It’s Episode 2, Season 1 of the SAGA Pod. Okay, I fixed my biggest production problem with some sound foam, so that this week it doesn’t sound like I’m recording from my bathroom. (I still have sound-level fluctuation. One fix at time.) Which is good, because it allows you to concentrate on my two guests:
First we talk to Matt Zoller Seitz, who started his career at the Dallas Observer and who now is the TV critic for New York magazine and Vulture.com, as well as editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com. His new book, The Wes Anderson Collection (trailer above), is just out, and we talk about the relationship between Dallas and Anderson’s first feature, Bottle Rocket. (Your background reading: this 10,000-word Observer cover story on the making of Bottle Rocket. It’s completely worth it, if only for the opening scene when James Caan head-butts Luke Wilson.) Seitz explains how Anderson got away from his feeling that movie runtimes should be under 100 minutes, how Rushmore is like an egg, why the Life Aquatic is Seitz’s favorite Anderson film, why Bottle Rocket is the best “Dallas movie” ever, and how the Twitter “baby picture” reaction to Seitz’s book has overwhelmed him. You should listen to it and then go see Matt on November 7 at the Texas Theater for a big-screen presentation of Bottle Rocket. Bonus: My awkward interview dismount!
Then we talk to Jim Schutze about the semi-conclusion of the Mike Miles saga (it’s really like the end of a movement in a long, sad, crazy composition), and how the anti-Miles forces (half the school board, the teacher’s unions) have only just begun to fight. Also: We explore the conspiracy theories about who paid for the anti-Miles robo-calls, seniority pay vs. merit pay for teachers, and why one of us says “I hate rich white businessmen.” Then we chat about the city manager search. Bonus: Amazing Laura Miller story!
You should be able to see it listed here, but for some reason it’s not showing up yet, even though it is downloading if you’ve subscribed on iTunes or to the RSS feed. I’ll update when it’s showing in the iTunes list, but in the meantime just go into iTunes, click on Subscribe to Podcast under the File menu, and paste in the RSS feed http://sagapod.libsyn.com/rss. It shows up then. Or listen here. here and listen in your browser Enjoy.
