Keith McNally's Movie and Finishing Big Projects

Diamond Concierge Service #010

I spent January burning through multiple projects, including finishing up the final edits for the book I’ve been working on with New York Nico and finally saying dayenu with my novel and giving it to my agent for (hopefully) a final look. Getting that obsessive over a single project wasn’t something I was ready for, especially because I write so much that it’s second nature to me. But without going on too much about my own stuff, I will say I have a newfound respect for fiction writers and it’s been a nice experience pushing my own boundaries.

That is all to say I’ve been slacking on The Melt for the last few weeks, and that ends now. I’m back on track and you’ll see this sucker in your box a few times a week again. More of these posts are going to be subscriber-only moving forward. I’m bringing a few writers into the fold this year and I’ve got to get them paid, so if you pay for a subscription (which I’m offering for 30 percent off) you’ll be helping make that happen.

• Alex Vadukul went to check out Keith McNally’s 1990 black-and-white psychological thriller, End of the Night. I especially enjoyed this quote from the kind of dude other than myself I imagine is most likely to be seen at such a thing.“It felt like a mix of After Hours and Eyes Wide Shut,” said Zac Zellers, a bespectacled writer and bartender with sideburns. “I detected early Cronenberg and Jarmusch in there, too” I love it when people say “I detected.” I don’t know why.

• There’s going to be a Judee Sill documentary. I’m generally sick of music documentaries, but sometimes there’s a good one and it’s usually when the musician led a hard life and died too young. I thought the Karen Dalton doc that came out a few years back was good (I wrote about it for Bomb in 2021), and it had me wondering if my other favorite doomed, forgotten folkie was going to get a similar treatment. The people involved in making it (Maya Hawke and Cheryl Strayed are executive producers) and some of the talking heads involved (members of Big Thief, Fleet Foxes, etc.) make me think this will be pretty good.

• Isaac Fitzgerald wrote about sneaking food into the movies. For what it’s worth, I’m 100000 percent pro-doing this. I hate knowing I’ve paid more for snacks at a theater than I did for the ticket itself. One of the few exceptions I’ll make is at Film Forum. And now that the popcorn is back, I feel like I can safely say that New York City is back as well.