Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary, Sirius plot a film podcast

By LINDSEY BAHR
AP Film Writer

Long before Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary won an Oscar for co-writing “Pulp Fiction,” they were just a couple of cinephiles working at a video rental store in Manhattan Beach, Calif, discussing and recommending movies and becoming the filmmakers they were meant to be.

Now almost 40 years after meeting at Video Archives in 1983, Tarantino and Avary are revisiting that pivotal moment and the films that made them with the Video Archives Podcast, a new venture from SiriusXM’s Stitcher premiering this summer. The company said Thursday that on each episode Tarantino and Avary will rewatch and discuss movies culled from the original Video Archives library.

“We never imagined that 30 years after we worked together behind the counter at Video Archives, we would be together again doing the exact same thing we did back then: talking passionately about movies on VHS,” Tarantino and Avary said in a joint statement. “Watching movies was what originally brought us together and made us friends, and it’s our love of movies that still brings us together today.”

When Video Archives went out of business, Tarantino bought their inventory and essentially recreated the store in his home. He once estimated that it was close to 8,000 video tapes and DVDs. On the podcast, they teased that they’ll cover everything from “controversial James Bond films” to surprising exploitation pics and beyond.

“Quentin and Roger have made such enduring marks on filmmaking,” said Scott Greenstein, Chief Content Officer at SiriusXM in a statement. “We’re so excited to be able to help them revisit this formative moment in their careers, and to bring their recommendations to new and larger audiences.”

The Video Archives Podcast will be available this summer on Stitcher, the SXM App, Pandora and other podcast platforms.