Last Monday, Jack Harlow announced via Instagram a partnership with The Roxy to show eight films that inspired Monica over the span of the four Thursday nights in April.

Readers can likely predict my next move. I immediately bought tickets to last week’s showing of La Notte and next week’s showing of Pauline at the Beach. The “Jack Harlow Selects” landing page of The Roxy’s website read, “each [screening will be] accompanied by appearances and reflections from Harlow himself.”

The announcement of the event restored my dwindling faith in living in New York City. I imagined seeing Jack Harlow talk about films would bookend this obsession of mine and allow me to move onto something frankly more interesting. 

I attended La Notte with two friends that after a years long propaganda campaign are now Jack Harlow fans in their own right. I imagined seeing this 1961 Italian film with a white rapper in attendance would measure up to some of my most treasured only-in-NYC nights which often feature a brush with celebrity. 

As we descended the stairs down to the theater, I was buzzing with nervous energy — what if he wasn’t as good at speaking about films as he is at writing about them? 

The album played when we walked into the theater and there was no unifying look to the smattering of people in attendance. In fact, aside from two teenage boys with no bags who left not even a minute after the movie started, no one there appeared to have any relationship with Jack Harlow. Aside from me and my friends, I heard no one whispering about him and sensed no excited energy.

While the other movie goers and apparent fans of Italian modernist cinema rustled through their outsized number of snacks, I was busy noticing a burly security guard standing in the back of the theater. When the lights went down, I heard a door swing open in that same corner. I whipped my head around and watched a tall man in a sweatsuit with the hood pulled low over his face take a seat. Almost positive it was Jack Harlow, I didn’t give him a second glance because I knew I’d be seeing him in the front of the theater in two short hours. I only became entirely confident it was Jack Harlow when I heard him laugh.

When the credits rolled, I sat up tall in my seat anxious for Jack Harlow to descend and speak. But no such thing happened. Everyone filed out of the theater. When it became clear there would be no presentation after the film, we, too, left.  I was puzzled to the point that I encouraged Mehak to approach a random guy and to ask if we “missed something.” This stranger wasn’t under the impression that Jack Harlow would speak. Did no one else read the description on The Roxy website?! 

On the subway ride home, I frantically refreshed Letterboxd and I was rewarded with further evidence of Jack Harlow’s attendance. He logged La Notte and wrote “Makes me want to be 42, hitting chic parties with my wife (🔜) And it must be said…Jeanne Moreau in this movie is exactly the type of woman I want to meet. Her demeanor. Her poise. The bags under her eyes. MY SPEED.” With a review like that, it’s hard to hold The Roxy’s miscommunication against him. I can’t wait to do it all again next Thursday. 

ALTAR BOYS IMPLICATED At South by Southwest, Billboard aired a dirty little secret of the music industry. In an interview, digital marketing agency, Chaotic Good, revealed how it builds networks of TikTok pages “from fan pages, meme pages, sports clips and more” and "plugs the artist’s song in the background to create a groundswell of support for the track” something the agency calls “trend simulation.” The co-founders claim that they know how to go viral and ensure that when a client is, let's say, performing on SNL, that network of social media accounts posts 100 times that it was the best performance of the year. 

The agency goes so far as to corrupt one of the most beautiful creative projects of the internet — the only reason I still use TikTok — fan edits. Chaotic Good made edits of Kevin Atwater’s song “startripping” to the show Yellowjackets. The co-founder said, “The song has 40,000 creates on TikTok, and it’s really improved a lot … Now fans show up dressed as the characters.” 

I imagine that this strategy is inspired by the success of Djo “End of Beginnings” which blew up in part because of The Bear fan edits. Fans organically tied the themes of the song to the themes of the show bringing it to new audiences. When Joe Keery talks about the success of that song he emphasizes how its was outside of his control and that he worked just as hard on every other song he wrote. Chaotic Good suggests that now that virality is in its control. 

It makes me sick to my stomach to imagine a sick world where my treasured Harris Dickinson “Crush” edit could be used as market research, or even worse, a creation of Chaotic Good trying to fabricate virality. 

In an excellent Substack post, Eliza McLamb grappled with finding out that Chaotic Good doesn’t just work with pop slop, but the musicians who move her — and me — like Cameron Winter / Geese, Dijon, and Mk.gee. She wrote, “Alternative music used to mean just that — an alternative to the mainstream — something that couldn’t simply be adopted by everyone else through pure exposure, through virality. There are certainly arguments to be made about the mass appeal of a band like Geese, but no one in good faith could compare them to the commercial pop stars that populate Chaotic Good’s roster.”

Former Skins cast members, anyone Irish, British actors whose breakout role was “playing gay,” rappers from Kentucky, and men in Ocean’s Eleven (and their codependent best friends) are all fair game.

MJ LENDERMAN is writing the forward to Penguin Classics reissue of Body by Harry Crews, a Southern writer who apparently is a huge inspiration for him. The book “explores the gritty world of female bodybuilding.” What the hell, sure! 

HONORABLE ALTAR BOY Loved the entirety of this interview between Romy Mars and her mom, Sofia Coppola, and Marc Jacobs, but especially her question about fan edits. 

If you can handle more JACK HARLOW, this Instagram Reel is a fabulous look into his creative process and hints at the origin story of his cinephilia.