If I were on the National Treasure Nominating Committee tasked with filling the glaring vacancy left by Betty White’s tragic and untimely death, my pick would be Adnan Virk.
Not only because he has seen National Treasure, National Treasure 2, and will be first on Fandango to pre-order opening night tickets for National Treasure 3 the moment they’re made available, but because he represents everything great about this country. Born in Canada to Pakistani immigrants, Adnan has made more than merely a name for himself in his adopted American homeland as sportscaster and studio host for the likes of ESPN, DAZN, MLB and NHL Networks, and WWE…
He also made a podcast!
Perhaps you know him as your friendly neighbor in Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ where he has become a pillar of the community with his lovely wife and 11 sons, single-headedly supporting the local haberdashery trade with his frequent fedora purchases and generously volunteering as an assistant coach for the Ho-Ho-Kus junior high school girls’ field hockey team.
Perhaps you know him from his many on-air appearances, always enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the subject at hand be it baseball, hockey, boxing, wrestling, college football, or regional New Jersey junior high girls’ field hockey.
Perhaps you follow him on X where he can’t help but compulsively respond to every @ mention, no matter how beneath him or unworthy of his attention.
I’m proud to know him as a pal. What started as a wary professional relationship in 2019, having been thrown together to co-host the primetime shift of DAZN’s hugely ambitious, widely ignored, and mercilessly canned ChangeUp, quickly became one of my most treasured friendships. Adnan is hysterical, endlessly energetic, and an expert in the two most important things in life: sports and movies.
It was his lifelong love of the cinematic arts — and his selfish desire to gain access to advanced screeners and red carpet movie premieres — that inspired him to launch Cinephile with Adnan Virk, a weekly movie review podcast he began in 2016 while at ESPN and carried over several networks to Meadowlark Media before closing the curtain last September after 330 episodes.
I was avid listener of the show and occasional guest, appearing in a segment dubbed “Ragstime” — a pun on the fin-de-siècle musical style and my alternate nickname to Rogo (Rags) which Adnan has always delighted in using. His producers even gave my segment a proper intro and everything!
But ever since Adnan turned off the lights, I’ve been left with a nagging void in my movie-going enjoyment and entertainment diet. With the 97th Annual Academy Awards around the corner, and no Cinephile to tide me over, I felt it necessary to take matters into my own hands…
So here you have it: the debut episode of Cinephilephile with Scott Rogowsky. And who would you imagine I booked as my first guest? After getting a hard pass from Clint Howard’s people and not receiving a single reply to the seven DMs I sent to Christina Hendricks, I settled on none other than the very inspiration for this brand new pod, Adnan Virk! ENJOY!
SPOILER ALERT: this episode contains spoilers for A Different Man, Anora, and The Brutalist. Listener discretion is advised.
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