Aaaaaaaaaand we’re back!
We’ve got six more episodes for you in season two, and we’ll be putting them out, one Friday after another, for the next six weeks. We are already talking to our guests for next season and putting together notes for upcoming bonus episodes over at The Back Pocket, our Patreon page, and we’ve got bonus up already where we discussed our favorite films of 2024.
Next week, I’ll be posting another Patreon episode where we each pick a David Lynch project to discuss and that leads us to talking about his place in the world overall. It’s a great late-night conversation, and what I’m realizing is that this no longer feels like a show we’re putting together. I look forward to spending time with my friends now, and when we’re not recording, I miss Aundria and Craig. This thing I cooked up in a lab over several years has lurched to life now, and I can’t imagine not doing this. It’s become the thing I wanted it to become, an ongoing party where we get to invite a new person to join us every time we do it.
I knew I had to to have today’s guest on as soon as I had the idea for the show. After all, I’ve known Eric Vespe for almost as long as I’ve been online at this point. I think in the early days of Ain’t It Cool, there was a tendancy to think of him as Everyone’s Little Brother, but that was a long time ago and a lifetime of experience away from where he is now. I think it’s safe to call The Kingcast a wild success, and I suspect that he and Scott Wampler would have kept podcasting together forever if not for Wampler’s tragic and sudden passing. They had just kicked off production on a brand-new podcast when that happened, and I think it’s amazing that Eric figured out a way to respectfully move forward with the show while also releasing the finished episodes that he and Wampler created together.
Anyone who survived Ain’t It Cool and came out the other side still working and creating has my undying respect, because it was a meat grinder. If you weren’t there, you will never understand just how weird it was, not just because of Harry Knowles and the way he ran things, but because of the way the industry reacted to us and then tried to figure us out. Eric was right there in the middle of that with me, and we can’t help but talk about some of those encounters as we discuss the three films he picked for the podcast.
The next five episodes are so much fun, and if you thought we started to figure out our chemistry and the show’s format in the first half of the season, wait ‘till you hear the episode where I’m pretty sure all four of us (our guest included) laugh for 90 straight minutes or the episode where we discuss four movies about faith as our guest lays out a personal, revealing, and always surprising trio of titles. We’ve got guests coming in from two of my very favorite podcasts (Doughboys and Blank Check), but maybe not the guests you’d expect in at least one of those cases. People pick titles you might expect, and a whole lot of titles you wouldn’t, and in every single case, I feel like I knew more about our guest at the end of the episode than I did at the start, even if I’ve already known them for years.
ERIC VESPE cut his teeth as Quint at Ain’t It Cool, starting with the site when he was still in high school, and he grew up embedded on film sets all over the world. He has written hundreds if not thousands of interviews and set visits, and along with his creative parter Aaron Morgan, he’s also made several short horror films while developing various feature projects.
He was one of the first people I invited to be on the show, in large part because he’s become a podcasting superstar with The Kingcast and The Spiel, focused on two of pop culture’s most totemic artists. I was not surprised when he came back with two films right away, because I think if you turn my friend into a math equation, his first film plus his second film is a pretty handy summation of who he is.
I mean, his Hip Pocket choices are Almost Famous, Jaws, and A Matter of Life and Death, the Powell and Pressberger masterpiece. I mean, Eric really is the kid from Almost Famous, but for the movie business in the early 2000s, and of course, he took his online name from Spielberg’s breakthrough blockbuster, something that he found incredibly awkward when he actually met Spielberg, as we’ll discuss. That last film? Well, Eric’s a big ol’ softie, which is one of the reasons I love him, and that movie speaks directly to that gooey romantic heart of his.
I figured if he’s going to give you a core couple of pieces of his identity as his picks, I can do the same, so I’m adding Lawrence of Arabia to the Hip Pocket Hall of Fame this week.
If you’d like to support The Hip Pocket at Patreon, you can find us at https://www.patreon.com/c/DrewMcWeeny.
If you’d like to find us on BlueSky, you can find us at https://bsky.app/profile/itsthehippocket.bsky.social.
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 guest is a successful podcaster, a comedian, and an actor who’s got a big hit streaming show returning for a second season later this year. I’ve been a guest on his show many times, both main feed and Patreon bonus episodes, and he is a frequent late-night movie buddy of mine here in LA. He normally talks about fast food, but I know him as a movie-lover, through and through. We’re talking Chris Farley. We’re talking Trey Parker and Matt Stone. And, yes, damn it, we’re talking Muppets.
Be here as I welcome one half of one of my favorite podcasting teams in just seven days!
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