Well worth the wait

I was gone for a week, soaking in the glow of being at the True/False Film Festival, which takes place in central Missouri. In March 2020, I was there, right as big things (like SXSW and sports) started getting cancelled. I flew home and within days was not sure when I’d be able to leave again. Last year I participated in the festival remotely, knowing that if I got to go back this year, it would be intensely emotional. And it was. I am wrung out and transformed in the best ways. Something broken feels healed.

But it also was also just very normal. Ate burgers at Booch’s. Talked to super-smart filmmakers about their work. Watched strange little movies. Saw smiles on faces. The only big change was that usually you can eat and drink in the venues, and for now that’s not allowed, but otherwise it was a blessing, from start to finish.

Then I came home and promptly got a cold — definitely a cold, as my nose is raw from both sneezing and all the covid tests I took. I holed up in my bedroom for all of this week, trying to keep Tom from getting sick and also needing the rest it afforded. My syllabi now need tweaking and I went through two boxes of tissues but I’m fully better today. Second cold of the covid era; still no covid.

I don’t know. I don’t really have anything to say, except this: One of the things I’m finding, the older I get, is how delightful it is to watch your friends succeed. When I first moved to New York, it seemed like we were always going to showcases and shows and plays in little theaters way over in Alphabet City or in the hinterlands of Brooklyn, and sometimes they were great, and sometimes they really weren’t. I have a memory of seeing a microbudget movie, maybe involving someone Tom studied with at Esper, in a theater somewhere, and I’ve never been there again and I have no idea where it was. (Maybe not even in New York?) You never knew what you were going to get, and it was always a challenge to find something constructive to say, and we were all always worried that none of it would come to anything in the end.

But you wait around long enough, and your friends’ bylines start turning up in cool publications, and they win awards, and they’re on Broadway, and they’re high up in the credits of the shows and movies you watched. You get emails from former students who are producing award-winning films. Your friends are touring with their brilliant films. You realize that a half dozen of your pals have books coming out this year, and oh, so do you. This stuff seemed so far off 15 years ago, and I guess it was, but now it is happening and it’s so satisfying.

I guess some things are worth the wait.

Been writing

• Wrote about the competing moral universes of The Batman and Joker — the movies, not the characters. Also, Taxi Driver!

• Wrote about the ongoing provincialism of the Oscars, and why it needs to change. And ranted a little about the way the Academy completely ignores how its policies around the international film category can aid and abet authoritarian governments.

Been reading and watching

• We’ve watched all but the final episode of The Dropout on Hulu (I believe four of the eight episodes have actually aired and you can watch them now). A VAST IMPROVEMENT on Netflix’s Inventing Anna series, which is abysmal and girlbossy in the worst way. Definitely recommend.

• Obviously I watched a whole pile of movies last week at True/False, none of which are available to watch at home yet — but oh, what a wonderful thing to see huge crowds of central Missourians turn out for challenging and formally inventive nonfiction films they’ve never heard of, in the middle of the day! Packed crowds! What a concept!

• I have just finished Joan Didion’s After Henry, which I’d read before and which is so scathing I think my hair is singed.

• Also, two recommendations from pals: Tara Isabella Burton on Reading the Catholic Novel in a Secular Age (in Gawker) and Vinson Cunningham talking to Cornel West (in the New Yorker).

Odds and ends

• I’ve finally nailed down all of our travel plans (crossed fingers, of course) for early summer, and would now like to know your favorite restaurants in Rome.

Enjoyed this? If you’re feeling it, I won’t object if you buy me a cup of coffee. Writers need fuel.