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

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

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

Welcome to The Next Picture Show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film and how it's shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Tasha Robinson, here with Scott Tobias, Genevieve Kosky, and Keith Phipps.

Here in the next picture show, we believe that no film exists in a vacuum and that all culture is more interesting in context.

So every other week, we get together to talk over a classic

film and consider how it relates to a current movie. This week, we're looking at two

small-town films full of fast-talking characters played by high-powered actors. Both films

are about the push-and-pull dynamics in cities small enough that everyone knows each other, and everyone

has opinions about everyone else's business. In one case, the story revolves around filmmaking, and in the other, it revolves around policing, but in both cases, politics and personalities come into play. Scott, do you want to put down the fishing reel and the novelty breadloaf there and tell the listeners what we're covering this week? Fine, but if I'm going to have to read this entire speech you've written for me, I at least want an associate producer credit on this week's podcast. This week, we're headed down to the burned out site of the

former old mill, where we're looking for our personal purity in state and Maine. David

Mamet's comedy from 2000, about a small-time film production navigating an endless series of

obstacles as it careens towards the beginning of its shoot. The filmmakers were originally set to shoot in a different town, but a sex scandal involving their leading man caused trouble with the locals, so they're starting over in a new place where they're out of money, running out of time, and running up against a number of area residents with their own conflicting agendas. A darker crime is at the center of Barton McDonough's new film, three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. A young resident was raped and murdered seven months ago, and the local police haven't made any arrests, don't have any suspects, and don't seem to be pursuing the case. So the victim's mother, played by Francis McDormand, rents a set of local billboards and puts up an incendiary message that has the town folk up in arms.

These films are both dark comedies, though with very different tones, but they take similar ensemble cast approaches to their stories addressing how tightly knit towns respond to pressures

and internal strife and chuckling over colorful, larger-than-life characters while finding a lot

of humanity in them.

Between them, these two films point accusatory fingers at everyone from racist cops to self-indulgent actors, to opportunistic politicians, to men who wear bow ties. On the first of this week's episodes, we'll look at State and Maine and sort out who comes out as a villain and who's treated as a lovable scamp, and we'll examine why moviemakers love movies about movie making so much.

Then later in the week, we'll bring in three billboards and consider redemption arcs

and the positives and negatives of living in a town where everybody knows your name.

We'll be back after the break.

This is picture.

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