A Tale of Two Wendys
Amy Adams has some fun, Wendy Williams gets some uncanny work done, Olivia Rodrigo goes rock, Porsha Williams climbs the charts, St. Vincent's Daddy is Home, and more rated Top Shelf to Low Brow!
Hello and good afternoon. Every Monday that I open this newsletter without any interesting news or anecdotes is like…five days off my life. I’m hungry to experience things again! But alas, I am but a penniless young English boy with soot stains on my face and a tattered scarf, so until that changes, I guess it’s just me coming into your inbox twice a week with a few new angles on pop culture. And what’s so bad about that, really?
Top Shelf, Low Brow: May 10 — May 16
The woman was definitely in the window…you cannot deny that
Ever since we all collectively rushed to theaters in October 2014 to experience an earth-shattering cinematic masterpiece called Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck’s huge dick, I feel like we forgot how to enjoy a classic mystery-thriller. Everything has to be about the “huge twists” and “filmmaking prowess” and “coherent story.” I say to hell with that! Bring back thrillers based on bestselling novels and led by prestige actresses that are nothing but good, silly fun! Amy Adams heard my call.
Well, technically, Joe Wright and Tracy Letts — the film’s director and screenwriter, respectively — heard my call, but Amy Adams answered the casting agent’s call. Must a movie be good? Is it not enough to have Amy Adams running around her four-story Upper West Side brownstone, blackout drunk and spying on her neighbors? Is it not enough to plop a blonde wig on Jennifer Jason Leigh’s head, give her two lines and a smile, and call it a day? And I ask you, implore you, is it not enough to have Julianne Moore tell you that you shouldn’t be drinking on prescription medication after she just called your house shitty?! Well, if not, then by god I don’t know what cinema has come to!
For what it’s worth, I genuinely enjoyed Netflix’s newest stinker The Woman in the Window, which can’t even be a dig at Netflix since they only acquired the film after it spent three years being shuffled around amongst production hell, studio mergers, and coronavirus pushbacks before finally seeing the light of day on Friday. I’d been waiting for it anxiously since it was announced that Adams would star, thinking that maybe it could be the next Gone Girl after 2016’s The Girl on the Train failed to live up to those standards beyond compelling character actresses and the casting of Luke Evans and Justin Theroux to skulk around, depressed and sexy. But when Disney bought Fox 2000 and therefore acquired the film, with reshoots announced soon after, I gave up hope for anything but some campy fun on a Friday night. And that’s exactly what I got!
Not everything can be Gone Girl, and I’m starting to think that nothing will be. It doesn’t help that the high-budget studio thriller seems to sort of be dying, something I’m incensed about. I need my Flightplans, my Red Eyes, my What Lies Beneaths! Yes, I know the depths of streaming services are laden with plenty of thrillers, but I don’t want nobodies fighting off home invaders, I want my esteemed actress leads taking on new and challenging genre variants! I want Amy Adams saying, “I love lavender!” It doesn’t get better than that! And frankly, it shouldn’t have to.
(Rating: Top Shelf, screw the critics!)
Last week, NBC announced that they would not be airing The Golden Globes next year…
Our nation’s leading correspondent, Wendy Williams, had this to say on the matter:
Speaking of Wendy! Move over, Michelangelo’s David!
Ms. Williams unveiled her Madame Tussauds wax figure on her show Monday morning, and it was a glorious explosion of uncanny terror! Not only is it maybe the best wax figure I’ve ever seen, but it was so believable that even Wendy seemed to have an innate connection with it. Wendy 2.0 joined Wendy Classic for the Ask Wendy portion of her show, during which the “real” Wendy continuously stroked the “wax” Wendy’s arm and hands while looking at her lovingly, as though Wax Wendy had confided in Real Wendy backstage that she was nervous for her big television debut. You can’t see television like this anywhere else.
Additionally, I woke up this morning to a New Yorker profile of Wendy, which is literally all I’ve ever fucking wanted in life. The only thing I want more is to be the person who wrote it, but maybe in the next life, when God has some mercy on me.
The piece is beautiful and brilliant, capturing everything that I and so many others deeply love about Wendy. She’s both an enigma and an open book. No matter how many episodes and compilation videos I’ve seen of Wendy, I’m constantly finding out more about her. For example: “Before each episode, she prays at a makeshift chapel, to a drawing of God that her son made when he was little.”
If you don’t have time to read it, you can spend 47 wonderful minutes listening to the article on The New Yorker’s website. It’s worth every second!
(Rating: Top Shelf)
The Gossip Girl reboot will not have “slut-shaming or catfights.” And so, they will not have my viewership. (Just kidding!)
On Friday, Joshua Safran, producer of the original Gossip Girl and co-creator of HBO Max’s new reboot, did a quick AMA while waiting in line at the pharmacy. One follower asked him if the new show will include slut-shaming and catfights, a fair question, as those two things make up a large component of the original series’ plotlines. Safran rebuked both of those aspects, saying the following:
Safran later clarified that by “catfights” he meant characters coming to physical blows. While I’ll certainly miss the push of a face into a cake at an election night party and a high heel to the head at Yale, the characters on the original show actually didn’t make their violence physical that often. But as both a scholar and dedicated fan of Gossip Girl and television in general, I have a few thoughts on the matter as a whole.
It seems as though certain groups of perennially online people have forgotten that there is such a thing as nuance and that fictional television writing does not necessarily represent the moralistic viewpoints of the people that consume and enjoy the show. It’s part of the reason why the original Gossip Girl has received so much hate for things like slut-shaming, which it never condoned in the first place but was perceived to have condoned long after it finished airing by collective groups on Tumblr and Twitter that refused to view it with an extra ounce of critical thinking because they were told by a small sect of the internet that all fictional media must be written with the intention of making the world a better place. The characters on Gossip Girl are not meant to be moral idols, emblems of high-thinking and ethics, they’re symbols of an idea that exists far outside the confines of a television screen. This narrative that caring about characters who may not display squeaky clean morals is somehow bad or “anti-woke” is simply just untrue, and frankly, it’s contributing to a larger, obnoxious, and somewhat worrisome idea that art which accurately depicts truth and nuance in the world is somehow bad or needs to be called out on Twitter. Obviously, I mean that to a degree. I think there’s a clear line between writing fictional television characters as refined, imperfect people and simply spouting unsafe, harmful rhetoric, something Gossip Girl never did and never aimed at doing.
I’m here to tell you that you’re not a bad person if you like the original Gossip Girl. You’re not a bad person if you think it’s fun to see characters stab each other in the back and say mean things to each other and maybe, once in a while, throw a Nair-tini at someone, causing them to go bald! In fact, enjoying those things, knowing that they can happen in real life and that they’re fictional symbols of a larger reality and narrative, and they do not aim to represent any kind of moral high ground because they are obviously bad is actually a nod to your critical perception of fictional art!
Anyway, long story short. I’ll be consuming every second of the Gossip Girl reboot multiple times each week. There’s no world in which I wouldn’t. And I have no doubt that the fine writers and producers and cast of the show are going to make it as fun, exciting, and scintillating as ever. It’s my most anticipated event of the year. I just think that sometimes it’s important to reevaluate how much real-world importance we place on perceptions of fictional characters and art before everything gets too Netflix-ified.
(Rating: I’m sorry to say it but…Low Brow! Also, completely off-topic [but sort of not], you must watch Veneno on HBO Max. I’ll keep saying it until I croak. You wanna talk about nuance? Well baby, look no further!)
Two important tweets from rich older white people:
The quest to make Porsha Williams’ “Flatline” the song of the summer rages on!
Some cosmic force is a dedicated Top Shelf, Low Brow reader, because last week, Real Housewives of Atlanta star Porsha Williams announced that she was engaged to Simon Guobadia, who is the estranged ex-husband of her RHOA costar, Falynn Guobadia. Aside from all of that bonkers insanity and an Instagram announcement posted with the hashtag #LoveWins (sshdgbgbdkfhbdksnlsjdngdhfgbshb!!!!), the drama resulted in The Shade Room digging up a clip from the Porsha’s “Flatline” video and posting it for their 23 million followers!
Readers will remember two weeks ago when I asked you to open your hearts and accept “Flatline” as your song of the summer, just a mere seven years after it came out. Well, it appears that my call is being heard! Next stop, the Billboard Bubbling Under chart and then? We’re taking it to #1, baby! Get your defibrillators ready, Little EMTs! The “Flatline” is coming!
(Rating: Top Shelf)
I can admit when I’m wrong! AKA, some thoughts on the new Olivia Rodrigo song, “good 4 u”
It’s no secret that I love when the mainstream women artists turn around and give us rock, seemingly out of nowhere. I just don’t think that anyone quite expected that of Olivia Rodrigo after the previous two offerings from her debut album SOUR, the massive hit “drivers license” and follow-up single “deja vu.” Both of those songs are swirlingly emotional, somewhat melodramatic (I mean, she’s literally 18, so that’s to be expected!) midtempos that never explode into the pop-punk flair of “good 4 u,” a song that would make 2000s Avril Lavigne and Paramore deeply jealous.
This is the kind of emotion and burst of raw personality that I love to see, especially from a new artist. Not to mention that it’s a classic case of a song being made even better by its accompanying visual. Naturally, Petra Collins directs Rodrigo with signature muted pastels and girly iconography before taking a can of gasoline to the whole thing with a well-earned Jennifer’s Body-referencing finish.
It’s undoubtedly a song that Rodrigo’s idol and mentor Taylor Swift, whose pen has written some of the best post-breakup revenge songs of the century, would be proud of. It also serves to remind me that Taylor should do a punk-pop album next. Hopefully “good 4 u” is just a glimpse into the genre-leaping boldness that Rodrigo will continue to explore down the line.
(Rating: Top Shelf)
I win again!!!!! Cruella edition
If everyone would just listen to what I’ve been saying and preaching and praying! First reactions to Cruella are in, and it looks as though they perfectly align with all the thoughts I’ve had since the first trailer dropped. Cruella will be an exciting, insanely watchable, crazy fun romp led by two Emmas — Stone and Thompson. Normally, I’m incredibly hesitant and wary of any comparisons to my favorite film of all time, The Devil Wears Prada, but in this case, I will accept it, largely because Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote Prada, worked on the story for Cruella as well.
I’m not saying I told you so, but I absolutely told you so months ago. I also reserve the right to rescind this in two weeks in the rare chance that I don’t like it.
I’m going to make this the first film I see back at Alamo Drafthouse and I absolutely cannot wait to shovel truffle popcorn into my fully-vaccinated maw while delighting in an uber fun Disney Girlboss origin story. This is how I win!
(Rating: Top Shelf)
New depression soundtrack dropped!
“To become ‘Daddy’ is just simply to become yourself.” So true, Ms. Clark! Daddy’s Home, one of my most anticipated albums of the year, dropped on Friday. To hear the album in full and in order is to finally dive back into the wholly unique world of St. Vincent and her increasingly idiosyncratic personas and influences. And, god, did it live up to expectations. I’ve missed these organic sounds and grimy melodies from St. Vincent, despite having to jar myself back into remembering that the electro-synth sounds that filled so much of her last record, MASSEDUCTION, were simply just another experiment in style and character. Much in the way that record seemed to find me at the exact right time, freshly moved from New York after my life had come to a standstill and wondering what to do next, Daddy’s Home is precisely what I need at this moment. A record full of retro sounds — sitars, muddy guitars, and 70s era electronic synths — that finds Annie Clark wandering around New York, down and out, listless and trying to find her place among old memories and new relationships. It’s another incredibly beautiful, endlessly interesting work from one of my favorite artists working today.
“I think once I make the work and then put it out into the world, it’s really for everybody else,” she says in the clip above. “How you take it is no business of mine.” Any art that openly allows and welcomes its participants to meld themselves and their experiences with it is important in my book. Daddy’s home!
(Rating: Top Shelf)
In huge tiddy news:
New outtakes from Harry Styles’ shoot with Mary Ellen Matthews for his appearance on SNL in late 2019 hit the web over the weekend. As you’d expect, it was quite a Saturday night for me. Sorry, I know it offends a lot of my fellow weirdos out there, but I’m never going to stop thinking he’s hot. It’s been nearly 10 years and it’s not changing anytime soon! I love a man that gives me full cleav.
I’m literally those old comments from Nicki Minaj’s Instagram posts
(Rating: Top Shelf)
That’s all for this week! Thanks so much for being here and reading. I love you all so much and I am so grateful to have you all. It’s crazy, but we’re coming up on the 50th newsletter in the next couple of weeks. I anticipated that this project would carry on for a while, but I never expected it would be continuously growing at such a rate and still inspiring me as much as it is. And that’s all because of you. If you haven’t yet read Friday’s letter, The Bizarro World of Real Housewife TikToks, there’s a lot of laughs in those incredibly surrealist, campy masterpieces. See you on Friday, I love you! 💖
"My Baby Wants a Baby" is my favorite track off of Daddy's Home, and it's on repeat! great letter xoxo