Tag Archives: Documentaries

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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