The Pink Smoke podcast

The Pink Smoke
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Aug 5, 2025 • 1h 6min

1974: Fifty Years Later / Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

Last year, the Pink Smoke Podcast created a series called 1974: 50 Years Later, each episode featuring a different guest who chose a 1974 movie to talk about, ranging from giant blockbusters to minor cult curios and everything else in between. But since all our guests are cool outsiders with eccentric tastes, most of them stayed away from the most iconic movies of that fabled cinematic year, eschewing The Godfather Part II in favor of forgotten TV movies and experimental horror films. While that was just fine with us, we decided it might be a good idea to back up and cover some of the acknowledged classics of 1974, starting with Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. The first of four projects released by the ultra-prolific auteur (two theatrical, two for TV), Ali tells the tale of a 60-year-old window cleaner who falls in love with a Moroccan Gastarbeiter half her age, much to the disapproval of their contemporaries. One of the enfant terrible's more gentle movies, it's still populated by his lovably repellent characters in whom Fassbinder seeks to excavate some humanity in a miserable post-war West German society. We discuss the director's destructive creativity, how his worldview is more complicated than those of directors with whom he's often connected (Douglas Sirk and Ken Loach fans maybe give this one a miss) and how his most endearing and connective theme is loneliness. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / "Tea for Two" Outro music: Marcus Pinn / "Vegas"
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Jul 22, 2025 • 1h 3min

Ep. 154: The Prophecy

Host Martin Kessler finds himself in the middle of an angelic civil war, complete with soul-sucking seraphims, ritual exorcism, apocalyptic implications and an intervention from Lucifer himself, as he opens the ancient book (or should it be a scroll?) on Gregory Widen's 1995 theological thriller The Prophecy. Luckily, he's able to enlist first-time Pink Smoke guest Matthias van der Roest and fan favorite John Arminio to confront Christopher Walken's celestial terminator Archangel Gabriel before he turns heaven into hell. Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com Movie Kessler on X: twitter.com/MovieKessler John Arminio on X: twitter.com/QuasarSniffer Popcorn Eschaton! soundcloud.com/zebras-in-america/popcorn-eschaton-60-dead-man Matthias van der Roest on X: twitter.com/MattRSays The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / "Tea for Two" Outro music: Marcus Pinn / "Vegas"
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Jul 19, 2025 • 49min

Ep. 26 Peterloo

Host John Cribbs is joined on the latest episode of The Pink Smoke podcast by Martin Kessler of Flixwise: Outpost Canada to discuss Mike Leigh's latest film, Peterloo. A historical drama looking at the semi-forgotten massacre at St. Peter's field in 1819, the film sees Manchester-ite Leigh returning to his home turf and somewhat unfamiliar artistic territory. With Vera Drake, Topsy-Turvy and Mr. Turner, historical dramas aren't precisely strange terrain for Leigh, so what makes Peterloo feel like the filmmaker has stepped outside of himself?
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Jul 19, 2025 • 1h 4min

Ep. 39 American Dharma

Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg discuss the legendary documentarian Errol Morris' latest film AMERICAN DHARMA, an extended interview with Steve Bannon (the architect of Donald Trump's successful 2016 presidential campaign). It's another typical Morris study of self-deception, specious reasoning & the strange intersections of pop cultural & real life. The podcast discussion also addresses the issues of deplatforming, how the film fits alongside FOG OF WAR & THE UNKNOWN KNOWN and the politics of fear. 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.
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Jul 19, 2025 • 1h 42min

Ep. 54 Eastwood Double Feature

For Clint Eastwood’s 90th birthday, hosts Christopher Funderburg and John Cribbs have each selected one of the actor/director’s films to discuss. This Eastwood Double Feature looks at Don Siegel’s The Beguiled and Eastwood’s own Unforgiven, a pair of films that illustrate why the star-auteur achieved his iconic status while remaining hard to pin down as an artist. The intense hothouse sexual politics of The Beguiled and the irony-soaked destruction (and rebuilding) of myths found in Unforgiven serve as a jumping off point to exploring Eastwood’s cinematic legacy, philosophies and elusive politics. It’s an unflinching discussion of one of cinema’s most towering, embattled, and controversial figures. 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.
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Jul 2, 2025 • 3h 29min

Ep. 153 Earp Adjacent Westerns

The myth of Wyatt Earp ignited at the ascent of cinema, his alleged Old West exploits embellished on celluloid during the Silent Era so that he was a full-fledged American legend come the golden age of Hollywood. Earp westerns were such an established staple that Law and Order, the first movie to star a surrogate Wyatt, was already out in 1932. All the familiar elements were there - Tombstone, Doc Holliday, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral - but the names of the players were different. From fairly straight biographical retellings including The Arizonian and Dodge City to radical revisions like Sam Fuller's Forty Guns and Edward Dmytryk's Warlock, the "Wyatt Earp movie without Wyatt Earp" has developed into an obscure but crowded subgenre. Who could identify such a subgenre but artist/Old West historian David Lambert, returning to The Pink Smoke to share his thoughts on the cinematic legacy of the killin'est peace officer who ever lived. Why so many thinly-veiled adaptations of the gunfighter's printed legend? How do they stack up next to the official versions, like John Ford's My Darling Clementine? Come for a nice long dive into these and other inquiries, stay for Lambert's killer Andy Devine impression. Hey! Look! It's our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: x.com/thepinksmoke John Cribbs on X: x.com/thelastmachine David Lambert on X: x.com/DavidLambertArt
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Feb 20, 2025 • 2h 15min

Ep. 152 Major Dune-dee

Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke Sam Peckinpah and David Lynch, two of the most recognized directors of their day, were each in their mid-30's when they embarked on their third feature film: an epic studio movie to be shot in Mexico (headquartered at Estudio Churubusco). In both cases, the resulting film was a commercial disappointment and a critical disaster. What went wrong? Who's fault was it? Do these maligned movies deserve reappraisal?In tribute to the legendary Sam Peckinpah's 100th birthday and the recent passing of the great David Lynch, the Pink Smoke has recruited artist David Lambert and filmmaker Martin Kessler to revisit these two films. Lambert takes us through the history of Peckinpah's 1965 debacle Major Dundee, including how star Charlton Heston almost murdered his hellfire director, while Kessler walks us through the production of 1984's infamously derided adaptation of Dune.  Exclusive "Major Dune-dee" art by David Lambert. Hey! Look! It's our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: x.com/thepinksmoke John Cribbs on X: x.com/thelastmachine David Lambert on X: x.com/DavidLambertArt Martin Kessler on X: x.com/MovieKessler
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Dec 31, 2024 • 1h 20min

1974: Fifty Years Later / A Wife To Be Sacrificed & Castle Of Sand

Support our Patreon: 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. The early 70's was a particularly transitional period for Japanese cinema in which major stars and directors found themselves shut out by the studios while the "Pinku eiga" era, in which celluloid sex and violence ran rampant, was on the rise. Surviving this shift in the landscape, director Yoshitaro Nomura, leading man Tetsuro Tamba and legendary screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto collaborated on the police procedural The Castle of Sand. On the other end of the spectrum was audacious auteur Masaru Konuma and his muse Naomi Tani who in 1974 teamed up for two movies including the BDSM melodrama Wife to Be Sacrificed, featuring "perhaps the most beautifully photographed flogging scene ever." Join us for this bizarre double feature programmed by Daniel Castro, writer and co-founder of the Colombian online film criticism portal Filmigrana, in which we discuss the state of Japanese cinema in the 70's, the pushing of boundaries versus the tugging of the heart, and the thin line between art and pornography. Hey! Look! It's our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”
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Dec 24, 2024 • 1h 14min

1974: Fifty Years Later / Female Trouble

Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke Who better to spend the holidays with than rebellious hair hopper Dawn Davenport, who goes from pinning her screaming mother under a Christmas tree for failing to provide the desired gift of Cha Cha heels to becoming the brightest star to light up the electric chair. Kate Wilkiinson returns to talk about the *most* John Waters movie ever made, his 1974 cult classic that puts his favorite obsessions of crime, fame and grotesque glamour center stage. Is there anything more lovable than a hideous Baltimore accent? Can anyone deny the sex appeal of Edith Massey sewn into a tight leather S & M outfit? And is there something about all this that's weirdly wholesome? 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. Wig Wurq on Tumblr: www.wigwurq.tumblr.com/ Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”
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Dec 17, 2024 • 1h 15min

PSP 1974 The White Dawn

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. We start winding down the series with a great companion piece to our past episodes on "wilderness adventure" classics Dersu Uzala and Quest for Fire. Filmmaker Jeremy Workman returns to discuss Philip Kaufman's The White Dawn, the story of three whalers who become stranded in the Northern Arctic and end up integrating with an Inuit tribe. There's a lot to talk about, from Kaufman's status as possibly the most underrated of 70's directors to Michael Chapman's naturalistic photography, the film's inspired use of diegetic music, authentic regional language and frozen landscapes, and how this movie is definitely not Louis Malle's Black Moon. Jeremy Workman on social media @jeremyworkman on Twitter Jeremy Workman's website https://jeremyworkman.com/ Website for Secret Mall Apartment secretmallapartment.com Support our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on X: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on X: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on X: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”

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