Script Apart with Al Horner

Today on Script Apart, the next in our run of conversations with nominees for this year’s Emmy Awards. Dying For Sex – created by Liz Meriwether and my guest today, Kim Rosenstock – is an adaptation of the popular Wondry podcast series of the same name about one Molly Kochan – a writer diagnosed with terminal cancer, who documents her sexual reawakening in the aftermath of that diagnosis.

Played in the show by Michelle Williams...

A long time ago in a galaxy not so far away, writer-director Dan Gilroy became captivated by the machinations of power; how throughout history, authoritarian figures have seduced electorates, seized control of nations and eroded important pillars of democracy – leading resistance fighters to push back across punishing decades of struggle. It’s a tale as old as time in our history books – but not necessarily in our movies and TV sho...

Welcome to Eddington – population: all of us. The new film from writer-director Ari Aster transports audiences to a town on the brink of combustion that, in a way, we’ve all been residents of for five years now. Look out your window right now and there may not be a New Mexico mountain range hugging the horizon like in the Eddington of Aster’s movie. But chances are you’ve absolutely felt it in the air – the same dread, the same fur...

All aboard the Cat Bus for a moving conversation about one of the greatest animations of all time – and the emotional madness of trying to bring that tale to the stage in London’s West End. If you’re in London at the moment, you need to see the current theatrical adaptation of My Neighbour Totoro currently showing in the West End. Produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company with puppet designs by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, this magi...

In 2023, Megan – a sassy robot, designed to be your daughter’s best friend – danced and dismembered her way to internet infamy. The title character of director Gerard Johnstone and writer Akela Cooper’s Blumhouse horror-comedy was an evil doll in the tradition of Chucky from Child’s Play, but at the same time, distinct in her modernity. As I asked in my review for Empire Magazine at the time: “Has Chucky ever interrupted a stabbing...

Today on Script Apart, we’re taking a long, hard look in the mirror – Charlie Brooker’s dystopian anthology series Black Mirror, to be more precise, with the beloved British writer joining Al for a spoiler-filled breakdown of the show’s brilliant latest season. Yes, this week we’re delving into a show that reflects back at us our darkest fears about the unrelenting march of technology on modern life. Across thirty three acclai...

As the Talking Heads once nearly sang: “And may find yourself beamed up into a spacecraft. And you may find yourself pretending to be the leader of Earth. And you may find yourself hanging out with weird and wonderful beings from outer-space, going up against intergalactic warlords and maybe learning a thing or two about belonging along the way.” Yes, it’s an Elio special on today’s Script Apart, as we venture across the cosmos wit...

The last time acclaimed writer-director Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Civil War, Annihilation) appeared on Script Apart, he told Al about his desire to quit directing temporarily and focus on writing – you know, like in the early days of his career. Well, it doesn’t get much more like those early days than returning to the blood-soaked quarantined Britain he imagined two decades ago, with a director who he shared an incredibly fruitful...

Havoc is the new film from Welsh writer-director Gareth Evans, and it does exactly what it says on the tin. Starring Tom Hardy as a jaded cop at the heart of a conspiracy in an unnamed, crime-ridden American city's underbelly, it packs some of the most frenetic action scenes of the year so far – but then again, what did you expect? Gareth is the filmmaker behind 2011's The Raid, 2014’s The Raid 2 and the TV show Gangs of London – e...

Did you think Script Apart was going to let the 30th anniversary of one of the most iconic teen films ever just pass us by? In the words of Cher Horowitz – “as if.” On today’s episode, we’re joined by Amy Heckerling, the writer-director who, three decades ago this summer, gave Jane Austen’s Emma a Beverly Hills makeover to remember. You may also know her for Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Look Who’s Talking and Vamps, but Clueless i...

Today on Script Apart – one of cinema’s great monster movies. The terrifying creature at this movie’s core, though, didn’t have trailing tentacles, bloodshot eyes or reptilian skin. Instead of sharp teeth, it wore a sharp suit – Valentino pinstripe, perfectly pressed. This monster owned a gleaming Rolex, lived in an elegant condo and smiled politely through slap-up dinners with his fellow Wall Street sleazes. At night, he stalked t...

Praise Kier, it’s a Severance Script Apart special! In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, Dan Erickson – the dystopian workplace drama’s creator and showrunner – spills all the secrets that Lumon Industries will allow, about the season two finale that aired last week, and our real-world relationships with work, corporations and personal pain that the show offers a meditation on.

The series, starring Adam Scott, Britt...

How do you follow a film like Longlegs, the chilling riff on serial killer thrillers that became one of the cult smashes of 2024? The answer, if you’re acclaimed writer-director Osgood Perkins, is to first swap out the pressure-cooker dread of that breakout hit. Next, add a cursed toy monkey. Then, harvest the wildest, darkest parts of your imagination for some of the most gruesome demises ever seen on screen. And finally, package ...

It was supposed to be “the cheerful Games.” That was the motto of the 1972 Munich Olympics, which was meant to usher in a peaceful new era on the world stage after the horrors in Germany just three decades earlier. Instead, on September 5th 1972, just after 4am. eight men in tracksuits jumped the fence at Munich's Olympic Village, armed with rifles and grenades. These men belonged to Black September — a group associated with t...

Our guest today is a Palme d’Or-winning writer-director whose films centre characters “chasing the American dream but who don’t have easy access to that dream.” You might know Sean Baker from exhilaratingly raw dramas like Tangerine, Red Rocket and The Florida Project – each a compassionate and captivating dispatch from life on society’s margins, and each lavished with critical acclaim. His latest movie, Anora, has seen new levels ...

How will romance adapt to the age of A.I that lies ahead? What bleak (and beautiful) impulses might the technology bring out in us? And have you ever seen a Black Mirror episode inside a Coens Brothers thriller, inside a Barbarian-esque horror? These are the questions posed by Companion, the new movie by writer-director Drew Hancock. Today on the show, we talk devotion, dating and androids with Drew, whose directorial debut kept it...

The climate crisis is here and over the last few years, a question has loomed: how will Hollywood respond? Can blockbuster movies be a tool for mobilising audiences into action as global temperatures rise, fires rage and climate denialism continues to spread? Maybe in decades to come, The Wild Robot – a film by my guest today, Chris Sanders – will be looked back upon alongside Pixar's Wall-E as one of the first indicators of mainst...

Jesse Eisenberg owes it all to an internet pop-up ad. A few years ago, while at an impasse with a screenplay about two friends on a trip to Mongolia, the writer-director and star of movies like The Social Network read an ad for “Auschwitz tours - with lunch.” And that jarring phrase unleashed an avalanche of ideas about, as he puts it, “the irony of wanting to connect to your ancestors’ pain but at the same time not being willing t...

Thirty years ago, a film hit multiplexes that helped redefine love onscreen for moviegoers. So much so, in fact, that the history of the modern romantic drama might arguably be best separated into two distinct eras: before Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater’s enchanting cult smash stroll through moonlit Vienna, and after. Today on Script Apart, Richard’s co-writer Kim Krazin reflects on three decades of hearing from strangers about ...