COP LAND

10/18/20 • 28 min

Screenwriter Raul Inglis (AMERICAN HEIST w/Adrien Brody, SUDDENLY w/Ray Liotta) joins the show to discuss James Mangold's cop drama, COP LAND, featuring a cast so absurdly stacked it's tough to write all their names in this summary - Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Robert DeNiro, Peter Berg, John Spencer, Malik Yoba, Janeane Garafolo, Noah Emmerich, Frank Vincent, Edie Falco, Annabella Sciorra and Michael Rapaport. As he's done at various points throughout his career, Stallone reminds us of what a true top-notch actor he can be when given the right material. Mangold affirms his status as one of our best living filmmakers. This is a great movie, period, and it's greatness has only increased in the years since it was released.

Previous Episode

INITIATION

The director, co-writer, and editor of this film, Oren Benamor, joins the show. Bloody Disgusting called INITIATION, "unusually thoughtful," and a, "well-crafted thriller." It's a death match movie, about a mysterious cult that kidnaps a group of strangers and makes them fight its recruits to the death as part of an initiation ceremony. You might notice that Oren and I have the same last name - he's my cousin, and I'm the other writer of the film. Listeners of the show know that I am brutally honest about my work, and this is my favorite produced film I've been involved in. We discuss how Oren made the film, the intense reactions it provoked when we screened it for an audience in a theater, and the process of capturing compelling performances from the talented ensemble cast of the movie. You don't need to have seen the film to get something out of this episode, which is also a peek behind the curtain at the practical challenges of independent filmmaking.

Next Episode

THE SALTON SEA

The writer of this film, Tony Gayton, joins the podcast. Tony also created HELL ON WHEELS, and wrote FASTER and MURDER BY NUMBERS. This film, a wild, inventive, tonally adventurous neo-noir, stars Val Kilmer, Vincent D'Onofrio, Peter Sarsgaard and marked the directorial debut of DJ Caruso, who would go on to direct DISTURBIA and many other films. A true original, this film is as fresh and unpredictable today as it was when it first came out.