This week's interview is with Paul Fischer, author of The Last Kings of Hollywood, Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg―and the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema, which could not possibly be more relevant to the current state of the film industry, and not just because there's a new Spielberg movie out and Marcia Lucas just died.

With Zoomer (Gen Alpha?) filmmakers breaking out (Obsession, Backrooms) while The Mandalorian and Supergirl flop bigly, there are signs that the paradigm has shifted. This, mind you, is not unprecedented. People thought the movie business was dead in the 1950s and 1960s as well, until some filmmakers changed film executives' ideas about what they thought they could sell. In this bonus interview, I talk to Paul about the modern parallels to the early seventies, the difference between how Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas thought about directing, and the story of Melissa Mathison, who went from Coppola's friend's babysitter to his mistress to one Spielberg's most important collaborators (writer of the best of his alien trilogy, ET). Good chat! Hope you like it!

Some other books I drew from and may have referenced:

The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir, You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, The Friday Afternoon Club: A Memoir, Adventures in the Screen Trade, and Pictures at a Revolution.