The meanest-looking man on screen, the star of Robert Rodriguez’s Machete and its sequels, is perhaps better known Trejo’s Cantina and other food emporiums have revealed the truth: despite his violent background he has reinvented himself as a good guy and plays that role extremely well, onscreen and off. (He also headlines a new streaming movie, Seven Cemeteries.) Leonard and Jessie enjoyed meeting him (via Zoom) and hearing the story of how he accidentally broke into movies and wound up working with some of the biggest names in the business.

David Stenn has a good “day job,” writing scripts for television (like The L Word and Boardwalk Empire) but his passion is film history. He has funded restoration of films long thought lost or unavailable, including a recent “find” featuring Clara Bow. He is also the author of two definitive biographies, Clara Bow: Running Wild, first published in 1988 and Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Harlow. They are both “must-read” recommendations, along with his passion project, a documentary called Girl 27 that is now available free of charge on YouTube. And if his face or voice seem familiar, it’s because he appears regularly on Turner Classic Movies.

Can it really be ten years since Whiplash put filmmaker Damien Chazelle on the map and earned J.K. Simmons his Best Supporting Actor Oscar? We interviewed the versatile actor in 2017 and his stories are worth hearing again. By the way, he remains a good luck charm for writer-director Jason Reitman, with a juicy role in his new movie Saturday Night. And Whiplash is also back on theater screens.