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His Creative Inspirations, Plus: Irma Vep, the Sex Pistols, David Yoon, and More ...
Dear Wags,
Encouraging news about Hollywood is rare, so let’s snatch at strands of hope. The monster opening of Top Gun: Maverick gives us reason to believe that the summer blockbuster isn’t quite dead, and while Top Gun is legacy I.P., it’s a break from the comic book store. Get ready for a flood of retooled ‘80s and ‘90s product to hit theaters in its wake — An Officer and a Gentleman, Pretty Woman, Backdraft, Titanic, Weekend at Bernie’s, Legal Eagles—why, the possibilities are endless! Meanwhile, there’s rejoicing in the C-suite at Netflix over the success of Stranger Things: Season 4, Vol. 1. Especially since a few seconds ago, cynics were dancing on the ur-streamer’s grave. What do these twin successes tell us about the direction of the entertainment industry? Shall we suggest that entertainment must come first as its business proposition?
Both Maverick and Stranger Things are broadly crowd pleasing, deeply nostalgic affairs. PhD. candidates will disagree, but neither strives for contemporary relevance. Whatever they are, they are not intellectually demanding, provocative, or divisive. They are escapism, which has always been Hollywood’s revenue driver. This is not a critique of consciousness-raising in pop culture — periodically, movies and television manage importance without being mortifying. But show business pays its bills with popcorn stuff, which is supposed to whisk humanity away from its squabbles and cares. If the industry cannot attract truly diverse, largely apolitical audiences, it is lost.
In the last decade, the disruption of Hollywood prompted all sorts of responses — an increased reliance on a few tentpoles, narrowcasting, and a sincere scramble for relevance among them. The results have been disaster for the large companies that manufacture our entertainments. It may be that the real lesson of the last few years is that consumers, of every type, haven’t changed as much as was thought. They long for distraction, and in parlous times, who can blame them? Screwball comedy was in its heyday in the 1930s — a time as grim as any in modern history. Why did we assume today’s audience was so different? If people can’t find fantasy, laughter, romance and adventure in the old ways, they simply look elsewhere.
It’s now go big or go home time, which is why Netflix has high hopes for Ryan Gosling in The Gray Man, and isn’t talking so much about the small-bore arty fare that it has spent tens of millions on. It’s why the world will queue up for Jurassic World and Bullet Train, and why Obi Wan Kenobi was always going to be gangbusters for Disney+. You don’t have to love it all, but it is extremely necessary. This looks like a reversion, after a period of faculty lounge idealism, to business as usual.
A course correction was inevitable. Genuine inclusion, on the scale of a global business, means embracing the whole audience, in all its (D)iversity, wherever it lives. Evolutionary change works better than bloody revolution, and it goes down much better with the public. And now, some delightful distractions for the first week of June.
Yours Ever,
Howard Beale
David Duchovney, why don’t you love me? Because he’s too busy being a Renaissance Man, silly.
Wag Supremo David Duchovny is a marvel—acting, directing, songwriting, chatting about Harold Bloom and literary theory at Café des Artistes—we wonder when he works in a nap. That is likely what we were doing when he cranked out his new novella, The Reservoir. It’s a New Yorky tale of a banker in quarantine, who spies a light flashing in an apartment window across Central Park, and deciphers that it’s a distress signal, possibly from the woman of his dreams! He’ll need to cross the no-man’s land between the Upper West Side and Fifth Avenue to save her, and himself. Bump it to the top of your summer reading list immediately. We must have 3 creative inspirations from this dashing smarty, whose big heart and bigger brain have delighted us since Collegiate (when you had to sprint past the Reservoir in order not to get mugged on the way to school).
1. Yes by Shekinah Glory Ministry. The most affirmative, moving declaration of love and positivity this half-Jew has ever heard. Listen to it. You’ll come away saying everything is yes.
2. Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle. Lectures and meditations by a brilliant teacher. I read passages and come away stunned by her insight and invariably go back to the sources she’s discussing and enter new inspiring dimensions yet again.
3. Audm. It’s an app on my phone where I can listen to the best articles in magazines I would never come across if I relied on subscriptions. I pretty much hate my phone, but I come away from Audm thinking that’s a movie or that’s a character. Both the anger and interest engendered by listening to great journalism can be inspiring.
No pain …no trenchant black comedy. Murray Bartlett sweats it out with Rose Byrne in the new season of Physical (Apple TV+).
Series
Physical (Apple TV+). Wags Annie Weisman and Rose Byrne return with a second season of this sharp look at ‘80s body culture, with Bryne’s broken, rapacious Sheila Rubin well on her way to creating a Southern California fitness empire. Sir Murray Bartlett (The White Lotus) shows up as a weight loss guru whose late night infomercials fuel and threaten her ambitions.
Irma Vep (HBO Max). There will be many reviews of Irma Vep in which the word meta will be used. Ignore them, and forge ahead. Genius Olivier Assayas has remade his 1996 film about a movie star (Alicia Vikander) who comes to Paris to remake a classic vampire movie with a loopy director (Vincent Macaigne), against the wishes of her grasping agent (Carrie Brownstein). Meta-schmetta: It’s a twisty, funny, and addictive look at the glories and horrors of show business.
Borgen—Power and Glory (Netflix).Dame Sidse Babett Knudsen is back as a scheming Danish politician, now serving as her country’s foreign minister, just as oil is discovered in Greenland. Will she walk back Denmark’s pledge to go carbon neutral? Can she balance tense relations with Russia and China, while dealing with a midlife crisis? Ja, hun er Borgen! Tense and timely.
Pistol (FX/Hulu). I am an antichrist/And I am anarchist/Don’t know what I want/But I know how to get it. Genius Danny Boyle shows how the Sex Pistols jolted gloomy 1970s Britain. Thomas Brodie-Sangster is an impish Malcolm Mclaren, while Louis Partridge, Toby Wallace, and Anson Boon are among the Pistols. No spitting please, applause will do nicely.
Proper Piss-Up
The Boys (Amazon Prime).Still wickedly funny, still icky-gory, The Boys returns us to a metaverse populated by corporate-sponsored superheroes, led by murderous sociopath Homelander (Anthony Starr), and the real good guys trying wipe them out. Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, and Erin Moriarty, among other worthies, are here for more blood and guts. — Ralph Hinkley
Fiction
You’re already living through an apocalypse — why read about another? Because City of Orange by Brilliant David Yoon is beautiful, and gives us a memorable hero in Adam Cheung, who wakes up in a wasteland with amnesia, unable to remember anything about his past life, except that the world has ended, though he can’t recall how. He begins to piece past horrors together, and meets other survivors who have figured out ways to rig dystopian Southern California with videogames and purified water. The world is totally screwed up, and yet, in some ways it’s going to be fine. In other words, you’ll find yourself in familiar territory.
Nonfiction
Camille Kouchner was born into the French intellectual and media elite — her father, Bernard Kouchner, founded Médecins Sans Frontières; her mother, ÉvelynePisier, was a feminist writer and political scientist, and her stepfather, Olivier Duhamel, was a famed academic and Socialist politician. He was also the sexual abuser of her twin brother. The Familia Grandewas a publishing juggernaut in France, but it’s less an exposé than an unsparing look at what it was like to grow up among egomaniacs who ditched parental love for radical poses. It’s not merely an indictment of those awful grown ups, but an entire selfish era. —Libbets Case
Wag Meghan Daum misses the days when smart people had healthy disagreements, without fearing that lives would be destroyed in the process. The Unspeakable podcast tackles everything you are terrified to mention, in a mellow, funny way. It’s not here to agitate you, but to make you think. Which suddenly, is revolutionary (plus, Meghan sells all kinds of amazing Unspeakable swag).
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a … Dear God, not more Jane Austen! OK, we will grant a fatwa exception to Sir Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who has collaborated with Gimlet to dramatize a Gay Pride and Prejudicefor Pride Month. Bennett, happily single, suddenly finds himself under pressure to settle down when gay marriage is legalized …blah, blah, Mr. Darcy, etc. — Charlotte Lucas
I stepped out the house today / But had to turn around / ‘Cause that girl over there, there, she / She tore my heart out. Isaac Dunbar, just 19, is a wunderkind from Barnstable, Mass., a maker of fun, funky, synth pop with a dash of Lady Gaga and a smattering of Rick James. Sunburn is blistering good fun. Meet your new summer song.
Montreal never quite gets its due as a great North American music capital, despite having exported Leonard Cohen, the McGarrigle Sisters, and Arcade Fire, among others. Indie rockers Stars are real northern lights, and Pretendersis a peppy, rueful tune that recalls the Smiths. We laid our bets, we made our beds, on staying young forever. Bad bet! But the melody is eternal. — Connor MacLeod
Wag has pointed out that the arc of history doesn’t inexorably bend toward progress, but zigs and zags all over the place. Pride Month is a good time to reflect on Hollywood’s complicated legacy when it comes to LGBT issues. No year illustrates that complexity better than 1982. Five movies with gay themes — Personal Best, Making Love, Victor/Victoria, and Death Trap—debuted that year, a multimillion dollar bet that American audiences were ready for more accepting depictions of sexuality. Best, written by Robert Towne and starring Mariel Hemingway, received largely positive reviews but flopped at the box office. So did Arthur Hiller’sLove, with Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin (the movie was blamed for hurting both actors’ careers). Only Blake Edwards’ broad musical comedy Victor/Victoria, which showcased his wife Julie Andrews, could be said to be a real success. On the heels of those releases, the AIDS crisis devastated the creative community and spooked entertainment companies. It would be decades before Hollywood would find such courage again. Whatever their quality, these films were part of a brief, hopeful moment that was over almost as soon as it began. — Brian Roberts
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CultureWag celebrates culture—high, medium, and deliciously low. It’s an essential guide to the mediaverse, cutting through a cluttered landscape and serving up smart, funny recommendations to the most hooked-in audience in the galaxy. If somebody forwarded you this issue, consider it a coveted invitation and RSVP “subscribe.” You’ll be part of the smartest set in Hollywood, Gstaad, Biarritz and Bumpass, Virginia, which was founded by Jack Bumpass, silly.
“Glory is fleeting, but the Wag is forever.”―Napoleon Bonaparte
