In one of the biggest, baddest episodes of the Way Too Indiecast yet, we welcome two of the best directors in the game as we hear from Richard Linklater about his ’80s college hangout movie Everybody Wants Some!! and are joined by Jeff Nichols, whose sci-fi thriller Midnight Special hits theaters this weekend as well.

WTI’s very own Ananda Dillon chats with Bernard about what she saw of AMC’s new Preacher series at WonderCon this past weekend, and if that wasn’t enough, the Dastardly Dissenter himself, CJ Prince, chimes in to talk about the recent controversy surrounding the Tribeca Film Festival and share his Indie Pick of the Week. Whew! What are you waiting for? Dive into the deep end of this week’s pool of ooey gooey Indiecast goodness!

And if that last sentence grosses you out…um…just hit play and enjoy.

Topics

• Indie Picks (5:18)
• Richard Linklater (18:42)
• Preacher Preview (32:17)
• Tribeca Vaxxed Controversy (51:13)
• Jeff Nichols (1:06:32)

Articles Referenced

• City of Gold Interview
• Fireworks Wednesday Review
• Everybody Wants Some!! Interview
• Midnight Special Interview
• Preacher Preview

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At a certain point during the WonderCon screening of AMC’s new show Preacher, based on the dark and brazen comic series of the late ’90s, I wondered fleetingly if what I was seeing was even allowed on television. Then I remembered AMC has basically rewritten the “rules” of television since Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead and Mad Men. The network that has pushed how ambitious and movie-like television can be, pushes that scope even wider with its most comic-like comic adaptation yet, and indeed perhaps done anywhere.

Whereas The Walking Dead is a gritty adaptation of a comic based in real-life scenarios and post-apocalyptic relationship dynamics, Preacher is your definitive supernatural and even horror-ish comic series. And not only does the show not tame down any of it, the show’s creators—Garth Ennis, creator of the original comic, with Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen and Sam Catlin producing and writing as well—have figured out how to create a screening experience that feels similar to the pacing, reveals, and character details one gets when flipping through the panels of a comic.

Dominic Cooper is Jesse Custer, a man with a dark past (of which a few black and white flashbacks only really hint at) who returns to his hometown of Annville, Texas to be the local preacher. Of course, he’s not actually any good at it, and there’s the small matter of him not being entirely sure there is a God. Joining him by way of passing airplane is Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun, who’s role in the British show Misfits immediately gives him my personal approval) an Irish vagabond with fighting skills and an unnatural ability to regenerate by drinking blood. But it’s by far Tulip O’Hare (Ruth Negga, also a Misfits alum!), Jesse’s ex-girlfriend, who makes the most impressive entrance: wrestling with a bad guy in a moving car through a corn field and then putting together a homemade bazooka with a couple of farm kids to take down more bad guys.

Fans of the comic will be glad that another familiar face from the series is introduced in the pilot. Though, to be honest, you don’t forget a face like his. Eugene, aka Arseface, is a teen in Annville who sports a particularly freakish mouth after a botched suicide attempt. His introduction is just one of many darkly comedic moments in the series.

And in fact, what makes Preacher most work is that dark comedy. It’s subtle in parts, like a news channel playing in the background of a scene announcing Tom Cruise has exploded (all part of the supernatural plot of Preacher), and blatant in other ways like a slow motion zoom in on Jesse’s face as he gets an obvious sense of pleasure kicking the shit out of a dude who deserves it.

In the WonderCon panel, producer and writer Sam Catlin mentioned that they were determined not to create “AMC’s Preacher” or “Preacher the TV Series” but just plain “Preacher,” which would suggest we’re sure to see even more of the incredibly dark elements that make up this series. But credit is most certainly due to AMC, whose freedom-giving to its showrunners has yielded some pioneering results. Those of us feeling the sting of The Walking Dead’s season coming to a close soon can find solace in knowing our thirst for blood—and some needed comedic relief after a dramatic season—will be quenched come May.

Preacher premieres May 22 on AMC. Follow Way Too Indie for further coverage.

Those of us addicted to AMC’s The Walking Dead tuned in warily but eagerly last night for the premiere of Fear The Walking Dead—a title I’m still not crazy about—to see if creators Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson could bring us new (fresh?) scares and an intriguing prequel storyline to compliment those bedraggled Southerners we love so much. In many ways this new series feels almost like Kirkman appealing to Hollywood more than to his fans, even to the point of setting the story in Los Angeles and focusing much of the first episode around junkie Nick Clark (Frank Dillane). And this is the only major stumbling block of the pilot, not enough walkers, way too much family drama.

The diverse family dynamic certainly makes for quite a few characters, which is a smart move in that those of us familiar with The Walking Dead will know that starting with a crowd means more people to choose from when the significant deaths start happening. Gruesome? Yes, but it’s the way of the walker world we’ve come to know. The pilot started and ended with a newly deceased walker—which may not end up being what we even call these zombies in this new show—but otherwise followed Kim Dickens’ Madison Clark, a school guidance counselor mostly concerned with her junkie son, Nick, and vaguely aware of the subtle signs around her that something major is happening in LA. One of those signs is that a lot of her students aren’t showing up for school, blamed on a bad strain of the flu going around.

When Madison isn’t at the hospital with Nick—where he insists he wasn’t hallucinating and did indeed stumble upon his girlfriend eating the face off a junkie in the church they were crashing at—she’s trying to get through to her teenage daughter, Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), who is going through an all too familiar, just-need-to-get-to-college phase. Madison’s live-in boyfriend (soon-to-be-husband?) Travis (Cliff Curtis) is the only one who thinks to check out Nick’s crazy story about cannibalistic girlfriends and finds a gruesome sight at the church to back it up. (You’d think the cops would also follow-up on that. LAPD, amiright?) Madison insists Travis keep his findings to himself so as not to “enable” Nick. And thus the zombie apocalypse begins, and our main characters write it off as either the flu or a drug-fueled hallucination.

Granted, the show couldn’t jump right into survival mode. The epidemic didn’t likely happen over night, but it also didn’t take that long. Rick Grimes woke up about a month after things got started and the world was already a pretty dismal place by then. Getting to see how news of the epidemic spread initially, and the reaction of a city as large as Los Angeles, is what I’m most intrigued to find out about, but the first episode was incredibly insular. As a devoted watcher of The Walking Dead, it was hard not feel a lot smarter than these new characters. In the end they encounter their first undead person, they run him over twice and watch as he still tries to get up. Madison and Travis look at each other with incredulity but not nearly enough terror. If FTWD is going to match the scares of TWD they are going to have to get the characters on-screen a lot more amped up over the insanity happening. We Angelinos are tough, but we’re not numb to blood-covered dead people trying to eat us.

The look and feel of the show are there, casting orange-ish L.A. hues in abundance in contrast to TWD’s green ones, and the music maintains decent tension, even if I was rather craving Bear McCreary’s frenzied strings (no complaints about Atticus Ross’s opening theme). Because of the newness of the disease-spreading, there will be a lot more opportunity for blood and gore on the show, rather than the decayed look of TWD. Madison Clark isn’t nearly as compelling as Rick Grimes was in his pilot episode, but Nick Clark is and so far is the only one displaying a little gravitas toward the situation. But considering that the similarly short season one of TWD played out in a slow Georgian sizzle, I’m trained well enough in Kirkman’s world-building to know its worth sticking around to see what’s coming.

Rating: 7/10

We’re shaking with excitement. For those, like us, who can’t get enough of any type of Walking Dead, Feared or otherwise, any morsel of what’s in store for us in the future gets us all geared up and ready to take on the apocalyptic world. So we’re sharing it with you.

The Fear the Walking Dead clip posted by Variety just this morning really puts the “tease” in teaser. It doesn’t give away much. Except that there will be a lot of…fear. No smidgen of a zombie is seen, but rumor has it they will have quite a different look from the current zombie type in Walking Dead as they will be a bit, well, more fresh. The trailer is titled “Nick’s Escape” so we’re guessing this is a character who might get more than a quick grisly death. IMDB credits a “Nick,” played by Frank Dillane, with six episodes in the series so we’ll see.

Also starring Ruben Blades, Mercedes Mason, Cliff Curtis, and Kim Dickens, to name a few, Fear the Walking Dead is set in Los Angeles at the very start of the walker outbreak. Or whatever we’re now calling it. Walking Dead fans may get a little bit more information on all that led up to where they started out back in 2010, but no one’s promising anything.

Check back with us in July when we cover the San Diego Comic-Con as both shows will be there along with Talking Dead host Chris Hardwick.

Fear the Walking Dead is set to premiere in August on AMC in what is as yet a two-season commitment.