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.

On the eve of the premiere of not one, but TWO of his Hallmark Christmas movies, screenwriter Russell Hainline joins us to discuss the poster-to-Hallmark-writer pipeline, his upcoming projects The Nights Before Christmas and Mistletoe and Mimosas, and his favorite movie of all time, Mel Brooks’s durable Western spoof Blazing Saddles.

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:

Blazing Saddles is available for digital rental or purchase. If you’d like to try one of our “Double It Up” pairings, the original To Be or Not To Be is streaming on the Criterion Channel and HBO Max; Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank is on Paramount+; Fail-Safe is on Tubi and YouTube; and Miracle Mile is on Tubi, Prime Video, and MGM+. You can read Vincent Canby’s New York Times review here. Oh, and you can buy the Richard Pryor book that Jason references here. 

Russell’s new films are The Nights Before Christmas, premiering on Hallmark November 14th, and Mistletoe and Mimosas, premiering November 15th, with both available next day on Hallmark+. You can check out his website here, and follow him on Bluesky, Letterboxd, and Instagram. 

You can listen to Mike’s new podcast “Whitewashed History” here, and you can also watch his documentary Betrayal at Attica on Tubi and Apple TV+. And Jason’s new book Yippee Ki‐Yay:“Die Hard,” Bruce Willis, and the Reinvention of the Action Movie (out 5/11/27) is now available for preorder from Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Inidigo, or wherever you get your books.

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!