On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of its release, and just in time for Halloween, we sit down with the inimitable film critic and essayist Bilge Ebiri to celebrate Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko.

Related reads:

Bilge's Vulture profile of Jake Gyllenhaal (March 2024)

Stupid Man Suit - Lindsey Romain on Donnie Darko (Issue #111, September 2022)

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Producer/Editor/Music: Chad Perman

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

This month, Chad and Elizabeth sit down with author Karina Wolf to discuss midlife crisis and Thomas Vinterberg's 2020 film, Another Round.

This month Chad and Elizabeth are joined by writer, producer, director, and showrunner Chris Cantwell (Halt and Catch Fire, The Terror: Devil in Silver)—an original BWDR contributor who also happens to be Elizabeth's husband—to take a deep dive into the 1990 Sean Connery classic, The Hunt for Red October.

You can read all 147 issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room—including our current issue on Summer Blockbusters—here. We’re also on Bluesky⁠ @brightwalldarkroom⁠ and @bwdrpod, and welcome listener feedback or movie ideas for upcoming episodes!

To kick off our upcoming Summer Blockbusters issue, we invited longtime BW/DR contributor—and podcast five-timer!—Frank Falisi to help us work our way through Disclosure Day, the latest summer blockbuster from Steven Spielberg, the director who all but created the genre more than 40 years ago.

We get into: the ending (first, of course), empathy, aliens, camera movements, CGI animals, post-Fabelmans Spielberg viewing, are we alone in the universe, and more!

We're back, and just in time for summer blockbuster season! Join Chad Perman and new co-host Elizabeth Cantwell as they talk their way through one of the biggest/best summer blockbusters of all time, James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, on the occasion of its 35th anniversary next month.

Not only is this Veronica and Eli’s last episode, it’s our fourth annual Cruisemas. With the release of One Battle After Another, we revisit Paul Thomas Anderson’s blank check big swing Magnolia (1999), and get into: young PTA and the New New Hollywood, sincerity and good listening, Phil Parma made Chad become a therapist, Fiona Apple as PTA’s Polly Platt, we desperately want a Tom Cruise coconut cake, life imitating art with Cruise’s Oprah interview, Melora Walters’ enigmatic smile, Magnolia trying to understand the same things as the Bible, the bleak prescience of ‘Seduce and Destroy,’ how to pace a 3+ hour runtime, and more.

Further reading: Roger Ebert’s “ecstatic” review, Lynn Hirschberg’s profile “His Way,” Steven Hyden on PTA and Fiona Apple for Grantland, and books from friends of the pod Adam Nayman (Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks) and Ethan Warren (The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson).

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast has been co-hosted since 2021 by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, and produced by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. Find every issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room at brightwalldarkroom.com, and thanks for listening.

Note: This episode was recorded days before the December 13 shooting at Brown University. Our thoughts remain with Veronica’s students and the entire community at Brown and beyond.

Happy 30th birthday to David Fincher’s Seven (1995). Joining us to celebrate is special guest Adam Nayman, Toronto-based critic, lecturer, and author of, among other books, David Fincher: Mind Games (2021).

We get into: boy movies, the intersections of art and trash, Fincher as mad designer and marketing guru, Veronica can’t do math, canceling Det. Mills, how a spark of ambiguity can incite a book-length study, the undersung editing of Richard Francis-Bruce, the undersung producing prowess of Michael De Luca, what is and is not in the box, and more.

References: Tony Zhou on David Fincher (“And the Other Way is Wrong”), Richard Dyer’s BFI book for Seven, and of course, Adam’s terrific book on Fincher, Mind Games, from Little White Lies/Abrams Books.

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, and produced by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

Find all 142 issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room at brightwalldarkroom.com, and please consider subscribing to the site, which directly helps support this show!

We welcome feedback, inquiries, and sponsorship opportunities at podcast@brightwalldarkroom.com.

It’s officially fall when the NYFF finally ends. In this episode, Veronica sits down with Fran Hoepfner, Frank Falisi, and our producer Eli Sands to postmortem the 63rd New York Film Festival. This is a spoiler-free conversation.

We get into: Miroirs No. 3, The Mastermind, Late Fame, No Other Choice, With Hasan in Gaza, The Secret Agent, Peter Hujar’s Day, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, A House of Dynamite, Sirāt, Cover-Up, Duse, How to Bake a Cherry Pie

Plus: One Battle After Another, Alana Haim sighing, bringing Tupperware to critics screenings, the push to explicit politics in this year’s slate, film critics turned filmmakers, “actual jeers,” settler colonialist ravers, Magellan wasn’t long enough, the corona of fascism, Veronica hasn’t seen anything yet, and more.

Further reading & listening: Look out for more NYFF coverage on Eli’s podcast, Deep Cut. Find Frank at BWDR and Reverse Shot. Find Fran online at Vulture and ⁠Fran Mag.

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

You can read every single issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room ⁠here⁠, including our most recent issue: ⁠Teachers⁠. We’re also on Bluesky⁠ @BWDR⁠ and welcome listener feedback & sponsorship inquiries at ⁠podcast@brightwalldarkroom.com⁠.