Watch With Jen™

This week, I'm so pleased to welcome back to the podcast a very talented, supportive, and funny friend. Currently based in Newark, Delaware, Mitchell Beaupre is not only the Senior Editor at one of my favorite services (via Letterboxd), but they're also the co-host of the Weekend Watchlist and Four Favorites podcasts, which you can find in the stream for The Letterboxd Show. Additionally, a prolific freelance film journalist and stellar interviewer for prestigious outlets such as "The Film Stage," "Paste Magazine," "The Playlist," and "Little White Lies," you can keep up with all of their impressive work on Twitter @ItIsMitchell.The biggest fan of Willem Dafoe, Mitchell's passion for their favorite character actor shines through in this rich, in-depth feature-length conversation. Zeroing in on TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (which is a legit obsession for both of us), THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, SPIDER-MAN, THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, 4:44: LAST DAY ON EARTH, and THE FLORIDA PROJECT, we cover everything from the way Dafoe uses his sexuality and spirituality to seduce and captivate to his generosity with other actors and joy just doing the work every day as a self-described restless "nomad."It's an engaging and thoughtful episode that acting nerds will especially appreciate. And since Mitchell's earlier appearance covering Jim Jarmusch movies was one of the most popular installments of Watch With Jen released this season, I know you'll enjoy this one as well!Note: There is only one regular episode left of Watch With Jen S3! Next week's Peter Weir discussion with Blake Howard marks our season finale, save for a bonus physical media episode that will drop sometime in December, initially as a Patreon exclusive, in order to thank you for your kind support.Logo: KateGabrielle.comTheme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music ArchiveOriginally Posted on Patreon (11/30/22) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/75311857

Watch With Jen started 2022 with an episode featuring fan favorite S.A. Cosby, so as we begin wrapping up our third season, it's only fitting that we bring Shawn back to discuss more movies he loves. As kind and genuine as he is knowledgeable and gifted, the first time I ever chatted with Shawn was one week before he released the book that would become a smash success and put him on the map.The remarkable Blacktop Wasteland won an avalanche of well-deserved praise and awards, including the Anthony and the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Hardcover Fiction Novel. Impressively, his follow-up title Razorblade Tears met and/or exceeded all expectations, becoming a runaway New York Times bestseller, earning Shawn another boatload of accolades, including repeat honors from organizations that celebrated Blacktop Wasteland the previous year. Perhaps the most staggeringly awesome achievement for Razorblade Tears, however, was when it was included as one of the titles on former President Obama's list of summer reads! Yet still as gracious as ever and well-loved among his colleagues, we're all so very proud of Shawn, and, considering that he was working intensely on the final edits of his next novel All the Sinners Bleed (out June 2023), I appreciated all the more his taking the time to tackle a filmmaker that fascinates him in this roughly one hundred minute conversation.While the first part of our chat is devoted to his own work because fans always want to know what's going on with the screen adaptations of his books and all other news (including my attempts to make him blush with questions from his best friend Nikki Dolson), we then venture north to Toronto to look at the weird, wild, kinky, yet morose filled world of Armenian-Egyptian-Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan.Drawn to stories of tragedy, regret, alienation, isolation in modern society, and our struggles to connect with one another, in this episode, we look at his two career high-water marks of the 1990s with Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, as well as his biggest box office hit from 2009 in Chloe. Analyzing the films' rich characterization, performances, and our impressions of what Egoyan is trying to say, while we do get deep, we also entertain, whether it's in the tale I share about this time in college when this woman in the quad tried to recruit me to join her escort agency (she had the wrong girl!) or Shawn talking about the beauty of ambiguous endings while touching on his own work. Cinephiles will dig this episode.Logo: KateGabrielle.comTheme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music ArchiveOriginally Posted on Patreon (11/14/22) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/74615939

A film critic for publications such as LA Weekly, New York Magazine, Vulture, The New York Times, and formerly, The Village Voice, the brilliant Bilge Ebiri is one of my favorite journalists working today. And recently, he was kind enough to name Watch With Jen one of the best current film podcasts in an article for Vulture. Additionally, a writer-director who's known for the films New Guy, Purse Snatcher, and for assistant directing The Barber of Siberia, Bilge and I had so much fun with our Colin Farrell episode last March that while talking about In Bruges, we knew immediately that Ralph Fiennes should be next.Celebrating the great range and remarkable films of the powerful and unpredictable performer who fluctuates between charm and menace, while we cite numerous movies from Fiennes' career, in this nearly two-hour episode, we spend the most time on Sunshine, The End of the Affair, Coriolanus, The Invisible Woman, and The Dig. One of my favorite things about chatting with the great Bilge is just how wonderfully descriptive he is, often using his hands to drive home precisely what it is that makes actors' faces and physicality so unique. The end result is a delightful and illuminating conversation about acting, character, filmmaking, and storytelling - including what Fiennes has in common with Prince - that cinephiles are bound to appreciate.Theme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music ArchiveLogo: Kate Gabrielle (KateGabrielle.com)Originally Posted on Patreon (11/7/22) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/74350007

Returning to Watch With Jen this week, we have my very talented friend and an official (and very popular) friend of the show. William Boyle is the acclaimed novelist behind such titles as Gravesend, The Lonely Witness, A Friend is a Gift You Give Yourself, City of Margins, and Shoot the Moonlight Out. In addition to crafting these wonderfully humanistic Lumet-like character-driven ensemble crime epics, Bill is quite the pop culture buff and one hell of a good movie trivia game player as well. Someone with whom I frequently discuss great character actors - such as Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nicolas Cage - in this thoughtful feature-length conversation, we take a look at the films, themes, actors, and style of the work of writer-director John Sayles. A humanistic sociologist of sorts with a passion for exploring human relationships among largely hardworking, blue-collar characters, while Sayles has a career that's spanned several decades, we opted to zero in primarily on his prolific, acclaimed '80s and '90s output via the films Matewan, Eight Men Out, City of Hope, Lone Star, and Limbo. Theme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music Archive Logo: Kate Gabrielle (KateGabrielle.com) Originally Posted on Patreon (10/31/22) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/74025916

This week's guest is a terrific character actor with over thirty years in the industry. A veteran of more than seventy Hollywood movies and hundreds of episodes of television, Donal Logue is the beloved scene-stealer of such films as Sneakers, Blade, and Zodiac, and TV series as Grounded for Life, Sons of Anarchy, Vikings, Gotham, and of course, the great Terriers, which Jed Ayres and I celebrated earlier this year in a full episode. Additionally, the recipient of the Special Jury Prize for Outstanding Acting at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival for the indie favorite The Tao of Steve, Donal also has quite the passion and talent for writing.In 2021, he co-wrote the brilliant New York Times bestseller Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, & Hollywood, along with his good friend Danny Trejo. Currently hard at work on his next book, Donal has just been added to the third season of the popular Queen Latifah CBS series The Equalizer, which I'm looking forward to checking out. Needless to say, he's a very busy guy! Someone I'm honored to have gotten to know after the Terriers episode, Donal has not only become a very good friend but has also consistently given me the best film recommendations, including several that we discuss in this fascinating episode.In a thoughtful roughly two-hour conversation, Donal shares his affection for the gritty, social realism centric tales of the so-called "angry young men" that took the world by storm in the UK Kitchen Sink Drama movement of theater and film in the late 1950s and early '60s. Focusing primarily on Look Back in Anger, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Billy Liar, This Sporting Life, Kes, A Taste of Honey, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and The Entertainer, this is an episode to listen to with a pen and a pad of paper as masterful films get cited throughout. With sharp insights about acting, filmmaking, and storytelling from his perspective as a film fan first and a professional second, this engaging chat is a treat for cinephiles everywhere. Enjoy!Theme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music ArchiveLogo: Kate Gabrielle (KateGabrielle.com)Originally Posted on Patreon (10/24/22) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/73713693

About a decade ago now, my mom read a WWII-era historical thriller novel called Mr. Churchill's Secretary and became an instant fan of both the main character - Maggie Hope, an intrepid young spy, and codebreaker who rose up to meet the challenges of that time - as well as author Susan Elia MacNeal. In the years that followed, she would eagerly anticipate each new installment and I remember going to track down a few on pub day at Barnes and Noble.A New York Times bestselling novelist of not only the Maggie Hope series, but also her recently published standalone book Mother Daughter Traitor Spy, in the last decade, MacNeal has won the Barry Award and also been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, Agatha, Left Coast Crime, Dilys, and ITW Thriller awards.Joining me to discuss first her new book as well as her writing and research process, Susan and I then dive into the world of spies in the films North By Northwest, Valkyrie, and BlacKkKlansman in a fun and fascinating hour of conversation.Theme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music ArchiveLogo: Kate Gabrielle (KateGabrielle.com)Originally Posted on Patreon (10/19/22) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/73508358

This week, I was so pleased to welcome back a very dear friend to the podcast. A senior film critic who writes the most soulful, insightful, and humanistic pieces at FilmFreakCentral.net, Walter Chaw's bylines have also appeared in LA Weekly, The New York Times, New York Post, The Washington Post, Criterion, New York Magazine, and more. Additionally, the author of a book about the film MIRACLE MILE, Walter's in-depth critical study of Walter Hill is scheduled to be published by Matt Zoller Seitz's MZS Press before the end of the year.After serving up an extended behind-the-scenes look at his book on Hill and the discoveries that he made writing it along the way, we spend the rest of this fast-paced roughly hour-long episode dissecting and celebrating the SCREAM franchise, which was launched by director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson in 1996. Releasing it early this week to coincide with the brand new 4K edition of SCREAM 2, it's the perfect listen to get you in the mood for Halloween. (And don't miss last year's episodes on Horror Remakes with Scott Weinberg, Sex, Gender, & Final Girls of Horror with Elizabeth Cantwell, and/or my conversation about the first SCREAM film on the first Adventures in Physical Media episode from Season 2 with Kate Gabrielle.)Logo: Kate Gabrielle at KateGabrielle.comTheme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music ArchiveOriginally Posted on Patreon (10/10/22) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/73124925

Returning to the podcast this week, we have a very talented freelance writer and lecturer specializing in women surrealists and visual culture. Sabina Stent's bylines include Magnum Photos and Crime Reads and she also writes a substack newsletter called Love Letters During a Nightmare. Her next online lecture is for the Morbid Anatomy Museum and is titled Cinematic Surrealism in Los Angeles: Maya Deren and David Lynch. (Tickets are available on the museum's website, which you can also find a link to in Sabina's current pinned tweet.)Joining me to discuss the fantastic range of character actor Robert Downey Jr. (whom she's dubbed Walking Charisma), in this thoughtful celebratory conversation, we analyze what it is that makes him so unique, and champion his work in the films ONLY YOU, KISS KISS BANG BANG, FUR: AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS, ZODIAC, & IRON MAN.Note: This episode also includes a lengthy introduction covering what you can expect to hear on the podcast for the rest of Season 3 and a few guests we have lined up for S4.Originally Posted on Patreon (10/4/22) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/72872065Logo: KateGabrielle.comTheme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music Archive

In this highly-requested feature-length episode, dear friends and past guests Jed Ayres, Rob Belushi, and Blake Howard join me to explore the critically acclaimed, award-winning FX Australia series Mr. Inbetween, which ran for three seasons from 2018-2021. Created and written by the show's charismatic lead Scott Ryan, the series finds the actor starring as muscle, debt-collector, hitman, and Underworld-Jack-of-All-Trades for-Hire Ray Shoesmith, whom Ryan's fans will recall was the same character he portrayed in his 2005 Australian independent feature film The Magician.Beginning like a traditional episode of Watch With Jen where we serve up a roughly forty-minute analytical overview and appreciation of the growing word-of-mouth cult favorite series, from there we move into an extended conversation the four of us were fortunate enough to recently have with the funny, disarming, and kind Scott Ryan.Covering everything from how much he hates "raw" sandwiches to his love of writing believable dialogue that isn't solely dependent on moving the plot forward, Ryan discusses the pros and cons of TV vs. film, celebrates his gifted co-stars, along with series director Nash Edgerton, and lets us in on what he's hoping to do next. A spoiler-filled installment that's best appreciated after you've seen Mr. Inbetween, we hope you'll enjoy it, and recommend both Ryan's series and this podcast to others to help spread the word.Theme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music ArchiveLogo: KateGabrielle.comOriginally Posted on Patreon (2/27/22) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/72500093

This week, I'm very excited to bring back one of our warmest & most knowledgeable guests who's become synonymous with fall. In fact, this is her third consecutive fall episode and fifth appearance overall!An accomplished lawyer and a highly readable film critic at her own site MovieMom.com and at RogerEbert.com where she's also an editor, Nell Minow has written over 3,000 movie reviews since the 1990s. Additionally, she's also authored a handful of terrific film books, including 101 Must See Movie Moments and The Movie Mom's Guide to Family Movies.Playing almost like a companion piece to Nell's last episode in the fall of 2021, which focused on female friendships in film, in this fast-paced, fun, and informative conversation, we take a look at the history of the role of the cinematic best friend as epitomized by Eve Arden in Mildred Pierce and Anatomy of a Murder and Judy Greer in 13 Going on 30 and 27 Dresses.Logo: KateGabrielle.comTheme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music ArchiveOriginally Posted on Patreon (9/22/22) here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/72336836