Since the FBI searched the resort in which now lives, emerging with highly classified documents he almost certainly never should have taken, Donald Trump has tried everything to save himself from potential peril. He’s whined about it. He’s claimed he did nothing wrong. He’s railed against the feds for, uh, not taking off their shoes. He’s also done one of his favorite tricks: try to gum up the works with frivolous legal tricks. But his latest ploy may have blown up in his face.
As per The New York Times, the former president’s attorneys met with the special master a Florida Trump judge, Aileen M. Cannon, okayed to review the seized material, to judge whether they were classified or not. It did not go well. During their first hearing, Judge Raymond J. Dearie cut through the usual tangled Trump nonsense, demanding the attorneys offer proof that the documents their client took with him to Mar-a-Lago were indeed declassified. They refused to say he had. Instead, they suggested they might do so later, claiming they didn’t want to give away their legal strategy.
Dearie said he was open to that, but he also expressed frustration with Trump’s legal team casting doubt on the classification of said documents without offering any proof. “My view is, you can’t have your cake and eat it too,” Dearie told them.
At one point, Dearie wondered why they were even having the hearings and, indeed, why he was even there. He pointed out that the government is saying the documents are classified while all Trump’s lawyers are doing is saying they aren’t but not offering any proof.
”What am I looking for?” Dearie asked them. “As far as I am concerned, that’s the end of it.” He added, “What business is it of the court?”
The hearings are already strange to begin with. For one thing, despite the case being based out of Florida, the hearings took place in Brooklyn, where Dearie, a veteran of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, is based.
At issue are the 11,000 documents taken by federal agents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, 100 of which bear markings that suggest they are among the nation’s most closely guarded secrets. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that he declassified them.
The disastrous first hearing prompted much rejoicing online, with some pointing out that Trump’s lawyers didn’t bring up some of their client’s claims, possibly because they know that lying would cost them their law licenses — a fate that’s befallen other Trump attorneys.
Why won’t Trump lawyers tell Judge Dearie whether Trump declassified the docs? It’s because the lawyers don’t want to lie and be disbarred and subject their client to a criminal false statement charge. 18 USC 1001.
Trump’s lawyers aren’t resisting Judge Dearie’s request that they prove the classified documents were magically declassified because of [irrelevant justifications]—they are refusing because they don’t want to lose their law licenses by repeating Donald’s lies in court.
This could still end up with a modest Trump win. It wouldn’t be the first time he escaped his presumed-to-be certain fate. But Dearie’s tetchy treatment of his lawyers does not bode well for him.
Carly Rae Jepsen’s next album, The Loneliest Time, drops on October 21st and the “Run Away With Me” singer is going to be in the midst of her So Nice Tourwhen it happens. Beginning on September 24th in Montreal, the Canadian pop star will then be touring coast-to-coast in the US. The tour concludes on November 5th in Chicago and she’ll be on stage at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, CA on the album’s release date. But who has Carly Rae Jepsen tapped to to open for her on the So Nice Tour?
Who Is Opening Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘So Nice Tour?’
The opener for the entirety of Carly Rae Jepsen’s So Nice Tour is indie pop artist Empress Of. The moniker of Lorely Rodriguez, Empress Of hails from Los Angeles and she makes glistening, dance-inducing pop. All three of the Honduran-American’s full length albums — Me, Us, and I’m Your Empress Of — are stellar spins. This past June, she released the likewise-excellent Save Me EP on her own Major Arcana label. It features standout single like “Dance For You” and “Turn The Table.”
Check out all of the So Nice Tour dates below and get tickets here.
09/24 — Montreal, QC @ MTELUS
09/26 — Boston, MA @ Roadrunner
09/28 — New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall
09/29 — Washington DC @ The Anthem
10/01 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia
10/02 — Norfolk, VA @ The NorVa
10/04 — Knoxville, TN @ Tennessee Theatre
10/05 — Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern
10/07 — Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits Festival
10/09 — Houston, TX @ 713 Music Hall
10/10 — Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom
10/12 — Denver, CO @ Mission Ballroom
10/14 — Salt Lake City, UT @ The Union Event Center
10/15 — Las Vegas, NV @ The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas
10/17 — Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Federal Theatre
10/18 — Los Angeles, CA @ Greek Theatre
10/20 — Santa Barbara, CA @ Arlington Theatre
10/21 — Berkeley, CA @ Greek Theatre at UC Berkeley
10/23 — Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater
10/26 — Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo
10/29 — Vancouver, BC @ Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre
11/02 — Madison, WI @ The Sylvee
11/04 — Kansas City, MO @ Uptown Theater
11/05 — Chicago, IL @ Aragon Ballroom
Perhaps no comic book character has seen a greater boost in popularity from the Marvel Cinematic Universe than Iron Man. While people have always loved the character, the movies turned him into one of Marvel’s most beloved mainstream characters, up there with Captain America and Spider-Man.
With mainstream popularity comes new opportunities and fans of Iron Man are about to get a big one with the announcement that he will get his own video game from development studio EA Motive in the near future. Soon, everyone will have the opportunity to fly through the air, blast enemies, and experience an all-new original story as Iron Man in his own game.
“Marvel Games is teaming up with Motive Studio to collaborate on an all-new single-player, third-person, action-adventure Iron Man video game,” Marika Hashimoto of Marvel.com wrote. “Now in early development, the game will feature an original narrative that taps into the rich history of Iron Man, channeling the complexity, charisma, and creative genius of Tony Stark, and enabling players to feel what it’s like to truly play as Iron Man.”
This is a really cool moment for both Marvel fans and video game fans, because for a long time, Iron Man’s legacy in video games was an awful movie tie-in game that came out in 2008. However, this is going to be an original experience that, according to Marvel, will pull from every aspect of Iron Man’s “rich history.” If other Marvel games like Guardians of the Galaxy and Spider-Man are anything to go by then we are in for a treat — both of those games had phenomenal stories that made newcomers and longtime fans fall in love with them.
Robert Sarver was issued a one-year suspension and $10 million fine by the NBA for his racist behavior and mistreatment of women employees in the workplace. The independent investigation detailed many instances of workplace abuse, including multiple uses of the N-word. The evidence in the report made people wonder if Sarver would face a similar punishment to former Clippers owner Donald Sterling, but in a press conference, NBA commissioner Adam Silver defended the punishment and noted that he does not have the authority to force an owner to sell, while others have called out the league for getting it wrong.
The logistics of a forced sale may be thorny, but that still does not explain why anyone in the Suns organization or the league at large would welcome Sarver back to the NBA. Draymond Green discussed the issue on his podcast and has a direct proposal to the owners. Via ESPN:
“It’s a little baffling to me that we’ll walk into the arena next year,” Green said on his podcast. “The Phoenix Suns will walk into the arena next year, he’ll sit on the sideline and we’ll just continue on playing. So the one thing that I am going to need is someone to explain to me why is it that it was OK to get rid of [LA Clippers owner Donald] Sterling, but it’s not possible to force Robert Sarver to sell after what we read?
“… I’m asking that there be a vote. If that’s the only way, then let’s see what those numbers are. Let’s see what they are.”
Green spoke at length about letting Sarver back into the league, saying “this report that came out last week is the total opposite of everything the NBA stands for.”
“To think that someone like Robert Sarver that’s acting in that manner can continue to represent us? That’s bullshit”
Green hit the nail on the head here. The players and league employees should be able to see where the owners stand on this issue. The report and subsequent punishment do very little to hold Sarver accountable for his workplace behavior, but an owner vote — which would require a three-fourths majority to remove Sarver as an owner — could change that.
The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.
Mercury is currently in retrograde for the third time this year. The celestial phenomenon has earned something of a bad reputation, one that villainizes its interference with communication and travel, often resulting in delays and misunderstandings. Whenever it circles back around, the best advice anyone can offer to get through it is to hold on tight and hope for the best — it’ll be over soon. On “Imagining,” a deep cut from her newly released sophomore album Hold The Girl, Rina Sawayama looks towards the planet for an explanation of the emotional whirlwind she’s been experiencing herself. “I don’t know if Mercury’s in retrograde,” she states, pondering: “Am I okay?”
But the three-week period doesn’t have to be a time of fearful hiding. Mercury, after all, is the planet of communication, intellect, memory, and transportation. Even when it’s emotionally difficult to dig deep into the past, retrograde can serve as an instrumental opportunity for reflection as a means of healing and moving forward. For Sawayama, the process of creating Hold The Girl consisted of this kind of stark reflection, re-calibration, and reconstruction on a mass scale. The British-Japanese pop songwriter pulls from a well of emotion throughout the deeply introspective record, repackaging therapeutic breakthroughs about healing her inner child and re-parenting herself with the type of grace her own parents weren’t allowed.
While her own revelations came from consistently interrogating her upbringing in therapy and studying perspective-shifting self-help books, Sawayama doesn’t use Hold The Girl to report back her findings with the intention of leading anyone else through the healing process. The promise that she makes on the album’s title track — “Reach inside and hold you close / I won’t leave you on your own” — is to herself, repairing the relationship with the emotionally neglected young child within her. Elsewhere, on “Phantom,” the singer claws back all of the bits and pieces she’s torn from herself and given away over the years, pleading through swelling strings: “Inner child, come back to me / I wanna tell you that I’m sorry.”
Sawayama mostly keeps relatability at arms length throughout the verses, her vocal performance sounding at times as though she’s forming a physical barrier between the version of herself she’s trying to protect and the rest of the world. But to the listening ear, one yearning for warmth and connection, these sentiments can feel personal, even parasocial, despite their hyper-specific origins. When she does invite the masses to join forces with her, and to find their own healing, it happens most often during the choral moments that bind them together as one.
“All my life, I’ve felt out of place / All my life, I’ve been saving face,” she sings on the opening track “Minor Feelings,” a 2-minute, reverb-driven anthem. “Well, all these minor feelings / Are majorly breaking me down.” Sawayama captures the hedonistic nature of dance music on the track, which functions as a thesis statement for the record, placing a spotlight on all of the small moments that pile up and threaten to burst at the seams when she finally reaches the dance floor.
Hold The Girl builds a bridge of accessibility through the kind of grand scale pop hooks Sawayama received praise for on her 2020 debut album SAWAYAMA. Whether exquisitely executing Kelly Clarkson-style 2000s pop-rock on “Hurricanes” or evoking unhinged melodrama á la Marina And The Diamonds on “Frankenstein,” the album offers catharsis through grandiose sing-alongs that are as fitting for a high-production stadium show as they are for cavernous venues that can only squeeze in around a thousand people. At the center of the album, “Holy (Til You Let Me Go)” uses explosive industrial dance to wedge open a door to complete escapism, ushering clusters of sweat-drenched bodies moving in tandem with one another through the opening.
When the nu-metal dream SAWAYAMA arrived, nearly every venue and club was shuttered in the midst of the pandemic, making Hold The Girl the singer’s first proper album release. But the sonic palette explored throughout the record — one that roots itself deeply in everything from European house music to melodic country with a twist — doesn’t lean into dance music with the shallow intention of celebrating the return of live music. Instead, Sawayama embraces the function of these sounds and wields the emotion they evoke as a means of communication.
“Forgiveness” creates a sense of safety through joyously shimmering production and tender delivery of the reassuring notion that healing doesn’t have to be linear, or simple. Hold The Girl marks the first record on which Sawayama locked in with a vocal producer, the benefits of which shine through as she uses her vocal range as a tool for conveying these varying complex feelings. More effectively, on “Your Age,” Sawayama evokes the spirit of Nine Inch Nails, using bulldozing industrial rock to communicate rageful disbelief. “Cause now that I’m your age, I just can’t imagine,” she sings with tamed fury, asking: “Why did you do it? What the hell were you thinking?”
On the album’s country-influenced cuts, Sawayama taps into the genre’s affinity for truthful storytelling in songwriting. Lead single “This Hell” opens with a nod to Shania Twain’s “Man, I Feel Like a Woman,” quickly spilling into a rodeo-ready country-pop party that embraces banding together through community. On the stripped-back acoustic ballad “Send My Love to John,” Sawayama sings from the perspective of an immigrant mother issuing an overdue apology for not accepting her son’s queer identity, drawing inspiration directly from the life of a close friend. In a way, she offers a proxy encounter for someone listening who may yearn to be on the receiving end of a genuine apology, but may never have the chance to experience one of their own.
Hold The Girl comes to a close with a healing self-care lesson of its own. “Flowers still look pretty when they’re dying / Blue skies always there behind the rain, rain / Oceans swallow all of our feelings / I know it’s just temporary pain,” Sawayama sings on the celebratory “To Be Alive.” Whether elating or soul-crushing, no emotion is permanent. Regardless of whether it lasts for three weeks of a celestial retrograde period, or for entire decades at a time, the guiding message is all the same: hold on tight and hope for the best — it’ll be over soon.
Hold The Girl is out now via Dirty Hit. Get it here.
Every now and then, the GOP let slip the truth. Earlier this year, George W. Bush tried to condemn the “wholly unjustified and brutal invasion” of Ukraine, but instead said Iraq, inadvertently slamming the disastrous war over which he presided. Whoops! On Monday, it was Jan. 6 apologist Ron Johnson’s turn to accidentally tell us what he really thinks.
The MAGA senator went on Maria Batiromo’s Fox Business show to, of course, talk about Republican’s favorite topic: the current president’s non-politician son. They got a little off topic, instead discussing Jim Jordan’s recent claims that investigations into “so-called domestic violent extremism” (i.e., Trumpists) were overblown. Johnson agreed, claiming “cyber threats” and “drug trafficking” were more pressing issues. He then went over his record.
“When I was chairman of Homeland Security, we’d have an annual threat hearing. And my ranking member would always be bringing up white supremacy which you know, I condone,” he said. Johnson quickly caught himself, saying, “I mean, I condemn.”
Problem is, a lot of people thought Johnson — who has done things like call COVID “over-hyped” — was right the first time. The slip inspired a lot of Freud jokes.
A woman in South Yorkshire, England, has had an incredible impact on hundreds of people’s lives by using her skills as a drone pilot to find lost dogs. Erica Hart, 40, told the BBC that over the past seven years she has “easily” reunited at least 200 lost dogs with their families.
It all started when she was playing with her new drone near a wooded area and a man told her he’d lost his dog. Hart located the pooch within 15 minutes. “It just went from there basically,” she told the BBC. “It’s like winning the lottery, it’s absolutely priceless.”
“When I first found that first dog and seeing that expression on his face because he’d been missing nearly four days, it was just a thing that, yeah, I can do something and I can make myself useful and be a pillar to the community and help unite loved ones with their dogs,” she continued.
What’s truly incredible is that she doesn’t charge a penny for her services and rarely accepts any compensation unless the job required her to use a lot of gasoline. Given the fact she locates animals that are priceless to their families, she could easily charge hundreds or even thousands of dollars for her services.
“I go home some days and I’ve spent £50 ($57) out of my own pocket and I’ve gone without stuff for myself to put petrol in the car to find a dog,” she told the Daily Mail.
Her success in reuniting lost dogs with their families led her to create HARTSAR, a Facebook community where people can enlist her services to find their lost dogs.
When Hart goes searching for a lost dog it’s like a military exercise. Her drone is equipped with a thermal energy camera that makes a warm-blooded animal easily identifiable among its cooler surroundings. The drone gives her an incredible vantage point that makes it a lot easier to see a dog than by searching on the ground.
From there, she positions people on the ground to intercept the missing pet.
Recently, she helped find Jamie and Leah Hollinshed’s black schnauzer Hilda in just 20 minutes after the couple had been trying to locate the dog for hours. Time was of the essence because a storm was on its way.
“What she did is brilliant. She’s a hero, a real superhero,” Jamie told the Daily Mail. “We’d had a couple of hours with no sighting but she spotted her in 20 minutes. It just shows how good these drones can be, we were so relieved when she found her.”
Hart’s brilliant technique for finding lost pups has already helped hundreds of people, but her story may save countless more. This new technology should be used by law enforcement and rescue shelters across the world to reunite people with their lost fur babies.
If every town in the world had an Erica Hart with a drone, hardly anyone would lose a pet.
Hart’s innovation is incredible, but for her, it’s all about the animals. “When I post it on Facebook and I see the comments I lay in bed with a smile on my face and realize why I do it,” she told the Daily Mail. “I do it for the love of the dogs.”
NBA 2K23 was released to the world on Sept. 9, 2022, and general feedback on it so far has been mixed. On one hand, when you’re one of the better sports simulation games out there, it comes with an extremely high bar that is going to be difficult to clear every year. On the other hand, the ways 2K23 struggles this year is the same issues that have been plaguing the series for some time now. The MyCareer plot has once again failed to meet expectations, virtual currency still runs everything, and online play is still inconsistent.
Rather than spend an entire piece explaining all the reasons 2K23 is frustrating, a thing we have done before, we’d rather focus on what we did enjoy from this year’s game, because while it’s far from a perfect game, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things in here to enjoy.
The Jordan Challenges
The big addition to 2K23 was the return of the Jordan challenges. Originally a part of 2K11, the Jordan challenges came back with more to do, more to experience, and modern gameplay on top of it. The final result is honestly one of the better experiences of the entire game. Not only does each challenge feature video interviews with people who lived these experiences in person, but they adapt to the modern time they were played.
The very first challenge the game throws you into is the 1982 national championship game between the North Carolina Tarheels and Georgetown Hoyas. Since this was a college basketball game in the early ’80s, it did not feature the 3-point line, because it had not yet been fully adopted by the NCAA. It even uses a classic broadcast style, scoreboard and all, to really emphasize the period this game was played. Touches like these are throughout the challenges and it makes it a great way to experience Jordan’s career from beginning to end.
Movement
The movement in 2K23 is really good. As someone who preferred the faster more arcade-style games from the early 2010s, it’s odd to play a game that is against me using the sprint button and actually enjoying it, but that is what 2K23 has accomplished. Momentum feels good, players don’t get stuck on each other, and passes feel like they’re actually being thrown between outstretched arms instead of just floating to their target. It feels good to move around even if the defense is simultaneously amazing at preventing 3-point shots and awful at stopping dribble drives.
Balance aside, having a game that feels good to move around in will go a long way in keeping players engaged while playing. Patches are more than likely on the way to work on some of the balance issues, but that’s typical of most modern games these days. It’s important that the core game is fun, and when players start up a match so they can play with their friends on the couch, they should have a fun time.
General Presentation
This is something that is actually great in every single NBA 2K game, but it honestly doesn’t get praised enough. The presentation experience while playing is maybe the best in all of sports gaming between commentators, sideline reporting, and how players are represented on screen. A huge part of why people continue to come back to NBA 2K every year, despite all the genuine complaints about it, is that it nails the experience of what watching a basketball game on TV should feel like.
For years, NBA 2K was praised as being a game where someone could walk by the room and think an actual basketball game was being played on TV, not a video game. That experience has been replicated over the years, and while it’s not a perfect experience — it’s probably never going to be one — it’s nice that there is still something about this franchise that continues to be great year in and out. Even this year, there are still moments where you fall into the experience and forget about everything because the polish is still there.
The Special Tour begins on September 23rd in Sunrise, FL and presses on until mid-November for dates at San Francisco’s Chase Center and the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. But who is opening for Lizzo on The Special Tour and what do you need to know about them?
Who Is Opening Lizzo’s ‘The Special Tour?’
The opener on Lizzo’s Special Tour is none other than Atlanta rapper and former Uproxx cover star Latto. You might remember Latto from winning the reality TV show The Rap Game in 2016. Back then, she went by Miss Mulatto, and her star hasn’t stopped soaring since. Latto’s latest album, 777, came out this past April and she’s best known for the single “Big Energy” which, has been a fixture on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The track rides the same sample as Mariah Carey’s track “Fantasy” and the “Big Energy” remix version features Carey and DJ Khaled. Latto also appeared on Megan Thee Stallion’s track “Budget” from the album Traumazine.
Check out the full list of tour dates below.
09/23 — Sunrise, FL @ FLA Live Arena
09/24 — Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena
09/27 — Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
09/29 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
09/30 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden
10/02 — New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
10/06 — Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
10/07 — Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena
10/11 — St. Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy Center
10/14 — Kansas City, MO @ T-Mobile Center
10/16 — Chicago, IL @ United Center
10/18 — Indianapolis, IN @ Gainbridge Fieldhouse
10/20 — Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum Center
10/22 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
10/23 — Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
10/25 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center
10/26 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
10/28 — Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
10/31 — Denver, CO @ Ball Arena
11/02 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Vivint Arena
11/04 — Portland, OR @ Moda Center
11/07 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena
11/09 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
11/12 — San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
11/18 — Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum
Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
It’s hard to limit yourself to just one topic when talking with stand-up comic, actor, and pop culture oracle Patton Oswalt, and so a conversation initially focused on his fantastically smart and silly new Netflix special, We All Scream (which you can stream now), veers a little. Make no mistake, there’s a lot here for fans of Oswalt’s comedy as we discuss the special (which is his directorial debut) and why he never blames an audience for a missed joke. But we also discuss the rah-rah patriotism of Top Gun: Maverick, the positives of nostalgia overload, and the dangers of over-enthusiastically trying to shepherd a new generation to the “good” art.
All of this is to say that what we have here for you is further evidence of Oswalt’s fertile mind and a nice appetizer for a special that is as comfortable talking about our tenuous grip on what is cool and what is inoffensive as it is joking with doctors and grocery store managers in the audience after spinning a tale about a barn full of pubic hair.
We spoke in May 2020 (right in the middle of lockdown) and I just remember asking (in a tearful frightened voice) “what… what movies are you watching? I don’t know what to ask?” It was a great conversation on my part.
I’m sure that interview was a portrait of psychosis.
[Laughs] And it was still early. So, I love the special. But are you really that hard on yourself for what you did or didn’t get done during the pandemic?
It wasn’t that I was so hard on myself for what I didn’t get done. What I’m really hard on myself for was the self-delusional, aspirational nature of what I mapped out that I was going to do. And you realize, “Oh, all of the hubris that I make fun of in other people, I own in spades.” And so it can be a little sobering when you see that aspect of yourself and know that exists.
I remember years ago, I got laid off from a job, and in the first week I reorganized my house, I converted all my CDs to digital files. I really thought the pandemic was going to be the same thing. And I signed up for Duolingo and stuff, and I did not learn Italian. Patton, I did not learn Italian.
I’m still trying to learn Italian. Oh, my God, there were going to be so many things I was going to do and I just absolutely did not do them. Friends of mine learned to cook, they wrote screenplays and stuff, and I just couldn’t do anything because it was weird. It felt like, “Why am I trying to create something for a world that might not exist when I’m done with it?” You do need the world pushing back or waiting, even if they’re waiting to tear it apart. For me, at least, you feel like you want to feel like, “Is there someone waiting for this? Or else, why am I doing this?”
You talk a little bit about being open-minded and the passage of time, and you are someone who’s very notably into comic books, geek culture, things of that nature, Star Wars — the things everybody’s into now, basically. But there’s a gatekeeping aspect to that in a lot of people. How do you steer clear of that? Has being a father helped you get to a place where you’re able to accept, “Okay. Everything’s not about me?”
Yeah. It’s actually two things. The first thing that’s very important; everything is not about me. And a lot of people have trouble, I think, embracing that, but what’s even more important is you have to step the fuck out of the way. I’m still very in touch with remembering what it was like when I was a kid, what it was like to be in elementary school and then middle school and then high school, and trying to form yourself and nothing, nothing made you recoil quicker than an adult that wanted to have a guiding hand in the kind of media that I consumed or the music that I liked. Everything good that happened from our generation and from any other generation before that, or any other generation that is going to follow us, is from kids being left alone to figure stuff out for themselves.
My parents were not into science fiction, they were not into comic books. I found what I needed to find by myself. And so I don’t want to be the jock version of a nerd dad saying, “You’re going to sit down and watch these Marvel films,” I want her [Alice, Oswalt’s 13-year-old daughter] to figure out [what she likes]. She likes some Marvel stuff, but there are other things she likes that I don’t understand, but that’s her thing and I’m letting her go do it. I’m not going to try to cram my ’80s childhood into my daughter’s 2020s childhood, that doesn’t make any sense.
Sometimes it just freaks me out a little, how there’s still this continuing push (in Hollywood) to make things feel relevant that happened 30, 40 years ago.
Except, here’s what’s kind of cool about that, there is always going to be the force of nostalgia on culture. People look back at, “Oh, but the ’70s had Star Wars,” but they also had a lot of crappy reboots and redos of TV shows and movies, just like any other decade because everyone wants safety and it’s the people that reject the nostalgia and plow forward with the new thing that creates the new nostalgia.
So yes, for as many reboots that are happening right now and as many revisitations, there are also people that we don’t even know about yet, that are kicking against that and aren’t liking that. And, I feel like we have a better quality of reboots, something like Cobra Kai is a reboot about the dangers of nostalgia and rebooting things, about how that just creates more problems. The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, which is “all the Marvel Avenger stuff that you were rah-rahing for was actually kind of evil in a way, wasn’t exactly all good.” And that needs to be examined. So maybe the smarter reboot, the smarter nostalgia, will make people more leery of it when it’s done badly or when it’s done for propagandistic purposes.
It’s so hard to figure out if there’s a path that people can actually identify that will tell them what is going to succeed. Like Paper Girls just got canceled, but that was a great comic.
Right. Not only did they not give it a chance, I didn’t know that it was on until after it had been on. There was no build-up to it. I don’t remember seeing a trailer and that’s one of my favorite graphic novels of all time.
Netflix
You just launched a comic with Dark Horse,Minor Threats[issue 2 comes out October 5]. As someone who is putting stuff out there in this world, do you try to figure out what the dynamic is to try and find success?
The only thing that will ever find success is when someone is making something that really is passionate for them, that they are excited to do. And if you feel that excitement, that’s what makes the thing push through. It’s why Squid Game was such a sensation. That was something that obsessed that guy for, I think 15 years he worked on that thing. It was just this thing that he could not get out of his head. So looking at whatever the trends are now or trying to predict an algorithm will always lead you to disaster.
As I think a lot of these paint by numbers, blockbusters, have been showing us, there’s been a lot of stagnation. Whereas something like Top Gun: Maverick, which I had my problems with, but that thing, whether you like it or not, is a crazy piece of filmmaking because that was a crazy obsessive vision from crazy obsessive Tom Cruise, who is basically betting on himself. And there is an actual visceral thrill to that, to seeing that level of commitment and kind of near insanity. There’s something thrilling about that, that a lot of other movies don’t have.
What are some of your issues with Top Gun: Maverick? I’m curious because I have some myself.
There’s a spooky, unspoken throwback to America: right or wrong, if anyone looks at us sideways, we go after them, even if that enemy might not be there. There’s no tangible, physical enemy there, in a weird way, the enemy is the unspoken idea that, “Hey, maybe America isn’t so awesome anymore. Well then let’s blow up the fucking world!” Now, however, they do make it look spectacular.
They do.
But the enemy in that movie is not the Russians, it’s not terrorists, it’s doubt in America. It is an esoteric idea that needs to be bombed off the face of the earth. And there’s something really weird about that. By the way, and I’m not going to lie and go, “And I sat there with my arms crossed and I was disgusted,” I was thrilled out of my fucking mind watching that thing. It was incredible.
I loved it, too. I just was hoping he (Maverick) would die. He saved him (Rooster) and it was nice, but I like fucked up endings, which is helpful for life. That’ll eventually pay off for me, but everything else, apparently gets a happy ending.
But he can’t die because at this point it’s like, this is all about franchise bucks down the line.
So you directed this special, tell me a little about just the decision to do that. Was this a precursor to something down the road, or is it just you really wanted to just take control here?
Both. I wanted to take control and have an idea that there are visual things that I want to see in specials. There are visual things I want to avoid in specials. I see a lot of crazy camera work and a lot of spectacle in the place of substance, and I really wanted to just bet on the substance of the material over any kind of crazy camera moves. And I had those ideas in my head. So to get to be there during the filming and during the cutting really made a big difference to me. And then it also showed me that, “Yeah, you can direct a movie.” It’s about gathering people and being open enough to other people’s suggestions and ideas to all create something together. And that’s how you get past the fear.
When you’re starting out as a comic and you’re experimenting, how do you avoid being angry at the audience when they don’t get something? How do you stay humble in that moment and not just be like, “Well they’re stupid, they don’t get me.”
That was very much a feature of my youth. I’ve been doing it long enough now to know that. No matter how long you’ve been doing it, you’re going to have bad sets. I’ve seen people walk on stage where the crowd goes nuts. You’re seeing them feel like, “Well, there’s no way they can fail,” and then they try new stuff and it doesn’t work. Sometimes, something you think is funny, either you can’t sell it or you were wrong and it doesn’t work. And again, it’s never the end of the world when something doesn’t work. But it’s also never, “This audience is fucking stupid.” You either didn’t sell it or you didn’t a hundred percent believe in it like you should have. Blaming the audience is taking the responsibility off yourself. You’ve got to make every audience your audience, no audience is your audience until you start talking and then you convince them that what you’re doing is funny. So if they’re not laughing, you didn’t convince them.
Do you think that we put too much attention on comics at this point?
I think it’s actually a bigger problem, I think we put too much attention on us being entertained at all times. Some things in life, some important things, don’t necessarily need to be entertaining to you. You’re being entertained enough. There are people that I know that didn’t even agree with Trump, but still were like, “But he is really entertaining.” I’m like, “I’m sorry, you’re not being entertained enough?” We are nonstop entertained in this culture. So if, God forbid, ten minutes of politics is boring to you, but it’s making sure that the dams aren’t collapsing and the water is running, then let that be boring. And then go back to playing Candy Crush.
You’ll be fine. You don’t need to be entertained every millisecond of the day. So it’s not that they’re putting so much stress on me, it’s like people are acting as if it’s some kind of crime where a minute went by where I wasn’t entertained and that needs to be addressed. No, it doesn’t, a big part of life is having to deal with boredom. And if you learn to deal with boredom creatively, that’s where you can really create interesting stuff. But if you’re constantly looking to be overwhelmed and engulfed by a new realm or a new form of entertainment, then you’re never going to form anything of your own.
I think that’s accurate. For the record, I’m not entertained by the world at large right now.
Yeah. Me either.
Patton Oswalt’s ‘We All Scream’ is streaming on Netflix now.
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(@AWeissmann_) September 20, 2022
(@DrGJackBrown) 
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