Episode 249 – MANK

Runtime 93 minutes Show Contents 0:00 Introduction 3:07 Know Your Enemy: Brian J. Roan 22:24 The New Slang: MANK 1:11:14 The Other Side: Brian and Ryan talk further reading after David Fincher’s new film Thoughts From Your Host… This is the last full episode of the year for The Matineecast. We still have the year-end show to come in a little over two weeks, but this is the last time we have a typical three-act show in 2020. I’ve been able to keep the show going all autumn long – and when I factor-in The Winchester Chronicles, I’ve been able to keep the podcast episodes coming every other week for all of this catastrophe of a year. So many other things have been a complete crapshoot: work, personal relationships, physical and mental well-being. Seems like every week it’s something new, and very seldom was it “new and good”. But podcasting? Somehow…I podcasted. Every other week, on-schedule, new movies and old movies. New friends and old friends. Every single episode has felt like a victory. Every new alert in my feed another mile I pushed into No Man’s Land. It was another moment where someone came through for me to talk about something inspiring, engaging, and enlightening. It was another moment where I was able to concentrate long enough to map it out, capture it, edit it, and publish it. Considering that this year there have been days where I couldn’t even concentrate on twenty pages of a book (and don’t even get me started on trying to write)…having that much focus is akin to skiing a black diamond run. I wasn’t sure I could pull it off – neither the summer stop-gap, nor the resumption of the classic Matineecast format in the autumn. Somehow I did. The hits kept coming, the wins piled-up. So here I sit, at the end of the end of the world somehow feeling the ’27 Yankees. I’m really not sure what 2021 will hold for this podcast, but I do know that I have it in me to keep pushing it forward. If I start to doubt that, I can just look backward at the ground I’ve already covered! Thanks for coming along – for 249 episodes, and especially the last ten. Have a wonderful holiday season, and we’ll talk to you again just before the ball drops for ’21. Links Mentioned on Episode 249: The Film Stage episode 410, where Brian & Co. review MANK Matineecast 152 where Kurt Halfyard & I review The Coen Brothers’ HAIL, CAESAR! Brian’s Twitter feed can be found here. Comments and feedback are welcome, and thank you very much for listening.