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LITTLE ODESSA (1994)

A new season (Season 16) in a new year (2026 CE), and The Good, The Pod, and The Ugly returns to its roots with its unpatented temporal pincer movement covering the directorial filmography of American auteur James Gray. And in keeping with this homecoming, we begin our Touch of Gray Season with the Gen X filmmaker’s first feature endeavor LITTLE ODESSA (1994).

Made at the unripened age of twenty-three after being recruited out of USC film school, Gray’s inaugural film is a mixture of the highly personal (reflecting his own mother’s terminal brain cancer, father’s temper, and family’s Slavic Jewish émigré origins) with trappings of the crime genre (hitman with ice cold blood in his veins returns to the one place he promised never to return, viz. New York City, i.e. Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach a.k.a. Little Odessa), each and together building to a profoundly unhappy ending.

Thanks to Brit producer Paul Webster who recruited Gray for this first film, Gray was able to bring on Tim Roth fresh from his acclaimed performance in Reservoir Dogs who was able to attract Edward Furlong, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, and Moira Kelly. Gray and team worked around losing a week to a record-setting blizzard in NYC, some days with only four hours to shoot, to create this two-hander crime+family (but not “crime family”) drama with the dominant hand played by Roth as the older brother hitman and other hand by Furlong as the younger brother under his father’s thumb and regularly truant from school. Redgrave and Schell play their parents. Kelly, two years removed from The Cutting Edge and Fire Walk with Me, plays Roth’s love interest. And fewer of these characters will be alive by the end of this film than you might expect outside of a Greek tragedy.

This week, additional research by Ken who watched the film within the film (Vengeance Valley, 1951), Ryan who explored Jewish funeral rites, and Thomas who on mic clarifies the actual size of Little Odessa.

Oh, and in a callback to the preceding Season 15, there are some satisfyingly strong squibs.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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PASSION OF THE CHRIST

“And in the ending days of two-thousand, twenty-five in the Year of our Bloodied Lord (R.I.P.), the three unwise men of TGTPTU shall gather and in their folly alloweth the unholy host Thomas to select the season’s Christmas-adjacent movie. And there will be great wailing and weeping and gnashing of ill-cared for teeth by his selection. Yet the episode shall not be mid. The hosts shall bloody nail it. And there shall be great rejoicing in one accord upon its record.”

-The Book of Ryan (or on its cover) 5:16-17, Revised New King Jim Edition

Yes, ho-ho-humbug, it’s our annual cross to bear: The Christmas-adjacent movie to end the year. In a rare moment of collective (fatigue / wisdom / pure awesomeness / mental constipation / fugue ß strike as appropriate), The Good The Pod and The Ugly hosts Ken and Ryan have allowed Thomas to pick the flick this season. He took a chance on a film he’d always wanted to but hadn’t seen, and that cinema selection took them to church! Tom picked the Mel Gibson co-written, co-produced, and solely(soul-ly?)-directed, Jesus story spoiler: THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004).

To their eternal credit, the hosts with no loyalty to any of the major- or bush-league Christian denominations managed to keep civil and polite, if not to each other then to the source material and Gibson’s passionate release. Ryan’s Catholic upbringing comes in handy for this, his third viewing, as he explains the church’s different classifications of visions and what parts of the film pull from scripture and which are attributable to a 19th century fever dream.

This ep, Ken talks sexy Satan, Ryan talks sexy Jesus, guest Jack has an unsexy hot take takeoff and landing, and his fellow Gen Z’er Tom sticks it to the olds after mis-Clarking. Skip to the end of the ep for a brief year-end recap of the best and worst first-watched and re-watched films covered in 2025 or skip further for spoilers from Ken as he shares his bulk-pricing Christmas presents for his fellow hosts.

In the new year, TGTPTU takes a Graycation (or is Going Gray or lets its Gray Pride shine) with the start of Season 16, tentatively titled By the Powers of (James) Gray’s Skull. And that’s the gospel truth.

Answer to the question raised during the episode: We’re Not Going to Take It.

Keith Moon wept.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
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bRyan’s Song

While the squib portion has ended with a bang (and some whimpers), Season 15 continues to stretch to the end of Year 2025. This ep we celebrate the contributions to the pod from one of TGTPTU’s three hosts: Ryan. Exceptionally written show notes rarely get noticed by listeners and editing is the art of concealment, so given the injustices of the universe, hosts Thomas and Ken interview the pod’s newest host and its six-time theme song writer-and-performer Ryan regarding his compositions, his process, and his Swiftie fandom along with what to do when a musician knocks on your front door.

The human jukebox with self-described photographic(?) memory for songs regales listeners with tales like his childhood stardom on the California circuit before the Super Bowl sold out(?), but don’t worry, we interrupt Ryan to replay the bangers you’ve come to love between all the yabber.

Some might call this a filler episode. What’s wrong with filler? It makes otherwise fish-lipped host Thomas’s teeth flaps luscious and his butt badonkadonk. Also, it’s a free podcast, you ingrates. You get what you pay for except when it comes to these theme songs as they’re worth so much more than what we commissioned them from Ryan for. Some appreciators of dad humor might even say TGTPTU got them for a song.

So shut up and listen back over the years with your hosts.

Next week is a bye week, and we’re likely on smoko the week after that, but join us in mid-December for the final ep of the season and a seasonal holiday tradition as TGTPTU covers a Christmas adjacent film.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias