Why Is This Not a Movie?

Jonathan Ames' detective novel A Man Named Doll, and its sequel The Wheel of Doll combine the playfulness of Bored to Death (which Ames created) and You Were Never Really Here (which Lynne Ramsay adapted into a film in 2017. It's a tricky balancing act between tones that Ames pulls of with aplomb.

Here to talk about why it should be a movie is Aquarium Drunkard writer and editor Jason Woodbury, who also hosts the Transmissions podcast.

Paul Chadwick's long-running comics series Concrete is about a man who's transformed into a hulking cement-like monster, who wants to use his newfound power to make a difference... and isn't really sure how to go about it.

Comics writer Ted Anderson (The Spy Who Raised Me, Side Effects, Orphan Age), joins us to talk about why saving the world makes for a less interesting story than trying to help in small ways and not always succeeding.

2016's The Nice Guys was a terrific action comedy, with a smart script by Shane Black, and two charismatic, bankable leads in Ryan Gosling and Russel Crowe. But it barely made its budget back and was quickly forgotten.

Screenwriter Scott Myers, who also runs Go Into the Story, the screenwriting blog for The Black list, joins us to talk about why Hollywood has lost interest in action comedies, AI and the aftermath of the WGA strike (which was resolved the day we recorded this), and why The Nice Guys deserved either several sequels or a limited series. Myers is also the author of The Protagonist's Journey, a book about screenwriting and storytelling, and we talk a fair amount about both in this episode.

Rube Waddell was a pitcher in the early days of baseball with one of the most colorful stories in all of sports. In 1903 alone, he threw 302 strikeouts, won 22 games, started the season sleeping in a firehouse, ended it working as a bartender, and in between starred in a play in which he refused to memorize his lines; met, married, and divorced one of his several wives; accidentally shot a friend through the hand; and was bitten by a lion.

Author Randall Lotowycz (The DC Book of Lists, Superhero Playbook, Michael Recycle) joins us to talk about why a character study of one of the game's most colorful oddballs could be the anti-Forrest Gump.

We're back to kick off season 5 with Preeti Chhibber, multitalented podcaster (Women of Marvel, Desi Geek Girls, Tar Valon or Bust) and author (A Jedi You Will Be, Avengers Assembly, Spider Man's Social Dilemma), who's here to tell us why her favorite Spider-Man movie is a Playstation game. Look for new newest book, Spider-Man's Bad Connection, in bookstores everywhere!

1984's Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eight Dimension was a fun, pulpy mess of a sci-fi adventure, which promised us a sequel... which we never got. Nearly 40 years later, screenwriter Earl Mac Rauch wrangled the rights to the character away from the studio and gave us a novelization of Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League, the movie he never got to make. And it's not very good.

So to wrap up Season 4, a brief meditation on the pitfalls of reviving a property by creating a watered-down version of the original instead of pushing forward with new ideas. As we coast to the end of the season, my voice is starting to go, so bear with me this week, as I talk about a movie I wanted and never got, the joy of throwing every crazy idea you can into a story, and the importance of keeping things moving forward.

In the 1890s, a British shipping clerk named Edmund Morel noticed the Belgians were shipping vast quantities of rubber from the Congo, then a Belgian colony, but the only thing they were sending in return were guns, explosives, and chains. Morel uncovered a scandal that shook the world, as it turned out Belgian King Leopold II was running Congo as his own private plantation, using horrific violence to keep the population working.

Washington D.C.-area journalist Orrin Konheim joins us to talk about how one of history's greatest atrocities was covered up, and then brought to light.

Franklin Roosevelt was wildly popular when he was in office, and is universally acknowledged as one of our greatest presidents. But in 1933, not everyone agreed. Shortly after FDR took office, a cabal of wealthy businessmen who were worried the New Deal would undermine profits, recruited General Smedley Butler — a widely respected WWI hero and crusader for veterans' rights — and tried to convince him to rally the servicemen and vets who loved and respected him, and use them to overthrow FDR and bring fascism to America.

Journalist Natalia Megas (The Washington Post, The Guardian, Daily Beast) returns to the show to talk about The Business Plot, and whether it was a genuine threat to democracy, or just a lot of bluster. You can see some of her writing at nataliamegas.com, and find her on Twitter @DameWriter.

Billy Haines was a silent movie star who made the transition to sound, but when the studio head made the openly gay actor an ultimatum — a sham marriage to a woman, or the end of his movie career. Haines chose love, quitting the movies, holding onto a relationship his friend Joan Crawford called "the happiest marriage in Hollywood," and got the best revenge of all: living well. Haines reinvented himself as the influential designer of the Hollywood Regency style, hobnobbing with movie stars and heads of state.

Shane Harris — Washington Post reporter, author of the books @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex, The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State, and host of the podcast Chatter, which interviews people at the intersection of storytelling and national security — joins us to talk about the man who invented Old Hollywood glamour, and which director's personal connection to Haines makes him the perfect choice to tell his story.

Boo Morcom was heavily favored to win the gold in pole vault at the 1948 Olympics. But he was playing hurt, in the rain, and missed his shot at the gold. So he tracked down the competitors who beat him, and challenged them all to rematches, just to prove he was the best. Morcom's grandson, former editor-in-chief of Gameological Society and The A.V. Club, and current host of the delightful podcast Pop Mom, where he and his mom discuss pop culture, joins us to talk about how you can't get back a moment in time, but you can still be stubborn enough to challenge the Olympics to a rematch.

Mark Olmstead found out he had HIV at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, when the disease was a death sentence. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he pulled off a string of scams including credit card fraud, insurance fraud, dealing crystal meth, and faking his own death, assuming he’d be dead for real before any of the consequences caught up to him. Except he didn’t die.

Kim Daly, whose book The True Crime File hits bookstores May 10 and is available for pre-order now, brings us a movie idea that brings us both the dizzying highs and lows of a charming con man, and an unflinching look at the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s.

For forty years, police in Saskatchewan, Canada were in the habit of arresting Ingdigenous men for minor offenses, or sometimes no reason at all, leaving them to freeze to death. And to this day, the police haven't been held accountable. Comedy writer and performer Tom Murphy joins us with a deadly serious story; the drama behind Canada's deadly "Starlight Tours" and the fight to bring the story to light.

In 1966, an El Paso theater actor bet his screenwriter friend he could produce a horror movie all on his own. The result was Manos: The Hands of Fate, an incoherent, no-budget movie considered one of the worst films ever made. And yet, it did somehow get made, and 50 years later, people are still watching it. Pop culture writer and bad movie evangelist Nathan Rabin (The A.V. Club, The Dissolve, and several books including My Year of Flops, You Don't Know Me But You Don't Like Me, The Weird Accordion to Al) joins us to talk about why the story of how a terrible movie got made would make for a great movie. Also, look for his new book The Joy of Trash, and read more of his writing at Nathan Rabin's Happy Place (nathanrabin.com).

Legendary Old West lawman Wyatt Earp fought at the O.K. Corrall, and then rode off into the sunset... but the story doesn't end there. Scott Bunn, who co-hosts the sports podcast Run That Back and authors the Bob Dylan blog ReclinerNotes.com, joins us to talk about Wyatt Earp resurfacing in 1910's Hollywood, where he worked as a bounty hunter and mingled with stars of the silent film era. 

Also, one show note: we lamented that we hadn't heard much from director Curtis Hanson after his masterful one-two punch of L.A. Confidential and Wonder Boys 20 years ago. I forgot that Hanson passed away in 2016; his last film was 2012's surfing biopic Chasing Mavericks.

Robert Smalls was an enslaved sailor on a Confederate ship, until late one night, he hijacked the ship, picked up his family and his crew's, and sailed into enemy lines. He went on to be a naval captain, a war hero, and a Congressman, but most importantly, a free man.

In the 1870s, traveling by train through Palisade, Nevada was a heart-stopping experience. It was a Wild West hive of scum and villainy, with a constant tumult of fistfights, gunfights, and robberies in broad daylight. Except it was all fake — a show put on by the townspeople because they were bored and thought it would be funny.

No guest this week, as we're adjusting the format — we'll continue to do longer episodes with a guest every other week, but we'll alternate with shorter, just-me episodes, as now that people are gradually re-entering society, I have less time to edit the longer episodes, and I have fewer guests who are stuck at home dying to talk about movies.

DC Comics has had a mixed record at the movies, but Boston Globe writer Nick Zaino, host of the podcast Department of Tangents, and first-ever WITNAM guest, returns to tell us why long-running, lesser-known DC title The Spectre is a better bet for the big screen than yet another take on the Joker. 

In 2020, a local TV host from Nebraska gained internet fame for a montage of her hilariously blunt interviews with A-list actors from the '70s and '80s. But her story goes far beyond one viral clip, as Drake burst into a male-dominated field and succeeded on her own terms, hosting and producing two TV shows that ran for decades, and interviewing everyone from local children and retirees to Hollywood stars. Artist and photographer Tony Cava joins us to about Drake's quintessentially Midwestern no-nonsense interviews, and why the juxtaposition of a small-city interviewer and Hollywood big shots needs to be a movie.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, so this week we have a true-life story from Kate Ranta, author of Killing Kate: A Story of Turning Abuse and Tragedy into Transformation and Triumph. Her seemingly happy marriage turned into a nightmare of abuse and attempted murder, but she survived and became and activist who's devoted her life to speaking out about how abuse victims are failed by the systems designed to help them.

Something different this week, as we're talking about something that already is a movie: The Moment, a film that's edited in real time by an audience member's brainwaves. Director Richard Ramchurn talks to us about the technology behind his remarkable film, and the hithero-impossible storytelling possibilities it opens up. You can learn more about the film at braincontrolledmovie.co.uk, and see a live screening online on September 25 at 8pm Greenwich / 4pm Eastern / 1pm Pacific. (More info on the web site)

Welcome back to Season 3 of Why Is This Not a Movie?! Every schoolchild knows the story of the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk. But less well known is what came next — a tense couple of years in which the Wrights perfected their design for an airplane in secret, worried that someone might steal credit for their world-changing idea. Matt Voigts, an anthropology researcher who has a side gig in film production joins us to talk about the two eccentric tinkerers who built one of history's greatest inventions... and then wouldn't let anyone see it.

We wrap up Season 2 with a remarkable story, as journalist and author Suki Kim tells us about the six months she spent undercover in Kim Jong Il's North Korea, teaching the children of the country's elite while in constant danger of being discovered. She recounted her experiences in a book, Without You, There Is No Us, now hear how she survived under an astonishingly oppressive regime, why a film adaptation needs to put the characters first and politics second, and why Ang Lee is the ideal director to bring this story of young people in a repressive environment to the big screen.

In 1856, a 23-year-old woman named Kate Warne walked into the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency and demanded a job. They had never hired a woman to be anything other than a secretary, but she impressed them so much they made her America's first female detective. She caught bank robbers, embezzlers, murderers... and prevented the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

A quick episode this week, before we go out on a high note next week to wrap up Season 2 of Why Is This Not a Movie? and then take a break until September. 

Dorothy Kilgallen was a beloved entertainment reporter, a regular on What's My Line, when she took a hard left turn into crime reporting. She covered murders and organized crime. She was the only person to interview Jack Ruby after he killed Oswald, and got to see the Warren Commission report even before LBJ. But when she started to challenge the official story on JFK's assassination, she soon died under mysterious circumstances. Was she murdered? Print journalist Orrin Konheim joins us to talk about Kilgallen succeeding in a male-domainted field, getting close to the Kennedys, and then dying in a manner suspiciously similar to Marilyn Monroe.

In the 1980s, American journalist Bill Gentile travelled to Nicaragua during the Sandanista revolution, and El Salvador during that country’s decade-long civil war, risking life and limb to tell human stories from these wartorn countries. Now he's written a book, Wait For Me: True Stories of War, Love and Rock & Roll, and joins us to talk about why it would make a great series.

In the Golden Age of Korean Cinema in the '60s, director Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee were making acclaimed films as a glamorous power couple. But their lives took a turn for the worse as their divorce and new censorship laws hurt both their careers. And then they were both kidnapped... by brutal dictator and rabid cinephile Kim Jong Il. After keeping Shin and Choi prisoner for several years, Kim put them to work building a North Korean film industry he wanted to be the envy of the world. They made several awards-bait films, and then a North Korean Godzilla knockoff, before they made a daring escape. Wyatt Dunn, an American writer living in South Korea, brings us a real life story so unbelievable, it has to be a movie. 

The Russian Revolution wasn't just a political and economic revolution. In the brief moment between the idealism of a revolution that overthrew a monarchy to establish a workers' paradise and the ugly reality of the totalitarian state the USSR became, Russia had its own Roaring 20s, with artists and bohemians exploring the freedom of a society that had just thrown off centuries of monarchy. Friend of the show Doug Woycechowsky joins us to talk about why that needs to be a movie that's half Robert Altman, half Downton Abbey.

History remembers Genghis Khan as a violent brute, destroying everything in his path. But the truth is more complicated than that. Ostracised from his community as a child, captured and enslaved, he escaped, became a leader, a warrior, united the fractured Mongols, and then conquered an empire twice as large as the Romans. The lifelong military campaign against virtually everyone else he encountered led to untold death and suffering... but also a continent-spanning meritocracy, with religious freedom and a healthy exchange of cultures and ideas. And Genghis' personal story plays out like a real-life Game of Thrones, with epic battles punctuating a life of intrigue, betrayal, sex, and murder. And it's never been told on screen in America (with the exception of the unforgiveably bad John Wayne vehicle The Conqueror), so we imagine it as a seasons-long epic television series, with a who's-who of Asian-American actors in the cast.

And as a bonus, after a decades-long wait, we're finally getting Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League. Tune in for more details!

Friend of the show Scott Bunn (Run That Back) returns so we can co-pitch an adaptation of Lloyd Alexander's delightful YA fantasy series The Chronicles of Prydain, which was upending genre tropes only a decade after Tolkein had established them. We discuss Disney's botched attempt to compress the books into The Black Cauldron, give thanks to our 4th grade teacher who introduced us to the series, and speculate as to whether Rian Johnson put an intentional Prydain reference into The Last Jedi.

Side note: sorry to take another break, but I'm going away for Memorial Day weekend and don't have time to edit an episode next week. So we'll be back on 6/8 with more movie ideas!

In 1959, nine friends went on a hike in Russia's Ural Mountains and never returned. Their bodies were found with a bizarre set of injuries, including head trauma, internal bleeding, exposure, and traces of radiation. 60 years later, the Dyatlov Pass Incident is one of history's great unsolved mass deaths.

Pop culture writer Lauren Thoman (Collider, Looper, PopSugar, Parade, Vulture) visits the show to talk about death in the mountains, and why this real-life story would make a great horror movie.

In 2012, a fungal meningitis outbreak killed 100 people and infected 750 more. Two doctors at the Center for Disease Control raced against time to stop a nationwide pandemic eight years before the Covid pandemic. Journalist Natalia Megas, whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Washingtonian, and The Daily Beast, joins us to talk about a race-against-time medical drama that's different enough to not be a too-soon Covid movie, but can still speak to our present ongoing crisis.

A quick special episode, in which we honor the best films and performances of 2020 not nominated for an Academy Award. Hear who won this year's Best Snubbed Supporting and Lead Actor and Actress, Best Snubbed Director, Best Snubbed Picture, and winners in three categories of filmmaking ignored completely by the Academy: Best Stuntwork, Best Voicework, and Best Casting. Then next week we return to our usual format with another movie pitch.

It's not a secret that Coca-Cola's original formula included cocaine. But what's less well-known is that the soft drink still uses coca leaf, just not the part that gets you high. One plant in all of America is legally allowed to process cocaine—the drug for medical use, and the byproducts for Coca-Cola. Kyle Ryan, TV/film producer and alumni of both The A.V. Club and The Onion joins us this week to talk about why a cocaine factory in New Jersey is the perfect setting for a heist movie.

A serial killer is targeting underappreciated artists. The twist: he's their art dealer. Emerson Rosenthal, a script consultant who's instagram account, @freemovieideas, is a nonstop font of clever elevator pitches for movies like this one. The second twist? Instead of pitching me the story, he challenges me to take his germ of an idea, and flesh it out into a full-on movie. 

In 1184, two German nobles had a land dispute. They presented their case to the King at a monastery in the town of Erfurt. Dozens of nobles packed into the room... the floorboards gave way... and 100 people plunged into the latrine in the basement. Annie Rauwerda, the mind behind Depths of Wikipedia, takes us through history's number one number-two-related disaster.

LSD came into vogue in the 1960s, but it came back in a big way in the '90s, as teenagers embraced the cheap, long-lasting high it produced. Jon Reid, host of Radio Free Brooklyn's Race to the Bottom, joins us to talk about how to make a film about the second wave of LSD that's neither D.A.R.E.-style scare tactic, nor rose-tinted nostalgia. 

In the year 2000, a secret military task force discovered Al Qaeda operatives working in the U.S., possible including the 9/11 hijackers. They claim they were ignored or silenced by the government. The government claims they never found anything worth silencing. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

This week Shane Harris, Washington Post senior national security writer and co-host of the podcast Rational Security joins us to talk about Operation Able Danger, who saw the first hints of a cataclysmic event that proved impossible to predict, and why their story could be The Big Short for the national security apparatus.

2,750 New Yorkers died in the World Trade Center on 9/11, but in 2004, the number was updated to 2,751. Sneha Philip was a young doctor who lived in lower Manhattan who was last seen on 9/10/01, and her final fate remains a mystery. Did she run into the towers to help and die in the collapse? Was she murdered the night before and forgotten in the confusion of that day? Or did she fake her death to escape mounting personal and professional problems? Comedy writer and Saturday Night Live background player Tom Murphy joins us to talk about a small-scale mystery backdropped by a large-scale tragedy.

In the '80s and '90s, Spider Robinson wrote a series of books about Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, a watering hole whose regulars included time travelers, aliens, mythological creatures, and the occasional talking dog. Ethan Poschman, co-host of the podcast A Special Presentation, Or Alf Will Not Be Seen Tonight, joins us to talk about why this story about storytelling needs to be a movie, or a series, or a little of both.

In the mid 1980s, baseball had a coke problem, as cocaine use was rampant throughout the major leagues. When Commissioner Peter Ueberroth cracked down and banned several players, one enterprising minor-league owner struck on a seemingly brilliant idea—sign up a bunch of disgraced players to attract fans. Could this ragtag of misfits band together and learn the meaning of teamwork during a thrilling season? They could not, and were in fact one of the worst teams in the history of baseball. Screen Scholars editor Jason Thurston joins us to talk about why fans just said no to the 1986 San Jose Bees.

Greetings, true believers!!! The cultural dominance of Marvel Comics has made Stan Lee a beloved American icon, but his creative partner through Marvel's formative years, illustrator/writer Jack Kirby, who co-created the Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and whose ambitious storytelling and energetic artwork came to define the superhero comic for generations. Comic book writer Ted Anderson (Moth Whisperer, Orphan Age, Adventure Time, My Little Pony) joins us to talk to us about everything from the impossibility of artistic credit being distributed fairly, to Judaism underlying the medium of superhero comics, to why it's always good to punch Nazis.

Graham Greene wrote 1949's The Third Man, considered one of the best films of all time. But at the end of his life, Greene became fixated on a real-life story that parallelled his movie, when two British spies defected to the USSR in the 1950s, and Mi6 suspected they had a third man who had tipped them off. That man, Kim Philby, let a remarkable life of ambition, betrayal, and secrets. Scott Bunn (Steve Sax Syndrome, now available in podcast form!) joins us to talk about the real-life Third Man, and why Philby's story needs to be a movie.

King Arthur can pull a sword from a stone, unite the Britons, and quest for the Holy Grail... but can he surf? Bitter Karella, creator of graphic novels including Misunderstanding Comics and Malleus Maleficarum; co-host of the podcast A Special Presentation, or Alf Will Not Be Seen Tonight, which revisits '80s cartoons based on newspaper comics; and mind behind the @midnight_pals Twitter account, joins us to pitch a throwback to trashy '80s comedies... with a throw-even-further-back to Camelot!

Those hip new neighbors you've been hanging out with? They might be aliens. And they want you to play their role-playing game. Author and interactive fiction game creator Steph Cherrywell joins us to talk about Interstellar Pig, William Sleator's 1984 YA sci-fi book, and why it needs a big-screen adapation.

The king is unwell. His sister is insane. Her son, the heir to the throne, is in the thrall of an all-corrupting villain. His sister is the kingdom's only hope, and to save her, please the gods, and ensure the kingdom's future, our hero has to die for his country. Four times.

Author and action-movie-fight-scene reviewer TG Shepherd (@tgshepherdvan, tgshepherd.com), takes us through Lois McMaster Bujold's award-winning fantasy series and why it needs to be the next Game of Thrones. 

In May of 2020, a blundering American private security company tried to invade Venezuela. It went even worse than you'd expect, with their speedboat-based invasion thwarted by a local fisherman. Doug Woycechowsky returns to talk about why this has the makings of a great absudist comedy, drawing on everything from Airplane! to the Marx Brothers to It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, as we start season two of Why Is This Not a Movie?

Somen Banerjee was a classic American success story — in founding Chippendales, the male stripper troupe, he tapped into a brand new market for exotic dancing that had previously catered only to men. But when the competition showed up, things got ugly, as Banerjee threatened to burn down clubs that booked rival acts, and eventually had a partner-turned competitor murdered. subjectmedia.org Culture Editor Jay Bharathan takes us through a story that has everything—incompetent criminals, male strippers, and a darkly absurd tale of murder!

After this episode we'll be taking two weeks off, but will return in the New Year with Season 2 of Why Is This Not a Movie?

While Shakespeare was putting on some of the most revered theater in history at the Globe, across town the Red Bull Theater was putting on bawdy comedies, scandalous political satire, plays that were just the funny bits from other plays, and letting women perform on stage. London-based comedian Paul Savage takes us back to a 17th-century London where everyone was drunk all the time, everything stank to high heaven, and a scrappy troupe of actors broke all the rules in service of the most important rule of all — get butts in seats.

While Paul's stuck not performing live during the pandemic, he's started a Kickstarter to fund his third book of comics. Get more info and chip in at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulsavagecomics/paul-savage-new-comics