54. When the campaign was better than the movie
Movie marketing has gotten so good that the film itself can't compete.
Hi friends.
How about that bait and switch between 94 degree weather yesterday and a cool 64 today?
Over the weekend, I went to a birthday party in a closed coffee shop on the Lower East Side. Two friends were there, both producers, one in film, one in fashion, and Marty Supreme came up. Neither of them liked it very much. I agreed. The case against it is well-documented: indulgent, stress-inducing, a white man making bad choices with zero apparent consequence. It’s been made thoroughly enough that I’ll spare you.
On Monday, my husband Ben and I watched Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. We’re serious about movies in the way that true film lovers are: no phones, no leaving the room, full attention. We held to this until around the final act, when I noticed Ben had gotten up from the couch. Afterward, I asked what he thought, expecting a full takedown. Instead: the costumes weren’t to his taste, it was trying too hard, and it was, overall, a little boring. Hard to argue.
The third film I’ve been turning over is The Drama, which I haven’t seen. So I did what any reasonable person does: I asked around. The consensus, to the extent there was one, broke along familiar lines. People who liked the concept didn’t love the execution: the script, thin character development, an ending that apparently goes too soft. The ones who landed somewhere between neutral and positive tended to cite the same thing: it’s a good conversation starter. One person went to opening night to support a friend in the cast and put it best: “It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to have one opinion about. I went with a group of like ten people and I’d say a couple really did not like it, a couple loved it, and most fell in a complicated middle.”
What all three films share isn’t mediocrity, exactly. It’s the gap between what they were sold as and what they actually are. Timothée Chalamet was everywhere before Marty Supreme dropped; the campaign was a spectacle unto itself. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi blanketed Vogue and Deux Moi in the run-up to Wuthering Heights’ Valentine’s Day release. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson were photographed together so relentlessly that by the time anyone realized it was a stunt, we’d already been had.
Movie marketing has always sold a fantasy. What’s changed is that it’s gotten so good at it that the film itself almost can’t compete. You’ve been on the date before you’ve walked in the door.
If you missed last week, I broke down why we all need to be watching Megan Stalter:
Rumor has it that Substack is suppressing free content. If you’d like to resist the algorithm pushing paid content only, then liking, sharing, and commenting on this newsletter will help! <3
A fun note. A lot of Party Talk items were sent in by readers this week and I love it! My inbox is open: kristine@secondarymag.com
Should we be paying more attention to the clown community? When a friend mentioned she was going to Paris to attend clown school I thought nothing of it (not sure who that says more about). But then I saw this feature in Vulture about the Los Angeles clown scene, which apparently was brought into the spotlight via Heated Rivalry’s “It” boy Connor Storrie, who casually mentioned taking clown classes in an interview. The pictures are pretty dynamic.
All Things Go NYC lineup was just released. I swear the Washington D.C. lineup is always better than the New York City one. Sigh. But our girl Meg Stalter is on the lineup so if anyone goes please let me know.
A Korean produce farm grows in the Hudson Valley. The chefs behind Jook, Jua, Atomix, Atoboy and more are taking sourcing into their own hands. After struggling to find high-quality Korean produce in the U.S. they’re launching @firsthandfarm, a one-acre farm in the Hudson Valley dedicated to growing foundational Korean ingredients like perilla leaves, namul vegetables, wild garlic, and more. They should have just bought the perilla leaves from me; They were growing so well on the terrace last year that we threw a perilla leaf party.
Anthropic keeps acquiring. Stainless, the SDK generator, announced it's joining Anthropic to work on Claude Platform capabilities and connecting agents to APIs. The move is less about tidying up the API docs and more about owning the infrastructure that connects AI agents to the rest of the internet and applications.
Shein bought Everlane, which is either ironic or inevitable. Shein is acquiring Everlane, the millennial DTC brand whose entire identity was built on "radical transparency" and ethical sourcing, from majority owner L Catterton for about $100 million, a steep discount from its $250 million peak valuation. The leading theory on why: Everlane allows Shein to play in a segment beyond fast fashion, supporting a narrative of a more balanced portfolio ahead of a potential IPO. Those with common stock will not receive a payout.
The Jacob Riis Bathhouse in the Rockaways is back with a cover charge. The Art Deco landmark that once held 10,000 changing rooms, a rooftop solarium, an orchestra, and 8,000 beachgoers at a time was boarded up in 1972 and handed off to the National Park Service, which used it mostly to house lifeguards. This summer it reopens as the $88 million Rockaway Ocean Club, a members club and hotel coming to what was historically known as the "People's Beach." The people’s beach no longer though, with founding memberships starting at $1,700 a year ($1200 + $500 joining fee for those under 30 years old). It does appear a few of the food offerings will be public.
The Met is absorbing the Neue Galerie. Ronald Lauder (Estée Lauder heir and founder of the Neue Galerie) and his daughter are contributing a $200 million endowment and 13 paintings from their personal collection to seal the 2028 merger; the deal brings more than 600 works into the Met, including Klimt's "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I," the shimmering "Woman in Gold.” Café Sabarsky stays open, which is the only part anyone on the Upper East Side actually cares about.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 underwhelms in China. Boycotts spread across China, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong after viewers said the name of a Chinese assistant character echoes "ching chong," a racist anti-Asian slur, while her portrayal as a nerdy, high-achieving but socially awkward overachiever drew criticism for reinforcing exactly the kind of Hollywood stereotype that hasn't gone anywhere. The film opened fourth on China's national chart.
Real estate.
The end of Bubble House. The iconic house at 251 East 71st Street with bubble windows has been sold to a family for $4.99M that wasn’t hunting for an architectural oddity and will “very likely” take the windows out.
Miami keeps getting richer and emptier at the same time. The number of millionaires in the city nearly doubled between 2014 and 2024, new arrivals earn $178,000 a year on average, and Palantir and Citadel have both relocated there — yet people are leaving metro Miami faster than any other large metro in the country, because it turns out importing the one percent does not make a city more livable for everyone else.
43,000 Chicago home listings just vanished from Zillow overnight. The local Midwest listings database cut off its feed to the site amid a broader fight over "private listings," a practice championed by Compass, the country's largest brokerage, that lets sellers quietly test the market with select agents and buyers before going public. Zillow, which argues private listings disadvantage buyers and undermine market transparency, is now caught in the crossfire, with tens of thousands of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin sellers suddenly invisible to the internet's most-visited real estate site.
Reality check.
Trump sued himself and won, at your expense. Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS (the agency he controls) in exchange for a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded "Anti-Weaponization Fund" with no congressional approval, no judicial sign-off, and a five-member commission Trump can fire at will. The fund is widely expected to pay out January 6 defendants and political allies; the settlement was timed to drop two days before a judge could ask whether the lawsuit was even legitimate.
A separate document signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche declares the government "FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED" from investigating Trump, his family, or his businesses for past tax issues. Senator Ron Wyden called it a violation of the federal law that prohibits executive branch officials from interfering in IRS audits. The contractor who leaked the returns in the first place already pleaded guilty and went to prison. Just one of those weeks.
Elon Musk is the world’s first trillionaire. Charming. From Barrons: “Musk holds 6.4 billion shares of SpaceX. The IPO hasn’t happened yet, but recent private-market trades have reached as high as $130. That makes Musk’s stock worth about $830 billion. Musk’s Tesla stock, including his 2018 vested stock options, is currently worth about $290 billion. Combined, that’s $1.1 trillion. He’s done it. Musk is a trillionaire.”
Jeff Bezos is on some weird crisis PR journey after the Met Gala. His remarks declaring he wants the bottom half of earners to pay zero income tax have been widely covered, but also he wants to make sure he notes that taxing him (ie. billionaires) more won’t do anything to help the bottom half in his opinion. If he’s so concerned about the bottom half of earners, it begs the question why his warehouse employees are peeing in bottles.
Palate cleanser.
The next Chapelle Roan will be British.
Ok bye! 🍊
Thanks for reading!