hello!

i've been thinking a lot lately about social media, and the internet, and how it used to be. this seemed like a fun way to hold onto a piece of that past!

10/24/21

everything feels like a marketplace - there's nowhere that's more evident than on instagram. i recently got the "shopping layout" update. you know, the one where in place of a shortcut to your engagement page, you have a little shopping bag that directs you towards... well, i don't even know. i refuse to click. everything is a marketplace! even magazines - which obviously are designed in part to sell you things - seem to be MORE like that now. my mom gave me a copy of a new magazine created by a celebrity (who i find very charming!) and my overwhelming sense was... this is an instagram feed of a magazine. a list of things you can buy. a list of vacations you can take. a list of photos you can take. not even articles, really - just captions that lay out why to buy and where to buy. where are the articles? where are the words?

in so many ways the internet is a visual medium - and that's not necessarily a bad thing. i love images! i like looking at them and thinking about them and, sometimes, trying my best to create them. but shouldn't there be more?

so i guess this is like, my version of a blog, or a newsletter, or shouting into the void. my 21st century diary :)

i'm not a podcast person. the medium just doesn't fit neatly into my life, i suppose. some of my first exposure was to comedy/pop culture podcasts, which tend to infuriate me... you're just people who are talking! and often they don't actually know what they're talking about! the times i have heard something incredibly incorrect and yet i have no way to correct it, and no way to inform other listeners that this is wrong... they're going to just go through life believing what they heard on a podcast! what an injustice!

however. i recently braved my podcast aversion to listen to the you must remember this series profiling polly platt, an unsung and under-credited creative force in hollywood from the early 70s through 90s. i watched "what's up doc" fairly recently, saw her name in the credits (as production designer, although she did much more than that), and thought... hey, i've heard there's a podcast about this lady...

fitting it into my days didn't happen naturally, but i'm glad i listened to it. i learned a lot about polly platt, and some of the classic movies that i've loved for a long time, and so many pieces of film history and logistics that i just wasn't aware of before. why would i have been? why would i have any understanding of how the production design guild works, or the relationship between a director and producer?

as much as i enjoyed it... i don't think i'm becoming a regular podcast listener. i'm a cherry-picker... i'll listen to an interview i'm interested in, or a well scripted and researched series like this.

and let's be honest - my complete disdain for the true crime industrial complex rules out 80% of podcasts anyway.

next on my to-do list in this arena is rachel abramowitz's book "is that a gun in your pocket," about polly platt and other women, and what they dealt with while working in hollywood.

of course, it all ties in with the project that absorbed much of my time last year (thank god - what would i have done without a project?) - 52 Films By Women. it's something i first became aware of by following marya gates on tumblr about a million years ago. well, the pandemic happened, and i didn't just watch 52 - i watched 104. i tracked what i watched via letterboxd list (thanks harry!). as i searched for things to watch - and it did become a search, one that i was very glad to take on - i became aware of so many movies that fly under my radar, so many different roads to filmmaking and distribution. and i became extremely aware of how many women direct one movie, then disappear. they go into academia or theater or simply down another road. and who can blame them?

i recently watched "girlfriends" (1978) directed by claudia weill, billed as a forgotten indie masterpiece until it was released as part of the criterion collection. i loved the movie, then watched an interview with the director. she did make a second feature, in the hollywood studio system, and talked about the horrible experience she had - hovered over by sexist studio executives, unable to make the movie the way she wanted to, and also - after that experience - unable to go back to the diy-style of girlfriends. so she left hollywood and worked mostly in theater for the next few decades. that's a choice - sometimes it's not worth it. what would be? to compromise yourself and your work that way. i wonder how many stories there are just like that, but i also don't wonder - i know in my bones that it's happened over and over again.