The Extras - TCM Host Ben Mankiewicz On Baseball, TCM’s Legacy, And The Future Of Classic Film

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

Send us a textWe sit down with Ben Mankiewicz to trace his path from sports-obsessed kid to TCM host, exploring what makes a film “classic,” why nostalgia hits harder with age, and how storytelling in podcasts and on-air curation keeps cinema alive. Along the way, we debunk Cleopatra myths, celebrate overlooked gems, and make the case for family movie night as a way to slow time.  This is a perfect podcast for the holidays, as we ruminate on family, nostalgia, and the importance of movies. Links:TCM WebsiteThe Plot Thickens: Cleopatra PodcastTalking Pictures Podcast The Extras Facebook page The Extras TV YouTube ChannelThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog Group Join our new public Facebook Group for Warner Archive Animation Fans and get the latest update on all the releases. As an Amazon Affiliate, The Extras may receive a commission for purchases through our purchase links. There is no additional cost to you, and every little bit helps us in the production of the podcast. Thanks in advance. Otaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. [e-mail]

Hi, I'm Gregory Orr, grandson of Jack Al Warner and producer of the documentary Jack Al Warner The Last Mogul, and you are listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras. I'm Tim enlarger host, and today I'm joined by TCM host, Ben McEwitz. Hey, Ben. Hey, Tim, how are you? Good, good. Are you getting ready for the holidays here? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're having a small Thanksgiving. People keep bailing on us. Maybe we should be coming. I know it's a busy week. Maybe we should read something into this.

But anyway, it'll be nice. And it's my favorite holiday by far. You know, it's you hang out with people you care about. Nobody has to give a gift. I know. There's football in the middle of the week and the weekend. It gets good. I love Thanksgiving.

Yeah, yeah. It's great. Well, I told you earlier when I met you that I worked at Wonder Home Video for almost 14 years. But we never actually met while I was working there because we're very separate divisions or anything. We actually met at our daughter softball game back in September. I remember the playoffs were going on. We were talking about that as we were watching the game.

But do people know how big of a baseball fan you are? I mean, people, if they've listened to one of the interviews I've done, but basically no, I don't get it. I thought that was going to be my career. I thought I was not playing. I wasn't that foolish. Although, you know, I played as long as I could. And then I played softball as long as I could also, but not as much as I should have.

Like, I love it so much that I should have been playing like a couple times a week. It's just I love it. But man, when I hit like 35, like I got a lot worse. Like, you know, I mean, I was always good. And then all of a sudden I'm like, I'm like the seventh best player on this team tops. Yeah. And I was a great outfielder. And all of a sudden I was like, I am letting balls go over my head.

Like I lost the ability to. Yeah, I thought I was going to be a baseball broadcaster. I sort of thought that's what was in the cards for me and what I wanted to do. And I sort of knew that if I worked at it, I'd be pretty good at it. And like I recognize now, this is going to sound, I'll probably regret this, but I would have been great at it. Like, because when I was coming up, there was a traditional manner in which broadcasters had to speak. And that was always tricky for me.

But now that you can sort of let your personality be part of your presentation that you don't have to act like you're a baseball broadcaster, right? That they're enough really good broadcasters. And I'm sure some people hate them. It's obviously a very subjective business. But I would have had my own thing and my own sort of very casual style and it would have worked enough for some people. And I would have been good at it. And partly because I just would, you know, I loved it. Yeah.

I still do. Still love listening to baseball on the radio. I agree. I think back, you know, when I was in college, when I went into my broadcast classes, one of the key things I thought was sports, you know, just in terms of a pure interest that I had as well. Here we are both. We talk about film, but. And sports is, I mean, it's, I mean, in this era where everything has changed and obviously sports has too,

but in a sense, sports has become more important than it ever was. I mean, you know, every single reality show is trying to capture what sports does. It's just this reality show where you don't know how it's going to end. And that's not, you legitimately don't know how it's going to end. I mean, you know, people can talk about the fix being in, but it's, there's no fix. And it's a great drama, right? It's great trauma. And we just came off this great World Series game seven.

It comes right down to extra. Yeah, yeah. There's no drama greater than that. Yeah, and in football and basketball too. I mean, I, you know, I mean, I remember I was listening to, I guess I didn't know. I hadn't listened to Clippers on the radio. I live out here in L.A. And I caught a Clippers game on the radio, and I think Ion Eagle was their play-by-play guy for years, which I was unaware of.

I mean, I knew Chick-Hern, and I knew what the Lakers did, but I just didn't, I'd watch the Clippers, but I didn't listen on the radio. And I heard him, and I was like, this is the greatest basketball broadcaster I've ever heard. It's because amazing. And I know how incredibly hard it is to basically keep you pass-to-pass into it without sounding like you're just overloading people with details and get, and you know what I think a lot of broadcasters miss on and I can be a tough watch but as you just heard I'll praise people who are great at it all the time but I like he he understood immediately what was more important than the other thing right right like and that's a thing that some broadcasters don't look it's a super hard job so if you're competent at it in a

sense you're great it's hard to even get competent yeah yeah well since you are a sports fan I have to just slip in a quick question about favorite sports film, baseball film. I love Field of Dreams. I do. I think I probably, I might like Bull Durham more as a movie because it's so engaging and funny and, you know, and Tim Robbins and Susan Sarander. So great in it, Robert Wool. And I'm leaving Costner out because I think his greatness is obvious, actually. He's sensational. But I do hate his speech about the things he loves. Like that's pretty painful, the one that wins Susan. surround and over. But I love the movie, and Ron Shelton knows that a mega sports movie. But when I saw, it was very close to my father, and we were baseball fans together, I became a baseball fan in large part because, I mean, simply because my dad was, but in 1976, well, 75 first, I was not. I was eight years old. Baseball was boring. I loved football. I loved basketball. I grew up in D.C. I loved the football team. I loved the Washington

Bullets. We went a lot. First game I remember going to, of anything, was going to see the bullets. Baseball, there was no team, and it was boring. And then the 1975 World Series happened, the Red Sox and the Reds. I hadn't followed it at all. I don't know who these teams are. And my cousins, my dad's sister's kids, were visiting, and they're both two, they're two and four years older, and I idolized them. And they were watching the World Series with my father. And they were glued to the TV and into it that great seven game series. You know, game six called Fiscombe Run, but game seven was a thrilling game, too, that the Reds won to win four, three. and I just remember seeing them bond, and I thought, oh, this is never happening again.

Like, I am not permitting this. I am going to, I am going to bond with my father over this. And so I willed myself to be a baseball fan in 1976, and I picked the Oakland A's because Reggie Jackson had been there. And even though he was traded to the Orioles right before the started season, the Orioles. And so my first baseball game was seeing the Orioles and the Cleveland Indians in Baltimore. But even though Reggie was there, I'd still sort of committed to the A's. And then in 1977, the A's got this great rookie Mitchell Page and an incredible rookie year,

one of the best rookie years of the 70s. And I picked him and I was sold. I was hooked at 10 and that was it. And I've been an A's fan my entire life. And I willed myself to be a baseball fan. And then it really took hold in 77. Yeah. So then in Field Dreams, I saw Field Dreams out in 88 and I think it was 88 with my girlfriend

who lived in San Francisco and Marin County. And I went and saw the thing whether. and I'm weeping because it's got the father and the son, the playing catch, and I'm super close to my dad and I was. And I call him the next morning because I saw it at night. He's back in D.C., so I can't call him when I finish the movie because it's like 1 o'clock in the morning in D.C. So I call him in the morning and I go, hey, pop, listen, I saw Field of Dreams last night.

And before I could say anything, he goes, oh, my God, what a piece of crap, right? I mean, if they build it, build what? Who will come? Who are really talking about this whole time? Oh, my God. I'm so dull, right? I'm like, why aren't people making such a fuss? And I'm like, yeah, right, totally, totally.

Same thing, right? I was like crushed because I was ready to have this moment with him. And then later, because he's such a great, he was such a great guy. He didn't, he was like, no, what are you talking about? I loved it. I thought about you and how close you were. But, man, that was feeling. But I love, I do love Field of Dreams.

And when a corny movie sticks the corniness, it's pretty great. Yeah. And, you know, you get older. I just showed the film to my daughter for the first time, you know, because, you know, she's playing softball. And we, we watched all the kids' films. And now I'm introducing her to some of the more adult sports films about baseball. And, I mean, I just, you get so nostalgic, you know, you get older and you just think the people you've lost, like, you know, my father's not here. And these films speak to you, you know, it's just. Yeah, I mean, sports films are like, sports films and science fiction films to me share. a descriptor, at least. Like, they're hard to do well, very hard to do well. But when they do them well, they're great. Yeah. Right?

So, you know, I don't love science fiction films. In fact, I even hesitate to see them sometimes until you see a great one. And you're like, oh, wow. Yeah. That was incredibly cool. And then I talk about it and I feel it. And so when a sports film lands, many of them, most of them are bad, they really land. In fact, I just saw one.

It turned out I really hadn't seen that I thought I'd seen. I saw it because I did an interview. with Noah Wiley from the pit, he came in and he's going to program two movies for us, TCM part of our two-for-one series. We bring in a director or an actor on a Saturday night, and they program a double feature. And one of the films he picked was Inside Moves with John Savage and David Morris, Richard Donner directs of the basketball movie where you see the like 1979, 80 Golden State Warriors there, like Clifford Ray, who beat the bullets in 1975, swept the bullets with the Warriors.

Like, he's got lines in it. Anyways, I loved that movie. It's really good. Everybody should check out if I haven't seen inside moves from 1980. It's definitely worth seeing a great basketball movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you're talking my era. I was in a huge Seattle Supersonic fan late 70s.

The rules games between the bullets and the Sonics. Yeah, sure, 78 and 79 NBA Championship. I couldn't believe the bullets lost in 79. They were so much better. I mean, they were so much better than they'd been in 78 and they'd won in 78. Yeah. But they were the best team in the league in 70s. And they won game one over the Sonics, blew a big lead, but won by one or two points.

And then the Sonics, like, steamrolled them in the next four games. Yeah, yeah. Well, we have a lot of TCM fans, and they probably clicked off because we're talking sports here. But hey, we'll bring it back to TCM. I think you must be one of the longest tenured folks there at TCM. Because you started back in what, 2003. Yeah, so I've hit 22 years. I think I started in July.

I shot in July to... air in over Labor Day weekend. I made my debut on the air Labor Day weekend in 2003. So next year, whether you want to call it July or September for my 23rd anniversary, I will have been on the air at TCM longer than Robert Osborne, which is stunning to me. He was there from 23 years basically until the channel signed on until he died. But his last appearance, you know, would not have. quite made 23 years. So sometime in the next year, I'll have been there longer in Robert,

which is, that's quite a, it's not so much quite an accomplishment, but it's, it's amazing to me that that's happened and, you know, preserve his, his legacy. Yeah. You know, it feels like a, it feels like a job that has some weight and responsibility to it, which doesn't happen a lot in television. Yeah. So I'm glad. I'm trying not to overstate it. I know it's just a job. I'm just a basic cable TV host. But, you know, Robert made this job something that mattered to people and the channel matters to people in a way that, you know, there's not another cable channel that matters to people like that. There just isn't. It doesn't. I've said this before, too, but I like saying it. You know, if you ask, you meet somebody and you're like, okay, so, well,

you know, what do you watch? What you got to show you like? And the person goes, oh, I watch anything on ABC. You'd be like, right? Like that. That's an insane. thing to say. Right. It's even insane to say I love HBO, right? Yeah. Because you don't love HBO. You love maybe many HBO shows, right? You know, but nobody likes a channel. Nobody likes Showtime, which doesn't exist anymore, I don't think. You know, somebody might love a news channel, but that's lame and that's not really television. Yeah. TCM feels like part of the fabric of someone's being to our fans. Look, I get most people don't know what it is and don't watch it. So I'm not trying to overstate it. But the people who watch it, they can't

care and they care deeply. So you'll see things on social media where somebody will be like, it's pretty regularly, you know, I'm a, you know, I'm a mom, I'm a lawyer, wife, dog owner, TCM fan. Like that's the things that they sort of identify with. And that's a, that's, that's incredibly unusual for a, for a TV channel. Why do you think that is? I think because I'm, I know why. I'm certain now why. I mean, it's a big answer, but the, because we connect people to others and mostly to our history, right? I mean, these movies, they're movies, but first of all, they're little, they're little mini documentaries and that even if it's shot on a studio a lot, getting a sense of how people dressed, how people talked, cars they drove, what the

world looked like in 1938, 48, 58, 68, 68, right? But mostly what it does is it connects us to nostalgia. And I, you know, it's funny, we're talking about sports, which is sort of also big on nostalgia. But nostalgia is not hanging in Oakland A's pennant or a Seattle Supersonics Penant. By the way, we're both fans of teams that left, which is terrible. Terrible. Terrible thing. And the Sonics belong in Seattle and the A's belong in Oakland. But nostalgia is not the pennant. Nostalgia is an emotion, or at least it connects us to emotions. So that channel connects people to their parents, to brothers and sisters, to grandparents, you know, if your dad was a big Western fan, was always watching Westerns, you're going to sit there and you're going to watch a Western and even if you don't even know the movie, you're going to think, yeah, but my dad loved this movie. You know, this kind of movie my dad would have loved. And that's a powerful thing. And it gives people a feeling of even before the world, it's funny, we signed on the air in 1994, which is really when I would say this, we may be in a new era now, but when politics started to fall apart in America.

And the manner in which we sort of talked to and about each other changed, started to change pretty dramatically, sort of, you know, led by New Kingrich. And that's when TCM signed on the air. So it's always been this sort of respite. It doesn't mean we don't talk about politics because politics in Hollywood are, you know, they're woven together and always have been. But the channel is escape from that sort of thing, even if we're going to put some movie in some political context, even if we're going to talk about the blacklist at the beginning. of a movie, right? And whether it was blacklisted people involved or whether it's, you know, whether it's putting in the, on the waterfront in a blacklist contextual context, it's still not

going to stop you. We're talking for two and a half minutes. You're still going to enjoy the film. As I always say, like, you know, I, you know, Alia Kazan made that movie as a means to show that sometimes you have to, sometimes you have to turn in people you care about. sometimes you have to think on people, you know, and I always want to say that's an interesting point of view to take. I just think if I had friends who were throwing people off the tops of buildings, yeah, I would turn them in. If they'd gone to a Communist Party meeting in 1935,

when capitalism had failed, I would not turn them in. Like, there's an enormous difference. So, like, Kazan is conveniently finding a way out as a means of it. And I find that a very irritating argument that he made. But I love on the waterfront. I can still love it. It's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you have a unique vantage point, you know, where you sit. And you're talking about why people are so passionate about TCM or classic films. Do you think that interest is increasing or declining? Well, I don't know. We don't, you know, we don't get ratings, which is one of the reasons why people love us so much, right? But we're going to get ratings because we don't have commercials.

They don't love us because we don't get ratings. They don't know we don't get ratings. They love us because we don't have commercials. But because we have commercials, we don't get traditional ratings. And so, you know, we've spent a lot of money over the years, various, you know, every I'm making it up now, but every five years or so, big research project shows where our audience is, who our audience is, you know, things you would learn for advertisers, but in this case, we're learning.

So we can figure out our way forward into this world of streaming, obviously, that's going to be part of our future, right? thankfully cable is it may be dying but it's not dead and it's not going to be dead in the immediate future and that's where all our revenue is derived from from cable subscribers right now or almost all our revenue but we do these and there's just shows that there's no weakening of our audience and obviously from the moment we signed on the air in 1994 I got there in 2003 one before we signed on the air then and with 1994 in 2003 and now you know we're We have us older audience than most people, although no older really than the news channels,

younger, in fact, than the news channels. Like, our audience is definitely younger than Fox News, but it's still a slightly older audience. And it seems obvious that people age into us, which is weird, but because they wouldn't have grown up loving classic movies, but something happens when you turn 46. Yeah. And all of a sudden, you know, a black-and-way movie doesn't feel like something you can. can't watch. And, you know, Casablanca means more to you. For a casual movie fan, Casablanca is going to mean more to them at 46 than it did to them at 26. It appears,

you know, and I'm using Casablanca both as literal and a metaphor for all sort of great, great classic films. So I don't know what it is, but, you know, and then, you know, we see at the festival, you know, how many young people watch the channel. And I think as filmmaking has opened up to the, you know, it's hard to get some, obviously it's hard to get mid-priced movies made. I mean, you know, the saying is, it's not quite true, but it gives you some idea of where we are in Hollywood that you can, you can make a movie for $3 million or you can make a movie for $300 million and not much in between, right? It leaves out a lot of movies for adults now. I've massively oversimplified it, but because there's certainly some

movies, mid-range movies that get made, but not as many. And so many of those stories are ending up on television. But, so it's hard to. get those movies produced in the same sense and a theatrical release. But, you know, these kids now, when they shoot digitally and cheaply, you can make a movie for not a lot of money. And it might be great if you know what you're doing. And you got a great story, right? You've got a first and foremost great script and a sense of purpose from the director and some good actors. You'll make something that could be interesting. But you're not in that thing, you're not going to, it's not going to be, you're not going to rely on incredibly expensive computer graphics packages.

You're not going to have a helicopter crash into a building and blow up, right? You're going to have people talking to each other. It's going to be a people story, people falling in love, people hating each other, people doing terrible things to each other, people seeking redemption. And those stories you're going to find over the 40 years of classic Hollywood. So I think that that has clearly happened too. That brings up a unique point. you kind of age into it. And I feel like I've done that, you know, part of it is when you have

kids too. And you, the way you can. Of course. Your parents over films and TV specials and holiday films and then now you have your own kids and you're like, what are we going to watch? It's a holiday. Oh, let's go back to some of the old favorites, you know. I mean, there's new films coming out all the time as well. But if you really love as a family to watch films or TV shows, you're going to want to start to go back as well. Yeah, we watch Christmas in Connecticut every year. My daughter loves it. She's programming. it next month in December on TCM, part of our kids fans that we're doing, I think, over the course of four weeks in December.

Yeah, it's going to be nice. You know, and I mean, it's, you know, we'll watch Christmas in Connecticut. We'll watch It's a Wonderful Life. You know, we'll watch Elf, you know. Like, so there's plenty of good new Christmas movies, too. I'm Scroogeed. I love Scrooge. I mean, it's not really new, but, you know, in our world and where I think of us as new

because it's 1988. Well, let me ask. nearly 50 years ago. Yeah, let me ask about that because it feels like a moving target, the definition of classic film. Yeah, so everybody asked that. I don't mean to, I'm not disparaging the question. I would ask it.

And whatever your answer is, Tim, is fine. Like, you can define it however you want. And we like that there is no answer for it. So part of the answer is we can definitely say, you know, very simply any movie made in Hollywood. during the studio era, right, which started to end in the 1950s, but really came up for basically any movie made before 1967. It's a classic movie, but that doesn't mean that it's a good movie by any stretch of the

imagination, which is part of the problem with the word classic, which feels like a compliment and is meant as a compliment a lot of the times, but it's also just means from an era that we think of the classic era of, you know, of classic Hollywood. So, you know, I think of that, the studio era from the dawn of talkies until that in 1959. So to me, that sort of 30 years when the studios were, that's dominant, the studios dominated and that's, those will always be part of the answer. But obviously, then it, then you start poking around.

I mean, it's now every movie, you know, I think the greatest 10 years in American movies was 1967 and 1976. So those are all classic films that are released then and most of them, many of those in that era. Obviously, I'm not saying that there were no great movies released. after that, there were, I just mean 1977, that's Star Wars. And that's

a different era. I'm starting, that begins something different. Yeah, it's like the era of the blockbuster kicks off. That's right. And obviously, you know, also, you know, also then you got, you know, the Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now and inside moves. All these movies I love. It's not in the Shining. We're not

ending great film, you know, but those movies feel like those movies I just named. Those movies feel more like movies that were made from 1967 to 76, even though they populate after that. So, you know, I mean, all those movies to me are obviously classic films. And then obviously some movies can become a classic film right away. What I love most about the answer to that question. And obviously, I don't really have an answer. That's why I keep talking, is that frequently you'll see people define a classic movie as a movie that aired on TCM. So then now

sort of we get to decide what a classic way. We, you know, we aired the, the, the, the, of the Rings trilogy, I think just one time, maybe, no, probably more than once. We did it, you know, and we, we wouldn't do it regularly, mostly because we can't afford it, right? But we got it for 31 days of Oscar the first time, the sort of month-long series of films that we do leading up to the Academy Awards in the month before the Academy Awards. We've done that for more than 20 years. Or we just put them in, you know, we, you know, we could do a lineup of films over a day or a month of a fictional fantasy locations, right? And that might warrant showing one of the Lord of the Rings movies.

And those movies are great, obviously. They're, you know, they won, I think, combined nearly maybe more than 30 Oscars, the three films in the trilogy. So those are obviously worthy of us showing. It's just that they're basically too expensive for us when we have a limited budget to acquire films to license films and you can't just say like oh great let's you know that's why we don't show we've shown the godfather so infrequently it's because it's hard to get right you know some of these movies that people complain that we don't show i'm like we can't sometimes it's a legal issue that's

tied up right for some reason for some inexplicably films that you'd think would everybody would want to be seen and and aren't that expensive but they're still tied up and rights issues so we can't get them and other things are we have you know we have the bulk of our budget is spent on licensing films, but we ultimately have a budget. And, you know, so we can't get some stuff. Yep. Yeah. Well, it's interesting that the TCM has kind of become a go-to for that definition because you can always hear complaints. You can hear some people complain about the definition if it's too recent in their mind. And of course, it depends on the age you are

to some extent. But, you know, we're already in 2025. I mean, we're already 25 years into this next century. And the films I grew up with, they're now considered by many classics. That's right. Some people would, right? Some from the 80s and, you know, it's like, wow, okay, well, they're a classic to me. Sure. In the definition of what I think of classic being Casablanca era, no, not really.

Right, but I just, like I mentioned Scrooge. Like, that's a good example. Like, I have to catch myself. Like, of course, there's no question that people think Scrooge is from another era because it was. Like, you know, we're doing this at the holidays, what I'm talking about. And I think, you know, and I'm a love Bill Murray. And so, yeah. I, and Scrooge is a great film.

And I, it's two Richard Donner films that I'm mentioning here inside moves and Scrooge. But yeah, it's 37 years old, right? But I still think, that's not what I mean, what I think of as a great classic film. But I get why people would. I'll leap to the TCM Festival for a minute here. But to be able to bring people like John Williams or Steven Spielberg or Scorsese or to the festival, these are people who, they talk about their view of classic. film the ones they grew up with, but there's now generations, and they're at the age

where you want to celebrate them and their films. Oh, no question. Well, they're alive. Well, they're still making them, you know what I mean? And so you can look and say, well, a Spielberg, I mean, his career so vast, his early films fall into that classic category, the Jaws, because that's a 50-year-old movie. But it's not a classic studio system, you know, it's not. But you still want to kind of expand that definition.

I think if you're TCM, right, so that you can celebrate these folks. Yeah, and Stephen and Martin Scorsese, those guys, you know, who've been such a huge help to us over the last three years. And really, like, unbelievable help to us, two and a half years. Amazing what these guys have done to keep us strong and where we ought to be. Because, you know, we asked, basically, we've been asking our bosses to treat us differently than a regular channel. and it took a little bit of convincing, but God bless our bosses, too. They did it. They heard it. And would they have heard it without Spielberg and Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson? I don't know. But they heard it. And it's pretty unusual for

powerful people who've already made a decision to unmake it. And they did. They unfired some executives and they listened. It's great. I can't, I can't respect the people I work for more for that. Yeah. Yeah. It's such, it's so rare. Well, I don't know how much we can get into this, but we do know that it's been announced that the Warner Brothers is splitting into two companies. Yeah. Do you know where TCM kind of falls into or how much you can talk about there? I do.

I don't actually know whether it's out yet, but in the, so no, I guess. But we're in a really, we're in a good place. And so, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, pleased by that. And once again, these guys have helped us and they've stood up for us. And, you know, we're a movie channel. And, you know, Warner Brothers makes movies. So that's great. Well, there's a lot of consternation among the listeners and the fans of you of TCM, you know, that they want to be sure that TCM continues and is available. And I know that when you, you know, when you go on to HBO Max, there is a nice presence there of the classic films that has really grown

from the early days. It has. It has. Branded, everything. And I like, I like seeing that. So it's good. Yeah, there's a hub there and that we're grateful for the hub, really grateful. It's been great. As people could probably tell it, we don't really program it. Like, so the HBO Max people and they're really good at what they do, really good. I mean, every time I sort of bounce around streaming services, and obviously there's shows that I watch, you know, I mean, I watch Landman on Paramount, Tulsa King. But Taylor Sheridan, that's a very clear idea of what makes good television show. That guy has a great sense.

And I love Billy Bob Thornton. I like Sylvester Stallum, too, but Billy Bob, really exceptional actor. So, Slice's really great actor, too, turns out. I mean, I say it turns out, but if you saw Rocky, he started off as a writer, too, you know. Yeah, totally. He wrote Rocky. He knows how to tell a story. He knows how to do that.

That on himself. I love, I love Slah. I love that guy. and Billy Bob Thornton just happens to be one of my favorite actors. So, and Landman's really good. But every time I end up on HBO, I'm like, this is the best one. It's just the best. It's got, you know, this is still feels like the one that is, this is for movies.

Yeah. Right. And I'm biased too, but the one I won't give up, I mean, to pay for. That's right. I would, that's, it would be if I had to keep one, there's no question. I would give up, I'd give up Netflix. I'd give up everything before I'd give up, before I'd give up HBO. And, you know, I pay for a lot of streamers, and there's a number of streamers that I'll go on and I'll put, you know, on hold for a while just because I feel I'm good.

Right, right, right, yeah. But because of the kind of the depth of what's on HBO Max, I always keep that one active. So, well, I know that you also have podcasts that you do. So there's, that's the part of the TCM network. You've got the plot thickens and talking pictures. What led you kind of down into deciding to do the podcast? Well, I worked in radio for a long time. I wanted to do podcasts for a long time.

So, I mean, I'm a, in a sense, I'm a spearhead of the fact that we have a podcast because I did, I don't advocate for myself very effectively, very often, but I wanted that. But that's the extent of my responsibility for why those are good, like what we have honored, at least in terms of the plot, things was not my idea of what we would be doing with a podcast, and I'm so fortunate that there were other people whose voices were heard because, you know, our first season of the Plotthagins, it's a narrative podcast. We've done six seasons so far. We're working on the seventh season as we speak. Announcement for that will come in the early part of next year, the first third of the year. So we started with Peter Bogdanovich,

and Peter and I were friends, and I was, so in the sense that we did Peter, that was my idea to do Peter, but I had a whole different idea. And then as we were fleshing out that, idea, our sort of director of podcast, Angela Carone, said, I think the story isn't the people Peter is interviewed. And those filmmakers, which is what we were going to do, like Peter and Howard Hawks and Peter and Alfred Hitchcock, Peter and John Ford, Peter and Lewis Milestone, that kind of thing. So what it turned out to be was Peter and Peter's life. Like Peter was the story. And that was all, that was not my idea. And it was great. And it just sort of then, and I have our storytelling team is amazing. And then we just went on from there. And we did a season on the devil's candy.

That was with Julie Solomon. I was slightly less involved in that one, but it was still a great season. And then we did Lucille Ball, season on Lucille Ball, season on Pam Greer, season on John Ford, and a season on Cleopatra, which we just finished, which was, I think, our, I mean, they've all been good, but it was sort of our most, I don't know if it was our best, but I think it was our best. That was a little interesting for me because it was really the star of it. was Joe Mankowitz, sort of looking at what that did to my uncle Joe. And it was quite something. I'm super grateful to a couple of my cousins, Nick Davis and Alex Mankowitz, for making stuff available. Alex is Joe's son. And Nick, like me, is Joe's our great uncle, our grandfather's

brother. Nick had written a book about Joe and Herman Mankowitz called Competing with Idiots, and he shared a bunch of his audio recordings and information that he'd found and couldn't include in the book, directed us to stuff. It was great. So, and it was fun to work with family. And I think that, you know, Cleopatra means something, and it's mostly negative, right? Most expensive movie ever made, biggest flop ever, nearly wrecked the studio and out of control Elizabeth Taylor. And it turns out, other than it being the most expensive movie ever at the time, none of those things are true. Like, I mean, it went into the black within two and a half years of its release. Elizabeth Taylor, I mean, it would have been the most expensive ever made with or without Elizabeth

Taylor, whether she made a million or seven million. I mean, yeah, she stayed in one of her villas, you know, sometimes too long, but she got legitimately sick and nearly died twice, once before Cleopatra and then once later, early on in Cleopatra. And so, like, and everybody got sick, and it wasn't just her. So, and she's great, and she delivers, and the movie's not that bad. It's certainly not the worst movie ever. And it didn't wreck the studio, and it made money, and it wasn't Elizabeth Taylor's fault. And it's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. So that was fun to do. And I invite people to listen to that. And then I do another podcast called Talking Pictures, which is me talking with directors and actors, filmmakers

about the movies, about what movies they love, why they love them. More that. That's the interview, that's the interview style podcast and then the other one is the deep dive. I mean, I like them both because, you know, one, you're talking to living people And you're getting, you know, you're getting their thoughts and ideas and in history and all their life experience and everything. Going back to the Cleopatra, I mean, there's so many things in there that you don't know that you, as a listener, that you find out. But, I mean, I love the whole kind of like Elizabeth Taylor just kind of throwing out a number, you know, that just seems impossible. Yeah. Right. She didn't really want to do it, right?

She's sitting in her bathtub. She's not going to do it. Yeah, in the bathtub. Yeah. And she's talking on the phone to Walter Wanger, who wants her to play Cleopatra. It's the only person he wants to play Cleopatra. He produced it. And she says to her husband then, Eddie Fisher, who of course she would leave during

Cleopatra for Richard Bird. She says to him, yeah, tell him, yeah, fine, I'll do it. She's been harassing or calling, calling. Fine, I'll do it. Tell her to do it for a million dollars. That's like 1959 or 1960. And a million dollars. And Wanger's like, I'll call you back.

And then he checks with the studio and they're like, okay. And then the studio, by the way, did a great thing that probably is a, from a marketing point of view and from a business point of view, is probably should be taught at every film school. She said yes. They were so excited to announce Elizabeth Taylor, the most beautiful woman in the world, you know, as she was routinely thought of then. And by the way, she might have been, would play Cleopatra, the most beautiful woman who ever lived, right? You know, that was the sort of hook. and so she'd said she'd do it and they announced it and they gave her a big fake check

for a million dollars you know like a prize winning sweepstakes and they announced it they did a whole press deal except they hadn't signed a contract yet so then they announced it so then all of a sudden they gave her so much leverage right by making that announcement before they had her actually signed that then she started putting in all the things that drove up her price and made it a fun story you know about bringing you know bringing the entourage that came with and the two villas and all this crazy stuff, but whatever. Again, that is not why Cleopatra went over budget, but it did set the template. And, you know, she would have signed it before if they'd made her.

People have to listen to the podcast to get the rest of this story here. Yeah, it's a great. It's a great. It's a fun story. It's a fun story. I did want to, before we move on from the podcast, though, I really enjoyed the John Ford one. Oh, yeah. I like it, too.

That's why I always hesitate to, you know, it's weird. I don't like lists. I mean, I make them sometimes, and I, but like, as soon as you don't put something on a list or you put something eighth instead of second, you know, it feels somehow like you've slighted it, right? So, yeah, I think our podcast has gotten better every season and I think they were really good to start. And I think there was something really powerful about our first season on Peter Bogdanovitch who has lived this, who lived, you know, I still sort of can't believe Peter's gone, but who lived this incredible life of, you know, being this Wonderkin director. you know, I mean, when he made last picture show in 1971, I can't remember what was Time or Newsweek, said that it was the greatest American film made since Citizen Kane.

And by the way, Orson Wells was, you know, Peter's mentor, idol. Yeah. Peter idolized him. Yeah, so that went to Peter's head. It did. And then he, by the way, and then he follows it up with, you know, what's up, Doc and Paper Moon. Like, it's an incredible three years, not his first three films.

His first film, Target's amazing, too. You know, but these were his first films with budgets and stars. and amazing filmmaker and then he got a little ahead of himself and then he left his wife Polly Platt who was really instrumental in those films too great production designer and he left her for Sybil Shepard

they legitimately fell in love I don't want to underplay that and you know he was so handsome himself Peter and Sybil's beautiful and Carrie Grant told Peter we have it in our podcast you know stop looking so happy why you always so happy all the time

Nobody likes other people being happy, right? But Peter sort of looked like he'd conquered the world, and he made some movies that weren't that great. Oh, St. Jack, a movie made in 1979 with Ben Gazzara's a great, great, great, great film that everybody should see. And then he had this unspeakable tragedy happening to him. And it ruined him personally for a while, the murder of his girlfriend, by her estranged husband, Dorothy Stratton. And then he tried to save the movie they made together.

which is quite good. They all laughed, a really nice romantic comedy with John Ritter and Dorothy Stratton and Ben Gazar again, Audrey Hepburn. But Dorothy had been murdered and so violently and so awfully that the studio was like

sort of nobody's going to want to see this movie with this sort of bright young star and Dorothy would have been at a bare minimum she would have been a sitcom star and I think she would have been a successful comedy actress. She really had it. She was very young.

And then Peter buys the movie, spends $5 million to buy the movie and market himself. You can't do that. And he lost everything. He lost everything. And he lost everything again when he sued the studio eight years later for mask because they wanted to replace Bruce Springsteen's music with Bob Seeger's because it was cheaper.

And he screwed up again. And he like don't stop. But then he sort of came back again and he was so respected by all these young filmmakers who adore him. Wes Anderson adores him. Noah Baumbach adores him. You know, Peter is really special, and he loves classic movies, and he was humbled by life, and I, I don't know, I loved him.

Yeah, that's a great. That's the first one I listened to, I mean, of the series. I've become a fan of, like, books on tape, partly because I love podcasts, and these are stories you're telling, you know, over the course of what, how many episodes you have, what? Anywhere from, we did, one season was 10, they were from 6 to 10. Yeah, yeah, and it just becomes, like, this fantastic. And then the Talking Pictures one, right? Also, we could have 10, 12. That's just me talking to people who love movies about movies. So, you know, it's also been great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, one of the things about TCM that I appreciate, you know, we're coming to the end of the year. And kind of the sad part of the end of the year is the in-memorium. But I think that TCM, you know, you guys do the best in terms of putting out something that really encompasses a broader. And I know you don't have the same limitations that maybe the Oscars. have or something, you know. Yeah, we can go longer. You can go longer a little bit more, but just the ability to get the clips that you're

able to give from the films and to showcase them and everything. But I also like the ones that you're populating now during the year as well. Like we just lost, you know, Dan Keaton, Robert Redford. I mean, there's so many amazing actors we've lost this year. But tell me. And you forget and Gene, you know, Gene Hackman also at the beginning of the year, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Tell me a little bit about that.

those and how they've become so popular. So there's a secret magic to those videos or in memoriums, which you do every year. And again, the academy is restricted by time. Yeah. I think the academy now, I mean, they should release a longer one, you know, to kind of like online. Online, you know, but we're sort of the template for that now. And a secret sauce is a woman named Christian Hammond and a guy named David Byrne, like the talking heads David Byrne and they're producer editors and they work on those and they're amazing and

they're just they're so talented everything they touch is that Christian and David make for us is great and so many of the things people see on the air and like you're like yeah that's Christian and David they're amazing and great great people too when we did a on the TCM cruise there's a karaoke night where we actually TCM staffers did karaoke for fans so it's weird to do karaoke when there's literally an audience. And also the hosts, but Christian who's like reserved and shy and brilliant. And she comes out and she's got sunglasses on and she's dancing. It was just awesome to see her do that.

And she enticed our head of programming to come out and play a fake saxophone. It was an incredible night. It was really stunning. So yeah, we've sort of, again, we, everybody at the channel loves movies and loves movies in a certain way, loves movies in this really respectful way. There are some scholars at TCM, no question. There's some people who were film students who can still talk about film that way. But this love of movies is this sort of passion and this eagerness to be blown away

and moved emotionally by movies. And that's the thing that movies can do still better than television, which is in many cases never been better. Yeah. And I know when people, you can criticize it and there's still. too much stuff on and a lot of it is junk, but there's also more great stuff than ever. It's really amazing what's being produced on television. That's one reason why there aren't those mid-range movies for adults. Those are getting made as, you know, those shows I mentioned,

you know, whether it's, you know, those Taylor Sheridan shows, whether it's Yellowstone or 1883 or Tulsa King or Landman, those like there was a time when those would have been movies, right, and would have been sort of great movie stories. Yeah. But now they're serialized television shows. So, you know, everybody who works there wants to be moved by movies, this compact, you know, 90-minute to two-and-a-half-hour format of sort of that can, you know, reach inside you and stir something in you that moves you to some action. And the action is not like maybe, you know, I'm not saying you, you instantly go out and start, you know, volunteering somewhere or helping the people who need to be help, it stirs you to action. and the action is crying. The action is connecting you to feelings that you might not otherwise have been able to find and identify.

Yeah. Movies are incredibly special, and they're singular in their ability to do that. You get older, and as you're going through life, you're busy living, and you're busy watching movies, you're busy watching TV, you're busy, years go by, decades go by, quarter century goes by, half a century goes by. you realize the way the movies weave in and out of your life they're part of the story and then you you watch these in memoriams sometimes and to me you're seeing you're seeing this and you're reminded of years of your life your times of your life people of your life it's the power of the movie and the actor and the power of TCM in people's life I think why partly why it means so much to people and why yeah i i think you're right i think you're right that's uh you know we uh movies

really can you know and and it just occurs to me right now and i'm dealing with this because i got a young kid like you do you know preteen daughter and you want her i want her so badly to slow down right her life is so fast and i don't mean i want to slow down her progress i'm not one of those parents. I mean, I feel the same way, but I immediately recognize that this is her life and she's got to, she's got to live it. But she goes fast and she doesn't recognize it yet. She will. She's Mark Kidd. But movies are a way of slowing down now. I mean, like, you know, that's, they aren't watching a 25-minute show that you can watch nine straight episodes of or even an hour-long show where you can like this is a single story inside you know a reasonable movie of 90 minutes to

two hours and 10 20 minutes that's an amazing thing now to be able to take that time and take in that full story with a beginning middle and end with a resolution with something that moves you if it's good in some way right whether to joy to laughter to tears uh to thinking right to considering what you've seen, it is a way to slow down. I'm going to have to re-emphasize that, why movie nights are so important, why movie nights are so different than family TV night. You know, you don't, it's not the same to watch two episodes, Game of Thrones with the family, you know, two episodes of the Sopranos,

still the greatest show ever on television. It's not the same as a family night where you watch. Whether it's Christmas in Connecticut or, you know, out of sight or Jay Kelly, something came out last year, you know, it's the first thing to pop in my head. I guess I have George Clooney on my mind. Yeah. So, you know, that's a, that's a full experience that I think, you know, I think some parents will have some success being like, hey, we're going to have a movie night, we're going to watch a movie. We're just going to have to sit through it. But asking my daughter to sit through a two-hour one thing is a challenge. Probably for you to.

Like, sometimes I get a, you know, do you want to watch a movie? No, not really. I want to play my game or I want to see my YouTube or whatever. It's a challenge. And what's interesting is growing up, my dad was very restrictive about TV or movies. He didn't want me to watch too much. And here I am trying to get out of the more. But watch it one thing, man, it matters.

And we're going to, I'm going to make sure it happens at least once a week. I'd like it happens twice a week, but I'll force it once a week. Yeah, yeah. Well, Ben, it was a pleasure, having you all. Oh, yeah, Tim. I'm sorry I talk so much, yeah, but thanks. No, you know what? It's a podcast. People who don't talk are really bad guess. Yeah, though that's true. It's better to talk too much than too little. But there's probably something in between.

Appreciate it. And happy holidays. Thanks, you too, Tim. Thanks very much. Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with TCM host Ben Mankowitz as much as I did. I'll have links in the show notes to the podcast we discussed that Ben hosts. They are terrific. And if you are a classic film fan, I think you'll thoroughly enjoy them. haven't been enjoying them yet. And if you aren't yet subscribed, you're following the show at your favorite podcast provider. You may want to do that because we have a lot of good shows leading into the end of the year. And of course, we'll have them at the beginning of January as well.

So lots of good stuff coming up that you want to be sure it's sent to you and you get them right away. And just as a reminder, you can text us here at the show and leave us comments about the episode. It's always nice to hear from people. So feel free to do that. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. Hey, are you a fan of the Warner Archive animation releases? Do you want to get the latest updates and news right away? If you're on Facebook, we have just created a brand new Facebook group called the Warner Archive Animation Fans Group. And we celebrate past releases, but really we created this group because of all of the great releases that have come in this year.

and are anticipated in the coming years. So there have been a lot of great releases from the Looney Tunes Collector's Vault series. There's the Tom and Jerry releases. There's all of the Hanna-Barbera releases. I mean, there's just a wealth of animation coming from the Warner Archive. So we celebrate all of it. It's a community with other people who enjoy these releases and want to talk about them and share the latest news, reviews, and updates from the Warner Archive.

So if that sounds interesting to you, check out the link here in the podcast show notes. And we hope to see you soon.