There's Sometimes a Buggy

Join Dave and Elise every week for a buggy-ride of cinematic exploration. A bilingual Montreal native and a Prairies hayseed gravitate to Toronto for the film culture, meet on OK Cupid, and spur on each other's movie-love, culminating in this podcast. Expect in-depth discussion of their old favourites (mostly studio-era Hollywood) and their latest frontiers (courtesy of the TIFF Cinematheque and various Toronto rep houses and festivals). The podcast will be comprised of several potentially never-ending series: - Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto: Our Perspectives on Choice Local Retrospectives - Hollywood Studios – Year by Year: Deep-cut dishing on Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, RKO, Fox, and Universal items from 1930 to 1948. - Acteurist oeuvre-views of worthy on-camera creatives, beginning with Jennifer Jones and Setsuko Hara. - And a big parade of special subjects hand-chosen by whichever of your hosts happens to have a handle on this buggy that week

There's Sometimes a Buggy is a society podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 415 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts There's Sometimes a Buggy, a society show with 415 episodes published.

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  There's Sometimes a Buggy

  Acteurist Spotlight – Sandra Dee – Part 3: PORTRAIT IN BLACK (1960) and ROMANOFF AND JULIET (1961)

  Sep 25, 202652 min

  Our final Sandra Dee episode for a while sees us battling out whether the inanities of the Ross Hunter melodrama Portrait in Black (1960), based on a play by the writing duo behind White Heat , are fun or just dumb, after which we turn to Peter Ustinov's Romanoff and Juliet (1961), the most curiously gentle satire of Cold War superpower misbehaviour it's possible to imagine. We do agree on one thing in this episode: there's not enough Sandra Dee. Time Codes: 0h 00m 20s: PORTRAIT IN BLACK (1960) [dir. Michael Gordon] 0h 31m 29s: ROMANOFF & JULIET (1961) [dir. Peter Ustinov] 0h 47m 49s: So This is Sarris (Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema ) – Delmer Daves +++ Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive ) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

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  There's Sometimes a Buggy

  Special Subject – Against Interpretation – LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961), 3 WOMEN (1977) and Susan Sontag's essay "Bergman's Persona"

  Sep 18, 20261h 12m

  For our September 2026 Special Subject we read Susan Sontag's essay "Bergman's Persona " and applied its ideas to Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad , mentioned in the essay, and Robert Altman's 3 Women , which owes a great deal to Persona . Following Sontag, we ask what it would mean to try to approach a narrative film without needing to know "what happens in the story" and what other modes of response are available for films that resist plot synopsis. And for those who are still trying to figure out the occult connection of Henry James to our podcast, there's lots of Sacred Fount talk (started by Sontag). But just like us with these movie plots, you will probably be no wiser. Time Codes: 0h 00m 20s: Sontag on narrative complexity/opacity 0h 07m 21s: LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961) [dir. Alain Resnais] 0h 33m 18s: 3 WOMEN (1977) [dir. Robert Altman] 1h 06m 25s: So This is Sarris (Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema ) – John Cromwell Susan Sontag's essay "Bergman's Persona: An Essay on Tragedy," published in Styles of Radical Will (1969) +++ Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive ) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

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  There's Sometimes a Buggy

  Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – RKO – 1935: ENCHANTED APRIL & IN PERSON

  Sep 11, 202657 min

  For this RKO 1935 episode, FOTP Ann Harding returns in Enchanted April (directed by Harry Beaumont), based on a novel by Elizabeth von Armin that Elise declares, based on the cinematic evidence, to be the missing link between Jane Austen and Jane Bowles. Then we turn to one of Dave's favourites, In Person (directed by William A. Seiter), a Ginger Rogers comedy that paired her with an unusually lively George Brent. We discuss the very unusual chemistry between their characters, a Hollywood actress in disguise and an outdoorsman who cures her agoraphobia in a curious way. Time Codes: 0h 00m 20s: 1935 & RKO 0h 04m 33s: ENCHANTED APRIL (1935) [dir. Harry Beaumont] 0h 25m 40s: IN PERSON (1935) [dir. William A. Seiter] +++ Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Vernon Harbin Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler 1935 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive ) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours , and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

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  There's Sometimes a Buggy

  Acteurist Spotlight – Sandra Dee – Part 2: STRANGER IN MY ARMS (1959) and GIDGET (1959)

  Sep 4, 20261h 13m

  For our second Sandra Dee episode we watched two films from 1959 (March 1959, to be exact): the Ross Hunter family melodrama A Stranger in My Arms (directed by Helmut Käutner), from a novel by the author of Written on the Wind , and the infamous Gidget (directed by Paul Wendkos), based on Frederick Kohner's novel about his daughter. We do our best to reconstruct the movie Stranger could have been while marveling at Dee's exhausting performance of a neurotic rich girl, and then turn our flabbergasted attention to Gidget , a movie with much more on its mind (particularly concerning gender roles and alienation) than we could ever have imagined based on its reputation. And in our So This Is Sarris section we get sensitive about Sam Fuller's visual forms. Time Codes: 0h 00m 20s: STRANGER IN MY ARMS (1959) [dir. Helmut Kautner] 0h 20m 54s: GIDGET (1959) [dir. Paul Wendkos] 1h 00m 32s: So This is Sarris (Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema ) – Samuel Fuller +++ Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive ) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again" * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

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  There's Sometimes a Buggy

  Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Fox Film Corporation/20th Century Fox – 1935: THE GAY DECEPTION and THE MAN WHO BROKE THE BANK AT MONTE CARLO

  Aug 28, 20261h 2m

  In this 1935 20th Century-Fox Studios Year by Year episode, Friend of the Pod William Wyler, in his only appearance at Fox during the studio era, hits it out of the park again with The Gay Deception . This is one of two comedy masterpieces by Wyler in 1935, both woefully neglected, although this one foreshadows his one well-known comedy, Roman Holiday , in certain of its plot elements. But it's recognizably a 1930s screwball comedy, albeit with Francis Lederer as the madcap heiress (or prince) driving Frances Dee screwy. And we also watched The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo (directed by Stephen Roberts), which is a very good use of Ronald Colman and also features Joan Bennett, which is no cause to complain. Finally, in our So This Is a Sentence? segment, Andrew Sarris enlightens us about lechery, longing, sophistication, sexual humour, and malice in the movies of Lowell Sherman. Time Codes: 0h 00m 20s: 1935 & Fox 0h 05m 52s: THE GAY DECEPTION [dir. William Wyler] 0h 44m 26s: HE MAN WHO BROKE THE BANK AT MONTE CARLO [dir. Stephen Roberts] 0h 58m 55s: So This is Sarris (from Andrew Sarris' The American Cinema ) – Lowell Sherman +++ Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of 20 th Century Fox (Aubrey Solomon and Tony Thomas) and The Fox Film Corporation, 1915-1935: A History and Filmography (Aubrey Solomon) Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler 1935 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive ) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours , and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

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