This is a preview of a premium episode from our Patreon feed, Paid Costly For Me! Head over to Patreon.com/PodCastyForMe to hear more for just $5 a month.

Like a bizarro Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone parlayed two iconic roles into a decades-long career as a movie star and filmmaker, restauranteur, and conservative hero - only he's short and a lousy director. In 2019, Stallone put his crusading 'Nam vet character out to pasture with RAMBO: LAST BLOOD, a half-assed UNFORGIVEN riff that finds Rambo going up against some rightwing fever-dream "Mexican" human traffickers. Beyond featuring almost zero Mexicans, the film also features zero Mexico: it was largely shot in Bulgaria.

Bulgaria's rise as a filmmaking hotspot is thanks in large part to the success of Stallone's Expendables franchise, which allowed production company Millennium Films to turn Sofia's Nu Boyana Film Studios into a one-stop offshoring shop for Hollywood. Joining us to discuss his experience working on this film (!) and the state of the Bulgarian film industry is filmmaker and co-host of the Cinema Strolls podcast Roman Pessarov! We also take a look at the Rambo series as a whole, being a cinephile outside of the US, and learn that even former Soviet dads are ultimately a lot like other dads.

GREAT ep, check it out!

Follow Roman Pessarov:
https://www.instagram.com/roman.pessarov/
https://www.hopp.bio/cinema-strolls
https://kinematograf.bg/mirror-touch-film
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3355231/

Further Viewing:

ROLLING THUNDER (Flynn, 1977)
FIRST BLOOD (Kotcheff, 1982)
RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (Cosmatos, 1985)
RAMBO III (MacDonald, 1988)
RAMBO (Stallone, 2008)
EASTERN PLAYS (Kalev, 2009)
GLORY (Grozeva & Valchanov, 2016)
PICTURES OF GHOSTS (Mendonça Filho, 2023)
THE SECRET AGENT (Mendonça Filho, 2025)

Further Reading:
"The King of the Geezer Teasers" by Joshua Hunt:
https://www.vulture.com/article/randall-emmett-movies.html

Remember when Soderbergh produced the first Oscars ceremony of the covid-19 pandemic? Because he's the CONTAGION guy so he knows about viruses? I mean that's literally why he did it. He's friends with the CDC. Plus I guess he had some other ideas about how to change up the Oscars just to see what happens. Have you ever read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine? It's basically like that. Anyway, we sat through the entire 93rd Academy Awards ceremony again (do NOT do this) to figure out what an awards show looks like, Soderbergh-style. Let's just say it's too bad he already called another project HAYWIRE!!!

Further Reading:

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

"When COVID Almost Canceled the Oscars: An Oral History of a Most Surreal Night" by Scott Feinberg: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/covid-oscars-oral-history-1236526506/

Further Viewing:

CONTAGION (Soderbergh, 2011)

Glenn Close does Da Butt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-RovCOajc8

Follow Pod Casty For Me:

https://www.podcastyforme.com/

https://twitter.com/podcastyforme

https://www.instagram.com/podcastyforme/

https://bsky.app/profile/podcastyforme.bsky.social

https://www.youtube.com/@podcastyforme

Support us on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/PodCastyForMe

Artwork by Jeremy Allison:

https://www.instagram.com/jeremyallisonart

This is a preview of a premium episode from our Patreon feed, Paid Costly For Me! Head over to Patreon.com/PodCastyForMe to hear more for just $5 a month.

It's the big Vegas road trip episode! Your two intrepid hosts and one of their intrepid partners hopped in the Subaru and drove to Las Vegas to see (Channing Tatum's) Magic Mike Live, shoot guns like Dirty Harry, tour the Liberace Mansion, and bear the full brunt of late-stage capitalism or whatever. We had kind of a bad time in Vegas, a good time with each other, and a hell of a lot to say into all sorts of microphones. This isn't our longest episode ever, but it's definitely the one with the broadest range of audio quality! We hope you enjoy it.

Follow Pod Casty For Me:

https://www.podcastyforme.com/

https://twitter.com/podcastyforme

https://www.instagram.com/podcastyforme/

https://bsky.app/profile/podcastyforme.bsky.social

https://www.youtube.com/@podcastyforme

Support us on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/PodCastyForMe

Artwork by Jeremy Allison:

https://www.instagram.com/jeremyallisonart