Advertise on podcast: Mutiny of Preverts: A Film Podcast

The recent death of Peter Bogdanovich prompted the Preverts to record an episode to explore the career of what might be the most neglected of the major directors to emerge from the New Hollywood movement of the 70s. Despite sharing an intense love for the cinema with peers such as Scorsese, Coppola and De Palma, Bogdanovich clearly had a more single minded focus on the early days of Hollywood from the silent era up to and including the 40s and his films reflect a desire to explore the basic forms established by his personal favourites like Welles, Hawks and Ford. He had a somewhat sad story having both direct and indirect connections to some of the more tragic Hollywood deaths of his time. And his reputation also seemed to wane after some poorly received films in the 70s and never fully recovered, but his contributions were undeniably substantial and he had a unique style and perspective that persisted throughout his career.  His representations of love and sex are particularly refreshing and may even give him some claim to being one of the horniest Hollywood directors of all time. Although his career was hindered by poor critical reception and an inability to get funding this episode makes the case that he still made a significant number of truly memorable films.

The recent release of Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of  Frank Herbert's Dune got us Preverts thinking back to a simpler time. A time when neo-liberalism was just a babe in the crib, when rap was a mere novelty genre and getting laid was in the realm of possibility. Yes, 1984! The year that David Lynch's version of Dune was released. Long pilloried as a colossal flop, Azed and Jay find a lot to admire in Lynch's mess of a movie, and also a lot to admire in Villeneuve's solemn, faithful update. Luckily, Azed's son, Ishmael (Recent U of T graduate-BSC with High Distinction and the only one among us who has read the source material) is along to school us on the whole Dune ethos and to set us straight on how recent accusations of "White Savior" syndrome miss the mark of Herbert's Magnum Opus. Still, while Villeneuve's film is a beautiful spectacle, some of us prefer Sting in a leather diaper to Timothy Chalamet attempting to act tough. It's a question of which is more believable?

We have a special treat for you Mutiny of Preverts listeners who have long grown tired of the format and are now only listening as a result of A) losing a bet, B) being related to the hosts, or C) out of the sheer ecstasy you feel from hate listening to us and fantasizing about what incredible horrors the Devil will reign down on Azed and Jay when they are inevitably banished to Hell. We will not only be discussing an excellent new film called Drunk On Too Much Life, but for the very first time, we have the makers of the very film we are discussing, Michelle Melles and Pedro Orrego, on the show to discuss it with us. The film is a very personal one about their daughter Corrina and her experience with "madness"  or what she referred to as being "drunk on too much life." We go deep with Michelle and Pedro on their family's search for something more than the biomedical diagnoses and medications that proved inadequate for Corrina and discuss everything from the history of mental health through the centuries, the influence social power has on mental health and the central role that art, poetry and music has played for Corrina, Michelle and Pedro in the healing process. We also dig into a few of the greatest and/or most notorious examples of madness portrayed on film including Titicut Follies, Warrendale, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Grey Gardens, Crumb and others and discuss some of the ethical considerations that have often been ignored, especially in the case of documentaries.

The first in our series called Our Lives in Movies where we revisit different stages in our lives and choose movies that impacted us at that time.  In this the first of the series, we explore a movie from childhood that made an impression on us. Azed & Jay, being from different generations, have very different selections but, as often happens, there are overlapping thematic tropes in both of their individual choices. Azed, being a child of the 70's, remembers the impact of Ken Russel's film adaptation of The Who's Tommy, while Jay being a child of the 80's remembers the impact of Robert Altman's Popeye.  Other topics covered here: How VHS changed the whole game with movies, How kid's today just don't get it, Shelly Duvall in the Multiverse, and Anne Margaret as Azed's 12 year old masturbatory fantasy woman.

Welcome to the sequel to our wildly popular episode on the most underappreciated comedies of the 2000s except with a radical new twist; instead of the 2000s we cover the 1990s! Upon writing that sentence I recognize its probably not that radical, BUT WE DID IT ALL THE SAME! Joining us is the crew from that 2000s episode, filmmaker Omar Majeed and Mongrel Media bigwig Tom Alexander with films ranging from Clifford (yes, that Clifford), The Watermelon Woman, Joe vs the Volcano and The Butcher Boy (yes, that The Butcher Boy). So strap on a scrunchy, pull out your Reebok Pumps, tell an authority figure to "eat your shorts" and let's all go back to that bygone era when MTV still played actual music and Leonardo DiCaprio played second fiddle to boob tube superstar Kirk motherf***ing Cameron.

If you're anything like the Mutiny of Preverts crew, and you've spent decades watching and appreciating all the great cinema of the world, there is one question you find yourself returning to time and again: What exactly does it look like when Rip Torn has vigorous, athletic coitus with a coed? Well,  lucky for you the films of Nicolas Roeg have the answer. And they also have the answer to similar copulatory questions about Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie, Theresa Russell, David Bowie, Candy Clark, James Fox, Mick Jagger, Rutger Hauer... We could go on. Despite the wealth of boning related topics, Azed, Jay and unofficial third host Omar Majeed also make time to discuss many of the formal and thematic elements of Roeg's films that make him one of the all time great directors. Azed, in particular, makes an astute connection between Roeg's fragmented visual and auditory style and the deeply alienated and traumatized characters that inhabit his films that you will not want to miss.

“He’s More a Painter, Maybe, Than a Director”: Jean-Luc Godard on Jerry Lewis Jerry Lewis, as a filmmaker, entertainer and celebrity persona, was constantly polarizing.  In America, he was loved by audiences, hated by critics. In France he was placed alongside such filmmakers as Howard Hawks, Hitchcock and Chaplin.  New Wave luminaries  such as Godard, Resnais and Chabrol, cited Lewis as a cinematic genius, while in America the critics maligned him as puerile, infantile and vulgar.  In this episode, Azed & Jay discuss the work and persona of Jerry Lewis and argue that his work is best understood by  re-contextualizing him as an experimental artist who used cinema as his personal psychoanalytic couch.  From the early Martin & Lewis days through to his increasingly bizarre but fascinating auteurist films, Lewis is the embodiment of a fragmented psyche searching for a coherent subjective position. A project which both in front of and behind the camera, Lewis consistently, but interestingly, fails to achieve. Speaking of using media as a personal therapy session, hopefully this episode will finally put to rest Azed's concerning obsession with Jerry Lewis and finally free him to concentrate on his other obsession: the music of John Tesh.

On this episode of Mutiny of Preverts we discuss something quite rare indeed. Along with our special guest, filmmaker Sean Cisterna, we talk about the very best Canadian films of all time, including Hard Core Logo, Dead Ringers, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, Begone Dull Care and a bunch more. We also dig into the inner workings of the Canadian film industry itself. What works? What doesn't? Are we as a country really producing the best cinema we could be? What's holding us back? After an honest and insightful discussion the truth behind all Canadian cinema revealed itself to us like a shining beacon from a plane of existence beyond all human knowledge and understanding. That truth sprouted and swelled inside our minds until we all saw that the one true analogue for all of Canadian cinema is the feminist sit-com classic The Golden Girls. Think about it; David Cronenberg is Bea Arthur, the core figure and ringleader. Denis Villeneuve is Rue McClanahan, the diva who is also (let's face it) kinda slutty (he just can't seem to keep from getting in bed with our American cousins). Guy Maddin is Betty White, the kooky one. And Arthur Lipsett is Estelle Getty, the grump. Whether a film fits into The Golden Girls paradigm should now and forever be the standard by which all Canadian cinema is judged. All else should be expelled from the country and labelled as... oh I don't know, Belgian.

Well, it happened. The pandemic has finally pushed Azed & Jay over the brink and into the mouth of madness. How else to explain this episode, wherein Kieran Dick, a Toronto/Brooklyn experimental video and film artist, who once refused to shake David Bowie's hand, zestfully defends the greasy 80's "comedy" DC Cab?  Kieran is on record declaring that DC Cab is the one movie he would take "into the bunker". Can a movie using Mr. T as it's main selling point really be defended?  Is there a hidden subtext in this otherwise clunky, super-inappropriate movie? Were the 80's all a dream? Tune in to find out. Joining in on the "fun" is comic performer and entrepreneur Trevor Burnett, who classes up the episode with some true Hollywood tales about his time as a  background performer in Billy Madison. And we go full TMZ when Trevor starts throwing shade on Adam Sandler for trying to pick up hot extras on set and having zero game.   NOTE: Azed gets increasingly drunk as the episode progresses and subsequently becomes more belligerent and sloppy than usual.

Here we are at episode 50 for the Mutiny of Preverts podcast! A milestone that neither Azed nor Jay bothered to even mention while recording. Is it because they switched from milk to lead based paint in their breakfast cereal? Or could it be the result of too little grey matter in their temporal lobes? The latter would certainly be fitting since lack of grey matter is one of the signs of psychopathy. And that very mental disorder (and sociopathy too) is the topic for this episode. In particular, Azed and Jay discuss how the loneliness of our times may be particularly fertile ground for the proliferation of sociopathy and the values of the post-Thatcher/Reagan era have been disturbingly kind to the psychopathically inclined. Some of the films discussed are Mike Leigh's Naked, No Country for Old Men, A Clockwork Orange, In a Lonely Place, Man Bites Dog, The Vanishing, Gone Girl and Titanic. *Disclaimer: Any murderous ideation resulting from the listening of this episode is not the responsibility Mutiny of Preverts. Should you decide to act on this ideation you do so at your own risk. P.S. But if you do commit murder please don't just hide the bodies in your crawl space. It's been done. Have a little respect for your craft.

In the first of our new series of "micro-episodes", MoP favourite, Omar Majeed defends the much maligned Adam Sandler movie, Billy Madison (1995).  The conceptual reasoning behind these micro-episodes is to up our production output by doing, what the kids call, a "hot take" on a movie or topic within the cinematic discourse.  Less work, less impressive but a hell of a lotta fun! And these days, don't we all just want a little more fun in our lives? Still, it wouldn't be an MoP episode without some random Lacan references and some unnecessary psychoanalytic cultural theory thrown in there to impress the elites! So don't panic pseudo intellectuals, we will never forget about you, as we are one of you!  NOTE: MoP highly recommends that you re-watch the film in question while high, with multiple s****y snacks, wearing either a "onesie" a "slanket" or just in your underwear, as long as you've been wearing them for at least three days straight.  ENJOY!

We're back with Part 2 of our discussion with Omar Majeed, Tom Alexander and Raul Pinto on our favourite films of 2020. In this part we discuss categories like The Film You Wish You Made, Biggest Disappointment, Most Original Film and Best Old Film You Watched. Same rules apply as last time, no biting, pinching or hair pulling, but crotch shots wholly encouraged! We hope you enjoy.