Timecode Cowboys | Ep. 13 | Universal Monsters & Other Ghost Stories

Happy Halloween!!! On this, our oh so spooky number 13th episode, Danny and Alec dust off the silver nitrate and dive headfirst into Universal’s monster legacy - from Lon Chaney Jr.’s The Wolf Man (1941) to Abbott & Costello’s horror-comedy crossover, all the way to the haunted soundstage where Phantom of the Opera was filmed (and allegedly never fully dismantled).

Along the way, they wander through forgotten film reels, UCLA’s hidden vault in the hills of Santa Clarita, and a few attempted “phone-a-friend” sessions with none other than friend-of-the-pod Colin Smight (spoiler: he didn’t pick up!).

Plus: Dodgers in the World Series, Tiny Tim trauma, and a quick shoutout for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another.

It’s a loose, spooky, cinephile séance — half Hollywood history, half family campfire. Join us!

🎬 Films discussed:
The Wolf Man (1941), Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), The Exorcist (1973), Sunset Boulevard (1950), In a Lonely Place (1950), Bugonia (2025), One Battle After Another (2025)

Send us a text

Timecode Cowboys | Ep. 12 | Judgment Day: The Future According to Cameron

This week marks a new era for Timecode Cowboys — cleaner lines, simpler frames, same father-son chaos. At the urging of our resident design whisperer Claire Smight, we’ve shed the visual noise and gone full refined minimalism — less clutter, more cinema. Fittingly, our topic couldn’t be more on theme: James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day — a film that redefined what “the future” looked like, both on-screen and off.

Danny and Al dive deep into Cameron’s visionary mix of analog grit and digital precision, unpacking how T2 still feels like the ultimate meditation on A.I., technology, and what it means to evolve — as artists, as humans, and now, apparently, as podcasters with better design taste.

Here’s what’s locked and loaded in this one:

🎬 Why T2 remains the gold standard for sequels (and possibly the greatest action movie ever made)

⚙️ How Cameron’s analog craft makes the digital revolution feel real

🦾 The birth of Skynet — and why the film’s warnings feel even more urgent today

🧩 Time travel, paradoxes, and the snake-eating-its-own-tail logic of the Terminator universe

💥 The genius of Linda Hamilton, the innocence of Joe Morton, and Arnold’s mechanical empathy

☢️ Cold War paranoia, nuclear nightmares, and sci-fi’s obsession with self-destruction

🧠 Plus: parallels between Cameron’s Skynet and the modern A.I. arms race

🎨 And a quick look at our own new aesthetic reboot — courtesy of Claire’s less-is-more design revolution

It’s part film school, part philosophy jam, and part nostalgic rewatch — a cinematic therapy session on what happens when machines learn too much and humans forget what made them human.

👉 Saddle up, hit play, and join us for Episode 12: Judgment Day: The Future According to Cameron.

🤠 Like, comment, and subscribe for more stories from the reel frontier!

🎧 Available wherever you pod!

Send us a text

Timecode⏱️🤠Cowboys | Ep. 11 | The A.I. Frontier ☕🤖

This one starts with an espresso machine that refuses to cooperate… and ends with an existential conversation about the fate of art, energy, and humanity itself.

Welcome to Episode 11 — our most caffeinated deep dive yet — where we unpack the accelerating world of generative A.I., from the creative possibilities to the ecological costs nobody’s talking about.

Here’s what we stir up in this wide-ranging conversation:

🏌️ Morning golf, California fires, and the virtue of routine

🎞️ How A.I. video tools are reshaping filmmaking — and why consistency is still the hardest shot

⚙️ Data farms, water shortages, and the energy arms race powering the digital frontier

💥 The Three Mile Island reboot — and what it says about the new technocracy

🧠 The ethics, excitement, and unease of working with the machine

📽️ From 2001: A Space Odyssey to The Social Network, how cinema has been warning us all along

It’s part debate, part crash course in the future of creativity — an episode where curiosity meets caution, and the cowboys face the algorithmic horizon.

👉 Saddle up, pour a double, and join us for Episode 11: Espresso Yourself.🤠 Like, comment, and subscribe for more stories from the reel frontier!🎧 Available wherever you pod!

Send us a text

Timecode A.I. West

Cowboys | Ep. 10 | Ten Gallons Deep: California Gold, Twilight Zones & The Wild

Our 10th episode! Ten rides in the can, and we’re celebrating the only way we know how — by

going completely off script. No guests, no notes, just a father-son free-for-all through film history,

memory, and the strange present tense we’re all living in.

Here’s what we wrangle in this milestone episode:

Grand Prix (1966) — split screens, speed, and the ghost of live TVA road trip to the Kern River & the volunteer museum preserving Western film history

A love letter to Huell Howser and the lost art of public-access wonder

Revisiting The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling, and the haunted poetry of early television

A philosophical detour into A.I., art, and the uncanny future of filmmaking

Why A Christmas Carol is the original ghost story

The Luddite wars, ChatGPT’s “computational jellyfish,” and what’s next for the creative class

It’s part California postcard, part Twilight Zone rerun, part midnight symposium on where movies (and

maybe humanity) go from here.

Saddle up, pour a drink, and join us as we mark ten episodes of Timecode Cowboys — still out

here on the reel frontier.

Like, comment, and subscribe for the next ten rides.

Available wherever you pod!

——————————————————————————————————————————

Send us a text

Timecode Cowboys | Ep. 9 | Renaissance Man Robert Young III

This week we’re catching up with one of Danny’s oldest friends and collaborators — filmmaker, actor,

musician, and bona fide creative polymath Rob Young III — for a conversation that spans decades,

mediums, and mindsets.

From their first short film together (a teenage neo-noir called Bulletproof) to Rob’s latest political rock

opera Nixon King, this episode is a trip through the wild roads of DIY filmmaking, Detroit artistry, and

the strange freedom that comes from doing it all yourself.

Here’s what we cover in this cinematic hangout:

From CalArts to Harvard — the winding path of a multi-hyphenate storyteller

Working at Detroit Public Television and learning the craft from the inside out

The genesis of Nixon King, a rock opera where MLK meets Nixon behind bars

Collaborating with (pre-fame) Damien Chazelle and the power of early creative circles

Reimagining Batman, JFK, and other icons on his long-running YouTube channel

The raw genius and controversy of Last Tango in Paris — and the cost of creative risk

Why filmmaking is still the most democratic art form… and the hardest to sustain

From Detroit diners to CalArts casting calls, Episode 9 is an ode to persistence, friendship, and the

lifelong pursuit of making something—anything—worth remembering.

Saddle up, hit play, and join us for a ride with the one-man studio himself, Rob Young III.

Like, comment, and subscribe for more stories from the reel frontier!

Available wherever you pod!

————————————————————————————————————————

Send us a text

Timecode⏱️🤠Cowboys | Ep. 8 | Pt. 2 | Salad Days & Starfields with Crescenzo 🌌🎬

Our ride with cinematographer extraordinaire Crescenzo Notarile continues — and this time we’re diving into his salad days working on ‘80s era music videos, his stint on Star Trek: Discovery, and the bigger questions about art, artists, and legacy - and of course, The Godfather.

Here’s what we cover in this jam-packed part two:

🎶 Shooting 850+ music videos — from Billy Idol to Tom Petty, U2, Pink Floyd & Michael Jackson

🔮 The tricks of the trade Crescenzo still carries with him from his MTV days

🚀 Lighting the impossible corridors of Star Trek: Discovery and Picard

👁️ The unforgettable sadness he saw in Michael Jackson’s eyes

⚖️ Can (or should) we separate the art from the artist?

🎨 Coppola’s Megalopolis and the beauty of taking big swings late in life

🍊 Oranges, tragedy, and the power of symbolism in The Godfather

From lasers at a Pink Floyd show to run and gun camerawork on the ledge of a liquor store, this conversation is a whole cinematic universe unto itself.

👉 Saddle up, hit play, and join us for Part 2 of our conversation with Crescenzo.
🤠 Like, comment, and subscribe for more stories from the reel frontier!
🎧 Available wherever you pod!

Send us a text

Timecode⏱️🤠Cowboys | Ep. 8 | Pt. 1 | Lights, Camera… Crescenzo! 🎥✨

We finally wrangled our biggest guest yet — the one, the only, Crescenzo Notarile — Emmy-nominated cinematographer, lifelong student of light 🧠💡 and all-around Renaissance man 🏆📸. We had sooooo much fun with Crescenzo that we had to split this one into TWO PARTS !

Here’s what we cover in this rich and rollicking Pt. 1:

📺 The Twilight Zone episode that changed Crescenzo’s life forever

📸 Crescenzo’s love for photography — and private collection of Avedon prints!

🎞️ The Swedish Masters of Mood: Sven Nykvist & Ingmar Bergman

🔍 The difference between long lenses vs. wide lenses

🧪 The lab montages that made CSI famous

📚 The Kubrick quotes we take as gospel

♟️ And why every great filmmaker should master the game of chess

From high art to handheld chaos, this one’s got gravitas, grit, and a whole lot of heart. ❤️

👉 Like, comment, and subscribe for more cinematic campfire tales 🤠

🎧 Available wherever you pod!

Send us a text

Timecode⏱️🤠Cowboys | Ep. 7 | Cannes You Believe It?! 🇫🇷🎞️

We’re back in the saddle after a wild ride to the Cannes Film Festival 🥂🎥 — where Danny’s work on Slauson Recwas a last-minute addition to the prestigious Cannes Classics lineup! 😱✨

In this very special episode:

🐎 Dan survives the red carpet and a brutal sinus infection

🧢 Buys waaaaay too many souvenir hats

🎟️ Breaks down the circus-like chaos of Cannes

📽️ Reflects on editing a vérité doc for 2 years straight

✍️ Retreats into the French countryside for a creative Eat Pray Love style journey

🍷 Visits Ridley Scott’s personal vineyard (and, yes, the Alien space suits are there)

From the Palais to the Provence, this one’s a jetlagged, wine-drenched, film-soaked recap of a life-changing creative high. ✈️💻📓

👉 Like, comment, and subscribe for more cowboy cinema ramblings 🤠

🎧 Available wherever you pod!

Send us a text