The Cinemile Podcast: Cork film podcasters on married life, living in Cork, and criticism

Mary Cate Smith meets the married couple who turned their love of movies into a hugely successful cinema podcast

Cathy Cullen and Dave Corkery who record a podcast, The Cinemile. Pictures: Denis Minihane.

The savage eye of a self-professed film critic can cast aspersions on others who don’t share the same exquisite taste in cinema.

Having once been a student of film theory, I can attest to the fact that the mention of a leitmotif can instantly transform a person whose favourite dinner is fish and chips into a pompous prig with a skinny scarf, ever ready to lambaste the greats of cinema. Coppola? Pfft. Hitchcock? Meh.

If high-brow cross examination of movies is your thing, maybe don’t tune into The Cinemile podcast. Helmed by a Cork-based married couple, Dave Corkery and Cathy Cullen, it’s the exact opposite. Expect fresh, unfiltered, light-hearted chats from the couple as they walk to and from the cinema. It’s raw, it’s unrehearsed, it’s rough and ready (in the background you can hear traffic and those damned Cork city gulls) and it ranks very low on the pretentious scale. The two 30-somethings are both genuine movie fans and challenge each other in a really fun way that’s very infectious.

The couple moved back from London to Cork recently, and say that it’s a dream come true.

“We hadn’t considered moving back to Ireland until the pandemic hit. Having our second kid with no family around was really challenging,” says Dave. “Then, remote working became a possibility and we realised we could live in Cork, but get jobs in Dublin and that opened up loads of opportunities.”

It’s fitting that the couple’s very first date was at the movies, although I imagine it wasn’t great for talking?

“We kind of knew each other, and had already covered a lot of ground,” says Cathy, “We had established we both had a real passion for film.”

For Dave, it was simple. Did Cathy like to watch and chat about movies? Yes. But more importantly, how acquainted was she with Cabot Cove and was she a fan of his TV muse, a Ms Jessica Fletcher?

She was. In fact, one of their first-ever in-depth conversations was about everyone’s favourite 90s TV show, Murder She Wrote. It went on for about 40 minutes.

“I think we were off to a really good start,” says Dave. “We had already established that we were really comfortable conversing about something that probably doesn’t warrant going stupidly in depth on.”

GETTING INTO PODCASTS

The couple moved to Australia in 2010. The podcast scene was still relatively new — the most widely listened to shows at the time were This American Life and WTF with Marc Maron.

“Dave got really into podcasts,” says Cathy. “He said we should do a podcast together and I was like, ‘What’s a podcast?’”

Dave persevered (or nagged!) for a few years and when the couple moved to London in 2015, he revisited the idea. Cathy wasn’t sold. She felt a lot of podcasts were “just men, sitting around talking”.

She wasn’t wrong, laughs Dave.

“Then Dave, just one day had a brainwave in the shower, and he ran out and said, ‘Oh, my God, we always go to the cinema and talk about the movie afterwards. What if I just record us? You don’t have to do any prep. It doesn’t have to be really serious.’ So, I was like, ‘OK, that does sound fun’. And that’s how we started.”

Since then, the couple has gone on to win a number of high-profile awards, including best podcast at the British Podcasting awards and have featured expert and celebrity guests including Scroobius Pip, Rick Edwards, and Michael Brooks.

While it was Cathy’s insistence on having parameters that didn’t require a huge amount of work after the fact, she believes that having the podcast has been a great way for them to get out after having children.

“Loads of our friends or listeners have said to us, since they’ve had kids, they never go to the cinema. They wonder how we do it. It’s because we prioritise it, because we love our podcast so much.”

I wonder if they are ever disappointed when they disagree on a movie? Dave’s teenage self balked at Cathy’s review of Star Wars. (Reader: Brace yourself, she says, “It’s fine.”)

“You just have to steel yourself. I put a lot of myself into the culture I consume. It becomes part of your identity, right? It’s embarrassing but as a child, Star Wars was everything. And then you expect for that same feeling that you’ve had with that material to translate to that person directly.”

Cathy Cullen and Dave Corkery: "We try to always acknowledge that making a movie is incredibly difficult, just to get it made."

STRIKING A FINE BALANCE

While Cathy and Dave are honest about their opinions on films, they are never mean-spirited. Cathy says it’s important to be sensitive.

“We’re never hardcore mean about a movie. Even when we saw Blackbird, we take into account, this is someone’s job, people have put a lot into this. It’s different if we think it’s racist or misogynistic.”

Another difference between The Cinemile and other traditional film critic podcasts is Dave and Cathy only focus on one movie at a time.

“We never do star ratings. We’re not constructing a review or a piece of criticism and we’re not film critics. We’re just trying to present a conversation that everyone has — whether you go to the cinema with your friend or with your partner as you walk home or go to your car.

“What we’ve been told by our listeners is one of the main selling points is the immediacy of our responses. Usually, when you’re listening to people deconstruct a film, they have usually watched it and thought about it. We don’t have that.”

The 250th episode of the podcast was centred on Michael Flatley’s Blackbird, which had quite a visceral reaction from both Dave and Cathy.

Dave’s take was that it was fuelled by narcissism and a lack of self-awareness but ultimately harmless, while Cathy felt it was a fun, tongue-in-cheek piece of cinema that was utterly enjoyable. They don’t agree on much about that film except on one thing — Flatley’s hat wardrobe was sensational.

The discourse of film criticism online can be quite toxic, Dave says.

“We try not to target or single out actors because something hasn’t met the expectation of a fan base. We try to always acknowledge that making a movie is incredibly difficult, just to get it made.

“You can laugh at it and pick it apart, call it vanity or a ‘passion project’ but ultimately, Michael Flatley employed a lot of people.”

Mostly they find the podcasting community to be supportive but Cathy experienced a lot of misogynistic backlash when she critiqued Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

“I think someone must have posted our review in a message board or something, because it got way more listeners than we normally get.

“And loads of negative commentary about me in particular, saying I dismissed the movie before I even saw it. I didn’t — but we did talk about all the problematic things about it.”

Apart from that incident, they find that their listeners belong to sub-communities who are really invested in the topic of movies.

They may have won some major accolades but they never wanted or intended to monetise the podcast, instead keeping it as an outlet for fun. They do make some money from the ads on Acast and from Patreon which pays for their expenses. They’re currently watching Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon.

Having experienced some major success in the UK, even giving talks about how to produce a podcast for the BBC, they are now living back in Ireland and still working in their day jobs.

However, if someone offered them a million to buy the podcast? They’d absolutely take it, they both agree.

“But that would be us, walking away from our careers. We’re quite comfortable with the balance of it now and it’s a gamble and we’ve got two kids. And it would risk killing our love of it.”

Cathy Cullen and Dave Corkery: immersing themselves in Cork after coming home

MAKING IT WORK BACK HOME

There was very little money invested in the setting up of their podcast, they both agree — the most expensive thing they bought was the editing software — and there are always ways around that for anyone looking to create their own podcast.

As all couples do, they disagree and sometimes argue.

“Most people say what they like about it is our chemistry but you’d want to have that when you’re a married couple,” says Cathy. “We’re comfortable with pushing each other’s buttons.”

“Cathy has accused me of mansplaining so many times on the podcast,” says Dave, “I don’t think I am half the time but that’s the whole point of mansplaining, isn’t it?”

Cathy says that the move back to Cork was not as easy as it sounds.

“The housing market did make it a tricky move home because we were obviously looking from London.

“We found somewhere while we were still in London and ended up getting it for a couple of months before we moved. So we were double paying, but it was kind of the only way to do it. We were looking for nine months before we found something so yeah, it’s tough for people moving home.”

What’s the best thing about being home for the couple? Having family around certainly helps, roping more than one member into babysitting duties already. What they weren’t expecting was the change in Cork City itself.

“We hadn’t lived here since 2008, which was peak recession. It’s brilliant being back, it’s so vibrant. It’s totally different from then.”

The local arts scene is thriving, post-pandemic, and Cathy has gotten involved from the get-go.

“There’s amazing music and food and actually since last year, I’ve been on the board of directors with the Cork Film Festival, voluntarily — as a director, I’ve really been immersing myself into the culture here — it really is a wonderful organisation.”

It can be really tricky to find the right family house, the couple say, especially with children. Cathy says that when they were looking, they were thinking about potential schools for their children.

“It’s doable, but very difficult. We love being back in Cork,” says Cathy. “We came back in time for our older son to start junior infants here which made the transition really easy. Living back in Cork and being near family is a life-changer.”

To catch up on all of Cathy and Dave's podcasts visit: www.thecinemile.com