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PODCAST

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood

Sonny Bunch hosts The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, a new podcast featuring interviews with folks who have their finger on the pulse of the entertainment industry during this dynamic—and difficult—time.

tv & film film interviews

All Episodes

53:57

Ron Howard: The Most Underrated Major Director?

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/08/15

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by New York Magazine’s Bilge Ebiri, who has an enormous, career-spanning interview with Ron Howard in the latest issue. We discussed what makes a Ron Howard movie a “Ron Howard Movie,” the incredibly under-appreciated Thirteen Lives, and that movie about J.D. Vance. And then we talked a bit about his fascinating history of a key element of film technology in the latest issues of Mubi’s quarterly film journal, Notebook. Why is 24 frames per second the accepted frame

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46:02

Can 'The Naked Gun' Save Hollywood Comedies?

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/08/01

I asked David Poland (read his Substack!) to come on this week to pick his brain about the state of the big studio comedy, a genre that has diminished in recent years as international grosses became more important and a lot of comedy releases shifted to streaming in an effort to reduce advertising costs. Which led to us talking about the states of various genres (including horror and superhero pictures) as well as the state of play around the world. If you learned something this week, I hope you

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50:07

The Society-Deforming Spectacle of Jubilee

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/07/25

On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Puck media correspondent Julia Alexander to discuss the absurdities of Jubilee. You might not recognize the name of the company but you’ve probably seen some of their clips; most recently, Mehdi Hasan went up against 20 self-described far-right conservatives that resulted in at least one of the participants losing his job after he proudly declared himself an autocrat and downplayed Nazi crimes during the Holocaust. Is this brand of debate spectacle lucrative

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42:31

Why Anime Is Taking Over Pop Culture

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/07/18

On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Crunchyroll EVP Mitchel Berger to talk about anime’s increasing popularity with those yearning for community. We reference a report on the state of anime several times; you can read it here. The long and the short of it, though, is that anime is increasingly popular with Gen Z and Gen Alpha, which will likely come as no surprise to anyone who has seen the wall of manga in their local Barnes and Noble. From theatrical rollouts in the United States and around

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35:33

How 'Sovereign' Tackles a Cult with Compassion

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/07/11

On this week’s episode, I talked to Christian Swegal, the writer-director of the new film Sovereign, about his new film and its focus on the cult-like behavior of the Sovereign Citizen movement. We discussed Nick Offerman’s commanding lead performance, how you adapt a movie with an ending and setting as tragic as this one, and the difficulty of finding compassion even for those who seem to deserve it least. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to check out Sovereign, which is in theaters and on

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46:02

Is 'F1' a Hit? How Do We Even Judge That?

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/07/03

Always glad to talk to the Entertainment Strategy Guy (read him here!) about the state of play in the world of streaming and beyond. Among the topics discussed this week: Whether or not F1: The Movie is a hit (and what being a “hit” means for a $200 million original for Apple as opposed to a different type of movie for a different type of studio); whether F1, the sport, is a butts-in-seats phenomenon in the United States; why the streaming wars are tightening and other streaming services are closing

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13:55

How Zombies Can Help Explain Political Theory

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/06/27

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Daniel Drezner—cohost of the Space the Nation podcast with Ana Marie Cox and proprietor of the Drezner’s World Substack—to discuss the eternal popularity of zombies (most recently via the hit movie 28 Years Later, which I reviewed here) and the continued relevance of his book, Theories of International Politics and Zombies, which is now in its third edition. We chatted about the ways different political theories might confront waves of the undead and discussed

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43:14

You Can Make a Movie with Your Phone

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/06/20

On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Bart Weiss to discuss the evolution of the iPhone-shot movie from Tangerine to 28 Years Later and his recent book, Smartphone Cinema: Making Great Films with Your Mobile Phone. You have the power to make a movie in the palm of your hand: will you use it? If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend!

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38:58

Why Productions Are Fleeing Los Angeles

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/06/13

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Lane Brown of New York magazine to discuss his feature on an increasingly rare phenomenon: the film or TV show shot in Los Angeles. From foreign tax credits to the cost of permits, Los Angeles is getting more expensive to shoot in, meaning that more productions are moving out of Los Angeles altogether. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to read Lane’s piece. And please, share this with a friend!

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46:22

How the Studios Are (Quietly) Using AI

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/06/06

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by New York Magazine features writer Lila Shapiro to discuss her feature story on the growing utilization of generative AI by Hollywood studios to cut costs and speed up production times. From a party hosted by an AI studio to the work being done by Runway to the growing sense that, hey man, this is just The Future, it seems like AI is, as several folks in the piece put it, “inevitable.” If you enjoyed this episode or learned something in it, please share it with a

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64:17

A Life in Music

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/05/30

On this week’s episode, I strayed a bit from Hollywood to talk to David C. Lowery of the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven about his new album, Fathers, Sons, and Brothers. You can check out the album here and peruse the accompanying Substack here. We had a fascinating chat about how the industry has changed over the last 40 years (for better and worse), how folks discover new music, and how his experiences growing up helped shape his musical tastes and self-conception as an American. If you

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28:40

Clothing 'The Last of Us'

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/05/23

I’m joined by Ann Foley this week to discuss her work as costume designer on the hit HBO show The Last of Us. From sourcing vintage clothes to weaving the infected’s fungal-explosions in with the clothes they were wearing when they died to her graduate school on the sets of Agents of SHIELD, Ann’s insights into translating the world of the game to the world of the screen are pretty fascinating. At the end of the episode, Ann mentions Ellie’s Converse sneakers; you can see what Bella Ramsey scribbled

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39:12

One Family's Journey Through Hollywood

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/05/16

I’m joined by Matthew Specktor, author of The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood. Part novel, part memoir, and entirely entertaining, Matthew’s book is a revealing look at life in Hollywood when you’re not on the A-list but occasionally adjacent to it. In addition to relating the drama that makes any family intriguing, Matthew’s book is a keen look at Hollywood in a time of flux, as the rise of the super agencies and the internationalization of the Hollywood studios radically

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46:45

How David Mamet Made His First Film in 12 Years

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/05/09

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Evan Jonigkeit, the star and producer of Henry Johnson. Based on the play of the same name by David Mamet, Henry Johnson is Mamet’s first film in a dozen years and a beguiling provocation; I greatly enjoyed discussing not only the meaning of the movie with Jonigkeit but also how difficult it is to get a picture like this—a series of Socratic dialogues, a movie of complex ideas made for adults—in front of audiences. Henry Johnson is available to rent now from

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41:26

The Hidden Art of 'Secret Mall Apartment'

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/05/02

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Jeremy Workman, the director and producer of Secret Mall Apartment. We discussed the difficult process of getting your subjects to trust you, the trickiness of distributing an indie documentary in the modern cinematic landscape, and the importance of having a big star like Jesse Eisenberg willing to do a little press for you. The movie’s playing in theaters now; you can see if it’s in a cinema near you here. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with

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61:02

Hollywood Should Rely Less on Overseas Box Office

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/04/25

On this week’s episode I’m rejoined by Scott Mendelson of The Outside Scoop to talk about the state of the box office thus far through 2025. It’s better than 2024—thank you, Minecraft—but not as good as 2023. Plus, we delve into some of the discussion surrounding Sinners’s box office, particularly the foreign and domestic splits. Does its strength in North America demonstrate that Hollywood should be less concerned with appealing to foreign audiences and more worried about making big bucks (and

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71:37

The Economics of Indie Distribution

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/04/18

On this week’s episode, I talked to Andrew Ortenberg of Briarcliff Entertainment about distributing tricky movies like The Apprentice and Magazine Dreams. How have the economics of cinematic distribution improved for distributors with the infrastructure in place to handle it? How have the various video-on-demand tiers shifted over the last few years? What should folks keep in mind before they declare a movie a hit or a flop? And why are family movies an under-utilized resource for the indie set? All

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43:31

Hollywood Imagery's Impact on Politics

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/04/11

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson to discuss her new book about Joan Didion, We Tell Ourselves Stories. I mentioned the book in a newsletter a couple of weeks back, but I wanted to focus on the ways in which the political world has borrowed showbiz’s penchant for image calibration, from the ways in which issues are decided upon to the means by which politicians decide which voters to target. Didion, of course, was a natural observer of these shifts,

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31:12

Bringing Memories of 'Warfare' to Life

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/04/04

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Ray Mendoza, who cowrote and codirected the new A24 movie Warfare with Alex Garland (Civil War, Ex Machina). We discussed the journalistic process of rebuilding the day’s actions portrayed in the film from the memory of those who participated, Mendoza’s work with Garland on Civil War, and the cinematic experience of trying to help people understand what it’s like to go into battle after getting your brain rattled. The movie releases on April 11, and I strongly

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34:57

Dystopian Mediocrity

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/03/28

I am pleased to be rejoined this week by Bobby Miller to discuss his new novel, Situation Nowhere. Imagine Brazil by way of Idiocracy but goopier: That’s Situation Nowhere. We talked about some of his influences, the state of our increasingly recursive culture, and why we need to bring back shaming folks for selling out. If you’re in Los Angeles, check out Bobby’s event on Saturday at The Redwood Bar! And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. (And listen to last year’s episode

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105 results

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