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This episode asks whether Marty Supreme is Spielberg's version of Uncut Gems — sumptuous instead of feral, but just as committed to a hero who never actually becomes one — and finds a genuinely tragic American Dream story hiding inside all that Safdie chaos.

We tackle (backhand?) Marty Supreme, the Safdie brothers' Timothée Chalamet-led ping-pong biopic, and argue about whether its narcissistic, self-destructive protagonist actually earns his Best Original Screenplay nomination. It's a chaotic, funny, occasionally uncomfortable conversation covering Jewish identity, the American Dream gone wrong, and why one host had to stop watching halfway through and sleep on it. If you like Uncut Gems, awards-season debates, or just want to hear three friends disagree about whether a guy deserves redemption for holding a crying baby, this one's for you.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

Confirmed current streaming/rental/purchase options for Marty Supreme:

• HBO Max (streaming with subscription)
• Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy)
• Apple TV (rent or buy)
• Fandango at Home (rent or buy)
• YouTube TV (streaming)

The film's currently streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel and YouTube TV, and can be bought or rented digitally on Apple TV Store, Fandango At Home, and Amazon Video.

For the podcast episode itself, worth noting: Marty Supreme currently sits at #40 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts, having jumped 35 spots in a single day — a nice little coda for a movie whose entire thesis, per the hosts, is a guy clawing his way up a leaderboard against his own better judgment.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning because you do not have to have seen the film we're talking about to enjoy the episode — heck, sometimes some of us haven't even watched the film we're talking about.

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Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

Marty Supreme is the Safdie brothers' — well, Josh Safdie's, this time flying without his brother — chaotic, two-and-a-half-hour period piece about a table tennis hustler played by Timothée Chalamet, a man who wants one thing (to compete, to win, to matter) and destroys nearly everything in his path chasing it. It's loosely based on a real person, shot in the claustrophobic, tight-close-up style of a 1970s car chase even though the sets are enormous and the budget was clearly unlimited, and it earned a Best Original Screenplay nomination — a category, we'd argue, this exact kind of movie was invented for. If you've seen Uncut Gems, you already know the feeling: the propulsive dread, the awful protagonist you find yourself rooting for anyway. If you haven't, one of us hadn't either, and it shows.

What we actually spent the episode on is the gap between admiring a screenplay and enjoying the experience of sitting through it. Cole came in on the filmmaking itself — what a movie chooses to point its camera at, why every nameless "bartender number two" deserves a name, and how a line like "I'm Hitler's worst nightmare" is worth building a whole script around. Robby, who loved Uncut Gems, kept circling the thing the movie withholds: no hero's journey, no growth, a man propelled through the universe rather than steering it, holding a crying baby at the end without a shred of evidence he's changed. And Jaclynn — who paused the film halfway through, went to bed, and gave herself a twelve-hour palate cleanser before finishing it — declared it "the most safty of all safties," a claim she cheerfully admits she has no standing to make, having never finished a single Safdie film. Somewhere in there we also worked out that the climactic match, held in India in real life, was relocated to Japan and stocked with a David Mamet cameo purely, obviously, to torment Jaclynn personally. The Safdies have done so much for her.

So it's an argument about whether a movie can be exceptionally well-made and still leave you glad the popcorn's gone. We land in three different places on that and don't pretend to reconcile them, and along the way we get into the film's Jewishness — two of us are Jewish, both non-practicing — the discomfort of rooting for a repulsive man, the dog that starts smelly in a hotel and ends up driving the entire plot, and the eternal question of what a little kid would say if you asked them for four words to build this scene around. (Dog. Blood. Bathtub. Ping pong.)

• Josh Safdie — Director; Screenwriter — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Good Time (2017), The Pleasure of Being Robbed (2008)
• Ronald Bronstein — Screenwriter; Producer; Editor — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Good Time (2017), Daddy Longlegs (2009)
• Eli Bush — Producer — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Licorice Pizza (2021), The Souvenir (2019)
• Anthony Katagas — Producer — also: 12 Years a Slave (2013), Uncut Gems (2019), Ad Astra (2019)
• Timothée Chalamet — Producer — also: Marty Supreme (2025)
• Darius Khondji — Cinematographer — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Se7en (1995), Midnight in Paris (2011)
• Daniel Lopatin — Composer — also: Uncut Gems (2019), Good Time (2017), The Curse (2023)

• Timothée Chalamet — Marty Mauser — also: A Complete Unknown (2024), Dune (2021), Call Me by Your Name (2017)
• Gwyneth Paltrow — Kay Stone — also: Avengers: Endgame (2019), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Iron Man (2008)
• Odessa A'zion — Rachel Mizler — also: I Love L.A. (2025)
• Kevin O'Leary — Milton Rockwell — also: Shark Tank (2009)
• Tyler Okonma (Tyler, The Creator) — Wally — also: The Mindy Project (2015), Big Mouth (2017)
• Abel Ferrara — Ezra Mishkin — also: Bad Lieutenant (1992), King of New York (1990)
• Fran Drescher — Rebecca Mauser — also: The Nanny (1993), Saturday Night Fever (1977), This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
• David Mamet — Glenn Nordmann — also: Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Beau Is Afraid (2023)
• Géza Röhrig — Béla Kletzki — also: Son of Saul (2015)
• Isaac Mizrahi — Merle — also: Sex and the City (1998), Gossip Girl (2007)
• Sandra Bernhard — Judy
• Emory Cohen — Ira Mizler
• Koto Kawaguchi — Koto Endo
• Penn Jillette — Hoff
• Pico Iyer — Ram Sethi
• John Catsimatidis — Christopher Galanis

The film earned nine Oscar nominations for the 2026 awards, including best picture, and best actor for Timothee Chalamet. Josh Safdie is nominated for best director. Miyako Bellizzi of Marty Supreme earned the nomination for best costume design. Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie scored another nomination for best film editing. Additional nominations included Best Original Screenplay, Best Casting, Best Cinematography (Darius Khondji), and Best Production Design (Jack Fisk and Adam Willis). Despite this haul, the film was completely shut out, not winning a single one of its nine nominations at the 2026 Oscars.

• Best Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Director (Josh Safdie) — NOMINATION
• Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Screenplay — NOMINATION
• Best Film Editing — NOMINATION
• Best Cinematography — NOMINATION
• Best Production Design — NOMINATION
• Best Costume Design — NOMINATION
• Best Casting — NOMINATION

Timothée Chalamet won the first Golden Globe of his career for playing a hustling ping-pong phenom in the frenetic comedy "Marty Supreme." The film also received nominations for Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy and Best Screenplay.

• Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy — NOMINATION
• Best Actor, Musical or Comedy (Timothée Chalamet) — WIN
• Best Screenplay — NOMINATION

Josh Safdie's ping-pong caper Marty Supreme earned 11 BAFTA nods. These included Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Leading Actor, and Best Supporting Actress for Odessa A'zion.

• Best Film — NOMINATION
• Best Director (Josh Safdie) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Screenplay — NOMINATION
• Best Leading Actor (Timothée Chalamet) — NOMINATION
• Best Supporting Actress (Odessa A'zion) — NOMINATION
• (plus several additional technical/craft nominations, totaling 11)

The film received eight nominations at the 31st Critics' Choice Awards. These included Best Picture, Best Director, Best Casting/Ensemble, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Art Direction, with Timothée Chalamet recognized with the Best Actor award.

• Best Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Director (Josh Safdie) — NOMINATION
• Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet) — WIN
• Best Supporting Actress (Odessa A'zion) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Screenplay — NOMINATION
• Best Editing — NOMINATION
• Best Art Direction — NOMINATION
• Best Casting/Ensemble — NOMINATION

• Best Cast in a Motion Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Male Actor in a Leading Role (Timothée Chalamet) — NOMINATION
• Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Odessa A'zion) — NOMINATION

• Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film (Josh Safdie) — NOMINATION

• Best Theatrical Motion Picture — NOMINATION

• New York Film Critics Circle: Best Screenplay — WIN
• Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Editing — WIN
• Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Lead Performance (Chalamet) — NOMINATION
• Boston Society of Film Critics: Best Ensemble — WIN
• National Board of Review: Top Ten Films of the Year (a non-competitive honor, noted for context)

Overall, Marty Supreme was one of the most nominated films of the 2025–2026 awards season, but its major competitive wins were concentrated in acting recognition for Timothée Chalamet (Golden Globe, Critics' Choice) and screenplay/editing wins from critics' circles — it went winless at the Oscars despite nine nominations.

Marty Supreme is loosely inspired by the real-life table tennis champion Marty Reisman, with Josh Safdie developing the film after being given Reisman's 1974 memoir, The Money Player: The Confessions of America's Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler, as Safdie and Bronstein began developing the film in 2018 after Safdie was given a copy of Reisman's 1974 memoir, The Money Player: The Confessions of America's Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler. However, Safdie found inspiration in the memoir's story and, using it as a springboard, invented his own characters and conflicts, with the filmmakers making clear that Marty Supreme is not a biopic or direct adaptation.

Book link: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=The%20Money%20Player%3A%20The%20Confessions%20of%20America%27s%20Greatest%20Table%20Tennis%20Champion%20and%20Hustler

"Marty Supreme" — Confirmed Production Trivia

Timothée Chalamet secretly trained in table tennis for six years before the film was even greenlit. He entered the world of professional table tennis and had to learn to convincingly portray a pro player, succeeding so well that he was able to film all the table tennis scenes himself, without the help of a stunt double. He kept it up covertly across totally unrelated productions — he secretly trained for years while working on projects like The French Dispatch, Wonka, and Dune: Part Two, even bringing a table into the desert during "Dune" filming and to an Airbnb near Saint-Tropez during Cannes for "The French Dispatch." [Source]

The film's makeup effects fooled a co-star in real life. Make-up artist Michael Fontaine applied pockmarks, freckles and nicks to Timothée Chalamet's face to give him a more weathered, street appearance — an effect so convincing that Gwyneth Paltrow thought it was real, privately suggesting he try micro-needling to fix his "acne scars." [Source]

Robert Pattinson has a hidden cameo added entirely in post-production. Robert Pattinson voices an off-screen British Open umpire, a cameo Josh Safdie got him to record during post-production. [Source]

A specific real match result was deliberately changed for the film — but not just the country. The film's climactic defeat is based on Marty Reisman's real 1952 loss, but he was defeated by a Japanese player at a world championship, though in real life, the tournament was in Mumbai, not London as the movie shows — and in the film Marty's subsequent quest is to get to Japan for a rematch, meaning the production relocated the "away" tournament location twice over from the true history. [Source]

The film's darkest "war story" scene is drawn from a real Holocaust survivor's account, but the filmmakers cut the most extreme detail. The honey-covered-body anecdote referenced by the Kletzki character is based on a real player named Alex Ehrlich, who was a Polish Jew who, prior to competing in London, had been a member of the French Resistance, and was imprisoned at Auschwitz, where on several occasions he was spared the gas chamber when a Nazi recognized him as a table tennis champion — a detail Safdie and Bronstein chose to leave out of the film entirely, keeping only the honey story itself.

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.

This episode's argument is that Project Hail Mary only pretends to be hard sci-fi about a dying sun — strip away the spaceships and it's La La Land with an alien, and our real case is that the film's quiet radical move isn't the science, it's refusing to make the alien the villain.

We watch Project Hail Mary — Ryan Gosling's big-budget adaptation of Andy Weir's bestselling novel (from The Martian screenwriter Drew Goddard and the directing team behind The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street) — and argue that despite the dying sun and one-way space mission, it's really "La La Land in space": a small, character-driven love story wrapped in a huge movie. Expect a close read of the alien sidekick Rocky (voiced by Meryl Streep), a debate over whether Gosling was miscast against the book's nerdier protagonist, and a real appreciation for a sci-fi film that, for once, doesn't make its aliens the enemy. No prior podcast knowledge, book-reading, or even movie-liking required — just come for the argument.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

• Prime Video (streaming with subscription, as of July 3)
• MGM+ (streaming with subscription)
• Apple TV (rent or purchase)
• Fandango at Home (rent or purchase)

The rollout here is a little bureaucratic for a movie about a guy racing to save the sun: Project Hail Mary premiered on Prime Video on July 3, a 105-day theatrical window, after hitting MGM+ first on June 18 as part of Amazon's traditional windows system moving from theaters to PVOD to the pay-one MGM+ window. So if you caught it on MGM+ two weeks ago, congrats on being an early adopter of "the obscure streaming service" — it's finally graduated to the app basically everyone already has.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning because you do not have to have seen the film we're talking about to enjoy the episode — heck, sometimes some of us haven't even watched the film we're talking about.

Spotify (link needed)

Pocket Casts (link needed)

RSS

Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

Project Hail Mary is Amazon MGM's adaptation of Andy Weir's novel — the guy who wrote The Martian — directed by the Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street team, shot by Greg Fraser, and starring Ryan Gosling, who acquired the rights before the book was even published because he and Weir share an agent. The premise: the sun is dimming, another ice age is coming, and Earth's only hope is a middle-school science teacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship twelve light-years from home with amnesia and, eventually, a rock-shaped alien named Rocky for company. It's a thousand-page novel that occurs mostly inside one man's head, compressed into a sub-three-hour buddy comedy — and against the odds, it works. Weir has gone on record calling this and The Martian "very, very different" stories. Two men stuck in space. Okay, Andy.

We came at this one sideways: Jaclynn brought it to the arc because she'd just been on a first double date with Robby's group of "normal, cool Americans who like cool movies" — the couple picked the film, Jaclynn played it cool and did the one thing no podcaster has ever done, which is not immediately mention she has a podcast. The through-line of our conversation is the argument between reading the book first or going in blind — Robby says know nothing, let the surprises land; Cole says for this one know everything, because the movie is doing more than you'll catch cold; Jaclynn splits the difference by reading fifty pages and then quitting, which we all somehow agreed was correct. Along the way you get Cole sitting arms-crossed judging it like it's Casablanca until the moment he gives up and worships at its feet, the Meryl Streep cameo that cost a fortune and was worth every cent, the puppeteer from Into the Woods' cow who voices Rocky, and a genuinely good point about how rare it is for an American film to make aliens a friend instead of a stand-in for whoever we've decided to be afraid of that decade.

We also got into the parts of the book the film smooths over — the non-consensual coma, the relativity that breaks Rocky's brain, the fact that a man with no family is a very convenient hero to throw at a suicide mission — and whether any of us would've gone back to Earth or stayed. Jaclynn's bringing the seven-pound dog. Robby's a better husband than the rest of us combined. And Dad, for the record, would absolutely not come get you, because one time Jaclynn took three days to reply to a message he sent from the top of an Alaskan glacier — she was in Russia, the time difference was wild, and she couldn't stop listening to Childish Gambino. Some grudges follow you twelve light-years.

• Phil Lord — Director; Producer — also: The Lego Movie (2014), 21 Jump Street (2012), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
• Christopher Miller — Director; Producer — also: The Lego Movie (2014), 22 Jump Street (2014), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
• Drew Goddard — Screenwriter — also: The Martian (2015)
• Ryan Gosling — Producer — also: La La Land (2016), Barbie (2023), Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
• Amy Pascal — Producer — also: Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), Little Women (2019)
• Aditya Sood — Producer — also: The Martian (2015)
• Rachel O'Connor — Producer — also: 22 Jump Street (2014)
• Greig Fraser — Cinematographer — also: Dune (2021), The Batman (2022), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
• Daniel Pemberton — Composer — also: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

• Ryan Gosling — Ryland Grace — also: Blade Runner 2049 (2017), La La Land (2016), Drive (2011)
• Sandra Hüller — Eva Stratt — also: Anatomy of a Fall (2023), The Zone of Interest (2023), Toni Erdmann (2016)
• James Ortiz — Rocky (voice/performer) — also: Into the Woods (2014)
• Milana Vayntrub — Olesya Ilyukhina — also: Project Hail Mary (2026)
• Ken Leung — Yao — also: Project Hail Mary (2026)
• Lionel Boyce — Carl — also: Project Hail Mary (2026)
• Priya Kansara — Mary — also: Project Hail Mary (2026)

The film Project Hail Mary is based on a 2021 hard science fiction novel by American writer Andy Weir that centers on science teacher and former biologist Ryland Grace, who wakes up aboard a spacecraft, afflicted with amnesia. You can find the novel here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611060/project-hail-mary-by-andy-weir/

Bookshop.org search link: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=Project%20Hail%20Mary

Here are five solid, confirmed production trivia items about Project Hail Mary:

1. The puppeteer voicing Rocky was never supposed to be the final voice.

Rocky was brought to life by theater puppeteer James Ortiz, who wasn't hired to voice Rocky but acted as the working voice on set so Gosling could have a scene partner speaking to him. He recited Rocky's dialogue for actor Ryan Gosling to play against, believing the lines would be replaced by a more famous actor, but directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller kept his performance in the film. Ortiz is also the same artist who designed the Milky White cow puppet for the 2022 Broadway revival of Into the Woods. (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/james-ortiz-project-hail-mary-rocky-interview-1236553879/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ortiz)

2. Meryl Streep's cameo voice was a real, unpublicized favor.

During the scene where Grace tests translation voices for Rocky, one of the rejected options is genuinely Meryl Streep — producer Amy Pascal had done "The Post" and many, many movies with her, and after they asked, she said yes, and did many different versions of the line. Director Phil Lord admitted "You have never seen a group of filmmakers procrastinate longer" before working up the nerve to ask her. [Source]

3. The film's first assembly cut ran nearly four hours and was called "embarrassing" by other filmmakers.

Lord and Miller subjected some filmmaker friends of theirs to a three hour and 45-minute cut of the movie, which was embarrassing, and the feedback the directing duo got was unanimous: "Get it way shorter." Miller noted "You just don't know how the scenes are going to land with an audience... We thought everything was charming, but some of those charming things didn't land. It made it really easy to get it down to three hours." [Source]

4. Sandra Hüller's karaoke scene wasn't in the script at all — Gosling overheard her singing in real life.

Gosling explained: he just happened to hear Hüller singing to herself and became convinced that she needed to bring that talent to the movie — he'd heard her beautiful voice down the hallway on an aircraft carrier and asked if she could sing in the film. Hüller overcame her fear and tried to find a song overnight, finding a Harry Styles song, and tried to learn it overnight — the rights were secured and the scene shot the very next morning. (https://gizmodo.com/project-hail-mary-karaoke-scene-sandra-huller-ryan-gosling-2000738133, https://screenrant.com/project-hail-mary-karaoke-scene-improvised/)

5. The production largely avoided green screen, building a real practical spaceship set.

Director Phil Lord clarified: green screen is sometimes used in lieu of building sets or figuring out locations/lighting in advance, which can be noticeable if not done carefully, and is something they didn't want to do — they built the entire interior of the Hail Mary ship, with puppeteers working through a raised floor for Rocky's scenes, while wide space exteriors were handled digitally by ILM and Rocky was a seamless blend of puppetry and animation from Framestore. [Source]

Since Project Hail Mary (2026) is the episode subject, Phil Lord and Chris Miller's next confirmed project after it is a new whodunit adaptation.

Here's what's confirmed since Project Hail Mary:

Phil Lord (with longtime partner Chris Miller) is bringing a classic whodunnit to the big screen, according to IndieWire, specifically a "Murder, She Wrote" movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis, which has set a 2027 holiday release with The Hollywood Reporter.

Drew Goddard is heading into the Matrix franchise: in April 2024, a new "Matrix" movie was announced to be in the works, with Drew Goddard writing and directing, per The Hollywood Reporter. Goddard has been tapped to write and direct a new Matrix feature for Warner Bros., marking the first Matrix film not to directly involve creators Lana and Lilly Wachowski, though Lana Wachowski will serve as an executive producer.

We haven't covered The Matrix 5 yet — but we probably should.

Here they are:

• "One stellar Gosling + one arachnid-ish alien + one Hail Mary mission = lightning in a spaceship." — critic quote, Rotten Tomatoes consensus [Source]
• "While you can't help but marvel at the visuals and applaud the commitment of Gosling's endearing performance, what also makes Project Hail Mary so gosh darn lovable is that it imbues us with child-like wonder from scenes that pay homage to such classics as E.T., Flight of the Navigator and, yes, Rocky." — Randy Myers, The Mercury News (via Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film))
• "Does it have many original ideas of its own? Perhaps not. But its greatest hits mixtape of other people's has been compiled with such flair – as well as a sound comprehension of why they worked so well the first time – that it's hard not to be swept up regardless." — Robbie Collin, The Telegraph (via Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film))
• "At almost every turn, Project Hail Mary attempts to convince you that it is groundbreaking, innovative filmmaking." — Barry Hertz, The Globe and Mail (via Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film))
• Owen Gleiberman at Variety was one of the few outright negative voices, calling it "not a very good movie" — Owen Gleiberman, Variety (via https://cinapse.co/project-hail-mary-reviews/)
• "I've known Phil Lord and Chris Miller for a very long time — I've been able to watch their careers from the very beginning; these gents have become giants, retaining their unique, humanistic, hilarious voice all along the way. Project Hail Mary is terrific. Go see this picture." — Scott M. Gimple, via Twitter/X (as reported by The Hollywood Reporter, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ryan-gosling-project-hail-mary-first-reactions-1236517129/)
• Regarding the directors screening an early cut: "Project Hail Mary Directors Screened a Nearly Four-Hour Cut to Other Filmmakers and Were Told to 'Get It Way Shorter': 'It Was Embarrassing'" — headline describing filmmaker feedback, Variety, reported by Zack Sharf (via Wikipedia citation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film))

Here are a few resources for listeners who want to go deeper on Project Hail Mary:

InSession Film Podcast — "Podcast Review: Project Hail Mary" (insessionfilm.com) — A dedicated movie-podcast episode discussing the film, with us noting they discuss Phil Lord and Chris Miller's film starring Ryan Gosling, offering both praise and some critical pushback — a good companion for listeners who want a more traditional film-critic take.

Hugonauts: The Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time — "Project Hail Mary: Book vs Movie" (Apple Podcasts) — This episode is especially useful for the book-to-film comparison angle, as it breaks down the movie version of Andy Weir's novel, comparing the film with the technical problem-solving of the original, and digs into which complex scientific explanations were streamlined for Hollywood pacing.

Rolling Stone — "How Ryan Gosling Ascends to Tom Hanks-Level Movie Stardom in 'Project Hail Mary'" (rollingstone.com) — Not a podcast, but a substantial essay/interview with directors Lord and Miller that directly addresses points raised in the episode, including their explanation for why they cut extra Earth-based relationships from the script: they tried to figure out what relationship Grace was leaving behind on Earth, but packing Earth with relationships that needed resolving wasn't what the book did — this is a story about someone who's lonely on Earth, makes a friend in space, and stays there. It's a great deep-dive for listeners curious about the adaptation choices the podcast hosts debated (especially the ending and Gosling's casting).

ARC_HOBBES_SHAW — Both involve directors/franchises connected to the "Lego movie guys" lineage of action-comedy filmmaking (Hobbs & Shaw shares the same buddy-comedy-wrapped-in-a-blockbuster sensibility we explicitly compare Project Hail Mary to via 21/22 Jump Street).

New to The Arc? Start with Episode 02: The Fantastic Four if you like Marvel movies — and want to hate us forever and tell your friends how lame we are.

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.

Pengun Random House interview with Andy Weir:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H_srBMz4JQ

This episode's whole argument boils down to Jaclynn'ss tagline, repeated like a confession — "this movie is smarter than me" — and we spend an hour proving that the vampires are the least scary thing in Sinners, since Coogler already gave the real monster a name: Mississippi.

We tackle Sinners, Ryan Coogler's Oscar-nominated vampire movie starring Michael B. Jordan in a dual role — and argue that the Jim Crow South it depicts is scarier than any bloodsucker in it. It's a horror movie, a heist movie, a Western, and a musical all executed "at a foundational level" before Coogler braids them together, and The Arc breaks down how a story about a juke joint becomes a full allegory for cultural exploitation, assimilation, and who gets to own the blues. No prior viewing required, but good luck not immediately renting it afterward.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

• HBO Max (streaming with subscription)
• Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy)
• Apple TV (rent or buy)
• YouTube (rent or buy)
• Fandango at Home (rent or buy)

The subscription option comes with an unusually thoughtful footnote for a horror blockbuster: HBO Max also has a Black American Sign Language version of the movie to stream, making it, per coverage of the release, the first-ever Black American Sign Language version of a major film. Worth knowing before you queue it up for the group.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning because you do not have to have seen the film we're talking about to enjoy the episode — heck, sometimes some of us haven't even watched the film we're talking about.

Spotify (link needed)

Pocket Casts (link needed)

RSS

Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

Sinners is Ryan Coogler's 1932 Mississippi vampire movie — twin brothers, both played by Michael B. Jordan, come back from Chicago to open a juke joint in a barn for one night, and then the vampires arrive. That's the setup, and it is also almost beside the point. The film works completely as a vampire movie you could watch without thinking twice about it; it also keeps opening up, on a second and third viewing, into something about white supremacy, appropriation, and what it means to turn a people's music — and a people themselves — into property to be bought and sold. Coogler pulls tropes from the Western, the heist, the musical, and horror and does each so cleanly that the film stops feeling like a mishmash and starts feeling like its own thing. Nominated for Best Original Screenplay, which is how it landed here: we set out to do something Oscar-centric, Robby has loved that category since high school, and — Cole's theory — Jaclynn had been looking for a reason to talk about Sinners for eleven months anyway. Not untrue.

What we kept circling is that the real horror isn't the vampires. Vampires have rules — sunlight, garlic, a stake — and the 1930s Jim Crow South does not. The chain gang, the cotton fields, the Klan that shows up at the very end after the supernatural threat is already dead: that's the part that stays with you, and the part that still felt true watching it in 2026. Robby walked out of the theater the first time saying he'd seen it all before, a well-made vampire movie he recognized — and the argument of the whole episode is what happens when you look again and realize it was an allegory the entire time. Jaclynn kept coming back to one line: this movie is smarter than me. She found her way into loving the two brothers through Annie, who humanizes them, and we spend real time on how the scene where Sammy plays and the music opens a door across the past, present, and future of Black music is doing the actual heavy lifting.

We are not the people to explain this film to you — Coogler and his cast and crew are, and honestly we'd rather just listen to him talk about it. What we can offer is three of us watching it more than once and disagreeing productively about it: whether "mishmash" or "tapestry" is the fairer word (Dad lobbies hard for tapestry; Jaclynn holds out because a tapestry is too neat), whether the ending should have stopped when it first seemed to, and why the bookend structure feels elegant here in a way it feels like a magic trick in Fleabag. You do not have to have seen Sinners to follow along — though if you haven't, do yourself a favor and don't read any further about it before you do. Then come back.

• Ryan Coogler — Director — also: Sinners (2025), Black Panther (2018), Creed (2015)
• Ryan Coogler — Screenwriter — also: Sinners (2025), Black Panther (2018), Fruitvale Station (2013)
• Ryan Coogler — Producer — also: Sinners (2025)
• Zinzi Coogler — Producer — also: Sinners (2025)
• Sev Ohanian — Producer — also: Sinners (2025)
• Autumn Durald Arkapaw — Cinematographer — also: Sinners (2025), Loki (2021), Teen Spirit (2018)
• Ludwig Göransson — Composer — also: Sinners (2025), Black Panther (2018), Oppenheimer (2023)

• Michael B. Jordan — Smoke / Stack — also: Creed (2015), Black Panther (2018), Fruitvale Station (2013)
• Hailee Steinfeld — Mary — also: True Grit (2010), Bumblebee (2018), Pitch Perfect 2 (2015)
• Miles Caton — Sammie "Preacher Boy" Moore — also: Sinners (2025)
• Jack O'Connell — Remmick — also: Unbroken (2014), '71 (2014), Skins (2007)
• Wunmi Mosaku — Annie — also: Loki (2021), Lovecraft Country (2020), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
• Jayme Lawson — Pearline — also: The Woman King (2022), The Batman (2022), Farewell Amor (2020)
• Omar Benson Miller — Cornbread — also: Ballers (2015), 8 Mile (2002), CSI: Miami (2007)
• Delroy Lindo — Delta Slim — also: Da 5 Bloods (2020), Malcolm X (1992), Get Shorty (1995)
• Li Jun Li — Grace Chow — also: Babylon (2022), Minority Report (2002)
• Yao — Bo Chow — also: Sinners (2025)
• Lola Kirke — Joan — also: Mozart in the Jungle (2014), Gone Girl (2014)
• Buddy Guy — Old Sammie — also: Sinners (2025)
• Saul Williams — Jedidiah Moore — also: Slam (1998)

Ryan Coogler) real awards history:

Sinners garnered a record-breaking 16 nominations at the 98th Academy Awards, winning four: Best Actor (Jordan), Best Original Screenplay (Coogler), Best Cinematography (Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who became the first woman to win in the category), and Best Original Score (Göransson). Additional nominations included best picture; director; supporting actress (Wunmi Mosaku); actor in a supporting role (Delroy Lindo); casting; production design; costume design; film editing; makeup and hairstyling; sound; visual effects; and original song for "I Lied to You".

• Best Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Director (Ryan Coogler) — NOMINATION
• Best Actor (Michael B. Jordan) — WIN
• Best Supporting Actor (Delroy Lindo) — NOMINATION
• Best Supporting Actress (Wunmi Mosaku) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Screenplay (Ryan Coogler) — WIN
• Best Cinematography (Autumn Durald Arkapaw) — WIN
• Best Original Score (Ludwig Göransson) — WIN
• Best Original Song ("I Lied to You") — NOMINATION
• Best Casting — NOMINATION
• Best Production Design — NOMINATION
• Best Costume Design — NOMINATION
• Best Film Editing — NOMINATION
• Best Makeup and Hairstyling — NOMINATION
• Best Sound — NOMINATION
• Best Visual Effects — NOMINATION

Sinners received thirteen nominations at the 79th British Academy Film Awards and won three awards at the ceremony (for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Score), making it the film with the most nominations and wins for a film by a Black director in BAFTA history.

• Best Original Screenplay — WIN
• Best Supporting Actress (Wunmi Mosaku) — WIN
• Best Original Score — WIN
• 10 additional nominations across other categories — NOMINATION

At the Golden Globes, Sinners received Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement and Best Original Score.

• Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement — WIN
• Best Original Score — WIN

• Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture — WIN
• Male Actor in a Leading Role (Michael B. Jordan) — WIN
• Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Wunmi Mosaku) — NOMINATION
• Male Actor in a Supporting Role (Miles Caton) — NOMINATION
• Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture — NOMINATION

Sinners won in the WGA's Original Screenplay category, with writer-director Ryan Coogler topping a slate of nominees that included its fellow Oscar contender Marty Supreme.

• Best Original Screenplay — WIN

The DGA announced that this year's five contenders are Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another, Ryan Coogler for Sinners, Guillermo del Toro for Frankenstein, Josh Safdie for Marty Supreme, and Chloé Zhao for Hamnet, marking Coogler's first-ever DGA nomination.

• Outstanding Directing – Feature Film (Ryan Coogler) — NOMINATION

Sinners received 17 Critics' Choice Award nominations and won four, including Best Original Screenplay, Best Casting and Ensemble, Best Original Score, and Best Young Actor/Actress (Miles Caton).

• Best Original Screenplay — WIN
• Best Casting/Ensemble — WIN
• Best Original Score — WIN
• Best Young Actor/Actress (Miles Caton) — WIN
• Best Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Director — NOMINATION
• Best Actor (Michael B. Jordan) — NOMINATION
• Best Supporting Actress (Wunmi Mosaku) — NOMINATION
• Additional nominations across other technical categories — NOMINATION

Sinners received a historic 18 nominations and 13 wins at the 57th NAACP Image Awards, including the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Motion Picture, with additional wins for director, lead actor, supporting actor (Delroy Lindo), supporting actress (Wunmi Mosaku), and breakthrough performance (Caton).

• Outstanding Motion Picture — WIN
• Outstanding Director — WIN
• Outstanding Actor (Michael B. Jordan) — WIN
• Outstanding Supporting

Here are five surprising production facts about Sinners:

1. Ryan Coogler negotiated an unprecedented ownership deal with Warner Bros.

As part of getting the film made, Coogler negotiated a historic deal with Warner Bros., securing full ownership rights after 25 years, first-dollar gross participation, and final cut privileges, an arrangement that industry observers saw as a serious challenge to how studios traditionally do business. [Source]

2. The film's cinematographer made cinema history by combining two massive, rarely-used film formats that had never been paired before.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw shot Sinners on large format Kodak filmstock in 5-perf 65mm and 15-perf IMAX formats, including Kodak Ektachrome, which was specially manufactured in 65mm by Kodak for the production. She became the first female DP to shoot 65mm in IMAX format, and the first cinematographer to incorporate 65mm in its widest aspect ratio, Anamorphic Ultra Panavision 70 (2.76:1), and tallest aspect ratio, IMAX format (1.43:1), in the same production.

3. Coogler originally imagined the movie as a small, 16mm production — the opposite of what it became.

Despite the eventual scale, Coogler didn't originally conceive of "Sinners" in large format — the director first thought of the film as being a good fit for 16mm. The decision to go big only came after Warner Bros. asked if they'd considered a larger format, which sent Coogler down the path toward Ultra Panavision and IMAX.

4. A custom lens was built just for one specific dreamlike moment in the film.

Cinematographer Durald Arkapaw had Panavision's optical engineer create another custom lens for Sinners: a Petzval 80mm for the IMAX camera, which comes into play for a dreamlike moment with Smoke and Annie at the end of the film, described as having heavy blur and aberration at the edges.

5. The very first scene the production actually filmed was the film's final, decades-later epilogue.

Despite where it falls in the story, Coogler revealed their actual first production day was the post-credits scene when Michael B. Jordan comes in wearing a Coogi sweater and sits down with 80-year-old Sammy — meaning the movie's emotional coda was shot before anything else.

Bonus/related detail: The character of teenage musician Sammie was named as a tribute to a real person — James, the uncle whose death inspired the film, had married into Coogler's family by marrying Coogler's aunt Sammie, and the Sammie character in "Sinners" is named after her. [Source]

Here are a few resources listeners can turn to for a deeper dive on Sinners:

The New Yorker Radio Hour — "Ryan Coogler on 'Sinners,' His Epic Film About Race, Music..." In this segment, Coogler sat down with New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb to discuss the recurrent themes of history, faith, and race in his work, and how he refracted them through the lens of horror in "Sinners." Worth a listen for a rigorous, journalistic conversation about how Coogler channels real history into genre filmmaking.

Script Apart — Episode 155: "Sinners with Ryan Coogler" This spoiler-filled interview covers the conversations with his Uncle James and his Grandmother that helped inform this vampire period piece, and gets into the meaning of Sinners' dance sequence, in which Sammy summons the ghosts of Black musicians past and future — a great companion for listeners who want the screenwriting-craft angle behind the film's central allegory.

The Gothic Library — "Sinners: Vampires and the Jim Crow South" (essay) This piece argues that Sinners offers a moral through a racial lens rather than a religious one, with Remmick tempting Sammie and his friends by promising a utopia of racial equality within his vampire family, though true equality shouldn't mean surrendering one's individual identity — a smart complement to the episode's discussion of "the oppressed becoming oppressors" and the film's subversion of typical vampire-genre rules.

ARC_FLEABAG_S02_EP_01 — The Sinners episode explicitly compares its bookend/opening structural device to the Fleabag Season 2 cold open (bloody nose, mystery woman), directly discussing that episode's technique as a point of comparison.

New to The Arc? Start with Episode 02: The Fantastic Four if you like Marvel movies — and want to hate us forever and tell your friends how lame we are.

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.

Below are links to full length interviews with the writer, himself, that the episode uses a few quotes from:

Hanna Flint - Ryan Coogler talks Sinners, Vampires, and Capitalism

On Film - with Kevin McCarthy - Autumn Durald Arkapaw talks Sinners, Cinematography, IMAX, and more.

In the grand tradition of this show, we watched this out of order in order to celebrate springing forward for Daylight Savings Time so true fans of "Back To The Future," please, be nice in the comments section because we have nothing but love for the genre (yes, "Back To The Future" is a genre unto itself).

We ask whether Back to the Future Part II is even a movie or just a very expensive, very confident first act — all hoverboards and fax machines standing in for the character work it never bothers to do.

On The Arc, three friends watch movies out of order on purpose — this time it's Back to the Future Part II, tackled cold with no rewatch of the original. The verdict: a technical marvel of practical effects and hoverboards that's all plot and no story, functioning less like a movie than an extended, very fun first act. Expect a genuine defense of fax machines, a rant about Jennifer getting treated like a piece of luggage, and an argument about whether wealth is really just a failure of imagination. You don't need to have seen either Back to the Future film to enjoy this one — though it helps.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

• Peacock (streaming with subscription)
• Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy)
• Apple TV (rent or buy)
• Fandango at Home (rent or buy)

All three trilogy entries live together on Peacock, which tracks — Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II, and Back to the Future Part III are currently available to stream via Peacock, so anyone inspired to finally watch the movies in order has no excuse.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning to get to know the show and find your new favorite film to pretend you've watched.

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Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

Back to the Future Part II is the 1989 middle child of Robert Zemeckis's trilogy — the one that picks up in the exact garage where the first movie left off, launches Marty McFly into a 2015 of hoverboards and self-lacing shoes and, apparently, multiple household fax machines, then folds back on itself into the 1955 of the original film. It was a technical marvel when it arrived, and, watching it in 2025 — a year that has now come and gone without the flying cars — it's become a document of what 1989 hoped and feared: that Japan would economically eat America, that the future would just be the past with more faxes. We came to it the way we come to most things, which is to say backwards and out of order: this is a podcast that started Freakier Friday before Freaky Friday and watched a Marvel movie having seen no other Marvel movies, so of course we began Back to the Future with the second one and have no firm plans to ever watch the first.

What we actually spent the hour on is the gap between plot and story — the thing this movie has a genuine surplus of one and a real shortage of the other. Robby, who was fascinated and on high alert the whole time, kept circling how it's exposition, exposition, exposition until the last three minutes, when a single kite string floating silently down finally delivered the stakes the whole film had been withholding. Cole, who tried to research it as a Film and gave up by the second shot, had the most fun he's had watching a movie in ages and then landed the episode's best idea anyway: that wealth and jealousy and poverty are never absolute, they're measured against whatever your imagination can reach — the future McFlys have seventeen fax machines and a drive-by shooting on the same street. And Jaclynn watched the plot mechanics of two Martys stranded in the same timeline quietly break her brain, while also refusing to let the movie off the hook for how it treats Jennifer, whose unconscious body gets dumped on porches like a prop. We also spend real time on the parts that don't hold up — the Reagan-era anxieties and the ugly caricature of Marty's Japanese boss — without pretending they aren't there.

If you've seen this movie a dozen times and never questioned it, or you've never seen it and are wondering whether it's worth two hours, this is three friends taking a "silly" sequel seriously enough to find both the racism and the accidental philosophy in it — plus a genuine argument that Back to the Future Part II isn't a second act at all, it's act one of a story that doesn't pay off until the third film. Also Dad brags at length about renting a DeLorean for a Broadway musical that never got shot, learns that people get married inside them, and gets caught rolling his eyes at his own pun.

• Robert Zemeckis — Director — also: Back to the Future (1985), Forrest Gump (1994), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
• Bob Gale — Screenwriter — also: Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part III (1990), 1941 (1979)
• Bob Gale — Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Used Cars (1980)
• Neil Canton — Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)
• Steven Spielberg — Executive Producer — also: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Jaws (1975)
• Kathleen Kennedy — Executive Producer — also: Poltergeist (1982), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
• Frank Marshall — Executive Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
• Dean Cundey — Cinematographer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Romancing the Stone (1984)
• Alan Silvestri — Composer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Forrest Gump (1994)

• Michael J. Fox — Marty McFly / Marty McFly Jr. / Marlene McFly — also: Back to the Future (1985), Family Ties (1982), Spin City (1996)
• Christopher Lloyd — Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown — also: Back to the Future (1985), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
• Lea Thompson — Lorraine Baines McFly / Lorraine Tannen — also: Back to the Future (1985), Red Dawn (1984), Howard the Duck (1986)
• Thomas F. Wilson — Biff Tannen / Griff Tannen — also: Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part III (1990)
• Elisabeth Shue — Jennifer Parker — also: The Karate Kid (1984), Adventures in Babysitting (1987), Cocktail (1988)
• Jeffrey Weissman — George McFly — also: Back to the Future Part II (1989)
• Harry Waters Jr. — Marvin Berry — also: Back to the Future (1985)

• Academy Awards (Oscars): Best Visual Effects — NOMINATION It was nominated in 1990 for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects (John Bell, Steve Gawley, Michael Lantieri and Ken Ralston), but lost to The Abyss.
• BAFTA Awards: Best Special Visual Effects — WIN The film won the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects (Ken Ralston, Michael Lantieri, John Bell and Steve Gawley)

- Saturn Awards (Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films):

- Best Special Effects — WIN The film won the Saturn Award for Best Special Effects (for Ken Ralston, the special effects supervisor)

- Best Science Fiction Film — NOMINATION

- Best Costumes (Joanna Johnston) — NOMINATION

- Best Make-Up — NOMINATION

These last three Saturn nominations are drawn from the film's official awards record.

Here are five verified, surprising production trivia items about Back to the Future Part II:

Crispin Glover's absence sparked a landmark Hollywood lawsuit. When Crispin Glover declined to return as George McFly, the production reused old footage from the first film and had another actor, Jeffrey Weissman, play George with prosthetics and camera tricks, going so far as to hide his face by having him "wearing sunglasses, from the back, upside-down in an Ortho-lev harness, or out of focus in the background." Glover sued, and the suit led to new clauses in Screen Actors Guild agreements barring producers from reproducing another actor's likeness without permission — a case still cited today as a key precedent in personality rights for actors amid increasing use of special effects and digital techniques. [Source]

The film's opening scene is a shot-for-shot remake necessitated by a real-life family tragedy. Claudia Wells had planned to reprise her role as Jennifer, but she had to drop out to take care of her mother, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer. As a result, after casting Elisabeth Shue as a replacement, the producers re-shot the closing scenes of the first film for the beginning of Part II, in a nearly shot-for-shot match with the original. [Source]

A groundbreaking motion-control camera system let Michael J. Fox act opposite himself — and move the camera while doing it. For the scene with three Fox characters interacting, the effects house used one of its first forays into digital compositing along with the VistaGlide motion control camera system, which for the first time allowed a completely dynamic scene where the camera itself could move while an actor played multiple interacting characters. [Source]

The "future" hoverboards weren't hidden tech — they were simple props, and Zemeckis's joke about them backfired. In behind-the-scenes materials, Robert Zemeckis jokingly claimed the hoverboards used for filming were real and just hadn't been sold to the public over safety concerns, and because it was framed as a factual interview, most people missed the sarcasm and began calling toy stores asking for them to be released. In reality, the hoverboards were simply wooden props attached to the actors' feet, with the actors suspended by cables that were erased in post-production. (https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/back-to-the-future-ii-trivia-quiz/54266336; https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/BackToTheFuturePartII)

The DeLorean was almost a refrigerator, and the climax nearly hinged on a nuclear blast instead of a lightning strike. Early drafts of the script had Marty harnessing the power of a nuclear bomb test explosion to return to the future, but the special effects required were too expensive to realistically pull off, leading the filmmakers to a forgotten courthouse set on the Universal backlot instead — which became the basis for the iconic clock tower climax. [Source]

Robert Zemeckis directed Here, a 2024 American drama produced and directed by Zemeckis, co-written with Eric Roth, based on the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire. The film stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, and Kelly Reilly, with digital de-aging via generative AI used to have the cast portray their characters across decades. He's since moved on to directing the Netflix thriller "The Last Mrs. Parrish," starring Jennifer Lopez, with Netflix having landed the rights to Liv Constantine's best-selling book, about a con artist who targets a wealthy couple by befriending the wife and seducing the husband, only to discover the wife's life is more complicated than she imagined.

Bob Gale, meanwhile, has stayed close to home base — he co-wrote the book for Back to the Future: The Musical, which premiered at Manchester Opera House in February 2020 ahead of a Broadway production that opened August 3, 2023. He's also confirmed to be helping franchise star Michael J. Fox write a book about his experience making the trilogy, titled "Future Boy." As for a fourth film, Gale has been blunt: he said he replies "F*** you" when asked about 'Back to the Future 4.'

We haven't covered Here yet — but we probably should.

Based on documented reviews and critic writings, here are confirmed quotes from named critics (not the film's own cast/crew) about Back to the Future Part II:

• "Back to the Future Part II is all manic and wacky." — Pauline Kael, Scraps from the Loft [Source]
• "I've never seen another movie in such a hurry or with so much shouting." — Pauline Kael, Scraps from the Loft [Source]
• "But Future II—which is the middle film of a trilogy—smacks of the assembly line." — Pauline Kael, Scraps from the Loft [Source]
• Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, criticizing it for lacking the "genuine power of the original" but praising it for its "zaniness" and "screwball jokes."
• Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the film is "ready for bigger and better things" and later said that it "manages to be giddily and merrily mind-boggling, rather than confusing."
• Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader gave the film a negative review, criticizing Zemeckis and Gale for turning the characters into "strident geeks" and for making the frenetic action formulaic, and believed that it contained "rampant misogyny," because the character of Jennifer Parker "is knocked unconscious early on so she won't interfere with the little-boy games."
• Variety said, "[Director Robert] Zemeckis' fascination with having characters interact at different ages of their lives hurts it visually, and strains credibility past the breaking point, by forcing him to rely on some very cheesy makeup designs."

Here are a few resources listeners can check out for more on Back to the Future Part II:

Podcast Like It's 1989 — "Back to the Future Part II w/ Emily St. James" (Patreon episode, hosted by Kenny Neibart and Phil Iscove, released August 2, 2021). This episode brings on Vox writer Emily St. James as a guest, and we take the unique opportunity to view the movie in a vacuum, apart from the first and last entries in the series, discussing their nostalgia for the sequel, the relatively small scale of its setpieces, and how despite its imperfections it still feels like a perfect movie.

Box Office Pulp — "Back to the Future Part II Commentary Track" (released March 20, 2019, run time about 2 hours). This is a scene-specific audio commentary track meant to be played alongside the film, and it digs into the production history, the thought process behind breaking the story, why that story is kind of broken, the film's approach to future design, and Zemeckis' push to do things totally unique — good for listeners who want a deep, structural dive to pair directly with a rewatch.

Den of Geek — "Giving Back to the Future Part II Its Due" (essay by Simon Brew). This is a reappraisal essay that's useful counterpoint to the episode's critical take: it acknowledges that many critics have long argued Part II is the most muddled of the trilogy, and even notes that Zemeckis himself has admitted it's the film he's least happy with, given how quickly he had to edit it since Part II and Part III were shot back to back, while still making the case for its ambition — praising its sheer level of ambition, since Zemeckis and Gale had boxed themselves into a corner with the original film's cliffhanger ending, written without any real belief a sequel was coming.

Back to the Future — This episode is the direct sequel discussion, explicitly building on and comparing itself throughout to our prior coverage of the original Back to the Future.

Or consider starting from the beginning — Episode 01: The Princess Bride is where we became friends.

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.

Jaclynn made the most viral reel about our friendship, and Robby has never seen Instagram until now- this is a GREAT (all caps episode) about telling a story in less than thirty seconds. The view count is well over a million and shows no signs of stopping.

This reel is so popular that it is actively making near strangers ask questions and have very strong opinions about our personal lives, which is astounding because Cole is the most boring person on the planet. "Movie magic" can do anything.

Jaclynn is really fun though, so watch it for yourself here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DR-C6OWieXl/?igsh=YXU4b2J1OWJnZjMw

And it may sound like we're being overly self-effacing about it, but we're also all in awe of anyone who *can* tell impossibly short stories.

Cole made us watch and (deeply) analyze a vine for a whole episode, and we haven't finished editing them yet but we have episodes coming about Lydia Davis' effortlessly infuriating micro-fiction and Ernest Hemingway's "perfect" six-word short story, "Baby Shoes."

Sound Attribution: S: Beach Dance - EDM Dance Cinematic Party Eletro Chill Happy 120bpm Music - EQ Mastered.wav by szegvari | License: Creative Commons 0

We argue that David Lynch made his most experimental film by removing every tool he usually relies on — no surrealism, no dread-tricks, just a man on a lawnmower — and dread showed up anyway, because it turns out the weirdness was never the trick, it was him.

Lynch is the master of the eery, absurd, surreal dream film, but he himself says that his most "experimental" film is "The Straight Story," a film that's ostensibly about a kind, elderly gentleman slowly riding his lawn mower across the country to see his brother. It is a G-rated Disney film about a real man who rode a lawnmower 300 miles to reconcile with his dying brother, and, according to Lynch himself, his most experimental movie ever made. The hosts unpack how a film with no surrealism, no non-linear tricks, and none of Lynch's usual chaos still manages to be the "Lynchiest" thing he's ever done, from a deer-crash scene that hooked all three of them instantly to the quiet horror lurking under its sweetness. If you've ever wondered what David Lynch looks like with all his usual tools taken away, this is the episode for you.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

• Disney+ (streaming with subscription)
• The Criterion Channel (streaming with subscription)
• Apple TV (rent or buy)
• Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy)
• Fandango at Home (rent or buy)

A Disney G-rated existential-horror movie sitting on Disney+ next to Marvel and Moana is exactly the kind of tonal joke the algorithm will never understand but Lynch absolutely intended — the deer lady is one row over from a talking raccoon.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning to get to know the show and find your new favorite film to pretend you've watched.

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Pocket Casts (link needed)

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Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

The Straight Story is the David Lynch film that Disney put its name on: a G-rated, true-to-life road movie about Alvin Straight, an elderly man in ill health who — no driver's license, legally blind, not much money — welds a trailer to his riding lawnmower and drives it over three hundred miles across Iowa and Wisconsin, at roughly three miles an hour, to make peace with the brother he hasn't spoken to in ten years. Lynch called it his most experimental film, which sounds like a joke until you sit with it: it's the one film he directed that he didn't write (the screenplay is Mary Sweeney's, his editor and producer of twenty years), it strips away every surreal tool he's known for, and what's left is somehow the most unmistakably him. Richard Farnsworth plays Alvin, and it's especially heartbreaking to learn afterward that he was carrying real cancer through the shoot and never disclosed it — a piece of information one of us admitted we wish we didn't have, because it blurs the line between what's performance and what's a man near the end of his life.

We came at this one from three different angles and, mercifully, three different opinions. Robby had seen every Lynch film except this one and was quietly hoping it would be the one that finally made him like Lynch — a genuinely funny confession to open with, and the tension the whole conversation pays off. Cole saw it in 35mm at some absurdly boutique Brooklyn screening and would very much like you to know that (Dad's regular life is just extremely artsy). And the moment that hooked all of us was the woman who's hit fourteen deer in seven weeks, standing over a fresh one in an open field with nowhere for a deer to have possibly come from, wailing where do they all come from — a line that, it turns out, is lifted straight from real life, which makes it the single most Lynchian thing in the movie. That scene became a whole bit; ask Robby, who mimed it at strangers on the subway.

What the conversation circles back to, and what we think earns the two hours, is one small true thing about the storytelling: Alvin doesn't change. He makes one choice decades before the film starts and one more to begin it, and every other beat flows from that — so the movie isn't about a man being transformed by the road. We're the ones who change, watching each person he meets slowly reveal what's at stake, until the reunion (his brother says only "sit down, Alvin," then looks up at the stars) lands as earned as anything you'll see. We also spend real time on Mary Sweeney, who wrote, edited, and produced this and edited most of Lynch's canon, and got a fraction of the flowers — because editing was once dismissed as unimportant, which is precisely why women so often did it. If you've heard the take that Lynch is always just messing with his audience, we'd push back on that here, on the record, and probably lose a few Lynch purists in the process. Sweet.

• David Lynch — Director — also: Blue Velvet (1986), Mulholland Drive (2001), Twin Peaks (1990)
• Mary Sweeney — Screenwriter — also: Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
• John Roach — Screenwriter — also: The Straight Story (1999)
• Mary Sweeney — Producer — also: Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
• Neal Edelstein — Producer — also: Mulholland Drive (2001), The Ring (2002), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
• Freddie Francis — Cinematographer — also: The Elephant Man (1980), Glory (1989), Cape Fear (1991)
• Angelo Badalamenti — Composer — also: Blue Velvet (1986), Twin Peaks (1990), Mulholland Drive (2001)

• Richard Farnsworth — Alvin Straight — also: The Grey Fox (1982), Misery (1990), Comes a Horseman (1978)
• Sissy Spacek — Rose Straight — also: Carrie (1976), Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), In the Bedroom (2001)
• Harry Dean Stanton — Lyle Straight — also: Paris, Texas (1984), Alien (1979), Repo Man (1984)

• Best Actor (Richard Farnsworth) — NOMINATION

• Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama (Richard Farnsworth) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Score (Angelo Badalamenti) — NOMINATION

• Palme d'Or — NOMINATION

Straight Story was nominated for four Independent Spirit Awards for Best Film, Best Director (Lynch), Best Actor (Farnsworth) and Best First Screenplay (John Roach & Mary Sweeney).

- Best Feature — NOMINATION

- Best Director (David Lynch) — NOMINATION

- Best Male Lead (Richard Farnsworth) — WIN

- Best First Screenplay (Mary Sweeney & John Roach) — NOMINATION

Richard Farnsworth won Best Actor and Freddie Francis won best Cinematography for Straight Story in the New York Film Critics 1999 Awards.

- Best Actor (Richard Farnsworth) — WIN

- Best Cinematography (Freddie Francis) — WIN

Winner British Independent Film Award, Best Foreign Independent Film - English Language

- Best Foreign Independent Film (English Language) — WIN

At the European Film Awards on Saturday, December 4 1999, The Straight Story won the Best non-European film award.

- Best Non-European Film (Screen International Award) — WIN

• Best Picture — NOMINATION
• Best Actor (Richard Farnsworth) — NOMINATION
• Best Director (David Lynch) — NOMINATION

• Best Actor (Richard Farnsworth) — NOMINATION

• Best Cinematography (Freddie Francis) — NOMINATION

2000 Winner Bodil, Best American Film

• Best Foreign Film — NOMINATION

David Lynch won the 1999 San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Director for Straight Story.

- Best Director (David Lynch) — WIN

The film received no nominations from BAFTA, the Writers Guild, or the Directors Guild, and was not selected for the National Film Registry.

The Straight Story is based on a true story: in 1994, 73-year-old Alvin Straight rode a lawnmower across roughly 250 miles of the American Midwest to visit his ailing brother, an event Mary Sweeney learned of through a New York Times article and adapted into the screenplay. More on the real Alvin Straight can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Straight

Here are confirmed, specific production trivia items about The Straight Story:

Richard Farnsworth was genuinely dying during the shoot, and his physical impairment on screen was real, not acted. He was terminally ill with bone cancer during the shooting of the film, which had caused the paralysis of his legs as shown in the film, and he took the role out of admiration for Alvin Straight, and astonished his co-workers with his tenacity during production. He nearly turned down the role because his cancer at the time caused him so much pain that he couldn't even walk, but when he learned he could use a walker since Alvin also used a walker, he gladly signed up. He died the following year, having kept his diagnosis secret through the Oscar campaign — his fiancée revealed that Farnsworth had kept all through the Oscar hoopla: He had been diagnosed several years ago with terminal cancer. [Source]

The entire film was shot in strict chronological order along the real Alvin Straight's actual route — an unusual and difficult approach for a production. The Straight Story was independently shot along the actual route taken by Straight, and all scenes were shot in chronological order in the autumn of 1998. Even Alvin's real house was used: Alvin Straight's real-life residence was used as his home in the film and Straight's neighbors in the film were his actual neighbors. [Source]

Cinematographer Freddie Francis came out of a long semi-retirement specifically to reunite with Lynch, and shot the whole film in just 23 days. This was the drama The Straight Story (1999), which was shot on location in Iowa in 23 days, and it turned out to be Francis' final feature film as a director of photography, a reunion with David Lynch. Notably, at 81 years old, he did stipulate a maximum 10-hour shooting day, and despite that constraint we still came in two or three days under schedule. Francis said that after their first conversation about the film, "With David Lynch, I was on the same wavelength after a few minutes' talk, and for the rest of the movie we never discussed the photography." [Source]

Mary Sweeney waited four years for the film rights to become available before she could get the movie made. Sweeney was so committed to getting the movie made that even though the rights were spoken for, she waited four years for them to become available again. She pursued the project because she thought it would tap into Lynch's emotional register, telling one interviewer: "David's films connect with audiences through his characters' struggles with darkness and confusion." [Source]

Editing the film moved Lynch to tears — a notable admission from a director known for emotional restraint. Discussing the cutting room process, Lynch said: "In the editing room I cried like mad." [Source]

Since The Straight Story (1999), David Lynch and Mary Sweeney went on to collaborate on two more major projects: Mulholland Drive, which retains a certain lyricality, and then Inland Empire, which feels like a different type of film entirely. On Mulholland Drive, Sweeney won the British Academy Award for Best Editing. She also produced Inland Empire alongside Lynch, though notably he edited that film alone without input from his then-wife Mary Sweeney, which she attributed to the lack of a real organized script to go by. Sweeney later stepped into directing herself, and in 2009 she wrote, directed, produced and edited her debut feature, Baraboo, which premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival and won Best First Feature awards at the Galway Film Fleadh and the Wisconsin Film Festival. She also worked in television, serving as a consulting producer/writer on Matthew Weiner's anthology series The Romanoffs.

One-line take: We've already covered Mulholland Drive — check out that episode.

Based on documented reviews and interviews, here are quotes from critics and other filmmakers (not the cast/crew of the film itself) discussing The Straight Story:

• "You'd think it was a fantasy, this kindness of strangers, if the movie weren't based on a true story." — Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com "You'd think it was a fantasy, this kindness of strangers, if the movie weren't based on a true story."

Here are a few resources for listeners who want to dig deeper into The Straight Story:

"Deviate" podcast — Rolf Potts interviews John E. Roach (rolfpotts.com): This is a rare chance to hear directly from the film's co-writer; John E. Roach discusses the origins of The Straight Story, Midwest culture and sensibilities, age and the World War II generation, and writing the character of Alvin Straight — great for understanding the screenplay's roots before Lynch ever got involved.

"The Straight Shooter: Reassessing David Lynch's The Straight Story" — Senses of Cinema essay (sensesofcinema.com): A dense, post-Lynch-death critical reassessment that argues this quintessentially American movie embodies the Japanese principle of mono no aware, the pathos from having a taste of the transience of human existence — a good companion piece for the podcast's "existential horror" reading.

Disquiet.com essay by Marc Weidenbaum, originally written for The Wire (disquiet.com): A sound-design-focused analysis worth pairing with the episode's cinematography discussion, since it makes the case that Lynch's only other credit on the film besides directing is sound design, and the sound exudes his characteristic surreality by way of heightened mundanity — it dissects specific scenes like the bar sequence and the deer-crash sound with a level of technical detail the podcast doesn't get into.

ARC_MULHOLLAND_DRIVE — Both are David Lynch films, and the digest explicitly credits editor Mary Sweeney (who also edited Mulholland Drive) as a key creative force underappreciated relative to Lynch's fame.

Or consider starting from the beginning — Episode 01: The Princess Bride is where we became friends.

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Everything you need to know about David Lynch's style in five minutes! You really should watch the whole film eventually, but a five minute scene that appears fifteen minutes into David Lynch's masterpiece "Mulholland Drive" is all you really need.

That said, you really should also know about Lynch's producer, editor, and sometimes screenwriter of twenty years, Mary Sweeney!

Please, note: this scene is a little bit scary, but aren't almost all thing David Lynch?

LINKS TO FULL INTERVIEWS WITH MARY SWEENEY:

Director's Club - "Editor of Lost Highway"

The Third Story - 2018

The Third Story - Mary Sweeney Returns

DePaul University - David Lynch's Producer

CREATIVES:

Director & Writer: David Lynch

Producers: Neal Edelstein, Tony Krantz, Michael Polaire, Alain Sarde, and Mary Sweeney

Composer: Angelo Badalamenti

Cinematographer: Peter Deming

Editor: Mary Sweeney

Production Designer: Jack Fisk

Costume Designer: Amy Stofsky

CAST:

Naomi Watts as Betty Elms / Diane Selwyn

Laura Elena Harring as Rita / Camilla Rhodes

Justin Theroux as Adam Kesher

Ann Miller as Coco Lenoix

Mark Pellegrino as Joe

Robert Forster as Detective McKnight

Dan Hedaya as Vincenzo Castigliane

Monty Montgomery as The Cowboy

Lee Grant as Louise Bonner

Billy Ray Cyrus as Gene

Patrick Fischler as Dan

Melissa George as Camilla Rhodes

Michael J. Anderson as Mr. Roque

Rebekah Del Rio as Herself

Bonnie Aarons as The Bum

SOUND DESIGN ATTRIBUTION:

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Content & Trigger Warning: this episode discusses sexual assault in the film and in real life.

We argue that "Women Talking" only looks plotless if you're measuring plot by what happens on screen instead of what it costs to decide anything at all — and that the film's real subject isn't the assault but the coerced forgiveness that lets it keep happening.

Women Talking, Sarah Polley's quiet, devastating film about the women of a Mennonite colony who discover they've been drugged and assaulted by the men in their community — and who spend two days in a barn deciding whether to do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. Cole and Robby dig into the film's craft, its late-in-editing narration switch, and why "plotless" might be the wrong word for a story built entirely around the fact that Jaclynn didn't watch it — and the reasons behind that choice is essentially the episode — it is one of the more personal episodes The Arc has put out. Content warning: this film discusses sexual assault directly, both in the film and in real life.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

• Prime Video (rent or purchase)
• Apple TV (rent or purchase)
• Tubi (streaming free with ads)
• Plex (rent)RSS

Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

Women Talking is Sarah Polley's 2022 adaptation of Miriam Toews' novel, and its premise is almost aggressively unpromising as cinema: the women of an isolated Mennonite colony, drugged and assaulted by the men of their own community, are given two days to decide whether to forgive their attackers, stay and fight, or leave. The men are away in town posting bail. The women gather in a hayloft. They talk. Roll credits. Cole, who brought the film to us, will tell you it has zero plot — "we gather in a barn, we talk, roll credits" — and he means that as the highest compliment, since he has a long-running and, per Robby, possibly incoherent theory that plot is just Mad Libs and story is the thing underneath it. The film looks like a Dorothea Lange photograph, it never once puts violence on screen, and it takes a decision most viewers assume is obvious and makes you sit inside how genuinely impossible it is — when you can't read or write, when leaving means forfeiting heaven, when forgiveness that's demanded of you starts to look a lot like permission.

What this episode became was not the tidy storytelling-craft conversation Cole had planned. He'd pitched it, by his own accounting, mostly to tee up nine reasons to praise and gently torment the two people he does this with — number nine being that Jaclynn gets "so effing excited about Sarah Polley" and had, at that point, never actually watched a Sarah Polley film. She still hadn't. Jaclynn tried to watch Women Talking several times and couldn't; her body wouldn't let her, and partway through the episode she says why, plainly and without flinching, in a way that reframes everything Cole thought he was assembling. So we ended up doing something closer to an experiment than a review: two of us who saw it walking a third of us — and you — through what it does and why it lands, while the person who couldn't watch it turns out to have the sharpest read in the room on forgiveness, complicity, and why people get so defensive about this movie in the first place. Robby, who watched it twice, is the one insisting there's a plot in here after all, and the argument the three of us have about that is the spine of the whole thing.

There is a content warning at the top for a reason — this episode discusses sexual assault, in the film and in real life. It is also, somehow, warm, and funny, and full of the kind of care that only shows up when people trust each other completely. Dad, as ever, brought something beautifully gift-wrapped and slightly impossible, and got called pretentious as fuck for his trouble, and was thanked for it sincerely by the end. If you found this looking for whether Women Talking is worth your time, or whether you can handle it, the honest three-way conversation we had about exactly that question is the reason to stay.

• Sarah Polley — Director — also: Women Talking (2022), Away from Her (2006), Stories We Tell (2012)
• Sarah Polley — Screenwriter — also: Women Talking (2022), Away from Her (2006), Alias Grace (2017)
• Dede Gardner — Producer — also: Women Talking (2022), 12 Years a Slave (2013), Moonlight (2016)
• Jeremy Kleiner — Producer — also: Women Talking (2022), 12 Years a Slave (2013), Moonlight (2016)
• Frances McDormand — Producer — also: Women Talking (2022), Nomadland (2020)
• Luc Montpellier — Cinematographer — also: Women Talking (2022), Away from Her (2006), Take This Waltz (2011)
• Hildur Guðnadóttir — Composer — also: Women Talking (2022), Joker (2019), Chernobyl (2019)

• Rooney Mara — Ona — also: Carol (2015), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Nightmare Alley (2021)
• Claire Foy — Salome — also: The Crown (2016), First Man (2018), The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018)
• Jessie Buckley — Mariche — also: Wild Rose (2018), The Lost Daughter (2021), Men (2022)
• Judith Ivey — Agata — also: Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986), Hello Again (2017)
• Ben Whishaw — August — also: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), Skyfall (2012), No Time to Die (2021)
• Sheila McCarthy — Greta — also: I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987), The Umbrella Academy (2019), The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020)
• Frances McDormand — Scarface Janz — also: Fargo (1996), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), Nomadland (2020)
• Michelle McLeod — Mejal — also: Don't Talk to Irene (2018), My Spy (2020)
• Kate Hallett — Autje — also: Women Talking (2022)
• Liv McNeil — Neitje — also: Women Talking (2022)
• August Winter — Melvin/Nettie — also: Women Talking (2022)
• Emily Mitchell — Miep — also: Women Talking (2022)
• Vivien Endicott-Douglas — Clara — also: Women Talking (2022)
• Kira Guloien — Anna — also: Women Talking (2022)
• Shayla Brown — Helena — also: Women Talking (2022)

Here's the film's real awards history:

• Academy Awards — Best Picture — NOMINATION
• Academy Awards — Best Adapted Screenplay — WIN (Sarah Polley) — at the 95th Academy Awards the film was nominated for Best Picture and Polley won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay
• Golden Globes — Best Screenplay — NOMINATION (Sarah Polley)
• Golden Globes — Best Original Score — NOMINATION (Hildur Guðnadóttir) — the film was also nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Original Score at the 80th Golden Globe Awards
• BAFTA — the film received no nominations; Sarah Polley had a notable response when one person suggested her film was snubbed by the BAFTA Film Awards
• Writers Guild of America Awards — Best Adapted Screenplay — WIN (Sarah Polley) — the film won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Critics' Choice Awards, Writers Guild of America Awards, and the Academy Awards
• Directors Guild of America — no nomination found for this film
• Screen Actors Guild Awards — Best Ensemble Cast — NOMINATION — the film was nominated for Best Ensemble Cast of a Motion Picture at the 29th Screen Actors Guild Awards
• Critics' Choice Awards — Best Picture — NOMINATION
• Critics' Choice Awards — Best Director — NOMINATION (Sarah Polley)
• Critics' Choice Awards — Best Acting Ensemble — NOMINATION
• Critics' Choice Awards — Best Score — NOMINATION (Hildur Guðnadóttir)
• Critics' Choice Awards — Best Adapted Screenplay — WIN (Sarah Polley) — 2023 Winner Critics Choice Award · Best Adapted Screenplay · Sarah Polley · 2023 Nominee Critics Choice Award · Best Acting Ensemble · 2023 Nominee Critics Choice Award · Best Score · Hildur Guðnadóttir · 2023 Nominee Critics Choice Award · Best Director · Sarah Polley · 2023 Nominee Critics Choice Award · Best Picture
• Independent Spirit Awards — Best Feature — NOMINATION
• Independent Spirit Awards — Best Director — NOMINATION (Sarah Polley)
• Independent Spirit Awards — Best Screenplay — NOMINATION (Sarah Polley)
• Independent Spirit Awards — Robert Altman Award (Best Ensemble) — WIN — 38 Independent Spirit Awards · nom. Best Feature · nom. Best Director (Sarah Polley) nom. Best Screenplay (Sarah Polley) winner · Robert Altman Award (Best Ensemble)
• Gotham Independent Film Awards — Outstanding Supporting Performance — NOMINATION (Ben Whishaw) — Gotham Independent Film Awards 2022 · nom. Outstanding Supporting Performance (Ben Whishaw)
• National Board of Review — Top Ten Films — WIN — it was named one of the top ten films of 2022 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute
• Los Angeles Film Critics Association — Best Supporting Performance — NOMINATION (Jessie Buckley) — Los Angeles Film Critics Awards (LAFCA 2022) nom. Best Supporting Performance (Jessie Buckley)
• Toronto International Film Festival — People's Choice Award — NOMINATION — Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2022) nom. People's Choice Award (Best Film)

The film did not receive nominations from the Directors Guild of America or BAFTA, and was not selected for the National Film Registry.

Women Talking is adapted from Miriam Toews's 2018 novel of the same name, which she described as an imaginative response to real events—the drugging and rape of women over several years in the Manitoba Colony, a Mennonite community in Bolivia, a case that led to convictions of eight men in a Bolivian court in 2011.

Toews describes it as "an imagined response to real events," the gas-facilitated rapes that took place on the Manitoba Colony, a remote and isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia... In 2011, eight men were convicted in a Bolivian court, each one receiving a lengthy prison sentence.

Novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_Talking_(novel)

Bookshop.org search: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=Women%20Talking

Sarah Polley's editor, Christopher Donaldson, has actually revealed just how last-minute the narrator switch was: the film was shot, scored, and voiced entirely with Ben Whishaw's August as narrator, and it wasn't until it was a risky change, and Polley hadn't yet completed her director's cut when they decided to switch narrators, so it was there in the edit that Hallett's character Autje, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Mariche, became the primary narrator. That meant Kate Hallett had to come back into the studio afterward, since Donaldson and Polley needed Hallett's voiceover, which wasn't in the original cut, so the actor was called to record her lines during the post-production process. [Source]

The scene most people remember as the film's opening — August teaching the boys along the fence — wasn't actually built to open the movie at all in the final cut; the scene where August teaches the young boys walking along the fence was originally meant to open the film, but Donaldson and Polley pushed it back. [Source]

The film's ghostly, near-monochrome look wasn't a digital filter slapped on afterward — cinematographer Luc Montpellier built it out of a real photography reference, since both Polley and Montpellier have mentioned the influence of Magnum photographer Larry Towell, who in the 1990s photographed nearly two dozen Mexican Mennonite communities, and Towell's photography book has been compared to Dorothea Lange's Dust Bowl work. [Source]

That look also came from an unusual lens choice: the crew shot with the large format Panavision DXL2 camera with Red Monstro sensor, equipped with Panavision UltraVista Anamorphic lenses to support an epic scope, which pushed the frame into an unusually wide, almost 70mm-style ratio — Montpellier was initially adamant about shooting in a conventional 2.40:1 ratio, but the camera and lenses package made him rethink this, and he and Polley both fell in love with 2.76:1. [Source]

Despite its rustic, outdoor feel, the barn debate that makes up most of the film wasn't shot on location at all — the most striking decision was to shoot most of the film in a studio, because with that amount of dialogue, the film taking place over 48 hours, and the cast going to dark places, Montpellier needed full control over the environment, since Polley's script called for scenes sometimes over ten pages long to play out at precise moments like sunrise, sunset, or dusk. [Source]

Since Sarah Polley wrote and directed Women Talking, her subsequent confirmed work centers on two things. She made a rare return to acting, playing a fictionalized version of herself in a 2025 episode of Seth Rogen's Apple TV+ series The Studio, a role she's said let her vent some directorial frustrations on camera. And she's now writing and directing an adaptation of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, with Billie Eilish attached to make her feature acting debut in the lead role, for Focus Features.

We haven't covered The Bell Jar yet — but we probably should.

• "there is a sustained moral seriousness in Polley's work, a willingness to confront pain" — Peter Bradshaw, quoted via IMDb user reviews compiling critic commentary [Source]
• "a powerful act of nonviolent protest" — Peter Debruge, Variety, via Wikipedia [Source]
• "a movie that deliberately hovers between drama and parable" — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, via Wikipedia [Source]

The film's broader critical reception was strong: the film received positive reviews from critics, who lauded Polley's screenplay and direction, the performances of the cast, and score, but it grossed just $9 million against a $20 million budget. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90%, based on 296 reviews, with an average rating of 8/10, with critics consensus reading that "While Women Talking sometimes forsakes entertaining drama in favor of simply getting its points across, its message is valuable -- and effectively delivered."

For anyone who wants to keep pulling on the threads this episode raises, a few places worth going next:

NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, "Women Talking is exactly that — and so much more" — Linda Holmes, Aisha Harris, Barrie Hardymon, and Bedatri D. Choudhury dig into the same choice we here fixate on, arguing that keeping the violence off screen and only showing its aftermath is precisely what makes the film land emotionally rather than relying on graphic content. It's a tight, conversational companion piece that also connects the film to Polley's own essay collection about trauma, Run Towards the Danger.

Seventh Row's Sarah Polley episode (E132) — this one is worth a listen specifically because it disagrees. Where this episode's hosts are largely admiring, the Seventh Row team, joined by a CanLit scholar, argues the film doesn't work on several levels, pointing to the didactic screenplay, flat production design, and how the adaptation handles its source text — a useful counterweight if you want the case against the film's craft.

Dissent Magazine, "Sarah Polley's Act of Imagination" — a sharper critical essay that traces how the film's ending actually works as drama rather than message. It zeroes in on the Mariche subplot, noting how her facade of anger collapses under Ona's question about choice, and how the women come to recognize what they call a "misuse of forgiveness" — which speaks directly to the forgiveness debate this episode spends so much time on.

New to The Arc? Start with Episode 02: The Fantastic Four if you like Marvel movies — and want to hate us forever and tell your friends how lame we are.

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We spend most of Carol braced for the tragic, closeted ending 1950s convention demands, so when Highsmith and Haynes hand the women the reins instead, it recasts everything we just watched as an argument that withholding psychology isn't distance — it's trust.

Carol takes place in the "liminal space" that floats between Christmas and the start of the new year, and it occupies the space held for best films ever made that didn't win and weren't even nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards... possibly because it is a classic story told in a slightly unconventional manner or because of the same conscious or unconscious prejudices that the characters in the story itself must live through. You can and should watch this film any (and arguably multiple) times per year: once for the holidays, once for the visual story, and once for every time you you want to feel like you're falling in love but it's complicated.

If you love the film already, then please, also listen to Subtextual's episode about "Carol" because they do an even longer breakdown and find it to be a warm Christmas hug and they're one of the best film review podcasts in general as well!

We watch Todd Haynes' Carol and find a movie so visually perfect it borders on distracting — gorgeous, glacial, and quietly radical for giving its women an ending where nobody has to hide. They dig into Patricia Highsmith's original pseudonymous novel, the 1950s photographers who shaped the film's look, and why an ending they expected to be tragic turned out to be the twist of the whole thing. No familiarity with the film required — just bring patience for a debate about gloves left behind "on purpose."

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

• Netflix (streaming with subscription)
• Amazon Prime Video (rent or purchase)
• Apple TV (rent or purchase)
• Fandango At Home (rent or purchase)

Somehow the movie about repressed feelings and things left unsaid has landed on Netflix without anyone making a fuss about it — no farewell tour, no expiring-soon countdown clock, just sitting there in the queue like it's always been there. For a film so obsessed with what people don't announce out loud, that feels almost on brand.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.

RSS

Carol (2015, directed by Todd Haynes) is a love story told in the liminal week between Christmas and New Year's — that no-man's-land of time when nobody quite knows what year it is or who they're supposed to be. Adapted from Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, a novel she first published under a pseudonym and only put her own name to decades later, it follows Therese (Rooney Mara), a young shop girl who can't decide her own lunch, and Carol (Cate Blanchett), an upper-class New Jersey woman who is, in Jaclynn's words, gay as the day is long and about to lose custody of her daughter over it. Carol leaves her gloves behind at the department store — accidentally or on purpose, though we spend a good while settling firmly on on purpose, on purpose — and the whole thing unspools from there. It's a movie that was passed over entirely at the Oscars, which feels like either a coincidence or exactly the kind of quiet punishment the film itself is about.

What we actually spent the hour on is the strange trick at the center of it: this is a film where almost nothing is said out loud, where the characters announce they want to ask questions and then don't ask them, and yet none of us ever felt lost for a second. Robby came in ready to argue that the constant shifts in perspective stretched the story too thin — a Brechtian "you are watching something, not living it" — while Cole and Jaclynn pushed back that the whole structure is a con that pays off, a fake-out opening scene we all misread completely until the ending rewrote it into a genuine plot twist. Robby also, at some length, describes the movie he actually wanted (Sarah Paulson's Abby, a cigarette, and the drive home nobody filmed), which is a movie that does not exist. Somewhere in there Cole confesses to a war story about handing off a camera rig in shame after trying to shoot a wobbly B-cam himself, which is the closest this show gets to a director's commentary track.

The honest thing we keep circling is whether something being beautiful makes it interesting — because Carol is shot like Vivian Maier and Esther Bubley photographs come to life, every frame a still you'd hang on your wall, and two of us cheerfully admit we didn't much like either lead and mostly just wanted to stare at them and get to the sex scene. If you want a warm-Christmas-sweater reverence, that's not quite us; if you want three people taking a gorgeous movie apart to figure out how it knows so much while showing so little, and disagreeing honestly about whether that's a feat or a limitation, this is the conversation. As always, you don't need to have seen it — though about five minutes in, you'll want to.

• Todd Haynes — Director — also: Far From Heaven (2002), I'm Not There (2007), Carol (2015)
• Phyllis Nagy — Screenwriter — also: Carol (2015), Mildred Pierce (2011)
• Elizabeth Karlsen — Producer — also: Carol (2015)
• Stephen Woolley — Producer — also: Carol (2015)
• Christine Vachon — Producer — also: Carol (2015), Far From Heaven (2002)
• Edward Lachman — Cinematographer — also: Far From Heaven (2002), I'm Not There (2007), Carol (2015)
• Carter Burwell — Composer — also: Carol (2015)

• Cate Blanchett — Carol Aird — also: Blue Jasmine (2013), The Aviator (2004), Elizabeth (1998)
• Rooney Mara — Therese Belivet — also: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), The Social Network (2010)
• Sarah Paulson — Abby Gerhard — also: American Horror Story (2011–), Ocean's 8 (2018)
• Kyle Chandler — Harge Aird — also: Friday Night Lights (2006–2011), Argo (2012), Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
• Jake Lacy — Richard Semco — also: The Office (2012–2013), The White Lotus (2021)
• John Magaro — Dannie McElroy — also: Not Fade Away (2012), First Cow (2019)
• Cory Michael Smith — Tommy Tucker — also: Gotham (2014–2019)
• Carrie Brownstein — Genevieve Cantrell — also: Portlandia (2011–2018)

Here's Carol's awards history:

• Best Actress (Cate Blanchett) — NOMINATION
• Best Supporting Actress (Rooney Mara) — NOMINATION
• Best Adapted Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) — NOMINATION
• Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Score (Carter Burwell) — NOMINATION
• Best Costume Design (Sandy Powell) — NOMINATION

(Carol received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, and Best Adapted Screenplay.)

Golden Globes

- Best Motion Picture – Drama — NOMINATION

- Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama (Cate Blanchett) — NOMINATION

- Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama (Rooney Mara) — NOMINATION

- Best Director (Todd Haynes) — NOMINATION

- Best Original Score — NOMINATION

(It led the Golden Globe Award nominations with five, for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Actress for Blanchett and Mara, Best Director, and Best Original Score)

BAFTA Awards

- Best Film — NOMINATION

- Best Direction (Todd Haynes) — NOMINATION

- Best Leading Actress (Cate Blanchett) — NOMINATION

- Best Supporting Actress (Rooney Mara) — NOMINATION

- Best Adapted Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) — NOMINATION

- Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman) — NOMINATION

- Best Production Design — NOMINATION

- Best Costume Design (Sandy Powell) — NOMINATION

- Best Makeup & Hair — NOMINATION

(Steven Spielberg's war drama Bridge of Spies and Todd Haynes' Carol led all nominees with nine nominations each, including nominations across Best Film, acting, screenplay, cinematography, production design, costume design, and makeup and hair categories.)

Cannes Film Festival (2015)

- Queer Palm — WIN

- Best Actress (Rooney Mara, tied with Emmanuelle Bercot) — WIN

(Best Actress: Rooney Mara for "Carol" and Emmanuelle Bercot for "Mon Roi" (Shared Prize); For its heartbreaking performances, stunning mise-en-scene, and overall mastery of craft we are proud to award CAROL with the Queer Palm... The film we've chosen to award is more than a movie, it's a moment in history. The first time a love story between two women was treated with the respect and significance of any other mainstream cinematic romance.)

Writers Guild of America (WGA)

- Best Adapted Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) — NOMINATION

Independent Spirit Awards

- Best Feature — NOMINATION

- Best Director (Todd Haynes) — NOMINATION

- Best Female Lead (Cate Blanchett) — NOMINATION

- Best Female Lead (Rooney Mara) — NOMINATION

- Best Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) — NOMINATION

- Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman) — WIN

Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards

- Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role (Cate Blanchett) — NOMINATION

- Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Rooney Mara) — NOMINATION

Critics' Choice Awards

- Best Picture — NOMINATION

- Best Director — NOMINATION

- Best Actress — NOMINATION

- Best Supporting Actress — NOMINATION

- (plus additional nominations across craft categories)

New York Film Critics Circle

- Best Film — WIN

- Best Director (Todd Haynes) — WIN

- Best Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) — WIN

- Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman) — WIN

Los Angeles Film Critics Association

- Best Music/Score — WIN

Carol is adapted from Patricia Highsmith's 1952 novel The Price of Salt (later republished under the title Carol), a 1952 romance novel by Patricia Highsmith, republished as Carol in 1990. You can read more about the novel here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Price_of_Salt

Bookshop.org search link: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=The%20Price%20of%20Salt

Ed Lachman fought hard for a texture most modern audiences would never consciously notice — he insisted on shooting Carol on Super 16mm rather than 35mm or digital because he felt "even 35mm negative is so grainless that it almost looks digital when you go through a DI," and wanted a grain structure that felt alive rather than "pixel-fixated" like digitally added grain. [Source]

The film's visual language wasn't drawn from other movies at all — Lachman and Haynes deliberately skipped cinematic references and instead built the look around a group of mostly female mid-century photojournalists, telling Indiewire "We looked at the time not through its cinema, but through its photographers that documented New York... mid-century photographers like Ruth Orkin, Ester Bubley, Helen Levitt and Vivian Maier." [Source]

Lachman's devotion to celluloid nearly cost him more than a stylistic choice — during production, he learned the New York Film Lab that processed the movie's negative was being shut down and its equipment scrapped, so he personally arranged to have roughly a quarter-million dollars of lab equipment hauled out and stored in his grip's warehouse rather than see it destroyed. [Source]

Rooney Mara initially turned down the role of Therese entirely. After making four films back-to-back and feeling burned out, she told The Hollywood Reporter she "didn't think I'd be good in it," and only came back around to the part once Haynes joined the project and she was in a different headspace. [Source]

• "The problem is that there is very little chemistry between the actresses, and Haynes and screenwriter Phyllis Nagy are far too studied in their depiction of passion." — Peter Rainer, quoted via Metacritic [Source]
• "The most impressive performance in the movie is given by Blanchett's elaborately coiffed, cast-iron hairdo." — Peter Rainer, quoted via Metacritic [Source]
• The Camerimage jury, awarding cinematographer Ed Lachman its top prize, called the film's look one of "aristocratic grace and elegance," noting its "delicate and precise exploration of emotion through color and light".
• Photographer and writer Teju Cole, discussing Saul Leiter's photography (a major visual reference point for the film), wrote that "the overriding emotion" in Leiter's work is "a stillness, tenderness, and grace that is at odds with the mad rush of New York street life."

The Film Comment interview with Todd Haynes is essential reading for anyone who wants the director's own account of the film's visual language — Haynes walks through how he and Ed Lachman moved away from referencing other movies and instead built the look from 1950s photojournalism, citing photographers like Ruth Orkin, Helen Levitt, and Esther Bubley, plus the more recent rediscovery of Vivian Maier.

Variety's interview with cinematographer Edward Lachman digs even further into the craft side, including how he and Haynes deliberately avoided the Douglas Sirk melodrama references they'd used on Far From Heaven and instead looked at mid-century photojournalists, many of whom happened to be women, to shape the film's cultural and visual signifiers. Lachman also traces a lovely detail the podcast touches on — how Highsmith's original novel had Therese working as a set designer, and it was screenwriter Phyllis Nagy's idea to make her a photographer instead, letting her camera work carry her evolving subjectivity.

For listeners more interested in the Highsmith side of things than the filmmaking side, the Dead Ladies Show podcast ran an episode on Highsmith that connects directly to Carol's origins, noting that Highsmith wrote several books that redefined the thriller, including one of the few stories to give a lesbian couple a happy ending — The Price of Salt, adapted into the 2015 film starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. It's a good companion piece if you want the messier, real-life backstory behind the novel — the book was inspired by one of Highsmith's own obsessions with a woman, at a time when she herself was a closeted lesbian engaged to a man.

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We argue Michael Caine playing Scrooge dead straight, like Shakespeare, is exactly why the Muppets around him are allowed to be so funny — and why this version, not the somber ones, earns its ending.

The Muppet Christmas Carol is, against all odds, one of the most emotionally sincere adaptations of Dickens ever put to film — and this week on The Arc, we figure out why. Michael Caine plays Scrooge dead straight, like he's doing Shakespeare, while Gonzo narrates as Charles Dickens and Beaker somehow steals the whole movie with a scarf. It's a conversation about villain origin stories, Dutch angles, and why letting the Muppets play it sincere makes the sad parts sadder and the redemption actually land. You don't need to have seen it since childhood, or ever, to enjoy this one.

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

• Disney+ (streaming with subscription)
• Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy)
• Apple TV (rent or buy)
• Fandango At Home (rent or buy)

Here's the detail worth knowing before Robby cues this one up: Disney+ isn't just streaming the movie, it's quietly streaming two versions of it. The service added the "full-length version" of Brian Henson's 1992 film, though unlike some other new releases, it's not that easy to find. Even if you search for the title, you'll first land on the edited cut — you have to scroll down and click "Extras" to find the 89-minute full-length version. That's the one with "When Love Is Gone" back in it, the Belle breakup song the episode spends real time mourning. The song plays during Scrooge's scenes with the Ghost of Christmas Past and his fiancée Belle, and Disney originally cut it for being a bit too adult. So if we want the cut they actually wished existed, it's already sitting on their own Disney+ app, buried one tab deeper than default.

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.

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The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) is Michael Caine playing Ebenezer Scrooge with total, unblinking sincerity opposite a cast of felt puppets — Gonzo narrating as Charles Dickens, Kermit as Bob Cratchit, a tiny crutched Kermit-nephew as Tiny Tim — in a version of Dickens' story so faithful it lifts language verbatim while still finding room for a joke about business being "the American way," then correcting itself to "the British way." It's the movie a lot of people absorbed so young they stopped seeing it, which is exactly the thing we found so worth talking about: it tricks you into paying attention to the original again. Robby brought it because he loves the Muppets and because he'd rewatched it as an adult and been genuinely shocked at how good it is, and about ninety seconds in he tried to declare "end of podcast" on the grounds that there's no story reason — we just love the Muppets. That did not hold.

What we actually got into is why this Scrooge lands harder than the George C. Scott or Scrooged versions most of us grew up on. Caine, by his own account, plays the human rock the Muppets bounce off — the more real he is, the funnier and sadder everything around him gets — and the argument here is that he changes gradually, with each ghost, rather than only when confronted with his own grave. Jaclynn's point is that the usual "oh no, I die, better change" beat is narcissistic, and that this version earns something quieter: a man realizing he has an effect on people and belongs to the world. Cole, who came in assuming he'd seen this a thousand times and had not, gets the film's structure (three ghosts announced up front, and you still feel every beat), clocks the relentless Dutch angles, and learns mid-episode that the poignant, careful writer he'd been praising as "the Muppets" is, in fact, Gonzo. Along the way: the line "darkness was cheap and Scrooge liked it," a cut song called "When Love Is Gone" that most broadcast versions quietly remove, a serious case for Caine deserving a 1992 Oscar nomination (the field was Pacino, Denzel, Eastwood — we ran the math), and a scene where a child freezes under newspaper that the film refuses to soften.

Cole scared the dickens out of everyone, apologized, and did it again. Somewhere in there we all admitted we cried — Tiny Tim, the schoolroom, the red scarf Beaker hands over to a man who's clearly never been given anything in his life — and then wished aloud we could haunt every billionaire on Christmas Eve and wake up to a world full of generosity. If you searched this film hoping someone would take a puppet movie as seriously as it takes itself, that's the whole show.

• Brian Henson — Director, Producer — also: Muppet Treasure Island (1996), The Happytime Murders (2018)
• Jerry Juhl — Screenwriter — also: The Great Muppet Caper (1981), The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), Muppet Treasure Island (1996)
• Martin G. Baker — Producer — also: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
• Frank Oz — Executive Producer — also: Little Shop of Horrors (1986), The Great Muppet Caper (1981), The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
• John Fenner — Cinematographer — also: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
• Miles Goodman — Composer (Score) — also: Footloose (1984), Big (1988), Muppet Treasure Island (1996)
• Paul Williams — Composer (Songs) — also: The Muppet Movie (1979)

• Michael Caine — Ebenezer Scrooge — also: The Dark Knight (2008), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Alfie (1966)
• Dave Goelz — Gonzo (as Charles Dickens) — also: The Muppet Movie (1979), The Great Muppet Caper (1981), Muppet Treasure Island (1996)
• Steve Whitmire — Kermit the Frog (as Bob Cratchit) / Rizzo the Rat / Beaker — also: Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Muppets from Space (1999), The Muppets (2011)
• Frank Oz — Miss Piggy (as Emily Cratchit) / Fozzie Bear (as Fozziwig) / Sam the Eagle / Animal — also: The Muppet Movie (1979), The Great Muppet Caper (1981), Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
• Jerry Nelson — Ghost of Christmas Present / Statler / Robin the Frog (Tiny Tim) — also: The Muppet Movie (1979), The Dark Crystal (1982), Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
• David Rudman — Bunsen Honeydew / Additional Muppet Performer — also: Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Muppets Most Wanted (2014), The Muppets (2011)
• Meredith Braun — Belle — also: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
• Robin Weaver — Young Belle — also: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
• Steven Mackintosh — Fred — also: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Underworld (2003)

• Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children (soundtrack/story album) — NOMINATION

Beyond that, no Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA, Writers Guild, Directors Guild, or National Film Registry recognition turned up in the film's awards record. The film's story album of the movie was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children in 1994, but no wins or nominations from the major film ceremonies exist for this title.

The Muppet Christmas Carol is adapted from the 1843 novella A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, with the screenplay taking artistic license to suit the aesthetic of the Muppets while otherwise following Dickens' original story closely. You can find the original novella here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46 and search for it on Bookshop.org here: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=A%20Christmas%20Carol

Michael Caine wasn't just serious on set — he actually didn't realize until halfway through filming that this was Brian Henson's directorial debut, an oversight that speaks to how confidently the 28-year-old Henson carried himself despite privately calling the shoot "completely terrifying" [Source] and admitting he'd begged other people to direct it instead [Source].

Before shooting began, Caine told Henson he intended to play the role completely straight — "I will never wink, I will never do anything Muppety" — treating it as if he were performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company rather than acting opposite puppets. [Source]

The film wasn't originally conceived as a serious drama at all — Henson and his team first planned it as a full-blown parody, with Robin the Frog cast as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Miss Piggy as a "bacchanalian" Ghost of Christmas Present, and Animal as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, before realizing that approach undercut Dickens' actual voice. [Source]

The heartbreak ballad "When Love Is Gone" was cut from the theatrical release at the last minute at the request of Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, who thought it was too sad for children — and the original master recording was later lost entirely, only turning up again in 2020. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104940/trivia/, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/71757/14-things-you-might-not-know-about-muppet-christmas-carol)

Because Caine performed at full height while his puppeteer co-stars worked from platforms below, the crew had to physically rebuild the floor between takes — filling in the hole where puppeteers had been standing and cutting a new one on the other side for the next shot — which Caine said made it "the most difficult film" he'd ever worked on. [Source]

Jerry Juhl died of cancer on September 25, 2005, in San Francisco, at age 67. He kept writing for the Muppets right up through the years after A Christmas Carol — co-writing Muppet Treasure Island and then Muppets from Space — and stayed head writer of Fraggle Rock and The Jim Henson Hour in the years around that stretch, before semi-retiring to teach and coach community theater near his home in Mendocino County.

Brian Henson, meanwhile, kept working steadily. He directed Muppet Treasure Island in 1996, executive produced the Emmy-winning miniseries Gulliver's Travels, and went on to oversee shows like Farscape and Bear in the Big Blue House. In 2018 he directed The Happytime Murders, an R-rated puppet noir-comedy starring Melissa McCarthy, and more recently he served as an executive producer on the 2024 documentary Jim Henson: Idea Man.

We haven't covered The Happytime Murders yet — but we probably should.

• "Nobody had ever captured Dickens's prose – the wonderful way he described the scenes" — Brian Henson (quoted in an interview with The Guardian, via Far Out Magazine [Source])
• "Caine, who has always been able to fully become the characters he plays, delivers an unexpectedly strong performance" — Norman Wilner, The Toronto Star, cited in Wikipedia [Source]
• "could have done with a few more songs than it has" — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, cited in Wikipedia [Source]
• "a work of genius on every level" — Anthony McGlynn, Screen Rant, cited in Wikipedia [Source]
• "among the most glorious of all Dickens adaptations" — The Guardian (2023), cited in Wikipedia [Source]
• "there wasn't great show of wit or tunefulness here" — Janet Maslin, The New York Times, cited in Wikipedia [Source]
• "a delightfully imaginative musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic tale" — Kathleen Carroll, New York Daily News, cited in Wikipedia [Source]

If you want to keep pulling this thread after the episode ends, a few things are worth your time.

Unspooled's episode on The Muppet Christmas Carol goes deep on the film's rocky theatrical run, noting the film limped into theaters and landed at number six for its opening weekend with just $5 million, crushed by Home Alone 2 and Disney's own Aladdin, along with the full backstory on how "When Love Is Gone" got cut for pacing reasons before fighting its way back into later home video releases.

The Half Past Ten essay "Holiday Spirit: The Magic of 'The Muppets Christmas Carol'" is a great companion piece if the Dutch-angle conversation hooked you — it walks through the film's cinematography and production design in detail, and includes director Brian Henson's own account of pitching the tone of the movie, including his explanation that the Muppets are famous for questioning the status quo and anti-establishment irreverence, so they pointed that at Charles Dickens.

SlashFilm's piece on Michael Caine's approach to the role is worth reading for the Caine angle specifically, built around his D23 panel comments where Henson recalled Caine telling him early on, "I think the only way I can play this is if I never react to anything as if they're Muppets," and that he'd play it "like I'm playing opposite the Royal Shakespeare Company."

New to The Arc? Start with Episode 02: The Fantastic Four if you like Marvel movies — and want to hate us forever and tell your friends how lame we are.

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.