The Projector #51: Your Bonus Content Feedback… Answered (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

Hi all. Thanks to everyone that offered their bonus episode feedback (and the warm sentiments) in response to last week's newsletter. Here’s some quick feedback while we all talk it over.

Watch Parties 

We could do that. What kind of movies make sense for this? To me, it should be something everyone’s seen before, right? Probably multiple times. The mothership Filmspotting podcast has plans to do Back to the Future, which seems like the perfect sort of movie for that sort of thing. Maybe we could present two options and put it to a vote.

Commentary Tracks

I’m a big fan of Blank Check’s audio commentaries (even though I’ve never synced one up; I just listen to them like ordinary episodes, usually while walking my dog). Their hook is working through franchises. I think we’d need to find a hook of our own, unless we just did random movies (which could work too).

Merchandise

Would anyone wear a T-shirt with our logo on it? Are we better off spending money on some art?

Games

You love them! Except those who hate them. I don’t know that we’ll be doing them all the time, but they’re fun for us when we do do them.

The general sense we’re getting is that you like what we’re already doing but would be happy for more. So we’re going to take that to heart. (Also, it sounds like we need to figure out what Discord is.) Also, we’d love to have Rachel on again. For some reason the timing hasn’t worked out. 

As for this request: “PLEASE start a Defector-style site like the Deadspin writers are planning to. There has to be a way to make this happen for cinema.” Well… that would be great. Defector’s off to a terrific start and I increasingly think that reader-funded sites like it and The Athletic are probably the best way forward for anyone who wants journalism that can go deeper than sites dependent on hits and SEO and whatnot. There are plenty of great sites doing great work right now and many talented writers doing it (see the links below), but I don’t know where something like, say, a Movie of the Week feature dedicated to Two-Lane Blacktop would live in 2020. I’d love to see that approach that seems to be working so well for sports expand to other topics like film, though I don't know if we're the best equipped to lead that expansion at present. But dare to dream!

We hope you’re enjoying our double-barreled blast of Kelly Reichardt frontier movies, starting with Meek’s Cutoff and continuing next week with First Cow. Thanks to Alissa Wilkinson for joining us. And if you’d like something to read, here’s some suggestions:

• For Polygon, our pal Noel Murray talked to writer Daniel Kraus (The Shape of Water) about completing George Romero’s novel The Living Dead.

• For Vulture, Matt Prigge explored the lowest reaches of the Disney+ library.

• For The Ringer, Kate Lloyd created an oral history of the infinitely rewatchable Coyote Ugly. 

• At Vulture, Rachel Handler spoke to the now-grown-up Kate Maberly about starring in The Secret Garden.