I'm Stephen McAff, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest.

Austin Butler is caught cat sitting edition.

It's Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025.

On today's show, the director, Darren Aronofsky returns with caught stealing a shaggy dog

crime romp starring Austin Butler and a cat.

Butler is an ex-baseball phenom whose life gets upended by a neighbor's ties to organized crime.

Movie also stars Zoe Kravitz and Regina King.

And then the Netflix feature of the Thursday Murder Club stars Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley,

and Celia Imrey as retirees living in an assisted living home who solve cold case murders.

It's directed by Chris Columbus.

And finally, we discuss a New Yorker article by our ex-production assistant Alex Barish about the film company A24.

Is it the new Miramax, the new United Artists, the new Warner Brothers? What is it exactly, this film company whose name we see everywhere?

Joining me today is Isaac Butler, the author of The Method, How the 20th Century Learned to Act.

Isaac, welcome back to the show.

Always a pleasure to be here,

Stephen. It is always a pleasure to have you here. And of course, Julia Turner is a fellow at the

Annenberg School for Journalism at the University of Southern California. Julia.

Hello, hello. Good morning. Good morning. All right, let's make a show.

Darren Aronofsky is the director of famously of Black Swan, Pie, Requiem for a Dream.

He returns with caught stealing. This one stars Austin Butler as a 30-something bartender in the East Village in the late 90s.

Hank. Hank's pleasant enough life in a wildly fun pre-bloomberg, New York City, at least in the depiction of this film,

is shadowed by this fact. He was once a baseball phenom on his way to start him when he crashed

...