After a year-long hiatus my podcast ‘Movies Til Dawn’ has returned to the ether-waves, with none other than Orson Welles as my first post-reboot guest. How did I make contact with Orson, you ask? Via Ouija Board perhaps? No. I won’t even pretend that I interviewed the man (the way I previously, shamelessly did with John Huston and Otto Preminger). This is because the new version of my podcast has nothing to do with me conversing with filmmakers and all to do with me finding juicy, obscure interviews on YouTube that I’ll be posting every month. Sounds lazy, I know. But hear me out. On this blog I try to keep any footage I post short–under ten minutes certainly and preferably under five (the Three Stooges weekend postings are an exception–after all, who can’t get enough of the Stooges?). That’s because perusing a blog is, by nature, a casual and non-committal act–somewhat like avoiding work by looking at real estate sites or pictures of cute puppies. But YouTube is filled with fascinating, longer interviews with all kinds of artists. If I were to post any of them on my blog, though, I doubt more than a handful of viewers would bother watching–after all, who has forty-five minutes to two-hours to devote to watching a video when you’re supposed to be working (or looking at real estate or puppies)? Podcasting, though, is a different animal. People like their podcasts to be long-ish since they usually serve as background to mundane activities–driving, exercising, having sex etc. Since an interview doesn’t necessarily require a visual accompaniment it lends itself perfectly to an audio-only experience. As to why I’ve lost the stamina to create my own interviews for my podcast the answer is simple; I’ve run out of people I want to have as guests. The whole point of my podcast from the beginning was to talk to veteran filmmakers, not young up-and-comers (screw them) or publicity seekers. I’ve run out of veterans, that’s all. Several who I wanted to appear declined to be interviewed, usually citing the book they’re writing about themselves as a reason not to be interviewed. (They didn’t grasp that my podcast wasn’t an interview show so much as a conversation between two filmmakers about the craft–and that nobody was going to read their book anyway). So that’s what you’ll be getting every month; an old, obscure but in-depth interview with a fascinating and sometimes legendary person who had something to do with the filmmaking world that we all remain weirdly fascinated by, even though the word ‘film’ really must be retired (I’m sorry to say) given that celluloid is a thing of the past. But do you really want to make or watch a ‘card’? This question will be answered in time–but not on my podcast. We do twentieth-century stuff only. And thank God for that. Above is the interview with Welles that I’ve posted on my podcast. You can watch it on this blog or listen to it on my podcast. My guess is that you’ll be more likely to do the latter, thereby saving thirty-seven precious minutes of screen-time for puppies and houses.