The Hip Pocket #209 - Kevin Biegel

KEVIN BIEGEL is one of the eight hundred writers who worked on A Minecraft Movie, and that’s just the latest highlight in a career that has been dedicated to making people laugh. He broke into the industry working for the Farrelly Brothers on Me, Myself & Irene, and he has moved from one great situation to the next. He worked on South Park before landing on Scrubs, where he worked for a number of seasons before he went on to create Cougar Town with Bill Lawrence, his boss at Scrubs. He also created Enlisted, a passion project that was as much about his own brothers as it was the US military. More recently, he was the screenwriter of The Machine, a film that brought the stand-up of Bert Kreischer to life. Kevin was also the host of a long-running Movie Night here in Los Angeles where he was eventually hosting about 50 people every event, showing triple-features of carefully curated lunacy, and this week, he drew from some of the highlights of his time attending festivals and hosting his own events to pick a list of three films that were all part of unforgettable screenings. First up is Neil Breen’s Fateful Findings, a bit of outsider art that you have to see to believe. Then we’ve got Action USA, a long-lost local Florida film that Kevin literally rescued from obscurity. Finally, it’s the fantastic Daryl Duke film Payday, starring Rip Torn, a must-see for anyone obsessed with the work of Danny McBride and Jody Hill. Our response film is an example of what happens when you don’t program a film festival the right way, the harrowing Dowdle Bros. movie The Poughkeepsie Tapes. And finally, after the conversation we had, I felt like there was only one possible addition to the Hip Pocket Hall of Fame this week, the underseen but outstanding caper film Gambit, starring Michael Caine and Shirley McClaine. If you’d like to support The Hip Pocket at Patreon, you can find us at https://www.patreon.com/c/DrewMcWeeny. If you’d like to find us on BlueSky, you can find us at https://bsky.app/profile/itsthehippocket.bsky.social. The Hip Pocket is hosted by Drew McWeeny and Aundria Parker. Craig Ceravolo is the show’s bandleader and producer. It is a Formerly Dangerous Production. You can find us at drewmcweeny.com and on your favorite podcasting apps!