Biopic: A Podcast Story

We return to the depression era to watch the rise of a delightful, curly-haired naif who charms everyone — the help, the military, and her cynical, wealthy new family. No, we’re not doing John Huston’s noted biopic Annie, we’re doing 1935’s The Rise of Catherine the Great.

We explore the many, many links back to the godfather of international cinema Alexander Korda, lavender marriages, Peter the Great’s descendant Peter the Meh, OG...

When do shenanigans cross the line into elder abuse? That’s the hotly debated issue at the heart of our vastly different experiences watching 2016’s Florence Foster Jenkins, directed by Stephen Frears and starring the legendary Meryl Streep as Florence Foster Jenkins, a syphilis-suffering patron of the arts and absolutely beyond-the-pale terrible singer.

Who is this movie for, exactly?

Come for the charming(?) Hugh Grant’s tireless...

This week, we’re back with our old pal Oliver Stone for his 2004 biopic of the world-conquering bisexual Alexander the Great, aptly titled Alexander.  

We welcome Colin Farrell to the show, and rejoin one of our favorites, the late great Val Kilmer, and our not-so-favorites Angelina Jolie and Jared Leto, for this sometimes brilliant, often literal film of a decade-long cultural appropriation-and-violence-filled rumspringa, a magica...

First shots have been fired in the Oscarbation Wars of 2025 / 2026, and those shots are coming to you from Bruce Springsteen, in Brokendreamsville, New Jersey, in a biopic that will certainly cover territory that we’ve already seen many times this year in our emergency breakdown of the Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere trailer. 

Will this movie have enough self-serious white men over-explaining the significance of the album Nebr...

This week, we welcome our special guest star, the very, very smart and insightful filmmaker, critic, and educator Brandon Wilson, to celebrate the 4th by dropping Malcolm X on Plymouth Rock. 

Given [gestures around at everything], we wanted to celebrate the decaying, never-actually-real American Dream with Spike Lee’s revolutionary, game-changing magnum opus Malcolm X, which is, of course, about the revolutionary leader Malcolm X (...

It’s been a minute since we’ve reminded our audience that Ronald Reagan is trash; there’s no better illustration of the hell he unleashed on America in one of our most mean-spirited decades by pretending that AIDS didn’t exist, or deriding it among his cabinet with giggle fits. 

You know who’s not trash? The many scientists and activists who are featured in this groundbreaking 1993 TV movie, And the Band Played On, based on Randy S...

Gay Pride Month continues with 1996’s seminal I Shot Andy Warhol, Mary Harron’s feature debut, starring Lili Taylor as titular shooter and firebrand Valerie Solanas, and Jared Harris as titular shooting victim Andy Warhol.

We’re back in that wildly unimportant summer of 1968, and discussing what we call “the Stephen Dorff problem” (casting a decidedly super-hetero male as beautiful woman Candy Darling), the Velvet Underground tribu...

Remember that time in 1973 when sexism was cured? Well, yeah, it didn’t work out because (**gestures around at everything**), but this unfairly overlooked movie nevertheless deserves your attention. The legendary match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs is commemorated in this utterly winsome, lovingly made 2017 biopic starring Emma Stone and Steve Carrell.

Battle of the Sexes details the utter triumph of one hard-working, pi...

What has four thumbs and loves John Hurt? This podcast. The Naked Civil Servant, a groundbreaking television movie from our friends in Great Britain, tells the powerful story of the wonderful Quentin Crisp—a man whose experience as a gay man spans the entire 20th century and is marked with trauma, challenges, arrests—and tremendous humor and humanity. 

Topics include: The groundbreaking producer of this film, Verity Lambert; A from...

Unsurprisingly, we had a great time discussing this raucous, genre-bending biopic that documents the madcap experiences of one Tony Wilson as he founds Factory Records and brings the world Joy Division, New Order, the Happy Mondays, the Hacienda nightclub, rave culture, and so much more. 

With our lovely and knowledgeable guest, music journalist Maggie Serota (‪@maggieserota.bsky.social‬), we discuss: how irritating is Steve Coogan...

Get ready for some of the lowest functioning addicts in the history of high-powered alcoholism.

Sara and Rena are joined by the amazing cartoonist and South Korea expert Ryan Estrada, who schools us up on the astonishingly dysfunctional and corrupt administration of South Korean president Park Chung-hee, who was assassinated by his own men in 1979 as part of a ill-thought-out coup.

We discuss the uniquely political South Korean fil...

Do NOT get us started on J. Edgar Hoover. The tragic life of actress Jean Seberg as seen through the lens of her entanglement with the FBI’s ugly COINTELPRO operations, Seberg is a pretty devastating portrait of a fragile, idealistic woman who is taken advantage of by everyone until she is driven to madness and blacklisted.

It’s not as if this has ever happened before or since.

Join us as we discuss the value of Captain America com...

Rena’s on vacation so Sara is joined by her dear friend and 1990s/early 2000s britpop expert Alex to attempt to unpack the Robbie Williams “biopic” that, instead of starring a man who looks like Robbie Williams, features a CGI Chimp with Robbie Williams’s voice standing in for him in an otherwise typical musical biopic that features disappointed parents, drugs and alcohol, dysfunctional relationships, and splashy dance montages.

Th...

All hail Queen Tina (and while we’re at it, Queen Angela Bassett). We take a look at the story of the singular Tina Turner as told through the 1993 biopic of her marriage to garbage monster Ike Turner with our very special guest Katy, co-host of the always entertaining Queens Podcast. 

We discuss what love has to do with it (spoiler: nothing, it’s coercive control), wigs, the #notallmen employees of the Ra...

Sara and Rena welcome the brilliant fashion journalist Roxanne Robinson for the 2009 film Coco Avant Chanel (that means “Before” for anyone who hasn’t been using their 2025 existential crisis to re-learn French on Duolingo). By being “before” Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel became an icon, we can skip over the grossness of Coco’s who Nazi thing, and focus instead on the ambitious, very talented designer who wanted women to be free, comfort...

The most meaningless standoff in American history is commemorated in a manner it deserves: a speechifying hagiography that’s actually about the political beliefs of its star and director, John Wayne. Davy Crockett (the awesomest dude who ever lived, according to this film), Jim Bowie (the second awesomest dude who ever lived) and William Travis (just kind of an okay dude) join forces to protect a fort (that has a basement, BTW) for...

Rena and Sara dive into this unflinching look at the life and times of the singular Dewey Cox, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. 

We discuss: What if Nate Cox had survived? Why didn’t Don MacLean include Dewey in “American Pie”? How important are blankets in recovery from addiction? Is twelve too young to get married? What is the “Short Power” movement, anyway? … And so much more as we unpack Jake Kasdan’s se...

Have you ever wanted to watch a movie about paint drying? You’re in luck. Sara and Rena are joined by Fry and Bry from Pontifacts to discuss the “will he or won’t he” tale of Michelangelo’s painting of the Sistine Chapel starring the NRA’s Charlton Heston and alleged murder and confirmed monster Rex Harrison as Michelangelo and Pope Julius II, respectively.

And that’s it. That’s the plot. Will he finish the painting? 

We discuss wh...