Two legends of American cinema discuss Altman, aging, Beatty, baseball, Coppola, Groucho, marriage, the state of the world...

Robert Downey (Putney Swope) Talks with Elliott Gould for The Talkhouse Film Podcast

core/paragraph

type

providerNameSlug

responsive

core/embed

core/html

Chase Joynt is a non-fiction filmmaker and writer whose latest film, <a href="https://www.thefilmcollaborative.org/films/stateoffirsts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">State of Firsts</a>, about Rep. Sarah McBride, is playing in theaters across the US from June 26. His documentary features The Nest (with Julietta Singh) and State of Firsts both premiered in 2025, at Hot Docs and Tribeca, respectively. His documentary feature Framing Agnes was named a Best Movie of the Year by The New Yorker after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the NEXT Innovator Award and the NEXT Audience Award. The film has played more than 100 festivals internationally and is distributed by Kino Lorber. With Aisling Chin-Yee, Chase co-directed No Ordinary Man, which was presented at Cannes Docs, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and was hailed by The New Yorker as “a genre unto itself” and Indiewire as “the future of trans cinema.” For the CW, Chase directed episodes of Two Sentence Horror Stories which are now streaming on Netflix; his episode Elliot from Season 2 won a Telly Award for directing. He is the co-author of three non-fiction books, including the Lambda Literary Award Finalist You Only Live Twice with Mike Hoolboom and Boys Don’t Cry with Morgan M Page. His latest book, Vantage Points, was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust of Canada Prize for Nonfiction and named a Best Book of the Year by CBC Books, The Walrus and Autostraddle. (Photo by Amos Mac.)

Chase Joynt

Film

A Trans Lens, a Cinema of Defiance

Ash Mayfair&#8216;s new feature, <a href="https://www.filmmovementplus.com/videos/skin-of-youth-trailer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Skin of Youth</a>, an all-consuming love story between a transgender singer and a dog-cage fighter set in 1990s Saigon, Vietnam, is out now on Film Movement Plus from June 26. She was born in Vietnam and educated in the UK and the US. Ash received a BA from Oxford University for English Literature, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London for theatre directing and received an MFA in filmmaking at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Her first feature, The Third Wife, was released by Film Movement in 2019 and is now available through leading digital platforms and Film Movement Plus. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the NETPAC Jury Award, and also won awards at the San Sebastian, Milano, Chicago, Minsk, Kolkata and Cairo film festivals.

Ash Mayfair

Transgender / Transcendence

Avalon Fast’s new film <a href="https://darkskyfilms.com/film/camp/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CAMP</a> hits theaters on June 26. They hail from Vancouver Island, BC, and their first film, Honeycomb, which was selected for the 2022 Slamdance Film Festival and went on to screen at Boston Underground, Calgary Underground, Etheria LA, Fantasia, and many more. In 2026, they premiered Drinking and Driving &#8211; co-directed, co-starring, and co-written with Jillian Frank &#8211; at the Los Angeles Festival of Movies. In addition to writing and directing, Fast recently starred in Louise Weard’s cultural breakout trans DIY epic Castration Movie Anthology, co-starred in prolific young filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay’s sapphic horror The Serpent’s Skin, and appeared in Jane Schoenbrun’s recent Cannes sensation Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

Avalon Fast

Everything is Ending, Everything is Ending

Nick Dawson talks with filmmakers, musicians and comedians whose work he loves, avoiding the mundane, predictable questions they&#8217;ve heard numerous times and instead asking substantive, thoughtful questions that get to the heart of who they are.

Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That

Podcast

Nobody’s Ever Asked Me That: Goran Stolevski

Brian d’Arcy James is currently starring in <a href="https://edwardburns.net/projects/finnegans-foursome/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Finnegan’s Foursome</a>, the new family-themed comedy drama from writer-director-actor Edward Burns, which is now on digital. His other recent film credits include two other films for Burns, Millers in Marriage and The Family Mcmullen, as well as Pain Hustlers opposite Emily Blunt and Chris Evans and She Came To Me, alongside Anne Hathaway, Peter Dinklage and Marissa Tomei. He was Officer Krupke in the Oscar-Nominated West Side Story, directed by Steven Spielberg, co-starred in The Kitchen opposite Melissa McCarthy, and gave standout performances in First Man, Molly’s Game and Spotlight, for which he won a SAG Aaward. On TV, he recently starred in The Copenhagen Test on Peacock, the David E. Kelly miniseries Love and Death, opposite Elizabeth Olsen. Brian has starred in fifteen shows on Broadway, most recently Into the Woods and The Ferryman, and has been nominated for five Tony Awards. He originated the role of King George in Hamilton.

Brian d’Arcy James

Three Great Things: Brian d’Arcy James

Nazanin Boniadi is an acclaimed British-Iranian actress and deeply committed human and women’s rights activist. Her new film, the adoption drama A Mosquito in the Ear, also starring Jake Lacy and Ruhi Pal, is in theaters now. Boniadi recently appeared in the Amazon series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. On the big screen, she appeared in Lionsgate’s Fox News drama Bombshell, opposite Margot Robbie, Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, and John Lithgow, and starred in the drama Hotel Mumbai, opposite Dev Patel. In addition to her passion for the arts, Boniadi is a dedicated human and women’s rights advocate with a focus on Iran. In 2020, she was appointed as an Amnesty International UK Ambassador. That same year, Boniadi released a short documentary film that she produced for ATTN: called Stateless, which chronicles her trip to refugee camps in Calais and Dunkirk to expose the plight of Iranian refugees and other asylums seekers who have been forced to leave their homes in an effort to find freedom, safety and to create a better life for their children.

Nazanin Boniadi

Three Great Things: Nazanin Boniadi

Creative

Footer Legal

Main

NavBar

Sections

Topics

Become a subscriber today to get unlimited access

Thanks for reading!

Register to continue

Talkhouse

798: French Training, Japanese Soul: Tadashi Ono’s Long Road Home

<div class="gs">
<div class=" ">
<div id=":1xc" class="ii gt adO">
<div id=":1xb" class="a3s aiL ">
<div id="avWBGd-223">
<div dir="auto">
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">
Curls Ultra is an underground post groovy rock band and activist network based in America. The band is known for their exhilarating live shows which feature Boredoms-esque noise jams, Can-inspired kosmiche grooves, and tender ballads depicting the degradation of the American psyche. They have performed at Pitchfork Music Festival, toured across multiple countries and opened for or collaborated with Tame Impala, Ariel Pink, Frank Hurricane, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Wild Pink, Salesforce Child, and most recently Tim Heidecker’s Dekkar.
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="avWBGd-224" class="WhmR8e" data-hash="0"></div>
</div>
</div>

Curls Ultra

Music

Mood Board: Curls Ultra’s American Blood

Janes Addiction’s “Ritual de lo Habitual”

797: Rita Gigante Grew Up the Godfather’s Daughter. Now She’s Sharing Classic Italian American Spots on Instagram.

962. – Chris & Jason

In the 1960s, Robert Downey began writing and directing basement-budget, absurdist films that gained an underground following: Balls Bluff, Babo 73, Chafed Elbows, No More Excuses and Putney Swope, the first Downey film to earn a mainstream release. The irreverence continued in later decades with Greaser’s Palace, Pound, Sticks and Bones (a play for the New York Public), Two Tons of Turquoise, Hugo Pool and Rittenhouse Square, a 2005 documentary.

Robert Downey

post

A former accountant and attorney, Van Billet transitioned from the business world at age 52 to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a screenwriter. Since then, several of his screenplays have earned critical acclaim, including Saving Paradise, which was produced in 2020. His screenplay <a href="https://www.jaysilvermanproductions.com/yale" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Yale</a> was produced in 2025 and on June 18, 2026 will have its world premiere as the opening-night film at Dances With Films. His next screenplay, Circumstantial Evidence, is about to be sold. Van’s screenplays are character-driven, exploring human frailty, ambition, and moral conflict. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Van now splits his time between Philadelphia and Naples, Florida.

Van Billet

The Charm, the Audacity and the Emptiness Underneath