Not only is this Veronica and Eli’s last episode, it’s our fourth annual Cruisemas. With the release of One Battle After Another, we revisit Paul Thomas Anderson’s blank check big swing Magnolia (1999), and get into: young PTA and the New New Hollywood, sincerity and good listening, Phil Parma made Chad become a therapist, Fiona Apple as PTA’s Polly Platt, we desperately want a Tom Cruise coconut cake, life imitating art with Cruise’s Oprah interview, Melora Walters’ enigmatic smile, Magnolia trying to understand the same things as the Bible, the bleak prescience of ‘Seduce and Destroy,’ how to pace a 3+ hour runtime, and more.

Further reading: Roger Ebert’s “ecstatic” review, Lynn Hirschberg’s profile “His Way,” Steven Hyden on PTA and Fiona Apple for Grantland, and books from friends of the pod Adam Nayman (Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks) and Ethan Warren (The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson).

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast has been co-hosted since 2021 by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, and produced by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. Find every issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room at brightwalldarkroom.com, and thanks for listening.

Note: This episode was recorded days before the December 13 shooting at Brown University. Our thoughts remain with Veronica’s students and the entire community at Brown and beyond.

It’s officially fall when the NYFF finally ends. In this episode, Veronica sits down with Fran Hoepfner, Frank Falisi, and our producer Eli Sands to postmortem the 63rd New York Film Festival. This is a spoiler-free conversation.

We get into: Miroirs No. 3, The Mastermind, Late Fame, No Other Choice, With Hasan in Gaza, The Secret Agent, Peter Hujar’s Day, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, A House of Dynamite, Sirāt, Cover-Up, Duse, How to Bake a Cherry Pie

Plus: One Battle After Another, Alana Haim sighing, bringing Tupperware to critics screenings, the push to explicit politics in this year’s slate, film critics turned filmmakers, “actual jeers,” settler colonialist ravers, Magellan wasn’t long enough, the corona of fascism, Veronica hasn’t seen anything yet, and more.

Further reading & listening: Look out for more NYFF coverage on Eli’s podcast, Deep Cut. Find Frank at BWDR and Reverse Shot. Find Fran online at Vulture and ⁠Fran Mag.

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

You can read every single issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room ⁠here⁠, including our most recent issue: ⁠Teachers⁠. We’re also on Bluesky⁠ @BWDR⁠ and welcome listener feedback & sponsorship inquiries at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

Happy 30th birthday to David Fincher’s Seven (1995). Joining us to celebrate is special guest Adam Nayman, Toronto-based critic, lecturer, and author of, among other books, David Fincher: Mind Games (2021).

We get into: boy movies, the intersections of art and trash, Fincher as mad designer and marketing guru, Veronica can’t do math, canceling Det. Mills, how a spark of ambiguity can incite a book-length study, the undersung editing of Richard Francis-Bruce, the undersung producing prowess of Michael De Luca, what is and is not in the box, and more.

References: Tony Zhou on David Fincher (“And the Other Way is Wrong”), Richard Dyer’s BFI book for Seven, and of course, Adam’s terrific book on Fincher, Mind Games, from Little White Lies/Abrams Books.

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, and produced by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

Find all 142 issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room at brightwalldarkroom.com, and please consider subscribing to the site, which directly helps support this show!

We welcome feedback, inquiries, and sponsorship opportunities at [email protected].

Hello, champagne. This month we welcome back to the podcast Michael Koresky (listen here to his first visit, discussing A.I.: Artificial Intelligence). Michael is MoMI’s senior curator of film, Reverse Shot’s co-founder and editor, and the author of Sick and Dirty: Hollywood’s Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness, out now from Bloomsbury.

Michael joins us to talk about a film from that book, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), the ‘perfect murder’ cocktail thriller best known for its deceptive formal gambit (shot continuously with “no” cuts) and spectral queerness.

We get into: ways around the Production Code, that Technicolor sunset, Farley Granger’s offscreen persona, Hitchcock’s lost Holocaust doc, the film version of trompe l’oeil, teaching classical Hollywood in a contemporary classroom, the lesser-seen These Three (1936) and Crossfire (1947), and more.

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The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, produced by Eli Sands, and edited by Buczar. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

You can read all 141 issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room—including our current Jonathan Demme issue!—at brightwalldarkroom.com.

Feedback and/or sponsorship inquiries: [email protected].

For a taste of summertime sadness, we look at a pick from curator Christos Nikou (Apples [2020] and Fingernails [2023]): Mike Mills’s semi-autobiographical bleak comedy Beginners (2010).

We get into the film’s tonality of “melancholic smile,” non-human actors, is this Mills’s All Fours?, Christopher Plummer’s silent expressivity (and “ascot game”), aging out of the gay bar, and nightclub as metaphor for life.

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The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by⁠ Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠ and⁠ Chad Perman⁠, and produced by⁠ Eli Sands⁠. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. Discover more at ⁠Galerie.com⁠.

Your mission, should 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.

We get into: the perils of Cruise-dom, building an extension on a plane you've already built, Luther!, missing Rebecca Ferguson, decompression chambers & gel manicures, Benji Impossible, no closure, loving these movies, and more.

Relevant reading:

Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning Is a Huge Mess. But It’s a Fun Mess. - Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine

How YouTube and Internet Journalism Destroyed Tom Cruise, Our Last Real Movie Star - Amy Nicholson, LA Weekly

Where Does Tom Cruise Go From Here? - Bilge Ebiri, Vulture

The Entity: On the Technologies of Late Cruisedom - Jadie Stillwell, Bright Wall/Dark Room

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The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by⁠⁠ Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠⁠ and⁠⁠ Chad Perman⁠⁠, and produced by⁠⁠ Eli Sands⁠⁠. Our theme music is composed by Chad (and remixed for this episode by Eli).

You can find every single issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room at⁠⁠⁠ brightwalldarkroom.com⁠⁠⁠. We welcome comments and inquiries at ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠.

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This episode is sponsored by ⁠Galerie⁠, a new kind of film club. Listeners can sign up for one month of free access to curated film lists, essays, live discussions, and more at ⁠galerie.com⁠, code: BWDR

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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 1932 works just as well in 2025, and more.

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Hosts: ⁠Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠⁠⁠ &⁠⁠ Chad Perman⁠⁠⁠

Producer: ⁠Eli Sands⁠⁠⁠

Music: Chad Perman

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Read the current issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room:

Community (Issue #140)

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This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠Galerie⁠⁠, a new kind of film club where you can chat directly with filmmakers, watch groundbreaking movies, and discover stories that bring you closer than ever to the craft and culture of cinema.

To enjoy one month of Galerie for free, and then receive 50% off the next three months, visit ⁠⁠Galerie.com⁠⁠ and enter the code “BWDR” when you sign up.

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 Mancina’s love theme, what it means to “become bomb,” and more.

Further reading/viewing: Veronica’s ⁠BWDR essay on Speed⁠, the comprehensive ⁠50 MPH podcast⁠ on the making of Speed, and Keanu Reeves’s ⁠vision of a perfect day⁠. Find Travis at BWDR, and here’s another ⁠recent piece of his on David Lynch's Wild at Heart⁠ over at Southwest Review.

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The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by⁠ Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠ and⁠ Chad Perman⁠, and produced by⁠ Eli Sands⁠. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

Find every issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room at⁠⁠ brightwalldarkroom.com⁠⁠. We welcome comments and inquiries at ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠.

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This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. Listeners can sign up for one month of free access to curated film lists, essays, live discussions, and more at galerie.com, code: BWDR.

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, the aesthetics of existential malaise, the virility of 70s'-era Nicholson, the intensity of traveling relationships, and more.

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Bonus Feature: We'll be hosting a special live discussion on The Passenger over at Galerie on May 20th at 3pm EST/12pm PST. We'd love to have you join the conversation!

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Hosts: Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠⁠ &⁠ Chad Perman⁠⁠

Producer: Eli Sands⁠⁠

Editor: ⁠⁠Buczar⁠⁠

Music: Chad Perman

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This episode is sponsored by ⁠Galerie⁠, a new kind of film club where you can chat directly with filmmakers, watch groundbreaking movies, and discover stories that bring you closer than ever to the craft and culture of cinema.

To enjoy one month of Galerie for free, and then receive 50% off the next three months, visit ⁠Galerie.com⁠ and enter the code “BWDR” when you sign up.

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 practical effects, Keanu’s accent work, crossing oceans of time to find you, Michael Ballhaus (and whether this is the dark b-side of The Age of Innocence), Eiko Ishioka with the muscle armor and tiny glasses, do young people want to be turned on by the movies (or at all), and more.

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Further reading/viewing:

The Costumes are the Sets (a 15-minute doc on the film’s Oscar-winning costumes), and James Hart on the transformation of Dracula’s script.

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The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is hosted by⁠⁠ Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠⁠ &⁠ Chad Perman⁠⁠, produced by⁠⁠ Eli Sands⁠⁠, and edited by ⁠⁠Buczar⁠⁠. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

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This episode is sponsored by ⁠Galerie⁠, a new kind of film club where you can chat directly with filmmakers, watch groundbreaking movies, and discover stories that bring you closer than ever to the craft and culture of cinema.

To enjoy one month of Galerie for free—and then receive 50% off the next three months—visit ⁠Galerie.com⁠ and enter the code “BWDR” when you sign up.

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 finding something in a film that's a little bit in excess of what the film seems to think it's doing.

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The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is hosted by⁠ Veronica Fitzpatrick⁠ & Chad Perman⁠, produced by⁠ Eli Sands⁠, and edited by ⁠Buczar⁠. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

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This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club where you can chat directly with filmmakers, watch groundbreaking movies, and discover stories that bring you closer than ever to the craft and culture of cinema.

To enjoy one month of Galerie for free, and then receive 50% off the next three months, visit Galerie.com and enter the code “BWDR” when you sign up.