Secret Movie Club Podcast

SMC Pod #156: Sex in American Cinema and the X & NC-17 Rating

While the team re-assembles, Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill goes solo to discuss the history of sex in American cinema and the X and NC-17 rating. Craig marvels that 50 years ago X-rated movies like MIDNIGHT COWBOY were winning Best Picture and THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES were mainstream, making the equivalent of $100 million dollars, and getting 3 star ratings from Roger Ebert while now American studios, filmmakers, and films seem to have no idea how to deal with sex scenes (and so avoid them). For the societal health of the country, Craig advocates for the emergence of the "adult sex movie" as a mainstream genre like action, horror, fantasy & sci-fi, and the superhero. It would help bring conversations about sex and sexuality back into the light and mainstream.

SMC Summer Podcast #10: Twin Peaks:The Return Parts 9-18 & SMC Pod #115: Tom Cruise

And so, finally, we get to Summer 2023 Pod #10. The number of completion. We look at Parts 9-18 of Twin Peaks: The Return. We discuss how David Lynch managed the seemingly impossibly by matching Part 8 with the sheer brilliance of Part 18. And we discuss all the grace notes throughout. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer feels that TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN ultimately is the greatest movie of 2017, one of the greatest features of the 21st century, and that TWIN PEAKS as a whole is one of the key cinematic works of the last 50 years. We also re-post SMC Pod #115 where the team discusses the mystery and marvel that is Tom Cruise, one of the most interesting and complicated of America's movie stars. 

SMC Summer Pod #9: When Hitchcock experiments & SMC Pod #108 Repost The High Concept Low Budget Film

Alfred Hitchcock is one of American cinema's most daring risk-takers and experimenters. His filmmography is filled with wild experiments from single location movies like LIFEBOAT, ROPE, REAR WINDOW to rule breaking near avant garde stunners like PSYCHO and THE BIRDS. Today, Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill looks at 1948's ROPE (comprised of only 11 shots and filmed to look like one continuous take) and 1963's THE BIRDS (in which seemingly docile everyday birds attack a small Northern Californian town with little to no explanation). Craig marvels at ROPE's technique and THE BIRDS secondary, less talked about subtext about the chaos of lust and desire. We also repost SMC Pod #108 about the wonderful Spanish time travel movie TIME CRIMES and the low budget high concept feature. 

SMC Summer Pod #8: Twin Peaks The Return Parts 1-8 & SMC Pod #10000 Repost Favorite pre 23rd Century Movies

Today we continue our TWIN PEAKS masterwork series by looking at 2017's TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN Parts 1-8. Founder.Programmer Craig Hammill talks about how David Lynch and Mark Frost telegraphed their ambition with the VERY FIRST Twin Peaks episode/pilot in 1989. Lynch's expanded vision which encompasses all of America married to Kyle Machlachlan's commitment to 5 different roles (!!) married to avant garde masterpiece parts like Part 8 make THE RETURN the greatest movie of 2017 and one of the great 21st century masterworks for Craig. We also repost SMC Pod #10000 recorded April 1, 2021 which was our first attempt at an April's Fool's episode where we wanted to make ya' laugh.

SMC Summer Pod #7: Personal Favorite movies of the 21st century & SMC Pod #96 re-post Speed Racer

SMC founder.programmer Craig Hammill talks about his personal favorite movies of the 21st century including Catch Me If You Can, Zodiac, No Country For Old Men, Un Prophete, Boyhood, Lovers Rock among several others. He notes how watching recent masterpieces can help give a current moviemaker the faith and belief necessary to commit to cinema in the current strange moment. David Lynch's and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks: The Return (which Craig considers one of the great 21st century movies) will get talked about at length next week in SMC Summer Pod #8. We also repost SMC Pod #96 about the Wachowski's Speed Racer and the wonderful phenomenon of movies that get re-appraised, re-considered over time. 

SMC Summer Pod #6: David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me & The Missing Pieces + SMC Pod #86 repost

SMC founder.programmer Craig Hammill continues the podcast summer mini-series deep dive into David Lynch's & Mark Frost's TWIN PEAKS. Today we talk about Lynch's 1992 feature film TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME and the 90 minutes he cut out that he later released in 2014 as THE MISSING PIECES. Fire Walk With Me was initially met with near universal dislike. Now it is considered one of Lynch's greatest and most essential movies.  Craig also notes how strangely the changes Lynch had to make to get the movie across the finish line helped the movie get more focused and more intense. Then we repost SMC Podcast #86. In this pod, we get to hear the "lost podcasts" recorded in 2018-2019, with friends of SMC that include screenwriters Matt Olsen, Steve Grest, and fellow USC film school grad Brian Hatfield. They represent the kind of wide-ranging movie conversations that great movies can kindle. Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, and possibly the greatest of all Star Trek movies Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan get discussed. There's also lots of laughter. 

SMC Summer Pod #5: Twin Peaks Season 1 & 2 Deep Dive + SMC Pod #85 repost: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

As our Summer podcast series heads into the back stretch, founder.programmer Craig Hammill decides to devote the remaining 4 summer pods to a deep dive into each phase/cycle of David Lynch's magnum opus Twin Peaks which now comprises two tv seasons, a movie, and a limited series on cable. If last week was a kind of general prologue, this week Craig deep dives into television seasons #1 and #2 which aired on ABC 1990-1991. Craig specifically focuses on how the poorly received back half of season 2 when Lynch stepped away from the series set the gears in motion for Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost to re-focus/re-center the show with the Season #2 finale. This in turn set up the 1992 Lynch directed feature FIRE WALK WITH ME which in turn set up 2017's TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN (all of which will get discussed in the next few episodes). Then we re-post SMC Pod #85. This was our first pod devoted to a long form conversation of a Secret Movie Club filmmaker of the year-here ultra prolific German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Editor Andrew Groves joins the conversation and adds deep rich detail. 

SMC Summer Pod #4: David Lynch, Twin Peaks, & the nexus of TV and Cinema + Defend This Movie #1 repost

Today in our ongoing August "summer break series" something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. . .Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill talks about season one of David Lynch's and Mark Frost's revolutionary TWIN PEAKS. Arriving in 1990 on network television, TWIN PEAKS was like nothing anybody had ever seen. Disturbing, unsettling, cinematic. It's also a fascinating case study in what a movie director brings to TV versus how a show runner trained in television would handle a series. Craig talks Lynch's stylistic imprint on the episodes Lynch directed including the still shocking pilot. Then we re-post the very first "Defend This Movie" posted in June 2021 in which Craig defends his love of the 1969 James Bond movie "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" against the withering scorn heaped by Craig's friend Steve Grest who finds it one of the worst of the Bonds. 

SMC Summer Pod #3: William Friedkin, the passing of the 70’s guard, and SMC Radio Hour #4 repost

Today, we continue our SMC Summer Pod hybrid series of new material and a repost of one our favorite earlier pods by honoring 70's maverick moviemaker William Friedkin. Founder.Programmer Craig Hammill talks about how he actually got to interview Friedkin for two hours in the 1990's. How very few moviemakers get a movie like THE EXORCIST that changes pop culture forever. And how Friedkin's passing really begins the passing of the guard in a way. We also re-post SMC Radio Hour #4 which is a fun (we hope) horror omnibus radio hour we did in our first year with great voice actors as a way to be creative at the height of COVID. 

SMC Summer Pod #2: Box Office, Critical Success, Longevity + SMC Pod #15: Spike Lee Repost

Craig riffs on the Barbie/Oppenheimer current pop culture juggernaut but also notes how strange it is that a movie like Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 which will gross at least $500 million worldwide is considered underperforming. Craig also celebrates a summer where movies are again driving the pop culture. Then we repost Secret Movie Club Podcast #15 where we talked about Spike Lee, Da 5 Bloods, Malcolm X with special guests Ajarae Coleman and Kevin Johnson in the age of George Floyd and the horrific police brutality against black Americans in the summer of 2020.