Paul Schrader's Blue Collar, Jacques Tourneur, and more with Bruce Bennett

Plus the gift of links, and my latest interviews: Hong Chau and Vicky Krieps

Dear The Last Thing I Sawfolk,

Happy holidays and glad tidings to all! Squeaking in on Christmas Eve, I’m posting an enlightening conversation I had with writer Bruce Bennett. This time we begin with Paul Schrader’s debut feature as a director, Blue Collar, and oh, the places we go. Believe it or not, this is a continuation of our earlier conversation, and the conclusion is, thanks to the marvelous mind of Bruce Bennett, quite something.

I’ve also posted an assortment of streaming picks to see you through the next week or so, and links to interviews with two of the year’s great performers: Hong Chau (times three) and Vicky Krieps. Will this be all you hear from the podcast for 2022? Just to be sure, don’t look away from this screen.

Give the gift of supporting my whole cute podcast thing! Button below. And thank you to all my listeners, readers, and supporters who have made The Last Thing I Saw into America’s favorite baking show.

Hooray!

Nic

THE PODCAST

Bruce Bennett on Blue Collar, Canyon Passage, Ragtime, Ken Burns (Episode 153)

Bruce Bennett is a scriptwriter, story producer, musician, and as a critic, has published widely including in the Wall Street Journal and back in the day The New York Sun. The Arrow streaming service he mentions can be found here.

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are also available at other podcast places such as Spotify.

For more information on the podcast’s opening and closing music by The Minarets (gratefully used with permission), follow the band on Instagram:

@theminaretsmusic

RECENT WRITING

For W Magazine, I did two new interviews. I spoke with the incredible Hong Chau about three recent films she’s in (and excellent in three very different ways): The Whale, Showing Up, and The Menu. And then I talked with Corsage star Vicky Krieps, who plays Empress Sissi, of whom a contemporary said: “Her soul is like a chaotic museum.”

For The New York Times, I reviewed See You Friday, Robinson, the epistolary film that connected Jean-Luc Godard and Ebrahim Golestan, showing them muse on life and cinema from their respective refuges.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Delectable selections for home viewing.

Fallen Angel (Criterion)

Terminator 2 (HBO MAX)

Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (Netflix)

Derek Jarman x 9 (Metrograph) Including Caravaggio, Sebastiane, and The Last of England

L’Enfant (Criterion)

Possession (Metrograph) Wrote about this for Artforum back in the day

Faces Places (MUBI)

THE END

Here I may end with a song. R.I.P. Mike Hodges, director of Get Carter.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold.

Besides hosting a podcast, I’m a writer and an editor. My features, interviews, festival dispatches, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Sight & Sound, Artforum, Filmmaker, and W Magazine (and have appeared in dearly departed publications such as The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine).

I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment, where I was for 15 years. There I assigned and edited both web and print editorial, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks and screenings, curated Film Comment Selects, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment was subsequently awarded the Film Heritage Award by the National Society of Film Critics (an honor historically awarded to the Museum of Modern Art and other institutions).

Feel free to get in touch re: writing, editing, moderating, programming, podcasting, etc.

nicolas.rapold@gmail.com