Newsletter catch-up free for all

Just a grab bag of things I want to write about

I have a running list of ideas for future newsletters that I keep on my desktop. Whenever I read, watch, or do something I think might make for an interesting blog post, I jot the idea down so I’ll have something to turn to when I’m at a loss for ideas. Unfortunately, these last few weeks, I’ve had more ideas than I’ve had time to sit down and actually write a newsletter. Thus, this is going to be a quick, rapid-fire journal of some media I’ve consumed lately and enjoyed:

I really enjoyed Susan Morrison’s biography of Lorne Michaels, simply titled LORNE. The book explores Michaels’ career from his roots in Canadian comedy (after a brief stint trying to sell old military vehicles to tourists in England) to his on-and-off-and-on-seemingly-forever relationship with SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. I’m not sure if Morrison (or Michaels himself, for that matter) would have ever intended the book to act as a leadership guide, but I found myself really soaking in some of the lessons Lorne imparts to his SNL crew, as reported on by Morrison. As depicted in the book, Lorne Michaels is a focused, godlike leader in Studio 8H, but in his later years at least, he seems to have become rather hands-off, letting his team make decisions and succeed or fail on their own. He gives feedback (sometimes incredibly harsh feedback) after each sketch plays during dress rehearsal, but - until Saturday night - he does not micromanage the rehearsals or the writing. The show directly reflects his tastes, but he’s not the one preparing the meal every week. Learning leadership from Lorne Michaels wasn’t on my bingo card for 2025, but I enjoyed the insight into a supremely successful entertainer’s work style. The fact that the book was also entertaining as hell was just a nice bonus.

When I first wrote “MYTHIC QUEST” in my list of potential newsletter ideas, it was to write about its then recently aired season finale. In the weeks since, though, the announcement has come out that the episode will now actually serve as the series finale. MYTHIC QUEST aired on Apple+ and was a show about the behind-the-scenes drama that goes into running a massive multiplayer online game. The show was great, and I was particularly a fan of its tangent episodes - one or two per season - in which the main story would be dropped in favor of a side quest about a character on the periphery. The two-parter tangent in season two - “Backstory!” and “Peter” - are two of my favorite hours of television ever. Apple had recently released a four-part spin-off of MYTHIC QUEST called SIDE QUESTS, and those were all super fun episodes that only tangentially had to do with the main story. Maybe straying too much from the story is what did the show in. It’s a bummer that MYTHIC QUEST has met its end - especially since the creators recently released a “patch” that removed the cliffhanger that the final episode previously ended on in favor of something more pat and pleasing for finality's sake. My favorite part about MYTHIC QUEST was watching series co-creator and co-star Rob McElhenney grow as an actor across the four seasons. McElhenny has gone on record saying that he believes he’s the weakest actor in the IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILIDELPHIA cast, and it is true that he’s not always the flashiest. Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton, Kaitlin Olson, and Danny DeVito are usually given more broad comedic bits to play with, but McElhenny has always been the secret weapon. With MYTHIC QUEST, though, he’s developed into an incredible dramatic actor. I’m excited for more SUNNY episodes this summer, but I’m even more excited to see what McElhenny does next now that MYTHIC QUEST has concluded.

I read Matt Haig’s THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY this month on the recommendation of my wife and really enjoyed it. Were elements of the story - after committing suicide, a woman finds herself able to revisit various parallel lives she could have lived if she had made different choices throughout her life - predictable? Yes, but THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY was a good reminder that the plot isn’t always king. Sometimes, a well-worn story is still made extremely enjoyable by how it’s told and the characters used to tell it. Haig’s prose is crisp and clever, and THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY feels like an intersection of cozy beach reading and existential TWILIGHT ZONE weirdness. It reminded me a lot of one of my favorite novels, Ken Grimwood’s REPLAY - and any book that reminds me of REPLAY will be worth a recommendation. THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY is a book about living in regret and how that can lead to a life full of profound sadness. I have personally been guilty of living a life spent looking behind me instead of forwards. Perhaps it was reading THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY, or maybe it was some health scares in my family, but I took some time last week to put together a list of things that were important to me and how I would like to spend my time. I stapled the list to my wall and am focused on trying my best to live every day, moving towards that list instead of bemoaning the road I had previously chosen.

The day Val Kilmer died, I started reading his memoir I’M YOUR HUCKLEBERRY. The book is a wildly different portrait of the notoriously thorny actor than I expected. I had heard stories of Kilmer the hellraiser and Kilmer the set disrupter, but the version of Kilmer that the actor chose to put out into the world with his memoir is that of a humbled man. I’M YOUR HUCKLEBERRY deals quite a bit with the actor’s relationship with his religion (Christian Science) and pursuit of love. He paints himself as a romantic, doomed to have had every significant romantic relationship in his adult life fall apart. He doesn’t really spend much time writing about what ultimately caused the relationships to end, just as he doesn’t detail some of the legendary stories of Kilmer’s fights with directors and studios. It’s OK, though. Every man and woman is entitled to tell their own story, and Kilmer’s story is that of a man who once had the world at his fingertips but, due to bad business decisions and health problems, was left living in Cher’s guesthouse and remaining celibate for the last twenty years of his life. It was actually depressing to read I’M YOUR HUCKLEBERRY. Val Kilmer was a force of nature and clearly a man who preferred to choose artistic pursuits over commercial ones. Still, even he was forced into decades of making crap movies to dig himself out of the financial hole he had found himself in during the last decade of his life. He was a man whose dreams were always just out of reach, even as he got to live others' dreams as he played Batman or dated Cindy Crawford. RIP Val Kilmer, you made some damn good movies and will be remembered for a long time to come.

I’ve been enjoying Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s new show, THE STUDIO (on Apple+, so probably soon to be canceled). The show is an inside baseball depiction of the behind-the-scenes drama at a major Hollywood studio. Rogen plays a newly appointed head of a film studio struggling to make the kind of movies he loves (highbrow, auteur-driven) in a world that demands superheroes, remakes, and IP pillaging. The show fully embraces cringe humor - with every episode frequently presenting scenes as uncomfortable as you’re likely to find on television this side of VIDEODROME. The most recent episode, though, hit a little close to home. “The Pediatric Oncologist” sees Rogen on a date with guest star Rebecca Hall, who plays the titular doctor. Immediately, Rogen’s ego is bruised when Hall and her work colleagues dismiss his line of work. Even as somebody whose job in the entertainment industry is remarkably further down the pecking order than Rogen’s Matt Remick, I have found myself in similar situations. Because of my job, I live and breathe movies 24/7. This means that I will probably be more invested in Hollywood and its output than anybody else in any room of normies I might find myself in. I know more about films and their release dates; I know more about what’s been developed and what bombed at the box office recently. Over the years, I’ve learned to dumb down my knowledge of film when talking to people outside the industry. If somebody says something wrong, I don’t correct them. But there’s only so much I can take. As Rogen’s character talks to his girlfriend’s doctor friends, they mention how dangerous it is to go to the movies since COVID, how there’s been nothing worth watching since Barbenheimer, and how the television at home is better than any movie screen in a theater. Blah, blah, blah. These are all things I’ve heard too. But here’s the thing - you can’t stick up for the entertainment industry. Nobody is going to sympathize with you if you work in film. Your job is seen as fun and unimportant, and - I know, I know - it is fun and unimportant! It’s fluff and everybody has an opinion about fluff. It doesn’t matter if that opinion is bullshit; it’s still valid because you’re still dealing with something ultimately inconsequential whose effect on society is intangible. I can get butt hurt all I want because people don’t understand my job is hard and when people sneak candy into the theater, they are taking food off my family’s plate, but nobody is going to care in the end. THE STUDIO is a great show that I’m sure will continue to hit me where it hurts. And I can’t wait.