The Film Stage Presents

Whatever the last great horror movie was, I doubt it was so strange or compelling as City Wide Fever. Shot on video, seemingly whenever the talent had free time from whatever else they were doing, this is a film rejects the eye-deadening digital that defines so many genre movies that go for prestige only to end up at TUBI. It’s also funny, with a sense of humor that is pranksterish, even juvenile without dipping into an edgelord attitude to which it could’ve so easily resorted.

City Wide Fever is now on Blu-ray. But if you’re in New York, then you have a special occasion to see it on Wednesday, April 15 at the Lower Manhattan Alamo Drafthouse, where filmmaker Josh Heaps is doing a Q&A. Josh, I feel compelled to note, started as a film publicist, and through his years there built enough connections to support this film, which he shot during his free hours with very little money. He’s a friend, but also someone whose film I genuinely like very much, and hope this conversation reflects those distinctions and commonalities alike.

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we celebrate our greatest living comedian: Steve Martin! Our B-Sides include The Man with Two Brains, The Lonely Guy, The Spanish Prisoner, and Novocaine.
Our guest is our dear friend Eric D. Snider, avowed Steve Martin fan and all-around smart-and-funny-and-good person who used to be a great film critic.

We celebrate Martin’s early career - his stand-up success, his Saturday Night Live appearances, his myriad interests (he’s written great books, made great music!) - and the early comedies that made him a movie star.

We discuss Martin’s willingness to play the straight man and let other comedians flourish (Charles Grodin in The Lonely Guy a prime example), his slow evolution into a dramatic actor (the supremely strange A Simple Twist of Fate is mentioned), and his incredible variance in quality of movies throughout his legendary career.

How often do you think about dolphins? That’s a serious question. Because it’s a topic worth turning over, which makes especially valuable… deep breath as I say the title… John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office, a documentary about the man whose work with dolphins blurred boundaries between science and counterculture. The filmmakers are Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens. While the former is better-known for his fiction features, including the recently restored Nadja, his portraits of artists—such as Sam Shepherd, William Eggleston, and Hampton Fancher—make him well-suited to the project. The latter, meantime, is shortly off Invention, which concerns sui generis experiments and the conspiracies they may or may not have engendered.

With voiceover from Chloe Sevigny and a hypnotic soundtrack, John Lilly is a suitably dense exploration of a complicated mind. I spoke to Almereyda and Stephens as the film begins its theatrical run from Oscilloscope.

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we discuss Spike Lee! One of our absolute favorite filmmakers! Our B-Sides today are: Girl 6, Get on the Bus, Summer of Sam, Passing Strange, and Chi-Raq.
We discuss what makes Lee a singular artist, his early films and early success, his celebrity as a commercial star, and his unbridled, unwavering optimism as a stylist.

Spike Lee has mentioned that Crooklyn is the movie most fans mention to him, I’ve written about Lee’s incredible movie openings, and Conor and I celebrate his maximalist aesthetic. There’s also his ambitious alchemy of tone. Consider the minefield scene from Da 5 Bloods, which we talk about. It’s funny for a moment, then awfully tragic.

There’s discussion about our dream Patreon mini-podcast series Macht Speed (a deep dive on the career of Gabriel Macht), the Spike Lee-Quentin Tarantino feud, and the audacity of ambition it takes to make a movie like She Hate Me.

Be sure to give us a follow on Bluesky at @tfsbside.bsky.social. Enjoy!

Take one step into the world of festivals and you'll understand that making a movie isn't just "making a movie." Even if one has the fortune to get some money for the script they've slaved over, get some actors in front of a camera, and survive the labyrinthine editing process, a veritable mountain of tasks faces those hoping to actually get the thing up and running. I might not know anybody who's better-learned in these spaces than my friend Gabe Klinger, who has worked in festivals, programming, criticism, and filmmaking, with his third feature, Isabel, debuting at this year's Berlinale.

Music courtesy of Lex Walton: “Love Theme from an Unreleased Film” from the album Giving It Up.