Vol. 2, Episode 3: Vibing Into a Dreamscape

The opening lines of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight

Details, credits, errata: Our guest this week is Friend of the Pod Isaac Butler, journalist and cultural historian who has a new and very good book called The Method coming out in February; he would be grateful if you’re able to toss him a pre-order—he’s a terrific writer and you won’t regret it. He also hosts a podcast of his own, Working, at Slate. Check him out!

The movie we’re talking about is David Lowery’s The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, and Joel Edgerton. It’s still in theaters most places and rentable on Amazon Prime, among other services. We recommend the movie and we recommend against the novel coronavirus so we suggest you make an informed and responsible decision and beg you not to go to a movie theater if you haven’t had a vaccine. We love you and want you to live!

The image on the site this week is the opening lines of the poem on which the movie is based, from the Cotton Nero A.x manuscript, now at the British Library.

Our theme song is Louis Armstrong and His Hot 5’s Muskrat Ramble, made freely available by the Boston Public Library and audio engineering shop George Blood, LP through the Internet Archive. The Green Knight is copyright 2021 A24. Brief audio excerpts are used herein for purposes of review. All other material is copyright 2021 Sam Thielman and Alissa Wilkinson.

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Vol. 2, Episode 2: Painted Women Who Will Do Anything for Silver

THE PRODIGAL (1955) with Lyz Lenz

Wally Wood and Harvey Kurtzman’s “The Prodigious.” Via DC Comics.

Details, credits, errata: Our guest this week is the delightful Lyz Lenz, returning to watch another awkwardly erotic 1950’s Biblical epic with us. It’s a goofy one. Our film is The Prodigal, a notorious turkey that lost the studio a ton of money despite having the beautiful Lana Turner as a fertility priestess. It is, as you might imagine, “based on” the parable from the Gospels in only the loosest possible sense of that phrase. Please buy Lyz’s books! They’re good.

Our image is a gorgeous Wally Wood illustration from his lengthy parody of this film, “The Prodigious,” from MAD Magazine #26, published 1955, with text by Harvey Kurtzman. There aren’t any print reproductions of the issue but DC Comics put out a big Complete MAD on CD that has nice hi-res images of the early issues of the magazine. I’ve taken the liberty of reproducing it large enough here that the text can be read if you’d care to click on the image. It’s pretty funny

Our theme song is Louis Armstrong and His Hot 5’s Muskrat Ramble, made freely available by the Boston Public Library and audio engineering shop George Blood, LP through the Internet Archive. The Prodigal is copyright 1955 MGM. Brief audio excerpts are used herein for purposes of review. All other material is copyright 2021 Sam Thielman and Alissa Wilkinson.

This is a free episode! We’d love it if you subscribed!

Vol. 2, no. 1: Resting Pod Face

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS with Jeff VanderMeer

Detail, Invasion of the Body Snatchers cover, 1967. Painting by

Details, credits, errata: Welcome back! We took a break and now are thrilled to return to you with a new episode about Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake, and guest Jeff VanderMeer, short-story writer and novelist whose masterly book Annihilation got made into a terrific movie by Alex Garland and whose books Hummingbird Salamander and A Peculiar Peril are both very well-reviewed (and good!) and available at Midtown Reader signed and inscribed, should you so choose, by the author himself.

This movie has been made a few times! The original was made in 1956 by Don Siegel, two years after Jack Finney’s novel of the same name was published (our image on the website is a detail from the cover to the 1967 Dell edition). Finney revised the novel the year the Kaufman movie came out, and the story was officially adapted again in 1993, as Abel Ferrara’s Body Snatchers, and in 2007 as The Invasion. It’s also the basis for a fun and trashy Robert Rodriguez 1990’s high school flick called The Faculty.

Our theme song is Louis Armstrong and His Hot 5’s Muskrat Ramble, made freely available by the Boston Public Library and audio engineering shop George Blood, LP through the Internet Archive. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is copyright 1978 United Artists. Brief audio excerpts are used herein for purposes of review. All other material is copyright 2021 Sam Thielman and Alissa Wilkinson.

This is a free episode! We’d love it if you subscribed!