Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, Oct. 13-19

Free dispatch

This is the Fran Magazine Sunday Dispatch, a weekly culture diary usually for paid subscribers only but this one is free again on account of being short. The Sunday Dispatch details what I’ve been watching, reading, playing, and listening to over the past week. Paid subscriptions help stabilize my writing career, but all readers — paid & not — are appreciated. You can also follow me on Instagram or Letterboxd (for free!). Thanks for reading!

A few additional thoughts on Liam Payne

I’ll be honest and say the back half of my week was completely derailed by the sudden death of former One Direction member Liam Payne. Celebrities die not infrequently, the shock and/or sadness around them varying wildly in circumstance. I recall being quite bummed about, say, Ray Liotta or William Friedkin or Maggie Smith, but none of those deaths carry with them the shock and vague horror of Heath Ledger, Brittany Murphy, Anton Yelchin, or now Payne. I was particularly reminded of Ledger’s death — more vivid than many memories from my high school years; I recall pulling up to a friend’s house the night the news broke — and the photos of his body inescapable the next day. The vivid nature of that night called to mind a handful of incidences from my own life — deaths of loved ones, friends, and family, mired in discomfort and misery, and complicated, truly, in every sense of the word.

I wrote an obituary of sorts of Vulture that got at some of the complexities around him, the last few years of his life, and the broader One Direction fans’ relationship to him throughout those last few years. I think

Emma

wrote about this with much more clarity on her Substack, so I’ll point you to her writing as well.

non-romance, romance #11: Husbands (1970, dir. John Cassavetes)

Allow me to go out on a limb and say that I think it is basically sad whenever someone dies, especially a young person (whatever your definition of young is), regardless of the circumstances. Maybe there are occasional exceptions,¹ but I think this is an otherwise normal quality to have. There was a rush of people who I have to assume were 23 years old who were quick to decry the death of Payne as that of a “bad person”; as Emma writes, this is basically reductive and impossible:

“Part of being an abolitionist that I try to enact in my everyday life is that I resist the impulse to categorize any person as a bad person. I believe that are harmful acts and we should try and minimize those acts and the impact of those acts.”

Mostly the situation from start to finish strikes me as deeply depressing across the board — the extent to which the music industry, and greater fame industrial complex, is a uniquely cruel machine.² Payne’s history both as an addict and as someone who committed abuse were profoundly, aggressively, and overwhelmingly documented, some by him and much by others. Part of what appealed about One Direction at the time of their rise and beyond their disbanding is that they’ve by and large lacked the media training of other young celebrities. They were, and perhaps kind of still are, a bit regular. I found this well-articulated by Niall Horan at the start of this TikTok (the rest of it is nice too):

@momoeditz__#onedirection #onedirectionedit #onedirectionedits #niallhoran #niallhoranedit #harrystyles #harrystylesedit #louistomlinson #louistomlinsonedit #zaynmalik #zaynmalikedit #liampayne #liampayneedit #trending #fyp #foryou #pourtoi #edit #edits #viral

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I saw One Direction only once in concert back in 2014 a few months before Zayn Malik left when it was already starting to feel like the seams were fraying. The whole enterprise felt unsustainable. My greatest takeaway from their documentary This Is Us was the size and scope of the crowds that followed them — how overwhelmingly frightening and horrible that must have been, the patterns of which are repeating even now. I was heartened in recent months, post-pandemic mostly, by the occasional, upbeat appearances of Malik and Payne’s efforts to reach out to former members of the group. A One Direction reunion always seemed vaguely impossible to me; Harry Styles is, broadly, too annoyed at the presumed obligation and annoying in his own way (self-serious) to capitulate to such demands. I would have assumed Malik was the hold out, but I think the tides were turning. In any sense, the hope for such a thing is basically gone, which is less about wanting to relive the past and otherwise hoping for a good future. Clare texted: “is there no sanctity for life?” I don’t think there’s any particular righteous attitude to take when something unexpected and horrible happens. It is just sad.

Anyway

I’ve been self-soothing with Norm MacDonald clips.

Scream, Wes Craven (1996)

Rewatched on MAX. I first watched Scream six years ago with Aubrey the weekend of Tessa and Geoff’s wedding (shoutout Tessa and Geoff’s wedding!). Long before I was actively trying to watch scary movies, I was assured, by Aubrey and others, that this was an undeniable classic that was scary, sure, but more importantly, the most fun movie you could have watching a movie. Everything everyone is doing here is a delight, the score is awesome, the kills are yucky! I haven’t seen any of the Scream sequels but maybe I’ll start…

Anora, Sean Baker (2024)

Watched at Regal Times Square. I preferred the free-wheeling, nasty cynicism of Red Rocket to this film, which is arguably a more grounded, “whole” exercise than it is a chaotic exploration. I had fun, I think it’s pretty good, sometimes great — but I am still considering a lot of what I saw. More in detail in the coming months. I might have to watch again.

Lonely Planet, Susannah Grant (2024)

Watched on Netflix. EVIL & CASUALLY RACIST & BORING! More here. I do think writers in particular may have fun putting this on and playing on iPhone.

Help Wanted, Adelle Waldman (2024)

Waldman’s 2013 novel The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. is — per my estimation — the funniest and most ruthless “media satire” of the past decade, a concurrent with HBO Girls-style New York email job, blogger class, “debut novelist” type of book. I was curious if it held up and reread it a few years ago. Let’s say 2021. Held up great — still funny, still cutting. I was excited to read her follow up about a group of big box store employees who unionize (sort of) in order to get their bad boss promoted so a new good boss can take over her work. The novel is full of great specifics on the work processes of big box stores (Waldman herself went to work at one for a year, maybe longer), but the whole book comes away feeling broad and forgettable, the characters never transcending loose tropes and the prose is full of cutaway paragraphs explaining why people behave how they do in the book. I admire the exercise and the broadening of point of view — it never feels exactly like “rich person novel about poor people,” or anything like that — but the work never transcends its premise.

Elden Ring

I’m lost on Mt. Gelmir.

Jeni’s update

I tried the Jeni’s Bay Leaf Cheesecake flavor, the first ice cream flavor for adults in who knows how many years — I guess last year, with Albero dei Gelati’s yellow pepper flavor, but still. Thank god for this.

1. Henry Kissinger.

2. Simon Cowell, you’re bones.