Charli XCX declared last summer "Joachim Trier Summer" — and Elle Fanning arrived at Cannes in agreement: This summer, I thought: why not make Joachim Trier Summer something you can actually join? So I'm hosting it — and you're invited. If you've been here a while then you probably already know there are few filmmakers whose work I love as much as Joachim Trier's. I named his Oslo, August 31st the best film of the 2010s, Sentimental Value the best film of 2025 — and I'm working on a book on...
9 days ago • 2 min read
If you're considering joining The Long Arc: Looking Season 1, which starts next Tuesday, June 30 — I haven't actually talked about the most important thing. Why a 10-week commitment lets us have a better conversation than something you can drop in and out of. So let me walk you through the long arc you — and the group — will go through, too. (Yup, I'm not just talking about the long arc of a season of TV!) In Week 1, you'll start learning how to investigate this show. As soon as you join,...
23 days ago • 3 min read
Quick question for you, Reader — Have you ever walked away from an episode of TV knowing something about a character without being entirely sure how you learned it? Most of us can tell when a character feels lost, comfortable, trapped, hopeful, uncertain, or in love. We don't usually stop to ask how the show taught us that. And even if we did, where would we start? Because it's usually not any one thing. It's how the dialogue, performances, costumes, shot choices, directing, and editing all...
25 days ago • 2 min read
I've spent the last couple of weeks talking about Looking, the show I've programmed for the inaugural season of The Long Arc this summer. But I haven't really answered a pretty basic question yet... What does it actually feel like to be inside The Long Arc? Over the first eight weeks, we'll watch one episode a week. Before each episode, you'll get the question we'll be exploring. Then, we'll gather online to investigate it together. Not by debating interpretations. But by getting curious...
26 days ago • 2 min read
There's a moment in the first episode of Looking that still lives rent-free in my head: Patrick meets Richie — his love interest for the season — on Muni (San Francisco's public transit). I lived in the Bay Area when it aired in 2014. So I spent the next three years riding Muni hoping my Richie would find me there, too. Which is a lot of influence for a scene that lasts only a few minutes. Of course, that was partly about what happens later in the show — when we find out just how great Richie...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
There's a moment in the first episode of Looking that I didn't fully appreciate until I was on my, IDK, 15th rewatch. After a catastrophically bad first date, Patrick (Jonathan Groff) gets on the Muni (San Francisco's public transit) to head to the bachelor party of his ex-boyfriend who he dumped for being boring. But first, he looks at a map: Like so much of Looking, it plays as completely naturalistic the first time you watch it. Patrick is trying to figure out where he's going next. But...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
What do Mad Men, The Good Wife, Gossip Girl, and Looking have in common? Aside from being four of the best TV series of this century? (I said what I said.) On the surface, they look very different. Mad Men is about advertising creatives in 1960s New York. The Good Wife is about a Chicago lawyer rebuilding her career after years spent raising children. Gossip Girl (the OG one) is Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth — if it were about teenagers with smartphones. And Looking is about three gay...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
On Sunday night at 9:15 pm, I filed into the InsideOut screening of Allan Deberton’s Gugu’s World, a Brazilian film about an 11-year-old queer boy growing up with his doting but ailing grandmother — after his father couldn’t accept him as he is. Earlier this year, the film premiered in the Berlinale’s Generation section — dedicated to films about young people, for young audiences — where it won the Crystal Bear for Best Film for audiences under 12. So why was it screening at 9:15 pm? And why...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
There's a moment at the beginning of Lean on Pete that seems so naturalistic and incidental, it hadn't even occurred to me it might reveal a lot about the central character, Charley. On his way out for his morning run, Charley picks up a moving box lying on the ground in front of his house and puts it in a recycling bin. When I talked to writer-director Andrew Haigh about the film, I discovered that this moment was actually written into the script. As Haigh put it, "He’s leaving the house,...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
