033: TIFF Spotlight: Alex Gibney’s MUSK — Tech Titan, Oligarch, or Conman?
Welcome back to Out There in the Dark! Grab a comfortable seat and maybe a double espresso, because Tom and Azed are taking on the Toronto International Film Festival—specifically, Alex Gibney’s gargantuan, four-hour deep dive into everyone’s favorite internet troll and occasional rocket scientist: MUSK.
Between the pre-festival legal threats, Elon's usual online meltdowns, and his outright refusal to participate while threatening to get the whole damn film shelved through litigation, we feel pretty lucky to have even seen it before it potentially gets erased from existence. That said, after four straight hours in theater seats, we definitely had some thoughts—and very sore butts. Does Gibney’s portrait actually unearth anything new about one of the most online individuals on earth? Is it just an expensive hit piece, or a fair, unbiased document of a monstrously powerful wrecking ball? Plus, our deep dives into TIFF, the festival market, and our usual bitchin' and moanin' which you all love so much!
Out There in the Dark: Truly one of the best hang out pods for tech oligarchs and trillionaires! Pop your headphones on and hit play.
Check out the Musk Official Trailer for a preview of the archival footage and style choices discussed in the festival cut.
14 Aug 2026
032: The Odyssey Cage Match: NOLAN v. HOMER
Christopher Nolan’s imprimatur is such that every new release is met with an enthusiasm usually reserved for professional sports. As an auteur, Nolan is akin to a "gifted" kid: highly intelligent, hyper-focused, a bit nerdy, and occasionally insufferable. But whatever your opinion of him, his platform is massive—which is precisely what makes his latest project so intriguing.
Based faithfully on Homer’s The Odyssey, Nolan’s interpretation is an impressive, yet ultimately unmemorable film. While he sticks closely to the canonical text, the updates and changes he employs are both fascinating and problematic. The performances are uniformly strong, but Nolan once again struggles to write convincing female characters, seems incapable of humor, and remains so obsessed with structure and form that it hurts the emotional core of the story.
Join Azed and Tom as they answer the Siren’s call for this episode—even though everyone else begged them not to.
19 Jul 2026
031: The Radical Empathy of Jonathan Demme
This week, hosts Azed Majeed and Tom Alexander step into the frame to track the erratic, brilliant orbit of Hollywood’s ultimate populist chameleon. From his raw, Roger Corman–style B-movie roots to massive cultural landmarks like The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, Demme proved that intense formal experimentation does not have to result in cold, intellectual detachment.
While legendary as an "actor's director" who captured uniquely intimate, substantive performances, Azed and Tom look past the surface to analyze Demme's precise formal grammar. They break down the mechanics of his iconic direct-to-camera close-ups and explore how his democratic, deep-focus framing shattered standard cinematic hierarchies—directly paving the way for the operatic ensembles of Paul Thomas Anderson.
The conversation dives deep into the "kinesic collisions" of his soundtracks (from Stop Making Sense to Something Wild), tackles the heavy sociopolitical and representation controversies surrounding Buffalo Bill, and delivers a vital psychoanalytic reassessment of his criminally underrated, gothic horror adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Ultimately, they argue for a complete reappraisal of a director whose auteurist stamp was a radical, open-armed humanism—proving that there is a distinct, undeniable feeling to being in a Demme movie, where the lens is driven by a profound civility and a refusal to look down on a single soul.
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