A podcast from Bright Wall/Dark Room, engaging with the business of being alive, one movie at a time. Hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick & Chad Perman.
A podcast from Bright Wall/Dark Room, engaging with the business of being alive, one movie at a time. Hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick & Chad Perman.

For a taste of summertime sadness, we look at a pick from curator Christos Nikou (Apples [2020] and Fingernails [2023]): Mike Mills’s semi-autobiographical bleak comedy Beginners (2010).
We get into the film’s tonality of “melancholic smile,” non-human actors, is this Mills’s All Fours?, Christopher Plummer’s silent expressivity (and “ascot game”), aging out of the gay bar, and nightclub as metaphor for life.
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The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, and produced by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.
This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. Discover more at Galerie.com.