Just&t married
Fran Magazine: Issue #182
📝 Thanks for reading Fran Magazine, a blog by Fran Hoepfner (me). Your subscriptions are welcome and encouraged for regular updates sent to your inbox (email, Substack, or both). Feel free to follow me on Instagram or Letterboxd. 📝 Everything I write for Vulture can be found HERE!
My book, THE FIELD GUIDE TO NEPO BABIES, is out in the world!!!! It’s available at Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and also hopefully your local bookstore. 📓
Sunday returns
Thank you all for your thoughtful questions from last week. You can still send some in here. I look forward to getting to them piecemeal over the course of the next couple of weeks, but here is the most pressing one:
Stitch question! I feel like 2025’s Lilo & Stitch has already been forgotten by the general public. What role do you you think that ill-begotten live-action adaptation played in keeping Stitch in the cultural conversation? Side question: are you going to get a Stitch Wooble?
I will be purchasing.
I think the live-action Lilo & Stitch is probably out of sight, out of mind for most childless adults and people who don’t care about live-action remakes, but I think that movie still has a chokehold over a certain generation of child, and even some of the anti-live-action remake people I know kind of like that movie because it made changes, like Nani giving up Lilo to Child Services so she can become a woman in STEM.1 I think the sequel will go crazy blockbuster mode. The ongoing success of the minions is kind of proof of the enduring appeal of Stitch: people like when a little guy sounds crazy. I remember one time someone said (or tweeted) that once you start noticing those little plastic tooth flossers on the ground, you start seeing them everywhere. People litter those left and right. That’s me with Stitch merch. I probably see three different items of Stitch-related merch every day. He is a retail icon, regardless of how he’s portrayed on screen. The live-action remakes don’t have to exist to keep Stitch popular, but they’re certainly not hurting. There was a lot of Stitch stuff at Disney World, though to my (humiliating) dismay, most of it was for children. Anyway. Time to buy my “Wooble.”
Tayvis happenings
I’ll admit that if there’s one conspiracy, for lack of a better word, that I bought into surrounding Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding, it’s that I figured the Madison Square Garden of it all was pure reception — that by the time they graced the middle of Manhattan, they’d be already man and wife They’d figure out how to get married in secret — at her home, or his home, or wherever it is they spend time together — and then gather 1,000 people at MSG for some kind of gigantic party, but that the wedding-wedding of it all, the ceremony, would already be done. That, however, was not the case.
The Swift-Kelce nuptials have been an exercise in extreme confirmation bias, which is, admittedly, the mode where I’m most inclined to take Swift’s side. It’s no secret that Fran Magazine is generally pro-Swift, though not without some degree of self-awareness.2 To watch Twitter leftists have meltdowns all week about her killing elderly people by using up all the electricity3 or driving business away from independently owned bars4 or forcing cops to work overtime5 has made me feel somewhat insane, though I am laughing more than I am mad or inclined to defend her choices. I like watching the linguistic hoops that people jump through to make a point, like taking issue with Madison Square Garden being rented out for a “private event,” as though Knicks games or Rangers games are public utilities. While having dinner last night, I overheard a group of people trying out the “(wokely) why not get married on a private island” argument in real life. Private islands: so long as they’re not inconveniencing New Yorkers, they’re good.
I’ve believed in the vision of Madison Square Garden since it was first hinted at. That’s not me saying I like it as, like, an aesthetic choice. Did you see my ass getting married at an arena? But I understand it, and it’s not pissing me off in the slightest. When she goes big, I’m far more compelled by her choices — when you have a billion dollars, even in net worth, it can and often does force a completely wackadoo choice. “Rockstardom isn’t just being cool within particular aesthetic parameters, but radiating something unnamable that people are drawn to, and abusing that power,” Clare Frances wrote earlier in the week. I feel sad, for lack of a better word, writing as someone who had to be lightly strong-armed into an outdoor wedding, that she did not get to see, say, natural sunlight during her wedding, but that’s fine. She probably didn’t really care. Her vision for her own wedding, as exemplified in her songs, is much stranger and messier than the alleged MSG castle (debunked?) than the average listener might be inclined to believe. BDM did a great job discussing that here. Probably the wedding was fun and random and strange. Bradley Cooper was there, and Alison Roman, and Kate Berlant. Funny! I feel like most celebrities were like “haha… what?” the whole time. It’s annoying that Brad Pitt was in attendance — literally why — and the guy who is the contractor for ICE. I doubt we’ll ever get the gist of either of those invites,6 but what I’m trying to say is that I’m not arguing on this whole thing being a net good so much as I’m not enraged or remotely offended by what transpired.
It was with this spirit of … let’s say … bemused neutrality that I approached a two-day scene reporting assignment for my job at Vulture. You can read the essay here. I’m quite proud of how it turned out.
