A Podcast with Roger Nygard, the Director of Trekkies, Suckers, and his new documentary The Nature of Existence

By Adam Lippe

Here’s a podcast with Roger Nygard, the director of Trekkies, Trekkies 2, High Strung (w/Steve Odekerk and Jim Carrey), Back to Back: American Yakuza 2, Suckers, and his new documentary The Nature of Existence. This hour long podcast covers such topics as how to sell your movie in Japan by adding a vs. to the title, how fans of the new Star Trek remake would change the inevitable Trekkies 3, why his fiction films are so damning of humanity and yet his documentaries are so non-judgmental, how to trust your judgment about how foolish you may or may not make your subjects look, and why it sometimes takes the Russian mob to get a Jim Carrey comedy financed.

As per the usual, seeing the films would help your understanding of the podcast, but it’s not a necessity, and you’ll still learn plenty about the low-budget world. Plus there’s a really good story about Elie Samaha.

If you want to learn more about Roger, you can go to his websites, RogerNygard.com and TheNatureofExistence.com.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking below or downloading it to your computer.

Download the full interview.
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Now on DVD and Blu-Ray

Roadracers

By Adam Lippe

Whenever there’s a genre parody or ode to a specific era of films, such as Black Dynamite’s mocking of Blaxploitation films or Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the second half of Grindhouse, the danger is that the film might fall into the trap of either being condescending without any particular insight, or so faithful that it becomes the very flawed thing it is emulating.

Black Dynamite has nothing new to say about Blaxploitation films, it just does a decent job of copying what an inept [...]


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On Cold Fish:

Though the 16 year old me described the 1994 weepie Angie, starring Geena Davis as a Brooklyn mother raising her new baby alone, as “maudlin and melodramatic,” Roger Ebert, during his TV review, referring to the multitude of soap-operaish problems piling up on the titular character, suggested that it was only in Hollywood where Angie would get a happy ending. “If they made this movie in France, Angie would have shot herself.”

Well Cold Fish was made in Japan, where Angie would have shot herself and that would have been the happy ending.