The Hip Pocket #311 - Jonathan Penner

It's weird to talk about careers in Hollywood.

For the vast majority of people who work in the entertainment industry, your "career" is just what happens to you. You are rarely in charge of it. Sure, there are people like Steven Spielberg, who have shaped their path for decades now, but most filmmakers are like Sisyphus, constantly pushing rocks up a hill, and more often than not, getting knocked down before they reach the top. Even some of our most acclaimed writers and directors are scrambling these days to figure out what's next.

Our guest for this special episode of The Hip Pocket is a perfect example of what a Hollywood survivor looks like, and not just because he's been on Survivor three separate times. If you owned a TV in the '90s, you've seen his face because he appeared on every network at some point. He was Oscar-nominated for a short film he made with Jason Alexander and Ed Asner, and his wife, the late great Stacy Title, was a force of nature in the indie scene in her own right.

These days, he's a programmer for the Tribeca Film Festival, which runs from June 3rd to the 14th, and he is specifically part of the Escape from Tribeca section and some of the anniversary screenings, including the Bound reunion that sounds amazing. I'd love to attend the Tribeca Festival one year. I think I was there one time for a single screening, but I've never been to the entire event, and talking to our guest only reinforced how much passion there is behind the line-up every single time.

JONATHAN PENNER is an actor, a screenwriter, a reality TV icon, and a producer. He was on Survivor: Cook Islands, Survivor: Micronesia, and Survivor: Philippines as a contestant, and is best known for the film The Last Supper, which Title directed, as well as the shows The Naked Truth and Rude Awakening. These days, he’s working with the Tribeca Film Festival, where his lifelong love of film has allowed him to step into a whole new role as a curator.

He had a long list of contenders but quickly landed on three radically different movies for his Hip Pocket line-up. We kicked things off with the grimy Wim Wenders film, The American Friend, which is perhaps the strangest film adaptation of any Tom Ripley novel by Patricia Highsmith, featuring a pair of great performances from Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz. Next up, we dug into David Cronenberg’s brilliant The Fly, and things get personal. We wrap it up with the unbridled joy of Rajamouli’s global sensation RRR, which is one of those films that makes you feel better as you discuss it.

Our response film is one of the foundational texts of my teenage years, Alex Cox’s midnight classic Repo Man. We talk about our very different first experiences with the film and what impact it had on us then and now.

And finally, the Hip Pocket Hall of Fame choice for the week felt like a very natural pick when considering the filmmaker cameos in The American Friend and the great Jeff Goldblum performance in The Fly. I know he’s a controversial filmmaker, but I think I make a pretty good case for John Landis’s 1985 flop Into the Night.

We’re shaking things up with the show right now, and we’ll be announcing all the news about it in the weeks ahead. We’re going to be doing a special live episode for the Chattanooga Film Festival again this year, and that’s coming right up, and we’ve got a whole fistful of new episodes recorded and in the process of being put together. If you like The Hip Pocket, tell people about it. We need the word of mouth! You are the most effective advertising we have!

Also, if you want to sponsor The Hip Pocket, we are looking for advertisers now. We want a good fit, though, so reach out to us and let’s see what we can do.

Support The Hip Pocket on BlueSky!

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.