Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Tony Black, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.
This time, a special treat. William Friedkin’s Sorcerer. And we’re crossing over with The New Wave, as a bit of a teaser for their launch.
Four men drift idly around a deadend town in the heart of South America, when an unlikely opportunity strikes. A terrorist has caused a fire at an American oil well, and the company is offering a lavish payday to anybody who can help. The only catch is that to earn that money, these four men will have to drive extremely volatile nitroglycerine across some of the most treacherous terrain imaginable. Those who survive will have enough to escape the hell in which they’ve found themselves, and those who don’t won’t care.
At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Show notes:
- Recorded 7th April 2020.
- Note: Due to the COVID-19 situation, this episode was recorded remotely. We suspect, going forward that a lot of our episodes will be until the crisis resolves.
- Sorcerer at The Internet Movie Database.
- The IMDB Top 250 as it appeared at time of recording.
- Follow Tony on Twitter.
- Listen to Tony (and occasionally Darren) on The X-Cast.
- Listen to Tony on Primitive Culture at Trek.fm.
- Read Tony at Set the Tape.
- Follow the New Wave Podcast on Twitter.
- The 250 (and Tony) discuss The Wages of Fear, April 2020.
- William Friedkin talks to Mark Kermode for Sight and Sound about the origins of Sorcerer, December 2017.
- William Friedkin talks to The Dissolve about the production and afterlife of Sorcerer, May 2014.
- William Friedkin talks to Cinephilia Beyond about his career and the legacy of Sorcerer, 2015.
- William Friedkin discusses why he chose the name Sorcerer with MovieHole, March 2016.
- Travis Woods at Bright Wall, Dark Room discusses the deeply troubled production history of Sorcerer, May 2019.
- William Friedkin talks to Time Out London about the origins and development of the project, November 2017.
- Susan King at The Los Angeles Times celebrates Steve McQueen, November 2010.
- William Friedkin discusses how Steve McQueen almost starred in Sorcerer with Variety, May 2016.
- Randy Jurgensen talks to Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers about his life and career, including his work with William Friedkin, December 2015.
- Paul Iorio at The Huffington Post presents a previously unpublished interview with Roy Scheider, May 2015.
- Roy Scheider talks to The New York Times about working on Jaws II and Sorcerer, July 1977.
- William Friedkin discusses Sorcerer with The Hollywood Interview, April 2014.
- Cyriaque Lamar at Cracked on the problems selling Sorcerer to an American audience, February 2009.
- The New York Times reports on Dominican residents suing the production company over the use of locations for Sorcerer, August 1976.
- Robert Lindsey at The New York Times profiles “the new tycoons of Hollywood”, August 1977.
- Robert Sam Anson at Vanity Fair reflects on Charlie Bluhdorn’s tenure in charge of Paramount Pictures, February 2015.
- Seymour M. Hersh at The New York Times on the S.E.C. investigation of Gulf and Western that overlapped with the release of Sorcerer, July 1977.
- Seymour M. Hersh at The New York Times on the questionable relationships between Gulf and Western and major banks, July 1977.
- Seymour M. Hersh at The New York Times on the investigation of Gulf and Western’s tax practices, July 1977.
- William Friedkin talks to The Guardian about his use of photos of the Gulf and Western Board in Sorcerer, September 2013.
- Will McCrabb shares a screenshot of Steven Spielberg wearing a Sorcerer T-shirt on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, March 2018.
- Anya Jaremko-Greenwold at IndieWire on the challenges that Werner Herzog has faced in making his films, September 2015.
- Roger Ebert interviews Werner Herzog about his Amazon obsession for The Chicago Sun Times, September 1981.
- Darren Mooney at the m0vie blog looks at the fatalism that permeates Sorcerer, April 2020.
- Ryan Parker at The Hollywood Reporter on how The Simpsons homaged Sorcerer, November 2017.
- Nicolas Rapold at The New York Times offers a brief history of Tangerine Dream‘s film scores, June 2012.
- William Friedkin talks to Vanity Fair about how Star Wars effectively steamrolled Sorcerer, April 2014.
- William Friedkin gets reflective with The New York Times about the failure of Sorcerer, April 2013.
- Gabriel Bell at Salon about how Star Wars obliterated Sorcerer from the cultural memory, May 2017.
- William Friedkin talks to The New York Times about his self-imposed exile in France following the failure of the film, May 2017.
- Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert discuss the overlooked classics of the seventies, December 1979.
- Connie Benesch at The Los Angeles Times discusses the many movies lost in home media limbo, April 1988.
- Brent Lang at The Wrap on the premiere of the restored Sorcerer at the Venice Film Festival, May 2013.
- Adam Bat at Hope Lies at 24 Frames a Second on the reappraisal and restoration of Sorcerer, April 2014.
- Sam Adams reviews Sorcerer for The Dissolve, April 2014.
- Amanda Kooser at Cnet celebrates the Amazon reviews of George Takei, May 2013.
- Follow The 250 on Twitter.
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- Listen to The 250 on Spotify.
Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: adventure, destiny, fatalism, podcast, remake, sorcerer, South America, the new wave, the wages of fear, tony black, William Friedkin |
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