96 Greers

PLUG IT UP!  "It" being your ears with earbuds, to listen to the latest episode of 96 Greers!  We have the iconic split screen mania of Brian di Palma's 1976 Carrie, the very long many shades of gray metaphorically and also the way the screen looks most of the time new Carrie limited series from Mike Flanagan-- but nobody's talking about the 2013 Carrie by Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry), starring Chloë Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore?  Well, Barry and Patrick are, because guess who plays the gym teacher!  This is the longest episode we've done yet, as we cover Stephen King's breakout novel, the potent themes that make it a pillar of pop culture, and the multiple different versions brought to the screen.  
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(Apologies for the weird booming noises, we are getting used to new microphone arms and we kept knocking the springs on them.)

Wake me up when September ends for the next episode of 96 Greers!  Barry and Patrick are talking Ordinary World, a 2016 indie dramedy with a punk approach to screenwriting (short and in need of tuning), starring Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong.  Our intrepid co-hosts take a longview on how bands move from pioneering to mainstream, wonder why punk protagonist Perry is written as such a basket case, and say good riddance to propriety in a very sensual Other Segment. 
 
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If you were watching Oscar bait type movies in the 00s, or if you simply have listened to 96 Greers episode 23 on Men, Women and Children, you are familiar with hypertext movies.  You know, when several short films get edited together into one feature film in a way that seems like it's saying something really deep about the world we live in?  Anyway, that's what this movie is.  Except the characters never talk about the unifying theme, but most of them moodily stare out windows and they all live in New York City and it's September 2002.  Also Edie Falco is in a scene, which is relevant because if you don't want to listen to Patrick and Barry talk about a 9/11 issues movie from the director of Dude, Where's My Car?, you can skip ahead to 1:26:10, where we transition into a spoiler-heavy Sopranos fancast as this episode's Other Segment. 
 
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If you were a hipster in the Aughts, you were only allowed to be horny for two people:  Zooey Deschanel, and Jean Luc Goddard.  Join Patrick and Barry on this lens flare-filled nostalgic road trip to THE GO-GETTER.  We discuss what it meant for a movie to be cool in the moment in cinematic history where we were theoretically part of the cool young person audience, the artists who embodied that cool (Judy Greer?  Maybe!), and how that kind of cool influenced who we were then.  Stick around for a surprisingly elegaic Other Segment!
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Another entry in our Temperature-Agnostic Teen Summer, another movie that Patrick aptly describes as "a clump of indie dramedy gestures."  GRINGA is the story of a bulimic teenager and her completely frictionless journey to repair her relationship with her absentee dad/screenwriter self-insert in a cozy beach town populated with Mexican stereotypes.  It's enough to make you want to speed-run the same complaints we always have about under-baked low-budget indie movies and spend most of the episode talking about the eating disorder melodrama that you're actually interested in... 
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We recorded this second installment of the miniseries we are NOT calling H*t T**n S*mm*r on the United States' Semiquincentennial, talking about Measure of a Man, which takes place during the United States' Bicentennial.  But the movie was made in 2016.  So this is podcast is celebrating the semicentennial of the events of the movie, but the decicentennial of the production of the movie.  Also these anniversaries aren't the measurements that the movie is about, it's about a fat kid who learns how to stand up to a gay Vietnam veteran bully. And Judy Greer is his mom.  The fat kid's, not the Vietnam veteran.  During the United States Bicentennial.  
Check out Barry's (writing as Tessa Racked) blog about fat characters in film, Consistent Panda Bear Shape
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Pride 2026, kicking off Teen Summer (or whatever we're calling it) with Three Months, an indie dramedy about a gay teen navigating a health dilemma in sunny Florida.  Join us for a public health perspective on film criticism, praise for the cast's geriatric MVPs, and an oldie-but-goodie Other Segment!  
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For the Summer of Greer we talked about a film adaptation of a Marvel superhero comic with Ant-Man, and again last year with Ant-Man & the Wasp. Now, on the spring that precedes the Summer of the Name We Haven't Come Up With,  we're talking about an adaptation of an alternative comic:  Daniel Clowes' Wilson.  Both of us are fond of Ghost World, so this movie about a solipsistic loser with no filter played by Woody Harrelson for some reason should be... well, it's also a movie.  
 
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Back at it again at the Music Box Theatre!  Long time listeners may remember in 2023 when Barry and Patrick saw a screening of ERIC LARUE at the Music Box as part of the Chicago International Film Festival and their minds were blown.  This year, the Chicago Critics' Film Festival displayed some excellent taste and included CHILI FINGER as part of their program, which is a small town caper starring John Goodman, Bryan Cranston, Sean Astin and Judy Motherfuckin' Greer.  Can a movie that begs comparisons to the Coen Brothers stand on its own?  Whose finger was in the chili?  And, most important of all, who showed up for the post-screening Q&A?  Only one way to find out, since Chili Finger is still making the rounds at film festivals as of this episode's release.
 
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Do you think dreams are dangerous?  Trying to keep your life together with happy pills and butter?  Sounds like you could learn a little something from Visioneers, in which Zach Galifianakis and Judy Greer live in a society.  Barry and Patrick reminisce about Adult Swim, ponder the revolutionary potential of extra-marital affairs, and present the long-anticipated, user-funded Other Segment. 
The Corporate Indie Canon, orson houellebecq on letterboxd.com 
Music:  "Silver Flame" by Kevin Macleod, incomptech.com.  Licensed under Creative Commons: by Attribution 4.0