I feel like this would be a good plotline for a gonzo Mission Impossible movie: make romcoms and comedy dramas relevant again. In one sentence, my guest, director and podcaster Charles Hood, declared “comedies and comedy dramas are dead, sadly” but also came back in the next few sentences with the announcement, I’m releasing a romcom feature later this year.
This sounds exactly like a challenge, if you choose to accept it, for one of the co-hosts of the official Mission Impossible podcast. And here’s to thinking he’ll be successful.
In this episode, Charles and I talk about:
Charlie’s Indie Film Highlight: Josh Greenbaum; GHOST BOY (2025) dir. by Rodney Ascher; THE NIGHTMARE (2015) dir. by Rodney Ascher; A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX (2021) dir. by Rodney Ascher
Memorable Quotes:
“ We always talk to everybody about Tom Cruise's hairstyle, their favorite haircut from the different movies. And we also would jokingly talk about how we're in a golden age of dog cinema because there were a lot of dog movies that have come out in the last 10 years.”
“ If you're gonna do a big short with a real budget, you might as well try to figure out how to squeeze that budget into a feature and do a feature.”
“Comedies and comedy dramas are dead, sadly.”
“ Actually if you make a romantic comedy, you get to sneak in a lot of character work that you wouldn't get to do in a lot of other genres.”
“We learned a lot over those years, writing studio comedies and learning structure and that applied to this movie that is mainly just two people talking.”
“So I’m still chasing that feeling again of making NIGHT OWLS.”
“They always say that, you have to know the rules before you can break them. And I was breaking them on FREEZER BURN without knowing them.”
“What Tom Cruise is all about is….serving the audience.”
Links:
Watch Indie Film Highlight: NIGHT OWLS (2015)
