Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, May 4-10

Sutton Foster, The Clock, and Friendship

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An aside on sports

The downside to having your team in the NBA playoffs is that it suddenly becomes hard to keep up with much else. Every other evening, I’m parked in front of the TV in a near-constant state of stress. I’ve not been able to make it through any of this most recent series between the Denver Nuggets and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

• Game 1: I got too stressed and annoyed at how everyone was playing and turned off the game. They won in what was practically a buzzer beater: I got two texts that said “OH MY GOD” at the exact same time.

• Game 2: Complete and total bloodbath. Became clear midway through the third quarter there would be no buzzer beater miracle. They lost.

• Game 3: Neck and neck. I got too tired and went to bed. They won.

There’s no conclusive evidence that my watching through the end of the game does anything in one way or another. I’ll be seated and watching in full this afternoon where hopefully I won’t be overtaken by some sunny midday desire to nap.

Podcast plug

I guested on Ian Moran’s Devised and Directed — the films of Mike Leigh podcast to talk about High Hopes! This is one of two episodes I make an appearance and it was great to dive into one of Leigh’s slightly lesser known films that also happens to be one of my favorites. I can’t help thinking Ruth Sheen is so unbelievably beautiful!

Two new treats

Yesterday, Sydney and Walter and I went into the city to hang out, and Walter grabbed an Abba-Zaba from Court Street Grocer (I grabbed my own favorite and underrated treat: a Cel-Ray.) I’d never seen an Abba-Zaba before. They sort of look like a white Airhead but the inside is all salty, creamy peanut butter. Extremely yummy.

I bought a Sparkling Sherbet Slush Celcius yesterday because I love the taste of rainbow sherbet and I am a sucker for a new bad Celcius flavor. My review? — definitely gross and also wonderful, but mostly gross. I’ll be having at least two more before summer is done.

Bandit

Do not worry about the cone — it’s to stop him from fucking with a mostly-healed injury (relatable). He looked like a cartoon all night last night; it was insane.

Caught by the Tides, Jia Zhangke (2025)

Rewatched at Walter Reade at Lincoln Center. Last year I kept telling everyone my favorite movie I’d seen the whole year was not really Nickel Boys (quite good) or Challengers (made me insane), but Caught by the Tides — a 2025 release. Out now on the coasts and soon everywhere, Jia’s latest is kind of a cross between Cameraperson and the Before trilogy, an accumulation and recomposition of B-roll and old footage attempting to make something new. He retraces his steps through Unknown Pleasures and Still Life, mostly, with hints of Ash is Purest White. It’s a love story, a crime drama, a musical. It’s a profoundly moving accumulation of time and devotion to Jia’s beautiful wife Zhao Tao. There’s a line from an old Jim Shepard short story that goes: “Life, motion, everything was untrammeled and without limitation, pathless, ours.” This is what I look for when I watch a movie.

The Clock, Christian Marclay (2010)

Watched at MOMA. It was fun to catch this the same week as I revisited Caught by the Tides: both films are about what it feels like to know that time is moving. I really ran out the clock (ha) on this video installation, which has played at MOMA for six months and I only went in its final week. I took a half day on Thursday so Phil and I could schlep up and see this at last. For those unfamiliar, Marclay’s project is a 24-hour montage of time-themed clips from movies that corresponds to the time it is in real life. E.g. 3:10 to Yuma arrives at 3:10pm, and so on. Is this a gimmick? Is it a movie? Is it a Youtube compilation? No, no, and no — it’s something far stranger and much, much more pleasurable. We watched from 1:40pm until a little after 4pm — it’s most fun at the cusp of an hour — and caught scenes from: The Talented Mr. Ripley, Spiderman 2, High Hopes, both 3:10 to Yumas, both Taking of Pelham 123s, National Treasure, The Clock (Judy Garland edition), Career Girls, The Terminal, Catch Me If You Can, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, a few episodes of Columbo, Twin Peaks, The X Files and The Twilight Zone, Hook, The Sixth Sense, Double Indemnity, The Sting, Secretary, LA Confidential, Primer, The Color of Money, Fanny and Alexander, Kramer vs Kramer, Safety Last!, and Mary Poppins, to name a few. In part I think we engage with art and watch movies to avoid knowing that time is passing and this does the exact opposite. As Phil said, “It’s never been so fun to know how long an hour is.” The Clock goes to Iceland and then who knows. If it comes to you, ya gotta go!

Friendship, Andrew DeYoung (2025)

Watched at the Angelika. I don’t think this is a “forgotten I Think You Should Leave sketch,” but I do think it’s worth investigating if this is a plotted feature versus a string of sketches thrown together. There’s a bit of shakiness to whether Tim’s Craig is an insane person in a normal-but-slightly-insane world, or if this is just all total nonsense. For the most part, the film leans towards the latter, which can sometimes undercut the fun of it. That said, however, I do think the “real world” is only slightly less absurd than the more grounded stuff here. Whatever: I laughed basically every single scene, and I think the ending is truly perfect. The mark of a successful comedy (to me) is knowing how to end.

Sutton Foster at Lincoln Center

I have been obsessed with Sutton Foster since I was a preteen. A friends’ parents took me on a little outing to see a local theater production of Thoroughly Modern Millie which left me completely floored. We later did Millie at my high school and I had the fortune of playing in the pit orchestra, so you can bet that I’ve heard every single song from this musical one hundred times. For all that I love Foster, however, who is a truly strange and magnetic theater celebrity — neither diva nor grande dame but like, forever messy ingenue — I’d never seen her live. She was the featured guest at the Lincoln Center Spring Gala where she sang many, many songs — a few from her musical repertoire (stuff from Anything Goes, The Music Man, etc.) but mostly songs she just seems to like. To my surprise, she didn’t go anywhere near Thoroughly Modern Millie. Maybe she’s sick of it? Still, no time for “Not For The Life of Me”? Or even a half-hearted attempt to reclaim “Gimme Gimme” from the paws of Rachel Zegler? Still: it was a blast, and introduced me to a great new song I’d never heard.

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As I publish this, Bandit is staring at me from across the apartment mad as hell that he hasn’t had breakfast yet. Are you watching the NBA playoffs? Are you reading or listening to or watching anything? What do you make of Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman? Will they ever bring Thoroughly Modern Millie back to Broadway with significant edits to address the fact that it is fairly racist?