One Heat Minute Productions

ONE HEAT MINUTE is the podcast examining Michael Mann's 1995 L.A crime opus HEAT minute by minute. In this very special bonus episode, the only man (besides Michael Mann) to connect HEAT and L.A Takedown joins host Blake Howard to talk about his small and unforgettable role as Ralph, Xander Berkely. Blake and Xander discuss being in the orbit of Michael Mann and casting director Bonnie Timmerman since a guest-starring role on Miami Vice, illuminating Blake on the evolution of pilot “Hannah” into “L.A Takedown,” modelling his Waingro’s physicality on the infamous Hillside Strangler and even throws in a Pacino “SIDDOWN.”GUEST BIOXander BerkeleyXander's father was a painter and his mother a school teacher who sewed, providing him with costumes (his preference over toys). School plays and Community Theater were next. An experimental theater troupe in the area (which was an offshoot from Joseph Chaikin's Open Theater in New York) took Xander under their wing when he was 16. He credits this group for shaping him as both a person and an actor, committed to taking risks and remaining open to the unknown. Xander went to Hampshire College, the progressive brainchild of Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Amherst, and the University of Massachusetts. He would continue in the theater at Hampshire, studying and doing plays at each of the other schools, all of which were there in the area.A move to New York after college brought him access to private teachers from the Royal Academy of the Arts, the Moscow Arts Theater and HB Studios. Later in Los Angeles, Xander would spend time with Lee Strasberg at The Actor's Studio during the last years of his life.Xander worked in Regional and Repertory Theaters in addition to off-Broadway while living in New York but, despite a classically trained theater background, he was increasingly drawn to the subtleties of film acting. A play, written by the great southern novelist Reynolds Price, called "Early Dark" had such a cinematic feel to it, that an agent saw the film acting potential in Xander and encouraged him to make the move out west.Soon Mommie Dearest (1981) provided Xander with his film debut in the role of "Christopher Crawford", and simultaneously gave his career a slightly cultish twist. Alex Cox with Sid and Nancy (1986), James Cameron with Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Bernard Rose with Candyman (1992), Todd Haynes with Safe (1995), Mike Figgis with Leaving Las Vegas (1995), Andrew Niccol with Gattaca (1997) all helped to further associate Xander as an actor in his own rather unusual category.Xander's choices were often determined by the opportunity to learn from directors he admired, certainly all those listed above fell into that category. Clint Eastwood with The Rookie (1990), Ron Howard with Apollo 13 (1995), Rob Reiner with A Few Good Men (1992), Michael Mann with Heat (1995), Wolfgang Petersen with Air Force One (1997), Steven Spielberg with Amistad (1997) are obvious examples of others Xander actively sought to work with and learn from.From obscure independent movies where Xander could play lead roles to the big budget studio movies where he might often play smaller character-driven parts, an education was taking place. Just as working with older directors like Michael Cacoyannis on The Cherry Orchard (1999) and Robert M. Young on Human Error (2004) (aka "Human Error") brought insights to ways of working that are being lost in pop cultures tendency to slide toward slickness. Not to mention bringing him to places like Bulgaria and China along the way.Perhaps because a life in the foreign services, or espionage was seen as a road not taken, living on location in foreign countries, working as an actor, has somewhat fulfilled the impulse. As early as 1987, a film took Xander to Nicaragua while the Contra War was taking place. It was during this three month shoot on the film Walker (1987) (starring Ed Harris) that Xander got an offer to do a film with his friend, director Jon Hess, in Chile for the following three months. Taking him straight from the revolutionary left-wing Sandanistas to Pinochet's fascist, right-wing regime.In 2001, an offer came in to play a part on a TV pilot called 24 (2001). It was another shady agent-type, and reluctant to repeat his performance from Air Force One (1997) as the turncoat secret serviceman, Xander almost passed on the job. Fortunately for him, he said yes. He met his future wife, Sarah Clarke during the first day of filming. His character, "George Mason", was just a guest star in the pilot, but the producers liked what Xander brought to it and continued to write more episodes for him. By the second season, it had become perhaps the most interesting, leveled character Xander had ever gotten to play. Sarah and Xander were married in 2002 and had their daughters, Olwyn in 2006 and Rowan in 2010.Other favorite roles of late have been "Arlen Pavich", the middle management dweeb, in Niki Caro's North Country (2005), and the Irish hooligan/railway foreman in David Von Ancken's Seraphim Falls (2006) and, more recently, "The King of Sodom" in Harold Ramis' Year One (2009), "Sonny" in David Pomes' Cook County (2008), the recovering meth head coming out of prison to discover the life he had left (and destroyed), and crazy "Uncle Doug" in David Wike's Out There (2006) (aka "Out There").- IMDb Mini Biography By: MosaicSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/one-heat-minute-productions/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

All The President's Minutes is a podcast where conversations about movies, journalism, politics and history meet. Each show we use the seminal and increasingly prescient 1976 film All The President's Men as a portal, to engage with the themes and the warnings of the film resonating since its release. For minute four host, Blake Howard joins editor of youth website GOAT and veteran journalist working in Australia's largest news publications Melissa Matheson. Melissa and Blake discuss learning and using shorthand to take damned quick notes as a cadet, nostalgic for typewriters and note-books, and the kinship of the All the President's Men newsroom and the newsroom from The Wire Season Five. ABOUT MELISSA MATHESONVia MumbrellaNova Entertainment has appointed former mX Sydney editor Melissa Matheson as the editor of youth website Goat. Matheson has spent a significant chunk of her career at News Corp, working across The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph in addition to mX Sydney. She also spent a brief period at SBS as a senior editor.Twitter: @Mel_MathesonSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/one-heat-minute-productions/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

“It was a reverse floor plan, with bedrooms on the entrance level and then upstairs the kitchen, maybe more than one, and various entertainment areas. The house should have been full of law enforcement. Instead, the boys from Protect and Serve had set up a command post at the pool cabana, somewhere out in back. Like getting in some last-minute free catering before their federal overlords showed up. Sounds of distant splashing, rock n roll radio, eating between means. Some kidnapping. ”…In the time it took [Sloane] to lead him through a dim sunken interior full of taupe carpeting, suede upholstery, and teak, which seemed to extend indefinitely in the direction of Pasadena, Doc learned that she had a degree from the London School of economics, had recently begun studying tantric yoga, and had met Mickey Wolfmann originally in Las Vegas.” There’s a reason why our buddy Thomas Pynchon describes the House of Wolfmann as a descent into Hell—for Doc, it kinda is. Having just met a salt-of-the-earth gal like Hope Harlingen (heroin and heaving and hardons aside), who with a quiet and modest dignity refuses to accept the death of her husband despite no support from the cops or the banks, it must be a shock to the system for our knockabout dick to find a woman outright celebrating the non-death of her missing husband with the cops and the banks and everyone else on the wrong side of karma in 1970. And that’s this scene in a nut, isn’t it? It’s a dichotomous portrait of lives on either side of the Golden Fang—the good lives the fangs chew to pieces…and the gaudy lives those fangs feed… About the GuestCOURTNEY HOWARDWith bylines in VARIETY and FRESH FICTION TV, film critic Courtney Howard is a member of the LA Film Critics Association, the Critics Choice Association, the Online Film Critics Society, and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Additionally, she's been stanning INHERENT VICE from day one, and at some point plans on having Roger Deakins do the lighting in the her house, Sloane Wolfmann-style.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/one-heat-minute-productions/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

All The President's Minutes is a podcast where conversations about movies, journalism, politics and history meet. Each show we use the seminal and increasingly prescient 1976 film All The President's Men as a portal, to engage with the themes and the warnings of the film resonating since its release. For minute three host, Blake Howard joins critic, journalist and author, Maria Lewis. Maria drags Blake for giving her 70% of a black screen for her minute before diving into how deeply this movie speaks to her beginnings as a prodigious 16-year-old journalist on the Gold Coast of Australia.ABOUT MARIA LEWISMaria Lewis is an author, journalist and screenwriter based in Sydney, Australia. Getting her start as a police reporter, her writing on pop culture has appeared in publications such as the New York Post, Guardian, Penthouse, The Daily Mail, Empire Magazine, Gizmodo, Huffington Post, The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, i09, Junkee and many more. Previously seen as a presenter on SBS Viceland’s nightly news program The Feed and as the host of Cleverfan on ABC, she has been a journalist for over 15 years.Her best-selling debut novel Who's Afraid? was published in 2016, followed by its sequel Who’s Afraid Too? in 2017, which was nominated for Best Horror Novel at the Aurealis Awards in 2018. Who’s Afraid? is being developed for television by the Emmy and BAFTA award-winning Hoodlum Entertainment. Her Young Adult debut, It Came From The Deep, was released globally on October 31, Halloween, 2017 and is a twist on The Little Mermaid meets Creature From The Black Lagoon.Her fourth book, The Witch Who Courted Death, was released on Halloween, 2018 and won Best Fantasy Novel at the Aurealis Awards in 2019. Her fifth novel set within the shared supernatural universe - The Wailing Woman - was released in November, 2019.Twitter: @moviemazzSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/one-heat-minute-productions/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

“Some ex-old lady had hit town, and they’d run away together. The emergency room had mixed them up with somebody else, the way maternity wards switched babies around, and they were still on some intensive care ward under another name. It was a particular kind of disconnected denial, and Doc figured he’d seen enough by now to recognize it.” In the novel Inherent Vice, that’s how Thomas Pynchon described the post-1960s generation coming of age in the year 1970, bleary-eyed and hungover from the last decade and the damage done, and afflicted with the cruelest kind of misery—absolutely devastated by the grief of loss, yet operating in complete denial of the existence that grief, telling themselves stories, as Joan Didion would say, in order to live, stories that explain away the deaths of loved ones as strange and grand mysteries, rather than cruel and banal fates. Further, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film adaptation, Sortilege intones that the post-Manson era in which Doc and company found themselves in was perilous, “astrologically speaking, for dopers...especially those of high school age. Who'd been born, most of them, under a 90-degree aspect...the unluckiest angle possible...between Neptune, the doper's planet...and Uranus, the planet of rude surprises. Doc had known it to happen...that those left behind would refuse to believe that people they loved...or even took the same classes with, were really dead. They came up with all kinds of alternate stories so it wouldn't have to be true.” The Harlingens are a family in need of such a story, one that will allow them to live in the Mansonoid post-60s drop-out drag of the Age of Nixon. If only someone could tell them that story, could put together the pieces so we could all see it a little more clearly…About the GuestLINDSEY ROMAINLindsey Romain is a film critic and culture writer whose work has appeared in NERDIST (where she is a contributing editor), BRIGHT WALL/DARK ROOM, THRILLIST, /FILM, VULTURE, TEEN VOGUE, MARIE CLAIRE, and THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE. In addition to crafting insightful cinematic and cultural commentary, and inflamming the Dumb Dude Wing of Twitter by embracing the thirsty excellence of THE LAST JEDI, Lindsey has written extensively about the pop phenomenon of Charles Manson, the death of the 1960s, and the collapse of that decade's counter-culture.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/one-heat-minute-productions/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

All The President's Minutes is a podcast where conversations about movies, journalism, politics and history meet. Each show we use the seminal and increasingly prescient 1976 film All The President's Men as a portal, to engage with the themes and the warnings of the film resonating since its release. For minute two host, Blake Howard joins the political editor of Business Insider Australia and journalist, J.R Hennessy. J.R and Blake discuss the prophetic nature of President's Men by focusing on the trade of journalism and the pursuit of truth. J.R and Blake also take an essential digression to contrast another "primary source" film David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's The Social Network and the quaint conclusions compared to the more substantial political ramifications a decade later.Directed by Alan J. Pakula, written by two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman from the novel by reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman; All The President's Men is a perfect film about an imperfect time.ABOUT J.R. HENNESSY J.R. is a writer and editor at Business Insider. He has written at The Guardian, Pedestrian. T.V. and blogs media politics here.Twitter: @jrhennessySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/one-heat-minute-productions/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

All The President's Minutes is a podcast where conversations about movies, journalism, politics and history meet. Each show we use the seminal and increasingly prescient 1976 film All The President's Men as a portal, to engage with the themes and the warnings of the film resonating since its release. For minute one host Blake Howard is joined by Editor for Vulture and New York Magazine and one of the world's best film critics, Bilge Ebiri. Bilge and Blake discuss director Alan J. Pakula's avant-garde choices, paranoia, audiences watching at the time knowing that all this "shit" only happening two years ago and the inference an impenetrable machine surrounding Nixon from the first minute of the movie.Directed by Alan J. Pakula, written by two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman from the novel by reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman; All The President's Men is a perfect film about an imperfect time.Guest Bio: Bilge Ebiri is a film critic/writer/editor at New York Magazine. He has contributed to publications such as L.A. Weekly, The New York Times and the Village Voice (rip). Bilge is also a writer and director, known for New Guy (2003), Purse Snatcher (2006) and The Barber of Siberia (1998).TWITTER: @BILGEEBIRI THE VILLAGE VOICE ARCHIVEROTTEN TOMATOESSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/one-heat-minute-productions/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Near the end of Douglas Sirk’s 1954 Technicolor melodrama, Magnificent Obsession, Otto Kruger makes a pretty heavy declaration:“Once you find the way, you'll be bound. It will obsess you. But believe me, it will be a magnificent obsession.” We agree that’s a sentiment that our pal Doc Sportello would be in a nodding, bleary-eyed acquaintance with, drawn inevitably as he is to the flame of beloved ex-old Shasta Fay Hepworth; it’s also something Bigfoot Bjornsen, Hope Harlingen, and the rest of Pynchon’s alliteratively named rogue’s gallery of drop-outs and dopers and heroes and hopefuls understand: “once you find the way, you’ll be bound.” They’re bound all right, though magnificent isn’t a word they’d probably use, what with their hopes and dreams all being squashed beneath the boot of time and time’s mercenary, The Golden Fang. But obsessions can be magnificent. Whether focused on a person or a time or maybe just a screen flicker at 24 frames per second, to passionately dedicate yourself to something you love can unlock doors you never even knew where there, sending you tumbling into worlds you never knew existed.That’s something our host would know a thing or three about; our guest Alicia Malone does, too. From sitting in the cave-dark of a theater for the first time to jockeying a video store to fanatically freaking about favorite films, Travis and Alicia understand obsession. How it can be magnificent. How it can be inherent.“Once you find the way, you’ll be bound.” Boy, don’t we know it, Otto.About the Guest - ALICIA MALONEA film reporter, broadcaster, historian, author, podcaster, and “self-confessed movie geek," Alicia Malone has talked about film on the Today show, NPR, MSNBC, ABC’s Academy Awards Red Carpet Preshow, CNN’s THE MOVIES docuseries, and her own show Indie Movie Guide for Fandango. She was the host of the late, the great, the never to be forgotten FilmStruck (as well as the host and producer of the The FilmStruck podcast); she is now a host on Turner Classic Movies and TCM Imports, and (seriously, the lady never sleeps) the podcast Magnificent Obsession, in which she talks to people with below-the-line jobs in the film industry about how they got their start and how movies shaped their lives. Additionally, she’s written two amazing books that are an incredible resource for film fanatics, BACKWARDS AND IN HEELS: THE PAST PRESENT AND FUTURE OF WOMEN WORKING IN FILM and THE FEMALE GAZE: ESSENTIAL MOVIES MADE BY WOMEN. You can buy both books here.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/one-heat-minute-productions/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

“…banana omelets, banana sandwiches, banana casseroles, mashed bananas molded in the shape of a British lion rampant, blended with eggs into batter for French toast, squeezed out a pastry nozzle across the quivering creamy reaches of a banana blancmange... tall cruets of pale banana syrup to pour oozing over banana waffles, a giant glazed crock where diced bananas have been fermenting since the summer with wild honey and muscat raisins, up out of which, this winter morning, one now dips foam mugsfull of banana mead... banana croissants and banana kreplach, and banana oatmeal and banana jam and banana bread, and bananas flamed in ancient brandy Pirate brought back last year from a cellar in the Pyrenees also containing a clandestine radio transmitter...”—Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s RainbowIt’s clear Pynchon has bananas on his brain, but perhaps not nearly as much as the bruised and spoiled synapses of Lt. Detective Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen, whose appetite for the yellow crescents sneaks nightward across the borderline of simple hunger and into the lawless landscape of horny-melancholy obsession…which, when you think about it, isn’t that—a preoccupation both depressed and thirsty—the mood of Inherent Vice as a whole? Further, after the wistful Big Sleep-isms of the seductive opening scene, and the twisty-turny plot mechanics of Doc pinballing from Pipeline Pizza to Aunt Reet’s phone line to brunch with Denis to learning the another lesson in the long, sad history of LA land use before taking a ball bat to head after being on the losing end of Jade’s Pussy-Eater’s Special, don’t we deserve a break with the funniest stretch of film in all of Inherent Vice?About the GuestMARYA GATESMarya Gates is the Editorial and Brand manager for Netflix Film, the force behind Old Films Flicker, the creator of #AYEARWITHWOMEN (in which she spent one year only watching films written and/or directed by women) and #NOIRVEMBER (the yearly celebration of all things noir)...and (*checks notes*) is the proud owner of BenicioDelTakeMeNow.tumblr.com.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/one-heat-minute-productions/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

“What was astonishing to him was how people seemed to run out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them who they were and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would once have felt sorry for. It was as though while their lives were rich and full they were secretly sick of themselves and couldn’t wait to dispose of their sanity and their health and all sense of proportion so as to get down to that other self, the true self, who was a wholly deluded fuckup.” -Philip Roth, American PastoralWell, at long last, we’re finally here. Put on a suit and tie, take the #2 clippers to your hair, and bite into the lightning-blast-to-the-teeth cold of a frozen chocolate-covered banana, because today is the day we tackle the unstoppable force (or is it immovable object?) of Bigfoot Bjornsen. The foil and nemesis and brother and partner and shadow-self to our wayward hero Doc Sportello, Bigfoot is Inherent Vice in flat-topped and flinty microcosm, an exaggerated and funhouse-stretched portrait of loss and longing for times and people passed.And today, we begin the first in a handful of episodes exploring the twisted mind and broken heart of this warped sheet of plastic as he drifts out of a commercial for Channel View Estates and materializes into that very real estate development, just in time to catch his ol’ buddy Doc catching a snooze next to what suspiciously resembles a bloodied corpse… Together, Travis and crime novelist Jedidiah Ayres chew the rag on this human blitzkrieg of broken machismo aggression and sorrow—just who is Lt. Detective Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen, and why can’t we stop thinking of him?About the GuestJEDIDIAH AYRESJedidiah Ayres is the author of such crime novels as PECKERWOOD and FIERCE BITCHES, works ropebound with such control and ambition and bloodied romanticism that reading either is akin to seeing Jim Thompson's fallen kingdom of El Rey resurrected for a Cormac McCarthy campfire tale (seriously, read this motherfucker). He also writes about crime fiction and film on his site Hardboiled Wonderland.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/one-heat-minute-productions/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy