Friend of the show Scott Bunn (Steve Sax Syndrome) returns so we can co-pitch an adaptation of Lloyd Alexander's delightful YA fantasy series The Chronicles of Prydain, which was upending genre tropes only a decade after Tolkein had established them. We discuss Disney's botched attempt to compress the books into The Black Cauldron, give thanks to our 4th grade teacher who introduced us to the series, and speculate as to whether Rian Johnson put an intentional Prydain reference into The Last...

In 1959, nine friends went on a hike in Russia's Ural Mountains and never returned. Their bodies were found with a bizarre set of injuries, including head trauma, internal bleeding, exposure, and traces of radiation. 60 years later, the Dyatlov Pass Incident is one of history's great unsolved mass deaths. Pop culture writer Lauren Thoman (Collider, Looper, PopSugar, Parade, Vulture) visits the show to talk about death in the mountains, and why this real-life story would make a great horror...

During the Vietnam War, a student protest at Washington University in St. Louis erupted into violence, with a campus ROTC building being burned down. A student named Howard Mechanic was accused of the crime, and when he was sentenced to federal prison... he vanished. He had been represented by civil rights attorney Louis Gilden, and he and his daughter Nina obsessed over Mechanic's whereabouts for years. Now an award-winning documentary filmmaker and founding director of Washington U.'s...

In 2012, a fungal meningitis outbreak killed 100 people and infected 750 more. Two doctors at the Center for Disease Control raced against time to stop a nationwide pandemic eight years before the Covid pandemic. Journalist Natalia Megas, whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Washingtonian, and The Daily Beast, joins us to talk about a race-against-time medical drama that's different enough to not be a too-soon Covid movie, but can still speak to our present ongoing crisis.

A quick special episode, in which we honor the best films and performances of 2020 not nominated for an Academy Award. Hear who won this year's Best Snubbed Supporting and Lead Actor and Actress, Best Snubbed Director, Best Snubbed Picture, and winners in three categories of filmmaking ignored completely by the Academy: Best Stuntwork, Best Voicework, and Best Casting. Then next week we return to our usual format with another movie pitch.

It's not a secret that Coca-Cola's original formula included cocaine. But what's less well-known is that the soft drink still uses coca leaf, just not the part that gets you high. One plant in all of America is legally allowed to process cocaine—the drug for medical use, and the byproducts for Coca-Cola. Kyle Ryan, TV/film producer and alumni of both The A.V. Club and The Onion joins us this week to talk about why a cocaine factory in New Jersey is the perfect setting for a heist movie.

A serial killer is targeting underappreciated artists. The twist: he's their art dealer. Emerson Rosenthal, a script consultant who's instagram account, @freemovieideas, is a nonstop font of clever elevator pitches for movies like this one. The second twist? Instead of pitching me the story, he challenges me to take his germ of an idea, and flesh it out into a full-on movie. 

In 1184, two German nobles had a land dispute. They presented their case to the King at a monastery in the town of Erfurt. Dozens of nobles packed into the room... the floorboards gave way... and 100 people plunged into the latrine in the basement. Annie Rauwerda, the mind behind Depths of Wikipedia, takes us through history's number one number-two-related disaster.

LSD came into vogue in the 1960s, but it came back in a big way in the '90s, as teenagers embraced the cheap, long-lasting high it produced. Jon Reid, host of Radio Free Brooklyn's Race to the Bottom, joins us to talk about how to make a film about the second wave of LSD that's neither D.A.R.E.-style scare tactic, nor rose-tinted nostalgia. 

In the year 2000, a secret military task force discovered Al Qaeda operatives working in the U.S., possible including the 9/11 hijackers. They claim they were ignored or silenced by the government. The government claims they never found anything worth silencing. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. This week Shane Harris, Washington Post senior national security writer and co-host of the podcast Rational Security joins us to talk about Operation Able Danger, who saw the first hints of a...

2,750 New Yorkers died in the World Trade Center on 9/11, but in 2004, the number was updated to 2,751. Sneha Philip was a young doctor who lived in lower Manhattan who was last seen on 9/10/01, and her final fate remains a mystery. Did she run into the towers to help and die in the collapse? Was she murdered the night before and forgotten in the confusion of that day? Or did she fake her death to escape mounting personal and professional problems? Comedy writer and Saturday Night Live...

In the '80s and '90s, Spider Robinson wrote a series of books about Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, a watering hole whose regulars included time travelers, aliens, mythological creatures, and the occasional talking dog. Ethan Poschman, co-host of the podcast A Special Presentation, Or Alf Will Not Be Seen Tonight, joins us to talk about why this story about storytelling needs to be a movie, or a series, or a little of both.

In the mid 1980s, baseball had a coke problem, as cocaine use was rampant throughout the major leagues. When Commissioner Peter Ueberroth cracked down and banned several players, one enterprising minor-league owner struck on a seemingly brilliant idea—sign up a bunch of disgraced players to attract fans. Could this ragtag of misfits band together and learn the meaning of teamwork during a thrilling season? They could not, and were in fact one of the worst teams in the history of baseball....

Greetings, true believers!!! The cultural dominance of Marvel Comics has made Stan Lee a beloved American icon, but his creative partner through Marvel's formative years, illustrator/writer Jack Kirby, who co-created the Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and whose ambitious storytelling and energetic artwork came to define the superhero comic for generations. Comic book writer Ted Anderson (Moth Whisperer, Orphan Age, Adventure Time, My Little Pony) joins us to talk to us about everything...

Graham Greene wrote 1949's The Third Man, considered one of the best films of all time. But at the end of his life, Greene became fixated on a real-life story that parallelled his movie, when two British spies defected to the USSR in the 1950s, and Mi6 suspected they had a third man who had tipped them off. That man, Kim Philby, let a remarkable life of ambition, betrayal, and secrets. Scott Bunn (Steve Sax Syndrome, now available in podcast form!) joins us to talk about the real-life Third...

King Arthur can pull a sword from a stone, unite the Britons, and quest for the Holy Grail... but can he surf? Bitter Karella, creator of graphic novels including Misunderstanding Comics and Malleus Maleficarum; co-host of the podcast A Special Presentation, or Alf Will Not Be Seen Tonight, which revisits '80s cartoons based on newspaper comics; and mind behind the @midnight_pals Twitter account, joins us to pitch a throwback to trashy '80s comedies... with a throw-even-further-back to Camelot!

Those hip new neighbors you've been hanging out with? They might be aliens. And they want you to play their role-playing game. Author and interactive fiction game creator Steph Cherrywell joins us to talk about Interstellar Pig, William Sleator's 1984 YA sci-fi book, and why it needs a big-screen adapation.

The king is unwell. His sister is insane. Her son, the heir to the throne, is in the thrall of an all-corrupting villain. His sister is the kingdom's only hope, and to save her, please the gods, and ensure the kingdom's future, our hero has to die for his country. Four times. Author and action-movie-fight-scene reviewer TG Shepherd (@tgshepherdvan, tgshepherd.com), takes us through Lois McMaster Bujold's award-winning fantasy series and why it needs to be the next Game of Thrones. 

In May of 2020, a blundering American private security company tried to invade Venezuela. It went even worse than you'd expect, with their speedboat-based invasion thwarted by a local fisherman. Doug Woycechowsky returns to talk about why this has the makings of a great absudist comedy, drawing on everything from Airplane! to the Marx Brothers to It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, as we start season two of Why Is This Not a Movie?

Somen Banerjee was a classic American success story — in founding Chippendales, the male stripper troupe, he tapped into a brand new market for exotic dancing that had previously catered only to men. But when the competition showed up, things got ugly, as Banerjee threatened to burn down clubs that booked rival acts, and eventually had a partner-turned competitor murdered. subjectmedia.org Culture Editor Jay Bharathan takes us through a story that has everything—incompetent criminals, male...

While Shakespeare was putting on some of the most revered theater in history at the Globe, across town the Red Bull Theater was putting on bawdy comedies, scandalous political satire, plays that were just the funny bits from other plays, and letting women perform on stage. London-based comedian Paul Savage takes us back to a 17th-century London where everyone was drunk all the time, everything stank to high heaven, and a scrappy troupe of actors broke all the rules in service of the most...

Boston Globe comedy critic Nick Zaino is back to tell us why America's love affair with cute, cuddly sloths should come to a violent end! Should an all-star cast of oddball actors get torn to pieces very, very slowly? Or should every role be played by Nicolas Cage? Either way, it's the campy, ridiculous horror movie America needs right now!

Quick, guest-free episode this week, as I wanted to tell the story of 14-year-old Edward Jones. Disguised as a chimney sweep, broke into Buckingham Palace. He’s caught, chased away, and arrested by the police, but not before stealing a regimental sword, and when the bobbies apprehend him, he has Queen Victoria’s knickers stuffed down his pants. Why Is This Not a Movie?!?

In 1971, Monte Hellman cast young unknown Laurie Bird in Two Lane Blacktop, thrusting the orphaned teenager into a Hollywood milieu of opportunists and phonies she wasn't emotionally prepared for. The year before, fellow nonactor Mark Frechette was cast in Michaelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, and his minor fame and naivete made him the perfect target for cultists looking for a meal ticket. This week, Doug Woychechowsky joins us to talk about why the story of two young aspiring actors...

In 2007, Michael Chabon published an alternate-history novel about Jewish state formed after WWII in Alaska instead of Israel. The Coen Brothers snapped up the movie rights... and then never made the movie. Scott Bunn, co-host of Steve Sax Syndrome on ashevillefm.org, is on hand to discuss why the Coens' love of dialect and language makes them the perfect directors for this story.