On Schmigadoon!, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Curtis Sittenfeld and Martin Amis
Dear god, is it really two weeks since I last wrote one of these? It feels like only yesterday that I was staring at my screen through my covid brain fog, trying to remember what words were and how to put in order them. Luckily for all of you, I am now completely and utterly recovered, yes, I’m sitting here simply lit from within with a radiant aura of good health—in the sense that I am now only suffering from my usual, pre-existing array of physical and neurological symptoms (indolence, corpulence, flatulence; a sprinkling of impenetrable existential despair).
It’s been an exciting couple of weeks for me, partly because my publisher sent through a bound proof of my novel. This is an early version of the book that is printed to send out to influential people (booksellers, reviewers, random nerds with millions of followers on BookTok, that kind of thing), and it’s the first time I’ve seen my book looking like…a book! I was still suffering from covid when it arrived, I hadn’t left the house for a week and was looking like a heavily composted zombie, but in an effort to engage in some shameless self-promotion on social media I slapped on some makeup and tried to take some photos of me looking excited. They all ended up looking like this:
Smoking hot, right? I’m going to be so good at the self-promotion side of the book business, I can already tell.
My publisher has also sent through a picture of what the final cover will eventually look like, which I think I’m not allowed to post yet, but I can assure you she is cute AF, just adorable, and you will definitely all want to buy at least 1,000 copies of the book when it comes out so you can glue it all over the walls of your house as an innovative and stylish insulated wallpaper solution that will also make you laugh/reconsider your purpose in life.
Television
I’ve been watching quite a lot of TV recently. I mean, I’m always watching a lot of TV—sometimes I think I watch more TV than anyone else alive!!! It may be related to the fact that my partner also loves TV, and so watching TV is our favourite thing to do together as a couple. You wouldn’t think it, but this provides a surprisingly good basis for a long-term relationship; like I think the moment I first knew we had real potential was when I arrived at his place a few days after we first met and he was watching Big Brother with the sound off in his lounge room, setting the perfect low-key ambient mood with some unobtrusive low-brow reality TV. I knew right then that this was a man I could build a life with.
This week, we watched the second season of Schmigadoon!, which is a very silly and delightful show on Apple TV+. The first season features two doctors, Josh and Melissa, who get lost while hiking, and stumble across a small town which exists in a parallel universe where everyone acts like a character from a cheesy Hollywood musical of the 1950s (eg Brigadoon, Oklahoma, The Music Man). Josh and Melissa have to adjust to life in this extremely surreal world where the prices, fashion and gender politics are stuck in the 1950s, and everyone in the town keeps breaking into elaborate song and dance numbers at the drop of a (straw) hat.
It’s bonkers, but it’s also super entertaining. The concept of the second season is similar, but it’s now Schmicago rather than Schmigadoon, and the musicals they’re inspired by are from the 1960s and ‘70s (Chicago, obviously, but also Cabaret, Hair, Sweeney Todd, and Jesus Christ Superstar)—meaning that everything has a darker, sleazier air than the first season.
I know that lots of people are not crazy about musicals, and look, if that’s you, I absolutely respect your right to live your empty, joyless lives as you please. However, if you ever come to my house, please know that there is a chance I will require you to undergo some gentle re-education to help you learn how to respect the local customs.
The musical numbers on Schmigadoon/Schmicago are so well done—the tunes are catchy, the lyrics are witty and self-aware, and the cast are incredibly talented—that I feel like even hardcore musical skeptics would have their heads turned a little bit. It’s difficult to choose a favourite number, but I did particularly love ‘Good Enough to Eat’—a cheerful tune about a plan to butcher the children at the orphanage to address a shortage of meat:
I’m not sure where my love of musicals comes from—I was never a theatre kid at school, because I can’t sing or dance or act was obviously way too cool—but I did help out backstage, and the best shows were always the musicals, those objectively bizarre performances where people would burst into song, mid-conversation, or express their most difficult, complex emotions through the medium of a jauntily choreographed dance. There’s something sublimely ridiculous about it that really brings me joy. One of my favourite shows from the last decade is Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Rachel Bloom’s brilliant musical rom-com that explored, amongst many things, stalking, mental illness, and the joy of generalising about men:
God, that show was good. It also included the best song about the legal profession of all time:
Has there ever been better advice?
On a completely unrelated note, here is a short animation I once made while working as a lawyer:
(To be fair, this is also an accurate depiction of my feelings at the moment about trying to write my second novel, so maybe it’s not the legal profession that is the problem).
Books
I recently listened to the audio of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy, which was breezy and enjoyable, but which I perhaps didn’t love as much as I hoped I might. It tells the story of a TV comedy writer, Sally Miles, who develops a crush on a handsome pop singer called Noah Brewster when he appears as a celebrity guest star on the late night sketch show where she works. I loved the stuff about the TV show (now I have achieved my ridiculous dream of writing a novel, my new ridiculous dream is writing comedy for TV) but I confess I wasn’t that invested in the relationship between Sally and Noah. I think I wanted more genuine tension, and doubt—almost everything that happened between the two leads went very smoothly, and the only difficulties encountered were related to Sally being neurotic and conjuring up problems for the sake of it, while Noah remained rich, handsome and ideal in every way. Maybe this is just how romantic comedies work, but I guess I wanted less rom, more com.
I’m now reading Martin Amis’ Money, which is definitely bringing the com—it’s full of dazzling prose and dark jokes. I’m sort of enjoying it, and sort of not. The narrator, John Self, is an advertising guy/film-maker who likes to spend his time getting wasted, jerking off, and visiting strip bars. He’s both a racist and a misogynist, meaning that it’s not altogether pleasant to spend all this time hanging out in his head—like, some of his musings about rape and violence against women are just…yikes. He’s not intended to be sympathetic, but still, I suspect the level of offensiveness reads as much more full-on now than Amis would have intended it to be when it was first published in 1984. Not because racism and misogyny no longer exist in the public discourse (ha!!!!), but they’re probably less overtly accepted in the mainstream media. Now, if you want to, most of the time you can avoid media/people who explicitly indulge in that kind of shit (I know people like to hate on how we all live in political ‘bubbles’ now and only engage with people who share the same views as ourselves—but jesus christ, have you looked outside your bubble lately? It’s bleak out there!!!)—so I suspect it’s more jarring to encounter it now than it would have been in 1984. The novel is also somewhat dated in the sense that the extremities of vapid wealth and hedonism it satirises no longer seem that extreme, at least, not in comparison with the contemporary age of ubiquitous porn and reality TV. Still, I think I will finish it, as his use of language is so startlingly fresh and fun, and I find it hard to resist a book that can make me laugh.
Other Things
Some other things I have enjoyed lately include:
This compilation of videos from the TikTok chicken wars. I don’t spend a lot of time on TikTok but I do love its potential for absurd comedy or musical collaborations from people who are completely unknown to each other, and this chicken thing is an excellent example.
This GQ interview with Ryan Gosling, who is sporting some very bad hair at the moment, but who comes across as surprisingly normal and lovely for someone who has been in showbiz since the dawn of time.
This New Yorker piece on the Succession finale. Oh my god. What a show. I thought the ending was perfect, unexpected and inevitable all at once. I am even a little tempted to go back and watch the whole series again right from the start. This isn’t something I usually do—while I’ll frequently rewatch comedies, I don’t think I’ve ever gone back and rewatched a drama. Do other people do it? Is it a good idea? Will it ruin the magic? Let me know if you have thoughts!
The exciting news that one of my absolute favourite writers, Elif Batuman, has started a substack.
Until next time,
Eleanor xx
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