This whole episode is a trap. In it, we join Josh Hartnett scholar and The Film Stage gentleman Dan Mecca to dissect the ins and outs of M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap.

We talk about: baby bangs, Hartnett always being a little bit weird, the tooth gap, Sleeping with the Enemy’s hand towels, auteur theory, one good part in The Village, Hayley Mills on the walkie-talkie, and more.

Further reading: Dan’s interview with Hartnett for Film Stage, Nicholas Russell’s M. Night Shyamalan essay for BWDR, and you can even run it back to Dan’s first-ever The B-Side episode on Hartnett himself.

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The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman, produced by Eli Sands, and edited by Buczar. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

You can find all 134 issues of Bright Wall/Dark Room, including our most recent issue on Spike Lee, at brightwalldarkroom.com. Please help us find more ears: follow, rate, comment, leave us a review!

This episode is sponsored by ⁠Galerie⁠: a new kind of film club. Listeners can sign up for 3 full months of free access to curated film lists & streaming films, essays, live screenings and much more at ⁠join.galerie.com⁠.

Inspired by the curation of costume designer ⁠Sophie de Rakoff⁠, this month we're taking a loving look at the gear-shifting, hybrid charms of Jonathan Demme's screwball noir, Something Wild—and the Ray Liotta entrance that changes everything.

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This episode is sponsored by Galerie, a new kind of film club. BW/DR listeners can now sign up for 3 months of free access here.

Joining us this month: Blank Check co-host & staff writer at The Atlantic, David Sims!

In summer’s last gasp, we go back to a flashpoint of summer blockbuster season: Jan de Bont’s 1996 Twister, plus its legacy in Twisters (Lee Isaac Chung, 2024), epic ensemble casting, craving movies about grown-ups, Hollywood’s dangerous brunettes, why not kissing at the airport matters, whether anyone votes in the world of Twisters, cinema sequences and storm spectatorship, Daisy Edgar Jones’s accent work, and the Spielberg touch.

Stuff we reference: Jan de Bont in conversation with Tim Grierson, and Lee Isaac Chung on the Twisters ending.

The Bright Wall/Dark Room Podcast is co-hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman and produced and edited by Eli Sands. Our theme music is composed by Chad.

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This episode is sponsored by ⁠Galerie⁠, a new kind of film club featuring curated films, original articles and interviews, and interactive live events. BW/DR listeners can now sign up for three full months of free access to Galerie through ⁠this special link⁠.