On September 27, 2023; the Writer’s Guild of America concluded a 148 day strike with the adoption of a new contract. The WGA’s long hot summer resulted in serious gains for writers all throughout our entertainment industry. The usual smattering of pay increases and beefed-up health benefits are all nice to see, as always. But the closing of contractual loopholes and protections against use of generative AI suggest that this agreement may represent a real paradigm shift in the industry. Studios, streaming platforms, and the money men that drive them have been dealt a bitter defeat. Previously-infallible brands and business strategies have hit key snags. Our entertainment and media sphere seems to be reaching a crossroads, where the need for a new approach is widely acknowledged, but nobody can agree on what tweaks need to be made.
I just wish I wanted to write about it more than I do.
Kicking and Streaming has been an enriching experience that I feel has reached its end. I plan to get spontaneous again, and could simply end these essays without another word if I chose. But enough is left undone, unsaid, unclarified, that I feel the need to empty the clip, so to speak. So we’ll do that here. Let’s slash and burn this thing.
I Hate Being Right All the Time
When I launched Brainworm I felt the need to embark on some substantial project to justify the idea. Something pointed and venomous to provide a sheen of cynical maturity. No movie reviews, no sports editorials, no navel-gazing. A real project with real objectives. Punching up at the streaming economy and its corporate drum majors felt more noble than anything I could manufacture about football, or music, or (God forbid) politics. I think I went wrong in considering my audience before I even had one, outside of my immediate family (hi mom). Locking myself into a long term project from the jump limited my output.
In short; I am ending Kicking and Streaming because I feel like I did what I set out to do. I perceived a rot at the heart of our modern entertainment landscape that was going unacknowledged. I decided to try and shine a spotlight on it. All that lies ahead of me is dreary re-iteration. No thanks. Gotta ramble on.
The Looming Question: “Are There Any of These Things You Actually Like?”
Yes. I planned and scrapped more than a few concepts for an essay meant to highlight what I considered to be a praiseworthy business model in the streaming space. These included:
Amazon Prime Video - The Evil Empire is, regrettably, kinda nice with it! Amazon Prime Video may be a total loss leader that (allegedly) exists as a social lubricant for Jeff Bezos but the folks tasked with running the damn thing do a pretty bang-up job. Hi-quality originals given resources and time to bear fruit. Good catalog of classic movies and TV, especially in foreign-language films. Also an underrated catalog of live sports. It’s in a large portion of American homes just due to the ubiquity of Prime as a delivery service and likely to remain there just due to the overwhelming utility it provides. Good stuff, even if it makes me feel ever-so-slightly dirty. Like I’m a high school teacher giving a (deserved) A+ to the child of the local mafia don.
Paramount+ - Most streaming services’ lack strategic focus. They don’t have a good sense of their ideal consumer and don’t seem to understand that it simply isn’t feasible to be all things to all people. Paramount+ has never fallen victim to this. It is the streaming platform for your parents. Nothing more, nothing less. In a climate of hysterical trend chasing I have to respect the elegant simplicity of just identifying an audience and calibrating your programming accordingly. Taylor Sheridan is a divisive figure for reasons I find too tiresome to research or elaborate, but he’s clearly got The Juice with middle aged folks that like to watch TV. There’s something commendable in just giving him a burlap sack with a dollar sign on the side so they can make another Yellowstone-spinoff where a former Hollywood leading man glowers at the Rocky Mountains and says something about masculinity. (I don’t know what Yellowstone is about. I thought it was “ranch murder of the week” (shoutout Shutdown Fullcast) in the same way Sons of Anarchy was “biker murder of the week.” But I guess it's actually like a political thriller? Kevin Costner’s good at wearing a stetson and that should be a requirement for being a big deal in movies. The American moviegoer needs westerns!) Real heads should watch those merger rumors closely. A partnership with Apple TV+ (also for parents) could shake the game up.
Criterion Channel - Yeah so I’m pretentious. So what? The fact of the matter is that you’re hard pressed to find a better value-proposition in streaming than the Criterion Channel. A well-curated catalog of historically significant rarities, golden age Hollywood classics, and foreign New-Wave stuff gets supplemented every month with pretty great themed collections. The Criterion brand as a whole has been widening the tent in recent years to welcome the A24 kids and other tribes of millennial and generation Z film freaks. Yeah they’ll give you some Turner Classic Movies-core stuff (which is also awesome) but you’ll also find more modern cult classics that trend freakier and more genre-y. It’s the only streaming service I pay for out of pocket and that is not likely to change any time soon.
So What’s Next for Brainworm?
In short: dunno. In medium: whatever I feel like. As I said at the beginning of all this I intend to get spontaneous again, and I intend to get weird through that spontaneity. Fewer well-researched 1500+ word essays and more 1000-ish word quick hits based on some intrusive thought that’s been occupying my attention. Get back to that e-journal quality I wanted to capture when I first launched this thing. You can be insightful and intelligent going long but you’ll find it damn near impossible to be charming or witty. Trying for “serious” output to christen this thing was a mistake. It made this too much of a job, which only makes sense. Writing is a job, after all. The WGA gummed up the Hollywood machine for 148 days to prove just that. In so doing they gave me a perfect getting-off point. I spent so much time trying to make Brainworm meaningful I neglected to make it fun. So I intend to scribble. I intend to doodle. I intend to rant and rave. I intend to have a little fun.