The Beauty Salon Recession Indicator and the 'Cult of Le Creuset'
Things I Saw This Week — Saturday, April 19
“Sinners,” the new Ryan Coogler-written, directed, and produced Southern Gothic-vampire and blues film, is now in theaters.
Because it’s set in North Mississippi, and Memphis and Mississippi musicians played a key role in the movie, I wrote an article delving into the film. (It’s paywalled.)
I loved reading the 60 pages of production notes and learning about the research and consultants (Choctaw, Mississippi Chinese, Irish) who worked on the project.
It was also inspiring to see Coogler talking about the filming process go viral.
Part of what I enjoy most about my job is going down the rabbit holes. I try not to go too far into the weeds since I’m writing for a general audience, but with every interview, there’s a nugget I tuck away.
An article I’m seeing making the rounds is about Coogler’s deal structure. Namely:
As one studio after another began clamoring to pay Sinners’s $90 million-ish asking price, the director’s agents at WME notified them of a few strings attached. Coogler would retain final cut (a creative dispensation reserved for the industry’s crème de la crème), command first-dollar gross (that is, a percentage of box-office revenue beginning from the movie’s theatrical opening rather than waiting for the studio to turn a profit), and, most contentiously, 25 years after its release, ownership of Sinners would revert to the director.
That last part was a dealbreaker for most studios — Quentin Tarantino is the most recent on a very short list of auteurs to demand such an exceedingly rare rights-reversion agreement. In 2017, the multiple-Oscar winner negotiated a complex pact with Sony under which copyright-control rights to his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood would revert from the studio to Tarantino 30 years after its theatrical release. And while Sony and Universal had been in hot pursuit of Sinners, Warner Bros. co-chairmen/CEOs Pam Abdy and Michael DeLuca were the only back-lot chieftains willing to acquiesce to Coogler’s unusual terms.
In the production notes, Coogler describes “Sinners” as his love letter to film.
Every time I see a piece of art in which someone put their love of something out into the world (their town, their genre, their craft, their people), I’m heartened to do the same.
And inspired to keep my own camera and notebook by my side.
(Keep creating and keep refining.)
(Going) Analog
(As I try to limit my social media usage to one day a week with varying levels of success)
“Meet The Young Photographers Bringing Film Back — And Creating A More Diverse Scene”
“This former influencer gave up her smartphone. She says you should, too”
Art
Rashid Johnson has a new exhibition in the Guggenheim Rotunda.
Even more than suiting the way his mind works—“I often argue that we are too limiting in the way that we define ‘medium,’” Johnson reflects. “Consciousness can be a medium”—taking an expansive, changeable approach to form and discipline was simply what was done as Johnson was starting out. “When I first came into art in the mid-’90s, it was almost perfunctory that you would be experimenting with other media, whether it be photography, film, performance, or installation,” he says.
That idea is most prominent in the Guggenheim show at the top of the rotunda, where Sanguine—a sprawling, site-specific installation composed of gridded steel structures with live potted plants, books by influential Black authors (one of numerous testaments to Johnson’s love of literature in the exhibition, which takes its name from a poem by Amiri Baraka), and videos—is mounted. The final Sanguine structure houses a film of the same name, which explores Johnson’s relationship with his father and son. As part of the installation, plants—including full-sized palm trees—are suspended from the Guggenheim’s ceiling, appearing to float in mid-air.
In Chicago, two exhibitions now on view center on the Great Migration.
Fashion
Hyperallergic reviews a new nail art photobook.
Casting a wide net, Denton-Hurst included select interviews and work samples from 35 international artists from Mexico, India, Japan, Korea, and across the United States and Europe. In a brief introduction, she traces the exponential growth of salon culture and nail art in the last two centuries, highlighting how Vietnamese immigrants began to shape the industry in the United States in the 1970s and the historical significance of custom nail art as a form of personal style for Black women.
Bloomberg looks at the “Beauty Salon Recession Indicator.” (gift link)
When the National Bureau of Economic Research made the Great Recession official in December 2008, its Business Cycle Dating Committee recognized the US economy had actually been contracting for an entire year. That’s where nontraditional indicators like visits to nail salons or barbershops can come in handy. “The first thing people are going to give up is their massage,” said Brian McGee, president of Phoenix-based beauty-industry consulting firm BAM Navigation LLC.
…
Well before the tariff threat, some clients were already losing patience with higher prices, said Sydney Jackson-Green, who’s studying cosmetology in Springfield, Pennsylvania. She had to raise fees because of “outrageous prices” on products, and she finds even a $12 to $20 increase can be prohibitive for her typical twentysomething client. To save money, some customers are trying to color their own hair. At least that brings in business: After they try and fail to do it on their own, they pay Jackson-Green to fix their “home disasters.”
Food (and Drink!)
On “The Color-Drenched Cult of Le Creuset”
Like Hermès and Chanel, Le Creuset (luh cruh-SAY, according to the official video, meaning French for crucible) is a Gallic legacy brand that has flourished in the modern global marketplace by becoming collectible while also remaining functional. And collectors have turned what was once a niche brand into a near-cult, perpetually entranced by new lines, colors and shapes.
Some stick to a color family, like pastels; others focus on a single item across the spectrum, like trivets or pie birds.
The Pudding analyzes wine quality based on what animal (or mythical creature) is on the label.
Travel
Here’s a guide to Alentejo, Portugal, south of Lisbon.
São Lourenço do Barrocal is also located just ten minutes from Alentejo’s ceramics capital, São Pedro do Corval. Here, you’ll find family-run workshops and studios where artisans still shape and paint everything by hand using traditional red clay pottery, like Egidio Santos, the only master potter left in the village who still does the entire process by hand using local clay. Just a few minutes down the road, you’ll find the beautiful preserved medieval village of Monsaraz, perched high on a hilltop, offering sweeping views over the vast plains and the Alqueva Lake below. Encircled by ancient stone walls, the village feels suspended in time, with narrow cobbled streets, where artisans’ shops, small galleries, and charming cafés are tucked into old white houses outlined in blue, blending seamlessly with the historic character. At its heart stands the Monsaraz Castle, once a strategic fortress, now a stunning lookout point. Uva also suggests visiting the town of Estremoz, famous for its Saturday market. “The market is a treasure trove of fresh produce, cheeses, cured meats, grains, and various antiques and collectibles, from furniture and ceramics to copperware, books, postcards, and even farming tools,” he says.
TV/Films
In other new release news, is the debut of Andrew Ahn’s “reimagining” of Ang Lee’s 1993 romantic comedy, ‘The Wedding Banquet.”
The sense of community the green-card marriage trope engenders for the characters is “authentic to modern day queer life. Friendships or polyamory, we are such a web,” he said. “Our friendship with one person might affect how we are a lover to another.” He added, “This iteration of ‘The Wedding Banquet’ grew because of an initial thought experiment where I wondered, ‘What if the bride in Ang Lee’s film [Banquet] was also queer, and had a queer partner?'”
Starting work on the script as early as 2019, Schamus and Ahn began an organic, trial-and-error-driven writing process. They never worked on the same Final Draft file at the same time, exchanged passes, and used index cards, physical printouts, and table reads as writing tools. Ahn described Schamus as adept in story structure, since he has been a successful studio head, and when Ahn went off to make “Fire Island,” Schamus continued experimenting with the script.
An interview with star (and “SNL” favorite) Bowen Yang:
The first time he saw the original Wedding Banquet was at NYU, rented on DVD from the campus library. At the time, he was (mostly) closeted, and the story of an Asian man hiding his sexual orientation from his family was particularly resonant. When he was in high school, his parents discovered he was gay; confused and distraught, they cut him a deal for college: He could either stay in Colorado and live at home, or go to either UCLA or NYU if he agreed to go to conversion therapy, which he did. Yang ended up at “the gayest school in the country” living with his older sister, also an NYU student, in an apartment next door to a gay bar.
Needless to say, the original film stuck with him.