About this episode
We’re all Golden Eagles here. Gemma is away on festival assignment, so filling in for her we’ve got Letterboxd senior editor and Weekend Watchlist co-host Mitchell Beaupre ! Slim and Mitchell are joined by Julian Higgins , director and co-writer of God’s Country —his neo-Western debut feature which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and is hitting theaters September 16 from IFC Films. We also dive deep into Julian’s four favorite films: Rashomon ; Chimes at Midnight ; The Return and Foxcatcher . Plus: Julian growing up with college professor cinephile parents; why he’s never seen a single Star Wars movie (hint: those two things are related); why is everyone in Rashomon sweating so much?; Toshiro Mifune is the last 30 seconds of a bag of Skittles; Slim (still) isn’t a Shakespeare person; the relentless pursuit of making a juicy period epic; going “full-on Orson Welles”; Thandiwe Newton having bigger balls than Slim; “We all gotta play by the same rules if this is gonna work”; Julian being afraid of reading reviews from writers he loves; Mitchell watching Foxcatcher in the heart of du Pont country; rich people can get away with anything; ornithologist, philatelist, philanthropist; nostalgia for HD DVD and how they made Slim’s dad cry, and Julian’s childhood hero Basil Rathbone. Credits : This episode was recorded in Los Angeles, Delaware and Pennsylvania, and edited by Slim. Facts by Jack . Booker: Brian Formo . Transcript by Sophie Shin . Art by Samm . Theme: ‘Vampiros Dancoteque’ by Moniker . Lists and links : The Letterboxd list of films mentioned; The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune by Stuart Goldbraith IV; The Criterion Collection’s HQ page; Julian’s Instagram, Winter Light by James Lee Burke; New Novel, New Wave, New Politics: Fiction and the Representation of History in Postwar France by Lynn A. Higgins—Julian’s mother Reviews of Rashomon by Esther Rosenfield and DallasFrance , Chimes at Midnight by Alyssa Heflin , God’s Country by Brian Tallerico , The Return by Marcissus