283. 'Dog Day Afternoon' (1975) Part 2: The Real Story
Release Date: 05/12/2026
301. 'Friday The 13th' (1980)
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Would you believe I've never actually seen Friday The 13th before? I surprised even myself with this realization. Since the Peacock prequel series Crystal Lake has become the highest-rated F13 spinoff in the franchise's history, and is omnipresent on social media in a blanket marketing campaign rivaling Crystal Lake in size and depth...I decided to wade in tentatively. What emerged was a nuanced appreciation for the film's deft stitching-together of the horror and film tropes that inspired it, and a confused awareness that Pamela Vorhees, and not Jason, is the real star...
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300. Fame (1980) & The Lives of Performers
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Episode 300: The Lives of Performers. I followed a line from Fame to the documentaries Every Little Step and Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened. Together, they cover so many of the joys and challenges of pursuing a life onstage, and present compelling and hard-won perspectives about the work’s peculiar and demanding mix of talent, luck on the audition day, and self-belief in the face of a thousand no’s to every yes. It was @bradcalebkane who suggested Fame as an episode. While revisiting the film, I learned its origin story: In 1976, talent manager David De Silva saw A Chorus...
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299. Bearer Bonds & Movie Plots 1967-1995
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"I dare you to do an episode about bearer bonds!" -Fraser Rice, Host, 'Wealth Actually' Podcast CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! Many thanks to my guest, for her insightful, funny, and (very important for a guy who counts on his fingers) easy-to-understand bearer bond background. You can read her excellent piece on the history of bearer bonds Also, I've changed the name of the podcast. More on that in a future episode.
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298. Die Hard (1988)
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In this installment of Sacred Cows, I take a fresh and possibly first look at 'Die Hard', John McTiernan's action classic that I can't remember if I ever actually saw before. It turns out there is plenty of subversive stuff going on beneath all the action, and it's no wonder that the film did such boffo box office...and also all the more disappointing that it went on to spawn such apparently uninspired sequels; something all the more ironic given the original film's general distaste for Capitalism, greed, and middle-manager icompetence. It ALSO turns out that the love story at the...
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297. Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
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SEQUELS... In this episode, I take a look at one of the most infamous film debacles of all time: John Boorman's ill-advised, poorly conceived, crowd-displeasing follow-up to one of the greatest and most popular horror films ever made. How could it go wrong? From the start, throughout, and even after release. Let me count the ways. Also, a bit on our current moment of performative reclamation of movies that are just demonstrably awful. Resist!
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296. Michael Keaton, Glenn Close & Robert Duvall in 'The Paper' (1994)
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One of the great newspaper movies, a great NYC location movie, a great set-dressing movie, a great acting movie...on and on. The Paper deserves more recognition; it's aged particularly well as a love letter to and from a very particular time in the media business.
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295. Dolly Parton & UK Crime Show Recs
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Summer's rapidly ending and it's time to get back to the FCAC rhythm and routine. Some thoughts on the passing of Dolly Parton and some UK crime shows I've been watching of late, notably the Apple TV series 'Criminal Record'.
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294. 'Crossing Delancey' (1988)
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Joan Micklin Silver's 1988 NYC love-letter/romantic comedy Crossing Delancey is one of the superlative NYC films of all time. And watching it today, it's hard not to mourn the loss of the sense of collective experience as New Yorkers she puts onscreen, given our current situation in the City of so much divisive rhetoric and violence. And this film righteously upends the conventions of its genre and allows a fantastic collage of actors to shine in roles as notable for their refusal to stereotype as they are for their humor and depth of feeling.
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293. Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' (2026)
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Go and see 'The Odyssey' in the biggest and best theater you can. You won't regret it. A rollicking great epic cinematic event. Historian Tom Holland interviews Actor Tom Holland on The Rest Is History does (the poem).
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292. Robert Redford in 'The Candidate' (1972)
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Michael Ritchie and Redford's still-searingly satiric and spot-on takedown of political operatives and image crafting, peddling, and pandering in the modern campaign-industrial complex speaks louder than ever, given recent events in our body politic.
info_outlineIn the second of my two-parter on Dog Day Afternoon, we get out of the fictional universe of the film and explore the real people behind the characters shown onscreen.
John Wojtowicz' life proved truly stranger and more depressingly pedestrian than fiction. So much so that he preferred the fictional version of himself and performed that role for the rest of his life after being released from prison in 1978 until his death in 2006.
The LIFE Magazine article that caught the attention of Pacino's producer and manager.
A very good jailhouse interview with John Wojtowicz from the Village Voice's Cliff Jahr.
The excellent documentary Based on a True Story: Dog Day Afternoon by the Dutch filmmaker Walter Stokman.
The documentary that covers more of the end of John's life, The Dog.
Pierre Huyghe's installation video art piece Third Memory, an indispensable part of understanding memory, film, and the roles we perform.
I didn't get to this in the podcast but here's an unpublished essay John wrote to the NY Times reviewing the film.
1978 Washington Post profile of John, freshly out of prison.