Maltin on Movies
Legendary film critic Leonard Maltin and his daughter Jessie are the ultimate movie fans. They love talking about movies, especially with people who share their enthusiasm—from living legends like Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and Quincy Jones to such contemporary artists as Amy Adams, Viggo Mortensen, Laura Dern, and Bryan Cranston. You’ll meet all kinds of interesting people and hear their recommendations of unsung movies you ought to know...
Episodes
Marc Wanamaker is a walking encyclopedia of Hollywood legends and lore. He grew up in the community and soon realized there was history all around him. He began to amass a collection of rare photographs which eventually numbered in the thousands. Marc has been an invaluable resource for authors, scholars, documentarians, and even the movie studios themselves. His newest book, written with Steven Bingen, is...
If you only think of Clint Howard as Ron Howard’s kid brother, it’s time to reassess. He and his older sibling recently wrote a joint autobiography called The Boys which explains their loving relationship and points to their actor-parents as lifelong role models. Early on, Clint embraced his destiny as a young-ish character actor. There’s almost nothing he hasn’t done in his sixty--some years in show business, from the original Sta...
Frank Marshall’s chance meeting with Peter Bogdanovich launched a career that led to him producing Indiana Jones, Star Wars and Jurassic Park movies, among many others, often in partnership with his wife Kathleen Kennedy. Now he’s released a record album that returns him to the world his father Jack Marshall inhabited: a long-forgotten session featuring two gifted jazz trumpeters. Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon In Perfect Harmony: The...
Our guest is a five-time Oscar nominee for Best Costumes—most recently for Killers of the Flower Moon, although she is equally lauded for her work on Dune, parts 1 and 2. Her background in the fashion world, and as an art history major, gives her unique credentials for someone who provides costumes for movies. She also has world-class stories to share about her collaborations with such major directors as Philip...
Internationally renowned actress, model, and individualist Isabella Rossellini is charm personified. She has a supporting role in Alice Rohrwacher’s new import La Chimera,which opens in theaters March 29, and recently completed two seasons of Julia, playing Julia Child’s longtime friend and cooking colleague. She also carries with her the torch lit by her famous parents, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini and does so with grace ...
His alter egos are world-renowned, but Leonard and Jessie didn’t focus on Miss Piggy or Yoda in this conversation, recorded in front of a live audience at Esther’s Follies in Austin. The main topic was directing movies, which Oz has done so well for so many years: The Muppets Take Manhattan, Little Shop of Horrors, In & Out, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Bowfinger, and What About Bob? are just a few of his credits. What is the through...
In honor of the Academy Awards, we’re revisiting our 2017 interview with Keith Carradine, who won his Oscar for writing and performing the song “I’m Easy” in Robert Altman’s masterpiece Nashville (1975). Since we spoke, the actor has remained a familiar face on television as he and his siblings carry on the acting tradition that began with his prolific papa John Carradine. Like his dad, he eased into the niche ...
From The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi to such movies as Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News and As Good as It Gets, writer-director-producer James L. Br...
Cord Jefferson is riding high as the Oscar-nominated writer and director of American Fiction, which has widely and properly been acclaimed as one of the best films of the past year. Even more exciting is the fact that Jefferson has never made a movie before. Leonard and Jessie enjoyed exploring the building blocks of his career that led to this achievement. He was on the writing staff of Larry Wilmore’s Late Night comedy show and A...
As editor of Empire, Nick de Semlyen presides over the best film and television magazine in the English language: Empire. Every issue is jam-packed with deep-dive articles, interviews, set visits, and fun facts for both the fan and the aficionado. Nick has also written two excellent books examining American films of the 1980s: Wild and Crazy Guys and The Last Action Heroes. Leonard and Jessie got to meet him on their last trip to L...
The senior film critic for the Los Angeles Times, Justin Chang is also a graduate of USC and took Leonard’s class—three times. Leonard takes no credit for Justin’s brilliance as an essayist or as a world-class punster. Jessie has known him her whole life and is also an unabashed fan. Just back from the Sundance Film Festival, Justin made time for us to talk about his career and some of the nuts and bolts of being a daily newspaper’...
Our guest this week is now appearing on movie theater screens in The Color Purple, recreating the role of Sofia that she originated in the Broadway revival. But as you’ll hear, that is just her latest achievement in an ever-growing body of work on stage, screen and television. Fans of Orange is the New Black knew her as Taystee, and followers of the recent series Peacemaker could see yet another facet of her boundless talent. A gra...
Sam Wasson has become one of the finest Hollywood historians of our time, and also one of the most productive. His newest book, The
Any film that includes Patricia Clarkson in its cast has the cinematic equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. She is that good, that committed, that versatile. Her credits run the gamut from well-loved indies like La<...
Oscar-winning actress, mother, championship archer, film festival director, memoirist, founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media…Geena Davis has many hats but wears them lightly. The star of such enduring films as Beetlejuice, A League of their Own, and Thelma & Louise is a cut-up at heart, as Leonard and Jessie quickly learned. It’s easy to see how she has accomplished so much, especially in the ...
David Keith has been out of the spotlight in recent years but when he hit it big in An Officer and a Gentleman he became a hot property. Many movies followed, including The Lords of Discipline, Firestarter, Heartbreak Hotel (in which he played Elvis Presley), and The Indian in the Cupboard, to name just a few. He’s kept busy doing episodic television and directing a handful of genre films. Now he’s working as a creative executive p...
A lifetime of acting, mostly on stage, finally paid off for Paul Raci when he earned an Oscar nomination for a part he was born to play in Sound of Metal. It has changed the trajectory of his career, and he is happy to talk about working with Nicolas Cage, Jennifer Lopez, and Colman Domingo on recent projects. But what Leonard and Jessie took away from our conversation is Paul’s admirable work ethic and total d...
If you weren’t among the seven million people watching Melvin Gregg’s 7-second Vine videos online you may know him from such films and TV shows as Nine Perfect Strangers and the brand-new feature Share alongside Bradley Whitford and Alice Braga, now available on VOD. His acting ambitions brought him to Hollywood but unlike other young, struggling thespians, he devised a game plan to get him in the door with A-l...
Tony Anselmo’s face may not be familiar, but the whole world knows his voice—that is, when he speaks as his alter ego, Donald Duck! Tony inherited this unique job from its creator, Clarence Nash, and he feels very protective of the famously furious mallard. He is also a graduate of Cal Arts and has been an animator at the Walt Disney studio since 1980. Leonard and Jessie are longtime fans and friends, as they share a love of all th...
Elizabeth Daley has served as the Dean of the USC School for Cinematic Arts for 30 years, which means she’s been Leonard’s boss for 25 of those years. Leonard and Jessie realized that they’d never sat and just talked to her for an hour—until now. Elizabeth studied theater and migrated to television early in her career, then answered the call from academia for what she thought would be a temporary assignment....
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