“Gene Takovic” lives in a gray world, black and white and rich, grainy gray. He is the future self of Saul Goodman, who was the future self of Jimmy McGill, who was the future self of “Slippin’ Jimmy.” All roads lead to Omaha, Nebraska, where “Gene” toils as the manager of a Cinnabon and hopes he will not be exposed as the accessory to mass murder that he is. The world he inhabits, as shot by director Bronwen Hughes and longtime director of photography Marshall Adams, is a lot like the way imagine the world to look when you put on the One Ring. It’s a world of murk and shadow, with light that adheres rather than illuminates. It’s a dead world.

I will be covering this season of Better Call Saul at my Patreon, starting with my thoughts on the season premiere.

I’ve started a new column about film called My Favorite Movies, which will cover exactly that. The inaugural installment: Eyes Wide Shut. It’s available for my Patreon subscribers at the $5/month tier. I hope you dig it!

With that in mind I’ve experimented with making my pro wrestling column, Sweeping Up the Eyeballs, free this week. I hope you dig that too!

The name…is Sean T. Collins. I’m a writer and critic who’s appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Vulture, Decider, Grantland, the AV Club, and more. I’m also the co-founder (with Stefan Sasse) of The Boiled Leather Audio Hour, a podcast about Game of Thrones & A Song of Ice and Fire, and the co-editor (with Julia Gfrörer) of Mirror Mirror II, an anthology of horror/erotic/gothic comics and art published by 2dcloud. I’m The Original Bad Boy of TV Criticism. I gave this nickname to myself as a joke but it stuck so it counts.

Also, I love Road House, the 1989 Patrick Swayze action movie. Road House is the story of Dalton, a famous bouncer whose quest to free a small town from the iron fist of the guy who is on the verge of opening the area’s first JC Penney will lead directly to the deaths of over half a dozen men. I love Road House so much in fact that in late 2018 I decided I would write an essay about Road House every single day for an entire year, that year being 2019—on top of the TV recaps, album reviews, film and television recommendations, and broader essays and deep dives I write for a living.

In the words of Road House, I’d like to make a better life for myself.

By subscribing to my new Patreon you’ll make Pain Don’t Hurt a paying concern. If you’re a fan of my Road House stuff this sells itself. But the beauty of getting paid to write about any one thing is that it makes it possible to write even more about other things. If you’ve ever enjoyed anything I’ve written, subscribing here is the best way to see more of it—both through tiered rewards that give you access to bonus stuff and simply by helping my family and I stay afloat so I can do more of the writing I love. (I love to write even more than I love Road House, though it’s obviously close.)

Friends, it’s time to be nice. Join the Jasper Improvement Society today! Thank you for your support!

Here’s the Patreon. Yes, it’s technically for the Boiled Leather Audio Hour podcast, and yes, I split it half and half with my illustrious co-host Stefan Sasse. But a) Stefan’s cool and deserves the scratch too, and b) you needn’t be interested in BLAH or the perks associated with becoming a patron to donate this way. Every bit helps.

And here’s the PayPal. This goes directly to me and you can make it a monthly subscription-type thing if you feel like it. Again, every bit helps.

I have big plans for this year and money is a constant worry, and I’m uncertain as to how my absence from Twitter will affect me professionally. Your financial support at any level means the world to me.

Thank you for your consideration.

Children of Men (A Patreon Production)

The Boiled Leather Audio Hour goes dystopian this month! By the special request of our Patreon supporter Jason, who earned the right to choose a topic for the podcast by subscribing at the $50 level, Sean & Stefan are taking a deep dive into the world of Children of Men, director Alfonso Cuarón’s gripping 2006 political science-fiction film. Starring Clive Owen and Julianne Moore and set in a near future where the world has been rocked by an infertility epidemic that has completely ended all childbirths for 18 years and counting, the movie is striking both for its technical virtuosity, particularly during its white-knuckle action sequences, and its emphasis on very human cruelty and empathy. How does its technical prowess affect its message? Where does the storytelling and imagery succeed, and where does it falter? What does its bleak yet ultimately optimistic vision of the future portend for our own grim present? We’ll do our best to answer those questions. Needless to say, spoilers abound!

DOWNLOAD EPISODE 64

Additional links:

Abraham Riesman’s article on the making of the film for Vulture.

Our Patreon page at patreon.com/boiledleatheraudiohour.

Our PayPal donation page (also accessible via boiledleather.com).

Our iTunes page.

Mirror.

Previous episodes.

Podcast RSS feed.

Sean’s blog.

Stefan’s blog.

Hello folks! First off, thank you all for your continued support of the Boiled Leather Audio podcasts, both Hour and Moment, via our Patreon. We wanted to give you a heads up that as of June’s subscriber-only Boiled Leather Audio Moment, we’re raising the reward tier for BLAM access from $1 to $2. We couldn’t keep that low low introductory price that low forever, or it would have ceased to be introductory, thus creating a tear in the spacetime continuum and threatening all of existence with annihilation. That said, we hope you’ll consider upping your pledge so you can continue to listen to each new BLAM–we’ve had a lot of fun with them and think they’re worth it.

Meanwhile, we’re shifting the $1 reward tier so that it remains the doorway to the subscriber-exclusive posts Stefan’s been doing on the Patreon site. Be sure and check them out if you haven’t already! Everyone subscribing at $2 or more will still have access to the Illustrious Co-host’s wit and wisdom, of course.

Thanks again for your support. It means so much to us!

Sean & Stefan