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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

38:19

Documenting Horror

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/02/08

On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by writer/director Philip Gelatt and novelist Paul Tremblay (author of Horror Movieand The Cabin at the End of the World, among other scary books) to discuss the new Substack-hosted docu-horror series Etch. The concept is pretty cool: Philip has interviewed a quintet of horror authors—Tremblay, Stephen Graham Jones, Laird Barron, Elizabeth Hand, and Mariana Enriquez—and every week he’s dropping another episode that combines that interview with a reading of a

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45:18

How Tariffs Will Make Movies More Expensive

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/02/01

On this week’s episode, Sonny Bunch is rejoined by Jesse Nelson of DiabolikDVD and Cauldron Films to discuss the state of home video. We get to the tariff discussion around 32 minutes in, but before that, Jesse dispels some of the concerns about Sony’s recent announcement that they’re discontinuing recordable media like Blu-ray, what collectors are looking for from his store, and how he and his business partner go about deciding out what titles to distribute via their label, Cauldron Films. As

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66:53

Why Is Gaming Underperforming Expectations?

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/01/25

On this week’s supersized episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, I’m rejoined by Matthew Ball to discuss his epic examination of the state of the video game industry and how its growing pains reflect what we’ve seen in other entertainment industries like film. I’d recommend at least scanning his report (you can download the pdf here) even if you’re not a gamer—I am, as discussed in the opening moments, at best a “filthy casual”—because if you’re familiar with the growth patterns of nearly any

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56:58

Revisiting 'Inglourious Basterds'

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/01/18

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Bill Ryan and Dennis Cozzalio to discuss their contribution to the new Arrow Limited Edition release of Inglourious Basterds on 4K. The booklet features a blog-era (remember blogs?) conversation about the film that occurred when it was initially released, in addition to, among other things, a postcard with a recipe for apple strudel (whip cream NOT optional). It’s a great set with lots of extras and I highly recommend picking it up if you can find a copy. We

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49:15

Awards Season in Flux

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/01/11

This week I’m joined by Richard Rushfield and Katey Rich of The Ankler to discuss the state of the awards season post-Golden Globes and in the midst of the Los Angeles fires. (Indeed, Los Angeles resident Richard is in the city to give us an on-the-ground update of the state of things from his perspective. Please excuse any background noise/distortion that you may hear as a result!) We talked about how the Globes might affect the Oscars, how the Globes has devolved into an incestuous web of

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46:07

The Fascinating Legacy of 'Yacht Rock'

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2025/01/04

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Steven Hyden, who—in addition to being the author of books on Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, and Radiohead, and a prolific author at Uproxx—served as the story producer on HBO’s new film, Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary. In addition to discussing just what it means to be a story producer on a documentary, we discussed the making of this film, the evolution of the term “yacht rock,” and why (some) artists have (slowly) warmed to the term. I really can’t recommend the

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49:33

Everything There Is to Know About Star Wars

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/12/21

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Brandon Wainerdi to discuss DK’s hefty and handsome new reference book, Star Wars Encyclopedia: The Comprehensive Guide to the Star Wars Galaxy. We discussed how he broke into writing about Star Wars, researching his entries for the book, and why so much of what we obsessives know about Star Wars comes not from the films but the surrounding products. Brandon’s interview podcast, Talking Bay 94, is a must-listen if you’re a fan of the series. I’ll just say, on a

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30:19

Bringing Novels Into the Internet Age

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/12/14

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by novelist and Broadway producer Michael Wolk to discuss his new interactive novel, Devil’s Game. You can check it out yourself here; it’s an interesting mix of web-first design and apocalyptic airport thriller. We talked about what drove him to write this novel and also discussed the state of Broadway and live theater more generally. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend!

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40:10

The Copyrighted Material Being Used to Train AI

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/12/07

On this week’s episode, I talked to Alex Reisner about his pieces in The Atlantic highlighting the copyrighted material being hoovered into large language models to help AI chatbots simulate human speech. If you’re a screenwriter and would like to see which of your work has been appropriated to aid in the effort, click here; he has assembled a searchable database of nearly 140,000 movie and TV scripts that have been used without permission. (And you should read his other stories about copyright law

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40:12

Comcast Is Spinning Off Its Cable Assets: What Does...

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/11/23

This week I’m rejoined by Sean McNulty of The Ankler’s morning roundup newsletter, The Wakeup, to discuss the big news in cable land: ComcastNBCUniversal’s decision to spin (most of!) their cable properties into a new, separate company, called SpinCo for now. What does this mean for MSNBC, USA, and the rest of the impacted channels? Why is Bravo staying under the Comcast umbrella? What impact will this have on NBC? All of these questions are asked and some answers are given. Warning: There is a fair

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58:56

Melding Video Games and TV Shows

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/11/16

This week I’m thrilled to be joined by Jacob Navok, the CEO of Genvid Entertainment, to discuss his company’s new partnership with DC Comics, DC Heroes United. A combination mobile game and Justice League television show, DC Heroes United is a fascinating hybrid entertainment experience, one that Navok has been working on in various forms for years now. The first 20 minutes or so of the show are largely about DC Heroes United; after that, we discuss the evolution of this sort of interactive

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52:32

The Christmas Movie Industrial Complex

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/11/09

This week I’m joined by Russell Hainline, the screenwriter of the forthcoming Netflix original Hot Frosty as well as a whole bunch of Hallmark original Christmas movies (including last year’s The Santa Summit and the forthcoming The Santa Class). I asked him on today to talk about the burgeoning market for Christmas movies on channels like Hallmark and streaming services like Netflix, and we had a great chat about how Hallmark resembles a cable network less than the old Hollywood studios like RKO

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33:52

Alfred Hitchcock, Master of Fear and Desire

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/11/02

This week I’m joined by Mark Cousins, the writer and director of the new documentary, My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock. We talked about his movie’s unorthodox presentation, why Hitchcock remains eternally relevant, and how he puts together his incredible video essays. (If you’ve never seen his The Story of Film: An Odyssey, you really should.) And then he turned the tables on me with some closing questions! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend!

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63:29

The Four Horsemen of the Media Apocalypse

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/10/26

Good show, long show today with the Entertainment Strategy Guy (subscribe to his Substack here). I’m going to offer up timestamps here, which I don’t usually do, because there’s a ton of stuff covered in this podcast. Amongst the topics we discussed: Marvel vs. DC in the TV realm (:40); Tulsa King’s status as a surprise hit for Paramount+ (11:40); what the data about Netflix’s second season of Monsters suggests about its completion rate and why that matters (16:06); why horror has a lower

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45:31

A Second Look at 'Caligula'

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/10/19

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Thomas Negovan, who oversaw the reconstruction of Caligula: The Ultimate Cut. Combing through 96 hours of the original negatives, Tom rebuilt the film from the ground up in order to bring it closer in line with the vision of writer Gore Vidal, director Tinto Brass, and star Malcolm McDowell. We discussed some of the technical challenges of tracking down source materials, the challenge of reconstructing a film that felt entirely different from every version

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41:31

The Movie Donald Trump Doesn't Want You to See

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/10/12

I’m joined by Gabriel Sherman, the writer of The Apprentice, on this week’s episode. Sebastian Stan plays Donald Trump in this movie in theaters now about the future president’s relationship with noted legal fixer and possible evil supervillain Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). The movie’s path to distribution is almost as interesting as the film itself: following production and a decent response at Cannes, it found itself in limbo as the original financier got cold feet and studios worried about reprisals

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39:57

Why Is It So Hard to Find Something to Watch on...

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/10/05

On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Parrot Analytics’s Brandon Katz to discuss a vexing issues for streaming channels and audiences alike: why do the services have such a difficult time helping people find more things on the service to watch? Our chat is based in part on his column in the Observer, and you should read it if you have a second. But the long and the short of it is that streaming services are dealing with customers signing up for a month or two, binging what they want to watch, and

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39:10

Devo's Groundbreaking Work

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/09/28

This week I’m talking to a friend here in Dallas, Bart Weiss, about the Ernie Kovacs Award taking place this weekend at the Texas Theatre. This year’s honoree is Jerry Casale from the band Devo, and we’re discussing his work both with the band and as a pioneer of the music video artform. Check out the links above for tickets to the various events (the screening tonight is going to be pretty fun, I think, as the movie is super-interesting). If you’re in the Dallas area I hope you check it out. And if

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65:53

How Social Media Is Warping Our Sense of Everything

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/09/21

NOTE: This is the correct audio file! Apologies, crossed my Audioboom streams the first time around.On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by Jason Pargin to discuss his latest novel, I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, a standalone comic adventure about life in the age of interconnectivity. It’s out Tuesday; you can preorder it now. And I really hope you do: Pargin is among the most precise observers of life as it is lived in the digital age, and one of the things we really dive

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54:50

The Death of a Community

The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood ·

2024/09/14

This week I’m joined by Amy Nicholson, the director of the documentary Happy Campers, which is now available for rental or purchase on VOD at Apple. We discussed the ragtag oceanside community Amy documented, how she came to find herself in a position to tell their story, and some of the stranger reactions to the film’s decision to be less didactic and more emotionally compelling. If you’re intrigued by what you hear here, make sure to check out the movie. And if you enjoyed this episode, please

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98 results

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