I am disappointed.
I really enjoyed the recording I did with Scott Swan for the new podcast. It has been, as it seems to be between all of them, a little while since we last recorded, and I had a lot of fun this time. Felt good. I also have some great other things lined up as part of the podcast, three full interviews that I think all are worth your time.
So when I went to put it all together, I was shocked to hear something wrong with the audio. There’s a strange sound, and I have no idea what caused it or where it happened in the process. I have tried everything I could to clean it up, following advice from audio nerd friends, but everything I tried seemed to make it worse.
In the end, I decided to cut it together and put it out even though it has the issue. There’s too much about it that worked for me to just shelve it, and it took me a week to get through all of my efforts at fixing it. As a result, this was supposed to run last Thursday, just before the opening of “After Earth,” and we do spend some time talking about what felt like a pile-on waiting to happen. If you followed the film’s release over at Rotten Tomatoes, you know that’s exactly what happened. Look at the quotes on that page: it’s a contest to see who can shred Shyamalan and the Smith family the hardest. It’s rough. We talked here about the way some directors end up getting their turn in the barrel and the way audiences and critics walk into films.
I’ve got three interviews for you this week. You’ll hear Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach back to back, and I recorded with them the day after I moderated a Q&A for the film at the LACMA/Film Independent screening. I think both conversations came out well, and I hope listening to Gerwig is enough to convince you to go see the film. She’s marvelous in it.
The third interview is with producer Walter Mirisch as part of the publicity for the recent Blu-ray release of “The Great Escape.” Mirisch is a legend, and it was a huge pleasure to get to chat with him, even if only for a few minutes.
We spend a lot of time talking about Shout! Factory’s new Blu-ray line of horror titles and the overall great work they’re doing these days, and as the episode was recorded, Scott and I were watching the insane “Captain America” live-action film starring Matt Salenger with the sound off. What a freakshow.
Scott even invented a new twist on our regular game of Movie God that I’m not sure we’ll keep using, but that certainly complicated the game for me. Overall, there’s a lot of fun stuff this week, and I’m sorry that I bungled the recording somehow. There are some big changes coming this summer for Team HitFix, and I’m hoping that part of that includes me putting together an easier, more reliable way to record these podcasts.
Here’s a quick rundown of everything in this week’s show:
00:00 – 1:40 – A quick introduction
1:40 – 52:15 – Expectations and how they play into the experience for audiences and critics
52:15 – 1:14:14 – Greta Gerwig on “Frances Ha”
1:14:14 – 1:27:55 – Noah Baumbach on “Frances Ha”
1:27:55 – 1:46:50 – Walter Mirisch on “The Great Escape”
1:46:50 – 2:10:30 – Shout! Factory, Scream Factory, and why physical media still matters
2:10:30 – 2:29:50 – Playing some games and wrapping it up.
Thanks, and as always, you can find us on iTunes or you can download directly from the link below. If you do find us through iTunes, please leave us a review as that helps other people find the show, and the more listeners we gain, the more time and energy I’ll be able to focus on the show.
“Frances Ha” opens wide this weekend.
“The Great Escape” is now available on Blu-ray and looks amazing.