The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast Bright Wall/Dark Room

Back from vacation with our summer blockbuster episode: author, Reverse Shot co-founder and editor, and Editorial Director at Museum of the Moving Image Michael Koresky joins us to proselytize Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001).

Michael takes us back to being an intern in 2001, watching A.I. six times in theaters, how both Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick do “sentimentality with a point,” Jude Law’s dialogue, parables of loss, and how this “unexpected sledgehammer” of 00s’ filmmaking sticks with him today.

For more, read story writer Ian Watson’s account of working with Kubrick and Michael’s Reverse Shot co-founder Jeff Reichert on “the desperation underlying much of human love.” 

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

You can find all 130+ issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room online at brightwalldarkroom.com. We remain on Twitter @BWDR and @TheBWDRPodcast, and welcome feedback and inquiries at podcast@brightwalldarkroom.com.

This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can enjoy two months of free access by signing up ⁠here⁠.


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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bright-wall-dark-room/support

Riffing on Kim Gordon’s curation, we get into Lynne Ramsay’s atmospheric Morvern Callar (2002), a mixtape of a film whose cursed vacation vibes echo something of Barbara Loden’s Wanda and foreshadow Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun. Shout outs to Georgia Humphreys’ terrific essay “Another Girl, Another Planet” and The Mamas and the Papas’ unlikely club banger, “Dedicated to the One I Love.”

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can sign up for two months of free access via this link.






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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bright-wall-dark-room/support

In honor of the 50th anniversary of its release this month, we're revisiting our conversation on Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974), looking at the film through the lenses of surveillance and seclusion, Gene Hackman and Walter Murch, Catholic guilt and cool jazz.

From its bird’s eye opening to the obliterative final shots, we get into the nuts and bolts of Coppola’s “personal” post-Godfather film and what it means to watch, fixate, deduce, mishear, and, despite everything, to long to be seen.

(Originally released July 25, 2022)

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The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

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We'll be back with two new episodes next month - talk soon!

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This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. Listeners can sign up for two months of free access at https://join.galerie.com/bwdr.


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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bright-wall-dark-room/support

Joining our spicy all-in-the-family March episode are substitute co-host Fran Hoepfner and BW/DR staff writer Sarah Welch-Larson. Listen as long-time Dune-thusiast Sarah absolutely schools us on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two (2024).

We get into the finer points of adapting Frank Herbert, how all the Bene Gesserit are sexy, space gravity, Rebecca Ferguson’s jaw, the secularization of Chani, are thumpers biodegradable, and more. Special shout-outs to Sarah’s prescient piece on Dune (2021) and Max Read’s encyclopedic annotation of Part Two.

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is (usually) co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

You can find every issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room at brightwalldarkroom.com, including our current issue on one of the single best years in film history, 1999.

Podcast-wise, we really appreciate your ratings and reviews. We’re on Twitter @BWDR and @TheBWDRPodcast, and welcome any feedback, questions, or sponsorship inquiries at podcast@brightwalldarkroom.com.

This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club, currently featuring Kim Gordon as curator; BW/DR listeners can sign up for two months of free access at ⁠https://join.galerie.com/bwdr⁠.


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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bright-wall-dark-room/support

On this month's micro episode, we get into Elliott Smith soundtracking a savory first kiss in Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting (1997), a film that changed one of our co-host's lives forever.

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The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25 is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands.

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The BW/DR Podcast: Frame 25 is sponsored by our friends at Galerie. To find out more about Galerie—a new kind of film club—sign up for two free months at join.galerie.com/bwdr.


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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bright-wall-dark-room/support

It’s still February in our souls. This month, we’re joined by writer and Letterboxd Senior Editor Mitchell Beaupre to revisit Mira Nair’s recently 4k-restored romance, Mississippi Masala (1991), starring Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury.

We get into the film’s ever-timely exploration of diasporic longing, when talking on the phone looks like phone sex, first-gen trauma, a particularly memorable prelude to a kiss, romanticizing physical media, and the finer points of Mitchell’s insightful April 2022 interview with Nair (over at The Film Stage).

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad. This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. Listeners can sign up for two months of free access at https://join.galerie.com/bwdr.

You can find all 128 issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room—including our double issue on the films of 1999 that starts this week!—over at brightwalldarkroom.com. Podcast-wise, we really appreciate your ratings and reviews. We’re on Twitter @BWDR and @TheBWDRPodcast, have a Patreon if you'd like to support the show, and always welcome feedback or inquiries at podcast@brightwalldarkroom.com.


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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bright-wall-dark-room/support