Hi, I'm Dana Stevens, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, Wicked Triple Feature Edition.

It's Wednesday, November 26, 2025, and this week we'll be discussing, first off, Wicked for Good. The second part of what,

if you add it to last year's box office smash Wicked, adds up to a nearly five-hour-long

adaptation of the Blockbuster Stage musical. Next, we'll discuss Train Dreams, a new film from

the indie director Clint Bentley that's an adaptation of a Dennis Johnson novella about the lonely life of a man laboring to clear land for the expanding railroad in the early 20th century.

And finally, an even smaller scale new independent release, Peter Hoogar's Day, stars Ben Wishaw as the photographer, Peter Hujar, and Rebecca Hall as the writer Linda Rosencrantz.

The two spent a whole day in conversation in Rosencran's apartment as part of her research for a book she's writing.

This is a very unusual two-person chamberpiece of a movie, kind of a queer My Dinner with Andre from the director, Ira Sacks.

Joining me to talk about this triple movie feature are the writer Dan Cois, late of Slate, but now a free-range writer doing

whatever the hell he wants, I guess. Hello, Dan. Free range writer, I'm roaming the planes,

like some kind of Robert Greeneer. Gazing. What about, what about like, hormones or antibiotics?

Are you getting those?

I mean, not that I'm planning to eat you, but...

Ah, I'm richly marbled.

We're fattening you up.

And richly marbled as ever is the critic, Stephen Metcalfe.

Yeah, veined, hard, cold.

I don't even know where this metaphor is going.

Marmorial. Yes, there you go.

Marble meat.

Yes, lovely to see you, Dana.

Yes, very good to be with both of you, too.

...