The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen Metcalf, and this is the Slate Culture Gap Fest. Will you be there for me?

Edition. It's Wednesday, August 28th, 2019. On today's show, Blinded by the Light is a coming-of-age film that features the songs, heavily features the songs, I should say, of Bruce Springsteen. It's the latest from writer-director, Garinda Chata, best known, I think, for Bennett, like Beckham, and then Lodge 49. What a deliciously weird, shambling TV series from AMC.

That's the network that brought us Breaking Bad and Mad Men.

Of course, how does this one stack up?

And then the TV show Friends, this just makes me feel old as dirt.

The TV show Friend turns 25.

And joining me today, of course, is the deputy managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, Julia Turner.

Hello, Julia.

Hello.

And of course, Isaac Butler, who's a renaissance man.

I don't even know where to begin describing your many attainments.

But let me isolate the one that I'm most excited about, which is currently working on a book about the history of method acting and Stanislavski called The Method. Very psyched to read it. We're joined by Isaac Butler. Hey, Isaac. Hello. The memoir, greetings from Barry Park, that's B-U-R-R-A, Park. Race, religion, and rock and roll was by Sarfraz Manzoor. And it told the story of growing up in Luton, the depressed London

suburb in the 1980s, as a Pakistani, a second-generation Pakistani immigrant in Thatcher's England.

Twist was he was as alienated from his peers as from his pious hardscrabble family and found

some improbable salvation in the pious hardscrabble working class hymns of Bruce Springsteen.

The book has now been turned into a film by Gorinda Chata, the writer-director best known for

Bendett like Beckham, I would say.

It stars Vivek Kaira as a young, do-eyed Javed, our protagonist who is sent on a journey

of self-discovery by Bruce.

Let's listen to a clip.

Root!

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