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...
3 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...
14 days 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...
17 days 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...
21 days 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...
26 days 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 1 month ago • 2 min read
You might be wondering what it's actually like to step into The Deep Focus. So here's a little taste. The first thing I always do is point you to a moment worth looking at. Below is one from the beginning of Sentimental Value. Take a sec to see what you spot in the image. Everything counts — even (and especially) the obvious. You might have noticed: ✨ We're looking through a window (which takes up most of the frame). ✨ We're watching someone through glass. ✨ Someone is leaving. ✨ It's a...
3 months ago • 1 min read
I’m running something new in April. It’s called The Deep Focus. We’ll spend three weeks with two films by Joachim Trier — Oslo, August 31st and Sentimental Value — following how they’re put together. We'll look at specific moments, trace patterns within and across the films, and see how those choices shape what you feel. If you’ve ever felt a scene hit — and weren't quite sure why — this is a space to stay with that question long enough to find an answer. I won’t tell you what to think.But I...
3 months ago • 1 min read
A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to Bill Hader, the SNL star-turned-writer-director, on the Team Deakins podcast. He was talking about rewatching Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, hitting a moment that felt like an emotional gut punch — and literally pausing the film to ask:“Why did that hit me?!” That kind of moment — where something lands harder than you expect —and you feel something strongly before you know why… You’ve probably had that, too. Even Hader — who thinks about directing...
3 months ago • 1 min read