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The Pink Smoke podcast: Daily Summaries Delivered
by The Pink Smoke
A podcast on cinema & literature, from Action Jackson to Zeder.
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- Jun 18, 20261h 10m
Ep 168 Kiss of the Spider Woman
Host Martin Kessler welcomes Felicia Maroni, host of the Seeing Faces in Movies podcast, to talk about a movie. Very appropriate, since the movie they're talking about is Hector Babenco's 1985 adaptation of the Miguel Puig book Kiss of the Spider Woman: a movie about talking about movies. The story of a two men trapped together in a Buenos Aires jail cell, its harsh narrative digresses into the memories of fantastical films seen by Molina, persecuted for his homosexuality, as described to his cellmate, political prisoner Valentin. Martin and Felicia also discuss the original novel and Bill Condon's 2025 adaptation of the stage musical, as well as the story's relevance to today's political climate. Martin Kessler on Twitter: x.com/MovieKessler Felicia Maroni on Twitter: x.com/CineMaroni The Seeing Faces in Movies podcast: seeingfacesinmovies.com
- May 7, 20261h 32m
Ep 167 The Seventh
Left burned and cleaned out after the events of The Jugger, Parker is forced to start fresh with a group of six other professional heisters targeting the cash receipts from a big weekend football game. The score itself goes off without a hitch, but a meddling amateur manages to make off with the entire boodle, including Parker's seventh of a cut! One of the legit best books of the entire series, The Seventh boasts some of author Donald Westlake's best precision plotting and most colorful characters. We typically sneer at Parker taking unnecessary risks or making bad decisions, but his bad judgment in this book is so astoundingly lopsided it's fun to just slide along as the floor falls apart beneath him. The Seventh is The Pink Smoke's eighth episode covering Westlake's Parker novels (what?! how did that happen?), and we have a great time discussing both the book and its 1968 film adaptation The Split.
- Apr 15, 20262h 52m
Ep 166 The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones
After struggling to write a novel about the last days of Billy the Kid, travel writer and Mark Twain scholar Charles Neider found his inspiration by heading to the Monterey coast and creating his own version of the "the greatest gunman alive at the time of his death." Published in 1956, The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones is a fictionalized take on the mythologized outlaw, relocating the mesas of New Mexico to the beaches of Ensenada and Punta del diablo and providing a lyrical and haunting prose which ended up inspiring both Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks and Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Despite its almost legendary reputation, Hendry Jones ended up falling into obscurity compared to other lauded 20th century Western novels. If anybody appreciates the influence of an underrated Western book, it's artist/historian David Lambert, who previously talked with us about Richard Brautigan's The Hawkline Monster and Crow Killer by Thorp and Bunker. Lambert returns to the podcast to celebrate the recent republishing of Neider's novel by digging deep into this rich psychological character study and its unique historical and geographical observations, as well as the shockingly faithful screenplay adaptation by Peckinpah and Brando's not-so-faithful screen version. David Lambert on X: x.com/DavidLambertArt David Lambert on bsky: @davidlambertart.bsky.social The Pink Smoke on X: x.com/thepinksmoke John Cribbs on X: x.com/thelastmachine
- Mar 30, 202656 min
Ep 165 Jim McBride's Lost Screenplays
After bursting onto the late 60's cinema scene with the independent underground hit David Holtzman's Diary and entering the 70's with the post-apocalyptic counter-cultural romance Glen and Randa, Jim McBride began work on two very different screenplays. The first was Gone Beaver, the genre-bending tale of a brawny mountain man and his adventures in the wilderness, and the second is My Girlfriend's Girlfriend, a contemporary comedy-drama about the love lives of young New Yorkers. Ultimately neither film was produced, although the script for Gone Beaver has circulated among film scholars and gained a reputation as one of the great unrealized acid westerns. Both scripts are now finally available together in a new publication titled Jim McBride's Lost Screenplays of the 1970s. The Pink Smoke welcomes Jim McBride and the book's editor James Kenney to discuss the origins of these scripts, why their productions never saw fruition and how their author feels about them over 50 years after their inception. In this fantastic conversation, Mr. McBride also shares anecdotes about some of his well known 80's work, Breathless and Great Balls of Fire! Information on the book: stickingplacebooks.com/books/gone-beaver-and-my-girlfriend-s-girlfriend The Pink Smoke on Twitter: x.com/thepinksmoke James Kenney on Twitter: x.com/jfkenney
- Feb 9, 20261h 55m
Ep 164 The Jugger
The Pink Smoke is back on track, picking up with the sixth entry of Donald E. Westlake's Parker series. A true outlier, The Jugger doesn't feature an epic heist or a ragtag mix of reliable and backstabbing criminals. In this one Parker's all alone, dropped into a situation he's not sure about, forced to make decisions that will have giant ramifications on his life and the series moving forward. We also discuss Made in U.S.A., Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 adaptation of The Jugger which is technically the first Parker movie even though you really have to squint to find any tract of Westlake. For one thing...Parker is a woman. And it just gets more estranged from the source material from there.
- Jan 6, 20261h 26m
Ep 163 The Maya and Science Fiction
Star Trek episodes, the title credits of Alien, the architecture of Star Wars and Blade Runner, the work of Joseph Campbell, H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker and Alejandro Jodorowsky. You'd be surprised how many iconic artworks have been influenced by transformative themes traced back to Mesoamerican mythology and Ancient Maya theology. On this episode, host Martin Kessler is joined by Mesoamerican occultist Solomon Pakal to discuss the Mesoamerican influence on science fiction/fantasy and horror. If you enjoy this chat make sure to hop back to Episode 69, in which Martin goes deep into Apocalypto, Mel Gibson's Mesoamerican action movie. The Pink Smoke on Twitter: x.com/ThePinkSmoke Martin Kessler on Twitter: x.com/MovieKessler Solomon Pakal on Substack: solomonpakal.com
- Dec 25, 20252h 25m
Parker Doesn't Say 'Merry Christmas': A 2025 Holiday Special
In this super-sized episode of our ongoing series where we discuss the exploits of career criminal Parker from the books by Richard Stark a.k.a. Donald E. Westlake, we're tackling three big Parker-based works. We start by jumping ahead in our chronological reviews to discuss The Handle, the eighth book in the Parker series, in which our professional thief is enlisted by a former enemy syndicate to rob an island casino and burn it to the ground. Next, we dive into the new Shane Black written and directed adaptation Play Dirty, starring Mark Wahlberg as Parker and LaKeith Stanfield as fellow heister Alan Grofield. This opens up the table to talk about Westlake's spin-off series starring Grofield, with its first book The Damsel. It's an epic conversation with some surprising developments and unexpected turns - much like a job pulled off by Parker or Grofield!
- Dec 16, 20251h 28m
Ep 162 The Score
With the fifth entry of the Parker series, The Score, Richard Stark aka Donald E. Westlake puts his career criminal anti-hero in charge of his most ambitious heist yet: the 12-man robbery of a North Dakota mining town. This allows the author to expand the violent world of Parker by introducing a slew of fresh characters, including thespian-thief Alan Grofield, who would go on to star in four solo novels of his own. We discuss the series' change in scope and structure in a book that would set the scene moving forward, the first of several to make the spectacular job the whole show. We also talk about the little-seen French movie adaptation, the introduction of this goofball Grofield and why Parker insists on taking jobs with such obvious risks. The Score artwork by Tony Stella. The Pink Smoke on Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / "Tea for Two" Outro music: Marcus Pinn / "Vegas"
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About The Pink Smoke podcast
A podcast on cinema & literature, from Action Jackson to Zeder.
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