It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

You believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to the next picture show, a movie The Week podcast devoted to a classic film and the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Keith Phipps here again with Tasha Robinson and Scott Tobias.

Genevieve Kosky could not be with us this week and we're planning to embark on a decades-long search to figure out why.

In our last episode, we discussed Orson Wells' The Other Side of the Wind,

a film finished years after Wells' death. In this episode, we'll be covering Shirkers, another film

seen the light of day after years of being lost, sort of. Where the other side of the wind is

the story of a movie finished years after its director let it go. Shirkers is the story of a film

its director could never really let go.

Sandy Tan came of age as a rebellious kid in Singapore, the center of a group of film-crazy

teens whose goals included shooting a movie that Tan would write, direct, and star in.

And remarkably, they did shoot it, thanks to some equipment loan from Kodak and with the assistance of a mentor named George Cardona,

who would say say little about his

past beyond occasional references to serving as the inspiration for James Spader's character

and sex lies and videotape. Maybe that should have been a red flag, but who sees red flags

when your dream is coming true? And who could have foreseen Cardona walking off with the footage

with no explanation? His disappearance, Haunted Tan and her friends until Tan unexpectedly received the footage back

after Cardona's death, only without any accompanying sound.

So she turned Shirkers, a never-to-be-finished narrative film, into Shirkers, a fascinating documentary

that revisits the experience years later.

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