"I do know my room was so cold in winter and so hot in summer I couldn't sleep. Your house looked like heaven, high up there. That's how I began to hate you."

On this episode hosts Christopher Funderburg and John Cribbs discuss the namesake of this very site, Akira Kurosawa's intense crime masterpiece High and Low! A long-standing favorite of the Pink Smoke, its founders are always excited to dig into this thriller about the harrowing moral decisions forced into play by a botched kidnapping.

The film's unique structure moves from a single-set drama about corporate back-stabbing to an expansive police procedural that winds its way through every level of Tokyo and, consequently, shifts its focus from Toshiro Mifune as an executive under pressure to Tatsuya Nakadai as the detective chasing down every lead. Brilliant from start to finish, there's a case to be made that High and Low represents the culmination of the finest era in the Japanese master's body of work.

Support our Patreon:


www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke

The Pink Smoke site:

www.thepinksmoke.com

The Pink Smoke on Twitter:

twitter.com/thepinksmoke

John Cribbs on Twitter:

twitter.com/TheLastMachine

Christopher Funderburg on Twitter:

twitter.com/cfunderburg

Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two”

Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

"Move over Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins... JUICY!" - Booklist

Cupid's arrow has struck the Pink Smoke on St. Valentine's Day, and they've decided to give some love to that most disrespected of genre fictions: the romance novel. Recruiting beach-read paperback enthusiast Melanie Daniels from the Cinema Parlor Podcast, hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg access the world of glamorous women and their lusty affairs with truculent suitors via Fame & Fortune by Kate Coscarelli. Known to cinephiles as author of the Phantasm novelization (and mother of Phantasm writer-director Don Coscarelli), Kate produced six salacious books dealing with the steamy lives of rich widows, lonely housewives, ambitious businesswomen and rising starlets struggling to stay on top in the cutthroat upper class society of Los Angeles.

Fame & Fortune deals with the circle of friends of one Peach Malone, super-wealthy widow of Drake "Midas" Malone trying to regain control of her estate following the death of her Prince Charming. Her friends include Grace Gable, a hairdressing entrepreneur harboring a dark secret; Maggie Hammond, blossoming interior designer with two smoky beacons for eyes like a Keane painting; Laura Austin, frail wife of an in-demand doctor whose own eyes have shifted to Hollywood's hottest sex symbol Ghilly Jordan; and Belinda Cornwall, the absolute doyenne of Los Angeles society - the lady with the whim of iron! Coscarelli juggles this large cast of characters as they struggle to wrest back dominance of their own lives by outsmarting, upstaging and maybe even murdering the gorgeous brutes who stand in their way.

The Pink Smoke site:

www.thepinksmoke.com

Melanie Daniels on Twitter:

twitter.com/plasticwerewolf

The Pink Smoke on Twitter:

twitter.com/thepinksmoke

John Cribbs on Twitter:

twitter.com/TheLastMachine

Christopher Funderburg on Twitter:

twitter.com/cfunderburg

Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two”

Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

Hosts Christopher Funderburg & John Cribbs discuss the new, posthumously-published novel from the great crime novelist, Donald Westlake - author of the Parker & Dortmunder books. Westlake is a Pink Smoke favorite and the podcast has previously covered Forever and a Death (a script for a James Bond movie converted into a novel) and Double Feature (a pair of novellas about violence in Hollywood.)

The story of a woman putting off responding to a marriage proposal by contracting a New York cabby to drive her to Los Angeles rather than flying there, Call Me a Cab is a bit of a change-up for Westlake. Instead of a dark thriller like The Hunter and The Ax or a clever, genial crime story like The Hot Rock, this latest novel is a low-key romance built around a meandering road-trip. It’s a unique story and approach by an author from who you would least expect it.

Support our Patreon:


www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke

The Pink Smoke site:

www.thepinksmoke.com

The Pink Smoke on Twitter:

twitter.com/thepinksmoke

John Cribbs on Twitter:

twitter.com/TheLastMachine

Christopher Funderburg on Twitter:

twitter.com/cfunderburg

Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two”

Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

We pay tribute to the recently deceased Peter Bogdanovich, considering his work both as a filmmaker and a cinephile by exploring his list of the best American films of 1939 (the year of his birth). We’re joined by Bill Teck, the director of One Day Since Yesterday, a loving celebration of Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed - a box office & critical failure only now being rediscovered in no smart part because of Teck’s documentary.

Bogdanovich's list includes screwball comedies, adventure films, melodramas, westerns, movies that (most importantly to Bogdanovich) express the personalities & emotions of their directors. The trio connects these films to Bogdanovich’s life and work, Teck’s experiences with the man himself & a discussion of the cruelty of Bogdanovich’s critical burial and deserving resurrection. The episode includes a healthy “fuck you” to Hal Needham.

Support our Patreon:


www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke

The Pink Smoke site:


www.thepinksmoke.com

The Pink Smoke on Twitter:


twitter.com/thepinksmoke

Bill Teck on Twitter:

twitter.com/billteck

John Cribbs on Twitter:

twiiter.com/TheLastMachine

Christopher Funderburg on Twitter:


twitter.com/cfunderburg

Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two”


Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

Host Christopher Funderburg is joined by his old friend Adam Leon to discuss Leon’s new film Italian Studies. Starring Vanesse Kirby (The Queen, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Pieces of a Woman), the film follows an author who suffers a psychotic break and wanders Manhattan, joining up with a group of random teenagers in attempt to take ahold of herself and her identity once again.

The discussion touches on Leon’s sudden success with the SxSW-winning, Cannes-selected Gimme the Loot, the weird intersection of success and failure that came with his follow-up film Tramps, and the risks of making a film that you know will be divisive like Italian Studies. Leon talks about the process of working with an actress like Kirby on a somewhat experimental film, how he found the film’s teenager actors, and why his film’s titles are always awful.

Support our Patreon:


www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke

The Pink Smoke site:


www.thepinksmoke.com

The Pink Smoke on Twitter:


twitter.com/thepinksmoke

Christopher Funderburg on Twitter:


twitter.com/cfunderburg

Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two”


Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg discuss the year in movies. The conversation naturally touches on their favorite films of the year but more than that, the duo discusses why they rarely do these “year in review” pieces anymore and how their approach to cinema has changed as they’ve gotten older. By the end of the conversation can they find a way to balance their negativity about the current state of things with their lifelong love of film? No. The answer is no.

Support our Patreon:


www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke

The Pink Smoke site:


www.thepinksmoke.com

The Pink Smoke on Twitter:


twitter.com/thepinksmoke

Christopher Funderburg on Twitter:


twitter.com/cfunderburg

John Cribbs on Twitter:


twitter.com/TheLastMachine

Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two”


Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

"Not even death is static like a picture is. If you look at a corpse long enough, you see things move beneath the skin, as real and liquid as the blood in your own veins."

What is Generation Loss? Is it a crime novel about a jaded never-was photographer turned leather-clad gumshoe? Is it a horror story about furry weasel-like "fishers" stalking tourists in rural Maine? Or maybe it's a dark melodrama about art and redemption in which a middle-aged alcoholic is forced to channel the energy normally reserved for self-damage to save a young girl from a reclusive, decades-old evil? Hosts Chris Funderburg and John Cribbs struggle to get a handle on genre-flipping Elizabeth Hand's Shirley Jackson Award-winning novel, the first of a series featuring tattooed shutterbug Cass Neary.

Support our Patreon:

www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke

The Pink Smoke site:

www.thepinksmoke.com

The Pink Smoke on Twitter:

twitter.com/thepinksmoke

Christopher Funderburg on Twitter:


twitter.com/cfunderburg

John Cribbs on Twitter:

twitter.com/TheLastMachine

Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two”

Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

"A captain's job is a lonely one. He's easily misunderstood."

On this episode, we welcome back John Arminio and his father, Captain Tom Arminio, USN, Retired, to tackle a double feature of classic WWII-set Naval melodramas: 1954's The Caine Mutiny and 1955's Mister Roberts. Both films deal with the tricky subject of bad military leadership, how it trickles down the ranks and threatens the effectiveness of an entire ship. Whose is the worst captain, Humphrey Bogart's erratic and incompetent Queeg or James Cagney's oppressive and oblivious Morton? When is the right time for officers to take a stand against a potentially mad or tyrannical leader? When is the right time to pitch the palm tree into the ocean?

Organizing movie screenings and discussions with his geographically separated family during the height of the pandemic, John Arminio has enjoyed regular movie talks with his father, whose 24 years of Naval experience give him a unique insight into these depictions of faulty leadership on the decks of wartime ships.

Support our Patreon:

www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke

The Pink Smoke site:

www.thepinksmoke.com

The Pink Smoke on Twitter:

twitter.com/thepinksmoke

John Arminio on Twitter:

twitter.com/QuasarSniffer

John Cribbs on Twitter:

twitter.com/TheLastMachine

Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two”

Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

“Perhaps when one is about to die one sees every kind of bird pass; when one sees the crow it means one’s time has come.”

A bit of a weird one: hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg each picked a “war story” to discuss. The podcast loves to dig into short stories (in the past it has looked at everything from Edogawa Ranpo to Patricia Highsmith) and, as a way of exploring the short fiction format, this episode deeps on a pair of only tangentially stories brought together around a loose theme.

The two “war stories” selected are Harlan Ellison’s hugely influential sci-fi classic “Soldier” and Italo Calvino’s bizarre & poetic “The Crow Comes Last.” While these two stories couldn’t be more different in approach, the conversation ends up being surprisingly revealing about both works and how they relate to each other. At very least, it provides the hosts an opportunity to talk about two of their absolute favorite authors!

All episodes of the Pink Smoke podcast are available to Patreon subscribers a week before their release to the general public!

Support our Patreon:


www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke

The Pink Smoke site:


www.thepinksmoke.com

The Pink Smoke on Twitter:


twitter.com/thepinksmoke

Christopher Funderburg on Twitter:


twitter.com/cfunderburg

John Cribbs on Twitter:


twitter.com/TheLastMachine

Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two”


Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

The Daniel Craig Era of James Bond has officially ended, allowing John Cribbs and special guest John Arminio to conclude their comprehensive review of every Bond movie, which they began in April of 2020 (the original premiere date of the much-delayed No Time to Die!) Starting with 2006's series reboot Casino Royale and finishing with their thoughts on the latest 007 adventure, Cribbs & Arminio reminisce on the things that got them excited and the things that made them disappointed in the last 15 years of the fabled franchise.

Why did Craig always have to be a rogue agent? Why was he so bad at protecting women? Did SPECTRE really need to subsidize Quantum? Was the overall characteristic of Craig's superspy really embarrassing failure? These are just some of the questions tackled by our duo of double 0 analysts as they wrap up the Pink Smoke's series of Bond reevaluation.

And don’t fail in your duty to check out our previous Bond episodes:

Bond in the Brosnan Era:

http://thepinksmoke.com/PSP74BondBrosnan.html

Bond in the 80s I:

thepinksmoke.com/PSP62Bondinthe80sI.html

Bond in the 80s II:

thepinksmoke.com/PSP63Bondinthe80sII.html

Bond in the 70s:

soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/user-564624820/psp-ep58-james-bond-in-the-70

spotify:

open.spotify.com/episode/2t6MQIIbFBKzzKfdtZaQ9x

apple podcasts:

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-5…i=1000489551247

Bond in the 60s:

soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/user-564624820/psp-ep52-james-bond-in-the-60s

spotify:

open.spotify.com/episode/3g6UHop4amOmuBpljaxx3F

apple podcasts:

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-5…i=1000506773799

The Pink Smoke site:

www.thepinksmoke.com

Support our Patreon:

www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke

The Pink Smoke on Twitter:

twitter.com/thepinksmoke

John Arminio on Twitter:

twitter.com/QuasarSniffer

John Cribbs on Twitter:

twitter.com/TheLastMachine

Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two”

Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”