Writers on Film is the only podcast to focus on film books and to talk to the best authors working in the area of cinema. From Making Of tomes to biographies, studies to novelisations, author and film critic John Bleasdale is fascinated by where the written word intersects with the world of the big screen. Get bonus content on Patreon
A proud part of the Film Stories Podcast Network: www.filmstories.co.uk
John Waters: Michelle E. Moore Praises the Pope of Trash
The first collected volume of work on cult film director and icon John Waters, which offers a comprehensive study of his work as an important filmmaker and cultural force. Includes chapters covering important themes in Waters’s work, stylistic tendencies, his relationship to the art world, and interviews reflecting on the impact of Waters’s films on his collaborators and audience. Also features a new retrospective interview with Waters in which he reflects on his career and films.
2 Dec 2025
Mike Miley on David Lynch
How are David Lynch's films as much in dialogue with literary and musical traditions as they are cinematic ones?By interrogating this question, David Lynch's American Dreamscape broadens the interpretive horizons of Lynch's filmography, calling for a new approach to Lynch's films that goes beyond cinema and visual art to explore how Lynch's work engages with literary and musical works that have shaped the American imagination. As much as Lynch stands as a singular artistic voice, his work arises from and taps into the cultural zeitgeist in a way that illuminates not only his approach to creativity but also the way works interact with each other in an age of mass media. From children's literature to teen tragedy ballads, Nathanael West and Cormac McCarthy to folk music and mixtapes, David Lynch's American Dreamscape investigates the cultural frequencies Lynch's films tune into and positions Lynch's work as a conduit for American popular culture, a medium or channel through which the subconscious of American life finds its way into full view.
The book expands upon this approach by discussing how artists such as David Foster Wallace and Lana Del Rey graft Lynch's affiliative, cinematic sensibility onto their own projects. Reading their work as intertextual engagements with Lynch's films further illustrates the versatile interactions among creators and audiences to generate more works, readers, and readings.
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27 Nov 2025
Joseph McBride talks I Loved Movies But...
Joseph McBride has been a veteran critic, a teacher, the screenwriter of (among others) Rock n Roll High School. He's acted for Orson Welles and campaigned for John F Kennedy. A fearsome intellect and a great film scholar, this is a mammoth episode for a legendary man. His new memoir/interview book with Danny Peary I Loved Movies But... is available here.
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Who has been a guest on Writers on Film
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Tom Shone
D Harlan Wilson
Julie Seabaugh
Jarett Kobek
Christina Juerling Birro
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
4.6 / 5
33 ratings
Spotify
4.8 / 5
56 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 55 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
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