Watch With Jen - S3: E15 - Leo McCarey with Ted Griffin

This week, it was a true honor to welcome a very special guest that I recently made the acquaintance of following our episode dedicated to FX's superb 2010 series TERRIERS. He's the first of two individuals related to the show whom you'll hear this season – series star Donal Logue is also forthcoming – but first up we have the show's creator and executive producer, along with the writer and director of two episodes, it's the great Ted Griffin.

A terrific screenwriter whose credits include RAVENOUS, OCEAN'S ELEVEN, and MATCHSTICK MEN (which he co-wrote with Nicholas Griffin), additionally, he is the producer of such Oscar-nominated films as UP IN THE AIR and THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, as well as one of my pandemic TV favorites, the Emmy nominated Netflix series PRETEND IT'S A CITY. Working alongside Martin Scorsese on some of the titles mentioned earlier, Ted also wrote two Scorsese-directed advertisements: the CLIO award-winning THE KEY TO RESERVA and STREET OF DREAMS.

Joining me to discuss the 1930s and '40s heyday of filmmaker Leo McCarey, who often gets overlooked in conversations that so often focus only on contemporaries like Lubitsch and Capra, in this wide-ranging conversation, we focus on the movies DUCK SOUP, MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW, THE AWFUL TRUTH, LOVE AFFAIR, and GOING MY WAY. Also revealing the way that his own family history links up with McCarey's as the grandson of director William A. Seiter as well as his own insights as a filmmaker and shout-outs to his gifted wife Sutton Foster, this episode is a must for classic movie lovers, in particular.

Logo: Kate Gabrielle (KateGabrielle.com)

Theme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music Archive

Originally Posted on Patreon (4/9/22) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/64931833