Alan Siegel

"I guess this is the modern trajectory," Hahn says. "It goes best friend, quirky best friend, pregnant best friend, mom, horny mom, horny divorced mom, witch."

Alan Siegel interviews director Joe Dante, Gremlins creator Chris Walas, and even the star of the film, Zach Galligan, to tell the story of all the madness that went into the making of ‘Gremlins’

Ten years after its premiere, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Will Arnett, Aaron Paul, and more reflect on the creation and legacy of ‘BoJack Horseman,’ an animated series that was born in an already bygone era and found comedy in the exploration of our existence

An interview with the stars of ‘The Instigators,’ a fun, anti-heist film that’s guaranteed to get Massholes tawking

Would the uniform still fit? Thirty years after the last time he wore it, Eddie Murphy had to be convinced. If you’ve seen the Beverly Hills Cop movies, you know the look: blue jeans, white Adidas, Detroit Lions jacket. “It was surreal when you put it on again and look at it again,” Murphy tells me. “They kind of had to talk me into wearing the same clothes. Because I was like, ‘Why would he have on the same clothes from 30 years ago? I have the same sneakers?’ And they were like, ’Can you get y…

Of all the valuable life lessons Gremlins has taught us, two are most important: 1. Society needs rules. 2. There’s nothing more fun than breaking them. That contradiction is the movie’s oozing heart. Because of human ignorance, the cutest creature on earth spawns an army of slimy monsters. But even as the reptilian goons terrorize the small town of Kingston Falls, it’s hard for the audience not to cheer on the mayhem. “The Gremlins themselves are creatures that adhere to nothing except their ow…

Make it gritty. When it came time to film the video for “Born in the U.S.A.,” that was Bruce Springsteen’s request. For John Sayles, it was easy to fulfill. “I was able to say, ‘Well, we do gritty,’” he remembers. The director was coming off Baby It’s You, a movie about the kind of blue-collar Jersey guy that the Boss might sing about. The dramatic comedy takes place in 1966 but features five Springsteen classics that in real life weren’t released until the next decade. Sayles couldn’t help incl…

The bare butt was too much, even for Green Day. It was the early 1990s, and big record companies were courting the band. Hard. So the three East Bay stoners started making demands—some more serious than others. They got one label to take them to Disneyland. Another flew them to New York. Then there was the unnamed A&R man they hooked with a gonzo request. “We said, ‘We will sign with you if you tattoo Green Day on your ass,’” lead singer and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong recalls. The next time…

How does David Mandel remember the reaction to the Seinfeld series finale? He’s not even sure his parents liked it. America was angry that day, my friends, and the show’s supervising producer knew why. The last episode, Mandel says, “distilled the characters to their most basic form. Much of the audience did not want to be confronted by that.” In the two-part closer, which aired on May 14, 1998, Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer watch—and laugh at—a small-town man getting carjacked. They’re subs…

Richard Lewis wasn’t the first neurotic stand-up comic, but he was one of the best—and, as contradictory as it sounds, probably the most comfortable. “When I’m on stage, I’m the happiest I could ever be,” he told me in 2022, during an interview about his friend Warren Zevon. “I’m just in touch with who I am, and want to express it. It’s just calm. It’s like the eye of a hurricane.” Lewis, who died of a heart attack on Tuesday at 76, wasn’t being hyperbolic. Over the course of his career, he spok…