Filmwax Radio

My guests in this special episode are co-hosts of the podcast Films Not Made: Amy Hobby and Avi Zev Weider. This episode is also appearing on their platform as well. Amy and Avi’s one-of-a-kind podcast explores the fascinating world of movies that were planned, developed, and sometimes even cast—but never made it to the screen. From legendary unmade projects to obscure near-misses, we dig into the stories behind cinema’s most intriguing what-ifs. Amy Hobby is an Oscar-nominated, Emmy and Peabody-winning producer with 30+ films including “What Happened, Miss Simone?,” “Secretary,” and “Sunday.” Former Executive Director of Tribeca Film Institute; co-founder of Distribution Advocates. She’s spent her career finding the stories nobody else would touch – and figuring out how to get them seen. Avi Weider is a filmmaker and technologist whose work spans the Sundance-premiered “I Remember” to “American Santa” (LA Times) to “Welcome to the Machine” (SXSW). He’s part of OpenAI’s Artist Program, a Sundance Lab alum, lives at the intersection of storytelling and emerging tech – and built half the tools he uses to get there.

My guests are documentary filmmaker Robert Stone and NASA Scientist and Science Fiction author Gentry Lee. Lee is the central subject of Stone’s new documentary “Starman” which is in theaters as of Friday, February 6. In this intergalactic biopic, we follow Gentry Lee, Chief Engineer for Planetary Exploration at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and sci-fi writer, on his journey to space and on Earth. From the Viking and Voyager missions to co-authoring the actual future with Arthur C. Clarke, Lee’s life has been spent with his head in the stars and his feet on the ground. In this visually stunning documentary, the octogenarian Starman reflects on decades of space exploration alongside friends like Carl Sagan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYjTbGLgyhk&t=5s

The filmmaker Dan Mirvish (“18 1/2”, “Bernard & Huey”) is back on Filmwax to discuss his latest project, “Atomic Fondue”. He has launched a Kickstarter campaign which is currently raising initial funds to get the film off the ground and to begin spreading the word. An elevated Cold War thriller/comedy, https://youtu.be/JiDjZ0GjmI4?si=hs4QqgBOSl3538WO “Atomic Fondue” is an upcoming American independent fiction feature film from me – award-winning filmmaker Dan Mirvish – and my amazing team of experienced collaborators. It’s going to be a fun, thrilling, sexy movie that we’re going to film next summer, and we’re excited to have you join the team and get involved!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxMerqB0nrs Palestinian American actor and filmmaker Cherien Debis (“Amreka”, “May in the Summer”) returns to the podcast with her latest film, “All That’s Left of You” which is currently in theaters. A deeply moving, multigenerational drama, “All That’s Left of You” follows a Palestinian teenager who gets swept into a protest in the Occupied West Bank and experiences a moment of violence that rocks his family. The film unfolds as his mother recounts the political and emotional threads that led to that fateful moment. Spanning seven decades, the film traces the hopes and heartaches of one uprooted family, bearing witness to the scars of dispossession and the enduring legacy of survival. Jordan’s Official Selection for the 98th Academy Awards. Cherien’s prior visit to Filmwax Radio in August of 2022.

Returning to the podcast after seven years, the filmmaker Gus Van Sant (“Drug Store Cowboy”, Good Will Hunting”) with a new film called “Dead Man’s Wire”. Based on a true story, the 1977 kidnapping of a prominent banker grips the nation and turns the abductor into an outlaw folk hero. As the media frenzy peaks, the standoff becomes a spectacle of desperation, defiance and blurred justice, which resonates even today. The film stars Bill Skarsgård in the main role as Tony Kiritsis, alongside an ensemble cast that includes Dacre Montgomery, Cary Elwes, Myha’la, Colman Domingo, and Al Pacino. “Dead Man’s Wire” opens Friday, January 9th in select theaters and then goes wide nationally on Friday, January 16th. https://youtu.be/42O-lJfP5Lw

The filmmaker Amos Poe was a guest on the podcast on two memorable occasions. The first time we sat was in a podcast studio in the East Village; Episode 385 in the Fall of 2016. For Amos’ second appearance, we sat in the downstairs lobby of the Roxy Hotel in Tribeca outside the screening room; that was Episode 520 in the Fall of 2018. Poe was a major influence in the underground filmmaking scene of Downtown NYC —aka the No Wave movement— beginning in the mid-1970’s. Of that community, which included folks like Jim Jarmusch, Bette Gordon and Eric Mitchell among others, Poe was often credited as being the first to pick up a camera. He would go on to make such films as “The Blank Generation” and “Unmade Beds”. I had heard he was ill for the past bunch of years and had reached out to him about returning, but he understandably had more important things to do with his time. He passed away on Christmas Day after a prolonged battle with cancer and is survived by his wife Claudia Summers and daughter Lisa Poe.

The Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan (“The Crying Game”, “Interview with The Vampire”) is also an author of several novels. Jordan has recently released an autobiographical work called “Amnesiac: A Memoir” (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024) which is currently available where books are sold. In this vivid, moving and strange memoir, Neil Jordan – the author of classic fiction like “The Past”, “Sunrise with Sea Monster” and “Night in Tunisia”, and the creator of celebrated movies like “Angel,” “Mona Lisa,” “The Crying Game” and “Interview with the Vampire” – reaches deep into his own past and that of his family. His mother was a painter, his father an inspector of schools who was visited by ghosts, and Jordan grew up on the edge of an abandoned aristocratic estate in north Dublin whose mysterious ruins fed his imagination. Passionate about music, he played in bands and theatre groups and met, at University College Dublin, a young radical called Jim Sheridan. Together they staged unforgettable dramatic productions that hinted at their future careers. His first collection of stories and first novel, “Night in Tunisia” and “The Past”, were met with acclaim, but Jordan was also drawn to the freedom and visual richness of film, and worked with the great English director John Boorman on his Arthurian epic “Excalibur”. His own first movie with Stephen Rea, “Angel”, was a brilliant angular take on the horrific violence of the Troubles, and in the years since then his films have combined in a unique way, intense supernatural elements with reflections on violence and sexuality. Jordan describes his work with Stephen Rea, Jaye Davidson, Bob Hoskins, Tom Cruise and many others, but this is not a conventional story of life in the movies. The book is an eerie meditation on loss, love and creativity, on inspiration and influence, by one of the most unusual artists Ireland has produced.

The non-fiction filmmaker Lynne Sachs returns to Filmwax for another memorable visit. Lynne has a new film, “Every Contract Leaves a Trace”, which is to have its world premiere at IDFA in Amsterdam on November 17th: Synopsis (from IDFA website): Since 1990, filmmaker Lynne Sachs has collected 600 business cards—from a hairdresser, a therapist, a textile artist. Together they form an archive of encounters. The title of this imaginative essay film, Every Contact Leaves a Trace, is a basic principle of forensic science, coined by Edmond Locard, a pioneer in the field. And any trace can link a person to a place, another person or an object. If that’s true, Sachs wonders, might every personal encounter not also leave a trace on your being? To find out, she tracks down some of the people behind the business cards. The thread connecting these hundreds of cards is Sachs herself, so the filmmaker naturally becomes the center of the film. Yet the focus is not on her; as in many of her works spanning more than three decades of film making, she merely provides the perspective—the point of departure. With her warm, contemplative voice-over and playful visual invention, Sachs weaves countless faces and voices into a patchwork of connections. These encounters—whether forgotten or remembered, faint or vivid—have become part of her being. https://youtu.be/1LV-r6VDUfM