The Spiel

Chaos ensues as the wonderful, and James Beard award-winning, author Mallory O'Meara (Girly Drinks, The Lady from the Black Lagoon) comes on the show to discuss the extremely odd Amblin flick Joe Vs. The Volcano, starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan (three Meg Ryans, believe it or not), and directed by the famous writer John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck).

This movie is a favorite of Vespe's, but both other folks in the chat are newbies to it. We get personal, talk about what we'd do if we were diagnosed with the dreaded "brain cloud," and ask ourselves why there isn't way more sex happening in this movie.

So, pop open the nearest orange soda and strap in for this energetic, very funny, and oddly deeply personal conversation as we look at Joe Vs. The Volcano.

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Germain Lussier (head movie nerd writer at Gizmodo and I09) joins Vespe and JRT for a wide-ranging discussion on Steven Spielberg's Hook starring Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, and a very pissed off Julia Roberts.

How much does nostalgia come into play when discussing this film? Did everybody who was a child when they saw it love it and all the adults hated it? Or is the answer more complicated than that?

We cover that, plus go into the troubled production and where Hook falls in Spielberg's overall body of work.

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Jurassic Park is not only one of the best popcorn films ever made, it's also the catalyst for the largest shift in Hollywood production and storytelling in recent cinematic history. It changed movies forever.

To dive into that and just how awesome and fun Jurassic Park is, we are joined by one of the most in-demand screenwriters in the business, Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight, The Umbrella Academy, Godzilla x Kong). We talk about Jurassic Park's impact, how different it would have been if any of the other directors pining for it had made it instead (Sam Raimi, James Cameron).

So join us clever girls as we gush all over this formative film.

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The Spiel co-creator Scott Wampler passed away before the show debuted and the hunt was on to find someone that could step in to the immense void he left behind. After months of searching, Vespe made his choice. Now you get to meet the new co-host. What are their dreams? Aspirations? Deepest, darkest wishes? And how good is their Morgan Freeman impression? You'll have to listen to find out!

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The Spiel rings in its very first live show at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX. Vespe is joined by guest co-host Nick Preuher (co-founder of the Found Footage Fest) and special guest Nacho Vigalondo (director of Timecrimes, Colossal, and Daniela Forever) to talk about Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Does Close Encounters act as a spiritual sequel to Jaws? What about shared DNA with David Lynch's Eraserhead? Nacho seems to think so! So enjoy this very special live recording!

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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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