Magnolia

Last year, I realized I want to try my hand at writing about movies. My brilliant friend Katharine Coldiron does so, often with a personal streak running through the text, and she encouraged me to pursue this fledgling desire. She directed me to wig-wag, a literary magazine devoted to personal essays on movies. That's more my style than, I dunno, criticism. (Which has its place!)

Much to my delight, wig-wag today published my essay on Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia in their 25th issue. I wrote about fathers and sons and tried to probe a little into why it is I've turned to this film again and again for over twenty years in search of an elusive vicarious solace. Hope you like it.

I'd never pitched a piece of writing before this one. I've always finished essays/stories and found homes for them afterwards. Pitching the editor at wig-wag was great (you should do it!) and I feel like I learned all about a new and different kind of muscle that I'm excited to explore more in the future.

Brad, the editor, gave me five weeks to write this, and three days before the deadline I had just 500 truly garbage words and was ready to throw in the towel. If not for relentless encouragement (and excellent notes) from my partner Rosanna and enthusiastic support from the aforementioned Katharine (whose new book Junk Film: Why Bad Movies Matter comes out next month!) I would never have finished this thing. THANK YOU.

Likely because I procrastinated so much, it feels a little rushed and threadbare to me. But I'm still happy with it.

Over the last three years I've published two other pieces which were only in print, so I love having a link to spread more widely this time around. And soon I'll have another. If you're still here in the next few weeks, keep an eye out because I have one more essay coming at the awesome X-Ray Literary Magazine, and it is a doozy. I think it's the best thing I've yet written. I worked and worked and worked and worked on it. It's tight. It's also extremely naked, in every way.

Until then,

I remain,

Daniel

P.S. If you're looking for a movie recommendation, please go watch Agnès Varda's documentary The Gleaners and I as soon as you can.