Y’all, I’m sorry.
It was a long, busy week and this newsletter is coming at you late…from a plane heading to Los Angeles this fine Saturday. Do you ever have a day or a week where your creative brain is just like NOPE NOPE NOPE? I have them often, of course, but I just could not find the words to finish this thing yesterday…so apologies!!
But California here I come, right back where I started from. Well, or at least lived twice. I’m so excited to hop off the plane at LAX, find my girl Gwen, arrive at our hotel in WeHo, and get a whiff of the very specific but hard to describe way LA smells in the morning when there’s a SoCal chill in the air. I love it so much and have missed it terribly. Then, tomorrow night, the first show of summer tour: Haim at the Hollywood Bowl.
Given said trip, I think I’m gonna take a whole week off from WHN, barring a pop culture emergency. But I shall leave you with this newsletter and one of my very favorite pod episodes wherein my friend Courtney Dunlop and I go all the way in on The NeverEnding Story. (And I have a great guest coming up on 5/12. Rebecca Soffer of Modern Loss joins me to talk about her wonderful and necessary new book, The Modern Loss Handbook, and the portrayal of grief in pop culture.)
From WTF is up with that weird (and enormous) attic that Bastian posts up in to The Nothing, the Gmork, the Childlike Empress, Bastian’s dead mom’s name, the Rockbiter, etc etc etc. Yes, we are addressing the collective trauma we all suffered at the hands of this movie (which I love with my whole heart!) and how it low key defines Generation X. That means we’re going back to the Swamps of Sadness with Artax and Atreyu and facing everything that happened to us there.
Let’s heal together, shall we? My god, this trailer really masked how insane and traumatic this movie really is…
I’ll likely also fall a little behind in all my show watching while I’m away, but here’s what I think everyone should get next to:
Under the Banner of Heaven (one of my fave non-fiction books) on Hulu with the great Andrew Garfield
Grace + Frankie, a show I’m very much not ready to say goodbye to
Real World Homecoming: New Orleans, which is just SO good after only two episodes
Heartstopper, which I’m seeing all over my feeds but I haven’t dipped into yet
If for some reason you denied yourself the greatness that is Hacks, please watch S1 before new eps premiere on May 13.
I Know My First Name Is Steven
My sister and I were OBSESSED with the TV miniseries I Know My First Name Is Steven from the minute it aired in 1989. It starred Corin “Corky” Nemec aka Parker Lewis Can’t Lose as Steven Stayner, a boy who was kidnapped and eventually returned home seven years later. (Other reasons Gen X is how we are? We spent our childhoods thinking we were constantly on the verge of getting ‘napped and our teen/college years thinking we were all getting AIDS. Fun stuff!)
40 million people watched over two nights back then, which I learned from a new doc-type Hulu show Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Story, which gets into what happened and the aftermath. There are some twists that I knew about, but you may not so I shall not spoil it for you!
It’s a rather strange setup where they bring back Corky and the actor who played Steven’s older brother, Cary, do do readings of transcripts with the actual men. It feels VERY odd but I guess they were both tech avail so why not take the work? But the story is still fascinating.
Also, I’d love to revisit Parker Lewis and see how that reads today. We were all VERY into it at the time.
Come On Harry, We Want to Go Swimming with You
Harry’s first big cover for Harry’s House dropped this week and it was an utterly DELIGHTFUL surprise: Better Homes & Gardens.
As I said on TikTok/Reels, I think this is such a cheeky, clever nod to the album’s themes and, of course, the title. But also legacy print magazines and the part of Harry’s demo that’s just a lil bit older. The youths will find any and all #Hontent regardless, and I just love this so much. (Well, really, any good Harrie will find all things H, but you know what I mean.)All my old magazine girlies and I were just thrilled and I love this boost for BHG.
I can absolutely see Harry and team coming up with this idea and it fits in very well with all the You Are Home mystery and ads that had been running prior to the album’s official announcement. (Some have wondered if this was supposed to be for InStyle and maybe it was, but as a Styles scholar I do think they could have been like, “What about a shelter title and not AD/Elle Decor because Harry is def not showing his actual house????”) Regardless it’s all working and the creative is 100% Harry with his whole team in control of every aspect of the shoot—in a good way.
As he said on tour (where he performed on the round): “Sometimes you will have my face, and sometimes you will have my ass.”
It’s styled by Harry Lambert and shot by the fabulous Tim Walker (with Molly Hawkins on creative direction) and the images derailed my entire day, natch. That fucking hole in the sock ended me with its darlingness.
And then there was this. Sigh. And, yes, I did order those briefs to sleep in. Please keep in touch with me when I’m moved to my padded cell.
The profile by Lou Stoppard (a woman I’m wildly jealous of) is also quite lovely and well done. First of all, they went cold water swimming. So I was all riled up from the start, as a former swimmer…something I like to mention more than even Space Camp. But I am who I am.
Kind of as expected, he talks about writing the album and the self-reflection he went through during lockdown. "Suddenly, the screaming stopped” is a line that kind of haunts me and then this always breaks my hearts, “It was the first time I'd stopped since I left my mum's” AT 16!!!!! Also heartbreaking, the way he cried when he realized he wouldn’t have to have “cleanliness” clauses in his solo contracts like the boys all did with 1D.
Some other highlights…
I mean, facts.
Styles is teddy bears on your teenage bed, perfect handwriting on thank you cards, picked flowers on Sunday morning, puppies running on fresh-cut grass, Grandma's favorite homemade cake. At points, he is almost daffily nice, too attentive, as if held in the throes of a decade-long bout of imposter syndrome (he confirmed that he does, sometimes, expect that someone will tap him on the shoulder and say, "The jig is up. You're done now"). Surely a mask, you are thinking. No one that fancied can be that sweet. I asked Styles this myself: Is he actually pleasant, normal, sane? "My producer keeps asking me when I'm going to have my big breakdown," he said, laughing. "The most honest version I can think of is, I didn't grow up in poverty by any means, but we didn't have much money, and I had an expectation of what I could achieve in life. I feel like everything else has been a bonus, and I am so lucky."
On his sexuality. Do with it what you will.
"I've been really open with it with my friends, but that's my personal experience; it's mine. The whole point of where we should be heading, which is toward accepting everybody and being more open, is that it doesn't matter, and it's about not having to label everything, not having to clarify what boxes you're checking."
"At the time, there were still the kiss-and-tell things. Working out who I could trust was stressful," Styles said. "But I think I got to a place where I was like, why do I feel ashamed? I'm a 26-year-old man who's single; it's like, yes, I have sex."
He also dropped the track list for the album randomly at like 10-something PM ET on Thursday night and I couldn’t help but wonder if that wasn’t moved up to try to shift the online narrative around his name late this week—as more people in the general public became aware of the, uh, timeline of when his current relationship started. But who can really say? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Regardless, I can’t wait for it all and am very much looking forward to whatever “Little Freak” is.
Oversold?
Listen, I devoured the new season of Selling Sunset in like a day, as per usual. But I do have some concerns that maybe we have jumped the shark. They didn’t even try to pretend to make up a “natural” way to bring in new girl Chelsea, who I don’t hate but also don’t find super compelling. And the fact that I was supposed to believe for one second that the Chrishell and Jason thing was real and serious enough to be talking embryos? Please. Though I did find his mom rather lovely.
This is one of my favorite fake ass shows around, but I do expect a modicum of effort—especially as I don’t believe most of these people actually sell anything other than themselves to Netflix.
I think it’s all about Tampa now and would like a new season of that show immediately if not sooner. (Also, I’ll never stop watching any version of this…in spite of my complaints.)
Oh, and…
James Corden—who is a terrible, terrible person that I very much wish was not a part of the Styles inner circle— is leaving his show. BYEEEEEEEEEEEE. When ever will he get fully Ellen-ed???? Where is this takedown piece???? Is he trying to get ahead of one????… Audrey Gelman’s new concept store sounds quite like my personal definition of hell … Apparently Allison Williams had a baby a while back and his name is Arlo. I’ve really been itching for a Girls rewatch—maybe this is a sign. I haven’t gone back since I watched it all unfold in real time … I’m legit sad about Dan Aykroyd and Donna Dixon splitting. How many times did we all watch Spies Like Us back in the day? … Mazel to Andy Cohen, who welcomed a daughter named Lucy via a surrogate … Nowhere in media is safe, even Netflix. They laid off a bunch of the editorial team they JUST hired, many of whom relocated to LA. And then apparently gave them only two weeks severance which is a real dick move … Related: I felt this Twitter thread deeply.
Until two weeks from now, enjoy Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda being iconic.
xA
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