Hello my treasured Babblers!

First of all — there are over a THOUSAND of you beautiful skanks now! I don’t know how it happened (yes, I do, it’s largely thanks to the support of literary celebrity Hunter Harris), but I’m so, so delighted that this many people are interested in reading what I have to say. And I’m really proud of myself for sticking with it. I’ve had a very difficult year and this newsletter has felt like a life raft. Yeehaw!

I’d like to try and talk a bit less about my personal woes this time around as I proceed with attempts to stitch myself back together in the wake of these past few months (don’t worry, I will be sharing a sprinkling of my continued delusion at the end of this post.) I also am stuttering forward with the process of writing a book (have a Google doc with copied and pasted sections from this newsletter called ‘Book’ that I open and get nauseous staring at for hours on end.) Also, here are some links to recent work I’ve done for The Hollywood Reporter — there are some very exciting interviews in the near future pipeline. But for now, I just wanted to check in about movies, because there are a lot of good ones out right now, and a few older ones I’ve been thinking about of late.

Movies, Movies, Movies

Escaping reality is such a crucial part of life. That’s where movie theaters come in: you consume an edible, you enter the lobby, you get some Buncha Crunch and popcorn and a Sprite/ lemonade mixed fountain soda. From there, you take out a second mortgage on your house to cover the costs of said concessions. Then you go to your seat a half hour before the screening time and watch Maria Menounos flop extremely hard with her Noovi sham farce (seriously, someone needs to revamp the pre-trailer content at the big chain theaters — I’m happy to be the face and pussy of that moving forward!) By the time the trailers are under way you can no longer turn your head because you have transfigured into gelatin due to the cannabis. Then Nicole Kidman comes on screen (side note: I recently discovered she hosted SNL on the LITERAL DAY I WAS BORN) and the whole world cheers as she does her legendaric AMC spiel and then it’s showtime.

Let’s start with Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. I believe I spoke about this film in a previous newsletter, but just want to reiterate how wonderfully funny, gripping, and macabre it is. Rachel Sennott should receive an Oscar nomination for this role (and for her previous work in Shiva Baby). Amandla Stenberg and Maria Bakalova are also pheNOMenal. Great movie to see on a date — it lends itself to grabbing each other’s thighs.

Marcel The Shell With Shoes On is the best thing I have seen all year, I believe. In my book it should win best picture. I don’t know that I’ve ever cried so hard in my life. A must-see. So many poignant thoughts about life’s purpose and mortality. And it has little mini objects being used as furniture, like in The Borrowers, which is always a huge servation.

I was mind-numbingly stoned when I saw Tár, so if I’m honest I didn’t really understand what anyone was talking about the whole time, but I do recall Cate Blanchett being magnificent, and the film as a whole being very interesting. I need to see it again but I think I might have loved it.

Not to sound like I’m addicted to weed, but I was also mind-numbingly stoned for Triangle of Sadness — one of the best moviegoing experiences I’ve ever had. This film has it all: shirtless male models, projectile vomit, and adorable elderly British people. There’s one shot I simply cannot get out of my head: I’m very averse to spoilers, but will just say it takes place in a bathroom and involves a stupendous performance from actress Sunnyi Melles, whom I felt was the standout. Also, see the director’s previous film Force Majeure if you haven’t already!

Bones and All was brilliant and sexy and scary and Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet are both legitimate movie stars. Women Talking I’m not sure I’m allowed to say anything about yet but I liked it? Also not sure if I’m allowed to say anything about Glass Onion yet but I loved and would give up both kidneys to be the wife of Daniel Craig. Close wrenched my heart out and had me wailing. Jeremy Pope is great as a gay guy in The Inspection. Everything, Everywhere All At Once was a little bit too long and, weirdly, predictable for me, but I thought that Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis were amazing as always.

I had the most insane moviegoing experience of my life watching Pearl. As soon as the lights dimmed and the opening credits came onscreen, a man seated in front of us let rip one of the loudest snores I have ever heard. He proceeded to dip in and out of deep, rumbling slumber for the rest of the movie, to the point that two gay guys seated next to us got up and yelled at him to wake up. That was after they yelled at the man sitting behind us, who was murmuring incoherently to himself for the entirety of the film. There was also an old fling of mine sitting a few seats away from my friend and I. The movie was good! Mia Goth is great — I liked its sequel film, X, more, but Goth delivers some truly legendaric lines in this. It has taken every fiber of my being not to send this video to my *x:

Hilton Dresden @Hiltyhilthilt

I have such strong will power for not sending this to my ex yet💪

Blonde I put on my projector and then proceeded to sext with a random father for the entirety of the film’s three-hour runtime, so I missed literally everything that happened, but I love Ana De Armas and am sure she did her thang or something. Don’t Worry, Darling was actually not bad at all and pretty fun to watch, even if the twists ultimately don’t really make sense. The Woman King was solid, and Thuso Mbedu and Lashana Lynch I think both deserve to be centered more in the upcoming awards conversation. I really wanted to like Bros and thought the dogpiling on it online was stupid, but the movie was ultimately just not that funny or interesting to me. Shout out to my darling Eve Lindley though who was a fantastic scene stealer in it! Barbarian was fantastic and so well-written — I was on the edge of my seat (comatose in a reclining chair) the entire time.

I still very much need to see The Fabelmans, Aftersun, Armageddon Time, Empire of Light, and She Said. Let me know what else I’m missing.

You can’t go wrong with Almodóvar — All About My Mother is maybe my favorite movie I’ve ever seen, if memory serves. I’m definitely do for a rewatch. But Volver, Bad Education, Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, The Skin I Live In are all incredible as well. I want to see the rest of his films yesterday.

Other movies in my Letterboxd top four: The Lure, which is a European mermaid musical horror film and absolutely staggering; Marielle Heller’s Diary of a Teenage Girl, which features a very hot/ morally-compromised Alexander Skarsgård as Kristen Wiig’s boyfriend; and the French erotic thriller Stranger By The Lake, which is super gay and creepy.

Crunching Towards Bethlehem

As promised, here’s a little tidbit of the mania I’ve been putting forth into the world: I joined Crunch (the gym chain) about a year ago, on one of their cheap plans which does not allow you access to the fancy Manhattan locations with steam rooms where you can often go cruise hot men who can afford to frequent such establishments.

When I joined, it was at the Greenpoint location, a neighborhood I was brutally ostracized from, as many of you know, this spring. I now live in Bushwick, where there’s a very busted Crunch that I’ve been biking to infrequently over the past few months. Last time I went, I noticed signs plastered all over the walls explaining that the Bushwick location would be closing at the end of October, but that all Bushwick members would be upgraded to an all-access pass (a deal of several hundred dollars a month) completely free for this inconvenience. Now, my membership still says online that my home base is Greenpoint, but I’ve been going to the Bushwick location since March. I tried to get myself this fabulous deal by explaining the situation to Crunch HR — what ensued was an incredibly unhinged email chain that ended in this:

In other news, the lightbulb in my bathroom went out a few weeks ago and instead of replacing it I lit a little candle while I showered for the following fortnight and often peed and brushed my teeth in the pitch black darkness, learning the geography of my toiletries on my sink by gingerly touching; aiming my pee by carefully listening to the sound it made as it splashed into the toilet water.

I just wanted to acknowledge my friends for making me feel so loved and not alone on my birthday this past weekend. When the clock struck midnight in Flaming Saddles in Hell’s Kitchen, and a gay guy wearing a T-shirt that read “Yippee, I’m Gay” on it line-danced across the bar top, and I was no longer 28, I felt so much joy and an enormous sense of relief to be putting this hellish year behind me. 29 is already feeling way better and I’ve already made out, thrown up, and developed a new anal fissure.

Also on my birthday, a horrific shooting targeting LGBTQ+ people killed five and injured many more in Colorado Springs, as I’m sure you’ve all heard. It’s fucking awful and heartbraking and infuriating and terrifying and, worst of all, I feel like I and so many other are just becoming numb to this as the way our reality will always be. I have nothing helpful to say that can fix this horrible country and its lack of gun control laws. But a link to donate to the families and friends of the dead and the survivors is here.

Babbling On

Movies, Movies, Movies