Hollywood Uncorked Podcast

Jonathan Kesselman got his big break directing the 2003 cult hit The Hebrew Hammer, which he had directed as a short film at USC Film School. And while he continued his career directing major commercials and comedies like Jimmy Vestvood, Kesselman always thirsted to make a sequel of Hammer. A window of opportunity opened up last year when investment rules changed, allowing non-accredited investors to participate in a film’s equity. To capitalize on this, Kesselman shot a short earlier this year with stars Adam Goldberg and Judy Greer, previewing a possible sequel called Hebrew Hammer vs. Hitler that you can find on Microventures.com. And as we discuss the path forward for the project, we continue our trip through Burgundy by drinking three bottles from the village of Fixin.

Steve Wegner (Insomnia, The Blind Side) was 12 years old when he saw Blade Runner, and even wrote a paper on it in film school. Little did he know he would become a producer on the film’s much anticipated sequel, Blade Runner 2049, which topped the box office this past weekend on some of the strongest reviews for a sci-fi movie in recent memory. In this episode, Steve joins the panel as they drink South African wine and discuss how a Blade Runner sequel came to be – from the “ah-ha” moment in the producing team’s first story meeting with Ridley Scott, what it took to get Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling on board, and why they gave the project the top-secret name “Acid Zoo” during development.

Are acting auditions really as painful as La La Land makes them look? Do you really have to know somebody to get your start in the business? Is the notorious “casting couch” really a thing? These questions and more are answered this week by actress Heather Ankeny (Weeds, Criminal Minds), who helps the guys kick off a journey into France’s Burgundy region by sampling Pinot Noir from the village of Marsannay. Along the way, she talks about leaving a job working for the Denver Nuggets to try her hand in Hollywood, how she got her SAG card as a stand-in for Christine Lahti on Chicago Hope, and her unabashed affinity for a down-and-dirty bottle of Charles Shaw.

Was Hollywood’s summer slump a one-off caused by tired sequels and real-life natural disasters, or did it represent something more ominous for the theater-going experience? To discuss Hollywood’s broken system for releasing movies, we sit down with Tom Williams, who was on the team behind one of its most notable recent casualties, Logan Lucky. While Williams talks about working with directors like Steven Soderbergh and Alexander Payne, and how The Notebook became the biggest surprise hit on his resume, we sample three bottles of the unappreciated varietal that is merlot – itself a notable Hollywood casualty.

Every week, actress Lauren Ash delivers some of the most aggressive and just-plain-wrong comedic moments on network TV playing megalomaniacal Cloud 9 assistant store manager Dina Fox on NBC’s breakout sitcom Superstore. With the show about to enter its third full season, Lauren takes time out from her shooting schedule to help us drink through – what else? – three Kirkland wines from big-box retailer Costco. As the wines deliver some pleasant surprises for the panel, Lauren delves into the personal quirks of adjusting to the stability of being on a hit show, dropping out of theatre school to train with the famed Second City comedy troupe, and the perverse joy of terrifying hundreds of people on the long-running prank-show gem, Scare Tactics. She also humors Ben through the most awkward, but ultimately glorious, moment in Hollywood Uncorked history (begins at minute 50).

As an executive creative director for advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi in New York, Mike Pierantozzi has a front-row seat to the closer-than-ever relationship between Hollywood and Madison Avenue. In this episode, we discuss how narrative storytelling is now sometimes indistinguishable between advertising and top-tier Hollywood content, how advertisers work to keep eyeballs on their product, and why top talent is flocking to commercials. Along the way, we do a number on three Russian River Chardonnays: a 2015 Hartford, 2014 Gary Farrell, and 2014 Walter Hansel Cuvee Alyce. Oh yeah, and we learn how Ben tangled with fate last week by busting the proprietor of an Italian joint in Queens for serving him homemade wine made from grocery store grapes.

As perhaps the biggest underdog winner in Survivor history, John Cochran isn’t afraid of making big moves. But he might have saved his biggest play for his post-Survivor life as the Harvard law grad turned his back on a legal career and instead pivoted to being a writer on CBS sitcoms The Millers and Kevin Can Wait. In this episode, Cochran helps the guys find the perfect wines to pair with Thai food while explaining why entering his first writing room was like walking onto the Survivor beach for the first time, which fellow Survivor winner supervised him during a college internship, and the hotel hot tub mishap he suffered after getting flown out to LA for the week-long Survivor casting process.

What happened to the romantic comedy? Despite being on constant rotation on cable TV, they’ve largely disappeared from the modern cinemaplex – but can they come back? In this episode, we discuss the downfall and future prospects of the rom-com with screenwriter Marc Klein, noted crafter of beloved versions of the genre such as Serendipity with Kate Beckinsale and A Good Year with Russell Crowe. As Marc helps the guys drink three wines Ben found at the BevMo Five-Cent Sale, he traces the history of the romantic comedy – from When Harry Met Sally to Sleepless in Seattle to Ten Things I Hate About You – and how the genre’s temporary stall might have as much to do with changes in our courtship customs as it does with studio financing. Oh yeah, and we also talk about the three years Marc’s dad spent as a casino executive for Donald Trump. So, you know, there’s that.

A third-generation writer, Emma Tolkin’s father scripted movies like Deep Impact and Changing Lanes, and her grandfather Mel served as head writer of Your Show of Shows, where he presided over one of the most legendary writing rooms in Hollywood history with fellow luminaries Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Sid Caesar. But when it came time for Emma to pursue her own writing career, she took her talents to the internet where she’s handled social media duties for the Anna Faris podcast Unqualified and numerous tech startups. She even co-founded the dating app Vibes. In today’s episode, she helps us wrap up our four-episode traipse through the world of GSMs while explaining why the tech world is a highly chaotic but deeply fulfilling alternative for creative types considering a career in entertainment.

In Part Two of our sit-down with director Mike Mitchell (Trolls, Lego Movie Sequel), we dust off two more bottles of Mourvedre and take a hilarious stroll down the long road that took him from the Midwest to Hollywood. Along the way, we visit waypoints like his time at CalArts, storyboarding for Spike Jonze, his first directing job helming Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, and how to work around a corporate agenda when you’re putting together a major animated sequel. Oh yeah, and we also learn about Tom and Mike’s strange, shared experiences with Oklahoma’s capital punishment system.

Given his role directing blockbuster animated sequels like Shrek Forever After and the upcoming Lego Movie Sequel, we thought it only appropriate to give director Mike Mitchell a two-episode arc to discuss his career as an animator and filmmaker in Hollywood. While drinking three hard-to-find bottles of Mourvedre, Mike walks us through how he developed the Trolls movie by going to the very origins of the ‘70s dolls themselves, the “hippie commune” that is Hollywood’s animated community, and the madness of being able to control every single inch of every single frame of your movie.

A manager at Magnet Management, Mitch Solomon works across many different disciplines in entertainment – from signing new talent, developing and producing scripts, and helping clients navigate Hollywood’s many pitfalls as they grow their careers. While drinking Grenache as part two of our look at the three wines that comprise GSM blends, Mitch discusses the factors that almost led to Hollywood’s first strike in a decade, the “greedy Communism” of running a management firm with eight other managers, and how he got his first job working for Robert Redford by answering a job in The Hollywood Reporter. Meanwhile, writer Pete Tibbals from Episode #4 steps in to hold down co-hosting duties for Tom who just couldn’t rally back after hand surgery earlier in the day and the several fistfuls of pain pills he chased it with.

Raised on the sights and sounds of MTV, Wende Crowley knew from a young age she wanted to put music in film and TV shows – even though she wasn’t totally sure it was a job. Today, she has that job as a senior vice president in Sony’s music publishing division where she and her team oversee more than 4 million music copyrights, including the entire Lennon-McCartney catalogue. Over three bottles of California Syrah, she discusses how she broke into Hollywood’s notoriously tight-knit music community, how she helps music supervisors from film and TV find that perfect song for a key scene, and how streaming and the DIY aspect of music production is affecting the future of the industry. We also learn that Ben will be forever indebted to her for giving him her seat at Sony’s table during his favorite band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. Which band? Listen and find out!

Hollywood is leaner than ever – smaller staffs, tighter budgets, fewer studio opportunities. But is this environment perversely suited to today’s young Hollywood aspirants, who are digital natives and came of age fully expecting the scramble of the gig economy? In this episode we talk about the hopes and expectations of Millennials in Hollywood with one of their own: Stephanie Varela Rheingold. At 28, she’s ridden the chaos of the business to work throughout the entertainment universe – from agency jobs, production gigs, making music videos, and even in social media. While drinking glasses of Cava (champagne’s cheaper Spanish cousin) we talk with Stephanie about how Hollywood’s new generation is using the stagnation of the business as an opportunity to build diverse experience across its many facets – with fewer expectations and a greater thirst for variety than perhaps any generation before them.

Screenwriter Pam Pettler (Monster House, Corpse Bride) has done about everything a comedy writer could want to do in Hollywood. She’s worked with directors like Ridley Scott, Tim Burton and Robert Zemeckis, wrote with Steve Martin, and was the first writer hired on iconic ‘80s sitcom Charles in Charge. She joins today’s episode with a bottle of Vieux Telegraphe that’s been sitting under her house for the last three decades so we can compare how it’s weathered the ravages of time and temperature versus one of its properly cellared cousins.

A Los Angeles native, Jennifer Ross spent her formative years hanging out at Tower Records, sneaking into clubs to see her favorite bands, and obsessing over carving a path in music. Now the music supervisor for one of the biggest music-focused shows on television – Fox’s Empire – Jennifer finds herself as a legitimate taste-maker in an industry that’s never been more decentralized. On this episode, she joins us to discuss old-world and new-world pinot noir, how she got her start in music working in artist relations with stars like Nelly Furtado, and the thrill of turning a hidden gem like Desiigner’s “Panda” into an overnight hit simply by putting it on an episode of TV.

As a member of a celebrated artistic family, Ahmet Zappa’s path to success as a best-selling children’s author, producer and screenwriter (The Odd Life of Timothy Green) was a surprisingly crooked line. With detours through child acting and MTV hosting gigs, and roadblocks that included dyslexia and crises of confidence, he walks us through the many strange steps of his Hollywood journey and more than does his part in helping the guys plow through three stellar bottles of Zinfandel.

Veteran Hollywood executive and producer Gaylyn Fraiche has made movies in all corners of the entertainment universe: from producing mainstream theatrical releases like Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 and Sparkle, to overseeing successful cable films like The Swap (Disney Channel) and The Bridge (Hallmark Channel). In this episode, she joins us to drink Beaujolais from the town of Morgon while discussing how binge-watching is changing Hollywood, the importance of making movies studios no longer want to, and why "straight-to-cable" movies might be the wave of the future.

Gren Wells is a badass -- whether rocking haute couture on the film-festival circuit, getting Hollywood's attention with a script about cancer (A Little Bit of Heaven starring Kate Hudson), or writing and directing last year's The Road Within with Robert Sheehan, Dev Patel, Zoe Kravitz, and Kyra Sedgwick. True to form, Gren doesn't disappoint in this episode, coming in hot and never taking her foot off the gas as we cuss, guzzle 19-year-old Barolo, and enjoy nuggets about her psychotic non-stop writing binges and how getting uncomfortably aggressive at a party with On Golden Pond producer Bruce Gilbert helped kickstart her career.

Back after a brief holiday hiatus, we kick off 2017 with screenwriter Jason Filardi, who's forged a lasting career in Hollywood with such bankable comedies as Bringing Down The House with Steve Martin & Queen Latifah and 17 Again with Zac Efron. While we tip back three bottles of Chianti Classico, Jason tells us how a script called "Himbos" got him his first agent, walks us through the anatomy of his first Hollywood writing deal, and describes why weekly production writing is the best gig in town.