The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast

Available Episodes

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The 63rd New York Film Festival (with Fran Hoepfner, Frank Falisi, and Eli Sands)
It’s officially fall when the NYFF finally ends. In this episode, Veronica sits down with Fran Hoepfner, Frank Falisi, and our producer Eli Sands to postmortem the 63rd New York Film Festival. This is a spoiler-free conversation.We get into: Miroirs No. 3, The Mastermind, Late Fame, No Other Choice, With Hasan in Gaza, The Secret Agent, Peter Hujar’s Day, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, A House of Dynamite, Sirāt, Cover-Up, Duse, How to Bake a Cherry Pie plus: One Battle After Another, Alana Haim sighing, bringing Tupperware to critics screenings, the push to explicit politics in this year’s slate, film critics turned filmmakers, “actual jeers,” settler colonialist ravers, Magellan wasn’t long enough, the corona of fascism, Veronica hasn’t seen anything yet, and more.Further reading & listening: Look out for more NYFF coverage on Eli’s podcast, Deep Cut. Find Frank at BWDR and Reverse Shot. Find Fran online at Vulture and ⁠Fran Mag.--The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.--You can read every single issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room ⁠here⁠, including our most recent issue: ⁠Teachers⁠. We’re also on Bluesky⁠ @BWDR⁠ and welcome listener feedback & sponsorship inquiries at ⁠[email protected]⁠.
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Seven (with Adam Nayman)
Happy 30th birthday to David Fincher’s Seven (1995). Joining us to celebrate is special guest Adam Nayman, Toronto-based critic, lecturer, and author of, among other books, David Fincher: Mind Games (2021). We get into: boy movies, the intersections of art and trash, Fincher as mad designer and marketing guru, Veronica can’t do math, canceling Det. Mills, how a spark of ambiguity can incite a book-length study, the undersung editing of Richard Francis-Bruce, the undersung producing prowess of Michael De Luca, what is and is not in the box, and more.References: Tony Zhou on David Fincher (“And the Other Way is Wrong”), Richard Dyer’s BFI book for Seven, and of course, Adam’s terrific book on Fincher, Mind Games, from Little White Lies/Abrams Books.The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, and produced by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.Find all 142 issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room at brightwalldarkroom.com, and please consider subscribing to the site, which directly helps support this show! We welcome feedback, inquiries, and sponsorship opportunities at [email protected].
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Rope (with Michael Koresky)
Hello, champagne. This month we welcome back to the podcast Michael Koresky (listen here to his first visit, discussing A.I.: Artificial Intelligence). Michael is MoMI’s senior curator of film, Reverse Shot’s co-founder and editor, and the author of Sick and Dirty: Hollywood’s Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness, out now from Bloomsbury.Michael joins us to talk about a film from that book, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), the ‘perfect murder’ cocktail thriller best known for its deceptive formal gambit (shot continuously with “no” cuts) and spectral queerness. We get into: ways around the Production Code, that Technicolor sunset, Farley Granger’s offscreen persona, Hitchcock’s lost Holocaust doc, the film version of trompe l’oeil, teaching classical Hollywood in a contemporary classroom, the lesser-seen These Three (1936) and Crossfire (1947), and more.***The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, produced by Eli Sands, and edited by Buczar. Our theme music is composed by Chad.You can read all 141 issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room—including our current Jonathan Demme issue!—at brightwalldarkroom.com. Feedback and/or sponsorship inquiries: [email protected].
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Beginners (2010)
For a taste of summertime sadness, we look at a pick from curator Christos Nikou (Apples [2020] and Fingernails [2023]): Mike Mills’s semi-autobiographical bleak comedy Beginners (2010). We get into the film’s tonality of “melancholic smile,” non-human actors, is this Mills’s All Fours?, Christopher Plummer’s silent expressivity (and “ascot game”), aging out of the gay bar, and nightclub as metaphor for life.--The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by⁠ Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠ and⁠ Chad Perman⁠, and produced by⁠ Eli Sands⁠. Our theme music is composed by Chad. This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. Discover more at ⁠Galerie.com⁠.
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Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (with Bilge Ebiri)
Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Bilge Ebiri—the man, the myth, the legend—joins us to bookend our discussion of all things Mission: Impossible from a couple of summers ago, on the occasion of the final (?) film of a nearly 30 year franchise.We get into: the perils of Cruise-dom, building an extension on a plane you've already built, Luther!, missing Rebecca Ferguson, decompression chambers & gel manicures, Benji Impossible, no closure, loving these movies, and more.Relevant reading:Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning Is a Huge Mess. But It’s a Fun Mess. - Bilge Ebiri, New York MagazineHow YouTube and Internet Journalism Destroyed Tom Cruise, Our Last Real Movie Star - Amy Nicholson, LA WeeklyWhere Does Tom Cruise Go From Here? - Bilge Ebiri, VultureThe Entity: On the Technologies of Late Cruisedom - Jadie Stillwell, Bright Wall/Dark Room--The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by⁠⁠ Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠⁠ and⁠⁠ Chad Perman⁠⁠, and produced by⁠⁠ Eli Sands⁠⁠. Our theme music is composed by Chad (and remixed for this episode by Eli).You can find every single issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room at⁠⁠⁠ brightwalldarkroom.com⁠⁠⁠. We welcome comments and inquiries at ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠. --This episode is sponsored by ⁠Galerie⁠, a new kind of film club. Listeners can sign up for one month of free access to curated film lists, essays, live discussions, and more at ⁠galerie.com⁠, code: BWDRThis message will self-destruct in—
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