With the Sonic Cinema Podcast, I’ve strived for it to be more than just me talking about movies and subjects related to movies. In the early years of the podcast, that’s mostly how it was, although I would- occasionally- have friends, and even filmmakers, on, the former to share some of our thoughts on particular movies, the latter to do interviews about their work. At a certain point, though, filmmakers joined to podcast to not just discuss their own work, but movies that they loved. Just listening to me talk would have made for a boring experience, so bringing other voices in was a big part of the process for me, and in the past year, it’s only become more so for me, especially when it comes to other film critics and fans I’ve met online.
In 2018, a friend of mine from school, Stuart Delony, had me on his radio show, Snarky Faith, after I reached out to him after listening to an episode he did discussing Martin Scorsese’s “Silence”. The subject? Christian cinema. Needless to say, that can be a punishing subject, but it was also a rewarding discussion, and I’ve wanted to guest on other people’s podcasts ever since. In late 2020, after a year of starting to connect with other members of “Film Twitter,” I would finally start reaching out.
January of this year brought my first opportunity to branch out, and partake in other critic’s format for podcast film discussion. Just prior to Sundance, I recorded an episode of the Binge Movies podcast discussing the Highest Grossing Films of 1998 #6-10. The way they approach film discussion is through a ranking system, and elimination discussion per season to determine which films would be “preserved” for all-time. The films we discussed were a crap shoot in terms of quality, but it was a lot of fun to really look at film through their perspective, and when I had Jason on the Sonic Cinema Podcast a month later to record, we brought some of that same thinking to our discussions of “Trancers”, “Leviathan” and “Popcorn”. I hope to rejoin the Binge in the future.
March brought two guests spots to record. The first was with Morgan and Chels of the Untitled Cinema Gals Podcast, which they had just started. There’s is a more traditional, conversational back-and-forth about movies and television, which made the subject we had agreed on- favorite soundtracks- a good one to begin with. We each chose our three favorite soundtracks, and all three of us discussed them. One of the things I loved about this discussion was not only in how certain soundtracks naturally led to others in the discussion, but the wide variety of how those soundtracks operated. All the Bops!, as it’s titled, is probably the most comprehensive discussion I’ve had on film soundtracks and my own musical ideas since I began writing about and discussing movies and soundtracks, so in a way, it’s pretty essential if you want to get to know me as a composer, and a movie lover. We’re planning on an appearance on the Sonic Cinema Podcast for over the summer, and maybe a discussion about movie theatre life now that theatres are reopened. You’ve been warned.
At the end of March, it was finally time to record all of the thoughts I had on Hal Needham’s “RAD” for the NostalgiaCast. DW, the host of the podcast, is one of my very favorite Twitter people to interact with, and it was a blast as he, Johnny (his co-host) and I looked at the deficiencies all over Needham’s 1986 BMX movie, and wondered what might have worked better, and whether it just needs to stay in the 1980s. It was a fun discussion, and one that allowed me to get all of my thoughts on the movie out of my system. DW will be on a future episode of the Sonic Cinema Podcast discussing Orson Welles, and I cannot wait for this back-and-forth to continue.
A week after discussing “RAD”, it was time to discuss one of my favorite films of all-time in Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life”. I wrote about this film being something of a mental reboot movie for me in a preparation rewatch of the film, and this is one of the things I discussed with film critic Amy Smith on an episode of her Film for Thought podcast. “Waking Life” representing not only one of Amy’s first Linklater films, but also the first time on her podcast- where friends and film critics bring a film with them to discuss- she was not a big fan of the movie being discussed. Nonetheless, we had an engaging and compelling discussion on storytelling structure in dream logic movies, the ideas at work in the film, and why it means something to me. Amy has already appeared on the Sonic Cinema Podcast, and I have contributed a number of pieces for her Ultimate Choice series at her website, so we will be continuing the discussion in the future.
Thank you to all of these intelligent and wonderful film critics and film thinkers for having me on their podcasts. It’s been a pleasure to be a part of the conversation you’re having on your podcasts; if I haven’t had you on already, I look forward to you continuing to be a part of mine in the future.
Viva La Resistance!
Brian Skutle
www.sonic-cinema.com
