The Hip Pocket #407 - Alan Sepinwall

I love it when I am surprised by someone’s Hip Pocket choices, but I am equally delighted when someone shows up with exactly the list you think they’re going to.

As we’re leaning into the new weekly schedule, we’re starting to be able to book people and time the release of our episodes to things they’re publishing. We’ve typically recorded stuff whenever we can and we banked them with the idea that we would put out set seasons in small groups. That meant that we would sometimes record something months before we put it out. That’s not going to happen as often next year, and we’re at the point now where we’re almost caught up with the stuff we had sitting the chamber, waiting for release. In this case, we had been trying to schedule a recording with this guest for over a year after they gave us their list, and all of a sudden, we had a very tight window to record and release the episode to help promote their new book, which comes out this week.

Happy to do it, too. I’ve known this week’s guest for a while now, ever since they came aboard as one of the two TV columnists as HitFix. They’ve written multiple books, and after HitFix, they were the lead TV critic for Rolling Stone for a number of years. Now, they’re publishing a newsletter, co-hosting a new podcast, and taking a much-deserved break after writing the best thing of their entire career.

ALAN SEPINWALL joined us to talk about Serling: A Journey into the Twilight Zone with TV’s First Visionary, his new book, and he picked three movies that could not be more in line with the sensibilities he’s cultivated as a cultural critic. Midnight Run is so closely connected to Alan at this point that it’s sort of amazing he didn’t actually have anything to do with making it. Nobody’s Fool features one of the best Paul Newman “old coot” performances, and is pure pleasure. Robert Zemeckis’s Used Cars rounds out Alan’s picks with a blast of rude and rowdy energy.

Our response film to him seemed to fit right into that comfort food line-up, and he seemed more than happy to talk about the delightful ensemble cast in Phil Alden’s Robinson’s Sneakers.

Finally, my pick for the Hip Pocket Hall of Fame this week is one of the coolest films of the ‘70s, the sweaty NYC heist film, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

I’d like to record Hip Pocket episodes for the rest of my life. I love this format because it allows for so many different conversations about so many different things. In order for that to happen, we need you to tell people about the show. If you’re enjoying it, please rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Word of mouth is the most valuable tool we have for recruiting new listeners.

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The Hip Pocket is hosted by Drew McWeeny and Aundria Parker.

Craig Ceravolo is the show’s bandleader and producer.

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