Tag Archives: Documentaries

‘The Smashing Machine’ (2002) Retrospective, with John Hyams

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Before it was a presumed Oscar contender starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson, The Smashing Machine was a documentary about MMA pioneer Mark Kerr, directed by John Hyams. Arguably one of the most influential documentaries of the 21st century, I was so obsessed with it that the first time I tracked down John Hyams to pepper him with questions about it was 13 damned years ago. That’s right, before my retrospective about The Smashing Machine documentary was a GQ feature, it was a FilmDrunk Frotcast. I haven’t seen the upcoming scripted A24 version starring The Rock, but knowing that Benny Safdie was at least as obsessed with John Hyams’ documentary with I am, obsessed enough to recreate certain scenes right down to getting the hats and trunks right, makes me think it’s going to be pretty good. Point is, this has no spoilers for The Smashing Machine (2025), because I haven’t seen it yet.

What this is is the most comprehensive behind-the-scenes interview about The Smashing Machine (2002) that I could conduct. Did you know it was originally supposed to be called “The Specimen?” That HBO considered calling it “The Bloody Punch?” That Hyams wrote his own scripted version of it that was once intended as a vehicle for Mark Wahlberg? That in a roundabout way, it would go on to evolve into what became Warrior? All of these things are true, and we know them because John Hyams was cool enough to sit in for an hour-plus interview. A handful of quotes made it into my GQ retrospective (up there with my Freddy Got Fingered oral history in terms of things I’m most proud of having written) but I always intended to post the whole conversation. Feel like I owed it to posterity.

Funny that Dana White and the UFC are now gung ho on Dwayne Johnson playing Mark Kerr–as Hyams recalls it, Zuffa used to try to scrub every mention of the documentary back when the UFC was still fighting for legitimacy (perhaps understandably so). The original came from a different time, when MMA fighters were far more concerned with convincing the public that they were legitimate athletes and not scary monsters (let alone trying to do rightwing demagoguery or whatever). That’s what makes it such an incredible time capsule, and Hyams was more than game to let yours truly Remember Some MMA Guys, specifically from the PRIDE days. Not always successfully, but that’s why editing exists. Hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did, and don’t forget to check out some of John’s other great movies like Universal Soldier: Regeneration and Sick while you’re at it.

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649: For The Epsteinth Time, with Billy Corben (Rent ‘Men of War!’)

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Returning champion Billy Corben (The U, Screwball, Cocaine Cowboys) is on this week to discuss his new documentary Men of War, which covers a wide-eyed Canadian idealist’s journey from thinking Full Metal Jacket is a movie about how the military is cool, to the US Special Forces, to ham-fistedly attempting a coup in Venezuela. It’s quite a ride.

Billy generously goes deep on Venezuelan politics to set the stage for how this unlikeliest of coup plotters got himself in that position to begin with. Billy also discusses his interpretation of coup leader Jordan Goudreau as a “post-modern” soldier in that his entire point of reference seems to be old war movies. “I’ll infiltrate with an inflatable boat, suit up theatrically on the beach, attack the island, scalp a guy with a saw blade, then impale Maduro with a steam pipe. Just like Commando!”

Billy has to go because the people running the studio he’s in have turned the lights off like bouncers at last call, so we then segue into this week’s hot topic that surely no one is tired of discussing, the Charlie Kirk shooting. Specifically, why are we still trying to shoehorn people into a left/right spectrum, and where does a guy making jokes about a furry with a boner fit in? Political incoherence is the new manifesto. Also, we are begging just one reporter to ask what “trans ideology” entails and how it can fit on a shell casing.

We wrap up by discussing the Verhoeven-esque scene that emerged from the shooting as  Mormon influencer “Elder TikTok” posted a selfie video from the ensuing moments after the shooting, imploring his audience to like and subscribe to both his Instagram and the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Grim stuff. He also contaminated the crime scene by picking up blood-soaked items, presumably to sell on eBay. Nevermind, this is worse than anything Verhoeven came up with. Smash that like button and sound off in the comments!

Rent Men of War on Prime Video and Apple TV (or wherever Men of War are sold!). Please.

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Frotcast 639: POOP CRUISE, with Jessica Sele

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PLEASE SIGN UP ON PATREON, EVEN IF IT’S FOR FREE! Posting everything here has become a burden, and if you’re only listening to this feed you probably aren’t getting all of the episodes. Patreon dot com slash frotcast! Sign up at Patreon to listen to this and future episodes. Become a patron, and get episodes of the Frotcast AND Pod Yourself A Gun the day they drop. It’s two for the price of one!

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SHUT UP SHUT UP (via Netflix)

This week we welcome comedienne Jessica Sele to the show to discuss bidet usage. But first, we kick things off talking about steamy hot cat sex. We bring up dogs briefly as well, but let’s face it, we know what our audience wants to hear about.

Speaking of which, we all watched Trainwreck: Poop Cruise which kinda felt like it was made for us but unfortunately (predictably, tbh) was a paint-by-numbers streaming doc. Props for minimizing usage of “typing things into a google search bar” shots, though. There’s a number of great stories to be told about it, but they focus on a small number of people and gloss over some major parts, such as, why anyone thought it was a good idea to make drinks free. There is a book’s worth of sociological insights to be gleaned from the poop cruise earning its name because everyone interviewed talks about refusing to poop in a bag, which of course exacerbates the issue and degrades the quality of life for everyone on board, but you aren’t going to hear about it on this podcast. I mean, come on.

Lastly, we dive into the New York Times’ hit piece on Zohran’s college application, which was only uncovered due to a hack of applicant data at Columbia, and provided to them by a “race science academic”. We asked Dave Weigel how exactly the ratfucking of Zohran would occur, but none of us had this on the bingo card. At least we still have Wordle.

You can find Jessica on Instagram and Twitter. Buy her album.

-Description by Brendan.

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Frotcast Bonus: Yasha Levine on ‘Pistachio Wars’

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PLEASE SIGN UP ON PATREON, EVEN IF IT’S FOR FREE! Posting everything here has become a burden, and if you’re only listening to this feed you probably aren’t getting all of the episodes. Patreon dot com slash frotcast! Sign up at Patreon to listen to this and future episodes.

I did a big write up for Defector recently about California water, wildfires, The Resnicks, Yasha Levine’s ‘Pistachio Wars,’ and the Central Valley, where I grew up and live. I had a great long chat with Levine for the piece, and only a handful of quotes actually made it into the article. Luckily, through the magic of recording equipment, I actually saved the whole thing so that I could share it with you here. We talk about water rights, the Resnicks and how they got started (owners of The Wonderful Company; mostly pistachios and pomegranate juice), California’s “terra forming” system, how the Iranian Revolution impacted the American pistachio market, and much, much more.

Make sure to listen to this and see ‘Pistachio Wars‘ so that you can tell DemocRAT Gavin NewSCUM to stop hoarding all of Central California’s beautiful water, and release it so we can all grow more delicious pistachios, which definitely taste better when good old fashioned Americans grow them instead of those evil Iranians.

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Lance Oppenheim Offers the Latest Updates on HBO’s ‘Ren Faire’

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LEASE SIGN UP ON PATREON, EVEN IF IT’S FOR FREE! Posting everything here has become a burden, and if you’re only listening to this feed you probably aren’t getting all of the episodes. Patreon dot com slash frotcast! This episode is free, but Patreon subscribers saw it earlier. 

Documentarian Lance Oppenheim last hung out with us just a few months ago to talk about Spermworld, his Hulu documentary about unlicensed sperm donors. At the time he teased us with news of his next project, Ren Faire, a documentary series about the eccentric owner of the Texas Renaissance Festival, one of the largest renaissance festivals in the world. Well now that documentary is here. Ren Faire, produced by the Safdie Brothers and Ronald Bronstein (Uncut Gems, Good Time, etc.) follows George Coulam, an eccentric octogenerian ex-Mormon who dresses in a self-designed military-inspired uniform who everyone calls “King George.” King George is the capricious ruler of the TRF, who says he wants to retire while his long-suffering employees scramble around trying to please him while plotting against each other and trying to set themselves up to become the heir apparent.

Ren Faire‘s main characters include Jeff Baldwin, the portly theater kid entertainment director who has recently become general manager, Louie Migliaccio, a steampunk energy drink addict who runs the festival’s kettle corn empire (but dreams of more), and Darla Smith, an elephant trainer-turned renaissance faire capitalist. Lance opens up about how he shot Ren Faire, what all the Ren Faire characters are doing now — big scoop on Jeff Baldwin and the rest of the staff in there — and how many energy drinks Louie Migliaccio consumes in a day. Oh, and about how King George’s sugar daddy dates at the Olive Garden actually went down, and whether George asked them any questions beyond whether their breasts are real.

Ren Faire is a great docuseries and the ultimate show for anyone who wants to know how unhappy rich people actually are.

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Frotcast: Billy Corben On ‘God Forbid’

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Good Night And Good Cuck

Director Billy Corben is absolutely SMASHING the record for the director with the most Frotcast appearances, with three or maybe even four already. Who can even say?! The man behind Cocaine Cowboys, The U, 537 Votes, Screwballs, et. al. is always a great interview — a “raconteur,” you might even say, which happens to be the name of his production company — so any time he has a movie out it’s a great excuse to get him on.

This week (month?) he has ‘God Forbid’ out on a Hulu, a documentary about Jerry Falwell Jr.’s swingery relationship with a “Miami pool boy” named Giancarlo Granda, who was really only a pool boy for one year of his life but now is forever associated with the phrase because of the scandal. Jerry ALLEGEDLY liked to watch Giancarlo have sex with his wife, Becki, but, because Giancarlo and Jerry caught tied up in a real estate deal with some sketchy Miami dudes, they ended up suing and the whole pool boy/swinger thing got out. ALSO, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen knew about the relationship and has claimed that he used this knowledge as leverage in trying to get Jerry Jr. to support Trump’s bid for president — which Jerry Jr did, and probably had some hand in evangelicals voting for Trump in record numbers.

Phew, now you know why this conversation lasted for a whole hour. Lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what have yous. Hope you enjoy, and don’t forget to check out God Forbid on Hulu.

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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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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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