Origin

The writer and director talks about the influence of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, shares his love for Original Cast Album: “Company,” and takes his chances on a series of blind selections.

The chaotic cult films of this American original are characterized by dark, absurdist humor, fantastical world-building, and eccentric characters.

The director of The Living End and The Doom Generation reminisces about writing papers on Bringing Up Baby in film school, defends one of David Lynch’s most polarizing masterpieces, and calls John Waters “the original godfather of everything.”

May 20, 2025 — A film about and against everything, this astonishingly original comedy attacks Big Brother, the bomb, and the incipient collapse of our planetary ecosystem, along with the lies that stop us from recognizing all of the above.

Jun 11, 2018 — Alexander Payne will direct the story that originally appeared in the New Yorker in 2013.

May 25, 2012 — The following article by the filmmaker himself originally appeared in the German newspaper Die Filmwoche on May 20, 1931.

Robin D. G. Kelley is a professor of history at the University of California Los Angeles. His books include Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination; Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times; Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times...

Paul Grimstad’s songs and original scores have been in movies by the Safdie brothers, Sean Price Williams, Nathan Silver, Albert Maysles, and others. His writing has appeared in print and online in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, the Baffler,...

Originally from Mexico City, Carlos Aguilar is a Los Angeles–based film critic and journalist. Aguilar’s work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Variety, and IndieWire, among others. He is a member of...

Stephen Winer was one of the original writers for Late Night with David Letterman. He has also written for comedians Robert Klein and Dick Van Dyke and the Disney Channel’s The All New Mickey Mouse Club.