The Hip Pocket #301 - Nick Wiger
The other half of the Doughboys brings a fistful of anime to kick off season three
It’s been a busy summer.
My primary attention has been split between two projects. One’s for television, and one’s a feature film. Both of them represent dreams for me in different ways. Working on them, I am constantly thinking about why I love the things I love, and why they work on me the way they do. It’s really made me focus on the art I love, which is thrilling, and one of the ways I’ve tried to make use of that energy is with the new season of The Hip Pocket.
I talk to Aundria and Craig pretty much every day, and at this point, it feels like that’s always been the case. We made a major change to the format this year because I wanted to get them both more involved with the production of the show. In our second season, I had them try to guess who our guests were, and while there were several episodes where there was a correct guess, I also feel like Craig and Aundria both had moments where they wished they’d known who they were going to be talking to in advance. This year, we’re talking about the guests and we’re all talking to potential guests and it’s feeling like our show, not my show that I wrangled people into doing with me. That’s what I hoped would happen, and it makes me so happy to feel it click into place.
One of our second season guests was my buddy Mike Mitchell, who you can hear on episode #208, and who you can watch right now on season two of Twisted Metal, which just wrapped up on Peacock. It’s a great season, and Mike’s got so much more to do this year. They just did a full month of guests to talk about Twisted Metal on Doughboys, Mike’s podcast, and it’s been a blast to listen to that and watch the show.
We knew as soon as we had Mike on that we wanted to have on his co-host, and I’m so excited that this is how we’re kicking things off. That’s right. It’s time. But our guest is so much more than the other Doughboy, and that’s why it was a blast to have this conversation with him.
NICK “TIGER” WIGER is celebrating the tenth year of co-hosting Doughboys, where he and Mike review chain restaurants. He also co-hosts Get Played, a video-game podcast that has special bonus episodes that focus on anime, one of Wiger’s passions. He showed up ready to share that passion with us, and I thought it was a great trio of titles, representing three very different type of storytelling.
First up, there’s The Castle of Cagliostro, the first feature film directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It’s a unique title in his filmography because of the origins of the film, but you can feel his voice loud and clear in the film’s energy. His second film is one of the foundational classics of the genre, the great Ghost in the Shell. And to wrap it up, he chose Look Back, a film that came out last year and that should have gotten way more attention than it did.
Our response film is a movie I once discussed onstage with Roger Ebert at his film festival in Champaign-Urbana, Rin Taro’s Metropolis, and it was definitely interesting to revisit it after almost 20 years.
Finally, this week’s selection for the Hip Pocket Hall of Fame is a film that is not anime, but the way it used anime as an inspiration is dazzling, and the result is a film that I rewatch often and love more every time. Let’s talk about Speed Racer, because it is always a good time to talk about Speed Racer. Always.
Support The Hip Pocket over at Patreon, where we’re gearing up for a full season of bonus episodes!
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The Hip Pocket is hosted by Drew McWeeny and Aundria Parker.
Craig Ceravolo is the show’s bandleader and producer.
It is a Formerly Dangerous Production.
NEXT TIME
Our next episode covers a lot of ground with a guest that may surprise people who have been reading me since the Ain’t It Cool days.
You want a wild ‘30s comedy that was a blockbuster in its day but that is largely forgotten at this point? Trust me… you do. You want a crazy French SF animated film from the ‘80s? Again… you want it. You have no idea how much you want it. And let’s not even play this game with a coming-of-age comedy about roller skating. OF COURSE that’s what you want.
Our first bonus episode is coming up over at The Back Pocket, our Patreon series, and our first episode is us talking about three films that we find gentle and soothing and completely mellow. We call it “The Soft Episode,” and it’s a great way to kick off ten episodes that are going to give Craig, Aundria, and me a chance to hang out and share even more of the movies we love with one another.
If you’re not already subscribed here, let me encourage you to wait a few weeks. I’m getting ready to migrate these newsletters off of Substack, and I’d prefer no one give them any more new money before we leave. What’s the point? They’d just use it to lure more Nazis to their platform, and lord knows, they’ve done plenty of that already.
I deeply appreciate all of your support for the podcast. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you can, and tell people why you love the show. We need new ears as we gear up for our best season so far!