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A podcast from Bright Wall/Dark Room, engaging with the business of being alive, one movie at a time. Hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick & Chad Perman.
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Imaginary Worlds sounds like what would happen if NPR went to ComicCon and decided that’s all they ever wanted to cover. Host Eric Molinsky spent over a decade working as a public radio reporter and producer, and he uses those skills to create thoughtful, sound-rich episodes about science fiction, fantasy, and other genres of speculative fiction. Every other week, he talks with filmmakers, screenwriters, novelists, comic book artists, game designers, and anyone who works in the field of make ...
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Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (with Bilge Ebiri)
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Your mission, if 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. -- The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman,…
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When Arvind Ethan David was a student, he decided to adapt the Douglas Adams novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency into a play. Arvind didn’t imagine that Adams would show up to see the play (which he did), nor that Arvind would grow up to become a caretaker of Adams’ legacy. Arvind just released an audiobook called Douglas Adams: The Ends …
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On this month’s bite-sized episode we're zooming in on a snappy/passionate moment from Ernst Lubitsch’s effervescent 1932 screwball comedy, Trouble in Paradise. We get into: sex & pre-code cinema, eye-widening lines, wikipedia marriage math, Betty and Veronica vibes, the Lubitsch Touch, what does classy even mean?, how a perfect escapist film from …
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The animated TV series Pantheon (streaming on Netflix) asks what if you could upload your mind to the Internet? Would still be human? Would we create a virtual paradise where everyone got to live forever? Or would we find new and more sophisticated ways to destroy each other? I talk with Pantheon showrunner Craig Silverstein and Ken Liu, the author…
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Murderbot Is Ready for Its Close-Up (But Not Eye Contact)
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Murderbot is a killing machine in the far future that would rather spend its time binging an intergalactic soap opera. Shooting bad guys with lasers is much less stressful than making eye contact or engaging in small talk with humans. Murderbot is also the main character of Martha Wells’ best-selling series of books, The Murderbot Diaries. The book…
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Pop quiz, hotshot: join us as we welcome back BWDR veteran and De Palma completist Travis Woods for a special conversation on one of our all-time favorites, Jan de Bont’s Speed (1994). We get into: repetition compulsion and classical Hollywood storytelling, Keanu’s peak hotness, Speed’s existential lessons, does Jeff Daniels close his eyes?, Mark…
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Next year marks the 60th anniversary of Dark Shadows. The gothic soap opera wasn’t originally intended to include a vampire, but when creator Dan Curtis introduced the character of Barnabas Collins in a last-ditch effort to avoid cancellation, he inadvertently launched a cultural phenomenon. As portrayed by actor Jonathan Frid, the character of Bar…
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This month’s micro-episode takes us inside the mysterious, sensual brilliance of Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger, a curated pick from director Ezra Edelman: "The idea of wanting to live with purpose, even if it’s someone else’s purpose—there’s just something so human about it." We get into: the comfort of slow cinema that doesn't feel slow, …
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We all have that one thing we just can’t watch. For me, it’s body horror -- the kind of horror where grotesque and disturbing things happen to someone’s body, like in The Thing, The Fly, or The Substance. There is a long history of body horror as a form of social commentary and special effects showmanship. I respect the artform, but I can’t stomach…
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Last week, we heard about a new exhibit in New York called Syd Mead: Future Pastime. The exhibit closes on May 21st, and I know most listeners won't be able to see it in person. So in this bonus episode, you can hear the entire tour I got from Elon Solo and William Corman, who organized the exhibit. You can also see some of the images on the Imagin…
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The Optimist Behind Blade Runner's Dystopia
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The late Syd Mead was a visual futurist who was hired to imagine the worlds of Blade Runner, Tron, Aliens, Elysium and other sci-fi films. His work in Hollywood has been lauded for decades, but there’s a new exhibit in New York that shows a different side of the artist. Syd Mead: Future Pastime is a collection of his personal and commercial paintin…
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Bram Stoker's Dracula (with Angelica Jade Bastién)
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This month we sit down with Vulture critic Angelica Jade Bastién, author of the newsletter Madwomen & Muses, where she recently started writing about “Movies That Fuck.” In honor of “cinematic sensuality,” we chat about Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Francis Ford Coppola’s ode to ahistorical melodrama and doomed romance. We get into: Roman Coppola’s…
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The golden age of sci-fi was filled with utopian visions the future. These days, when sci-fi creators project ahead several decades, the world is looking a lot more dystopian. But there is a group of artists who believe that a better tomorrow is possible if we can imagine it first. Architects are finding that science fiction can be a great way to u…
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Mary Blair: Coloring Outside the Lines at Disney
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In honor of Women’s History Month we’re producing a two-part series about two artists who were visionaries and trailblazers. In part 2, we look at the career of Mary Blair. She changed the way Walt Disney wanted to make animation and brought modernist sophistication to his style. But not everyone at the studio was on board with Walt’s dream to “get…
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This month's bite-sized episode zooms in on the spectral perspective of Thomas Vinterburg's debut film, The Celebration (1998), one of Palestinian director/writer/producer Annemarie Jacir's curated picks. We get into: Dogme 95, family gatherings as horror movies, the generative energy of stylistic constraints, dynamic chaos, ghostly POVs, and findi…
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Bonus: Superstar Stuntwoman of Silent Cinema
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In the previous episode, I talked with author Mallory O'Meara about Milicent Patrick, but there wasn't room to include this bonus material about Mallory's new book, Daughter of Daring. It tells the amazing story of Helen Gibson, the first superstar professional stuntwoman in Hollywood. She was like a combination of Annie Oakley and Michelle Yeoh at…
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Milicent Patrick: Disney Magic to Monster Mayhem
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In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re producing a two-part series about two visionary and trailblazing artists: Mary Blair and Milicent Patrick. They went to the same art school. They each began working at Disney during the Depression. They were both singled out for their talents but left in 1941. From there, they went on to have wildly differen…
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Rewind: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (with Michael Koresky)
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In honor of guest Michael Koresky's new book announcement, we're revisiting this conversation with him from last summer about Steven Spielberg's A.I. Michael's new book, Sick and Dirty: Hollywood's Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness, will be out from Bloomsbury in June. --- Reverse Shot co-founder and editor, and Editorial Director …
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This week’s episode comes from our Patreon podcast Between Imaginary Worlds. It’s a more casual chat show that appears between ad-free episodes of Imaginary Worlds for listeners who support the show on Patreon. I wanted to play this episode for you because it gives a good sense of the types of conversations we’re having on Between Imaginary Worlds.…
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Filk Fusion: Where Sci-Fi Meets Folk Music
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In the 1950s, an article about the popularity of folk music among science fiction fans had a typo where “folk” was written as “filk.” From then on, filk music became a staple at grassroots sci-fi conventions. Filkers would either write parody lyrics to existing folk songs, or they’d invent entirely new speculative worlds in 3-4 minute songs. Filk h…
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We’re back with an episode analyzing writer-director Aaron Schimburg’s Kafkaesque body swap, A Different Man. Joining us is critic, actor, and BWDR darling Frank Falisi, co-founder of Garden State Lantern. We get into Adam Pearson’s Oscar snub and Sebastian Stan’s win, The Substance for boys, shooting in NYC, if you want to dance the mask, the huma…
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The writer Jon Ronson and producers of the immersive theatrical experience Sleep No More have teamed up to make a vast new immersive show that unfolds beneath a Wall St. skyscraper. Life And Trust tells the story of J.G. Conwell, a bank president on the eve of the 1929 crash who makes a Faustian bargain to return to his youth. We accompany him back…
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Our first mini-episode of 2025 looks to one of director Andrew Haigh’s curated picks: Billy Wilder’s subversive farce Some Like It Hot. We get into the unlikely modernity of Hot’s sexual politics, Orry-Kelly’s naked dresses, Wilder’s collaboration with I. A. L. Diamond, is this the greatest comedy of all time, and more. -- The Bright Wall/Dark Room…
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Lauren Shippen is one of my favorite creators of audio dramas. In 2015, she burst on the scene with The Bright Sessions, which was about young people with supernatural abilities who are in therapy. The show was so successful, she used it to create an audio drama network called Atypical Artists, which produces her work and other indie creators. As a…
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In honor of Muppet*Vision 3D closing at Disney World, we look at the history of The Muppets before Kermit joined Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear. Two decades earlier, Kermit was hanging out with Sam and Friends -- a local TV show in Washington, D.C., that launched Jim Henson's career. This episode comes from the podcast Sidedoor, produced by The Smithso…
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Be thankful we did your Gladiator II homework, rewatching Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 1 (2000) with amateur Russell Crowe historian Blake Howard. This is a Gladiator II-spoiler-free conversation: listen as we get into Crowe kissing disembodied feet, Scott’s world-building, the technology of acting, Oliver Reed’s digitized face (RIP), is anything bette…
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Bond, Bond, and James Bond: An Audio Drama
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There’s a fan theory that James Bond is a codename, and all of the Bond movies are in a single chronological order. In this original audio drama, James Bond is not a film series but rather an MI6 program (or programme) where agents embody the persona of “James Bond” until they retire from the field one way or another. I talk with three characters w…
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This month’s mini-episode takes us into the rich opening sequence of a pick curated by director Andrew Haigh: Nicolas Roeg’s Venetian nightmare, Don’t Look Now . We get into Graeme Clifford’s expressionist editing, celebrating movies for grownups, the color red, non-chronology, grief, and what lies “beyond the fragile geometry of space.” -- The Bri…
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Rewind: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
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This holiday season, we're revisiting last year's holiday special: an audio essay of one of the most popular articles we've every published on the site: Ethan Warren's A Grand Yuletide Theory: The Muppet Christmas Carol is the Best Adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Written and read by Ethan himself, with holiday music from Ryan Pollie. (Origin…
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The Penguin series on HBO and Max has been one of the most critically acclaimed comic book-based TV shows in years. Much of the praise has gone towards actors like Colin Farrell, who plays the classic Batman villain. But the makeup and prosthetics designer Mike Marino has been singled out for his innovative and striking design of the main character…
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In honor of the release of Wicked, we’re hitching a ride on a tornado to hear three different stories about Oz. We hear how the “rainbow chaser” L. Frank Baum failed at every career he tried until he sat down to write The Wizard of Oz. We learn about Baum’s frenemy W.W. Denslow, who illustrated The Wizard of Oz, and then tried to create a competing…
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