I’ve never met PETER FILARDI or had, to the best of my knowledge, any contact with him. I certainly know his work. Both Flatliners and The Craft were big movies when they came out, and Filardi was at Fantasia, the Montreal film festival I attended for several years, with his movie Ricky 6 the first time I went. He’s attending the Chattanooga Film Festival this year with his new short film, Damn Handy, and when they pitched him the basic premise of our show, he said he was interested.

As soon as we started communicating about his hip pocket choices, I knew we were in for a good show. Peter is thoughtful, a lifelong film fan who came to his craft (ha!) in a kind of odd sideways manner. We decided to talk about movies that he knew first as books because he didn’t live in a place where he had access to movies when he was young, and his three films are all big beautiful significant films.

First up, we talk about Roman Polanski’s brilliant and haunted adaptation of Macbeth. Next up, it’s The Black Stallion, a gorgeous piece of pure cinema. And finally, it’s the fantastic and feisty One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. All three of those films are incredible, and any one of them would be enough for a full episode, but to discuss all three in one conversation? Delightful.

Finally, we picked The World According to Garp as our response film, for reasons I explain in the episode, and it feels like it was a perfect punctuation mark to the larger conversation. While we may have started the conversation as complete strangers, by the time we wrapped things up with Peter, it felt like all of us had gotten to know each other a bit better, which is the exact point of the show.

A huge thanks to Dustin at CFF and to all the fine folks who work to put on such a great event for their audience every year. It is an honor to have been invited, and I suspect this is just the first in a series of festival appearances and live shows we’re going to do for The Hip Pocket. Here’s hoping the next time we work with CFF, it’s live and in person, all three of us together.

But wait! Would you like to actually watch this episode instead of just listening to it? Well, then, Chattanooga Film Festival has some terrific news for you. Visit their YouTube channel to see it!

If you’d like to support The Hip Pocket at Patreon, you can find us at https://www.patreon.com/c/DrewMcWeeny.

If you’d like to find us on BlueSky, you can find us at https://bsky.app/profile/itsthehippocket.bsky.social.

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.

You can find us at drewmcweeny.com and on your favorite podcasting apps!