Today we’d like to introduce you to Queer Cinema Catchup .
Hi Queer Cinema Catchup team, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourselves.
The story of Queer Cinema Catchup begins many years ago when its co-hosts Allison Theveny and Joe Murphy were neighbors who made movies together in the backyard. Though the rest of their siblings and friends eventually felt too old for what was admittedly glamorized make believe, Joe and Allison could not let it go. Making movies felt like magic; an escape; a way to be something other than the way they were, which felt oddly freeing to them, so they cajoled and convinced their crew to stick with it. Perhaps they would have continued to make movies no matter how old they got, but something awful happened. Allison had to move 3,000 miles away just before the start of high school.
What happened next shocked us (the Allison and Joe in question). While the internet and a handful of visits kept us in touch, we were never as close as when we were making movies. That old magic, though, continued to have power over us, inspiring Joe to move to Los Angeles in 2019 to pursue a career in editing around the same time Allison decided to pursue an MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage at Northwestern University. Two years later, Joe posted a vlog in which he quipped that he wouldn’t be bringing his wife and kids along on a camping trip because he was gay. Upon seeing this vlog, Allison felt that old magic all over again because she was currently coming out herself. While she wanted to text Joe immediately to revel in their shared queerness, she decided a more chill I’m probably moving to LA would suffice. Turns out Joe was about to begin his MFA at the American Film Institute, which meant he needed a new apartment and roommate, and so the girl who was so sad to move away from her movie-making friend suddenly found herself roommates with said friend.
Almost three years later, Allison and Joe have bonded not only over the shared identities and formative experiences they never knew they had in common while growing up, but also over an eerily similar sense of humor and an unending appetite for tv and film, especially when it has queer representation or themes. This led to Joe suggesting they make a short video series in which they discussed their analytical and personal responses to various queer holiday films. While fun, the series required a lot of editing work for Joe, so Allison wondered if a podcast might be a somewhat easier endeavor – she could even use her-about-to-expire MFA grant from Northwestern to get them some proper equipment. Some time later, Queer Cinema Catchup has become a weekly chance for Joe and Allison to catch up with one another and queer cinema, tv, and entertainment. Plus, we get to revel in the surprise of our reunion in each and every podcast intro…which remains shocking to us, even if we’re both aware that it’s not all that crazy for two queer kids to wind up in tinseltown.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
In some ways, Queer Cinema Catchup is an easy project for Joe and Allison. We live together, we watch everything together, and we can’t help but discuss nearly everything when it comes to both movies and our lives. You could say we’re perhaps too close, but this makes the work and rapport of good podcasting more simple than it might otherwise be.
That said, it hasn’t necessarily been a smooth road to QCC on a personal and practical level. For Allison, coming out was a long process and not just in terms of defining her sexual orientation. To get here – to LA, to living with Joe, to embracing her identity as a queer woman and artist – she had to quit law school and accept that she wanted to write and create even if it wasn’t the kind of practical, type A goal for which she had always striven. At that same time, she did have to confront her sexual orientation and all the repression and confusion that had prevented her from embracing it sooner. In fact, the identity was so new when she moved to Los Angeles she felt a little wary of starting the podcast, for it meant being out in a public way.
Thankfully, Joe didn’t give up on the project but also was willing to let time go by before we got it off the ground. On his end, Joe was similarly grappling with what it meant to embrace a creative career. In 2019, Joe was working in social media at the YouTube channel Cut and was about to turn 30. This milestone made him realize the time was now if he was ever going to strive for the kind of filmmaking career we had both longed for as kids playing with a camcorder in the backyard. Thus, he came to LA ready to dive into the industry, but there was one small problem: the pandemic. Lockdown created the space to think about the very next step, graduate school, and this led Joe to many new, creative horizons, including our podcast Queer Cinema Catchup.
In spite of the challenges and the cliche of LGTBQ+ people moving to the cities where they can truly express themselves, Allison and Joe nonetheless see some wisdom in the bumpy road to QCC. If either of us had found resolution in our respective struggles sooner, we wouldn’t be sitting in our Hollywood apartment preparing to record our next episode. That forever will feel magical to the two of us, and we hope that those who feel that magic too might enjoy an episode or two of QCC.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Queer Cinema Catchup is a podcast that looks at film and other entertainment through a queer lens. While far from the only option for listeners eager to hear talk about media and LGBTQ representation and themes, QCC stands apart because of its hosts. No, they aren’t foremost experts in their field, but they do bring shared personal history and distinct areas of expertise to each episode. From one moment to the next, Joe and Allison could go from laughing about the time they made Signs: The Remake in their backyard to dissecting the differences between M Night Shyamalan’s older and newer films to recounting their ill-fated trip to the Chocolate Emporium before seeing Knock at the Cabin last summer (and by can we mean will in our upcoming episode on Ishana Shyamalan’s directorial debut The Watchers). Shared memories, film critique, and many escapades as roommates and friends all have place in the secret sauce of QCC. In short, thanks to Joe’s editing expertise and Allison’s writerly perspective, the analysis of QCC is sharp, but it’s the heart that matters more.
How do you define success?
After a quick chat, Joe and Allison decided the best way to answer this question would be to state how Queer Cinema Catchup might represent success. While our tastes are very similar, we don’t always agree on whether or not a film or tv show succeeds, and we both think that the episodes in which we disagree are our best.
Allison often thinks about how Joe was once opposed to doing multiple episodes about a single tv season, stating that he felt it was stronger to dissect a story once it was complete. He nevertheless listened and reflected upon Allison’s argument that multiple episodes on a single TV season might allow us to delve into the details and journey a bit more and changed his mind. Ironically, Allison also came to see the wisdom in Joe’s perspective after they reviewed the first few episodes of Under the Bridge in an overly positive way that clashed with their later opinion on the series.
All of this to say, we think Queer Cinema Catchup defines success as openness and evolution. Debate, but listen. Reflect, and change. As we said before, if Joe and Allison hadn’t done these things in their own separate teenage and adult lives, there wouldn’t be a Queer Cinema Catchup today.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.queercinemacatchup.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/queer_cinema_catchup/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNqNgCckmZE8RyqBg-Jsvnw
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@queercinemacatchup
