#250 - Conquest of the Useless

Explicit content warning

07/09/21 • 49 min

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The classic documentary BURDEN OF DREAMS (1982) captures director Werner Herzog as he's mounting the most ambitious feat of his career: attempting to haul a literal steamship over a literal mountain for his film Fitzcarraldo. We discuss how this legendary saga of directorial megalomania in a world where directorial megalomania has gone out of fashion. PLUS: the complicated reasons why there are no nice things in American politics.

Previous Episode

PREVIEW - #249 - The Reunion Episode

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/53342923 Your hosts met in person to record for the first time since March 2020, and the result is their wackiest, most stream-of-consciousness episode in years! The boys crack open a few cold ones and discuss AMERICANS (2012), a short "public service" film by Sean Penn and Kid Rock that clumsily sought to build a bridge between Red and Blue America. But this is mostly an opportunity for your very inebriated hosts to shoot the breeze over such diverse topics as Wetmovie1, working in public access television, and forgotten Canadian TV shows from the '90s. So pull up a chair and share a toast!

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PREVIEW - #251 - Accredited Media Only

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/53583912 Gadfly documentarian Nick Broomfield claims he wanted to make a movie about the "real" Margaret Thatcher, but TRACKING DOWN MAGGIE (1994) - which documents his failed quest to land an interview with the former Prime Minister - ended up being about the limits of the strange, cloistered world of the global elite, and the limits of "access journalism." PLUS: We discuss the media reception to Richard Branson's journey into space.