Roundball...talk?!?!?! That's right, it's the HIGH FLYING BIRD episode where we cover Soderbergh's second shot-on-iPhone feature, a 2019 direct-to-Netflix basketball lockout drama starring his old THE KNICK pal André Holland (and a totally different guy named Dr. Edwards). Join us for a great in-person (!) discussion of the intersections of sports, labor, race, and technology, and what exactly Soderbergh is trying to suggest he's really doing with this experimental distribution business. Plus we come up with some genuinely great names for basketball teams. Listen or we'll smoke you like the clown that you are!

Further Reading:

The Revolt of the Black Athlete by Harry Edwards

Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA by Theresa Runstedtler

"Harry Edwards, a giant of sports activism, still has people shook" by Lonnae O'Neal: https://andscape.com/features/harry-edwards-mexico-city-olympics-sports-activism-john-carlos-tommie-smith-1968/

"Michele Roberts vs. the NBA: Why the New Head of the Players Union Is a Hero for Progressive Sports Fans" by Will Leitch: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/11/michele-roberts-the-hero-of-progressive-sports.html

"Steven Soderbergh on the High-Speed Production of High Flying Bird" by Brian Raftery: https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/steven-soderbergh-high-flying-production.html

Further Viewing:

JERRY MAGUIRE (Crowe, 1996)

MONEYBALL (Miller, 2011)

LOGAN LUCKY (Soderbergh, 2017)

UNSANE (Soderbergh, 2018)

THE LAST DANCE (Hehir, 2020)

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

Produced by Ian Rhine and Jake Serwin. Additional production by Ryan Torgeson.

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.

Originally written for Clint Eastwood by friend of the show Elmore Leonard, Richard Fleischer's 1974 Charles Bronson vehicle MR. MAJESTYK is that classic action film setup: a melon farmer accidentally ends up in the middle of a mob hitman's prison transport escape and teams up with a beautiful migrant labor organizer to save his crop. It's a hell of a lot of fun, and probably should have been Patreon episode 3, but here we are. We talk Bronson, small grower economics, and a whole lot about the United Farm Workers, Dolores Huerta, Larry Itliong, and Cesar Chavez. Good ep!

Roger Ebert's profile of Bronson: https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/charles-bronson-its-just-that-i-dont-like-to-talk-very-much

Paul Koslo interview: https://iamlegendarchive.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_10.html

Review of Christian Paiz's Strikers of Coachella: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/coachella-united-farm-workers/

Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers by Frank Bardacke: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2213-trampling-out-the-vintage

As always, thanks to Jetski for our theme music and Jeremy Allison for our artwork. Additional production by Ryan Torgeson.

It'll be a lot easier for everyone if you just listen to our episode on UNSANE, Soderbergh's 2018 shot-on-iPhone experiment that's otherwise a pretty solid thriller! Writer Esmé Holden returns to the show after far too long to talk smartphone aesthetics, involuntary holds, whether all doctors are cops or just most of them, the intersections of mental illness and misogyny and transphobia, and a very special man by the name of Gavin de Becker. Wonderful guest, wonderful conversation, check it out!

Heads up: there's a very brief bit of rough audio right when our guest starts speaking, but it clears up quickly.

Further Reading:

The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker

"Still The Smartest Guy On The Hill 30 Years After Sex, Lies & Videotape: Steven Soderbergh Unravels Hollywood Chaos" by Mike Fleming, Jr. https://deadline.com/2019/01/steven-soderbergh-sundance-slamdance-icon-interview-1202544513/

Further Viewing:

GASLIGHT (Cukor, 1944)

SHOCK CORRIDOR (Fuller, 1963)

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (Demme, 1991)

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (Myrick & Sánchez, 1999)

SIDE EFFECTS (Soderbergh, 2013)

TANGERINE (Baker, 2015)

Follow Esmé Holden:

https://letterboxd.com/esmepartii/

https://substack.com/@esmeholden

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

Hosted and produced by Ian Rhine and Jake Serwin. Additional production by Ryan Torgeson.

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.

George Clooney's second feature - written with his producing partner Grant Heslov - was 2005's GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK, a dramatization of newsman Edward R. Murrow's brave stance against Senator Joe McCarthy's anticommunist witch hunt. Well, just against the witch hunt part. And we're not sure it was all that brave - listen and find out. Plus, obviously, we talk about how this all obviously reminds us of support for Gaza, and how Clooney doesn't seem to know that.

Further Reading:

A History of Broadcasting in the United States + Media Marathon, both by Erik Barnouw

The Strange Career of Annie Lee Moss: Rethinking Gender, Race, and McCarthyism

https://web.archive.org/web/20071103160336/http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/94.2/friedman.html

Further Listening:

Michael and Us - https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/michael-and-us-cinematic-civics-lesson/id791564318?i=1000659893073

Citations Needed - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ep-207-us-backed-killing-of-journalists-in-gaza/id1258545975?i=1000665331874

Thanks as always to Jetski for our theme music and to Jeremy Allison for our artwork.

Look, either you know what this is or you won't believe us. In 2017, Steven Soderbergh and writer Ed Solomon made a murder mystery show that was an app on your phone. You used your phone to decide which scenes to watch next to find out who killed Sharon Stone. This is real. Then they re-edited it as a miniseries for HBO, and now you can't watch the app version literally anywhere. The whole thing is nuts, and thank G-d we have our friend Comrade Yui to help us navigate through it (app joke). Join us for a typically wide-ranging conversation about interactivity, the artist as fascist (complimentary?), video game theory, and biodigital jazz, man. Hey more like Steven Flappybird! Because he deleted the app! Well, someone did.

Further Reading:

Extra Lives by Tom Bissell

Cain's Jawbone by Torquemada

"Interactive Cinema: The Ambiguous Ethics of Media Participation" by Marina Hassapoulou - https://filmquarterly.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Hassapopoulou_Interactive_Introduction-1.pdf

"Mosaic: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Review of Steven Soderbergh's Mystery" by Matt Brennan - https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/mosaic/mosaic-hbo-steven-soderbergh-review

Further Viewing/Playing:

MOSAIC trailer/app demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km_u51OE3VA

KINOAUTOMAT (Činčera, 1967)

OUT 1 (Rivette, 1971)

ZORK (Anderson, Blank, Daniels, and Lebling, 1977)

DRAGON'S LAIR (Bluth, 1983)

CLUE (Lynn, 1985)

MASS EFFECT 2 (Hudson, 2010)

BLACK MIRROR: BANDERSNATCH (Slade, 2018)

Follow Comrade Yui:

https://x.com/yui_antinomy

https://www.patreon.com/c/comrade_yui/

https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/

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.

You voted, we watched! For our third Listener Choice episode, we jumped in the saddle to talk OPEN RANGE, Kevin Costner's 2003 Lauran Paine adaptation that he seemed to think would be his UNFORGIVEN. We disagree! To the many Costnerds among you, we apologize in advance - but this thing ain't UNFORGIVEN, let me tell ya. We talk free grazing, mythmaking, saving dogs, and the wonderful Robert Duvall and Michael Jeter.

Avatar: The Last Annettebender. Is that anything? Let us know.

As always, thank you to Jetski for our theme music and Jeremy Allison for our artwork.

Produced by Jake Serwin & Ian Rhine. Edited by Ryan Torgeson.

The Winds of Winter is still a distant dream for incarcerated fantasy fans, but our episode on Soderbergh's 2017 NASCAR caper LOGAN LUCKY is coming to you on schedule. We brought back our friend, and rebel among San Diego film critics, Glenn Heath Jr. to discuss how Ocean's 7-Eleven combines Soderbergh's impatience with conventional film production, his visions of an incongruous South, and his preternatural flair for heist movies. It might be a live-action cartoon or it might be serious American Regionalism. We lay it all out for you in what Sebastian Stan has called "the dirtiest air of all."

Further Reading:

"Will Soderbergh's Strategy of Bypassing the Studio System...," by Ryan Faughnder

Prison Life Unlocked by Phillip Vance Smith Jr.

"Former Coal Towns Get Money from Clean-Energy Factories," by Hiroko Tabuchi

"How an Ex-Coal Mining Town is Turning to Ecotourism," by Emily Cataneo

"For Black NASCAR Fans, Change Would Mean Feeling at Ease," by Andrew Keh

Further Viewing:

RAISING ARIZONA (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1987)

BOTTLE ROCKET (Wes Anderson, 1996)

TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY (Adam McKay, 2006)

BERNIE (Richard Linklater, 2011)

Follow Glenn Heath Jr.:

His Twitter

Digital Gym Cinema

San Diego Asian Film Festival

Pacific Arts Movement

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.

As promised, we decided to dig in on last year's Best Picture winner and one of the most-discussed Political Films to come out of Hollywood in a long time: Paul Thomas Anderson's ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER. And of course we roped in our buddy Ryan Torgeson, formerly of the Altmania podcast, who has maybe more context for this film than anyone we know. We talk about whether the film has a coherent politics and what that might be, the film's depiction of Black women, the "discourse" that most pissed us off, being the child of radical parents, and of course how many beers we've had (and their relative size). Really great conversation, check it out!

follow Ryan: https://x.com/molecularlioneI

"Black Actresses Are Carrying One Battle After Another" by Angelica Jade Bastién - https://www.vulture.com/article/black-actresses-are-carrying-one-battle-after-another.html

Mother Country Radicals podcast - https://crooked.com/podcast-series/mother-country-radicals/

As always, thank you to Jetski for our theme music and Jeremy Allison for our artwork.