The Friday Article Roundup
There's no disguising the best pop culture writing of the week.
This week, you will face up to:
Send articles throughout the next week to magpiesmedia [at] gmail, post articles from the past week below for discussion and Have a Happy Friday!
Marya E. Gates interviews Rick Baker about making up monsters and men — including Eddie Murphy in Coming To America — at Letterboxd:
I loved that he had fun with the makeup. He joked that he could go to the mall in that makeup. And I said, “Yeah—but I don’t think they’ll take your credit card.” I enjoyed the experience of working with somebody who made the makeup look better and had fun with it. When we were filming the scene with the old Jewish man, Eddie got in a golf cart and drove around the studio, trying to sell scripts to people, trying to make dates with secretaries. John asked, “Where’s Eddie?” I’m, like, “He took off in a golf cart.”
At the LA Review of Books, Adam Sobsey uses two new tomes to make the case for AOR and New Age equivalence:
One generation of baby boomers, two very different modes of musical expression. Or were they? Both New Age and AOR—“album-oriented rock,” a genre invention and coinage of early 1970s radio-biz consultants bent on imposing all that music your dad liked, and probably still does (e.g., Boston, Kansas, Foreigner, Journey, Styx, Toto), on Americans’ ears—were partly derived from prog rock. Both relied on the advent of analog synthesizers, plus a lot of drugs (New Age: psychedelics and marijuana; AOR: cocaine and booze). Both took advantage of burgeoning new distribution formats that allowed for proliferation suited to their respective listening communities, which were in both cases overwhelmingly white, as were the musicians. Both were preferred for planetarium laser shows. Both were inclined toward spacey album art. Both have been “so widely misunderstood, so consistently scorned,” as Rees says of AOR but Smith could just as easily say of New Age. And both, like their boomer inventors, still predominate in the American sonic landscape and commodity marketplace.
For The Ringer, Tyler Barker sings the praises of Brad Leland and Buddy Garrity:
It’s important to understand that this man could, for reasons not entirely clear, charm the fangs off a snake. Sometimes, a sad sack. Other times, charisma in two boots. Raekwon once said the words “lemonade leathers,” and I feel Buddy Garrity understands that. He’s on that same wavelength, the latest fleece wear and all that. Drink in his electric visage, behind the wheel of his own personal E-Z Go, pink-cheeked and heart bursting, cruising the sidelines, ready for some football.
Mark Asch reviews For The Moon, a documentary with a unique perspective, at The Art Newspaper:
[Director Éric] Baudelaire distributed Sony handicams to five of the students, some fully blind and some severely visually impaired. (The footage was assembled with editor Claire Atherton, a longtime collaborator of Chantal Akerman.) In an early scene, Kadiatou, a philosophically inclined girl, shows a classmate how to use the camera; we see through the lens as the girls’ hands feel their way around the lens cap. A beautiful film, Kadiatou opines, “has to be properly shot and all that”, but also “appearing natural, and filming according to our intuition. I think intuition is more beautiful than something that’s scripted or staged or precise.” It will be beautiful because it came from them.
And Daniel Kolitz breaks down the fast-growing genre of microdrama for the New York Times:
One thing confused me: “Bound by Love,” which in its finished form would run more than two and a half hours, was to be shot at a variety of locations over the course of just 11 days. And yet, in the three hours I’d spent on set, the crew had worked through what seemed like barely two minutes of screen time. The key grip had an explanation for this: The scenes they were shooting that day were for an early episode, one that would appear before the viewer hit the paywall. As at least a dozen people would subsequently inform me, the platforms are not overly invested in the quality of the episodes that come after — i.e., the episodes a viewer has actually paid to see. If we were to apply this logic to “Bound by Love,” that would mean that some measure of care would be lavished on precisely 15 of its 118 episodes.
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What did we watch?
Babylon 5, Season Five, Episode Sixteen, “And All My Dreams Torn Asunder”
Everyone here is putting 100% into a plotline that’s kind of dumb and boring. One of Grant’s observations about The Shield was that it never repeated itself in a major way, and this puts into perspective what he meant; this is just season one Centauri stuff again where Londo being in charge doesn’t really make any meaningful difference. Even the plotting here – it’s clear that Londo has no idea what’s going on and that there are wheels within wheels again as actions spin out of control – is really good, it’s just in service to something that feels lacking in meaning.
Hammett – The titular ex-Pinkerton man and nascent writer is strong armed by his one time mentor to help on a case, and of course gets sucked into murder, conspiracy, and depravity. In theory this is supposed to offer a different approach to neo-noir, the world as seen by someone who’s more writer than detective now, but it doesn’t get that, and the sometimes convoluted plot feels more Chandler than Hammett. This was Wim Wnders’s first American project, and while I am not conversant with Winders’s style at all, the internet tells me you can’t really find it here. What’s more, he was made to reshoot huge chunks of the movie, and legends has it that producer Francis Ford Coppola took over in the chair (Wenders denies this). Fair to say, it’s not great but it could have been a lot worse. Frederic Forrest is very good as Sam Hammett (I don’t know if anyone till Lillian Hellman called him Dash), Marilu Henner is okay as his occasional girlfriend, Peter Boyle is fair, and Elisha Cook steals the show as a cab driver who’s a former Wobblie. The movie steers clear for the most part of obvious references, but there is a scene with a fat British and his young, thuggish boy toy, a scene where of course Hammett uses the word “gunsel” correctly, and during the scene, the cab driver is still just a few feet away. Deja vu for Cook!
The late Joe Gores’ books, one of which served as the basis of HAMMETT, are pretty good, but as anyone familiar with THE AMERICAN FRIEND could tell you, Wender’s isn’t tonally faithful to the genres he works in when working outside of arthouse picaresque projects. The hard boiled sensibility of Dashiell Hammett’s books isn’t in his wheelhouse, even if the poetic realism of noir is. Coppola, I think, tried to impose a nostalgic toughness to the project, and it doesn’t sit to well with the overall artifice of the production.
Wenders’ subsequent film, THE STATE OF THINGS, serves, in part, as his therapeutic hit piece on Coppola. It’s a beautifully shot (in widescreen black and white) homage to the genre depicting European filmmaking. It’s a bit hard to track down, but worth the effort.
Ouija: Origin of Evil – my horror viewing this season has largely followed the format of “eh, click on the first thing that pops up”. Solid results again here, I remember hearing this was a massive step up from the first Ouija film (which I haven’t seen) which was enough to recommend it. And indeed, it delivers some excellent scares and atmosphere, although for me it fell a little short towards the end when it gets a little too overloaded with lore and excess CGI. Still, good spooky fun.
Flanagan had a lot to say about the making of Origin. I can certainly respect making the best damn PG-13 prequel to a movie about a ouija board that you can, even if the audience wasn’t quite there.
https://www.tumblr.com/flanaganfilm/718620053295316992/hi-mike-i-am-loving-the-long-posts-youve-been
The Hitcher — a nightmare. Maybe two nightmares, Howell and Hauer’s initial meeting is a mistake that immediately becomes a disaster but Howell extricates himself surprisingly quickly. But that just starts the deeper bad dream, where Hauer becomes supernatural in his appearances and menace. I think the opening section is important in a subtle way, Hauer kills the driver of that VW beetle we saw at the very beginning so we know his existence and evil is outside of Howell’s world, so his choice of Howell after Howell’s rejection has meaning, even if it is inscrutable. Hauer becomes a nemesis and mentor, and Robert Harmon finds a balance between the gore and action (the car carnage here is fan fucking tastic, what a world we have lost) and the empty landscapes and dreamy isolation, this was Eric Red’s first script and he and Katherine Bigelow clearly took notes from Harmon’s work here when making Near Dark. The movie actually goes to where it says it will at the end and then it stops. Great shit.
Tales From The Crypt, “The Man Who Was Death” — quite the watch with last night’s news. I would like to think televising executions would make them less palatable but Bill Sadler (and wonderful That Guy Roy Brocksmith) are pretty convincing it would not. There’s only one way to come around in the end, and Sadler sells this as well as he does the rest of his stone cold classic EC protagonist.
What did we read?
Lenin: A Biography, Chapter Twelve, Robert Service
Plotwise – and I know I’m talking about actual history here – the two essential elements are Lenin breaking up with his mistress and the Party being undermined by one of their own turning traitor. The Soviet communists were largely defined by paranoia that managed to reverse the old adage, to wit: just because they’re out to get you doesn’t mean you’re not being paranoid; this was an actual example of a traitor in their mix that would add to their belief they were constantly facing internal enemies, even when they weren’t.
This also delves into the flipside of Lenin’s fanatical self-belief I talked about last week, where Lenin’s unspoken assumption is that he’s right about everything and anyone who disagrees is basically wrong; again, something that would serve him well when he’s actually in charge (and has people agreeing with him) and ranges from obnoxious to undermining him now. Service notes that at this point in his life (1913), basically nobody had heard of Lenin outside his tiny circle, and he wasn’t that respected or interesting within it.
The Spoiled Earth, Jessica Stirling
I was in the mood for something that was just a novel, and man, did this deliver. It’s essentially a Workers Rights And Also Feminism novel about women living and working in Scotland in the 1870’s; the plot kicks off with an explosion in the mine that kills almost all the men in the Stalker family, which drives them all to various plans. The central scheme is that the family works to get the only surviving son into law school; one of the big Worker’s Rights aspects of the book is that there’s not really any central protagonist, with each person reacting to it in a big way, though Mirriam ends up with the biggest story in the book as she works for (and falls in love with) the guy who owns the mine itself, setting off conversations about class.
Anyone who knows the basics about Workers Rights And Also Feminism will not be that surprised by the themes of the book, though they are delivered impeccably and efficiently. Much of this is about how much work women have to do just to get by, let alone to get a big task accomplished; there’s a runner about the youngest son and his twin sister, and how the former has so many more opportunities despite having, if anything, fewer ambitions (at least until the opportunity to become a lawyer and to better himself comes along). I wasn’t particularly surprised by any of the plot turns here, but they were delivered beautifully.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, John Carreyrou
A book on Theranos from the guy who broke the scandal publicly. The most fascinating thing about this is the divide between Elizabeth Holmes, who is a mystic con artist with an otherworldly charisma, and Sunny Balwani, who is a garden-variety asshole. Like, it genuinely became amusing just how banal Balwani was; dimwitted, incurious, and a braggart concerned solely with status. Not to say Holmes was particularly strange; the ironic thing is that she probably would have been happiest keeping her head down and being well-liked by her friends and family as opposed to trying to, you know, achieve something.
There are two competing narratives here; the first is of Holmes as a genius charisma bomb who lies and manipulates her way to the top, and the other is how blatantly and patently obvious it was to everyone around her that her company was bullshit and barely holding together. A good ninety percent of Holmes’s success came down to her already having the money to fail, mostly from either her family or from Balwani, and managing to bilk investors who were rich enough to take the risk and usually distant enough to be unaware how full of shit she was as well as cycle out inconvenient employees.
Carreyrou deliberately withholds any real analysis of Holmes’s motivation or her place in the larger culture of Silicon Valley until the epilogue. For the former, sprinkled throughout is her pleasure at the image and at being well thought-of; her fandom of Steve Jobs is difficult to pin down precisely, but she gets a real thrill out of recreating the imagery. For the latter, Carreyrou describes her as an extension of Silicon Valley principles of secrecy and combining overpromising with underdelivery.
Scorsese on Scorsese, edited by Ian Christie and David Thompson
A series of interviews with Martin Scorsese as he talks about all his films released up to that date; the second-last chapter is him discussing the future projects he’s most interested in, The Aviator and Silence. As you might expect, it’s gorgeous, almost a novelistic warping of Scorsese into a Scorsese protagonist. Obviously, his love of film shines through; he actually references movies about as often as Tarantino, though he’s usually concerned much more about what he does and does not relate to as opposed to pulling back and looking at ideas in a more objective sense.
There’s really a sense that Scorsese sees the world purely in terms of self-expression; I realise one thing that attracts me to his sensibility is that he’s clinically incapable of judging even the worst people he’s talking about, because as he sez at one point, they’re all still people, and he can’t consider himself above them when he himself has struggled with evil impulses. To take a leaf out of Scorsese’s book, these are attitudes I relate to.
I read Bad Blood recently too–I’d bought it after seeing the first documentary about Holmes, and now finally read it in preparation for seeing the new one–and that “patently obvious” trainwreck quality was a big part of the fascination for me, because it’s both riveting and infuriating to watch how many people tried and failed to point out the emperor’s lack of clothes. (And, of course, Holmes and Balwani had the money to crush most opposition through prolonged legal persecution, Holmes’s charisma, and people’s unwillingness to face that fact that they’ve been deceived. Something heartbreaking about that kid’s beloved grandfather ultimately siding with Holmes over him.)
I can understand at least a version of how Holmes could get herself into this situation, which is not the same thing as understanding her, necessarily; she might not have had the feelings I’m attributing to her. I’d like to get a better idea of exactly what her perspective on all of it was, but I’m not sure she’ll ever offer that in an honest way even if she got to the point of really wanting to. We all edit our own memories.
I read it partly because Conor talked about it this week (and it’s always funny to scoop him) but mainly because the Nathan Fielder documentary is coming out soon, where we’ll presumably get a little bit more of her perspective, even through the twisted way Fielder will try and get us there – I hear there are multiple twists with the implication that she nearly gets one over on him at least once, which will be exciting.
Agreed on the sadness of that one kid – it was nice that they managed to reconcile before he died, and I wonder how much of that was him simply and finally falling for a scheme and refusing to admit it because he’d come through so many.
Damn your scoops! I got the impression that Holmes would have been better off as a religious cult leader where there would’ve been less scrutiny of her schemes; she even mentions that what they’re doing is a religion and I ended up thinking “I mean, in a cult, there’s no one to ask questions about the device you’re building.”
I’m caught between “Yeah, it would have been smarter of Holmes to choose a world with less scientific scrutiny and objective measures of success” and “what does it say about Silicon Valley and their supposed objectivity that she got as far as she did”.
Nothing good lol. Really she should have not made a medical device because that involves scientists, doctors, etc. – people who love regulation and facts. (The world dodged a bullet when Holmes’ medical devices didn’t really get the opportunity to hurt or kill more people.)
I’ve come to the conclusion that the acceptance of Humanity’s messiness is what RAGING BULL boils down to. For all of it’s stylistic cohesion, I’m not sure if it works emotionally, particularly in ascribing empathy with LaMotta through its point of view pyrotechnics–but maybe acceptance, not empathy, was the point.
Finished the bio of Samuel Adams. Generally good but perhaps a bit under-critical of the master propagandist. And having once again come across how the whole tea tax thing was a bailout for the East India Company, I found a book on that subject, though their misdeed with colonial tea are a very small part of the show.
Started the third Witcher book, which so far is focused on Geralt’s unexpected young ward Ciri, but no doubt will soon raise the stakes.
Listening to The Rare Coin Score, Parker novel #9, which I had read before but didn’t really remember other than it introduces Claire. This is a banger of a book, with a good balance between the heist (and what goes wrong), getting to know the other characters bit by bit, and actually getting inside Parker’s head. As much of a sociopath as he is, he has a fair degree of self-awareness and I think it’s fair to say that part of him wants a stable relationship, even if he isn’t the sort one would say falls in love. The formation of Parker’s enduring connection with Claire is fascinating. At some level, I wish we had seen more of her after this – she plays a big role in one more book, and then is just occasionally mentioned, though it’s clear that the relationship is stable and that she is a big part of his support system without ever going near his work – but I get why she doesn’t come back. She wants to be in the background and Westlake keeps her there. (The audiobook is okay. The reader makes Parker sound too much like Clint Eastwood, but overall he does right by the book’s voice.)
It’s a lot easier to see on a return trip through the books how much Parker is destabilized post-Lynn and pre-Claire — not to the point of danger but he’s very nearly there at the start of the Rare Coin Score. Deadly Edge is about the two of them obtaining and then defending a home, but the real home for Parker is Claire, a hotel is ultimately fine for his purposes (and the end of the series hints this is where they are going back to). I think part of the overall lack of Claire is Stark not wanting to examine this too closely, which is the right call in the end — too much analysis would not fit the books or the character. But it’s there and necessary.
Plus we do get to see how Westlake writes relationships elsewhere, and more of Parker and Claire would not be as interesting as any of the couples in the Dortmunder books or the Mackeys or even what we see of Grofield and Mary.
Reading King Sorrow by Joe Hill which apparently takes place in the Kingverse, explicitly mentioning events from The Dead Zone. The actual effect reminds me of The Secret History mashed up with IT, and there are some bravura thriller and horror scenes here like the whole plane countdown. Plus Hill doesn’t have his dad’s often grating ticks (Oh thanks for inserting that childhood nonsense rhyme again, Uncle Steve, you only mentioned it like twenty-five times in the book already.) Once they got into government intervention and more into the macro it’s started losing me a little. More into the consequences of their murders and King Sorrow being a giant ancient dragon.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle – More next week but I am not surprisingly into it.
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James – a seasonally appropriate pick from the ongoing Guardian list project. It’s a memorable ghost story but James’ prose drove me a little crazy, and left me slightly dreading his other two books on the list. Kinda glad I’d previously seen The Innocents so I could fall back on my memories of that when the author was intent on descending into endless nested sentences.
Now halfway through Dracula, which entered the world one year earlier but feels vastly more modern in terms of the writing. And I am absolutely loving it! More when I reach the end.
Fuck yeah, Dracula!
I feel like I vibe more with Henry James when he’s not even trying to have more of a plot and just goes full Jamesian, so I liked The Portrait of a Lady Not on Fire and Daisy Miller better than Turn of the Screw, to my surprise. But I feel like I’ll never be a huge fan: maybe I’m too much of a Victorianist, and he tips a little too much over into being a Modernist for my taste? A shame, because I appreciate finding literary masters who have made my last name into an artistic adjective. At least I love M.R. James.
That’s encouraging, thanks! Portrait of a Lady and The Golden Bowl are the other two on this particular list, I’ve already sourced a copy of The Golden Bowl so I guess I’ll try it sooner or (more likely) later…
Dracula though! Fuck yeah!
A Small Town In Germany, by John Le Carre — the town in question is Bonn, the capital of West Germany and where Le Carre himself was stationed at one point, although not in the late 60s when this is set. An attache of sorts disappears with many sensitive documents and MI5 agent Alan Turner is dispatched to investigate and tamp things down so this scandal doesn’t thwart Britain’s attempt to join the Common Market (the precursor to the EU); this needs the support of the German government to succeed but a populist rabble-rouser is making this difficult and his rallies are converging on Bonn itself. Turner is a lower-class brute who uses these characteristics to unnerve his targets but the hermetic world of an embassy is not so easy to crack and for a while the book has a very weird vibe, James Bond as Sgt. Howie investigating the diplomats’ version of Summersisle (the book predates The Wicker Man). Le Carre as always is a master of insinuation and machination and the way people fuck these things up, he was also getting extremely divorced while writing this and that pops in at times (Turner is also on the outs with his wife) for a less successful and almost surreal tone. But Bonn is a surreal place, mists and alliances that replace firm ground, the kind of straightforward thinking that both Turner and the man he is chasing hold to. What makes this so grim in the end is how all of the British political and social games seem so foolish as something darker comes crashing in, but those games are still enough to absorb the darkness. What that absorption does is not really thought about, although Neville Chamberlain is mentioned more than a few times in passing. Late in the book Turner is told the job is to maintain the high and low tides, three inches in either direction, and not to disrupt the position of a fading empire in a changing world, and if Le Carre does not agree with that he makes clear why it happens. Dark and despairing stuff, a peaty single malt of a spy book.
Gwen, In Green, by Hugh Zachary – Trashy Paperback From Hell full of sexploitation and eco-horror. Gwen is frigid, married to a man who understands her feelings but also teaches Gwen the joys of sex. They buy a large parcel of rural land in an area quickly becoming a suburb for cheap since the creek that runs through it is cooling effluent from the nearby nuclear power plant. But Gwen isn’t bothered by that; after all, the radiation isn’t all that high, and who doesn’t want to make their husband happy? Her husband builds a house, stripping the land and clearing trees. They like to swim in a pond on the property that holds a deadly secret and Gwen takes care of the dying plants, few remaining trees, and especially the Venus flytraps that grow near the pond. She starts having conversations with the flytraps, feeling their pain and becoming an advocate for the surrounding plant life, with increasing violence. She begins having disturbing nightmares and eventually outpacing her husband in sexual drive. She seduces the meter reader, construction workers and people start to go missing. It’s a sick and twisted Poison Ivy origin. Zachary comments on the growing eco-movement of the time and women’s liberation in a pulpy and sleazy style, and Gwen’s past sexual trauma and awakening is handled with the pop psychology of a man from 1974. But the sex scenes are tame enough not to give fifteen year-old boys nightmares.
As long as we’ve got The Ringer up, let’s certainly not overlook this look back at 30 Rock (which premiered 20 years ago this coming Sunday!) and all its fake shows:
https://www.theringer.com/2026/10/08/tv/30-rock-20th-anniversary-tina-fey-fake-shows-parody
That really points out how much the show’s comedy came from putting insane amounts of effort into stupid ideas – building whole sets for six second jokes, like the Black Fraiser set.
Using your SNL connections to get Will Ferrell, the biggest man in comedy for a decade, and deploying him for two five-second clips — that is how it is done, folks.
I also love stuff like how they put together Leap Dave Williams: “Well, we want to make fun of a Jim Carrey-type movie… Hey, you think we can get Jim Carrey?”
It’s amazing they pulled off something as brilliant as Homonym so deep into their run.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL just started reading this and —
“Mean Girls gets quoted back to me a lot—brag much?—but the 30 Rock people,” Fey says, “they are the Elvis Costello fans of comedy.”
She’s still got it!
Year of the Month updates:
Here’s all the movies, albums, books from 1998 you can sign up for this October!
Oct. 9th: Gillian Nelson: Mighty Joe Young
Oct. 13th: John Bruni: High Art
Oct. 18th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Who Moved My Cheese?
Oct. 30th: Gillian Nelson: Halloweentown
And coming in November, get ready to write about anything from 1968! Here’s some lists of movies, albums, books, and TV to get you started.
Nov. 8th: Tristan Nankervis: Night of the Living Dead
Nov. 22nd: Tristan Nankervis: Slouching Towards Bethlehem