Writers on Film
John Bleasdale
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The only podcast to focus on film books and to talk to the best authors working in the area of cinema. From Making ofs to biographies, studies to novelisations, I'm fascinated by where the written word intersects with the world of the big screen.
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From the Archive: Talking memoirs with Gabriel Byrne
Writers on Film
11/23/23 • 47 min
John Bleasdale talks to actor, producer, director and author Gabriel Byrne about his autobiography.
Walking with Ghosts is the stunningly evocative memoir by Irish actor and Hollywood star, Gabriel Byrne.
'Dreamy, lyrical and utterly unvarnished' – Colm Tóibín
As a young boy growing up in the outskirts of Dublin, Gabriel Byrne sought refuge in a world of imagination among the fields and hills near his home, at the edge of a rapidly encroaching city. Born to working-class parents and the eldest of six children, he harboured a childhood desire to become a priest. When he was eleven years old, Byrne found himself crossing the Irish Sea to join a seminary in England. Four years later, Byrne had been expelled and he quickly returned to his native city. There he took odd jobs as a messenger boy and a factory labourer to get by. In his spare time he visited the cinema, where he could be alone and yet part of a crowd. It was here that he could begin to imagine a life beyond the grey world of ’60s Ireland.
He revelled in the theatre and poetry of Dublin’s streets, populated by characters as eccentric and remarkable as any in fiction, those who spin a yarn with acuity and wit. It was a friend who suggested Byrne join an amateur drama group, a decision that would change his life forever and launch him on an extraordinary forty-year career in film and theatre. Moving between sensual recollection of childhood in a now almost vanished Ireland and reflections on stardom in Hollywood and on Broadway, Byrne also courageously recounts his battle with addiction and the ambivalence of fame.
Walking with Ghosts is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking as well as a lyrical homage to the people and landscapes that ultimately shape our destinies.
‘Make no mistake about it: this is a masterpiece . . . poetic, moving and very funny’ – Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin
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11/23/23 • 47 min

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Neil Fox on Screenwriting and Screenwriters
Writers on Film
06/01/22 • 57 min
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I talk to writer, film producer and academic about screenwriters and screenwriting.
Here's some information from Neil's own webpage:
My award-winning film work includes the short film It’s Natural To Be Afraid (2011), viewable here, and the feature film ‘Wilderness’ (2017), currently out for sale following a successful festival run. You can find my filmmaking site here.
I am the co-founder and co-host of the renowned film podcast The Cinematologists.
I write about music documentaries for The Quietus, and about film more broadly for Beneficial Shock, Directors Notes and others.
I am a contributing editor to MAI: Journal of Feminism and Visual Culture, and have conducted long-form interviews with filmmakers Hope Dickson Leach and Lynn Shelton.
On this site you will find details of current projects and articles alongside links to where you can find evidence of my bold claims.
My research interests include Film Education, Music Documentaries and Concert Films, and Podcasting.
By day I am a senior lecturer in Film at the School of Film & Television, Falmouth University, where I also lead a research and innovation programme on pedagogy. I teach screenwriting and filmmaking on the BA Film and MA Film & Television courses.
I have a beautiful wife and a daughter, Beth and Tessa, a cheeky dog called Bailey (aka Chaos Dog) and we all live in Cornwall, UK.
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06/01/22 • 57 min

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Adam Nayman's Masterworks
Writers on Film
09/01/21 • 84 min
John Bleasdale talks about Paul Verhoeven, the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher and film bros with Adam Nayman, author of Paul Thomas Anderson Masterworks and The Coen Brothers. Adam talks about his beginnings as film critic in Toronto. He also tells John his thoughts on the current state of film criticism, including the impact on social media on the film discourse. Adam's recommended film book is Un-American Psycho: Brian De Palma and the Political Invisible by Chris Dumas.
Buy Adam's latest book here.
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09/01/21 • 84 min
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: The Novelisation
Writers on Film
08/25/21 • 70 min
John Bleasdale talks to Ed Potton of The Times and freelance journalist and Manson/Tarantino expert Damon Wise about Quentin Tarantino's first novel: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. They discuss the film and its relationship to the book and Damon fills us in about the Manson conspiracy theories and how Bruce Lee was once suspected. We also address some of the issues of generational change in Hollywood and how and when Tarantino might retire. Ed's recommended book is Anthony Lane's Nobody's Perfect.
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08/25/21 • 70 min
08/20/21 • 63 min
I talk to Matthew about Night Moves and the Scottish screenplay writer Alan Sharp, as well as Orson Welles and especially his recently reconstructed film The Other Side of the Wind.
You can find Matthew's work here: www.matthewaspreygear.com
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08/20/21 • 63 min
Mark Harris on Mike Nichols and others
Writers on Film
08/13/21 • 58 min
John Bleasdale talks to author Mark Harris about his books Pictures from the Revolution and his recent biography of Mike NIchols.
Mark's recommended book is Jason Bailey's Fun City Cinema, available here.
Here's the blurb to Mark's most recent book:
An instant New York Times Bestseller!
A magnificent biography of one of the most protean creative forces in American entertainment history, a life of dazzling highs and vertiginous plunges--some of the worst largely unknown until now--by the acclaimed author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back
Mike Nichols burst onto the scene as a wunderkind: while still in his twenties, he was half of a hit improv duo with Elaine May that was the talk of the country. Next he directed four consecutive hit plays, won back-to-back Tonys, ushered in a new era of Hollywood moviemaking with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and followed it with The Graduate, which won him an Oscar and became the third-highest-grossing movie ever. At thirty-five, he lived in a three-story Central Park West penthouse, drove a Rolls-Royce, collected Arabian horses, and counted Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Leonard Bernstein, and Richard Avedon as friends.
Where he arrived is even more astonishing given where he had begun: born Igor Peschkowsky to a Jewish couple in Berlin in 1931, he was sent along with his younger brother to America on a ship in 1939. The young immigrant boy caught very few breaks. He was bullied and ostracized--an allergic reaction had rendered him permanently hairless--and his father died when he was just twelve, leaving his mother alone and overwhelmed.
The gulf between these two sets of facts explains a great deal about Nichols's transformation from lonely outsider to the center of more than one cultural universe--the acute powers of observation that first made him famous; the nourishment he drew from his creative partnerships, most enduringly with May; his unquenchable drive; his hunger for security and status; and the depressions and self-medications that brought him to terrible lows. It would take decades for him to come to grips with his demons. In an incomparable portrait that follows Nichols from Berlin to New York to Chicago to Hollywood, Mark Harris explores, with brilliantly vivid detail and insight, the life, work, struggle, and passion of an artist and man in constant motion. Among the 250 people Harris interviewed: Elaine May, Meryl Streep, Stephen Sondheim, Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Tom Hanks, Candice Bergen, Emma Thompson, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Lorne Michaels, and Gloria Steinem.
Mark Harris gives an intimate and evenhanded accounting of success and failure alike; the portrait is not always flattering, but its ultimate impact is to present the full story of one of the most richly interesting, complicated, and consequential figures the worlds of theater and motion pictures have ever seen. It is a triumph of the biographer's art.
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08/13/21 • 58 min
The Paul Duncan Archives
Writers on Film
07/30/21 • 62 min
John Bleasdale talks to Paul Duncan about his writing. From his first efforts to his amazing Taschen books, he describes his encounters with famous filmmakers such as Michael Mann and George Lucas and his work on the Ingmar Bergman Archives. His recommended book is John Boorman's Money into Light.
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07/30/21 • 62 min
Paul Cronin's Guide for the Perplexed
Writers on Film
08/04/21 • 88 min
John Bleasdale talks to Paul Cronin about his books on Werner Herzog and Abbas Kiarostami and his work on Alexander MacKendrick. We also talk story structure, the history of the Faber Film Books and screenwriting. In many ways this becomes a much broader conversation and encompasses much about storytelling and what makes a film a film.
Check out Paul's website here
His recommended book is Amos Vogel's Film as Subversive Art and Alexander McKendrick's On Filmmaking.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/writers-on-film.
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08/04/21 • 88 min
Tales from Development Hell with David Hughes
Writers on Film
07/21/21 • 70 min
In this episode I talk to David Hughes, a journalist turned screenwriter who is also the author of a number of books on cinema. The Greatest Science Fiction Film Never Made and Tales from Development Hell are two riveting reads about all the films that almost got made and their tortured pre-production history. We also talk Stanley Kubrick (briefly) and David Lynch.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/writers-on-film.
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07/21/21 • 70 min
Rob Young's Magic Box
Writers on Film
08/27/21 • 68 min
CORRECTION: Rob mentioned some 80s film essays on Channel Four by Lindsay Anderson and Alan Clarke – it was actually Alan Parker. (His correction)
Rob Young's new book continues his exploration of British culture, delving into TV and cinema.
Growing up in the 1970s, Rob Young's main storyteller was the wooden box with the glass window in the corner of the family living room, otherwise known as the TV set. Before the age of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, YouTube and commercial streaming services, watching television was a vastly different experience. You switched on, you sat back and you watched. There was no pause or fast-forward button.
The cross-genre feast of moving pictures produced in Britain between the late 1950s and late 1980s - from Quatermass and Tom Jones to The Wicker Man and Brideshead Revisited, from A Canterbury Tale and The Go-Between to Bagpuss and Children of the Stones, and from John Betjeman's travelogues to ghost stories at Christmas - contributed to a national conversation and collective memory. British-made sci-fi, folk horror, period drama and televisual grand tours played out tensions between the past and the present, dramatised the fractures and injustices in society and acted as a portal for magical and ghostly visions.
In The Magic Box, Rob Young takes us on a fascinating journey into this influential golden age of screen and discovers what it reveals about the nature and character of Britain, its uncategorisable people and buried histories - and how its presence can still be felt on screen in the twenty-first century.
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08/27/21 • 68 min
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FAQ
How many episodes does Writers on Film have?
Writers on Film currently has 135 episodes available.
What topics does Writers on Film cover?
The podcast is about Film, Publishing, Screenwriting, Writers, Podcasts, Books, Movies, Authors, Tv & Film and Cinema.
What is the most popular episode on Writers on Film?
The episode title 'From the Archive: Talking memoirs with Gabriel Byrne' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Writers on Film?
The average episode length on Writers on Film is 68 minutes.
How often are episodes of Writers on Film released?
Episodes of Writers on Film are typically released every 6 days, 23 hours.
When was the first episode of Writers on Film?
The first episode of Writers on Film was released on May 11, 2021.
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