A Piece of Pie: The Queer Film Podcast

Click here to send us a message! This week we're discussing two of cinema's most celebrated queer filmmakers, Luca Guadagnino and Andrew Haigh. Within the last few years, they've each given us deeply personal stories about love, loneliness, grief and the disconnect of growing up queer in a straight world. Through different eras and wildly different tones, each film grapples with queer life in stunning and heart wrenching detail. Chris is back as we discuss the two newest editions to the Queer...

Click here to send us a message! Just in time for Halloween, we're revisiting two of our favorite classic 90's horror flicks. Fresh off an Academy Award for Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino teamed with director Robert Rodriguez for From Dusk Till Dawn, starring Tarantino and George Clooney. Rodriguez would follow that up with The Faculty, from writer Kevin Williamson. With sprawling casts and self-referential scripts, these films still hold up among the best horror of the 1990's.

Click here to send us a message! This week we’re joined by Raina Deerwater, Associate Director and Research Analysis at GLAAD! She joins to discuss their Studio Responsibility Index, and recent findings that LBGTQIA+ representation in film is on the decline. We discuss what that means, and what can be done about it. And then we talk about the sapphic crime drama, Love Lies Bleeding starring Kristen Stewart one of a few queer centered films from 2024.

Click here to send us a message! This week we're finally discussing Tony Kushner's masterpiece, Angels in America. As Chicago's own Invictus Theater Company stages a new production, we welcome two actors from the show, Miguel Long and Ryan Hake, to discuss the 2004 HBO adaptation. They offer insight into playing these challenging roles, as we discuss the differences between the play and the movie, and how the play remains as relevant as ever. Click here for information about the Invic...

Click here to send us a message! This week, Brian is joined by writer Sezin Devi Koehler, who quite literally wrote the book on Keanu Reeves. Her book, Much Ado About Keanu: A Critical Reeves Theory highlights the actor’s legendary career. We take a specific look at The Matrix, a franchise created by trans women, and John Wick, an iconic character that, according to Sezin’s theory, is very likely transgender himself. You can find a copy of her book here https://tinyurl.com/2tbpyex6

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Click here to send us a message! This week we’re taking a look at two very different queer icons. Musical geniuses Freddie Mercury and Liberace each got the biopic treatment in the 2010’s, and each got very different treatment. Behind the Candelabra starred Oscar winners Michael Douglas and Matt Damon and was directed by Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh. Despite the pedigree, only HBO would release it. Bohemian Rhapsody, by contrast, despite a troubled production and a problematic filmmaker, so...

Click here to send us a message! This week we’re joined by film scholar Syd Wrigley, who joins the podcast to discuss Gregg Araki’s famed Teen Apocalypse Trilogy. Starting with Totally Fucked Up in 1993, he followed it with The Doom Generationin 1995 and finally Nowhere in 1997, the trilogy that would define a generation and stands at the center of the New Queer Cinema movement. Recently re-released via Criterion, these films are being discovered by a brand new generation, and Araki is only n...

Click here to send us a message! This week we have an interview with director Dana Flor discussing her new documentary, 1-800-ON-HER-OWN, an intimate look at singer songwriter Ani DiFranco ! And we’re excited to announce a partnership with the filmmakers to bring the movie to Chicago! On April 13 at the #Music Box Chicago to catch the Chicago premiere in person!

Click here to send us a message! This week we're joined by writer Alonso Duralde, author of Hollywood Pride to discuss Barbra Streisand's directorial debut, Yentl. The story of a young woman who bucked convention, and gender norms, to follow her dreams. Progressive for 1983, the film was ahead of it's time, and is undergoing a queer reappraisal.

Click here to send us a message! We only have one tradition here at Piece of Pie, and that's our annual Oscar episode. We started this little podcast discussing the Oscars, and ever since we've made sure to cover them. This year Paul Klein and Chris Alexander join Brian to discuss queer representation at the yearly show, Conan O'Brien and more!

Click here to send us a message! This week we're joined by Chicago's Joan Waters, local drag queen and John Waters super fan, and we're taking a look at Polyester, John Waters' first studio film. With his biggest budget to date, Waters paid tribute to William Castle, and Douglas Sirk, two of his favorite filmmakers. Sirk directed the Rock Hudson classic All That Heaven Allows, a clear influence on queer filmmakers like Todd Haynes and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. So we paired it with Polyester a...

Click here to send us a message! Brian interviews filmmaker, writer and actor Vera Drew about her debut film, The People's Joker. Produced on a shoestring budget and released in secret while Warner Bros waged a legal battle, The People's Joker uses popular DC Comics characters to tell a truly unforgettable coming age of story.

Click here to send us a message! We're saying goodbye to a tumultuous 2024 by discussing one of the year's biggest, and arguably gayest, box office hits. From bookshelves, to Broadway and now to movie theaters, Wicked is a superhero tentpole movie for theatre kids, but is it any good? And how does it hold up taken next to the beloved stage play? Rob and Max join Brian to discuss all that and more!

Click here to send us a message! We’re closing out spooky season with a couple of tear-jerkers. In one of our most poignant episodes, Brian opens up about the loss of his mother and how it affected watching these two films, one an Oscar powerhouse the other something of an Oscar also-ran, each of them with passionate queer followings given their stacked casts.

Click here to send us a message! Brian and Max went to the Alamo Drafthouse to catch one of the year's most talked about films of the year, Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis. Developed by Coppola over a course of 3 decades, Megalopolis finally hit screens in 2024. After standing ovations at film festivals, the film released to the public with mostly a shrug, but Brian and Max wanted to see it for themselves, and then recorded at a bar after the screening.

Click here to send us a message! By now, Keanu Reeves is an accomplished action star with two multi-billion dollar franchises to his name. But this week we're taking a look at the two movies that helped get him there, Point Break and Speed. He hit it big with these two films, and represented a shift away from the buff action heroes which drove the critics of the time to only one conclusion - he must be gay. Join us as we unpack two of the biggest hits of the 1990's; the queer coded Point Brea...

Click here to send us a message! This week we're joined by "The Horror Dyke," Heather O. Petrocelli as we take a look at David Cronenberg and recent Palme D'Or Winner! In 1996, Cronenberg released the controversial Crash, about a man who seeks to reinvigorate his sex-life after a near-fatal automobile accident. We pair it with 2021's Titane, Julia Ducournau feminist body horror film that owes a huge debt to Croneberg's work, while remaining it's own truely unique vision.

Click here to send us a message! Our newest contributor Paul rejoins the podcast as Max and Brian revisit their series pairing off the films of Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson. We've skipped ahead a bit to land on their 70mm roadshow pictures, each auteur using their clout to shoot on film, on location. In doing so they crafted two of their most personal movies, with wildly varied results. Give us a listen as we continue to pit these two geniuses against each other!

Click here to send us a message! This week we’re taking a look at two films from Gregg Araki. One of the architects of the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990’s, Araki pivoted in the new century after finding critical success with Mysterious Skin. He followed up that award winner by pivoting to a stoner comedy that Max argues is worth revisiting every April 20.