Junk Filter Jesse Hawken

The film writer David Jamell Moses joins the show for a discussion about a great nineties film that has been flying under the radar for too long, Boaz Yakin’s debut feature Fresh (1994) starring Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson and a 13 year old actor named Sean Nelson making his film debut, in one of the greatest screen acting performances by a child.

Nelson plays Michael (aka Fresh), a quiet 12-year-old boy who runs drugs for rival gangsters in New York City, including one kingpin who has addicted his sister to heroin and considers young Fresh to be his heir apparent. When Fresh witnesses an act of horrifying gun violence, he takes inspiration from his estranged alcoholic father, a speed-chess master, and applies the principles of the game of chess to carry out a complex strategy to eliminate the gangsters and save himself and his sister from their fates.

Fresh isn’t as well-remembered as other urban crime dramas of the 1990s  but David and I love it, and on this episode we go deep on the film’s many virtues; some may be surprised to learn this film was made by a white director but Yakin hardly takes a wrong or phony step to tell this Black story, which functions as a thriller and a tragedy, with magnificent performances and a devastating conclusion.

Plus: how to properly pronounce the name “Giancarlo Esposito”!

Become a patron of the podcast to access to exclusive episodes every month. Over 30% of Junk Filter episodes are exclusively available to patrons. To support this show directly for only $5.00 a month (U.S.) please subscribe at  ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow David Jamell Moses on Twitter, and check out his writing over at his blog Departures.

Here’s David’s appreciation thread for Fresh on Twitter that inspired this episode

Trailer for Fresh (Boaz Yakin, 1994)

Access this entire 105 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus shows) by becoming a Junk Filter patron for only $5.00 (US) a month! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. ⁠https://www.patreon.com/posts/169-cannons-with-105061266

The film writer Jessica Ritchey returns for a show about Cannon Films, and the aggressive attempt by “The Go-Go Boys” Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to bring legitimacy to their schlock studio by financing projects designed to win them awards and prestige.

Despite the critical success of some of these offerings, and some high-profile wins and nominations, none of these films were financially successful thanks to Cannon’s hapless marketing strategies and their bad reputation within the film industry (including staggering money losses, a shareholder revolt and an SEC investigation into their accounting practices). Cannon would file for bankruptcy by the end of the eighties.

We discuss 5 of these prestige projects: the dark journalism thriller Street Smart (which Cannon financed for Christopher Reeve in exchange for starring in Superman IV and the film that put Morgan Freeman on the map), Andrei Konchalovsky’s masterful Runaway Train (the best film the studio ever made) and his followup, the American gothic drama Shy People (an award winner at Cannes which vanished without a trace), Nicolas Roeg’s Castaway (the film Oliver Reed was promoting the night he almost beat up David Letterman), and Barbet Schroeder’s black comedy about alcoholism Barfly with Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway.

Street Smart, Runaway Train and Shy People are currently available to stream on Tubi.

Follow Jessica Ritchey on Bluesky, and support her work on Patreon.

Trailers

Street Smart (Jerry Schatzberg, 1987)

Runaway Train (Andrei Konchalovsky, 1985)

Shy People (Andrei Konchalovsky, 1987)

Castaway (Nicolas Roeg, 1986)

Barfly (Barbet Schroeder, 1987)

Elana Levin from Graphic Policy Radio returns to the show for a deep dive into the second wave of Ska music, a brief but influential era when black and white UK musicians fused Jamaican dance music of the sixties into punk and new wave music of the seventies to create a sound that would further revolutionize American popular music in the nineties.

The modern ska genre gets made fun of a lot (mozzarella sticks, anyone?) but Elana will have you know that ska music is not a joke. In an 18-month period, 2 Tone Records, an indie label founded by the keyboardist from The Specials, Jerry Dammers, took over the UK pop charts with major distribution support from Chrysalis Records. In the wake of the election of Margaret Thatcher and the rise of white nationalists taking advantage of national economic malaise, a musical rebuke of these trends came from bands in the town of Coventry, offering alternative visions of racial harmony and anti-fascist songs you could dance to. The 1981 concert documentary Dance Craze, recently restored, captures the 2 Tone bands performing in their prime.

We discuss the evolution of ska, pay tribute to some of the top groups of the Second Wave Ska era including The Selecter, Madness, Bad Manners and The Specials and bid farewell to their lead singer the late great Terry Hall, whose passing last year inspired this episode.

Become a patron of the podcast to access to exclusive episodes every month. Over 30% of Junk Filter episodes are exclusively available to patrons. To support this show directly for only $5.00 a month (U.S.) please subscribe at  ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow Elana Levin on Twitter and check out their podcasts Graphic Policy Radio and Deep Space Dive!

Elana’s “2nd Wave Ska” Spotify playlist 

BBC Arena segment from 1980 on 2 Tone Records and the new ska scene coming out of Coventry.

Madness-inspired Colgate advert from the UK, 1982

Re-release trailer for Dance Craze (Joe Massot, 1981)

The Selecter - On My Radio, from BBC’s Top of the Pops, 1979

The Beat - Stand Down Margaret, from ITV’s O.T.T., 1982

The Specials music videos

Gangsters (1979)

Ghost Town (1981)

Free Nelson Mandela (1984)

Access this entire 87 minute episode (and additional monthly bonus shows every month) by becoming a Junk Filter patron! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. https://www.patreon.com/posts/167-civil-war-102981212

The comedy writer Ursula Lawrence (Drunk History, Adam Ruins Everything) returns to the show from Madison, Wisconsin to discuss A24’s first foray into blockbuster filmmaking, Alex Garland’s Civil War, set in a near-future America torn into factions, as seen from the perspective of an intrepid team of reporters travelling to Washington D.C. to get an interview with the totalitarian President on the verge of being violently deposed by the “Western Forces” of Texas and California.

Garland has described the work as an anti-war film where the particulars of the conflict are mere backdrop to a general story of combat journalists, but Ursula and I discuss Civil War’s politics anyway, what the film is and what it isn't, and kick the tires on its stated tone of ‘impartiality’ which seems more like faux-neutrality (with a Trumpian president and references to ‘the Portland Maoists’ that cater to the audiences’ already-existing biases).

Plus: an on-the-ground report from Ursula about seeing Civil War in a theatre in Madison that serves food and drinks!

Follow Ursula Lawrence on Twitter.

Trailer #1 for Civil War (Alex Garland, 2024)

The writer Sean T. Collins joins the pod from Long Island for a deep dive into the original 1989 Road House and the 2024 remake now streaming on Amazon Prime.

Sean’s book Pain Don’t Hurt offered daily meditations on specific elements of Road House for an entire year, and we discuss the many virtues of this eighties classic about Dalton, the second-greatest bouncer in the world (Patrick Swayze) who is hired by the owner of a violent honkytonk bar in Jasper, Missouri to clean up the place, raising the ire of the local crimelord Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara) who rules Jasper with an iron fist and an amazing crew of henchmen. Sean has given this movie a great deal of thought over the years and we discuss the ludicrous plot, spectacular performances and classic one-liners.

And we also compare the OG Road House to the new remake with a pumped-up Jake Gyllenhaal as Dalton and UFC fighter Conor McGregor in his screen acting debut as the main henchman, with the action transposed to the Florida Keys. The remake wisely does not try to recreate the original so much as to modernize it, resulting in a film that’s honestly not as bad as fans of the original feared it would be.

Become a patron of the podcast to access to exclusive episodes every month. Over 30% of Junk Filter episodes are exclusively available to patrons. To support this show directly for only $5.00 a month (U.S.) please subscribe at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

Sean’s writing can be found at seantcollins.com and you can also support his work on Patreon.

Sean’s book Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House is available from Mutual Skies publishing.

All Fucked Up: Erotic Tales from the Road House Expanded Universe - the fanfic zine by Julia Gfrörer, Sean T. Collins and Gretchen Felker-Martin, available on Julia’s Etsy store.

Trailer for Road House (Rowdy Harrington, 1989)

Trailer for Road House (Doug Liman, 2024)

CW: This episode discusses cinematic sexual violence.

The founder of Fun City Editions, Jonathan Hertzberg, joins the podcast from New York City to discuss the boutique video label and their latest blu-ray release, 1983’s Deep in the Heart, aka Handgun, directed by Ken Loach’s longtime English producer Tony Garnett.

Deep in the Heart, a brutal portrayal of American gun culture as seen from an outsider’s perspective, stars the undersung actress Karen Young in her screen debut as a Boston schoolteacher working in Dallas who is groomed and then sexually assaulted by a well-liked local attorney and antique gun collector. She gets nowhere trying to get the police and the church to support her quest for justice, but gets all the help she needs from the local gun club, and transformed by the culture and her experience, plans her revenge. The film was bought by Warner Bros. not to release the film properly, but to keep it from interfering with the commercial prospects of their upcoming Clint Eastwood release with a similar theme, Sudden Impact.

Deep in the Heart is the kind of film this label specializes in: films that have for various reasons been forgotten in the modern age but deserve to be restored, reissued and rediscovered. Jonathan gives us insight into the process and the challenges of locating and reviving these catalogue titles, and how Deep in the Heart still speaks to contemporary American concerns over 40 years later.

Become a patron of the podcast to access to exclusive episodes every month. Over 30% of Junk Filter episodes are exclusively available to patrons. To support this show directly for only $5.00 a month (U.S.) please subscribe at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter

Follow Fun City Editions on Twitter.

You can order Fun City Editions’ new release of Deep in the Heart through their website.

Trailer for Deep in the Heart aka Handgun (Tony Garnett, 1983)

Fun City Editions trailer for Seeing Red: 3 French Vigilante Thrillers

Trailer for Strangers Kiss (Matthew Chapman, 1983), restored version coming soon from FCE