Dead End Follies 2020
Great things happened in 2019.
I’ve traveled, met people I wasn’t sure existed for real, powered through self-doubt and started writing something that’s artistically more ambitious than this site and well… it wasn’t all that bad over here either. Dead End Follies had its most successful statistical year since 2012. I got into six digits readers again. What was my secret? Letting go of the social media hustle and focusing on making great content that’s Google friendly. This way, people who care about the things I write find the site and a great deal of them stay for more. Well, some of them do.
Outside of work, it was a motherfucker of a year, though. But having you guys around kept me focused and creative. Count your blessings, they say.
So, what’s going to happen next year? First, you’ll be getting 100 to 120 new pieces again. Ten years into reviewing, I’ve found a balance that allows me not to go creatively bankrupt every two months. Otherwise, I want to focus on separating reviews of new material from classics more clearly and give you guys better navigation through the site. If you want my reviews of old movies, you’ll get a clear pathway. If you want my thoughts on Adam Driver getting angry at Scarlett Johansson and punching through walls in Marriage Story, you’ll get a clear pathway too.
No more having to slog through reviews of old Martin Scorsese movies in order to get to the new Jeremy Saulnier and so on. By the way, you’re totally getting a review of Marriage Story early in January. There’s no escaping it. That’s on the technical side. I want to eventually test new television review formats, but I haven’t found exactly the form yet. It’ll be coming soon nonetheless. The other big announcement is the 2020 retrospectives. Because I will run not one, not two, but three retrospectives next year… or at least I’ll try to. You guys are really enjoying this continuous format, so I’ll go harder at it.
There will be one for music (my fourth consecutive years), one for books and one for cinema.
Here are my choices:
Leonard Cohen
It’s not a secret that I’m the biggest Leonard Cohen fanboy, but I’ve barely talked about him on this site. The man had a knack for making himself periodically forgotten. My choice was motivated by two factors: I want to help keep his legacy alive after his passing and it’s going to be easier to talk about. His music is more bare and straightforward than anything I’ve ever reviewed here. Connecting the dots between form and content while providing the necessary historical context should be simpler than for… let’s say William DuVall-era Alice in Chains.
I’ve already did You Want it Darker when it came out, so there’s 14 albums left. That’s more than one a month, but barely. I’ll do Songs of Leonard Cohen and Songs from a Room in January and New Skin for the Old Ceremony and Death of a Ladies Man in March. You will love Leonard Cohen as much as I do come next December or you will hate me.
Chuck Klosterman
I can see you rolling your eyes from here. Not THIS GUY again, right? Let me explain. I chose to revisit Chuck Klosterman for a particular reason: I’ve discovered his work in a very important period of my life, where I was launching this site and figuring out my writing voice. Now that it’s done and that I’ve read everything from him, I want to go over the entire thing again and give you the ultimate Chuck Klosterman primer. An appreciation of his work from a hopefully more mature and pertinent voice. I promise I’ll try not to overthink it too much. If need be, I’ll address my own original reviews too.
Chuck Klosterman wrote twelve books, but I’ll leave out Raised in Captivity (which I just reviewed) and HYPERTheticals, which… I’m still unsure how to talk about.
Batman movies
I originally wanted to review a director’s career. Then, I thought of cult actors I could do. There were good options: David Cronenberg, Takashi Miike, Gary Busey, Roy Scheider… but I couldn’t talk myself into any of them. So, I went the third route: the most unsatisfyingly portrayed superhero in cinema history. I will revisit the Chrstopher Nolan movies one by one (which I never did here, believe it or not), but not Batman v Superman because it’s very long and boring and I’ve said all I wanted to say about it already. That’ll be ten films in all, starting with the old Adam West movie and finishing with The Dark Knight Rises.
It’s with great energy that I leap into 2020. I hope you’re well and that you’re looking forward to talk books, movies and music with me. Happy new year everyone!
