Alternate Sides
James and Sam have been friends and collaborators for over 20 years. They’ve worked on films and TV shows and commercials together and have written numerous scripts that lie unproduced in their shared Dropbox folder. But James has a secret: he hasn’t actually seen that many movies. And Sam, who’s a bit of a film snob, has been giving him a hard time about it for years. As James enters undeniable middle age, he has finally promised to catch up on some of the films he’s missed. Every week or so, while Sam has to move his Subaru from one side of a Brooklyn street to the other (to appease the street-cleaning gods), they chat about a classic movie that James has somehow managed to avoid until now. One film from each year of James’s life so far: 1973 to 2023…
Episodes
We close out Season Two of the podcast with Martin Brest’s drama Scent of a Woman, starring Al Pacino and Chris O’Donnell.
Plus: Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, and an encounter with a rude traffic warden.
LINKS:
Trailer for Scent of a Woman
Trailer for The Holdovers
Trailer for People I Know
This week week we’re taking a bite out of Jonathan Demme’s classic serial-killer thriller The Silence of the Lambs, starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins.
Plus: James comes out of film-scoring retirement.
LINKS:
Trailer for The Silence of the Lambs
"Lotion" by Greenskeepers
Austin Pendleton as a lawyer in My Cousin Vinny
This week we discuss the journey of author Janet Frame in Jane Campion’s biographical drama An Angel at My Table, starring Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson, and Kerry Fox.
Plus: Season Two of The Jinx, and the time Stanley Tucci took James to a Yankees game.
LINKS:
Trailer for An Angel at My Table
Trailer for season two of The Jinx
Dr McCoy treats a patient in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
This week we explore Spike Lee’s comedy-drama Do the Right Thing, starring Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, John Turturro and Rosie Perez.
Plus: James eats a $35 salad, Don Mischer’s “Go balloons”, and 1990 as the year of sequels.
LINKS:
Trailer for Do the Right Thing
Trailer for Thea Sharrock's Wicked Little Letters
Don Mischer at the 2004 Democratic National Convention
An incredible use of film scor...
This week we discuss Stephen Frears’s film-adapted-from-a-play-adapted-from-a-novel Dangerous Liaisons, starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Plus: James finally visits the Vanguard!
LINKS:
Trailer for Dangerous Liaisons
Malkovich and Sinise in True West
John Candy in Uncle Buck: "unbreakable"
This week we take a stab at Adrian Lyne’s classic romantic thriller Fatal Attraction, starring Glenn Close and Michael Douglas.
Plus: the two faces of Harrison Ford, and James’s habit of talking to the television.
LINKS:
Trailer for Fatal Attraction
The original ending of Fatal Attraction
Trailer for Running on Empty
It’s a double-feature this week as we riff on two movies about musicians: Bertrand Tavernier’s Round Midnight and Alex Cox’s Sid and Nancy.
Plus: burned-out cars, slow television, and the unhelpful advice Robert Redford used to get.
LINKS:
Trailer for Sid & Nancy
Trailer for Round Midnight
Siskel & Ebert on Round Midnight
"Slow Television": the train in Norway
This week we survey the expanses of Ran, Akira Kurosawa’s epic adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear.
Plus: beds in cinemas, Werner Herzog on psychotherapy, and Sam’s aversion to movies set on ships.
LINKS:
Trailer for Ran
"VIP Beds" in UK cinemas
How an 18th-Century Sailing Warship Works
Werner Herzog on psychology as a “catastrophe”
This week we tackle the Coen Brothers’ gritty debut feature, Blood Simple, starring Frances McDormand, John Getz, and M. Emmet Walsh.
Plus: Wayne Shorter, rock climbing, and our experiences with first-time directors.
LINKS:
Trailer for Blood Simple
Trailer for Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity
Let's go to court: a scene from The Insider
This week we discuss Nicolas Roeg’s period drama Eureka, starring Gene Hackman, Theresa Russell, and Rutger Hauer.
Plus: Wynton Marsalis, washroom attendants, and James's recent trip to London.
LINKS:
Trailer for Eureka
Wynton Marsalis does Louis Armstrong
The Wolseley
Climax of The Natural (Randy Newman)
It’s a special holiday episode! We’re deviating from our usual chronology to talk about Jon Favreau’s 2003 Christmas classic, Elf, starring Will Ferrell, Zooey Deschanel, and James Caan. And it turns out that neither of us had ever seen this movie before this week.
Plus: Ferris Bueller, overripe fruit, and “cross-hatched” dreams.
LINKS:
Trailer for Elf
Will Ferrell takes a dart to the neck in Old School
This week we close out Season One of the podcast with a conversation about Ingmar Bergman’s family epic Fanny and Alexander, starring Bertil Guve, Ewa Fröling, and Jan Malmsjö.
Plus: wind chimes, bookstore etiquette, and Gloomhaven.
LINKS:
Trailer for Fanny and Alexander
Art Garfunkel in the studio
Chevy Chase can't get left, from European Vacation
This week we discuss Michael Mann’s gritty debut feature, Thief, starring James Caan and Tuesday Weld.
Plus: spa treatments, house cats, and Pink Floyd knockoffs.
LINKS:
Trailer for Thief
The VEMI treatment
Steve Martin makes coffee in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
The end of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” (starting at 4:20)
“Confrontation”, the final music cue in Thief (starting at 0:40)
This week we explore David Lynch’s black-and-white period drama The Elephant Man, starring Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, and Anne Bancroft.
Plus: Just how bad was James’s first screenplay?
LINKS:
Trailer for The Elephant Man
Michael Jackson bids for Merrick's bones
Three pages from The Mourning Cloak (1999)
This week we tackle two movies. Hal Ashby’s American satire Being There, starring Peter Sellers; and Terry Jones’s biblical spoof Monty Python’s Life of Brian, starring the Pythons.
Plus: blooper reels, the death of Black Panther, and the apparently ambiguous ending of Planet of the Apes.
LINKS:
Trailer for Being There
Trailer for Monty Python's Life of Brian
James's mother's eyes in Twe...
This week we discuss Terence Malick’s luminous period drama Days of Heaven, starring Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, and Sam Shepard.
Plus: Virgil’s Eclogues, group dynamics, and the Identified Patient.
LINKS:
Trailer for Days of Heaven
Steve Coogan's impression of Richard Gere (from The Trip)
The "identified patient"
This week we discuss Werner Herzog’s black comedy Stroszek, starring Bruno S, Eva Mattes, and Clemens Scheitz.
Plus: Sam has a martini with Dianne Wiest.
LINKS:
Trailer for Stroszek
Thieves stealing the "cat"
Afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason
The afternoon tea menu
This week we discuss John Avildsen’s rousing and immortal Rocky, starring Sylvester Stallone and Talia Shire.
Plus: Real tennis, a dead car battery, and the time Sam’s parents met Mike Tyson.
LINKS:
Trailer for Rocky
The LOKITHOR car charger
Charlie Chaplin boxing in City Lights
Real tennis
This week we talk about Michelangelo Antonioni's existentialist thriller The Passenger, starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider.
Plus: What George Plimpton found at the top of the Brooklyn Bridge.
LINKS:
Trailer for The Passenger
The Weather Channel explains "wintry mix"
Trailer for Flesh Gordon (1974; NSFW)
This week we talk about Hal Ashby's road movie The Last Detail, starring Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, and Randy Quaid.
Plus: James shares a bedroom with Sam's parents.
LINKS:
Trailer for The Last Detail
"The Man Who Never Heard of Frank Sinatra"
Trailer for Flash Gordon (1980)
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