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Welcome to Kicking the Seat!

Ian Simmons launched Kicking the Seat in 2009, one week after seeing Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia. His wife proposed blogging as a healthier outlet for his anger than red-faced, twenty-minute tirades (Ian is no longer allowed to drive home from the movies).

The Kicking the Seat Podcast followed three years later and, despite its “undiscovered gem” status, Ian thoroughly enjoys hosting film critic discussions, creating themed shows, and interviewing such luminaries as Gaspar NoéRachel BrosnahanAmy Seimetz, and Richard Dreyfuss.

Ian is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association. He also has a family, a day job, and conflicted feelings about referring to himself in the third person.

Ep193: COMEDY is King

Today, HollywoodChicago.com's Patrick "The Über Critic" McDonald returns to the Kicking the Seat Podcast for the first of what we hope to be a unique and exciting series that pairs a film from 2017 with another movie celebrating an anniversary this year. Kicking things off is a look at Martin Scorsese's 1982 prescient fame parable, The King of Comedy, and Taylor Hackford's The Comedian, which opens today. Both are Robert DeNiro films. Both are films in which DeNiro plays a struggling stand-up comic. But, as you'll soon hear, the approaches and the results could not be more different.

Also, Ian talks about his trip to Tribeca Flashpoint Academy on Wednesday with The Lens Legal Group's Elaine Wyder-Harshman, where they enjoyed a screening of Brady Corbet's The Childhood of a Leader, and the spirited audience discussion that followed. The event was hosted by IFP Chicago, and Ian shares some information about this wonderful group of people who foster independent filmmaking and appreciation in the Windy City.

Episode 193 is funny--like a clown that's s'posed to amuse you.

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Ep194: No Rest for the WICK

Ep192: Making Hay