The Pink Smoke podcast

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. Anyone familiar with actor Marjoe Gortner's background as a child evangelist preacher (and his later milking of said image as depicted in the Oscar-winning 1972 documentary Marjoe) will know he often commanded his congregation to pray. But is there any prayer that could help the Wildcats? Anthony King - husband, father, beer leaguer, hockey player and film writer - is also a huge fan of Marjoe Gortner, and he's here to discuss the former minister's first full length film, Pray for the Wildcats, which debuted on ABC in January of 1974. A murderer's row of television personalities make up the titular squad: Mayberry's own Andy Griffith, Robert Reed of the Brady Bunch and William Shatner fresh off the USS Enterprise are joined by Marjoe on a dirtbike trip to the Baja California desert. Desperate to impress Griffith's sociopathic business exec, the three ad execs bring along plenty of personal baggage on a trip fraught with resentment and failure that ultimately ends in death. It's a terminally square yet truly strange and somewhat obscure TV movie that we're glad Anthony unearthed for us to survey. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Anthony King on X: x.com/akdonelly John Cribbs on X: x.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on X: x.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: x.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

All episodes are made available to Patreon subscribers, the most determined and unsparing of all audiences, one week before their general release. {www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke} The Cannes Film Festival, May 1994. Two independent American crime films featuring guns, gangsters, torture, redemption, stylized artificial dialogue, quirky comedy, a cool soundtrack, a main character who dies and is resurrected and a criminal's kept woman with an Anna Karina haircut made their debut at the southern tip of France. One of them went on to conquer the world and become one of the most beloved and imitated films of the ensuing 30 years. The other faded into obscurity and is barely brought up three decades later. The films are Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Hal Hartley's Amateur, and their divergent paths clearly shifted the cultural space of American independent cinema moving forward. We welcome back Pinnland Empire guru Marcus Pinn (like us, a teenage budding cinephile in the mid-90's) to talk about these two films, how they were shaped by the climate of late 80's/early 90's indie cinema, their impact and their legacy. Despite Hartley's deep meaningful contemplations proving no match for Tarantino's sheer exuberance, these are two films that were meaningful to all three of us, so we also get pretty heavily into some formative personal history and lament the slow death of a truly specific kind of American movie. Who's the real amateur here? Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Marcus Pinn on Twitter: twitter.com/PINNLAND_EMPIRE The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg 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. One of the more neglected films of the year was The Education of Sonny Carson, the coming-of-age tale of an inner city kid who moves from life with a street gang to fighting for survival during a stretch in prison. Directed by The Mack's Michael Campus and adapted by civil rights activist Sonny Carson from his autobiography, the film packs a more brutal punch than any movie from its time yet barely gets mentioned these days. Marcus Pinn returns to discuss the film's curiously underwhelming reputation despite its decades-long legacy through hip hop music and influence on the next 50 years of cinema. Even with a messy aesthetic and muddled narrative, Campus' film is an unquestionably powerful artwork that captures individual struggle and the cruel reality of life in Bedford-Stuyvesant with the use of real locations and real Brooklyn gangs. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke 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. Despite the domination of Coppolas, Polanskis and Cassaveteses, 1974 really belonged to Mel Brooks. Nearly 50 at the time, the legendary comedy writer had risen from his Borscht Belt origins to release two classic films in one year, 1974's #1 box office smash Blazing Saddles and trailing all the way back at #4 highest grossing picture Young Frankenstein. While both films became instant perennial favorite parodies of then out-of-style genres, Young Frankenstein is a true love letter to the Universal Monster movies of yore and a masterfully-made horror flick that just happens to have jokes in it. We welcome back Pink Smoke favorite and wig expert Kate Wilkinson to join our chorus of praise for co-writer Gene Wilder as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (sorry, Fronk-en-steen), Marty Feldman as Eye-gor, Teri Garr as Inga, Cloris Leachman as Frau Blücher, Madeline Kahn as Elizabeth, Kenneth Mars as Inspector Kemp, recent Oscar-winner Gene Hackman as the Blind Man and true 70's superstar Peter Boyle as The Monster - each performer at the absolute top of of their game. We discuss the film's origins being deeper than the iconic 1931 James Whale movie, whether this is more a triumph for Brooks (who was banned from casting himself) or Wilder (it was his baby) and how it fit into the comedy mindset of the mid-70's. Wig Wurq on Tumblr: https://wigwurq.tumblr.com/ Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

A Pink Smoke tradition resurrected: our once annual Summer Movie Blockbuster Preview Extravaganza returns from the dead as we train a beady and judgmental eye on all that Hollywood has to offer over an increasingly marginalized and marginal summer blockbuster season. Even if audiences no longer flock (in droves!) to big budget star-studded special effects spectaculars the way they used to, it’s still worth considering what the immediate future holds for le cinema du multiplex. Hosts John Cribbs, Martin Kessler and Christopher Funderburg are joined by Pink Smoke copache Marcus Pinn to discuss Fall Guys, Deadpools, Borderlandies, the ways in which Howard Stern resembles Brandon Lee, under what circumstances you might be willing to watch Daddio, how much of a benefit of the doubt George Miller has earned and betraying the true essence of Garfield. It is essential listening for All True Cinephiles. As essential as A Quiet Place: Day One or Despicable Me 4. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Marcus Pinn on Twitter: twitter.com/PINNLAND_EMPIRE 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"

Join host Christopher Funderburg as he chats with screenwriter Tom Vaughan and critic Stephanie Crawford about the new Fallout TV series. They discuss adapting video games to TV, Fallout fandom, Walton Goggins' charm, and the perks of creating a bloody mess.

Episodes are made available to Patreon subscribers one week before their general release. {www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke} For the first episode of our new series 197:4 Fifty Years Later, we’re joined by the first guest ever to appear on the podcast, the peerless man of le cinema Brian Saur. The Pure Cinema and Just the Discs podcast impresario selected for our conversation to discuss one of the most maligned and neglected Best Picture nominees of all-time, the ne plus ultra of blockbuster disaster films, The Towering Inferno. Star-studded cast featuring Steve McQueen (at the height of his box office power), Paul Newman (coming off 1973’s Best Picture winner, The Sting), Fred Astaire (shamelessly nominated for Best Supporting Actor), William Holden & Faye Dunaway (together two years before Network), Jennifer Jones, Richard Chamberlain and too many others to name battle a high-rise blaze in a special effects extravaganza that puts the spectacle in “Outrageously Outsized Hollywood Spectacle.” We do our best to ignore the consistent presence of OJ Simpson and put the focus where it belongs: on Sterling Siliphant. We dig into the split-direction of disaster movie mastermind Irwin Allen and actor’s director John Guillermin, McQueen and Newman’s amazingly petty competition for screen-time, the utterly ridiculous Oscar the film did win, and why there should be more appreciation for Hollywood cinema doing what only Hollywood cinema can do. Stars, explosions, character actors, air-tight screenwriting and buckets of poured money into the blaze: join us in standing in awe of this monument to Hollywood blockbusterizing. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke Just the Discs podcast: https://justthediscs.libsyn.com/ Pure Cinema podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pure-cinema-podcast/id1204885502 The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

Episodes are made available to Patreon subscribers one week before their general release. {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. In this introductory episode, hosts Christopher Funderburg and John Cribbs discuss the idea behind the series and their relationship to movies from the year 1974. They go over the biggest films of the year: which were the most successful in terms of box office, critical success and long-ranging canonization? Why are these movies still relevant 50 years down the line? Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

In this episode, host Martin Kessler welcomes John Arminio of the Popcorn Eschaton! podcast to discuss Kevin Reynolds' underappreciated 1988 war film The Beast. Set during the second year of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, it follows a Soviet T-55 tank unit who lose their way in the mountains following a savage attack on a Pashtun village and the vengeful mujahideen soldiers tracking them, committed to destroying "the Beast."  Kessler and Arminio dig into this "holy grail of tank movies" and how it smartly deals with themes of revenge and mercy, the Islam faith, Pashtunwali, overcoming language barriers and humanizing both sides of a "rotten war." Popcorn Eschaton!: https://soundcloud.com/zebras-in-america/popcorn-eschaton-1 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 Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"

The Pink Smoke brigade is back to discuss the movies of 2023. Hosts Martin Kessler, John Cribbs and Christopher Funderburg look back on a year replete with above-average horror films, new works from tenured auteurs and theoretical physicists battling it out at the box office with living dolls. The conversation naturally digs into their personal favorites, including two animated masterpieces, a kaiju showpiece, a surprising amount of mainstream and direct-to-streaming releases, and a new bona fide classic from Brazil. 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 Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas"