Stepping out of the wood, out of the dark, out of the night, the so-cast pod is back for a chat about the surprising parallels between Wicked and My So-Called Life! Sure, Winnie Holzman is one of the main writers behind both proj...
2024-12-02 17:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello there!
I'll have a great big new video for you next weekend about An American Family, but in the mean time here's some more fun stories about another unscripted show, Candid Camera. We'll start with the time the producer was involved in an airplane hijacking that was assumed at first to be a prank ... but then turne...
2024-12-01 17:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Before we get to this week’s episode, I have a question for you. And that question is … do you have any questions for me? I ask because we’re coming up on the 500th episode of The Sewers of Paris next month, and to celebrate I’m going to be doing a special Q&A episode where I answer questions from listeners. So if you h...
2024-11-28 16:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello there!
I have a video coming for you next week (fingers crossed) about An American Family, the invention of reality television, and about the first gay reality star Lance Loud. For this week's bonus video, I want to take a look at Lance's later career as a pop culture journalist, and in particular a FASCINATING oral history that he w...
2024-11-24 18:59:28 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris has experienced reality TV as both a viewer and a participant. Growing up in Australia, Antony’s window to the world was watching American daytime talk shows like Oprah and Ricki ...
2024-11-21 17:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
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For this week's bonus video, I want to draw your attention to a figure who appeared ever so briefly on PBS back in 1973: Holly Woodlawn, an icon of queer theater, a Warhol superstar, and a magnificently weird storyteller. Holly was a trans woman who hitchhiked from Florida to New York and became famous simply because there wa...
2024-11-17 17:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is Chad Anderson, host of the Graymalkin Lane podcast. Chad grew up in a home that was not exac...
2024-11-14 17:00:18 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm chatting with a super exciting guest this week: It's the delightful Senta Moses, who played Delia Fisher on My So-Called Life! We talk about her early career, the inspiration for her performance, the real-life confession that may have influenced th...
2024-11-11 23:55:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello there!
For this week's bonus video, we're going way back to the 50s for a peek at the show that would lay the groundwork for the groundwork of reality television. Candid Camera was a fun, lighthearted show (created by a terrible tyrant of a man) that was among the first to experiment with cameras following real people t...
2024-11-10 17:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris got his start performing in high school, when he worked as a carnival barker. Bruce Costella drew inspiration from ...
2024-11-07 19:10:39 +0000 UTC View Post
When last we left Angela and Brian and Rickie and Rayanne and all their friends, they were in the early days of 1995 and at a point of no return in their teen lives. So what's happened to them in the intervening 30 years? On this week's episode, we hav...
2024-11-04 19:51:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello there!
For my most recent YouTube video, I did some research into the early days of PBS (and its predecessor, NET), and came across a lot of fun Julia Child stuff that I didn't have room for in the final video. But I thought you'd get a kick out of a couple of clips in which she screws things up, and because it's live TV (or live-to-...
2024-11-03 17:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is Ian Carlos Crawford, who you may know from the podcasts 2024-10-31 16:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post
My So-Called Life lives again! This week on the podcast, we're chatting about how MSCL was saved from oblivion, resurrected on cable. What made MTV such a perfect home for this show -- better, in fact, than the network where it originally...
2024-10-28 18:13:35 +0000 UTC View Post
I have a new YouTube video premiering this weekend about the miniseries Tales of the City, based on the books by Armistead Maupin, and for this week’s episode we’re diving into the Sewers archives to revisit my 2020 interview with Michael — who, like the main character of Tales, moved to San Francisco to dis...
2024-10-24 17:56:34 +0000 UTC View Post
In this week's episode of Matt's So-Cast Pod, it's the dramatic conclusion -- OR IS IT??? We've reached the final episode of My So-Called Life, in which everyone has revealing dreams and Brian finally tells Angela how he feels ... but...
2024-10-21 19:39:26 +0000 UTC View Post
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For this week's bonus video, we're plucking Fred Rogers out of his neighborhood and sending him to Washington to scold a senator about giving PBS more money. But wait, there's more! Years later, Fred returns -- this time, to court, where he testifies in favor of our very good friend, the Video Cassette Recorder, boldly defying...
2024-10-20 17:19:37 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is Ben Graetz, also known as Miss Ellaneous — an Australian drag performer whose work is infused with influences that range from a life-changing Tina Turner concert to his family’s First Nations heritage...
2024-10-17 14:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
On this week's episode of the podcast: We're closing in on the end of the series, and it's time for some wacky hijinks after last week's heart-rending drama! The grownups are going to take a VERY SERIOUS vacation, and they leave Angela in charge ... but it doesn't take long for chaos to reign when Rayanne accidentally handcuffs herself to a bed,...
2024-10-14 16:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello there! My travels continue this week, and for this week's bonus video I have a story about a big fight between a writer and an actor. At issue: Writer Armistead Maupin was FURIOUS that the actor in Tales of the City was pretending to be straight. But who was the actor??? It's a mystery, but perhaps some of you will have a theory or two. 2024-10-12 21:31:50 +0000 UTC View Post
I’ve got a special conversation for you on this week's Sewers of Paris: Toni Godwin Sells is the Chief Business and Strategy Officer at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle. MoPOP is about to open a new exhibit dedicated to the works of Keith H...
2024-10-10 14:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello! Thanks for your patience during our little break from Matt's So-Cast Pod. As of today we're back, with just three episodes of My So-Called Life remaining!
This week: Everyone’s life is FINALLY going smoothly … fo...
2024-10-07 16:00:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello there!
I'm coming to you from the road this week, with a bonus video about two very different topics: First, from my most recent YouTube video, some details about the very 90s fashion on My So-Called Life (and the unlikely career of the show's wardrobe guy); and second, as a preview of my next upcoming video, a quick look into the SU...
2024-10-06 16:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest this week on the Sewers of Paris podcast is Johnnie McNamara Walker, whose solo shows The Heterosexuals and Redheaded Stepchild led to him being described as a comic genius by The Irish Times. Johnnie spent a lot...
2024-10-03 21:19:21 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is jazz musician Richard Cortez, whose new album 2024-09-26 16:00:34 +0000 UTC View Post
UPDATE: Very annoyingly, Warner Bros (or someone???) copyright-claimed this video because of a snippet of Madonna music, so I've replaced the video with a new un-Madonnaed version. Hopefully that works.
Hello there!
In this week's video, I'm sniffling my way through the last vestige of a cold and sh...
2024-09-22 16:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
This weekend, there’s a new documentary coming to theaters about the life of Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman. It’s called Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, and it’s about his career, the injury that changed his life...
2024-09-19 16:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
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For today's bonus video, we're taking a look at the history of gay teens on TV -- going alllllll the way back to Dobie Gillis in the early 1960s, then wandering through the groovy vibes of Richard Dreyfuss into the 1970s with lesbian-teacher scares. And of course, who can forget young Ryan Phillippe as a troubled soap opera yo...
2024-09-15 16:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is Mark Segal, who started making waves in the 1960s and hasn’t stopped since. Mark was there for Stonewall, he was there for the organizing of the first Prides that followed, and he was re...
2024-09-12 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
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I was doing some research on Wilson Cruz and My So-Called Life when I came across a BONKERS semi-lost sitcom called Great Scott -- not only is it Wilson's first(ish) TV role, it's also an early role for Tobey Maguire, before he was the Spider-Man. But the most interesting thing about it is the astonishingly bigoted casting exp...
2024-09-08 16:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post