HeyJaredVerbal Diorama
The award-winning podcast celebrating the history and legacy of movies you know, and movies you don't.Have you ever wondered how your favourite movies were made?
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 9
- Latest publication
- Sep 24, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 23, 2026
Latest episodes
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (opens the original)
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The Empire Strikes Back is often called the best film in the Star Wars saga, and it started with a decision that seems almost unthinkable in retrospect. George Lucas, creatively burnt out after directing the first film, chose not to direct the sequel at all. Instead he handed the reins to his old USC film professor Irvin Kershner, hired veteran pulp sci-fi writer Leigh Brackett to draft the screenplay, and set about building Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic into more than one-hit studio
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (opens the original)
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The original Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) wasn't a huge hit at cinemas. It found its real audience on home video and cable, building into a genuine phenomenon almost after the fact. That success put New Line in an unusual position for the sequel: expectations had shifted from "will this work" to "this will work and let's make it bigger and crazier". It meant Mike Myers going from playing two roles - Austin and Dr. Evil - to playing three, with Fat Bastard being literally th
Back to the Future Part II (opens the original)
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Back to the Future Part II wasn't really supposed to exist as its own film. The original Back to the Future 's "TO BE CONTINUED" tag was actually a post-hoc addition for home video, not a plan, after studio head Sid Sheinberg demanded a sequel. The pitch that eventually became two movies went from Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, through Spielberg, to Sid Sheinberg, who greenlit the whole thing on the spot. From the film's vision of the future 2015, to its pre-CGI ingenuity, and a purpose-built mot
Chicago (opens the original)
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Long before Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly had names, they had mugshots. In 1924, Chicago tabloids were consumed by Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, two unrelated women tried for murder and both acquitted; largely because all-male juries of the era were reluctant to convict an attractive woman. Covering both trials was Chicago Tribune reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins, whose ironic dispatches later became a satirical play that folded the two cases into one fictional cell block. Watkins's 1926 play was
Tropic Thunder (opens the original)
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In 2008, Ben Stiller made a war movie about people making a war movie, and in doing so, accidentally made one of the more prescient satires of 21st-century Hollywood ego, method acting, and the studio system's addiction to spectacle. Tropic Thunder arrived as a big, dumb action-comedy on the surface and a razor-sharp industry roast underneath, skewering everything from Vietnam war epics to blockbuster bloat to the cult of the "serious actor." Starting life as a Stiller passion project over a dec
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