Happy Down With Tyrants Day, Wags!
Happy Down With Tyrants Day, Wags!
Travels with Jerry Stahl and Other Diversions for Your Holiday Weekend
Dear Wags,
You’ve made it halfway through 2022—the longest year in history—and are headed into July 4th weekend feeling a mix of giddiness and dread. Giddy-Making: The prospect of lazy days with your lovelies, fireworks, and barbecues. Dread-Inducing: Civilization on the Brink! Well, we never promised you a rose garden.
We are presently negotiating an glitch in our information system. It looks like this: Having a Take > Actual Reporting. All of us have an opinion, and all of us our spraying these opinions across the universe. The universe, consequently, is spiraling out of control. So, let’s reestablish some scientific order to the place:
A dangerous narcissist was put in charge of the most powerful country on earth
This drove absolutely everybody (everybody) to madness
A global pandemic accelerated a breakdown of social norms and exacerbated distrust in institutions
Everybody (everybody) behaved despicably as a consequence
We are not out of these woods!
Some may say: How dare the Wag-in-Chief, a take-having pot, call out all the other take-having kettles! Whatever, it’s our newsletter, and thousands of smarties enjoy it. Plus, we believe the points above are as inarguable as gravity. As always, let’s point to a little ray of hope. In a tribal ecosystem it is easy to believe that They — those who don’t share our world view — are uniformly awful. We are learning that among They are good people who feel obligated to do the right thing. Guess what: There are never a lot of these people on any team. Guess what: We, who are so smug, may not have what it takes to speak the truth when hard truths are called for. So: When such people appear, embrace them. Saving the world is not a game for hair splitters and purists.
So, on July 4, salute Cassidy Hutchinson—a great name for a junior GOP aide or a competitive cheerleader!—not for agreeing with you about everything, but for simply doing the right thing. In this precarious moment, one should feel gratitude for those who do their duty, no matter what.
That is patriotism.
And now, more diversions for a most excellent holiday weekend!
Yours ever,
This is the point in the summer when lesser outlets bombard us with the “best” of what’s been screened in the past 6 months. Delete those. When it comes to movies, there is only one answer: Top Gun Maverick, for restoring a smidge of Hollywood’s faith in itself, and delivering something crowd pleasing. As for Hollywood’s future, Wag spoke to The Smartest Marketing Exec in Town about what lies ahead:
“Ok, hard truth: We went too far pretending to embrace a so-called social justice agenda at the expense of creativity, and rational business strategy. I’m not speaking about ideals. I’m talking about what was delivered: Fear, content nobody likes, and organizational meltdown. People lost their heads.”
“Speaking of: The real genius of the moment is Taylor Sheridan, who is actually creating a universe of good content that hits Middle America and not just the coasts. We need more creators that know how to speak to that audience.”
“The abandonment of broadcast television for streaming, and then this cringey ‘uh oh, maybe we moved too fast,’ moment is another blow to the media leadership class. Whatever credibility they had, well…”
“We need new moguls without old baggage — individuals with vision, who are fearless and a little crazy, who can lead. Hollywood by committee sucks. We need people who can push for good things, risk unpopularity, and deliver. Enough with mealy-mouthed tech wannabes.” — Noah Cross
Series
Loot (AppleTV+). Wag brooks no criticism of Wag Suprema Maya Rudolph: The world needs heaping helpings of her! Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard have given us just that in the saga of a Molly, the jilted wife of a Bro-illionaire (Adam Scott) who discovers the other 99 percent by going to work at her foundation. Invest!
Only Murders in the Building (Hulu). Our Three Podcasting Amigos (Selena Gomez, Steve Martin, Martin Short) still live at the Arconia (actually, the Belnord), a storied if murdery apartment building on the Upper West Side. In Season 2, they find out who slew the awful coop board president (justifiable homicide in Manhattan). Dame Shirley MacLaine is something yummy from Zabar’s as the victim’s mother.
Doc
Hallelujah (Theaters). Wag Emeritus Leonard Cohen, poet, Don Juan, mystic, meditator, Montrealer, Angeleno, was more than his most famous song. Still, that elegy’s convoluted history—Cohen worked on Hallelujah for years, wrote more than 100 verses, and saw it go from failure to a standard used on the Shrek soundtrack—says much about his resilient genius.
Bang! Pow!
The Terminal List (Amazon Prime). The Instagram star known as prattprattpratt (Our Pal Chris) is a Navy Seal with PTSD, who finds out there was a sinister coverup of his last doomed mission, and then…kablooey! Constance Wu and Taylor Kitsch help with that kablooey, and lookie, there’s young Patrick Schwarzenegger, too. Boom!
The Princess (Hulu). A very stabby fairy tale, starring Head Girl Joey King as a kick-ass maiden who is not about to marry nasty Dominic Cooper (doing Basil Rathbone). Lots of slow-mo kicks, slices, chops, and defenestrations. Bloody!
With the In-Laws
Jerry & Marge Go Large Paramont+). First, J&MGL is not a sequel to Barb & Starr Go to Vista Del Mar, though both titles are fun to say. It’s about a nice retired couple who figure out how to exploit a flaw in the Massachusetts lottery! Who doesn’t love Their Royal Highnesses Annette Bening & Bryan Cranston? Nobody well brought up. —Evelyn Greenslade
Wag Jerry Stahl isn’t afraid to get dark. How could the fellow who wrote Permanent Midnight be shy about that? So when the novelist, screenwriter, and memoirist hit a rough patch in his life, he signed up for a Holocaust bus trip through Germany and Poland. The result is the crackling Nein, Nein, Nein! which might as well be subtitled If It’s Tuesday, This Must be Belsen! Jerry, not the group tour sort, joins a nutty band of travelers on a junket that includes polka and a visit to the Auschwitz snack bar. It’s bizarre, distressing, hilarious and hopeful. Read it immediately, but first, revel in a few of his creative inspirations:
Memoirs of an Amnesiac by Oscar Levant. Levant, a genius pianist, actor, author, and occasional mental patient, wrote one of the few books I continue to read over and over. He was also the first person to discuss addiction and neurosis—his own—on television. Asked sarcastically by the Tonight Show host how he managed to look so hale and hearty, Oscar responded: "I get plenty of exercise. Once a week I stumble and fall into a coma.” I love any writer who mines their worst flaws for their best material.
A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. Coltrane could scream through his horn - and make it beautiful. The pain of an entire people, and the musician himself, were made manifest through the sounds that came out of that tenor saxophone. There’s a deep humanity, and a raw, searing spirituality on this album that can keep you going when nothing else will. All the artists I admire are the ones who say the unsayable. And Coltrane could do it without words.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. Somehow, somewhere in the ramblings of Ottessa Moshfegh’s laid-out pillhead narrator, there emerges as profound a meditation on depression, suicide, and 21st Century madness as anyone, anywhere has written. And if that’s not enough, the book is as funny as it is dark. I’ve read this three times, to see how Ms. Moshfegh does it. I am still in awe.
Fiction
Why are smarties buzzing about Nightcrawling? Because Leila Motley’s debut novel is both a stark look at life on the margins and a compulsively readable thriller. Struggling to make rent in East Oakland, Kiara finds herself turning tricks to feed herself and the abandoned child she cares for. When an investigation reveals her to be a key witness in a scandal involving local cops, the stakes get even higher. The former Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland is a dazzling new talent.
Reportage
Patrick Radden Keefe has a knack for dissecting very bad people. Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks collects some of his best stories for the New Yorker, which delve into corruption, family secrets, and knotty crimes. Charlatans abound in these pages, among them a certain reality producer who may be responsible for electing a president, a woman who claims her brother is out murder her, and a bank worker who either blows the whistle on corruption or is lying about the whole thing. Also included: Keefe’s compelling profile of Anthony Bourdain.
Stories
Hilary Mantel is beloved for the Wolf Hall novels set in Tudor England. Learning to Talk is something different — short stories set in the North of England in the 1950s, a clannish backwater defined by loyalty and hardship. It’s a sweetly rendered and autobiographically inspired tribute to a vanished place. —Catherine Cawood
All these years later, Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, has become a punchline. This obscures and minimizes his crimes — Kaczynski murdered three people, and tried to kill many more. His ravings about the dangers of technology can be read as prophetic, but they are also deranged. How did a professor of mathematics become the most feared domestic terrorist of the late 20th century? In Project Unabom, Eric Benson gets beyond manifestos to chart a descent into violence. — Samuel Gerard
And meanwhile, down home/Oh, you know mama's still cooking/them down home grits/I promise I'm working/With this guitar 'bout as hard as I can. This summer’s raft of strong country releases is led by Nashville’s Jimmie Allen, who sings about driving backroads in his Ford F-150, bumping Charley Pride, in the single Down Home He’s got a huge voice, and an equally outsized future.
When I go out again, I’m going to drink a lot/I’m going to take a shot/’Cause that’s just what I want. MUNA (USC alums Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin and Naomi McPherson) create a going-out anthem for the post-Covid era, which evokes all those old synth-y, club tunes of your heedless days, schlepping to LeDoux. You’ll want a strobe light for this one. At least the night is still young.—Alice Kinnon
When America goes into one of its funks, it is good to connect to something that speaks to our better qualities. Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris (1951) isn’t the best of the MGM musicals, but as an expression of Yankee vim in the postwar years it’s hard to beat. There’s Gene Kelly as a WW II vet in France, trying to be an artist, underrated Nina Foch as the lonely heiress who wants to be his patron, and Leslie Caron as the gamine beauty who steals his heart. There’s a 17-minute ballet sequence, and best of all, that score by George Gershwin. Embrace it, because it is sweet, and embraceable (July 3 on TCM). — Milo Roberts
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CultureWag celebrates culture—high, medium, and deliciously low. It’s an essential guide to the mediaverse, cutting through a cluttered landscape and serving up smart, funny recommendations to the most hooked-in audience in the galaxy. If somebody forwarded you this issue, consider it a coveted invitation and RSVP “subscribe.” You’ll be part of the smartest set in Hollywood, Gstaad, Biarritz and the Polo Lounge (order us a McCarthy salad and an Arnold Palmer, please).
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