Biopic: A Podcast Story

Week 2 of Black History Month brings us to 2014’s Selma, Ava DuVernay’s masterful look inside the life of Martin Luther King (you’ve probably heard of him unless you’re home-schooled or live in Florida), as he leads the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights marches (which were initiated by minister James Bevel). This movie might have been nominated for 2 Academy Awards, but it’s wildly underrated. 

We couldn’t be more excited to w...

It’s Black History Month and we’re celebrating at Biopic: A Podcast Story. First up is HBO’s Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, which introduced us to the depth of Halle Berry’s capabilities as an actor back in 1999. (You see what we did there.)  

We couldn’t be happier to see the first Black woman nominated for a Best Actress Oscar get proper attention, however, this movie is also a product of its time and its HBO-in-the-late-1990s tr...

Sara would like to make it very clear that she doesn’t have experience in hiring a hitman in this episode about 2017’s amazing and revelatory I, Tonya, the story of Tonya Harding and 1994’s “the incident.” While it’s pretty difficult to turn Margot Robbie and Sebastian Stan into anything besides the most beautiful freaks walking God’s green earth, their outstanding performances go the distance to transform them into, respectively, ...

 Do you like the movie Psycho? Have you ever thought yourself, I wonder what it was like to make that movie, and I hope that Ed Gein’s spirit was there to guide Alfred Hitchcock’s creative process? 

Look. No. Further. 

While 2012’s Hitchcock suffers from not being as good or interesting as the film it documents the making of, it’s still a mostly engaging ride through the creepy genius Alfred Hitchcock’s approach - and a look at the...

Have you ever thought to yourself: “You know what my life is missing? A movie that looks sympathetically on the legal rights of the traitorous crew of Confederates who devised and executed the plan to kill Abraham Lincoln because they were butthurt over losing the war they started and thus, their rights to own people.” Look no further: We’ve got the movie for you, 2011’s The Conspirator, directed by Robert Redford and starring a ve...

2026 sure looks like it’s going to be a year with movies in it. Rena and Sara break down what we know is coming—Michael, Jimmy, Young George Washington, Madden—and what we know will never come (give up the ghost, “Devil the White City directed by Martin Scorsese” shippers), and where the biopic stands as we leave the hellscape of 2025 and enter the hellscape of 2026. 

We don’t have all the answers, as we ask, what, exactly, is a KJ...

It's a very Oppenheimer holiday season 2025! Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus about the work of one of America’s most brilliant scientists, and his leadership in creating our first weapon of mass destruction, is a GD masterpiece, and we love it.  

Enjoy the end of the year with this feel-good tale of that time we built and used nukes and it was never, ever a problem ever again. If those feels aren’t good enough, enjoy the throughlin...

“You ruined it with your stupidity!” Rena’s favorite line in the history of film comes alive (albeit not the way she remembers it) in this absolutely magical biopic about the compassionate genius Temple Grandin, a true doctor Doolittle (unlike alleged murderer Rex Harrison). 

Through almost starting to cry again, we discuss the David Strathairn exception to the dangers of being hot for teacher, how the squeeze machine could have be...

Buckle up, snowflakes, we’re ruining your favorite folk hero! 

Politics month is supposed to be over, but we have one more slice of Americana bullshit for you all, 1973’s Walking Tall, starring Joe Don Baker. After all, what is more patriotic than being a pro-wrestler-turned-town-sherriff-without-any-law-enforcement-experience-cum-alleged-wife-murderer-and-legend who stands up for what is right (grifting harder than your competitio...

Hello boredom, our old friend. Dull, terrible Parnell — widely considered Clark Gable’s worst film and one of the worst movies ever made — lives up to its reputation as we celebrate the blessed end of Politics Month. We take a long, pained look at a film that combines the magic of inert, uncommitted acting, a dire, boring screenplay filled with cliches, and the thrills of parliamentary procedure around Irish “home rule”, and firmly...

We couldn’t be more excited to welcome our friend and New Orleansian Glenn from The Awesome Village to talk about John Goodman’s star turn as Louisiana populist senator and governor Huey Long in the TV movie Kingfish. 

Featuring a cavalcade of future stars, Kingfish efficiently cycles through the political career, appetites, and light corruption of Long with what Sara found to be an objectionable amount of music. Also discussed at ...

A crude, egomaniacal leader with astonishing hair, suffering from mini-strokes and hypertension, dies following a party where everyone kisses his ass and cheers on American machismo. Is it a call from the future? A bird? A plane? No…It’s The Death of Stalin!

Chaos breaks loose as his potential successors try to figure out who is the most feckless and clever of them all, and who can take over the future of the USSR. We meet failsons...

Emergency bonus episode! Michael, the oft-delayed musical biopic about the life and times of troubled genius and smooth (never convicted, often tried) alleged criminal Michael Jackson has a teaser trailer and an April 2026 release date. We risked 1990s-era Pokemon-inspired seizures as we watched the trailer over and over in an attempt to parse the psychotically edited clip parade for insights about what we can expect from this movi...

We start Politics Month with a whimper: A 2 hour, 30 minute, ponderous look inside the months and (maybe?) years that immediately follow FDR’s devastating polio diagnosis. 

Should this be an interesting look at a consequential moment in which the future of American politics was forever changed? Yes. Should this be an incisive character study on one of the most important, decent and progressive individuals to hold the office of pres...

We welcome back the amazing cartoonist and South Korea expert Ryan Estrada  (https://www.ryanestrada.com/) to discuss this truly inspiring biopic that is “not about” (wink and nudge, folks) the early years of future 9th president of South Korea and human rights activist Roh Moo-huyn, then a tax attorney who is compelled to defend a number of teenage students who are arrested and imprisoned without warrants on fabricated charges of ...

 While it dazzles with its 1895-era special effects, the Thomas Edison-produced The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots offers scant commentary or insight into the life of Mary Stuart, opting for salaciousness over character development. 

It’s also 18 seconds long. 

Rena offers critical context that the O.G. shameless idea thief Thomas Edison’s film fails to provide, and we also discuss Sara’s ongoing enmity of Kevin Costner, Wes Ben...

Juana of Castile is MADDDDD WITH LOOOOOVVVEEE for one of those Easter Island-headed Hapsburgs and … that’s the movie. That’s it. That’s Mad Love.

After several back-to-back bangers, Rena and Sara find themselves in biopic purgatory with this boring-as-all-get-out movie that features baffling artistic choices (including absolutely no lighting and an angry-as-hell score) and manages to make what Rena promises are super-compelling peo...

69! Very nice. We commit to the bit by exploring the seedy underworld of Los Angeles’ porn and drug scene in 2003’s unfairly overlooked Wonderland. Starring Val Kilmer as the legendary abusive monster John Holmes, aka Johnny Wadd, Wonderland documents, Rashomon-style, the notorious revenge murders in which John Holmes most definitely participated, and reminds us that drugs are indeed very, very, very bad. 

We discuss a lot of addic...

Rena and Sara are pretty psyched that they saw this the second-best way (the first being on an Apple watch) at the Paris Theater. Because David Lean’s epic masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia is what everyone says it is: expansive. 

Why did everyone tolerate Peter O’Toole’s drunken shenanigans? Why was Anthony Quinn’s appearance the one that had to be made accurate with a prosthetic nose? Which of T.E. Lawrence’s contributions to societ...