A Mid-Summer Progress Report (and Late-Summer Hiatus) / by Karina Longworth

At the beginning of June, I announced my intention to ramp up my focus and produce an episode of this podcast every week until the end of July. With two days left in the month, I’ve hit a bit of a research stumbling block (in short: I’m in San Francisco and don’t have access to library materials I need, which are in Los Angeles), meaning that there will not be another new episode before July ends. So, it seems like a good time to tally the results of this experiment.

I managed to complete seven episodes in seven weeks: The Last Days of Judy Garland; Isabella Rossellini in the 1990s; The Many Loves of Howard Hughes, Chapter 1;  The Follies of 1938; Ida Lupino (The Many Loves of Howard Hughes, Chapter 2); Kay Francis and “box office poison”; and the fall and rise of Katharine Hepburn (Howard Hughes, chapter 3). It was difficult, but doable. I have definitely streamlined my production process and can now breeze through the editing in half the time it was taking me a month ago. Research and writing are now the toughest, most time consuming parts — which is probably as it should be. 

The effort seems to have paid off, in that people seem to be finding the podcast, and liking it. (Did you see us in Entertainment Weekly? That was exciting because my dad knows what it is!) So, I’m going to keep doing it!

But first, I need to take a few weeks off. There are some changes that I want to make to our web presence (as I noted on the Village Voice Film Club podcast, I want to add a wiki to allow listeners to suggest and lend support to episode topic ideas). Also, for my own sanity, I need to take some time to create a better organizational system for my ideas and research process. Also, we’re moving back to Los Angeles from San Francisco next week, and that will make for a stressful few days. Also, it’s about to be August, and I need a little bit of a vacation. 

My tentative plan is to be back with new, weekly episodes starting August 20. In the meantime, I may repost remastered versions of our first few episodes. Stay tuned for those, and for any news I have to report, by following us on Twitter