Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, welcome to Talk Easy, a weekly podcast
Speaker 1: of intimate interviews with the people shaping our culture. I'm
Speaker 1: San Fragoso. Thank you for tuning in. This week on
Speaker 1: the show, we have acclaimed author and MTV film critic
Speaker 1: Amy Nicholson. Amy has been writing about the movies for
Speaker 1: more than a decade, most notably as the film critic
Speaker 1: for La Weekly, where she wrote for three years. At
Speaker 1: the Weekly, she was a perfect mix of funny, insightful,
Speaker 1: and incisive. She could write beautifully about a movie she
Speaker 1: loved or scathingly about a film she loathed. When Amy
Speaker 1: is not being one of America's best film critics, she's
Speaker 1: an author. Her first book, Tom Cruise, Anatomy of an Actor,
Speaker 1: delivered exactly what the title promises, a detailed examination of
Speaker 1: the life and work of Tom Cruise, from risky business
Speaker 1: to Eyes Wide Shut, to scientology to Mission Impossible. Now
Speaker 1: Nicholson can be found on the recently revamped MTV News,
Speaker 1: where she serves as their chief film critic. In case
Speaker 1: you didn't know it already, she's a passionate critic, great writer,
Speaker 1: and even better human being. So finally, here's Amy Nicholson. Also,
Speaker 1: it's like a weird like therapist set up, like you're
Speaker 1: on the coach. I'm not lying down. Yeah, have you
Speaker 1: done there? I've never left. Okay, and I did it
Speaker 1: like four times when I was breaking up with a boyfriend,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, this is fine. Oh god,
Speaker 1: see I did it for like ten months. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's always there's So there's a couch and then there
Speaker 1: was a chair. Yeah, and you can decide. I don't
Speaker 1: know what your your setup was like. It was like
Speaker 1: a tiny love seat. It was just a tiny love seat. Okay.
Speaker 1: I never went on the couch, So I feel like
Speaker 1: that would be a Woody Allen movie. You'd be like me,
Speaker 1: I'm flat. Yeah, it's a stereotypical. I don't know. It
Speaker 1: was weird. I just went and then then I realized
Speaker 1: I felt like I didn't even have anything to talk about,
Speaker 1: and it was okay, So can we just start from
Speaker 1: the beginning? Yeah? Where were you born? Oh? Where's I born? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do you think I meant by the beginning? I don't know,
Speaker 1: like the beginning of time. Oh oh yeah, Actually, if
Speaker 1: you want to give that interpretation and tell us how
Speaker 1: that happened, I am a deist or I was a deist. No, No,
Speaker 1: I'm an atheist, so I don't know. Absolutely a big bank. No.
Speaker 1: I was born in Lansing, Michigan. Yeah I didn't even
Speaker 1: know that. Yeah, No, I left when I was eight
Speaker 1: or nine months old. Yeah, just like my family's all
Speaker 1: from Michigan. Oh really where and yeah yeah, and we're
Speaker 1: like port here on mostly like the little knuckle by
Speaker 1: the thumb, right by the Canadian border. So you left
Speaker 1: at eight or we left? We left Lansing when I
Speaker 1: was eight months old. I went to Saganov for a
Speaker 1: couple of years. My parents were both getting their degrees
Speaker 1: at Michigan State. Oh yeah, so my dad was finishing
Speaker 1: law school or he had just finished, and he was
Speaker 1: doing his like clerking stuff, the low rent little things
Speaker 1: you have to do in your a lawyer, right, And
Speaker 1: my mom was getting her PhD in child psychology or
Speaker 1: educational child psychology, like writing the SAT that kind of
Speaker 1: a thing. Oh okay, wow yeah yeah, not like kids
Speaker 1: on the couch, but kids on the couch. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: more like how do kids learn, like spatial reasoning? And yeah,
Speaker 1: she wrote the SAT for a couple of years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's a big nerd. I didn't do well in the SAT. Really,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. No, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Did you did well? My mom wrote it, I did
Speaker 1: very well. That's some bullshit cheating right there. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: know that SAT saved my life. It got like my
Speaker 1: It got me a scholarship to college. It was like
Speaker 1: my dream. Yeah. But my mom was making me take
Speaker 1: the SAT when I was seven, so it's kind of
Speaker 1: not so we're totally jumped. So like you moved at eight,
Speaker 1: you're taking seven. Oh wait, no, I moved at five
Speaker 1: to Texas, Texas. Yeah. Yeah, I was eight months old
Speaker 1: when we moved to Michigan Cities. And then my mom
Speaker 1: got a job at the SAT Company or Harcourt Bast Javanovich.
Speaker 1: They wrote educational textbooks and that was in title again
Speaker 1: Hardcourt Brace Javanovich. They used to run Sea World Is.
Speaker 1: They're a weird thing, but they're like if you look
Speaker 1: at almost any school textbook, it might be from Hardcoot
Speaker 1: Brace Javanovitch. So that's what took us to Texas. Okay,
Speaker 1: and Texas is where I grew up. San Antonio. Oh really,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about San Antonio. That's where the
Speaker 1: Alamo was from. Yeah, I got that. I know what
Speaker 1: is a day? Like? What is your teenage life in
Speaker 1: San Antonio? San Antonio is great, Like I feel I
Speaker 1: spend my life advocating for San Antonio, especially because of
Speaker 1: the rise of Austin and we're rivals. It's a websited rivalry,
Speaker 1: like Austin doesn't care, but San Antonio cares because we're
Speaker 1: about an hour away. Well, we're an hour away from
Speaker 1: Austin and we're much bigger, Like where you have. San
Speaker 1: Antonio is the seventh biggest city in America. Like you
Speaker 1: can check that. It's true, and nobody knows or cares
Speaker 1: about it. That has the river thing, the riverwalk. I
Speaker 1: only know that because I like the spurs exactly. So
Speaker 1: at times they do, like during the halftime, they'll do
Speaker 1: like a wide aerial shot of San Antonio and that's
Speaker 1: all yeah, and it looked really nice. Yeah you see
Speaker 1: the river. It's like tons of tourists drinking Margarita's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we diet green at Saint Patrick's Day. We put Christmas
Speaker 1: lights all over it in the holidays. It's beautiful town.
Speaker 1: But all the bands and all the filmmakers wind up
Speaker 1: moving to Austin because it's just an hour away and
Speaker 1: it's the only place people look for creative people. So
Speaker 1: I hate Austin because of that. Yeah. Yeah, that's like
Speaker 1: like in the strong stance right there that you hate,
Speaker 1: you hate as well. You know, Austin gets all this
Speaker 1: rep for being the liberal part of Texas. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I would say a couple of things, like San Antonio
Speaker 1: is also crazy liberal. We was a liberal when you
Speaker 1: grew up there, but it's like died in the wool
Speaker 1: Catholic charity liberal, you know where it's like. But like
Speaker 1: my mother, for example, is like a really strong Catholic
Speaker 1: who believes a lot in advocating against the death penalty
Speaker 1: and helping the poor and values that make her very democratic.
Speaker 1: And so it's that kind of a city. It's like
Speaker 1: a working class, blue collar religious liberal, which is I
Speaker 1: guess is kind of weird and interesting. I really like
Speaker 1: it a lot. And then Austin gets all the credit
Speaker 1: because it's college kids, I understand. So you're a raised Catholic.
Speaker 1: Uh No, I was raised with Greek Orthodox, okay it
Speaker 1: My parents were different religions. Oh so my dad was
Speaker 1: a Catholic person who quit the Catholic Church when he
Speaker 1: was twenty too and became a Greek Orthodox, which is
Speaker 1: like they're kind of the original christian Um. They're they're
Speaker 1: they're just the oldest Christianity I think, and they like
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church splintered off of them. And he got
Speaker 1: really into it because there's an author named Nico's cousin Zakis.
Speaker 1: He wrote like Zorbit of Greek. Yeah, Nikos's cousin Zakis
Speaker 1: was my dad's favorite author. He was like, my dad
Speaker 1: was like kind of a beatnick intellectual type, you know,
Speaker 1: Beard and Pipes. I mean it was like the sixty seventies,
Speaker 1: and my mom was more like Valedictorian Hillary Clinton kind
Speaker 1: of oh, such a good combo. Yeah, it's a cool combo.
Speaker 1: It works, but um yeah. So my dad was just
Speaker 1: a hippie, like because Lancing in port here On, which
Speaker 1: is where he grew up, was the home of students
Speaker 1: for Democratic Society. Now I feel like I'm talking like
Speaker 1: in all different circles, but he knew those kids and
Speaker 1: he was like that kind of rebel tweed jacket dude
Speaker 1: who was like, I'm going to read up on Greek
Speaker 1: Orthodox because I love with the Greek and so he converted,
Speaker 1: and then that's what I ended up being raised as
Speaker 1: is a Greek Orthodox. Well, my mom stayed Catholic. So
Speaker 1: what were you like a mix of those two in
Speaker 1: high school? Kind of like they sent me to a
Speaker 1: Catholic high school. Yeah, I went to one of those.
Speaker 1: Yeah they're great, right, I mean they're kind of great.
Speaker 1: They're weird. I could do without the uniforms. I loved
Speaker 1: a uniform really. Yeah. Well it definitely allowed you not
Speaker 1: to think about what you're going to put on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that why you liked it? Definitely that, And I
Speaker 1: think I was kind of a I didn't start Catholic
Speaker 1: school till high school. They moved me over when I
Speaker 1: was a freshman. Okay, in middle school was horrible because
Speaker 1: I was worried so much about what I was going
Speaker 1: to wear every day and if I looked cool. And
Speaker 1: we didn't have that much money when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: so I always felt like I was underdressed. All of
Speaker 1: my friends were like raised by these suburban moms who
Speaker 1: curled their hair and gave them puff paint shirts, and
Speaker 1: my parents were like, I don't know, put on something, go,
Speaker 1: and so I always felt underdressed and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: having a uniform was amazing. I felt like I wasn't
Speaker 1: stressed out so much about looking that much poorer than
Speaker 1: all of my friends. Right, So, but did you have
Speaker 1: like religion classes? Yeah, weird ones. We had a nun
Speaker 1: called Sister Elizabeth, and we had to take multiple choice
Speaker 1: tests on things like what does your body do after
Speaker 1: it dies? Oh, your soul can like transform from here
Speaker 1: to there, Like it's a proving multiple choice yeah question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had to memorize all sorts of bullshit, you know,
Speaker 1: it was hilarious. Was it funny to you even then?
Speaker 1: Like were you like this is not what is going
Speaker 1: on here? Yeah? I mean my earliest we're really going
Speaker 1: into religion, okay, yeah, No, My earliest memories were like
Speaker 1: going to the Greek Orthodox church with my dad and
Speaker 1: he was in the choir and climbing underneath his robe
Speaker 1: because I would just spend all the church inside of
Speaker 1: his robe, like it was this big tent because he
Speaker 1: was in the choir, so I had these big black
Speaker 1: robes and sitting there and being like this is such bullshit.
Speaker 1: When do we get to leave? Like being like I
Speaker 1: know I'm supposed to be scared or believe in heaven
Speaker 1: and Helen. It never made any sense to me. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know when I didn't like finally put the
Speaker 1: words in it and said I was an atheist. It
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, you've been feeling that way since you
Speaker 1: were a baby. It wasn't even a hard transition. Oh,
Speaker 1: when I was under his robe, I was probably five
Speaker 1: or six. And then I think I didn't come out
Speaker 1: and say I was atheist, didn't tell twenty one I
Speaker 1: want to do it. After high school, yeah, I went
Speaker 1: through a period of being like a deist or just
Speaker 1: like not really putting the words to it or thinking
Speaker 1: about it, knowing I didn't care. And then just coming
Speaker 1: out and saying like I'm adeist was the first one.
Speaker 1: And then which is just you know, you believe that
Speaker 1: there's some sort of a spirit that created the world
Speaker 1: or created the universe. Impartially tipped over a domino and
Speaker 1: then the rest of it happened, and it doesn't pay
Speaker 1: attention to you right or care about what you do.
Speaker 1: And that was what my freshman year college boyfriend was.
Speaker 1: And when he explained that to me, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get that. That's close to sort of what I feel.
Speaker 1: And then it just took me that when their step
Speaker 1: of being like, well, I really believe that the thing
Speaker 1: that tipped over the domino is nature, and then if
Speaker 1: there's nature, it's just nature. I just believe in nature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think there's a lot of awe in nature,
Speaker 1: and so it's kind of religious in a way to
Speaker 1: be like, that's amazing that, you know, we're sitting here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles and there's like birds, and my cat
Speaker 1: is here and natured at all of that. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: A lot of things and food, any food. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just ate, like sorry for people who are listening,
Speaker 1: We just ate, like an omelet and a salad and
Speaker 1: radishes and mustard and these are all things that thank
Speaker 1: you for that. Sure the nature gave it to us
Speaker 1: or somehow it existed. Yeah, that's true. So you were
Speaker 1: religiously skeptical, like pretty early on and then they're high
Speaker 1: school and early college. It always just felt unnecessary, unnecessary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like people can be good to other people without That's
Speaker 1: that's what I got because my dad's not I went
Speaker 1: to Catlish school, but my dad's not particularly religious. But oh,
Speaker 1: they just put you there anyways. Oh, It's a long story,
Speaker 1: right that, like were you a bad kid? No? No?
Speaker 1: Well no, no, like is it punishment? Did you do something?
Speaker 1: Is this Amy interviewing me? No, it was the neighborhood
Speaker 1: I lived in the public school was like not good,
Speaker 1: and so my mom it was like, yeah, you should
Speaker 1: just go to this Catholic school that where everyone else
Speaker 1: in our neighborhood was going to. And then I went
Speaker 1: and neither of them our religious. Actually, But the reason
Speaker 1: I'm bringing all this up is because I don't know
Speaker 1: when my dad told me, but it was maybe six
Speaker 1: seventh grade, where he's like, you just gotta be a
Speaker 1: good person, like that's the only religious Like that's all
Speaker 1: you need to you don't. That's what I always found
Speaker 1: so frustrating because in catholicisms like you can be good,
Speaker 1: but only if you're Catholic, yeah, which is such a
Speaker 1: weird qualifier, Like I don't understand, And that didn't make
Speaker 1: sense to me, and I knew it didn't work. I
Speaker 1: would like fall asleep in religious classes, like I would.
Speaker 1: I would. It would be like five minutes in then
Speaker 1: they'd be open to Psalm thirty eighty five and I'd
Speaker 1: be falling asleep. And in church, I fell asleep all
Speaker 1: the time. Why you didn't have to sit and stand
Speaker 1: so much? Then that didn't keep you? Oh no, they
Speaker 1: woke me up when I had to stand and then
Speaker 1: and then kneel, Like, oh, the kneeling was the best
Speaker 1: because then I could just kneel and then put my
Speaker 1: head on the We're getting very descriptive about how I
Speaker 1: fell asleep and gained the system. Anyway, the point is no,
Speaker 1: but I feel you. I think it was around that
Speaker 1: age too, where when when you have to go to
Speaker 1: Sunday school class because my mom would make me sometimes
Speaker 1: go to everyone Catholic school. Yeah, because that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: My parents weren't religious. They were just like, go to
Speaker 1: this private Catholic school and go do that. But they didn't.
Speaker 1: They didn't really give a shit. My parents were like,
Speaker 1: you have to pick one of these two religions. They're like,
Speaker 1: we don't care which one it is, but Sunday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just went to the Greek one because my dad
Speaker 1: always stopped for breakfast, and like the Catholic one is
Speaker 1: just right across the street. And I'd also I like
Speaker 1: to with my dad a lot on Sundays and I
Speaker 1: sort of liked that at the Greek church people dressed up.
Speaker 1: They were like furs and heels, and at the Catholic
Speaker 1: church people are just in jeans, and I liked the
Speaker 1: excuse to wear a skirt. Yeah, and I think there's
Speaker 1: probably like a cute boy at something at the Greek
Speaker 1: church too. It was just like little things. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the detail you definitely remember. Yeah, there's definitely someone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I remember my mom making me go to you know,
Speaker 1: Sunday school and going through the whole thing and then
Speaker 1: explaining that thing where well, if a person has ever
Speaker 1: heard of Jesus and they didn't convert, their going to
Speaker 1: Hell and being like, why do we send missionaries and
Speaker 1: then to other countries and tell them about Jesus just
Speaker 1: to set them up for maybe going to Hell. Isn't
Speaker 1: it better to not have a missionary go there so
Speaker 1: that they never hear the word Jesus and then they're fine.
Speaker 1: It It seems kind of mean to go over there
Speaker 1: and say the word Jesus and then expect them to
Speaker 1: change their entire life and if they don't, now they're cursed.
Speaker 1: Like that was one of those logicals as a kid
Speaker 1: where I was like y'all need to explain this to
Speaker 1: me or your religions just mean to people. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of logical Yeah, did you write in
Speaker 1: high school? Yeah, I would. I helped co found Like
Speaker 1: we tried to get the school paper started up again
Speaker 1: when I was a junior. I tried to do that
Speaker 1: and it was a disaster work. Yeah, it never works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we tried to call it opus. I was also the
Speaker 1: photographer for it because I wanted to be a photographer
Speaker 1: back then, and we really wanted to call it opus.
Speaker 1: And I remember like our school moderator, the guy that
Speaker 1: they assigned to kind of supervise our paper, said everyone's
Speaker 1: going to laugh at you if you call it opus
Speaker 1: because that just sounds so pretentious. And you just wanted
Speaker 1: to call it the paper. And I thought that was
Speaker 1: the dumbest name ever. I thought opus was pretentious, but
Speaker 1: the paper, Yeah, it was the nineties. I guess he
Speaker 1: thought it was like st I liked that Michael Keaton movie.
Speaker 1: It was so ridiculous. I threw a big fit and
Speaker 1: then the first issue of the paper I've walked out
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm getting I mean, I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I was an asshole in high school, Like I was
Speaker 1: always getting in trouble. I'm like, they were not cool
Speaker 1: with me at my school until my senior year, and
Speaker 1: even then it was still sort of weird. I was
Speaker 1: just always like the raising my hand like no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is not right. I'm going to take this to
Speaker 1: the top. I was like that kid. It was. It
Speaker 1: was kind of fun, like I have a demerit, that's
Speaker 1: my favorite demerit and it's just checked for other and
Speaker 1: then she wrote in miss Musinski short and being sassy,
Speaker 1: and that's in your prize possession. Yeah, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of dumb fights. I got into a nice school
Speaker 1: I was very proud of. Like one time because we
Speaker 1: had to wear these sweaters, you know, uniform sweaters, and
Speaker 1: my sweater was too big, so I decided I was
Speaker 1: going to cut off the bottom and make it kind
Speaker 1: of a punk rock sweater, right, And I wore it
Speaker 1: like that for about a month, and then a teacher
Speaker 1: really noticed what I had done to the sweater and
Speaker 1: it became this thing where they're like, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: You have to get a new sweater. And I was like, well, technically,
Speaker 1: this is the uniform sweater, and they couldn't quite argue
Speaker 1: that you're not allowed to cut it. It wasn't in
Speaker 1: the yearbook, like there wasn't in the rule book. They
Speaker 1: didn't add it to the real book, like you may
Speaker 1: not reconfigure sweater. It might have eventually, but I remember
Speaker 1: just like really fighting this, like taking it to the
Speaker 1: vice principle and being like, why I should I have
Speaker 1: to buy another sweater? This is the sweater and her
Speaker 1: finally just going, Okay, I think you're right, you're right,
Speaker 1: Will you just do it as a favor? And then
Speaker 1: it turned out that was all I wanted to hear.
Speaker 1: I just wonder, do you hear that my argument was correct?
Speaker 1: That's all you want to hear. Yeah, that's the best thing.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to change, just so long as people admit
Speaker 1: that I'm right about something exactly. I just needed that.
Speaker 1: What a fucking crazy Like that's not normal on my
Speaker 1: part either? Did I need that validation that I'm right?
Speaker 1: I was a jerk. I'm surprised that they like put
Speaker 1: up with me as long as I did. So when
Speaker 1: did you first you started writing in high school? Trying
Speaker 1: to do this paper? Yeah? And I quit that issue
Speaker 1: one because I ran a picture on the front page.
Speaker 1: Our school had just bought Saint Anthony's. We bought it
Speaker 1: that year they were independent. Then we took him over
Speaker 1: and so for the first issue of that to commemorate
Speaker 1: this kind of big deal because we bought them. And
Speaker 1: now occasionally some boys might be in our classes here
Speaker 1: and there in the class. Um, No, he wasn't smart enough,
Speaker 1: and then he got kicked out of his school. He
Speaker 1: got kicked out of Anthony's. But um, I ran a
Speaker 1: picture on the front cover of this friend of mine
Speaker 1: named Apolo wearing our uniform. And it was Apollo and
Speaker 1: he was topless, but he was wearing our skirt. You know.
Speaker 1: It was kind of like a oh, like one of
Speaker 1: those from the Knees looking up at the heavens shots
Speaker 1: where he looked gigantic. And I was like, that's our
Speaker 1: cover picture. And they weren't gonna let me run nipples
Speaker 1: on the cover, and I just got mad and quit
Speaker 1: out of protests. And you thought a Catholic school is
Speaker 1: gonna be like, yeah, well a lot of nipples. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: we like this Amy person, We like you, like how
Speaker 1: she thinks we're gonna bend years of suppression and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was genuinely surprised. I think I offered try on
Speaker 1: a censored bottle were the nipples, And then I was
Speaker 1: just like, I can't do this. You're repressing me. This
Speaker 1: is I was a jerk, Yeah, yeah, but with clear ideals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm embarrassed by a lot of the stuff I pulled
Speaker 1: in high school. I remember, well, not really like, but
Speaker 1: I do remember it makes you who you are though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I was one of those idiot writers who thought
Speaker 1: the more adjectives I put in a sentence, the better,
Speaker 1: which I think I'm still fighting against. I'm still fighting
Speaker 1: and it's so hard because you want to show off
Speaker 1: when you learn a lot of words when you're a kid,
Speaker 1: you get rewarded for it either you want to put
Speaker 1: them in everything. And one of my teachers, bless her,
Speaker 1: I think miss Bell gave me grief about it. And
Speaker 1: and so I remember like writing a note in saying
Speaker 1: Hemingway's overrated, and like slipping it under her door because
Speaker 1: she wanted to to write more like Hemingway. And now
Speaker 1: I'm like, what an idiot? You know, really really like
Speaker 1: I would kill to right like Hemingway. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's the thing I regret. Yeah, that's that's a pretty
Speaker 1: Uh did she respond to that it was anonymous? I
Speaker 1: mean I did it cowardly. You probably knew it was me,
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's funny. So what happened when he went
Speaker 1: to college or did you major in like literature? Oh know?
Speaker 1: I started off as a photography okay, yeah, my first
Speaker 1: semester and then I switched, which I'm really glad I
Speaker 1: switched because I entered school kind of the last year
Speaker 1: that you were really doing a lot of where photography meant,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty five millimeter, developing your own film, you know,
Speaker 1: being in the dark room all the time. We had
Speaker 1: a dark room in my house when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: H We got one when I was in high school
Speaker 1: because I was really into photography and um, you know,
Speaker 1: so I'd always be developing photos in my garage and then,
Speaker 1: you know, immediately after I would have graduated college, all
Speaker 1: that was obsolete. I think I started right before photography
Speaker 1: became photoshop and digital and like a whole new way
Speaker 1: of doing things. I would have had this really outdated education, right,
Speaker 1: But part of my interest in photography feels like it
Speaker 1: was just related to everything else, which is I was
Speaker 1: really interested in subliminal advertising. That was always one of
Speaker 1: my passions with photography was like what messages can you
Speaker 1: get in this photo? Like how can you affect what
Speaker 1: people think when they see this image? And I was
Speaker 1: just interested in that kind of vague concept. And I
Speaker 1: didn't really know exactly what the other part of it was.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe it was like psychology. So I was
Speaker 1: a psychology major for like a month and I hated that.
Speaker 1: And then I was sociology for like a month and
Speaker 1: I was like, no, that's not really it changing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: freshman year, I changed my major like three times. Four times.
Speaker 1: Were you in a dorm? Yeah? I was in the dorm? Yeah,
Speaker 1: great times. I liked it, Yeah, totally. The thing did
Speaker 1: how many years? Did you just do it for the
Speaker 1: first year? Yeah? Yeah? And then I got like a
Speaker 1: little apartment exactly the same thing. It was nice. It's
Speaker 1: a one year thing. Yeah, I came on. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't go back again, though. You have to do so
Speaker 1: just so you understand dorm movies and what it's like
Speaker 1: to be stuck with a roommate. And we had a
Speaker 1: weird deal where we had one of those suits where
Speaker 1: it was like two bedrooms in one room and then
Speaker 1: you shared bathroom, and then two bedrooms in the next one.
Speaker 1: And one of the girls like moved for some reason,
Speaker 1: and then the other girl like ran away from school
Speaker 1: and never came back. You guys each had your own
Speaker 1: room basically like we had a party room essentially, right,
Speaker 1: and she was always at her boyfriend. So it was
Speaker 1: kind of like I just had a room, like two rooms.
Speaker 1: It was amazing. This is good. Yeah, I forgot about that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we would just go crazy. So what was
Speaker 1: freshman year besides changing the majors? What was that? Like?
Speaker 1: You know, I really liked it a lot. It was
Speaker 1: I moved to Oklahoma. That's where I went to school.
Speaker 1: Not that far away, not that far. It was like
Speaker 1: a seven hour drive, right, but enough that there's enough
Speaker 1: distance from parents. Like the seven hour drives kind of
Speaker 1: bad masks for them to make. Oh totally. My parents
Speaker 1: rule was that they didn't want me anywhere near home.
Speaker 1: They wanted me to get out, so I didn't. I
Speaker 1: wasn't like even really incur ridge at all to apply for,
Speaker 1: like to UT. I didn't apply to UT or anything
Speaker 1: in Texas because it was always like I was just
Speaker 1: raised being like you were getting the fuck out of here,
Speaker 1: so you change a major three times? Yeah, I wound
Speaker 1: upout anthropology, which is what I figured was actually what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. By the end of freshman year,
Speaker 1: you were like your major in anthropology. Yeah, by the
Speaker 1: end of the freshman year, I was a double major
Speaker 1: in anthropology in film studies because I figured out film studies.
Speaker 1: The second half of this of the year. Well made
Speaker 1: that happen? Well, it was weird. I realized what I
Speaker 1: liked about anthropology, and I think I would have been
Speaker 1: an anthropology major even earlier if I had known what
Speaker 1: it was. I didn't really know what it was. That
Speaker 1: it was just the study of people and the study
Speaker 1: of like how this culture relates to people, which I
Speaker 1: thought might have been psychology and that was too specific,
Speaker 1: and then I thought might be so sociology, But that
Speaker 1: stuff is all statistics. It's anthropology. That's like more narratives
Speaker 1: and cultures and embedding yourself and really understanding how people think.
Speaker 1: And that's always been the thing I was most interested in. Like,
Speaker 1: even with subliminal advertising, there was like this weird through
Speaker 1: line of how does Coca Cola steer what people think?
Speaker 1: And I'm just fascinated in that. And then my sophomore note,
Speaker 1: my spring semester freshman year, I took a class called
Speaker 1: Films and Culture of the Great Depression And it was
Speaker 1: just a random elective and my teacher, who was amazing,
Speaker 1: Joanna Repp, she's still there. She's related to Harry rep
Speaker 1: who was one of the founders of I Think MGM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's his granddaughter. She said, Oh, well, here's this thing.
Speaker 1: You know, the Great Depression happens, and culture reflects that
Speaker 1: in gangster movies. And then FDR gets and elected and
Speaker 1: he goes to Hollywood and he says, I want the
Speaker 1: culture to feel more optimistic. Can we stop making gangster movies?
Speaker 1: And can we start making like comedies and musicals and
Speaker 1: Shirley Temple and this idea that I'd never really thought
Speaker 1: of before, you know, hit me that movies are our
Speaker 1: culture and that basically film studies an anthropology are the
Speaker 1: same thing. And anthropology felt a little limited in that
Speaker 1: they really just like studying cultures that are different from us.
Speaker 1: They're like going to you know, Papa New Guinea and
Speaker 1: looking at them with this detachment. But I felt like
Speaker 1: we could do the same thing. Through film here in America,
Speaker 1: and so I want I guess a little bit of both.
Speaker 1: It felt like, why are we so able to extrapolate
Speaker 1: all this stuff from a basket in Popa New Guinea
Speaker 1: and we're not turning that on ourselves. And then you
Speaker 1: get older and you read more film criticism and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: people were doing that. But I thought I was brilliant
Speaker 1: at eighteen, Like, oh wait, this is anthropology. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I was a pretentious asshole. That's what we're establishing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I hope people take away from the first
Speaker 1: part of this conversation is, oh, yeah, you're a pretentious asshole.
Speaker 1: I'm glad people didn't meet me when I was eighteen.
Speaker 1: I was the worst, But yeah, that was it. And
Speaker 1: then freshman year, I just that was it. And I
Speaker 1: added a minor in American history and those three things
Speaker 1: just kind of they're like my unofficial film critic degree.
Speaker 1: She felt like, you need to get a PhD to
Speaker 1: just like causes. You need that to be successful. It's
Speaker 1: just represent I guess this is I guess this is
Speaker 1: what it's like when you grow up, you know, Republican
Speaker 1: or my kids Democrat. You just grow up a thing
Speaker 1: and you don't always question it. And I grew up
Speaker 1: Democrat and I'm glad I did. But you never had
Speaker 1: that moment of questioning it. And it's just or like
Speaker 1: your religion that you grew up with, you don't question.
Speaker 1: I guess in my case, I questioned the religion, but
Speaker 1: I didn't ever question the PhD. It was just one
Speaker 1: of those facts like this is what you will do.
Speaker 1: This is see, this is a reoccurring thing for you. Really,
Speaker 1: you gotta do this, you gotta do this, and these
Speaker 1: are like the necessary steps to like live life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just thought everybody had a PhD. That makes me
Speaker 1: sound so weird, but like, yeah, I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: have any of this. Yeah, that's my parents were just
Speaker 1: very smart. Like my mom likes to tell me that
Speaker 1: she has one hundred and seventy i Q. I don't
Speaker 1: she's never. I don't know, I don't know. That's what
Speaker 1: she tells me. That's what I grew up with. One
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy IQ. What's yours? Uh, it's lower than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never. I never took that. Really nuts, Wow, my
Speaker 1: mom was making me take a Q test when I'm
Speaker 1: like four. She was also running the SAT I know
Speaker 1: she was. It was weird. I took I had to
Speaker 1: take a standardized test to get into preschool. This was
Speaker 1: my childhood, very weird. It didn't seem weird at the time,
Speaker 1: but it created a smart person, so that's good hopefully.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, it's yeah, that's I met. My parents
Speaker 1: were both just the valedictorians and the whole thing. And
Speaker 1: I think I was a lab experiment. So yeah, PhD
Speaker 1: was just always a thing I was supposed to do.
Speaker 1: So when you're like nearing college senior year, are you thinking, yeah, fuck,
Speaker 1: I have to go to more school. Yeah? I was thinking,
Speaker 1: well where am I going to go to film school?
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, well, there's USC, and there's Madison,
Speaker 1: and I hate cold weather, so probably USC. And then
Speaker 1: some weird stuff happened, like the very beginning of my
Speaker 1: senior year or right before what happened. Well, yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: don't forget on me when I tell you the story
Speaker 1: of August two thousand and one, because it can sound weird,
Speaker 1: like you want the people listening your maid not to
Speaker 1: freak out on everybody. Okay, So August two thousand and
Speaker 1: one started with like I think the first day, someone
Speaker 1: stole my laptop, which had all of my writing I
Speaker 1: was going to use to apply for grad school because
Speaker 1: I went to school for five years, because I had
Speaker 1: a five year scholarship, And so my parents were like,
Speaker 1: dick around, take every class you feel like taking, study
Speaker 1: whatever you want to study, study abroad, like spend times.
Speaker 1: It's the best thing ever. I was so glad about it.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have realized how lucky it was at the time,
Speaker 1: but they were like, on the laptop, No, it was
Speaker 1: all gone. There was no rope. Yeah it was you know.
Speaker 1: It was this huge old laptop and someone stole it
Speaker 1: from my work from I worked at the school library.
Speaker 1: And I was just devastated because my whole plan had been,
Speaker 1: you know, take all your writing classes the semester before,
Speaker 1: which I had done, you write all your huge papers
Speaker 1: about everything, and then fall semester you're gonna apply for
Speaker 1: grad school. But everything, And I remember calling my dad
Speaker 1: and like just in tears, like my life was over
Speaker 1: that I've made that call. Yeah, you're just I don't
Speaker 1: know what I'm gonna do with my future now. It
Speaker 1: was horrible. And then a couple of days later, my
Speaker 1: dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer Jesus Christ. And then
Speaker 1: he actually ended up dying like a little bit less
Speaker 1: less than two weeks later. He wound up dying like
Speaker 1: August thirteenth, and it was just like boom. And then
Speaker 1: oh God, see, this is why don't need to freak out,
Speaker 1: because it's gonna get word. And then only because you're
Speaker 1: like smiling right now. Well, it's been a long time,
Speaker 1: and you kind of get used to this story, and
Speaker 1: I think you smile at a nervousness because you realize
Speaker 1: you have the potential to make people really uncomfortable. No,
Speaker 1: you're not making that, okay, cool? Yeah, yeah, But he
Speaker 1: just died like as soon as he would he was diagnosed, basically.
Speaker 1: And then while I was gone at the funeral, my
Speaker 1: cat ran away. And then when my boyfriend came down
Speaker 1: for the funeral, he freaked out the night before and
Speaker 1: like cheated on me because I think he just couldn't
Speaker 1: handle the responsibility of taking care of a girlfriend whose
Speaker 1: dad had just died, so he just blew it up.
Speaker 1: And then also on the way to the funeral, my
Speaker 1: roommate was driving my car so I'd have it, and
Speaker 1: she totaled my car somewhere three hours north of where
Speaker 1: I lived. And that was just August and I started.
Speaker 1: I went back to school like about a week later
Speaker 1: when the semester started, just gutted. And then the next month,
Speaker 1: September eleventh, happened and I was like, oh fuck this.
Speaker 1: It was just like this crazy month to month, like
Speaker 1: five weeks of insanity. So instead of applying for grad
Speaker 1: school in the fall, I was like, Oh, the world
Speaker 1: is gonna end. That was my mindset, like everything's over.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no point in grad school. I may
Speaker 1: as well just do whatever I really want to do.
Speaker 1: And maybe I don't want to go to grad school.
Speaker 1: And I realized I didn't want to be a professor.
Speaker 1: I think I just always assumed I had to be
Speaker 1: a professor, which sounds weird again coming out of my mouth,
Speaker 1: But like I would see my professors, who were some
Speaker 1: of the most brilliant people I knew, and they had
Speaker 1: no control over where they wanted to live, you know,
Speaker 1: brilliant people living in Oklahoma and knowing as great as
Speaker 1: Oklahoma is, they'd probably rather be in a place with
Speaker 1: like more arthouse theaters and better restaurants and more to do.
Speaker 1: But they were in Oklahoma because you can't get academic
Speaker 1: jobs at easily, and thinking I don't want to do that,
Speaker 1: like I don't want to be told where to live.
Speaker 1: I want to pick where I want to live, and
Speaker 1: that's never going to happen if I go into academia.
Speaker 1: So that was when I started to think it's silly,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't ever think that film criticism was something legitimate.
Speaker 1: In the joke I always say is that I grew
Speaker 1: up in San Antonio, where a film critic would judge
Speaker 1: things by halopanos, and so I thought film critics were
Speaker 1: just like I thought that was what you did if
Speaker 1: you didn't become a professor. I still sound like such
Speaker 1: a job. I sound insane. You don't sound insane. But
Speaker 1: that was when I started thinking, oh, could that not
Speaker 1: be funny to be that's incredible. That's so it just
Speaker 1: kind of dawned on me that semester that if you
Speaker 1: become a film critic, not only do you get to
Speaker 1: pick where you live, well, you have to live in
Speaker 1: La really or like San Francisco in New York, Okay,
Speaker 1: So you don't totally get to pick where you live.
Speaker 1: But I loved LA. But you Also, you don't just
Speaker 1: you know, while yourself away writing books, you get to
Speaker 1: engage in the conversation about what's happening in film every week.
Speaker 1: And that was when I really really got an appalling
Speaker 1: kale and I started to think, oh my god, there's
Speaker 1: so much you could do with film criticism that I
Speaker 1: never took seriously because I was just on this. I
Speaker 1: couldem me a trip that I didn't ever question. So
Speaker 1: you had about like a decade's worth of terrible things
Speaker 1: happen in about a month. Yeah. Yeah, I've had really
Speaker 1: a good luck ever since then, I'm sure, because it's
Speaker 1: all gone, like you, like, all the bad things that
Speaker 1: happened to most people, like those things are spread out.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, And I'm leaving out like that, I mean
Speaker 1: the rest of that month. I September because of all
Speaker 1: the stress, I got an ulcer. I've never had an
Speaker 1: ulcer before. They're horrible. Yeah. The little things I'm leaving
Speaker 1: at are dumb, Like my roommate got me a new cat,
Speaker 1: and then the cat had ringworm, so everybody in the
Speaker 1: house got ring worm. And then this is all September,
Speaker 1: and then I ended up like in October accidentally running
Speaker 1: over the cat because it no, it was terrible. I
Speaker 1: came out of my house this is October. I turned
Speaker 1: the car on to and I had gotten a package.
Speaker 1: My aunt and uncle had sent me a gift and
Speaker 1: it was on my front door and I saw it
Speaker 1: when I came out to get in the car, and
Speaker 1: so I turned the car on and I was sitting
Speaker 1: in the car opening the package. And while I was
Speaker 1: doing it, the kitten crept up in the wheel of
Speaker 1: the car. And I didn't know because I was inside
Speaker 1: the car, and it just I think it thought it
Speaker 1: like the warmth of the vibration. And when I backed out,
Speaker 1: I just had I ran over the kitten. It was
Speaker 1: the worst of me is terrible. My life. This is
Speaker 1: really bad. It was bad. My boyfriend ended up like
Speaker 1: getting together with the girl he cheated with, cheated on
Speaker 1: me with. I assume that didn't work out. They wound
Speaker 1: up having a kid, and they get divorced. I think
Speaker 1: they This is going to sound awful. I feel like
Speaker 1: part of the reason they wound up having a kid
Speaker 1: is because they got like ostracized when everybody realized what happened.
Speaker 1: There was kind of a bad punchline to this story,
Speaker 1: like his mom was mad at him, like everyone was
Speaker 1: just mad at him. So he and this girl were like, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make this work and prove everyone wrong. And
Speaker 1: then they had a kid about a year later, and yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was everything really weird out of that month. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's but you found Pauling Gale. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: but to your point, that changes you a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: I think I was, Well, it's also I think what
Speaker 1: I find most interesting, besides the fact that it's all
Speaker 1: like in quick succession, is that it's coming at a
Speaker 1: very moment, like a moment of instability, Like you're leaving college. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now you get a fair of like what the
Speaker 1: fuck am I had five you know, you had five
Speaker 1: years of I live here at school's paid, I was
Speaker 1: scholarship and I'm doing this and I'm studying and all that,
Speaker 1: and then now you have to like go do life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then all this happens, like the moment you like
Speaker 1: take one step out into life, like all this and
Speaker 1: and I'm a little surprised, like the year still here,
Speaker 1: like I don't know how you Like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm strong enough to get past that. I think
Speaker 1: everyone is, which is why it's kind of good to
Speaker 1: get tested that way. Then you know that you can
Speaker 1: That's like, that's optimism on your partner. That's good. Well,
Speaker 1: what's weird too, is it? You know? I don't want
Speaker 1: to undersell the idea. And I'm so curious here about
Speaker 1: other people who were in their senior year of college
Speaker 1: when September eleventh happened, you really thought the world is
Speaker 1: going to change. I feel like there's a weird glitch
Speaker 1: in my year where a lot of people didn't go
Speaker 1: to grad school because all of us thought maybe there
Speaker 1: was going to be a huge war and people would
Speaker 1: get drafted. We didn't know. Yeah, I almost didn't go
Speaker 1: to second grade. Well yeah, Sepior that young, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: September eleventh was my roommate's birthday, my roommate who got
Speaker 1: me the cat, my roommate that I killed, My roommate
Speaker 1: who told my car, And it was her birthday that morning,
Speaker 1: and I woke up and I had stayed up early
Speaker 1: late the night before September tenth making her an ice
Speaker 1: cream cake. This before or after she told your car?
Speaker 1: This was after? This was like the month after she
Speaker 1: friend and you're making her, Oh this girl's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but is there a chance she's listening? No, not at all.
Speaker 1: She looked out like if she had told my car
Speaker 1: any other time but August two thousand and one, I
Speaker 1: think it would have been a problem. But it was
Speaker 1: like the least thing that we cared about. And then
Speaker 1: when my dad was dead, so I had his car,
Speaker 1: it was just like, okay, fine, I have a car,
Speaker 1: and maybe just we let her get totally off the
Speaker 1: hook with it. Strange, it's so weird. She'd never nothing
Speaker 1: ever happened of it with that. But but yeah, so
Speaker 1: I stayed up late to make her this ice cream cake,
Speaker 1: and then you wake up in the morning. And it
Speaker 1: was September eleventh, and we had told everybody to meet
Speaker 1: us at the park in the afternoon, and you know,
Speaker 1: this was slightly pretty cell phone. I had a cell phone,
Speaker 1: A lot of my friends didn't have a cell phone.
Speaker 1: She didn't have a cell phone. So we all just
Speaker 1: met in the park anyways, because we didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do and classes were canceled. And I remember sitting
Speaker 1: there in the park with this ice cream cake and
Speaker 1: it's melting and we're all just terrified, and we're looking
Speaker 1: up at the sky. Where are you right here? Oklahoma?
Speaker 1: We're in a park in Oklahoma, and we're just looking
Speaker 1: at our male friends and we're thinking, are you guys
Speaker 1: going to have to go to war? It was terrifying,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of us didn't come to grad school.
Speaker 1: It was the weirdest year to graduate. I've never heard
Speaker 1: that before. Really, I never heard that, like people didn't
Speaker 1: go to grad school or like that. I understood, I
Speaker 1: guess I understand the idea intellectually that like life halted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the idea that that changed the trajectory for so
Speaker 1: many people to continue their education or to make their
Speaker 1: next step. I mean, maybe it's just anecdotally with my friends,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's the fall. This is when you
Speaker 1: apply for next year. And no, none of us did. No, no,
Speaker 1: none of us did. It didn't feel like there was
Speaker 1: a point. Yeah, it was like, what's the point of
Speaker 1: grad school? If the world's over? It sounds that this
Speaker 1: is this is ending. We thought it was World War three,
Speaker 1: you know, or I definitely thought it was World War three.
Speaker 1: It we we had just come out of like the
Speaker 1: crazy election, the Bush election, and it just felt like
Speaker 1: the world was insane. You know, My dad sent me
Speaker 1: tons of forwards making fun of you know, the Bush
Speaker 1: Supreme Court thing, and it just felt like anything could happen.
Speaker 1: It felt like you grow up expecting one arc for
Speaker 1: the world, and then all of a sudden, like at
Speaker 1: this last moment, you know, your last year of college,
Speaker 1: like the railroad got blown up, and then it feels
Speaker 1: like the railroad maybe kind of got put in place
Speaker 1: a couple of years later, but that like that one
Speaker 1: year I graduated, I think the track was just like demolished, right,
Speaker 1: And so the demolished track led you to writing about movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: weirdly here, that seems about right though, given this profession. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because one thing that happened was there is this critic
Speaker 1: I used to love who wrote for CNN dot com
Speaker 1: and he was one of the few cricks I read.
Speaker 1: His name is Paul Tatara. And what happened is he
Speaker 1: panned Black Hawk Down around this time, not a good movie,
Speaker 1: not a good movie, but in a moment where we
Speaker 1: were all talking about the troops. He got all this
Speaker 1: hate mail for panning black Hawk Down, tons of hate mail,
Speaker 1: and CNN ended up the story I heard you said,
Speaker 1: they ended up firing him kind of a weird foreshadowing
Speaker 1: to you on Loan Survivor. Yeah, and the idea that
Speaker 1: a film critic could be fired for talking about the
Speaker 1: real world as reflected in a movie all of a
Speaker 1: sudden made film criticism seem like noble. Yeah, like you're
Speaker 1: you're writing is not only substitutive but potentially impactful. And yeah,
Speaker 1: you're talking about the world. You have an excuse to
Speaker 1: talk about the world. So you never wrote about film
Speaker 1: in college except for like your papers, Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: film my papers. I did like long treatises on you know,
Speaker 1: Asian American characters and eighties films and how it related
Speaker 1: to Yeah, stuff like that. That was my thesis, was
Speaker 1: the last part of the thesis. Oh about how the
Speaker 1: you know, the rise of Toyota and Honda in the
Speaker 1: eighties and our fear that Japan was going to overtake
Speaker 1: us in the world market, particularly in automobiles, led to
Speaker 1: racist eighties characters who are Asian in movies like Revenge
Speaker 1: of the Nerds and Sixteen Candles. That was all of
Speaker 1: us taking out our aggression on Japan in eighties movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe in it really strongly. So I thought I
Speaker 1: was going to be writing stuff like that, which, in
Speaker 1: a way I guess you are still you know, we
Speaker 1: get to do that still, So you how quickly did
Speaker 1: you transition? Like when did what was your first gig?
Speaker 1: Pretty quick? The spring semester I started writing, Oh that
Speaker 1: I ended up taking spring semester a class in film criticism.
Speaker 1: Suddenly we had one. We never really had one before,
Speaker 1: but we had one that was like a kind of
Speaker 1: a rotating elective. So I took that, and then I
Speaker 1: also started writing film reviews for the school paper because
Speaker 1: I knew I would need those to move to La.
Speaker 1: I knew I needed to get samples. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: my spring semester when I realized, like, this is what
Speaker 1: you're going to do. And I'd been visiting La a
Speaker 1: lot because my friends were slightly older, some of them,
Speaker 1: so they had moved to LA before I got here,
Speaker 1: and I would come out and visit, and I knew
Speaker 1: I wanted to live here. I knew this was my place.
Speaker 1: I imagine it felt wildly different from Oklahoma. It did,
Speaker 1: but it weirdly feels a lot like San Antonio because
Speaker 1: they're both huge cities that live on tacos. You know it.
Speaker 1: It takes like an hour to get anywhere. They're set
Speaker 1: up very similar. It was just a cooler version of
Speaker 1: San Antonio, where you even have a we even have
Speaker 1: our own shitty river, you know, It's true. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: felt it felt at home like I'm used to being
Speaker 1: in cities with a lot of Spanish and with you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of culture, and Eli has a ton of culture. Oh,
Speaker 1: it definitely does. So you've like visited here and thought, okay,
Speaker 1: I can I can move here. Yeah. And I would
Speaker 1: read the La Weekly. You know. I remember sitting in
Speaker 1: the back of ocar because we would drive here mostly
Speaker 1: from Oklahoma. It's like about a twenty two hour trip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I would sit in the back of the car
Speaker 1: when I wasn't driving, and I would read the LA Weekly,
Speaker 1: like cover to cover all the capsule reviews, all the
Speaker 1: film reviews, all the art stuff. And it was big
Speaker 1: back then. They used to run like, yeah, tons of
Speaker 1: theater reviews, everything, And I just I loved that tone,
Speaker 1: you know, it was like snarky and smart and funny
Speaker 1: and really knowledgeable, and it just made sense. It felt
Speaker 1: like I wanted to write there specifically. And then what
Speaker 1: happened is my spring semester. A writer who is still
Speaker 1: great and he's Boston right now. Gerald Perry. He came
Speaker 1: to my town to give a writing award to somebody else,
Speaker 1: not me. I don't even know what they're writing word
Speaker 1: was for. But because he was a film critic and
Speaker 1: I was the only person who wanted to be a
Speaker 1: film critic, my head of the department was like, oh,
Speaker 1: get lunch with Amy, which was great, and so Gerald
Speaker 1: and I got lunch, and I remember we fought about Amalie.
Speaker 1: He liked it and I thought it was like crap.
Speaker 1: I was again, I was still kind of an asshole. No,
Speaker 1: fuck that movie. Whatever. Do you think you're still an
Speaker 1: asshole a little bit? Probably? Yeah, Well, I think all
Speaker 1: of us critics have to be We have to be
Speaker 1: certain that we're right all the time. If you're not
Speaker 1: certain that you're right, then why are people reading you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know they're not. Yeah. But so he ended
Speaker 1: up connecting me to an internship with the LA Weekly,
Speaker 1: and so he's a good start. Yeah, just it was
Speaker 1: like very random. He called me a month later and
Speaker 1: he was like, you know, I know a guy at
Speaker 1: the LA Weekly. If I made this happen for you
Speaker 1: would you move out to La immediately right after graduation? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Of course. Yeah, So that's that was He's I mean,
Speaker 1: we all have people that I think were the number
Speaker 1: one person who helped us, and just by that phone call,
Speaker 1: like Gerald, changed the whole course of my life. So
Speaker 1: Day wanted LA Weekly. Yeah, they want a LA Weekly
Speaker 1: film intern. What are you doing? I am doing? Actually,
Speaker 1: Day want to LA Weekly was if a few months
Speaker 1: after Manola had left to go to the La Times.
Speaker 1: And so they put me in her chair, which was crazy,
Speaker 1: like her in her cubicle next to La Taylor, who's
Speaker 1: great in reviews movies for NPR. Right now it teaches
Speaker 1: here at USC And they said, well, we're going to
Speaker 1: need a new film critic. And I was like me
Speaker 1: and they're like ha ha, no, fuck you go away.
Speaker 1: They're like, here's a stack of applications of people who
Speaker 1: wanted to be film critics. They sent us in their stuff.
Speaker 1: They're like, do you want to go through them and
Speaker 1: see if anybody's good? And I was like what, Like
Speaker 1: that's that's incredibly crazy. So do you remember the people
Speaker 1: that were in there? Yeah? There are some people I knew,
Speaker 1: some people I didn't know. Some people who were crazy.
Speaker 1: Some people couldn't write with any thing I went through.
Speaker 1: If Paul Ta Tara was in there, I found maybe
Speaker 1: four or five handed them over. They never read them,
Speaker 1: you know who. I don't think so I have no
Speaker 1: idea really that much anymore. This is two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: But what was really chilling about it was that some
Speaker 1: of the letters were years old. You know, people had
Speaker 1: just applied beforeman all even left, you know, just in
Speaker 1: case or maybe to be like a freelancer, and you realized, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't get hired in this world, you know, like
Speaker 1: writing a letter is and how this works. And that
Speaker 1: was the wake up call of being like, oh, you
Speaker 1: can't just write a letter because no one will read it.
Speaker 1: And then they'll just send it to some twenty two
Speaker 1: year old who just showed up from Oklahoma and they'll
Speaker 1: be like, oh, why don't you read these It'll give
Speaker 1: you something to do, and that's how that's how it works. Like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: that doesn't work at all. Yeah, that was terrifying, crushing realization. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, I'm never going to get to be
Speaker 1: a film critic. If that's how this work. You had
Speaker 1: just moved here. Yeah, like that week. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: the first week, your spirits were already Yeah. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this doesn't there is no template for this, you know,
Speaker 1: that's not like a normal job. And then they ended
Speaker 1: up hiring Scott Founders, who wasn't in that stack. You know.
Speaker 1: He was just a smart guy that they knew and respected,
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, wow, okay, this is how it works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is no map. So you've finished your internship a weekly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They really had nothing for me to do there. It
Speaker 1: was kind of just like a kindness. It was a
Speaker 1: it was a get you in the door a thing
Speaker 1: and did right. Yeah. They let me write a couple
Speaker 1: of film reviews. I remember my first one was for
Speaker 1: Little Secrets, a movie with Evan rachel Wood. It's crazy
Speaker 1: Evan rachel Wood opens up this business people. I think
Speaker 1: it's like people pay her a quarter to tell her
Speaker 1: a secret that she'll never tell anyone. So she was like,
Speaker 1: for people who are just bursting with secrets they need
Speaker 1: to tell. And I wrote a capsule review, like two
Speaker 1: hundred words of it, and remember the first line, no,
Speaker 1: but I think it is rotten tomatoes. I remember having
Speaker 1: a thing on rotten tomatoes. And being like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I just moved here. I have a review in Rotten Tomatoes.
Speaker 1: You are. It's an exciting thing that happens. I remember that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then I didn't. I don't think I got another
Speaker 1: review on there for like seven years. I was like, well, there,
Speaker 1: I did it. I did it. So what happens in
Speaker 1: between you leaving LA Weekly? Like then what? Oh well?
Speaker 1: I wound up kind of staying at LA Weekly. What
Speaker 1: happened was the theater editor because part of what I did,
Speaker 1: everybody took pity on me there. We're trying to find
Speaker 1: me little jobs to stay alive because I like you,
Speaker 1: or maybe I was just annoying. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I was like sleeping on a living room floor because
Speaker 1: I didn't have money from my own bedroom. That kind
Speaker 1: of a thing, and that's a likable trait in people. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I think I was the only intern in the building,
Speaker 1: you know, So I was just this kid running around
Speaker 1: from Oklahoma and being like I'm from Oklahoma. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: did they have an accent? No? No, my god. But
Speaker 1: they are all these older hipster types, you know, like
Speaker 1: people who had been at The Weekly since the eighties.
Speaker 1: Because this is before the big turnover at the Weekly.
Speaker 1: So they're all a big part of your life apparently,
Speaker 1: but I get like, not your choice. Well, they were
Speaker 1: like the cool people from the eighties who were in
Speaker 1: all the cool bands and everything, you know, people like
Speaker 1: Stephen Michuelan, who's a god. You know, he was there,
Speaker 1: and my editor was Stephen Lee Morris in the theater section.
Speaker 1: So they were finding me jobs like filing photos in
Speaker 1: the basement, and they taught me how to proof read.
Speaker 1: So I was like proof reading and this is all
Speaker 1: like twenty five bucks here, thirty bucks here, just to
Speaker 1: pay rent. And I was on food stamps. They were
Speaker 1: trying to like help keep me alive, so I wasn't
Speaker 1: just only on food stamps. And yeah. So it was
Speaker 1: like going through a press release or something. I saw
Speaker 1: that Sebastian Bach was going to be in Jackal and
Speaker 1: Hide somewhere in Orange County. He was going to be
Speaker 1: in the stage production of Jekyll and Hyde. And I
Speaker 1: loved heavy metal, so I went to the theater editor.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I still do, really yeah. So I asked
Speaker 1: the theater editor like, oh my god, did you know
Speaker 1: that Sebastian Bach is going to be in Jekyl and Hide.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is the biggest fucking thing. I
Speaker 1: was so excited about it. And he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: do you want to interview him? And so he let
Speaker 1: me interview him, and then he would just let your
Speaker 1: first interview with Sebastian book and then he just let
Speaker 1: me start writing theater reviews. And so that's what I
Speaker 1: ended up doing for ten years, basically his writing theater
Speaker 1: reviews at the LA Weekly, right, like for you know,
Speaker 1: seventy nine dollars a pop. Yeah, so this is from
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. Yeah, two thousand and eleven or twelve.
Speaker 1: I think I did it ten years exactly. But you
Speaker 1: haven't you written? Haven't you written about movies prior to
Speaker 1: like twenty eleven or twelve? Yeah, yeah, I started to
Speaker 1: phase in more movies, Yeah, towards around probably probably it
Speaker 1: probably wasn't seven years. It's probably like two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven or eight. I started writing for the Inland Umpire
Speaker 1: Weekly in La City Beat. I got my foot in
Speaker 1: the door a couple of places, right, and just worked
Speaker 1: and then Box Office Magazine and what happened to the
Speaker 1: Box Office Magazine? I think they're still around. I don't
Speaker 1: know they're not our else. Well, I mean this is
Speaker 1: like the type of research I did. Two in the morning.
Speaker 1: I googled it because you had put it on like
Speaker 1: just like I as searched your name. I was like
Speaker 1: Amy Nicholson, see what happens, and like on the first page,
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the first page, there's like a
Speaker 1: Google Plus account of yours. Oh and you're like box
Speaker 1: Office magazine. I worked hard on this. Here's the here's
Speaker 1: the app. And I clicked it and iteen. It's like, nah,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Yeah, we launched. I was the
Speaker 1: editor box Office after a while, and we launched an
Speaker 1: iPad magazine. Yeah, I bag it was wasn't like David
Speaker 1: are like partner, Yeah yeah, David are like I remember
Speaker 1: he wait he was at south By and when our
Speaker 1: critic who was at Southby couldn't review something if he
Speaker 1: was like, my buddy can do it, and it was
Speaker 1: David Airlick. And I remember reading David air likeic and
Speaker 1: being like, who is this genius? Yeah, yeah, he's brilliant.
Speaker 1: He's one of my favorites. Yeah. Yeah, so we I
Speaker 1: was like, as soon as we had money to hire people,
Speaker 1: I was like, David are like, he's number one on
Speaker 1: my list. I loved him. Yeah, And so then you
Speaker 1: did the theater stuff, started writing more film reviews. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then box Office ended up taking over just enough
Speaker 1: that I had to, like I had to, I couldn't
Speaker 1: do theater anymore, which is kind of what happened is.
Speaker 1: I went to go see a Christmas Carol. I was
Speaker 1: like a sign to go review a Christmas Carol. And
Speaker 1: it was like the tenth time I'd been sent to
Speaker 1: go review a Christmas Carol. Yeah, I reviewed it so
Speaker 1: many times. And every Christmas you have to go reviewed
Speaker 1: at least once or twice. It's like every film critic
Speaker 1: or every theater critic is like they do twelve productions
Speaker 1: of it. So it's like everybody kind of gets sent
Speaker 1: to see a different one. And I just I snapped.
Speaker 1: I was like, I can't review a Christmas Carol anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm done. What was the first film review in those years?
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, I got something I could do this,
Speaker 1: this is good. I don't know. I always think about
Speaker 1: my college review of Wind Talkers, which I feel like
Speaker 1: I've never written anything as good as that. I feel
Speaker 1: like everything I've done since has been downhill somewhere on
Speaker 1: the oh you Daily, Maybe it's not even that good.
Speaker 1: There a few things I regret. I was like mean
Speaker 1: to an actor in it in a way I don't
Speaker 1: like being now. It was, you know, it's a Nicolas
Speaker 1: Cage movie. I think I said he looked like a
Speaker 1: piece of boiled pork. Like I just made fun of
Speaker 1: his face. And I would never do that now, like
Speaker 1: that's too mean. You can do it. No, you couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. Now, it's cruel, it's not fair. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was an asshole, But like I remember looking up Navajo
Speaker 1: for my lead. I was like, I'm gonna do my
Speaker 1: foot because it's about Navajo translators. And I remember like
Speaker 1: the Navajo world word was bill nahey and I don't
Speaker 1: remember what it meant, but I was like so proud
Speaker 1: of myself for finding Navajo as a lead. That's what
Speaker 1: I was. Just crazy. Yeah, yeah, so that was a
Speaker 1: good review. It's the one I really I want to
Speaker 1: still be the critic. Quais initiative to look up words
Speaker 1: in Navajo for a lead. Yeah, you could do that
Speaker 1: when you went back to La Weekly. Yeah you could
Speaker 1: have done that. I guess probably. I feel like that
Speaker 1: set a standard for myself. I want to make sure
Speaker 1: I don't ever like I feel like when i'm when
Speaker 1: I fail that standard, I'm very aware of it. When
Speaker 1: did you get that position? It was after Karina left, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was after Karina left. Yeah, she left her also,
Speaker 1: Krein along Worth the best we're talking about, Like, some
Speaker 1: people don't know that Kaarina a long Worth. Yeah she's great.
Speaker 1: I owe so much to Kreing a long Worth. Yeah
Speaker 1: she is. Yeah, Like I don't think i'd be writing
Speaker 1: as much of it weren't for Karina. Yeah, she's incredible.
Speaker 1: She's incredible. She's the one who connected me to my
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise book. She's the one who kind of put
Speaker 1: in a good wood for me the weekly. Like, I
Speaker 1: feel like I've never bought Karina enough beers to make
Speaker 1: up for it, and I buy her buy her well,
Speaker 1: I buy her a fair amount whisky. She doesn't really
Speaker 1: like beer, but even so there's not enough whiskey to
Speaker 1: be bought. Yeah, or how important Kreina long Worth has
Speaker 1: been to me? When you get to that other weekly job,
Speaker 1: like back there after having done odd jobs and the
Speaker 1: theater stuff, and you did in turn and you're doing
Speaker 1: the thing you want to do. Are you just over
Speaker 1: the moon? Yeah? I mean the crazy thing was they
Speaker 1: announced the La Weekly job when they announced that I
Speaker 1: had I started at the end of July, but they
Speaker 1: announced it on July first, which was the day that
Speaker 1: I had moved to LA. Like, I moved to LA
Speaker 1: July first, two thousand and two, and they announced I
Speaker 1: had the weekly job July first, twenty thirteen. Wow, And
Speaker 1: I remember the really took just over a decade. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that just there's this weird symmetry to it where
Speaker 1: it just always felt faded in a way that felt cursed,
Speaker 1: almost like I moved to LA to get that job,
Speaker 1: and then then what happens, Like I hadn't really thought
Speaker 1: past that, like, oh God, like I think, I, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's weird. It's weird when you it's weird when you
Speaker 1: realize you had such a good stroke of luck and
Speaker 1: then you think is everything else downhill? Or like what
Speaker 1: do I do after this? Or what am I just
Speaker 1: putting off the inevitable moment of failure? Like how did
Speaker 1: I get the thing that I wanted to? Feel like
Speaker 1: you're constantly waiting for the moment of failure? Well, I
Speaker 1: think My two goals were that I wanted to be
Speaker 1: the LA Weekly film critic and now I'm gonna jinx myself.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be New Yorker by fifty. That was
Speaker 1: like the long term goal. And if I crossed fifty
Speaker 1: and I haven't gotten there, like getting the ELI Weekly job,
Speaker 1: and now I'm not. Now I'm like set up for
Speaker 1: failing for New York. Not to skip ahead, which but
Speaker 1: like when David Denby left, I remember talking to people
Speaker 1: and I was like, there's like three people they could hire,
Speaker 1: the people that they should hire. Either Wesley Morris, Danna Stevens.
Speaker 1: There ain't me. Oh god, what's the other fucking Pulitzer?
Speaker 1: Dude can podcast? He's like episode four. Oh he's the best,
Speaker 1: He's the best. Yeah, he's one of those you know
Speaker 1: we got writers in this business. I think of his
Speaker 1: like carrots and we're the greyhounds and we're like, how
Speaker 1: do I get to be as good as Alla or
Speaker 1: Wesley or Stephanie's a Herrick. But when that when that
Speaker 1: job opened up, I didn't really open up, no, because
Speaker 1: then they never hired Ane. But like your head, you applied,
Speaker 1: I know you applied. Well, I don't even think they
Speaker 1: had applications. I think i'd send an email of some sort. No, really,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I even send an email to like
Speaker 1: Richard Brody saying hey, well it's because it's also you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they should hire a Brody. Brodie's brilliant. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wish I could write that good. I feel like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like right now as a writer,
Speaker 1: I'm still just trying to do push ups to get
Speaker 1: ready for being that good. I still Readpalling Kill and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know if I'll ever be that good,
Speaker 1: and it's I don't know how we get that good.
Speaker 1: The problems are writers. I don't know how we get better.
Speaker 1: Will you continue writing? I mean, what's what I like?
Speaker 1: It's like you you do have one of those two goals,
Speaker 1: like you did it and then you didn't want it anymore. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I I love that paper so much. I don't think
Speaker 1: there was anything harder than leaving a weekly Why do
Speaker 1: you leave? I wasn't ever planning on it. It was
Speaker 1: weird when MTV called, I didn't know it was for MTV.
Speaker 1: It was just Dan Fairman, who I love, you know,
Speaker 1: and he was a grand he was a Grantland and
Speaker 1: sometimes they would talk about me going over to grant Land,
Speaker 1: and I would be like, I love the Weekly, right,
Speaker 1: gigantic thing coming by. Plus like Wesley kind of had that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he already had. They had had Sean Fantasy, and they
Speaker 1: have plenty, They had plenty of there were so many writers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to be at the Weekly
Speaker 1: for ten years, and that was my plan. I wanted
Speaker 1: to be there until I felt like I was ready
Speaker 1: to maybe do like I don't know, I mean, because
Speaker 1: everybody wants one of those jobs where you feel like
Speaker 1: it won't ever get lost. You know, you can go
Speaker 1: back and read the New York Times or the LA
Speaker 1: Times from fifty years ago and you can see what
Speaker 1: film critics say. And I think that's kind of one
Speaker 1: of the that's one of my long term goals is
Speaker 1: I want to be at one of those places where
Speaker 1: in a hundred years, wherever I write for is smart enough,
Speaker 1: like they have they have the resources that every all
Speaker 1: of the all of their work is there. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you know how frustrating is you're right for the web
Speaker 1: and something can vanish it has and it does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm so scared of came back at some of my
Speaker 1: stuff and seeing if it's gone, it probably is, and
Speaker 1: that's I can't think it's like a death. So I'm trying.
Speaker 1: I think the goal is always to get to something
Speaker 1: where you feel like, even unless there's a nuclear event,
Speaker 1: somebody will be archiving at that site. So MTV calls you, though,
Speaker 1: or yeah, and calls you rather Yeah, Dan calls me,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was for grant Land again and
Speaker 1: I was like, no, dude, come on, like you guys,
Speaker 1: you guys don't need me over there. And then he
Speaker 1: just he said MTV. And I had never crossed my
Speaker 1: minding before because why would it. You know, MTV's MTV
Speaker 1: is really different now than it was even six months
Speaker 1: ago because they're they're redoing it from scratch, really, and
Speaker 1: it had never really dawned on me until he said it.
Speaker 1: He called me about the MTV job. And he called
Speaker 1: me like right when I was about to drive to
Speaker 1: Napo Valley to go to a film festival. It was
Speaker 1: in the car. I had like seven hours to think
Speaker 1: about it. It was it was like timing to sit
Speaker 1: in the car and be like, oh my god. And
Speaker 1: there was something about just the words MTV. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: grew up watching MTV, right, and he was like, we
Speaker 1: have the chance to make this brand cool again. It's
Speaker 1: suddenly that meant the world to me. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: how much it meant to me, Like MTV raised me
Speaker 1: everything I know, so much of what I my hair
Speaker 1: metal stuff, all my heavy metal stuff, so much of
Speaker 1: everything that I feel like made me me came from
Speaker 1: watching out of MTD. Yeah, and then suddenly thinking like,
Speaker 1: he's hiring all these people I think are some of
Speaker 1: the smartest people I know, and we might have a
Speaker 1: chance to make MTV cool again. It was crazy. You
Speaker 1: can't pass that up. You couldn't. You just couldn't. From
Speaker 1: the outsider perspective when that was happening, I was like,
Speaker 1: what is going on. It's bizarre. It's so inexplicable and strange,
Speaker 1: and You're hiring all these people that I like, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, the smartest people in the world, Like there
Speaker 1: are writers. I can't wait for people to start really
Speaker 1: cluing into we have this guy Caleb Hoorton. Yeah, who
Speaker 1: if people google Caleb Porton, Caleb with a K genius Like,
Speaker 1: this is the guy. This is a guy who I
Speaker 1: think we're going to be reading in a hundred years.
Speaker 1: This is the guy who's going to be like the
Speaker 1: SuDS Circle of the future. The Caleb Porton blows me
Speaker 1: out of all the water, like he he blows my
Speaker 1: mind when I read Kaleporton. Yeah, and we have sud Circle.
Speaker 1: That's a high. He writes politics for us, and he's
Speaker 1: a genius. He's to work with people like that. I
Speaker 1: just Carbo Wallace, who lives in San Francisco with you.
Speaker 1: He's amazing. Oh I know this are you given me? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Carlo Wallace, he's great. He writes a lot about like
Speaker 1: jazz and pop culture. We have Yeah, yeah, you have
Speaker 1: Jessica Hopper and yeah, Jessica Hopper Smith and like Anna
Speaker 1: Marie Cox doing policies, on and on. He goes on
Speaker 1: and on, and it's just I didn't understand it. I
Speaker 1: still don't really understand it, Like tell me how, Like
Speaker 1: what is it like over there? What is it going on?
Speaker 1: It's exciting as a hell, basically more excited. You seem
Speaker 1: more excited by this than anything you've done it before.
Speaker 1: It feels like it feels like Dan Fairman, the guy
Speaker 1: who called me who co founded Grantline with Bill Simmons,
Speaker 1: who's brilliant, has been around forever. He was at GQ,
Speaker 1: he was at EW. He's one of the smartest people
Speaker 1: I've ever met my life. And it feels like MTV
Speaker 1: gave him a chunk of money and said, hire your
Speaker 1: dream team. And the dream team he's hired is just mental.
Speaker 1: It feels like these are the people. Just even to
Speaker 1: be associated with these people is amazing, you know, just
Speaker 1: to be like in that fold. Yeah, and then to
Speaker 1: have you know, the MTV brand combined with that, to
Speaker 1: not even be starting it from scratch, but to have
Speaker 1: the idea of I guess like rewriting over it, right,
Speaker 1: you're starting a new kind of Yeah, You're like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, Yeah, it's kind it is rebranding. I would say,
Speaker 1: what you guys are doing, especially the type of writing
Speaker 1: you're doing and all the people that Dan is hired, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems different. It seems wildly different than my perception
Speaker 1: of MTB. Yeah. I think what they realized for me,
Speaker 1: like MTV was a place that in the nineties started
Speaker 1: a lot of conversations. What I always think about is
Speaker 1: when the very first Real World came out, that group
Speaker 1: of housemates painted the one eight hundred number for Jerry
Speaker 1: Brown on the wall of their loft. This is when
Speaker 1: he was running for president, and they were like, we
Speaker 1: have a candidate. We love him. He's progressive. We are
Speaker 1: this eclectic group. You know. The first season of the
Speaker 1: Real World was the most eclectic group ever that they
Speaker 1: ever did. And they used that power of MTV as
Speaker 1: a megaphone for a progressive political candidate. And quickly after that,
Speaker 1: Real World turned into something else. But that idealism of MTV,
Speaker 1: the first years of Rock the Vote, the idea of
Speaker 1: this as a youth brand. The words youth brand like
Speaker 1: made me shiver. But but the idea of using this
Speaker 1: megaphone that they have for good. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: they got lost from that for a while, and I
Speaker 1: think they'd admit it too, And I think they spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time like losing their identity. And they
Speaker 1: from what I understand, they had this kind of come
Speaker 1: to Jesus moment about a year ago where they, you know,
Speaker 1: internally at the top were like millennials don't even remember
Speaker 1: when we're cool, Like they don't, they were never alive
Speaker 1: for it. It's you know, older people who might remember
Speaker 1: what they used to mean to people, and why don't
Speaker 1: we just write the kind of writing that those people
Speaker 1: might like? Again, like, why don't we were? I think
Speaker 1: us to MTV News are sort of the tip of
Speaker 1: the spear of that were like the people writing the
Speaker 1: articles to get people to realize that MTV is changing.
Speaker 1: And then in the fall, the actual network is going
Speaker 1: to be launching a bunch of new shows that are
Speaker 1: getting away from I mean, we can't kill teen Mom.
Speaker 1: People love it, but teen Mom gets a day and
Speaker 1: then we get a lot of other cool stuff on
Speaker 1: top of it. And yeah, I mean those moms, you know,
Speaker 1: they need money, and teen Mom is I think the
Speaker 1: perfect example of MTV because they it started off as
Speaker 1: actually a really good service. It started off as sixteen
Speaker 1: and Pregnant with them saying, girls, understand, if you get pregnant,
Speaker 1: your boyfriend is probably gonna dump you and it's not
Speaker 1: going to be as fun as you think, and this
Speaker 1: is how hard it is. It was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a warning against it, right, and then it became like
Speaker 1: teen Moms they're in you know, porn movies, and that
Speaker 1: was never the intention. Your good things go awry, good
Speaker 1: things go awry, Yeah, because we didn't talk about your book,
Speaker 1: but your book is more about it's definitely more anthropological.
Speaker 1: The Tom Cruise thing when we talked about it, when
Speaker 1: when did that come out? Like two or three years ago.
Speaker 1: It'll be two years in July, Okay. I remember asking
Speaker 1: you at the time that as like Tom Cruise reached
Speaker 1: out at all, Like, no, I would love that so much.
Speaker 1: I wanted to his response, especially to the piece that
Speaker 1: is like the one you guys put online about the
Speaker 1: Oprah Show and all that and the scream that that
Speaker 1: assistant heard that day or whatever his job boy was
Speaker 1: at that was the lead. It was like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a scream, and I was like, oh funk, that's
Speaker 1: a good lead. I hate when people I know right
Speaker 1: good leads and I'm like, god, damn it, oh man,
Speaker 1: it took so much research to find that lead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a fucking great lead, and it's a great it's
Speaker 1: a it's a great piece. Um. I looked out do
Speaker 1: you know how I found that? That was all luck.
Speaker 1: I was trying to find anybody who could have been
Speaker 1: at the Oprah Show because what I really wanted was
Speaker 1: I wanted somebody who was there at the Oprah Show
Speaker 1: when Tom Cruise was there. I spent forever scouring the
Speaker 1: internet for combinations of Oprah quote I was there, quote
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise. Everything I could find buried in some Reddit thread.
Speaker 1: I found a guy who was like, oh, I was there,
Speaker 1: and then he wrote me back. I like signed up
Speaker 1: for Reddit to be like, can you talk to me?
Speaker 1: And he ended up working there and being the best
Speaker 1: interview ever. Yeah, that was just one of those. That
Speaker 1: was one of the stroke of luck things like that.
Speaker 1: He even wrote me back. People don't even I called
Speaker 1: him a fair amount of people, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times you just get crickets, right oftentimes, Yeah, oftentimes when
Speaker 1: you wrote that book, by the end of it, did
Speaker 1: you feel like I understand Tom Cruise, Like I've never
Speaker 1: met him? You ever met him? No? Never, No one
Speaker 1: really gets to interview. He doesn't really do interviews. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he does, like Jimmy Fallon exactly. He shows up when
Speaker 1: he's charming. He can do the karaoke thing for five
Speaker 1: minutes and there's no mention of any scientology or anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is good because who cares about his religion? I don't.
Speaker 1: I can't care that much. I don't, um I don't
Speaker 1: care that he's a scientologist. I care that he is
Speaker 1: u condoning the things that happened within scientology. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: like that That Al Gimney documentary was particularly troubling to
Speaker 1: watch because like he's like aware of those things, and
Speaker 1: to me, that's just like kind of gross ignorance that
Speaker 1: I can be a scientologie. I don't get shit. But
Speaker 1: the whole like manual labor thing and all that, I
Speaker 1: don't know. That that to me was a little and
Speaker 1: like having that girl flown out for him because he
Speaker 1: did a new wife. How are you going to meet
Speaker 1: someone when you're Tom Cruise though I don't know Tender?
Speaker 1: No way can you add in Tom Cruise on Tender?
Speaker 1: That's the thing. No one who has a recognizable face
Speaker 1: can even go on Tender. Yeah. I'm not even recognizable.
Speaker 1: And I won't go on Tinder because once I had
Speaker 1: somebody say are you the film critic? And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh fuck, yeah. You just think like what if there's
Speaker 1: you know, aspiring directors and they see me on Tinder
Speaker 1: and they're like, ha ha, I know something about that critic.
Speaker 1: I'm too paranoid, got off. Yeah, I think I can
Speaker 1: do it's too much, or there's a hinge where it's
Speaker 1: like all people who you know from Facebook, it's like
Speaker 1: your friend's friends. And I did it for two hours
Speaker 1: and everyone was an agent and I was like, nope, nope,
Speaker 1: everyone was like an agent or a publicist. It's too
Speaker 1: close to home. Yeah, yeah, that's that's okay. So I
Speaker 1: give the point of and that's Tom Cruise. I know
Speaker 1: it's tonkers and you're amy, but it's just like, um,
Speaker 1: that deep dive into his work and to him, like
Speaker 1: you really got underneath him. I think that sounds wrong.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, you got I say that in a way
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound righting. Yeah you God damn it. Um
Speaker 1: you understood him. It seemed like you understood, like you
Speaker 1: deep into his mind, like you've you understood him. I
Speaker 1: hope so, or it could be totally wrong, like and
Speaker 1: he says like no, but it made sense to me
Speaker 1: from everything I read? Was that type of writing? Did
Speaker 1: you find that different than the film criticism you do?
Speaker 1: And then and like did you find it more satisfying
Speaker 1: in a way? I really loved it? Like I'm a
Speaker 1: research nerd, right either, well, I'm most of my reviews
Speaker 1: I love researching, even even the conjuring two. I think
Speaker 1: I researched the end Filled Murder or the Endfield Poltergeist
Speaker 1: for like two hours. You know, most of that doesn't
Speaker 1: even make an end of the piece. Is that why
Speaker 1: you see? I think we both loved the research is
Speaker 1: our favorite part, right. I almost like the research more
Speaker 1: than the writing, and so I'm very happy, Like, hold
Speaker 1: up reading a thousand articles about something, you know, it's
Speaker 1: also procrastination. It's great. Yeah, it's a great procrastination. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I love any excuse to research is like my
Speaker 1: favorite thing on the planet. Do you think the book
Speaker 1: turned out well? I hope so. I really like it.
Speaker 1: Did he get the response you wanted to? I think so.
Speaker 1: I mean I keep my head down a lot. I
Speaker 1: am mad that, Like on all of my Amazon reviews,
Speaker 1: there's like one person who just wrote would be better
Speaker 1: with a different writer, and it doesn't even I don't
Speaker 1: think they even wrote it. I've read it. I feel
Speaker 1: like it was like some internet roll left over from
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe the the Glenbeck thing or something
Speaker 1: they were just because it's a link to it in
Speaker 1: my Twitter. I think this is went there and gave
Speaker 1: me a one star review and I'm like, you didn't
Speaker 1: even read my book better with a different writer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that was really all they said. And I was like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck? Who are you? And they just dinged
Speaker 1: my reviews. But other than that, I think, yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember you were pretty uh because someone was riding a review.
Speaker 1: It was like in the A. V. Club and like
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, I just read the review
Speaker 1: before interviewing in. Yeah, Sam, don't tell me. Yeah, Sam,
Speaker 1: don't tell me. And You're like, well, they didn't like it,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Sam, I felt so bad because
Speaker 1: I didn't know you really that. Yeah. Well, and I
Speaker 1: was like, fuck, I just did that accident. I was
Speaker 1: like it wasn't even on purpose. And they're like, no, no,
Speaker 1: damn it. I've still never read that review. I won't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I've had people come up and talk to me
Speaker 1: about it and they're like, I think it's wrong. So
Speaker 1: I like that, Okay, you like that you won't read
Speaker 1: it though, No, see, do you're like a healthy person.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't, Or I'm a weak person. I'm
Speaker 1: so weak. I know I can't read stuff about me.
Speaker 1: Are you weak? I don't. I didn't I don't get
Speaker 1: a sense of that, like, well, I'm weak enough that
Speaker 1: I can't do it, you know, if I was a
Speaker 1: strong person, you know, like Devin Fratti, my co host
Speaker 1: on a Cannon, he loves reading hate stuff about him.
Speaker 1: He like thrives off of it. It's like it gives
Speaker 1: him power. And with me, I just crumble. So I
Speaker 1: just have to keep away from everything. What are you
Speaker 1: afraid of reading? Though? Well, whatever, we're all afraid of that.
Speaker 1: We're somebody thinks we're a big dummy or worse, when
Speaker 1: you actually do fuck something up and they're like, you
Speaker 1: fucked it up. That's horrible as somebody. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: want people to think you're a big dummy. So it's
Speaker 1: like a give and take. I try not to write
Speaker 1: on Twitter that I think people are big dummies and
Speaker 1: then hopefully nobody tells me a big dummy. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I think we live in a world that's really negative sometimes.
Speaker 1: I think Twitter, especially Twitter especially, and it's negative. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pylon culture on Twitter. Somebody says like the wrong word
Speaker 1: and a thousand people jump on them and it's not cool.
Speaker 1: And I think people who love to get into the
Speaker 1: fray and like make fun of people, especially when you
Speaker 1: just say something clumsy or wrong or it's misconstrued, and
Speaker 1: everybody's so quick to call somebody's sexist or racist or whatever.
Speaker 1: All of that is just a male ground I don't
Speaker 1: want to be on because I don't it's going to
Speaker 1: come around to all of us anyway. So we should
Speaker 1: just be nice when other people woke up and patient
Speaker 1: and I don't know, assume that people didn't actually mean
Speaker 1: the worst of it, and then if they do, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but if they don't or if it's an accident, we
Speaker 1: punish people a lot for careless thinking. Did you think
Speaker 1: when you were going to, like when you're starting to
Speaker 1: write film reviews, that there would be a point where
Speaker 1: you're concerned about what people say on Twitter? Never it
Speaker 1: didn't exist. It's crazy. It's like such a rain comments
Speaker 1: didn't really barely exist even Yeah, yeah, and then who
Speaker 1: knows what it's going to be in five years? Like
Speaker 1: that's scary to me. This, this already seems overwhelming. So
Speaker 1: what's the future? Um, well, five years, well, i'd ask
Speaker 1: how old you are? No, Well, then I can't make
Speaker 1: the statement I was gonna make. I had a perfect
Speaker 1: statement lined up, well, lady does not tell. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I think you can easily do the math from everything
Speaker 1: I've said here. I don't do math. I'm terrible enough. Um,
Speaker 1: i'd say five to ten years. Maybe the second goal
Speaker 1: I wish comes from will I'll be dead? Maybe there
Speaker 1: could be another like okay, well, if that happens, then
Speaker 1: you're not the only yeah yo, if I love how
Speaker 1: if that happens, you're the only person like you? You die,
Speaker 1: but everyone else is okay, it would just be more luck.
Speaker 1: Like plane crashes, but it's an empty plane, and somehow
Speaker 1: it only hits me. I think you're the bad. Luck's gone.
Speaker 1: I think you had only unless you haven't told me
Speaker 1: something terrible that you do on a routine on a
Speaker 1: regular basis. I mean, you know, I shaved my cat
Speaker 1: into a lion cut and humiliate him. That's really fun.
Speaker 1: That's I don't know. I could eat less meat. I
Speaker 1: should definitely eat less meat. Yeah, I don't think you're
Speaker 1: gonna die. Well, well, I definitely drink too much whiskey.
Speaker 1: Drink too which was yes. Um, so this is going
Speaker 1: pretty well for you this whole career. Oh, I thought
Speaker 1: you meant in this podcasts I was like, yeah, after
Speaker 1: we started off like from everybody getting mad at me
Speaker 1: for not liking religion talking about my dad nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: this has been a great it's been fun. Um. Are
Speaker 1: you happy with all this? Yeah? Like with this whole
Speaker 1: trajectory you not going to grand school? Yeah, that seems
Speaker 1: like it would have been miserable. Honestly, do you? But
Speaker 1: I guess it seemed like you were someone who had
Speaker 1: goals early on, and you had like very clear ambitions
Speaker 1: like I don't work out the other weekly, and you
Speaker 1: had very you had a map in your head for
Speaker 1: a profession that, as we've talked about, doesn't have a map.
Speaker 1: There's no equation, there's no if you do this and
Speaker 1: do this, you get here and yet it's worked out.
Speaker 1: I know. It freaked me out. Yeah, it freaks me out.
Speaker 1: It's like, but do you think you deserve it? I
Speaker 1: hope so. But it's when you don't know how you
Speaker 1: got so lucky, you don't know how to keep it going.
Speaker 1: You know, it almost feels like, but I think you
Speaker 1: know how you got so lucky. No, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of like you know how it goes to this world.
Speaker 1: It's you know, the best film critic jobs. There's one
Speaker 1: person who has them, and they have them as long
Speaker 1: as they have them, and then there's one hundred people
Speaker 1: who might want it when they're gone, and you who
Speaker 1: knows where you'll be on that cycle. Like, honestly, one
Speaker 1: of the best things that happened to me is that
Speaker 1: Box Office shut down its Ipid magazine and I was
Speaker 1: out of a job for like six months, and it
Speaker 1: was terrifying, and I thought, what if this is it? Like,
Speaker 1: what if this is as far as I get with
Speaker 1: this film criticism thing. You know, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: maybe picking up playwriting back again, because I used to
Speaker 1: think I might be like in those like middle years
Speaker 1: when I was doing a lot of theater criticism. We're
Speaker 1: not writing about film. I was, You're going at theater
Speaker 1: and thinking I could do that. Yeah, I got my Well,
Speaker 1: I got my masters in playwriting, like in that time,
Speaker 1: you did get a master's. I did, but I didn't
Speaker 1: get a PhD. But I got a masters because I
Speaker 1: felt like I needed to do something. I love how
Speaker 1: you getting a masters is immediately fallen by but I
Speaker 1: didn't get a PhD. Well, you know, it's it's a
Speaker 1: weird masters. I mean it's in playwriting. I just wrote
Speaker 1: a bunch of plays. Yeah, but you still got a
Speaker 1: master's amy. You can be good with that, and you
Speaker 1: didn't need the PhD. You're doing fun. I don't think
Speaker 1: I could have been happy if I didn't get that. No,
Speaker 1: that's not true. I felt that's a cute. You don't
Speaker 1: think you could have been happy if you didn't get
Speaker 1: the masters. Actually, I can't. I can't really mean that.
Speaker 1: I never think about it. It's a weird thing. It's
Speaker 1: like a weird hobby I did for a couple of
Speaker 1: years when I didn't have anything else to do. I
Speaker 1: was just teaching kids the SAT prep and writing theater
Speaker 1: reviews and finally making enough money. I was off food
Speaker 1: stamps and figuring, I guess I should just go to
Speaker 1: grad school. Like I didn't know, you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: know what else to do. Do you think a lot
Speaker 1: of your happiness is placed in your career? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: definitely my number one. Is that worrisome? No? But you know,
Speaker 1: the older you get, the more you start thinking about
Speaker 1: like you're the life of Are you prepared to give
Speaker 1: up everything right too? For your career? I was saying
Speaker 1: about that, David foster ballas he talks about um, and
Speaker 1: I'm I would mean to sound like I haven't read
Speaker 1: I haven't finished him jest, like I'm not. I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not like a David foster Balls. Ye, what you
Speaker 1: have seen the Jason Semil movie. Yes, I have, and
Speaker 1: I've done that. No, but fuck me. Um. What I
Speaker 1: was trying to say, because I think about it a
Speaker 1: lot for myself, because I do. This is if if
Speaker 1: you place all your reward in like self worth and
Speaker 1: happiness in your career and the thing that you're trying
Speaker 1: to constantly move up, then like it's never gonna like
Speaker 1: it's never gonna be enough. And that worries me because
Speaker 1: I put a lot of stock into it and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to figure out like, wow, I can't, I can't.
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta love other things. I gotta be
Speaker 1: and I do. But it's really hard because in my head,
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, the thing, the career is not a
Speaker 1: nine to five job I don't want to do. It's
Speaker 1: something I love doing. Yeah, and yet I worry that
Speaker 1: I put too much into it and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to be constantly let down. Yeah, That's why I worry
Speaker 1: about New York at fifty. I totally get that, because
Speaker 1: what happens if it doesn't work out? I don't I
Speaker 1: don't have a backup. Yeah, So yeah, and it but
Speaker 1: I mean it's so tied, you know. Part of why
Speaker 1: we do what we do, part of why we're film critics,
Speaker 1: I think, is because we're people who need that kind
Speaker 1: of mental stimulation all the time. You know, We're people
Speaker 1: who we could never be happy unless we had a
Speaker 1: job where we every day we're thinking about something totally different,
Speaker 1: you know, Korean war dramas and like nineties romantic comedies,
Speaker 1: and we need to be distracted by that, yeah, in documentaries,
Speaker 1: like yeah, we need For me, film criticism is just
Speaker 1: a way to feel like you're learning something every day.
Speaker 1: And that's no matter what job it was I ended
Speaker 1: up in, and I knew I needed that, and then
Speaker 1: it just turned out to be that that was what
Speaker 1: film criticism was for me. But yeah, I guess what,
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm trying to say, but that
Speaker 1: it's like something just in our DNA, like that's whatever
Speaker 1: we ended up doing, it would have to be something.
Speaker 1: I think they satisfied that itch. And maybe there are
Speaker 1: other things that do. This is the only one I
Speaker 1: know of for me. Yeah, but I guess if it collapse,
Speaker 1: i'd have to find something. Well, I'm hoping it doesn't
Speaker 1: collapse for you. I hope so. But who knows. Publishing
Speaker 1: could collapse? Yeah, anything could collapse. The New York Times
Speaker 1: is having trouble staying a float, and they're like the
Speaker 1: gold standard. Yeah. With on a positive note, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for doing this, not thank you, Sam. It
Speaker 1: was fun. I hope I have not been too morbid. Sorry, no,
Speaker 1: not more abid at all. Fair enough, Well, there it is.
Speaker 1: You can purchase Amy's book on Tom Cruise on Amazon.
Speaker 1: Will include a link in the show notes. You can
Speaker 1: also find her weekly on MTV News. And lastly, a
Speaker 1: big thanks to Amy Nicholson for letting me come into
Speaker 1: her house and record this episode, also for the free omelet.
Speaker 1: If you're listening, do be sure to subscribe to the
Speaker 1: show on iTunes and SoundCloud or your favorite podcasting app.
Speaker 1: If you want to drop us a line about anything,
Speaker 1: please email the show at talk easypod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: You can follow the show on Twitter and Facebook and
Speaker 1: Instagram at talk easypod. Our theme music is provided by Vanilla.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is David Chen, Graphics by Ian Jones,
Speaker 1: Technical assistants by Joe Stillwater. The show is produced and
Speaker 1: edited by Coreya Tad. I'm your host, Sam Vargoso. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. I'll see you next week.