A Piece of Pie: The Queer Film Podcast

After 5 and half years, Brian and Max finally wrap up their series on filmmakers Quentin Tarantino & Paul Thomas Anderson. Since mid-2020 they’ve been pairing off the works of the two Gen X auteurs. Chris joins them to discuss Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, his favorite Tarantino, paired off with PTA’s own Los Angeles love letter, Licorice Pizza. 

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This week we're taking a look at one of the year's biggest movies, and one of its gayest, The Devil Wears Prada 2. And we take a look back at the 2006 original, discussing it's status in the queer canon. 

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This week Brian and Keegon take a look at two tales of the search for eternal youth. A campy, laugh filled Death Becomes Her and the dark body horror Oscar nominated The Substance. 

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Paul and Chris return to the pod to bring their expertise on classic Hollywood. In 1934, Will Hays, then the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, began strenuously enforcing the Production Code. This code was a guideline used to determine what films could depict on screen and the behavior of characters. These included drug use, promiscuity, and yes, homosexuality. Despite limiting these things, it inspired creative filmmakers to work around the code and find new and clever ways to challenge it. The films we chose, She Done Him Wrong and Baby Face were each released in 1933...

Brian welcomes back Keegon and Chris as they discuss this year's Oscar night. 

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We’re continuing our series examining the films of 90’s auteurs, Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson! This time Brian and Max are joined by playwright and our newest contributor, Keegon Schuett. We discuss the legacy of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams’ questionable handjobs and, as always, the problematic behavior of Quentin Tarantino. Is this his most relaxed film, or his most baldly depraved? 

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This week, Raina Deerwater from GLAAD returns to the pod to discuss two nominees of the 2026 GLAAD Media Awards. On Swift Horses and Hedda were nominated for Outstanding Film (Wide release). Each film tackles queer characters in mid-century America. On Swift Horses is about a war veteran returning to the states where he reunites with his brother, while Hedda is a queer adaptation of the play, "Hedda Gabler" starring Tessa Thompson. Raina and Brian discuss queer representation in films, then and now, and take a look at two different films taking place in similar eras examining queer lives in...

For our 150th Episode, Brian decided to highlight one of his favorite films, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. 

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This week our friend Keegon Schuett returns to the show to continue gushing about Diane Keaton as a mother to queer people. In The First Wives Club it’s a token lesbian, while she’s best friends with fellow icons Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler. We paired it with the modern classic Bridesmaids and spend more time quoting it than discussing it. 

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We're commemorating the Christmas season by taking a look at two Nicole Kidman films. First up, the final film from Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut, co-starring her then-husband Tom Cruise. And we pair it with Babygirl, co-starring Harris Dickinson and Antonio Banderas. We're joined once again by Alonso Duralde, writer of the recently revised Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas. He brings his Christmas-movie expertise to these two films, and we discuss what makes them both quintessential Christmas classics.

Click here for your copy of Alonso’s book, Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas

This week we're celebrating the late, great Diane Keaton. Contributor and playwright Keegon Schuett returns to the pod with one of his favorite warm blanket movies, Something's Gotta Give co-starring Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves. And tis the season for Holiday movies, so we pair it with Keaton's turn as the matriarch of a chaotic family Christmas in The Family Stone.

For details and to buy's Keegon's new play, click the link below!

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300282764/this-dry-spell/

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With Paul Thomas Anderson's newest One Battle After Another in theaters and heavily favored in the Awards conversation, Brian and Max return to their project pairing off his films with the work of fellow American master, Quentin Tarantino. This time it's a bloody revenge fantasy paired with an Altman-esque stoner comedy that refuses to be understood. Give a listen as we continue to examine two modern day auteurs who are still changing Hollywood, 30 years after their game changing debuts. 

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This week we're discussing two of cinema's most celebrated queer filmmakers, Luca Guadagnino and Andrew Haigh. Within the last few years, they've each given us deeply personal stories about love, loneliness, grief and the disconnect of growing up queer in a straight world. Through different eras and wildly different tones, each film grapples with queer life in stunning and heart wrenching detail. Chris is back as we discuss the two newest editions to the Queer Film Canon. 

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Just in time for Halloween, we're revisiting two of our favorite classic 90's horror flicks. Fresh off an Academy Award for Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino teamed with director Robert Rodriguez for From Dusk Till Dawn, starring Tarantino and George Clooney. Rodriguez would follow that up with The Faculty, from writer Kevin Williamson. With sprawling casts and self-referential scripts, these films still hold up among the best horror of the 1990's. 

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This week we’re joined by Raina Deerwater, Associate Director and Research Analysis at GLAAD! She joins to discuss their Studio Responsibility Index, and recent findings that LBGTQIA+ representation in film is on the decline. We discuss what that means, and what can be done about it. And then we talk about the sapphic crime drama, Love Lies Bleeding starring Kristen Stewart one of a few queer centered films from 2024.

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This week we're finally discussing Tony Kushner's masterpiece, Angels in America. As Chicago's own Invictus Theater Company stages a new production, we welcome two actors from the show, Miguel Long and Ryan Hake, to discuss the 2004 HBO adaptation. They offer insight into playing these challenging roles, as we discuss the differences between the play and the movie, and how the play remains as relevant as ever. 

Click here for information about the Invictus Theater’s production, running through September 7, 2025.

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This week, Brian is joined by writer Sezin Devi Koehler, who quite literally wrote the book on Keanu Reeves. Her book, Much Ado About Keanu: A Critical Reeves Theory highlights the actor’s legendary career. We take a specific look at The Matrix, a franchise created by trans women, and John Wick, an iconic character that, according to Sezin’s theory, is very likely transgender himself. 

You can find a copy of her book here 

https://tinyurl.com/2tbpyex6

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Questions or comments about what we talked about? Click here to let us know!

This week we’re taking a look at two very different queer icons. Musical geniuses Freddie Mercury and Liberace each got the biopic treatment in the 2010’s, and they each got very different movies. Behind the Candelabra starred Oscar winners Michael Douglas and Matt Damon and was directed by Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh. Despite the pedigree, only HBO would release it. Bohemian Rhapsody, by contrast, despite a troubled production and a problematic filmmaker, somehow won four Academy Awards in 2019. Film scholar Paul Klein returns to discuss two queer biopics. 

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This week we’re joined by film scholar Syd Wrigley, who joins the podcast to discuss Gregg Araki’s famed Teen Apocalypse Trilogy. Starting with Totally Fucked Up in 1993, he followed it with The Doom Generationin 1995 and finally Nowhere in 1997, the trilogy that would define a generation and stands at the center of the New Queer Cinema movement. Recently re-released via Criterion, these films are being discovered by a brand new generation, and Araki is only now finding auteur status. 

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This week we have an interview with director Dana Flor discussing her new documentary, 1-800-ON-HER-OWN, an intimate look at singer songwriter Ani DiFranco ! And we’re excited to announce a partnership with the filmmakers to bring the movie to Chicago! On April 13 at the #Music Box Chicago to catch the Chicago premiere in person! 

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This week we're joined by writer Alonso Duralde, author of Hollywood Pride to discuss Barbra Streisand's directorial debut, Yentl. The story of a young woman who bucked convention, and gender norms, to follow her dreams. Progressive for 1983, the film was ahead of it's time, and is undergoing a queer reappraisal. 

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We only have one tradition here at Piece of Pie, and that's our annual Oscar episode. We started this little podcast discussing the Oscars, and ever since we've made sure to cover them. This year Paul Klein and Chris Alexander join Brian to discuss queer representation at the yearly show, Conan O'Brien and more!

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This week we're joined by Chicago's Joan Waters, local drag queen and John Waters super fan, and we're taking a look at Polyester, John Waters' first studio film. With his biggest budget to date, Waters paid tribute to William Castle, and Douglas Sirk, two of his favorite filmmakers. Sirk directed the Rock Hudson classic All That Heaven Allows, a clear influence on queer filmmakers like Todd Haynes and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. So we paired it with Polyester as we take a look at the similarities, differences, and Sirk's continued influence in queer cinema. 

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Brian interviews filmmaker, writer and actor Vera Drew about her debut film, The People's Joker. Produced on a shoestring budget and released in secret while Warner Bros waged a legal battle, The People's Joker uses popular DC Comics characters to tell a truly unforgettable coming age of story. 

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We're saying goodbye to a tumultuous 2024 by discussing one of the year's biggest, and arguably gayest, box office hits. From bookshelves, to Broadway and now to movie theaters, Wicked is a superhero tentpole movie for theatre kids, but is it any good? And how does it hold up taken next to the beloved stage play? Rob and Max join Brian to discuss all that and more! 

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We’re closing out spooky season with a couple of tear-jerkers. In one of our most poignant episodes, Brian opens up about the loss of his mother and how it affected watching these two films, one an Oscar powerhouse the other something of an Oscar also-ran, each of them with passionate queer followings given their stacked casts.

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Brian and Max went to the Alamo Drafthouse to catch one of the year's most talked about films of the year, Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis. Developed by Coppola over a course of 3 decades, Megalopolis finally hit screens in 2024. After standing ovations at film festivals, the film released to the public with mostly a shrug, but Brian and Max wanted to see it for themselves, and then recorded at a bar after the screening. 

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By now, Keanu Reeves is an accomplished action star with two multi-billion dollar franchises to his name. But this week we're taking a look at the two movies that helped get him there, Point Break and Speed. He hit it big with these two films, and represented a shift away from the buff action heroes which drove the critics of the time to only one conclusion - he must be gay. Join us as we unpack two of the biggest hits of the 1990's; the queer coded Point Break and what was then seen as feminine features for a...

This week we're joined by "The Horror Dyke," Heather O. Petrocelli as we take a look at David Cronenberg and recent Palme D'Or Winner! In 1996, Cronenberg released the controversial Crash, about a man who seeks to reinvigorate his sex-life after a near-fatal automobile accident. We pair it with 2021's Titane, Julia Ducournau feminist body horror film that owes a huge debt to Croneberg's work, while remaining it's own truely unique vision. 

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Our newest contributor Paul rejoins the podcast as Max and Brian revisit their series pairing off the films of Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson. We've skipped ahead a bit to land on their 70mm roadshow pictures, each auteur using their clout to shoot on film, on location. In doing so they crafted two of their most personal movies, with wildly varied results. Give us a listen as we continue to pit these two geniuses against each other!

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This week we’re taking a look at two films from Gregg Araki. One of the architects of the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990’s, Araki pivoted in the new century after finding critical success with Mysterious Skin. He followed up that award winner by pivoting to a stoner comedy that Max argues is worth revisiting every April 20. 

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This week we're joined by film scholar Paul T. Klein, as he brings a queer appraisal to one of the biggest box office hits of all time, Titanic. What is it about this film that appeals to queer audiences? Is it Rose rejecting the life others want for her? Or did Cameron interject just enough Sirkian melodrama to appeal to our camp sensibilities? Maybe it was just Leonardo DiCaprio in his Twink era? We also take a look back at the 1958 classic, A Night to Remember, the film that inspired James Cameron. Paul joins Brian and Chris to discuss why...

As we head into the final stretch of #Pride2024 we’re taking a look at a couple of movies that attempt to dramatize the very concept. In 2014, action film director Roland Emmerich tried, and failed, to tell the legendary story of #Stonewall via a white-washed tale of privilege. A year later came a film called #Pride that tells the true story of a group of activists who find kindred souls in a group of coal miners and work to support their cause. Two true stories told in vastly different ways, each tell essential stories of queer history. 

Que...

We're celebrating Pride 2024 by introducing Pink Flamingos to a contributor who'd never seen a John Waters movie! This disgusting masterpiece has been grossing people out since 1972, long since becoming a beloved cult classic. With tongue firmly in cheek, Waters' film features violent SA, cannibalism and, yep, that famous ending with dog feces. How does it hold up fifty years after it's debut? You'll have to listen to find out. 

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With the recent release of Ripley on Netflix, Brian welcomes Max and Nick to discuss all things Tom Ripley. Since the novel was released in 1955, audiences have been captivated by the murderous exploits of this charming sociopath. Every generation, filmmakers bring their own perspectives and a brand new actor to the role, as he gets gayer by the decade. Join us as we discuss the character, why does he endure, and why are audiences so enthralled by a queer murderer? 

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With celebrated out filmmaker John Schlesinger at the helm, 1969's Midnight Cowboy has entered the queer canon, flaws and all. We pair it up with 2017's Beach Rats from director Eliza Hittman. 

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We're joined this week by writer Casey Snow, who brings her love of the lesbian spy comedy D.E.B.S. and we pair it with 2023's hit comedy, Bottoms, starring Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennot. 

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We don't have many yearly traditions here at The Queer Film Podcast, but we always make time for the Academy Awards! It's our seventh annual discussion--despite what Brian says in the recording, mistakenly saying it's the sixth--and he convened with regular contributors Rob and Chris, to discuss predictions before the show and reactions after the fact. Join us as we celebrate yet another year of movies!

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Is the director of The Love Witch a cult visionary, or a TERF Tommy Wiseau? This week we're joined by Raphael Martinez, programmer at Facets and host of their monthly film trivia night, to discuss that exact question. And be sure to join us on February 29, 2024 as your host Brian co-hosts the trivia with Raphael as we give away prizes before a screening of the film in question! 

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