The Hip Pocket #308 - Dan Fienberg

One of the strange side-effects of the pandemic is how rare it is for me to get sick these days.

We still mask at the grocery store and do our best to protect ourselves in any situation where we’re around a lot of people. I’m 55, and at this point, getting sick really kicks my ass. I used to get sick all the time, especially when I went to film festivals. I could pretty much count on five or six nasty chest colds per year, and often more than that. The kids brought everything home from school, which guaranteed a few extra colds. It was amazing how used to it I was. These days, if I’m really sick once a year, it’s a big deal, and sure enough, the last few weeks were one of those rare instances. Whatever it was, it landed on me first, and then my girlfriend, so between the two of us, we’ve had a solid two weeks of it in the house.

I’m getting close to the end of the Ghost migration, but the final step is something I have to do manually, one person at a time, and it’s a time-consuming pain in the butt. All of this has kept me from being able to deal with the podcast, and I apologize. We’ve got a fistful of them recorded now and ready to drop for you guys, starting today with an old buddy from my HitFix days.

We’ll have a few weeks of new episodes in a row, then a short break for the holidays, and then we’ll be back with the back half of this season. I am excited by how many new faces there are in the mix, and I look forward to introducing some of these guests to you as I get to know them at the same time. Today, though, I reached out to one half of the HitFix TV team, because I know for a fact that this friend watches a ton of movies and has some closely-held favorites.

DAN FIENBERG has been the Chief Television Critic at The Hollywood Reporter for a decade now and hosts TV’s Top 5, a weekly television podcast for the trade. He also writes the Now See This newsletter and was the president of the Television Critics Association. He was a co-founder of HitFix, one of the original writers for the site, and I have spent an enormous amount of time at film festivals and industry events with him. He was part of the Firewall & Iceberg podcast with Alan Sepinwall, and I felt genuinely lucky to work at a publication with the two of them. They are consummate professionals and good all-around dudes, and there was no way I was going to do this podcast without having them as guests eventually.

Anyone who follows Dan on any social media platform is familiar with his long-standing use of Gizmo as his icon, so it should not be a shock that he picked Joe Dante’s Gremlins as his first film. His second pick is another film he has always given a lot of public love, Chris Noonan’s magical Babe. Finally, he threw a real curveball at us with an intense ‘70s film that people don’t discuss nearly as often as they should, Sidney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Craig picked our response film this week, and when you hear his reasoning behind the choice to program Hot to Trot, a talking horse comedy from the ‘80s, I think you’ll be as entertained as we were.

Finally, my choice for the Hip Pocket Hall of Fame this week is a nod both to Craig’s unorthodox choice and my history with Dan, since he was at Sundance with me the year I saw Bobcat Goldthwait’s caustic World’s Greatest Dad.

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The Hip Pocket is hosted by Drew McWeeny and Aundria Parker.
Craig Ceravolo is the show’s bandleader and producer.
It is a Formerly Dangerous Production.