20 episodes
Downlowd: The Rise and Fall of Harry Knowles and Ain't It Cool News Joe Scott
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- TV & Film
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4.0 • 52 Ratings
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Downlow.d is a deep dive audio documentary series that explores the morally complicated, occasionally inspiring and often forgotten oral histories of the internet. Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/downlowdpod/support
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Episode Eight: "Hay Bales (Parts I & II)"
Part I (0:00) - In September of 2017, a perfect storm of controversies threaten to destroy the Alamo Drafthouse, Fantastic Fest, and Ain't It Cool News.
Part II (50:07) - The bravery of the women who stepped forward to speak out against Harry Knowles helped one woman to gain new context for events that transpired in 2004. Plus an examination of the culture that enabled sexual harm in the Austin film and internet movie geek communities for more than two decades.
Written, narrated, and edited by Joe Scott.
Executive produced by Kristina Bell
With production and sound engineering by Eddie Garcia.
Editorial assistance by Erin Poythress.
Production assistance by Abrar Mubashar
And Online production by Janessa Smith.
With Ben Jones as the voice of Harry Knowles.
AJ Schraeder as James Gunn
Jake Steward as Devin Feraci
Cabell Wilkinson as Caroline
Jon Chenoweth as Todd Brown
Kristen Korkowski as Jen
And Jasmine O'Connell as Diane.
Got questions or comments?
Visit our website at www.downlowdpod.com
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Episode Seven: "The Anti-Social Network (Part Two)"
Through his website’s only technological innovation, Harry Knowles exploits a secret that will eventually transform future social media platforms into billion dollar companies. And Drew McWeeny 'fixes' one last major film production before leaving AICN for good.
Written, narrated, and edited by Joe Scott.
Executive produced by Kristina Bell with sound engineering by Eddie Garcia.
Production assistance by Reis Allyn and Abrar Mubashar as well as online production by Janessa Smith.
Featuring Ben Jones as the voice of Harry Knowles with a chorus of angry ‘Talkbackers’ played by AJ Schraeder, John Chenoweth, Reid Pegram, and David Decareax.
Visit our website at https://www.downlowdpod.com/.
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PREVIEW: Episode Seven: The Anti-Social Network Part II
Get ready to take your shots! Downlow.d will launch the beginning of the final trilogy of episodes in The Rise and Fall of Harry Knowles and Ain't It Cool News starting Thursday, June 9th! Here's a preview of Episode Seven. See you next week!
Click here to visit our website:
https://www.downlowdpod.com/
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Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/downlowdpod/support -
BONUS INTERVIEW: Outlaw Vern
UPDATE: The narrative episodes of Downlow.d will return on June 2, 2022.
On this special bonus interview of Downlow.d, we talk with alleged criminal and ex-con Outlaw Vern about his film criticism that he wrote for AICN as well as his life of crime (or lack thereof). We also discuss Vern’s fantastic book “Seagology: A Study of the Ass-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal” and what it was like to work the Direct to Video action movie beat for Ain’t It Cool News.
Vern’s Website:
https://www.outlawvern.com/
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BONUS INTERVIEW: Don Dupree, director of Siskel & Ebert
What was it like to be on set for Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert and witness the fights between the legendary film critics that didn't make it to the airwaves? In this special archive interview, Joe Scott shares the full conversation he had with TV director Don Dupree, who made more than 200 episodes of Siskel & Ebert. Topics include getting Harry Knowles ready for TV, the lack of a comprehensive archive of old Siskel and Ebert episodes, as well as one of the most underrated comedies of the 90s. We also give shoutouts to everyone who supported the Comics For Kids fundraiser, which ended successfully on May 6th.
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BONUS INTERVIEW: David Poland
NOTE: Consider donating $2 (or more) to our Comics For Kids community fundraiser. Click here to help!
Film critic and journalist David Poland has a lot of WAR STORIES. But that’s what happens when you’ve worked in his industry for as many years and in as many outlets as he has. We talk about ‘throwing Jeffrey Wells out of a moving car,’ old arguments with Drew McWeeny and Ain’t It Cool News, and the importance of recording the erasable history of online journalism.
Subscribe to David Poland’s Movie City News on Substack by clicking here:
https://davidpoland.substack.com/
And again, consider buying comic books for kids by clicking here:
https://gofund.me/73c01eea
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Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/downlowdpod/support
Customer Reviews
A for effort, E for editing
Host Joe Scott has more than done his hard work reporting this podcast. He scored some great interviews and he weaves a mostly coherent narrative that is very listenable. From the Q&A episodes he also seems very self-effacing yet charming, and to have a true love for movies and interest in web history.
But he shouldn’t be his own editor. Too often he introduces people and explains their quotes, like saying “X person worked on Y paper and wrote about Z movie” and then plays a clip from the interviewee saying “I was X, I worked on Y paper and wrote about Z movie.”
Only other reason for a 4 star is that he needs to call some of his interviewees on their bull. One AICN writer talks about watching a movie age 9 and standing on his seat and screaming “F*** yeah!” because the magic of action movies dawned on him there. Right. There are several other examples like this in episodes.
I hope (1) people listen to this, the effort invested is admirable, (2) Scott continues with more series downloading the scoop on other notorious websites/web figures and (3) that he lets someone dispassionately edit him, with a little trimming this would be 5 stars.
Leaves out the Kickstarter scandal so not the whole story
How can you do a podcast about AICN and only talk about the infamous Kickstarter scandal for a minute? If you’re going to tell the AICN story, then tell the whole story. If you leave out major events, it’s incomplete. Then, when critiqued on Twitter about the omission in a civil way, the baby blocks you.
Good but tangents that go nowhere
The podcast has 30 minutes of good material, but you have to listen to someone ramble for an hour and a half. Would be better if it was published in 30 minute chunks because each episode is overstuffed and disjointed.