Tag Archives: bonus

Frotcast Bonus: Alex Gibney On ‘The Forever Prisoner’

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What’s up, Frot fans. This week I’m talking to Alex Gibney, who you may know from one of his million documentaries. He won an Oscar for Taxi the Dark Side, he made the Enron movie, and a whole bunch of them since then. He makes like one or two documentaries every year, it’s insane. Anyway, his latest is out on HBO this week, and it’s called The Forever Prisoner.
It’s mostly about the CIA’s torture program and what a comedy of errors it was. (One of the main interview subjects in it is actually Daniel Jones, the character Adam Driver plays in The Report. Remember when I demanded you all watch that one? Yeah). It all started with this prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, who was taken to Thailand for interrogation and was actually giving up good information to the FBI handlers talking to him, one being Ali Soufani, just based on regular interrogation work — building rapport, showing the guy what they knew, and all the normal stuff police and prosecutors usually do. But then the CIA got involved, and they used these kooky contractors who had this crazy torture plan, and everything kind of went sideways from there. Anyway, I think that’s mostly all you need to know in order to understand the interview. 
ALSO, we’re going to be doing a live episode of Pod Yourself A Gun in San Francisco at SF Sketchfest in January. It’s going to be January 15th at Pianofight theater. Here’s the link to buy tickets! Come see Matt sing songs on stage or whatever! 

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Interview: Bobcat Goldthwait And Dana Gould On Their New Comedy Doc, ‘Joy Ride,’ And All Of Their Showbiz Beefs

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Hey, Frotcast fans. Here’s another fun interview: Bobcat Goldthwait directed a concert slash road trip movie where he and Dana Gould go on the road and do stand-up together. Like… they get onstage together and do it as a duo, not just one dude at a time (just the way your mother likes it). Regular listeners will note: Matt and I are normally pretty averse to comedy specials, which oftentimes just feel like doing homework. BUT, and I can’t stress this enough, this one was great. It’s hard to even call it a “comedy special,” mixing as it does, footage of Bobcat and Dana onstage, them on the road, and even some historical footage of them as younger comedians. It’s more like a brand of loose storytelling. It doesn’t feel like having to sit through a comedy special.

Once again, the movie is called Joy Ride, and it will be out as a streaming rental this weekend. It should be available for pre-order now. Remember the name, JOY RIDE: just like your mom’s nickname in junior high.

Aaaaanyway, I think that’s all you need to know. Just listen! At the beginning here there’s a part that gets cut off, I was asking Bobcat about the poster he has of Barry Crimmins behind him. I got to interview Bobcat about his Barry Crimmins documentary a few years back, and then I interviewed Barry for his special when that came out a bit later. Barry died in 2018 (RIP to a real one, for real), that’s why Bobcat calls him “a drunk ghost.” I still don’t really understand who the Duffy twins are, but maybe some bright listener out there can fill me in? We love our obscure references, don’t we folks? Anyway, I always love talking to Bobcat, and Dana Gould was a delight as well, so… enjoy!

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Frotcast Bonus: Teaching Nic Cage To Cook, With Gabriel Rucker, Food Consultant for ‘Pig’

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Hey, Frotcast fans. Here’s an interview I did with Gabe Rucker. He is the chef/owner of Le Pigeon, in Portland, and recently he worked as the food consultant on the movie Pig, with Nicolas Cage. Nic Cage plays an ex-chef who is a hermit that lives in the forest with his pet pig foraging for mushrooms. Anyway, Gabe got to be the guy who taught Nicolas Cage to cook and created a dish for him to make in the movie. We talk about creating dishes for movies, why chefs seem to hate restaurant movies, how Gabe taught Nic Cage to smell a mushroom, and much, much more. Please to enjoy.

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TEASER – Noomi Rapace and Valdimar Jóhannsson from LAMB

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FULL EPISODE AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS AT PATREON.COM/FROTCAST

Hey, Frotcast fans. I’ve gotten mostly positive feedback on the interviews I’ve shared, so I thought what the hell, I guess I’ll keep posting them.

This week I got to talk to Noomi Rapace and Valdimar Johansson from the movie Lamb. Valdimar directed it and Noomi Rapace stars. You may also know her from such films as Prometheus, the original Swedish versions of the Girl with The Dragon Tattoo movies, and The Drop. Which, just as an aside, to me was the superior dog revenge movie, though it got got unfairly overshadowed by John Wick.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. Like I said, the movie is called Lamb, it’s from A24, and it’s out in theaters this weekend. It’s about a couple, named Maria and Ingvar, who live on a farm in Iceland, who sort of have their lives changed by this baby lamb. I thought it was beautifully shot and just enjoyably weird.

We don’t get into too much spoiler territory in this, at least nothing that’s not in the Trailer. Aaaaand. Well, I’m pretty sure that’s all you need to know. Anyway, hope you enjoy it, and if not we’ll have lots of regular Frotcasts coming your way.

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TEASER – Frotcast Interview With AJ Galante

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This is just a teaser! To listen to the full interview, subscribe at Patreon.com/Frotcast.

An interview with AJ Galante, the son of an alleged mobster whose father bought a hockey team to run when he was in high school.

Hey, Frotcast fans. Matt is in Portland helping Francesca with a live show this week and we already recorded a new Pod Yourself A Gun, but I’ve got another interview for the Frotcast feed this week.

So, this week there was a new episode of Untold, the sports documentary series from Netflix. They already released a Malice At The Palace episode and a couple others. This latest one is from Maclain Way and Chapman Way, the brothers who did Wild Wild Country. This latest one is about a hockey team called the Danbury Trashers. Basically there was this alleged mobster named Jimmy Galante who ran a trash hauling empire from Danbury, Connecticut. His son AJ was a hockey player, but in his senior year AJ had a really bad injury that ended his hockey career. So in 2004 his dad ends up buying a minor league hockey team and he makes AJ, who was 17 at the time, the general manager.

AJ finds all the best goons and basically turns them into real-life Slapshot. I got to interview AJ this week, and it felt relevant to the Frotcast fans for obvious reasons. With Jimmy Galante in the trash business in a New York suburb, and having a teenage son named AJ, the Sopranos parallels are pretty obvious. In the doc they say that the Sopranos might’ve been partially based on them, but I haven’t found a source for that. Anyway, AJ was a lot of fun to talk to, and I thought it would be a lot more fun to actually hear his voice than just reading it on Uproxx. So, I hope you like it. As always, we have a lot more free stuff on the Pod Yourself A Gun feed, but we’re doing our best to keep that content slop flowing. Hope it fills your snouts.

 

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Frotcast Bonus: Billy Corben On ‘Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings Of Miami’

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Hey, Frotcast fans. I have this interview for you I did with Billy Corben this week. He directed The U, the Cocaine Cowboys movies, Screwball, Broke on 30 for 30 — I think this is the third time I’ve talked to him, so we sort of know each other by now. He’s a great talker and always a great interview. His latest is called Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings Of Miami, and it’s out on Netflix. It’s about these guys Sal Magluta and Willy Falcón who were trafficking cocaine in Miami in the 80s and 90s. Beyond that I don’t think there’s anything you need to know to understand it. My voice sounds a little weird at first because I was getting an echo and I had to put a filter on my track, but hopefully it isn’t too bad. It also goes away about halfway through.

We haven’t done many episodes on the free feed lately, just because we’ve been busy doing Pod Yourself A Gun, and those are all free. If you’re still thirsty for more content, you can always subscribe on Patreon at Patreon.com/Frotcast. Do that! It’ll be awesome! Anyway, here’s me and Billy Corben.

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TEASER: Frotcast 455 – Hillbilly Smellegy with Jason Webb

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THE FULL VERSION of this podcast, like all other bonus content, is available to our subscribers, at Patreon.com/Frotcast. You should subscribe! You won’t regret it! No refunds.

Hey everybody, long time no pod. Well that’s not entirely true. Vince and I have been hard at work doing episodes of our Sopranos podcast Pod Yourself A Gun so we haven’t had as much time as usual to do a Frot. But after many letters of complaint and a few death threats we finally decided to get it together and talk about movies again.

This week, me and Vince invited Jason Webb to the frotquarters to have him play the token hillbilly during our discussion of Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy, a Ron Howard adaptation of JD Vance’s 2016 memoir of the same name. Having actually read the book, Vince was able to give some key insights into where the film and book diverge. And having been a hill person, Jason Webb was able to give some key insights into living life as someone who regularly gets in fist fights with his family. Also, I was there just talmbout lumming.

We also discuss Jeffrey Toobin’s firing, Four Seasons Total Landscaping, Dean Brownings gay black alt twitter account, and much more! It’s a great episode and I can’t wait for you to listen.

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TEASER – Kirsten Johnson From ‘Dick Johnson Is Dead’

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For the full version of this interview, subscribe at Patreon.com/Frotcast.

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I normally avoid any movies about dementia like the plague, but one I loved is Dick Johnson Is Dead, in which documentarian Kirsten Johnson imagines all kinds of death scenarios for her father, Dick, who has recently been diagnosed with dementia, and has him help her reenact them on film. Dick Johnson is delightful and a great sport, and the movie is not only delightful and funny, but dare I say it, weirdly uplifting and life-affirming. I highly recommend it. I got to speak with Kirsten Johnson via Zoom this past week and I found her to be almost as good an interview as she is a filmmaker. She gave me the lowdown on some questions I had about the film, like how she filmed the surreal funeral sequence, and some questions about her life, like her kids and growing up  Seventh Day Adventist. I hope you enjoy it!

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Frotcast Bonus: Billy Corben And Alfred Spellman For ‘537 Votes’

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Normally this is the kind of thing I’d probably post on the premium feed for our Patreon subscribers (Patreon.com/Frotcast) but this interview seems, dare I say it… too important for that? Understanding what happened in 2000 in Florida, and specifically in Miami, and how it got us to where we are today seems like required viewing going into this election. That’s the subject of ‘537 Votes,’ the new documentary on HBO from director Billy Corben and his producing partner Alfred Spellman, whose films — Screwball, the Cocaine Cowboys movies, The U, Magic City Hustle… have largely all advanced the thesis that Florida and specifically Miami is a cautionary tale for the rest of America, culminating in their latest movie. In this chat, I pick their brains about why that is, how it came to be, and how they became the documentarian answer to Carl Hiaasen — making “Florida F*ckery” a genre all its own.

You can also read my profile of Billy and Alfred on Uproxx. Enjoy it and go vote even if it seems kinda pointless. 2000 was my first election and I voted even though it seemed kinda pointless then too but imagine how different things might be had it worked out a little differently.

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Teaser: King Of Staten Island Bonus Review, Plus JK Rowling And Ice Cube

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This week’s Frotcast is available on Patreon! Subscribe now to hear the rest of this show and a veritable mountain of bonus content. You can add our premium content to your regular podcast feed! Subscribe at Patreon.com/Frotcast, tell your friends.

In this week’s bonus Frotcast, I had to watch The King Of Staten Island because I’m a movie critic so I forced Matt to watch it with me. Sometimes being a movie critic doesn’t feel like work and other times Spike Lee and Judd Apatow both release 140-minute+ movies on the same weekend. PITY ME! Matt and I discuss Pete Davidson, how this movie could’ve been better, Bill Burr’s shockingly good performance, and why movies always want us to think 20-something year old adult men care who their mom is dating. Gross, man, come on. And then, just when you think we’re through, nope, we got more to talk about. Like, did Ice Cube fall down an Anti-Semitic conspiracy theory rabbit hole this week? And does Just Kidding Rowling, aka JK Rowling coming out as a transphobe retroctively validate us never giving a shit about Harry Potter? There are a couple of accents and everything is pretty dumb but hopefully you don’t have anything better to do and that’s why we love you. Please to enjoy.

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