Episode 55: 1999 with Brian Raftery
A podcast about the great movie years.
Brian Raftery is the host of the excellent narrative podcasts Gene and Roger and Do We Get to Win This Time? for the Ringer and Spotify; he’s also SUCH an expert on the movies of 1999, he wrote an entire book about them: the wonderful Best. Movie. Year. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen. He joins us to talk about why Election still hits, why Eyes Wide Shut has had such a wild afterlife, how The Blair Witch Project is somehow underrated, and much more.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Election is streaming on Max and Kanopy, and is available for digital rental or purchase or on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection. Three Kings is available for digital rental or purchase.
The Blair Witch Project is streaming on the Criterion Channel, MUBI, Plex, and Freevee. The Insider is available for digital rental or purchase.
And Eyes Wide Shut is available for digital rental or purchase as well. If you’d like to hear our conversation about that one, with past and future guest Alonso Duralde, you can listen to that old bonus episode here.
More fun links: if you’d like to watch the Curse of the Blair Witch special we discussed, you can find it on Vimeo. And if you’d like to see the “An Intimate Look Inside the Acting Process with Ice Cube” featurette (and you don’t mind watching it stretched to 16x9), it’s the first two minutes of this YouTube video; you can also find it on the Three Kings DVD. (And how’s about a damn Blu-ray, WB?)
You can buy Best. Movie. Year. Ever. here, listen to Gene and Roger here, and listen to Do We Get to Win This Time here. And if you’d like to hear our first 1999 episode, with guest Drew McWeeny, you can do that here.
You can follow Jason on Blusky, Instagram, and Letterboxd - where you'll find his lists of all the movies on every episode of the show (including this one!). And you can follow Mike on Blusky and Twitter/X/whatever.