A little warm-up while we wait

I’m done telling you what I’m going to do.

Now that we’re starting fresh here at Ghost, we’re genuinely starting fresh. If there are features from Formerly Dangerous that you’ve enjoyed, please let me know, and I’ll consider bringing them over. But rather than tell you what I have planned, I figure it makes more sense just to start doing it. I should have the full site activated by Friday of this week or Monday next week at the latest. In the meantime, I thought I'd try a little warm-up.

One of the hardest parts of this creative business I love and hate so much is the amount of time you have to give to something to make it happen. It’s not that I mind the work; I don’t. I love the work or I wouldn’t do it. I enjoy writing. I like bringing things to life. I like the whole process. But the idea that there is at least half of the process that has to happen as an act of faith, a speculative effort that may or may not result in something that people actually get to see? That kills me, because when things don’t happen, all of that work goes into a box and that box goes on a shelf and people just don’t get to see it. It’s like it never happened. It is the proverbial tree falling alone in the forest, and my career consists of a whole lot of lonely trees that made no sound.

I have two active prospects right now, and both of them are incredibly exciting and totally tenuous. Anything can happen. And if I want anything to happen, it requires constant attention and effort from me. It’s a hard way to live. Everything is hypothetical. Everything is potential. I have no real control over the outcome of any of it.

This is one of the reasons I am thankful for something like The Last ‘80s Newsletter (You’ll Ever Need) as an ongoing place I can put effort where actual progress is made and shared. It’s a gigantic, ridiculous project, but at some point, I will hit send on that final issue with Tango and Cash, and I will be “done.” My guess is I’ll always be adding small updates, but there is a finish line to the larger project and god willing, one day, I’ll get there. In the meantime, you’ll see every step of that process, and it doesn’t feel like work that disappears into the ether.

I am glad to announce that drewmcweeny.com is the new official landing page for all of this. I don’t want Substack’s name in my site address. No offense to Ghost, but I don’t want their name in the address, either. This is my newsletter, my site, my online home, and I am the one who you can direct all comments, complaints, and questions to regarding anything you read here.

I posted a goodbye over at Substack, and I'm happy to finally be able to open the doors over here. If you are subscribed over there, you’ll be subscribed over here. There are a number of changes to the way I'll be charging subscribers over here, and I didn't choose to carry over all of the free subscriptions. My prices at Substack were pretty much exactly the same the entire five-plus years that I published there, so it was time to make some adjustments that take into account the amount of work it is to create both of these publications.

Right now, I’m in the middle of one of those crazy-busy weeks where I’ve got something going every day and most nights, and while I’m enjoying it, I’m at my best when I’m at home and I can set my own work schedule. I started the week with a friend’s birthday gathering at a local pizza place, and it was a crowd full of familiar faces. There were plenty of people I knew, and plenty of people who I just recognized because I like their work, and it was fun to mingle with both groups. The conversation was loose and covered all kinds of topics, but one person after another asked me about one film in particular. Understandably so. Not only did people want to know if I’d seen it, but where I’d seen it and in what format, because that’s the kind of party Paul Thomas Anderson’s throwing right now.

I love Inherent Vice. I was pretty transparent about how much I loved Inherent Vice when it came out. It was my favorite film that year, and my review was a rave. Here’s an excerpt from what I published on HitFix after attending the NYFF premiere of the movie:

NEW YORK – Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice is probably the most accessible novel he's ever written, set in 1970, a sort of hyper-clever nod to the Raymond Chandler tradition of Los Angeles detective stories. As much as I wanted to like his work, I was never able to really dig in and enjoy Pynchon's books. They felt to me like something to be conquered. With Inherent Vice, I finally found myself caught up in not just his language but with his characters and the world that he was describing. It was my in to the rest of his work, and so it holds a special place for me among his novels…

… The last word I would ever use for Pynchon's work is “cinematic,” so it seems like a perverse joke that Paul Thomas Anderson would go all-in on an adaptation of one of Pynchon's books. Even more unlikely is just how right Anderson ends up being for the material. It would be easy to try to compare Inherent Vice to other films in the same genre. You'll read plenty of comparisons to Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye or The Big Lebowski by the Coens, but it's really not doing the same thing either of those films did. This is a singular thing, and it is gorgeous.

It's not a movie. It's a contact high

The idea that the same writer/director and star made this and The Master is insane. Crazy-talk. Impossible. This movie is so funny, so strange, so wonderfully charmingly deranged. I love Doc Sportello in a way that I didn't love him in the book, and that's because Joaquin plays him with such a sense of decency, a confusion as to why the world has to be so shitty. He is a good man in a weird time, and the way he approaches the world and the people in it makes me really love the guy.

Robert Elswit's photography is miraculous. This looks like it was shot in 1970, on 1970 film stock, with no sense of making it precious. It's not a period film. It just looks like it was shot when it is set, and looking at Los Angeles in the film, I don't see anything that betrays the changes the city has gone through. It's almost miraculous how right they get it…

… Did I mention that the film is laugh-out-loud funny? It is. Wait until you see Josh Brolin in this thing. I'm not sure when the last time was that he looked this engaged in a film. There are things he does to a chocolate banana… you'll see. He is every repressed and angry cop watching the world go crazy with free love and drugs and he can't deal with just how furious it all makes him. Doc is the manifestation of all of that, and so their relationship becomes a tension point that means something more...

… There is so much to digest. The way the film plays with memory and with chronology is fascinating. One of the great detective movies/novels of all time is The Big Sleep, and one of the things that I find most amazing about the book and the movie is that they simply don't add up. The mystery doesn't really work, in a few key ways, and it doesn't matter. Well, Inherent Vice is like having someone who watched The Big Sleep at 3:45 in the morning three weeks ago while reeeeeeeally high trying to explain the movie to you, while reeeeeeeally high again. And I love it.

I felt like I was alone on an island when Inherent Vice came out. I would write my reviews before talking to anyone, and so when I started talking to other people about Vice and I realized they were baffled by it or hostile toward it or just annoyed that it existed, I got even more defensive about it. Time has been kind to the film, though, and it feels like people have gradually tuned in to the distinctly weird wavelength the film operates on. Even so, I didn’t think we’d ever see Paul Thomas Anderson return to Pynchon as source material. And despite the credits on the film, I’d argue we haven’t, because this is only slightly related to anything in Vineland. This feels like he read Vineland, went to sleep, and had a dream about something totally different. You can see the ways it might have inspired him if you really squint, but there are no characters or situations that are directly adapted. It is a fascinating response to another work of art, one that feels deeply personal to Anderson. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I watched it, and I’m going back Thursday for a second time. I have not been able to get tickets for a screening at the Vista, Quentin Tarantino’s theater that is one of only three in the United States currently playing the film in actual VistaVision, and I hope to do that before the end of its run. I can’t wait, though. The film keeps rattling around inside me, and I need that second and third viewing to fully digest this giant, rowdy, wildly entertaining primal scream.

I think it’s my favorite film since Once Upon A Time in Hollywood in 2019. I seriously can’t think of a film I’ve had this strong a reaction to in that time, and I’m not sure there’s a film I can point at that makes me feel the same way this one does. Part of it is timing, certainly. It’s hard to watch this film at this moment without having a very strong emotional reaction, and I suspect there will be people who hate this film passionately. Some people will hate it because of the film itself, while others will be reacting to what they think the film is saying. All of that is valid. Anytime someone makes a piece of art as personal and eccentric as this, delivered at this kind of high level of impeccable craft, it feels like it divides audiences. Good. I’m all for provoking a reaction. Right now, all human art is resistance art, but very few studio movies are as nakedly concerned with what resistance really means.

Having said that, it’s not the only film on my mind right now. It’s October, which means we’re about to face a small avalanche of titles, and I’m starting my own catch-up run to make sure I’ve seen a fair sampling of the year’s work. I am not publishing best of lists anymore, as I discussed in one of the Substack newsletters, but I still keep running lists for myself. My favorites are my favorites, and that has nothing to do with awards season or predicting anything or even trying to put together an “objective” list. I love what I love. I respond to whatever I respond to. Too much of modern film coverage is about urgently selling you something, and that’s inherently tied into the way access has become the primary metric of an outlet’s “worthiness.” The more early access you get, and the earlier that access is, the more important you are. That access depends largely on how much of a puzzle piece you are in the studio’s marketing plan. If they need you for something, then you are suddenly the smartest, most interesting and worthwhile opinion in the world. The moment you step outside of the marketing strategy, whether by choice or because you aren’t “important” enough, you do not exist. Studios don’t give a shit what a critic thinks or says unless it impacts their plans for a film positively or negatively.

What I publish here, I publish for you, the reader. We’re the only ones having this conversation. This isn’t a public-facing website. This isn’t meant as anything other than a conversation between you and me. At this point, thirty years into my publishing online, I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m not trying to influence any races or impact the box-office. Film is what I live and breathe, and I’d be having this conversation with myself if no one else was interested. I am grateful for every single one of you who make the decision to spend your time and attention and, yes, money to be part of this conversation, and more than ever, I want this to be a space that isn’t constantly trying to sell you something.

When I tell you that I am haunted by the quiet power of Train Dreams or that I am rattled by how much I loved Bryan Fuller’s Dust Bunny or that Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein just broke my heart in the best possible way, I’m just excited that you have these experiences to look forward to in the months ahead. When I tell you that Superman has become my most-watched film of the year, I look forward to discussing why and what I’m getting from it. When I tell you that I have seen the new Avatar Fire & Ash trailer about a dozen times now and I can’t get enough of it, I’m curious if you’re feeling the same way. I want you to be an active part of this conversation, too. I’m not just throwing these comments out into the void. Even before Ain’t It Cool and the newsgroups that first enticed me into public posting in the mid-90s, I was sending a sort of a newsletter out to my actual friends, a mailing list of about 100 people, and while I’ve grown as a writer in the 30 years since then, the intent remains much the same. I love all of this stuff, and I love building a community of other people who love this stuff, too. I love to argue about it and rant about what I love and rail against what I hate and I am always intrigued by the way two people can look at the same piece of art and see two different things.

Working for websites taught me some terrible habits, and much of the Substack era was about me unlearning some terrible habits. I don’t give a shit about SEO. I’m not trying to game any search engines. If you love what you read, tell people about it. Send them something to read. Please… you’re the only advertisement I care about. Since you’re paying to be here, your satisfaction is the one metric of success that means anything. Tell me what you like. Tell me what you want more of. Tell me what got you to subscribe or what keeps you here. As I said… I’m not going to make a bunch of grand specific proclamations about what you’re going to see here moving forward. Now that the migration of my archives is basically done and we’re just getting all of the subscribers sorted into the right columns, I can finally stop tinkering with the tools and get back into the business of writing and publishing, and you guys can get back to reading. If you’re subscribed to just Formerly Dangerous, please consider jumping on board for The Last ‘80s Newsletter, too. It’s some of the best film writing I’ve ever done, and there’s still so much more of it to go. I’ve made it easy to get them together with a bundle that offers you a discount on both.

Your support matters to me, and I look forward to showing you just how much it matters as we close out 2025 and look forward to 2026. Thanks for being here.