Mailbag for September 27, 2024
50 Cent's PhD thesis in hateration, friendly benchmarks, looking beyond TV, are all comic arcs the same, and what is UP with Apple TV’s marketing strategy?
Dear Squawkers,
First, some housekeeping, a reminder that we will be dark on Monday, September 30, for Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. We’ll open the Daily Chat thread for paid subscribers, as usual, however. Please join in there.
Now, onto business, which is Diddy. The allegations are serious, and I don’t want to make light of that, but…I can’t stop thinking about 50 Cent making his own documentary about what a sh-theel Diddy is. This man is a platinum-grade hater.
It started last year, with news that Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson was producing a docuseries about Diddy—and that he would donate the proceeds to the survivors—then in May, he announced Netflix won a bidding war for said documentary, and this week, Variety confirmed it. Netflix is releasing is Curtis Jackson’s PhD thesis in hateration.
50 Cent has been hating on Diddy for nigh on twenty years, including verses about the guy profiting off Biggie Smalls’ death (I mean…show me the lie), and alleging Diddy was involved in Tupac’s murder (I MEAN…). Curtis Jackson does not fuck with Diddy, he never has fucked with Diddy, there is a real chance he might be one of the only high-profile figures in hip hop who will emerge from the coming storm unscathed. Maybe even better than before, as he is doing the work many journalists ignored for decades, putting together allegations, creating a timeline, interviewing survivors… The Weinstein scandal broke from proper journalists who did proper journalism. The Diddy scandal broke through lawsuits and an FBI raid and Curtis Jackson doing the leg work.
After the publication of Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey's bombshell article in the New York Times, the Weinstein scandal was an avalanche, a deluge of information, names, and accusations. It was literally an overnight phenomenon that led to an industry-wide reckoning (the success of which is debatable). Once that article came out, there was no stopping everything that followed.
With Diddy, though, it’s been more of a steady drip over the last year, with lawsuits, settlements, accusations, and that FBI raid, which is when it feels like the wider world started paying attention. Will this lead to the music industry’s #MeToo moment, though? I don’t know. The lens is so securely fixed on Diddy, it hasn’t yet widened out to broader, systemic patterns of harm. If that reckoning comes for the music industry, it might happen more in fits and starts, as other names emerge through Diddy’s wrongdoing. Because one thing is for sure, we WILL hear more names. The man kept RECORDS.
Records rivaled by those compiled by 50 Cent. I cannot emphasize this enough, I’m not laughing over here. This isn’t funny, but if you’re reading The Squawk, then surely you appreciate the time and effort Jackson put in to turn gossip into hard information. He really said, “I hate that motherfucker so much, I’m going to do an entire documentary about it.” 50 Cent played the long game, he laid the groundwork, he organized his notecards, and now he’s making what is probably the last move in his beef with Diddy. Forget the prosecutors, there are only two people who can tell me about Diddy: Josh Johnson and 50 Cent.
Onto the mailbag!
Question from Betts:
I have a Show Your Work question. In my career, I have a group of successful peers that I pay attention to - some are friends and some aren’t - as a way to informally benchmark my own successes and keep an eye out for other opportunities I might want to pursue. There can be competition there, but mostly it’s a way to judge the landscape and how I am positioning myself in my field. So, Lainey and Sarah, do you have those successful peers you use as a gauge? If so, who? And does LaineyGossip as a blog have them?
Sarah’s answer:
I have peers I use as a gauge, for sure. It’s not about jealousy, and you always have to be careful because comparison truly is the thief of joy, but there are people whose work is so good, it inspires me to try a little harder. For instance, Kayleigh Donaldson. She’s so smart and insightful, she inspires me to always make a little extra effort, think a little harder and longer, choose my words better. One way to improve your writing is just to read a lot, and reading Kayleigh makes me better, for sure.
Brian Grubb, too, is such a hoot. He is SO funny, and constructs the most beautifully dumb but perfect sentences, and his writing on Justified was my absolute favorite writing about that show. Now, his writing on Slow Horses, featured on Vulture, is just perfection.
And Robert Daniels, again, just a very smart, interesting writer. Ditto for Angelica Jade Bastien. Even if I don’t agree with them, I always walk away from Robert’s and Angelica’s writing with something to think about.
As for the blog itself, Lainey probably has a different answer, but mine would be…The Toast. I love The Toast. I miss The Toast. I go back and re-read stuff on there all the time. I would love if people thought of LG the way I think of The Toast. Smart, insightful, but entertaining, too. Good for a fact and a laugh. A perfect midday break site. The stuff of legends, really.
Jacek’s Answer:
I’ll jump in on this as I edit this piece if I can. I do keep close tabs on how our peers are doing. When traffic or revenues are trending up or down, I like to check in with Dustin at Pajiba or the Fug girls. Both sites are similar in size and both cover the celebrity ecosystem, and each has a different primary monetization partner so sharing that info helps me gauge whether or not something we’re experiencing is unique to us or a trend in the industry. Google algorithm changes come to mind when referral traffic dips or spikes from Search or Discover, for instance. I’ll look at certain comparison tools that are available online when I want to see how our site is doing against other sites with whom I don’t keep in touch directly. Similarweb is one a lot of industry folks use for that.
Question from Maggie:
Lainey in the recent mailbag you mentioned you are interested in more than just the on-camera parts of television. Kind of like many actors like to go behind the camera and direct - is there something similar you would like to do down the road?
Lainey’s Answer:
From the minute I got into TV, I was fascinated by more than just the on-camera part of the process. Of course, Duana has something to do with this. Duana produced me remotely for my first few months on ETALK. We spent hours and hours and hours on the phone, getting to know each other; it was almost like a long-distance relationship, LOL.
I was living in Vancouver at the time, which is why it took a while before we met in person. We finally met in person when ETALK brought me into the studio in Toronto on Junos weekend. If you’re not from Canada, the Junos are the Canada’s major music awards and, at the time, our network had the rights to broadcast the show. That year, 2006, the Junos were taking place in Halifax. ETALK had a whole team on the ground in Halifax, sending footage back to Toronto all weekend, where Duana was managing the feeds and organising how to get it all into the show.
So I walk into the studio, and in one hand she’s holding a venti-size coffee and in the other I think it was a clipboard, and she’s keeping up a conversation with me while also somehow on the phone with a colleague in Halifax, and we’re going back and forth from her desk up a flight of stairs to where the viz was coming in from the Junos, and she’s doing time-coding and whatever math at the same time and making decisions about what to cut or keep…
Walking and talking, walking and delegating, and writing shit down on her clipboard, keeping it all together. I’m telling you, in my memory of that day, Duana was The West Wing. And it was at that moment that was like … umm… producers are sexy as FUCK.
That scene is why I’ve always been obsessed with television producers because Duana belonged to a whole cohort of baddies—including Sasha!—who guided me through my first years in TV.
Over the last few years, I’ve accumulated some co-producing credits of my own on half-hour specials that we’ve aired on ETALK and I love this work, collaborating with other producers, like Joanna, for example, on major interviews that I’ve hosting, having a voice in where we want to take the discussion, what parts of the eventual interview we want to highlight, what clips to use that add to what our guest is saying – I have loved these opportunities and I hope there will be more.
As for directing, Duana’s been doing more and more directing these days. She was the co-showrunner and co-director on her series, Near or Far, that was released earlier this year, and she just directed an episode of another series that you’ll see next year. The sheer amount of work involved in directing an episode of television? It’s bonkers because what you don’t “see” is the prep. That’s the shit that well before the cameras are in place. I’ve heard Duana describe it as Tetris. It’s a lot of project management, resource management, but also, you can do everything possible during the prep stage but still be prepared to figure out a new puzzle on the day with the cameras and where they’re positioned and how they’ll move and whether or not it works with the scene. That kind of work is perfect for Duana because she is a problem solver, she gets off on that controlled chaos. And she enjoys making decisions.
Me? Not really. I make decisions all the time in my job, of course, but to be honest, unlike Duana, that’s not on the top of my list of “fun”. Let me give you an example. This past Emmys weekend was right after TIFF. Sarah and I were exhausted, and we already knew, midway through the festival, that we would not have the bandwidth to lead our coverage on Emmys weekend. I’ll speak for myself – all I wanted to do was take orders. I was totally up for the writing, but I was not up for the lining up the site, choosing which stories to cover and which to drop, and making the assignments. Sarah and I talked the week before the Emmys and I was like, hey, you’re tired, I’m tired, should we hand it over to Duana? We were in agreement, and guess who couldn’t wait to take the reins?
That’s not to say that Sarah and I didn’t have input on our Emmys coverage. We shared our ideas, what we thought about who won and who wore what, and after hearing what we had to say on our Zoom call after the show, it was Duana who figured out the groupings and the rundown and gave us our assignments. Earlier this year after the Oscars, it was Sarah who took on that responsibility. Sarah took the lead on our Oscar coverage, and it was more fun for me to work on what I was given and just… write away. Which tells me I am not cut out to direct!
Producing? Yes. And writing, too. I’ve only written for unscripted television, never for scripted, and I’m starting to think about that more and more.
But where writing is concerned, if I can find time to write outside of LaineyGossip and The Squawk and the regularly scheduled program, I’ve actually started sketching out an idea for a novel. It’s early, very, very early, so I’m still noodling, and there’s a plot point that I can’t quite figure out yet, but that would be where I really want to put my energy…. Eventually.
Question from Nadya:
This is for Sarah - not sure if it rises to mailbag level. One of the parts of the MCU I find really tedious and boring are the stakes / villain / third act. Like I feel like it’s *always* the end of the world and it’s *always* about learning to be selfless and sacrificing for the team / loved one. I just… don’t care? How many times can I watch this? But I don’t know the comics. So my question is - do the comics feel the same way? This sort of relentless assault of dissolving the entire space time continuum? Or are more of them like The Batman, where we can have a plot of like one guy in the sewer trying to blow up a wall?
&
Question from Kathryn L-B:
Me too! I loved Spider-Man Homecoming bc the stakes were a kid taking on a local adult grifter and losing his crush. Both of those felt like equally dire conflicts. And they didn’t need to include saving the world!
Sarah’s answer:
Not all comics are like that, no. Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye run from the 2010s, for instance, was about what Clint Barton gets up to in between Avengering. Very street level stuff, which the show actually captured very well. Low stakes! Fun adventure!
There are larger scope stories, of course, such as the Infinity Saga, but Marvel heroes, in the comics, tend to do best when working at the street level. What’s the best Iron Man arc? Demon in a Bottle, in which Tony Stark reckons with his alcoholism. What’s the best Captain America arc? The Captain, in which Steve Rogers steps down as Captain America because he doesn’t want people to conflate his (forced) actions on behalf of the US government with his endorsement of those policies. The world-ending stuff tends to get the biggest readership, because crossover events reward years of keeping up, which is what Avengers: Endgame paid off in the movies. But the best storytelling comes from stories about heroes struggling with relatively grounded problems. Family stuff, personal failings, misgivings and internal conflict, that sort of thing. Right now, the MCU could take a page.
Question from JC:
What is UP with Apple TV’s marketing strategy? Some of the best shows you’ve never heard of are on Apple, and you sometimes just kind of stumble on them. New series directed by Alfonso Cuaron starring Cate Blanchett, and it’s a thriller coming out during spooky season? I want this. I want to know about this and not have to just hope the algorithm finds it for me. Why aren’t they advertising??
Sarah’s answer:
From your lips to the goddess’s ears! I do NOT understand Apple TV+ marketing at all…but over the last couple years, Slow Horses has turned into a word-of-mouth hit. Ted Lasso, too, caught on AFTER people started recommending it. It seems like, right now, Apple’s strategy is to build a reputation as a tastemaker, much like HBO enjoyed until very recently. They want to put out stuff, especially TV shows—their TV side is much more consistent and cohesive than their film side, to date—and let audiences find them, rather than go out and hustle an audience.
That said, they release trailers, send their talent out for press rounds, they are engaging. They just don’t seem to be advertising a lot on other people’s platforms. Like I don’t see a lot of Apple TV+ ads on Youtube, you know? I see ads for every other platform and network, but them, not so much—and I watch their trailers and google info about their shows, so the algorithm SHOULD be showing me that stuff, but it’s curiously absent. But again, if the goal is word of mouth, they let fans of particular actors or titles do the work for them, like everyone recommending Bad Monkey because they like Vince Vaughn and/or Carl Hiaasen’s books. I haven’t seen a single commercial for Bad Monkey, but I have had several people recommend the show to me. (I haven’t started it yet because there is too much stuff.)
So maybe it’s working. Again, assuming they want to be known for quality first, and if they want to build a sense of exclusivity around their platform, not doing massive media campaigns plays into that. It’s a long game for sure, but if the model is peak HBO, well, HBO was never a ratings leader. But they were a tastemaker, the progenitors of peak TV. And if that’s Apple TV+’s goal, it seems to be working. For their TV shows, anyway.
Thanks as always for reading! Don’t forget we’re dark on Monday!
Just keep squawking,
Sarah and Lainey
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So I'm going to talk about something that will probably get me yelled at, but it's been bothering me all week and it's kind of festering in a way that I need to lance. I'm talking about Janet Jackson and her clueless remarks about Kamala Harris.
I've spent 2 decades defending Janet Jackson against the slings and arrows that were unjustly heaped on her because of Justin Timberlake and the superbowl incident, and paying marginal attention to what she says and does. She has never seemed political, she is basically pretty quiet on all fronts. But here she is in the Year of our Lord 2024 spreading one of the most bizarre pieces of a bullshit conspiracy theory, in a publication with global reach, against the one hope we have of avoiding rule and ruination by an authoritarian fascist who isn't just a threat to our country, but a global threat. I mean, What the Actual Fuck? And the garbage she spouted isn't up for a "maybe not, maybe so" kind of discussion, it is demonstrably untrue. Kamala is a mixed race woman of both black and Indian descent, she has always identified as black, she went to an HBCU, she has not been shy about claiming her black heritage. Her father is absolutely a black man, as anyone with 30 seconds and an internet connection could see for themselves. He's not just a black man, but an accomplished economist and professor emeritus at an Ivy League school. He's not a mystery. Again, WTaF?
"Well, I haven't seen the news in a couple of days." Or has it been the last 2 decades? No acknowledgement from her or her staff, except the guy that got fired for trying to make a proper correction. I mean, if you don't know anything but conspiracy theories, then why are you talking about it at all? And why not admit your error, move on, and keep out of something you clearly know nothing about? You had no problem spouting this garbage to start with, why should it be left to Tito to decide whether you make things right?
I know this all sounds very harsh and angry, but that's because I am super angry about this. She has a platform, people listen to what she says when she does say something. If you don't understand the politics and the gravity of a situation then maybe it's best to stay the hell out of it and keep your mouth shut. I have real fear bordering on panic about what will happen in November and beyond, I fear for the future of my children and grandchildren. This is not the time to repeat untrue bullshit about our last hope for saving ourselves. But here we are.
50 Cent is just like Kendrick Lamar and Drake: women are the pawns with which men wage war against their enemies. 50 Cent has a record of misogyny and recently sided with Tory Lanez against Megan Thee Stallion. 50 Cent is no hero. This isn't just hateration, it's part of the elemental misogyny (especially against black women) in hip hop and hip hop beefs. This is a significant omission from the post.