Big Podcast Plans versus the Black Cloud

I need a place to write these things down so I thought my Blog would be a great place! So here I am wanting to podcast regularly again. A Movie podcast where I discuss a film that I've just seen either solo or with friends. The Podcast is called Movie Landfill a name that I've been using and already put out two episodes under that name. I want to create a new podcast feed for it too. It will still be on the Entertainment Landfill feed but also have its own feed for new listeners to discover.

I've gone to the movies for the past **Four** Fridays and this has been after an entire year of not going for whatever reason. I have loved it! Each time I've gone alone though, Heather works sometimes until around 6pm and is too tired to want to go to a movie at 7:00 or 7:30 and I really don't want to go to a late movie at all. I start getting sleepy around 10:30pm - I know I'm getting old, but I've gotten to where I think sleep is more important than my entertainment, probably another sign of getting old. But, I look forward to going to see a movie on Friday and I want to continue to do it. It's basically giving me a way to check-out of real life and to get some alone time. For awhile now I had been getting this real uneasy feeling on Friday, this feeling like I was supposed to be doing something with my life and I was just kind of miserable. It's been years and I still get this kind of restless feeling on Friday evenings. For years I did the Podcast live and I worked on it all day on Friday and then finally in the evening it was time to do the show and it was great. It has been years now since Stephen would show up at my house and we'd do the show and I've missed it immensely but life moved on and so we'd (Me and my Wife) would occasionally watch a movie streaming or Hockey or a TV Show or my Wife would be working late here at home so I'd just play Xbox with headphones on or I'd just flip channels and look at my phone until it was time to go to bed. I love creating something, that feeling of having the finished show on my recorder, achievement unlocked, there was nothing better, no better feeling. So I've been thinking about podcasting more regularly but I also know that in the past I tend to go too hard at post-production and burn myself out. I love having a thing to work on but I wear myself out and I need to be conscious of that in future endeavors meaning I need to find a happy in-between of feeling creatively fulfilled and also not working too hard....

A Happy medium. So I've been thinking a lot about the recent podcast episode I just put out with Adam and Ken, it was fun recording with them again and it was fun but also I've noticed that people that have not seen the films, One Battle After Another or Tron: Ares don't want to listen because either they don't want to get spoiled or they have no interest in those films. SO, I've listened to more than a few movie podcasts over the years and I enjoy the format of the Non-Spoilery conversation and then saving the Spoilery conversation for the second half -- I'd like to do this in future episodes! Especially since Podbean now has implemented Chapter skips in the podcasts so now (If anyone cares, I honestly have no idea) a listener can just listen to a conversation about what a film is about and thoughts about it without spoiling anything and skip over the spoilerish parts. Would this create more work for myself? Maybe, I won't know until I actually do it more but putting chapter skips in the recent episode took me about 20 minutes of skipping around, so that's no big deal. I think I may do a another Rent Free episode just talking about format ideas. When I did NiM I had a format and we stuck to it. There will be times when I see a movie and there will be no one to talk to about it and I'll have to go at it solo, that's okay, there can be some short solo episodes, one week's a solo episode where I talk about two movies I saw with some other segments kind of like 'Rent Free' where I'm just ranting about some casting news or something lol and then the following week a bigger episode with Adam and Ken where we talk about some big film or something. I'd also like to have guests like Ross and Adam and Stephen and Jimmy Good! That would be a blast! I want to have fun! I want to be spontaneous! I want to go and see a movie and if I'm excited enough about it, I want to record my thoughts on my phone and get like a lav mic or a wireless mic or something! I want to just podcast on a regular basis again!

I'm not dumb though, I know those old feelings will creep up, you know the ones that always lead to burnout? That's right, the dreaded lack of feedback, the dreaded lack of conversation as it pertains to the hours of podcast that I plan on churning out. I need to fight through it, keep my head to the grindstone and keep on working. When I feel overwhelmed or like a burnout is settling in, I just need to go to the movies, eat some popcorn and just kick back. If I see something I'm excited about, I'll want to talk about it. I also need to start every episode asking whoever is listening that I want to hear from them in the nicest way possible, ask them to either join the discord and drop me a voicemail that I'll play on the show if they want me to that is. I do know though that sometimes it is not even that, that leads to burnout, it's working really hard on something that I'm proud of and release it to the sound of crickets. It always happens and that's okay. The episode of NiM Movie Club that I released in May of 2024 called It's High Noon in the Meta Storm is probably one the the best edited podcasts I've ever created. It had a very fun segment that I had been thinking of for a long time called 'Film Therapy' where we discussed two films that I've always had lingering problems with all of these years since their release, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Wayne's World, I collected assorted clips from the films and added them into the conversation in fun ways and I had an absolute blast assembling the episode. It's probably where I am at my happiest, putting it all together. First you record the episode with friends, then you get to work editing the conversation, removing the noise, cutting out ums and ahs etc. That takes a long time and it's pretty monotonous, but it's during that editing that I take note of possible clips that would go here and there, sometimes I collect them as I'm going by recording off Youtube or Netflix or whatever and put them in a folder. So then when I'm done editing the conversation I begin making the clips that I've collected and adding them in, there's almost always more that I need that I have to create on the fly. After I'm done with that version the 'Conversation with Clips' added I will have been mulling over an intro the entire time, sometimes I know exactly what I'm gong to do and sometimes I have no idea what I'm going to do but something always comes together and that's when I add background music and finally some kind of Ender (as I call it) that I've thought of during all of this listening to the films clips over and over, some moment that I put right at the end and cap it all off with a "Now this is Pod-CASTING!" drop to end it all. It feels so good to be finished with the episode but I've learned my lesson after the years of releasing podcasts, I don't release the episode right away. I put it on my phone and listen with earbuds or in the car and over night sometimes I think of one more thing to add or something that I don't quite like to take out. Sometimes I leave it exactly the way it is but every once in awhile I add one more thing and then I publish the episode and post it on the website and on Discord and Facebook, Twitter and then it is done and it's over. I feel good for the rest of the day.

And then that feeling creeps in. No one cares. I mean I see the downloads, someone is downloading the episode. I mean, downloads weren't what they once were back in the heyday of Nowhere in Mulberry but I'm pretty happy when I see thirty downloads after a full day or two but it might as well be just phantom numbers that mean nothing because there's never an inkling of a hint that someone out there enjoyed the episode. I still have no idea what anyone thought of the Film Therapy segment that I was so proud of. Did anyone laugh, smile or even agree with me? I'll never know and that's fucking sad, that's what leads to me getting depressed. There's no continued conversation and that has always bummed me the fuck out. I just have to live with it, I just have to figure out a way to go on without it. I have to keep doing what makes me happy and ignore that part of when it makes me sad because I don't see it changing. Hell, I don't even know if it would stop the bummed out part from happening because I do hear from certain people who have listened here and there but it's not enough. I don't know, I've wrestled with this for years and years. There was times when we were getting thousands of downloads on a weekly NiM and we still never heard a damn thing. Yes, we did get voicemails, we would get occasional emails and we even made friends with regular listeners and I've always been thankful for that but it was never enough for me. Maybe if I had comments out the ass on every single episode of the show it would be exhausting? What if it was just a bunch of people nitpicking everything we said? I've certainly seen that happen to other podcasters in comment sections and I would never want that. 

But what do I want?

I want to release a podcast with alarming regularity, I want to have a show again, a dependable show that someone can count on that will always be there. I want to bring joy to whatever audience I happen to have and I want to express my love of the movies in the only way I know how, through the art of podcasting! I want to have all of my friends on the podcast from time to time, I want my Sisters on the podcast from time to time, I want members of my family on the podcast. I want to look back in Ten years time and be equally proud of the new generation of podcast episodes that I have created -- all timeless. Timeless because it won't matter what year you listen to them. I don't want to talk about current events on these episodes. I just want to talk about movies.  

So this is what I've come up with. The Podcast is called Movie Landfill. Occasionally when I am so inspired there might be an episode of TV Landfill possibly. There are no plans at the moment for another TV Landfill but it's bound to happen. So Movie Landfill will sometimes be Solo and sometimes have co-hosts. I'd love to always find a co-host that has also seen the same movies as me but I'm being realistic that that won't always be so and I'll be okay with that. Movie Landfill will have a conversation first about the film that is non-spoilery and then after a break We'll come back and spoil some things. Every episode will have chapters to skip ahead past the spoiler part. While I don't necessarily care to review a movie I don't think it would be too big of a deal to say a film is for example a "Go see it on the Big Screen!" or "Wait for Streaming" or if say something just wasn't my cup of tea to "Skip it." Although I don't think I've ever told anyone to skip a movie. I'd just say that I wasn't into it. Not flat out, "It sucks! Don't see it if you count yourself as my friend!" I'm honestly okay with someone liking something that I don't. I'm honestly not too picky as I like all sorts of movies. I've honestly never given a flying shit about a film rating except for when I was a kid and Siskel and Ebert gave thumbs down to a movie that I loved. I will encourage to see a movie that I'm really into though. So there's that. I want the podcast to be about the conversation about a movie that we've just seen more than any review that you just want to skip to the end of to hear our rating. 

I want to have fun with the format, add clips where I can and make it enjoyable to listen to while flexing my creativity and most of all I want it to sound fantastic! I want the audio to be professional and something I can be proud of. I want to average over a thousand downloads per episode and even have an ad or two to make some money from this endeavor! Why not? Everyone else seems to be! There will always be an ad-free version though for my dear friends! Hahahahahaha (I've gone mad with power!) I kid I kid!

Most of all I want to have my own show, a show I can be proud of and something I look forward to doing and something a listener can look forward to, I want to build a small loyal following of people that dig what I do, I want a podcast keeping me busy and helping me be creative, making something, something I can be proud of. 

I'm ready. 

 

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On the recent Remastered NiM Movie Minis

 

I just realized that people probably don't understand what these so-called 'Remastered' podcast episodes really are, they might think "I've already listened to these episodes long ago." and that would be wrong. THESE ARE NEW EPISODES -- the conversations we recorded long ago for the NiM Holiday Packs (The NiM Movie Mini's were originally available to Listeners who donated to the show and they would receive an email response with a link to the downloads) for 2011 and 2012 and they were rushed, hurried, whatever you want to call it to meet a deadline that landed before Christmas. The recordings didn't sound great, Mics were too hot or too low and that always bothered me. 

I was proud of our conversations about these films but the final product while a lot of work in a short amount of time were disappointing to me at the time but I had to go with it. NOW all of these years later when I've been podcasting less and less, thinking back on what was it about podcasting that I found rewarding, what brought me joy? It wasn't just the conversations, the banter, it was the working on these projects, putting ideas and being creative with clips and music and piecing together something that brought a smile to my face and hopefully someone else's. Things I've never enjoyed about podcasting has been the loneliness after an episode has been completed and released, that lack of conversation, that lack of knowledge if someone truly enjoyed it. We live in an age of social media and instant gratification and maybe someone did listen to something I made but they've listened and moved on, they don't realize I wanted something from them. I wanted a connection, sure a 'like' is nice but it also hurts when there's one or none on an episode you've worked weeks on. I want to know that you enjoyed the episode, did you laugh, did that clip make you smile? When I went back and listened to these old NiM Movie minis I couldn't get over the fact that they sounded terrible, there was noise under the recording that I tried to hide by putting constant music in the background. I found it un-listenable but I did enjoy the conversation. 

 Then I thought, 'Hey, I'm not working on anything right now, why don't I go back, remove the noise and redo those episodes just like I would now, like I did with that Ghostbusters 2 Movie Mini? (the episode that broke me by the way, zero response -- it hurts, people.) and I learned a lot making that episode (why not throw in old interview clips of people talking about making the movie, throw in references that Will and I made to other films and products in said films?). SO I went back and tried to fix the Back to the Future episode, my mic was way too hot but I got rid of the noise, I edited it again, took my time and I'm pretty happy with the episode and damn proud of that intro. From Goonies to Gremlins and Robocop and Lethal Weapon and finally Die Hard I feel like I've learned so much more than I knew back in 2011. I wish I could go back and do BTTF again with the knowledge and Ideas I've gained in just four weeks lol but I won't. It's done, I'm not freaking George Lucas. 

So anyway, I've included screenshots of the work that went into these episodes, the clips, the music and the editing software I use. I also use Audacity for a lot of stuff like fade-ins and fade-outs on music and clips and removing noise -- it's very handy. I would like to thank William Laughner My Bud and Co-host for buying the podcast editing software called 'Propaganda' in the year 2005 it's what I've used to make every single podcast and I don't think I could have done the things I've done on audacity alone. Thank you, sir for all of the fantastic conversations. Going back to these episodes has truly been like traveling in a time machine and whenever I miss my friend I can go back and listen to these episodes and laugh with those two guys from the past and I hope you laughed too. My work is not done, I've got a few more episodes to do and when they're done maybe then my work will be done. I don't know... Maybe there are more films to talk about. 

 

So when you look at those screenshots I want you to notice all of those little black dots in the software, those are clips added -- so many. I get a kick out of it when it's all done. A lot of love and nostalgia and joy went into these remasters and I hope that you enjoy them and just remember They are Brand New! You've never heard them before and maybe you will hear something you never heard in those old original episodes like competence in editing LOL. Also, I'll be here to talk about any and all of the episodes if you want. One more thing, when you work on one of these episodes you find that you have the film and music from the film, the dialogue stuck in your head for weeks and the only way to get them out is to start work on an entire new episode. To go from Marty's voice to Chunk's voice to laughing Gremlins and then Clarence Boddicker -- I think I'm going a little insane lol. Okay, that's it for now, enjoy!

 

 

Finally here's my screenshot of all of the work that went into the Die Hard episode, so many clips, so much editing. 

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Father's Footsteps

I've seen The Road Warrior or Mad Max 2 so many times I've lost count, it could be hundreds -- I just don't know. Yesterday it was on one of the HBO channels and the movie had already started but I didn't care so I turned it on in the background and of course I found myself watching it once again. It's one of my favorite films of all time. This time was interesting though, I've watched the film enough times that I know it by heart but I noticed something I haven't paid attention to for a long time if ever. It's when Max returns to the Gas Tribe's compound with the precious Big Rig Truck they will need to escape from Lord Humungus and his Marauders. It's a really intense scene and Max has given these people hope for the first time in what is probably a very long time.

Max walks with confidence his Dog along side of him and not far behind is The Feral Kid. This child cannot speak most likely because no one has had time to teach him how because they are too busy fighting every single day for their lives. This is what I noticed -- As the Feral Kid follows Max, the Kid is looking down at Max's feet trying to match Max's footsteps. The Kid follows Max's stride mimicking him and I smiled. I thought it was a very nice detail -- How did I not notice this before?

The Feral Kid looks up to Max, The Road Warrior, he wants to walk in his footsteps and all that and BOOM IT HIT ME. I remembered the scene in the original Mad Max film, there's a moment when Max and his wife Jesse are laying outside talking.

Max talks about his Father:

"When I was a kid...

...me and my father used to go for long walks I remember staring down at his shoes.

They were special shoes, brown.

And he always kept them really shiny.

He was tall, and he used to take long strides.

And there I'd be right alongside him...

...just trying to keep up with him.

I don't think he ever knew how proud I felt of him.

Or how good it felt just to be there alongside him..."

Max disappears for a moment, thinking about his Father. The man he looked up to, the man that probably instilled in Max the drive he now has to survive and what also causes Max to eventually do the right thing. Max may seem selfish at first but he always ends up helping others. So here's The Feral Kid -- We have no idea if he had a Father or where he even came from. He's staring down at Max's feet trying to match Max's stride and one day he grows up to become the leader of the Great Northern Tribe as we're told by the closing narration. Perhaps when he saw Max, this lone warrior, this last hero in a world of scavengers and human trash he found inspiration to be more than just a man in a wasteland he found the inspiration to be a leader and help others along.

I don't know, but it's cool that a movie I've watched countless times made me think and see something new. God, I love George Miller and I love this film.



*Originally written in a Facebook Post in the Entertainment Landfill Fan Club Group Page Sep 9th, 2017*

Green

Just don't leave me alone, he thought. Just don't leave me waiting here for you to return. Don't make me sit and wonder when you're coming back. Don't make me be the one that does all of the hand wrenching, all of the nail biting and nervous breathing. Don't make me, you can't make me. But there he was sitting in an empty room waiting for her to return. How many times had he tried to prevent this very situation. The situation of caring. Heart beating for someone else. Who can know, how can anyone know that every time your heart beats for someone else, their's beats for yours? There is no way of knowing. You have to go on faith or the actions of that other person. You can't read minds can you? Of course you can't, some people can read body language but Jack wasn't someone that could do that.

"You're coming back, right?" He had said half-joking but with an air of seriousness. Was she indeed coming back? How many times had he pushed the worry back and back further into his mind? He would worry and then talk himself out of the worry. He would pick up the game controller and start playing and let the hours pass by. By the time he looked up at the clock he would realize that he had wasted the entire day. He had accomplished nothing. He would turn off the console in disgust and make a half-hearted effort in cleaning up the apartment. The trash would be easy, do that. He would run around collecting all of the garbage from each room adding it to one bigger trash bag. He would run it outside to the dumpster and come back in and look around. Vacuum, that will be easy. He would vacuum for five minutes, not even picking up shoes or pants off the floor, he would go around them. There, that's done. Wipe the counters. A few quick wipes. There, that's good. It looked like he made an effort.

The problem is that it doesn't occur to him until he is in a panic. When he is at ease he is too much at ease where something like effort is too much effort. He'd rather screw around accomplishing nothing until there are so few minutes left in the day he has to cram it all in, all the cleaning in a last ditch effort of sweat. When she would come home the room had the illusion that it had been cleaned, that he had been trying hard all day long to make the place nice for them. In reality he didn't give a shit. Does that mean if he was alone he would live in filth? He didn't know, that's why he needed her to always return.

Do not leave me alone. He needed just enough to live each day when he was alone. He needed about ten dollars a day. He could live off of that. A few donuts here and a few sandwiches there. He could live on cans of chili and ravioli. He had done it before but he didn't want to do that again. To sit still in that place, to not do anything but feel air on the hair of his arms. He could do that. He could be nothing but a tree. He could blow in the wind. Where was the effort in that? Did a tree have to think about creating oxygen or did it help the world just by being? Why couldn't he do that? If he were just to be, to just stand there and sway in the wind, he would be a lunatic. A loser with no hope for any future of any kind. Didn't he want to accomplish things? Of course he did. He just didn't know how.

How do you accomplish things? Is it as simple as doing them?There were times in the past when he stood and breathed the air outside and the way things felt, the slight chill made him think about his childhood, a different time and a different place. If only he could go there now. When he was a child he could walk a few miles up the road and find different places he could drift to. He could play games at an arcade with the few quarters he had in his pocket. He could buy ice cream at a local drug store for thirty five cents. He could do whatever he wanted. He chose that day to sit on the corner and watch the cars go by. A purple bug, a red sports car, a white van. He was only existing in this place and watching it happen. Watching it pass him by.

"It's because it isn't real." He says to no one. "Wasn't real." This place is an illusion meant to make him feel alive.

To be a tree, leaning and green.