The Film Stage Presents
Subscribe for conversations presented by The Film Stage, your spotlight on cinema since 2008.
Episodes
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...
Mark as Played
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...
Mark as Played
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...
Mark as Played
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 ...
Mark as Played
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...
Mark as Played
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...
Mark as Played
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...
Mark as Played
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...
Mark as Played
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. ...
Mark as Played
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...
Mark as Played
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 ...
Mark as Played
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...
Mark as Played
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...
Mark as Played
July 2, 2025 • 36 mins
Perhaps no line of dialogue better encapsulates lived experience than this bon mot offered by John Huston’s Noah Cross: “Of course I'm respectable. I'm old! Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”
I thought about this line––granted, a line I think about at least once a week––while watching Alex Ross Perry’s Videoheaven, which is perhaps the closet a movie can come to putting us back in...
Mark as Played
June 26, 2025 • 46 mins
When people call music cinematic, I think they just mean it sounds like it could be in a movie. About which, fair: being in a movie would do so. But the term is a little frivolous and unevocative. So take me at my word when I say U.S. Girls, the band fronted by American ex-pat Meg Remy, evokes such in its grand, powerful, barreling, vivid sound. I’ve loved her music for years––a super-aggressive start in ambient, atonal sounds that...
Mark as Played
June 20, 2025 • 100 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 Mike Leigh, one of our greatest living filmmakers. Born in England in 1943, Leigh remains an artist for the everyday person more than most. And this descriptor is quite reductive, as the writer/director’s aesthetic is deceivingly simple and incredibly effecti...
Mark as Played
June 19, 2025 • 49 mins
I've spent my offline hours producing The Jag, a new play that runs from June 21 to July 6 at the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research. Even without some of my fingerprints, this makes a curiously cinema-centered creative team: directed by Paul Felten (Slow Machine) and written by Robin Schavoir (The Plagiarists), it combines the lo-fi grittiness and observant humor that have defined either's output. (To say nothing of a certain be...
Mark as Played
June 13, 2025 • 37 mins
The release of a new Tom Cruise film is less about the film than it is about Tom Cruise. Ceaseless junket and red-carpet interviews with supposed journalists who were perhaps invented on the spot to ask him questions, clips of these interviews that quickly go viral, endless rankings of the movies, and between all of it the… acknowledgement, perhaps, that Cruise is connected to (or currently participates in) the horrific doings of S...
Mark as Played
June 6, 2025 • 124 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 return to one of our earlier subjects: Ryan Gosling! Our B-Sides are The Ides of March, Gangster Squad, Only God Forgives, and First Man. Our guest is our dear friend Cory Everett, creator of Cinephile: A Card Game!
We talk about Gosling’s television career as a young ...
Mark as Played
May 23, 2025 • 156 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 discuss Clint Eastwood, the director and the movie star. Our B-Sides are Breezy, White Hunter Black Heart, Blood Work, Flags of Our Fathers, and The Mule. Our guest is the impeccable Mitchell Beaupre, Managing Editor at Letterboxd.
We talk about Clint’s Casper cameo an...
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.