Secret Movie Club Podcast

SMC Pod #220: Inverting one movie to make another (Gemini movies)

One of the most clever ways moviemakers make new movies is to take a movie they love and invert it-do the opposite of key aspects of the movie and problem solve how to make that work. Peter Jackson famously took George Romero's zombie classic Night of the Living Dead where zombies are outside trying to get into a house and made Dead Alive where zombies are inside a house and the hero is trying to keep them from getting out. The first three Indiana Jones movies are all clever inversions of classics like Casablanca, Gunga Din, and From Russia with Love. And Casablanca gets another crazy inversion in the form of the 1946 classic Gilda starring Rita Hayworth. Secret Movie Club founder Craig Hammill dives into this fascinating way of flipping a movie on its head to make a totally new movie. 

SMC Pod #219: The Music Video Movie Director Generation

In the 1980's and 1990's, David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Sofia Coppola, among many others honed their craft and proved their vision directing 3 minute music videos for MTV.  While the "music video" aesthetic was sometimes attacked as hurting cinema, in retrospect, the best directors of that generation brought a much needed innovation to movie language from which we can still take inspiration. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill looks at this video work and notes how often the master moviemakers of a generation come out of a looked down upon medium. 

SMC Pod #218: From the stage to the screen-Adapting plays into movies

Adaptation is a tricky thing no matter the source in cinema. Novels, life stories, historical events, original ideas, short stories. Adapting live theater plays is an especially tricky business. Something written to be performed live, often in 1 location/set, with concentrated poetic dialogue, plays different as a movie. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill takes a look at everything from Sidney Lumet's adaptations of 12 Angry Men and Long Day's Journey into Night to all the various Shakespeare adaptations to experimental one location minimalist adaptations like Richard Linklater's 2001 Tape. His conclusion? It might help moviemakers to direct some plays to be better prepared to adapt them to the big screen.

SMC Pod #217: Directing the Action Film

The precision, patience, and technical know how needed to sell action filmmaking is underrated and under appreciated. Action directors like Michael Curtiz, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, George Miller, John McTiernan, even. . .Michael Bay get treated differently than art house canonically revered moviemakers. Yet what is accomplished in action hits like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Aliens, Die Hard, Mad Max Fury Road, even Bad Boys II is a cinematic miracle. Very carefully planned illusion becomes reality. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill takes a filmmaking-centric approach to talk about the technical tools and tricks used to sell stunts, sequences, cinematic danger. 

SMC Pod #216: Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Russian Sci Fi Hard to be a God, and our family field report

Oh boy. This one is a movie hodge podge stew. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill announces the first dates of the SMC 2026 season. 8 movies, 5 on 35mm! Then we talk about one more Russian sci-fi classic, 2013's HARD TO BE A GOD by Aleksei German to round out SMC Pod 215. And finally, the Hammill family ages 2 to 48 talk about their thoughts on THE SUPER MARIO GALAXY MOVIE and going to the theaters in 2026.

SMC Pod #215: Soviet Sci‑Fi: Hidden Masterpieces from Solaris to Silver Globe

Soviet Sci fi is an undiscovered ocean of incredible cinema for folks here in the west who may not know many of these masterpieces exist. While Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris and Stalker are frequently screened, amazing sci-fi works like Dead Man's Letters, Kin Dza-Dza, and On The Silver Globe are just as powerful.  Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill also takes a survey look at other works from the Soviet Union's first sci-fi, the silent film Aelita-Queen of Mars all the way to a crazy Polish sci-fi sex comedy SexMission that may have partly inspired Mike Judge's Idiocracy.

SMC Pod #214: Casablanca: A case study of how a Studio Team Built a Masterpiece

1942's Best Picture winner CASABLANCA, made at Warner Brothers, is ultimately the best evidence one could produce for how the old studio system of the 1920's through the 1940's was set up to occasionally produce a masterpiece that could not have been made any other way.  Defying the auteur-centered way we often appraise movies, CASABLANCA really was a team effort with critical contributions from writers, the producer, the composer, the cast, the director, the production designer, the cinematographer.  Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill using amazing books like Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of Casablanca by Aljean Harmetz for research does a deep dive into the pre production, production, and release of one of Hollywood's most beloved movies. While we've moved on from the studio system, often for the good, there is still a lot we should reconsider that might help bring that magic to our current work. 

SMC Pod #213: Ken Loach & his 1969 masterpiece KES

British filmmaker Ken Loach has been committed to socially minded cinema for over six decades. From early 1960's TV work to his most recent (and possibly last feature) in 2023, Ken Loach has been one of world cinema's most reliable productive practitioners. So why did it take Secret Movie Club programmer.founder Craig Hammill so long to finally see  Loach's 1969 masterpiece Kes? An incredible film that follows working class British teen Billy who suddenly discovers his passion when he trains a baby hawk using a library book on falconry. It's a deeply felt honest look at childhood, the British class and school system, and the socio-economic tensions that can trap a boy like Billy as much as Billy traps Kes. SPECIAL NOTE: We'll return in 3 weeks on Fri, April 17, 2026 with our next podcast, SMC Pod #214: CASABLANCA, a movie case study.

SMC Pod #212: Luis Buñuel, L'Age d'Or

Episode 212 of Secret Movie Club dives into the life and work of Luis Buñuel, tracing his surrealist beginnings with Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or, his powerful Mexican period (Los Olvidados, The Exterminating Angel), and his later French masterpieces (Belle de Jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, That Obscure Object of Desire).

Founder and programmer of Secret Movie Club, Craig Hammill, shares biographical context, thematic through-lines—religion, class, dream logic and satire—and personal memories of discovering Buñuel, while recommending key films to watch for newcomers and longtime fans alike.

SMC Pod #211: Movies & AI

The AI disruption for movies is here. Poor movies, battered on the choppy seas of digital, streaming, COVID, and now AI, have yet another challenge to contend with. But we've been here before with sound, color, television, home video. In fact, if anything, the history of movies and the history of technological innovation and disruption are forever intertwined. And movies, at least so far, have found a way to innovate and to endure. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill takes a look at where AI is in 2026 and what that may mean for cinema, movie jobs, and the art form going forward.