Oh, I know this movie is going to make me cry for its entirety but hopefully in a good way. I just read a story about a woman who dove into an icy river to save her dog that had fallen in. They didn’t find her until two weeks later, and when they did, she still had her arms wrapped around her dog. That would be me without a doubt.

I don’t think this film will have such a tragic end, though. The music seems to indicate otherwise.

It’s not who you live for… It’s who you’d die for. Watch Brad Pitt in the new trailer for David Ayer’s #HeartOfTheBeast – only in theatres September 25th.

After a harrowing plane crash, Special Forces officer James Belmont (Brad Pitt) and his combat dog, Odin, find themselves stranded deep in the Alaskan wilderness. Together, they are forced into a brutal fight for survival against the elements. From acclaimed filmmaker David Ayer, Heart of the Beast is an intense adventure thriller that explores the unbreakable bond between a man and his best friend as they face their greatest battle yet.

After a bit of a break, Sasha, Scott and Jeremy are back to talk Obsession and why the horror genre allows people to be more creative. We talk about the current Oscar race and whether Cannes will be a factor this year. We talk AI and why it is not going away any time soon. We also go through Scott’s most recent predictions and try to find the “Woke Movie” we know will win Best Picture.

The Academy has officially announced this years Honorees!

Honorary Awards: Glenn Close, Floyd Norman, and Ridley Scott

Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award: Christine Vachon & Pamela Koffler

Oscar statuettes will be presented at the Academy’s 17th Governors Awards on November 15, 2026.

Finally Glenn and Ridley get their Oscars, though I think both of them still have time to win competitively.

We wish a hearty congrats to the new honorees, and we look forward to celebrating them in November!

First off, I am relieved that it’s not a January 6th screed. Or if it is, that is not in the trailer. At first glance, Jeremy Strong looks amazing in this role, as do the supporting players – Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White. That’s the good.

The bad news is that Hollywood’s moralizing feels very out of date. We don’t need movies to tell us what to think anymore. The entire Hollywood ecosystem has been stuck in this rut for decades, and honestly, if The Social Network had been about that, it would not have been a masterpiece. This has always been the problem with Aaron Sorkin’s work. It was a great way back when, but now, I don’t know. Either way, I’ll keep an open mind. The performances look good.

The ugly:

I mean, Sorkin will have to be compared to David Fincher and that’s like being compared to Alfred Hitchcock — hard act to follow. It doesn’t look like he’s mimicking his style, though. But still, that will hang over the film a shadow. And interestingly, Quentin Tarantino’s thumbprint will hang over The Adventures of Cliff Booth.

Let’s go back to the ’80s one last time!

I think we are all on the same wavelength that, from an Oscar standpoint, the decade of the ’80s was rather bleak. However, I can think of many films from the ’80s that I truly love and admire, films that stand out far above many of the Oscar winners of that era. I am eager to get to the 1970s, so let’s finally lay this decade to rest!

Name your favorite ’80s films, Oscar-nominated or not!

Jerm’s Favorite Films of the 1980s

10. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

9. The Goonies

8. Big

7. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

6. The Color Purple

5. Dead Poets Society

4. A Room with a View

3. Indiana Jones Franchise

2. Terms of Endearment

1. Moonstruck

All of these films hold a special place in my heart. They are movies I come back to over and over again, which speaks to their staying power and relevance even to this day.

It should surprise no one that Moonstruck is my number one film of the ’80s. I think it defines the era perfectly. To me, it is a near-perfect film, and I will die on that hill.

With that, we bid farewell to the ’80s, and soon we will head into the ’70s! For now, though, I am curious to hear what your favorite films of the ’80s are, and I hope you share them with me!

I must apologize for the shorter entry this week. As you will find out on the podcast, if you endeavor to listen, I am currently down for the count with my back. I am writing this article for you all while laying down on top of ice, lathered in ointment, and filled with as much Motrin as legally allowed me. Maybe I will watch Moonstruck. A good movie is always good medicine!

As usual, be kind, be respectful, and of course… Let’s Talk Cinema!

You can subscribe to the Buzzmeter here.

We’re in a Fourth Turning now. If you know, you know. That can be boiled down to this: Out with the Boomers and in with the Millennials. Nothing showcases that theory better than Bari Weiss, Scott Pelley, and 60 Minutes. With just 9 million viewers per week (making it the number-one news program on network television, which tells you where network television is headed), 60 Minutes felt like the past. My mother never missed an episode, but my daughter? Well, let’s just say it would never occur to her to watch.

Scott Pelley is a pompous, self-important bloviator if there ever was one. His worldview is exactly what is wrong with the modern-day Left and the legacy media that props up the empire. I know you’re not used to hearing this, or reading it, because you get what you expect from the press: confirmation of your own worldview.

The assessment of Bari Weiss runs the gamut between erratic incompetence at best to being a Trump toady, silencing free speech at worst. That Hollywood and the ruling class have cast themselves as living through another “blacklist” era, where Trump is trying to censor them, is hilarious. If only they put this much imaginative thinking into writing better screenplays…

To the Left, to Hollywood, to the trades, they believe they are the brave people standing up to tyranny. They genuinely believe “free speech is under threat.” This Scott Pelley speech says it all — and it’s this false reality that I escaped. None of this is true or was ever true.

Scott Pelley fired.

This commencement address last year was peak Pelley:

The drama. The theatrics. The self-important preening and performative outrage. The sermonizing. The propaganda.

Scott can now bring this kind of energy to Substack and hits on the Jim Acosta podcast. pic.twitter.com/1VZZhxGkuz

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) June 3, 2026

Hollywood and the trades, of course, back up this mass delusion that this is somehow an affront to free speech. Yeah, the 3 million who watch Kimmel at night (at best) and the 9 million who watch 60 Minutes are meant to represent all of America.

Brother, you can shout your opinions from the rooftops anywhere in America, and nothing will happen to you. If Trump had the power to censor anyone, he would go after the people who get hundreds of millions of views that people actually watch on YouTube and TikTok. He never had the power to do that.

Trump isn’t threatening Hollywood. Trump isn’t killing Hollywood. Hollywood did that to itself by becoming an insulated, isolated bubble and then, at best, passing judgment on its audience and, at worst, demonizing them. They want all of America to worship the same gods they do — to elevate the marginalized based on identity, where you have no way up the ladder except to become more of a victim and find your place in one of the protected groups.

No one is being censored. It’s called being fired for being boring, predictable, and one-sided. Scott Pelley, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel are not being silenced. My god, you can’t shut them up. All we hear is their blather. Get back to me when they’re thrown in jail or simply shot, as Hitler would have done. They won’t be. The shooting, the silencing, and the censorship are going in the other direction and have been for ten years. Anyone who says otherwise is either stupid or lying or both.

I loved freedom of thought and speech back when it existed in our culture. It doesn’t anymore because the people who rule over it demand obedience or else. You are told what to think and forced to believe it, even if it isn’t true. What we all created on the Left, going back to the very beginning of 2008, was a 1984-like “Inside” and thus, we could also banish anything or anyone we didn’t like to the outside.

Social media made that possible, as we all formed a massive tribe ruled by an angry mob that swarmed the non-compliant whenever they stepped out of line. I’ve been writing about this for many years now, almost ten years, probably because cancel culture – the black lists, the silencing of speech, and the suppression of free thought has collapsed Hollywood’s empire, even if very few of them will admit it.

Why do you think Nepo Babies are so popular now? It’s this idea that they’ve closed themselves off like an aristocracy would have, you know, like the Romanovs before the Russian Revolution, or the Court of King Louis XVI. It’s easier to keep recycling the same bloodlines rather than open it up to new people. There is a pipeline now, and no one says anything about it. If you are a member of this class, you are invited to participate.

America was not built to be a class system, though that runs counter to our nature, doesn’t it? We are status-oriented, and we always want to position ourselves against everyone else. I’ve just never seen the Left do it in my lifetime. I’ve never seen them sneer at the working class the way they do or decide it’s perfectly fine to shut out or disregard millions of Americans just because they voted for Trump. It remains hard for me to fathom that this is what became of American culture at the hands of the ruling class.

I know why it happened. I lived it. But I couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t like living that way. I don’t like demanding that other people follow the rules or else. I don’t like accusing people of things they aren’t guilty of just because you imagined soemthing they said or did was racist or homophobic.  And so here I am, an exile in my own country and the Hollywood I used to know.

None of this means that either side is better than the other. People are people. They will essentially do the same things in varying circumstances. I am listening to a brilliant Noiser podcast about Adolf Hitler.

What is remarkable is how many people went along with Hitler’s way before it even got to war. He was able to invade countries, and they barely even bothered fighting back. Why? I don’t know exactly, except to say that people go along with things. They just do. Unless, of course, you aren’t built that way, and I am not built that way. I would not have survived Hitler’s Germany, and not just because I am half-Jewish. I would not have survived Salem in 1692 either. I would not have been able to hold my tongue.

The Left would tell this as a cautionary tale against Trump because they’ve been selling that lie for ten years, that Trump is Hitler and his supporters (half the country) are Nazis, but really, the opposite is true. The side that dehumanizes and demonizes whole groups of people, shuns them, and prevents them from participating in culture until they comply is the fascist side.

It’s true that the Right dehumanizes illegal immigrants, black and brown people, trans people, etc. But you don’t see violent mobs attacking them.

You just don’t see the opposite playing out. We never saw illegal immigrants chased and beaten and swarmed. It was all imaginary, a lie sold to the public that it was the Right that was violent because you saw the January 6th footage on a loop. Well, it doesn’t matter because dehumanizing whole groups of people is always wrong. For Hollywood and culture writ large, it has been catastrophic.

I’m still shocked that the dominant ruling class — people like Steven Spielberg, Rosie O’Donnell, Jon Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Kimmel and Robert De Niro believe they are in the right in participating with this madness, shutting out half the country, pointing fingers at them constantly, mocking them. What a mess.

Well, one person who bravely stood apart this past week was none other than Gwyneth Paltrow who said the following:

Here is the whole clip of what Gwyneth said, and if everyone on the Left thought this way, our problems would be solved. pic.twitter.com/z8N9KkNwbk

— Sasha Stone (@realsashastone) June 9, 2026

Only parts of it were clipped, where she says she’s a Centrist and wouldn’t you know it, the puritanical fascist scolds erupted on Twitter as they always do.

Speaking of brave, Natalie Portman, Justine Triet, and others sign a letter protesting a boycott of an Israeli filmmaker. People, what are we even doing here? Why are so many going along with it?

The censorship, the blacklists, the public pressure and cancel culture has been coming from the Right for a decade. It’s time Hollywood reckoned with this and started doing the work to repair the damage.

The 60 Minutes, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert freakout over David Ellison and Paramount, along with the merger with WB, is such gaslighting by people who literally control everything. They have all the power, and they abuse it casually, without even thinking. Yes, Paramount, like Focus, still advertises on this site because someone in those companies is not a fascist scold. It’s shocking that they still exist, but apparently they do.

Learn from history. You can’t shun or ignore or demonize the working class majority and expect it to go well for you. The internet has blasted through what used to be a shared culture. We all knew the same songs, the same TV shows, the same movies. We shared in these cultural experiences. It changed when Obama became the leader of the Left’s massive power alignment. That meant if he was beaten by Trump, then Trump had to be a racist, and that meant war.

So, the entire power alignment turned on half the country. And yet, even after they threw one hissy fit after another, after their violent outbursts, their protests, their impeachments and indictments, Rachel Maddow’s nightly monologue (as she collects, what is it, $30 million a year?), assassination attempts, Trump won again. That should have been the wake-up call, but it wasn’t.

So what’s the plan here? To take back power and then do what with the other half of the country? Throw them in concentration camps? Put them in jail? Either way, Hollywood will not be able to tell really great stories until they get over themselves.

Maybe none of it matters anyway because AI will just zoom right past all of it. Why, because it’s there and because it can. Who wants to wait around while everyone re-arranges the deck chairs on the Titanic? Human beings have always had the urge to create art, not art that tells people what to think and what to believe, but art that expresses some kind of fundamental truth.

This AI film will screen at Telluride, and it was made for just $2,000. You think the gatekeepers are going to slow this thing down?

No one should be surprised when the real revolution obliterates the ruling class that now rules Hollywood.  That’s what history tells us anyway. To quote the great Cormac McCarthy: You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.

I don’t know how all of you survive on the inside. I could never live like that. I’ll take my chances on the outside, with the Proles.

Continuing on from last week’s article, it’s appropriate to turn to the DGA (Directors Guild of America) and discuss what ultimately might be in contention, or, in this case, who has the narrative to go all the way on paper.

Many will look towards Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day as a very clear example of a film that, to a lot of normies, would be considered a “top tier” awards player, Directed (and written partially) by one of the most beloved filmmakers of this generation and in film history, it seems almost foolish to bet against it on paper, especially with some of the early positive word of mouth that it has earned from those who have seen it early (which one can find here if they are interested). With praise towards the script, the direction, and a performance from Emily Blunt that some are going to push for awards consideration, it has the ingredients of something that could have an impact, especially if it is successful financially.

The main question becomes, why aren’t people as confident as one would think in its chances to go all the way?

The main answer comes from experience and expectation. In addition to being a genre film, it needs to make a significant amount of buzz to remain in the conversation, and not be “perceived” as a failure. A passion project from Spielberg, it will for sure have its supporters critically and will be an initial hit on its opening weekend, but needs to sustain that overseas, which is likely to be a challenge considering how his past two films have fared. However, its appeal as a genre film can help it in this regard.

John Williams is probably destined to at least get nominated for this film, the track found here is already receiving several notices. In addition to him, the sound work of the film is likely to be in contention considering its genre, a few other techs and whatnot. Then it becomes a question of the above-the-line prospects: can Koepp and Spielberg obtain a writing nom, can Emily Blunt muster an Oscar nom, and can the film pull off a picture or directing nom? This will all be dependent on how the next few weeks go for the film, if it is a success, and if its initial reactions have any bearing on potentially gaining organic buzz, or becoming a word-of-mouth hit.

A place that used to be (and still is to an extent) very open to honoring Steven Spielberg was the Directors Guild of America, where he currently holds the record for most wins in 3, and most nominations being 13 (one can find information on the theatrical feature category here).

If Spielberg’s influence on the award circuit was as prevalent as it was in his most significant decade (say the 80s or 90s), chances are he would be a shoo-in to get nominated. However, the film has to prove itself to be a viable contender to ultimately do that. By the time one reads this piece, the reviews might have already been released (slated for Tuesday), so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

For the sake of it, here are my DGA predictions

• Martin McDonaugh, Wild Horse Nine
• Christopher Nolan, The Odyssey
• Alejandro G. Iñarritu, Digger
• Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Project Hail Mary
• Tom Ford, Cry to Heaven

Other contenders to consider

• Steven Spielberg, Disclosure Day
• Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Three
• Jesse Eisenberg, No One Cares
• Tony Gilroy, Behemoth!
• Javier Ambrossi, Javier Calvo, The Black Ball
• Chloe Domont, A Place In Hell

Oscar Predictions for week of 8 June 2026

Not much has changed this week, but if there was to be something of note, it would be

• Disclosure Day in Best Sound over The Adventures of Cliff Booth
• To Hold a Mountain over When a Witness Recants in Documentary Feature
• I have also decided to include Best Song, though it’s a question over certain eligibilities, etc

Without further conversation, here are some updated predictions

Best Picture

1. Wild Horse Nine
2. The Odyssey
3. Digger
4. Project Hail Mary
5. Cry to Heaven
6. The Black Ball
7. Dune: Part Three
8. Fjord
9. A Place in Hell
10.  No One Cares

(alts: Obsession, The Social Reckoning, All of a Sudden, The Adventures of Cliff Booth, Disclosure Day, Werwulf, Behemoth!)

Best Director

1. Martin McDonagh, Wild Horse Nine
2. Christopher Nolan, The Odyssey
3. Tom Ford, Cry to Heaven
4. Cristian Mungiu, Fjord
5. Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, The Black Ball

(alts: Paweł Pawlikowski, Fatherland, Alejandro G. Iñárritu for Digger, Christopher Miller and Phil Lord for Project Hail Mary, Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Three Steven Spielberg, Disclosure Day)

Best Actor

1. Tom Cruise, Digger
2. John Malkovich, Wild Horse Nine
3. Matt Damon, The Odyssey
4. Sebastian Stan, Fjord
5. Ryan Gosling, Project Hail Mary

(alts: Pedro Pascal, Behemoth!, John Turturro The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, Jafar Jackson, Michael)

Best Actress

1. Michelle Williams, A Place In Hell
2. Sandra Hüller, Fatherland
3. Renate Reinsve, Fjord
4. Juliette Binoche, Queen At Sea
5. Cynthia Erivo, Prima Facie

(alts: Mikey Madison, The Social Reckoning, Julianne Moore, No One Cares Sandra Hüller, Rose, Emily Blunt, Disclosure Day )

Best Supporting Actor

1. John Goodman, Digger
2. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Cry to Heaven
3. Steve Buscemi, Wild Horse Nine
4. Sam Rockwell, Wild Horse Nine
5. Paul Giamatti, No One Cares

(alts: Jeremy Strong, The Social Reckoning, Riz Ahmed, Digger, Willem Dafoe, Werwulf)

Best Supporting Actress

1. Mariana Di Girolamo, Wild Horse Nine
2. Anne Hathaway, The Odyssey
3. Daisy Edgar-Jones, A Place in Hell
4. Sandra Hüller, Digger
5. Inde Navarrette, Obsession

(alt: Noma Dumezweni, Prima Facie, Tao Okamoto, All of a Sudden or Penélope Cruz, The Invite)

Best Original Screenplay

1. Wild Horse Nine
2. Digger
3. Fjord
4. A Place In Hell
5. No One Cares

(alt: Obsession, Queen At Sea and Club Kid)

Best Adapted Screenplay

1. Project Hail Mary
2. Cry to Heaven
3. The Odyssey
4. All of a Sudden
5. The Black Ball

(alts: Dune: Part Three and The Social Reckoning)

Best Casting

1. Wild Horse Nine
2. Digger
3. The Odyssey
4. Cry to Heaven
5. The Black Ball

(alt: The Social Reckoning and Fjord)

Best International Feature

1. The Black Ball
2. Fatherland
3. All of a Sudden
4. Minotaur
5. Rose

(Alternate: Coward and Fjord if its eligible)

Best Animated Feature

1. Wildwood
2. Hoppers
3. Forgotten Island
4. Toy Story 5
5. Tangles

Best Documentary Feature

1. Once Upon a Time in Harlem
2. American Doctor
3. Nuisance Bear
4. One in a Million
5. To Hold a Moutain

Best Cinematography

1. The Odyssey
2. Digger
3. Fatherland
4. Dune: Part Three
5. Jack of Spades

Best Editing

1. Wild Horse Nine
2. The Odyssey
3. Digger
4. Project Hail Mary
5. The Black Ball

Best Production Design

1. The Odyssey
2. Digger
3. Project Hail Mary
4. Cry to Heaven
5. The Black Ball

Best Costume Design

1. Cry to Heaven
2. The Odyssey
3. Werwulf
4. Sense and Sensibility
5. The Black Ball

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

1. Digger
2. Werwulf
3. The Odyssey
4. Clayface
5. Resident Evil

Best Visual Effects

1. Dune: Part Three
2. Project Hail Mary
3. The Odyssey
4. The End of Oak Street
5. Avengers: Doomsday

Best Sound

1. Dune: Part Three
2. Project Hail Mary
3. The Odyssey
4. The Black Ball
5. Disclosure Day

Best Score

1. The Odyssey
2. Project Hail Mary
3. Wild Horse Nine
4. Disclosure Day
5. Behemoth!

Best Song

1. I Knew It, I Knew You from Toy Story 5
2. How to Write a Song (Without You) from Power Ballad
3. La Playa from The Black Ball
4. Runway from The Devil Wears Prada 2
5. Diane Warren Track (not sure of which film but one will present itself as it always does)

As always,

If you want to follow me on Twitter (x), the link is here
If you want to follow me on Letterboxd, the link is here
I’m also on the Awards Expert app, you can find me there.

It’s hard to imagine any other song beating this one for the Oscar.

The passage of time will forever be such a mystery to me. It’s funny how when you want things to slow down so you can enjoy them, time seems to speed up. Yet when you are going through something terrible or uncomfortable, time moves at a glacial pace, which thrills absolutely no one. (If you know, you know.)

I thought life really sped up when I graduated from school, but then I got married and had kids, and suddenly it feels like everything is moving even faster. I’m at the age with my oldest son where I am learning to loosen my grip a little and allow him to experience some independence. The other day I was at some football games supporting my nephews and friends with their kids. My son asked if he could walk around with one of his friends. Normally, I never let him out of my sight, especially in crowds like that, but this time I said yes.

I have never felt an ache quite like it.

Watching him make friends and move through the world a little more freely on his own was awkward, funny, painful, emotional, and necessary all at the same time. I always thought I would be a much more chill parent than I actually am, but this world has not exactly made raising kids any easier. I am learning. My son is learning. Life is happening. And time truly is such a vapor.

Ironically, after I got home from those games, I finished the season of Rooster with Steve Carell on MAX, started watching Shrinking with Jason Segel and Harrison Ford on Apple TV+, and also jumped back into Welcome to Wrexham on Hulu. I am deep in the middle of trying to catch up on all the shows everyone has been talking about. As I sat thinking about all three of these shows, I realized they each highlight different aspects of parenthood that I deeply connect with right now.

Rooster might be my favorite new show on television. I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I do. Steve Carell plays an awkward writer who ends up taking a job as a professor at the same university where his daughter teaches, mainly to help her keep her position as she navigates the humiliation and heartbreak of her husband cheating on her with one of his students. At its core, the show is really about parenthood, it is about learning when to let go of the reins, when to stop trying to steer your children’s lives, and allowing them the freedom to make their own decisions and mistakes.

Steve Carell somehow still remains Emmy-less, which honestly feels criminal at this point. This might be his best performance in years! He is hilarious, painfully awkward, and quietly heartbreaking all at once. It is weird to say this after saying that, but something about this show is so comforting, anyone else feel that? The supporting cast is fantastic too, filled with wonderfully chaotic personalities played by Danielle Deadwyler, Charly Clive, Phil Dunster, John C. McGinley, and several others. I highly recommend it.

Shrinking completely baffles me because I cannot believe I waited this long to watch it. I’m only on season one, so I cannot speak to the current season yet, but once again we are dealing with another father in the thick of parenting, but from a different point of view. Segel’s character is struggling through grief after losing his wife while trying to repair the relationship with his grieving daughter. At the same time, he is trying to help his patients work through their own pain as a therapist.

I have always believed Jason Segel had the potential to be a really great actor if he ever found the right role, and this is absolutely the role. Much like Carell in Rooster, Segel portrays a father desperately trying to help his daughter navigate her struggles while barely holding himself together emotionally. Harrison Ford is equally fantastic here, and I feel this may be some of the best acting he has done in decades. I cannot wait to catch up with everyone else watching this show. If you have not started it yet, absolutely do so.

Welcome to Wrexham is probably not a show everyone will connect with, but it has genuinely impacted my life in a very real way. Last season’s finale absolutely wrecked me emotionally. Watching these men chase their dreams of becoming successful “soccer” stars while I sat there realizing I had not really pursued my own dreams hit me harder than I expected. That realization is honestly part of what pushed me to start writing here at AD. I remember thinking, “How can I tell my sons to go after their dreams if I have never fully gone after mine?”

That finale might have been some of the best television I had seen in a very long time. Then somehow this current season opened with an even more emotional story involving parents grieving the loss of their son and another man receiving a life-saving transplant because of him. Once again, I found myself sitting there in tears. I love this show so much.

All three of these shows touch on the universal experiences of parenthood. The ups and downs. The grief. The fear. The process of letting go. The challenge of giving children space to grow no matter how old they are.

There have been so many moments in parenthood where I have felt like an island, completely alone in what I was feeling. Thankfully, I have my amazing wife beside me and a village of people supporting us. I honestly do not know how I would get through all of this without them.

After the football game the other day, I told my dad, “My heart hurts a little watching him walk away and seeing him from a distance.” My dad looked at me and said, “You’ve been trying to hold on so hard, Jay. It’s time to loosen the reins a little.” I guess I just never realized how difficult this part of parenting would actually be.

I love that Rooster, Shrinking, Welcome to Wrexham, and so many other great shows shine a light on this stage of life that I currently find myself walking through. In some strange way, they remind me that I am normal. That I am not alone. That there are other people struggling through these same emotions, and there are people who have already gone through them who have little nuggets of wisdom to pass down to parents like me. Somehow, we convince ourselves that our struggles are unique until someone holds up a mirror and reminds us they really are not. I will forever be grateful for television that reminds me of that.

As far as awards go, Rooster and Shrinking deserve all the love possible. Nothing would make me happier than seeing Steve Carell, Jason Segel, or Harrison Ford finally win Emmy Awards. They would all be incredibly worthy winners.

Let me know your thoughts on these shows, and also drop any recommendations for shows I need to jump into next.

As usual, be kind, be respectful, and of course… Let’s Talk Television!

The first real breakout star from YouTube was Bo Burnham, who became a well-known rising star on YouTube before becoming a film director and, I would say, performance artist. He went to Netflix, and that felt like a more reliable connection between the two streaming platforms.

But now, Curry Barker and Kane Parsons (two very Gen-Z names) have done something we haven’t seen before. They’ve taken their YouTube platforms and transformed them into must-see movies at the movie theater. It’s a whole new world and Gen-Z is ready to partake in it.

Curry Barker’s comedy work absolutely is a template for Obsession, with videos like this:

And this:

And short films like this:

And this:

Backrooms is a concept lifted from YouTube and for the olds like me it’s new. But for Gen-Z it is their familiar reality. Everybody knows about it. This video from four years ago has 84 million views:

Most of the videos on the channel are getting over 1 million views. It’s a no-brainer to take this kind of success and toss it to the big screen. The only question is what took so long?

You might already know if you’ve been reading this site for a while. It’s the gatekeepers in Hollywood who have been killing the box office. They stopped giving people what they wanted and instead gave them what they thought they should want, which has been catastrophic for the business.

A utopian view of society took hold, and there was no way to shatter it because everyone was too afraid. While filmmakers like Ari Aster, Mike Whit,e and BJ Novak kind of, sort of went there — SNL didn’t. Jimmy Kimmel didn’t. Stephen Colbert didn’t. Most film directors knew their whole careers were on the line.

But YouTube is pure capitalism funneled through algorithms. You not only get what you want to see, but you often get what lots of people want to see. Then again, as a heavy YouTube user, neither of these two accounts ever dropped into my feed until I started searching for them. I’m not exactly the Gen-Z demo, so that’s not surprising, but every budding filmmaker out there, every person with a story to tell, should get thee to YouTube and showcase your talent. Who knows, maybe someone in Hollywood will see it.

Had Obsession bombed that might have made the YouTube to box office pipeline less promising but it’s on track to become one of the most profitable movies in history as it was made for just under $1 million (another way YouTube content creation can become film school – you learn quickly how to do it all – light, sound, editing and on the cheap) and has now made $100 million domestic and $150 globally mostly on word of mouth alone, making more money after its opening.

YouTube is a testing ground that takes the gatekeepers out of the mix and puts content in front of people. Not even Netflix does that because it’s controlled by the gatekeepers. There is no real way for someone to just break in like there is with YouTube.  It’s also how word of mouth spreads in an organic way rather than driven by marketing execs.

Says Box Office Jedi:

But Backrooms and Obsession feel, to the untrained eye, more like sorcery.

Their box office comes from a place that seems off-limits to the average industry observer, not unlike the Backrooms itself: that internet-born mythology of endless fluorescent corridors, the liminal layer of reality where things slip out of public sight. To most, it’s just unused office space. To others, it’s full of meaning and potential and lore. There’s a parallel ecosystem of audience attention that doesn’t show up in trailer-view dashboards or paid-search tracking. It lives in Discord servers, TikTok comments, late-night YouTube binges, Reddit theory threads, and group chats. Things grow there, away from anyone who’s counting, and then they emerge fully-formed on the box office charts.

Project Hail Mary is still in theaters with $340 million domestic and $614 globally, and much of that is driven by word of mouth.

It’s a whole new world, friends. Hopefully the Oscars will evolve along with it.