Veteran independent filmmaker Ira Sachs is known for a body of work marked by beauty, nuance, and intimate portrayals of people and their emotional lives. He is driven, he says, by a deep curiosity about freedom and its limits - both in his characters and in filmmaking itself. This is part of the reason why Taxi Zum Klo (Taxi to the Toilet), a radical portrait of personal and sexual freedom, blew his mind. The semi-autobiographical story of writer/director/star Frank Ripploh takes us into his separate lives - devoted school teacher by day and enthusiastic cruiser of Berlin’s gay scene by night. Explicit and bold, it was hailed by the Village Voice as “the first masterpiece about the mainstream of male gay life,” when it premiered in the early 1980’s. 

We learn how Ira discovered the film, despite the fact that it’s nearly impossible to find today, and how it inspires him to push the boundaries of his own work. Plus, Cooper shares his experience seeing Taxi Zum Klo when it played the New York Film Festival in 1981, and Tabitha dives into questions about the value of art as a provocation. 

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Cabaret icon, RuPaul’s Drag Race Superstar, acclaimed actress and vocalist, the “internationally tolerated” Jinkx Monsoon joins Cooper and Tabitha to explore the many layers of Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1950 backstage theater drama All About Eve. Starring Bette Davis in the role that came to define her career, and Ann Baxter, the multiple Oscars-winning film is iconic for its witty dialogue and its scathing take on the ruthless nature of show business.

Jinkx shares how Davis’s performance inspires her own work, what the movie has to say about the experience of female performers in a youth-obsessed industry, and the love story playing out off screen between Davis and co-star Gary Merrill. We learn all about Jinkx's Portland, Oregon childhood, the innate roots of her fabulosity, and what keeps her spinning the golden threads of performing on stages around the world.

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Twenty years ago, one of the most indelible movie characters of recent decades was born when Napoleon Dynamite premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. From Vote for Pedro T-shirts to the pet llama Tina (aka: “Fat Lard”) and a seriously iconic dance number, Napoleon Dynamite has earned a top slot in the pop culture canon of the 21st century. This week, Cooper and Tabitha speak with Jared Hess who, together with his co-writer and wife Jerusha Hess, is the force behind Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre (co-written with Mike White), Masterminds, and more. 

Jared shares his deep love for Hal Needham’s Rad (1988), a classic ‘80’s teen flick about competitive BMX racing and a bike battle between local kids and the professional riders who come to town. We learn a bit about director Hal Needham, the highest paid stunt double of his time who directed action-packed classics like Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and The Cannonball Run (1981). Plus, how Rad’s soundtrack featuring The Sparks, opening sequence cinematography by Robert Schwartzman, and a curious activity dubbed “ass-sliding” make this a feel-good sports movie for kids of any generation. 

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Willem Dafoe joins Tabitha and Cooper to share Onibaba, the 1964 film by the prolific and pioneering Japanese filmmaker Kaneto Shindô. Literally translated as “Demon Hag”, Onibaba is a tale of a mother and daughter-in-law’s murderous quest for survival in the midst of Japan’s medieval civil war. When a man returning from war enters the picture and latent primal urges emerge, all hell breaks loose. The striking black-and-white imagery and percussive soundtrack make for a wildly kinetic ride that is both terrifying and delightful .

As Willem shares what he loves about this classic of the Japanese New Wave, we also learn a bit about Kaneto Shindo’s extraordinary life, art, and career. Plus, what it is about making film and theater that keeps him inspired, the importance of being in the moment, and the visceral power of cinematic storytelling.

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Celebrated for bringing depth and nuance to roles ranging from a drug-addicted art dealer (High Art, Lisa Cholodenko, 1998), to a dying mother meeting her daughter for the first time (Monica, Andrea Pallaoro, 2023), Patricia Clarkson is no stranger to complex emotional terrain. Perhaps that is why she feels somewhat comfortable in the volatile world of A Woman Under the Influence, John Cassavettes’ 1974 masterpiece. The film centers around Mabel Longhetti, brilliantly rendered by Gena Rowlands, as a deeply loving, profoundly unstable housewife and mother of three.

We explore the extraordinary power and nuance of Rowland’s performance, the layered collaboration of Cassavettes, Rowlands, and Falk, and learn the extent to which the film was indeed a family affair. For this iconic film, we could not ask for a better guide than the woman Cooper once dubbed the “Unofficial Queen of Sundance”, Patricia Clarkson.

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From his first viewing at the Angelika as a freshman at NYU, Joan Micklin Silver’s 1988 rom-com Crossing Delancey blew Michael Showalter’s mind. In this episode Michael shares how and why the movie made a lasting mark and how it continues to influence his work today. Adapted by Susan Sandler from her play of the same title, this is the story of Izzy Grossman (Amy Irving), a nice Jewish girl with roots in Manhattan’s Lower East Side but now living uptown with literary-adjacent aspirations. Sam Posner (Peter Reigart) is a purveyor of pickles, with a shop down the street from Izzy’s grandmother’s apartment. 

We learn how the film’s spot-on portrayal of 1980s city living with characters who exist in coffee shops and bars and bookstores, and apartments, resonated with the life 18-year-old Michael imagined for himself. As he unpacks what makes this a rom-com classic, co-hosts Cooper and Tabitha spark a debate around the off-screen future for Sam and Izzy, and where they might be today.

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From her feature film directorial debut Flamin’ Hot, to her career-launching turn as Gabrielle Solis on Desperate Housewives, Eva Longoria has a thing for characters - and people - who get things done. Case in point, Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro), the central character in Martin Scorsese’s Casino (1995) who brings hard-won street smarts and ruthless clarity to his job as casino boss. He is less clear-eyed when it comes to his hustler-addict wife (Sharon Stone) and unhinged mafioso best friend (Joe Pesci), both of whom sow chaos with every move. 

Eva takes us inside the film that brings us the violent, stylish, and desperate world of 1970’s Vegas. We learn how Scorsese’s filmmaking in Casino inspired many of the techniques she used in Flamin’ Hot, how she cut her directing chops, and the parallels she sees between her own Texican heritage and the Italian American experiences at the center of so many of Scorsese’s films.

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Time traveling hitman, love-struck greeting card writer, notorious whistleblower, and an alien passing as a human boy are just a few of the characters Joseph Gordon-Levitt has brought to life. His extraordinary range as an actor is matched by his taste in films, as evidenced by his choice of Disney’s Encanto as the film that blew his mind. From the way it subverts storytelling traditions to its layered and lyrical songs, Joe shares all the reasons why Encanto is a favorite with his young family and what it has to say about honesty as the greatest superpower of all.

Plus, zip-lining as an antidote to grief, Kurt Vonnegut’s dystopian “Harrison Bergeron”, and the role that Sundance has played in Joe’s own life.

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When trailblazing Native media maker Sterlin Harjo first experienced Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye one solitary day during the pandemic, he says it felt as if he was floating through the film. Floaty and dark, Altman’s 1973 film adaptation of the 1953 book by Raymond Chandler delivers a wry, wise-cracking Elliot Gould as detective Philip Marlowe and takes place in a Los Angeles reshaped by the cultural upheaval of the 1960s. Cueing off The Long Goodbye, Sterlin makes a case for treating background as foreground and for storytelling that emphasizes an ensemble over a single hero.

From his family’s famous spaghetti to the funeral parlor his auntie called home, we learn all about the people and the place that made Sterlin the filmmaker he is today. Plus, how Oklahoma Noir may well be the genre we didn’t know we were missing.

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