A podcast with Sam Rockwell, Tony Goldwyn, and Betty Anne Waters on the film Conviction

By Adam Lippe

Here’s a podcast about the film Conviction with star Sam Rockwell, director Tony Goldwyn, and subject Betty Anne Waters. [You can read a review of the film here.] While this may seem like a normal roundtable podcast, it is not. This is because I recently got a complaint from another reporter that I was using his questions and stealing his soul while he, I, and other journalists were attending a to-be-recorded, public roundtable. This, despite the fact that this person had appeared in many of my podcasts before and I identified him by name whenever possible — so it isn’t as if he hasn’t been properly represented. As a result, I felt obligated (though not legally, everyone’s tape recorders are running during these interviews, and questions asked are basically public domain by that point) to remove this person from the podcasts. And in this particular recording, just to be safe, I’ve removed everyone else and replaced them with their questions re-written and paraphrased and recorded by a terrible, terrible Alan Arkin impressionist. Why Arkin? Well doesn’t Arkin’s persona emanate from every film critic, anyway?

Covered in the 25-minute podcast are subjects like Tony Goldwyn’s view of his own role in the remake of The Last House on the Left; how Hilary Swank — who played Betty Anne in the film — can fool the real Betty Anne’s children into believing that she’s their mom; Sam Rockwell theorizing that his role as a CIA assassin in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind did not color his view of government policies; Goldwyn passionately detailing the struggle regarding removing a crucial bit of information in the film that would have colored the entire movie; and, most importantly, you’ll probably learn how to do a really awful Alan Arkin impression.

P.S. The rumor is that the first actress who was supposedly cast in the Betty Anne role before Swank that Goldwyn refers to (but not by name) was Naomi Watts.

Download the full interview.
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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.