Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, Sept. 29-Oct. 5

It's Peacocktober

This is the Fran Magazine Sunday Dispatch, a weekly culture diary usually for paid subscribers only. 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!

Are you guys mad at me?

Fran Magazine is oozing paid subscriptions lately; is it because I came out as anti-war or is it because you guys are mad at me?

Just kidding — I can survive this. Merch is right around the corner the second I figure out how to use Big Cartel. I do keep hearing from folks that they’re not getting email notifications or Fran Magazine isn’t showing up in their Substack inbox; this has been happening to me as well. This I suspect is due to Phil being personally responsible for the indictment of Eric Adams via analysis of his son’s music. Like all the most successful Substack community members that eclipse me, I have finally been granted a conspiratorial belief that the world is out to get me for my bold and insane opinions, minus the fact that mine are actually right and theirs aren’t. Anyway, on with the show.

yayyy

Busy week! I mercifully have about two (maybe three) more days left of commuting to Lincoln Center five times a week as opposed to one time a week and then our national nightmare (me being so sleepy) will be over. It’s been a great New York Film Festival this year and unless something really insane happens in the next couple of days, it’ll be my first year since I started going in 2018 where there hasn’t been a weird altercation during a press screening involving an old person yelling. Wow! Everyone got it together (maybe).

A bit of writing I’ve been doing for Vulture lately: I tried to figure out if the new Kristen Bell-Adam Brody Netflix romcom series Nobody Wants This is antisemitic (yes! and during the High Holy Days, no less…) and I wrote about April and Harvest, two of my favorite films at the festival so far. At time of writing this particular dispatch, I am midway through two different book-related pieces (no Rooney thoughts yet; I’m only about 70 pages in… should Fran Magazine dedicate a whole issue to “Thoughts on Sally Rooney”? sound off below… in the meantime please enjoy

BDM

ranking the recent Rooney reviews; I thought her review was quite excellent) and a new film essay, along with complete NYFF coverage for Bright Wall/Dark Room. It’s a busy month! I want to go apple picking but there’s been no time! And then I am (surprise) going back on residency for part of November to remember how it feels to chill out again.¹

I haven’t seen Joker: Folie à Deux! I haven’t even listened to the new Lady Gaga album (?)! Life flashes before my eyes and all I can see is the inside of Alice Tully Hall, where Pedro Almodóvar shot a scene from his new movie to pay tribute to the glorious New York Film Festival. When I make a movie of Fran Magazine (?), there will be a scene in the Walter Reade women’s bathroom where everyone tries to remember which is the sink that doesn’t work.