The Spiel

The one and only Ariana Richards, Lex Murphy from Jurassic Park, joins Vespe and JRT to talk dinosaurs, Graboids, Martians, and even her ludicrous haircut in 1989's Prancer. This is Ariana's very first podcast appearance and she comes loaded for bear, y'all. She has stories about working on all her big movies including Jurassic Park.

Hear about how she got noticed by Spielberg in the first place, what it was that set her apart from the other girls who auditioned to play Lex, how Spielberg treated her on set, how scary the animatronics were to work with, and even if she can fill in a couple of big plot holes, like where the hell did that giant drop in the T-Rex paddock sequence come from.

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Today's guest is the self-described World's Smallest Stuntman who has doubled everybody from Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings to Christopher Reeve's Superman and James Cameron's Aliens. Kiran Shah is also a poet and an actor who played a not so small part in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark before going on to double Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Kiran looks back on his time working with Spielberg, how he had to lie to get his job on Raiders, as well as stories from all over his career, including being a bad influence on Christopher Reeve, working on Legend with director Ridley Scott and the great VFX legend Rob Botin, and the scariest stunt he ever did that had him doubling a small girl being blown into the River Siene.

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Today we have a conversation with Ian Malcolm's Daughter, Kelly, herself, Ms. Vanessa Chester. Despite being plagued by tech issues, this deep-dive interview about Vanessa's experience working with Spielberg, Goldblum, Vaughn, and Moore while making The Lost World: Jurassic Park is funny, illuminating, and is guaranteed to brighten your day.

Chester most recently appeared in a cameo for the currently out Spielberg parody film THE INVISIBLE RAPTOR. We talk about that, and just about everything you could want to hear about from the making of The Lost World.

Happy Holidays from us here at The Spiel!

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Steve Agee (Peacemaker, The Sarah Silverman Program, Superstore) joins the Spiel boys to talk about the very festive, very zany, and incredibly dark family film Gremlins, produced by Steven Spielberg, directed by Joe Dante, and starring Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates.

The trio discuss the film's reception upon release, why it still holds up today, how it helped usher in the PG-13 rating, how devastatingly gorgeous Phoebe Cates is, and how Gremlins grew out of the famous unmade Spielberg evil aliens movie titled Night Skies.

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The very talented actor, comedian, and voice performer John Mariano has played a part in a lot of your favorites, from Married with Children and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia to Fallout 4 and Baldur's Gate. But one of his most recognizable performances is as Bobby the pigeon in Steven Spielberg's oddly raunchy '90s cartoon series Animaniacs.

Bobby was the leader of the Goodfeathers, a trio of birds who sound a lot like the lead characters of Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas.

John joins us to talk about working on Animaniacs, meeting Spielberg, and hearing what Martin Scorsese himself thought of the recurring bits on Animaniacs.

John is also a talented artist who illustrated a ton of the original Garbage Pail Kids cards all us '80s kids loved even if our parents hated them. We talk about that, his youth in New York and experiences seeing grindhouse movies firsthand, and the impact Spielberg had on him long before he got to creatively collaborate with him on Animaniacs.

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We're forcing author, comedian, and actor DC Pierson to cover all the Transformers films with us here at The Spiel and he finally returns for the second film in the franchise: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a film that is inexplicably nearly 3 hours long, is even more incoherent than the first, and filled with giant robot testicles.

Still, this film has its fans and at least one of them is in on this chat. Listen to us go over the weird politics of the movie, try to make sense of the varying locations used throughout, question how much involvement executive producer Steven Spielberg had on this one, and marvel at a truly unhinged Michael Bay flick.

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Is the Back to the Future Trilogy the culmination of what we think of as the Amblin Experience? Did you know that the original thought was to have Doc and Marty travel back to the groovy '60s? And what exactly happened with all that Crispin Glover stuff?

All those questions and more are discussed as Vespe is joined by his Ain't It Cool compatriot and incredibly film writer Drew McWeeny as we dive into Back to the Future Part 2, a film that set the template that's still being followed to this day (looking at you, Avengers: Endgame).

We bring up lots of behind the scenes stories and take a close look at Spielberg's relationship with Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis. It's a ripper, this one.

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Live from Corey Feldman's recording studio comes this in-person sit down interview with Corey and director Eugenio Mira, whose long lost collaboration, The Birthday, is finally getting a second life thanks to Drafthouse Films in theaters and on streaming.

Corey welcomed Josh and Vespe into his home for this interview where some pretty strict limits were put on us, but we rolled with it and get a very insightful chat about Feldman's creative process, his appreciation of pop culture art, and his budding friendship with Jordan Peele, who is instrumental in The Birthday's rediscovery.

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David Dastmalchian is one of our best character actors (LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL, THE DARK KNIGHT, DUNE, OPPENHEIMER, THE SUICIDE SQUAD) and now he's joining Vespe and JRT to talk about the controversial INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM.

Our time with Dave was limited, so we run through this movie at a breakneck pace, much like the back half of the film itself, talk about its place among the other Indiana Jones films, why we loved it so much growing up, and why it remains a favorite entry into the franchise despite its not so stellar reputation.

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The writer/producer/director team behind A Quiet Place, 65, and The Boogeyman have a new movie out this week called Heretic, starring Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, and Chloe East, so they decided to stop by and chat about one of their favorite Spielberg films: A.I.

That's right, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods are our guests and we dive into the nitty gritty of Spielberg's controversial masterpiece, A.I. We all have different interpretations of the ending, so of course we talk through that. We talk tone, the Kubrick of it all, and how Spielberg shoots a good amount of this movie like a horror film.

It's a wonderful chat about one of Spielberg's most fascinating movies.

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