Darling, I Have a Few Questions and Concerns: What I Liked This Week #6
For my first official Substack, an investigation into SPITGATE
We’re back and we’re making moves! We’re changing things up. We’re saying an amicable farewell to our jobs! We’re making a SUBSTACK. I like Medium. I really do. But I find its paywall confusing, and I like that Substack sends emails to people. And so begins a new era! Reminder for any newbies, this is not intended to be the most eloquent thing you’ve ever read. It’s just supposed to be fun. I promise I am capable of good writing and if you would like a sample of that because you would like to offer me a job, that can be arranged (did you catch that I’m recently unemployed?).
Movies: Don’t Worry Darling
Nothing delights me like celebrities being messy. I love to see beautiful people engaging in low-stakes, highly publicized drama, and I’m not ashamed of it. It’s nice to see my Twitter feed truly uniting over something that has no consequences for the vast majority of us. Now, presumably, you are like me, and have been eating up the Don’t Worry Darling drama for WEEKS. Or, at the very least, since yesterday. However, I recognize that not everyone is chronically online, and for those of you living under a rock, I offer this summary:
Once upon a time, socialite-turned-actress-turned-director Olivia Wilde made a movie. It was called Booksmart and opened to generally good reviews. It had a cast of young, hot nepotism kids and even featured Wilde’s fiance/baby daddy, Jason Sudeikis. I liked it! It was engaging and funny and somewhat true to my experiences as a high school nerd. When Olivia Wilde announced that her next project was a sci-fi/retro period piece starring Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine & Gemma Chan, who wasn’t thrilled? What a cast! What a concept! But alas! As they began filming, darling, the worries began.
Now, I cannot offer a real timeline for the events that occurred during the filming of Don’t Worry Darling. I can, however, relay them in the order I learned about them on TikTok. EVENT ONE: Olivia Wilde begins dating Harry Styles and splits from fiance/baby daddy Sudeikis. Did she cheat on Sudeikis? …Maybe. Are she and Styles a real couple or just PR? Who can say? EVENT TWO: Ted Lasso season 1 comes out, and Sudeikis becomes a National Treasure™️, which honestly is not entirely fair to Wilde. The season features an episode directed by Zach Braff (47), who just so happens to be Florence Pugh’s (26) boyfriend at the time. EVENT THREE: Filming finishes and rumors start swirling that Pugh was upset with Wilde, perhaps due to her relationship with Styles, perhaps due to poor directing. It’s even rumored that Pugh had to step in and essentially direct the film herself.
A brief intermission.
EVENT FOUR: Promotional videos for the movie start to come out. Pugh posts none of them. We as a community make a devastating discovery: Harry Styles cannot act (Dunkirk be damned). EVENT FIVE: Interview Season!! Pugh criticizes advertising, and by extension, Wilde, for focusing on the film’s sex scenes. Wilde says that Styles’ role was initially played by Shia LaBeouf, and she fired him after learning of the abuse allegations against him. LaBeouf denies that he was fired and shares a video of Wilde where she says she wants to work with him if she can get “Miss Flo” on board, adding fuel to the theory that she and Pugh are feuding. Harry Styles says that he doesn’t get why movies need gay sex scenes. EVENT SIX: Styles begins his residency at MSG. He and Wilde maybe???? break up midway through. I go see him. He is excellent. The night after performing for ME he flies to Itlay, which leads us to EVENT SEVEN: SPITGATE.
Venice Film Festival, September 5, 2022. Florence Pugh arrives late, after refusing to do any interviews for the movie. She brings her grandma as her date (suck it, Zach Braff). Chan and Pine are REPEATEDLY forced to stand in between Wilde, Styles, and Pugh, who all seemingly refuse to be next to each other. Styles has apparently just learned what a movie is. Chris Pine is Dissociating. Pugh leaves while the audience is still on minute four of applauding the movie, which apparently matters. Styles kisses Nick Kroll, who is apparently in the movie. An actress named Sydney Chandler (26) is also in the movie. Looking her up brings about a nasty revelation: her boyfriend, Enola Holmes star Louis Partridge, is only 19 and they started dating immediately after he turned 18. And in perhaps the MOST talked about event of the day, HARRY STYLES (allegedly? lmao) SPITS ON CHRIS PINE. (Editor’s Note: as I have written this, both Styles and Pine have denied that the spit happened. Interesting.) What happened to Treat People With Kindness? Harry, I just spent 125 hard-earned American dollars on you, and you embarrass me like this?
Before there was One Direction, before there was Music for a Sushi Restaurant, there was Chris Pine in Princess Diaries 2: The Royal Engagement. I will always choose him. Watch your back, Harold.
Television: Only Murders In the Building (Season 2)
Onto a lighter topic: Murder! God, I love Only Murders. Objectively, I do not think that season 2 was as good as the first, but I loved it all the same. Watching it feels like a warm hug, like wrapping yourself in a blanket and sitting on the couch with a cup of tea in one hand and a bowl of popcorn in the other. I want Steve Martin and Martin Short as my weird grandpas. I want to go stomping around secret passageways in chunky boots with Selena Gomez. Like Ted Lasso, it is so lovely to watch shows with characters who are just nice (minus Amy Schumer and Cara Delevingne, both of whom I find mildly grating). I wouldn’t say I was disappointed with who the murderer turned out to be, (no spoilers yet it came out only 2 weeks ago!) but I do wish that the murderer’s own story had gotten a little more time, and perhaps that the motive was a wee bit stronger. I accurately guess who the murderer was in season 1, and did NOT for season 2, which I feel like speaks to the quality of the show, rather than my own detective abilities. Highlights of this season included all the tunnels, Mabel Mora’s wardrobe, Nathan Lane and Shirley MacLaine’s cameos, and episode 5, “The Tell.”
Theater: Into the Woods
I think, over time, I’m realizing that I am a Steven Sondheim fan - first Company, now Into the Woods, and apparently next up, Sweeney Todd with Josh Groban. However, Sondheim, and Sondheim performed well, are two very different things. Fortunately, this was an excellent production. As we’ve established, I like Marvel movies. That said, Into the Woods was my Multiverse of Madness, not the Benedict Cumberbatch movie. Sara Bareilles, The Leading Player, Eliza/Natasha, Shrek, Ashlyn Caswell, Aaron Burr, and a BEAUTIFUL Cow Puppet all in one show? Insane.
Featuring a full onstage orchestra, but otherwise minimal set design and staging, this production of Into the Woods is designed to let the music (and vocalists) shine. Bareilles gets her “moment in the woods,” as does a superb Patina Miller as the Witch. While they were perhaps my two standout performances, everyone was wonderful. The whole time I was like, oh what good singing! Woah. Cow Puppet. Woah! And I wasn’t the only one. The vibes in the theater were impeccable. It was like attending a concert for theater nerds - every song got a solid minute of applause. Take that Venice Film Festival!
Books: Dune
Hmm. Dune. Something I did indeed read. Did I like this book? Like is generous. I found the writing very accessible, very readable. It was mostly the length (and periodically, the plot) that I struggled with. I could not/would not follow the political plotlines in Part 1. I found the rest of the book more engaging and particularly liked the world-building. That said, as much as I would say that I didn’t love this book, I get it now. The hype makes sense! Because, slowly, very slowly, as each annoying man in the book got killed off, I started to get into it. I started to get invested (I also read it on a plane. I love all plane books). As much as I found Paul and his chosen one complex irritating, I liked his mom (Lady Jessica, the original Space MILF,) and the Fremen, his rebel allies. Notably, while I disliked Paul in the book, I actually liked him in the movie. This is notable because I have historically never liked Timothee ‘statistics’ Chalamet in anything. But somehow, watching Dune, I was like “huh. Maybe he isn’t a bad actor.” So. Good for him, I suppose. Will I be reading the Dune sequels? Probably not - think of all the other things I could do with that time. But I’m not mad I read it!
Conclusion:
Thank you for reading! Maybe I’ll post on a more consistent schedule now that I am ~unemployed~ and procrastinating job applications. Stay tuned for Westworld and As You Like It at the Public Theater!
My favorite recap I’ve read so far I must attest!! Welcome :)