Adam McKay and his firm Hyperobject Industries and Sony Music Entertainment have produced an eight-episode podcast sequence titled Death on the Lot. The present will discover a number of of the Hollywood tragedies in the 1950s.
The tales will dive into the deaths of James Dean, Hattie McDaniel, John Garfield, and different notable Hollywood figures who died prematurely in the 1950s.
The undertaking was born out of McKay’s 2021 podcast Death on the Wing, which explored the premature deaths of basketball gamers in the Nineteen Eighties. McKay stated: “All during the making of Death at the Wing, we kept saying the only other comparison we can think of is Hollywood after World War II. Then we thought, ‘Well, let’s do a season about that, and see what we can uncover.’ And if possible, it was even richer and deeper, and more to the core of the American story than we anticipated.”
When speaking about what he likes about engaged on podcasts, McKay stated: “You’re able to walk into the project, and make the project, with questions still unanswered. With these podcasts, the questions are the central theme of the show — and it’s really fun, because you’re constantly making discoveries. It’s just a very living and breathing process, all the way to the very end, when you record that last couple of sentences.”
Some of the people who had been interviewed for the podcast embrace Ron Howard, Lee Grant, and James Cromwell, in addition to the relations of a few of the topics, corresponding to McDaniel’s nice grand-nephew. McKay stated: “That diversity of voices, it’s essential to this kind of storytelling, because it’s incredibly interdisciplinary. You’re not ever just looking at things through an economic lens, a sociological lens, an entertainment history lens — the lens is always shifting. So it really creates this need for an incredibly broad perspective.
He added: “That collection of voices is the center, the core, of the show. It’s the living questions — and then going to this incredible array of people to get those answers.”
McKay particularly talked concerning the podcast’s second episode, because it resonates with what is at the moment occurring with the author’s strike. The episode focuses on the demise of Willie Bioff, an organized crime determine and a corrupt labor chief, who was murdered in a automobile explosion. McKay stated: “We knew we wanted to do an episode about labor and the movie industry because people tend to forget that Hollywood, much like the country at large, was built by unions. We didn’t know that the story would be as resonant as it is now, with the writers once again fighting for a viable future for the people who really make this industry tick. And when you listen to the way that striking movie workers were talked about by those in power in the ’40s and’ 50s… it sounds awfully familiar. There are lots of lessons from the labor fights of the post-war era.”
All eight episodes of Death on the Lot might be obtainable on Sony Music’s platform The Binge on June 1, and can roll out weekly on different podcast platforms.
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