Haring, Burger She Wrote, Past Lives

I’m restarting the blog but not going to write a big post about it because a) who cares? and b) who knows if I’ll just abandon this like every other thing I start but I’m not going to restart my quest for 230 new things in 2023 but I’ll double back later to cover the new things that happened before today.

#46 - Keith Haring Exhibit @ The Broad: Is Keith Haring an appropriator? That’s the thought that kept going through my head as I walked through the new Haring exhibit at The Broad. He moved to NY, embraced the rising hip-hop and graffiti scene, and it inspired his art and made him famous. Is it not appropriating culture if you use it to fight The Man? I don’t know and I’m not sure that I care. Ultimately, Haring just isn’t really for me. I don’t dislike it but I didn’t feel the need to spend much time looking at his works.

#47 - Burger She Wrote: A great name for a burger spot. I got the Oklahoma Burger with onions and fries. It was good but I can’t say it stood out from other burgers that I’ve had. Off the top of my head, Burgers Never Say Die might be my favorite spot but I’ve only been there a couple of times. Anyway, the fries at Burger She Wrote were tasty but were overcut for my liking; they were a bunch of tiny pieces.

“Past Lives”: This is a quality indie film. The pacing is slooooooow so you have to be prepared for that but it’s a great, simple love story and immigrant story. The writing presents the story as honest, realistic, and unspectacular but still riveting. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo are tremendous while John Magaro hits the right notes in his performance as well. I really can’t say enough about Lee and Yoo; some of the best on-screen chemistry in years. A fantastic debut by writer-director Celine Song.

NEW SCRIPT IDEA: As I was walking around, I had a random thought, has anyone made a movie about a fictional aging gay rock/pop icon? I started imagining the opening scene of a film called “Bitter Queen”. It wouldn’t be about an Elton John-level guy; maybe someone more along the lines of a smaller celeb, one who has had to deal with a Rick Astley-like scenario of his song becoming a meme. I’m just not sure where it would go. Just a character study. Maybe a rom-com with him finally settling down with his best friend/confidant.
But then I switched the idea a bit and thought about a story of a Kurt Cobain-type icon who killed himself but uttered the last words, “Y’know, he wasn’t wrong.” 20 years later, a young writer tries to uncover what he meant in a kind of Citizen Kane rip-off. It’s probably too dark but my thinking was the final reveal is that the star had inappropriate relations with a kid, who spoke out to people close to the singer who tried to cover it up or told him and his family to be quiet. In a last sordid power move, the singer bequeathed the rights to his biggest album to the kid, putting the kid and his family in a predicament - do they go public with what happened and kill the guy’s reputation and knock his songs out of rotation or do they keep quiet and reap the royalties.