Media Club
Over the decades of my adult life, I’ve had the privilege of participating in three long-running, very successful book groups—one in Manhattan, one in the Hudson Valley, and one in Southern California. A good book club is like a literature seminar combined with regular found-family bonding time, often with excellent snacks thrown into the mix. What could be better?
Well, at the risk of sounding boastful, I’ll tell you. In September of 2020, our second child (James) came to our oldest child (Christian) and me with a proposal. James had graduated from college the May before and missed the rigor of regularly being assigned to write analytically. We were all in the midst of COVID; everyone we knew was getting creative in finding ways to stay close to loved ones.
We’d always enjoyed our three-way conversations about the arts, and James wanted to continue them despite our inability to see each other often. So he proposed that each month, one of us choose a book, one of us a movie, and the third an album. We’d spend time consuming all three, then write our responses to each other via email. Then the next month, we’d rotate who chose what.
This sounded great to Christian and me, and we committed to give the endeavor our best. We came up with several clever, cheeky, or esoteric names for our group, but ultimately ended up with the imaginative moniker “Media Club.”
We made our first choices and wrote about them the very next month. James chose clipping.’s album There Existed an Addiction to Blood. I picked Thomas Vinterberg’s 2015 film Far From the Madding Crowd. Christian selected Hunter S. Thompson’s book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972. At the time, James lived in Berkeley, Christian was roaming the East Coast on a campaign trail of his own, and I was in Southern California—so the emails flew back and forth across the continent as the months rolled on.
I immediately knew I wanted to preserve this correspondence for posterity. I opened up a new Scrivener file and created a Master List of our selections. Then I made a new file for each month (and eventually a folder for each year) and copied and pasted all our emails in chronological order. For the first four years, we were all together for Thanksgiving, so we watched that month’s movie and had the rest of our conversations in person. As a result, November’s files don’t have much in them. But over the past five and a half years, we’ve averaged about 100,000 words—more than a novel’s worth—each year.
We disclose “what made us choose.” (Family joke.) We talk about what we loved and what we didn’t, from characters to chord progressions, from plot holes to polyrhythms. We educate each other on genre and context, and we often include a fair amount of autobiographical material. We gravitate toward favorite types or themes (horror, hip hop, and political commentary are always popular), but also have managed to have our selections reflect our broad, eclectic tastes—K-pop, jazz, and country; classics, true crime, and poetry; and films from all over the world.
Once in a while we’ve run into time constraints and have had to extend the deadline for our responses to six weeks or even a whole summer. We never want the perfect (finishing by month’s end) to be the enemy of the ultimate good (continuing our conversations without getting frustrated and burning out). Occasionally we’ve done something special, like contrast two films, albums, or literary works in addition to the month’s other media.
To make my selections easier, I keep a running list of ideas in all three categories, culled from reviews or memory or just random inspiration. Sometimes one of us ends up choosing a real clunker—mostly unintentionally, but in at least one case, on purpose. We’ve found you can learn just as much (and have just as much fun) by savagely ripping apart discussing something bad as something good. Nevertheless, we do tend to apologize; time is precious, and ideally, we generally want our media consumption to be pleasant.
I turn 60, Christian turns 33, and James turns 30 this fall. It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that I was reading them both picture books until my voice literally gave out, or watching Toy Story with them for the thousandth time, or dancing around our living room with them to the immortal tracks of the first Pokémon movie soundtrack. I’m stunned at the talented, insightful, brilliant, kind, and hilarious men they’ve become, and after more than five years of reading their writing, I still often am astonished by both how good it is and how it keeps getting better.
Media Club has done what James hoped it would do. It has expanded our horizons, broadened our tastes, and deepened our knowledge stores and cultural understanding. It’s made us stronger writers and musicians. (Sadly, none of us is currently making a film.) But most of all, it has brought us closer together and strengthened bonds of understanding, respect, and love. For my part, I hope we can keep Media Club going for decades to come.
Our Master List thus far:
2020
October
There Existed an Addiction to Blood (clipping.) J
Far from the Madding Crowd (Thomas Vinterberg, 2015) L
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 (Hunter S. Thompson) C
November
The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years (Spheeris, 1988) C
Marshall Crenshaw (Marshall Crenshaw) L
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) J
December
Meat is Murder (The Smiths) C
A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens) L
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000) J
2021
January
Carrion Comfort (Dan Simmons) C
Madvillainy (Madvillain) J
Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003) L
February
Fire in the Kitchen (The Chieftains) L
The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night (Eugene O’Neill) J
Sleepers (Barry Levinson, 1996) C
March
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (George Saunders) L
The Heart of Saturday Night (Tom Waits) C
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979) J
April
To Pimp a Butterfly (Kendrick Lamar) J
Neuromancer (William Gibson) C
Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) L
May
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Ocean Vuong) J
I Advanced Masked (Andy Summers and Robert Fripp) L
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos, 2018) C
June
Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011) J
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw) L
Me Against the World (2Pac) C
July
Crimson Peak (Guillermo del Toro, 2015) L
The Sympathizer (Viet Than Nguyen) C
Trout Mask Replica (Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band) J
August
A Hard Day (Kim Seong-hun, 2014) C
Sweetheart of the Rodeo (The Byrds) L
Absalom, Absalom! (William Faulkner) J
September
Goldenrod (Maggie Smith) L
Night Creeper (Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats) C
Transit (Christian Petzold, 2018) J
October
Cargo (Ben Howling, 2017) L
Lunar Park (Bret Easton Ellis) C
Untrue (Burial) J
November
What’s the 411 (Mary J. Blige) L
Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson) J
Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme, 1984) C
December
Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead (Olga Tokarczuk) L
The Slim Shady LP (Eminem) C
The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012) J
2022
January
The Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler) C
Looper (Rian Johnson, 2012) L
Deloused in the Comatorium (Mars Volta) J
February
Blue (Joni Mitchell) L
The Devil Finds Work (James Baldwin) J
Jacob’s Ladder (Adrian Lyne, 1990) C
March
Pain and Glory (Almódovar, 2019) J
Big Dark Hole (Jeffrey Ford) L
Doolittle (The Pixies) C
April
The Spanish Prisoner (David Mamet, 1997) L
Bright Lights, Big City (Jay McInerney) C
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) J
May
Breaking Away (Peter Yates, 1979) C
Imperial Bedroom (Elvis Costello) L
The Namesake (Jhumpa Lahiri) J
June/July
Dark City (Alex Proyas, 1998) J
The Ministry for the Future (Kim Stanley Robinson) L
My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy (Kanye West) C
August
A Medicine for Melancholy (Ray Bradbury) C
The Handmaiden (Park Chan-Wook, 2016) L
Exmilitary (Death Grips) J
September
Night of Hunters (Tori Amos) L
Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983) C
Darkness on the Edge of Town (Brian Keene) J
October
The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafón) L
Scenery (Ryo Fukui) C
Cure (Kyoshi Kurosawa, 1997) J
November
Unknown Pleasures (Joy Division) J
Le Trou (Jacques Becker, 1960) L
Night Things (Michael Talbot) C
December
If We Were Villains (M.L. Rio) J
Scarface (de Palma, 1983) C
Rage Against the Machine (Rage Against the Machine) L
2023
January
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) J
Facelift (Alice in Chains) C
Hokuloa Road (Elizabeth Hand) L
February
My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985) L
Murder on the Orient Express (Agatha Christie) C
OK Computer (Radiohead) J
March
Vaughan Williams: Orchestral Works (Marriner/St. Martin-in-the-Fields) L
The Conversation (F. Coppola, 1974) C
Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky) J
April
The Hacienda (Isabel Cañas) L
Lonesome, On’ry, and Mean (Waylon Jennings) C
Incendies (Denis Villeneuve, 2010) J
May
Orlando (Sally Potter, 1993) L
Koko (Peter Straub) C
Dummy (Portishead) and Mezzanine (Massive Attack) J
Summer
154 (Wire) L
A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan) J
Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977) C
September
White Cat, Black Dog (Kelly Link) L
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Schrader, 1985) J
Oops! I Did It Again (Britney Spears) C
October
Shaun of the Dead (Wright, 2004) L
Laughing Stock (Talk Talk) J
Skeleton Crew (Stephen King) C
November
Bewitched (Laufey) L
Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984) C
I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Iain Reid) J
December
How High We Go in the Dark (Sequoia Nagamatsu) L
Chocolate and Cheese (Ween) C
Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985) J
2024
January
Mount Analogue (Rene Daumal) C
Saint Maud (Rose Glass, 2019) L
The Velvet Underground & Nico J
February
Urban Counterpoint: The Piano Music of Ed Bland (Judith Olson) L
Songs of a Dead Dreamer/Grimscribe (Thomas Ligotti) J
The Day of the Jackal (Zinneman, 1973) C
March
Lord Willin’ (Clipse) C
High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963) J
The Three-Body Problem (Cixin Liu) L
April
The Name of the Rose (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1986) L
Vespertine (Björk) J
The Princess Bride (William Goldman) C
May
Negative Space (B. R. Yeager) J
English Settlement (XTC) L
Deep Red (Dario Argento, 1975) C
June
Afterland (Lauren Beukes) L
Apocalypse Now (F. Coppola, 1979) J
Robbin’ the Hood (Sublime) C
July
In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2008) L
Discovery (Daft Punk) J
The Jaws Log (Carl Gottlieb) C
August
Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1989) C
The Album (Blackpink) L
Helter Skelter (Vincent Bugliosi) J
September
Screaming for Vengeance (Judas Priest) C
Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami) L
Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000) J
October
Oddity (McCarthy, 2024) L
The Boys on the Bus (Timothy Crouse) C
Bone Machine (Tom Waits) J
November
If on a winter’s night, a traveler (Italo Calvino) J
The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973) C
Goat’s Head Soup (The Rolling Stones) L
December
Reasonable Doubt (Jay-Z) C
Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008) J
Holidays on Ice (David Sedaris) L
2025
January
RRR (S. S. Rajamouli, 2022) L
The Long Halloween (Loeb/Sale) C
You Must Believe in Spring (Bill Evans) J
February
In the Miso Soup (Ryu Murakami) J
Want Two (Rufus Wainwright) L
Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019) C
March
Between Two Fires (Christopher Buehlman) L
PetroDragonic Apocalypse (King Gizzard) C
Decision to Leave (Park Chan-Wook) J
April
33 1/3: Led Zeppelin IV (Erik Davis) C
This Is It (The Strokes) J
The Prince of Egypt (Chapman/Hickner/Wells, 1998) L
May
Last Days (Adam Nevill) J
Maximum Overdrive (King, 1986) C
Arcadia (Alison Krauss & Union Station) L
Summer
James/Huckleberry Finn (Everett/Twain) L
Entre Marido y Mujer (Fruko Y Sus Tesos) C
The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009) J
September
A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick, 2019) L
Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath) J
What It Takes: The Way to the White House (Richard Ben Cramer) C
October/November
Halloween/Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978/2018) C
Proxima (Overland Inn) L
“The Fall of the House of Usher” (Edgar Allan Poe) J
December
Piñata (Freddie Gibbs & Marlin) C
High Spirits (Robertson Davies) L
Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) J
2026
January
De Todas las Flores (Natalia Lafourcade) J
Perdido Street Station (China Mieville) C
Women Talking (Sarah Polley, 2022) L
February
Anthem (Black Uhuru) L
GoldenEye (Martin Campbell, 1995) C
Nuclear War: A Scenario (Annie Jacobsen) J
March/April
Back to Black (Amy Winehouse) C
Long Lankin (Lindsey Barraclough) L
Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997) J
May
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964) L
In a Silent Way (Miles Davis) J
The Queen (Nick Cutter) C
June
Blindness (José Saramago) J
Violent Femmes (Violent Femmes) L
Chungking Express (Wong Kar-Wai, 1994) C
