no movie no life
parasocial hour with john early and kate berlant in MADDIE'S SECRET // the official *life is disappointing* tokyo shopping guide
My goal with this newsletter is to write about new films as they reach general release, along with seasonally appropriate commentary on other cinematic events and interests. A quick one this week because I am out of the country and overwhelmed with possibility. This newsletter comes out on Fridays, which this week means I honestly have no idea.
I wanted to go to a midnight showing of Gummo at the Grandview before an early morning flight to Japan last week but Florine said absolutely not. To get back at her I went to the Twin Cities opening of Maddie’s Secret while she dealt with some last-minute logistics that included paying a guy to clean up the dead squirrel she found in our attic. This was unfair and I regret it. I can’t imagine a film more crafted to her exact taste - Kate Berlant and John Early star in a dramedy about food influencers with a drag performance at its core - and it was cruel that I got to see it while she dealt with a flat tire, an after-hours work meeting, last-minute flight logistics, and the squirrel thing. So this one goes out to FLORINE, the most beautiful woman in the world and the only reason I survived my flight and am currently alive and well in the country of JAPAN.
Gummo at the Grandview might have been the more appropriate cinematic experience for Our Nation’s quarter-millennial, but Maddie’s Secret hits on a different side of failed-state America. The internet-addled hellscape of L.A. food culture isn’t quite as depraved as Harmony Korrine’s Xenia, Ohio, but John Early’s world isn’t all that much less nauseating. He finds a similar beauty in the grotesque, mostly revealed through alternatingly mordant humor and just-barely irony-tinged sweetness. It’s hard at times to know what’s a joke and what’s genuine, whether he’s making fun of his characters or deeply in love with them. Actually what am I talking about, it’s not unclear at all. There’s no need for separation between these things. Life is very stupid and life is very poignant, I hate my friends and also I love them dearly. Filming yourself making/eating food is pathetic and also captures of one of the few universally acknowledged joys in life. Bulimia is a serious mental health issue that real people deal with but also kind of funny. Lifetime-style movies are cringey but also make people cry. Can you deal with this liminality? Probably, you’re reading about movies on the internet. Edgelord is over, sentimentality is over. Subversion and its opposite, romanticism, are over. We live in a world where everything is dumb and beautiful at the same time and there’s no need to differentiate one from the other. You can call this nihilism or you can call this denial or you can just call it what it is, materialism in a world that is too aware of itself to not acknowledge its discordant possibilities.
Not unlike Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, Boys Go To Jupiter, this year’s Youtuber blockbusters, or even Blue Heron, much of what works about Maddie’s Secret comes from the audience’s familiarity with the people making the movie. The content is great on its own, but parasocial intimacy with the creators is half the experience. What I found particularly lovely about Maddie’s Secret is that we get to watch people primarily known for conversation podcasting actually making something. I spend a lot of time feeling disgusted that podcasts exist and that people get paid to do nothing but chat with their fake friends about inane bullshit, but when I step back from that disgust I’m reminded that all these people are artists who I’m sure would love to be spending their lives making actual art. Our culture is more willing to spend money on moronic chatter than beautiful things that require effort, and wasting your life away in a podcast studio is just a stupid day job, the same way that Nathaniel Hawthorne worked as a customs agent or whatever.
So it’s lovely to see John Early throwing his heart into lighting, hair, and make-up, or Kate Berlant playing a character instead of yammering about face washes. These people are funny and smart and deserve to put their hearts into things they care about. Does Maddie’s Secret make any sense to someone who has never listened to POOG? Is it 10x funnier if you spend your life in LA/NY media, literally or vicariously? Probably yes to both, but it’s also funny for normal, vaguely media-aware people too. Parasociality is a parallel element of art that winds in and out of audience awareness, and we don’t know enough about it to write about it in a coherent way. All I can say for sure is that it’s become a fascinating component of how we experience contemporary films.
And especially film debuts. Maddie’s Secret is yet another 2026 first film that has baked into it an assumption that the audience sort of knows what’s going on with the people who made it. Blue Heron does something magisterial with this - Maddie’s Secret less so, but John Early as creator/friend/character is still part of the fabric of the film. It’s part of an ongoing shift in the art/artist relationship that goes without saying for anyone under 25, is maybe incomprehensible to anyone over 45, and remains the topic of enduring fascination for all the millennial-esque people in between. How exciting that we get to live through and participate in a significant shift in art and its meaning! Maybe this is not actually happening and more likely you don’t care that much. If that’s the case whatever, this movie is funny, go see it.
I’m writing this on David Leitch’s BULLET TRAIN from Tokyo to Kyoto, and though it’s indescribable how much better than Amtrak the Shinkansen is, I have to say it’s making me kind of sick. Some things work just too well. Overall though I am really enjoying the train life in this country, along with basically literally everything else. I didn’t do study abroad and missed the age-appropriate opportunity to fawn over the ways travel opens one’s mind to new ways of living, but after a week in Tokyo I’ve realized it’s true, America is a trash country. I can’t speak for actual standards of living, but I don’t understand why anyone would come from Japan to the United States on vacation. Especially for shopping. Don’t believe the hype, guys. You have it so much better. Everything we sell is garbage, and it’s not even cheap.
As I sometimes do when I’m struggling for content, and in celebration of the current exchange rate, here is the official *life is disappointing* retail guide to Tokyo.
Hario V60 filters (Union Coffee, Kappabashi-dori). These are like 2 dollars a pack in Tokyo. I got 500.
Doshisha Gorilla Fan (Lawson convenience store, Asakusa). Portable fans are one of the silliest additions to summer 2026, but this one is extremely powerful and basically a normal house fan that fits in your suitcase. I am regularly appalled by the lack of fans available at hotels and Air Bed and Breakfasts and will never travel without this again. It came with a bonus gorilla charm who is making a loser sign with his hand. That’s you if you don’t have this item.
Kakimori Frost fine point pen and daruma ink (Kakimori Ink Stand, Kuramae). Surely this is the best stationary store on the planet. I got a fountain pen, five matching ballpoint pens, and a bottle of house-made red ink. I had to stop before delving paper section because I think it would have destroyed me. If it gets better than this I don’t want to know about it.
Korg Volca Beats (Five G Music Technology, Harajuku). At the top of Takeshita Street and four stories up is a dumpy store where anyone able to find it is invited to play with the best electronic music machines in the universe. I’m a beginner in this field and was there to pick up an entry level drum machine, but the store is a maze that opens up with literal toys and ends with a collection of beautifully restored Roland TR series synthesizers. The sound of freaks from around the world playing through the the history of electronic music all at the same time is a beautiful thing.
My Bloody Valentine x Andrew Weatherall “Glider" E.P.” remixes (Disk Union, Shinjuku). Found it between Like A Virgin and All The Right Reasons in the “~80s Rock/Pop” section. I cried.
You should not take my Japanese travel advice, shiranai, watashi wa neko desu. But I have had a variety of mildly interesting cinema-adjacent experiences over here that I’ll share next week. I wish I could go see The Odyssey this week but it doesn’t get here until October. I’ll have plenty to report on that topic when I’m back in North America. I never thought I’d say this but that will be far too soon.
Thanks for reading *life is disappointing.* If you found this newsletter slightly less disappointing than the rest of your life, consider liking, commenting, sending me money (thanks!) or subscribing. Subscribing will get you exactly what you get here but sent to your email inbox. I’ll be back next week with some grab bag travel items. After that I’ll be back to normal movie content with what will surely be the cinema event of the century.