Homeland showrunner Alex Gansa responds to criticism about the show's second season, including the pacemaker, the BlackBerry with Skype, and how Brody ended up in the Vice-President's quarters without being noticed.
This week on the Hollywood Prospectus Podcast, we're going east, young men and women. Andy and I, both having seen Silver Linings Playbook (don't worry, we don't talk about it) (but go see it!) have some brotherly love pumping in our hearts (3:30). The film is set in Philadelphia, in the weeks between Halloween and Christmas, and Andy I were nostalgic for our Thanksgiving breaks back in our hometown. So we decided to make a Spotify playlist celebrating the mid-'00s hip-hop that soundtracked so many of those trips home. We talked a little about why this was such a special time for rap music, salute the glory that is hip-hop one-hit wonders, and talk a little about the Philly premier of the dystopian Brad Pitt flick Twelve Monkeys. Nostalgia is in the house.
We get back to regularly scheduled programming with a whip-around through Sunday-night TV. I am kind of out on Homeland (19:35), and when it comes to The Walking Dead (29:45), Andy is wandering around in the forest covered in zombie entrails.
In a late-week, holiday-hangover episode of the Hollywood Prospectus Podcast, Andy Greenwald and I get together to talk about how we spent our (brief) summer vacations. I went to see The Amazing Spider-Man (2:40), along with most of America, while Andy checked out a special screening of the '90s indie cult classic Kicking and Screaming (12:00) (not the Will Ferrell soccer one). Both of these cinematic experiences are discussed in depth, with much mirth and reverie.
We then checked the pulse on Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom (20:20), wondering whether Alison Pill has ever been drunk in real life or if Dev Patel could have ever imagined things could have gotten worse after The Last Airbender. We also discussed the world of music (and what a world it is), praising the holy verses of Pusha T and Kanye West on the new G.O.O.D. Music track, "New God Flow," (29:20) and taking in Frank Ocean's personal revelations (36:26). There was also a bit of talk about Andy's excellent Fourth of July Spotify playlist and the role '90s indie rock band Velocity Girl played in my brief stint as a high school film auteur. Ask about me.
We wrapped it all up with some Double Down Book Club. This week's author is British spy-novel-master John le Carré (45:40); we heaped praise on his masterpiece Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy as well as some lesser-known works, The Tailor of Panama and Absolute Friends. Check it out: The podcast fireworks have only just begun.
With the good Sunday-night shows off the air, it was time for Chris Ryan and me to strap on our galoshes and deal with the bad one: The Killing (1:05) was (mercifully?) killed this past weekend, and I hope you’ll forgive us if we did not speak kindly of the dead. Instead, we spent some time splashing around in the puddles of incoherence that tended to pool around this soggy show and discussing just when the whole world stopped caring about who killed Rosie Larsen. On a happier note, we went back and forth on the generally excellent season finale of Girls (20:55) and the even more exciting new trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (35:10). After a brief, bottle-tossing detour to discuss Drake’s role in the new 2 Chainz video (41:20) and his allegedly more dangerous involvement in a club brawl with professional villain Chris Brown, we finished with a spirited talk about the latest entrant into the Double Down Book Club, Dennis Lehane (45:10). Like George Pelecanos, Lehane was a staff writer on The Wire and is responsible for novels both fun and punky (A Drink Before the War) and more sweeping and serious (Mystic River). He’s worth a read whether you’re in his native Boston or in Little Boston, drinking milkshakes with Daniel Day-Lewis.
Last month, when Grantland Senior Zombie Correspondent Andy Greenwald was on vacation, our Reality Czar, David Jacoby, filled in on The Walking Dead recapping duties. The differences in opinion were stark: Andy found the show’s second season to be frustratingly slow, riddled with inconsistencies and terrible storytelling decisions. Jacoby liked it that one time the zombie got an arrow in the skull. In the wake of Andy’s extensive column listing the many ways The Walking Dead could be improved, Jacoby suggested a very special conversation for the Grantland Network in which the two could hash out their differences without resorting to biting, shotgun blasting, or violent swings of a pharmacy shelf to the face.
