Yes, it’s true. I somehow managed to wrangle Scott Swan over to the house one last time for a final 2012 podcast.
This has been a terrible year for the podcast, frankly, and Scott and I are both aware of it. I am tired of being a guy who is full of good intentions but who is also unable to follow through with those intentions. It does me no good to want to publish something unless I actually prepare and publish that thing. As the HitFix audience continues to grow, something that we here at the site are all intensely proud of, I’ve got to master my ability to juggle tasks. There are times I’m good at it, and times I fail completely, and I am genuinely torn up about that.
In particular, I feel a sense of obligation to sort things out regarding the podcast. The feedback Scott and I have gotten over the years from you guys has been incredibly kind and it feels like there’s a community of you out there who have listened to them all and who have encouraged us constantly, and because of that, Scott and I are working out a way to maintain a regular schedule. He keeps crazy hours these days, as do I, and we’re both also dealing with the demands of family… and none of that matters, ultimately, to an audience who wants content at a reliable time each week.
This final podcast of the year ran very long, and it’s built around a really solid Albert Brooks interview I did a few weeks back. I spoke to him by phone on a day where I was going to be running back and forth across town, and I can honestly say there are few better ways to kick off a busy morning than having a chat with one of the funniest writer/directors alive. We talked about his book, the changing nature of relationships between parents and adult children, his work in “This Is 40,” and more, and it was a complete pleasure. If all you care about is the Brooks interview, you can forward directly to 1 hour and 36 minutes into the podcast, and you’ll hear that.
For those of you willing to listen to the entire thing, we cover a broad range of topics this week, including a whole ton of “Star Wars.” I had heard a rumor that we might be getting the “Star Wars Episode VII” director announcement today, and we talk about that, but I was surprised how much Scott did not know yet about the buzz surrounding these new films. We also spend a fair amount of time on “The Hobbit,” and we dig into the various controversies that have erupted this Christmas around films like “Django Unchained,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” and “This Is 40.”
More than anything, this is one last chance to spend a little time with you guys here at the end of the year, and we appreciate every single person who has supported the podcast over the last few years.
We’re going to do everything we can to reward that support this coming year. Here’s hoping that in 365 days, I can honestly say that we did it better. We’ll see.
As always, you can play the podcast here as an embedded file, you can download it directly, or you can go to iTunes and run a search for “Drew McWeeny,” and you’ll find the full archive of the podcast there.
Have a great New Year, everyone. We’ll talk again in 2013.