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It's important to do your homework when entering a new line of work so I've been reading books like Monster by John Gregory Dunne, about the years-long process of writing Up Close & Personal with Joan Didion and a slew of producers, and You'll Never Make Love In This Town Again—the title a send-up of the bestselling You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again (next on my list)—which I purchased on audiocassette and chronicles three high-class hookers blabbing on their celebrity clientele. The Kid Stays In The Picture is read by a very gravelly Bob Evans on audiobook: a must. Michael Ovitz's memoir was involuntarily funny because he's such a liar. I even read Disney War, a book about Michael Eisner's reign of terror at the Walt Disney Company. Now I'm on Tinderbox, which is a newly released oral history of HBO. I think it's good to be familiar with everything that can and has gone wrong in the movie and TV business so you can adjust your expectations and remain cautiously optimistic.
Mar 3, 2022
Related Recs
An unbelievably comprehensive 600-page oral history of the Village Voice, formerly the best of all US alt-weeklies and simply the main way anyone marginally cool knew wtf was going on in town before social media. Dripping with details (e.g. after being the only paper with writers/photographers on the ground at the Stonewall riot, the Gay Liberation Front was founded in rock critic Robert Christgau's spare journalism classroom (!)); casually interleaved with jaw-dropping adversarial interview appearances (both Donald Trump and Michael Alig drop in to give their own perspective on events); and unafraid to critique/discuss the Voice's own historic homophobic, racist, and sexist blindspots, I can't think of a better crash course in What People Talked About in 1960-1995 NYC (the Voice's subsequent Craigslist-induced decline era gets comparatively short shrift).
Apr 9, 2024
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Much like Bret Easton Ellis, Bruce Wagner has an insidious gift in capturing the life and antics of the people that run around Hollywood. If you’ve seen David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars he wrote that script and it’s kinda based on a culmination of all the themes and ideas from his previous works. Personally I’d recommend Force Majure and Dead Stars to start. Funny and harrowing as hell all his work makes for an engrossing read.
Dec 29, 2023
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The name dropping will leave you breathless!! the best niche ref is fern mallis. has anyone else read this?? bc I need to know what you think about the mountain of Snapple and mentos consumed and what it felt like for you to be in zoolander’s vacant head for 500 pages and what you think the ice and confetti were all about
Jan 28, 2024
Top Recs from @patrik-sandberg
Whenever I mention Night Flight Plus, no one knows what I’m talking about. It’s a streaming service named after (and featuring) the USA Network late-night cult series from the 1980s. It also includes a ton of films of the cult, horror, obscure music documentary, and exploitation variety. If you’re looking for Paul Morrissey, Troma Films, Vinegar Syndrome, or outdated TV specials about Minor Threat and Kate Bush, its curation is like a return to Kim’s Video… or my favorite VHS store from San Francisco, Le Video. The other night I watched an English-language Italian fashion giallo from 1988 called Too Beautiful To Die. It’s a totally outrageous masterpiece. It’s my favorite subscription. Feast your eyes.
Feb 21, 2025
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I was born in San Francisco and raised in Marin and Sonoma (specifically a town called Petaluma) and now that enough decades have past, I have a new appreciation for the beauty of the region—particularly as depicted by Hollywood's great genre filmmakers of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Of course, this includes great San Francisco movies like Vertigo (Hitchcock), Bullitt (Yates) and The Game (Fincher), but there are so many others that venture out to Monterey, Bodega Bay, and all the way up to Humboldt County. Some of my friends keep a running tally of "NorCal Noir" movies. Some favorites:
Salem's Lot (Miniseries, 1979), The Fog (1980), Play Misty For Me (1971), The Birds (1963), The Final Terror (1983), Firefox (1982), Dead and Buried (1981), Murder She Wrote (TV episodes, various), Cujo (1983), Point Blank (1967).
There are probably many others but between the midcentury architecture, west coast hippie/yuppie dialectic, atmospheric coastal fog, and rolling hills, it's a distinct vibe that always feels incredibly indulgent and tasteful even when it's lent in service of schlock.
Nov 24, 2024
My friend Aaron put me onto Badvril, the best band presently crawling out of San Francisco—the cesspool from whence we all came. And they sound like it, in all the most perfect, sludgy, narcotic, dreamy, total-eclipsing sort of ways. If you like shoegaze, Catherine Wheel, early Pumpkins, '90s alt revival, or melodic punk that pre-dates the Hot Topic era, you will die and go to heaven listening to their I AM GOD EP. that came out in February.
The desirous thing about becoming a fan before there is too much noise is that it's easy to catch up on their back catalogue. And then Becket becomes your Instagram friend and sends you the new unreleased album and it's the best music you've ever heard in your life. One wrong move and they could be too huge to handle. I wish them all the money in the world.
Dec 9, 2024