I’m with Rihanna & Rocky
Getting film gossip at the Gotham Awards.
I flew into New York City on Thanksgiving—mainly to attend the Gotham Awards, which was held on Monday evening at Cipriani Wall Street. Earlier this year, Gotham had asked me to help select the shortlists of nominees for this year’s acting categories, a list which, in the end, included A$AP Rocky, Jennifer Lawrence, Jacob Elordi, and i-D cover star Teyana Taylor. (Her presence on our cover did not mean she got a free pass here, they made me read and sign a thing that forbids me from doing such things!)
They were all in the room. Rocky brought Rihanna. I ran into Elle Fanning and Paul Thomas Anderson and saw Indya Moore sat at their table texting. After the ceremony, I caught Pillion director Harry Lighton on the way out. He was carrying a beer, two skinny cigs, and his trophy for Best Adapted Screenplay. Hot!
The Gotham Awards don’t tend to be big predictors for the Oscars. Best Lead Performance was won not by Leo or Timmy, but by Sope Dirisu, for a quiet British-Nigerian indie movie called My Father’s Shadow—it’s cool to see the underdogs get their moment. One Battle After Another, the real frontrunner, was snubbed all night—then it won Best Film. I think that’s the only real crossover we’ll see between this ceremony and the Academy’s tastes. We’ll find out in March, I guess.
Before I fly long haul (yes, I’m categorizing London to New York as long haul), I check the airline website for what the in-flight entertainment system has to offer. It’s a good place to play catch up sometimes, which I did with:
A Minecraft Movie, which lowkey really rocked.
I Know What You Did Last Summer, the Gabriette-starring remake from earlier this year. Self-aware and a little trashy—important cinema.
The Social Network, my big Fincher blind spot. The Kevin Spacey producer credit jumpscare though. Oof!
At the same time, my love for falling asleep watching movies was reaffirmed. It feels good everywhere: at home, in a theater, or on a plane. For years at festivals, when I’ve accepted my fate with a really bad movie, I’ll allow my sleep-starved body to slip into circadian rhythm. The director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who made this really awesome movie with Tilda Swinton called Memoria, is a master of slow cinema. He’s said that falling asleep during his movies is the highest compliment.
On my flights, I slept through:
Love Actually, one of the few Christmas movies I’ve never seen. Ended up sleeping through about 80% of it, waking up just in time to spoil the ending.
Inherent Vice—but it was intentional. I’ve seen it already so popped a melatonin, stuck it on, and enjoyed it as beautiful background noise. Underrated PTA.
Reader, what are your favorite sleepy movies? Do you have a festive long-haul coming up you need recommendations for? Drop your airline and route below and I’ll make some suggestions.
While in town I saw Practice at Playwrights Horizons, the off-Broadway theater that birthed Tony winners like Stereophonic and A Strange Loop. This play, written by Nazareth Hassan, is about making art with a hive mind mentality: Seven young performers are cast by a director, one who’s known for their unorthodox route to creating memorable, metaphysical theater. Knowing the end result will be worth it, the group audition for the director’s new workshop, and one-by-one are pushed to their limits. My friend compared it to Gaspar Noe’s Climax.
The typical structure of a play favors a heaviness in the first act, but without me expecting it, Practice was staging its own coup de theatre. The play runs close to three hours in length, but its first act—dedicated entirely to the workshops—runs for an obscenely long two hours and 10 minutes.
Look, we watch movies that are longer than that all the time, but the contract of theater plays with your attention span differently. Sometimes, even when you’re enjoying something, you find yourself gasping for the interval so you can debrief and break the tension in the room.
But Practice, in a way that both angered and intrigued me, starved me of it for so long that by the time the overdue interval arrived I sat in my seat anyway, dumbfounded. I found plenty of things about it quite interesting—that tricky act of time fuckery definitely one of them. But so much of it only started locking into place after it had finished, so I’m glad I stayed. Absolutely worth seeing, I’d say. It runs until December 14.
Archie Madekwe and I were ships in the night this week. He showed up to the Gothams afterparty at the Bowery Hotel that I skipped in favor of watching The Simpsons in bed. Later this month, Lurker, the excellent pop star stalker movie he just got nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for, will finally get its release in UK cinemas. North American folks can watch it on MUBI already.
With the party in mind, I asked him:
When is the appropriate time to arrive at a party? And when should you stay until?
“I think you definitely arrive an hour/an hour and a half in minimum, but staying really depends on the vibe… you gotta feel it out! I love being the last ones left in a restaurant, but I feel sad if I’m the last one on the dance floor…”
I’ve seen Marty Supreme and it rocks.
The harsh throat sound present in the Scouse accent is known in phonetics as “voiceless velar fricative”
First world problem: Anyone else buy Aesop hand balm, only for the metal tube to crack and ooze EVERYWHERE? It’s so good but has ruined every book that’s been in my bag with it. Good alts?
My other favorite movie of the year is a 3.5 movie about a bisexual white savior set in Guinea-Bissau.
Richard Lawson is one of our best film critics, and after parting ways with Vanity Fair he’s launched his own newsletter, “for lovers of high culture and trash.” He is the movie oracle’s movie oracle!