Adam McKay is exploring 1950s Hollywood tragedies in new podcast series DEATH ON THE LOT

Adam McCay and his company Hyperobject Industries and Sony Music Entertainment produced an eight-episode podcast series titled Death on the lot. The show will explore many of Hollywood’s tragedies in the 1950s.

Stories will dive into the deaths of James Dean, Hattie McDaniel, John Garfieldand other major Hollywood figures who died early in the 1950s.

The project grew out of McKay’s 2021 podcast Death on the wing, which explored the premature deaths of basketball players in the 1980s. McKay said, “Everything during the making of Death on the wing, we kept saying that the only other comparison we can think of is Hollywood after WWII. Then we thought, ‘Well, let’s do a season on that, and see what we can figure out.’ And if anything, it was even richer and deeper, and more central to American history than we expected.

Discussing what he likes about working on podcasts, McKay said, “You’re able to go into the project and make it happen, with questions still unanswered. With these podcasts, questions are the central theme of the show and it’s really fun, because you’re constantly making discoveries. It’s just a very alive and breathing process, until the very end when you record the last couple of sentences.

Some of the people who were interviewed for the podcast include RonHoward, Lee GrantAND James Cromwell, as well as relatives of some subjects, such as McDaniel’s great-grandson. McKay said, “That diversity of voices is essential to this type of storytelling, because it’s incredibly interdisciplinary. You never look at things through just an economic lens, a sociological lens, an entertainment history lens — the lens is always shifting. So it really creates this need for an incredibly broad perspective.

He added: “That collection of voices is the center, the core of the show. It’s the living questions – and then going to this incredible array of people to get those answers.

McKay spoke specifically about the second episode of the podcast, as it resonates with what’s currently happening with the writer’s strike. The episode focuses on the death of Willie Bioff, an organized crime figure and corrupt union leader, killed in a car explosion. McKay said, “We knew we wanted to do an episode about jobs and the film industry because people tend to forget that Hollywood, just like the country in general, was built by unions. Little did we know the story would be as resonant as it is now, with the writers once again battling for a viable future for the people who really make this industry work. And when you hear the way striking movie workers talked about who was in power in the 1940s and 1950s… it sounds awfully familiar. There are many lessons from post-war union struggles”.

All eight episodes of Death on the lot will be available on Sony Music’s platform The Binge on June 1st and will drop weekly on other podcast platforms.