In what might be our longest episode ever, but is certainly an epic installment in any event, your friends in podcasting delve into the potential new relevancy of late night television, the frightening potential merger of Paramount/CBS/Skydance with Warner Bros/Discovery, and the power of TikTok (and other social media platforms) in turning this year’s Superman into a box office hit. Four of the all-time great films (Carl Thodore Dreyer’s 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc, Luis Bunuel’s 1961 Viridiana, Jean Vigo’s 1934 L’Atalante, and Charles Laughton’s 1955 The Night of the Hunter) receive deep-dive analyses. With pal of the show Jon Lawlor adding support, the influence of Robert Redford’s training as a painter on his work as an actor and filmmaker gets discussed as does Burt Bacharach’s (terrible) music score for (the great) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

This week’s show begins with a cold open about Spanish film star Carmen Sevilla. It continues with Dean and Phil previewing an email from a loyal listener (that they will answer on NEXT week’s show). The email involves the ongoing Writer’s Guild strike and Dean and Phil use it as a springboard to discussing the latest labor negotiation news in Hollywood and to ponder the question “Is Ryan Murphy (once again) the worst person in the world?” Last week, the life and career of Oscar-winner Glenda Jackson was celebrated. This week, Phil reveals tidbits from her final (?) still-to-be-released movie, The Great Escaper (starring Michael Caine). After that, Dean and Phil offer up remembrances of three more great stars of the silver (and small) screen: Julian Sands, Frederic Forrest, and Treat Williams. The second half of the show is all about Indiana Jones (and “The Dial of Destiny”), Akira Kurosawa (and two of his independent films), and the Martin Scorsese classic Raging Bull.