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You know what is sometimes good? Leaving the house. It’s something I tend to forget. Even in the pre-pandemic world I could become a bit of a shut-in, especially when working on something big. It’s like you just forget to engage in anything outside of your own realm. And if you’re me, you tell yourself that isolation is a part of a larger Very Smart and Disciplined creative philosophy. Nope! That’s utter horseshit. As I was recently reminded when I was forced to leave my home/writing cave to come out to LA and celebrate the release of the MMITB doc. In between events, a friend and checked out Joan Didion: What She Means, curated by Didion’s friend, the writer Hilton Als. It’s weird to have a visual art exhibit about a writer. And even weirder to have an art exhibit about a writer curated by another writer. What is the art part? What are we looking at that collectively gets at some larger truth or sense of understanding of Didion’s work? But I loved it. So much. Didion herself was a kind of alchemist. A magpie assembler of facts and impressions and senses of things into work that felt, in its refracted, prismatic, fractured way, like the most unflinching, crystal-clear rendering of the modern world imaginable. This exhibition so captured that. I was walking through it, looking at things on walls and in cases – photos of Didion smiling as a young woman (riveting and almost upsetting to see her before her stare became her calling card) and vintage Vogues and video of John Wayne and Diane Arbus photographs – and feeling all the things I felt when I first read Didion: gob smacked, agitated, exhilarated, and… in a hurry to go home and write.
Nov 2, 2022
Related Recs
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The best $25 I spend every month. Literally pays for itself if you see one movie
plus if I see a bad movie I don’t feel like I wasted money
Jan 30, 2024
I recently watched The Monkey for free at Chicago's Music Box Theatre — and even stuck around for Perkin's Q&A session. I have to say, it was the best movie-going experience I've ever had. An organist played the score with diabolical cymbals in the background — come on! And the movie was hilarious and equal parts gory!
Feb 11, 2025
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Going to the movies rocks. this was honestly such a hard question. This isn’t exactly the ~best~ movie but it is a great movie to see in a theater
From like 19-20 going to the Landmark in Westwood to see the Room with my friends rocked. The Room is such a funny bad movie and it’s even better at this theater because of all the canned responses the audience has to the shit happening on screen. its similar to how campy people get with Rocky Horror Picture Show. People throw plastic spoons and loudly jeer at the movie. occasionally Tommy Wiseau and maybe Greg Sestero will show up and you can take a pic. Highly recommend pregaming and then going with your friends at least once
sometimes a specific audience for it will suck but overall it was always pretty fun.
May 1, 2024
Top Recs from @lizzy-goodman
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I’ve been deliberately reading a lot of New York fiction these days, thinking about the city as a character, the city as the ultimate backdrop for coming-of-age stories, the city as a source, in general, of inspiration. What have New York stories looked like throughout time? What do Rear Window and American Psycho and Catcher in the Rye and the Basketball Diaries and Cruel Intentions all have in common? This novel by Dawn Powell is one of those books every New York lit nerd with taste tells you read, but I never had. It’s currently blowing my mind.
Nov 2, 2022
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I was obsessed with this show when S1 first aired in 2020 year. S2 is finally (finally!) coming out later this year and I’m re-watching S1 to prepare. The show was co-created by the actress (and former teen pop star) Billie Piper and the playwright Lucy Prebble (who is also a co-executive producer and writer on Succession … so yeah, she’s hot shit). They’ve been collaborating for years (see also: Secret Diary of a Call Girl). I’m not going to spoil the show by explaining the premise, but I will say that it has a really tight, super high-concept structure. The result is a series of tense, fraught, hyper-immersive mini-film-ish episodes that drop you directly into the show’s world. On the podcast I host, Difficult Artist, we talk a lot about the power of structure. I’m obsessed with structure because I struggle so mightily with it. I’m dying to have these two on so they can tell me how they pulled this off. It’s also worth pointing out the obvious, which is that women are never seen like this on TV. The lead character is just this magnetic, flawed human being working through a mess of her own making. She happens to be female and the show is undeniably feminist, but it's not about being female or conveying an explicitly feminist message. A++
Nov 2, 2022
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I, like so many, adore Stacey Abrams. She’s so inspiring. This brilliant powerhouse of informed optimism, whose faith in and commitment to the power of organizing has reminded many Americans that fighting for your rights and the rights of others is the definition of patriotism. If you are a fan, you’ve heard her speak, and perhaps you’ve noticed that between the steady stream of thoughtful, cheery-yet-steely determination exists the occasional glimpse of deep nerdiness. I mean, she’s a Trekkie who’s written a bunch of romance novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery. (So charming!) But until I read her latest, the thriller While Justice Sleeps, (published under her own name) I had no idea the extent of Ms. Abrams’ geekiness. A major plot element hinges on secret communications in online chess message boards. We need our leaders to be people, first. People with real lives. People who understand joy and humor and sex and who have hobbies and interests and obsessions with, for example, chess moves and the sci-fi-ish implications of DNA-sequencing (another major plot point). I can’t wait to vote for this woman for president one day.
Nov 2, 2022