Green Screen
Sean Munger
1 Creator
1 Creator
1 Listener
All episodes
Best episodes
Seasons
Top 10 Green Screen Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Green Screen episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Green Screen for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Green Screen episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear
Green Screen
07/23/20 • 67 min
What starts out as a light-hearted palate cleanse quickly becomes more than Sean and Cody bargained for as they seek to lighten the mood with a classic Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker slapstick comedy. In The Naked Gun 21⁄2, dimwitted Police Squad detective Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) bumbles into a plot where evil White House Chief of Staff John Sununu (Peter Van Norden) is trying to rig George Bush’s environmental policy so fossil fuel fat cats like the dapperly mustachioed Quentin Hapsburg (Robert Goulet) can keep killing the planet for profit. But with Drebin, Ed and Nordberg on the case, are the oily baddies finally about to meet their Waterloo? Environmental issues discussed include the evolution of climate change denial as official U.S. policy, the consequences of the George H.W. Bush presidency, the cultural resonance of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster, and the influence of fossil fuel industry lobby groups on public opinion.
Why did John Sununu hate science so much? How did tobacco company shills and defense analysts pushing beam weapons to Ronald Reagan in the ‘80s prime the pump for the rise of global warming denialism? What was the most embarrassing oil company commercial of all time? Was Hazelwood really drunk when the Exxon Valdez crashed into that reef, or was that an urban myth? How do you stretch an 85-minute comedy into three excruciating hours of television? How did Priscilla Presley get into Scientology? Is The Sound of Music really a Christmas movie? Does anybody remember who Mel Tormé was? Why is this film so damned depressing and enraging? All of these questions are ready to be taken downtown and interrogated in this episode of Green Screen.
The Naked Gun 21⁄2 (1991) at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102510/ The Naked Gun 21⁄2 (1991) at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-naked-gun-2-the-smell-of-fear/
Next Movie Up: King Kong (1933)
1 Listener
1 Comment
1
12/10/20 • 99 min
Sean and Cody exchange Thanksgiving leftovers for Rwandan mountain gorillas and join forces with History by Hollywood podcast host Martin Darlington for an in-depth look at Gorillas in the Mist, the popular biopic of legendary primatologist Dian Fossey. In this 1988 film based on her memoirs, amateur naturalist Fossey (Sigourney Weaver) begs bigwig anthropologist Louis Leakey for a slot on a junket to Africa to count endangered gorillas. When she gets in-country she begins an obsessive one-woman war against poachers, zoo headhunters, amorous graduate students, wayward National Geographic photographers and anyone who stands in the way of “her” gorillas. Environmental issues discussed include species conservation, poaching in Africa, bushmeat and its relationship to economies and disease, the world wildlife conservation business and a repeat grudge match with our old friend the White Savior Complex.
Was the real Dian Fossey a saint and a savior, or an out-of-control monster who did more harm than good? Who might have been responsible for her still-unsolved 1985 murder? Should Westerners from developed countries go to Africa to save wildlife, or is that another form of colonialism? Are poachers always bad? What was the Congo Crisis and what does it have to do with this movie? Why would you want to put a chimpanzee into a gorilla suit? Are there actually any real gorillas in this picture, or are they all people (or chimps) in suits? How did Teddy Roosevelt set out to save the environment by shooting up the landscape with a shotgun? Is Sigourney Weaver’s agent secretly subsidizing the production of Green Screen? After the racist Götterdämmerung of King Kong, why are we talking about gorillas again? All these questions are beating their chests and screeching to be debated on this Very Special Episode of Green Screen.
Big thanks to Martin Darlington of History by Hollywood, with whom this episode is a joint production.
Gorillas in the Mist (1988) at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095243/ Gorillas in the Mist (1988) at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/gorillas-in-the-mist/
Next Movie Up: Batman Returns (1992)
Tremors
Green Screen
05/28/20 • 68 min
Eager to escape the drug-addled inner city of the last episode, Sean and Cody tool on out to dusty rural Nevada in search of subterranean beasties that seem to have a taste for almost-leading-man that-guy actors, the dad from Family Ties and an especially fetching Fred Ward. In Tremors, bromatic handymen Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Ward) start finding dead people all over the place, apparently chomped by hungry creatures who have inexplicably decided that humans are their new favorite food. Can Val and Earl rescue the beleaguered denizens of Perfection, Nevada from the hordes of grabby ghoulies, or will they end up as fertilizer? Environmental issues discussed include nuclear weapons testing, cultural fears of the unintended consequences of technology, and the centrality of water infrastructure to the modern West.
How did our hosts (one of whom has a Ph.D.) initially get fooled into thinking Paradise, Nevada was a real place? Are the “graboids” recent arrivals on the scene, or have they always been there, and if they have, how come no one noticed them before? Is the infamous “nuke the fridge” scene from Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull based on a true story? Did Howard Hughes give John Wayne cancer? What happens when you set off a nuke underground? Why should you never underestimate the power of slime? What’s a “Weisiger moment”? How many degrees of separation is our podcast’s biggest fan away from the real Kevin Bacon? Was the premise of the sitcom Family Ties funny to anyone who wasn’t a Baby Boomer? All these questions will be messily devoured in this monstrous episode of Green Screen.
Tremors at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100814/ Tremors at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/tremors/
Next movie: Princess Mononoke (1997)
Jaws (with guest Alex Arreola)
Green Screen
06/24/21 • 93 min
An episode that’s been a year in the making, Sean and Cody are joined by self-professed shark addict Alex Arreola for this bloody good analysis of Jaws, the 1975 blockbuster that’s now recognized as one of the greatest—and most popular—motion pictures of all time. On the ambiguously located Amity Island, transplanted New York cop Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) loses his lunch, and his cachet with the elders of the town, when a woman is killed by a shark and he decides quite rationally to close the public beaches. But the shark’s appetite has barely been whetted before the tantalizing main course of an island full of Fourth of July revelers. Environmental issues discussed include the horrific and bizarre Jersey Shore shark bite incidents of July 1916, the historical basis of the film; sharks’ feeding habits and their relationship to humans; marine species’ vulnerability to climate change; and the true story behind a real-life incident said to have been a mass shark feeding frenzy, the infamous Indianapolis disaster referenced in the film.
How dangerous are sharks to humans, and what factors bring the two species into conflict with one another? Why is “shark bite” a better term to use than “shark attack?” What happened in Matawan, New Jersey in July 1916 and how faithfully did that true story translate to book and eventually to screen? Why did the author of the book this film was based on, Peter Benchley, eventually regret writing it? Which U.S. President held an emergency cabinet meeting to talk about sharks? Can German U-boats cause shark bite incidents? How accurate is Quint’s famous speech in Jaws describing the USS Indianapolis disaster of 1945? How are sharks threatened by climate change? Is Steven Spielberg really the genius at figuring out crowd psychology, and if you think he is, how do you explain his dreadful film Always? There’s so many questions like this in the episode that we’re going to need a bigger boat for this episode of Green Screen.
Special thanks to Pop-Up Puppet Cinema for permission to use the “Jaws Sea Shanty” in this episode, and also thanks to The Daily Jaws website.
Jaws (1975) on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/ Jaws (1975) on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/jaws/
Next Movie Up: Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
Nightcrawler
Green Screen
09/16/21 • 71 min
Fresh from being serenaded by singing ‘toons in the last episode, Sean and Cody sprint for the finish line of their “L.A. trilogy” and delve into the heart of darkness—and modern Los Angeles—as they examine this media-savvy 2014 thriller. In Nightcrawler, sleazy ne’er-do-well Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) graduates from Satan’s entrepreneurship program and starts going around L.A. filming bloody car crashes and crime scenes so he can sell the gore-soaked tapes to Channel 6’s program director Nina (Rene Russo). But when he and his camera witness a murder that’s tailor-made to inflame the fears and prejudices of Angelenos, whatever used to pass for journalistic ethics gets sliced, diced and filleted as Lou uses the incident to vault to the top of the city’s grimy underground of freelance stringers. Environmental issues discussed include the geography of crime and its incidence as an environmental threat, how the digital media landscape affects political decisions, and how Los Angeles got to be the way it is, especially after the processes discussed in the recent Chinatown and Who Framed Roger Rabbit episodes.
How can cities be designed better to cut down on crime? Why did Los Angeles not only ignore all the ways that can be done, but actively try to thwart them by doing the opposite? Is crime in big cities going up or down, or does it depend on the political beliefs of who you ask? How many “stringers” are there in L.A.? What wild animal is the character of Lou Bloom based on? How does Nightcrawler uniquely illustrate the “Six L.A.s” discussed in the Strange Days episode? How are right-wingers taking over America’s local news TV stations? What’s the connection between Nightcrawler and Chinatown? What legendary science fiction writer did one of the Green Screen hosts have lunch with in 1999? Now having done three L.A. pictures in a row, can we please move on to something else? All these questions are creeping out of the suburbs and coming for your children in this creepy-crawly episode of Green Screen.
Nightcrawler (2014) on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2872718/ Nightcrawler (2014) on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/nightcrawler/
Next Movie Up: First Cow (2020)
The Birds
Green Screen
12/09/21 • 70 min
Thoroughly rehydrated after their detour to post-apocalyptic Australia last episode, Sean and Cody venture into the depths of avian paranoia and Alfred Hitchcock’s abusive soul as they review this classic 1963 horror masterpiece. In The Birds, manic pixie dream girl creepy stalker Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) uses a pair of lovebirds to troll Mitch (Rod Taylor) by delivering them to his family’s house on the California coast. But just as she makes the delivery, birds of all kinds suddenly decide this is the perfect moment to wage an epic jihad against humankind, and the little town of Bodega Bay is first on their target list. Environmental issues discussed include “revenge of nature” stories in fiction, bird behavior and their propensity to attack, a real-life incident involving a mass bird invasion in coastal California in 1961 and its relationship to ocean ecosystems and a toxic algae, unknown at the time but discovered long after the film was made.
Just how fantastic is the scenario depicted in this film—have birds really attacked humans, and if so, under what circumstances? How can toxic shellfish cause a bird invasion? What’s the history of these kind of “revenge of nature” movies, and has climate change made them even more topical than they were in the 1960s? Why don’t people get anchovies on pizzas or salads anymore like they used to 50 or 60 years ago? What’s the relationship between this film and those When Animals Attack shows from ‘90s Fox TV? How did shooting this picture ruin Tippi Hedren’s life? Just how much of a sick, misogynistic bastard was Alfred Hitchcock, and, knowing now how awful he was, should we stop watching his movies? Are Hitchcock’s chintzy rear-pro backdrops deliberately shoddy, or was he just getting lazy? All of these questions are swooping in for the attack in this terrifying episode of Green Screen.
Content warning: this episode contains discussion of psychological and physical abuse.
Where you can find The Birds: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-birds
The Birds (1963) on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/ The Birds (1963) on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-birds/
Next Movie Up: Orlando (1992)
Lords of Dogtown
Green Screen
05/27/21 • 77 min
Sean and Cody exchange the gently-waving bamboo forests of China for the sizzling streets of Southern California as they skate their way into this 2005 sports drama, based on a true story. In Lords of Dogtown, urban surfers Stacy (John Robinson), Jay (Emile Hirsch) and Tony (Victor Rasuk) are having a sad in 1975 coastal California as the waves are flat and blown-out. But then spaced-out surf shop owner Skip (Heath Ledger) gets some groovy new plastic skateboard wheels and sends the boys out to carve up concrete and hopefully drum up some business. All it takes is the Dogtown lads and a drought of Biblical proportions to launch a whole new professional sport and cultural craze. Environmental issues discussed include the history of droughts in Southern California, the psychology behind water conservation, the rise and fall of amusement park piers, the linkage of pop culture fads to climate change, and the design of swimming pools and backyard gardens. This episode of Green Screen is uniquely dense with environmental history topics.
Would professional skateboarding exist as a sport if it hadn’t stopped raining in Southern California in 1976? Why is it a good idea to drop a brick into your toilet? How come people can be easily persuaded to conserve water in a drought, but they think having to wear masks in a deadly global pandemic is an unacceptable infringement on “muh freedom?” Would this podcast exist if not for the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine? Why is the world plastic industry dying? Is the Sid character from this film based on a real person and did he really die of a brain tumor? How closely can you copy Disneyland’s rides without getting sued for infringement? Why is “urban renewal” a racist concept? What famous film director’s father did one of the Green Screen co-hosts once work for? Is this movie worth seeing or should you just watch the documentary? All these questions and many more are skating the half-pipe in this information-heavy episode.
Lords of Dogtown (2005) on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0355702/ Lords of Dogtown (2005) on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/lords-of-dogtown/
Next Movie Up: Aliens (1986)
The French Connection
Green Screen
05/14/20 • 64 min
Sean and Cody descend into the crime-ridden hellscape of early 1970s New York to examine urban environments and how they played on the silver screen at the dawn of “New Hollywood.” In The French Connection, a thoroughly unpleasant unhinged racist cop (Gene Hackman) and his surprisingly rational partner (Roy Scheider) spy on a Mafia-connected high roller (Tony LoBianco) and figure that he’s up to no good. In fact he’s about to bring a huge score of magic white powder over from France, hidden in the innumerable crevasses of one of the ugliest cars ever manufactured. Will the cops shut down the French junk chute in time? Environmental issues discussed include de-industrialization and the decay of American inner cities, white flight and “redlining,” the geographic dimensions of the transatlantic trade in heroin, and more.
How did parts of New York, Detroit and other cities wind up resembling the ruins of Dresden after World War II? What did postwar federal mortgage programs have to do with drugs? Why did so much heroin come out of Marseilles in the ‘60s and where did it end up? How do you disassemble a Lincoln Continental down to the sub-atomic level and then put it back together so that no one notices? Why is Gene Hackman so angry in this movie? How do you film the world’s greatest car chase without permits? How did Tricky Dick Nixon rig the drug laws to make life miserable for people he didn’t like? What’s with that totally insane jazz music on the soundtrack? All of these questions will be thoroughly roughed-up, interrogated and booked on this episode of Green Screen.
Sean's Video on "The Places of the French Connection": https://youtu.be/9MG5KxQxIcA
The French Connection at IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067116/
The French Connection at Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-french-connection/
Next Movie: Tremors (1990)
How Green Was My Valley
Green Screen
03/19/20 • 76 min
Our intrepid duo of hosts face off against an undeniable classic, the John Ford-directed family drama How Green Was My Valley, which beat Citizen Kane for Best Picture at the 1941 Academy Awards. It’s a charming nostalgic story of a family of coal miners in Wales at the end of the 19th century seen through the eyes of a young boy (pre-pubescent Roddy McDowall) who watches his beloved green valley turn black and icky because coal mining generally sucks for the environment. Of course we don’t actually see the green of the valley because the picture is shot in black and white, a decision ultimately made because Adolf Hitler just had to have Poland. The film touches on the hazards of fossil fuel extraction, the environmental cost of “progress,” and the relationship between environmental problems and labor strife.
How did Wales’s coal fuel the rise of the British Empire? Was being endowed with generous coal deposits Britain’s fortune or its curse? Can falling through thin ice and catching hypothermia really render you a paraplegic? How do you pronounce “Angharad”? Was Walter Pidgeon a beefcake in 1940 or more like a creepy old man? How did the guy who shot this picture win an Academy Award for Best Cinematography when his competition shot Citizen Kane? How do you get Malibu to look like Wales? Why do these miners always sing in such perfect harmony, and more importantly, why won’t they stop? These are the burning questions on the table in this inappropriately age-paired and unexpectedly musical episode of Green Screen.
How Green Was My Valley on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033729/
How Green Was My Valley on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/how-green-was-my-valley/
Next Movie: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Green Screen
06/09/22 • 74 min
After last episode’s icy prison break, Sean and Cody go down under for Pride Month as they load up the bus for a queer road trip into the outback. In The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Australian drag queen Tick (Hugo Weaving) gets a gig to do a show in the remote outback down of Alice Springs, so he teams up with the flamboyant Felicia (Guy Pearce) and transgender widow Bernadette (Terence Stamp) to get a bus to transport them, their costumes and a giant high-heeled shoe halfway across the continent. But there’s more on the road than dust and kangaroos, as the trio encounter homophobia, unexpected allies, and various bonding experiences in the places they stop along the way. Environmental issues discussed include resource extraction in Australia, boom towns such as Broken Hill and Coober Pedy, aborigines and their sense of their land and history, and lots of queer history.
How did resource extraction, especially gold and other precious metals, shape the history and environment of modern Australia? How did queer history unfold in Australia and how was it different from the course of queer history in the U.S.? Which tiny Australian town produces 70% of the world’s opal? What was the only battle of World War I fought on Australian soil, and how did it come to involve an ice cream salesman? Which environmental hero’s name was claimed by 111 women arrested for an anti-nuclear protest near a site shown in the film? Was Australia slower to warm to LGBT equality than other countries, and if so, why? How did they get the iconic shot in this film? Who is lip-syncing to Vanessa Williams in the end credits? As progressive as this film was for its time, how is it still incredibly cringe-inducing today? All these questions are ready to do drag in the desert in this, the penultimate regular episode of Green Screen.
Where you can find The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-adventures-of-priscilla-queen-of-the-desert
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109045/ The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-adventures-of-priscilla-queen-of-the-desert/
Next Movie Up: Dances With Wolves (1990)
Show more best episodes
Show more best episodes
FAQ
How many episodes does Green Screen have?
Green Screen currently has 60 episodes available.
What topics does Green Screen cover?
The podcast is about Film, History, Environment, Nature, Podcasts, Movies, Science, Tv & Film and Cinema.
What is the most popular episode on Green Screen?
The episode title 'The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Green Screen?
The average episode length on Green Screen is 72 minutes.
How often are episodes of Green Screen released?
Episodes of Green Screen are typically released every 14 days.
When was the first episode of Green Screen?
The first episode of Green Screen was released on Feb 6, 2020.
Show more FAQ
Show more FAQ