Recommendations
Here’s some of the resources that make the podcast better, even if they’re not expressly mentioned on it!
Horror Cinema
(Taschen Bibliotheca Universalis)
by Paul Duncan & Jürgen Müller
I saw a gilded edition of this book over on Easton Press. It retailed between $130-$200. Way out of my price range, even for limited editions. I noticed, however, folks in the comments section saying that its contents were simply a reprint of a German publishing company’s work. If you can do without the gilding, it’s available for around $20. Personally? I like the pulpy, cheaper cover. It’s a great reflection of what’s in the pages–beautifully illustrated and exhaustively detailed accounts of the peculiar, camp, and glamorous history of horror.
“I think that, I don’t know when it happened, but I thought that being an adult was going to be easier than it is...I think I thought it was gonna work like this: you know–you work hard, you tell the truth, your aim is true, and you’ll slowly build and get better and better and better. And life doesn’t work on some slow, gradual ascent where every decision makes sense.”
I’ve been on something of an Ethan Hawke binge lately. It started with this video (Ted Talk skepticism aside–they all feel too simplistic, too neat, to be of genuine use–every now and again they’ll release something that hits me at just the right moment, and I’m reluctantly won over). I searched on The New Yorker app to see if he’d been interviewed there and was illogically pleased to find out that not only did Hawke spend part of his youth in New Jersey, but he took classes at the same Princeton arts center where I took classes. I eventually made my way over to his career retrospective, wherein he talks about director Peter Weir’s brilliant “cast for the final color” advice. (Imagine being eighteen and getting that advice? I’m dizzy with envy!) However, my favorite stop along this rather random rabbit hole is, without question, Hawke’s Off Camera interview with Sam Jones.
It transfixed me.
The honesty of it. The self-reflection. The messiness. The unbridled love of art for art’s sake and for the sake of others–for the “powerful play” to which we all get to contribute a verse. It felt like a bit of sustenance for my soul in a moment where my life’s questions, always outnumbering the reach of my answers, were terrifying me. Where today felt overwhelming and tomorrow felt insurmountably daunting. Obviously, a podcast episode from a movie star I’ve never met can’t solve anything for me–even in my most whimsical moments, I know that. But, man, it can serve as a tonic during the struggle to figure things out for myself.
I keep returning to this episode when my soul feels a bit worn out, a bit feeble. When I’m worried that I’m the only one fucking up. When my anxiety gets too loud. It’s a nice, grounding reminder that success, in all its illusive forms, doesn’t promise you answers or peace, but that there’s eternal value in pursuing art and life with courage. There’s value in asking the questions and sharing in the fuck-ups. There’s value in trying.
This definitive feminist text on horror cinema…
…is one that has been recommended to me time and time again. I’m not sure why it took me so long to purchase it; my affinity for film and film talk loves the low-brow, chat channels of YouTube as much as the high-brow academic texts. Full review in the works!
“I’ve described radio in some ways as like building a Trojan horse. Where the Trojan horse is the story, but what you pack in there are these parts of yourself that you’re trying to put out into the world to somehow make normal, almost, and normalize. I think my favorite ones might be the ones where I put out my darkest thoughts, my biggest fears, and I try to figure out a way to make them relatable–as best I can, so that I don’t feel as alone. And maybe the people who feel that way, too, won’t feel as alone.
You create this stuff to make your peace with your weird self.”
There’s a playlist on my Spotify called “Warm Hug Podcasts.” It’s full of episodes that I listen and re-listen to when I need audio comfort food. The shows all have a hopeful quality to them, but they’re not necessarily happy. They deal with topics–deeply personal and terrifyingly existential–that aren’t easy to mull over. Each episode confronts one of these topics with such care and thoughtfulness that, despite their weighty subject matter, you feel safe listening to them. It’s a bit like walking in a spooky forest and realizing someone else is ahead of you, holding a flashlight.
Heavyweight is one of the first “warm hug” podcasts I encountered. As a person who logically knows that closure is an ever-moving mark yet, still, craves resolution at every turn, Heavyweight is a dream. Hosted by Jonathan Goldstein, a veteran radio show host and producer, the podcast gives people the opportunity to follow up with the one that got away, the friend that lost touch, the babysitter who disappeared. It’s a chance to look at unhealed scars, pick the scabs off of them, and get a fresh bandaid–all while someone holds your hand.
Goldstein, the aforementioned hand-holder, is the sort of host who leans into awkwardness. If there’s an uncomfortable question you want asked, you can almost guarantee he will ask it. Sarah Larson, at The New Yorker aptly profiled him “as a kind of social instigator and meddling therapist. With gumption, empathy, and comic awkwardness, he ventures into people’s lives and tries to help them resolve things from the past.” You can listen to an episode of Heavyweight below (no, it’s not the one with Moby–but that one is pretty great, too).