Although the official press release for this can be found on CLAPPER, I thought I’d share this here as well and maybe offer a few extra words of personal commentary. For a very long time I have been carrying an idea for a podcast about movies that for one reason or another are no longer talked about. In its initial guise it was a one-man show where I’d be talking at length about these films and traversing from the story to themes, to nuances of production, some anecdotes about filmmakers and so on. But as time went on it dawned on me that a show in this format would benefit most profoundly from a conversational format. So I pitched it to my good buds over at CLAPPER and now we’re here.

The Uncut Gems Podcast is what I hope would become one of the central pillars of my film-related activity this year, which I have tentatively branded “The year I would finally stop procrastinating things I have carried in my chest for years”. I am extremely excited about this, which is a feeling I haven’t experienced in a very long time, and it would really mean a lot to me if you, dear Reader, would like to accompany on this journey into the wilderness of podcasting.

I like to think of the show itself as an alternative to How Did This Get Made where a group of folks talk about movies that most people would never describe as classics. However, what distinguishes this gimmick is the fact the films we are going to cover are not chosen because they were bad, nor with an expectation to take them apart and have a good laugh at their expense. Granted, this will undoubtedly be a part of the experience, but the overarching premise lies within the idea of choosing forgotten movies that might become great topics of conversation for one reason or another. In short, I don’t think you should expect us to cover classics like Taxi Driver or The Seventh Seal.

Instead, we have chosen to kick off with Brian De Palma’s overlooked science-fiction epic Mission to Mars, a movie that killed his desire to work in Hollywood and bombed mercilessly at the box office in spite of the genre being in the midst of a massive resurgence. In addition, we ended up talking about its direct competitor Red Planet, which has also fallen by the wayside. Have a listen if you wish (the show is available on Anchor and Spotify as of now, with more platforms hopefully to follow) and be sure to follow the show on Twitter to stay on top of things!