Chapo Trap House crew turns podcast clout into a surreal movie
The socialist podcast team’s first film, Chunks, premieres on Patreon with six shorts and a bigger production push behind it.
By Poppy Nakagawa · Culture Writer
3 min read
The Chapo Trap House team is taking its first movie to Patreon, with Chunks set to premiere July 19 at 8 p.m. ET through the subscriber platform’s new ticketed digital-events feature, Rolling Stone reported.
The film is a six-part anthology comedy built from surreal shorts, according to Rolling Stone. After the premiere, it will remain available to stream for a fee.
For a podcast that became known for political riffing in audio form, the project marks a shift into scripted screen work. Chapo Trap House launched in 2016, with Amber A’Lee Frost, Will Menaker, Felix Biederman and Matt Christman among the voices associated with its rise, according to Rolling Stone.
Frost told Rolling Stone that the movie idea began after she moved from New York to Los Angeles in 2020, following a Chapo tour and the arrival of Covid. She had been thinking about a West Coast move already, and said she felt her time in New York had run its course.
The initial plan was not to turn the podcast itself into a film. Frost and producer Chris Wade told Rolling Stone that the group did not think the show’s loose, friendly political conversation would fit a traditional narrative movie.
Instead, Frost pitched an anthology: a batch of short comic pieces grouped into one feature. Wade told Rolling Stone that the format made sense because it could bring several contributors into one project.
The team soon ran into the slower pace of film development. Frost said meetings with industry figures often ended with praise, followed by a suggestion that the Chapo team should write and make the project themselves while others took a cut.
Six years later, Frost, Wade and Josh Androsky have produced Chunks under the ColdFeet Productions banner, with Patreon as a partner, according to Rolling Stone.
What is in Chunks?
Rolling Stone described Chunks as a deliberately odd collection styled after cable-access television and public-media programming from Frost’s youth.
The shorts include an animated piece by comedian and podcaster Nick Mullen that riffs on a familiar toilet paper ad while taking aim at the health care industry. Another segment features comedian and writer Sandy Honig in a story involving a trip into the afterlife. A poker-night piece involving Nate Fischer, co-writer of Eephus, places viewers among toxic online personalities, according to Rolling Stone.
The segments carry left-wing critiques of contemporary capitalism, Rolling Stone reported, and the filmmakers designed them so each could potentially stand alone or grow into a larger project.
Frost told Rolling Stone the creators were encouraged to make shorts that could work like pilots while retaining ownership. She said the Chapo team holds broadcast rights and would receive a share if a segment became a show.
ColdFeet has more in motion
Chunks is part of a broader push from ColdFeet Productions. Rolling Stone reported that the company co-produced Eephus, a film about a paint-store baseball team that premiered at Cannes last year.
The company is also involved with Raccoon, a Tim Heidecker film headed to festivals this fall, and is working with Sony on an animated adaptation of Justice Warriors, the independent comic by Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson about a police officer made of feces.
Wade told Rolling Stone that his goal for ColdFeet is to build a company that can help projects get made, particularly work from left-leaning creators. Frost summed up the ambition more plainly to the magazine: “You know, like a production company.”
This story draws on original reporting from Rolling Stone.