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It’s Showtime, Folks

Dear Readers,

I had an amazing time chatting with Ella Dawson on the Rebel Ever After podcast. I’d tell you some highlights, but these graphics, I believe, sum it all up! (Though, for the record, it was something SHAPED like a People’s Choice Award. The award itself stayed unbesmirched.) Anyway, listen wherever you get your podcasts!

I’ve spent (and will be spending) a lot of time at Vidiots this week. Amongst other films, on Monday night I saw perennial fave All that Jazz, even more brilliant when I’ve been lucky to see it on the big screen. A man, I said when we were walking to my car afterward, will make an entire brilliant film instead of just going to therapy and I guess sometimes I think that’s OK. My favorite things about the evening was that the 47-year-old film was sold out on a Monday night, and also that one of my best friends had not seen it before and she had exactly the experience with it that I hoped she would. Sharing art is always risky, a thing that rattles some exact right thing inside of you but who knows what’s going on within anyone else. When it all resonates together, it is really something wonderful.

Last night Vidiots held their own Jellicle Ball because they were finally showing Cats (2019)! (I promise this is not really about Cats.) I’ve obviously waxed poetic already about the actual Jellicle Ball, but I do also love this very bad movie, though I did see it on the very first day of 2020 with a loud group of both friends and strangers, and a friend theorizes that starting our year this way probably did not help things. I watched it over Zoom during lockdown, and I went to a rowdy screening at the Drafthouse not long after lockdown ended. But, truly, nothing was as spectacular as another sold-out crowd packed in to watch a terrible movie we all had enormous affection for. It was real Rocky Horror Picture Show audience vibes. (The popular costume was Skimbleshanks. I saw two or three film versions, and one Jellicle Ball version. Tens across the board.)

Have you ever loved something dumb? Have you ever loved that thing with a few friends? And then you get a chance to sit with about three hundred others and find out you all love this dumb thing, often in the exact same way? I dunno. This is a bad, bad film, but I think this feeling of coming together is actually really fucking magical. It’s one reason I love all of it: the good movies, the bad ones, the ones you’ve never seen before and the ones you’ve committed to heart and the ones you haven’t seen in decades that find ways to surprise you anew. It’s why I love theatre! Sitting in the dark with strangers and finding connection and commonality, it has always been vital, but In Times Such As These it has never been more so.

(During the new song in the movie, I leaned over to my friend, like, who the fuck wrote these lyrics again, and she was like, TAYLOR SWIFT.)

I have been thinking a lot about collaboration and community this week anyway because I had my dreaded event, The Notes Call With My Editor. I’m going to drop this below the paywall just because it makes me feel VULNERABLE and perhaps BARFY.