montage #40: NYC IRL
I’ve been seeing the internet in everything I watch recently, but I think it has at least a little bit to do with the fact that the nastiness of the internet has begun to reflect the nastiness of the present day. I worry that 75% of this newsletter is just me saying “it used to be…,” but it used to be that people posting online were often and easily caricatured as sweaty social miscreants in their moms’ dank basements with no direct access to sunlight. It was easy to paint cyberbullies as nerds with no grasp on reality, which of course wasn’t really true. But times change, and nothing changes as quickly as the internet—especially with a certain ex-president’s success bringing burbling human malice to the surface, stripping it of any need for embarrassment or social contract. Now the internet is written all over the face of the physical world, and I guarantee you within a week Kamala Harris is going to walk up to a microphone and make a joke about coconuts and prove me right.
When I saw Yorgos Lanthimos’s sicko mode Kinds of Kindness anthology last weekend, this is all I could think about. The movie posits a world where some people seem to be going about their totally normal lives in totally normal ways, while other people are getting into boat loads of freak shit for no good reason; the ways in which these two paths sometimes intersect—a car crash, a sex tape, a walk home from school—reflects the (literally) violent absurdity of making a life for oneself in the present day. It’s oftentimes comforting to see your world reflected on screen in the movies, and walking into Kinds of Kindness an hour after a public assassination attempt on a frontrunning presidential candidate made the world of that particular movie not a reflection so much as a full-scale immersion.
Just a few days later, I watched Andrzej Zuwalski’s Possession for the first time (trying to milk Kanopy for all it’s worth before NYPL realizes I live here now) and had the same ecstatic experience: here was the unexplainable insanity of today, bursting into and overtaking the two-toned world until everything is in shambles. Horror movies are often doing this, but Possession’s insistence on refusing to illuminate its purpose or structure until the very end—and even then only just—is destabilizing in a different way, a way that feels like the very present daily experience of logging on, witnessing horrors without context, and continuing to make your way through the rest of your day somehow. And how are we supposed to make sense of that? How do we wrestle control of our own lives back from the internet’s gooey (sexy?) tentacles?
I don’t know the answer because there isn’t one, but I’d like to start doing my best. One of the advantages I was most looking forward to in moving to New York this summer is the way the city allows you to cast net after net into its open seas, trawling for community to whatever degree you hope to find it. There are a few nets I have in the water right now in an effort to live more of my life offline and steady the turbulence of maneuvering through an insane, actively dying empire. I want to run them down real quick for you because you’re all invited to participate! And if you don’t live in New York? And most of you probably don’t? Take this as a clarion call for community, I guess!
🗓️ Rep Screening Google Cals
It seems like anyone who cares about movies in New York has their own way of keeping track of what’s coming to which theater when. Screen Slate famously provides day-by-day info each week, and there are some Instagram accounts that collect rep showings, plus the Paradiso app—but none of these methods gather every major theater, and none of them give you calendar view options. More for my own cranial organization than anything else, I tackled a lightly insane project last week and created a separate Google Calendar for each rep theater (or regular theater with rep screenings, a la Alamo), going through a dozen websites and manually adding in every rep showing as far out as the theater has them scheduled. For some, this means movies for the next two weeks; for Village East by Angelika, this means through the end of 2024. What I love about these calendars is you can choose to look at just one at a time, or two or three at a time, or all 11 of them if you favor pure chaos. If you’d like access to any or all of them, please let me know! They really soothe me 😌
🌌 Show and Tell Club
Many years ago in the Bay Area, I was eager to meet new people and try new things, so I created a monthly get-together called Show and Tell Club. The idea was pretty straightforward: whoever’s turn it is that month picks something they love (to do/see/eat, doesn’t matter) and invites everyone along, sharing what they love about it along the way. Everyone is allowed and encouraged to bring friends, and you can pick and choose which events you go to—no limits, low expectations. We had a blast back then going to Alcatraz (one of my picks), shopping at the Alameda flea market (Rosa’s), hiking by the ocean (Lena’s), and lots more. Anyway, I’m revitalizing the idea this summer—for our first order of business, we’re headed to the Museum of the Moving Image on 7/28 for a screening of Speed Racer, then tacos across the street (can you tell this one’s my pick…). Prarthana’s already called August—don’t know what it is yet, but we’ll find out, won’t we! If this sounds fun to you, trust me, there’s always room for one (or fifty) more. Lmk!
💫 The Wig-Wag Zine and…Live Event???
One of my big goals for myself this year was to make a zine, and to make sure it happened I gave myself a public deadline (I always recommend this, especially if you give up easily). The August issue of wig-wag (randomly volume 33…the Jesus issue…?) will be its five-year anniversary, and to celebrate I’m making it a physical zine as well as the usual online form. I have never really made a zine before beyond fucking around in high school, and we’re slated to have about 10 pieces of all stripes chronicled in this thing—it’s going to rule, and I think I’m underestimating how much time it’s going to take. That’s ok! I’ll let you know when it’s out, so you can get a copy and sleep with it under your pillow. On top of that, winds are blowing about a potential live NYC wig-wag event for the release of the zine—I’m listening to these winds like a deeply traumatized Daisy Edgar-Jones playing quietly with dandelions in tornado alley… stay tuned, my friends! It’s becoming clearer and clearer that community is the only way forward through the binary code—all we can do is do our best to build it. I’m open to any ideas!
Movies I watched this week: Twister (really fun, nostalgic) and Twisters (really fun, IMAX); Possession (Sam Neill is one of the craziest looking people in this movie…he really aged into his hotness didn’t he); Cleo from 5 to 7 (stunning first time watch, at the Paris); Step Brothers (wanted something “silly” after a long beach day but I don’t think I’ll ever love this movie, unfortunately); In the Mood for Love (at IFC Center—perfect, obviously)
Just to follow up briefly on the silent discos at Lincoln Center, which I spoke of so rapturously in last week’s Friday Five: we went again this past Friday night and it sucked. No energy, no one really dancing, weird weird weird vibes. But I’m determined not to give up on it!! Clearly it all depends on the DJ…who up practicing they silent disco DJ skills rn…
I would love access to your doc!!