Here's a question: is the “spirit of the Blitz” that’s become one of the pillars of British self-identity actually a myth? The idea of ordinary people coming together in a moment of collective resilience during WWII is invoked regularly in UK politics and beyond. There might be more to that story than meets the eye, though, according to Blitz – the…

On today’s episode – a crime thriller? A musical? A coming-out drama? Emilia Pérez, the new film from famed French auteur Jacques Audiard, is all of the above and somehow none of these things at all. It really is hard to understate the disorientating excess and madness of this somewhat opinion-splitting new Netflix awards contender, which is tipped…

On Election Day in America, with the nation at the polls, Al spoke with a man uniquely placed to comment on the fractures underpinning the battle for the nation. Chuck Palahniuk, you see, is the author of 21 novels, but probably best known for his first - 1996’s Fight Club, later adapted by David Fincher into one of the defining films of its era. S…

In 1978, a Texan-born man went on national TV, competing in and ultimately winning an episode of the popular American game show The Dating Game. This man was, according to host Jim Lange, a "successful photographer" who you might find "skydiving or motorcycling." Left out of that description – unknown to Lange, the show's producers and millions wat…

Today on Script Apart – religion, Radiohead and ratcheting terror, in the basement of a man who has spent way too long on the "Monopoly" Wikipedia. Four years after their first appearance on Script Apart, breaking down their franchise-launching script for A Quiet Place, writer-director duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods are with us once again, to unpic…

Love hurts in the dizzyingly unpredictable Strange Darling – a thriller that upends expectations at every turn, courtesy of our guest this week, Las Vegan-born writer-director JT Mollner. JT grew up surrounded by immersive storytelling – his father ran a haunted house in Vegas that he helped conceptualise every Halloween as a child. That adolescenc…

This week on the show – Azazel Jacobs is here! Azazel is writer-director of the new Netflix drama His Three Daughters, one of the most deeply moving films of the year so far, and a stunning addition to a filmography already brimming with intriguing tonal blurs and beautiful realised characters. You might know Azazel for acclaimed works like The Goo…

Great Scott, it’s been 35 years since the second instalment in one of the most beloved trilogies of all time – Back To The Future Part II, directed by the great Robert Zemeckis and co-written by our guest today, Bob Gale! Bob first guested on Script Apart in 2021, breaking down his first draft of 1985’s iconic debut outing for Marty McFly and eccen…

For a film built around a song titled Remember Me, Pixar's Coco sure has proven absolutely unforgettable in the seven years since its release. Directed by past Script Apart guest Lee Unkrich, the animation told the story of Miguel – a young boy voiced by Anthony Gonzalez who is accidentally transported to the Land of the Dead, where he seeks the he…

Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley are the co-writers (and in Greg's case, director) of Sing Sing – a prison drama that tips on its head the entire prison drama genre. This is a film that forefronts humanity and tenderness instead of the violent and savagery that often powers movies set in jail. There are prison dramas we all adore but how many times ha…

"His stories were good because he imagined them intensely, so intensely that he came to believe them." So wrote Patricia Highsmith in her seminal literary thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley in 1955. You might also characterise the work of our guest today, the talented Mr. Steven Zaillian, this way. The worlds and characters of his films and TV shows …

Unless you’ve spent the last year locked in a radiation-proof vault deep below the surface of the Earth, you’ll have no doubt heard about Fallout – a TV video game adaptation unlike any other. Created by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and our guest today, former Portlandia writer Graham Wagner, the show brought to life the blue suits, barbarism and bizarr…

Today on Script Apart – a film about a man trapped in an air-conditioned purgatory, full of fast food joints, luggage carousels and people in transit, while he himself remains frustratingly locked in place. 2004’s The Terminal is the Steven Spielberg-directed tale of Viktor, played by Tom Hanks: a kind-hearted soul marooned at an American airport o…

This week on Script Apart – a sit-down on a proverbial park bench to pick through the box of chocolates that is Forrest Gump, with the legendary screenwriter behind the classic drama, Eric Roth! Marking the film's 30th anniversary, Roth regales us with secrets from the Gump's creation, breaking down why he elected not to make Forrest a NASA astrona…

Two sisters on opposite sides of the Force; one terrible trauma that sent them on those divergent paths... Set one hundred years before the Skywalker Saga that would define a galaxy, The Acolyte – Disney's newest Star Wars TV show – explores uncharted territory for the franchise in more ways than one. Not only have fans never seen this era in Star …

A Quiet Place: Day One is an alien invasion tale well and truly worth shouting about. Written and directed by our guest this week, Milwaukee-born filmmaker Michael Sarnoski, it’s a rare example of sequel that prioritises its characters and their connections instead of chasing bigger, more bombastic explosions. Where most franchise follow-ups get bo…

The Bikeriders is another triumph for Little Rock-born filmmaker Jeff Nichols. Inspired by and named after a 1968 photographic study of Chicago bikers by Danny Lyon, the film charts the rise and fall of not just a motorcycle gang but also an era in American history. It stars Austin Butler as young rebel Benny, Jodie Comer as his long-suffering part…

Brian Duffield is one of the most original writer-directors in genre cinema right now – a spec script maestro whose films are homages to the popcorn thrill rides he grew up on, without being nostalgic replays of those ‘90s classics. Instead, his movie’s always offer something new. Take Spontaneous, for example – his brilliant coming-of-age director…

Drew Pearce is the writer of movies like Iron Man 3, Hobbs and Shaw and 2018’s Hotel Artemis – the Scottish-born storyteller’s directorial debut. This week, he’s back in cinemas with The Fall Guy – a car-flipping, boat-exploding, bullet-dodging, unicorn-hallucinating love letter to practical filmmaking that’s pure adrenaline and charisma. The David…

“You’re remembered for the rules you break.” So says Ben Affleck in Air, the 2023 sports marketing drama that took its own advice. Written by our guest today, Alex Convery, Air shouldn’t have been the captivating cinematic slam-dunk it turned out to be. At least, not on paper. A drama about the creation of the Nike Air Jordan trainer? That sounds l…

If you went down to the woods in July 1999, you were in for a big surprise. The Blair Witch Project – our movie this week, one of the most notorious horror films in modern movie history – was a phenomenon that no one saw coming. Its reverberations are still being felt today, not just in horror but in movie-making at large. Is tale of a group of ind…

Today on Script Apart – another in our "Stage Apart" series about great plays! Our guest this week is a storyteller beloved across stage and screen, whose 2009 play Jerusalem is frequently referred to as the best play of the century so far. His acclaimed theatre productions includes 1995’s Mojo, 2012’s The River and 2019’s The Ferryman – but movie …

This week on Script Apart – a storyteller who began penning films like 28 Days Later and The Beach, before stepping behind the camera as the writer-director of stories that go to fascinating philosophical places, asking borderline unanswerable questions about humanity along the way. Alex Garland's fourth time in the director's chair, Civil War, is …

This week on Script Apart, we’re broadcasting from the Upside Down. Yes, grab your Eggos and Metallica CDs for a special, spoiler-free conversation all about Stranger Things: The First Shadow – the first theatre production that we’ve covered on the show, as part of a new strand of episodes called "Stage Apart." The First Shadow is a show that, as r…

Welcome to another Script Club episode of Script Apart, in which storytellers we admire pick a film or show they love and talk about why it's special. Today, revered Folio Prize-winning author Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties, In The Dream House) breaks down the dystopian delights of Alfonso Cuarón's Children Of Men, co-written with…

“We are what we survive.” That’s the message of Expats, the powerful new limited series from our guest this week, Lulu Wang. Lulu is a writer-director whose stories are unflinchingly intimate portraits of characters captivatingly full of contradictions. In this show, adapted from a novel by Janice Y.K. Lee, those characters are three women, differe…

Today on Script Apart, we're heading to Malia with Molly Manning Walker, writer-director of How To Have Sex. Since wowing audiences at Cannes last summer, the sun-sea-and-consent drama has proved a box office hit, been hailed as one of the strongest feature debuts by a British filmmaker in recent year and sparked long-overdue, nuanced conversations…

American Fiction is two films at once – a farcical comedy take-down of white gatekeepers who only want one type of Black storytelling and a beautifully tender drama that underlines the richness possible when filmmakers of colour are allowed to operate outside of the boxes they’re often put in. Written and directed by Cord Jefferson, whose past writ…

Alienation, abandonment and dislocated shoulders: not really your usual ingredients for a tender festive heart-warmer. But then again, The Holdovers – unequivocally one of our favourite films of the last twelve months – isn’t your average Christmas movie. Directed by Alexander Payne and written by our guest today, the brilliant David Hemingson, it'…

This week we're joined by writer-director Andrew Haigh, whose new metaphysical drama All Of Us Strangers is a bruise in movie form: all swirling blue and purple hues, symbolic of hurt and longing to heal. The film tells the tale of a quiet screenwriter named Adam, played by Andrew Scott, who lives in a lonely London tower block, divorced from the w…

The acclaimed new Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro is about more than just the life and times of arguably America’s most famous composer. It’s about the idea of genius and what allowances those in the presence of gifted creatives sometimes permit, at great personal cost, to allow that artistry to flourish. Starring Carey Mulligan and Bradley Cooper…

This week, we're joined by the great Ari Aster – one of the boldest and most enigmatic voices in American cinema right now. He’s a filmmaker that Al first met in May 2019. The New York-born writer-director’s debut horror, Hereditary, was a few months old at the time, and Ari was deep in the edit for Midsommar at the time. Al had been sent by Empire…

Today on the show – a movie in which Emma Stone attempts to punch a baby, by a playwright and screenwriter whose stories never fail to pack a punch. Yes, Tony McNamara is here, talking all things Poor Things, his latest collaboration with director Yorgos Lanthimos. Having previously worked together on the ten-time Oscar-nominated historical comedy …

On October 13, 1972, a plane carrying 45 passengers and crew – 19 of whom were young rugby players – took off from Carrasco International Airport in Uruguay heading to Santiago, Chile. The plane never reached its destination. Adverse weather conditions caused Flight 571 to crash into a mountain ridge, ripping the aircraft in two over the Andes moun…

In our final episode of 2023, Michael Arndt – the acclaimed writer of films like Little Miss Sunshine and Star Wars: The Force Awakens – drops by for a two-hour dissection of his script for Toy Story 3 –a Pixar sequel that went to infinity and beyond when it came to thrills, laughter and emotion. Directed by past Script Apart guest Lee Unkrich, the…

On today’s episode, an interview at the end of a TV show: A Murder At The End Of The World. That’s right, Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij are with us, breaking down every detail of their phenomenal techno-thriller whodunnit, which reached its breathtaking conclusion last night. As we’ve come to expect from the creators of head-spinning drama The OA…

New disaster movie Leave The World Behind deals with themes that its writer-director, Sam Esmail, finds impossible to leave behind himself. Eight years ago, the filmmaker introduced himself with Mr. Robot – a techno-thriller piece of prestige TV that warned of the ways that society might grow fragmented, unreliable and open to exploitation, the mor…

Something sinister simmers beneath the surface of suburbia in Eileen, a psychological thriller about pent-up desire, parental neglect and escaping the shackles of the life expected of us. It’s a story that first existed as a novel, launching the literary career of Boston-born author Ottessa Moshfegh in 2015. Since then, Ottessa’s career has skyrock…

May December – written by our guest this week, Samy Burch – tells the serpentine tale of a TV actress, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) who descends upon the home of a family founded on scandal. Two decades have passed since Gracie, portrayed by Julianne Moore, and her now-husband Joe, played by Charles Melton, hit the headlines after beginning a relati…

Stick to the plan. Anticipate, don’t improvise. Trust no one. Never yield an advantage. Fight only the battle you’re paid to fight… and if you can do all that while listening to The Smiths, even better. That’s the mantra of the eponymous assassin at the heart of The Killer, directed by David Fincher and written by our guest today – the fantastic An…

Can you find the wolves in this podcast? Our guest today, Eric Roth, is the Academy Award-winning writer behind films like Forrest Gump. He wrote The Insider for Michael Mann, Munich for Steven Spielberg, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for David Fincher and 2018’s A Star Is Born for Bradley Cooper, and two years ago, we had the delight of his …

Film history is full of troublesome hotels, isn’t it? A few of them we've even covered on this very show, from the haunted Overlook in The Shining to the labyrinthine, unsettling Airbnb in Barbarian – the kinds of places that make you vow to never complain about a Premier Inn again. This week, revered writer-director Kitty Green releases a thriller…

The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. But when it comes to Bottoms – the new queer high school comedy from Emma Seligman, in which two teen lesbians start their own Fincher-esque Fight Club in an attempt to get closer to cheerleaders – well, there's really no helping it. On today's episode of Script Apart, the acclaimed …

This week, we're delighted to be reunited with the talented Jeff Rowe, who first appeared on the show in 2021, breaking down his and Mike Rianda’s hilarious The Mitchells vs the Machines. On today’s episode, the animation auteur returns to talk all things Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The heroes in a half shell returned earlier this year in Mutant …

This episode is part of our Storyteller Sessions event – a weekend of career-spanning conversations with game-changing storytellers, raising money for the Entertainment Community Fund. If you enjoy this episode or any of the episodes still to come across this weekend, please do consider donating via the link below: Donate to our fundraiser here! Gi…

This episode is part of our Storyteller Sessions event – a weekend of career-spanning conversations with game-changing storytellers, raising money for the Entertainment Community Fund. If you enjoy this episode or any of the episodes still to come across this weekend, please do consider donating via the link below: Donate to our fundraiser here! On…

Welcome to the Script Apart Storyteller Sessions – three days of career-spanning conversations with truly game-changing storytellers, talking about their relationship with the page. 100% of proceeds are going to the Entertainment Community Fund, a brilliant charity doing hugely important work – so if you enjoy this episode or any of the episodes ac…

This week on Script Apart, the writers behind Pixar’s latest heartwarming spectacle take us down to Element City where the tree people are green and the Vivisteria Flowers are pretty. Yes, today we’re joined by Kat Likkel and John Hoberg, the husband-and-wife duo whose script for Elemental – co-written with Brenda Hsueh and director Pete Sohn – has…

Think of your worst experience with online dating – the most excruciating Hinge disaster or Tinder catastrophe. However bad you might think that ordeal was, it’s nothing on the tale told in the extraordinary recent indie I Love My Dad. Part cringe comedy, part family drama and part horror movie for the MySpace generation, the film followed a screw-…

Judd Apatow needs little in the way of introduction. He’s a filmmaker synonymous with an entire era of American comedy – that mid-’00s explosion of zeitgeist-grabbing movies about incapable men, grappling with the realisation that it’s about time they grew up. There’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which Apatow wrote and directed. There’s also the cult cl…