The Pink Smoke podcast

We watched Arthur. A New York love story. Pure lightning in a bottle. The little movie that went on to become the #4 biggest hit of 1981. And we watched Arthur 2: On the Rocks. A critical punching bag. An outcast. Something considered a travesty of elegance and taste, when it's considered at all. More to the point, what is Arthur in 2025? It's weird that it was so successful back in the day, and even weirder that we'd still want to discuss it now. We dig into that weirdness, and the double weirdness of its denigrated solo sequel: why it happened, how it happened and how it happens to work for us, just a little. Support our Patreon:www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site:www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on Twitter:twitter.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on Twitter:twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on Twitter:twitter.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / "Tea for Two" Outro music: Marcus Pinn / "Vegas"

We continue our series on the Parker books by Donald E. Westlake, published under the nom de guerre Richard Stark, which follow the various criminal activities of hard-boiled heister Parker and the shady characters surrounding him looking to screw up the score. Coming after the 'Outfit Trilogy' that kicked off the series, 1964's The Mourner is one of the weirder entries, focusing specifically on the eponymous MacGuffin: a lost historical statue sitting in the art collection of an embezzling expatriate from a small Slavic country who has himself been targeted by a secret policeman whose desire for a new life of luxury in America will mess everything up for Parker and his partner Handy McKay.  Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / "Tea for Two" Outro music: Marcus Pinn / "Vegas"

Ever since Dogfight was released in 1991 to middling reviews and invisible box office, it's slowly developed a following among viewers who appreciate Nancy Savoca's empathetic story of two young people making a meaningful connection at a pivotal point of the early 60's. Two such viewers are host Martin Kessler and his guest, film writer and programmer Vanya Garraway. They explore this very human film and the richness of its lead characters, an aspiring folk singer and a young soldier due to deploy to Vietnam who chooses her as his date for a party where the marine who brings the ugliest girl is rewarded. Over a single night, the couple find themselves challenging rigid gender roles and finding unexpected inner strength, leading to what Garraway refers to as "one of the most romantic scenes you'll ever see in cinema." Support our Patreon:www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site:www.thepinksmoke.com Vanya Garraway on Twitter:@nostalgiaphile@PaidInSweat Paid in Sweatprod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pag…0abda7cb4e9& Movie Kessler on X:twitter.com/MovieKessler The Pink Smoke on X:twitter.com/thepinksmoke Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two”Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

Last year, the Pink Smoke Podcast created a series called 1974: 50 Years Later, each episode featuring a different guest who chose a 1974 movie to talk about, ranging from giant blockbusters to minor cult curios and everything else in between. But since all our guests are cool outsiders with eccentric tastes, most of them stayed away from the most iconic movies of that fabled cinematic year, eschewing The Godfather Part II in favor of forgotten TV movies and experimental horror films. While that was just fine with us, we decided it might be a good idea to back up and cover some of the acknowledged classics of 1974, starting with Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. The first of four projects released by the ultra-prolific auteur (two theatrical, two for TV), Ali tells the tale of a 60-year-old window cleaner who falls in love with a Moroccan Gastarbeiter half her age, much to the disapproval of their contemporaries. One of the enfant terrible's more gentle movies, it's still populated by his lovably repellent characters in whom Fassbinder seeks to excavate some humanity in a miserable post-war West German society. We discuss the director's destructive creativity, how his worldview is more complicated than those of directors with whom he's often connected (Douglas Sirk and Ken Loach fans maybe give this one a miss) and how his most endearing and connective theme is loneliness. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / "Tea for Two" Outro music: Marcus Pinn / "Vegas"

Host Martin Kessler finds himself in the middle of an angelic civil war, complete with soul-sucking seraphims, ritual exorcism, apocalyptic implications and an intervention from Lucifer himself, as he opens the ancient book (or should it be a scroll?) on Gregory Widen's 1995 theological thriller The Prophecy. Luckily, he's able to enlist first-time Pink Smoke guest Matthias van der Roest and fan favorite John Arminio to confront Christopher Walken's celestial terminator Archangel Gabriel before he turns heaven into hell. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Movie Kessler on X: twitter.com/MovieKessler John Arminio on X: twitter.com/QuasarSniffer Popcorn Eschaton! soundcloud.com/zebras-in-america/popcorn-eschaton-60-dead-man Matthias van der Roest on X: twitter.com/MattRSays The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / "Tea for Two" Outro music: Marcus Pinn / "Vegas"

Host John Cribbs is joined on the latest episode of The Pink Smoke podcast by Martin Kessler of Flixwise: Outpost Canada to discuss Mike Leigh's latest film, Peterloo. A historical drama looking at the semi-forgotten massacre at St. Peter's field in 1819, the film sees Manchester-ite Leigh returning to his home turf and somewhat unfamiliar artistic territory. With Vera Drake, Topsy-Turvy and Mr. Turner, historical dramas aren't precisely strange terrain for Leigh, so what makes Peterloo feel like the filmmaker has stepped outside of himself?

Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg discuss the legendary documentarian Errol Morris' latest film AMERICAN DHARMA, an extended interview with Steve Bannon (the architect of Donald Trump's successful 2016 presidential campaign). It's another typical Morris study of self-deception, specious reasoning & the strange intersections of pop cultural & real life. The podcast discussion also addresses the issues of deplatforming, how the film fits alongside FOG OF WAR & THE UNKNOWN KNOWN and the politics of fear. The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com/ Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/CFunderburg Intro & outro music by Marcus Pinn of Pinnland Empire.

For Clint Eastwood’s 90th birthday, hosts Christopher Funderburg and John Cribbs have each selected one of the actor/director’s films to discuss. This Eastwood Double Feature looks at Don Siegel’s The Beguiled and Eastwood’s own Unforgiven, a pair of films that illustrate why the star-auteur achieved his iconic status while remaining hard to pin down as an artist. The intense hothouse sexual politics of The Beguiled and the irony-soaked destruction (and rebuilding) of myths found in Unforgiven serve as a jumping off point to exploring Eastwood’s cinematic legacy, philosophies and elusive politics. It’s an unflinching discussion of one of cinema’s most towering, embattled, and controversial figures. The Pink Smoke site:
 www.thepinksmoke.com Patreon: 
www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke on Twitter: 
twitter.com/thepinksmoke John Cribbs on Twitter: 
twitter.com/TheLastMachine Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: 
twitter.com/CFunderburg Intro & outro music by Marcus Pinn of Pinnland Empire.

The myth of Wyatt Earp ignited at the ascent of cinema, his alleged Old West exploits embellished on celluloid during the Silent Era so that he was a full-fledged American legend come the golden age of Hollywood. Earp westerns were such an established staple that Law and Order, the first movie to star a surrogate Wyatt, was already out in 1932. All the familiar elements were there - Tombstone, Doc Holliday, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral - but the names of the players were different. From fairly straight biographical retellings including The Arizonian and Dodge City to radical revisions like Sam Fuller's Forty Guns and Edward Dmytryk's Warlock, the "Wyatt Earp movie without Wyatt Earp" has developed into an obscure but crowded subgenre. Who could identify such a subgenre but artist/Old West historian David Lambert, returning to The Pink Smoke to share his thoughts on the cinematic legacy of the killin'est peace officer who ever lived. Why so many thinly-veiled adaptations of the gunfighter's printed legend? How do they stack up next to the official versions, like John Ford's My Darling Clementine? Come for a nice long dive into these and other inquiries, stay for Lambert's killer Andy Devine impression. Hey! Look! It's our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: x.com/thepinksmoke John Cribbs on X: x.com/thelastmachine David Lambert on X: x.com/DavidLambertArt

Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke Sam Peckinpah and David Lynch, two of the most recognized directors of their day, were each in their mid-30's when they embarked on their third feature film: an epic studio movie to be shot in Mexico (headquartered at Estudio Churubusco). In both cases, the resulting film was a commercial disappointment and a critical disaster. What went wrong? Who's fault was it? Do these maligned movies deserve reappraisal?In tribute to the legendary Sam Peckinpah's 100th birthday and the recent passing of the great David Lynch, the Pink Smoke has recruited artist David Lambert and filmmaker Martin Kessler to revisit these two films. Lambert takes us through the history of Peckinpah's 1965 debacle Major Dundee, including how star Charlton Heston almost murdered his hellfire director, while Kessler walks us through the production of 1984's infamously derided adaptation of Dune.  Exclusive "Major Dune-dee" art by David Lambert. Hey! Look! It's our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: x.com/thepinksmoke John Cribbs on X: x.com/thelastmachine David Lambert on X: x.com/DavidLambertArt Martin Kessler on X: x.com/MovieKessler

Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke 1974 was a landmark year for film, a convergence of exciting international cinema and the original voices of New Hollywood that still resonates 50 years later. In our new series we invite a different guest for each episode to choose a 1974 movie to talk about, ranging from giant blockbusters to minor cult curios and everything else in between. The early 70's was a particularly transitional period for Japanese cinema in which major stars and directors found themselves shut out by the studios while the "Pinku eiga" era, in which celluloid sex and violence ran rampant, was on the rise. Surviving this shift in the landscape, director Yoshitaro Nomura, leading man Tetsuro Tamba and legendary screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto collaborated on the police procedural The Castle of Sand. On the other end of the spectrum was audacious auteur Masaru Konuma and his muse Naomi Tani who in 1974 teamed up for two movies including the BDSM melodrama Wife to Be Sacrificed, featuring "perhaps the most beautifully photographed flogging scene ever." Join us for this bizarre double feature programmed by Daniel Castro, writer and co-founder of the Colombian online film criticism portal Filmigrana, in which we discuss the state of Japanese cinema in the 70's, the pushing of boundaries versus the tugging of the heart, and the thin line between art and pornography. Hey! Look! It's our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke Who better to spend the holidays with than rebellious hair hopper Dawn Davenport, who goes from pinning her screaming mother under a Christmas tree for failing to provide the desired gift of Cha Cha heels to becoming the brightest star to light up the electric chair. Kate Wilkiinson returns to talk about the *most* John Waters movie ever made, his 1974 cult classic that puts his favorite obsessions of crime, fame and grotesque glamour center stage. Is there anything more lovable than a hideous Baltimore accent? Can anyone deny the sex appeal of Edith Massey sewn into a tight leather S & M outfit? And is there something about all this that's weirdly wholesome? 1974 was a landmark year for film, a convergence of exciting international cinema and the original voices of New Hollywood that still resonates 50 years later. In our new series we invite a different guest for each episode to choose a 1974 movie to talk about, ranging from giant blockbusters to minor cult curios and everything else in between. Wig Wurq on Tumblr: www.wigwurq.tumblr.com/ Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

1974 was a landmark year for film, a convergence of exciting international cinema and the original voices of New Hollywood that still resonates 50 years later. In our new series we invite a different guest for each episode to choose a 1974 movie to talk about, ranging from giant blockbusters to minor cult curios and everything else in between. We start winding down the series with a great companion piece to our past episodes on "wilderness adventure" classics Dersu Uzala and Quest for Fire. Filmmaker Jeremy Workman returns to discuss Philip Kaufman's The White Dawn, the story of three whalers who become stranded in the Northern Arctic and end up integrating with an Inuit tribe. There's a lot to talk about, from Kaufman's status as possibly the most underrated of 70's directors to Michael Chapman's naturalistic photography, the film's inspired use of diegetic music, authentic regional language and frozen landscapes, and how this movie is definitely not Louis Malle's Black Moon. Jeremy Workman on social media @jeremyworkman on Twitter Jeremy Workman's website https://jeremyworkman.com/ Website for Secret Mall Apartment secretmallapartment.com Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke 1974 was a landmark year for film, a convergence of exciting international cinema and the original voices of New Hollywood that still resonates 50 years later. In our new series we invite a different guest for each episode to choose a 1974 movie to talk about, ranging from giant blockbusters to minor cult curios and everything else in between. Debuting in competition at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival was British thriller Symptoms from Catalan director José Ramón Larraz, a difficult-to-synopsize terror tone poem featuring Angela Pleasence being threatened by psychosexual hallucinations and a peeping odd-job man. Joining us to rake the leaves of this moody manor are Dan Pullen and Bradley J. Kornish of the Movies from Hell website and podcast who give their opinions on Spanish genre directors of the decade, the film's place among hysterical women movies like Repulsion and how horror movies were beginning to evolve in 1974. Movies from Hell website: moviesfromhell.com The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke 1974 was a landmark year for film, a convergence of exciting international cinema and the original voices of New Hollywood that still resonates 50 years later. In our new series we invite a different guest for each episode to choose a 1974 movie to talk about, ranging from giant blockbusters to minor cult curios and everything else in between. Host Martin Kessler hops on The Nickel Ride, one of the more unjustly neglected films of that hallowed cinema year that sees director Robert Mulligan instill a distinctively L.A. setting with a shadow of noir desperation and a tinge of French crime drama melancholy. Martin is joined by two ardent cinéastes, podcaster Felicia Maroni and film writer Andrew Nette, to discuss how Mulligan creates a precis of mid-70's American movie constructs - fading machismo, pervasive paranoia, volitional isolation - that thrills even when there's more talking than shooting. The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Andrew Nette on social media: @pulpcurry.bsky.social Andrew Nette's Pulp Curry website pulpcurry.com Andrew Nette's Substack newsletter: andrewnette.substack.com Felicia Maroni on social media: @CineMaroni Seeing Faces in Movies Podcast seeingfacesinmovies.com/episodes

What is there left to be said about the greatest horror film ever made? Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

All episodes are made available to Patreon subscribers, the most killer-ish and dozer-y of all audiences, one week before their general release Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke celebrates the Spooky Season with the most terrifying subject imaginable: a sentient, vengeful bulldozer! Guest Joe Gibson has chosen this TV movie from the pen of science fiction legend Theodore Sturgeon to discuss for our 1974 series, one that comes between the highway horror of Duel and apocalyptic chaos of Maximum Overdrive. Can the half dozen construction workers stranded on an island off the coast of Africa survive the wrath of a meteorite-possessed Killdozer? This is a very fun movie. 1974 was a landmark year for film, a convergence of exciting international cinema and the original voices of New Hollywood that still resonates 50 years later. In our new series we invite a different guest for each episode to choose a 1974 movie to talk about, ranging from giant blockbusters to minor cult curios and everything else in between. Joe's Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/zoltarak/ The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas" Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke

Episodes are made available to Patreon subscribers one week before their general release. www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke "'It doesn't seem important anymore.' Her eyes held a vacant stare which bothered Dee. They appeared to be looking but not seeing anything. 'I didn't think I'd ever want anything more than I did, gold and good times and excitement. I guess I lived it day and night. Gold! Bread! Loot! I quit school to get it. Money was the only thing that was important in the whole world to me and I didn't care much how I got it. And I liked it so's I could buy fly juice and powder! Pot! Hashish! Now it's all changed. I don't want any of it. Why fly when there’s no place left to fly?" In celebration of Edward D. Wood Jr.'s 100th birthday, The Pink Smoke dives into one of the many pulp books the venerated "worst director of all time" churned out in the last decade of his life. In spite of being overstuffed with characters and subplots, Devil Girls from 1967 is also packed with the kind of half-clunky/half-poetic dialogue and potboiler action sequences that made his films so entertaining. Devil Girls tells the story of The Chicks, an all-female gang of juvenile delinquents involved in drug running within their kill-crazy gulf port town. Between jazzing on the big H, heisting soda shops and taking part in hazy orgies with the local thugs, these young troublemakers also arrange the murder of a schoolteacher and kill a parent or two. Which of them will see the light and follow Reverend Hank Steele's path to salvation? Which will end up under a boat propeller? Listen to this episode before you light another fix candle - your life might depend on it! Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Movie Kessler on X: twitter.com/MovieKessler The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

All Pink Smoke Podcast episodes are made available one week before their general release to Patreon subscribers. Subscribe to get early access & so much more: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke 1974 was a landmark year for film, a convergence of exciting international cinema and the original voices of New Hollywood that still resonates 50 years later. In our new series we invite a different guest for each episode to choose a 1974 movie to talk about, ranging from giant blockbusters to minor cult curios and everything else in between. Falling somewhere between his more restrained films about Elgar and Delius and his untamed biopics of Strauss and Liszt, in 1974 Ken Russell released a portrait of Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer Gustav Mahler and his silently suffering spouse Alma. We welcome back Russell's wife and collaborator Lisi Tribble Russell, who shares her insights on this low-key masterpiece and memories of her friendship with its star, the wonderful Georgina Hale. The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas” Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke

All Pink Smoke Podcast episodes are made available one week before their general release to Patreon subscribers. Subscribe to get early access & so much more: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke A dead body! A trainful of suspicious movie stars! Real authentic exotic locations! Sidney Lumet's all-star adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express is the ultimate comfort movie for mystery aficionados and fans of ritzy, old-fashioned Hollywood productions alike. Melanie Daniels of the Cinema Parlor Podcast is both, which makes her the ideal guest to discuss the performances of the movie's top-notch cast, the eclecticism of Lumet's filmography and how solidly Hercule Poirot's cases would hold up in court. 1974 was a landmark year for film, a convergence of exciting international cinema and the original voices of New Hollywood that still resonates 50 years later. In our new series we invite a different guest for each episode to choose a 1974 movie to talk about, ranging from giant blockbusters to minor cult curios and everything else in between. Melanie Daniels on Twitter: twittter.com/plasticwerewolf Cinema Parlor Podcast: twitter.com/cinemaparlor The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Movie Kessler on Twitter: twitter.com/MovieKessler The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"