To the White Sea

By To the White Sea

A close look at the work of the Coen brothers through the lens of their unproduced screenplay To the White Sea, based on the novel by James Dickey. Hosted by filmmakers Jordan Fish and Ray Tintori, an... more

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FAQs about To the White Sea:

How many episodes does To the White Sea have?

The podcast currently has 42 episodes available.

To the White Sea episodes:

January 19, 2026 31: Point of View
You are about to listen to a mega episode. Charged up and sans guest, we dive deep into a core facet of moviemaking and film-viewing: point of view—the power of films to invisibly place you behind the eyes, and inside the mind, of a specific character. Jumping off from two dynamite script pages, and pulling crucial info from our film studies education, we explore how subjectivity is essentially inescapable as soon as a camera angle is chosen. We also turn our attention to what “objectivity” could possibly mean in a cinematic context, what happens when multiple POV characters collide, and whether we may have found the most perfect pair of socks for a cold weather film set.
Coens covered: Barton Fink, Touileries (from Paris, je t'aime), Fargo, A Serious Man, True Grit, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail, Caesar!, The Gal Who Got Rattled (from Buster Scruggs)
Plus: Frankenstein (2025), Amélie
Want to join the study group? Follow us on social media, tell your friends about the show, and leave a rating/review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. These all really help. And join the Discord too!

**You can also support us directly at https://ko-fi.com/tothewhitesea**

For all things TTWS visit tothewhitesea.me
...more
2h 50min
December 25, 2025 TTWS Xmas Party – Bad Santa with Jason Adam Katzenstein & Michael Tyburski
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good commentary! That’s right—to celebrate the holiday season and ring in the new year we’re watching Terry Zwigoff’s 2003 holiday classic Bad Santa. We’re joined by our dear friends Jason Adam Katzenstein, New Yorker cartoonist and co-author with Roz Chast of the forthcoming graphic novel The Two Saddest Kitchens, and Michael Tyburski, director of Palimpsest, The Sound of Silence, and Turn Me On.

Together we discuss Bad Santa as a seasonally perfect encapsulation of the lows of Christmastime in America, and the Coens’ role in the film’s development from initial idea to the various edits of the film that have been released over the years. (Note: we’re watching the unrated version, aka Badder Santer.) We also open advent calendars and talk the malls of our youth.

Please enjoy this cozy episode and have a wonderful holiday. Sending immense gratitude to everyone out there who has joined us on this journey “to the white sea.” We'll see you again in 2026!

Want to join the study group? Follow us on social media, tell your friends about the show, and leave a rating/review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. These all really help. And join the Discord too!

**You can also support us directly at https://ko-fi.com/tothewhitesea**

For all things TTWS visit tothewhitesea.me

...more
1h 59min
December 17, 2025 30: Someone You’re Not with Rebecca Rose Bulnes
We’re back with a positively joyful episode about white-knuckling it through life :) These are scenes where characters are undercover, pretending to be different than they are, or otherwise just trying to act normal while being observed and under significant stress. Yikes! To help light a path through this nine-eyed, five-0 vision quest we’re joined by writer, actor, comedian, and podcaster Rebecca Rose Bulnes! This is a free-ranging conversation with all the trimmings, so put your shades on and tuck in.

Coens Covered: Burn After Reading, Blood Simple, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, Hail, Caesar!

Plus: The Beekeeper, Weapons, The Wolf of Wall Street, Spike Lee’s “vitaminwater: From New York”

Check out Rebecca’s podcast Classroom Crush!

Want to join the study group? Follow us on social media, tell your friends about the show, and leave a rating/review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. These all really help.

**You can also support the show directly at https://ko-fi.com/tothewhitesea**

And join the Discord too!

For all things TTWS visit tothewhitesea.me
...more
3h 13min
November 19, 2025 COENS SECRETS UNLOCKED with Griffin Newman, Skip Lievsay & Joni Tefoya (Heidi Gardner)
In this extra special live event To the White Sea makes study group history as we explore deep secrets, hidden connections, and cinematic revelation in the work of the Coen brothers. In our quest for the truth we're joined onstage by Connoisseur of Context Griffin Newman, longtime Coens collaborator Skip Lievsay, and script supervisor of The Ladykillers Joni Tefoya (Heidi Gardner). Legendary storyboard artist J. Todd Anderson also joins us via video essay for an incredible look at shots that recur across the Coens’ filmography. Thank you LIFE WORLD and everyone for coming out!

Producer: Michael Tyburski
Graphic Designer and Live Visuals: Jason Katzenstein
Audio Technician: Alex Bliss
Audio Equipment: Caley Monahon-Ward
Life World Staff: Sarah Wilson, Ian Faria

Catalog of Coens - Video Link
...more
2h 23min
October 31, 2025 COENS THEATER VOL. I: “SAWBONES” / LIVE SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT
Boo! In this special episode we announce our live show COENS SECRETS UNLOCKED and unveil our new miniseries exploring the stage play work of the Coens. We kick off COENS THEATER VOL. I with the radio play SAWBONES, which debuted in April 2005 as part of Carter Burwell’s Theater of the New Ear. Sawbones is a thrilling and bewildering triptych, simultaneously a 60s western TV show, a suburban melodrama, and a fire tower natural disaster thriller. Join us as we unpack a lost work of the Coens and Burwell at their most symphonic and triple-braided. And we’ll see you all soon at LIFE WORLD!

COENS SECRETS UNLOCKED - Get Your Tickets Now!

Coens Covered: Sawbones, The Big Lebowski, Blood Simple

Plus: K-CoreaINC.K (section a) (Dir: Ryan Trecartin)

Theater of the New Ear - April 2005 performance at St. Ann’s Warehouse, broadcast later on SiriusXM.

Theater of the New Ear on CarterBurwell.com

Want to join the study group? Follow us on social media, tell your friends about the show, and leave a rating/review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. These all really help the show. And join the Discord too!

**You can also support us directly at https://ko-fi.com/tothewhitesea**

For all things TTWS visit tothewhitesea.me

...more
1h 28min
October 16, 2025 29: Mega Presences with Will Oldham
Today is all about mega presences—performances with so much character, life, and musicality breathed into them by their actors that they seem to haunt an entire film and stick with you long after the credits have rolled and the house lights have come on. And we are thrilled beyond words to be joined by a one-of-one artist, the great Will Oldham!

Jumping off from a rather intense skydiving scene in To the White Sea, Will talks to us about how you can craft a performance by drawing on formative experiences and memories of people you once knew. He also tells us about how you can perform for an audience by in some sense becoming the audience, and brings awesome insights to all of the Coens films we cover, often bringing in counterpoint scenes from other films that unlock the richness of the performances.

Special thanks to Rebecca Bulnes and her grandmother Maria for helping us with the Spanish translation of a pivotal moment in Blood Simple in a brand new segment called To the White Sea: The Latin Beat.

Coens Covered: No Country for Old Men, Fargo, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Blood Simple, The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, True Grit, Inside Llewyn Davis

Plus: Jackass 3D, Minnie and Moskowitz, Longlegs, One Battle After Another, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Want to join the study group? Follow us on social media, tell your friends about the show, and leave a rating/review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. These all really help the show. And join the Discord too!

**You can also support us directly at https://ko-fi.com/tothewhitesea**

For all things TTWS visit tothewhitesea.me

...more
2h 13min
September 26, 2025 28: Laughed Out of Hollywood with Ian Faria
Laughter—why does it happen? Brilliant filmmaker and comedy consigliere Ian Faria joins the study group to break down comedy in all its forms, be it slapstick physical violence, zinging dialogue, or a slow-burn silent reveal. Ian is just wrapping up post-production on a feature with his comedy group Simple Town and has much to share. This episode is the whole ball of wax and you're just gonna love it—definitely stay tuned to the very end for a surprise...!

Coens covered: No Country for Old Men, Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Ladykillers, Burn After Reading

Plus: Friendship, Simple Town Goes to London

Want to join the study group? Follow us on social media, tell your friends about the show, and leave a rating/review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. These all really help the show. And join the Discord too!

**You can also support us directly at https://ko-fi.com/tothewhitesea**

For all things TTWS visit tothewhitesea.me
...more
3h 19min
September 08, 2025 27: The Dialectic with Edward Ongweso Jr.
Today we’re joined by writer, researcher, and podcaster Edward Ongweso Jr. to discuss “the essence of The Dialectic,” as a highly-fictionalized Herbert Marcuse proclaims in Hail, Caesar! Dialectics: what are they, what is their function, and how might their theory and praxis manifest multifariously across the Coens’ body of work? We discuss the history of the term, how the concept of keeping two ideas in tension is expressed within individual characters, and we finally tackle the loop-de-loop structure of Inside Llewyn Davis. This conversation is a deep dive and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Ed’s podcast: This Machine Kills
Ed’s substack: The Tech Bubble

Coens Covered: Hail, Caesar!, Inside Llewyn Davis, A Serious Man, No Country for Old Men, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Fargo

Plus: No Direction Home

Want to join the study group? Follow us on social media, tell your friends about the show, and leave a rating/review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show. And join the Discord too!

**You can also support us directly at https://ko-fi.com/tothewhitesea**

For all things TTWS visit tothewhitesea.me
...more
1h 47min
August 23, 2025 HONEY DON’T! – A PANEL DISCUSSION with Ben Brewer, Emilio Diaz, & Melissa Tuckman
To the White Sea is back to discuss HONEY DON’T!—the slapjacking new film from Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke—and we’re bringing a new episode format to attempt to wrap our minds around this monumental moment.

We’ve gathered some of our favorite minds of filmmaking and film analysis—Melissa Tuckman, Ben Brewer, and Emilio Diaz—for an unrehearsed panel discussion affectionately dubbed The McDunnough Group. We explore important issues of the day including how this new film differs from a Joel and Ethan collaboration, how a more varied filmmaking approach impacts the experience of the viewer, and whether the film successfully defines its moral universe. Thank you so much to all of the panel guests. Special thanks to Focus Features.

Coens Covered: Honey Don’t!, Drive-Away Dolls, The Big Lebowski, The Ladykillers, Burn After Reading

Plus: Supervixens, Before Sunset, Punch-Drunk Love, Love Lies Bleeding, Death Proof

“In livelier precincts, the swells of Dreamland gather to inspect the complicated weave of another piece of gossamer… Another movie, another portion of balm for the ache of a toiling mankind.”

Want to join the study group? Follow TO THE WHITE SEA on social media, tell your friends about the show, and leave a rating/review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. These all really help out the podcast.

***You can also support us directly at https://ko-fi.com/tothewhitesea***

Visit tothewhitesea.me for all the links – and join the Discord too!

...more
1h 39min
August 08, 2025 26: Intergenerational Warfare with Will Menaker & Hesse Deni
Today we’re excited to be joined by Will Menaker and Hesse Deni—cohosts of Movie Mindset, as well as Chapo Trap House and Seeking Derangements respectively—to split the everlasting light of cinema via a prism of great importance: tensions between the old and the young in the films of the Coen brothers.

Jumping off from a thrilling duel between Muldrow and the blind swordsman we unpack the trope of The Old Gunslinger vs. The Kid, and from there fan out across a galaxy of cigar-chomping geezers, stoned Bar Mitzvah boys, goldbricking veterans of forgotten wars, and house partying dybbuks.

Thank you to Will and Hesse for this life- and movie-affirming conversation! Thank you also to the great Chris Wade for helping setting this up.

Coens Covered: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Miller’s Crossing, The Hudsucker Proxy, A Serious Man, The Big Lebowski, Inside Llewyn Davis

Plus: Armageddon, The Heart She Holler

Want to join the study group? Follow TTWS on social media, tell your friends about the show, and leave a rating/review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show.

*You can also support us directly at https://ko-fi.com/tothewhitesea*

For all things TTWS visit tothewhitesea.me – and join the Discord too!

...more
1h 35min

FAQs about To the White Sea:

How many episodes does To the White Sea have?

The podcast currently has 42 episodes available.

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