The opposite of FOMO
This week's Marginalia: There needs to be a word for being a pop culture aficionado, but not being interested or participating in several major pop culture events ("Game of Thrones," the new "Star Wars" trailer, "Avengers: Endgame") — whatever the opposite of FOMO is.
NOW PLAYING/STREAMING
My current TV obsessions:
Season two of "Killing Eve" (BBC America/AMC) is in full swing. While creator and original show-runner Phoebe Waller-Bridge stepped away from the show a bit, given that she has seemingly 10 other projects going on right now, it's still as great as ever, continuing its brilliance as a stylish spy thriller from the female gaze. If you're fashionably late to the party, season one is available on Hulu.
Easily mistaken for a Ryan Murphy miniseries, "Fosse/Verdon" (FX), about the tempestuous careers and marriage of director and choreographer Bob Fosse and dancer and actress Gwen Verdon, continues his legacy of stylish camp, now that he has taken his talents to Netflix. I came for the showbiz setting and Michelle Williams, but somehow missed that this show was masterminded by the team behind "Hamilton" (Lin-Manuel Miranda executive-produced, Tommy Kail directed, and Andy Blankenbuehler choreographed). The show is very good overall, but if you want to make a show about a problematic man overshadowing his female collaborator, why not make it with her at the center and with him as a side character?
COMING ATTRACTIONS
"Booksmart"
Caught an advance screening of this forthcoming teen comedy, the directorial debut of actress Olivia Wilde, starring Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever, which I've been excited to see since it made a splash at SXSW last month. While I had some quibbles with the execution, I mostly ate it up, as someone predisposed to like this movie. Naturally, it reminded me of some other great female-driven teen comedies of recent vintage ("Lady Bird," "Eighth Grade," "The Edge of Seventeen") and some classics of the genre (lots of "Clueless" vibes), while reinventing the form in a lot of fun ways. The movie will be out Memorial Day weekend, and I'll be writing about it, so stay tuned.
BRICOLAGE
Imagine being as good at your job as Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who was called in to improve the script for the next James Bond installment...by Daniel Craig himself, who is reportedly a huge "Killing Eve" and "Fleabag" fan. While we're at it, a Phoebe Waller-Bridge Cinematic Universe would be A+.
This quote from the New York Times' Wesley Morris from a recent live episode of the Longform podcast (taped in my dear Pittsburgh) is a succinct summation of an idea that has informed and undergirded much of my work over the last 2+ years, my default framework for trying to understand politics and culture.
Think of the thing that we actually have in common to talk about now. What is it? What is the thing that, no matter where you go — on Earth, really now — what is the thing that you wind up talking about? It's that dude! It's him! We talk about him all the time. He is the cultural product that we all have in common, and we all know something about. And it is the thing that is dividing us in one sense, but bringing us together in the other sense… And there's a new episode every day.
Rep. Ilhan Omar and director Ava DuVernay, respectively, about the "negative weight" of being the "first":
You’re drowning in it, because you don’t want to mess this first thing up for everyone you want to hold the door open for.
I didn’t just come off of a star or a moonbeam to all of a sudden be the first black woman who could do this. It’s the time we’re in that created the space for us. But even though we’re first, the goal is to make sure that we’re not the last, right?
As of this writing, I have not yet watched "Homecoming" (I know, I know — in my defense, I've had a lot of both work and non-work things to watch this week, and I have been listening to the live album). Queen Bey is the latest big name to sign a huge deal with Netflix. Beyoncé Cinematic Universe?
Filed under stories I wish I thought of this week: comparing Pete Buttigieg and Ben Wyatt. Buttigieg "has not, as of this writing, bankrupted South Bend by building a winter sports complex."