The Hip Pocket #401 - John Gholson

Things are changing at The Hip Pocket.

When I had the idea for this show originally, it was meant to be a game. I wanted to find some people who would enjoy playing that game with me, and it was a process to put this particular trio together. I feel like I got very lucky, too, because I knew Aundria Parker online, but not in person, and I wasn’t sure what it would be like to throw her and my old friend Craig Ceravolo together. They clicked immediately, and it makes me genuinely happy every time we fire up the StreamYard to record a new episode.

We’ve been talking about what we want from the show, and I think all three of us agree that it’s time to start growing this thing. It took us a while to get it down technically and to figure out what we’re doing with guests, and we’ve reached a point where we feel comfortable producing the show now. We know what that feels like. We know how to have fun doing it. And while we originally were talking about doing all of this in groups of ten or twenty, season by season, with pauses in-between, we all feel like it’s hard to get any momentum when we do that. So we’ve made the decision as a group to move to a weekly format, with between forty-six and forty-eight episodes per year. We’re going to be dark the last two weeks of the year, because you really don’t want to hear us blathering on about movies when you’re neck-deep in the holidays. Otherwise, though, we’re going to be recording year-round, and that means we’re going to be mixing some things up.

When we have a guest on for the first time, it’s all about discovery. We want to learn who the guest is and what’s important to them, and we want to let them drive the conversation with their three choices. We’re going to start having some of our friends back in the coming months, though, and when we do, we’re going to play a different version of the game. Also, on weeks we don’t have a guest, we’ve got a new version of the game to play. On those weeks, we’ll pick a theme, and then everyone picks one film that illustrates that theme. We’ve recorded quite a few of these now, starting with “The Soft Episode,” where we all picked the absolute softest film we could, movies that feel like a warm blanket. We’ve recorded the opposite of that as well, “The Hard Episode,” and we tried to see if we could leave a mark on one another. We’re going to talk about movies about different cities, movies that define a genre for us, or movies from out various birth years, and that’s just to start. It’s a fun way to continue to dig deeper into other’s personalities and keep learning about each other, and when a guest jumps in, it’s great because we’re all on equal footing and throwing one movie into the pile. We’ve got plenty of great guests already recorded for the rest of this year, but there’s a little bit of 3D chess to scheduling the three of us in different time zones plus a guest every week, so I think opening up the shape of the show gives us room to go back and forth.

It sounds complicated, but it’s not. Ultimately, every version of the show is about people coming together and using movies as a way to open up to each other. This week’s show is a great example of that, because even though I’ve known our guest for years and years, I feel like I got to see a new side of him in this conversation, and it only made me like them more. Hopefully you’ll feel the same way. This guest is also an old friend of Aundria’s, something we only realized when we booked this episode, and it’s kind of delightful that we both got to catch up with him while Craig got to meet him for the very first time.

JOHN GHOLSON is an actor, an artist, all-around good egg, and a longtime mainstay on the Austin movie scene. He was one of the stars of the recent indie horror hit Man Finds Tape, and you’ve also seen his face in things like the Netflix series Bad Thoughts with Tom Segura, as well as Todd Rohal’s Fuck My Son. When I published my magazine that came between the end of HitFix and the start of the Substack version of my newsletter, John was the artist for several of the Pulp & Popcorn covers. It’s been too long since we spoke, so it was a real treat when he decided to join us.

His picks were eclectic and revealing, just like I hoped they’d be. First up, we discussed Peter Jackson’s second film, the completely insane Braindead. His next film was easily the most controversial pick we’ve had in a while because it was directed by “human cilantro” Eric Schaeffer. If Lucy Fell spurred a great conversation, but it was his third film that led to the best stuff in the episode. Small wonder. Anyone who works in the arts because they love it can relate on some level to American Movie, the spectacular documentary from 1999.

Aundria picked our response film this week, and I love when she picks something I’ve never seen before. I may have been a big fan of punk rock when I was growing up, but I somehow completely missed Hard-Core Logo, Bruce McDonald’s mockumentary about a Canadian punk band reforming to raise money for one of their former members. I thought it was a treat, and a great movie to watch right after American Movie.

Finally, the Hip Pocket Hall of Fame choice this week is a movie that perfectly captures what it feels like when someone finally gives you the break you’ve been waiting for as an artist, and you suddenly realize you’re not entirely sure you can do the job you’ve been begging them to give you. I love Roman Coppola’s CQ, and I’m always happy to try to get people to check it out.

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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.

100% HUMAN-MADE © 2026 by Matt Kindt, LLC is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0