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Fifteen years ago, writer/director Judd Apatow hired documentary filmmaker Chris Wilcha to film a behind-the-scenes movie about the making of “Funny People” and changed Wilcha’s life forever when the documentarian moved from New York to Los Angeles to work on the project. After he was done with the shoot, Wilcha had a hard time finding documentary work and ultimately settled into a life of directing commercials, returning to his first love of non-fiction filmmaking only sporadically as he accumulated hard drive after hard drive of footage from unfinished projects. Apatow was stunned to learn what an effect he had had on Wilcha’s life. “I didn’t even know that he moved to L.A. for the job,” Apatow told IndieWire, “and that his mom has been mad at me for decades.”

The unexpected connections between people and the unknown ways in which they affect each other are...

"It's beautiful and inspiring." Oscilloscope Labs has revealed an official trailer for a documentary film titled Flipside, which first premiered last year at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival. It's the latest creation from doc filmmaker Chris Wilcha, who worked for "This American Life" and also made a few docs, including Knock Knock It's Tig Notaro in 2015 and his breakout The Target Shoots First. Flipside is his comical attempt to save a New Jersey record store and confront a mid-life crisis. TIFF adds: "In the process of looking back, he gets inspired to revisit the half-finished documentaries that exist only on his hard drives. He pulls up old interviews that no one has seen with creative people who faced their own crossroads, including radio host Ira Glass, writer Starlee Kine, jazz photographer Herman Leonard, and television writer David Milch. The passage of time brings a deeper poignancy to their testimonies... His quest may be personal,...

There is no surprise twist in Chris Wilcha’s Flipside, a documentary making its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. This is not a true-crime doc or a story of unearthed family secrets. (Although there is lots of ephemera excavated after years of quasi-hoarding.) Instead of a twist, though, there is an audience awakening, one that takes a rather standard there-are-places-i-remember doc into surprisingly resonant territory. Ultimately, Flipside is a moving, funny, inventive film that may cause viewers to follow Wilcha’s lead and ask tough questions about their own lives. That is no small feat for a documentarian.

Of course, Wilcha is no novice. His first success, 1999’s The Target Shoots First, brought him rave reviews and modest fame. Wilcha shot it while working at Columbia House Records––yes, the “8 CDs for a penny” mail-order service many remember with great fondness. In Flipside, Wilcha shows the viewer his early-20s self,...

As bizarre as the fake death hoax around Lil Tay may be, eagle-eyed TV viewers may be scratching their heads over it due to an entirely different reason than the rest of the internet. The ongoing story around the 14-year-old influencer is eerily similar to a Season 3 episode of the Fxx comedy series “Dave” that premiered earlier this year.

A commentary on the trappings of fame in the social media age, the comedy from Dave Burd and Jeff Schaffer follows a fictionalized version of Burd as he tries to prove he’s one of the greatest rappers of all time. That quest leads to Season 3’s ominously titled “#RIPLilDicky,” which was directed by Ben Sinclair and written by Starlee Kine.

While Dave and his manager Mike (Andrew Santino) are trying to cancel Lil Dicky’s ongoing tour, the tour bus explodes. With no service and nowhere to go in the desert,...

Production on Evil season 4 has officially shut down after a Writer's Guild Strike strike picketing outside the set. Evil first premiered on CBS in September 2019, but moved exclusively to Paramount+ for season 2 onwards. The series was renewed for season 4 in July 2022, and was in the midst of filming when the WGA went on strike on May 2. The WGA strike has led to the shutdown of a number of major film and television productions.

Confirmed in posts to Twitter by Warren Leight and Starlee Kine, filming on Evil season 4 shut down early in the morning on Friday after a small group of picketers protested outside the set for six hours. Though the studio and producers held out hope that they could outlast the protest, keeping the Evil crew "there for hours, sitting on the sidewalk," filming was ultimately shut down. Check out Leight and Kine's posts below:

1Am update from...

“Evil” is wrapping up filming on Season 4 earlier than anticipated. After the set faced disruptions by picketing Writers Guild members on Friday, the Paramount+ series is now seeing a cast member take a leave of absence due to a personal family matter. As a result, production has wrapped early on the next season.

A source close to the series would only confirm that the early end to filming was a result of the unnamed actor’s temporary exit from the show. However, no filming occurred on Friday, as Writers Guild members on strike demonstrated near the production.

The fourth season of “Evil” was commissioned to include 10 episodes. It remains unclear whether the early end to production will impact those plans.

On Friday, Starlee Kine, a writer on “Search Party” and public radio producer, shared a photograph of striking Writers Guild members on Twitter. Kine details how the picketers disrupted the “Evil” shoot,...

Exclusive: Inside Amy Schumer co-creator Daniel Powell and Alex Bach’s Irony Point production banner is expanding its relationship with Netflix as the streaming giant bolsters its comedy slate. The company has signed a multi-year production commitment overall deal with the streamer, with a first-look component for projects developed by Irony Point, encompassing stand-up comedy, sketch, variety, alternative formats and more. Irony Point co-Presidents Powell and Bach will serve as executive producers on all projects.

Netflix and Irony Point have previously partnered on series including I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, which launches its second season later this year, and specials such as Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine, among others. As part of the deal, Irony Point will render its production services for specials, series and various comedy formats for its own projects and select original Netflix productions in those genres. Ayesha Rokadia will continue to produce for Irony...

Audible is punching up its scripted comedy podcast lineup with two new shows from Broadway Video: “Hit Job,” a high-concept workplace comedy starring Keke Palmer and “Saturday Night Live” cast member Pete Davidson, and “Hot White Heist,” a queer action comedy featuring “SNL’s” Bowen Yang and directed by Alan Cumming.

Broadway Video, which struck a multiyear deal with Audible in 2019, has eight other comedy projects in development for the Amazon-owned audio platform. Those include podcasts from Fred Armisen; Drew Tarver and Gilli Nissim; Chloe Fineman, Dan Robert and Starlee Kine; Chris Redd and Will Stephen; Max Silvestri and Leah Beckmann; and Billy Kimball.

All of the Broadway Video shows will be available as part of Audible Plus, the subscription service that starts at $7.95/month and provides unlimited access to thousands of audio titles.

The 12-episode “Hit Job” is set to premiere April 22. The show is created and written by...

Exclusive: Election Profit Makers, the political betting podcast set up by Mystery Show host Starlee Kine, Dicktown’s David Rees and investor Jon Kimball, is coming back for the 2020 election season.

The show launched in 2016 to cover the election battle between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It is now coming back as the Democrats figure out who will compete with Trump in November.

Election Profit Makers is a political podcast with a high-stakes twist; the hosts invest their own money in political predictions. On every episode David Rees, who host NatGeo’s Going Deep and whose animated show Dicktown, created with John Hodgman, will premiere on Fxx this summer, Starlee Kine, who is a writer on HBO Max’s Search Party, and Jon Kimball, founder of iCapital Holdings, a domain name investment, acquisition and development firm focusing on strong generic keyword domains, make bets via PredictIt.org.

They bet on...

“Superbad” BFFs Jonah Hill and Michael Cera will reunite in voice form on the new Adult Swim pilot “The Shivering Truth,” which hails from Vernon Chatman. Chatman and Starlee Kine will also take to the booth to provide audio for a couple characters. “‘The Shivering Truth’ is a delicately crafted, darkly surreal anthology comedy, a miniature propulsive omnibus clusterbomb of painfully riotous daymares all dripping with the orange goo of dream logic,” per Adult Swim. “A series of loosely-linked emotional parables about stories within tales that crawled out of the deepest caverns of your unconscious mind and became lovingly animated in.

“Serial,” a spin-off of the public-radio show “This American Life,” became an internet sensation in late 2014, topping the iTunes charts and gaining a strong following. The podcast, hosted by Sarah Koenig, tells one true story over the course of a season using investigative journalism.

Now, per Vulture, the “Serial” team announced that they have formed a new production company called Serial Productions and unveiled its first project: “S-Town.”

Read More: Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast: ‘Beach Rats’ Director Eliza Hittman on Why a Director’s Sophmore Sundance Film Can Be More Difficult Than the First (Episode 19)

Hosted by “This American Life” producer Brian Reed, “S-Town” is a non-fiction limited series that is set in a small, rural town in Alabama. Production for the podcast began when a man reached out complaining about his small town and wanted a reporter to investigate the son of a wealthy family who had allegedly been bragging...

If you gave Starlee Kine's Mystery Show a whirl, you're probably familiar with the contentious mystery that is Jake Gyllenhaal's height. If you haven't (you should!), here's the background: Nobody knows exactly what it is, and Jake loves that, as well as fudging it. Fortunately, Conan had everybody gathered to settle this once and for all. Unfortunately, Jake wasn't standing up straight and knew damn well that Conan would just eyeball it. Jake, you psychotic genius you. Sorry, Starlee. Case still open?...

If you listened to The Mystery Show, one of the Summer's most enthralling new podcasts, listen up. The narrator, Starlee Kine, stopped by Conan on Thursday night, and she revealed that one of the show's biggest mysteries still isn't officially solved. As you may recall, one of the most popular episodes consists of trying to figure out how tall Jake Gyllenhaal is. The conclusion of the episode involves one seriously flirty phone call, and of course, his revelation: he's 5'11 1/2". In this week's interview, though, Starlee told Conan O'Brien that the Internet didn't find the source reliable enough. So, to settle it once and for all, Conan busted out his tape measurer and invited Jake to the stage. Watch the video above to see how it all went down.

Vulture is holding the ultimate Sitcom Smackdown to determine the greatest TV comedy of the past 30 years. Each day, a different notable writer will be charged with determining the winner of a round of the bracket, until New York Magazine TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz judges the finals on March 18. Today's battle: "This American Life" contributor Starlee Kine decides between two very different tales of Manhattan women: Sex and the City and 30 Rock. Make sure to head over to Facebook to vote in our Readers Bracket, which has already veered from our critics' choices. We also invite tweeted opinions with the #sitcomsmackdown hashtag.When asked to pick a first-round match-up to decide in the Sitcom Smackdown, I was drawn to 30 Rock versus Sex and the City because I didn’t immediately know which show I’d be choosing as the winner. I love them both, but for very different reasons.

Your regularly scheduled Following recapper, Starlee Kine, is out this week, so I will be filling in with a numbered list of the moments that stuck out to me. 1. "Previously on The Following" — What am I supposed to make of the fact that whoever edited this preshow catch-up included that newscaster audio footage telling us that Joe Carroll was convicted of killing a bunch of women. As if seven episodes in we have forgotten that this guy is a serial killer. Have faith in your audience! 2. Joe Carroll is let out of prison (plan is to transfer him to a facility in Georgia) because Ryan Hardy broke his fingers several episodes back, which is a violation of his Eighth Amendment rights. (That's the one about cruel and unusual punishment.) This happens in a room with a couple of people, and there is no press to be seen...

Vulture’s Walking Dead recapper, Starlee Kine, will be filling in for Julieanne Smolinski this week. As we begin, Sister Jude’s sitting behind the wheel of a car. It’s not the “young-but-somehow-still-old” version of her from the flashbacks with the little girl but her sixties self. She’s here to sic a concentration camp survivor-turned-Nazi hunter on Dr. Arden. He tells her about something called Operation Paper Clip, which immediately made me thinking of that little icon that used to come with Microsoft Word that would ask you if you needed help formatting your letter. Which is to say, an adorable name for such a horrible idea — the U.S. government giving new identities to the best and brightest Nazi scientists so they could come work for us. Ryan Murphy manages to sex up an explanation of SS blood type tattoos when Sister Jude’s asked if she...

I was all gung-ho about writing an exhaustive piece on the near creative suicide of The Walking Dead in the first half of season two and its unlikely partial resurrection; but since my colleague Starlee Kine recapped the finale so thoroughly, and with such insight into the season as a whole, I'll just add a few general observations. First, even though the show had nowhere to go but up, quality-wise, and is still far from great (I'd give the first half of season two a D, and the second half a solid B), it's still a remarkable improvement in that it made me care again, sort of. The front half of season two was flat-out awful, the kind of botch that makes you want to abandon a series for good and never look back; it took any potential for greatness The Walking Dead had fitfully demonstrated in season one, threw it on the ground,...

There was an episode of radio show This American Life called "Kid Politics," in whose first act Starlee Kine observes a class of elementary schoolers at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library as they performed a simplified reenactment of the decision making process behind the U.S.-led invasion of Grenada in 1983. The purpose of the exercise was to demonstrate how that President Reagan's actions reflected the right and only choice. In a similar vein, President Reagan's son, Michael Reagan, is hosting What Would Reagan Do?, a new web series that purports to "take a look at the issues of the day and how his father Ronald Reagan set the tone for strong American Leadership." The series is filmed from the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, CA. Wwrd, a play on the acronym Wwjd (meaning What Would Jesus Do?—the comparison does not seem to be tongue-in-cheek), is a part of RightChange,...