Biopic: A Podcast Story

Episode 65, Part 2: Tombstone, the Best Wyatt Earp Movie, Starring Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday and Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp!

PART 2 of the most epic and definitive discussion of the greatest movie ever made: 1993’s Tombstone, a film we loved so much that we could not shut up about it and had to make our first two-parter. 
 
There’s more talk about costumes and sets and history, but also a LOT more talk about the perfection of Val Kilmer, the one way America could be made great again (over-the-counter laudanum), continued hatred of 1994’s Wyatt Earp (known as “Boring Tombstone”),  what is not Charlton Heston’s final acting role. 
 
This movie is perfect and that is settled law. 
 
Tombstone stars Kurt Riussell as Wyatt Earp, Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday, Sam Elliott as Virgil Earp, Bill Paxton as Morgan Earp, Powers Boothe as Curly Bill Brocius, Michael Biehn as Johnny Ringo, Charlton Heston as Henry Hooker, Jason Priestley as Billy Breckinridge, 
Jon Tenney as Behan, Stephen Lang as Ike Clanton, Thomas Haden Church as Billy Clanton, 
Dana Delany as Josephine Marcus, Paula Malcomson as Allie Earp, Lisa Collins as Louisa Earp, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson as Mattie Earp, Joanna Pacula as Kate, Michael Rooker as Sherman McMasters, and Harry Carey Jr. as Marshal Fred White.
 
Sources used in the episode include…
 
Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell
By Tom Clavin
 
The Last Gunfight : The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral—and How it Changed the American West
By Jeff Guinn
 
Lady at the O.K. Corral : The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp
by Ann Kirschner
 
Ride the Devil's Herd : Wyatt Earp's Epic Battle Against the West's Biggest Outlaw Gang
By John Boessenecker
 
The Making of Tombstone by John Farkis, and a note on John Farkis who is life goals—his bio: “Retired automotive executive John Farkis, is an historian and lifelong fan of the cinema.” He’s basically like, I am a fan of this movie and I am going to write a book and he DID. 
 
Also a podcast that Sara would recommend highly, It was a Shit Show, which did an episode about the behind of the scenes of this film, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCN_JF1kN-g 
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
Our theme music is by Ben Patch: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5BB01QpPE7HBGacGAlullu?si=gp_6jbvsThWXg_sSLVcv6Q
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Contact us: biopiclistenermailbag@gmail.com

Episode 65, Part 1: Tombstone, the Best Wyatt Earp Movie, Starring Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday and Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp!

Get in, losers, we’re going to Tombstone. We’re back from hiatus, and we love this movie so much that it gets pretty embarrassing. But what are you supposed to do when gazing upon the majesty of Kurt Russell with ALL the eyeliner on, Sam Elliot and his magical moustache, Powers Boothe’s goofy, over-the-top Curly Bill, and, of course, the miraculous Val Kilmer’s virtuoso turn as Doc Holliday? 
Kevin Costner and “Boring Tombstone” catch plenty of strays as we praise this film’s costumes (no, seriously), the screenplay’s avoidance of clever subtext, it’s sort-of-a-scientology audit meet-cute scene between Wyatt and his eventual wife Josie, and so much more. 
Also, we loved this so much that we had to do this episode as a two-parter!  
Sources used in the episode include…
Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell
By Tom Clavin
The Last Gunfight : The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral—and How it Changed the American West
By Jeff Guinn
Lady at the O.K. Corral : The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp
by Ann Kirschner
 
Ride the Devil's Herd : Wyatt Earp's Epic Battle Against the West's Biggest Outlaw Gang
By John Boessenecker
The Making of Tombstone by John Farkis, and a note on John Farkis who is life goals - his bio: “Retired automotive executive John Farkis, is an historian and lifelong fan of the cinema.” He’s basically like, I am a fan of this movie and I am going to write a book and he DID. 
Also a podcast that I would recommend highly, It was a Shit Show, which did an episode about the behind of the scenes of this film, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCN_JF1kN-g 
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
Our theme music is by Ben Patch: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5BB01QpPE7HBGacGAlullu?si=gp_6jbvsThWXg_sSLVcv6Q
 
Follow us!
Instagram: @biopicapodcaststory
Bluesky: @biopic-podcast.bsky.social
Threads: @biopicapodcaststory
Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/biopicapodcaststory
Contact us: biopiclistenermailbag@gmail.com

Why There Is No Episode This Week, and Why We’re Going on Hiatus During August

Sara and Rena have an announcement to make about why there is no episode new this week, and why we'll be taking a hiatus for the month of August, 2025.
We will be back on September 2 with Tombstone. Until then, we have over sixty official episode plus bonuses that we're hoping you'll check out.
See you in September!
 
Love, 
Rena & Sara

Episode 64: The Rise of Catherine the Great, Produced by Alexander Korda

We return to the depression era to watch the rise of a delightful, curly-haired naif who charms everyone — the help, the military, and her cynical, wealthy new family. No, we’re not doing John Huston’s noted biopic Annie, we’re doing 1935’s The Rise of Catherine the Great.
We explore the many, many links back to the godfather of international cinema Alexander Korda, lavender marriages, Peter the Great’s descendant Peter the Meh, OG nepo baby Douglas Fairbanks Jr., German expressionism, and so much more as we watch this very, very, very old movie. 
The Rise of Catherine the Great was produced by Alexander Korda, directed by Paul Czinner, and stars Elisabeth Bergner as Catherine the Great of Russia, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., as Grand Duke Peter (later Peter III), Dorothy Hale as Countess Olga, Flora Robson as Empress Elizabeth, Gerald du Maurier as Lecocq, Irene Vanbrugh as Princess Johanna von Anhalt-Zerbst, Diana Napier as Countess Vorontzova, Griffith Jones as Grigory Orlov, and Gibb McLaughlin as Bestujhev.
 
Sources used in the episode include…
Elizabeth and Catherine: Empresses of all the Russias, by Robert Coughlan.
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert Massie.
 
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
Our theme music is by Ben Patch: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5BB01QpPE7HBGacGAlullu?si=gp_6jbvsThWXg_sSLVcv6Q
 
Follow us!
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Website: https://biopicapodcaststory.podbean.com/
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Contact us: biopiclistenermailbag@gmail.com

Episode 62: Florence Foster Jenkins, Starring Meryl Streep as the World's Worst Opera Singer

When do shenanigans cross the line into elder abuse? That’s the hotly debated issue at the heart of our vastly different experiences watching 2016’s Florence Foster Jenkins, directed by Stephen Frears and starring the legendary Meryl Streep as Florence Foster Jenkins, a syphilis-suffering patron of the arts and absolutely beyond-the-pale terrible singer.
Who is this movie for, exactly?
Come for the charming(?) Hugh Grant’s tireless work in creating a scaffolding of lies, delusion, and gaslighting to make Florence feel good about her talents as she spends the last year of her life preparing for a concert at Carnegie Hall. Stay for the nausea-inducing bathtub filled with mayonnaise-based potato salad, the invention of irony, tales of Rena’s high school trauma, more conversation about Sharknado than necessary, the suffering (both on and off-screen) of Rebecca Ferguson, and the lamentably brief appearance of the preternaturally gifted Nina Arianda.
Florence Foster Jenkins Is directed by Steven Frears from a script by Nicholas Martin and Julia Kogan and stars Meryl Streep as Florence Foster Jenkins, Hugh Grant as St. Clair Bayfield, Simon Helberg as Cosmé McMoon, Rebecca Ferguson as Kathleen, Nina Ariana as Agnes Stark, Stanley Townsend as Phineas Stark, Allan Corduner as John Totten, Christian McKay as Earl Wilson, Brid Brennan as Kitty, David Hague as Carlo Edwards, Mark Arnold as Cole Porter, and John Cavanaugh as Arturo Toscanini with a cameo appearance by Josh O'Connor as Donaghey.
 
Sources: 
Florence Foster Jenkins: The Inspiring True Story of the World's Worst Singer by Nicholas Martin and Jasper Rees
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
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Episode 63: Alexander, The Oliver Stone Alexander the Great Movie from 2004

This week, we’re back with our old pal Oliver Stone for his 2004 biopic of the world-conquering bisexual Alexander the Great, aptly titled Alexander.  
We welcome Colin Farrell to the show, and rejoin one of our favorites, the late great Val Kilmer, and our not-so-favorites Angelina Jolie and Jared Leto, for this sometimes brilliant, often literal film of a decade-long cultural appropriation-and-violence-filled rumspringa, a magical horse named Bucephalus, a mother with an Olive Garden accent and an obsession with snakes, wigs on wigs on wigs, and talky talk talk about Zeus and Achilles. 
Also covered: Germany’s pre-2006 filmmaking tax benefits, Oliver Stone’s judicious use of CGI (we’re not always being dicks, guys), Donald Sutherland, elephants, guyliner, and how to get impregnated by a God. 
Alexander is directed by Oliver Stone and stars Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Jared Leto, Brian Blessed, Christopher Plummer, Jonathan Rhys-Myers, Anthony Hopkins, Rosario Dawson, and many, many animals who may or may not have been harmed in the making of this film. 
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
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Emergency Episode 2: The Deliver Me From Nowhere Trailer, with Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen

First shots have been fired in the Oscarbation Wars of 2025 / 2026, and those shots are coming to you from Bruce Springsteen, in Brokendreamsville, New Jersey, in a biopic that will certainly cover territory that we’ve already seen many times this year in our emergency breakdown of the Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere trailer. 
Will this movie have enough self-serious white men over-explaining the significance of the album Nebraska to satisfy Hollywood's annual quota of self-serious white men over-explaining things? Did the hotel room in which Bruce Springsteen recorded the album serve as a murder room for one of the many serial killers who haunted America in the 1970s because of the excessive use of lead paint? Are we going to see an actor’s interpretation of record executive John Hammond for the fourth time since we’ve launched this show? 
Most important: how important is that hole in the floor that Jeremy Strong talks about in this trailer going to be to the plot of this film? 
Come for the rage and the coverage of everything from former New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s unrequited passion for Bruce to how Gaby Hoffman’s Jersey hausfrau turn makes us feel old, stay for Sara’s truly vexing true-or-false quiz about Bruce Springsteen.  This movie comes out on October 24 and you bet we’d prefer not to see it. 
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is directed by Scott Cooper and stars Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen, Stephen Graham as Douglas “Dutch” Springsteen, Paul Walter Hauser as Mike Batlan, Marc Maron as Chuck Plotkin, Gaby Hoffman as Adele Springsteen, David Krumholtz as Al Teller, the magnificent Jeremy Strong as Jon Landau, some bottle blonde actress as a woman who is probably not Patti Scialfa or Julianne from Sisters as “The Girl 🙄,” and soon-to-be-breakout-star Cormac Fingeret as “Man Riding in Truck with Man Yelling ‘Bruce, You Suck!”
The trailer’s here: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2147076121/?ref_=tt_vids_vi_1 
 
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
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Episode 61: Malcolm X with Guest Star, Filmmaker Brandon Wilson

This week, we welcome our special guest star, the very, very smart and insightful filmmaker, critic, and educator Brandon Wilson, to celebrate the 4th by dropping Malcolm X on Plymouth Rock. 
Given [gestures around at everything], we wanted to celebrate the decaying, never-actually-real American Dream with Spike Lee’s revolutionary, game-changing magnum opus Malcolm X, which is, of course, about the revolutionary leader Malcolm X (and a lot of other things). 
The original recording was almost 5 hours long, so we had to cut a lot of amazing convo since we’re two broads and not an idiotic white man who works overtime to humanize monsters and has the capability to sway elections and get people to disbelieve common sense science. 
However, we cover plenty of other things as we take the plunge into this very long but deeply exhilarating epic, including the genius of Spike Lee, the astonishing snubs this film received from the Academy (but hey, Howard’s End and Enchanted April, right? And Scent of a Woman?), having the Jersey shore stand in for Mecca, how the hell this film got made, and so much more. 
Malcolm X stars Denzel Washington as Malcolm X, Angela Bassett as Betty Shabazz, Spike lee as Shorty, Kate Vernon as Sophia, Delroy Lindo as West Indian Archie, Theresa Randle as Laura, Al Freeman Jr. as Elijah Muhammed, Albert Hall as Baines, and many, many more.
Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.
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Contact us: biopiclistenermailbag@gmail.com