Chris Fenton on China, the Oscars, and the MCU

April 29th, 2021  |  30 mins 20 secs

Chris Fenton, author of Feeding the Dragon: Inside the Trillion Dollar Dilemma Facing Hollywood, the NBA, & American Business, returns to the show to talk about China’s influence on Hollywood, and vice versa. Why is the Chinese Communist Party censoring news about Chloe Zhao’s historic win on Oscar night? Should Disney be worried about the fact that she’s the director on the forthcoming MCU tentpole, The Eternals? What to make of recent misfires in the Middle Kingdom like Mulan and Raya and the Last Dragon? And why did the CCP not really care that Hong Kong got destroyed by Godzilla and King Kong? All this and more on this week’s episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood! If you enjoy the chat, please hit that button below and share this post with a friend who also loves talking about movies! They’ll thank you later, trust me.

Nicholas Jarecki on 'Crisis,' Opioids, Releasing a Movie During COVID, and Armie Hammer

April 22nd, 2021  |  50 mins 46 secs

On this episode, Nicholas Jarecki—the writer and director of the opioid crisis thriller Crisis—talks about the making and casting of Crisis, the evolving international market for feature films, and the difficulties of promoting a movie when one of the actors is undergoing a PR crisis of his own. We also talk a bit about the evolving nature of film criticism, how one researches a project about drugs while tens of thousands are dying from overdoses, and more. If you enjoy the show, please share it with a friend! Podcasts need love too.

Megan Ganz on 'Mythic Quest' and Comedies in the Covid Age

April 16th, 2021  |  28 mins 14 secs

This week Sonny is joined by Megan Ganz, an executive producer and creator of Mythic Quest, AppleTV+’s workplace comedy about life at the studio behind an MMORPG. Megan has worked on a number of great shows, including It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Community, so it was fun to pick her brain about the differences in production cycles on a network, basic cable, and streaming service, as well as what it’s like to produce a big show like this in the age of Covid. (Spoiler: It’s tricky!) If you aren’t watching Mythic Quest, you should be. And if you know someone who does watch that, or Always Sunny or Community, but doesn’t listen to this podcast for some reason, please share it with them! Hopefully they’ll find it entertaining and informative.

Richard Rushfield on Scott Rudin, Bad Boss, and More!

April 8th, 2021  |  40 mins 55 secs

The show’s first ever guest, Richard Rushfield, returns to the program to discuss all sorts of stuff. Super-Producer Scott Rudin: bad boss, or something worse? What went down with Ray Fisher and Warner Bros.? Are theaters coming back? What’s the industry hoping for in terms of Oscars viewership? All this and more on this week’s episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood!

David Thomson on His 'History of Movie Directors'

April 1st, 2021  |  39 mins 17 secs

Sean O'Connell on the Grassroots Efforts to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut

March 26th, 2021  |  44 mins 53 secs

Snyder Cut week at the Bulwark wraps up with Sean O’Connell, author of Release the Snyder Cut: The Crazy True Story Behind the Fight that Saved Zack Snyder’s Justice League. We talk about his new book, the social media campaign that not only secured the release of Zack Snyder’s four-hour version of Justice League but also raised more than half a million dollars for suicide prevention charities, and how the rise of streaming helped ensure this film could be released at all.

Tom Shone on Christopher Nolan

March 18th, 2021  |  54 mins 54 secs

This week, Sonny is joined by Tom Shone, film critic for the Sunday Times, to talk about his recent book The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan. The book is a must-own if you’re a fan of Nolan, as Shone spent hours with the director of The Dark Knight trilogy, Memento, and Inception. On this episode we talk about influences on Nolan’s work like Jorge Luis Borges (whose collected fiction is also a must-own for those looking to understand the director), how fatherhood has influenced his work, and the politics of The Dark Knight.

Mike Malloy on the Business of Blu-ray Supplements

March 11th, 2021  |  34 mins 26 secs

On this week’s episode, Sonny talks to Mike Malloy about the home video landscape, what it’s like to make supplements for specialty Blu-ray purveyors, and the world of tough-guy cinema writ large. Mike began as a film journalist for newspapers, magazines and the occasional book. After the decline of print media, he moved into filmmaking with larger projects like his EUROCRIME! documentary. But with budgets hard to come by, he has lately settled into the groove of producing—and appearing in—bonus content for Blu-Rays. You can find his YouTube channel here and his Instagram account here.

Scott Feinberg on the Business of Hollywood Awards Season

March 4th, 2021  |  43 mins 16 secs

This week Scott Feinberg, the Hollywood Reporter’s awards columnist and host of the excellent podcast Awards Chatter, joins Sonny to talk about the business of awards season. How corrupt are the Golden Globes? What could improve them? And Sonny asks Scott about his absolute favorite part of Oscars season: The Brutally Honest Oscar Voter Ballots! All this and more on this week’s episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood.

Abraham Riesman on the Rise (and Fall) of Stan Lee

February 25th, 2021  |  46 mins 38 secs

Joining Sonny on this week’s episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood is Abraham Riesman, the author of the excellent new biography True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee. We discuss the long-running fight for credit between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby as well as Lee’s greatest contribution to the world: the character of Stan Lee, a catchphrase-spouting mascot whose ability to connect with fans and create a sense of community helped shape the idea of fandom to this day. For more on Riesman and his book, make sure to check out his website.

Harold Mintz on the Past, Present, and Future of CinemaScore

February 18th, 2021  |  30 mins 54 secs

This week on The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, Sonny is very excited to have the president of CinemaScore, Harold Mintz, on the show. CinemaScore is the fantastically useful company that polls opening weekend moviegoers for their grades on new releases, and it’s a more accurate and unbiased measure of audience opinion than just about any other easily available metric.

Alan Zilberman on life as a critic during awards season

February 11th, 2021  |  36 mins 51 secs

Alan Zilberman, a critic for the Washington City Paper and the Washington Post, joins Sonny Bunch for a very special episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood in which the two discuss life as a part-time film critic during awards season.