All I can say is we’ve all had our moments during this pandemic when it just felt like the whole thing is wobbling away from us and we can’t put A before B anymore, and then, hopefully, you bounce off of that and keep going.
The Saturday Free-For-All is one of my favorite things here. I read every single thing you guys post, and I am amazed that we are seven months in and you guys have been nothing but good to each other. You’ve discussed any number of tricky subjects, and you’ve never even had to be warned to cool off. You’ve all brought real conversation to the table and you’ve treated each other with respect. That would be impressive enough if it was just the subscribers, but the whole point of the SFFA is that it’s open to anyone, not just those of you who have taken the plunge for the paid content. Looking at the numbers, it’s clear there are way more of you reading and participating on those days, and even so, it feels like a community where no one’s looking to spoil the party.
I appreciate that. More than you know.
I’m excited about all the new movies this weekend. I’m excited to be excited. Last night, we watched Palm Springs, and it feels like a movie that is accidentally even more of its moment than when it was made. There is nary a hint of pandemic in the film, but it’s a perfect love story for right now. If you haven’t seen it, I won’t ruin anything, but I’ll simply say that it is easy to read the situation the characters find themselves in as a metaphor for the way many couples have suddenly found themselves in close quarters during quarantine for much more time than normal. My girlfriend and I are about to celebrate our five-year anniversary, and it feels like we’re better together now than we’ve ever been. She’s been here every day for months, something that is brand-new, and I’m someone who is very dependent on certain habits about my workspace. It could have easily been a problem, but we met later in life, after we’d been through situations that didn’t work, and we knew what we wanted from another person. Palm Springs is silly and ridiculous, but it is ultimately a piece about how important it is to find someone you want to face it all with, someone who can accept where you’ve been even if it’s imperfect, and who will be there when it gets tough. If you are fortunate enough to have your ride-or-die, or if you appreciate just how great is to find them, Palm Springs will resonate deeply.
It’s always strange, the way films time out. Sometimes you can make something and release it and it suddenly feels all wrong, like with Targets or The Manchurian Candidate or Suddenly after the JFK assassination or SpaceCamp after the Challenger explosion. Sometimes you get the opposite, when a film seems almost prescient, and it feels like it’s speaking to us in a way that it wouldn’t have even a year earlier, and that’s Palm Springs right now. The whole world is a time loop right now, and it’s never been more urgent to figure out how to live with one another, flaws and all.
Let me ask you this, then: have you ever seen a film that felt accidentally perfect for a moment or a situation? If so, what film and what situation? I’ll give you an example for me personally. When I was first dating my girlfriend, I was still recovering from the end of my marriage and I was on fairly unstable ground emotionally. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to really open myself up fully again, and I found myself holding back, intentionally finding reasons to not commit. Specifically, I was gun-shy about the words “I love you,” and when I went off to the Toronto Film Festival, I did so feeling insecure about things. One morning, I went to an early screening of Anomalisa, and it felt like Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson were speaking directly to me about fear, about insecurity, and about love, and when I walked out of that movie, I called my girlfriend, and I told her, “I love you” for the first time. I know the film wasn’t made for me, but I saw it at the exact moment I needed to see it, and it spoke to me powerfully. I wrote about it, and I can say that when you see my quote on the film’s poster, I am not being hyperbolic. I feel that even more strongly five years down the road. See if you can spot the quote here:
So come on… let’s share on a Saturday afternoon. And if you don’t want to talk about that, Saturdays are for talking about anything you’d like, including any of this week’s newsletters or whatever you’re watching or reading right now. Hopefully, you guys are up for some weekend chat, and I’ll see you back here Monday as we kick off volume 2 of Formerly Dangerous in earnest.
The Saturday Free-For-All is always free for everyone. Share it if you feel like it!
Image courtesy of Hulu Image courtesy of Paramount/Snoot/Starburns Industries
Toy Story 3 came out the day I graduated high school. I went with a group of friends for a late night screening after the day's festivities, and we were all emotionally wrecked by the end. Seeing that movie on that particular night, I felt like I was Andy, letting go of my childhood in a way.
Annihilation came out about a month after my grandmother passed away from cancer. It was a three year process from when she got it to when she passed, so we had all come to terms by that point. But I remember feeling very surreal in the theater, watching this crazy Sci-fi film really hit everything that was on my mind. I don’t think I would have wanted to see something directly about cancer at that time, but something about that film’s approach really helped lay to rest all those feelings. I’m also a massive fan of anything that involves animals that eat people, so that movie is a home run for me.
Not a film. But Ricky Gervais’ After Life. Hit me last summer as I was alone for a week drinking. Quit drinking that week Was a year on July 8. Haven’t had the guts to attempt season 2 but there was something so life affirming in that 1st series I almost don’t want too.
Not quite on your theme, but the remastered 50th anniversary '2001: A Space Odyssey' re-release in 2018 springs to mind. I've seen it on the big screen before, but I took my two children (8 and 10) to see it for the first time, and they were absolutely enthralled. It makes you happy that in a world of 'faster', 'product' movies, that the truly classic movies hold up for the ages. The gentleman next to me said at the end that it was really lovely to see young children watch it for the first time, as he remembered seeing it with his dad all those decades ago. As we all know, nothing beats the big screen experience, and let's all hope we can watch movies together again one day in safer times.
500 Days of Summer. I had just gone through a divorce, spent most of my nights watching movies, feeling sorry for myself, and feeling like I would never find love again. That film, and specifically the "Expectation vs Reality" sequence, reached into my soul and shook me out of of my pity party. It made me re-examine my role in how the divorce played out, and made me understand that relationships often make sense in our minds, but in the light of the real world, they are complicated, unstructured, and subject to all sorts of twists and turns you never see coming. Helped me start viewing my relationships through a different perspective.
In 2007, as flawed as the film is, “Spider-Man 3” hit exact the right notes in Peter struggling with the person he was trying to be for this anxiety-ridden 29-year-old who was wrestling with the way his life was going.
In 2009, “Up” helped me finally feel closure over losing my grandfather with its story of a widower who wants to travel after wife died, and the scout who inadvertently tags along. My grandfather did the same after his wife died, and I was a scout, and I felt like he was in the theatre with me, sharing an adventure together, at last.
In 2014, “How to Train Your Dragon 2’s” story of a son trying to live up to his father’s sense of duty hit me hard watching it 8 months after my father died.
It's not a movie, but I caught up on the first and second seasons of Workaholics right as I graduated from college and took a job that was almost the exact same kind of job Blake, Adam, and Anders had (my job was b2b).
To say it prepared me for the mixture of delirium, boredom, and even excitement (when you got a lead) of being on the phone making cold calls for 8 hours a day is an understatement. It probably kept me sane that first year as I became pretty good at what we did.
It also created a permanent soft spot in my heart for the comedic talents of Adam DeVine, who should honestly be in more things.
I think I’ve only had the opposite happen to me. The first movie I saw after my father passed away was La La Land which was fine. The problem was the trailers. A Dog’s Purpose and A Monster Calls played back to back. I just wanted to run out of the theater.
Back in 2003 I was a thoroughly single man trying to start a career and moving into his late 20s wondering why I wasn't connecting with anyone the way I always thought I would. Right around this time Lost in Translation came out and the meditation on modern loneliness and ennui in it spoke to me on a fundamental level. And even though I didn't end up with Scarlett Johansson as a result, I turned off the DVD and felt a little more at peace with whatever the universe had in store ahead for me.
I'm bi-polar, so I go thru ups and downs -- unfortunately at times to extremes. I was in one of my pretty bad downturns and I happened to watch HECTOR AND THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS.
I don't think I can really express how that film spoke to me: it's like it filled in something that I'd lost faith in and had been missing, and it was a beautiful thing to see part of the myriad of ways that happiness can be found.
I have two kids that I absolutely love and love me back, and not just because we're supposed to ... but HECTOR just spoke to me on a whole different personal level.
I saw ARRIVAL at an advance screening the night after the 2016 election. Really cathartic to watch a movie about people coming together to face and address something totally beyond everyone's imagination. I think those circumstances improved my view of it, even though on multiple rewatches it's held up wonderfully.
I was one of those kids who didn’t really feel like he had a place to belong in any clique or group at school. I was also a lonely guy, as it had been around 6 months to a year since my only relationship. Then I ended up seeing The Way Way Back by Jim Rash and Nat Faxon. The character Liam James plays I look at as a more introverted version of myself, and I feel for him deeply. Like his character, I tend to be pretty awkward around people, and I am him in a lot of ways. Seeing him succeed and come out of his shell by the end of the film is one of the more rewarding experiences I’ve had with a movie, and I still hold the same fondness for it. And beyond that, I think it’s a fantastic movie, and it’s one of my personal favorites.
I'm going to take "exact right time," a little differently than most.
Took our children to see The Avengers in the theater, since they'd proven themselves ready to cope with home viewings of Iron Man, and 1-2 other Phase 1 MCU films. We saw it, loved it, and walked our to our car under a darkening sky. Then suddenly...
... THUNDER ...
"It's THOR!" from one of 'em and giggles from the rest of us. Yes, that sounds like the exact right time to me. :)
The last time it happened, I played hooky from life/work and saw the musical ONCE. It was precisely the art/feeling I needed to encounter at the moment I needed it. I haven’t had a moment quite like that since, but my life is different. Nevertheless, because I know that art can still make me feel, I try to remain in hope and optimism. I still believe that Art, capital A or not, can save me.
I’m way late to this one, but MIDNIGHT IN PARIS comes to mind. I had moved to a new state in 2011, chasing something I thought was elsewhere and ended up learning the old “everywhere you go there you are” lesson pretty hard. I saw the movie alone in the theater and it both wrecked and rejuvenated me. I realized what I was feeling wasn’t the end of the world, figured out that I was looking in the wrong places, and made my way home. I still think about the film all the time.
FANBOYS. My barely a year old marriage was falling apart when I got the call that a friend from back home - I had moved 100 miles when I got married - had passed away rather suddenly. Bobb had been a friend for about 10 years and STAR WARS was just one of the many things we had in common. A few weeks later FANBOYS came out. Outside of the short time I had travelling back for the viewing and services, I really didn't have any emotional support to help me deal with things. (Wife had pretty much emotionally withdrawn at this point.) I saw the film three times in one week, because there was something about it that helped me grieve for my friend and work through that time. I still get more than a little misty-eyed when I rewatch it now, eleven years later.
While it's not a movie the greatest episode of television of all time, Ozymandias from Breaking Bad hit me like a ton of bricks. My wife and I were going through a rough patch in our relationship and Walter White's actions and behavior in that episode really helped lay bare just how selfish and immature I was being about certain things. I broke down crying and it led to one of the most honest, course correcting moments of my life and I honestly feel like it helped strengthen our marriage.
I was having a serious mid-life breakdown fueled by having been in a toxic marriage for over a decade. I didn't think anything could make me feel better, but then I went and saw "Guardian's of the Galaxy." Then I saw it three more times. That movie is a feel-good machine; got me through the roughest three months of my life.
1) Waited until Oscar Night to finally see PARASITE. Finished it and turned on the tv just before it won Best Picture.
2) Watched THE LIGHTHOUSE a few weeks into quarantine. An uncomfortably on-the-nose movie choice at a time when we were all trying not to lose our collective shit.
Back in '93, just a couple months before I left Chicago to move out to L.A., I caught BARAKA at the Music Box. For me it was akin to a religious experience. Made me determined to head out into the world and experience it as much as I can. I'm still in L.A. and I'm lucky to live in a city that screens BARAKA from time to time, never fails to move me.
Toy Story 3 came out the day I graduated high school. I went with a group of friends for a late night screening after the day's festivities, and we were all emotionally wrecked by the end. Seeing that movie on that particular night, I felt like I was Andy, letting go of my childhood in a way.
Saw GONE GIRL five days before getting married. Much nervous chuckling.
Annihilation came out about a month after my grandmother passed away from cancer. It was a three year process from when she got it to when she passed, so we had all come to terms by that point. But I remember feeling very surreal in the theater, watching this crazy Sci-fi film really hit everything that was on my mind. I don’t think I would have wanted to see something directly about cancer at that time, but something about that film’s approach really helped lay to rest all those feelings. I’m also a massive fan of anything that involves animals that eat people, so that movie is a home run for me.
Not a film. But Ricky Gervais’ After Life. Hit me last summer as I was alone for a week drinking. Quit drinking that week Was a year on July 8. Haven’t had the guts to attempt season 2 but there was something so life affirming in that 1st series I almost don’t want too.
Not quite on your theme, but the remastered 50th anniversary '2001: A Space Odyssey' re-release in 2018 springs to mind. I've seen it on the big screen before, but I took my two children (8 and 10) to see it for the first time, and they were absolutely enthralled. It makes you happy that in a world of 'faster', 'product' movies, that the truly classic movies hold up for the ages. The gentleman next to me said at the end that it was really lovely to see young children watch it for the first time, as he remembered seeing it with his dad all those decades ago. As we all know, nothing beats the big screen experience, and let's all hope we can watch movies together again one day in safer times.
500 Days of Summer. I had just gone through a divorce, spent most of my nights watching movies, feeling sorry for myself, and feeling like I would never find love again. That film, and specifically the "Expectation vs Reality" sequence, reached into my soul and shook me out of of my pity party. It made me re-examine my role in how the divorce played out, and made me understand that relationships often make sense in our minds, but in the light of the real world, they are complicated, unstructured, and subject to all sorts of twists and turns you never see coming. Helped me start viewing my relationships through a different perspective.
In 2007, as flawed as the film is, “Spider-Man 3” hit exact the right notes in Peter struggling with the person he was trying to be for this anxiety-ridden 29-year-old who was wrestling with the way his life was going.
In 2009, “Up” helped me finally feel closure over losing my grandfather with its story of a widower who wants to travel after wife died, and the scout who inadvertently tags along. My grandfather did the same after his wife died, and I was a scout, and I felt like he was in the theatre with me, sharing an adventure together, at last.
In 2014, “How to Train Your Dragon 2’s” story of a son trying to live up to his father’s sense of duty hit me hard watching it 8 months after my father died.
“Palm Springs” was so good and unexpected.
I hope everyone is safe and healthy.
It's not a movie, but I caught up on the first and second seasons of Workaholics right as I graduated from college and took a job that was almost the exact same kind of job Blake, Adam, and Anders had (my job was b2b).
To say it prepared me for the mixture of delirium, boredom, and even excitement (when you got a lead) of being on the phone making cold calls for 8 hours a day is an understatement. It probably kept me sane that first year as I became pretty good at what we did.
It also created a permanent soft spot in my heart for the comedic talents of Adam DeVine, who should honestly be in more things.
I think I’ve only had the opposite happen to me. The first movie I saw after my father passed away was La La Land which was fine. The problem was the trailers. A Dog’s Purpose and A Monster Calls played back to back. I just wanted to run out of the theater.
Back in 2003 I was a thoroughly single man trying to start a career and moving into his late 20s wondering why I wasn't connecting with anyone the way I always thought I would. Right around this time Lost in Translation came out and the meditation on modern loneliness and ennui in it spoke to me on a fundamental level. And even though I didn't end up with Scarlett Johansson as a result, I turned off the DVD and felt a little more at peace with whatever the universe had in store ahead for me.
I'm bi-polar, so I go thru ups and downs -- unfortunately at times to extremes. I was in one of my pretty bad downturns and I happened to watch HECTOR AND THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS.
I don't think I can really express how that film spoke to me: it's like it filled in something that I'd lost faith in and had been missing, and it was a beautiful thing to see part of the myriad of ways that happiness can be found.
I have two kids that I absolutely love and love me back, and not just because we're supposed to ... but HECTOR just spoke to me on a whole different personal level.
I saw ARRIVAL at an advance screening the night after the 2016 election. Really cathartic to watch a movie about people coming together to face and address something totally beyond everyone's imagination. I think those circumstances improved my view of it, even though on multiple rewatches it's held up wonderfully.
I was one of those kids who didn’t really feel like he had a place to belong in any clique or group at school. I was also a lonely guy, as it had been around 6 months to a year since my only relationship. Then I ended up seeing The Way Way Back by Jim Rash and Nat Faxon. The character Liam James plays I look at as a more introverted version of myself, and I feel for him deeply. Like his character, I tend to be pretty awkward around people, and I am him in a lot of ways. Seeing him succeed and come out of his shell by the end of the film is one of the more rewarding experiences I’ve had with a movie, and I still hold the same fondness for it. And beyond that, I think it’s a fantastic movie, and it’s one of my personal favorites.
The Farewell. The perfect reminder, especially at the moment, to embrace every moment with those you love.
I'm going to take "exact right time," a little differently than most.
Took our children to see The Avengers in the theater, since they'd proven themselves ready to cope with home viewings of Iron Man, and 1-2 other Phase 1 MCU films. We saw it, loved it, and walked our to our car under a darkening sky. Then suddenly...
... THUNDER ...
"It's THOR!" from one of 'em and giggles from the rest of us. Yes, that sounds like the exact right time to me. :)
The summer before my senior year of high school, I got "Superbad."
The summer before my freshman year of college, I got "The Wackness" ironically enough, I saw it with a girl I had a rocky, uncertain future with.
It felt like both of those films spoke directly to me at the time.
The last time it happened, I played hooky from life/work and saw the musical ONCE. It was precisely the art/feeling I needed to encounter at the moment I needed it. I haven’t had a moment quite like that since, but my life is different. Nevertheless, because I know that art can still make me feel, I try to remain in hope and optimism. I still believe that Art, capital A or not, can save me.
I’m way late to this one, but MIDNIGHT IN PARIS comes to mind. I had moved to a new state in 2011, chasing something I thought was elsewhere and ended up learning the old “everywhere you go there you are” lesson pretty hard. I saw the movie alone in the theater and it both wrecked and rejuvenated me. I realized what I was feeling wasn’t the end of the world, figured out that I was looking in the wrong places, and made my way home. I still think about the film all the time.
FANBOYS. My barely a year old marriage was falling apart when I got the call that a friend from back home - I had moved 100 miles when I got married - had passed away rather suddenly. Bobb had been a friend for about 10 years and STAR WARS was just one of the many things we had in common. A few weeks later FANBOYS came out. Outside of the short time I had travelling back for the viewing and services, I really didn't have any emotional support to help me deal with things. (Wife had pretty much emotionally withdrawn at this point.) I saw the film three times in one week, because there was something about it that helped me grieve for my friend and work through that time. I still get more than a little misty-eyed when I rewatch it now, eleven years later.
While it's not a movie the greatest episode of television of all time, Ozymandias from Breaking Bad hit me like a ton of bricks. My wife and I were going through a rough patch in our relationship and Walter White's actions and behavior in that episode really helped lay bare just how selfish and immature I was being about certain things. I broke down crying and it led to one of the most honest, course correcting moments of my life and I honestly feel like it helped strengthen our marriage.
I was having a serious mid-life breakdown fueled by having been in a toxic marriage for over a decade. I didn't think anything could make me feel better, but then I went and saw "Guardian's of the Galaxy." Then I saw it three more times. That movie is a feel-good machine; got me through the roughest three months of my life.
1) Waited until Oscar Night to finally see PARASITE. Finished it and turned on the tv just before it won Best Picture.
2) Watched THE LIGHTHOUSE a few weeks into quarantine. An uncomfortably on-the-nose movie choice at a time when we were all trying not to lose our collective shit.
Back in '93, just a couple months before I left Chicago to move out to L.A., I caught BARAKA at the Music Box. For me it was akin to a religious experience. Made me determined to head out into the world and experience it as much as I can. I'm still in L.A. and I'm lucky to live in a city that screens BARAKA from time to time, never fails to move me.