Vintage Sand

About Vintage Sand

Join the intrepid trio of Josh, Michael and John as we explore the history of film from the silent era through today’s releases, and from Hollywood to the far reaches of world cinema. Through lively discussion and occasional argument, these three old friends will take the listener on a highly opinionated tour of some of the more obscure recesses of film studies. If, as Alfred Hitchcock was fond of saying, film is life with the boring bits left out, then Vintage Sand will be film study with the boring bits left out. The creators will always approach film from the point of view of the fan, which above anything else defines who we are. From the obscure to the classic and back again, come with us and recall and rejoice in the joys of the big screen.

Publisher

Vintage Sand

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

30 Apr 2018

Latest episode

14 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

73 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   14 Oct 2026

   Vintage Sand Episode 70: Director's Cut: Hal Ashby

   Like most film fans, we are obsessed with that brief moment in the early 70’s where directors had creative control in American film. This was the period that gave us Scorsese, Coppola, Altman, De Palma, Bogdanovich, Friedkin, Rafelson, and so many others. But often lost in the shuffle of this Hollywood New Wave is the great Hal Ashby who, coming off his editing Oscar for 1967’s In the Heat of the Night, had an unbroken string of great films that lasted the entire decade of the 70’s. In this, our fourth episode devoted to the work of one director, we look back at Ashby’s career, and it’s a retrospective that may provide more questions than answers about a body of work that burned brightly for a short while and flamed out just as suddenly. Of all the great American directors of that period, Ashby most walked the walk in terms of living what might be called a countercultural lifestyle (though, like Altman, he was a few years older that the rest of the New Hollywood kids). Remember that at several points, he was attached to both "Cuckoo’s Nest" and "Hair", two anti-establishment classics, before Forman directed them. The establishment comes off poorly in Ashby, from the clueless families of the wealthy and powerful in "The Landlord" and "Harold and Maude" to the military institutions of "The Last Detail" and "Coming Home". The films almost always feature a Candide-like naïf whose journeys reveal the corruption and hypocrisy (and occasionally the kindness) of the world around them. Part of the brilliance of Ashby is that while his films are political in that sense, he never hits us over the head with his ideals; in the end, it’s always about people. And you can’t talk about Ashby without focusing on how he seemed to attract the most brilliant collaborators. Ashby was an actor’s director, and one can barely keep track of the number of actors in the 70’s who were nominated or who won acting Oscars under his direction. Much of that stems from the brilliant work of his casting director, the great Lynn Stalmaster. And look at the list of cinematographers for these films: Gordon Willis, John Alonzo, Michael Chapman, Laszlo Kovacs, Haskell Wexler and Caleb Deschanel. This is why although he was a “we’ll fix it in the edit” director his films look so beautiful. The great Robert Towne wrote two of Ashby’s best films. And he had people like Paul Simon, Cat Stevens and Al Kooper writing music for him. Clearly, the most imaginative and talented film people of that phenomenally creative period in American film wanted to work with Ashby. So why is Ashby mostly forgotten? Was it that his career fell off a cliff when the 80’s arrived, due to a vicious circle of Hollywood politics and his increasing drug use? Was it that he was not a distinctive stylist, dare we say an auteur, like Scorsese and Coppola et al.? Was he just a visually gifted studio hired gun, or was there something more to Ashby’s body of work in the 70’s? Watching these films again, Ashby seems to us to be the bard of an America where the promise of personal and political revolution of the 60’s resulted not in liberation, but rather in a sense of being lost, unmoored and generally unhappy and unfulfilled. In the end, there is no questioning the quality of Ashby’s work in the 70’s, from "The Landlord" through "Being There". Except perhaps for Coppola, no American director had a better more consistent decade of work in the 70’s, and it’s time that we recognized Hal Ashby as the poet laureate of American dislocation in that tumultuous decade.

2. 

   3 Sept 2026

   Vintage Sand Episode 69: Hidden Gems, Volume VI

   Hey Vintage Sand fans! Hope the summer was relaxing, fun, and adventurous. An offbeat recommendation to begin—even if you’re not a fan, as a film lover you must see the first half hour of this summer’s "Minions and Monsters", which pays gentle comic tribute to the entire history of film from Muybridge’s experiments through "Citizen Kane", name-checking the Lumieres, Méliès, Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, and riffing like "Singin’ in the Rain" and "Babylon" on the impact of the arrival of sound in Hollywood. Love or hate the little yellow guys, here are some filmmakers who truly love film and film history! For the sixth time in the history of the podcast, Team Vintage Sand returns to one of its most popular formats: the Hidden Gems episode. As we did in episodes 11, 30, 40, 53, and 64 (take notes—there will be a quiz), we each choose one film to discuss that we feel has been underappreciated and overlooked by the madding crowd yearning to see anything besides a prequel, sequel, spinoff, or reboot. This time around, by pure coincidence, the episode features three films that are relatively similar in their lightness of tone, though only one might be described as a pure comedy, albeit a dark one. That would be Michael’s pick, Lawrence Kasdan’s "I Love You to Death" from 1990. Featuring an unbelievable cast including Kevin Kline (fresh off his Oscar win for "A Fish Called Wanda"), the sublime Tracey Ullman in her first big-screen performance, as well as Joan Plowright (who steals the film), River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves and William Hurt, the film puts a black comedy twist on the real-life story of a pizzeria-owning, philandering husband, and his wife, who makes repeated and increasingly violent unsuccessful attempts to kill him. John shines the spotlight on "The Nice Guys", the 2016 action comedy by Shane Black starring Ryan Gosling and a heavyset, Bronx-accented Russell Crowe. The film features a stellar supporting cast including Keith David, Margaret Qualley, Kim Basinger, and a wonderful performance by Angourie Rice as Gosling’s daughter. Set in LA in 1977, it is a compendium of every noirish LA film ever made, from "Chinatown" to "Lebowski" to "Boogie Nights" to "Pulp Fiction" to "The Long Goodbye". As always with Black, the writing can be clunky and the tonal shifts are sometimes awkward. But the film is more than worthwhile for every priceless moment that Gosling and Crowe are together on screen; they are probably the best buddy pair featured in Black’s long list of buddy action comedies. I focus on the film that brought an abrupt end to the roll Alan Rudolph was on in the mid-80’s, from which the Altman disciple and wannabe never really recovered: 1987’s "Made in Heaven". The story of a romance (featuring Tim Hutton and Kelly McGillis) kindled in the Afterlife but which extends from this world to the next, the film, like another 1987 release "The Princess Bride", unironically and sweetly makes the case for the power of True Love, even over death. How you feel about that idea will largely determine your reaction to Rudolph’s film; there are plot holes as wide as the Pearly Gates themselves, and some questionable writing here and there. But the other thing the film has going for it is its focus on music, especially the concluding song “We’ve Never Danced”, written by Neil Young (who has a cameo) and sung by the wondrous Martha Davis, the lead singer of early-80’s faves The Motels. So please enjoy visiting and/or revisiting these films, check out that opening of the Minions film, and celebrate the new school year by recommitting to your love of film and seeing movies in theaters. And whatever the rest of 2026 brings us in the world of film, count on Team Vintage Sand to be your trusty sherpas for the journey.

3. 

   13 Jun 2026

   Vintage Sand Episode 68: "The Story of Love and Hate": Despised Films We Truly Love

   Brothers and Sisters! Let us tell you the story of Love and Hate. H-A-T-E! It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-O-V-E! You see these fingers, dear hearts? The right hand, friends, the hand of love. Now watch, and we’ll show you the story of being a movie fan. Old brother left hand Hate’s a-fighting; there are many, many films that most folks hated and which have not, like other ignored-upon-release films, gone on to be cult classics. But wait a minute! Hot dog, Love's a winning! Yessirreee! It's Love that's won, and old left hand Hate is down for the count! For in this episode, brothers and sisters, Team Vintage Sand makes the case for why we love these films that just about everyone else hates. The nine films we’ve chosen to highlight could not be more different from one another. We reach all the way back to the 1940’s and come all the way up to a film released just four years ago. We range from well-known directors like Paul Schrader, Ang Lee, and Arthur Penn to solid directors like George Roy Hill, Mark Robson, and Lasse Hallström, to a couple of directors whose obscurity is well-earned or whose reputation is yet to be determined by time. So beat the drums, ‘cause here comes our last episode before a summer interlude! Lastly, join us in a moment of silence for the late Ted Turner, who in spite of colorization and his ownership of the Atlanta Braves is one of our heroes, for TCM is a treasure that never stops giving to film fanatics like us. As for the coming summer, here’s hoping that "Disclosure Day" is closer to "E.T." than to "A.I." , and that Nolan is somehow able to pull off "The Odyssey" (and that for once in a Nolan film, we can hear the dialogue over the music in the sound mix). Have a safe and peaceful break, and remember a great way to stay cool in the time of El Niño (both the weather phenomenon and the current political leadership ) is to go see movies in a real theater. Just saying…

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

17 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 33 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

46

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

51

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Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.