The Business

‘Mudbound’ director of photography Rachel Morrison just made history as the first woman nominated for an Academy Award for best cinematography. She’s also the first woman to shoot a big comic book movie: the upcoming Marvel mega-hit, ‘Black Panther.’ She fought hard to get to the top of her male-dominated field, but says more women are getting a shot at getting the shot.

Documentarian Alex Gibney is known for his award-winning investigative films on Enron, Wikileaks and Scientology. For his newest project, he took on the Volkswagen diesel-car emissions scandal and this time, it was personal. Gibney tells us about his new Netflix series ‘Dirty Money,’ in which his look at VW is one of six documentaries in a series on corporate greed.

Tom Rob Smith seems like a nice enough guy, but many of his works are about grisly murders. His newest project is ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace,’ FX’s second entry in its American Crime Story anthology. The series examines the murder of the fashion icon, and looks at the lives of the other men who died at the hand of killer Andrew Cunanan. Smith tells us why writing about murder is a useful way of exploring a society.

Amazon’s ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ tells the story of Midge Maisel--the perfect well-to-do 1950’s New York housewife who turns to stand-up comedy when her husband leaves her. Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband and producing partner Daniel Palladino tell us about the work that goes into filming a period series in Manhattan and their painstaking process for selecting music for the show.

In 2012, director Ziad Doueiri broke Lebanese law by shooting a movie in Israel. His latest film,‘The Insult,’ has nothing to do with Israel, but Doueiri still has enemies in the Middle East who tried to stop the release of this movie. They failed, and now 'The Insult' is shortlisted for Oscar in the foreign language category and a box-office hit in Lebanon.

Now that Russia has been banned from the upcoming Winter Olympics, we thought it would be a good time to revisit our interview with ‘Icarus’ director Bryan Fogel. We talk about his crazy journey of meeting, befriending, and then very likely saving the life of Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the architect of Russia’s state-run Olympic doping program. Plus, an all-new Banter about the effort to keep the #MeToo momentum going.

Sir Ridley Scott just pulled off a one-of-a-kind filmmaking feat--cutting Kevin Spacey out of his new film and reshooting with Christopher Plummer in the role--all in just six weeks. Scott tells us about his mad dash to refilm 22 scenes of the Getty family kidnapping drama All the Money in the World.

It's time for that annual tradition--the year-end mega-banter! Kim Masters, Matthew Belloni and Michael Schneider take stock of the year that was in Hollywood.

Guillermo del Toro's new film, The Shape of Water, is a visually stunning love story between a mute cleaning woman and an exotic sea creature. It looks expensive, but del Toro actually came in under his modest budget. He tells us about the creative ways he stretched a dollar making his awards contender.

For his new series Wormwood, documentarian Errol Morris used interviews and archival footage to tell the story of Frank Olson, an Army scientist who died a mysterious death in 1953. But he also cast Peter Sarsgaard to play Olson in scripted sequences. Netflix footed the bill, though no one quite knew what they were getting themselves into when they first took on the project.