Speaker 1: Oh gee, folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they want closed sodas,
Speaker 3: pop popcorn in.
Speaker 4: No monsters in the Projection Booths.
Speaker 2: Everyone for tend. Podcasting isn't boring?
Speaker 1: Got it off?
Speaker 2: Hey, folks, Welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
Speaker 2: I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, it is
Speaker 2: the return of Alicia Malone. We talked with her a
Speaker 2: few years ago about one of her previous books. We
Speaker 2: also had her on the episode all about Deep End,
Speaker 2: and now she is back with a new book, tcm Imports, Timeless,
Speaker 2: Favorit's and Hinde Gems of World Cinema. The book includes
Speaker 2: fifty two reviews of some amazing films from around the world,
Speaker 2: including a lot of titles that you might not have
Speaker 2: expected to see. Is that your typical eight and a
Speaker 2: half lestrata type of book. It actually digs a little
Speaker 2: bit deeper, shows you a whole lot of great movies
Speaker 2: and Alicia's writing is just fantastic, very very pleasurable to read.
Speaker 2: Highly recommended. I know it's April when we're talking about this.
Speaker 2: This is going to be a great Christmas gift if
Speaker 2: you haven't bought it for yourself or a friend by
Speaker 2: the end of the year. But I would say, go ahead,
Speaker 2: pick this up. You're really gonna enjoy it. Thanks so
Speaker 2: much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed the interview.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember when we did that Deepend episode.
Speaker 2: That's been a few years.
Speaker 5: It's been a while, and I was just looking at
Speaker 5: it in my David eight collection the other day. I
Speaker 5: was like, oh, yeah, Deepend. I forgot about that movie.
Speaker 5: But that was back when I lived in La Now
Speaker 5: I'm over in May. All different worlds, cold but beautiful.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to talk to you about your latest book.
Speaker 2: This is the fourth one, I think.
Speaker 5: Fourth book, but first one with TCM.
Speaker 2: How did you get this assignment and how did you
Speaker 2: decide what movies you were going to cover for this?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was the interesting thing because I was approached
Speaker 5: by Running Press, who do the TTM Library books, to
Speaker 5: come up with a book I could do for their library,
Speaker 5: and I thought I wanted to do something based around
Speaker 5: foreign film because of the TCM Imports section that I
Speaker 5: host on TCM.
Speaker 6: But the hard part was how do you.
Speaker 5: Narrow it down what kind of lens do you give
Speaker 5: this book? And I didn't want to do the greatest
Speaker 5: films of all time? So I thought about the way
Speaker 5: that I liked to watch films, and that is really seasonal.
Speaker 5: I love watching four films in fall and Christmas films.
Speaker 6: At the end of the year. So I thought about
Speaker 6: doing it that way.
Speaker 5: That was how they programmed TCM imports, and in doing so,
Speaker 5: I ended up with a real eclectic list of films
Speaker 5: that aren't necessarily all my favorite, but they're really interesting
Speaker 5: and wide ranging, and that's what I like about it,
Speaker 5: the strange list, and I like it.
Speaker 2: I would be hard pressed to think of a movie
Speaker 2: like Bicycle Thieves and say this belongs in the summer,
Speaker 2: the spring, and the fall.
Speaker 5: Some were like more obvious and than some were just
Speaker 5: like the vibe.
Speaker 2: And I love this whole idea too, that you are
Speaker 2: a PCM import, so what you consider foreign film is
Speaker 2: way different than what I consider foreign film.
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: I would say Hollywood films are foreign films for me
Speaker 5: growing up in Australia. But I tried to think about
Speaker 5: it in terms of international cinema rather than just foreign
Speaker 5: film because I didn't want it to be non English
Speaker 5: speaking films only. I had to include some from Australia,
Speaker 5: some from the UK, from a New Zealand, so basically
Speaker 5: it's just non Hollywood films.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that must have been a little difficult to think
Speaker 2: of your native Australia as being a foreign land.
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly. It doesn't feel foreign to me.
Speaker 5: And that was the great part about growing up in
Speaker 5: Australia was that I felt like we had access to
Speaker 5: world cinema at your local movie theater. It wasn't just
Speaker 5: Hollywood films, although Hollywood definitely dominate all the movie theaters
Speaker 5: in Australia, but we had French films and German films
Speaker 5: and a lot of films from the UK. And also
Speaker 5: growing up in Australia, out television was all British television
Speaker 5: or American television and a little bit of Australian television.
Speaker 5: So just always had that feeling that the world was
Speaker 5: bigger than where I lived, Whereas when I moved to
Speaker 5: America it felt like America is the center of the
Speaker 5: world and everything else is feign and far away.
Speaker 6: You don't hear that much about it.
Speaker 2: You definitely shed some light on some films that I
Speaker 2: was not familiar with at all. Of course, we all
Speaker 2: have our own lists of shame as far as things
Speaker 2: that we should have seen, but we have it. But
Speaker 2: then there are movies that you covered that I really
Speaker 2: haven't heard of before. So how did you even come
Speaker 2: up with your list for this?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I started with some of the obvious ones that I
Speaker 5: wanted to include, and I also made rules for myself
Speaker 5: being trying to cover movies from as many countries as possible,
Speaker 5: although I ended up with a lot of French films
Speaker 5: because France has really created some amazing movies in film history.
Speaker 5: But I also wanted to just choose one film per filmmaker,
Speaker 5: so you could easily do a seasonal book about Eric
Speaker 5: Rohmer's films. Ingrid Bergman has made many films that fit
Speaker 5: into seasons, so that was tricky in thinking about how
Speaker 5: to pick just one film from directors such as them.
Speaker 5: And then I wanted to push my own boundaries because,
Speaker 5: as you say, we all have blind spots. We all
Speaker 5: have favorite films that we returned to time and time again,
Speaker 5: and our film can get smaller and smaller when we're
Speaker 5: just talking about the same films. So I asked a
Speaker 5: lot of different people, especially the programmer of TCM Imports
Speaker 5: he runs. She has a really good sense of cinema
Speaker 5: from all over the world, and she helped me with
Speaker 5: particularly South Asian films that I might have a blind
Speaker 5: spot too, And I asked some of my just weird
Speaker 5: cinophile friend but if they had suggestions, especially when it
Speaker 5: came to Christmas movies, like what are some other Christmas
Speaker 5: movies that I'm not thinking of? And one that I'd
Speaker 5: never seen before that is actually hard to find, so
Speaker 5: I feel a little bad including it is Paris pick Up.
Speaker 5: It's a great French film noir set around Christmas time.
Speaker 5: And that was a film I'd never heard of before,
Speaker 5: and I watched it, really enjoyed it, and I was
Speaker 5: happy I could include it. So hopefully there is something
Speaker 5: for everyone to use that tired expression. Whether you've seen
Speaker 5: any foreign films, you've seen a lot of foreign films,
Speaker 5: there will be one or two titles that you've never seen,
Speaker 5: or maybe you've been meaning to see you haven't yet.
Speaker 2: Besides Paris pick Up, what were some of those other
Speaker 2: treasures that you uncovered along the way?
Speaker 6: Yeah, Spring in a Small Town was another film.
Speaker 5: It's a Chinese film that I had never heard of before,
Speaker 5: and it was one of those movies that was lost
Speaker 5: for many years, and I found it literally by looking
Speaker 5: up some Spring movies and I was looking for anything
Speaker 5: with Spring in the title, and I found copy of
Speaker 5: that film on YouTube. But I watched it, and it's
Speaker 5: actually a very poetic movie about this woman who's in
Speaker 5: an unhappy marriage and then her ex lover comes to
Speaker 5: stay with her and her husband, and she's deciding whether
Speaker 5: to run off with him or stay in her marriage.
Speaker 5: And that's what I love about film, and particularly foreign
Speaker 5: film and world cinema, is that there's so much to
Speaker 5: discover and there's so many surprises to be found. The
Speaker 5: film that I hadn't heard of now becomes one of
Speaker 5: my favorite movies and one that I'm glad I get
Speaker 5: to share with people.
Speaker 2: And it's always the trick, isn't that trying to spread
Speaker 2: the wealth and say, like, there's this thing over here
Speaker 2: that you really need to pay attention too, and you
Speaker 2: kind of have to lead people to it. So I
Speaker 2: love with your entries with each one of these films
Speaker 2: that you give us some history. We talked about the
Speaker 2: filmmakers as much as you can and just even having
Speaker 2: those little what would you call those sidebars on most
Speaker 2: of those little piles where it says, like other good
Speaker 2: things by this director or other things that fit into
Speaker 2: this particular area. I love that. I think it was
Speaker 2: really smart the way you did that.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's hard to include all the films that you
Speaker 5: want to include, and of course doing any kind of
Speaker 5: list book when it comes to film is very contentious
Speaker 5: and dangerous because everyone will have ideas of what should
Speaker 5: be included, what shouldn't be included. Is so I wanted
Speaker 5: to find as many ways as I could to add
Speaker 5: more titles in there. So sometimes I've got more titles
Speaker 5: by that same director, sometimes more from that country, or
Speaker 5: sometimes more of that on that same theme, and then
Speaker 5: I hope that people can continue to go deeper and find.
Speaker 6: Some other films to watch.
Speaker 5: It was also really fun to get to talk about
Speaker 5: not only, as you said, the filmmaker and the making
Speaker 5: of the film and the film itself, but what was
Speaker 5: happening in the country at that time. People say keep
Speaker 5: politics out of films, but I think that's impossible because
Speaker 5: every movie is an all time capsule of when it
Speaker 5: was made and where it was made, and particularly when
Speaker 5: it comes to a lot of the cinematic movements like
Speaker 5: the French New Wave, Italian Near Realism, the Czech New Wave,
Speaker 5: they all came from a political place of people wanting
Speaker 5: to stand up and speak the truth to power, and
Speaker 5: that fuels a lot of I got to learn a
Speaker 5: lot about world history and politics as well as the
Speaker 5: films and the filmmakers.
Speaker 2: To the man, how long did it take you to
Speaker 2: write this?
Speaker 6: I only had a couple of months.
Speaker 5: As you may know, when you write a book, you
Speaker 5: hear when the book is going to come out, and
Speaker 5: you think, okay, April twenty twenty five, I have a
Speaker 5: long time. I have a year to write this book,
Speaker 5: and then it gets shorter and shorter because printing deadlines
Speaker 5: and editing deadlines design deadlines. So I wrote it probably
Speaker 5: in about four months, and of course I wish I
Speaker 5: had a lot longer, but there's something nice about having a.
Speaker 6: Deadline because you'll always get it done. And it forced
Speaker 6: me to make some decisions, and.
Speaker 2: You're doing your regular job at the same time.
Speaker 5: Yes, So I figured out that last year I probably
Speaker 5: wrote around three hundred thousand.
Speaker 6: Words about film Wow.
Speaker 5: Because I write my own scripts for TCM, so I
Speaker 5: write about four hundred intros and four hundred outros a
Speaker 5: year for TCM, and each one is different. You may
Speaker 5: reuse a couple of the same stories if there's not
Speaker 5: too much material in existence about the making of that film,
Speaker 5: but I try to write each film fresh. So that
Speaker 5: was a real challenge, and I felt like I was
Speaker 5: going cross sits some days writing about movies. But I
Speaker 5: also got to draw on a lot of research that
Speaker 5: I'd already done for some of the films that had
Speaker 5: played on TCM imports, so I'd already written about them.
Speaker 5: I already had materials that I could start when so
Speaker 5: that definitely helped with some of the tight time frames
Speaker 5: that I had and some of the films I've also
Speaker 5: written about in my previous books. I always liked to
Speaker 5: include movies made by female directors, especially some of my favorites,
Speaker 5: like My Brilliant Career from Australia or Jehan Dumont from Belgium,
Speaker 5: which is named the greatest film of all time on
Speaker 5: the BBC site and Sound Poll quite recently. So some
Speaker 5: of them I had already written about, and the challenge
Speaker 5: was not to copy myself, but try to write about
Speaker 5: them in a fresh way.
Speaker 2: I just like that each entry feels so different from
Speaker 2: every other one, Like sometimes you'll start with the filmmaker,
Speaker 2: sometimes you'll start with the history. And just the way
Speaker 2: that you lead us through these stories. Each entry in
Speaker 2: the book feels like a different story and a different
Speaker 2: approach to it. And yeah, to read like you're talking
Speaker 2: about my brilliant career and just like, Okay, how's she
Speaker 2: going to approach this one? Or I really liked her
Speaker 2: Entreon angel I might table and the way that you
Speaker 2: took us through like the career of the filmmaker, and
Speaker 2: just how this started off as the three different stories
Speaker 2: or three parts of it and then came together as
Speaker 2: one instead of a mini series. I love that mixing
Speaker 2: of the history with the actual telling of the tale.
Speaker 2: And you're so right about the politics behind so many things,
Speaker 2: and just the politics behind how few women directors have
Speaker 2: been over the years, and I love that you put
Speaker 2: that thought light on them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 5: That's always the challenge when it comes to a list
Speaker 5: book is how to not make every entry feel the
Speaker 5: same as the one that came before it, and particularly
Speaker 5: when there are these trends that happened in world cinema,
Speaker 5: such as with female directors that you don't see that
Speaker 5: many female directors prior to the nineteen sixties. And then
Speaker 5: with the all the various new waves that happened around
Speaker 5: the world that sort of opened the gates for new voices,
Speaker 5: particularly women, to come shining through. And then of course
Speaker 5: the men in those new waves usually the ones that
Speaker 5: end up with the spotlight. So that's to be able
Speaker 5: to say women were there, they had more obstacles to overcome,
Speaker 5: but they were making films at the same time. But
Speaker 5: again to try not to feel too repetitive, so I'm
Speaker 5: glad I didn't do that. And I also like doing
Speaker 5: that when it comes to the TCM intros because I
Speaker 5: do so many scripts. How do I get into each
Speaker 5: film in a slightly different way?
Speaker 6: What's the angle?
Speaker 5: Honestly, the fun part of my job is doing the
Speaker 5: research about all of these movies and you come across
Speaker 5: one little nugget in a book and you're like, that's it.
Speaker 5: That's the book, and that's what I'm going to base
Speaker 5: the whole story around, and to try to tell a
Speaker 5: cohesive story with a beginning, middle, and end, and not academic.
Speaker 6: I'm not a film scholar.
Speaker 5: I didn't study films, so I don't naturally have that
Speaker 5: way of writing or speaking anyway. But I definitely wanted
Speaker 5: this book to feel more accessible because foreign films can
Speaker 5: be very daunting to people not knowing where to start
Speaker 5: and feeling like they have to have a film degree
Speaker 5: to be able to follow them.
Speaker 2: You may not come at it from an academic point
Speaker 2: of view, but I disagree with that as far as
Speaker 2: the way that you will paint that picture, as far
Speaker 2: as what the world was like at that particular time.
Speaker 2: That's such an academic thing to do to really give
Speaker 2: you more of that context, and I think that was
Speaker 2: super valuable where you could, because, like you said, some
Speaker 2: of these films are very tough to find out information.
Speaker 5: Paris Pickup, which we spoke about before, has very little information.
Speaker 5: So how to write about that film in a way
Speaker 5: that just doesn't feel like you're drawing it out? And
Speaker 5: some entries a little bit longer than others, but I
Speaker 5: always tried to ground it in context where possible. Don't
Speaker 5: think context is key to understanding where the film came from.
Speaker 5: It just didn't come out of nowhere. It came from
Speaker 5: a movement or a history or a political movement at
Speaker 5: the time. And I learned so much by writing this book.
Speaker 5: And again the great thing about film, always more to see,
Speaker 5: always more to learn, there's never an end.
Speaker 2: You talked about the preponngerance of and I didn't feel
Speaker 2: that it was too much, and I feel like you
Speaker 2: balance it out with many other cinemas around the world
Speaker 2: that it doesn't feel like, Oh, this is a real
Speaker 2: Francophile that wrote this. I was really happy to see
Speaker 2: you write about DDLJ, just to see a really brilliant,
Speaker 2: super popular but yet not that well known to Western
Speaker 2: white people like me. I love that you were able
Speaker 2: to go to that place because that's such a fantastic movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is a fantastic movie. And I have to
Speaker 5: credit him, Ronnie Viaz from t them Imports, for leading
Speaker 5: me to that one. I knew I wanted to include
Speaker 5: a Bollywood film, but where do you start when it
Speaker 5: comes to Bollywood. The Hindi language section of Indian cinema
Speaker 5: is twice as big as Hollywood in terms of the
Speaker 5: output every single year. It's way more profitable. It's very popular.
Speaker 5: There's so many films to choose from, and she said
Speaker 5: you should try DDLJ because it is one of the
Speaker 5: most popular Bollywood romantic musicals of all time. And I
Speaker 5: write about it in the book that there's this one
Speaker 5: movie theater in India that's Save for the Pandemic has
Speaker 5: played the film almost every day since it came out
Speaker 5: thirty years ago, and it still draws an audience every
Speaker 5: single day. People go and watch it over and over again.
Speaker 5: It's a real comfort film for them, and it's a
Speaker 5: film that explores interesting themes when it comes to arranged
Speaker 5: marriages versus love marriages, female autonomy in Indian society, the
Speaker 5: westernization of the younger generation. These two characters, the boy
Speaker 5: and the girl, live in London, so they have more
Speaker 5: of a western view and their parents are much more traditional.
Speaker 5: So you've got that tension between the old ways and
Speaker 5: the new ways. And then just a lot of dancing,
Speaker 5: a lot of color, a lot of songs, a lot
Speaker 5: of comedy, and it's fun to watch. So hopefully that'll
Speaker 5: make people curious to explore more Bollywood films.
Speaker 6: I know I need to see way more than I have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, having a tour guide through the world cinema, and
Speaker 2: that's what I feel that your book is doing. Quite
Speaker 2: a bit is taking me by the hand and take
Speaker 2: me around all of these different countries to show me
Speaker 2: here's what you're missing.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I know you are such a cinephile and you're very
Speaker 5: experimental in what you watched. But some people that don't
Speaker 5: know where to start when it comes to films that
Speaker 5: aren't American, or maybe feel daunted by the fact that
Speaker 5: there's subtitles, or they think it'll be boring or hard
Speaker 5: to relate to. But actually you discover that there are
Speaker 5: so many similarities between American films and films from around
Speaker 5: the world, and the characters are human and we can
Speaker 5: all relate to that. Plus, I think right now it
Speaker 5: just feels fun to be able to travel around the
Speaker 5: world virtually and to escape America absorb ourselves in many
Speaker 5: different other cultures from around the world.
Speaker 6: Some escapism, then virtual travel yet.
Speaker 2: And then yeah, the whole seasonal thing. Like I said,
Speaker 2: I think that was brilliant, And that's something I talk
Speaker 2: about on the show a lot. As far as if
Speaker 2: you're releasing the movie that that in the wintertime and
Speaker 2: at Christmas or around Christmas, may be released it around
Speaker 2: that time of the year. Like the idea of releasing
Speaker 2: the thing dead center in the summer didn't make any
Speaker 2: sense to me at all.
Speaker 6: Why don't you do that exactly?
Speaker 5: I know. I love watching winter films in winter and
Speaker 5: summer films in summer. Be in to fall, especially now
Speaker 5: I live in New England, the leaves are turning and
Speaker 5: I just want to curl up on the couch with
Speaker 5: a blanket and a cup of hot apple cider and
Speaker 5: watch a film that's set around that time. And like
Speaker 5: I said, some movies are very obviously set during that time,
Speaker 5: like Purple Noon, for example, the French adaptation of the
Speaker 5: talent in Mister Ripley is very obviously set. It's summer,
Speaker 5: and it feels like summer. It's bright, it's colorful, it's sweaty.
Speaker 5: And then you have films that I just like more
Speaker 5: of a mood of the season. D DLJ takes place
Speaker 5: many different seasons, but I felt like that was a
Speaker 5: spring movie because it's New Loves.
Speaker 6: New Journeys and rebirth.
Speaker 5: And then I have films like All About My Mother
Speaker 5: at Mother's Day and so each films if you wanted to,
Speaker 5: you could watch one film a week for an entire
Speaker 5: American calendar year and it should match up to whatever
Speaker 5: holiday is happening. If people wonder why there's a lot
Speaker 5: of film noir in fall, that's because of Noir November,
Speaker 5: which has become a big movement among cinophiles to watch
Speaker 5: film noir in November. So it's fun again to play
Speaker 5: around with things like that and just force me to
Speaker 5: stretch my own list and knowledge. And I'm glad you
Speaker 5: said it doesn't feel too French because it's funny even
Speaker 5: films like I was like, oh okay, the Double Life
Speaker 5: of Varani, that feels like a full film and it's Polish.
Speaker 5: Oh wait, it's set in France and mostly in French.
Speaker 5: Or Black Girl from Santagal. I love showing that film.
Speaker 5: That's a wonderful film and that it's summer. But oh
Speaker 5: chie in France and Singalese French, So I couldn't escape
Speaker 5: the French as much as that, right, And.
Speaker 2: It's good to know so that there's another Christmas Noir
Speaker 2: film as well. I'm always into those. I'm a big
Speaker 2: Blast of Silence fan, so having another Noir to watch
Speaker 2: around Christmas time is going to be a good thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And Eddie Muller, who hosts the Noir Eli on TCM
Speaker 5: was very happy that I included Paris Peak up plus
Speaker 5: all the other film noirs that I included in Saul,
Speaker 5: and it was fun to include Black Christmas, which is
Speaker 5: a Canadian slash of film, and who doesn't love watching
Speaker 5: people get murdered around Christmas?
Speaker 6: Its festive.
Speaker 2: I am so curious as far as some of the
Speaker 2: other stuff that you weren't familiar with, because again I'm
Speaker 2: talking to the Queen of TCMM for it there. So
Speaker 2: what were some of the other ones that were surprised
Speaker 2: for you?
Speaker 5: I think just making sure that I wasn't doing the
Speaker 5: obvious choices. So I'd seen films like La Dulce Vita before,
Speaker 5: but when it comes to Federico Fellini, mostly I've watched
Speaker 5: Eight and a Half, and that was a film that
Speaker 5: I'm very determined not to include because so many brilliant
Speaker 5: film scholars have written about Eight and a Half. I
Speaker 5: didn't think I could add much to that discourse. Films
Speaker 5: like Fanny and Alexander by Ingma Bergman another Christmas film.
Speaker 5: I've definitely watched Persona and other Bergman films much more
Speaker 5: than that film.
Speaker 6: But I think d.
Speaker 5: DLJ spring in a small town and a Paris pick
Speaker 5: up with a three I had never seen before.
Speaker 6: Others I'd seen once or twice again.
Speaker 5: When it comes to filmmakers like Sachichi Rive from India,
Speaker 5: he has a massive filmography and you most often talk
Speaker 5: about his Apu trilogy with Patapanchali, especially his first masterpiece.
Speaker 5: But I was like, Okay, let me choose something else.
Speaker 5: So I'd seen dev once through TCM imports.
Speaker 6: And I really liked it.
Speaker 5: So I revisited that film again and realized, Okay, there's
Speaker 5: a lot of meat meati stuff I can talk about
Speaker 5: here again, making sure there was a range of subject
Speaker 5: matters to talk about.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that you're up in main now and I'm curious,
Speaker 2: do you like fly down to Atlanta once a month
Speaker 2: to do all of your host segiments.
Speaker 5: Yeah, fly down to Atlanta once every two months and
Speaker 5: film two months worth of introduction in two days. So
Speaker 5: that's about seventy intros and seventy outros in two days.
Speaker 5: It's a lot of costume changes, makeup changes, so it
Speaker 5: looks like it's different days. And let me tell you,
Speaker 5: it's very hard to have an off day because it
Speaker 5: lasts on the channel for two months. So if you
Speaker 5: always want to make sure you have enough sleep and
Speaker 5: you're ready to go. And it involves just me talking
Speaker 5: for probably eight or nine hours straight. And I like
Speaker 5: the challenge of trying to make sure that each introduction
Speaker 5: feels fresh, even if it's by fifth time having to
Speaker 5: say the script because I've kept screwing up without a
Speaker 5: word or pronunciation. Often my Australian accent gets confusing and
Speaker 5: a way to pronounce things, So try to make sure
Speaker 5: it still sounds fresh, it still sounds energetic. Put my
Speaker 5: mind into watching them, especially when it comes to the outro.
Speaker 5: I like to really think about, Okay, how does this
Speaker 5: film end? Because of a film, it ends with a death,
Speaker 5: I don't want to come back and be like, hey,
Speaker 5: what the bag?
Speaker 6: So I want to make sure I have the right
Speaker 6: mood in my mind.
Speaker 5: And then I come back to my house in Maine
Speaker 5: and I spend two months watching all the films, doing
Speaker 5: all the research and writing the scripts ready for the
Speaker 5: next one.
Speaker 2: I can't even imagine just trying to keep your energy
Speaker 2: up for recording eight hours a day of those intross a.
Speaker 5: Lot of coffee involved. But it's such a lovely crew
Speaker 5: that we have. TCM and I don't think people realize
Speaker 5: how much work goes into every single introduction, and they're
Speaker 5: only played on the channel once and then they're gone.
Speaker 6: We never repeat them.
Speaker 5: So many people are involved, from programming to the assignment
Speaker 5: of the scripts, and we have other writers that write
Speaker 5: for the other host that goes through fact checking. Then
Speaker 5: we do it with the crew, and it's a huge,
Speaker 5: massive crew that are looking out for everything. There's not
Speaker 5: a hair out of place on my head. There is
Speaker 5: will stop and do it again. Everyone is so dedicated
Speaker 5: to make every single introduction perfect and I love that
Speaker 5: because I think it would be so easy to say,
Speaker 5: good enough, that's fine, it's going to play once, don't
Speaker 5: worry about it. But no, every person, including the host,
Speaker 5: want to make sure that every intro we deliver is
Speaker 5: not only factually correct but also entertaining, but also as
Speaker 5: perfect as it can be.
Speaker 2: Now, obviously I don't work at TCM still think that
Speaker 2: you need a host for the occult cinema stuff that
Speaker 2: you were doing, But just throwing my hand out there. Anyway,
Speaker 2: when it comes to TCM from the outside, from my perspective,
Speaker 2: it does look incredibly professional and so well done, and
Speaker 2: the same thing goes for the book as well. A
Speaker 2: layout is gorgeous. I love those big, colorful photos that
Speaker 2: you have throughout the book, or the beautiful black and
Speaker 2: white stuff. It's so nice to look at as well
Speaker 2: as just to read your words.
Speaker 5: Now, I was so excited to get to do a
Speaker 5: book with Running Pressed. They take care of all of
Speaker 5: the TTHM Library books and do such an amazing job.
Speaker 5: My three previous books were with a lovely publisher, but
Speaker 5: very small and we weren't able to include any photographs.
Speaker 6: It was a very.
Speaker 5: Small team when it came to editing and copy editing. Here,
Speaker 5: I felt like I was really supported. There's a whole
Speaker 5: team involved, again, very professional. They have designers who do
Speaker 5: the layout. Then I picked all the photos, which was
Speaker 5: sometimes challenging because some of these films don't have many
Speaker 5: photos available, so I wanted to include as many as
Speaker 5: I could, and we went back and forth on the design.
Speaker 5: We went back and forth on every single detail, lots
Speaker 5: of help with copy editing, with fact checking. It was
Speaker 5: a big, long process. But when you see the book
Speaker 5: and hold the book, I love that at eight it
Speaker 5: feels like a book, like it puts some weight to it.
Speaker 6: It feels like a proper book, and it'll.
Speaker 5: Be nice to have on your coffee table look at
Speaker 5: to read and then if you're stuck for what to watch.
Speaker 5: Because I'm just like everyone else where I sit down
Speaker 5: at night, I open up all the streaming apps and
Speaker 5: I go, I don't know, there's so much what where
Speaker 5: do I start. I feel like I get analysis paralysis.
Speaker 5: I'm like, I don't know, do I just watch the
Speaker 5: same movie as I've always watched. I also hate when
Speaker 5: the algorithm stares to tell you to watch more of
Speaker 5: the same you've just seen, Like, no, let's widen it
Speaker 5: a little bit. So hopefully people can just open up
Speaker 5: the book and find something new, and whether they love
Speaker 5: the film or hate it, they'll have an experience and
Speaker 5: that's good.
Speaker 2: It's the kind of book that makes me wish I
Speaker 2: had a coffee table because I'll tell you reading it
Speaker 2: that night in danger of it landing on my face.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's nick how many interviews are in there?
Speaker 2: Fifty two fifty two? Yeah, so yeah, the whole weekly thing.
Speaker 2: And I love that idea of having a new movie
Speaker 2: to watch every single week.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I was trying to think of how many films that
Speaker 5: I could write about within the timeframe, and that would
Speaker 5: feel worthwhile.
Speaker 6: To have in a book.
Speaker 5: And fifty seems like a good number, and you often
Speaker 5: see that when it comes to list books or about film,
Speaker 5: and so I thought, maybe if I do one every week,
Speaker 5: then it's fifty two. When I first started to think
Speaker 5: about the films I wanted to include before I came
Speaker 5: up with a seasonal idea, I listed probably around two
Speaker 5: hundred and sixty something movies that I would love to
Speaker 5: write about, and I thought, Okay, I think just shorten
Speaker 5: this down. I do not have time to write about this,
Speaker 5: but hey, maybe there could be future versions to come.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you have your next project already picked out?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 5: But you know what, I've only ever written non fiction
Speaker 5: and nonfiction about film. But I'm really curious to try fiction.
Speaker 5: I don't know if i'd be any good at it.
Speaker 5: I'd love a cozy murder mystery. Whether I could pull
Speaker 5: that off, I'm not sure, but that's I think what
Speaker 5: I'm gonna play around with next and see what happens.
Speaker 2: Alicia, I don't know you as well as I would like,
Speaker 2: but just from the small interactions we've had together, I
Speaker 2: think you'll do whatever you put your mind.
Speaker 6: To thank you. I am very temined, so it works
Speaker 6: in my favorite I.
Speaker 2: Definitely recommend that people check this book out because it
Speaker 2: is so much fun and so well written, and I
Speaker 2: really appreciate you doing it for us.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Mike.
Speaker 5: I appreciate you reading the book, and I'm so glad
Speaker 5: that you liked it.
Speaker 4: Be good to leves, Yes, I blamu and you not
Speaker 4: remember pray for a good.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 4: Look out the part well, don't look at what the
Speaker 4: man ye blomo man. He came good for you, so
Speaker 4: he's the pass to the movie back jack God love Gus,
Speaker 4: the cinema. He gat it at.
Speaker 3: It is a.
Speaker 4: Ros rose, the mooning all astreen fun more.
Speaker 3: Number dosy lesser do sometimes form sers number dosyers doss
Speaker 3: then meself.
Speaker 4: Paba you want about tam re reading of same