1971
Who is this Colin Higgins fellow and why are we talking about him? How resonant is Harold and Maude still? Are jokes about suicide okay in a context like this? Tune in to this week’s show to get these answers and more!
Listen Now
How does this film fit thematically with the other Once Upon a Time films? How are Rod Steiger and James Coburn in the film? And have you ever seen such disgusting, ugly eating? Tune in to this week’s show to get the answers to these questions and more.
Listen Now
Twentieth Century Fox had found that cheap sequels could turn healthy profits so immediately booked Paul Dehn, the writer of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, to write a third in the series. Unfortunately, the second film ended with the planet being blown up. For Dehn, that was just a thrilling challenge to overcome, and overcome it he did. Join us as we continue our Planet of the Apes series with Don Taylor’s 1971 film Escape From the Planet of the Apes.
Listen Now
It’s time for our first 2017 Listener’s Choice episode! Pony Prize winner Finn Frode, who’s from Norway but living in Sweden, won and selected a Swedish film with one of his favorite Norwegian actresses – Liv Ullmann. The film he selected is the first half of Jan Troell’s epic tale of immigration – 1971’s The Emigrants.
Listen Now
Michael Crichton’s space disease thriller hit the public at the perfect time – when everyone was afraid of the astronauts accidentally bringing back space viruses upon returning to Earth. Crichton wrote the book in a very pseudo-scientific way that made it feel like more of a scientific documentation of a real happening, and it worked gangbusters for his readers. When Robert Wise decided to adapt it, he opted to treat it the same and make it feel like a documentary. For some, it works better than for others.
Join us – Pete Wright and Andy Nelson – as we continue our disease series with Wise’s 1971 thriller The Andromeda Strain.
Listen Now
Richard Matheson’s 1954 vampire horror novel “I Am Legend” helped influence the zombie genre (it was the inspiration for the ‘68 George Romero film “Night of the Living Dead”) and popularized the concept of a worldwide apocalypse due to disease. Yet for some reason, filmmakers haven’t been able to crack the story. It’s been made into three different films, and it doesn’t seem like any of them have gotten it right. Join us – Pete Wright and Andy Nelson – as we kick off our disease series with the second of these adaptations, Boris Sagal’s 1971 film, “The Omega Man.”
Listen Now
For his original script “The Hospital,” Paddy Chayefsky won his second Oscar and created an enemy for himself — the US’s medical institution which he was satirizing. But his script, while genius in many ways, veers off course into several strange directions that take the sting out of the satire. And that’s, perhaps, why the film isn’t talked about much these days. But it’s still worth watching and talking about! Join us — Pete Wright and Andy Nelson — as we happily talk about this wild Chayefsky ride and continue our series on this great American writer.
Listen Now
It’s our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY, everyone! That’s right, we’ve been doing this podcast for one year now, and what better way to celebrate than with the next in our Great Car Chase series—William Friedkin’s 1971 Best Picture Oscar-winner, “The French Connection.”
Listen Now
We’re taking a leap back to the 70s with this next series—Alan J. Pakula’s paranoia trilogy. First up, 1971’s “Klute,” a dark and gritty character study/thriller about a small town detective trying to get information from a call girl about his missing friend.
Listen Now