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.

Isaac Butler’s phenomenal new book, The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art, and the Birth of America's Culture Wars, is a detailed examination of the intersection of art and politics in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s — just like Bob Fosse’s 1972 film adaptation of the Weimar-set Broadway smash Cabaret. We discuss both in this week’s can’t-miss episode!

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:

Cabaret is streaming on Tubi and Hoopla; it’s also available on Blu-ray and for digital rental or purchase. You can read Roger Greenspun’s New York Times review here, Pauline Kael’s New Yorker review here, Roger Ebert’s Chicago Sun-Times review here, and Jay Cocks’s Time review here. Here is is the front page Times story Mike read from about the Howard Hughes “biography.” 

You can buy The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art, and the Birth of America's Culture Wars here, and you can visit his Substack here. You can also follow him on Bluesky and Instagram, and read the excerpt we mentioned in The New Yorker here. If you’d like to check out the YouTube page for Mike’s other podcast, “Black Diplomats,” it’s here; you can also watch his documentary that we mentioned, Betrayal at Attica, on Tubi and Apple TV+. 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!