Episode 4 - Stephen Cone

Hog Butcher Radio Hour

"I grew up a queer son of a Southern Baptist minister in South Carolina, and that’s where a lot of this comes from." That's writer/director/actor Stephen Cone telling the New York Times where he drew inspiration for his latest film, a current festival favorite, Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party. His other films include the provocative and enigmatic Black Box and his most widely seen film to date, The Wise Kids. All deal to some extent with issues of spirituality and sexual identity. And all are, to the filmmaker's great surprise, Coming Of Age stories, a genre Cone was never consciously drawn to. He talks to us about his own coming of age, about the challenges of being an independent filmmaker today, and about the potential downside of indie legitimacy. Also on the podcast, with the recent spate of celebrity deaths, mortality is in! So the Hog Butcher Radio Players perform Funeral. And we close with a song by the remarkable Robin Bienemann off of his record Songs About Work.