The Horizon

Two years ago, I found myself restless despite enjoying my work at TCM. I needed an outlet to write about movies, TV, and media. Sending off little posts on social media wasn’t cutting it, and I didn’t want to return to a large outlet where my voice would be one among countless freelancers. A newsletter appeared to be the best option, and since I still find it creatively fulfilling two years later, I’d like to expand it a bit.

But this is about more than just my creative outlet. I want to talk about why I feel like newsletters are the best option for entertainment journalism today.

I’ve seen the bizarre rise and fall of writing about movies online. In the early 2000s, a nerdy go-getter could muscle their way into entertainment journalism. This is how we got websites like Ain’t It Cool News, CHUD, Cinematical, /Film, and Collider, among others. However, no site was immune from the changing fortunes of the larger Internet landscape, and it was all uncharted waters in terms of how to build an audience and successfully monetize your outlet while building credibility in the entertainment industry. Eventually, even if you did a great job of turning your site into a thriving publication, no one could compete with Google and Facebook sucking up all of the ad revenue. There became less and less money to go around, fewer sites could thrive, and so we got into ages of sponsored content, pivots to video, and dozens of other attempts to find revenue without turning on paid subscriptions.

Looking back, I feel like that experiment has largely failed. It’s not the fault of the sites or their writers any more than it’s the fault of a boat that capsizes in a hurricane. There are larger forces at work here, and the only way to be successful at this point is to no longer play that game.

I’m strongly believe that subscription-based, worker-owned outlets like Defector, Aftermath, and 404Media are now the future of online journalism, because they’ve made the sensible trade for slower growth but a higher quality product. They want to be successful, but they define success by sustainability rather than rapid expansion. We’ve seen from the total and swift collapse of The Messenger that simply showing up with millions of dollars and SEO skills isn’t going to amount to much in today’s online space.

Commentary Track is my way of getting back to basics: Instead of pumping out countless articles in order to hit every SEO term available, it’s a site that’s going to go deeper rather than broader. If you’re going to pay for a subscription, I want you to read an article and feel like that was money well spent. I don’t want you to have to sift through a dozen ads that make a webpage unreadable. I want you to feel welcome here as a fan of entertainment eager to have a discussion with other fans, rather than feel like you’re putting on armor for the next flame war. I understand why the incentives of quantity, ad space, and outrage were successful, but that doesn’t mean I have to perpetuate them.

If Commentary Track is going to be different, then what does that look like, and how do we get there?

The Paid Tier

If you subscribed in the last two years, then nothing will change for you. The Sunday editorial and midweek update will remain the same.

If you want to upgrade to the paid tier, then here’s what you’ll get:

First Five: A monthly series exploring the first five films of different directors. It will start next month with the first five films of Steven Soderbergh. I decided to kick it off with Soderbergh since I recently rewatched sex, lies and videotape, and I feel like the start of his career is fascinating given the immense success that greeted his first movie only to be struck with failure in his following efforts. Future subjects will include Spike Lee, Kathryn Bigelow, Bong Joon-ho, and Agnès Varda.  

News Flash: If there’s a news item that breaks that I think is worth exploring in a timely manner, subscribers will receive this update. For instance, I don’t really want to write an entire editorial about this teaser trailer for IF, but I do think it’s an interesting piece of marketing in that the studio thinks a good way to sell this movie is by referencing a 12-year-old cold open from The Office. That’s the kind of shorter article you’d get once or twice a week.

Commenting Privileges and Weekly AMAs: These a pretty self-explanatory, but the larger goal is that if you pay into Commentary Track, then you’re part of the community. I want your voice to be heard (provided your voice is respectful; let’s leave terrible comment sections as a thing of the past).

These are the first rewards, but as the site grows, and my capacity expands, I hope to add more articles to the site.

The Bigger Picture

What I would like to achieve with Commentary Track is something akin to what The Dissolve was in its heyday. You had a website devoted to entertainment with a small, intelligent staff writing incredible commentary. I don’t need Commentary Track to be the biggest entertainment site. I want it to be one where readers know the writers, and writers know the readers. I want this to be a place where people feel valued; where writers can develop an audience, and readers don’t feel like they’re simply targets for programmatic ads. It’s both an old and a new notion, but I feel like it’s worth a shot.

Recommendations

I won’t recommend Substack publications anymore (not because all Substack writers are bad, but because it doesn’t make a lot of sense to bolster a place I chose to leave for various reasons), but other newsletters are still fair game! I wanted to shout out The Verge’s Installer newsletter, which arrives on Saturday mornings. It’s a look at various apps, programs, shows, games, and more that might warrant your attention. What I like about the approach is that it’s very take-it-or-leave it in terms of the various app recommendations. It’s a good way to bypass app store recommendations and instead here from users who recently adopted something cool that they want other people to check out.

Big Fish is only $7.99 on Blu-ray on Amazon. I feel like this is Tim Burton’s last great movie. It’s earnest, heartfelt, and eschews his typical story of a misunderstood weirdo that the world fails to properly appreciate. Instead, it’s a moving father-son story about the importance of storytelling as a way to understand our own lives and connect with those we love. I suspect you’ll enjoy this more than the upcoming Beetlejuice sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (yep, that’s the title; film comes out in September).

Note: I get a small cut of sales made through my Amazon Associates link.

What I’m Watching

Speaking of Tim Burton, I saw Lisa Frankenstein last night, and it feels like a throwback to his earlier work. Directed by Zelda Williams from a script by Diablo Cody (Oscar-winning screenwriter of Juno), the story is set in the 1980s and follows Lisa, a depressed young woman (Kathryn Newton) who befriends a reanimated corpse (Cole Sprouse) and helps him get the body parts he’s missing through some slightly murderous means. The film is a lot of fun, and it feels like a good gateway for teen viewers on their way to harder dark comedies like Heathers. Newton and Sprouse are hilarious, and Liza Soberano, who plays Lisa’s step-sister Taffy, is incredibly endearing. I recommend checking the film out when it opens this weekend. 

Since it’s Black History Month, I’m trying to watch as many films as I can from Slate’s The New Black Film Canon. It’s a starting point for shaping understanding, not the end, and I like the diverse selections among these 75 movies. You’ve got no-doubt inclusions like Do the Right Thing and Within Our Gates, but you’ve also got lesser-known works like The Blood of Jesus and Looking for Langston. A lot of these are pretty easy to find this month on various streamers, so I encourage you to check some out.

I’m also now caught up on True Detective: Night Country. There are some aspects that I really like: the setting, the performances, and the overall vibe. But I feel like there’s more narrative than the show can bear, so you get way too much exposition, innuendo, and allusions to the past to where it feels like the mystery we’re trying to solve isn’t how the scientists died, but the baggage the main characters are carrying around. I think I see what showrunner Issa López is trying to do, but I don’t know if she can bring it all home in the final two episodes. 

What I’m Reading

I finally finished A Short History of Nearly Everything and really enjoyed it. I don’t think author Bill Brysonthinks that any reader will come away thinking they now have a deep understanding of science, but I feel like the larger picture of our place in the universe emerges, and it becomes pretty life-affirming. Plus, the way Bryson tells the story is through the scientists who made the discoveries, and he always finds a way to make those discoveries compelling and comprehensible to the layperson.

I’ve now moved on to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which I’ve been meaning to read for years. 

In other reads: 

How I Got Scammed by Cory Doctorow – While it’s tempting to say that people who get scammed are “stupid” and therefore deserve it, that’s a lot like saying that people who get sick weren’t eating healthy enough. Sometimes you can be like Doctorow—an expert in online scams!—and still fall for things. As he notes in his stories, there were layers of security at play, but they were able to get him not only by posing as an authority figure (in this case, fraud protection for his Credit Union), but by taking advantage of him while he was in a stressed state. So if you’re stressed out and your “bank” calls, if it’s really your bank, they’ll wait. Don’t give out information over the phone or click links without first seeing where they’ll lead. 

What I’m Hearing

Like everyone else, I’ve been listening to “Fast Car” a lot since The Grammys. It’s an amazing song, and the performance by Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs was really special. Put this classic back into your rotation:

What I’m Playing

I picked Final Fantasy VII Remake back up, and it’s amazing how much I love this game just because it reminds me of a game I loved when I was thirteen. It still feels like kind of a miracle it even exists, and I can’t wait for the next installment at the end of the month.

I’ve also started playing Critics Choice Grid every day. I like testing my movie knowledge, and this is a fun spin on games like Wordle. The point is to try and guess a movie or actor that meets two requirements like “Oscar Winner” and “Was in Apollo 13” or “Gary Oldman” and “Movie That Made Over $100 Million Worldwide.” There are multiple answers, but you’re trying to guess the most obscure option because your score is based on rarity.

As I write this out, I now see this probably only appeals to other movie nerds. Ah well.

Over on Decoding TV

In the latest episode, Dave and Patrick discuss Evan Rachel Wood’s comments on the ending (or lack thereof) of Westworld, thoughts on Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and more.