Secret Movie Club Podcast

SMC Summer 2023 Pod #1:When you have to reshape a movie & SMC Pod #1 Repost

As we work feverishly to prep our remaining Summer and Fall 2023 seasons, we're going to do a month of new-repost hybrid podcasts. The first 10 minutes or so will be new and on a short subject. This week, Craig talks about fascinating classics like Apocalypse Now, Dr. Strangelove, Sexy Beast, and Annie Hall that had to be severely reworked in production and post production because some element didn't work. And how strangely the brainstorming that went into fixing the problem created classics. Then we'll repost a great podcast from our vaults so folks can hear topics they may never have realized the team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, other SMC Team Members, Craig Hammill) covered when we started way back when in 2020.  Today, we re-post our first ever podcast! SMC Podcast #1 (recorded just a few weeks into the pandemic in March/April 2020) focuses on the team's personal top 10 favorites lists. And the reexamination if such a list even makes sense when there are so many great movies. 

SMC Podcast #155: David Lynch’s THE STRAIGHT STORY & Directors’ Oddball Entries

The Secret Movie Club Team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, and Craig Hammill) talk about David Lynch's 1999 G rated Disney movie The Straight Story. It is agreed that it is one of Lynch's greatest movies yet oddly one of his most underseen because it defies many folks' surface expectations of what is a David Lynch movie. The team also offers up their own oddball director movies. 1941, Gloria, Brewster's Millions, Spike Lee's Old Boy, among many others get discussed. Connor notes how some directors are allowed to branch out and others can get imprisoned in a certain genre. Edwin bristles and swears more than usual. Daniel brings up Francis Ford Coppola's Jack too late. Craig talks Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. 

DEFEND THIS MOVIE #11: William Friedkin’s CRUISING

The return of our side podcast Defend This Movie! Secret Movie Club team member Edwin Gomez has long loved William Friedkin's controversial 1980 police thriller Cruising about Al Pacino going undercover to find a serial killer in New York's underground gay S&M leather bar scene. Founder.Programmer Craig Hammill has long felt uncomfortable about the movie for what he feels is a lurid, uncomfortable use of a gay sub-culture in a slasher/edgelord kind of way. But upon re-watching the movie, Craig's feelings have become more ambivalent. Head projectionist Alex Olivier feels the movie has incredible merit and is far less problematic then some of the other movies Craig has programmed for Secret Movie Club.  The three meet for an Oxford style debate about one of the 1980's most controversial movies. 

SMC Pod #154: The Fourth of July and Other Summer Holiday Movies!

The Secret Movie Club Team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, and Craig Hammill) gets beach-ready with films for the summer! The Team agrees that Jaws is the quintessential Independence Day (the holiday) movie! Edwin salutes Patton as the greatest American movie ever made. Daniel reports on All the President’s Men and how much he likes watching people be good at their jobs. Connor half-heartedly endorses Mars Attacks! as an Independence Day (the movie) alternative. Craig celebrates “last day of school” movies, like American Graffiti, and camp films, like Wet Hot American Summer! Stay cool out there, Secret Movie Clubbers!

SMC Pod #153: SEVEN SAMURAI Special!

On the heels of Secret Movie Club’s biggest screening to date, SMC programmer and founder, Craig Hammill, sits down with Team member and head projectionist (AND samurai aficionado), Alex Olivier, to spend nearly an hour talking about one of the best films of all time, Craig’s desert island film, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai! Alex and Craig go into the movie’s themes, the legendary cast, the difficult production, and the enormous influence the film and Kurosawa has had over cinema since its release. Edwin makes a brief appearance.

SMC Pod #152: Comfort Food Movies + WE BOUGHT A ZOO!

The Secret Movie Club Team (Connor Lloyd Crews, Edwin Gomez, Daniel Ott, and Craig Hammill) returns with some tasty comfort food movies that’ll make you feel warm inside! Craig recounts the way the ending of Thelma & Louise made him feel as a kid. Daniel doesn’t mind sitting with Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson. Connor is somehow comforted by the Saw franchise. And there’s the main event, The Trial of Edwin Gomez, where the Team tries to understand what compelled Edwin to watch Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo five times in two months!

SMC Bitesize Pod 4: The Heirs of ”The Wizard of Oz”

1939's The Wizard of Oz (dir by Victor Fleming, MGM) was not only one of the greatest movies in what is considered Hollywood's greatest year but it also has had a sonic boom cultural influence on almost all pop culture of the last 90 years. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill looks at all the amazing creative folks influenced by Oz including Stephen King, Steven Spielberg, David Lynch, James Cameron, as well as folks like Stanley Kubrick who claimed to hate it.  Craig powers through the podcast as the pre-focus for Top Gun happens in the background. He also shares a story about how his Jewish great-grandfather, Sam Levin, a tailor at MGM, and Craig's Bubbe (Yiddish for grandmother) are connected to The Wizard of Oz. 

SMC Bitesize Pod 3: The ”Perfect Movie”

Secret Movie Club Bitesize Pod #3 (final bitesize pod #4 next week then the gang returns 6/23/23) finds programmer.founder Craig Hammill looking under the hood of the concept of the "perfect" movie. What elevates movies like The Gold Rush, The Godfathers I & 2, Jaws, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Goodfellas, The Big Lebowski, In the Mood For Love, Mulholland Drive, Mad Max Fury Road, even 2017's Into The Spiderverse to the rarefied air of the "perfect" movie. And what actually happens behind the scenes in the sausage making to get there. Craig discovers a lot of the pictures are unified by the suffering, constant revision, and problem solving  of its stressed out makers.  A strange distinction between the "perfect" movie and a "great" movie also gets noted. Plus Craig manages to keep this pod more bitesize through some ruthless editing of his preambles and caveats. 

SMC Bitesize Pod 2: The Life Cycle of Lord of the Rings as cinema

Part #2 of our four part "Bite Size Pods" series finds founder.programmer Craig Hammill looking at the cinematic life cycle of LORD OF THE RINGS. Craig considers the 2001-2003 Peter Jackson movies to be the greatest blockbuster trilogy of the 21st century. But he also wonders why so many great movie series must go through birth-growth-renaissance-decadence-death. Craig starts with the roots of LORD OF THE RINGS in Norse and Germanic mythology, looks at the JRR Tolkein books of the 1950's, the attempts to adapt the books (including one by the Beatles in the 1960's directed by Stanley Kubrick (!!), Peter Jackson's ultimate adaptation, then the works like THE HOBBIT trilogy and the recent Amazon series THE RINGS OF POWER that came after.  Ultimately Craig feels hope lies in the final part of the cycle:  rebirth.  

SMC Bitesize Pod 1: Lars Von Trier’s EUROPA/ZENTROPA (1991)

While the Secret Movie Club team takes a much needed one month break (SMC Pod #152 returns June 23rd), founder.programmer Craig Hammill hosts a mini-four part series of "bite size" pods. This week, Craig finally watches Lars Von Triers' third feature EUROPA/ZENTROPA (1991), a movie he's wanted to see since he was a teenager. Craig notes how all the elements of Von Trier's cinema are here without yet coming to full blossom. He also feels it's key  to tap into your "young person" style no matter what age you are. Plus he blows his intro.