Broad Appeal

The time has come: 12 books. 12 films. All of them read (by Brian). We conclude our magnum opus with THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, the insufferable little book by Robert James Waller that became the sensitive work of bleeding-heart conservative Clint Eastwood. Meryl Streep is Francesca Johnson: The Italian war-bride who traded Bari for Iowa, and fiery Italian passion for steadfast, cornfed, mundanity. Then enter photographer Robert Kincaid (Eastwood) and four days that change her life forever.  Like all true fans, here at Broad Appeal we have equal parts ire and admiration for the most overrated actress in the world. But there is just something about Meryl in THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY that even Pauline Kael would have praised her for. Could this be the film where Brian learned what love was, all those years ago in Quincy, Mass? Is it as he remembers? And will Seán be sucker-punched by the inescapability of melodramatic love? In a word, yes. To all our listeners: thanks for coming on this journey with

An air hostess, a gun runner, a bail bondsman, a sun kissed dope-bunny and his boyfriend Brian... but enough about our holiday! Elmore Leonard's RUM PUNCH was adapted by Quentin Tarantino into JACKIE BROWN: a grown-up, low down, sly and slick piece of filmmaking. Tarantino, auteur and fanboy supreme, made the canny alteration of turning a sultry, middle-aged, blonde white lady into Pam Grier, icon of blaxploitation and commanding leading lady. Tarantino's film is an exemplar of adaptation, both pulpy and slow-burning, tense and quotable. You might have guessed we both enjoyed it. How did Seán feel about the new concept of reading on the beach? What is Brian's dramaturgical analysis? Needless to say it all breaks down into the most Broad Appeal conversation ever: A debate over Jodie Foster's Oscar dress.  Please return your tray tables to their upright positions: here comes Jackie Brown. Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.co

The same year Diane Keaton won her Best Actress Oscar as ANNIE HALL, she also starred in LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR. Keaton is no stranger to dramatic roles and few actresses have such iconic films as THE GODFATHER, REDS and (I mean, it goes without saying really) THE FIRST WIVES CLUB in their filmography. But while ANNIE HALL is a classic, GOODBAR is increasingly forgotten. Based on Judith Rossner's best selling book chronicling the life and death of an independent, sexually active young woman, a work Brian has openly called "reprehensible". Seán is eager to view the 1970s as a true period drama but just what, if anything, does it say about sex, independence and death? Would Mia Farrow have done it any better? Who is this nefarious Mr. Goodbar? And have you seen a white lady named Bernice? Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks).

We watched this movie so you don't have to: in the 1980s Manhattan art scene, Bernadette Peters is a bohemian babe whose lack of funds keep her in slave-like subservience to a chauvinist brat who just happens to be in possession of his own loft apartment (and a set of very appealing lean twink-muscles). But all she really wants to do is make her own (crazy-as-fuck) hats. [Ed. Note: none of this is important.] SLAVES OF NEW YORK may not seem like your typical Merchant-Ivory flick but it's actually a costume drama - only this time the costumes feature day-glo colors, shoulder pads, teased-out hair, and orange eye shadow. Based on zeitgeisty stories by scene queen Tama Janowitz, this has been at the top of Brian and Seán's viewing queue for some time. They expected a mess of film'sa movie with "up-to-minute" satire that had dated faster than a plate of sashimi. What they got was a surprising cavalcade of stars -- including Mercedes Ruehl, Stanley Tucci, and Steve Buscemi -- wandering around parties and fashio

Dear God, why did white movie executives take an amazing African-American novel of female empowerment and water it down into asexual Southern-fried syrup? Blame Steven Spielberg, blame the patriarchy, blame everybody (except Oprah). THE COLOR PURPLE by Alice Walker is an incredible, humane, Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece. The 1985 film, featuring Whoopi Goldberg's acting debut, is a missed opportunity - an object lesson in the simplification of Black history for white audiences, not to mention squeamishness about clitoral stimulation. Brian and Seán get worked up into woke dudgeon as we parse all the ways in which the story has been neutered. The film didn't push our buttons but it gives us plenty of corn to chew on as we ponder the nature of authentic storytelling. Can we get an Amen up in here! Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks).

Everyone remembers their high school prom... unless of course said prom ended in mass death initiated by a telekinetic witch bent on revenge and destroying their entire community. CARRIE (1976) is not only a horror classic but a feast of actresses: Oscar nominees Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, podcast perennial Amy Irving, musical diva Betty Buckley and Nancy (not Karen!) Allen. The boys conquer their fears and enter the girls' locker room: Seán's been a horror queen since his youth, but Brian is wary of the genre, so much so that he'd never read a Stephen King novel... until now. This time around, Seán gets verklempt feeling all the feels for poor Carrie White, while Brian overcomes his adolescent reticence of all matters menstrual to appreciate the 70s masterpiece that King and Brian DePalma have crafted. Plug it up!! Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks).

Seán thought he wouldn't like ORLANDO... until he saw it. Shame he didn't do the reading. Brian, of course, did. Based on Virginia Woolf, it's no frou-frou drawing room drama, but a time-traveling, gender-bending history of sexuality, Foucaudian avant la lettre. Alien androgyne Tilda Swinton is a man who becomes a woman somewhere over the course of his/her 400 years of life. Lush, funny, philosophical and featuring plenty of wigs, Sally Potter's 1992 masterpiece turns the wacky weirdness of the original text into a piece of filmmaking unlike any other. This is one costume drama where the drama is really in the costumes: doublets, farthingales, corsets, breeches and perruques, all designed by the ever-resourceful Sandy Powell and prompting us to ask whether clothes really do make the (wo)man? Social constructivists, ahoy! It's time to take down gender essentialism & have a blast doing it. Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcl

Wife, Maid or Martha? From the (in)fertile imagination of Margaret Atwood, THE HANDMAID'S TALE imagines a dystopian world in which women's rights have been written off the books, reproduction is under state control, and the patriarchy reigns supreme (in other words... America in 2017!) Having swooned and shivered over the novel, the Broad Appeal boys turn to the ill-regarded 1990 film. Ever frantic Faye Dunaway longs so badly to be a "Mommie Dearest" that she conscripts Natasha Richardson's ovaries to do the heavy birthing. Meanwhile, Seán longs to wear Colleen Atwood's frumpy-chic costumes while Brian longs to be delivered from the flat dramaturgy. Join us as we spill our seed all along the road to Gilead!! Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks).

Papa can you queer me? Brian and Seán take a Guilt Trip together, all the way to the shtetls of Eastern Europe and finally watch what they've been building up to all along. The time has come: Broad Appeal does YENTL. With a running-time much longer than it takes to read the Isaac Bashevis Singer story upon which it's based, this cross-dressing musical about a young woman who longs to study Talmud was Barbra Strei-ssssand's directorial debut. Is it a masterclass in egomania or all-too rare glimpse of the feminist gaze onscreen? Maybe a bit of both! Female directors, Jewish customs, Barbra's vocal talent and lengthy disputations about just what makes Mandy Patinkin so G-d damn sexy! If any auteur can command equal amounts of respect and eye rolling, it's (simply) Barbra. Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks).

Five Moms and a First Lady. A computer programmer and a video game producer. An aspiring actress and a syphilitic singer. ....These are your 2016 Oscar-nominated female roles!! In their now-annual tradition, Seán and Brian will peruse, parse and prognosticate on the only two categories at this year's Academy Awards that actually matter: Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. (And we'll give some nods to the egregiously overlooked as well.) It may be Oscar Week, but here on Broad Appeal it's Ladies' Day!

Drowned wives, stately homes, and a skull-faced lesbian housekeeper: REBECCA has it all! Daphne DuMaurier's gothic romance became an Oscar-winning Alfred Hitchcock film. And at the center is.... a heroine so lacking in gumption or personality that she doesn't even have a name!! Joan Fontaine (one of the most forgettable actress from Hollywood's Golden Age) was probably the perfect choice to play the drippy, dithering second Mrs. DeWinter. Thank goodness Judith Anderson and George Sanders are there to slather on some delicious villainy. Seán read the book as an impressionable fourteen year-old, prompted by a BBC readers' poll; Brian's encountering this spectral romance for the first time. When they return to Manderley, will they be thrilled or chilled by the cut-glass accents and unrelenting noblesse oblige? Come with us into the West Wing to revisit the scene of the crime...... Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersd

"Is there really such a thing as the greatest living actress???" Mais oui! And if anyone currently holds the strongest claim to that title it must be Isabelle Huppert. Before her knockout performance in this year's ELLE and her long-overdue Oscar nomination, she was equally transcendent in Michael's Haneke's equally scandalous THE PIANO TEACHER. Seán and Brian dived deep into the original Viennese novel by Nobel Laureate Elfreide Jelinek -- only to emerge dirty, bruised and stinking of various bodily fluids. How could this darkly cynical vision of a Classical musician with repressed sadomasochistic desires be translated to the screen? Only by Isabelle, it seems. We sit down at the keyboard for equal parts Schubert and schmutz -- but does the right hand know what the left hand is doing???? Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks).

In which Brian & Seán read extended passages from Henry James and marvel at Barbara Hershey's collagen-injected lips. For the first in our series of female-driven literary adaptations, we tag along with Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) as she fends off the advances of several suitors, only to get caught in a web of European marital treachery. We spent a year reveling in the excruciatingly exquisite prose (and campy dialogue) of THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. Now we see what happens when visionary director Jane Campion puts this literary classic through her feminist Cuisinart. Masturbatory fantasies, talking vaginal beans and bucketloads of bibelots await! Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks).

Tension. Psychological pressure. Chaos in the streets. DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975) isn't exactly your typical holiday movie, but in retrospect it seems a fitting way to close out the sh*tshow that has been 2016 (as well as our mini-series The Male Gayz). Having started the season cruising with killers, Al Pacino finishes it by robbing a bank -- in one of the most high-wire performances he ever gave. He's a 70s "everyman" caught between two lives, two very different wives, and more social and sexual pressures than any psyche can possibly contain. Just before they head off for a New Year's respite, Seán and Brian give their rapt attention to this unclassifiable masterpiece of 70s filmmaking, with its incredible ensemble performances, taut editing and surprisingly modern plot twists. "I'm dying here!" says Pacino, but this movie is undeniably alive. Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks)

IRISH GAY BOY OVERLOAD. On this Very Special Broad Appeal™, Brian and Seán are joined by writer and all-round babe Alan Flanagan to discuss Neil Jordan's BREAKFAST ON PLUTO: glam rock, Irish Catholicism, magic, music, the IRA and gender identity. We follow Cillian Murphy as Patrick "Kitten" Braden on her journey from parochial Ireland in the height of the Troubles to the lights and smog of London as she hopes to find her mother, herself, and a whole variety of episodic adventures. Alan and Seán reflect (at length!) on the motherland, giving you a heavily accented history of post-Good Friday Ireland as well as their own journeys from parochial Ireland to the heady delights of where they are today: a flat in Brixton! With love to Brian, who had to edit all of this. Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks)

Remember when Tim Burton & Johnny Depp actually made good movies? None of them was ever better than ED WOOD, about a real-life transvestite filmmaker who made movies so bad they're actually amazing. Confused? Just put on a pink angora sweater and cuddle up with someone you love for the next installment of our Male Gayz miniseries, one of the weirdest, most touching Hollywood biopics ever. Although sci-fi tends to leave Brian cold (cf. the previous episode), Ed's earnestness and creative passion have always made this film one of his favorites. Continuing in the vein of camp and cross-dressing, he tries to recruit Seán into the cult. Will he succeed? As Bela Lugosi would say, PULL THE STRINGS! Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks)

In dark days, when the values of democracy and equality seem threatened who doesn't want to don some fishnets and dance the Time Warp? Who wouldn't rather blast off to the planet Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania? Why not construct a blond, tanned muscle god who exists solely for the purpose of 'relieving our tension', as we fuck indiscriminately in a bacchanalian orgy? We didn't get to THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW at Halloween but in our post-Election daze perhaps Dr. Frank N. Furter is exactly the presiding spirit we really need right now. For Seán, the film was a seminal adolescent text: introducing him to queerness, camp, and the possibility of a life lived in the company of weirdos. For Brian, it was a cult classic that he never got around to seeing. In this next installment of our miniseries THE MALE GAYZ, we debate the film's merits as well as its representation of sexual fluidity. (SPOILER ALERT: We don't agree.) Even if the contentiousness seems to reflect the current global mood, h

Guns, Boys, and Beef. We had to cover a Western in our Male Gayz series... and that Western had to be RED RIVER (1948). John Wayne is the ultimate American capitalist hero/villain, building his commercial empire through the theft of indigenous lands and the exploitation of low-wage laborers. Monty Clift is his adopted son, transitioning from homosocial gunplay with his fellow cowpokes into full-fledged Oedipal revolt. Howard Hawks's multilayered masterpiece will convince even the most Western-phobic viewer to embrace the genre (as well as to give Monty a much needed cuddle). Straddling the transition from frontier to civilisation, as well as Classical Hollywood acting to the Method, the film has enough generational conflict to fill out an entire lifetime of Freudian analysis. Plus you get to hear Seán and Brian's patented John Wayne/Walter Brennan double act. Saddle up, pardners, and let's hit the trail. All clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by Cybe

Before Trump, there was Kyle Hadley -- the spoiled, insecure narcissistic billionaire of WRITTEN ON THE WIND. Kyle (Robert Stack) and sis Marylee (Dorothy Malone) are troubled oil brats, whose lives of decadent luxury are just not enough! Kyle loves Lucy (Lauren Bacall), but Lucy probably loves sexually passive Mitch (Rock Hudson), who is idolised but hated by Kyle who is truly hated by Marylee, who also hates Lucy but definitely loves Mitch. Got it? For the next installment of The Male Gayz, we bring you Douglas Sirk's story of oil, emasculation, and bongo drums. Sumptuous Technicolor can't bring warmth to these characters, but knockout performances, broiling tension and burning desire make this 1956 melodrama into a tour de force of masculinity in crisis. Who else but Sirk? All clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks)

Get your ass into cruise control, boys. Seán and Brian are back with our new miniseries - Broad Appeal: The Male Gayz. We've ditched the chicks and are hanging back with the brutes for seven whole episodes. We kick off with a re-evaluation of sleazy, sketchy and sloppy(?) sex-sesh CRUISING (1980), directed by William Friedkin who having dealt with the devil in The Exorcist, confronted audiences with something much more demonic: LEATHER. Al Pacino plays an undercover cop who huffs too many poppers in his quest to find a killer at large on the gay S&M scene. It's explicit, it's weird, it's QUEER. But is it any good? Grab your chaps and let's find out. All clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks)