🎥
i'm never on youtube, but today i was and i randomly clicked on this movie by a creator i know for his shorter sketches, Joel Haver. the movie is not really my thing— the acting is not very good and the script takes unnecessary turns at certain points, but it is definitely a new style of screenwriting that I haven't really seen.
but that's all besides the point because the first two minutes are amazing and I think really a simple and beautiful way to talk about falling in love. i wish the sound mixing was better but it still i think strikes a chord.
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Mike Mills' film Beginners is actually what made me start my Substack. After the credits rolled and the screen went black, I kept walking around, talking to friends and family, unable to shut up about it. I had to keep grinding down the topic of love, how bad people are at it, and how childlike we are in it, over and over again. Then, while watching Fire of Love, I realized Miranda July (recent author of All Fours and another current obsession of mine) was narrating it. Looking at her Wikipedia page I realized that the two of them are MARRIED. They have the most beautiful photo together, young and in love and in bed. When I look at it I try to imagine if they, like me in all my relationships, were also bad at loving and being loved in the beginning.
Sep 18, 2024
🎬
Rewatched this on Valentine’s Day when I was feeling down and it made me giggle for the first time in weeks.
this movie is inexplicably human and to an extent everything we are told we are not supposed to do — waste away a day and fall in love with a stranger. In the end, the movie is about giving in — to ourselves, to our deepest desires no matter how impractical.
Feb 18, 2025
🎞
I’m always keeping my thoughts on the few films I choose to write about solely within the pages of my notes up, so I figured what the heck! Maybe someone out there might like the two cents I want to spend on talking about a film that moved me :] Spoilers, ofc!!!
(2/2/25) Absolutely beautiful film. Watched it with katlafo, and we were both sobbing messes by the end. Throughout the beginning, I spent so much time trying to analyze the film, thinking I HAD to figure out the underlying message of a film I’d heard so much about before I’d even truly experienced it for myself. Man.
The scene where Greg shows Rachel her film was so beautiful. Again, I tried to pin point what it all meant in the moment—the constant cuts to Greg and Rachel’s pained expressions, the long shots of seemingly symbolic stop-motion—but I realized that that was exactly what was keeping me from what I longed for. So I sat there, and felt. And cried, and cried.
Later, the scene where Greg chooses to go to Rachel’s room, allowing himself to simply exist in the silence, taking in the remnants of her life, it was all so beautiful; the tears just wouldn’t stop, haha.
While I didn’t leave this film with some life changing message I was subconsciously searching for, I feel this movie reminds me to love myself the way I do others; and to do things because they matter to ME, because I care about them.
While I want to say I’ll never trust anything that tells me someone or something won’t die at the end, I know that’s not true.
Feb 3, 2025
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there’s this band called Big Star that started releasing records in 1971 that capture an indie rock/folk sound i think more clearly than any artist had before, but had no real success while they were first active in the 70s.
their sound was so undeniable that we start to see a new generation of musicians that discover the band and create music inspired by it with much greater success, an inspiration that can be undoubtedly heard in these musicians’ writing.
my favorites of these Big Star Influenced artists:
Elliott Smith (and thru him, phoebe bridgers)
The Replacements
R.E.M
Wilco
Teenage Fanclub
Jeff Buckley
(and many more)
Sep 30, 2024
such a hauntingly beautiful record — will forever be associated with big life changes and with fall
Sep 30, 2024
📝
hi there! funnily enough I also go to school for songwriting (kinda, I'm a music production major but I'm in songwriting class with all of the songwriting majors and have been writing for a long time as well). if there was one text I'd recommend for working on your songwriting and lyric building process it'd be the exercises in the book "How to Write One Song" by Jeff Tweedy. he basically just shows you how to jumble up your current way of thinking about writing and finding new ways to put words together that you never thought you could do.
P.S. your line about wanting to creating lyrics that move people is very relatable and I understand that want very much and know you probably already are moving people and that as much as we want to be able to write like our heroes as soon as possible, our own just as powerful sound will come eventually with slow and hard work. I'm sure you know this but I thought I would say.
feel free to message me if you'd like to talk songwriting more—happy writing!
Oct 1, 2024