Not Required Reading
Some links, recs, and rec links for your reading pleasure!
Hi all. I got back from a shoot for Emma’s film Father Figures (the first shoot in quite a while that didn’t involve dummies) and am fighting off a bit of a cold (TBD on whether it’s legit illness or fatigue or both!) and so I wanted to balance my need to be of service to you the readers with my inability to currently form a cogent thought.
With that in mind, here are some much more cogent thoughts from other people that I’ve enjoyed lately.
How Do You Get the Rights to IP? — The WGA’s newsletter sent this piece by Jody Lambert out recently. Twice in the past couple years I’ve purposefully tracked down IP myself (without any producer helping) and managed to get the rights by simply… asking. Sometimes, if you want something, all you have to do is some light googling and then… ask!
Atelier Format on “nonDē,” the new film movement growing right here out of substack! Thanks to the og filmstacker
for coining the term, and to and and all the others running with it.Is comedy back? New Naked Gun trailer has me thinking comedy’s back:
I have to follow up the cop movie with
’s piece about living in downtown LA during the past week of protests of ICE raids and the fact that copaganda and positive depictions of the machinery of war in film & tv are in fact at least partially to blame for our current fascism predicament.I’ve been fascinated by Ana Marie Cox & Open Mike Eagle’s new podcast, “Past Due,” which dives into the thorniest of conversations about money, stability, and success for artists. I’ve already caught up on all the episodes, and think like any good podcast, the perfect first episode is one with Paul F. Tompkins.
Good AI news: Disney & Universal are suing midjourney, the AI company, for scraping all of their intellectual property and then allowing users to export things like “Thanos taking a dump.” Feels important to note that while “Thanos sitting on the toilet” isn’t necessarily a popular search on TikTok, there are definitely some results.
That’s all I’ve got for you folks this week. Hopefully back with more of our regular programming next week — and then Hollyweird turns ONE YEAR OLD on JULY 4TH.
I move that this year (and maybe for all future years) we officially ban any suggestion of patriotism and instead focus on celebrating this newsletter. I’m all ears for recommendations on how to do that.
