“War movies: One of the core genres of the cinema. From the earliest days of the form, filmmakers have been trying to capture and comment on war. Do these films accurately represent the battles they depict? And are they more useful as depictions of history, or as artifacts from the eras in which they were made? Do enough of them have Brian Dennehy? Join Adam Pranica (network page), Ben Harrison, and John Roderick for Friendly Fire, the war movie podcast that answers all these questions and more!”

This show was produced and edited by Rob Schulte and was released on the Maximum Fun podcast network.
After the BeanDad incident in January of 2021 the show was cancelled on behalf of Adam and Ben.
The intro music is War by Edwin Starr.
The logo art is by Nick Ditmore.

* = short intro
^† = full transcript available

Official website: Friendly Fire, also on Maximum Fun and on Art19
Official Twitter-feeds: Friendly Fire Podcast, Adam, Ben, John, Robs, #friendlyfire
Official Facebook group (soon to be archived): Friendly Fire
Official Subreddit: Friendly Fire Podcast Appreciation Society. There is also a thread for each episode on the Maximum Fun subreddit.
There is a timeline of all the war movies maintained by Michael Ahr.
There is a spreadsheet with episode information, notably a compilation of all the ratings, and some graphs maintained by Ian.

Further information

John gave an interview about this show on Episode 13 of the Who Shot Ya? podcast.
John and Ben have also been on Alison Rosen is your new best friend in the episode from 2018-02-26.

The next movie to watch is chosen by John picking a random number at the end of each episode. From episode 40 on, John is using a 100-sided die that was sent to him by listener Guy Yedwab. The number then corresponds to an entry on Ben's randomized list of movies. That way they are getting a good mix of very well known films and smaller pictures, even in foreign languages. If they pick three movies about the same war in a row, that war is then removed for the next pick.

Episode 44 was not picked at random, but was chosen deliberately for the 100th anniversary of the Armistice of World War I. Episode 48 was not picked at random, but was chosen for the 77th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Episode 67 was not picked at random, but was thematically related to episode 66, both being about Winston Churchill. Episodes 78 and 79 were not picked at random and were a live show and a collaboration that were inserted into the feed. Episode 100 was not picked at random, but was chosen for the 78th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. From episode 80 on Adam has acquired a 120-sided die because John couldn't find his 100-sided die after having sold his house and packed up all his things.

The first 25 episodes were prerecorded before the preview was released on December 20th 2017.

Episode 13, 53, 54, 79 and one other have been recorded face-to-face. Episode 103 has been recorded on Ben's birthday.

In Episodes 97 and 103 John mentions that they often record two episodes per week.

From episode 14 on (plus the out-of-time Bonus-episode), they started to review the movie on a scale of 1-5 "things" picked by Adam. The podcast itself is rated by Adam and Ben at 5 bathtubs, which is the location that John records from each and every time. John only gives it 4,5 bathtubs because it is a show by three white guys talking about war movies.

Episodes 30 and 79 were a collaboration with Movie Crush, guested by Chuck Bryant.

From Episode 40 on, Adam is recording together with John at John's house in his podcasting studio he built for The Omnibus. John and Adam recorded Episode 65 from John's uncle's house in Hawaii. From episode 67 on John recorded at Adam's house because he sold his house. This continued probably until episode 84. Later they record in John's daughter's mother's basement where John records all his other shows until his new house is ready. John recorded Episode 110 together with Ben in Los Angeles.

During the first year the intros to each episode were narrated by John. They became more elaborate since episode 15 and are done round-robin style by all hosts since Episode 50. Transcripts can be found on each episode page. The show opener after the intro is spoken by Ben and a collection of those one-liners can be found here.

After episode 156 was released the production of the show has been suspended because of John being cancelled on Twitter and subjecting everybody involved to a lot of anger from people on the Internet.

Support the show, live shows

This podcast was supported by its listeners and memberships were available here. There were yearly bonus episodes for MaxFun members:

See also John's Reddit AMA in connection with the 2019 MaxFunDrive.

In 2019 the goal of the MaxFunDrive to acquire 2000 new or upgrading members has been reached. As a perk the hosts were able to do a short US tour with live shows and there is now a "pork chop" feed with war-adjacent movies. Tickets for the live shows could be purchased here. Complete itinerary:

The "Pork Chop" feed contains some of the live shows and some shows recorded in studio:

All members-only episodes were part of the Maximum Fun members-only feed (password required).

John's Personal Stories

John told some personal stories on this podcast that are relevant for this Wiki. Expand section below to see them.