meet I didn't get to meet Carrie, unfortunately. Hopefully, I'll get to meet him in the future, but I just basically looked up everything I could find on him, print interviews, what little video there was of him out there, I mean, the picture that was painted of him within our script was more than enough for me to grab hold of as an actor. Sure. You know, this coming at this time in your career, what is that telling you? Is it are you going in another direction? Is there something new that we're seeing with this film? Well, it's funny that you asked that. I mean, that's the plan. I mean, you know, I definitely want want to move away from the matinee Idol and move into more serious roles and, you know, work with you know, more producers and directors that I that I really respect. I mean, such a great team on this project with Roman Downey, Autumn Bailey Ford, Sean McNamara, who I I had previously worked with, and I was really excited to get the opportunity to work with again. I think it was just it was the right team on this one with the right script and I'm really proud of what they produced.

0:27:54
I mean, it's a very watchable movie that really keeps you on the edge of your seat. You know, they talk about this being a faith film or a faith based film. And I don't think that it's you know, I wouldn't use those terms for it. I think the faith is is underlying. Absolutely. But it isn't something that hits you over the head. You know what I mean? We're a lot of those things, they're like, oh, I'm not going to that. No. No. I I agree with you completely. I mean, honestly, I don't I don't consider this faith based movie at all. And I I think this this movie is of the caliber that, you know, could have gotten a theatrical release. I mean, it's just it's It's a different landscape these days. Very happy to have been picked up by Amazon Prime Video. They're really behind the movie. Yeah. I mean, you know, when people believe in a project and they know that the the the the content is good, I mean, it's just it's a it's a good feeling, you know, to have to have that kind of momentum.

0:28:51
Take me back to those days of desperate housewives. How how really unreal was that? I was it was incredibly unreal. I didn't anticipate the success of that show at all. Coming off of daytime television, moving into a nighttime show, but that felt very daytime. It was a easy transition. I mean, look, it wasn't the most challenging role in the world, but I tried to bring, you know, your vulnerability and and depth to the role. But, I mean, it was a it was a whirlwind, you know, that just, like, kinda swept me right off my feet. I didn't anticipate the success.

0:29:30
And to still be talking about the show twenty years later, I mean, I guess it's achieved some level of, you know, iconic television status which is something I'm, you know, I'm I'm proud to have been part of. Did it did it just kind of throw you coming so early in your career? Or was it You know, I I I had been in the business for for five years on daytime television, but, I mean, you know, daytime television and primetime are just, you know, their their night and day. Right. They they really are. You can we can work on daytime your entire career and he, you know, the average person might might not know your name. You know, so to to become a household name pretty much overnight was was definitely interesting.

0:30:17
Was it good to learn those lessons early on? Or do you say, oh, I'd be much more prepared now if I had that, like, real heat? Well, hindsight is twenty twenty, you know. So I I'd be much more prepared now, definitely. And I'd like to think you know, I'll I'll have some of those big opportunities again. I I mean, I'd like to believe that that the best of my career is is still ahead of me here. You know? Yeah. I I know I know I know I'm ready for it now. That's for sure. All we need to look at is this year's best picture winner and you look at those people and you say, all of them were at some point told you're out of the game and look at them now. They're on top of the game. So it's just It's very it's very only one project away, you know? Right. This could be yours. You never know.

0:31:06
Then you you have your kind of I I I love to see these different periods that you've had. You have your hallmark period. What is that world like? Well, I mean, the hallmark channel was very very good to me. They allowed me to executive produce some projects with them and kinda, you know, be involved in the creative and the casting of those projects. I really learned a lot during my hallmark period. And, you know, I'm I'm proud of a a lot of the work that I created during that period as well with this show that I did for them called Chesapeake shores where I played, performed, and wrote some of the music for the show. Right. I mean, you know, I I give a hundred and ten percent to everything that I do. I mean, I I'm one of those actors that really cares. Maybe I care a little too much, but, you know, I like to look back at different periods, as you say, and and be proud of those periods. So, you know, that that was a great time in my career.

0:32:06
In the learning process, do you go, oh, that's something I'll never do again? Or is it, okay, this is how I would change those things up if I did this again? Well, there's always lessons. You have to find the lessons in everything you do in life. But specifically in this business, You know? I mean, you wanna continue to become a better actor. You know, I I am very interested in doing more producing and executive producing. So you know, you have to learn those lessons, but it's really about it's it's it's it's about relationships and it's a it's a it's a very people oriented business. It's a collaborative art form and you have to work well with others. And, you know, I mean, those are the best lessons, I think.

0:32:50
What is it like when you wanna create something? Is it hard to actually get others on board with you? Or what do you to me, it'd be a big sales job. I'd have to sell others on my vision and I don't know that I could do it. While producing is a big sales job, isn't it? You know, I mean, generally, you're trying to find financing for ideas that you have. And that that can be a little soul sucking at times because as artists, you know, we don't wanna be, you know, making phone calls and sending emails begging people for money. You know, but there's also some great facets to executive producing or producing as well, you know, kind of like being in charge of the entire picture.

0:33:33
Which sometimes, you know, when you're just an actor on a project, you know, hire to do one specific thing, it can be a little limiting. Specifically when you see things that could be better or, you know, maybe, you know, holes in a story that could be patched up and you have ideas for that, you're not always you're not always in the position to share those ideas. Would would you ever not act? Would that ever be in the cards? Would I ever not act? Yeah. Yeah. I think I think that could be in the cards. I I think I would like to move behind the camera, you know, specifically in producing roles. And and and I have I have an interest in directing. I mean, I went to New York University for writing and directing teach school of the arts But over the over the years, I've seen how much work directing is. I mean, you're literally, you know, the first person on the set, the last person to leave and up all night preparing. So, you know, I I think producing might be my lane. Better. Yeah. Is another thing.

0:34:36
You know, and how they I forgive me for not knowing what this is like, but when they're judging you to to cast you in a role, based on a look, how how do you deal with that? I I would find that very difficult. Well, a lot of people say that there's a lot of rejection in our business, but I think you can't look at not getting a role as rejection. Because getting a role is like finding a needle in a haystack. You know, there's so many variables as to what our producers and directors and casting directors are looking or for a specific role. So I think, you know, you have to just put yourself out there, give the best audition possible, and if it doesn't go your way, just let it go. I mean, easier said than done, but dealing with the rejection would be the very difficult thing. Well, why wasn't I right for this. Exactly. I mean, hey, nobody likes dealing with with rejection, but that's life. It's life. Right?

0:35:32
What's next then after this? Are you already working on something? Well, I have two other films coming out this year. I mean, three, actually. One's called the comic shop. Which is kind of like a Kevin Smith esque story about a disgruntled comic book store owner who had some trials and tribulations in his life. It's kind of a interesting story. Then I have another one that's on the festival circuit right now called the Latin from Manhattan. And then I have a a a a a VC Andrew series of movies coming out on a lifetime where I I play dad in the early sixties. So it's it's my first dad role, so I'm kind of excited about that.

0:36:13
See, I've seen -- Oh. -- I've seen -- Oh. -- I've seen -- Oh. -- I've seen -- Oh. -- I've seen -- I've seen -- I've seen -- -- I've seen -- -- I've seen -- I've seen -- I've seen -- wonk long. I've I've seen some of the footage actually doing a ADR for the for the movies and I I play opposite this adorable you know, effervescent actor of Breck Bassinger, who's from from the series star girl. I play her father And it's very, very charming actually. I'm I was really, really pleased with it. I'm excited for people to see it.

0:36:40
Well, you know, if we're ever on a plane together and something happens, I'm calling you into action here. You're gonna be helping land the plane Okay. I know nothing about that. You might wanna call Dennis, but hey, you know. Yeah. I would run up and down the aisles going, no, we can't do this. This is not good. This is terrible, but it was very fun to watch you in this. I enjoyed it. Thank you so much. Alright, Bruce. Thank you for that interview. What else do we have on top? Coming up. Big big big kind of surprising thing. Rachel vice, Oscar winner, Rachel vice.

0:37:16
Is in a new adaptation of dead rangers. It's about twins who are in the birthing business, if you will, and if you may remember Jeremy Irons started in this film in the nineties. It was a David Cronenburg film Well, now, Rachel has the part where she plays two characters. And she's trying to get this clinic off the ground, a birthing center. And she has to appeal to various and sundry people and how it's a very kind of political world to be in the medical field, but it's also really, really creepy. So when you see this, you'll see the creep factor. One of the people we talk to is Poppy Lou who plays their kind of assistant, and she has a big handle on the differences between Beverly and Elliot Mantel. So we'll have that next week and we'll talk about some other kind of creepy ones that aren't coming. Alright. That sounds good. So we'll look forward to that. Thank you everyone for listening to another episode of streamed and screened.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Whether it's Sean Connery, Roger Moore or others portraying James Bond, or Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in the "Mission: Impossible" film series, we find ourselves sucked into the world of espionage thanks to the spy genre of television shows and movies.

In this week's episode of Streamed & Screened, hosts Bruce Miller and Terry Lipshetz have a brief discussion of the genre to set up a conversation with Guy Pearce, the star of "Spy Among Friends," a limited series available now on MGM+.

Read more: Guy Pearce, Damian Lewis ponder betrayal with 'Spy Among Friends'

About the show

Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was generated by Podium.page and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

0:00:03
Welcome everyone to another episode of streamed and screened in an entertainment podcast about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises. I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee and cohost of the program with Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal and a longtime entertainment reporter. Bruce, I I wanna pass you a note. I've got some secrets. Do you have any secrets? Can you share anything? Yeah. Send me a text. Okay? That might be the best.

0:00:28
In the old days, you know, spies were so much different because they would sit on a park bench and they pass an envelope between each other. Right? Right? Now it's like we're hacking into systems and we're going to we always you notice how they always have that clock that counts down until the file is uploaded, and it's like, oh, is it gonna happen? Is it gonna happen? Well, there, all you had to worry about was did somebody grab the envelope or are you just letting it go? So it is a different world.

0:00:57
And there's a new mini series or limited series, whatever you wanna call it, that has been airing in Great Britain already, and it got huge reviews. They loved it over there. It's called a spy among friends. And we're getting it now on MGM Plus. And it is the the sort of true story of Kim Philby. You probably have never heard of Kim Philby at all. But he was a traitor to Great Britain. He was a spy, but he was getting information from Russia. And when they found out that he was defecting to Russia, they sent his friend to try and talk to him about all of this. And, like, would you keep this information? I don't know how I could ever be a spy because I talk too much. And I think I I would tell too much. But that your your best friend could not guess that you were gonna be a traitor. And, you know, wouldn't you have dropped some kind of message about this? I find that just really hard to believe. Yeah. But but yeah. And that was a big scandal in the sixties. And people remember the name Kim Philby because he was this trader who went to Russia. And he was very well known. Today, it doesn't graze the radar. People really don't know who he is, or who his friends were.

0:02:17
But the film, which kind of looks at the class system that's very popular in Great Britain, tries to explain all of that by that because there was a group of young man who thought that they were if you will, better than other people because they went to the right schools, they had the right majors, they had the right connections, their parents were probably somebody. And as Damian Lewis says, they dabbled in communism. And so they thought that this was kind of a cool thing that we could do, and they wouldn't be caught for anything like this. Well, Kim Philby, didn't just dabble. He was doing a little bit more with all of that. And I got a chance to talk to Guy Pierce who plays Kim and he was talking about acting acting and acting as a spy. How much acting is involved with all of that? Do you really Do you feel you need to pretend all the time? And he said this class system is something that kind of it didn't matter. You didn't have to do that because they just accepted whatever you were doing was just temporary, and they were allowed to do that. And he and the the creator of the series, Alexander Carey, talk about how this is kind of important again today. Because we're seeing a class system that's being created in just all parts of the world, where some people think they're above the law, and they don't have to worry about consequences. And then others who don't don't seem to be able to catch a break no matter what. That's fascinating.

0:04:00
What's your general thought on on spy movies and TV shows in general? Do you do you enjoy them? Do you get sucked in? Oh, you know it. I I it's strange how something like James Bond has changed so drastically. Because in those early days, you know, with Sean Connery, maybe Roger Moore, who didn't they did a lot of things that was they they were just conversational. That's how they got their information. And then they started getting all those toys. And then they started having gadgets and, you know, I mean, come on. Where do you find all this stuff? And how would you be able to create all this? And then you have all these kind of inched people. How do you keep anything from somebody else that they wouldn't know? Today, it's so over the top. Look at how, you know, it takes several years for somebody like Tom Cruise to make one of his spy films. So it's a it's a different game. I think it's changed. But I think they suck you in all the time because you always wonder That was the bad guy. I'm not really sure I know who the bad guy is.

0:05:06
Did you see the spy a couple years ago. That was the one. It starred Sasha Baron Cohen, you know, who everybody knows is Borr at, but he did a really serious take He played Eli Cohen, who's a Israeli, and he was spying in the nineteen sixties. And ultimately was caught, but it was the the true life story and it was a very serious role for him. But it was a real fascinating look into into espionage.

0:05:36
Could you be a spy? I thought about it. I I think I could. Really? Yeah. I don't know how you do that in school, where you say, alright, I'd like to go on the spy track, please. Could I please take those classes that are necessary for that? I I couldn't. I know I couldn't. Because the I mean, I can keep a secret, but I don't think I could like the Americans, I don't know I could do what they did, where you just suddenly assume new identities and live among people for years, and then you're kind of trying to get a little bit of information out to the others. I don't know that I could do that. At some point, I would break.

0:06:12
And I think where they always go wrong with these kinds of films is they have families. Right. And I think a true spy has no connections. That's why you see James Bond as such a good spy. Because he always seems to be a loner. Once they get him with somebody, then it becomes, uh-oh, I've got to worry about somebody killing this person. You know, to get to me. So if you're as bi, you should be a loner. It never worked out well for for James Bond in those movies because he would he would either meet someone and they would end up dead or they would end up turning on him.

0:06:51
Well, could you imagine that this day if you were, like, googling pussy galore, I think it's a reminder. I think it's a reminder. You know, they in when that movie became out, they released trading cards for that movie. Did you say that? No. Because I I wasn't born back numbers, but but they changed the name of that character to Kitty Galore because we couldn't we couldn't go that. It's a little too dirty for the kids back in the sixties. So, yeah, that that was always kind of fun, Goldfinger. But, yeah, I I don't know if I could be a spy.

0:07:29
Like, it it always sounds cool, but then you think about, well, you got all these crazy secrets. You can't settle down with the family. Somebody's gonna keep a secret in your own house. If you get kids, come on. They don't have work. They do. Right?

0:07:43
I always wonder too when watching things like mission impossible. You know, that that that this recording will self destruct in ten seconds. But it it goes up in flames. Nobody notices that. Nobody sees this, like, flaming package that's sitting next to you on the train and and it does it not set off as smoke alarm?

0:08:02
You know, for many years, studios would send out DVDs of their films. And they would disintegrate. I mean, after you had watched it once, you couldn't watch it again. And they always said, well, that's how they should have done that stuff. Because a tape recorder that's burning yeah. That's not gonna happen. Not a problem. That might that might raise a couple of red flags.

0:08:25
Well, and you could never rerun. You know, you never could go back and look at a scene again. You saw once. It's on your computer. That's it. It's done. Now you can go back to screening lengths and go back and see things if you wanna look at the more than once.

0:08:39
But yeah. So the spy world? No. The the best best thing about me is I couldn't remember anything because I think I've learned so much in my lifetime. There's so much crap in my head. That we have to we have to empty the trash at some point to try and remember these things. So if you put me under oath and had a lie detector and everything hooked up, I'd be good because I couldn't remember a darn thing that you'd told me.

0:09:04
Does did Guy Pierce talk about at all? Like, how he how he researched for this. Yes. You're using. He did. And and that's that's in the interview. I want you to listen to the interview, you know, talk to some of the kind of research he did. And how it would kind of work for him? How he would be as a if he could be a spy? So there's a lot of interesting things there. I think you should unpack it. It's not that long.

0:09:29
We have Guy Pierce and Alexander Carey talking about a spy among friends. Can a spy really have a friend? I think I think friendship is the main currency of of spies. I think that I think I think I mean, it's a good question because on one side of the relationship, yes, that question is pertinent. On the other one, it's pertinent in a different in completely the opposite way. Yeah. It it just it struck me as if I were a spy, I would not be friendly with anybody. I would just let it go. But there also is an element of acting that's involved. And Guy, would you make a good spy? Well, look, I I may make a good spy, you know, on the surface, but I mean, of course, I can work as an actor on screen but it's never a life or death situation. I don't know how I'd I don't know how if I've got the Hutzpa to to, you know, act as well when I know that there are lives or countries or at stake. So probably not, I think, is the answer.

0:10:40
How does spies operate today when there's just so many ways that the truth could come out? Is it a a whole different world and what? Because the the sixties is kind of a a a real romantic period at at least for spies. Well, you're I think in the sixties, human intelligence, in other words, human to human getting information in sort of bars and on park benches and all the rest of it was a reality. And and was the the the the the main way of of getting and passing information these days. There's a lot more of sort of cyber espionage and all the rest of it. And I think you'll find that in various intelligence agencies. There are also still two factions. You know, there's the there's the one that goes, well, human intelligence is really the only the way that you're gonna get the definitive stuff or the stuff that's gonna be, you know, keep on giving. And then there are people who are gonna go, no. Let's just put a drone up. So so So, you know, they're very different these days. But Yeah. But that's the friendship thing. The friendship thing is important for a spy. Yeah. It doesn't seem as much fun, but maybe I'm wrong, never been a spy, can't can't weigh in.

0:11:52
Guy, how much did you read about him before you actually started doing this? Did you know much about him or not? I didn't know a lot. No. I mean, I'd seen a couple of films that had been made and I'd seen a documentary once about the Cambridge five. So I didn't know a lot. I knew of Kim Filby, of course, but knew no detail about about him really and certainly knew nothing about this relation it between he and Nicholas Elliott.

0:12:17
I read a number of books before we started and through the course of making the show. One in particular, I think, was a was a helpful piece, which was written by Eleanor, his third wife, his American wife, the wife that he was with in Beirut when he when he left. She wrote a book that that that looked at some of the letters between the two of them, you know, that published the letters between the two of them through that time. So there was something personal and human about the way she wrote. And so that was an interesting little way in for me into into Filby. But, yeah, I read I read bits and pieces of all sorts of things before we started. But of course, I always would would come back to the the script.

0:13:07
And at a certain point, I find I have to sort of let the let the research material go. Were there things you could relate to? And did you like him at all or not? I never know the answer to the liking question because whilst making I'm so in I'm so embedded in into him that I lose myself in a way. So it's not necessarily that I have then have an opinion of him. I'm I'm I'm so sort of, yeah, lost in trying to just become and understand him. I think the bigger question is is is whether I understand him and and, you know, I'm that's what I'm searching to do through the process and and, you know, you can probably only understand any character, you know, this much at the best of times when you're dealing with someone like Philby, you can probably only understand him this this much because he's a mystery to everybody. So it was a complex and challenging process. Yeah. Well, thank you. Both it's been so exciting to watch this unfold. And I'm just playing dumb through the whole thing. I'm not I'm not looking ahead to find out anything. I don't wanna know anything, but it is fascinating. It's a a different world, a different time. So thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thanks, Bruce. Nice to meet you. Alright, Bruce. Thanks for that interview. A fascinating discussion there.

0:14:37
Did you get to talk to anybody else from that Phils from that series. Who is who plays the friend that, you know, has to try and talk to this Kim Philsby. I did get to talk to him. And I do have a story Maybe you can add a link to this. And if you don't wanna read, you'll see some more stuff from him about this whole project. But it's a six part limited series on MGM plus. And, Eric, could you do anything this next week that I worry about? I'll know you're a spy. Sounds good, Bruce. So we'll have a link to that article in the show notes of this episode. And otherwise, we will see you next week with another episode of streamed and screamed. Have a great one.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Do you love the 1980s? John Hughes comedies such as "The Breakfast Club," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Sixteen Candles," "Pretty in Pink," "Weird Science" and "Some Kind of Wonderful" captured the struggles of teens during the period.

Hughes later shifted toward adulthood during the later part of the decade with movies like "She's Having a Baby," "Uncle Buck," "The Great Outdoors" and "Planes, Trains and Automobiles."

John Hughes films and the nostalgia of the 1980s helped serve as the inspiration for and provided some themes in the new film "Prom Pact" that debuts March 30 on Disney Channel and Disney+. 

Co-host Bruce Miller spoke with stars Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Blake Draper and Margaret Cho, as well as executive producer Julie Bowen of "Modern Family" fame and director/executive producer Anya Adams.

Before those interviews, Miller and co-host Terry Lipshetz discuss "Life Moves Pretty Fast: The John Hughes Mixtapes," a box set compilation of music from those 1980s movies from Hughes that was released in November.

The talk about how the songs provided the backdrop in key scenes in the movies and how some of the selections came about, as well as Hughes' love for music.

About the show

Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was generated by Podium.page and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

0:00:03
Welcome everyone to another episode of streamed and screened and entertainment podcasts about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises. I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee and cohost of the program with Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal and a longtime entertainment reporter. Bruce How's everything going? You know, Terry, come on. I lived through the eighties, and now you've discovered something from the eighties that I urine all excited about. You got a a big kind of album collection, if you will, or a a what do they call box set? A set. Is that the term that you are you young people using that term box set today? Or is that just something from the old days? But it it samples John Hughes movies. That is correct. Let's hear all about it because I've the eighties are big. If you didn't know, the eighties are back. And we're gonna relive them. Babies are back in a big way. So recently, this isn't a yesterday release.

0:01:00
This came out in the late I I think it was pretty much for Christmas that that selling period. Life moves pretty fast. The John Hughes mix tapes. It's a box set. It was released in England.

0:01:14
They put out several configurations. There was, like, a two l p version of a condensed mix. Six LPs, four CD box set, and then there was like a deluxe four CD box set that also had a a seven inch single and a cassette. But what it did was it collected the key tracks? It's not like complete soundtracks from each movie, but it's a lot of the key tracks from John Hughes movies of the nineteen eighties. So we're talking sixteen candles, the breakfast club, weird science, ferris bueller, And then it kinda brings everything up to Uncle Buck, which was released in nineteen eighty nine. So that was the last movie that they really sampled from. So there's nothing new or none of the like, Christmas tracks from home alone or any of those. But it's it's that huge period.

0:02:04
And and for me, you know, when I was boy, probably ten years old or so, my aunt took me to see Ferris Bueller's day off in the theater. And it was the greatest thing. And and that movie, Weird Science, some kind of wonderful these were movies that I just loved watching and growing up too, so they they kinda hold a special place in in my heart as a movie. But as a music collector, somebody who's got a really large collection of of CDs and Vinyl, I always love a really good soundtrack. And one thing that has eluded me all these years was a soundtrack to Ferris Bueller's day off because it never came out. They never released one. So this was kind of a fun way to collect not all the tracks from Ferris, but it has pretty much every key track you can think of from that movie in this box set.

0:02:56
Is that something about a certain age when something strikes and hits you? That you go, I have got to have that. I've got to own a piece of that somehow because I remember that with my first Disney cartoon. It was stored in the stone. And I wanted something from sword and the stone in the worst way. Then it became I wanted something from midnight cowboy. Because that was my first x rated film that I'd ever seen. But I've never had it with music because I think I've gotten more than enough and a lot of times I don't listen to music more than once. I know that sounds really terrible, but it's like watching a TV show. I can watch it once, but then we're gone.

0:03:36
The thing about John Hughes own, I think we've talked about this before. I've interviewed him many times during that eighties period when he was doing all these films, and the people who were in his films thought he was the coolest man ever. Just the coolest guy. He was like that uncle that always had the right record collection and would turn you on to things and make you feel like oh, yeah. I've got to know that too. So I does that come through in the music selection? Absolutely. So a lot of the songs in the box set. And and also just from his all of his movies in general kinda come from a certain period. He's a huge he was he obviously passed away a number of years ago, but he he was a huge music collector. So he would go to the studio, do his thing, leave in the early hours, go to the record store, kinda clean them out, you would be hanging out and whether it'd be at home, or in his office. He had, like, records all over the place, cassette he would make mix tapes, and that's kind of where The name of this album came from is the John Hughes mix tape because they found boxes of his mix tapes that he put together kind of with the soundtrack in mind that he wanted to use for the movie. So they they pulled the bits and pieces out of this, but you're right, even in the liner notes of this, It talked it talked a lot about the affinity that the actors had toward John because he was really about maybe ten years older than a lot of these.

0:05:06
So the the cool uncle piece really comes through because I think he was born around nineteen fifty, but that brat pack era of actors, they were born right around like nineteen six feet. Right? So, you know, to to them as teenagers, here's this guy who's, like, twenty five, thirty years old, who has this cool record collection. He had he had a job. He was an advertising executive for a while and then, like, blew that off. And got into movies. So he was just this cool guy who when you're at that age of of, like, in your twenties, late twenties, you feel like you can still connect to younger people, but, you know, you're not necessarily a parent yet, so you don't, you know, you're you're not too restrictive and and you're kind of that that cool guy. It's funny because he looked like somebody who went to an Ivy League school and kind of, if you will, lorded it over you that he had more knowledge than you did. This is just impressions I remember from being around him. But he was always very giving and very friendly. And he would talk about these things, the inspiration. And I if I remember right, he would let the actors know about the songs that he wanted to use So they would be inspired by that music when they're when they're doing the acting. So he was very good at kind of creating an atmosphere that they could they could get into and understand and then hopefully project it on screen.

0:06:31
The liner notes of this box that really got in deep into the weeds. So a lot of times when I'll get liner notes in in an album, I'll read them. I'll glance through them, but this one really sucked me in because they gave you each and every track in the box. And it would say, you know, such and such song. It came from this movie. This is the scene it was used in. And then they talked to the people that were involved. So it was mostly tarkin Gotch.

0:06:58
He was a British music executive. He wrote the bulk of the liner notes, but along with him and a few others, they they kinda had the backstory of how these songs came into existence. So one really good example was with she's having a baby, which was a very personal story to John Hughes because it was a bit autobiographical with the birth of his son and kind of and it it was even in the movie. He was a advertising executive in Chicago, which was a lot like him. So he had planned out the scene and he filmed it and he had in it a song. It was called song to the siren. It was from an gear music band called Myrtle Coil. Okay? So he he films it. They've got the music over it.

0:07:43
And then at that point, they're just like, okay, we gotta get the rights. We gotta pay the band and and we'll include the movie. So they go to them and they're like, no, we don't we don't wanna do it. So they just thought it was they're playing around. They just want more money. It's John Hughes, he had already made a name for himself. So they're like, alright. Just go back and pay him more money. And they're like, no. We we don't want that. And then finally, it got through to John, and they're like, John, they're not gonna accept any level of money. They don't wanna do anything that's seen as, like, commercial because it's unhip. It's not cool.

0:08:15
So he was devastated because the entire scene of this movie, it it's that that and at the House spittle when, you know, will the baby survive? Will his wife survive? And so tarkin goes, says, I'm friends with Kate Bush. Let me talk to her and see if she'll do a song. So he talks to her. They bring her the end clip of the movie, probably on like a VHS tape or something. She watches a scene, composers a song, sings it, they get it back to John, and they're at this point, they're thinking we're gonna just to redo it and, you know, nice effort. And it's this beautiful song that they end up playing over it. The only thing he had to do was add in a couple your scenes because he didn't wanna trim the song. He wanted it to run its entire duration. So it ended up into this, like, wonderful piece of history, but you wouldn't know it without reading these liner notes, the back story. It was really cool. That's that's fascinating. It's It's weird how when you do see those scenes without any music behind them, how really like, this is gonna be this is gonna work.

0:09:25
Really? I'm not so sure. You know? And then you can get a song that really pulls it together, and it's incredible. It makes a whole difference. I don't know how you, you know, as a creator, how you would envision that, especially if you have your mind set on something. Like, how do you regroup after somebody says, no, you're not having our music. We're not doing it. And that ends up being a real problem for some of these films coming out in any kind of other market because they didn't make a deal with them upfront for DVDs or whatever else streaming, whatever it might be. So sometimes you get those films and they don't have the real music with them, and I think it kills it. Didn't when they put married with children when they ended up releasing that on DVD years after the show aired on TV, they had to replace the theme song because they didn't have the the DVD rights to do it.

0:10:20
But it it it was really interesting because they, you know, talking about songs, they took the final edit of planes, trains, and automobiles and started showing it to test audiences. So originally, the plan was to use nothing but, like, a country and western song. So they had, like, Steve Burrow and Emily Lou Harris, and it was gonna be nothing but, like, a country and western soundtrack. And the test came back and they're like, well, they kinda liked the movie, but they hated the music. So they had to go back to the drawing board and they still use some of them, but then they added in some more kind of popular tunes too to to bring it around.

0:10:59
Again, you could look at those movies and you think this is a bomb. I've been at a couple of test screenings for things and you go, holy man, they're not this is not releasable. And then it ends up being one of the biggest hits because they tweak the right things. And like I say, music is a huge, huge part of that. But well then, what did you find out about Ferris Bueller? So Ferris Bueller was an interesting one too because if you watched the credits. Right? And it's the that song, yellow, the the oh, yeah. Right? That that rolls over and that they're on the school bus. At the bottom of that, at at the very end, almost when they cut back to the scene where where Matthew Broderick walks back in and you're still here, it says, like, by the soundtrack to Ferris Bueller's day off on cassette and record. And and I remember asking for it as a gift Christmas, and nobody could find it because it just it never actually existed. They never produced it. So what had happened, what they mentioned in in the liner notes was right around that time.

0:12:04
The popular lore is that that John Hughes as well, the soundtrack wouldn't work well as a soundtrack. It's just a collection of songs. You know, it just doesn't make sense to release it. But that's b s because he he did that for every movie up to that point and he did it with every movie after that point. But what happened was right around that time he was trying to launch his own music label called Hughes Music. And they think what happened was it was just the timing was terrible. They couldn't release it on Hughes music because it was still, I think, on Arista, most of those and it just they couldn't get the rights worked out. There was a lot of conflict. So it just never came out. He put out a couple seven inch singles for for fan clubs, but that was it. And it was a very popular soundtrack of songs.

0:12:52
Like, because each of those songs plays so uniquely with different scenes. You know, I sadly, I probably have that that because I should look. I should dig in my archives somewhere because I do remember that when we did the junket for that, there was something kind of interesting. Now, do you remember anything about The the song that was on the in the parade. Was it twist and shout? Was it twist and shout? Yeah. Yeah. We always have twist and shout, or do they have something else? No.

0:13:23
That was that was kind of planned out. They the the funny thing was is I think there was actually, like, another song that they're gonna add in they were gonna like, they did that and they did Dunkin' Shay. Right? But they ended up deciding, like, this whole scene is getting way too long and that's that's fine. So I think they had originally talked about doing maybe another song in the parade. There were also a few other scenes that they were planning to film and they had songs in mind for them. But the movie like, the original cut off Harris Bueller was, two hours and forty five minutes. It just went on forever. Now they'd let them do that. Yeah. Probably. Yeah. Extremely. We're gonna yeah. Just take it up. We just we can get more ads for that. So, yeah, go for it. Well, that's fascinating because that was such a huge, huge part of our lives in the eighties. Those films were seminal, I think.

0:14:16
And it's funny that somebody hasn't gone back and done something about him. I mean, is there a book about him? Is there a movie about him? Is there something about him that they could easily tie these things to. Because, you know, I think he was at the time as big as Steven Spielberg. Because you you know, here's who's influencing a generation. Now when you look in the grand scheme of things, that doesn't hold up. But at the time, I remember the wait for a John Hughes film. It was like guaranteed it was gonna be something you would go to. Because he didn't he didn't repeat himself, and he was always on the cutting edge of whatever was was trendier current at that time. So if you wanted to be a hip teenager, you had to be part of that that whole world. Yeah. They made a couple interesting notes about that in in the liner notes. They talked a little bit about how popular his films were during that time, but he never got to do he probably was deserved because comedies, they don't get nominated for anything. Right? It's just dramas and -- Right. Bad. So your your ferris bueller is not gonna get nominated for best picture. So that was part of it.

0:15:34
And a lot of his films too were actually filmed on pretty small budgets. And if you look at the release of some of those films, he was cranking out like two movies a year. It was eighty five. He did the breakfast club in weird science. Eighty six. He did pretty in pink and ferrous bueller's. Eighty seven was some kind of wonderful in planes, trains, and automobiles.

0:15:53
And he said, I always have to do a movie because he was worried that one would bomb and then the studio would say, you're done. So he said if I'm always working, they can't cancel me. Yeah. Well, you get three in those days, you get three films. Right. You get one, you say hit, then you have two more that will kind of hold you. But if you're not by the third, coming back with another hit, you're out of the business. That's how brutal it was. Yeah. One he one film when you're out. Yeah. So he would have, like, one one kind of in post production are ready to go, and then he'd already be working on the next one. And then the first one would do good. So then he would it would buy him another film after through that. And he was just kinda hop scotching from one to the next.

0:16:40
One other interesting point too from the soundtrack It only included one song from vacation, which was holiday road by Lindsay Buckingham, which was actually very interesting when you read the notes because he hated kind of like mainstream rock and roll in a lot of ways. He he didn't like like Fleetwood Mac. He aided Fleetwood Mac because they were too commercial. But he had Lindsay Buckingham from Fleetwood Mac to Holiday Road, but he didn't really direct that. He just kind of wrote the green play, so that might have been part of it too. But they included that song in in the box, which is fun. You know? And that's the idea that he could write was his biggest success as a director. If he wrote a script, you knew the script is good and you know all these other directors who made hay with his work. But he whenever he was writing, he would be able to tweak it as he needed to for the film he was trying to produce.

0:17:40
I remember one of the young people, and I wish I could tell you who it was. It was Rob Lowe, Demi Demi Moore, if it was Ellie Sheedy or Jed Nelson, I can't remember who it was, said that they thought he was the coolest guy ever, and they looked to him for style. And so I asked him about that. I said, they think that you're kind of like the style setter of all these above the Brad pack of whomever. And he said, me, I wear the same clothes all the time. I don't even I have no sense of style. I am not that person. But if they think I'm cool, that's okay. I'm alright with that. And I found that very fascinating because He did seem like he was at kid who came home from college, who knew a little bit more than everybody else did, and you looked up to him because he had seen the world, but he wasn't gonna volunteer what he had seen. You had to kind of pull it up.

0:18:36
You know, you had asked if if anyone ever did anything on Hughes, you know, a movie or book, the only thing that I could think of offhand was Netflix does a program called the movies that made us, which looks back at films of like the nineteen eighties and pop culture and stuff. So they did one episode on home alone. And even though he he didn't direct that, that was a Chris Columbus film. He wrote it, he produced it. And it kinda got into a lot of the background of John Hughes and because they filmed it at that same abandoned high school that they used for, like, ferris bueller and and breakfast club and stuff. So they they set up offices in there, and they I think they used to Jim to build sets on it and things like that. So that was kinda interesting.

0:19:25
But he was buddies with John Candy, and he didn't show up really to any of the filming except for the one day they had John Kandy on set to film his, like, two scenes as you know, that that guy that meets up with Catherine O'Hara at the airport. And it was funny because they said they paid scale for him. So, you know, whatever scale is and nineteen ninety ish. They they worked them for, like, twenty hours just just to get, you know, like, five minutes of screen time. They were gonna they were gonna milk that until the end and they said John Kandy ever exhausted. Yeah. Yeah. So he was exhausted. And then as soon as John Kandy was done, John Hughes took off and Chris Columbus took back over. Yeah. Is it that is weird. That is weird. But I think they would defer. I really think that was the kind of the way it was with him even though he was not listed as director, you know.

0:20:19
They they have enough of these people who are still around who would make a great documentary. I think somebody should do that and interview the alcoholic calkins and all these other ones who have been part of that John Hughes world and give people a sense of what it is today because I don't know that kids today have anything like that. There isn't, you know, one of those kind of filmmakers that you say, it's a must. I've gotta go see it. Quentin Tarantino doesn't make enough films. To really merit the loyalty, if you will, that somebody like John Hughes engendered. You'd have to go back to the old forties and fifties to really find somebody else who had that same, yeah, will go attitude. It's interesting.

0:21:03
When a celebrity dies, I'll have that moment, like, that's sad. You know, that he was a great musician, great actor, whatever. But it doesn't really I I don't feel it in any way. I the the two deaths that I could think of from from a celebrity standpoint, because it it impacted me in some way. When John Hughes died, I just felt crushed because there was my childhood. And the other one was Michael Kriton because he was my favorite author. He'd written so many, you know, Jurassic Park was I got roped in with that, but movies or books like The Androbanist rain and Congo and the terminal man rising sun. I mean, these were all really good books and and I was devastated by I think that death also. And actually, they just discovered some some books of his that were written under a pen name and they're gonna re release So I'm I'm excited about that. I'm getting ready for, like, more Michael Creighton books that that I didn't even know existed. But it it was, like, those two desks kinda just hit me hard because from as a child or as a teenager, these were huge parts of my life and a lot of other celebrities. It doesn't hit me that way.

0:22:13
Well, can I give you something that I think you should watch? Sure. I'm not sure if you're gonna go all Bruce, please. No. But it's on the Disney Channel and Disney Plus. It's coming up this week and it's called prom packed. And it's about these two friends. It's a boy and a girl who are friends, not romantically, but they're just besties. You know? And I think that's something that we haven't seen for a while. And they decide that they're going to go to prom. Which has an eighties theme for its prom. But, you know, you hear about promposals all the time, where how somebody asks somebody to go to problem. Well, in the film, they do all of these kind of bits from eighties film. So you will see a lot of John Hughes represented in the in the course of this. And they're very funny, very cool the way they they pull off. And I was able to talk with members that cast the producers and a key guestar. But I have a I have an interview here that I think you might like because it talks all about them.

0:23:17
Ram Peck premieres March thirtieth on Disney Channel and Disney Plus, and Bruce has interviews with key people from the film. In this first clip here from stars, Payton Elizabeth Lee and Blake Draper. Alright, Blake. Fill me in.

0:23:29
What surprised you most about the United States when you came here? Oh. What surprised me most, I think Self-in-depth. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When I when I ride and Los Angeles for the first time and I was driving around with Milo actually, I couldn't believe how many billboards that were. That's just Which is, I guess, must be strained. But in Australia, we just don't have that many billboards of films and and then television shows. So that was kind of jiring to be like, wow, this is really a town built on entertainment. Sorry. System Are you on one now? Are you guys on one now yet? I think we're on a couple. Sorry. It's a big idea. You have to get over there and pose with it. That's the deal. Yeah. No. I was I was at the shelving mall recently and I popped up on one of the screens there, and it was kind of a jump scare. People like you.

0:24:19
And So Satan believes a lot of Have you been teaching him everything? Are you now his his tudor in this too? He's he's tutor in fame. He never did that. Anything I'm doing right now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I have to I see.

0:24:33
Yeah. I needed a lot of help. Yeah. She needs more. No. I mean, I don't know enough to tutor anyone in anything. But now, they're also putting you with Milo in doggy. Right? Yes. Do you ever get rid of him?

0:24:49
I try my very best and fail at every point. It's he is a a force that needs to be tamed at some point. Yes. I do my best. I do the same. I think it's Georgia.

0:25:03
But you know, Mandy and Dewey are kind of alike, aren't they? Sorry? Aren't Mandy and Dewey kind of alike? Oh, definitely. I mean, I think they're both very strong, smart, independent women. And I just feel so lucky to be able to play both of them. And I guess if I can play a strong, smart woman, authentically, then it must mean something about me. Right. If she wouldn't like that or is she just really out of it? When you see her off the screen. This is for you, Blake. This is Yeah. She is really happy. It was just another screen. She's a mess. Don't tell them. No kidding. Pain. No sick. No pain. Pain's amazing.

0:25:48
She's a he said she said, wow. She's she's a lot of similarities with the characters that she plays. We're smart. So it's all these types. It's a vague you. It's pretty smart. Yeah. She's a smart she's she is a smart lady. She's independent. She's he's very strong. She's very head strong, which I've definitely learned. The hard way? I love the hard way, but, no, I've taken a lot from Payton. And, yeah, she's she's amazing. Payton said off the set. I want him off the set now. Is that what she does? Yep. Yep. Definitely.

0:26:20
I was shocked, though, Blakely, that you didn't know how to play basketball. Yeah. This is my first time. It's my first time learning it. Luckily for me. Or yes. Sorry. Go again. Is that easy to see? Super fast. Not easy. I for Seth. Already forgotten how to play because I haven't touched a basketball since I was lost on Seth. But luckily, if I may, my older brother is an amazing basketballist. So he actually helps coach me, which was really, really fun and I And what did he think?

0:26:49
Did he think you were any good? I think he was worried at the start. But people had a lot of time that happened and somebody's really helped me out. But I had a few other coaches You need one of them? Payton and in in Vancouver as well. So Yeah.

0:27:03
And did you use the beef method? I did actually. Yeah. I I did it. It it it it cried. My gram had a point and it and it helped me as Blake.

0:27:15
Bing and Graham. Wow. It's very matters. Isn't it? This really kind of conjures a lot of John Hughes talk, I think. Yeah. Did you see it? Did you see that kind of central election for sure? Oh, definitely. I mean, I was raised on John Hughes movies. My mom loves the eighties, the music, the clothes, the the movies, and so all of it was very infused into my upbringing. So it was really exciting to get to sort of keep the spirit of the eighties romcom alive and then, you know, make some adjustments so that it makes sense in a in a twenty first century world. But yeah, it it was so much fun to get to dive into that that sort of feeling.

0:28:01
Are you surprised by the little more adult tone that this took from other Disney films? I don't know if I was surprised. I was excited about it. You know, I think kids these days are so smart. And they're not to be underestimated. And I think it is our job to create content that speaks authentically to what it is to grow up today, what it looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels like. And so I don't know if it's more grown up, but it's just more truthful. So but it was very exciting for me because I think that's very important. Yeah. Definitely.

0:28:37
Blake, if I said, get your head in the game, would you know what I was talking about? In basketball? High school. High school musical? Did you see she tutored you on that answering. I can see that. You I do love high school musical. Our high school musical is amazing. I remember I vividly remember saying a lot. You vividly No. The last one, like, the last musical three. I remember my older brother telling me about it. Right? Is that how it goes? Hey, Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it. Thank you.

0:29:11
In the second clip, here an interview with another star of the show, Margaret Cho. Margaret, what was your your high school guidance counselor like? Gosh, I don't even know if I met with my high school counselor, I think a counselor, guidance counselor, I can't remember. I mean, it didn't make an impression on me. To the point where I can say who it even was, but the one person in high school that really believed in me was I had a high school theater teacher who would sign me up for open my comedy nights when I was a really young teenager with my comedy partner at the time who was Sam Rockwell, who's a very famous actor. So we were a comedy duo and she would sign us up because we were too young to sign up So she would call the club and put in our names, and then we would go. We were like fifteen. So young.

0:30:00
But what an amazing vote of confidence and it set me off on a career in him too, I guess, for sure. I think something happened to him, didn't it? I think there's a little something. Well, today, she could get arrested for doing something like that. You know? Yeah. It's still very different. You know, it's a very different time, but she was a young woman. She was, like, in her twenties. You know, and she just saw such a energy in me and in Sam and you know, kind of gave us a lot of encouragement and really tested us to, like, okay, why don't you challenge this by going and doing something at a night club? And so, you know, when she was there to slap her own to make sure it didn't get weird. So she was like the responsible adult throughout, but at the same time was giving us this idea of opportunity, which is really important.

0:30:58
How good were the two of you as a team? Were you good? I don't really remember. I think we were just so young that people were just kind of like, what is going on with these ideas. Right? What even is it? You could see there's footage of it on YouTube of some of our stuff that we would do. And so ridiculous and funny, but it's also like just trying things out, you know, when you're a kid that's sort of what high school's about. You know, I remember when you were the queen of ABC and when all American girl came out and that that was gonna be a big game changer. And now this year, we hear about everything everywhere as a big game changer. Is it It is. It's great. It's really exciting. I wanna see more Asian American participation in film and television. In arts in general, you know, it's really exciting. I think, you know, it's a long time coming. For sure. But I'm so proud that we get to sort of see ourselves in film and this film prompt act also features and centers on an Asian American woman who's forging a pop and you know, to me, that's really exciting.

0:32:12
Did you when they approached you about this, did you say, well, I would be what? You know, I mean, did you see that the guidance counselor would be your role? Well, I I was just offered the role, but I I was really excited to do it. I wanted to work with Payton again. I'd done her show, Dewey, last year, which I I really was impressed by her acting her ability and her innovative genius when it comes to approaching these roles. And I was excited to work with her and The role was written as queer guidance counselor, which I thought was really interesting and really cool. So I really was excited to do it. Did you talk with her at all about, you know, the business? Did you give her any advice? Oh, she doesn't need advice for me. She's doing great. You know, she's, like, so I was looking for advice for me because I think I learned so much from younger people on how the industry has changed and how things are really different. You know, we're we're looking at social media differently. And there there really have so much to offer to like somebody like me who's trying to learn about what new stuff is going on.

0:33:19
Howard Bauchner: You know, when this show makes a big deal about eighties films, What did you think when those eighties films were out? Did you say, oh my god. Yeah. That's really great, or were you looking at them and saying, you know, they're really not showing the picture. Well, I loved it because they were what we had, you know. And I remember going to the first showing pretty in pink at our local theater where I was growing up and was so exciting. Because you had just a film that was about being a teenager, which I think was just so Right. And the coolest adult, which is Annie Pott's is great in the movie. And so I was really channeling Annie Pott's in prom packed because I think that's kind of the right sort of like character that absorb mind matches. Well, I hope this is the start of a lot of things for you because I miss you. I don't see you enough. Yes. We need more meat.

0:34:20
And finally, in this third clip, executive producer, Julie Bowen, known for her role on Modern Family is joined by director Anja Adams. Julie, what did you learn about producing? What did this teach you? I learned a lot. I learned that producers work much harder than actors and get paid less. That's what I learned, and I have a lot of respect for them. And will never complain again.

0:34:43
Did you find though that now I understand some of the choices they make? You know, like when you say I didn't get cast in this because Well, casting is definitely something that I I've done some directing before, so I was more familiar with that process and definitely learn to take casting less personally after being on the other side. You you realize that there's so many forces at play. It's not always the best actor, it's it you're you're figuring out a whole ecosystem on how it's gonna work. I I think I really figured out that there's a lot of you've got a partner like Disney who's great, and there's a lot of you've got to meet a lot of different needs and a lot of from the people on the set to the highest levels and sometimes there's compromises that don't make sense to somebody who's just standing on set like I used to do. It makes sense. It makes sense.

0:35:40
For both of you, this is a little more adult than most Disney films. And there there's a specific area that I could reference, but I don't wanna reference. Uh-huh. Goodbye with that. You wanna take that on yet? I mean, Disney I I feel like Disney wanted to do this movie because they also are trying to really grow their team, you know, mid kind of range viewership and and really dig into that, and this was a way to do it.

0:36:11
I mean, when you look at the other stuff that's out there for teens, it is a little bit more grown up, and they are opposed to a lot more things on the Internet and on their phones. And so it's like this movie, I think, had a real strong Disney feel But, you know, we we tried to elevate it and and just bring it into kind of the the present day as it were and, you know, blazes trail for Disney into this? Yeah. Disney wants to grow with its with its audience. They have such a solid base in the Disney channel But then when you're moving into Disney plus and you have the whole family watching, there it's not inappropriate to have references to some more mature subject matter. So we did.

0:37:01
I was saying, and I don't know if I got cut off. But I love it. Idea that there was a boy girl friendship, but it didn't have to lead to romance. I thought that was a really cool kind of aspect of the film, and I hope that that's a lot. I hope that happens a lot. Yeah. I mean, that was really important.

0:37:19
When I read the script, I was like, I don't see this. I don't see a lot of, you know, hetero kids being friends, male, female. You just don't see that. And I think it's something that is a reality in the world. And it's you can have friends with the opposite sex and and support each other and love each other and be in a friendship. And I think payton and and Milo crafted it beautifully. Yeah. I think sometimes there's too much pressure if you will. You can't just be friends that's gotta lead to something else. But Yeah.

0:37:50
Do you two remember promposals? I never had that in my day, but I'm ancient, so there you go. No. I think these are pretty recent. I I have my own theory and that is that they came along with social media and the rise of the smartphones in the late, you know, arts. Mhmm. Because before that, like, it you weren't doing big splashy things because you weren't trying to record them and show them on social media. But I could be wrong.

0:38:20
Howard Bauchner: Well, well, how are you asked to prompt? You just somebody comes up to you and says, would you like to put a prom with me and that was it? Well, I on your back and I was back in the passing note stages, I mean, I wrote my prom data letter because he lived in another city and had to fly in for it, and he did, and it was amazing. But I think if, you know, you're in a high school back in the day, you were, like, writing a letter, you had your friend go ask. It was very you know, contained. And I didn't perform I went to a boarding school. We didn't have a prom, so I got to avoid that altogether. Oh, no. This is your prom then. This is it. All the better. Right? It's my wish fulfillment.

0:39:04
There's also a very John Hughes vibe to this film. Did you plan that, or is it just because of the times? Hundred percent. It was up slowly planned in the script and in the development. We wanted to reference it. We wanted to say that those movies left us feeling really good, but then upon reflection, have some really problematic stuff, and we needed a director who could put all of that together in a visual language and and Annie did a great job.

0:39:36
Alright, Bruce. Thanks for that interview. Be sure to watch prom packed. It's on both Disney Channel and it's on Disney plus, but I must tell you the Disney channel version has been sanitized for your protection. So you're not gonna get the kind of the dirty references where they actually go John Hughes on you in the Disney plus version. So watch that one and you'll get some things where you go, oh, I didn't realize that Disney did these kind of things, but they do. And look in the background of everything because you'll see promposals that are not meant to be overt. They're just ones that you as a fan of eighties films would be able to catch the the reference. Sounds good, Bruce. So we'll be back again next week with another episode of streamed and screened.

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The Oscars are behind us, so it's time to turn our attention to new programming until the big summer movies return. But this week we find ourselves going back in time as we discuss "Marie Antoinette," a new historical drama on PBS.

The stars of the show, Emilia Schüle in the titular role and Louis Cunningham as Louis XVI, sat down with co-host Bruce Miller to discuss the program, the arc of the series that is planned for three seasons, and whether or not Marie Antoinette really said "let them eat cake." 

Leading into that interview, miller and co-host Terry Lipshetz discussed how this show is the latest in a line of recent period dramas that have dominated streaming services. 

"The Great" is among our favorites. The show starring Elle Fanning, which is very loosely based on the life of Catherine the Great, returns to Hulu on May 12 for season 3 with 10 new episodes.

Another show that is a bit more realistic is "The Crown" on Netflix. The sixth and final season should wrap production in a few months and could drop by the end of the year. The program, which changes ensemble casts every two seasons as characters age, is expected to bring viewers through the death of Princess Diana, but before the recent drama surrounding Princess Andrew, Prince Harry and the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

If you want some of that drama, you can watch the documentary series "Harry & Meghan" on Netflix. 

Another period drama, also on Netflix, is "Bridgerton." The series is a fictional drama based on the book series by Julia Quinn that takes place during London's Regency era of the late 1700s.

Perhaps "Marie Antoinette" most closely resembles another historical drama in "The Last Czars" that aired on Netflix in 2019. That show focused on the final years of Russia's Romanov dynasty.

About the show

Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was generated by Podium.page and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

0:00:03
Welcome everyone to another episode of streamed and screened and entertainment podcast about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises. I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee and cohost of the program with Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal and a longtime entertainment reporter. Bruce, welcome back. How's it going? No. We went through the Oscars We're good. We are looking forward to the spring shows. We're good.

0:00:30
I have watched all of Ted Lasso. I'm good. So, yeah, there's a there's a lot there that we've been able to peel off during the last last few weeks. But, you know, if I see a cocaine bear in the streets, I'm stopping. I'm excited. I have not seen cocaine beer and I will not until it's at least on TV for streaming purposes. But I am excited for Ted Lasso. That's the one show because I feel like Apple T. V. Plus, they've got some good programs. But I I can't pay for it year round because they don't seem to have enough at any given moment for me. Like, I like Tesla, so I like that space program. Where it was kind of the alternate history. Yeah. I really like that. So I've been waiting for Ted Lass, so so I can resubscribe for about a month or two Watch watch that.

0:01:25
Watch for all mankind. I still have to get caught up on that that Jennifer Aniston to the morning show. Morning show love that. Yeah. Look at what you're missing. You should be spending money. You're rich. You can do all that.

0:01:41
If I was rich, Bruce, I probably would be doing something differently right now, but I'm not. I'm rich in knowledge. I'm rich in movie and TV knowledge spending my time with you. You know, we don't need we don't need all that money because we have someone's experience that's where we're able to draw on that bank. And if you buy that graph, I'll tell you a little bit more.

0:02:06
I think we need a time machine, Bruce, for this episode. Like, I was looking I was looking locally for a delorean to see if I could whip something up. Because I I wanna go back in time because it feels like everything we're watching on TV now is going back in time. A lot a lot back in time. Yeah. And they're going back to the the days when maybe politics wasn't the same as it is today. Right now they're trying to kind of show us what was it like when x or y was in charge? What did they do? Right? And how did they react? And it's interesting. I don't know if we're learning anything because I think our politicians are making the same mistakes they've always made.

0:02:48
It is fun to look back at these things. I love these ones that have great sets and costumes. I really like looking at that stuff because I think what are they what kind of hell are they going through to wear this this junk. You know? And when you see something like the great, which just turns it on its head and goes for the laughs. I enjoy it. It's fun.

0:03:11
But a lot of things are coming up before the end of the spring, Tom Jones. They're doing a remake of Tom Jones that will be a little less user friendly. Let's just say that Tom isn't the the dashing rogue that he once was. And so that's an interesting take on things. And then we have Maria Antoinette, which is a kind of a spin on how that whole story played out that the people who made it said that, really, Marie Antoinette was the victim. She was not treated the way she really should have been, and she was the victim of gossip in the court. People were she was, like, the first influencer who was canceled. Is one of those kind of things where permanent They were out together, and so they did whatever they could. And in this new this new series, limited series that they have, you'll be able to see how the people are really she wasn't that bad, but she was treated badly. And then we'd have the crown. Look how long we've been looking at the British dynasty and what they're up to. And how will that shift now when Charles is in charge?

0:04:26
Howard Bauchner: Right. So you mentioned the great, which that one's actually coming back pretty soon. Season three is coming back May twelfth. They're gonna drop ten ten episodes on Hulu. And I feel like that's gonna be one where I'm gonna have to tell my wife, like, we gotta take a couple days off because we're we're just gonna crush through all ten episodes back to them. And they're quick ones too. I I feel like that one you can kinda you can crush through the great -- Yeah. -- pretty quickly.

0:04:53
But I I love that show because it's it's so irreverent. Everyone's smashing glasses on the floor and Hazan and it it it's a little bit historically accurate, like, at, you know, like, one percent. But it's so fun. And very naughty, which I like naughty. Yeah. That's a that's a good thing. The gentleman who created the great. Also did the favorite. If you remember the favorite. Okay.

0:05:23
And that starred Olivia Coleman, she won her Oscar for that. And when me and Coleman was in the crown. Right? And I just talked her she's gonna be in great expectations. Another adaptation that's coming up. And she says, I have no interest in history. I really I am not one who who wants to go back and and dig out that stuff. In fact, she remembers being assigned great expectations when she was in high school. She's, I don't think I even read it. I really don't. So I I like the honesty that she she brings to all of this because it makes, I think, the character a little more believable. But yeah. But she was in the crowd.

0:06:05
And you know, I I I mentioned this before, I'm sure, that I don't like that they switching out the cast because I think they could do with some of that stuff. I think this latest cast, you know, the last one was really good. And now these once I'm not so sure I'm buying into it, but there you are. Yeah. I liked so and it was weird too for me because I didn't watch the crown initially. When season four of the crown came out, which was the second and final season with the second cast, my wife and I decided, let's kinda check this one out. So we went back and we we crushed through season one and two. Then immediately went to season three, which is very jarring when you go and look at the cast change because we really liked and we we kinda grew to like that initial cast. And then it goes to season three, and we didn't know kind of what to think of it. And I think it finally grew on us once we got about halfway through maybe the second the the third season.

0:07:06
It was a really I really I think ended up liking the season three and forecast the most because I thought Olivia Coldman really nailed a a kind of middle aged queen Elizabeth, somebody who is no longer, you know, the young pop in who's kind of settled into herself and taking charge and knows what she has to do, but you had hell in a bottom Carter playing her her sister, which was kinda fun. And then I didn't even realize it until almost after the fact, but they brought back Dana Sculley, Julian Anderson played Margaret Thatcher. And she was fabulous. It was so good. And and the actor that was from the Game of Thrones who played he he was the the member of the family that was blown up by the the bomb, the boat bomb. Oh, the Fort Mount bat or was it Fort Mountbatman? Yeah. Yeah. Because he was Tywin Lannister in the Game of Thrones. So it was just they had a really solid ensemble cast. So I I absolutely loved it.

0:08:12
I thought they had a really good young Prince Charles in that program. Right. I thought they had a really good young Princess Diana, but it didn't translate well when they jumped to season five. I I thought, like, it It wasn't as jarring because it'd been so long since I'd watched seasons five four and five, but I I'm not in love with the current cast. Dominic West, isn't he Prince Charles now? Mhmm. Yeah. I think No.

0:08:40
That was miscasting. Right there. Right. Right there is miscasting. But you know, it I get what they're doing. What's funny is that they kind of take a Jackie Collins approach. To that whole royal world, and yet they're trying to play it as very masterpiece theater. You know, there's there's a lot of down and dirty stuff that you think, is this really what happened? Or are you going a little too far on the edge here? So I don't know how accurate it might be, but I bet any money that the people who are in the royal family had a great time watching it. I heard I don't know if you heard this, but around the time of the first season, one of the Queen's sons I can't remember if it was Prince Edward, but they they would go to her house, her castle, whatever she lives in. And they would watch it on, like, Sunday nights. Once a week. You're gonna be great? Yeah. So they threw on the Netflix and watched themselves. And then you would be, like, screaming at the TV. No. That's not the way it is. That's not true at all. Right? The one yeah. I know.

0:09:52
The one actor who I really thought has nailed the role in the newer season, though. Jonathan Price is Prince Philip. I I feel like I believe him in that role. It feels like Prince Philip to me. Well and, you know, isn't it weird that we know these characters? Or we feel we know them because we've seen them in the media. We've seen them doing things. So you have a a a different approach. Whereas the ones that are from Katherine or Grace era, she can be whatever. You know? Because we've enough about her that I don't know that that's true. But so it's I think it's easier for an actor to play one that we aren't familiar with. But something, but that really kinda grazes your radar. I think that's difficult. Yeah.

0:10:35
So that program has the final season coming up season six, which will maintain the current cast. I've read that it's scheduled to wrap photography sometime in May or June. And that Netflix, there's no release date, but Netflix has historically dropped that show in either November or December. So take that for whatever that's worth. We probably will see it by the end of the year maybe. Will they go up to the death of Elizabeth, or will they No. I I thought the plan was to kind of bring it up to, you know, we'll obviously see the death of of Princess Diana, and I think they have a young Kate Middleton cast. So we will see like William meet Kate in school. But I don't think it goes any further than that. I think that was their point was they wanted to kind of bring it up to sort of modern times, like, where we would recognize transition from that to almost the present day, but they weren't planning to bring it much further. Didn't you see though a standalone movie where they do the death of Elizabeth, where that's kinda and then the transition of power -- Yeah. -- that'd be cool.

0:11:45
And just the drama, the Harry drama. Oh, the spare, I've been reading the book. Have you? Yeah. The spare is very interesting because you can see First of all, the media is the devil. He has the media responsible for everything, which I find kind of like Boy, they really fed him the kool Aid, didn't they? Mhmm. But he does have an altered view of his importance his place and the family drama. Now, he tells a lot of things that are very fascinating, you know, about how bad the the plumbing is in the palace and and how the sheets are repaired so many times that when you're in bed, you feel like all these these holes that used to be in there are darned over and it rubs against you.

0:12:36
I think, well, that that's kind of information I would well, I'd want that. I'd like to know that kind of jump. But then he gets into his military career and single handedly, he is, like, Liam Nason here. He's doing a flying into Afghanistan and Yeah. It's and, you know, there are there are a lot of girlfriends mentioned that I never knew. I I'd be going if I were British press, I'd be going back and asking them a few questions about Is this the way that book actually happened? Can you fill me in on this? This is the truth. But he always is going about the paparazzi And early in the book, he has this philosophy that he thought his mom was not dead, that she was you know, just hiding out because she wanted to get away from all of it.

0:13:23
And it took him going to the site of where she died to really come to a different different kind of conclusion. But it it is fascinating because those people don't reveal their feelings. For the most you never we don't know what the queen was like. She could have been a big old lush. But, you know, all we have to go on is that she has a purse, she likes corgis, and she always wore a hat. Right? And worse racing. Right. This is like this is what we know about the Queen. Yeah. So Queen speculation that a TV show does It is what it is. Yeah.

0:13:59
I I haven't read the book. I'm not really interested in reading it. I I have not watched Harry and Meghan on Net flix and I I really don't feel like feeding that beast. You know, it's funny you mentioned the the the devil and the media yet they have no problem using the media to their own advantage. It's only when it it doesn't serve them right.

0:14:21
But I think my problem is he he it just comes off as very elitist and entitled on his part. I mean, he I I I don't doubt that he's probably felt disparaged in some way. You know, we we all know going back to when even he was younger they were referred to as the heir in the spare. So I totally get that. But you're living a very gilded life to begin with. I I don't care about your problems all that much. It's it's a, you know, you you can have a lot of problems. And I also think too, like, you're kinda burning bridges at this point.

0:15:02
We all have people in our families who we don't necessarily like. You see them on Thanksgiving, you got your crazy uncle or somebody that believes in weird conspiracies or that UFOs are coming down to com and you just kinda like, get denied politely and you move along. But in theory, he's really not that far removed from the monarchy. So Like, you would almost wanna be, like, let me just play it cool for the time being. Because in, you know, what happens if if Charles were to die? And then something crazy like William and his family are flying off somewhere in the plane crashes. All of a sudden, you're the king of England. So it's not you know, it's one thing with his his cousins who are like fourteenth in line and they're never gonna smell the throne room. But he's actually still not that far removed from from that position. Like, just kind of let it roll out and then maybe you know, years from now, but, you know, it is what it is.

0:16:00
There I think Meghan and Harry are playing it like a reality show. You know, they all give me all that kind of angst that we should get on their side and we feel sorry for them. Look, I'm feeling sorry for nobody who has you ring a bell and you get a meal. I have to scramble to get a meal. So and they haven't they don't have to worry about any money. They can buy whatever they want. They can get whatever they want. But I do see the the kind of velvet handcuffs on them where you gotta go cut a ribbon or open a store or something and Is that really a job?

0:16:38
Right? And he acts like he's the only one who's seen the real outside world. He hasn't seen the outside world at all. He wasn't working at seven eleven. He wasn't doing, you know, some of these things that they act like, oh, we are real commoners. We are just weird. You know? And so it's fascinating. I like I say, I enjoy reading this because it's so kind of diluted -- Right. -- about what the real world is.

0:17:06
And then as you said, Putting the blame on the media when you don't really even know how grateful you should be to the media for carrying your water. Where would his side have been in this whole thing if Oprah hadn't said, hey, let's do a little let's do a little interview. You know? And so he's naive. Naive is a better word than spare. But he brings up the spare aspect all the time in that book. Yeah. I am just this Oh, feel sorry for me. He's gonna beat the queen's pony until its death on that one. Well, and yeah. And I think they will go. They will go to the coordination. Because that more content. They're it's they're just, like, influencers that have to have more content for their site. So they're going and they're not gonna look happy, but they're gonna go and then they're gonna bring the kids and then they all say that somebody dissed him or Camilla didn't grab the kids and hug them like she should have or it'll be some crap like that because it keeps the monarchy going. As long as there's interest in that, nobody is talking about, let's get away from Let's not do that. Let's just make those some museums that we can send people through. Of course.

0:18:29
Now some royal drama that I do enjoy Bridgerton. Bridgerton. Yeah. I you probably are looking at me like, Terry, you you really Bridgerton? Yeah. I I enjoyed that. I kinda got roped into it with my wife and I've been sucked in. It's it's fun. It's just fun good old drama.

0:18:47
I tried the first season, and there were so many disconnects. That I thought, you know, I can't. I can't do this because it's one more that I'm gonna have to watch. And I did not buy the characters But this is me. This is just me now. You enjoy. Go. Do. Enjoy. But I you know, when they lost their leading man after the first season. I thought, this is gonna really kill it. But then they've got enough people there that each year they can have a new one who's looking for love even though the plot seems a little familiar.

0:19:21
I also like as a music buff they have, like, the vitamins yeah. The vitamin string quartet and there's another group too where they take contemporary music but turn it into ballroom dance songs. So when I'm watching it, I'm thinking, like, I know that song somewhere and then it's still there's still There's Nirvana. I can't believe you can dance to Nirvana. So that's kinda some good old fun. But, you know, it's It is what it is. I that one's I guess, they're still working on season three, no release date. Again, they're kind of like changing over some of the cast because they're gonna focus in on a different character or something, but it's it's not reality. So but it's kinda got that drama.

0:20:14
With the newest with Miranda Gwynet, which is coming out this month -- Mhmm. -- they go back and they looked at all of the way that she was treated. And they looked at the books that were written about her and how people reacted to her. And they realized that what we know, the things like she says, let them eat cake. She never said that. Off with their heads or any of those kinds of things that seemed very kind of fictitious. It was all made up. And instead, she was just another person throwing into this this royal world. She had no idea what she was doing, and they hated her because she was an outsider. She was not somebody that was picked from the inside. And she really kind of had to learn with her king because he was thrown into it when his family died. So they were these naive kids.

0:21:13
This is probably more like Romeo and Juliet than anything else. Yeah. And they had to figure out What do we do now? An interesting factor. We I think we have the interview, but I talked to the two stars of the of the mini series.

0:21:31
Amelia Schul and Lewis Cunningham, and get this. He was never gonna be an actor. He did a couple of shows in his college. Right? And thought, oh, that's interesting. Okay. But he was all geared I think he was a German major, and he was gonna do something else. And suddenly he gets cast in this thing and his co star was actually serving as his kind of his adviser telling him what he needed to know to be able to be in a mini series. So it is it's fascinating how all of this world kind of opens up to certain people. And it's not unlike royalty, but you could be the star of a mini series tear. I could. You know, all you need and then the actors can lead you through it. So there you go. I'll I'll start looking for parts.

0:22:25
The the closest thing that I could think of with this series, Netflix did one a couple years ago called the Last SARS. Did you see that one at all? Might have seen, like, an episode. I usually see the first episode of everything, and then after I'm done with that, I just bail. So the last star is if you haven't seen it, It's one of those shows where I'm not gonna recommend anybody you're listening to it to go see it because it wasn't that good.

0:22:48
But the problem with it is once you watch one episode, you kind of feel compelled to finish them off because it's not that bad either. It's sort of in between. It's one of those that has It's, like, fifty six percent on rotten tomatoes. So it's not terrible, but it's just not great either. We need it. We don't have completion. That's what you're looking at. Exactly. And it was short enough. It was only episode. So it's kinda I can I can kinda work my way through mediocre series?

0:23:13
It's but this that one felt a little bit like this Marie Antoinette where it's the czar, the last czar of Russia. It's it's how he gets married. The the the influence from Rasputin and kind of what happened leading up to the Bolshevic revolution and then ultimately the family getting wiped out. And and I think it might have it's been a while since I've seen it, but I think it might have even began with, you know, did Anastasia actually survive it because there's somebody in the hospital who's roughly that age who claimed to be the daughter of the czar and it was a fascinating look, and I think it provided some insight into the time period. And it was a good you know, it's somebody who's a student of history like myself and I like to think of myself, it was good to watch from that perspective. So I feel like I might actually hop into this one because it seems interesting enough to kinda cap my my attention.

0:24:07
They shot at her side, so you actually get to see the locations and they were shocked because they said there's a lot of show there. You can see the, you know, the the grand ballrooms that they have, but they were living in, like, back rooms basically. They didn't really have all that opulence around them at all times. I don't think that's true with you know all all regal people. Mhmm. I don't I think some of them do have the the good stuff. But, you know, interesting, isn't it that you can go and I don't know that you as a tourist could go into those back rooms and see what it's like. They got an opportunity because they were filming there and they said, you wanna see this room and, like, Yeah. Okay. Let's go look.

0:24:50
So that's and it this will be a three parter too where we have to so I just know that it's three years that they'll be doing this. I think that's eight episodes or so for the first season, then they'll do a second and they'll do the third. And so we don't get head cutting until the end. And then and there's no cake because we've we've already ruled that out. Cake. We are not having cake. No. Unless they decide to do it at the end. You know, let's end by the way, to celebrate this month's fundraiser on PBS. We're gonna be having cake. You don't get the tteok bag. You get a piece of cake. We're selling it. A hundred dollar donation. You we'll send you a piece of cake. We'll get the piece of cake. That's right. Alright. So let's queue that up.

0:25:34
Amelia Schul is is Marie Antoinette. And Louis Cunningham, who plays Lewis King Lewis, are are the stars of this. And they became very, very, very good friends. In fact, before I was interviewing them, they were just sitting on a couch and he had kicked off his shoes. And his shoes were like they were huge. They had a huge heel on them. They were like, it looked like something you'd walk in a in a fashion show with. And I said, can I look at those shoes? Do you mind? He says, oh, they my feet hurt so bad from wearing them, but they look cool. And he didn't have enough room in his luggage. So she brought the shoes with to do the interviews. And so he he would have a look, but it wasn't like it was gonna be suffering for his art. But that was kind of a a little insight into their friendship. They really are close friends now. Because of this. And they're they're excited about going back.

0:26:31
If they say it's really cool to know that you have another job to go to. That's the best part of being in a mini series or a limited series is that you're not just one and done. It's like, well, now we can go and see those same people next year. And keep up and then maybe look for some other work in the process. So, anyway, there's lots of fun.

0:26:50
Here they are, Amelia and Lewis. This reminds me that please don't think I'm crazy for suggesting it, but it's a very hair Meghan kind of thing, where they're kind of the victims of all the people who just gossip around them. Did you see that at all? Or am I just crazy? It's been, like, brought up a bed. In different reviews.

0:27:11
And I I'm not if I'm honest, I hadn't thought about it at all before. And I guess Yeah. Someone knew coming in to a big royal family really. I know. I guess maybe James kept saying that as well. James couldn't afford anything. Yeah. Maybe there are definitely something. But it definitely didn't it wasn't something that I could have thought of going into it. But yeah. Yeah. No. And maybe you're right. But look, I haven't really thought about it as well. I mean, courts are difficult, and there's always intrigues and, you know, like Social media is kind of the the the whispering that goes on in the a thing. And so it's like, oh, I wonder if that's I mean, if you could make that that parallel. I mean, I did make I didn't make the parallel Harry and Meghan, but I make the parallel that she was a victim of fake news and canceled culture. And, yeah, of this whole campaign that was designed to destroy her and to support the revolution. You know?

0:28:08
When you look at all the things that are written about her, do you say, well, what can I believe What can I you know, because some people thought she was good, some thought she spent too much money, some thought she was fooling around? Yeah. I mean, where do you find her? That was definitely a challenge for me because I've, you know, been diving into the prep and we seeing all these books. And and then we have our script, which is an entirely new take on her. And then I I had this conversation with the red neighbors. And I was, like, naming all the books I've read and she was, like, what, you've read the Stephan Spike book? When I read that, I wanted to throw it against the wall. I hate that book. Mhmm. And I was, like, okay. You could Stephen Spike obviously didn't think she's a great person. And, you know, it's like the description of a mediocre character. It's like the subtitles of the of the script. So yeah.

0:28:54
And this is when I kind of understood that. I have to we, you know, distance myself from all this and find my own Marie Antoinette and we have this script. We have my work and, you know, did did you like her? Oh, yeah. I totally sympathized with her. Like, I didn't know like, I had all these cons conceptions about her before I, you know, got this part. And then when prepping, I, you know, I fell in love with her because her life was tragic, you know, like, she's getting sent away from a home country. It's kind of child marriage. She's a husband who doesn't touch her So she has to bear the humiliation of, like, hold Europe. And she can't fulfill her only job that she has to do to, you know, produces air. Mhmm. So I do get why she, you know, distracted herself with the partying and the dresses and the wigs because she's been traumatizing stock up to stock up since, you know. Yeah. So yeah. I think Cover.

0:29:53
I think it was what's really interesting is reading the history books and then seeing yeah. As you said, how things are so different in different accounts? And thinking, okay, why is that? Why a perception? Changing. And then from that, you can kind of get a slight understanding of what you might want to portray within, you know, your character. Could you relate at all to him? Or is it, like, yeah, do you see it? Oh, I'm not like that I I talk. Yeah. I mean, on that level No. Not so much. But absolutely. I mean, I think I've -- Yeah.

0:30:24
-- a hundred percent been in situations where kind of anxieties or fear takes over and you it's kind of a fight fight or fight type situation. Yeah. And I just shut off. I was saying the panel that we've just done, you know. I just almost kind of on zombie mode of automatic function, kind of just rolling out. And obviously, I was speaking there, but it's that kind of because it's stressful. It's stressful. It's stressful. It's of that. But at the base of it, I was just like, okay. Put myself in his shoes. Fifteen year old fifteen years old getting married. Your parents have both died, your brothers died, you know that you're gonna become king of this country that you really don't know much about, to be honest. Never see much of it other than your massive castle. Yeah. And the pressure that has put on you is a normal and especially the pressure in the bedroom. It's like how on earth could you ever perform -- Yes. -- sexually under such political stress and kind of Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Excuse me for being stupid.

0:31:27
Did you major in acting in Not Oh. So what were what was that career that you were studying? Yeah. So the career no. I I studied German and philosophy at university. Speak to and French. We have another show, the deck of Filiens. Okay. So very great.

0:31:43
And I but I always loved loved theater. And I did a bunch of theater on the side of my degree at my university. And I I was at the mindset that, okay, maybe if I finish university and then I still really wanna do this. I'll play drama schools in the UK and then go from there and to patterns or I'll get it out of my system and then go and do I have no idea what. But I got so lucky, a casting director saw a player that I was in and then introduced me to my I'm saying? Do you tell him this doesn't happen? No. It doesn't. I told him that I waited seventeen years to get a job like this. And it's his first job, like, proper job. Is that fair? Not really fair. No. No. No. But I had her. I haven't heard a guy. Honestly, I can't I will say this to you for a quarter machine.

0:32:37
Amelia is one one of the most insanely talented people I've ever met in my life. Two, the kindness. Three, the most impressive guideer ever. You know, if I was lost, stressed nervous or just didn't really know how something worked. Always always always explaining it to me, helping me out, pushing me along right now. She didn't say scared in my share them. Yeah. Hold on. And she would make everything vibrant and exciting and fresh and energetic and, you know, we would play with everything.

0:33:05
And these like, by the end, when I know you're gonna be. I'm just like So does it make you wanna do this then? This is the career? So all that other careful just It's like a drug, you know, like, once you, you know, try it from once you're hooked, like, acting, doing the films Have you both thought about what this could do for your careers? Nope. No. I mean, because this will be a big platform. It will be a big launch. And Yeah. Yeah. But then again, you know, like, the market is so big. There's so much out there. So I'm trying to be like, shit. Build and, you know, it can go in either direction and you just have to be grateful, you know, like, take a day by day. Yeah. What did you shaved your hair? For for filming Germany.

0:33:46
Did they shoot those scenes then when she is executed? Maria Antoinette? No. No. No. Because it didn't she ever I mean, this is what I've read. I don't know if they've like, to be honest, my prep went up until the and where we finished season one because there was a lot a lot to prep for. So she still has her head at the end of season one. So we could have season two, and it would be fine. That would be fine? Well, I mean, you you gotta do the same. You should be alive. It isn't like No. I'm still alive then. Yes. Yeah. Okay. It's your free season concept.

0:34:20
Do you think about though doing that last kind of moment of these characters. It's really interesting. Deborah was very specific and she said in the history books, don't read a past a certain point? Yeah. Because these people didn't know what was coming for them. So why why should he Yeah. So we didn't think about that moment. No.

0:34:39
But it's in the in the first season, there are a couple of tiny things that I kind of foreshadowing wants to come. And that was a really interesting things to think about. And also, the first season is really just within Dasei and in the court. So it shows how blissfully unaware there were, everything going on without side and the reality of life in France for the normal people. And to Yep. It was it was kind of more interesting to play these roles with no concept.

0:35:11
Did you think you could live this life? Did you say -- No. -- I really No. No. It's horrible. I mean, you come to code, everyone, like, as a Spanishman gentleman, everyone hates you because you're Austrian, everyone's to get rid of you. And and there's are these, like, stupid one hundred your old rules, you have no privacy, you're always observed, always judged, and controlled, and you have no life on your own, of your own, you know. This is why she was so rebellious because she wanted to, you know, be human being.

0:35:43
Have you watched the great? Yes. Yes. Do you see parallels between characters? Or Yeah. I mean, it yeah. But both of them but, I mean, Katherine just That's played for humor, but it's still I mean, both wanted to change the court, and Katherine succeeded, and Melania didn't. So, I guess, Katherine was just more lucky, you know.

0:36:08
Did you think she was pretty? I mean, I I don't Maria Twonette, do you look at pictures of her because some, you say, and then some, they say she was just beautiful. So how do you find what the visual is of her. I honestly haven't thought about that, but what they do write about in the picture is that she was just very very and she had this aura and this playfulness and that was just seductive, you know. That's what I've, you know, try I've been trying to And the hunter? Are you hunter hunter? No. I'm really No. I'm I'm a gatherer. I'm a gatherer. Yeah. Great. I but also get back to the kind of, like, image of these people. They had their portraits painted. You haven't you never know. They can take a look at some eighteenth century photoshop -- Right. -- on those things. Yeah. Sure. Sure. It could be worse. Right? Who knows?

0:37:02
I mean, I think the idea of an arranged marriage where I mean, is that just so foreign to you that -- Yes. -- where do you where do you find a way in? It's views. It's not right. I mean, people in India would see, you know, see that differently. There's a lot of range. Marriages. I I think what even more than just being in a range marriage, it was that they were children. They were I mean, I think of myself at fifteen. I was the you know, and I was keen. Yeah. Yeah. I was just so unprepared for the world and that you're forced to marry someone you don't know. You've never met.

0:37:41
But I think, you know, with Louis, he's trying to weigh up. He's angry because he doesn't wanna be kidding. He's been forced to marry his brother as horrible to him. Everyone thinks he's useless. And then this woman comes in and he's kind of simultaneously reguiled in or of her, but also doesn't want to do that because it kind of, you know, he falls in line with everything that has been laid out for him then. But so he's just completely drawn in every direction.

0:38:06
How is it working in France? Is that interest thing. The rumor is true. They do have wine at lunch, but first of all, it's true. Like, it's I've seen it. And then the other If you will get around to the house of people.

0:38:26
The other rumor that they don't speak English is also true. Like, or hearty and English. So that's been a challenge, but then also beautiful for me because, you know, like, my hairdresser who has spent, like, I I counted. I must have spent like four hundred hours on the hair chair and he didn't speak any English and I didn't speak any French. But you can communicate age, not verbally. Because we do best parties. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's if that sums it up.

0:38:55
And also, we were living in Paris. We were living in Paris. But That's not too bad. It. You know? Yeah. We were all kind of five minutes away from each other. Yeah. We could. Yeah. From a You were living in Paris. Do you have, like, go betweens to help you talk to people? Or But What does it go between? Somebody who would need to translate Oh, wait. Well, actually, half of the costs were friends So -- Yeah. -- that helped a lot. Yeah. They've managed to find the most incredible number of half French half English actors. And, you know, they all live in Paris, but then have, you know, one parent is English, so they'd be perfect English, perfect English. Tractor. But so they would help a lot. Yeah. No.

0:39:37
But there were moments where they said like action and French, and I didn't realize we were filming. Yeah. Yeah. You know what we've stated in those. Yeah. We'll we'll tell them on these what they say. What? So how would they approximate? Did your French get better than? A little bit, a little bit. The petite. Let's eat it. Yeah. Yeah. It was amazing by the end. Not up by the end. I didn't have any time at night six for days, but I started to learn French after we stopped filming. You say that, but actually your friend. She knew the good words. Right? She was able to say certain things. Then when you come to the next two two years of this, when do you go back to do something thing on this. When would you feel? We don't know, but something. No. That's not. Yeah. Well, that that isn't that the best. Yeah. Alright. Thank you so much. Thank you so appreciate it ever.

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