Fran Magazine: Issue #42

The Jeremy Strong issue

You’re reading Fran Magazine, the one and only Substack blog for friends of intellectuals who think their perceived smarter friends are taking it all a little too seriously. This original draft was around 900 words and then got deleted in the night, which feels apt for its subject matter, weirdly enough. Anyway, did you know Fran Magazine is currently running a HOLIDAY SALE in which ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS are now 25% off aka 30 DOLLARS A YEAR? Consider upping to a paid subscription to enjoy a second whole year of Fran Magazine.

Fran Magazine Holiday Sale

In case you always skip the italicized part of the issue, Fran Magazine is running a holiday sale from now through December Somethingth in which annual subscriptions are 25% off: $30 for a whole year. Give yourself the gift of… Fran.

The Fran Magazine Chat is up and running

Maybe you’ve downloaded the Substack app and maybe you haven’t. Who am I to tell you to download an app? But if you have downloaded the Substack app, you will find that that Fran Magazine Chat — just like the Fran Magazine comments — are up and running. We’re all having a good time on there and maybe you will too.

Good for the Jews

I have grit my teeth for the past month reading ungenerous opinions of James Gray’s latest film, Armageddon Time. I reviewed Armageddon Time — mostly favorably — but it has only grown in my estimation since seeing it: a thorny, non-condescending movie, rich with texture and discomfort. That people disagree with me is fine and good. I actually think it’s important to have divisive art! Call me crazy. Though I do find a lot of what makes for its pans to be reductive and unsympathetic — at least people are having fun talking about TÁR. I think it was K. Austin Collins who once pointed out that it’s not that Gray’s films are “on the nose” so much as they are the nose themselves. I try to think around that literal obviousness, and how I often favor that direct, no nonsense approach to other preening “it’s a metaphor, dontcha see” type of works of late.

What surprised me at the time of its release was the number of people who told me or said anecdotally that the movie was “good for the Jews.” Huh? What? I think it’s quite condemning of the Jews, maybe making it good for the Jews in the way that, like, homework is good for students (though I think we’ve since proven that’s not true either). It’s good for the Jews in the way that vegetables are good — which they are, but they’re still vegetables. I wondered if perhaps this was a point of authenticity: the movie felt more Jewish than other Jewish-ish things of late. Certainly, Armageddon Time does not suffer from a certain Mrs. Maisel-itis, but few of its core cast members are Jewish. Anne Hathaway receives partial goy credit because she’s from New Jersey. Anthony Hopkins is literally British, but because my Jewish grandfather was an anglophile I’ll give him a pass. The main core cast member — outside of the obviously Jewish Tovah Feldshuh — is Jeremy Strong, the star of Succession, whose Jewish father gives him at least partial credit to play the patriarch of Armageddon Time.

Jeremy Strong has been top of mind lately, not because it’s been nearly a year since anyone saw any new Succession, but because he’s been on a press blitz for Armageddon Time more than he has for any other film he’s been in. This called to mind an important forthcoming anniversary that Fran Magazine hopes to cover annually, which is:

The one year anniversary since the Jeremy Strong New Yorker profile

Where were you when Michael Schulman’s Jeremy Strong profile in The New Yorker dropped?