Talkhouse Podcast

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, writer-director Allison Anders talks with her mentor, iconic German filmmaker Wim Wenders, on the occasion of Wenders' new touring film series. In their fascinating and wide-ranging conversation, the two old friends talk about a possible sequel to Paris, Texas, why Wenders didn't direct True Detective, how Until the End of the World presciently anticipated everything from GPS to search engines to selfie culture – and also a lot of stuff about music, including how Wenders saved The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by digitally replacing an Elvis song with a copycat track, Wim buying Allison her first iPod, and a discussion of the art of the mixtape. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

This edition of the Talkhouse Music Podcast features two of the more acclaimed new singer-songwriters of 2015: Jessica Pratt and Tobias Jesso, Jr. Both musicians have deep roots in the sounds of the '70s, but two very different sides of the '70s. Jesso's piano-driven debut album Goon evokes superstar '70s singer-songwriters like John Lennon, Carole King, Harry Nilsson and Elton John. But Pratt's latest album On Your Own Love Again channels a very different, much more obscure side of the Me Decade: psychedelic folk from brilliant musicians such as Linda Perhacs and Vashti Bunyan. We put these two together backstage at this summer's Pitchfork Music Festival and they covered a wide range of topics: the recent Brian Wilson bio-pic, the difference between playing solo and with a band, dealing with stage nerves and insecurity, how malfunctioning equipment can be a blessing, the interview tricks journalists try to pull on them and the wonderfulness of the Train song "Drops of Jupiter." Jesso reveals his tricks for playing as few songs as possible in his set. Pratt recounts a synopsis of the film she has seen more times than any other: The Brave Little Toaster (1987), which prompts our guests to wrestle with a most vexing question: "How weird is it for a blanket to be chasing a kid through a forest?"

“Transsexuals are the stormtroopers of the future.” So says Genesis P-Orridge, the iconic, visionary musician who has fronted influential bands like Psychic TV and Throbbing Gristle. While P-Orridge isn’t transgender — they* call themselves a pandrogyne — their partner in this Talkhouse Music Podcast, Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace, came out as transgender in 2012. Still, as P-Orridge points out, both musicians have done something very brave: they’ve transitioned, in one way or another, in front of their audience. And it was P-Orridge who paved the way. As Grace says here, “Someone like yourself is so important to me.” P-Orridge and Grace might hail from different generations, countries and musical communities, but they found plenty to talk about: what it was like to transition in public, the mind-body duality, paranormal phenomena, the perennial bathroom problem, the perennnial airport screening problem, courage, death, Caitlyn Jenner, a hilarious exchange about what to wear on stage, dealing with photographers who want you to show your boobs, and what P-Orridge calls “a gradual shift in the way that gender and sexuality are perceived in our species.” This is one of the more fascinating and potentially visionary exchanges we’ve ever had on the Talkhouse Podcast. It’s also one of the more risqué, so if you’re easily offended, maybe you’ll want to check out one of our other podcasts. * A word about pronouns: P-Orridge call themselves “we” because they feel at one with their late wife Lady Jaye. Much more about that in the podcast.

Dan Zanes has long been one of the biggest names in the still-exploding genre of so-called "kindie-rock" — music made especially for kids. As the leader of the Grammy-winning Dan Zanes and Friends, he’s made over a dozen hugely popular and acclaimed albums and played concerts for adoring audiences all over the world. And Bill Sherman has not only won a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmmy, he's the music director of the iconic children's show Sesame Street. As a songwriter and orchestrator, he's responsible for the music you hear on the show, and works with the many musicians who drop in and sing: stars like Janelle Monae, Ed Sheeran and Will-I-Am, and many others. But perhaps more impressively, Sherman is one of the driving forces behind such magnum opuses as "Glory of Cookies," "Grover Can Do It All" and "Guacamole: the Musical." In the mid to late ‘80s, Zanes led the scrappy and beloved New England roots-rock band the Del Fuegos. Here, Zanes talks about how he went from playing in a rock band that, as Spinal Tap keyboardist Viv Savage once put it, had a good time all the time to making wholesome music for kids, and how it helped him rediscover what he loved about making music in the first place. Sherman discusses how Sesame Street music is made — with a lot of care, for starters — and what it's like to work with the many stars who drop by the show… and lots of other stuff you've probably wondered about music at Sesame Street. So these guys certainly had a lot of interesting things to say about making music for children, but they also had a lot of interesting things to say about making any kind of music. Like, why — and how — do you make music in the first place? A note to parents: while the music these guys make is rated G, some of the language here is definitely PG.

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, acclaimed English composers Geoff Barrow (Ex Machina) of Portishead fame, and Clint Mansell (Noah, Black Swan) discuss their creative processes, working with filmmakers, Ennio Morricone's low­ opinion of modern composers, the questionable quality of most films today, and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

Lower Dens leader Jana Hunter is a frequent Talkhouse contributor and a fine writer — in April of 2015, she wrote a widely read piece for Cosmopolitan titled "What It's Like to Be a Female Musician When You Don't Identify as a Woman." And Perfume Genius, aka Mike Hadreas, has said he's pretty fluid with gender too. But that was only one reason why we invited these two to sit down and chat for the Talkhouse Music Podcast. Lower Dens and Perfume Genius make some of the most interestingly beautiful music around, and Hunter and Hadreas are two intriguing, well spoken people. Sure, they talked about "gay/gender stuff" but they also just related as musicians — and talked candidly about inspiration, how to conduct yourself on stage, the perils of social media and dealing with hate mail. And they related as people too — they talk about dealing with email, the awesomeness of Rihanna, their methods for quitting smoking and why Clark Kent is hot. Hadreas and Hunter had met only briefly once before, but they're fans of each other's music, and when they sat down at the Talkhouse Music mikes, they hit it off immediately — in fact, almost from the start these two very thoughtful people were giggling like teenagers. They do have one big difference, though: Hadreas believes in everything, but Hunter doesn't believe in anything.

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Gayby's writer­-director Jonathan Lisecki talks about the best new TV show of the summer, UnREAL, with Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, its co-­creator, writer and supervising producer. The pair discuss Shapiro's background, her inspirations, how she turned an award­-winning short film into a hit TV show in record time, getting over "the Lifetime of it all," and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

In the late '70s, Andy Gill and Jon Langford were schoolmates at the University of Leeds in England. That was where Andy co-founded a band called Gang of Four and Jon helped start a band called the Mekons. Those bands went on to great things, such as helping to invent post-punk — and becoming iconic bands in the process. The Mekons are possibly the longest-running and certainly the most beloved post-punk band. Their music has encompassed punk rock, country music and dub reggae, and they've released a long string of truly great albums like Fear and Whiskey (1985) and The Mekons Rock & Roll (1989). Their history, their music and their perseverance through thick and thin, not to mention their sense of humor, are showcased in the 2015 documentary Revenge of the Mekons. In the late '70s and early '80s, Gang of Four made some classic albums of life-changing, canonical Neo-Marxist post-punk, like Entertainment (1979), Solid Gold (1981) and Songs of the Free (1982). They've influenced everybody from Rage Against the Machine to St. Vincent. With Andy Gill as the sole remaining original member, they released an album in 2015 called What Happens Next. Here, these two smart musicians and old friends recall their common roots, trace the evolution of the concept of punk rock as it traveled north through England, and how it inspired their respective bands. Punk's chief message, according to these guys: "You can really go anywhere you want with it."

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Joe Swanberg becomes the first person to make a return appearance, here talking to Kris Swanberg, his wife and the writer-director of the recently released Unexpected. In a really frank and revealing conversation, they discuss the Sundance experience, selling a film, finding the right distributor, dealing with agents, taking meetings, shaping a career, and the challenges of being in a two-filmmaker household. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

You might think that Chicago rapper Vic Mensa and Samuel Herring, the frontman of Baltimore synth-pop band Future Islands, don't have much in common. But you'd be wrong. And it's not because Mensa used to rap in a rock band and Herring has been a hip-hop fan since he was a kid. And it's not because Mensa is a fan of the Beatles and Nirvana, and Herring is about to drop a hip-hop EP he recorded with Stones Throw producer Madlib. No, it's because Mensa and Herring are both musicians and they enjoy each other's work. So these guys, who had never met before, hit it off right away when they sat down at the Talkhouse Music microphones backstage at the 2015 Pitchfork Music Festival. In less than 30 minutes, they cover a whole lot of ground: their previous lives as shoplifters, music biz economics, compromising your youthful ideals, going to church, the ghettoes of Baltimore, the U.S. legal system and their mutual disappointment with the Obama presidency. And Herring even reveals the inspiration for his trademark sidestepping dance move!

Chvrches was playing a great set at the 2015 Pitchfork Music Festival when we noticed all three members of Haim rocking out by the side of the stage. Clearly, they're big Chvrches fans. When our producer bumped into Este Haim in the VIP area, he asked if she'd like to do a podcast with Lauren Mayberry, Chvrches' lead singer (and a regular Talkhouse writer). She absolutely did. Then Danielle Haim wanted in. And then Alana Haim wanted in too. So we wound up with Lauren chatting with all three Haim sisters in a noisy trailer right there on the festival grounds. Topics covered: how to deal with getting hit in the face with a beachball in front of thousands of people, mesmerizing Afros, panic-vomiting, forgetting lyrics on stage and, most importantly, how to pronounce GIF.

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, writer­director Mary Harron sits down with Rose McGowan, the actress turned director who last year moved behind the camera for the acclaimed Sundance short, Dawn. Their wide­ranging discussion touches on everything from punk, religious cults and pyromania to Harron's experiences making American Psycho, McGowan's past as a teenage runaway and the ingrained sexism of Hollywood. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

Belle & Sebastian co-founder Stuart David is the author of the critically acclaimed In the All-Night Café: A Memoir of Belle and Sebastian's Formative Year, which came out this year, and the Pogues' longtime accordionist James Fearnley is the author of the candid, vivid and appropriately rip-roaring Here Comes Everybody: The Story of the Pogues (2012). The two author-musicians discuss the tricky matter of writing about your bandmates, the vagaries of memory and taking out the bits that make you look like a knobhead. And there might just be an anecdote or two.

If you’re a pop musician of South Asian descent, not many like you have yet reached the toppermost of the poppermost. Some really famous ones include M.I.A., Norah Jones and Tony Kanal from No Doubt. Soundgarden lead guitarist Kim Thayil, whose folks came from India, was among the first. As a kid, acclaimed new singer-songwriter Bhi Bhiman, whose family emigrated from Sri Lanka, looked to Thayil as something of a role model. Which was wise, because Thayil is one of the brightest, coolest rock musicians one could hope to meet. Now Bhiman and Thayil aren’t just mutual fans, they’re also friends. We put them together at KEXP’s studios in Seattle for a Talkhouse Music Podcast, and sure, they talked about being self-described “outsiders in rock & roll,” but they talked about a lot of other interesting things, too: their musical backstories, ruminations on the nature of pleasure and pain, the role of baseball in assimilation, their first guitars, the Chi-Lites, Nirvana’s nickname for Thayil, dealing with fans and, perhaps most important of all, the meaning of the word “epistemological.”

In this episode of The Talkhouse Music Podcast, two great rock songwriters, Courtney Barnett and Kim Deal — of iconic alt-rockers the Breeders — get together, have a few laughs and talk about hearing the sound of your own voice, obsessing in the studio, the relationship between drugs and creativity, touring and seeing the world, what it's like to be 27, and playing guitar upside down. Don't miss Kim's imitations of English people speaking French. And she just may have come up with the title of Courtney's next album.

In this episode of the Talkhouse Music Podcast, Philip Selway (Radiohead drummer and outstanding solo artist) has a really lovely conversation with one of his favorite new musicians, Ghostpoet, who weds vivid poetry with flowing grooves. (Offstage, he's Obaro Ejimiwe, and he happens to be a big Radiohead fan.) The two had never met before, but you can hear them hit it off, as they get deep into their processes in a really candid and insightful way, and get to places that only two musicians can get. Selway has some really great reminiscences about the dawning days of Radiohead, and Ejimiwe has some really great reminiscences about the dawning days of Ghostpoet, and they talk about music theory vs. intuition, collaboration, self-doubt, the dangers and benefits of reading your own press, and much more. Although they make very different kinds of music, by the end, Selway declares, "We've got similarly wired brains."

In this episode of the Talkhouse Music Podcast, Philip Selway (Radiohead drummer and outstanding solo artist) has a really lovely conversation with one of his favorite new musicians, Ghostpoet, who weds vivid poetry with flowing grooves. (Offstage, he's Obaro Ejimiwe, and he happens to be a big Radiohead fan.) The two had never met before, but you can hear them hit it off, as they get deep into their processes in a really candid and insightful way, and get to places that only two musicians can get. Selway has some really great reminiscences about the dawning days of Radiohead, and Ejimiwe has some really great reminiscences about the dawning days of Ghostpoet, and they talk about music theory vs. intuition, collaboration, self-doubt, the dangers and benefits of reading your own press, and much more. Although they make very different kinds of music, by the end, Selway declares, "We've got similarly wired brains."

Erika Wennerstrom sings and plays guitar and keyboards with the great Heartless Bastards, whose new album Restless Ones came out June 15th. Her band has threads of garage rock, blues and country — and the music of the great Texan singer-songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard shares some of those same sounds. Wennerstrom and Hubbard are also fans of each other’s music, so we put them together for a Talkhouse Music Podcast and they dug deep into their songwriting process and had some laughs… and maybe a cry too.

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Matthew E. White and Delta Spirit lead singer Matt Vasquez had never met before they recorded this Talkhouse Music Podcast, but they just fell right into a great conversation, and they covered a whole lot of ground: their path into a career in music, the new music industry, the future of music, why they are musicians, and why and how they do what they do, and who is the greatest American rock & roll band.

In the second part of their conversation for the Talkhouse Music Podcast, Janet Weiss discusses her talent crush on Nick Cave and Meredith Graves talks about making music as a solo artist.

In this edition of the Talkhouse Music Podcast, Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney and Meredith Graves, formerly of Perfect Pussy, talk about creating safe spaces for women to feel empowered, crashing with your fans, and fist fights.

Big-time Gang of Four fan Annie Clark (St. Vincent) talks with the band’s guitarist Andy Gill about distortion pedals, soccer tricks and the Grateful Dead.

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, husband-and-wife filmmaking team (and regular Talkhouse Film contributors) Lawrence Michael Levine and Sophia Takal discuss with Hollywood screenwriter Larry Karaszewski their Brooklyn-set screwball comedy Wild Canaries, plus the art of writing dialogue, acting in your own movies, mysteries, the movies of Milos Forman and Blake Edwards, and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Daniel Schechter, the writer/director of Life of Crime and also a Talkhouse Film regular, is in conversation with actor/writer/director Desiree Akhavan about her debut feature Appropriate Behavior, plus women in film, bad actors, "director jail," finding your voice, and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, legendary actresses Isabelle Huppert and Kim Cattrall -- who first met on the set of Otto Preminger's 1975 suspense drama Rosebud -- look back on their friendship and discuss such topics as achieving longevity in their careers, Sex and the City, Cattrall's new TV series Sensitive Skin, and the joys of producing. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, two Academy Award-winning filmmakers are in conversation as Errol Morris talks with James Marsh about his new Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, plus Morris' own Hawking film, A Brief History of Time, Frederick Wiseman, cinematic misanthropy, Ed Gein, beating Donald Rumsfeld with a brick, and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

On this week's episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, James Marsh — the Oscar-winning director of Man on Wire and a regular Talkhouse Film contributor — sits down with Laura Poitras to discuss her gripping and revelatory Edward Snowden doc, CITIZENFOUR. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Joshua Marston, the director of the Oscar-nominated Maria Full of Grace, talks with his longtime friend Jesse Moss about Moss' surprising and compelling Sundance documentary hit The Overnighters, a portrait of a smalltown priest in North Dakota who houses incoming oil workers in his church. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Music podcast, Merrill Garbus from Tune-Yards talks with the iconic performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson. By turns funny and poignant, and always insightful, the conversation between these two affable powerhouses ranges from coping with sudden fame, "the art police," the healing power of puppetry, their upcoming projects, dehydrated kale bars, nutritional pantyhose and… hotel hotdogs. For more musicians talking music, visit Talkhouse Music at thetalkhouse.com/music.

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Gareth Evans, director of the awesome martial arts thrillers The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2, talks with fellow fan favorite Ben Wheatley (Kill List, A Field in England), with their wide-ranging conversation touching on everything from fight choreography and their upcoming projects to musicals and gonzo filmmaking. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

This week on the Talkhouse Film podcast, Savage Steve Holland, writer-director of the classic '80s movies Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer, talks with filmmaker (and Talkhouse Film contributor) Michael Tully about Ping Pong Summer, Tully's heartfelt homage to '80s teen movies. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

Rian Johnson, the writer-director Brick and Looper, talks with Terry Gilliam on the occasion of the U.S. theatrical release of Gilliam's new movie, The Zero Theorem. In the concluding part of their two-part conversation for the Talkhouse Film podcast, Johnson and Gilliam touch on such disparate subjects as piracy, directing opera, Star Wars, magic, the horror of nature and Gilliam's long-delayed Don Quixote project. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

Rian Johnson, the writer-director Brick and Looper, talks with Terry Gilliam on the occasion of the U.S. theatrical release of Gilliam's new movie, The Zero Theorem. In the first part of a two-part conversation for the Talkhouse Film podcast, Johnson and Gilliam discuss topics ranging from modern movie-watching and the perils of social media to Stars Wars Episode VIII, which Johnson is to write and direct. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

The latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast was recorded earlier this summer at the Sundance Resort, where the Sundance Screenwriters Lab took place. In conversation are lab mentor Scott Z. Burns, a regular collaborator with Stephen Soderbergh, and lab fellow Oorlagh George, who won an Oscar for producing her father Terry George's 2012 short The Shore, as they share stories from trenches, screenwriting wisdom — and a very memorable Bob Dylan story. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

The latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast features a conversation between writer-directors Stacie Passon (Concussion) and Ira Sachs, whose film about two men who finally marry after 39 years, Love is Strange, is released this week. The two friends and fellow filmmakers discuss full frontal nudity, how to get great performances, and the necessity of being a "hustler" in indie film. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

Recorded at a live event at DCTV, the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast features Tracy Droz Tragos, one of the directors of Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning documentary Rich Hill (now on general release), in conversation with After Tiller's Martha Shane. The two talk about the more personal aspects of non-fiction filmmaking, such as the art of co-directing (with your cousin!), building trust with subjects and how relationships shift after production has ended. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

In the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Robert Altman's frequent collaborator (and also one of the most interesting leading men in Hollywood history) Elliott Gould talks with Robert Downey, the legendary director of such cult comedies as Putney Swope and Greaser's Palace. To mark the premiere of the new documentary Altman, the two raconteurs not only discuss Altman and his movies, but also aging, marriage, baseball and the state of the world, and tell stories involving Warren Beatty, Francis Ford Coppola and Groucho Marx. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

In the latest Talkhouse Film podcast, I Origins writer-director Mike Cahill and True Detective director Cary Fukunaga are in conversation. Cahill makes emotionally acute sci-fi movies that ask big cosmic questions, while Fukunaga's work is darker and grounded in an often bleak reality; although their filmmaking styles couldn't be more different, the two have been good friends for years. Their wonderfully wide-ranging conversation here takes in everything from science to storytelling, with some gripping real-life stories of ghosts and the unexplained in there too. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

In the first ever Talkhouse Film podcast, we bring together in conversation two pivotal figures from the recent American independent film scene: erstwhile "mumblecore" ringleader Joe Swanberg (Happy Christmas, Drinking Buddies) and Hal Hartley (Amateur, Simple Men), one of the smartest, wittiest directors to emerge in the '90s. Over the course of their conversation, they discuss everything from film vs. digital and the changing landscape of the indie scene to the growing prominence of television and the role that technology plays in their lives, for better or worse. It's the kind of conversation that only two filmmakers could have. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film.

In the new Talkhouse Music podcast, underground art-hardcore-metal meets classic '80s hair metal: Liam Wilson of the Dillinger Escape Plan chats with Kip Winger of Winger. They're two very different musicians from two very different generations, but they find plenty of common ground: how to deal with being pigeonholed, how to be a mature band and still be exciting, great stories about how their bands started, and Liam introduces Kip to the concept of math metal. It's a conversation that only two musicians could have. And for more musicians talking music, visit Talkhouse music at music.thetalkhouse.com

In today's Talkhouse Music podcast, the Black Keys' drummer Patrick Carney speaks with Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney, Portlandia) and over the course of a fascinating 49-minute conversation, the two veteran musicians cover a whole lot of ground: working with Danger Mouse on the Black Keys' new, #1 album Turn Blue, withstanding the haters, the dark side of social media, the Black Keys' internal chemistry, surviving fame, and what it’s like to wing it in front of 35,000 fans. It's a candid and insightful exchange that only two musicians could have.

In this podcast from the acclaimed music site the Talkhouse, Hamilton Leithauser, formerly the lead singer of the Walkmen, talks with Carrie Brownstein (Wild Flag, Sleater-Kinney, Portlandia) not just about Leithauser's outstanding new album Black Hours and the joys of going solo, but also lame horn sections, working with Rostam from Vampire Weekend, singing when your voice is shot, and people eating hotdogs while they watch you play. There’s even a preview of Leithauser’s hilarious upcoming Talkhouse piece about bodily injury. It’s fascinating, witty and revealing conversation that only two veteran musicians could have.