The Pink Smoke podcast

On the inaugural episode of The Pink Smoke podcast, we tackle Michael Haneke's semi-sequel to Amour & discuss whether the filmmaker is entering a new phase of his career. Join hosts Christopher Funderburg & John Cribbs as they enter a new phase of their professional lives. One in which they have a podcast. The Pink Smoke site: http://www.thepinksmoke.com/ The Pink Smoke on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepinksmoke Theme music by Marcus Pinn of Pinnland Empire.

"The rat had taken some pleasure in attacking a member of the human race, one with the same smell as the big ones." We’re joined by regular guest & noted animal-lover Wendy Mays to discuss Patricia Highsmith’s THE ANIMAL-LOVER’S BOOK OF BEASTLY MURDER! This collection of short stories follows a series of creatures from elephant to cat to rat to cockroach that find themselves wrapped up in murder, robbery and all manner of unsettling Highsmithian mayhem. Previously having joined us to discuss the novels FERAL and PET SEMATARY, Mays returns to dig into these moral tales about animals encountering the worst of humanity has to offer. The stories, ranging in tone from sentimental to blackly comic, represent Highsmith on a strange and experimental artistic tangent. Join us to find out about the bravest rat in Venice, the greediest pig in France and the cat burglar that was actually a monkey. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Wendy Mays on Twitter: https://twitter.com/meowmays The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

Of all the overlooked, misunderstood films directed by Tobe Hooper, Spontaneous Combustion remains one of the most overlooked and misunderstood. There are few viewing experiences as shocking and tragically poetic as watching human nuclear meltdown Brad Dourif expel flames from his body as smoke pours out of him like the tip of a lit cigar. On this episode, hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg invite Stan Giesea, author of Charred Remains - an account of his time on the set of Spontaneous Combustion - to talk about his experience behind-the-scenes of the most genuinely weird and fascinating metaphysical thrillers ever produced. They discuss what makes this movie, a tale of corruption and individual cataclysm yet a love story at its core, an essential part of the late master's work. Support our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Stan Giesea on Twitter: twitter.com/stangiesea The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

It was inevitable that our decade-spanning reappraisal of the James Bond franchise would hit the Pierce Brosnan period, but rather than return to die another day host John Cribbs and special guest John Arminio go full-tilt into all four films running from 1995 to 2002. Following Bond's evolution in an era of megalomaniacal media moguls, invisible cars and Dr. Christmas Jones, they question whether the charismatic Irishman ever really found his footing as the fabled spy or if his efforts were simply not enough. Topics covered as Cribbs & Arminio bungee jump into each film include the celebrated N64 Goldeneye video game, Donald E. Westlake's unproduced Bond script, the bizarre parting sentiment of Desmond Llewelyn's Q and striking contrast in quality between the first and second half of Brosnan's final 007 adventure. Do these movies really mark the low ebb of the series, or are there things to love about the Pierce years? And don’t fail in your duty to check out our previous Bond episodes: Bond in the 80s I: http://thepinksmoke.com/PSP62Bondinthe80sI.html Bond in the 80s II: http://thepinksmoke.com/PSP63Bondinthe80sII.html Bond in the 70s: soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-564624820/psp-ep58-james-bond-in-the-70 spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2t6MQIIbFBKzzKfdtZaQ9x apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-58-james-bond-in-the-70s/id1529803112?i=1000489551247 Bond in the 60s: soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-564624820/psp-ep52-james-bond-in-the-60s spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3g6UHop4amOmuBpljaxx3F apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-52-james-bond-in-the-60s/id1529803112?i=1000506773799 The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke John Arminio on Twitter: twitter.com/QuasarSniffer John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

Hosts John Cribbs and Christopher Funderburg discuss Patricia Highsmith’s 1960 crime novel, This Sweet Sickness. The novel follows a stalker who constructs a perfect marriage in his mind and goes to horrifying extremes to make that vision of domestic bliss a reality. It’s a book about the psychosis of a romantic worldview, about the insanity lurking behind the ideas of a One True Love. 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.

Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg sit down to pay tribute to one of the greatest screenwriters who ever lived, Jean-Claude Carrière. When Carrière recently passed away the hosts decided to pick a handful of the writer’s films to discuss as a way of exploring his long and incredibly varied career. From his career-defining work with Luis Buñuel to his long-running associations with filmmakers including Miloš Forman & Pierre Étaix to his more off-beat one-off projects, few screenwriters were as fearless & unpredictable. Carrière’s career began in the early 60’s & spanned decades - he kept working right up until the end, with screen credits as recently as 2019. This is our remembrance of the novelist, ghost-writer, conversationalist, adapter and screenwriter who collaborated with everyone from Umberto Eco to Nagisa Ōshima to the Dalai Lama. Rest in peace, Carrière. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

“Who speaks of realism here?” This is it: our mammoth exploration of the work of Japanese iconoclast Seijun Suzuki. Hosts Christopher Funderburg & John Cribbs are joined by poster illustrator and peerless cinephile Tony Stella to examine the legendarily idiosyncratic and uncontrollable director. From Suzuki’s start as an impossibly lazy assistant director at Shochiku to his his period as a relentlessly prolific genre filmmaker at Nikkatsu to his second act as an esteemed independent artist. His films long-suppressed by Nikkatsu and unknown outside of his native country, Suzuki’s reputation took off in America in the 90s when filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch sang his praises (Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog is famously an extended homage to Suzuki’s career-breaking Branded to Kill); after a few tumultuous decades, Suzuki finally achieved the international renown he deserved. Join us as we follow the director’s journey, beat by beat, film by film; from his early “youth in revolt” films like Everything Goes Wrong to his wild genre experiments like Youth of the Beast & Tokyo Drifter to his notorious “flesh trilogy” that caps off his early career with the brilliant Carmen from Kawachi. We go after it all: the Taisho trilogy, his Lupin III anime, his golf comedy, his late-period curtain call. It’s here, the most comprehensive podcast study of a filmmaker like no other. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Tony Stella on Twitter: twitter.com/studiotstella Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

Host John Cribbs is joined by John Arminio to discuss the James Bond films of the 60s. Looking at what many fans consider the series’ untouchable golden age, Cribbs & Arminio go film by film through every cinematic portrayal of Bond in the decade, not even skipping over 1967’s Casino Royale! Starting with Dr. No and Ursula Andress (as iconic as Venus de Milo) emerging from the ocean, touching on the duo’s consensus for the best film in the series, and capping off the conversation with a discussion of the series’ transition away from lead actor Sean Connery to George Lazenby with the undervalued On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Cribbs & Arminio drill down into what makes that era of Bond films so irresistible! 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 John Arminio on Twitter:
 twitter.com/QuasarSniffer Intro & outro music by Marcus Pinn of Pinnland Empire.

On this month's pulp fiction episode, Funderburg & Cribbs discussed former cop Joseph Wambaugh's brutal, depressing & hilarious Hollywood conspiracy thriller, The Glitter Dome. It's a masterpiece of the "sleazy cop" genre that depicts a world of casual racism, violence, and depravity in a chaotic story about cops wildly failing to live up their duty.

“Most great art has been commission work. Bernini didn’t sit around making statues because he liked making statues, he did it because Pope So-and-so wanted a bust of himself on his elaborate tomb… Rembrandt, I’m sure, would’ve been happier doing something other than painting fat businessmen most of his life.” No name is as synonymous with the art of novelization as “Alan Dean Foster,” known for his work reverse engineering novels out of films like The Thing, Alien and, most of all, Star Wars. We’re joined by the prolific sci-fi author to discuss his storied career - the novelizations, continuation novels and original work - in the context of his recent dispute with the Disney corporation over unpaid royalties after their acquisition of Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox. We start at the beginning with his adaptation of a crummy Italian gender-swapped Tarzan rip-off before the conversation explores everything from when Frank Frazetta’s artwork suggests stories far more compelling than the source they’re portraying, why world-building in novelistic writing is the same in original stories or adaptations, and how he came to write the first Star Wars expanded universe novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (which spawned an entire ecosystem of ancillary material.) Foster is a legend in his field and this discussion explores his crucial role in modern pop culture - and why the Disney company’s ambivalence about paying him the royalty money he’s unquestionably owed is so repellent in a larger context that extends beyond Foster himself. The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”