Our Favorites & How to Watch Them:
Reed Morano
Art by Jeff Sciortino (@SciortinoPhoto)
The Handmaid's Tale (2017): A system of government that overwhelmingly favors rich white men strips the rights of pretty much everyone else and so a bunch of people start #resist-ing. Who comes up with this stuff?!
Meadowland (2015): Luke Wilson and Olivia Wilde. Elisabeth Moss and John Leguizamo. Merritt Wever who you don’t know you know but you do know and she is one of my favorite actresses. Something bad happens to a kid but y’all ate up Manchester by the Sea so why not this? Like I said - I haven’t seen it, but Laura says it’s good and we should all listen to Laura. Plus it’s on Netflix right now!
Halt and Catch Fire, Season 3, Episode 8, “You Are Not Safe”: Go read this excellent recap of Season One and then forget everything because the show dramatically shifts for seasons two and three and is roughly ten billion times better. It’s also on Netflix right now, you lucky ducks!
Reed Morano
Dear Reed Morano,
During a meeting last week I visualized flipping over a desk, smashing a Perrier bottle on the window sill, and holding its glinting, jagged points millimeters from the throat of man who said he “didn’t love” Margaret Atwood and had “less than no interest in watching The Handmaid’s Tale.” Reed, I tell you this not just to illustrate how a verdant imagination can help one survive Hollywood meetings, but also to say how much I’m enjoying The Handmaid’s Tale.
I had heard the show would be “pretty” and that a director-née-cinematographer would be doing the first three episodes and I thought, “okay fine just mainline Margaret Atwood into my veins I don’t care how it looks.” But then I watched and WOW. It’s beautiful, but not always. It’s funny, which I didn’t expect. And it’s brilliant at conveying the whole point of The Handmaid’s Tale – that oppression isn’t just our past and maybe future, it’s very much our present. Props to the writers OF COURSE but you created a world that’s the perfect mix of naturalism and formalism— beautiful airy memories contrasted with lenses so wide and oppressive Elisabeth Moss must have hit her head on them four times a day.
When I looked you up I realized I already knew you from the “You Are Not Safe” episode of Halt and Catch Fire which is very, very good. Aside from writing gushy letters to female directors, my other life’s work is to get people to skip season 1 and dive into seasons 2 and 3 of Halt and Catch Fire with their whole hearts. I haven’t yet seen your feature Meadowland because I can’t handle bad-things-happening-to-kids movies anymore but co-founder Laura says it’s excellent and she’s the one who told me about Halt and Catch Fire. Reed, have you ever fallen so hard for someone you can’t wait to see what they’ll be like in 5, 10, or 20 years? Because that’s how I feel about you.