Zen Pop Parenting

Cathy and Todd continue their summer blockbusters series with Raiders of the Lost Ark, the George Lucas and Steven Spielberg collaboration born from a beach conversation in Hawaii, diving into the film’s origins, iconic casting (Tom Selleck almost got the role), and the chaotic Tunisia shoot where nearly the entire cast and crew got food poisoning. They rank history’s oddest ...

Cathy and Todd kick off their summer blockbuster series with Top Gun (1986), directed by Tony Scott and produced by Simpson and Bruckheimer, which turned a $15 million budget into $357 million worldwide and made Tom Cruise a superstar. The episode covers the Scott brothers’ contrasting Hollywood legacies, the Navy’s behind-the-scenes script approval that reshaped the story, p...

Cathy and Todd kick off their summer blockbuster series with Top Gun (1986), directed by Tony Scott and produced by Simpson and Bruckheimer, which turned a $15 million budget into $357 million worldwide and made Tom Cruise a superstar. The episode covers the Scott brothers’ contrasting Hollywood legacies, the Navy’s behind-the-scenes script approval that reshaped the story, p...

Cathy and Todd discuss Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs for Zen Pop’s space month, a 1987 Star Wars parody following Lone Starr and his half-man half-dog sidekick Barf as they rescue Princess Vespa from Dark Helmet and the incompetent President Skroob (whose name is literally an anagram of Brooks). The cast includes Bill Pullman, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Daphne Zunig...

Cathy and Todd discuss Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar for Space Month – the dying Earth, the wormhole near Saturn, the black hole that swallows decades of a man’s life while his daughter grows old without him. They get into Matt Damon showing up two-thirds through as a villain nobody knew was in the movie, why Anne Hathaway’s love speech is the whole point of the film, the ...