Letting Them Talk with Will Harris - Ep. 21 - Nathan Rabin (A.V. Club / The Dissolve)

Today, I’m letting Nathan Rabin talk.

I used to read Nathan’s work on the A.V. Club long before I began writing for the site myself, and every once in awhile it still strikes me as a little weird that he and I have become a mutual admiration society. And it’s not just me: during the course of the conversation, you’ll hear me mention that my daughter considers it her favorite low-key brag that her dad is friends with the guy who created the phrase “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.”

Nathan’s a legend amongst pop culture writers, thanks to his work not only at the aforementioned AV Club, but also the late, great Dissolve. These days, he splits the majority of his time between his Substack newsletter Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas and his website, Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place, a.k.a. NathanRabin.com. That said, he also spent a little time recently in the hospital after a car accident, which we talk about during the course of our conversation, but thankfully he’s long since back home and recovering nicely, even if he’s still working his way back from the physical and financial damage it caused.

Not that Nathan and I need a reason to chat, but what brings us together for this particular conversation is his latest book, THE FRACTURED MIRROR, which is devoted to as many American movies about filmmaking as he could fit into its pages before he finally had to just stop and publish the damned thing. We’re talking almost 550 pages, and even though – as I freely admit to him – I haven’t finished it yet, I’m loving every page of it thus far, and I’m excited to keep working my way through it and, God help me, watching a lot of the films covered within its pages.

Well, I think that’s enough of an intro. It’s time to let Nathan Rabin talk.