Stephen Lee Naish, "Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency" (Lever Press, 2026)

Summary

---

Podcast Summary

New Books Network — Stephen Lee Naish: "Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency"

Date: March 10, 2026
Host: Joel Czerny
Guest: Stephen Lee Naish

---

Episode Overview

Joel Czerny welcomes author and essayist Stephen Lee Naish to the New Books Network for an in-depth discussion of Naish’s latest collection: Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency (Lever Press, 2026). Through wide-ranging essays, Naish explores how recent emergencies—climate, pandemic, and political—are reflected (and refracted) in contemporary cinema. The episode unpacks key essays from the book, examines the evolution of film culture in crisis, and considers what the future of cinema might hold.

---

Key Themes and Discussion Points

1. Introduction & Author Background

• Naish’s Journey in Film Writing: Born in Leicester, UK, Naish moved to Canada in his thirties. His working-class upbringing, love of 1980s/1990s pop culture, and early jobs in camera stores and bookstores shaped his fascination with film as both art and cultural artifact.
• Pathway into Film Criticism: Initially sought a career in music journalism, but pivoted to film, using it as “a lens to look at wider issues of politics and pop culture and society and technology.”

  “I really wanted to write about film, but use film as a lens to look at wider issues of politics and pop culture.” — Stephen Lee Naish [07:33]

• Previous Books: Naish has written on Dennis Hopper, American film and politics, and the Manic Street Preachers. Many essays in Screen Captures originated over a decade, revised to address current emergencies.

---

2. About "Screen Captures" — Book Structure & Approach

• Essays from 2014–2021: Some originally written years ago, now expanded and updated to address "the age of emergency" (pandemic, climate crisis, political instability).

  “Even an essay that was published in 2014, when the world seemed a little calmer…still kind of resonates today. So we kind of just brought it up to date a little bit.” — Naish [11:53]

• Bridging Old and New: The publisher encouraged "smashing essays together," adding new connective tissue and current context. Several fresh essays and an afterword specifically respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

---

3. Thematic Focus — The 'Age of Emergency'

• Emergencies as Cinematic Lenses: Naish identifies multiple overlapping emergencies—climate, COVID-19, neoliberal capitalism—as central to interpreting the films discussed.

  “These are all just side effects, I think, of a larger emergency…’unfettered capitalism,’ basically.” — Naish [14:29]

• Films in Crisis: Essays interrogate how cinema both reflects and is shaped by these emergencies, as well as how film culture has changed in the streaming era.

---

Essay Highlights

4. Star Wars Accelerationism [20:26–28:29]

• Star Wars Sequel Trilogy: Naish critiques Disney’s rushed approach, noting a lack of overarching vision after Lucas. The chapter explores “accelerationism”—the sense of rushing to market for profit, at the expense of narrative coherence.

  “Each film kind of reacts to the [last]…with no real coherence.” — Naish [22:09]

• Fandom & Fragmentation: Toxic subcultures and the state of the fictional galaxy mirror real-world division:

  “All these different fighters at the end of the film don’t really have any unifying ideology… So it’s a mess. And so the fandom is a mess and the films are now a bit of a mess as well.” — Naish [26:29]

• Streaming as the Future: While films have faltered, Naish sees hope in TV spin-offs and newer formats.

---

5. Men on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown [32:43–38:19]

• Masculinity in Film: Begins with personal nostalgia for "Bachelor Party" (1984), shifting to analysis of male-centered narratives in films by female directors such as "Point Break," "American Psycho," "Hump Day," and "Old Joy."
• Female Directors' Perspectives on Male Friendships: Noting unique takes on male competitiveness and homoeroticism, as well as the toxicity illuminated in male-centric stories.

  “I was really interested in what a female perspective on male friendship or male dominance... plays out…” — Naish [35:37]

• The SCUM Manifesto: Links the historic feminist critique to recent figures like Trump and Weinstein, arguing Valerie Solanas’s old text oddly predicts modern toxic masculinity.

---

6. Changing Media — VHS Nostalgia & Streaming [38:19–44:35]

• Physical Media vs. Streaming: A reflective aside traces the move from hand-worn VHS tapes (and edited TV broadcasts) to today’s algorithm-driven digital sameness.

  "I kind of had this individual copy, individual idea of what the film was in my head, which I don't think we have anymore." — Naish [41:34]

• Choice vs. Curation: Naish and Czerny lament the paradox of unlimited choice—now it’s harder to settle on something to watch, despite convenience.

---

7. All American Tragedy — The American Pie Films [44:35–54:16]

• Revisiting 'American Pie': Naish discusses how these late-90s comedies—originally lighthearted and raunchy—gain new poignancy post-9/11 and after the 2008 crash.

  “It was before 9/11. It was before the war in Afghanistan and Iraq... The last 20 years has been exhausting.” — Naish [45:41]

• Capitalism's Fading Promise: The arc from youthful hope to middle-class disappointment is read as a bleak metaphor for neoliberal society failing its own “golden boys.”

  “Capitalism… eats its own. Even the kids that were going to do well have kind of fallen down…” — Naish [49:24]

• Problematic Content: Discussion also touches on problematic elements (voyeurism, sexism), as well as the surprisingly anti-athlete, anti-jock sentiment of the films.

---

8. Film in the Pandemic & Cinematic Futures [Afterword — 55:13+]

• Theaters in Crisis, Community Response: Naish describes the struggle of small theaters during COVID-19, but also the new forms of support and engagement through virtual festivals and local initiatives.
• Expanding Access: Sees potential in film festivals remaining hybrid/virtual even post-pandemic:

  “It was really remarkable that we have new films… that usually maybe we couldn’t attend because we would have to travel… But now we have this incredible access.” — Naish [56:11]

• Hope for Smaller, Local Films: Argues for a move away from blockbuster monoculture toward more intimate, locally grounded, and artist-driven work.

  “Maybe Hollywood and mainstream movies don’t need to spend billions of dollars… We can make smaller, more engaging films about what it means to be human, what it means to live in a community like the one that I live in.” — Naish [58:56]

• Hybrid Futures and New Audiences: Both guest and host note that streaming was already transforming cinema, but the pandemic made it universal—affecting even big filmmakers and the global box office calculus.

---

Notable Quotes

• On the current crisis:

  “We can’t deal with the climate emergency… We can’t really deal with COVID-19 unless we face that issue of unfettered capitalism.” — Naish [14:36]

• On nostalgia and changing formats:

  “When you had TV, you looked down the listings and saw the film was on at 9pm on a Friday night. That was your plan… Now, I scroll through…before I finally find one thing that I will watch.” — Naish [41:21]

• On democratization of film technology:

  “The technology has been democratized… I carry around with me a pretty decent video camera in my pocket and editing software is free online. We've got no excuses anymore.” — Naish [65:39]

• On the excess of 'content':

  “The content is obviously massive and that's a key word… I don't want to see content anymore. I just want to see movies.” — Naish [64:29]

---

Important Timestamps (MM:SS)

• 02:35 — Stephen Lee Naish’s background in film, college, and early jobs
• 10:49 — Essays in the book: which are oldest, which are updated/new
• 14:23 — Concept of multiple emergencies and their centrality to the book
• 20:26 — Star Wars chapter: analysis of sequel trilogy and Disney’s strategy
• 32:43 — “Men on the Verge…”: Male films, female directors’ perspectives
• 38:19 — The nostalgia (and loss) of VHS, implications of streaming
• 44:35 — American Pie essay: youth, lost dreams, neoliberalism critique
• 55:13 — Afterword: pandemic’s effect on moviegoing, community in crisis, new hopes for film culture
• 64:39 — The democratization of filmmaking tools and streaming technology

---

Tone & Style

Naish speaks candidly, blending personal experience, political commentary, and cultural observation. The conversation is both critical and hopeful, mixing nostalgia for older film cultures with cautious optimism for more diverse and democratized cinematic futures.

---

Summary

This episode offers an insightful, wide-ranging discussion on how the collective emergencies of our time ripple through contemporary cinema—affecting not just what films are made and how they’re watched, but what stories get told, and who gets to tell them. Naish’s essays and the conversation invite listeners to reflect on their own relationships to film, both as a mirror of the world’s crises and as a tool for imagining new futures.

---

For listeners interested in film criticism, cultural studies, or the future of cinema, this episode (and Naish’s collection) provide not just analysis, but also a blueprint for asking necessary questions about movies in an age of perpetual emergency.

Transcript

[Joel Czerny]

Welcome to the New Books Network. Welcome to New Books and Film, a podcast series on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Joel Czerny. My guest today is returning author and New Books Network host, Stephen Lee Naish. We discuss his new book, Screen Film in the Age of Emergency, published in 2021 by New Star Books. In a series of essays, Steven discusses various topics and review films related to each written during the pandemic. He also talks about the current state of film. Welcome, Stephen Lee Naish. Hi, Steven, how are you?

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Hi, Joel. Nice to see you again.

[Joel Czerny]

Yes, we've actually talked to each other 3 other 2 other times. And then you've also been on the New Books Network with another one of your books, all of which are listed in the show notes in case anyone wants to go back and listen to some of your previous appearances. In addition, you've done some recording as a host for the New Books Network in the music section. So those are out there, too, if anybody wants to listen to them. But we're here to talk about your new book, Screen Film in the Age of Emergency, published in 2021 by New Star Books. We're talking towards the end of September and the book scheduled to be published in the next week or so. But as we've already discussed before we started, there are clearly publishing paper issues that are causing most books to be a little late. So, although I suspect, if you're the right person, like I. Bob Woodward's book came out on time yesterday, so I suspect we're just not on the same level. But anyway, so what we're gonna do is talk a little bit about you and touch a little bit on your previous books, and then we'll get into this book as well. So I hope we have a good conversation.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah, thanks very much, Joel.

[Joel Czerny]

Okay, so, Stephen Lee Naish, you are in Canada. You were born in the United Kingdom, am I correct?

[Stephen Lee Naish]

You are indeed. Yes. I was born in the city of Leicester in the Midlands.

[Joel Czerny]

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your background. As I say, you've been with me before, and you've probably given a lot of this already, but never assume that people have listened to past episodes because the thing with podcasts is people join on whenever they do, so it's not unusual for people to sort of come and go. So talk a little bit about what led you to want to write about film or to study film.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah, sure. So, yeah. Well, thanks again for having me on, and I'll try not to repeat myself too much in this part of the introduction. But yeah, so, you know, I grew up in Leicester in the United Kingdom. I was born there and I lived there until about the age of 31 when I moved here to Canada with my wife and our kid. And back in, back in Leicester, you know, I was just, I grew up on, I grew up on like a council estate just outside of the city of Leicester. And council estate for American listeners might just be sort of like socialized housing basically. And I was just, you know, a kid into film and into like pop culture of the sort of 1980s and 1990s. And that's reflected quite a bit in the writing that I do. But yeah, you know, I wasn't particularly a great student so I didn't really do so well at school. But I Left school at 16 and worked for a little while and I worked in a. My first ever job was working as a packer for a camera store. So I was handling all this camera equipment, like, you know, camcorders and editing software and things like that. And by proxy I kind of just figured all this stuff out. And then a couple of years into that I realized that didn't really want to be a packer for the rest of my life, so decided that I would go back to college and study the things that I was kind of interested in, which at that time being sort of 18 years old was mostly just kind of music and clothes. But you know, I went and I

[Joel Czerny]

studied like most 18 year olds.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah, well, it was, it was pretty, pretty amazing to be a 16, 17 year old with a full time job and just so much disposable income that I could go out every week and buy, you know, free new records, bunch of new shirts, new jeans and still have money left over. I wish I'd saved more money when I was younger there, but you know, anyway, so I went to study media at Leicester College and my initial feelings were that I really wanted to be or maybe write about music. So music journalism was kind of the thing that I was really into at that time. I was a big reader of music magazines like the NME and Melody Maker and things like that and just going to see bands every couple of weeks and just really enjoying that. So I went and I did a year and then I did another two years and while I was there I got to make films as well and we got to talk about films in class and it was just really, really fascinating. And the people that I was at college with were obviously really kind of film obsessives as well. So my, my dwindling Disposable income kind of went on VHS cassettes as opposed to CDs and records. And I kind of like built up a little film collection of VHS cassettes just as they were dying out and being replaced by dvd. So they were always super cheap. You could always go to Virgin Megastore and pick up a VHS cassette for like 2 pounds equivalent of maybe $2 or something like that. And then I. Yeah, so, you know, I got into kind of like filmmaking when I left college. I was. I went to work at a regular job, went to work for a bookstore, but on the side as a kind of like side hustle. I would go out with my $150 camcorder and go and film bands that were visiting Lester and bands that were already kind of in Leicester and developed a kind of reputation as the guy who would kind of film your band while you were playing live for relatively little money, if any. Maybe just a few beers or something like that was usually what I would. What I would ask for. You know, if I'm. If I'm there, I'll. I'll take a couple of beers from the bar and I'll film your band and edit the footage together for you and you can use it on your MySpace page and things like that. So I kind of did that for a few years and really enjoyed it. But, you know, I get. You get to the age of like, you know, 27, 28, and you realize that hanging out in like smoky back rooms and at 2 o' clock in the morning isn't really going to be sustainable. So I ended up sort of like leaving behind filmmaking, but still really very passionate about film itself. And what I really wanted to do was write about film, but use film as a lens to look at wider issues of politics and pop culture and society and technology and things like that. And so I went back to. I went back to college. I studied with the Open University, which is a bi correspondence university in the uk, had again, just a really great experience of doing that. I studied politics, I studied creative writing, I studied essay writing. And then I sort of began in the background again, just still working, but writing about film and planning, you know, the possibility of putting a book together on Dennis Hopper, who was, who was my man back then. And that book actually did come together and was released in 2016 by Amsterdam University Press. And me and Joel discussed that a few years ago and. Yeah, and then, you know, the move to Canada kind of happened. And when I arrived in Canada, I wasn't really able to work for a few months. So I had all this stuff circular circulating around my head about sort of film and I had some time to write it because I couldn't work for a couple of months. So I would just sort of take some time with a laptop and just try and bash out a bunch of essays as quick as possible and started submitting them places and gathered a, you know, kind of a publication history online. And that kind of led me to my first book called USA Politics and Humanity An American Film, which came out in 2014 with, with zero books, which was always kind of an ambition of mine to publish with Zero Books, actually, because when I was a bookstore worker, I would see their books come in every, every, you know, a couple of weeks and always be really intrigued by their titles. So it was really great to be published by them. And that kind of led me to then publish the book on Dennis Hopper and. And then a book on Dirty Dancing a few years after that. And then I took a little break from film writing in the last couple of years to concentrate on writing a little bit about music, going back to sort of what I initially wanted to do, like back in, you know, back in the late 90s, early 2000s, and do some music writing. So I wrote a book about. Well, actually, I wrote two books about a band called the Manic Street Preachers. They're a Welsh punk band turned stadium rock band, one of the most popular bands in the United Kingdom. In fact, as we're talking right now, they've just released a new record and it's just hit the number one spot in the, in the United Kingdom. So they've been going for like 30 odd years and they're still, you know, racking up number one album. So they're still very, very popular band. So that was really great. You know, I got to sort of write about them and have some really cool experiences of just sort of talking about the Manics and. But, you know, this collection of essays which has been kind of put together into screen captures has kind of always been on the background for the last few years as well. I mean, even when I was writing about music, I was writing about film as well. So, yeah, that kind of, I mean, that kind of brings you up to date of where I am right now, I suppose. Joel.

[Joel Czerny]

So the book is a series of essays, not all of which, I mean, they're all written by you, obviously, but not necessarily first for this book since. But you've already pointed out that you do quite a bit of writing in various places. What is the oldest essay in this book, if you don't mind me asking,

[Stephen Lee Naish]

I think the oldest essay comes from about 2014, actually. I think I wrote maybe one or two of them kind of in support of the. Of the very first book. But, you know, just. Just kind of like everything, you know, the. I've kind of been. They've kind of been lost to the Internet a little bit, and. But I'm still very, like, proud of those pieces and wanted to sort of get them out, even though they were kind of were out at one point, but kind of lost. So, you know, this. This. What we decided to do, or what initially I wanted to do anyway, was I submitted the manuscript kind of just as a collection of essays, and it was kind of sparse and random, but the publisher of this book, newstar Publishers, who are based out of Vancouver, kind of suggested, why don't you smash some of these essays together? Why don't you create some new writing around them? Why don't you bring them up to date? We're dealing with a pandemic right now. Why don't we sort of bring this in? So even, like, you know, an essay that was published in 2014, when the world seemed a little calmer before Trump, before Brexit, before COVID still kind of resonates today. So we kind of just brought it up to date a little bit.

[Joel Czerny]

So some of the. Are any of the essays as they originally were written, or have you pretty much updated all of them?

[Stephen Lee Naish]

I pretty much updated all of them. I think maybe there's one essay which I think we will probably end up talking about, which is on the American Pie franchise, that pretty much exists in the book as it existed when it was first published online. But again, it was kind of one of those essays that was published back in 2014 maybe, and kind of just lost on the Internet. So I'm quite proud of that essay and wanted to sort of get it out there again. I think it actually resonates even more than it did back in 2014, actually.

[Joel Czerny]

I know at the end of the book, at the end of the entire book, you have a list of where all of these were originally published, at least in one form or another. And then are any brand new to this collection or which ones are? Because I assume at least a couple of them are new.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah, there are a few new ones in there. The very last essay, titled the Slow Dissolve, it's entirely brand new. The introduction to the book as well is all new. Ideas in there and I assume the afterword, too. Yeah, exactly. The concluding kind of essay, as well, because that really does kind of bring in the COVID 19 pandemic as well. But yeah, and then throughout the sort of the essays there's kind of like connecting bridges, which are like brand new, that kind of bring, bring the essay into sort of today's light. So.

[Joel Czerny]

Yeah, so the subtitle of the book is Film in the Age of Emergency. I assume that's what we're talking about. That what your publisher and you've already, what you've mentioned is that a lot of the ideas and where you were trying to write about relate to present day, particularly with the pandemic and other kinds of emergencies. Is that really what your plan was?

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah, I think the subtitle kind of came a little later actually. But I feel like we're dealing with so many emergencies. I mean, I don't know where what, what you've been experiencing this past summer, but here in Canada we've had some of the craziest weather, weather events. I mean, I'm in a relatively calm place in Ontario, but we've seen some incredible storms here. But across Canada, you know, wildfires, floods, across the world, more floods and droughts. It's really been an awful summer for weather events and climate catastrophe. And I feel that obviously that's kind of like the overriding emergency right now. But then yes, on top of that we also have the COVID 19 pandemic. But I think, you know, this is like, to me this is like whack a mole. These are all just side effects, I think of a larger emergency which is that of, you know, neoliberalism, capitalism, the way that we've shaped our world for profit. And I feel that is probably the biggest emergency that I feel that we face. And we can't deal with the climate emergency. We can't really deal with COVID 19 unless we face that issue of unfettered capitalism. Basically, yeah.

[Joel Czerny]

I live in northeastern Kentucky and I must admit we don't weather wise. The biggest issue we had was in February we had an incredible ice storm which most people around here said they've never seen anything like it. We were out of power for two weeks. Ice was every place. You couldn't even get anywhere. It was just ridiculous. I mean, we don't usually get a lot of snow. We get some cold weather, but not snow. And yet this was just pure ice all over the place. And it was like four days before the temperature got back above freezing or actually even a little longer. And so that happened. And that was unusual, of course, around here. We also, I'M also living in an area where the other two big, quite big issues for us in the United States have been very important. Obviously, the most current one is the pandemic, where I'm definitely living in an area where there is a certain group of people who aren't particularly interested in vaccinations or this vaccination. And then, of course, then we have the folks who supported the last United States president and still many of them still claiming that he's still the president or should be. And I'm not going to get into any of that, but it gives you a little bit of sense of what I have, what I deal with here. And then, of course, I have friends and relatives in Cleveland, Ohio, which is where I'm from. And we haven't gone up there very much because of the pandemic. But we were up there a couple of months ago and it was very interesting to be in an area that's got a different point of view and found it very interesting as a comparison. And not that we're not happy where we are, we're here for my wife's job, but there's no question that there are days where we sort of miss the slightly different point of view that we get up there.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah, it's really rough. I remember reading and seeing images of that ice storm because I do have a friend who is in that area as well, and I was concerned about them. But, yeah, I mean, that was just the starting pistol for this year's intense, intense weather. I think it's finally put it on the map a little bit, put it on people's agendas a little bit. But, I mean, over here in Canada, we've just voted. We've just had our federal election and we've just voted in the Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau. And it's just the same old, same old. You know, we're not going to be going anywhere with this Liberal government. They're not going to be initiating any major changes in policy that will positively affect the climate. It's only going to be continuation of what they see as well, the continuation of their neoliberalist point of view. I suppose we had an opportunity, I suppose, to. To vote in a progressive government with the NDP here in Canada, but we didn't. So one day we might. But we're running out of time. So that's kind of the emergency that we're dealing with. And that's kind of the book takes those emergencies and slams them through the lens of film.

[Joel Czerny]

Well, we're not going to Discuss every essay. Obviously I didn't count. So you can tell when I see one tooth is it's 12 essays, I think, and an afterwards.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

So, yeah, I think that's about right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joel Czerny]

So they're obviously people like hearing me count over the Internet. So anyway, luckily I grouped them in threes. That's how I learned to do math. Anyway, so we're going to talk about a few of them. Some are ones that I've particularly found interesting. And then there's a couple that you wanted to particularly talk about. So hopefully we'll give people a taste of what's in here so they know, get a better sense of what your writing plan was. And the first chapter is Star Wars Accelerationism, and that's right at the beginning. So I think it's a good one to start with because usually when you write anything or film or anything, whatever's first is in music, for that matter, first tends to be very important because it's how you start off. That's how you grab the reader. And. And so I think the Star wars chapter is very good place to start. And when did you. Is this. I'm assuming this is somewhat older, but you go all the way to the last film, you know, the last official film. So what's the genesis of this chapter?

[Stephen Lee Naish]

It's a really good question. And it's such a vast chapter that I'm not 100% sure even I know what it's all about. But I really did try to cram as much ideas in there as possible because I'm a huge fan of Star wars, and I have been for many, many years. I was kind of late to it. I really didn't get into it until the prequel trilogy back in the late 90s and early 2000s. But I was just so super excited about this idea of a sequel trilogy with new characters and things like that. And Disney's kind of takeover obviously concerned me a little bit, but I thought I would just sweep that aside and enjoy reminiscing about Star wars, but also embracing this kind of new idea of Star wars, which, I mean, just didn't really come to pass. The chapter itself is called Star Wars Accelerationism. And I think that ultimately, when you look at the sequel trilogy, the films of the Force Awakens, the Last Jedi, and the Rise of Skywalker, it's this race to the finish line. I mean, it really. It really is this idea of trying to push out free films as fast as possible.

[Joel Czerny]

Yeah, they came out every two years instead of the original, which were Three.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah, that's right. That's one thing that obviously is different. But you've also got to take into account the sort of teaser effect as well of these films that always start about a year before. The Internet is a big deal now as well. I mean, it was obviously well used back in the early 2000s as well. But now every YouTuber and every blogger can decipher every single morsel of information that's out there. And some YouTubers and podcasters are making a living now out of Star wars theories and delving into sort of Star wars law. So it's become kind of like its own little cottage industry on the side. But I really feel like with this particular trilogy of films that there was no plan from Disney. Each film kind of reacts to the. With no real coherence. And so when I got to review the final film, the Rise of Skywalker, which came out in December 2019, which seems like a lifetime ago now, because

[Joel Czerny]

in many ways it was, it was just before.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

I feel like I've aged maybe four or five years as opposed to just two from that perspective. But I gotta say, I was just super, super disappointed. You know, there was elements of narrative in the Last Jedi which I thought made Star wars, which I think point Star wars in a more progressive way or more progressive direction. And then the last, sorry, the Rise of Skywalker kind of just scrapped that completely and just went full on adventure film and really just unsatisfying conclusion. But it was, it wasn't just the fact of this unsatisfying conclusion to, to a trilogy of films. It's obviously the concluding chapter of a nine film arc that we all meant to sort of watch from the Phantom Menace all the way through to the Rise of Skywalker. And I mean, I just, I've never, I've never done it. I've done, I've done six films back to back. I've never done the nine films. And I can't imagine what it would feel like to, to get to the end of that, to get to the end of those nine films and be faced with this inconclusive movie that doesn't push anything forward. And also then I got to thinking like, and I do this in the chapter to some length. You know, what, what is going on in the Star wars universe now, like after this film is. Sorry, after this story has kind of wrapped up because, you know, the galaxy far, far away does not seem like it's in a very good place after this, after this film, you know, we've had a trilogy of this kind of quasi Empire, the rise of that and then it's fall. And we have at the very end of that film, spoilers. But you know, there's all these ships that show up to fight the remnants of the Empire and this First Order. And we don't know who these people are. They could be scoundrels of the worst kind, pirates, bounty hunters. Some of them we definitely know are assassins and bounty hunters because we meet them earlier on in the film. So he kind of comes to this conclusion that the galaxy is kind of just going off in this strange place of no. No real unity. There's no Jedi, there's no leadership from any of the previous films. And that leaves. That leaves me deeply unsatisfied. And I think. I think it probably left a lot of people unsatisfied as well. As a standalone movie or even as a start of a new trilogy, it would probably be good. A good to begin, but a good way to end. It's not. And so that chapter kind of deals with that a little bit and it kind of deals with the fandom as well. You know, there's a lot of sort of toxic fandom in the Star Wars. Star wars communities that kind of have reared their ugly head over. Over the Last Jedi, but also over the. The rise of Skywalker as well. And it just seems very reminiscent of what is happening within the film. You know, these. All these different, you know, fighters at the end of the film don't really have any unifying ideology or anything like that. So it's. It's a mess. And so the fandom is a mess and the films are now a bit of a mess as well. I will say though that Disney has done a pretty good job at the TV productions, which I don't really cover too much in the book. They're mentioned, but again, it's the accelerationism of everything that Disney has done. They pushed out five movies in the space of five years. A two season TV show

[Joel Czerny]

and then in a bunch of animated.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yes, a bunch of animated shows. So there's a lot of Star wars content out there and I think the best way for it to move forward is probably just through streaming now, through television and through free streaming, because the movies are pretty much dead in the water now, I think. Yeah. Enjoyable experience watching it at the movie theater. But at the same time I did just come out feeling totally defeated. And yeah, so that chapter kind of does deal with that a little bit. My own personal sort of disappointments. But on the bigger picture, the sort of. The idea that, like, if you just. If you could just have a plan and then stick with it, you might have just actually developed a decent film. Or if you're going to cast minority actors, how about you let them see their character arc all the way through rather than kind of dismiss them in the sort of next film, you know, just a huge mess. So, yeah, Star wars accelerationism kind of starts the book off slightly pessimistic, but there is a lot more hope in the. In the book itself.

[Quaker Protein Instant Oatmeal Advertiser]

Start your day with Quaker Protein Instant Oatmeal. The instant oatmeal. Ready to help you tackle whatever your day brings. Like wrangling your toddler into their car seat. That was Fun. Coaching your 6th graders soccer team Go girls. And carrying all the groceries in one trip. Try Quaker Protein Instant Oatmeal Granola and bars. Great taste and a good source of protein. Quaker bring out the good

[Monster Energy Advertiser]

monster energy. Everybody knows White Monster Zero Ultra, that's the OG it kicked off this whole zero sugar energy drink thing. But Ultra is a whole lineup now. You've got Strawberry Dreams, Blue Hawaiian Sunrise, and Vice Guava. And they all bring the monster energy punch. So if you've been living in the white can branch out. Ultra's got a flavor for every vibe, and every single one is Zero Sugar. Tap the banner to learn more.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Close your eyes, exhale.

[Joel Czerny]

Feel your body relax. And let go of whatever you're carrying today.

[Quaker Protein Instant Oatmeal Advertiser]

Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh, my gosh, they're so fast.

[Joel Czerny]

And breathe.

[Quaker Protein Instant Oatmeal Advertiser]

Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

1-800-contacts.

[Joel Czerny]

Well, we can always use A New New Hope, so that's good. I must admit, one of the things that you said that I definitely agree with is that the biggest problem with the last three movies is that there wasn't an overall person in charge. George Lucas. You can complain all you want about aspects of what he did and how he changed things and his lack of reasonably good writing skills, at least dialogue and things like that. But the bottom line is you knew it was unified. And, you know, as far as that part is concerned, I go to Star wars all the way back. I was 8, 19 years old when Star wars came out. And there's no question in my. Actually 21. Sorry about that. I can't do my math. One of the things that I always remembered was, as each film came out, you kept saying, okay, did I like it? So, for example, everybody loved Star wars, but then when Empire came out, everybody says, oh, my. He did. He did better. Of course, remember back then, he wasn't 100%. I mean, he was in charge. But Irvin Kirschner really took that film on his own. Jedi we didn't like as much because it seemed like he backed. You know, things backed up a little bit as far as quality. And then when the. The prequels came out, we were all going crazy. Oh, boy, here they come. And then you had to sit there after Phantom Menace, and you didn't to want. Want to come right out and say, I didn't really like it that much, but it was tough.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

No memories of that film.

[Joel Czerny]

Right.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Obviously no memories of watching that movie in the movie theater. I've seen it so many times on dvd. But I. I definitely went to the movie theater a bunch of times to watch that, and I have no memory of it at all. So. Very strange. But, you know, yeah, they brought in

[Joel Czerny]

J.J. abrams to do Force Awakens, and of course, he also did Rise of Skywalker, but it's obvious he didn't have total control. He. Especially with Rise of Skull Walker, there are a number of interviews in which he talks about how things he wanted to do got shut down by Disney.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah, yeah. There was another director on that and who, you know, who had a. Heard a great story, and it's on there. It's on the Internet somewhere. You know, the director actually put the story and screenplay that he had planned, and it would have made a much more exciting film.

[Joel Czerny]

But anyway, we could spend the whole hour talking about this, and we've already spent quite a bit, so let's move on. We're talking about men on the verge of a nervous breakdown. If I read what you were trying to say. Reasonably well, in my reading, you were trying to talk about films that have a distinct male audience or male contingent. Is that basically where I was right about?

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I talk about in that chapter, first of all, I start with the Bachelor Party, which, interestingly enough, me and you actually did talk about the Bachelor party on a podcast. I think it was for the Dirty Dancing episode. And we actually did discuss this particular essay, which is really quite weird. But, yeah, so I start with the Bachelor Party, which is a 1984 Tom Hanks movie. Very misogynistic. Very. Well, not very, I suppose, but certainly elements of racism and stereotyping. In there. And I start with that film just because it's my way in. Basically, like this film was a film that I watched when I was a kid to almost to the point where the VHS tape destroyed itself. And that's what I talk about in the. In the opening of that chapter is because I. It was almost like an exorcism, getting this film out of my system, watching it so many times that I basically destroyed it. And I've rarely ever gone back to it. But when I was obviously like a kid, you know, when I was late on, I mean, I was young when I watched this film, I was probably younger than I should have been to watch this movie. But for whatever reason, my parents thought that because it had Tom Hanks and it must be wholesome. And this was an early Tom Hanks movie when he was still just coming off TV and going into movies. So, yeah, there's quite a lot of sex in there. There's not a lot of nudity, but there is a little bit. All of this didn't bother me at all as a kid. I was more interested in the humor and. Yeah. And so over the years, you know, this VHS tape which contained this taped version of the Bachelor Party is just being slowly queued up by my Top Loader VHS machine, but then is also being kind of corrupted by my own sort of messing around with the remote control and things like that. So I wanted to open that chapter with a personal kind of experience of a male film. And then we kind of launch into discussing four movies that are all by female directors. So there is American Psycho, Point Break, Hump Day and Old Joy. And two of those films, I would sort of say are from more or less the mainstream. Point Break and American Psycho. And then the other two are kind of more from the indie cinema scene, low budget, not as well known actors probably, and, you know, just kind of have a bit of a slower story unfolding. And I was really interested in what a female perspective on male friendship or male. What you mentioned, their dominance and how that plays out from a female perspective. And so I was really kind of intrigued to watch Point Break because again, like one of my most favorite movies of when I was younger and just sort of see that kind of homoeroticism that was kind of playing out in. In Point Break and then also in. In Hump Day and Old Joy, there is also a sort of sense of homoeroticism, but also competitiveness as well. And that's kind of the driving story behind Hump Day is actually two guys who can't back down from a bet, end up convincing each other that they must have sex on film and enter it into an adult movie festival. And they basically can't back down from each other. It's male competitiveness. And then in old Joy, two friends who haven't seen each other for a while kind of go camping together. And there's a few moments there where one of the characters kind of, maybe inappropriately kind of touches the other one, but the other one kind of lets it happen. And I just felt that that was an interesting perspective that a female director took that a male director would probably not have, would probably have not have done so. And then we move into the ending of that chapter because we've talked a little bit about masculinity and toxic masculinity. We kind of move into Trump and we kind of move into a book called the Scum Manifesto, which was written by Valerie Solanas fifty years before Trump's inauguration. And so it was quite fitting that those two things happened because the description of the scum male in the Scum Manifesto perfectly aligns with a description of Trump or a description of any of the horrible, disgusting men that we've kind of had to be, had been dealing with in the past few years. Trump, Harvey Weinstein. When you read the Scum Manifesto, you realize that Valerie Solanus was 50 years ahead of all of this stuff. And it's a controversial book, but I feel like it's a necessary one to read in this current climate.

[Joel Czerny]

Of course, in 1971 all of these issues were still going on. It's just as you say, it tended not to be discussed very much because it was still a male dominated world, even if the major women's liberation movement had been going on by then for a while. One of the things I found so interesting about this chapter was the whole discussion of VHS and one of those things that you talk about more than once in the book. And that's the idea of how information, how these movies or how our content is, is delivered. Back in the day, obviously pre video recordings, the only way to see a film there was two ways. You could see it in the theater or you could hope that it showed up on television. Of course, if it showed up on television, at least in the United States, good chance was it was going to be edited even unless it was a really old film once the rating board started and films got to be a little more involved and weren't because they were able to use the ratings to still end up presenting information without censorship. Once they showed up on television, they required editing. And of course, you mentioned in your discussion of Bachelor Party, you had said this was actually not just a VHS recording of it, but a VH recording off of television. So it wasn't even an original tape. Back when you were growing up, was Great Britain editing these films or were they showing them as is?

[Stephen Lee Naish]

No, they would have been editing these films, absolutely. I'm not sure if we had in the UK this thing called the watershed, which meant films shown before 9pm would have to have language and nudity cut out of it. And then post, post watershed, I think films would just go out as they were. But I, I got a feeling this was taped before the watershed. And I mean, I have a clear memory of even being in bed, in bed at the time and my parents calling me down and saying, hey, there's a Tom Hanks movie on. Do you want to come down and watch it? Like come out of bed and watch it with us. And so that would have been, you know, before, before 9, 9pm so, yeah, I think there was definitely some editing in there. Not anything that I really noticed. But, you know, I think I saw the film on DVD a few years later and it didn't really, it didn't really seem different other than these kind of cues which were on the vhs, where the, the film would be cut into with advertisements, you know, all the catchy jingles and stuff like that would come on. And I think even, maybe even a news, a five minute newscast as well would usually come on as well. And those were missing from the dvd. And when I watched the dvd, I was like, you know, I saw those cues and then it just seamlessly cut to the next scene and I was like, oh no, there's something missing there. And then obviously I'd been very juvenile with the TV zapper and I'd cut lots of little scenes into the videotape from like, you know, tennis matches and things like that from, from Wimbledon in like 1990 or something like that, I don't know. And so I was expecting all these things to happen and they never did. So it was quite cool because I kind of had this individual copy, individual idea of what the film was in my head, which I don't think we have anymore. I think film is streamed now and we don't really have those physical formats that can be, you know, can be damaged, can be manipulated. We all have the same film on our devices. It all comes to us in the same way. Edited. It doesn't need editing anymore. You know, you can watch a film at any time of the day. So it's interesting. There's obviously an element of nostalgia there. I wanted, I want to sort of go back to those times. But I'm also hooked into having the convenience of streaming. But man, do I spend a good half hour to 40 minutes searching for something to watch rather than actually just being presented with something to watch. Which was when you had tv, you looked down the listings and you saw the film was on at 9pm on Friday night. That was your plan. I'm going to watch that 9pm on Friday. And now it's like I scroll through the. I've got four different streaming services and I screen, I stream through them all before I finally find one thing that I will watch. And usually it's something that I've already seen, so I'm already familiar with it. But yeah, occasionally it will happen where I will watch something brand new and be absolutely swept away.

[Joel Czerny]

Of course, in the United States and I'm presumably Canada. I don't know what the TV situation really is like in Great Britain, but we have all these, you know, we have huge amounts of channels and yet there are regular cable channels that still show films with commercials and everything. I mean, tbs, tnt, I mean it's every weekend, it's non stop superhero Marvel films. And yet they all have commercials in them. And yet you want to ask yourself who's watching them? I mean, especially like Marvel and Star wars, there's absolutely no reason you can spend a few bucks on Disney plus and then if you live in the United States and you can watch them uncut and stuff. And yet they obviously must be getting some amount of viewers because they keep doing it. They never seem to change.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Well, yeah, that's a really good point. But I also have to sort of raise like what's the difference? You know, watching a Marvel movie is like watching an advertisement with so much product placement in there. Anyway, what's the difference if a bunch of, you know, adverts show up every 40 minutes to break up the narrative, you know. So yeah, I don't know what the difference is really. But anyway, I think obviously streaming is our future and I'm hooked into it, but I wish I could be more decisive and just go ahead and watch the new films that come on this on the, on the device.

[Joel Czerny]

Well, let's, let's both stop acting like we're old and let's move on to another chapter. All American Tragedy, which is about the American Pie movies. We're talking about the four actual feature films. Not the direct to video material that continued on. What's interesting is, is when you start writing that chapter, I started to read it and I said, I'm not sure I get it. Is he joking at the beginning? But the more I read it, and I said, no, you actually have a serious point you're making in the way you described those films, especially the first one. Talk a little bit about how you developed your personal ideas about, particularly of the first one. But then, of course, the entire series.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah. So it's been a while. Actually, that chapter was. That essay appears in the book pretty much as it appeared back in 2014 when it was published online somewhere. I think it was published in a magazine called Gadfly, which I think is still around. I'm not sure if it still produces new stuff, but it's there somewhere. And I don't know, I guess I was sort of thinking, well, so initially I had no ideas about the American Pie franchise because each movie is a, you know, kind of. I mean, I hold them. I hold them to my. Close to my heart. Because I was of a similar age to the boys in the film when it actually came out in 99. You know, I was, I guess. I guess 18, 19 years old. The characters in that film are around about that age, although the actors are actually much older. But. So I have, like, a certain affection for those films, especially the first one. But it really wasn't until, like, the reunion came out, which I think I believe came out in 2012, that I was like, oh, there's something quite interesting here, because when you look at the original film, you kind of. First of all, it's set in a. In a period of time which we all kind of look back on with some, you know, sense of nostalgia and sense of wonder of that period of time, the late 90s, where it was before 9, 11. It was before the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was before the financial crash and we could just keep going on. It was before Trump. It was before Brexit. The last 20 years has been exhausting. And I feel like when you look back at the 90s, it was probably no different really than it was. We were just younger, that's all. And I was obviously a teenager in the 90s and having the time of my life. So, you know, wasn't. Didn't have adult responsibilities to consider. So that's kind of why I look back on it so fondly. But, yeah, when the reunion kind of came out, we're talking sort of like 13, 14 years after the original and the characters are not really where you would have expected them to be. So when you kind of look at the original film, you've got the four characters. So you have Jim, Kevin, Chris and Finch. And you also on the periphery of that group as well, you have Stifler. And that's the main focus of the film. I mean, there are obviously some. There are female characters in there as well, but really it's those four boys and Stifler on the periphery. And then later in the. Later in the franchise, Stifler becomes a bit more of a main character. But, you know, they've got a lot of things going for them. They're from fairly wealthy, middle class backgrounds, they're all white, and they've all got their quirks, but they're fairly popular in school. You know, Jim's kind of a nerd. Paul Finch is kind of a nerd, as is Kevin. And then you've got Chris Ostrich, who's this kind of sporty, popular one, who kind of brings them in to the fold, I suppose, of being popular in their, in their kind of class or in their, in their school. And, yeah, you kind of feel like, you know, these guys are going to do well. You know, they got some eccentricities. Paul Finch, for example, they referred to him as Shipwreck because he likes to leave school to go and use his own bathroom as opposed to the one in the school. But he has a sense of worldliness about him that probably wasn't, you know, for a teenager. He has a, you know, he's a connoisseur of good coffee and things like that, and you kind of expect them all to go good places. Stifler is a guy who we see to be incredibly popular and incredibly rich. And, you know, and then when we join them in the reunion, you know, Jim is married to Michelle. They're basically exhausted parents. Chris was a sports star and now is like a sportscaster for like a cable sports channel. Stifler, who we first sort of see as, you know, kind of strolling around this office, like, giving out orders at this, what looks like a sort of tech startup or something like that, but then he turned, you know, it turns out he's actually just the intern. And Paul Finch, the kind of eccentric coffee connoisseur, the one who seemed very worldly, who was going to do great things, maybe become a writer or something like that, is an assistant manager at Staples. The Station Restore. Nothing wrong with being an assistant manager at Staples. It's just maybe not what we didn't envision for him and maybe what he didn't envision for himself. And I think like when you look at the reunion in the sort of like post 9, 11 post. Well the war was obviously still going on. But the post kind of main part of the war, the post mission accomplished and the post crash as well, you kind of see that neoliberalism capitalism has kind of expanded to the point where it eats its own. You know, even the kids that were going to do well have kind of like fallen down because the system wasn't there to hold them up anymore. You know, they somehow along the line they've lost their status as good, clean, all American white boys. You know. And I just kind of felt that that film put a real sort of stab in the heart of what we were all probably expecting to be at that age as well. You know, I was, I was maybe expecting to be something and somewhere different as well. But you know, I was maybe was thinking I was going to be traveling the world and. But you know, life catches up with you and it catches up with these guys as well. And then they weren't immune to it. They weren't immune to the sort of influx of neoliberalism post crash where it had to, you know, eat its own children basically in order to survive. And that circle is just getting smaller and smaller as we're all being kind of jettisoned out. So the middle class is now, you know, the middle class has become the working class and the working class is the underclass. Now all that's left is just the upper echoes, the billionaires and the tech wealthy millionaires I suppose. So it's quite sad sort of idea, but I think it just ties in with where, where we all ended up, you know, post nine, 11, post crash. Yeah.

[Joel Czerny]

The one issue to me with the first film, and I'm not the only, I'm not the first person to say this, but it has become pretty much a topic of discussion when we talk about teenage sex comedies is the scenes where they try to put the, the exchange student over the Internet without her knowledge. And we run into that with other films that got good reputations for being enjoyable during the period. Revenge of the Nerds is another one and it's probably the one part. And although in the end he gets his comeuppance, the fact that they were, he was, they were actually going to do it though is one of the negatives which unfortunately I agree with you. The idea that the film actually is anti athlete if you think about it, there's only one athlete of the group. And in the end, he doesn't go to his game. He ends up going to the. The choral.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yep, yep. And he. And he's also the only one who doesn't lose his virginity that night as well.

[Joel Czerny]

So there was no question that the filmmaker was trying to come at things with a little different way. And I guess the fact that there's a lot of raunchiness at first glance makes it harder to see those kind of things. But in the end, I agree with you. There is certainly an attempt to show things differently, and even with a storyline that's probably been used in some way, shape or form a number of times, but the concept at least of trying to get. Having sex for the first time as you graduate.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joel Czerny]

So as I say, we've talked about only three chapters and we've been on for almost an hour. But so obviously there's plenty of others. There's. You've. You cut. You delve back in with Dennis Hopper in a chapter and talk about David lynch as well. With that chapter, you've got a whole chapter about Nicholas Cage. Number of other chapters. There's one about disaster films, more current ones, starting with Deep Impact and Armageddon, which came out at almost at the same time. Both basically destroying, attempting or planning on destroying the world. One succeeds at least to an extent. The other one, they're saved. But let's talk about your afterword, because that was obviously one of the more current things, and it's your discussion of, you know, entertainment and film in the current pandemic period. What was your. What did you want to cap the book off by saying?

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah, I guess, you know, there's obviously elements in the book which are a little pessimistic, and that just comes from, you know, the film culture that we kind of exist in right now. So I wanted to sort of like, take the idea of the pandemic and how it has affected film and kind of try and make a positive spin on it in the past year. I live in a relatively small city. I've got this amazing movie theater downtown. It's small. It only seats about maybe 100 people per screen. But right now, obviously, they can only seat about 20, you know, with social distancing, mask compliance and things like that. So they're struggling, they're having a hard time. And. But what, what kind of happened and what was really positive is, you know, the kind of. The community around the movie theater kind of came together and there was donation runs and things like that, and they. They've got about, you know, they got another year of, of time to sort of adjust to this new normal that we keep hearing about. So I wanted to kind of like make a positive case for films and kind of like the access that we now have because film festivals are happening online. So a film festival, like. Well, you know what, maybe not like the Cannes Film Festival, maybe I can't attend that virtually, but my downtown one, the Kingston Canadian Film Festival that happened back in April, I believe was all virtual and they had the best attendance they'd ever had. They had people from Paris, Ontario and Paris, France attending. This is actually really quite remarkable that we have new films that are being screened at, at film festivals that usually maybe we couldn't attend because we would have to travel or, you know, maybe we'd have to even leave the country. Maybe they weren't even showing in, even in our region. But now we have this incredible access. And I really hope what kind of happens, and this is what I talk about in the book, is that we kind of, we keep this, we kind of have this kind of hybrid version even when the pandemic is over and we can go all, and sit in movie theaters together again. I think it would still be really wonderful for people to still have, from all around the world to kind of access film through this method because we're all used to it now as well. Like we've all been streaming films on our laptops for the past, I don't know, like 10 years, really, maybe even more. You know, we're all there. The only thing that I do obviously feel a bit sad for is, you know, the, the sort of, the multiplex kind of as it exists and maybe won't exist anymore because we're all out of the habit of going to the big movie theaters now. I mean, I went to one a few weeks ago and had a pretty, pretty good time. But I mean, it was me and my son and then maybe three or three of the families in this vast auditorium watching Space Jam. You know, it doesn't really need to happen that way anymore. So maybe, maybe the films, maybe the multiplex dies replaced by smaller movie theaters or different viewing experiences. I've always really enjoyed watching films in different places like art galleries or even outside. You know, we have a big square downtown which accommodates a really big screen and they've had Thursday night movies in the square and it's been fantastic. So maybe we do that and then maybe Hollywood and mainstream movies don't need to spend billions of dollars making and promoting these, making and marketing these Immense movies. Marvel, Star wars movies, maybe we don't need those so much anymore. If they can be small, if we can make smaller, more engaging films about what it means to be human, what it means to live in a community like the one that I live in, maybe we can make more, you know, films that are regionally based as opposed to these big international money making movies. I'd love to get back to, you know, film as art. And it's happened before. You know, we've had movements within cinema. We've had the new Hollywood films of the 1960s and 70s, we've had mumblecore, which was a little subgenre of independent film, which films like Hum Day and Old Joy and you know, those very small intimate films kind of came out of. And I think that would just be really wonderful to kind of go back there. So the afterward of the book kind of just point us in that direction. And I hope that readers of the book who are film lovers and film goers take some away from that. But if filmmakers as well read that chapter and maybe think to themselves, you know, maybe I don't need to make this vast budget movie, maybe I can just go out with my video camera and record my community and make stories within my local region or my local area. There's always stuff going on that's kind of where the afterward takes us.

[Joel Czerny]

Well, it's funny because I think that was already starting to happen pre pandemic. When you think about first Netflix to a large extent, but then just about every other all, not just about all the streaming services now have their own in house productions or they buy feature films that maybe show up in a theater briefly just to qualify them for an Academy Award, but other than that or any other kind of award, but in the end, that's the way they're known. And just about every major filmmaker now doesn't even think twice about doing it. I mean, Marty Scorsese did the the Irishman on and number of other major filmmakers who you were at first thought wouldn't have think they would do it, ended up doing it. And a lot of these were obviously pre pandemic. And the fact that so many of these are winning awards, both television awards and movie awards, tells us that. I think even if it wasn't planned that way originally, the pandemic has really helped that take off. And now it's just a matter of seeing how it goes forward. I think the financing issues and the fact that right now, at least, at least in some of these films, the international box office is so important, particularly China and some of the other countries that we're still going to see certain films they're going to release into the theaters because they want to make sure they get that, that box office. But it will be. Unfortunately, there's a whole issue related to when you accept money from international filmmaker, you know, companies. It definitely affects the actual filmmaking, and that's a whole subject all by itself. But anyway, I think we're going to definitely see. I mean, and in each case, like I say, Star wars and Marvel had already started to plan out their TV series before Pandemic hit. And in fact, what's actually happened is it's the movies that were delayed, not the TV series.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah, but, you know, as we kind of move into this kind of post pandemic world, you know, there's already films coming out in the next few years like the Batman, and they're going to be hitting streaming as well as being released to the movie theater. And I just think that's a really great thing, you know, because it gives people more access, I suppose people who may not be able to be vaccinated against this disease can still go and watch a movie. And just, just to like, put a little postscript on, you know, I'm still super, super excited about the next Star wars movies, the next Marvel movies. I saw the trailer for the Matrix, new Matrix movie that's coming out, and like, it still gives me that, like, tingle at the spine. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not dissing the big films, but I think there's room now to, to have in our, in our culture these smaller movies that can do better because we just have the access now. We have access to film festivals that hybrid themselves across the world so that, you know, you have in person attendance and online attendance, and we have just, just a ton of really great streaming services like Canopy and the Criterion Channel and things like that, you know, so it's, it's good in a way. But, you know, the content is obviously massive, and that's a kind of a key word, is content. I don't want to see content anymore. I just want to see movies.

[Joel Czerny]

Funny part about it is the other thing that streaming has given us is depending on your willingness, you can put together a much better viewing and sound system than some of the movie theaters. Yeah, especially when you think that watching a film in a theater can be a great experience. But if the projections, I mean, if the like. It's always been my feeling that the digital and maybe it's just the movie Theaters I'm going to, not that I've been to any for a while. They always seem darker than they need to be. And when you're at home on your. With your own television and sound system, things can look so much better. But. And I think that's just a Hollywood thing or not just Hollywood, every place. They just need to work hard if they really want to keep movie theaters going. They can't let them become second rate or second nature. That no matter what, you're not going to want to go to the theater because the experience isn't as good.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yep, exactly. But you know, the technology has been democratized. You know, I carry a, I carry around with me a pretty decent video camera, you know, in my pocket and editing software is free online. So, you know, it's. We've where we've got no excuses anymore. You know, when I was filmmaking back in the mid-2000s, you know, camera equipment was a few hundred. Well, I was in the uk, so a few hundred pounds and Adobe editing software and stuff like that was a couple hundred as well. Now it's just not even necessary. So.

[Joel Czerny]

And the other part is that movie streaming services, depending on your television have now reached the point where with 4k they are getting almost same now as what you would see in a movie theater. 4K is, you know, we're reaching the point now where the difference between 4k and whatever would be next may well be negligible. And that's, that's something that never obviously we've gotten to that point and I'll, you know, to me, I think that makes it even more exciting to be able to. The home viewing experiences can be so much interesting.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Absolutely.

[Joel Czerny]

So. Well, we've talked about this book. We've only given a taste, but I think it's a good taste. Hopefully what we talked about with the various chapters we discussed were interesting to the listener. And I hope you feel like we've discussed the book well enough to not just sell it, but also to give it a good, give a good sense as to what's included in it and what kind of writing people can look forward to not only from this book, but whatever other writing you do and then whatever future books are in the, in coming forward that they continue to get a good sense of, of of what you want to say about film.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Yeah. Thanks, Joel.

[Joel Czerny]

So I appreciate the time and I hope things go well and once again we'll probably talk again in the future. Thanks a lot.

[Stephen Lee Naish]

Let's hope so. Let's hope so. Thank you.

[Joel Czerny]

Thanks for joining me, Stephen, I found your essays to help give a view of various films along with your own personal experiences with them. This is Joel Czerny and I will be back soon with more new books and film, a podcast series on the New Books Network.