Thanks for reading Fran Magazine, a biweekly blog by Fran Hoepfner (me). Wednesday issues are free to everyone and Sunday issues are for paid subscribers only. Consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription for access to more Fran Magazine. It’s worth it!
Maestro moment
Good news and bad news: the good news is that the New York Film Festival, which I have been lucky enough to attend for what is about to be the sixth year in a row, announced their press screening schedule so I now know the time and date I will see Maestro — October 3rd. Twenty days from now. At first I panicked because I teach on Tuesdays and Thursday; what would happen if the Maestro screening fell during class time? Never fear, I will be out of Maestro with a whole half hour to spare before I have to head to the classroom. Maestro moments are soon upon us. Will Bradley be there? Probably not — “girl the strike.” But a girl can dream.
Required viewing
Here are some questions I got about the movies from the Fran Magazine subscribership. I’m sorry the Fran Magazine was late today. “I’m busy”? Who cares? This is most of my job. Let’s get into it.
Kyle wrote:
Hi Fran! Something I've always meant to ask you but it's more fun this way — we've talked so much about our favorite directors, films, etc... but unless Letterboxd is lying to me, I don't think you've watched any David Lynch? I can understand why, but also — why? And if you wanted to watch, I'd recommend Elephant Man.
Yes, this is true: I’ve never watched any David Lynch films, though I did see one of his gallery installations that consisted of both paintings and short films about a decade ago, though I don’t remember many of the specifics. Like any major oversight in my own artistic education, I’m embarrassed not to have seen any Lynch, and it isn’t for complete lack of interest or engagement. I’d planned to do a bunch of Lynch last year, which I had intended to be my “year of scary Davids” (e.g. Cronenberg and Lynch). I got through far more Cronenbergs than I did Lynch, which is to say five compared to zero, before getting led astray.
Beyond my own sense of distraction — I am much worse at setting filmography assignments for myself than I used to be — the other annoying thing that keeps happening as I start to ready myself for “getting into David Lynch” is that there will be one of those annoying upticks in posts about The Return or some discourse about Lynch’s politics and I get discouraged and disinterested. I remember the “Is Twin Peaks: The Return TV or film?” Twitter debates as though it was yesterday, and in the way that I allowed Tumblr gifset culture to ruin my attitude towards Tree of Life for nearly a decade, I find myself allergic to engaging with Lynch whenever he pulses towards the surface of conversation. Which is unfair mostly because it’s got nothing to do with him or the quality of his art at all. He is not responsible for everyone in my office being so annoying about The Return six years ago. That’s on those people.
I wonder if it’s a particularly generational thing to feel this kind of aversion to something that reads as popular or talked-about more than usual, if this is why my friends who don’t/didn’t watch Succession felt so turned off by it, or if it was not to their actual taste. Have I not engaged with David Lynch because I’m genuinely disinterested? When does that become a valid opinion to have as a critic? (Probably never.) All of which is to inarticulately say two things: 1) I wonder what the feeling was like before smartphones when someone wanted to make you watch a nine minute long Youtube video for no apparent reason and 2) I will get around to David Lynch.
Finn wrote:
the rise of letterboxd & culture of movie reviews. is it helping us? do we have too much access to other people's opinions now? are those opinions informing our own no matter how hard we try to have our own thoughts? perhaps a brief breakdown of key differences between rating systems (imdb, rotten tomatoes, etc) how to find worthwhile films while avoiding any kind of spoilers for anything at all ever.. idk
I have a longer piece about this coming out soon, so without spoilers, suffice it to say: helping us do what?, yes, and yes, respectively. But I don’t think that means Letterboxd is unhelpful or bad. What I find to be the general appeal of Letterboxd is that I use it for my own pleasure, sorting, journaling, stats accumulation, and secret, quiet list-making. That I have friends and loved ones on that site, whose writing I read and like, feels almost superfluous to the experience itself. I would be content to use it as a solo enterprise, to curate and log my developing taste. If you waited a month to see Oppenheimer, you’ve probably seen all of your friends’ reviews of Oppenheimer by now, sure, but one of the things I like most about the platform is that it’s not forcing you to engage with anything you don’t actually want to see. And if you don’t want access to other people’s opinions, you don’t have to have them. (I have rarely, if ever, looked at the most popular reviews under a movie. Why would I care about that?) It strikes me as interesting that when there is Letterboxd drama, it all plays out in the dysfunctional comments section (the lack of tagging is a plus of the site, imo) or on other websites entirely.
That said: I think Letterboxd has the potential to be very helpful in terms of finding worthwhile movies to watch, but I don’t think any ratings system is particularly useful whatsoever: IMDb, Letterboxd, or Rotten Tomatoes. Or Metacritic or whatever else. I don’t think of a ratings system as more effective than a New York Times Bestsellers list: these are just things that got a lot of eyeballs on them, and maybe made some money along the way. I’m only compelled to look at the ratings of a movie if I see that there are wide swings between, say, 4.5/5 stars and 1/1.5 stars. Now that’s a movie I wanna see!
In order to find worthwhile films, I have mostly spent time reading long-form criticism, finding critics I like and see what they put on their lists of notable watches, as well as following the careers of directors and writers and performers I like. I love to gobble up any old list put out by anyone in the industry that I love. The Sight & Sound lists have been wonderful for this, really.
I think of the proliferation of spoilers the same way I do “bad audience behavior” in movie theaters: I don’t love either of these things in a vacuum, but they mostly feel like a part of life by now. Unfortunate, but true. The best way to avoid spoilers is to avoid as much as you can prior to watching. This might mean some kind of social media or review-reading sabbatical. They’ll all be there for you on the other side anyway.
Eric wrote:
Potential topic for a future Fran Magazine piece — what films did Li'l Fran enjoy? My 8yo is starting get into films with the most recent Puss in Boots: The Last Wish being a current fave. That got me thinking what films was I in love with as a youth. Willow. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And Hook came to mind. Interested in what were your faves.
I’ve still never seen Willow or Hook, believe it or not, but both the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie from 1990 as well as the corresponding NES game were major players in my household.
I wish I had “interesting” taste as a child, but I didn’t, in part because I was a child. I liked the Disney animated musicals a lot, though I tended a little away from the princesses (though I liked Belle, and Beauty & The Beast, mostly because it was the most brunette one) and more into stuff like Hunchback of Notre Dame (which I still love) and Hercules and The Great Mouse Detective. I liked quite a bit of non-Disney animated stuff too: Don Bluth’s Thumbelina, Anatasia, etc. I recall both James & the Giant Peach and A Bug’s Life making a big impact on me. Both were quite terrifying (bugs) but also intriguing (bugs) and both had beautiful girl spiders (Susan Sarandon- and Bonnie Hunt-voiced, respectively).
I watched a lot of TV as a kid too: The Simpsons was major for me, as was Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Yu-Gi-Oh. (I definitely read both Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura books too, as well as spent a summer trying to figure out the Yu-Gi-Oh card game with my brother.) We were also pretty tightly confined to PBS for a number of years prior to the aforementioned programming, where I watched a lot of Arthur (<3) and also a lot of Monty Python when they used to do their 60 hour marathons. The Olympic Hide & Seek sketch felt designed to make me laugh as a seven-year-old. I wonder what Henry would think of it!
What did everyone else with presumably “better child taste” than me like as a kid? If someone says “the films of David Lynch,” I will lose my mind.
Fran, did your PBS watching involve Wishbone? I was reminded of it this week and hadn't thought about it in years--what a strange, yet wonderful show!
Sticking with the animals-as-characters theme, I was also extremely into the Disney Robin Hood (a real bisexual origin story film--I had a huge crush on both Robin Hood and Maid Marian, and did not understand those feelings at the time!).
And, believe it or not, something I watched all the time as a child was the puppet-y version of Peter and the Wolf you once called "extremely terrifying" in The Awl!
Ok, showing my kids the Monty Python sketch tonight. Road Dahl content was always a hit in my house growing up with The Witches causing many a nightmare.