#58: It was the best of actresses, it was the worst of actresses
Death By Consumption
6/10/25 - 6/16/25
Can anyone help me figure out if it's a bad thing that our dementia-addled diaper-wearing President vaguely threatened to nuke a city of 10 million people in the middle of the night? That seems really bad! I'm sure responsible adults will step in and get us back on a normal track aaaaaaaany day now. On a more local level, I'm very excited to vote this week for certified cutie patootie Zohran for Mayor. Hard to believe we could possibly (I still can't dare to actually hope; I know what American voters are like) have a hot socialist mayor in this city, but if we don't get Zohran, at least we'll get... an ancient crook who seems to love two things equally: groping women and getting speeding tickets in school zones? Another spectacular election by the Democrats! Anyway, I can't wait to vote for Zohran and then immediately get killed in a hit-and-run by Cuomo speeding through a crosswalk.
This week, Sarah Snook changed my life, I saw a new horror film and a new horrible film, I watched a French bisexual cause chaos, I spiraled about AI, and I wore a new shirt.
The Picture of Dorian Gray — on Broadway
In a matter of 2 hours, Sarah Snook turned me into a Broadway gay. I genuinely do not know what I have been thinking before this. I apologize to all the theater gays I have smeared over the years (not you, Hamilton gays... I still have some standards). Sarah Snook, fresh off her Tony win, has shown me the error of my ways, and you can now catch me in line at TKTS most nights. Live theater: what a concept!
What struck me most about Dorian Gray — and I realize this is going to sound so stupid and obvious to all you regular theatergoers — was how impossible it would ever be to translate the experience to anyone outside of that room. You quite literally just had to be there. Which, you know, I guess has been the whole point of this live theater thing for, say, a few thousand years. I know, I'm sorry I'm only now figuring this out, I'm listening and learning.
While I hate to pit two queens against each other, this blew the other one-person show I saw recently out of the water. I spent the entire two hours with my jaw open, genuinely in awe at the spectacle. Of course, it's a very different production than Andrew Scott's Vanya: where his was extremely minimalist — no scene or costume changes, just one man doing voices on a stage for 2 hours, for better or worse — Dorian Gray was an elaborate high-wire act, with multiple screens on stage helping to layer Sarah's various performances on top of each other. The choreography was staggering and complex and truly mind-boggling, so much so that you'd think it would all distract from the performance, but it's all so seamless that it only enhances the experience. I still don't know how they did it all.
It was all so flawless, there were several moments where I genuinely forgot that Sarah Snook was playing every character, and I would wonder where the other person on stage had gone, before being like: ohhhh, right.
I compared Andrew Scott's one-man show to athletics with how much pure effort he puts into it, onstage alone for an uninterrupted two hours, but that was nothing compared to Sarah Snook's performance. This play must have had, I don't know, a million words? The sheer memorization is hard to comprehend. And through it all, she's seamlessly whipping from character to character, donning wigs and corsets and jackets and props, hitting very specific marks without missing a beat while also, at times, filming herself with a camera or a phone, and she not only never even slipped up a single syllable, she never stopped to take a break, or even a quick sip of water. Not for a second! The sheer exertion was unimaginable. She must be exhausted after this! How is her mouth not sandpaper halfway through! I'm glad she got the Tony, if only so she can finally rest for a while.
Anyway, I came out of the show physically exhausted, mentally soaring, and a changed person. And I'm proud to say that after years of neglecting the theater industry in NYC, this year I randomly saw both Cole Escola and Sarah Snook's Tony-winning performances, so I guess I really am becoming a theater gay. Watch this space!
Materialists (2025) — at Regal Battery Park
Materialists is getting rave reviews — the BBC called it "exquisite", Variety called it "lavishly charming", and the NYTimes' Manohla Dargis, who I think needs a wellness check, called it "seductive". All these reviewers, and everyone involved in this movie, need to be hospitalized immediately. This film was one of the most insane experiences I've ever had in a theater, one that left me questioning if I even live in the same reality as most people.
Four of us saw it in a packed theater, and we were clearly the only people in the room not enjoying it. The rest of the audience laughed and chuckled at the terrible forced jokes, they swooned appropriately at the stiff and chemistry-free love scenes, and they got choked up at the overly written, dramatic monologues delivered flatly by three of the worst actors Hollywood has ever seen. I felt insane! These are my fellow citizens?! No wonder our country is on the brink!
It has to be said up front: Pedro Pascal is a bad actor. He's not good! I know he's cute and charming, and I feel the same way about him that you do, but the man reads lines as if he's literally reading them off an SNL cue card held just out of frame, and he absolutely cannot carry a film. Sorry! I hate to have to say this, in Pride Month no less.
And then there's Dakota Johnson, who I genuinely love — and as she's showing on her press tour she's clearly capable of being a very charming and almost-human woman — but, honestly, she was stiffer in this than Madame Web. Dakota excels at being an aloof, mysterious figure, one that's so captivating and unknowable that she causes everyone around her to spiral (A Bigger Splash, The Lost Daughter), but the lead of a romcom she is not. A romcom lead needs to be somewhat relatable or at least aspirational, and Dakota, who presumably arrives to set via UFO or gigantic Venus clam shell, is not.
The casting and acting choices were so stiff and baffling that I started to wonder if it was intentional. A stylistic choice, or maybe a prank. Like: what if we made a romcom where all the characters were asexuals on high doses of Valium? When Chris Evans is the best actor out of the three leads, it's a crisis.
Even worse, nothing makes sense in this movie! No one's motivations are logical, clear, or even consistent, and characters are so poorly sketched out to be almost nonexistent. Literally all we know from the beginning to the end of the film is that Dakota Johnson's character is a materialist. Okay! Great! Thank you! No further info needed! And then, would you believe this: the materialist has to choose between a rich guy and a poor guy??? (Both guys are equally normal and nice and pleasant, so she's really only ever deciding between their bank accounts, which is weirdly played straight instead of for laughs. But also: we're supposed to be rooting for this woman?) This is the rare romcom that's neither romantic nor comedic.
It also must be noted, Dakota Johnson's character presents her salary of $80K — "pre-tax", as if anyone ever says their salary post-tax — as low, but considering the only thing we ever see her do at her job (she's a matchmaker, of course) is to call someone and say, "How'd the date go?" I'd say she's making a killer salary for working, at most, 2-3 hours a week.
And, I will not spoil it because it truly has to be experienced for yourself, but there is a reveal about Pedro Pascal's character that is so shocking, so deeply insane, that the four of us just straight-up lost our minds. None of Tim Robinson's jokes in Friendship hold a candle to the backstory given to Pedro Pascal's character (which is presented in a serious way, unbelievably). We were literally weeping with laughter in the back of the theater for the 20 minutes after the reveal, while the other theatergoers turned and GLARED at us for ruining their experience. Which I would normally feel bad about, but, I'm sorry — anyone unironically enjoying this movie and that scene in particular should not be allowed to vote! What is wrong with you people?!
It's all just so crazy, it feels like it was written by an AI programmed by someone with an active concussion. The way people talk in this film feels like the script was written in another language, then translated by Google through a few other languages, before finally translating it to English. You know that old '90s hack joke about people in movies never saying "bye" to end their phone calls? This movie shows you why that's the case, by having Dakota Johnson stiffly end a call with her boss with a completely unnecessary and inhuman, "Bye. My boyfriend is here," before hanging up. (This was another moment that caused a 5-10 minute gigglefest that got us more angry glares.) This woman is not acting normal! Is there someone we can call? She needs help!
I hated every character in this movie by the end, and was actively rooting against them. The moral of the film, I think, is: if you're a man, don't be poor or short. There's also a random sexual assault that gets introduced and then, just as quickly, tossed aside, which on paper is an admirably modern and realistic update to the classic romcom, but... maybe we should have left that one in the drafts? You can't have a scene in which a woman has barricaded herself in her apartment because she's being terrorized by her violent abuser suddenly transition into a scene with a cute makeout moment!!! That is so crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
These characters were all bad people, played badly, making stupid decisions, all performed by actors who speak in the way I speak when I've taken too big an edible and I'm kind of freaking out but I don't want the checkout girl at the grocery store to know. Materialists is fucking insane. I'll never recover from this. Our nation may never recover from this.
Bring Her Back (2025) — at Regal Union Square
Much like Materialists, Bring Her Back is about unholy creatures trying and failing to pass as humans, but at least the horrors in this movie were intentional. This film was wild and disgusting and I loved it! It had everything you want in a horror movie: Sally Hawkins acting like a freak, Satanic VHS footage, a blind girl kicking ass, demonic possession, vomiting blood into mouths, cannibalism, the horrors of spending too much time with Australians, etc.
I didn't love the ending, but most horror movies end with either a flop or a fizzle, so I won't hold it against it, because the rest was so strong. I love that the Satanic panic is coming back, if only if it means we get more original, fucked-up films like this. This is the kind of movie I love seeing in the theaters — at one point, a girl screamed so loudly and so out of nowhere, that I genuinely panicked that there must be a rat in the theater, before I realized she was just preemptively screaming because things had gotten so tense. It's just so nice to escape from having a panic attack from reading the news and instead have a panic attack about demonic possession!
Misericordia (2024) — on Criterion
A chaotic bisexual returns to his small hometown French village and causes mayhem. (Honestly, this feels like the kind of thing that happens weekly in France.)
I had a very very good time with this film, even though it's not, you know, a great film. But the absurdist tone keeps you on your toes, as well as the hints that the main character seems to have possibly slept with every single person in this town. It builds to a wild climax, and a very unexpected relationship develops, one that's in conversation with twisted love stories like Phantom Thread and Harold & Maude. I didn't love this nearly as much as the director's best movie, the gay erotic thriller Stranger by the Lake, but it's always good to check in on what the French gay freaks are up to.
Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, by Vauhini Vara (2025) – library ebook
This book is a collection of connected essays, reporting on and exploring the history of tech and social media through a personal lens, and unfortunately I don't think it was for someone like me. I'm a few years younger than Vauhini, but we're essentially contemporaries, so the chapters detailing the early days of what it was like being on AOL chat rooms and Facebook and Twitter were a bit, like... yeah, I know, I was there too? But the focus of the book, clearly, is on the future, which these days means: AI. (Ugh.)
Between each section, the book includes chat logs with ChatGPT in which it provides feedback and analysis of the preceding essay, a gimmick I found truly unbearable. To be honest I skimmed those pages, spending fewer than 10 seconds at a time on any page with AI dialogue. (I've actually never been able to read more than a sentence of AI-generated text at a time, in fact. It's all so generic and bland in tone that my eyes glaze over. It's impossible to take it in. I find the idea of actually spending time looking at and ingesting AI-generated sentences insulting, to be frank.) I genuinely do not know what the point of these sections were — it seems the point was to show that AI is impersonal, bland, and homogenizing, which, like, yeah, we already knew that?
The book made much more sense to me when I got to the chapter called "Ghosts," which was originally an essay of Vauhini Vara's that went viral in 2021, and what ultimately was expanded into this book. In the essay, she is struggling to write about her sister's death in college, so she turns to (a pre-public release version of) ChatGPT to help her finish the essay. I can see why such an article would go viral in 2021, before ChatGPT was available to most people, and before AI had started to pollute everywhere and anywhere words are used, but reading ChatGPT logs in 2025, in a book you thought was written by a human, was excruciating.
Vauhini's writing is gorgeous and heartbreaking, full of real human emotions and specifics about her sister, while the AI sections are nonsense. You may as well be reading a user manual for a dishwasher, rather than about a dead sister. It's soulless and miserable to get through. Which, again, begs the question: what is the point?? Comparing your writing style to AI's is like dunking on a puppy. I'm not impressed that a Pulitzer-nominated writer can write better than AI and, honestly, it's a little embarrassing to even feel the need to show it off.
To be fair, she does explain her intentions in publishing the piece, writing:
I had published "Ghosts" partly as a provocation. I wanted to bring attention to a promise I imagined AI companies might make in the future — that they could help us tell our own stories — and then demonstrate that promise getting uncannily close to coming true while ultimately being broken. At the same time, I wanted to demonstrate my own complicity in taking the bait in the first place. But I could also see an argument that, whatever my intent, the exercise of "Ghosts" had been fundamentally corrupt — that my desire to make a point mattered little, set against my collusion with the harmful practices required for "Ghosts" to exist. A small part of me even hoped critics — at least one critic — would censure me for it.
Well, here I am, censuring her! But instead of censure, she says, she was widely praised — by publications, writers, celebrities ("A beloved indie filmmaker emailed me looking for advice on using AI in a screenplay," she says, unfortunately without naming names — my money's on Spike Jonze, but what if it's Greta???). Essentially, and depressingly, she was lauded by all the people and industries most likely to be eviscerated by the very technology she was trying, and failing, to critique. Whoops!
And yet, even she can't resist the allure of AI — she says that she found the most meaningful writing about her sister to be the portions written by AI, not by herself. "Artificial intelligence had succeeded in moving me with a sentence about the most devastating experience of my life. If it could write that sentence, what else could it write?" she asks. Which, to me, says a lot less about AI's writing quality (really, the line she was moved by was extremely mediocre), and more about how Vauhini Vara, like most writers, is unable to accurately judge whether what she's written is good or not. Like, I hate everything I ever write — I will be unduly embarrassed by this email the moment I hit "send." So I'm not surprised a writer decides she's lacking when comparing her writing to anyone (or anything) else's — that's just the writer's brain, baby! But it doesn't mean the AI is actually good; it just means maybe Vauhini should talk to a therapist about her self-esteem.
Towards the end, she pivots to a full-throated denunciation of AI that feels satisfying and true ("What distinguished the productization of AI so far had been not its impressiveness but the speed with which corporations had insinuated it into our lives despite its frightening unimpressiveness") but all of that, to me, is undone by the fact that this book is at least 10-20% written by AI, not by Vauhini. If it's so unimpressive, why did you fill so much of your book with so much of its boring slop? I know I sound like an old man shaking his fist, but please stop making me read mindless AI writing; its flat, false, ass-kissing tone is starting to make me homicidal.
Finally, she compares her use of AI to the famous Audre Lorde essay "Master's Tools Will Never Take Down the Master's House," which, once again, begs the question: then why are you using these tools? At my most cynical, it feels like the use of AI in the book is simply an advertising tactic, to get more press ("ChatGPT cowrote this book about AI!"), to sell more books, and to have it both ways — you can sell to the technoskeptics like me and the crypto vultures at the same time! That is, if those people even buy books anymore; it's much more likely that they'll ask AI to summarize the book, and Vauhini won't see a dime from it. We've finally arrived at the glorious future: AI-written books that can be summarized and synthesized by AI, no humans required.
"Extra Dirty" shirt — by Tombolo
I bought this shirt a few months ago but have found rare occasion to wear it. But this weekend I had my first-ever Gen Z birthday party, for my friends Ben and Ava, who also happen to be twins (they're also the kids of my friend Debra, who has a very delightful Substack!). So I figured: time to break out this stupid shirt.
The thing is, this shirt is right on the line between fun and humiliating — if I pull it off, it's campy and playful, but if I don't, I've suddenly got the vibe of Jesse from The Valley (one of the four douches of the Apocalypse). So I approached the party with trepidation, especially since the media has spent years drilling into my head that Gen Z thinks all Millennials dress like either normcore losers or wannabe tryhards, and this shirt felt like it was straddling both those worlds. So I came armed with responses prepared in either case: if someone said they didn't like it I could toss out a delighted, "I know, isn't it so stupid?" but if they did like it I'd excitedly reveal that the martini glass is also a pocket. But, instead, the worst option happened, one I didn't even consider: no one said anything.
I spent hours mingling and having a good time (while maintaining an unfunny joke that got less funny as we went, in which I kept updating Justin on how close he was to being the oldest person at the party — by the end, he was #3, and furious with me), all the while wondering: has no one noticed the buttons on my shirt are olives?! Finally, hours in, it was like a switch was flipped, and the compliments started rolling in. Thank you! It's so stupid, isn't it? Have you noticed the martini is a pocket?! Look, the buttons are olives!
Maybe before Gen Z could comment on the shirt they had to ask ChatGPT what the drink with olives in a triangle-shaped glass is called, or maybe the youths were simply offering some polite kindness to the batty old Millennial wearing the stupid shirt, but either way I was happy to accept any and all compliments. I left the party drunk and happily exhausted and feeling like I had survived a potential fashion disaster, and I suppose that's exactly the purpose of a shirt like this.