The Spiel

We celebrate the final episode of The Spiel with Scott Wampler as co-host with this rowdy chat with our dear friend, podcaster, and advisor to the stars Wynter Mitchell about a top tier Spielberg entry: Catch Me If You Can.

This is a special episode in that it is the very first thing we recorded for the show. This was our test run to see if a podcast about Spielberg's movies would work and two hours later we knew we had something cool on our hands.

With Scott's passing it's only fitting that every single thing he recorded gets its time in the sun, especially when the chat is as alternately chaotic and insightful as this one turned out to be.

Enjoy the chat and tip a can of White Claw for Pop-Pop.

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The very talented writer/director Brian Duffield (Spontaneous, No One Will Save You) joins Wampler and Vespe to discuss Spielberg's War of the Worlds. We go through all the set pieces, talk about the 9/11 parallels, how awesome it is that Tom Cruise plays a glorious screwup, and so much more. War of the Worlds is one of Wampler's favorites, so it's very cool that we got to talk about this title while he was still around.

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Director Greg Mottola (Superbad, Paul, and Confess, Fletch) joins Wampler and Vespe to talk about a very early outing for Steven Spielberg as producer: Used Cars. Written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, produced by Spielberg and John Milius, and directed by Zemeckis, this raunchy, cynical, absurd early '80s comedy starring Kurt Russell, Jack Warden, and Gerrit Graham seems made in a lab to be one of Scott Wampler's favorite movies. But... he didn't take to it.

We dive into why that is as well as trade off Larry David impersonations, find out the status of Mottola's Fletch sequel, and dive into some of our favorite scenes from the movie.

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The time has come. The All-Spark is up for grabs and that can only mean one thing: We gotta talk about Transformers, executively produced by one Mr. Steven Spielberg. Wampler and Vespe couldn't do it alone, though, so they called in the calvary in the form of the very funny comedian, author, and actor, DC Pierson (Mystery Team, The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To, Captain America: Winter Soldier).

The plan is for DC to come back again and again until he's helped us cover every single one of the Transformers movies. In order to finish this journey, we must first take a step and that step is with the 2007 Michael Bay first film that kickstarted this shockingly huge franchise.

We talk through this movie act by act, ridiculous moment by ridiculous moment, and weigh the blockbuster spectacle of the era it was released in against today's quite different landscape. There's not a whole lot of robots peeing on John Turturro on the big screen these days and that's a damn shame.

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Comedian Josh Gondelman (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) joins us to talk a little about the very first Men In Black. How does the film hold up? Is it okay to like Will Smith again? How good was Barry Sonnenfeld at making this type of goofy genre movie? Why won't Hollywood just give Rick Baker a trillion dollars to keep making movie magic? All these questions and more are answered as Vespe, Wampler, and Gondelman look back at the highest earning movie of 1997.

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The incomparable Dee Wallace joins The Spiel to discuss her work on Steven Spielberg's E.T. Wallace takes us behind the scenes of the making of the movie, including stories about how she got the part of Mary, what it was like the first time she saw E.T., the one time she had a disagreement with Spielberg on the set, her beliefs on what real life aliens are like, and the legacy of the film some 40+ years after its release.

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Model, Streamer, and Kingcast favorite guest Laura Lux makes her first appearance on The Spiel and she brings a hell of a title with her. This is our very first time talking about a movie that Spielberg produced, but didn't direct. That's right, it's 1990's Arachnophobia directed by Spielberg's longtime producer Frank Marshall and starring Jeff Daniels, John Goodman, and Julian Sands... and a shit-ton of spiders.

Our guest is from Australia, so she's uniquely adept at discussing big-ass spiders, which we do. The conversation also covers our childhood thoughts on the movie vs. how we perceive it today, trying to lock down what exactly the "Amblin feel" is, plus some brainstorming on what other kinds of creatures would we want to avoid swarming our house.

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Yes, The Spiel has a Patreon and here's a tiny taste of the bonus episodes you get if you sign up. First one's free!

This chat with Laurent Bouzereau will give you a behind the scenes peek at what it's like working with Steven Spielberg as his own personal documentarian. We discuss the importance of Laurent's documentary work, including his recently released FAYE on HBO, and dive into his incredible book Spielberg: The First 10 Years, which dives deeply into the first decade of Spielberg's work, from Duel to ET.

Other bonus episodes include film critic BJ Colangelo discussing Twister and its recent successful sequel and the great composer Bear McCreary picking his top 5 favorite John Williams/Steven Spielberg scores.

Sign up now: www.patreon.com/TheSpielPodcast

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Comic book legend Brian Michael Bendis (creator of Miles Morales, author of House of M, The Ultimates, Torso) decided, for some reason, to talk about Steven Spielberg's 1941. This was the director's first failure, an over caffeinated live action Looney Tunes look at how the post-Pearl Harbor hysteria hit Southern California.

This kitchen sink of a movie is the brainchild of Bob Gale, Robert Zemeckis, and John Milius, and the film Spielberg followed up his one-two punch of Jaws and Close Encounters with. The discussion is focused primarily on what Spielberg learned as a filmmaker from this critically panned film, how it humbled him, and what we actually like and dislike about the movie.

Wampler also pulls some comic book stories out of our guest before revealing that this movie super got on his nerves.

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Elijah Wood, who is known as an actor, producer, DJ, and who also happens to be our boss here at The Spiel, joins Vespe and Wampler to discuss one of Steven Spielberg's most beloved films: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. There's so much ground to cover with this one, from the immaculate cast, the huge cultural impact, and the sheer amount of pure Steven Spielberg heart poured into it that this rowdy trio somehow didn't have enough time to diverge into a thorough Mac and Me discussion. It is a shame, but we promise the resulting conversation will tickle your nostalgia center a bit while making you laugh a whole lot.

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