Check Book: JJ's Mailbag

A chance to ask him anything before we fire him again.

, and

Dec 16, 2024

Surprise! Blank Check has started a newsletter! Your favorite connoisseurs of context are gonna go on even more tangents, commit to even more bits, and share opinions on even more pieces of entertainment industry news because - hey, why not. Thanks for joining us!

IN THIS WEEK’S EDITION:

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THE BARDI PARTY REPORT

I’m going to let JJ do the heavy lifting in this week’s newsletter as I was ON VACATION IN THE ONLY CITY IN THE WORLD WHERE CINEPHILE CULTURE IS ALIVE AND WELL.

There are so many movie theaters in Paris. First-run theaters, repertory theaters, theaters that have been around since the dawn of cinema, theaters that look new and shiny and pleased as punch to be showing Emilia Perez, which is a terrible movie and indicative of a certain tendency of contemporary French cinema (tackiness). I went to the Pantheon Cinema Bookstore and bought two issues of Cahiers du Cinéma from the 1950s with pieces in them written by Bazin and Rohmer and Chabrol. I also bought a little book about the depiction of the toilet in cinema, and a book about the oeuvre of M. Night Shyamalan. I did not end up going to the Cinémathèque française as originally planned because Paris is kind of overwhelming for someone like me (obsessed with culture and food and history and death) and I barely got to do anything except stuff my face with foie gras. One of my favorite things to do in any historic city is visit cemeteries, and Paris has so many famous cemeteries (not even counting the very famous catacombs) and I didn’t get to see ANY of them. Mark my words, I will be back.

JJ’S MAILBAG

Last week, I put out a call for questions via this Substack “chat,” and, now, well, here are my answers. (That is how a Q&A works, after all.) Thanks for submitting, everyone! I read and enjoyed every single note. Sorry if I didn’t get to your question this time—or if you didn’t see the call for submissions—but I will probably do this again some time next year. And who knows, maybe other BC folks will eventually do their own Q&As, too—but this time, you got me. So, without further ado, let me just say… ::Bill Simmons voice:: yup, these are my readers.

THE GREAT ADEN: Which unmade Lynch project (Ronnie Rocket, Dream of the Bovine, One Saliva Bubble, etc) would you most like to see?

I’m going with two relatively recent ones. First, there’s Snootworld, the all-audiences animated fairy tale project that Lynch developed with Edward Scissorhands/Nightmare Before Christmas writer Caroline Thompson. In an interview with Deadline earlier this year, Thompson described the project as “wackado,” further saying, well, “It takes my breath away how wacky it is.” Her description of the story: “The Snoots are these tiny creatures who have a ritual transition at aged eight at which time they get tinier and they’re sent away for a year so they are protected. The world goes into chaos when the Snoot hero of the story disappears into the carpet and his family can’t find him and he enters a crazy, magnificent world.” But Lynch claims that Snootworld is out of step with current trends in family filmmaking, and thus he’s been unable to find financing for the film: “Snootworld is kind of an old fashioned story and animation today is more about surface jokes. Old fashioned fairytales are considered groaners: apparently people don’t want to see them. It’s a different world now and it’s easier to say no than to say yes.” Don’t listen to the studios, David: there are lots of us out here who would love to see what a children’s film from the Wacky/Wackado Mind of David Lynch would look like.

And second, there’s Antelope Don’t Run No More. For as much as I like Inland Empire and love Twin Peaks: The Return, it’s a real shame that Lynch opened the 21st Century with one of its greatest films… and then, just, you know, never made another traditionally scripted film after that. And per Room to Dream co-writer Kristine McKenna, Antelope sounds pretty neat to me: “Set mostly in Los Angeles, Antelope Don’t Run No More braids threads from Mulholland Drive and INLAND EMPIRE into a narrative fantasia that incorporates space aliens, talking animals, and a beleaguered musician named Pinky; it’s impressed everyone who’s read it as one of the best scripts Lynch has ever written.”

THE GREAT ANDJ: As you were researching this year, which single quote or anecdote made you laugh the hardest?

Here’s a quote that’s really stuck with me, from Kevin Reynolds’s agent in a Los Angeles Times cover story about the production of Waterworld: “Sometimes they [Reynolds and Costner] remind me of John Ford and John Wayne--same first names, each stubborn, with strong personal visions. Like Ford and Wayne, they’ve run hot and cold, but in the creative friction, good work’s been done.” This quote is about the two guys who made Fandango, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and Waterworld.

But the correct answer is probably this quote that John Travolta shares on the “Basic: A Director’s Design” special feature on the DVD for John McTiernan’s 2003 film Basic: “I didn’t realize how filmic [McTiernan] was, not doing the standard fare. I mean he really had a very cinéma vérité or Godard-esque or Fellini-esque idea in his mind of how to do this movie, and I was very thrilled with that because it needed a twist. It had many twists in the scenario but it also needed a visual twist. … He’s chosen in this movie to be more film noir, kind of slightly avant-garde in his filmmaking. And I think it’s right for this movie.” Yes, if you are wondering, Basic remains the first and only dossier to ever contain a reference to Jean-Luc Godard.

THE GREAT CODY F. SCHMIDT: What was the longest thing you read for a dossier this year, and how worthwhile was it for the insight gathered?

Had to have been My Name is Barbra. It was extremely worthwhile for gathering insight on exactly what I was looking to gathering insight on: Barbra Streisand. Relatedly…

THE GREAT RILEY JESSETT: What standalone book(s) included in miniseries research this year would you actually recommend others read?

This was a great year for artists’ memoirs! If you’re at all into Babs, My Name is Barbra is worth a read (or listen), and David Lynch’s hybrid autobiography/biography Room to Dream (co-authored with Kristine McKenna) is GREAT. Chris Rodley’s Lynch on Lynch is fantastic, as is this collected volume of Lynch interviews. (Huge shoutout to the University Press of Mississippi—I love that whole series.)

THE GREAT DANIEL BACHMAN: If you had to choose from the whole list of Blank Check miniseries subjects, who are the first five you would draft in a pickup game, who would play what position, and how would you coach them?

Now this is a great question. Fosse’s my one: obvious leader, guy’s got grit, semi-questionable locker room presence, but totally unafraid to lay it all out on the floor. Kind of like an Alex Caruso/Chris Paul hybrid. Costner’s my two: that’s a classic American bucket-getter right there. I’m putting Spielberg at the three: is there a more switchable wing than the man who could release Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List in the same year? Campion’s at the four, working inside and out: her stroke from three is sweet(ie), and she’s not afraid to pound it in the cut (which is what they call the paint in Australia). She’s got the power of that dog in her. And this one is kind of cheating, but, the five’s gotta be Godfrey Reggio: dude’s 6’ 7”!

THE GREAT MICHAEL GREENE: What does the dossier look like? Is it a regular pdf, or is there anything special like art that goes into it?

The dossier is just a Google Doc, nothing crazy, no art—though it would be fun/funny to commission art for something that, like, four people see at most. I shared some screenshots of the one for Oz the Great and Powerful in this piece I wrote for Contingent Magazine last summer. (That piece also serves as my answer for all of the questions asking about my researching process for the dossiers.)

THE GREAT JOE SKYRM: Would love to hear [your] thoughts on the 2025 Oscars! Any early predictions, thoughts about the Hulu move, and how excited are [you] for Conan?

Right before the Gothams, I had this bubbling feeling that Sing Sing was going to Coda; after the Gothams, that feeling was BOILING OVER. But now I’m not so sure. Why? Vibes, what else is there. Look, I’m probably the first person to say this this Oscar season, but… weird year! Anybody’s game!

I think it’s good that the Oscars will be streaming this year, but, well, the Oscars were already on Hulu last year: Hulu with Live TV, that is. But now this year they’ll be on Hulu, too. But will the Oscars also be on Hulu on Disney+? I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure: Hulu is a service that makes a lot of sense to me in its current incarnation. If I had the chance, I would also pay $8.6 billion to buy it.

Conan is the best. I love him so much. My high school graduation speech (dual valedictorian/class president lol) was mostly about Conan. He is a hero and I think he is about as good of a choice as you can make for this silly awards show that I spend most of my waking hours thinking about.

THE GREAT ALEX YOUNG: Hi JJ, I’m curious to know when you first started listening to BC, how you first heard of the pod, how you landed the gig and some of your favourite episodes pre-hiring (and multi-firings)!

I think I first heard of the podcast back in the Griffin and David Present days via a Richard Lawson tweet, but I didn’t start listening until the DreamWorks-era Spielberg miniseries. (Very cool to be working on another Spielberg miniseries these days.) I then spent all of the summer of 2017 catching up on the show while working a job at the Media History Digital Library uploading out-of-copyright issues of old Hollywood trade magazines. I think I first entered the show’s orbit as an annoying reply guy (sorry), but later I got a crucial co-sign from my college pal Shirley Li, who convinced David to follow me on Twitter (huge mistake, wonder if he resents her for it). David, (former co-researcher) Nick, and I became pretty frequent texting friends over the pandemic, and the job kind of came about naturally from there. (And thank God, because Lord knows there were not many desirable jobs out there for film PhDs during the pandemic lol.) Show changed my life, I’m thankful for the opportunity every day, still just trying not to let down anyone who took a chance on me.

But enough of that! Some favorite episodes I didn’t work on: Aloha with Esther Zuckerman, A Master Builder with John Hodgman, and, of course, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk with J.D. Amato.

THE GREAT JORDAN: Unrelated to Blank Check directly but about a filmmaker I hope will be covered soon, since I know he’s one of your guys, what is your favorite Todd Haynes movie?

For most of my 20s, I would tell people that my two favorite movies of all time were Punch-Drunk Love and Only Angels Have Wings. Then Phantom Thread came out, and I thought it was better than Punch-Drunk Love, but there was no way a movie that recent could be my favorite movie of all time. So I turned to Safe, the answer I still usually give today, though it inspires a lot of weird looks when I explain what it’s about. And for whatever reason I mostly say A Matter of Life and Death instead of Only Angels Have Wings now, though I’ve also been testing out The Beaches of Agnes sometimes.

THE GREAT LYNN ROBERTSON: Which do you prefer: short miniseries or long miniseries research projects? I’m sure there are pros and cons to both.

I like a mix of both! It can be really nice to settle into one filmmaker’s brain for a sustained period of time, but it can also be really nice to hop around a bunch of different brains. But no matter how long or short the miniseries is, one thing is always true: it’s all about those brains, baby!

THE GREAT MATT MILLER: It sounds like Lynch was recorded mostly in chronological order unlike most past series, would you like to continue that process or do you prefer the random recording order? I find the random order allows each episode to stand alone better but in the sense of these being mini series especially with Twin Peaks it works better this way.

Honestly, I am just relieved to no longer be researching around the recording schedule while also finishing grad school/teaching (and grading) ninety undergraduate film students lol. My last semester of grad school I went to the doctor because I had these giant splotches on my neck and they basically said “we don’t know what these are so we’ll just measure them every time you come into the office.” Then I finished my dissertation and they never took any measurements again because the splotches just went away. So, yeah, whatever recording order is fine with me because it is Better Than Finishing Grad School And Developing A Bunch Of Big Splotches On Your Neck.

THE GREAT DAVID: Could I get a book recommendation? Any kind of book will do.

Sure! My favorite author is John le Carré. If you haven’t read any of his books, you should probably start with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, though my favorite is maybe The Honourable Schoolboy. If you’d rather read about crime than spy crime, I had a big Jean-Patrick Manchette phase a couple years ago. Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse is probably the best book I’ve ever read, though Toni Morrison’s Jazz is right behind it, or Dennis Johnson’s Train Dreams if we’re counting novellas. I return to my worn copy of The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis all the time, and I’m thinking about rereading Paul Beatty’s The Sellout. But if you want something about The Movies, well, here’s a link to a free download of David Bordwell’s Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema—doesn’t get much better than that!

THE GREAT SUBSTACK USER: JJ, what’s your favorite citation style?

Chicago, and I refuse to recognize any others!!!

THE GREAT HENDOH: Hi JJ, what are your top 3 video games of all time?

I’m just going to go with the first three games that came to mind: Hades, Super Mario Odyssey, and Slay the Spire. When it comes to video games, I’m—for better or worse—a serial sampler. Thanks largely to my Steam Deck (and Steam sales), I played over a hundred different games this year (lol). But Hades, Super Mario Odyssey, and Slay the Spire are all games that have risen well above sampler status, and often when I’m sampling games, I think I’m really just looking for something that will hit like those three did/do.

THE GREAT BAT BUÑUEL: JJ, gimme your cold and hot takes / predictions for the Bucks season. They going all the way?

Cold take: they are absolutely not going all the way lol. Hot take: they’d still beat the Cavs in a playoff series.

THE GREAT RILEY JESSETT (AGAIN): Justify not living in Milwaukee?

Riley Jessett is probably my favorite of my mother’s many pseudonyms.

THE GREAT SIMON DOWLING: Weren’t you fired?

Yeah, but I just keep showing up anyway.

WHAT IS THE TEAM INTO THIS WEEK?

ALL OF US: Just in time for the Holidays, Patreon is offering gift memberships! You can give your loved ones the gift of Blank Check Special Features this year by clicking this link: https://www.patreon.com/blankcheck/gift

David Sims, Host: “I recommend watching BETTER MAN when it comes out and then listening to Life Thru a Lens and then watching the video of Robbie Williams performing “Angels” at Knebworth to understand David, age 11.”

Griffin Newman, Host: “My recommendation this week is THE BIG PICTURE’s “The King of Physical Media” episode with Tracy Letts. (My favorite podcast episode of 2024, and I imagine anyone nerdy enough to be a subscriber of The Check Book might agree.)”

Ben Hosley, Producer: I’m recommending the British house TV show Grand Designs. It’s so different compared to the American trash I’m used to watching. The featured homes are consistently elegant and interesting. But when they are bad the presenter Kevin McCloud is straight up mean about them. I love that. Watch on YouTube.

AJ McKeon, Editor: “A good Diet Coke on an airplane. Something about the bubbles helps calm my nerves while flying.”

Marie Bardi, Social Media: “The French-exclusive Croco-Pik Haribo. For the life of me, I do not know why we don’t have these in the states. Perfectly tart, yet with a marshmallow (?) bottom that balances out the sourness. I have eaten four bags of them this week. I will be importing more.”

Alan Smithee, Pseudonymous Editor: “I’m recommending Fredrik Backman’s Beartown books. I just started the third one and I’m so happy to be back in that world.”