The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast

On this special mega episode, co-host Veronica sits down with critic ⁠Fran Hoepfner⁠ and our producer Eli Sands to postmortem the 62nd New York Film Festival. This is a mainly spoiler-free conversation! We get into: Hard Truths, Caught by the Tides, Nickel Boys, April, Harvest, The Brutalist, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Shrouds, Queer, Maria, Stranger Eyes, Eephus, I’m Still Here, Anora, The Room Next Door, one stray line about Misericordia, plus: wife guy directors, the surveillance motif, doing Mike Leigh homework, critic versus public screenings, do we need subtitles to understand Scottish accents, stop describing Brutalist as monumental, are movies too long, Almodóvar’s secret to killing it at Q&A, what lipstick is Mikey wearing in Anora, and more. Further reading and listening: Fran’s ⁠NYFF report⁠ for Bright Wall/Dark Room and her incredible ⁠piece on Dick Pope⁠, and more of Eli on the festival at ⁠Deep Cut⁠. Find Fran online at ⁠Fran Mag⁠, ⁠Twitter⁠, and ⁠Letterboxd⁠. -- The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by⁠ Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠ and⁠ Chad Perman⁠, produced by⁠ Eli Sands⁠, and edited by ⁠Buczar⁠. Our theme music is composed by Chad. Please: follow, rate, review! Find all 135 issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room at ⁠brightwalldarkroom.com⁠ (and be sure to check out our upcoming November issue, Neo-Noir 2024). We’re on Twitter (@BWDR and @TheBWDRPodcast), ⁠Bluesky⁠, and ⁠Letterboxd⁠, and welcome feedback and ad/sponsorship inquiries at ⁠podcast@brightwalldarkroom.com⁠. -- This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠Galerie⁠⁠: a new kind of film club. Listeners can currently sign up for three months of full access to essays, curated film lists, live screenings and much more at ⁠⁠join.galerie.com⁠⁠.

This month’s mini-episode takes us into one of costume designer Sophie de Rakoff’s curated picks: Irvin Kershner’s The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), an American giallo with style to spare. We get into Faye Dunaway’s scream, POV in horror, how this is Helmut Newton x John Carpenter, the ethics of glamorizing suffering, and, yes, the clothes. -- The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, produced by Eli Sands, and edited by Buczar. Our theme music is composed by Chad. This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can sign up for three full months of free access to curated film lists, essays, live screenings and more here.

This whole episode is a trap. In it, we join Josh Hartnett scholar and The Film Stage gentleman Dan Mecca to dissect the ins and outs of M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap. We talk about: baby bangs, Hartnett always being a little bit weird, the tooth gap, Sleeping with the Enemy’s hand towels, auteur theory, one good part in The Village, Hayley Mills on the walkie-talkie, and more. Further reading: Dan’s interview with Hartnett for Film Stage, Nicholas Russell’s M. Night Shyamalan essay for BWDR, and you can even run it back to Dan’s first-ever The B-Side episode on Hartnett himself. --- The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, produced by Eli Sands, and edited by Buczar. Our theme music is composed by Chad. You can find all 134 issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room, including our most recent issue on Spike Lee, at brightwalldarkroom.com. Please help us find more ears: follow, rate, comment, leave us a review! This episode is sponsored by ⁠Galerie⁠: a new kind of film club. Listeners can sign up for 3 full months of free access to curated film lists & streaming films, essays, live screenings and much more at ⁠join.galerie.com⁠.

Inspired by the curation of costume designer ⁠Sophie de Rakoff⁠, this month we're taking a loving look at the gear-shifting, hybrid charms of Jonathan Demme's screwball noir, Something Wild—and the Ray Liotta entrance that changes everything. -- This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can now sign up for 3 months of free access here.

Joining us this month: Blank Check co-host & staff writer at The Atlantic, David Sims! In summer’s last gasp, we go back to a flashpoint of summer blockbuster season: Jan de Bont’s 1996 Twister, plus its legacy in Twisters (Lee Isaac Chung, 2024), epic ensemble casting, craving movies about grown-ups, Hollywood’s dangerous brunettes, why not kissing at the airport matters, whether anyone votes in the world of Twisters, cinema sequences and storm spectatorship, Daisy Edgar Jones’s accent work, and the Spielberg touch. Stuff we reference: Jan de Bont in conversation with Tim Grierson, and Lee Isaac Chung on the Twisters ending. The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. --- This episode is sponsored by ⁠Galerie⁠, a new kind of film club featuring curated films, original articles and interviews, and interactive live events. BW/DR listeners can now sign up for three full months of free access to Galerie through ⁠this special link⁠.

Chad goes full dad in this mini-episode on Richard Linklater’s 2014 coming-of-age epic Boyhood. Specifically, the plural meanings of Patricia Arquette’s anguished move-out speech, and why raising children to lead their own lives is a bittersweet success. The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. --- This episode is sponsored by Galerie, where you can join Veronica & Chad for a watch party this Sunday, August 18 at 3pm ET/12pm PT. We'll be hosting a viewing of Olivier Assayas' ⁠Clouds of Sils Maria⁠, with live commentary and conversation, and would love to have you stop by and say hello! (BW/DR listeners can currently sign up for three months of free access to Galerie ⁠here⁠.)

Welcome back to the pod Carrie Courogen, author of Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius out now from St. Martin’s Press. Carrie joins us to discuss Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972), her honeymoon horror film co-starring May’s daughter Jeannie Berlin and Charles Grodin as doomed newlyweds and Cybill Shepherd as the coed for whom Grodin’s Lenny quite literally risks it all. Further reading: here’s Chad’s interview with Carrie in the June 2024 issue. BW/DR did its own Elaine May issue back in September 2019, where you can find the genesis of Carrie’s May scholarship along with Ethan Warren on The Heartbreak Kid, and Veronica on May’s first feature, A New Leaf.  The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.  Find every issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room at brightwalldarkroom.com. Podcast-wise, we appreciate your ratings and reviews. We’re on Twitter @BWDR and @TheBWDRPodcast, and welcome feedback and inquiries at podcast@brightwalldarkroom.com. This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club featuring curated films, original content, and live events. BW/DR listeners can now sign up for three months of free access at https://join.galerie.com⁠.

Follow us into one of Rachel Kushner’s picks: Maurice Pialat’s slow ode to the sacred and profane, Under the Sun of Satan (1987). Co-starring Gérard Depardieu and Pialat’s muse Sandrine Bonnaire alongside Pialat himself, Under the Sun is a pastoral parable with a lot of dialogue and a few good screams. The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club.

As summer begins in earnest, we're looking back at a 2022 highlight—Charlotte Wells’s staggering debut feature Aftersun—and revisiting one of our most popular episodes ever: a conversation with film critic, author, and educator ⁠Adam Nayman⁠. Adam shares special insights from his ⁠conversation with Wells⁠ about the film, plus the case for cinematic mystery, Paul Mescal crying, analog devices and the technology of memory, good karaoke scenes, fatherhood feelings, and why 2022 stinker The Whale stumbles precisely where Aftersun soars. For more on Aftersun, check out producer ⁠Barry Jenkins’s conversation⁠ with director Wells for the Directors UK podcast, Filmmaker’s ⁠profile⁠, and Wells’s own ⁠letter to audiences⁠ for A24. The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by ⁠Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠ and ⁠Chad Perman⁠ and produced and edited by ⁠Eli Sands⁠. Our theme music is composed by Chad. You can find all 130+ issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room, including our most recent, Breaking Point, at ⁠brightwalldarkroom.com⁠. Please subscribe, rate, and flatter us with a review, it truly helps the show! This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. Bright Wall/Dark Room listeners can sign up using this special link to get two months of free access to Galerie's essays, live conversations, and streaming catalogue! This episode originally aired in January 2023.

It’s showtime–in this episode, Chad takes us through the opening of one of Ethan Hawke’s curator picks: Bob Fosse’s autobiographical kaleidoscope, All That Jazz (1979). Here’s the Motion Pictures Editors Guild on what makes All That Jazz the fourth-best edited film in history, and Hawke himself on “personal filmmaking at its finest.” The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can sign up for two months of free access via this link.

Back from vacation with our summer blockbuster episode: author, Reverse Shot co-founder and editor, and Editorial Director at Museum of the Moving Image Michael Koresky joins us to proselytize Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). Michael takes us back to being an intern in 2001, watching A.I. six times in theaters, how both Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick do “sentimentality with a point,” Jude Law’s dialogue, parables of loss, and how this “unexpected sledgehammer” of 00s’ filmmaking sticks with him today. For more, read story writer Ian Watson’s account of working with Kubrick and Michael’s Reverse Shot co-founder Jeff Reichert on “the desperation underlying much of human love.”  The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. You can find all 130+ issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room online at brightwalldarkroom.com. We remain on Twitter @BWDR and @TheBWDRPodcast, and welcome feedback and inquiries at podcast@brightwalldarkroom.com. This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can enjoy two months of free access by signing up ⁠here⁠.

Riffing on Kim Gordon’s curation, we get into Lynne Ramsay’s atmospheric Morvern Callar (2002), a mixtape of a film whose cursed vacation vibes echo something of Barbara Loden’s Wanda and foreshadow Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun. Shout outs to Georgia Humphreys’ terrific essay “Another Girl, Another Planet” and The Mamas and the Papas’ unlikely club banger, “Dedicated to the One I Love.” The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can sign up for two months of free access via this link.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of its release this month, we're revisiting our conversation on Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974), looking at the film through the lenses of surveillance and seclusion, Gene Hackman and Walter Murch, Catholic guilt and cool jazz. From its bird’s eye opening to the obliterative final shots, we get into the nuts and bolts of Coppola’s “personal” post-Godfather film and what it means to watch, fixate, deduce, mishear, and, despite everything, to long to be seen. (Originally released July 25, 2022) -- The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. -- We'll be back with two new episodes next month - talk soon! -- This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. Listeners can sign up for two months of free access at https://join.galerie.com/bwdr.

Joining our spicy all-in-the-family March episode are substitute co-host Fran Hoepfner and BW/DR staff writer Sarah Welch-Larson. Listen as long-time Dune-thusiast Sarah absolutely schools us on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two (2024). We get into the finer points of adapting Frank Herbert, how all the Bene Gesserit are sexy, space gravity, Rebecca Ferguson’s jaw, the secularization of Chani, are thumpers biodegradable, and more. Special shout-outs to Sarah’s prescient piece on Dune (2021) and Max Read’s encyclopedic annotation of Part Two. The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is (usually) co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. You can find every issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room at brightwalldarkroom.com, including our current issue on one of the single best years in film history, 1999. Podcast-wise, we really appreciate your ratings and reviews. We’re on Twitter @BWDR and @TheBWDRPodcast, and welcome any feedback, questions, or sponsorship inquiries at podcast@brightwalldarkroom.com. This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club, currently featuring Kim Gordon as curator; BW/DR listeners can sign up for two months of free access at ⁠https://join.galerie.com/bwdr⁠.

On this month's micro episode, we get into Elliott Smith soundtracking a savory first kiss in Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting (1997), a film that changed one of our co-host's lives forever. -- The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25 is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. -- The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25 is sponsored by our friends at Galerie. To find out more about Galerie—a new kind of film club—sign up for two free months at join.galerie.com/bwdr.

It’s still February in our souls. This month, we’re joined by writer and Letterboxd Senior Editor Mitchell Beaupre to revisit Mira Nair’s recently 4k-restored romance, Mississippi Masala (1991), starring Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury. We get into the film’s ever-timely exploration of diasporic longing, when talking on the phone looks like phone sex, first-gen trauma, a particularly memorable prelude to a kiss, romanticizing physical media, and the finer points of Mitchell’s insightful April 2022 interview with Nair (over at The Film Stage). The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. Listeners can sign up for two months of free access at https://join.galerie.com/bwdr. You can find all 128 issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room—including our double issue on the films of 1999 that starts this week!—over at brightwalldarkroom.com. Podcast-wise, we really appreciate your ratings and reviews. We’re on Twitter @BWDR and @TheBWDRPodcast, have a Patreon if you'd like to support the show, and always welcome feedback or inquiries at podcast@brightwalldarkroom.com.

The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25 is a series in conversation with, and sponsored by, our friends at Galerie. Every month, we pick a title from Galerie’s curated library and zoom in on a single moment to better see the whole. This month we're chatting about expressive sound and slow motion in John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood (1991), a pick by curator Reinaldo Marcus Green. To see the rest of Green’s hit picks, sign up at https://join.galerie.com/bwdr. * This episode is co-hosted by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠Chad Perman⁠⁠⁠⁠ and produced and edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Eli Sands⁠⁠⁠⁠. * Further reading/Articles Referenced: They've Gotta Have Us - Karen Grigsby Bates (New York Times Magazine, July 14, 1991) How Boyz n the Hood Beat the Odds to Get Made—and Why It Matters Today - Sam Kashner (Vanity Fair, August 4, 2016) * To read our current issue, or browse our 125+ issue archive, visit us at Bright Wall/Dark Room

This month we’re joined by writer, critic, and editor Nicholas Russell to chat about Bradley Cooper’s Maestro (2023). We get into: what makes a Bradley Cooper Film (thanks Fran), when weird voices work, that epigraph, tension as structure and provocation, what’s going on with the ending, getting moved by Mahler, and more. -- The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, and produced & edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. You can find every single issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room, including our January issue on The Best of 2023, at brightwalldarkroom.com. We really, really appreciate your ratings & reviews. We’re on Twitter @BWDR and @TheBWDRPodcast, and welcome feedback and inquiries at podcast@brightwalldarkroom.com. And, to the best of our knowledge, we have never once abandoned Snoopy in the vestibule. -- This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. This month's featured curator is writer/director James Gray. BW/DR readers & listeners can sign up for two free months of access here.

This month, we're looking at James Gray's Two Lovers, exploring its intimacy, specificity, complexity—and a fantastic Joaquin Phoenix dance scene. --- The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25 is a series of bite-sized episodes in conversation with, and sponsored by, our friends at ⁠⁠Galerie⁠⁠. Each month, we pick a title from Galerie’s curated library and zoom in on a single moment to better see the whole. BW/DR readers & listeners can use this special link to get two months of free access to Galerie, a new kind of film club! --- This episode is co-hosted by ⁠⁠Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Chad Perman⁠⁠ and produced and edited by ⁠⁠Eli Sands⁠⁠.

Merry Cruisemas, from our home to yours! For our 3rd annual celebration, we sit down with bosom buddy, film critic, and podcast extraordinaire Blake Howard to discuss Doug Liman’s 2014 film, Edge of Tomorrow. We get into: time loops, Emily Blunt's triceps, Cruise's determined pathos, Liman's blockbuster craftmanship, McQuarrie's calibrations, repetition and rewatchability, three-beers-in movies, and more. -- Cruisemas 2022: Vanilla Sky Cruisemas 2021: Eyes Wide Shut Blake's podcast empire: One Heat Minute Productions -- The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by ⁠⁠Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Chad Perman⁠⁠ and produced and edited by ⁠⁠Eli Sands⁠⁠. Our theme music is composed by Chad. To read the current issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room, or browse our 125+ issue archive, visit us at brightwalldarkroom.com. We’re also on Twitter ⁠@BWDR⁠ & ⁠@TheBWDRPodcast⁠, and always welcome feedback and advertising inquiries at ⁠podcast@brightwalldarkroom.com⁠. Happy Holidays, and thank you, truly, for giving us an hour or so of your time each month. We appreciate it more than you'll ever know. See ya next year! -- This episode is sponsored by ⁠Galerie⁠, a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can sign up using ⁠this special link⁠ to get two free months of access to the site!