Hollywood history is cyclical,” says Karina Longworth, host of the podcast You Must Remember This. For 10 years, Longworth has unpacked the legends and lores of 20th-century Hollywood—everything from myth-busting Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon to revisiting Charles Manson’s friendship with the Beach Boys. The podcast’s latest season, the Old Man Is Still Alive, which premiered on January 14, explores the late-career work of major directors who got their start around the midcentury. Longworth selected 14 directors—including George Cukor, Vincent Minnelli, and Frank Capra—whose experiences in the industry decades ago eerily parallel problems of Hollywood today. Look no further than the fates of projects by aging directors in the past year: Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 debuted in fewer than 50 theaters across the country before moving to streaming. Francis Ford Coppola poured $120 million of his own money into Megalopolis, the melodrama (plagued with allegations of sexual assault against the director) that grossed a mere $14.3 million at the box office. John Waters’s first film in almost 20 years stalled because of a lack of funding.
Longworth spoke to Alta about the inspiration behind season 18 and the stark reality of contemporary filmmaking. The latest Hollywood plot twist: Several productions were paused because of the Los Angeles fires, which some suspect could have long-lasting impacts on the industry. The podcaster joined via Zoom from the L.A. home she shares with her husband, director Rian Johnson, shortly after evacuation orders from the Sunset Fire were lifted for her neighborhood.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
How did the idea for the Old Man Is Still Alive come to you?
In summer 2023, there was a retrospective of director Vincent Minnelli at La Cinémathèque Française in Paris. I was able to watch several of Minnelli’s films that I either hadn’t seen in 20 years or had never seen. The one that made the greatest impression on me was 1962’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and I started reading about its meaning. There’s something very interesting about how beleaguered a production Horsemen was and how it seemed to damage Minnelli’s reputation as a filmmaker very shortly after he had won the Best Picture Oscar for Gigi. I filed that away in my brain until the summer of 2024, when a number of things made me think of this concept of late movies. Specifically, I was interested in the late films by directors who got their start in the silent era and were still making movies in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s—and, in some cases, like Stanley Donen, even the ’90s. In this season, I look at how these directors responded to changes in the culture and film industry; how their movies changed or obstinately didn’t; and how some of these guys, like Otto Preminger, tried to, even at an advanced age, prove that they could still connect with young audiences.
How did you select the directors?
While in Paris, I also saw John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, from 1962, which was a really key film in his later career. I’ve never really talked about John Ford that much on the podcast, and I was excited about digging into his films. And then you had Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga, from last year. There was a lot of press around him leaving the most popular show in North America, Yellowstone, to do Horizon and putting in his own money and having it be perceived as a failure. There are a lot of cases like that, such as Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. Going back to 2023, two of my favorite films were Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and Michael Mann’s Ferrari, both of which I saw frequently being criticized as bloated movies made by old men who didn’t know what was good anymore. That just wasn’t the way I received those movies at all. I was impressed by the levels of technique and confidence that only filmmakers around the age of 80 can bring to something!
With concerns about funding, streaming, AI, and strikes, do you think we’re entering the end of an era for Hollywood?
The season’s name, the Old Man Is Still Alive, comes from an interview with George Cukor. In addition to being about the last or late films of 14 directors, this season is also about this idea that life is long and complicated. I feel lucky to have seen the world change several times.•
You Must Remember This airs new episodes every Tuesday on Spotify and Apple.
Scarlett Harris is a culture critic and the author of A Diva Was a Female Version of a Wrestler: An Abbreviated Herstory of World Wrestling Entertainment. You can read Harris’s previously published work on her website and through her Substack, The Scarlett Woman. Follow Harris on Bluesky at @scarletteharris.bsky.social.
