BRIAN DUFFIELD is a writer/director who has been one of the most acclaimed (and busiest) screenwriters of the last decade. He has shown up on The Black List, the annual selection of the best-loved unproduced scripts in Hollywood, roughly 50 times in the last ten years, which is mathematically confusing but impressive. We talk about his unusual upbringing in this episode, and we dig into just how wild it is that he grew up denied of mainstream pop culture, only to become the creator of Spontaneous and No One Will Save You. His upcoming adaptation of Daniel Kraus’s wildly popular novel Whalefall is in production now, but he took some time to join us with one of the most personal line-ups of the season.

He chose three films that tell an unusual story about his desire to become a storyteller. First up, there’s the 1973 Christian exploitation film A Thief in the Night, a film that was new to all three of us. Then he chose The Prince of Egypt, the animated musical that kicked off DreamWorks Animation. Finally, he selected the sweaty Southern drama, Black Snake Moan, and he managed to tell us a story that tied all three of these films together in a way I found both surprising and completely logical.

Our reaction film for him is the Lars Von Trier feel-bad epic Breaking the Waves, one of the few films that ever stirred real feelings of faith in me, an avowed atheist.

And finally, for the last Hip Pocket Hall of Fame entry for the season, I chose Akira Kurosawa’s brilliant, beautiful mediation on life, Ikiru.

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The Hip Pocket is hosted by Drew McWeeny and Aundria Parker.


Craig Ceravolo is the show’s bandleader and producer. 
It is a Formerly Dangerous Production.

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