The Whole Movie Podcast

Blade Runner (1982) — The We Stand With The Replicants Episode

What more is there to say about this week's Botcast movie? Blade Runner has been discovered every way from Sunday for 40 years. It's a landmark of the robot cinema canon. It's a science fiction masterpiece. It's also... a story about queers? Probably! Because everyone who's anyone knows that robots are canonically queer, and Margot and Jordan just want these Replicants to be able to live in peace with their chosen family and not have to worry about the asshole humans running in and trying to ruin (re: end) their lives. Come with us to 2019 Los Angeles. Pris is boiling eggs and Roy is cradling birds, and we're all out here dreaming of electric sheep.

Produced by: Jordan Crucchiola

Music by: Margot Carlson

Hugs for: Super Yaki

A.I. (2001) — The Jordan Gets Traumatized Episode

Hello everyone, and welcome to the third season of The Whole Movie Podcast, aka THE BOTCAST! Your co-host Jordan Crucchiola is joined this season by her dear friend: the robot scholar and screenwriter Margot Carlson. The Botcast was born of their shared love for robot cinema and mutual pledge to join the android uprising when the war between humans and synthetics begins. And to get the show started, Margot is putting Jordan through something she's sworn off for 20 years... the movie 2001 A.I. from director Steven Spielberg! It's not that Jordan thought it was bad. It's just that Jordan thought it would be too sad to handle, and she was absolutely right — but she was also pleasantly surprised to find it's such a rich text for talking about the responsibility humans have to their robot creations, the recurrent robot cinema theme of passing, and the double standard around bloodlust for humans and bloodlust for bots. We're calling our shot and swinging for the fences. Welcome to the Botcast.

Produced by: Jordan Crucchiola

Music by: Margot Carlson

High fives to: Super Yaki

The Whole Movie Podcast Season 3 Teaser: Botcast!

The Whole Movie Podcast is back, and this time it's got at least 500% more robots. Jordan Crucchiola is back and joined this time by co-host Margot Carlson so the two can discuss one of their greatest cinematic loves: robots on film. Margot — an actual academic specialist in the subject — will bring the scholarship while Jordan brings the sheer enthusiasm, and both will meet in the middle with their shared sense of endless empathy for our synthetic brethren. Together they will discuss robots as metaphors for practically everything, what makes them queer (also practically everything), what side they will take when the singularity arrives and it's man v. machine, and so much more. Welcome to the Botcast.

Produced by: Jordan Crucchiola

Music by: Margot Carlson

BONUS — The Voyeurs (2021)

On this special episode of The Whole Movie Podcast, Jordan follows her obsession to its source. After watching the 2021 erotic thriller The Voyeurs, which sent her into a tweetstorming tail spin as she soaked up every beautifully batty twist and turn, she had to have a conversation almost as long as the movie itself with writer and director Michael Mohan about every little thing. The Voyeurs feels cut straight from the cloth of the erotic thriller zenith, those lawless 90s, when sexy trash was king and femme fatales were in high supply. The plot is: Sydney Sweeney's Pippa and her man Thomas (Justice Smith) move into a gorgeous apartment across the street from a volatile, gorgeous couple whose lives they become ensorcelled by from across the way. The spying leads to secrets kept, and secrets shared lead to harrowing outcomes. The Voyeurs is doing the at every turn, and Mohan was grateful enough to go long on his wilding entertaining new film.

Produced by: Jordan Crucchiola

”I ate her...”

In the finale episode of The Neon Demon Pod, Roxana, William, and Jordan bear witness to Sarah coming into her ultimate power and Gigi succumbing to the fickle whims of the beauty beast. You've come a long way with your co-hosts — considering beautiful ghosts, Dracula's brides, Refn's work as his own personal drag show, the limits of consent in a world where one is utterly out of control, what it would be like to have Abbey Lee bearing down on you while carrying a fire iron — and now you've come to the end. No one can answer the question for you of whether or not you should eat the eye ball, but hopefully, The Demon Pod has given you a lot to consider while making your choice.

Produced by: Jordan Crucchiola

”You‘re a dangerous girl”

As the Neon Demon pod approaches its finale, Roxana, Jordan, and William finally reach the point where this story explodes into its final form. Gone is the metaphor, the artifice, the performance of humanity. Now it's time for cruelty, cannibalism, murder, ruthless beauty, and asexual group showers in bisexual lighting. "You're a dangerous girl" takes our co-hosts to the Paramour Mansion, where Jesse will embrace the thrill of her newfound power just as the witches around her assemble to take it from her. It's a study in perspectives as one character fancies herself a god, while everyone else has designs on her as a sacrifice, and your heroic trio is here to parse the effects of the beauty industrial complex on pretty girls and the men who covet them.

Produced by: Jordan Crucchiola

”beauty isn‘t everything; it‘s the only thing”

In this week's episode of The Neon Demon pod, Roxana, William, and Jordan talk about the film's crystal clear thesis statement: Beauty isn't everything, as the bitch fashion designer Sarno tells us. It's the only thing. And that means it's time to take it to the catwalk! Jesse slays another dragon in the form of Gigi and struts to her destiny in front of flashing bulbs and adoring onlookers. This is also the moment when Neon becomes the movie it was meant to be, and your co-hosts are here to unpack pretty privilege, Dean's hollow virtue, who else the demon might have visited before this, knife-wielding predator Keanu, and more. 

Produced by: Jordan Crucchiola

"I'm a ghost"

This is the episode that William and Jordan have been waiting for, the Abbey Lee special, the brutal go see, the cruelty of pure and utter objectification. In this installment of the Neon Demon pod, your co-hosts will hone in on "I'm a ghost" by talking through the diner scene between Ruby and her wicked step daughters and the runway audition that follows — or, as Nicolas Winding Refn calls it: the slaughterhouse. Your heroic trio also finally gets their chance to dissect the film's most honest and devastating scene, when Lee's Sarah probes Elle Fanning's Jesse about the profound power of beauty. As Roxana so appropriately says: "This fucking movie, man..."

Produced by: Jordan Crucchiola

"Is there a problem?"

You've considered the question "Are you food, or are you sex?" But now The Neon Demon pod presents you with another: "Is there a problem?" So far, Roxana, Jordan, and William have set the stage for Demon with a look at Nicolas Winding Refn's career and laid a foundation for the predator/prey relationship between Elle Fanning's Jesse and her pseudo-vampiric fashion industry cohort. For this episode, your co-hosts will now brace themselves for a breakdown of one of the film's most excruciating scenes, the closed set photoshoot with star photographer Jack, that features young Jesse stripped down to nothing but gold paint with a grown man's hands all over her. So, let's all get uncomfortable and consider the limits of the phrase "well nothing happened," Jesse as subject vs. object, and the dangerous nature of Ruby.

Produced by: Jordan Crucchiola

"I can make money off pretty"

In the world of Neon Demon, you're only worth as much as your body can get you in trade — for money, status, power, love, respect — and it's with that in hand that Jordan, Roxana, and William consider the subtle devastation of "I can make money off pretty" in this week's Neon Demon-cast. Your co-hosts will discuss how the movie is basically a black mirror version of Elle Fanning's real life, the perfection of casting Christina Hendricks as a ruthless modeling agency exec, the myth of the "nice guy", and so much more. Welcome back to our tour of the fantastique. 

Produced by: Jordan Crucchiola