Don't Encourage Us
av Don't Encourage Us
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Story Break: No Reel, No Role. Can This Startup Break Acting’s…
Story Break: No Reel, No Role. Can This Startup Break Acting’s…
Om denne podkasten
Most people watch a movie. We use it to generate new ideas.
Don’t Encourage Us takes films and TV apart to uncover the creative decisions, strategic trade-offs, and unexpected connections that spark original thinking. From Alfred Hitchcock to Artificial Intelligence, we use stories as springboards for exploring business, human behavior, strategy, technology, and creativity in ways that reveal possibilities others might miss.
The point isn’t to review what’s been done. It’s to connect ideas that haven’t been connected, challenge familiar assumptions, and discover new ways of seeing problems and opportunities.
Watch a story. Discover new ideas.
Episoder
De 20 nyeste av 55 episoder
- Story Break: No Reel, No Role. Can This Startup Break Acting’s Catch-22? · 1 t 8 min · Episode 55Returning guest Steve Custer pitches a startup built around acting’s maddening catch-22: you need a reel to get work, but you need work to get a reel. What begins as a small…
- We Fed Our Episodes To AI. Here's What It Discovered. · 17 min · Episode 54Two AI hosts analyzed our back catalog and discovered something. The show presents itself as a pop culture podcast but that’s a lie. This is their report.
- Captain America: Brave New World — Why the MCU Can't Handle More Filler & the Case for Isaiah Bradley · 1 t 55 min · Episode 53Deadpool & Wolverine rebuilt MCU momentum. Captain America: Brave New World spent it. We break down why this film's stacked cast, a genuinely interesting Harrison Ford arc, and…
- Roadside Picnic & Stalker, Deadpool's Anti-Plot, and Story Break: UNESCO's Agent · 1 t 22 min · Episode 52Tarkovsky took a philosophical Russian sci-fi novel about alien artifacts, made the authors rewrite the script repeatedly to strip out the science fiction, and produced a…
- Deadpool & Wolverine: Did It Un-F*ck the MCU? · 1 t 48 min · Episode 51The plot was built backwards. Start with the cameos you want, the fight choreography, the fan service moments — then invent a plot to connect them. "Anchor being" exists because…
- The List: No One Can Save You, Late Night with the Devil, 1984, X-Men '97, & How to Actually Prompt AI · 1 t 13 min · Episode 50A format experiment: no main topic, just the list. What happens when Apple spends a fortune on science fiction and keeps treating the sci-fi as a gimmick? Why does No One Can…
- Godzilla Minus One - Balancing Character, Spectacle, and Story · 1 t 13 min · Episode 49A $15 million Japanese film delivered better spectacle than Hollywood's $200M blockbusters and told a deeper story while doing it. We break down the production decisions, budget…
- Fallout (2024): The Wizard of Oz Template. Plus, Is Netflix Making Bad Shows on Purpose? · 1 t 11 min · Episode 48Is Netflix intentionally making forgettable shows to inflate viewer numbers for advertisers? The hosts build that case then reverse-engineer Amazon's Fallout as a Wizard of Oz…
- Road House (1989) vs. Road House (2024): Why Killing Breaks One Film and Makes the Other · 1 t 49 min · Episode 47Both Road House films have the same setup: tough guy, nasty bar, local villain, knife wound, sexy doctor. But the 1989 original gives Dalton a complete character arc — he's…
- The Happening, Our Origin Story & Reality TV Pitches · 24 min · Episode 46Three clips from episodes that never aired. First: a pre-cohost episode where two guests try to make sense of M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening and things go sideways almost…
- Story Break: Demon Code — What Happens When AI Manipulates · 1 t 27 min · Episode 45We build an original horror concept from scratch. An apartment building where tenants experience what looks like paranormal activity. The reveal: it's not ghosts, it's two…
- I Saw the Devil: The Revenge Film Where the Hero Is Also the Monster · 1 t 18 min · Episode 44This isn't cat and mouse. It's cat and cat. A Korean intelligence agent's wife is murdered by a serial killer, and his method of revenge — catch, torture, release, repeat while…
- 3 Body Problem: Season 1 Is Nothing Compared to What's Coming · 1 t 34 min · Episode 43The Three-Body Problem novels work because every escalation in scope gives you time to sit with the new reality before it changes again. The Netflix adaptation fires revelations…
- League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Avengers Before Anyone Was Ready for It · 1 t 25 min · Episode 42New format: Defend Yourself — we put a film fan on trial. First up: 2003's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a favorite of our host, and Sean Connery's last film. Seven literary…
- Dimension X (1950): The Radio Show That Taught America How to Fear the Future · 1 t 8 min · Episode 41Before Twilight Zone, before Star Trek, NBC's Dimension X adapted Asimov, Bradbury, Heinlein, and Vonnegut for radio and accidentally created the template for how science fiction…
- Oscars: Barbie's Real Achievement Isn't Cinema — It's the Greatest Brand Flip Ever · 1 t 58 min · Episode 40Part 2 of our Oscar episode — we actually get to the movies this time. The Barbie argument: its real genius isn't filmmaking, it's taking a product that represented everything…
- The One Where They Don't Get to the Oscars: Neuralink, Streaming & Cancel Culture · 1 t 6 min · Episode 39This was supposed to be the Oscars episode. We didn't get there. Instead: why a private company tweeting about human brain implants should concern everyone, whether streaming is…
- Notorious (1946): Hitchcock's Best Spy Film Is Actually a Romance · 1 t 20 min · Episode 38We picked this expecting a spy thriller. It's a romance where the spying is just an obstacle for two emotionally immature people to hurt each other. Cary Grant plays a government…
- Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Why a Science MacGuffin Breaks the Character · 1 t 5 min · Episode 37The Dial of Destiny has a problem that goes deeper than pacing or casting. Every great Indiana Jones MacGuffin is an object of faith — the Ark, the Grail, the Sankara Stones…
- Wes Anderson's Asteroid City: Yearbook Movie or Masterpiece? · 54 min · Episode 36Wes Anderson packed Asteroid City with Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, and about twenty other famous faces and that might be exactly what's wrong…
