'The Plot Thickens' S2 Is a Fascinating Look Inside a Box-Office Bomb

Director Brian De Palma is one of our most overlooked auteurs, but not everything he touched was gold. We often hear stories of movies where everything goes right, but we never get the exact details when everything goes wrong. 

This season on The Plot Thickens, they attempt to pull back the curtain on just exactly what happened to The Bonfire of the Vanities. How did a #1 New York Times best-selling book, a big budget, and a cast with Melanie Griffith, Tom Hanks, and Bruce Willis turn the movie adaptation into one of the biggest failures in feature filmmaking? 

The Plot Thickens is a documentary podcast about the movies and the people who make them. The second season is called The Devil’s Candy, the inside story of how a star-studded movie with all the makings of a hit ended up a cautionary tale for the ages. And it's one of the best journalistic pieces on Hollywood in recent history.

The podcast is told through the point of view of Julie Salamon, the film critic and author of the book The Devil’s Candy, which chronicles the year she spent on the set and with the filmmakers behind The Bonfire of the Vanities. Salamon got the once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness how a movie is made from start to finish and recently found all her audio cassettes and interviews in an old storage locker. She shares rare and intimate moments. 

TCM host Ben Mankiewicz plays co-host and gives us each episode's introduction and summation. He's a wonderful MC here, helping ease us in and out of the world and giving us context. 

Mankiewicz told The Hollywood Reporter, “There have been plenty of lemons in movie history, but none that have been so meticulously recorded. Julie Salamon’s book was a gift to film lovers, film students, and perhaps most critically, movie executives. She lays out a blueprint for what will go wrong if you lose your way. We’re thrilled to bring her book and her recordings to life with this season of the podcast.”

This is a great opportunity to see how a project can fall apart and the level of cooperation needed to bring a movie to life.

Check it out and let us know what you think!