Tessera

MINONS & MONSTERS: come for the loving tributes to film history, stay for the inspiring depiction of film’s present where laborers band together to defeat an all-consuming corporate behemoth.

(it’s also a stealth David Byrne pod) I’m at the Demme pod! I’m at the Byrne pod! I’m at the combination Jonathan Demme-David Byrne pod!

#Podcast: #WatchWithJen - S7: E15 - Early Jonathan Demme with Mike Miley Film scholar & author @mikemiley.bsky.social returns to discuss the life & career of the director, plus the films STOP MAKING SENSE, SOMETHING WILD, & MARRIED TO THE MOB. Available Everywhere www.patreon.com/FilmIntuitio...

Aw, thanks, Jen!

We’ve had a lot of wonderful conversations for cinephiles on the pod this season, but this is one of my favorites. We also had no idea when we planned it that it would tie in with this month’s @criterionchannl.bsky.social spotlight!

Talking with Jen about Jonathan Demme has been one of the highlights of my summer. Hope you enjoy it too (and go watch those films!)

Jason P. Woodbury@jasonpwoodbury.bsky.social · last mo.

A great and moving thread by a great and moving writer and musician.

I've seen lots of smart takes about music criticism/journalism this week (a lot of stupid ones too). For me, it comes down to this: music is a form of human communication older than language itself & my listening life has been enriched by writing & reporting that explores it.

QueenCityJamz @queencityjamz.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Steve Erickson’s 1992 review of Fire Walk with Me is 💯

Mike Miley @mikemiley.bsky.social · 2mo ago

#SotGirlSummer

A copy of John Barth’s novel The Sot-Weed Factor

Mike Miley @mikemiley.bsky.social · 2mo ago

As expected, I had a blast talking with Jen. Very excited for y’all to hear this one.

Jen Johans @filmintuition.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Great pod recording session with knowledgeable film historian @mikemiley.bsky.social! We talked early Jonathan Demme, genre explosions, character reinvention, & bringing joy back to filmmaking. You’ll hear it on #WatchWithJen pod soon.

Jen Johans @filmintuition.bsky.social · 2mo ago

3 Shows Just Added to Watch With Jen pod’s Season 7 Summer Roster!

Max Evry @maxevry.bsky.social · 2mo ago

My next book for @1984prods.bsky.social is STRANDED ON EARTH: HOW NIGHT SKIES BECAME E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL Don't get left behind when it arrives on October 6.

Mike Miley @mikemiley.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Starting my summer reading right with this one by @willsloanesq.bsky.social. Been looking forward to this one for a while.

Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I wrote about MULHOLLAND DRIVE for my reader's choice series. In this essay I looked at dreams, tragedies, queer identification and shadow histories of Hollywood. It's a longer one, but you can read a sample below. www.patreon.com/posts/patron...

a still image of Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive. She has tears in her eyes as she sees her lover with someone else

A few months ago I dreamed I was at a wrap party for a Hollywood production, and while I grazed around in my black cocktail dress and with a martini glass in hand I began to get the strangest sense of deja vu. It was around then that I realized that in my dream state my mind was re-enacting the culmination of Diane Selwyn’s (Naomi Watts) tragic love story with Camilla Rhodes (Laura Harring) from Mulholland Drive. In my dream I kept flickering between the cinematic representation from David Lynch’s film and my heels-on-the-ground experience of witnessing Diane’s heart-break firsthand. In Mulholland Drive Naomi Watts delivers a devastating close-up in that scene where her eyes are a deluge, but she holds the emotion within her face to keep from making a scene and when that image flickered and froze in my subconscious my mind pulled a song up from the ether to accompany the moment: The Supremes version of “Unchained Melody”.

“Unchained Melody” speaks to the ache of a broken heart, but the version by The Supremes goes further than the sweeping ache of the arrangement, or the narrative of the lyrics, and feels cosmic in what it suggests. It’s an ethereal version of the track whose orchestration sounds closer to the chilly fuzz of what would become dream pop. It is a version that prioritizes the sonic texture of what the lyrics suggest when Diana Ross sings, “Lonely rivers flow, to the sea, to the sea, Lonely rivers sigh, wait for me, wait for me.”. I have always thought that it sounded like a precursor to one of David Lynch’s favorite pieces, “Song to the Siren”, and with Mulholland Drive’s girl group odes it makes sense that my mind would attach these pieces together. There is something essential about The Supremes version of that song. It pierces the membrane of the very idea of a love song to show the core of the medium, and this is also how I feel about Mulholland Drive in relation to American cinema. In most versions of “Unchained Melody” the vocalist approaches the phrase, “godspeed, my love” as a straightforward declaration of letting go, but that is not the case for Diana Ross. In the final moments of the track she sings, “god......speed my love”, and her voice hangs on God, and there is space inbetween the phrasing, as if the ache of her desire were momentarily a prayer. To me, that heartbreak across eons, and ages and dimensions is also the story of Mullholland Drive. Diane Selwyn and Camilla Rhodes are meant to find each other in different guises of identity and personality, and they will always find themselves ripped apart from one another. When I woke up from the dream, I felt as though I had been somewhere deep and mysterious inside of myself, and in the months since, I have not stopped listening to “Unchained Melody”, or thinking about Mulholland Drive.

Jen Johans @filmintuition.bsky.social · 3mo ago

#Podcast: #WatchWithJen - S7: E9 - Gregg Araki's Teen Apocalypse Trilogy with S.A. Cosby The wonderfully gifted author of KING OF ASHES returns to talk Araki, plus the filmmakers, actors, video stores, & more of the '90s indie film scene. Available everywhere or www.patreon.com/posts/watch-...

Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I wrote about LOST HIGHWAY for my horror column. This one is different from his later films. We aren't meant to identify or empathize with anyone. We are meant to observe. It's closer to his work as a painter where rationalization is elusive & the world is cruel. www.patreon.com/posts/monste...

a sample image of Bill Pullman in LOST HIGHWAY bathed in red light and in close up

David Lynch caught a new idea on the final day of filming Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. He imagined a man and a wife nearing the end of their relationship receiving a videotape in the mail that contained footage of the two of them sleeping peacefully in the comfort of their bedroom. He was pulled to the idea because it disturbed the notion of privacy within the home, but he did not believe that the idea was strong enough to carry a film on its own. Over the course of several years, more ideas and ‘fated’ moments of coincidence came to him organically that were eventually attached to what would become Lost Highway. The legend goes that Lynch was interrupted at dawn by a phantom message on the telecommunications device attached to the gated entrance of his home, “Dick Laurent was dead.”. He never investigated further, because he did not want to lose the mystery. He read Barry Gifford’s “Night People”, and loved the prose of two sentences in particular, “We’re just a couple of Apaches riding wild on the lost highway.”, and “You and me, mister, we can really out-ugly the sum’bitches, can’t we?”. The former of those two sentences was eventually copied word for word in pornographer Mr. Eddy’s (Robert Loggia) final moments in Lost Highway. Additionally, Lynch became obsessed with the ongoing televised trial of former football star and Naked Gun actor O.J. Simpson who was accused of murdering of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson. A palpable darkness seeped into the project when he began penning the script with Gifford, but it was a morbidity that was separate from his empathetic portraits of women in trouble. Lynch usually gave the viewer a figure to identify with, and in the time leading up to Lost Highway, that had primarily been women suffering at the hands of misogynistic abuse. Lost Highway offers no such pathway. We are put into the position to observe Lost Highway rather than identify with it....

Katie Reed @katiereedwrites.bsky.social · 3mo ago

One month out from publication day and VELVET GOLDMINE is #130 on Amazon’s movie guides and reviews best seller list?! (It’s out June 11, you can preorder now, including from @bloomsburymedia.bsky.social, and I will sign yours and/or sing “The Ballad of Maxwell Demon” for you if you purchase.)

Mike Miley @mikemiley.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Top 15 shows ever, unranked & gut-based: Twin Peaks The Comeback MST3K Tales from the Crypt The State Deadwood The Wire You Can’t Do That on Television Pee-Wee’s Playhouse Press Your Luck Daria Beavis and Butthead Animaniacs Tanner 88 Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Jason Bailey@jasondashbailey.com · 3mo ago

Name your top 15 TV shows ever, gut instincts only— MST3K Columbo The Wire The Sopranos Breaking Bad Mad Men Gilmore Girls 30 Rock Cheers SportsNight Felicity The Mary Tyler Moore Show The Dick Van Dyke Show Night Flight Late Night with David Letterman

Mike Miley @mikemiley.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Jessica Ritchey@jmritchey.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Without downloading anything new, where are you, mentally?

Katie Reed @katiereedwrites.bsky.social · 4mo ago

IT’S REAL! It’s full color! It’s coming to a bookstore near you (in a little while)! I cannot wait till my VELVET GOLDMINE book is out in the world (on June 11! Less than 2 months away!) Preorders from @bloomsburymedia.bsky.social or your favorite bookstores

The cover of BFI Film Classics volume VELVET GOLDMINE — a pink and blue watercolor rendering of Brian Slade — sits on a tabletop on Scrabble tiles

Niko Stratis@nikostratis.com · 4mo ago

Y'all, this book is the real deal--buy two because you're going to want to give one to someone before you finish chapter two!

Next month is the one year anniversary of the release of my debut book, The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman, and to celebrate i would love to sell out the initial print run. It's a goal that's already close! bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I have some huge news! I am making my debut on a Criterion disc for their stunning 4k restoration of Neil Jordan's THE CRYING GAME. I wrote an essay for the booklet and I'm very excited for everyone to check it out. www.criterion.com/films/33812-...

The Crying Game

Neil Jordan’s emotionally stunning international sensation overcame the barriers between independent and mainstream cinema to become one of the defining films of the 1990s. Set against the turbulence ...

criterion.com

theJLM / Jeremiah Lee McVay (he/him)@thejlm.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I want a Car Talk-style show that's just Bob calling Comrade Josh.

A movie couple that would definitely have a podcast

I’m teaching INFINITE JEST again this summer for @roundtable92ny.bsky.social—join me for a thematic tour through this novel for its 30th anniversary! roundtable.org/live-courses...

So excited to get my hands on a hard copy of this review.