The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen Meckhaff, and this is the Slate Culture Gap Fest, Voice Like a

Jagley Bell edition. It's Wednesday, October 23rd, 2019. On today's show, Pain and Glory is the new autobiographical

film from the Spanish writer-director Pedro Almodovar. We're joined by Slate's very own June

Thomas, who interviewed Almodovar for Slate for the magazine. Very curious to talk to her about that

and what she thinks of the movie. And then she is arguably the least disliked human being on the planet.

Dolly Parton is now also the subject of a deep dive podcast from Jad Abamrod,

co-host of Radio Lab, which comes out of public radio in New York City.

And finally, Dan Cois joins us to talk about his wonderful profile of Lauren Gunderson, the most popular playwright in America, who I had never heard of.

Joining me today is Julia Turner, who's the deputy managing editor of the Los Angeles Times.

Hey, Julia.

Hello, hello.

And of course, Dana Stevens is the film critic of Slate.

Hey, Dana.

Hey, greetings.

So eager to talk to you about this movie, both of you and June.

Pedro Almodovar is the great Spanish film director. It's fair to say he has to be regarded now as a European master.

And to be classed with Bergman and Truffaut as one of the

mediums really great incorrigible humanists, a writer-director for whom filmmaking hosts has

always been autobiography. He's now entering his late phase and his new movie Pain and Glory is

so tender, so beautiful, so elegiac, really as deeply autobiographical as movie-making gets.

It tells the story of what is an obvious alter ego. Salvador Mayo, played sublimely by Antonio Banderas, a film director

...