We’re back with an all-new season of Guide for the Film Fanatic! In each episode, Jason Bailey and Mike Hull invite a guest from the world of film (including filmmakers, authors, critics, actors, and more) to select one of the 1600+ “must-see movies” collected in Danny Peary’s seminal 1986 book, Guide for the Film Fanatic. Bailey, Hull, and their guests deep dive on each film, discussing its history, themes, style, performances, initial reception, and legacy, taking a fresh look at some of the most beloved titles in cinema history.

This week, film essayist, podcaster and author of Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA, Will Sloan, joins us for our first discussion of one of the XXX-rated titles in Guide. We’ll discuss the transgressive 1982 adults-only dystopian satire Café Flesh — and the blurry line between mainstream and hardcore.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We’ve partnered up with One Heat Minute Productions on this show, so we’ve migrated over to their feed; subscribe now if you haven’t already. 

We’re also putting our new episodes up on YouTube! Watch the show on our YouTube channel, @guideforthefilmfanatic, for visual accompaniment and bonus stuff and who knows what else:

Café Flesh is, as Will mentioned, available in a new 4K UHD edition; you can also check out the “PG version,” which lops off all the sex, on YouTube. You can read the Chicago Reader review here and the Time Out London review here. Here is the interview with director Stephen Sayadian that we referenced from Interview magazine, and here is the interview with him that we quoted from Screen Anarchy.

You can buy Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA here, and you can visit his website here. You can also follow him on Bluesky, Letterboxd, and Substack, and listen to his podcasts, The Important Cinema Club and Michael & Us.  If you’d like to check out the YouTube page for Mike’s other podcast, “Black Diplomats,” it’s here. And Jason’s book Gandolfini: Jim, Tony, and the Life of a Legend is OUT NOW, and you can order it from MZS Press, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your hardbacks, ebooks, paperbacks, and/or audiobooks. 

Last but not least, if you’d like to make a little donation to support us and the show, you can do that at Ko-fi!