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The Pink Smoke podcast

The Pink Smoke

A podcast on cinema & literature, from Action Jackson to Zeder.

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01:55:28

Ep 164 The Jugger

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2026/02/09

The Pink Smoke is back on track, picking up with the sixth entry of Donald E. Westlake's Parker series. A true outlier, The Jugger doesn't feature an epic heist or a ragtag mix of reliable and backstabbing criminals. In this one Parker's all alone, dropped into a situation he's not sure about, forced to make decisions that will have giant ramifications on his life and the series moving forward.We also discuss Made in U.S.A., Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 adaptation of The Jugger which is technically the

01:26:16

Ep 163 The Maya and Science Fiction

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2026/01/06

Star Trek episodes, the title credits of Alien, the architecture of Star Wars and Blade Runner, the work of Joseph Campbell, H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker and Alejandro Jodorowsky. You'd be surprised how many iconic artworks have been influenced by transformative themes traced back to Mesoamerican mythology and Ancient Maya theology. On this episode, host Martin Kessler is joined by Mesoamerican occultist Solomon Pakal to discuss the Mesoamerican influence on science fiction/fantasy and horror.If

02:25:02

Parker Doesn't Say 'Merry Christmas': A 2025 Holiday...

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/12/25

In this super-sized episode of our ongoing series where we discuss the exploits of career criminal Parker from the books by Richard Stark a.k.a. Donald E. Westlake, we're tackling three big Parker-based works.We start by jumping ahead in our chronological reviews to discuss The Handle, the eighth book in the Parker series, in which our professional thief is enlisted by a former enemy syndicate to rob an island casino and burn it to the ground. Next, we dive into the new Shane Black written and

01:28:55

Ep 162 The Score

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/12/16

With the fifth entry of the Parker series, The Score, Richard Stark aka Donald E. Westlake puts his career criminal anti-hero in charge of his most ambitious heist yet: the 12-man robbery of a North Dakota mining town. This allows the author to expand the violent world of Parker by introducing a slew of fresh characters, including thespian-thief Alan Grofield, who would go on to star in four solo novels of his own.We discuss the series' change in scope and structure in a book that would set the

01:55:55

Ep 161 I Killed Bette Davis by Larry Cohen

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/12/02

If you're a fan of Larry Cohen, the maverick filmmaker behind such mind-bending genre pictures as It's Alive, God Told Me To, Q: The Winged Serpent and The Stuff, you owe it to yourself to check out his newly published memoir: I Killed Bette Davis and Other Confessions of Heinous Crimes Committed in the Name of Moviemaking. The legendary director recounts all the great anecdotes you've already heard - driving a cab on actual NYC sidewalks, firing machine guns from the top of the Chrysler Building

03:03:48

EP 160 Visitors from Lanulos

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/11/18

“I went to a different planet where the spacemen drink coffee and don't cheat on their wives.”Cryptozoologist Christopher Funderburg and parapsychologist Martin Kessler meet in an undisclosed location to perform a secret autopsy on Visitors from Lanulos, "a history book about something that never happened." Ostensibly the chronicle of Woodrow Derenberger, a West Virginian contactee who reported encounters with Indrid Cold and his extraterrestrial buddies from the galaxy of Ganymede, the book would

01:10:00

FiVE FROM THE FiRE / Episode 11: Becky D'Anna and Jon...

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/11/04

What if every single print of every single film by 5 esteemed filmmakers were housed in a burning warehouse and there was only time to save 5 of them? This is the hypothetical hot seat into which guests are placed on the recurring Five from the Fire series, tasked to choose a handful of movies to rescue from oblivion!We entrust the hosts of Director's Take: A Sony Pictures Podcast, Becky D'Anna and Jon Laubinger, to charge fearlessly into the flames and make some tough decisions. Will their

02:39:35

Ep 159 Gremlins Rip-Offs

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/10/31

For this year's Halloween theme, the Pink Smoke sets its sights on the mid-80's to early 90's trend of "mischievous little monsters" horror movies modeled after a certain masterpiece by a certain Joe Dante. Is there anything of quality to be found in such creature feature cash grabs? Do any cinematic critters, ghoulies, munchies or hobgoblins break the mold of the Gremlins template and discover their own identity? Is there any joy to be had in the low budget exploits of tiny varmints terrorizing

02:24:53

Ep 158 Crow Killer / "Liver-Eating" Johnson /...

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/10/20

We journey out to Montana Territory in the latter half of the 19th century to break biscuits with John "Liver-Eating" Johnson, subject of the books Crow Killer by Raymond W. Thorp and Robert Bunker and Mountain Man by Vardis Fisher, both of which were subsequently adapted by John Milius for the Sydney Pollack film Jeremiah Johnson starring Robert Redford. All three detail Johnson's life as a hunter/trapper and his war with the Crow Indians after the killing of his wife, and while the accounts of

01:46:34

Ep 157 Arthur and Arthur 2: On the Rocks

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/10/06

We watched Arthur. A New York love story. Pure lightning in a bottle. The little movie that went on to become the #4 biggest hit of 1981. And we watched Arthur 2: On the Rocks. A critical punching bag. An outcast. Something considered a travesty of elegance and taste, when it's considered at all.More to the point, what is Arthur in 2025? It's weird that it was so successful back in the day, and even weirder that we'd still want to discuss it now. We dig into that weirdness, and the double

01:14:31

Ep 156 The Mourner

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/09/16

We continue our series on the Parker books by Donald E. Westlake, published under the nom de guerre Richard Stark, which follow the various criminal activities of hard-boiled heister Parker and the shady characters surrounding him looking to screw up the score. Coming after the 'Outfit Trilogy' that kicked off the series, 1964's The Mourner is one of the weirder entries, focusing specifically on the eponymous MacGuffin: a lost historical statue sitting in the art collection of an embezzling

00:58:18

Ep 155 Dogfight

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/08/26

Ever since Dogfight was released in 1991 to middling reviews and invisible box office, it's slowly developed a following among viewers who appreciate Nancy Savoca's empathetic story of two young people making a meaningful connection at a pivotal point of the early 60's.Two such viewers are host Martin Kessler and his guest, film writer and programmer Vanya Garraway. They explore this very human film and the richness of its lead characters, an aspiring folk singer and a young soldier due to deploy

01:06:04

1974: Fifty Years Later / Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/08/05

Last year, the Pink Smoke Podcast created a series called 1974: 50 Years Later, each episode featuring a different guest who chose a 1974 movie to talk about, ranging from giant blockbusters to minor cult curios and everything else in between. But since all our guests are cool outsiders with eccentric tastes, most of them stayed away from the most iconic movies of that fabled cinematic year, eschewing The Godfather Part II in favor of forgotten TV movies and experimental horror films.While that

01:03:27

Ep. 154: The Prophecy

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/07/22

Host Martin Kessler finds himself in the middle of an angelic civil war, complete with soul-sucking seraphims, ritual exorcism, apocalyptic implications and an intervention from Lucifer himself, as he opens the ancient book (or should it be a scroll?) on Gregory Widen's 1995 theological thriller The Prophecy.Luckily, he's able to enlist first-time Pink Smoke guest Matthias van der Roest and fan favorite John Arminio to confront Christopher Walken's celestial terminator Archangel Gabriel before he

00:49:12

Ep. 26 Peterloo

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/07/19

Host John Cribbs is joined on the latest episode of The Pink Smoke podcast by Martin Kessler of Flixwise: Outpost Canada to discuss Mike Leigh's latest film, Peterloo. A historical drama looking at the semi-forgotten massacre at St. Peter's field in 1819, the film sees Manchester-ite Leigh returning to his home turf and somewhat unfamiliar artistic territory. With Vera Drake, Topsy-Turvy and Mr. Turner, historical dramas aren't precisely strange terrain for Leigh, so what makes Peterloo feel like

01:04:04

Ep. 39 American Dharma

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/07/19

Hosts John Cribbs & Christopher Funderburg discuss the legendary documentarian Errol Morris' latest film AMERICAN DHARMA, an extended interview with Steve Bannon (the architect of Donald Trump's successful 2016 presidential campaign).It's another typical Morris study of self-deception, specious reasoning & the strange intersections of pop cultural & real life. The podcast discussion also addresses the issues of deplatforming, how the film fits alongside FOG OF WAR & THE UNKNOWN KNOWN and the

01:42:15

Ep. 54 Eastwood Double Feature

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/07/19

For Clint Eastwood’s 90th birthday, hosts Christopher Funderburg and John Cribbs have each selected one of the actor/director’s films to discuss. This Eastwood Double Feature looks at Don Siegel’s The Beguiled and Eastwood’s own Unforgiven, a pair of films that illustrate why the star-auteur achieved his iconic status while remaining hard to pin down as an artist. The intense hothouse sexual politics of The Beguiled and the irony-soaked destruction (and rebuilding) of myths found in Unforgiven

03:28:59

Ep. 153 Earp Adjacent Westerrns

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/07/02

The myth of Wyatt Earp ignited at the ascent of cinema, his alleged Old West exploits embellished on celluloid during the Silent Era so that he was a full-fledged American legend come the golden age of Hollywood. Earp westerns were such an established staple that Law and Order, the first movie to star a surrogate Wyatt, was already out in 1932. All the familiar elements were there - Tombstone, Doc Holliday, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral - but the names of the players were different. From fairly

02:15:06

Ep. 152 Major Dune-dee

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2025/02/20

Support our Patreon:www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke Sam Peckinpah and David Lynch, two of the most recognized directors of their day, were each in their mid-30's when they embarked on their third feature film: an epic studio movie to be shot in Mexico (headquartered at Estudio Churubusco). In both cases, the resulting film was a commercial disappointment and a critical disaster. What went wrong? Who's fault was it? Do these maligned movies deserve reappraisal?In tribute to the legendary Sam

01:20:06

1974: Fifty Years Later / A Wife To Be Sacrificed &...

The Pink Smoke podcast ·

2024/12/31

Support our Patreon:www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke 1974 was a landmark year for film, a convergence of exciting international cinema and the original voices of New Hollywood that still resonates 50 years later. In our new series we invite a different guest for each episode to choose a 1974 movie to talk about, ranging from giant blockbusters to minor cult curios and everything else in between. The early 70's was a particularly transitional period for Japanese cinema in which major stars and

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