Episodios

  • Special Report: When the Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor

    Special Report: When the Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor
    Apr 7 2026
    Released in 1978 and directed by John Landis, National Lampoon's Animal House follows the anarchic members of Delta House fraternity at Faber College as they wage war against pompous Dean Wormer (John Vernon) and the rival Omega House. Written by Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney, and Chris Miller, and starring John Belushi as the legendary John "Bluto" Blutarsky, the film became one of the highest-grossing comedies of its era and helped launch the modern R-rated comedy.

    Jeff Nelligan's satirical new book When the Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor: Animal House in Western Intellectual Thought subjects the film to mock-scholarly analysis, taking its title from Bluto's historically garbled motivational speech. Casting Animal House as a Homeric odyssey and a meditation on society's moral impulse, Nelligan lampoons academic pretension while celebrating a comedy that has embedded itself permanently in American culture. Nelligan is a Washington, D.C. public affairs executive, Army veteran, and author of several previous books on parenting and political life. Mike talks with him about the film's enduring legacy and the making of the book.

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    28 m
  • Special Report: Bryan Parker on Scarpetta (2026)

    Special Report: Bryan Parker on Scarpetta (2026)
    Apr 6 2026
    Mike talks with Sound Designer Bryan Parker about his work from his early days on Reality TV to his current jobs on The Pitt and Scarpetta. Parker describes how he works with his peers and creative partners to create the best experience via his craft.

    Follow Bryan on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/bryanvanbryan

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    39 m
  • Special Report: Sonny Atkins on undertone (2025)

    Special Report: Sonny Atkins on undertone (2025)
    Apr 3 2026
    Evy (Nina Kiri) hosts a paranormal podcast from her childhood home, where she has returned to care for her dying mother. A skeptic to her co-host Justin's (Adam DiMarco) true believer, she keeps the supernatural at arm's length — until anonymous recordings begin arriving: a married couple, their home filled with strange noises, their lives unraveling. As Evy listens, the distance between their story and her own begins to collapse.

    Mike talks with editor Sonny Atkins about shaping a horror film built around sound, the discipline required to cut a story told almost entirely in audio, and what it means to edit your first feature.

    Learn more about Sonny at https://www.slatkins.com/

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    24 m
  • Episode 793: The Good Fairy (1935)

    Episode 793: The Good Fairy (1935)
    Apr 2 2026
    Adapted by Preston Sturges from Ferenc Molnár's play and directed by William Wyler, The Good Fairy (1935) is a screwball fairy tale built on mistaken identities, comic misfortune, and the peculiar moral logic of someone who genuinely wants to do good but hasn't quite figured out how the world works.

    Luisa (Margaret Sullavan) has grown up knowing nothing of the world outside the orphanage walls. When she's finally released into Budapest society, she proves as well-meaning as she is naïve — and as prone to catastrophe as she is to kindness. A chance encounter with the wealthy and lecherous Konrad (Frank Morgan) sets off a chain of complications, chief among them the lie that she's already married. The problem is that she isn't, but she soon will be — to a bookish, bearded lawyer named Dr. Sporum (Herbert Marshall) who has no idea any of this is happening.

    The film showcases the range of Margaret Sullavan's screen presence — radiant and funny and heartbreaking in equal measure — alongside Frank Morgan's gloriously stammering comic turn.

    The episode also looks at the 1947 remake I'll Be Yours, starring Deanna Durbin, and the 1951 Broadway musical adaptation Make a Wish, with music by Hugh Martin and a book co-written by Sturges and Abe Burrows.

    Mike talks with co-hosts Rahne Alexander and Federico Bertolini about Molnár, Wyler, Sturges, and the many lives of a very good fairy.


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    1 h y 45 m
  • Special Report: The Serpent's Skin (2025)

    Special Report: The Serpent's Skin (2025)
    Apr 3 2026
    Alice Maio Mackay made her first feature film at 16. By 20, she had six. The latest, The Serpent's Skin, follows Anna, a young trans woman who flees her transphobic hometown and falls for Gen, a goth tattoo artist with a gift for the supernatural.

    Mike talks with Mackay about the making of the film, her approach to genre filmmaking, and what drives one of the most prolific young voices in independent cinema.

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    18 m
  • Episode 794: Fucktoys (2025)

    Episode 794: Fucktoys (2025)
    Mar 31 2026
    Mike is joined by Payton McCarty-Simas and Rob St. Mary to dig into Fucktoys, the 2025 SXSW Special Jury Award winner written, directed by, and starring Annapurna Sriram. Sriram plays AP, a sex worker adrift in Trashtown — a candy-colored dystopia of industrial decay and pastel skies — after a swamp-dwelling tarot reader tells her a curse can be lifted for a thousand dollars and the sacrifice of a baby lamb. What follows is a picaresque night of surreal encounters, escalating absurdity, and a collision of intimacy, exploitation, and class in a pre-millennium alternate universe.

    The gang explores the film's John Waters–adjacent sensibility and its candy-coated production design, debating whether the aggressive tonal shifts and theatrical performances sharpen the film's satirical edge or tip into pure indulgence. They also dig into what the curse might actually represent, how Sriram's central performance holds the chaos together, and where Fucktoys fits within a lineage of underground feminist and transgressive cinema.

    Also featured is an interview with writer/director/star Annapurna Sriram.


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    1 h y 42 m
  • Episode 792: Exposure 36 (2022)

    Episode 792: Exposure 36 (2022)
    Apr 1 2026
    Mike and Ben Buckingham take a look at Exposure 36, the 2022 film written and directed by Mackenzie G. Mauro. Charles Oudo stars as Cam, a photographer spending the last three days on Earth selling drugs and wandering the streets of New York City, encountering a colorful cast of characters along the way.

    The apocalypse here is background noise rather than spectacle — a quiet, meditative film that doubles as something of a Rorschach test, with different viewers latching onto entirely different aspects of the story. Mike and Ben dig into the episodic, wandering narrative, the film's mysterious blue figures, its use of photography as a distancing mechanism, and the way the story shifts from meditative sci-fi into neo-noir thriller territory before it's all over. Mauro joins the show to discuss the film.

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    1 h y 56 m
  • Special Report: Dead, White & Blue (2025)

    Special Report: Dead, White & Blue (2025)
    Mar 30 2026
    Mike sits down with filmmaker and archivist Mike Davis to discuss Dead, White & Blue — a gleefully subversive political satire assembled entirely from recycled public domain footage.

    Davis, whose previous "green movies" include Sex Galaxy and President Wolfman, sifted through more than 300 films — predominantly training and educational films produced by the U.S. government, military, and law enforcement — to construct a comedy about the KKK's use of a shrink ray to retrieve an incriminating bullet from the body of a Black man shot by a racist white cop, while an Atlanta mayor goes missing and the U.S. military closes in. The result is a film that plays like found footage as social X-ray, with flat-affect dubbing, sly sight gags, and a retro visual texture that doubles as pointed commentary.

    Mike and Davis dig into the art and obsession of the "green movie" — a tradition running from J-Men Forever to Kung Pow! Enter the Fist — and what it takes to build a coherent (or deliberately incoherent) narrative from hundreds of forgotten films. They discuss the particular satirical charge of repurposing government and law enforcement footage, why race relations make for such rich — and risky — comedic territory, and what drives a filmmaker to spend years hunting through public domain archives instead of just making a movie the normal way.

    Find out more at https://stag-films.com/

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    36 m