The Film Stage Presents
Subscribe for conversations presented by The Film Stage, your spotlight on cinema since 2008.
Episodes
November 26, 2025 • 129 mins
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.
Today we talk about someone who played Bond, James Bond, and Blanc, Benoit Blanc. It’s Daniel Craig!
Our returning guest is the great Gavin Mevius, co-host of both The Mixed Reviews Podcast and The Q Division on Glitterjaw.
Our B-Sides today include The Mother, Enduring Love, T...
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November 24, 2025 • 36 mins
One of the many special things in Train Dreams, directed by Clint Bentley, is the production design. Nearly every element of each setting feels like it was just sitting there, waiting to be captured. Of course, this is not the case. It was meticulously, carefully planned and built. The Film Stage's Dan Mecca was lucky and honored to speak with Alexandra Schaller, the film’s production designer, about the agonies and ecstasies of br...
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November 14, 2025 • 95 mins
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.
Today we discuss Richard Linklater! He’s an American indie legend who we recently just spoke to! With two new films out here at the end of 2025 (Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague), we discuss his B-Sides: SubUrbia, The Newton Boys, Me and Orson Welles, and Apollo 10½: A Space Age ...
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November 4, 2025 • 37 mins
A world-cinema fixture who's earned the support of Martin Scorsese, M. Night Shyamalan, Olivier Assayas, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Béla Tarr, Claire Denis, Christian Petzold, Tilda Swinton, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi––among many others––Carlo Chatrian reshaped the festival landscape with his work as artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival and Berlinale, his influence such that an abdication of his position at the latter in 2023 ...
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October 30, 2025 • 87 mins
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.
Today we discuss David Cronenberg, one of the truly great Canadian geniuses and the filmmaker credited with the advent of “body horror” (a distinction he bristles against, for what it’s worth). Our B-Sides today include Fast Company, The Brood, M. Butterfly, and Spider. Our g...
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October 23, 2025 • 67 mins
Given her work in and around cinema, it’s no surprise that Stephanie LaCava would write a novel that is, no small feat, cinematic. Said novel is Nymph, a slim and elliptical and fully satisfying character piece about a young woman, Bathory––called “Bat” for short––whose parents’ strange lifestyle, either involving spy craft or assassinations or just being out-and-out weirdos, brings her down dark corners.
Having known Stephanie fo...
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October 16, 2025 • 132 mins
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.
Today we talk about a performer that we lost far too soon: Bill Paxton.
Our B-Sides today include Brain Dead, Indian Summer, Traveller, and Frailty. Our guest is Billy Ray Brewton, and we cover a lot of ground.
We dive into Paxton’s Roger Corman origins (Crazy Mama getting rea...
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October 3, 2025 • 107 mins
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.
Today we talk about maybe the greatest actor who ever lived: Philip Seymour Hoffman. But seriously, did Hoffman ever give a bad performance?
We talk about it! Conor and I are back and our Philip Seymour Hoffman B-Sides are Leap of Faith, Owning Mahowny, Pirate Radio, and Jack Go...
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October 2, 2025 • 47 mins
Ed Wood died the better part of a half-century ago, and to this day his reputation as the world's worst filmmaker persists. Even in this era when seemingly everything can be reclaimed, few have made the effort for Plan 9 from Outer Space, Glen or Glenda, or Night of the Ghouls, making all the more compelling a new book that does so without necessarily making the case for Wood as a strictly speaking good filmmaker. The author is Wil...
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September 24, 2025 • 36 mins
If you live in New York and care about movies, the beginning of the New York Film Festival—this year, specifically, on Friday, September 26—is perhaps the most exciting moment of any year. Though he served on the committee for a number of years, since 2020, Dennis Lim has shepherded the festival, his dispensation as a journalist and critic carrying naturally to his inclinations as a programmer. On the eve of the New York Film Festi...
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September 16, 2025 • 143 mins
In remembrance of the legendary Robert Redford, we're resharing this conversation from 2024 on his extraordinary career and most overlooked performances.
Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.
Today we talk about the movie star. The person who if you looked up “movie star” in the dictionary there ...
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August 22, 2025 • 45 mins
With exposure to Brazilian cinema being so pitiful, I thought it would be past due to host both an episode and screening that put a bit of spotlight on their rich cinematic history. One of my favorite films I’ve seen in recent years is Carlos Reichenbach’s Movie Dementia, which is both the cinema-induced madness its title suggests and a gritty view of national disaffection circa the 1980s––think Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou peppered wit...
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August 1, 2025 • 105 mins
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.
Today we discuss John Frankenheimer, a true expert of the craft and a man who could make any kind of film. Our B-Sides today include Prophecy, 52 Pick-Up, Dead Bang, and the HBO Film Against the Wall (for which Frankenheimer won an Emmy!)
Our guest today is the great Blake H...
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July 31, 2025 • 50 mins
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars, movie directors, and sometimes––sometimes––movie writers! Today, we speak with author and screenwriter Jordan Harper, whose novel She Rides Shotgun got made into a movie of the same name, directed by Nick Rowland and starring Taron Egerton and Ana Sophia Heger. The film is in theaters this Friday, August 1, 2025.
We spoke with Harper about adapting his novel for the big screen...
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July 29, 2025 • 38 mins
Few people have contributed more to cinema and cinephilia in the last 50 years than Dave Kehr. He’d have some claim to this title solely as a major critical voice, his work remaining currency decades hence––just look at the popular Not Dave Kehr Letterboxd account for a symbol of his enduring prominence. As a film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, however, Kehr has emboldened one of the world’s foremost cinema cultures with year...
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July 25, 2025 • 36 mins
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars, movie directors, and sometimes - sometimes - the companies that made the movies those stars and directors made! We were lucky to speak with Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler of Killer Films in honor of Metrograph’s 30th Anniversary program, with screenings starting on August 2, 2025.
Vachon and Koffler speak on curating the celebratory program, which includes Office Killer. ...
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July 22, 2025 • 34 mins
You'd have to be very bad at interviews, or really just conversations, to not get something from Abel Ferrara, who's the perfect combination of endearing and pugnacious, amenable to ideas while unable to entertain even a hint of bullshit. He's especially verbose discussing Turn in the Wound, his most recent documentary, which premiered at last year’s Berlinale and is now streaming on the Criterion Channel and parallels the effect o...
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July 16, 2025 • 33 mins
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars and movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Sometimes we are lucky enough to even speak with them about their work. And sometimes, they are both a movie star and a movie director. Today that’s Embeth Davidtz, director of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, now in theaters and expanding this weekend.
Our ...
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July 15, 2025 • 32 mins
Raise the subject of documentaries about filmmaking and you'll probably first go to Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. Or the film you’re thinking about instead was directed by somebody was thinking about Hearts of Darkness. Or, assuming the film came out earlier, it was perhaps directed by someone who later saw Hearts of Darkness and wishes they made a film as good. Which is no disrespect to any other film that fits int...
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July 3, 2025 • 153 mins
Welcome to The B-Side! Here we sometimes talk about movie stars! We sometimes talk about movie directors! Today, we talk about both! Specifically, the B-Sides of the Mission: Impossible franchise.
It’s just Conor and I today folks, waxing poetic on Tom Cruise’s legendary franchise and the B-Sides that we were inspired to discuss. We’ve chosen one for each of the Mission movies. It’s also July 3rd on the day this episode is publish...
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