Fran Magazine: Issue #79

SITTING IS THE OPPOSITE OF STANDING + a new Maestro moment

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Maestro moment

Less than two weeks until I see Maestro. For about three minutes the other week I got my dates mixed up and thought that the Maestro press screening would occur on Yom Kippur; thankfully, it does not. Still, I had a lot of fun thinking about what it would be like to sit through that moving having been fasting, how “lowkey not chill” it would have been to put the Maestro screening on Yom Kippur, and if pondering repentance would make me more less inclined to enjoy the film. Alas, now I have to see it on a regular Tuesday, and I will go see the new Hamaguchi movie on Yom Kippur.

Last week I got coffee with my friend Mia and we discussed Letterboxd’s Four Favorites feature that they do on red carpets and at film festivals. I think this is sort of a genius interview method for a number of reasons.

1. Instant brand recognizability — every user has a four favorites, I have a four favorites, you can imagine yourself doing the interview alongside celebs

2. Celebs don’t have to pretend to like the movie they’re in or have to talk about themselves or their process

3. But in focusing on their own industry, it forces a celeb to cement their media consumption, however briefly, all of which is to say that I’m always curious if someone is going to: a) list four canonical favorites of their, b) list four movies they’ve just happen to seen in the last three or four years or whenever they got a publicists, or c) list other movies by the director of the movie they’re in. Or if someone is going to be just totally insane.

I watch as many of these as I can get my hands on. They always make for a fun talking point, ranging from “good picks” to “me when I’m lying” to “so bad it’s real.” I always think about an old AV Club interview with Ansel Elgort where he admits to having only seen “like, six movies.” This was an exaggeration, I’m sure, but not that much an exaggeration. I think he’s probably in decent company, but at least a feature like that forces someone to reckon the extent to which they are an active participant in their own industry.

meet Maestro

Fran Magazine is wholeheartedly pro-SAG/WGA strike. That said, we are being robbed of Maestro’s four favorites, which are sure to be insane in a number of ways. I do not mean the no longer living Leonard Bernstein’s four favorites; I mean Bradley Cooper’s four favorites, specifically “Bradley Cooper promoting the movie Maestro”’s four favorites. These would not be Bradley’s regular four favorites. They would be curated. They would be focus grouped. They would determine whether or not he would use the film’s press tour to come out as allegedly bisexual, like Maestro (Leonard Bernstein) before him.

The question I pose to you is: what would Maestro’s (Bradley Cooper doing promo for the movie Maestro) four favorites be?

Here’s my answer: Cooper rarely does anything without granting credit to Clint Eastwood. So there’s definitely an Eastwood in there (probably Bridges of Madison County). Maestro is also produced by both Scorsese and Spielberg, so he’s going to include a movie by each of them (initially I thought maybe The King of Comedy and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, now I think Age of Innocence and West Side Story — the Maestro of it all…). That leaves room for a fourth random movie with a number of possible routes: he could pick a different movie Bernstein scored — On The Waterfront — he could pick an actual influence — All That Jazz? IDK — he could pick a Carey Mulligan movie — Far From The Madding Crowd, I know his Maestro ass has seen that one. But maybe he’s picking Maurice and like, Deep Blue Sea by Terence Davies. Who knows! You tell me.

Sitting (opposite of standing)

By now I imagine Brian Jordan Alvarez’s “sitting is the opposite of standing” has made its way to you:

@brianjordanalvarezSITTING 🗣️🗣️🗣️🎶🎶🎶

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The song has already been remixed and covered and uploaded to streaming services with the speed and urgency of people who know that everything on the Internet is fleeting and soon we’ll have a new insane thing to talk about.

There are few things less desirable than “explaining why a video is funny,” but I do think there are a few notable reasons why his Sitting song has more legs (maybe) than the cloying (but admittedly catchy) Planet of the Bass and has also kind of attracted such a fervor and passion around it.

1. The lack of polish around the original video suggests, as it does with a lot of Alvarez’s video, that this is more of an off-the-cuff musical riff than it is an attempt to go viral.

2. The lyric that explains how sitting is “kind of like a nap / kind of like something else / but it is actually just sitting” has all the sweaty, bit-is-running out exhaustion of watching someone on stage fumble their way through a joke transition. It’s very endearing.

3. Sitting essentially, emotionally is the opposite of standing.

I won’t go crazy here, but I have had a lot of respect for Brian Jordan Alvarez for some time now in part because of the relentless nature at which he posts. In any other context, that would be seen as some kind of brain damage, but I truly admire his consistent output which suggests a little less poster’s disease and a little more lack of preciousness around his ideas. He’s someone who has been doing comedy for a long time and continues to find new, stupid, wonderful ways to be silly and casual. That there’s not a ton of work going into his videos is a refreshing change of pace and harkens, almost, back to the glory years of Vine.

I think it was Caroline who introduced me to this particular Brian Jordan Alvarez character, the one with the wide-mouth face filter known canonicaly as TJ Mack, who has previously gone through phases of bonding with his son (“my sohm!”).

@brianjordanalvarez @brianjordanalvarez ♬ original sound - Brian Jordan Alvarez

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Prior to that, this character was always doing an extended bit about opening an onion-based (?) restaurant in Denver (“Denber”) and having what mostly seemed like a normal marriage to his wife.¹

For a significant part of last summer, I was obsessed with a different Alvarez character who is an Australian grad student in lifting.²

@brianjordanalvarez @brianjordanalvarez ♬ original sound - Brian Jordan Alvarez

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Prior to the sitting is the opposite of standing video, Alvarez was kind of blowing up with this other grad student-adjacent character, an inarticulate AI handsome guy who has a business internship and is getting into using Hinge.

@brianjordanalvarez @brianjordanalvarez ♬ original sound - Brian Jordan Alvarez

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The Alvarez characters are funny for two main reasons:

1. It is funny to hear a guy use a funny voice doing a silly face filter.

2. Keeping up with these characters and with Alvarez himself allows two narratives to occur simultaneously: what happens to the character (he gets his internship, he goes on another Hinge date, etc.) as well as how Alvarez wants to keep pursuing the character. The early days of the internship guy were mostly him doing off-key covers of pop songs, which isn’t not funny, but it’s nowhere near as funny as watching a semi-articulate AI face explain how excited he is for his internship. That people online have developed this pseudo-investment in this character speaks to the development of process and the endearing nature of Alvarez’s performance. If there is something cynical here, it’s hard to find.

I was introduced to Alvarez’s comedy years and years ago, back when I was living in Chicago. I watched his webseries (remember those?) The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo which has all the ephemera and joke density of the good 2010s sitcoms with none of the moral superiority of current sitcoms. I put on five minutes of it while I was writing this issue and found myself laughing at it like I was watching it for the first time.

I think about Brian Jordan Alvarez in the same context I do Conner O’Malley, the latter of whom did a great Vulture interview this week. These are two guys who have constantly made stuff — mostly micro or low-budget — for the better part of the last decade, and I think the continued making has allowed them to hone a craft that feels that much more significant and specific than people who have been relentlessly shitposting their way into staff writer jobs. I never think that the comedian’s job should be to “seem like a friend,” but I think some of the best comics give off the nature that you could be sitting in the room with them and together, you would be even funnier than if you were sitting alone. Just because the audience exists through a screen doesn’t mean it’s not there. Alvarez’s excitement to get a joke out feels palpable and contagious, like riffing with a friend.

1. Eating too many chicken wings and not being allowed to go to the country club with your life because you’re laughing too much does feel like the most I’ve seen my own relationship represented in comedy

2. Relevant to me as a perpetual adjunct who does running.