Ep 165 Jim McBride's Lost Screenplays

Ep 165 Jim McBride's Lost Screenplays

From The Pink Smoke podcast by The Pink Smoke

March 30, 2026 · 56 min

About this episode

Jim McBride discusses his lost screenplays and shares anecdotes from his career.

After bursting onto the late 60's cinema scene with the independent underground hit David Holtzman's Diary and entering the 70's with the post-apocalyptic counter-cultural romance Glen and Randa, Jim McBride began work on two very different screenplays. The first was Gone Beaver, the genre-bending tale of a brawny mountain man and his adventures in the wilderness, and the second is My Girlfriend's Girlfriend, a contemporary comedy-drama about the love lives of young New Yorkers. Ultimately neither film was produced, although the script for Gone Beaver has circulated among film scholars and gained a reputation as one of the great unrealized acid westerns. Both scripts are now finally available together in a new publication titled Jim McBride's Lost Screenplays of the 1970s. The Pink Smoke welcomes Jim McBride and the book's editor James Kenney to discuss the origins of these scripts, why their productions never saw fruition and how their author feels about them over 50 years after their inception. In this fantastic conversation, Mr. McBride also shares anecdotes about some of his well known 80's work, Breathless and Great Balls of Fire! Information on the book…

People in this episode

Host: The Pink Smoke

Guests: Jim McBride, James Kenney

Topics covered

  • screenwriting
  • film history
  • unproduced films
  • interviews
  • cinema
  • anecdotes

Keywords

  • Jim McBride
  • screenplays
  • film
  • David Holtzman's Diary
  • Glen and Randa
  • Gone Beaver
  • My Girlfriend's Girlfriend
  • Breathless
  • Great Balls of Fire!

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: stickingplacebooks.com, x.com/thepinksmoke, x.com/jfkenney

Books & works: David Holtzman's Diary, Glen and Randa, Gone Beaver, My Girlfriend's Girlfriend, Breathless, Great Balls of Fire!

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