Tag: plan 9 from outer space

Smug Film Podcast Episode #3 – Movies That Got Us Into Movies (4/21/14)

movietheaters 1:15:47 | View on iTunes | Download Mp3

On this episode, I am joined by fellow Smug Film contributors John D’Amico and Jenna Ipcar. We discuss the movies that got us into movies, and were our gateway into obsession. As always, we go on tangents along the way, take a quick break for a movie joke by comedian Anthony Kapfer, and then close the show with questions from our mailbag.

If you have a question for the show, leave it in the comments or email us at Podcast@SmugFilm.com.

If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, and leave a rating and a comment on there as well. Doing this helps us immensely as far as our ranking on there, which is what allows people to be able to discover us. Word of mouth is always best of all though, so spread the word!

Movie Stuff Referenced in this Episode:
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My First Feature Film Is Almost Done

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I’ve told this story a billion times so this time I’m going to try to include some more details.  When my late grandpa, Tom Easton, was ten years old, he saw Fantasia in the theater.  He always wanted to be a cartoonist but his dad was cold and distant and thought cartoons were for kids and no way to make a living.  But despite that lack of encouragement, Tom did some cool things.  He avoided combat in the Korean War by teaching art on base and drawing army posters.
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Nights On Netflix: A Journey Through The Aisles Of Our Friendly Neighborhood Internet Video Store

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Future generations won’t know the joy of driving to a Blockbuster and picking out a rental (or rentals) for the weekend.  It was an inconvenient life, but nostalgia erases that.  Waxing romantic on it now makes me exhale in deep wistful wonder, my heart full of bliss.  Video stores fostered my burgeoning cinephilia in the late nineties, and provided some of the best memories of my life.

But Netflix has changed all that, and I say good riddance. All Netflix really does is add convenience to the already established video store mechanism. Now you don’t even have to leave the house. You can snuggle on the couch with your lover and your Roku box and browse what’s currently streaming (and I suspect, in a decade or so, everything will be).
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10 Movies Nobody Has Seen (Because Nobody Cares About Them)

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Sometime in the year 2000, I went to the movies, and I don’t even remember what I ended up seeing because one of the previews left such a profound mark on me that what followed has been erased from my memory.  The preview was for Under the Tuscan Sun, and when it came on all I could think was, ”who the fuck would ever want to see this movie?”.  That moment crystalized my understanding of the irrelevant.

The movies on this list are not famously bad like Plan 9 From Outer Space.  And they’re not notorious flops like Ishtar and Bonfire of the Vanities.  In fact, there’s nothing remotely memorable about them.  They just sort of exist, but it’s hard to believe they do, because nobody talks about them.  In a way, they’re much worse than awesomely bad triumphs like The Room and Troll 2, because those movies at least found an audience.  These movies are so wholly uninteresting in every way that they aren’t even worth making fun of.

If you’ve seen any of the following movies, please let me know.  You’ll be the first person ever to have seen them, and will be given an award as their respective patient zero.
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An Interview with B-Movie Filmmaker Jack Perez

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You might not have heard of Jack Perez, or his many aliases, but you’ve probably heard of his work.  Jack directed Wild Things 2 for TriStar and the pilot for the popular cult TV show Xena: Warrior Princess. His film Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus is a staple of the B-movie resurgence of the last decade.

Jack has one of the rarest jobs on earth—he’s a working director in Hollywood.  The DGA represents just over 14,000 directors.  They say in SAG about 5% of the union is working—I’d probably halve that when talking about the DGA.  And remember, for every one of those 14,000 there is literally thousands upon thousands of people dying to get in.  Directing is an elusive job, everybody knows a director makes a movie but almost nobody—lay people and cinephiles alike—really have any idea about what the job actually entails.
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