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Why Seth Rogen is cooking with the good oil and much more! $$PLAIN_TEXT_PREVIEW$$
MY FAVOURITE THINGS | You And I
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“The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable. As soon as we begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility.” — ESTHER PEREL
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Sawadee from Bangkok! My home away from home. It’s a beautiful winter’s day outside as I write this, (a sultry 33 degrees outside) the overbearing heat and humidity leaving this sun lizard feeling like a million buckeroos. There is something about this city that leaves me on cloud nine. A land of epicurean delights populated by locals whose warmth and radiance reminds me to never stop leaning into the power of love and happiness.
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Esther Perel has achieved something sublime with Mating In Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, her 2006 exploration into the complex web that underlies modern relationships in the twenty-first century. Sex lies at the heart of the acclaimed psychologist’s treatise on our malaise, a fact that is loaded with great depth and intricacy. This book has helped me bring so many of my own ardent beliefs into focus. It’s helped me understand why I’ve always managed to ruin one relationship after another when the going gets tough. It’s also helped me acknowledge my proclivity to surround myself with women who aren’t afraid to call me out for my bullshit and push me to be a better person. Perel, whose podcast series Where Should We Begin I wrote about in this newsletter last year, has such a curious perspective on the notion of happiness and fulfillment in modern relationships. I love the way she breaks down the parameters of intimacy, a term whose relevance only came to bear with the onset of the industrial age, a time when families (often three generations at a time sleeping under the same roof) were pulled apart in service to machines. I love the way the Belgian psychotherapist speaks to the dualities we all face in our love life; freedom and commitment, passion and reason, stability and change. The more we accept the complexities in ourselves and our better halves the more we can lean into making them work for us. “We live in times where faster is better and control is power, where performance trumps process and risk is mathematically calculated. In our overcommitted lives there’s a temptation to simplify our existential complexities. Eroticism challenges us to seek a different kind of resolution, to surrender to the unknown and ungraspable, and to breach the confines of the rational world.”
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It’s been twenty years since Sam Mendes first released American Beauty, his celebrated debut, into the world. That film, starring (the now cancelled) Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening, would come to represent a watershed moment in Tinseltown, ushering the British theatrical director into the Hollywood fold. With the extensive body of war dramas that have come and gone over the years, it’s hard to believe that a film documenting the horrors of WWI can still add value. Mendes’ WWI epic, based on the stories imparted from his late grandfather Alfred Mendes, has done just that, imbued with that same ineffable passion from his debut outing. Not only did the ensuing story scare the living daylights out of me — I would have been an utterly atrocious infantryman — but its cinematography and attention to detail swallowed me whole. After listening to this incredible DGA interview in conversation with fellow heavyweight Ed Zwick, (The Siege was my jam as a kiddo!) I came away with even more reverence for the man and his unflappable devotion to putting the story front and centre. With help from Roger Deakins, a living legend in the land of cinematography, the British director pulls us up from the bench onto centre court. By subjecting us to the horrors of the Western front, he holds us accountable for the horrors of war and the agony that consumed our ancestors.
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It’s altogether rare to come across a podcast that satiates my far-flung curiousities while nourishing my craving for high-octane pop-cultural nuggets. Disgraceland, a darkly satirical look at iconic musical legends and their brushes with the dark side hits the sweet spot. Produced and moderated by Jake Brennan, a musician turned podcast extraordinaire, the show has became a cult sensation and for good reason. I came upon it last week while listening to an advertisement on an episode of Big Boy’s Neighborhood, a podcast series featuring interviews with celebrated African American icons (his conversation with Kanye West is out of this world!). The show features episodes that run from thirty minutes to an hour and are littered with well-constructed narratives that immerse you into a time and place. They are the acoustic equivalent to Vice’s documentary television series, offering an insightful look at celebrated figures falling on hard times. Brennan and his team of insiders have done their homework, serving sincerely entertaining pieces that rise above gutter gossip. A must listen for those that love music, crime and the unexpected. Millennial journalism at its finest.
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I thought I had a pretty clear idea who Kevin Hart, the comedian and Hollywood A-lister, was and what his brand meant to the current culture. After binge-streaming this new six-part documentary series from Netflix, I’ve come full circle on his significance to the zeitgeist. Hart is the product of a broken home, raised by a single mother and haunted by a junkie father who abandoned the carrot in favour of a mean-old stick. To see the thirty-nine year old squeezing the most of each and every day is something to behold. Seeing him spin all of these different plates, producing films under his Hartbeat Productions shingle, negotiating brand endorsement deals and travelling the world to deliver his mass-arena comedy specials left me awe-inspired. The man has redefined hustling. Hart’s hard work is all part of a larger vision, to join the billionaires boys club and prove that a young man from the wrong side of the tracks can achieve great things. I was sincerely humbled at the way Hart has confronted genuine moments of adversity in recent years, from an affair caught on camera to the Oscars fiasco that led to him stepping down from hosting the celebrated awards ceremony within forty-eight hours of his surprise announcement. This docu-drama is more than a well-crafted PR statement. It’s a poignant reminder that we can all learn and grow from our mistakes. Confronting adversity is how we become who we were always meant to be.
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I tucked into a seminal episode of Disgraceland on the rise and meteoric fall of Rick James (née James Ambrose Johnson Jr.) while riding the treadmill this week. The episode offers a sobering look at James’ young life running numbers for his underworld mama. In an attempt to escape this world he signed up for the Navy reserves at sixteen but soon went AWOL across the border to Toronto. It was here that the runaway would befriend a young Joni Mitchell in the mid-sixties. Their friendship blossomed around a shared love of music and when James mentioned he was looking to start a band, Mitchell introduced him to Neil Young. The pair would hit it off from the start, forming The Mynah Birds (their singles are UNREAL!) and even securing a record deal at Motown from Berry Gordy himself! Unfortunately for James, his military dreams would come back to haunt him. As James served time behind bars, Young and Bruce Palmer pawned their equipment, purchased a 1953 hearse and drove out to the City of Angels to find Stephen Stills, an old friend from up north. Buffalo Springfield, their subsequent brainchild, would come to define the summer of love with their debut single For What It’s Worth making waves in the US and Europe. Buffalo Springfield Again, their second outing, is full of beautiful dualities; at once hard-hitting and deeply tender. While the quintet would only produce three LPs together, (Stills would go on to form Crosby, Stills and Nash while Young would take himself solo) there is something magical about their collaborative efforts. A sound that captured the end of an era.
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I was tucking into a fruit salad at breakfast when I came across a startling revelation about the making of Kramer vs. Kramer in the Hollywood Reporter. The 1979 drama, featuring stellar performances by Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman, was a commercial and critical hitmaker, bringing momentous fame to both actors. Yet the celebrated pair were both dealing with great agony in their personal lives during its conception; Hoffman was ending his marriage while Streep was mourning the sudden death of her partner John Cazale. Cazale was a New York theatre actor whose screen presence affected me deeply during my teenage years. Born in 1933, Cazale made his first foray into the New York theatre world in the late 1950s, soon developing a reputation for excellence from his peers. Yet it was his casting in The Godfather that catapulted Cazale into the big time. There is something so honest about the way he inhabits Fredo Corleone, Michael Corleone’s foolhardy older brother. An unknown sadness that fills his very soul. While Francis Ford Coppola would be known for bringing him into the public eye, Cazale would soar in Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon and Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter. It was heart wrenching to read about Cazale’s sudden decline following a diagnosis of lung cancer, of Streep chained to his bedside for weeks on end before his untimely death. While he only starred in five films, his body of work has inspired so many talents from Phillip Seymour Hoffman to Michal Fassbender. A star that burned so very bright, if only for a little while. “The jerk made everything mean something. Such good judgment, such uncluttered thought.” — Meryl Streep
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Thanks for tuning in. If you like this newsletter and want to support it, forward it to someone who’d like it. Until next time. Xo
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