REBELS WITH AND WITHOUT A CAUSE: Join me and filmmaker Derek Nguyen (The Housemaid, now available on Amazon) as we talk Hair and No Regrets for Our Youth, two films about young people protesting a war.

“It’s the age of Aquarius.” War. What is it good for. Absolutely nothing, except maybe munitions manufacturers, politicians, war contractors, oh, and of course movies, can’t forget movies…Sounds like it’s time for Episode 98 of Pop Art, where we find the pop culture in art and the art in pop culture. It’s the podcast where my guest chooses a movie from popular culture, and I’ll select a film from the more art/classic/indie side of cinema with a connection to it. For this episode, I am happy to welcome as my guest, writer, director, producer Derek Nguyen, who has chosen as his film the Milos Foreman musical Hair, while I have chosen an early Akira Kurosawa film, No Regrets for Our Youth, both films about young people protesting war.

And in this episode we answer such questions: Why is there such a dearth of war protest films? What great songs did they leave out of Hair? What is the real history behind the events in No Regrets…? What did the authors of the original Broadway version of Hair think of the movie? Is Henry David Thoreau full of it? What musical pieces are played on piano in No Regrets…? Where is the lyric The Rest is Silence from? What doesn’t quite compute about the ending of Hair? Where does Nicholas Ray appear in Hair?