F2K Ep. 42 - Film Writer Matt Prigge

Fun 2 Know Podcast

On today's show, Matt Prigge. Matt has written about film since the late 1990s, originally at The Philadelphia Weekly, then for four years as the film editor at The Metro, the free commuter paper that has editions in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia. Matt is a particularly engaging writer with an unusually firm grasp on a wide range of cinema, finding what is worth celebrating in everything from low-grade action films to finessing the metaphors in the work of Lars Von Trier. We get rolling on a tangent-rich conversation but also chart and mourn the decline of independent weekly newspapers, that served the variety of cultural function for city dwellers until the new millennium when many of their services could be transferred easily to the internet. Across the country those papers have withered and died since the internet's rise and lost is the paper's role as a magnet that brought journalists and artists under one roof to share ideas and energy. Along the way we also discuss growing up in Mechanicsburg PA, Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom,” Richard Lester, The Beatles “Help!” Fellini meets Michael Jackson, Stanley Donen. Woody Allen, the cinema of Calista Flockhart. The politics of “Die Hard,” TheArchers - Powell and Pressburger, the late films of Billy Wilder, John Huston, the key to Tarantino. the late Alan Rickman, “listicals,” “Smokey & The Bandit,” writing about The Marvel Universe. “Twin Peaks: The Return,” Steven Soderburgh, Frederic Wiseman and Matt's new job teaching at NYU.