The newsletter's going through a bit of a vibe shift

Let's talk about the reasons why

It’s Friday, September 30th, and here’s where we are…

Get ready for a vibe shift around here.

I’m in a very particular position right now and I have to, for the first time in my adult life, put my own ambitions ahead of my almost pathological need to share my opinions about the way this industry works. I am working on something right now with a new partner who is taking a real chance on me, and the last thing I want to do is inadvertently poison some room before we walk into it. There are plenty of things I’m excited about right now and plenty of things I’m enjoying, and it seems pretty much professionally suicidal to publish long grumbly reviews or reactions when I could simply use this space to talk about older films and the things I’m digging.

So yeah… you’re not going to see my teeth for a while. I wasn’t kidding when I named this newsletter. There was a point in time when I gave people nightmares in this business. They have admitted that to me. I don’t want that anymore. I know I am chronically addicted to the taste of the hand that feeds, but it’s not good for me. I want to make this new thing. I don’t just want to write it and put it on a shelf or think about it. I want to make it. I want you guys to see it. I want to share it with people. There’s nothing I can write about D23 or toxic fandom or the streaming wars or DC’s upcoming slate or any of that noise that is more important to me and, honestly, how much of that stuff do you really want or need?

The things I have always enjoyed writing the most are the things where I just dig into the nerdy nuts and bolts of the art I love, trying to convey why I love it and how it impacted me. The Hip Pocket is a great example of that, and the upcoming podcast version of those columns is going to hopefully be a big fat blast of sunshine on your podcasting platform of choice every two weeks. If we really are in an age where the entire notion of moviegoing is at risk of losing its cultural hold, then the most radical thing I can do is spread the ongoing gospel of why movies matter and why the experience of sharing them is an important one.

It’s so easy to be negative. There are plenty of opportunities for me to be disappointed or disheartened, but a lot of that comes from frustration. Frustration is not a place I can work from creatively, and right now, I need to be wide open. I’m letting go of the things that frustrate me for now and I’m embracing the things that feed me. This isn’t a cynical cover-your-ass thing, either. This is a choice about what’s going to get the best words on the page and what’s going to give me the best chance at actually making this thing. If I want to be in the right frame of mind, it’s all about what I choose to put in there and what I choose to occupy myself with. It’s one of the reasons The Last ‘80s Newsletter (You’ll Ever Need) is such a perfect project for me. It’s all historical context. It’s a research project wrapped in biography and it has zero chance of political blowback on me in the present tense. Writing about the 4K business and the way the catalog avalanche has begun is another thing that seems to be serving me well. There are plenty of ways for me to be me, to give you plenty of what I’ve promised, but not stick a lit firecracker in my own mouth in the process.

I hope you’ll bear with me. This could be a few weeks of this new vibe. It could be a few months. It might be permanent depending on how things go. I don’t really know. In general, I hope the vibe is infectious and that you guys enjoy the benefits of all the positivity as well. It feels like everything is shouting at me, whether I’m reading or watching or listening to media and it can sometimes start to feel oppressive. Let’s keep it light for a while and I’ll try to use whatever muscle I have to help lift up some things I think might need it.

image courtesy of Prime Video

aFor example, have you guys seen A League of Their Own? No, not the Penny Marshall film, although I do love that movie. I’m talking about the new Prime Video streaming series based on the same true events, created by Will Graham and Abbi Jacobson, who also stars in the show as Carson Shaw, the catcher for the Rockford Peaches. It’s a great ensemble show and by digging deep into history and telling stories that have never been told in mainstream entertainment before, they’ve come up with one of the year’s best entertainments on any screen, big or small. I know there’s a lot of pressure on the performance of The Rings of Power, a monumental gamble for the streaming service, and any show that represents a half-billion dollar investment for the company producing it is going to end up under a microscope. I am digging The Rings of Power so far, and I am genuinely impressed by the scale of the thing. But A League of Their Own should be the show that they’re using as an example of who they can be as a streaming service, a home run masterpiece that expands the source material and more than justifies a return to the property.