Diving Back In...

My love for film has been a roller coaster of a ride since the pandemic started. I had previously been writing a film blog (Film Assist) and experimented with a podcast. The weekly grind of watching new movies was quite exciting and I always made sure to keep up with the daily film discourse across the interwebs, but that all changed in 2020. About a year leading up to the pandemic I started to feel exhausted with the grind. No one was reading my blog posts and my voice started to feel smaller inside the echo chamber that was Twitter. I needed a break.

Coincidentally, the pandemic shut down all new movies (with some exceptions) and I felt liberated. I experimented with film challenges now that I had the time, but ultimately, I didn’t have it in me anymore. I started reading more frequently and what once was a passion for film turned into a hobby, then an occasion, until it physically pained me to sit through any movie. 2020 was the year I genuinely thought I’d stop watching movies altogether.

Then I started writing again. This time I helped out some friends with their website to accompany their podcast (Random Movie Roulette) and fell back in love with this crazy medium of storytelling. It felt great and I had a new appreciation for movies. After RMR I experimented with my Film Assist blog again, but I settled with Substack once the Oscars came around. I haven’t been great at keeping up with this, but I want to change that.

This year one of my goals is to write more. Personally, professionally, all manners of writing. I’m currently putting together a short story collection that I will self-publish later this year. I started a reading podcast where I talk about what I’ve read lately. And now I want to draw my focus back to this Substack. I have a lot of thoughts on films, and I don’t want to feel crippled with anxiety when tackling them. So, this will be my plan for this space…

Expect a monthly essay.

One of my favorite experiences with Film Assist and Random Movie Roulette had been writing essays with a focus on a niche area of film. Like my essay on the social anxiety that Tony Stark had to deal with in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I have a couple of prompt ideas ready, but because of how much research I’ll need to do I expect to confidently put one essay out a month.

A New Podcast.

I want to experiment with podcasting again, but there’s been so many film podcasts that it was tough figuring out which niche I wanted to focus on. So, I decided on something that’s close to my heart. Comic books. Now before you complain about there being an endless onslaught of comic book news and podcasts dedicated to Marvel and DC, that’s not what I’m doing. Sequentially Speaking will be a comic book podcast specifically about non-superhero comic books and how they are adapted. This mainly came up because of Keanu Reeves’ BRZKR, which was created as a comic to be optioned off into a film. I wish for this podcast to cast a light on how Hollywood uses comic books as a cheap way to greenlight projects and see if their adaptations are even in the spirit of their source material.

Finally, a new column.

In a similar vein to Sequentially Speaking, this new column on this Substack will be about adaptation. I’ve wanted to discuss adaptations for years but haven’t had a great avenue to explore them. With this, I want to talk about all sorts of adaptations. They’ll mostly be book adaptations since that’s the main idea source for Hollywood, but I thought it would be fun to see video games, short stories, and maybe even news clippings on the art of adaptions within Hollywood. This will be called Lost in Translation.

These plans are very ambitious, but doing each one of these monthly should be manageable. Down the road, I do want to expand what I cover, like conducting interviews, but that’s far down the road. I’m excited about the near future. I’m excited to share my unique love of film. And I hope you’re there for it.

Thank you.