How Long Gone launches awards show: The Goneies.
Plus: New York Magazine wants a real estate reporter, new Upper West Side pizza, and more.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Last night, I started watching Monsters of God on HBO (made by Eric Goode of The Bowery Hotel and Chimp Crazy — man has range). Curious if any of you started the series and what you think. I’ll have to compare it to Xander Robin’s The Python Hunt. Lots of snake on screen this summer.
Today’s newsletter includes: Nat Geo’s New York hiring spree, David Remnick is hiring an assistant, How Long Gone’s new awards show, Teddy Kim on Willem Dafoe’s Late Fame, good news for the Elizabeth Street Garden (what a rollercoaster), and Alex Cooper dodges Andrew Ross Sorkin’s questions.
“If anyone is casting the Leopold Aschenbrenner biopic, this is your man.” By Teddy Kim
Stay Tuned is a Feed Me guest column about film and entertainment, written by Teddy Kim.
Quick thoughts on two movies I saw and enjoyed this week: Kent Jones’s Late Fame, which stars Willem Dafoe as a long-retired downtown New York poet, Ed Saxberger, who gets “rediscovered” by a circle of young writers and drawn back into the artistic life of the city, only to find its character much changed. Saxberger published one book decades ago and his new friends decide he’s a lost master who’ll lend a serious artistic and historical weight to their own ambitions. The first half hour is a delight, a really funny send-up of the downtown intellectual arts scene. Edmund Donovan plays the ringleader of the group; if anyone is casting the Leopold Aschenbrenner biopic, this is your man. My one complaint was that the film almost suffers from servicing too much plot. I would happily have spent more time just sinking into the vibes of Saxberger’s own life and seeing him hang out with his two sets of friends. If you liked Paterson or Perfect Days or The Great Beauty, this is in that neighborhood, with a little bit of Finding Forrester in there, too.
And Olmo, Fernando Eimbcke’s first feature in ten years, in which a young teen in 1979 New Mexico spends one very hot day trying to get out of looking after his sick dad so he and his friend can make it to a party. It’s not fully Superbad or a John Hughes film, but it carries the charm and innocent fun of those kinds of movies while at the same time staying true to its more quiet and reflective tone. The period detail is also impressively rendered for such a small budget. And it doesn’t hurt that it was produced for Plan B by my friend Yuri.
New releases this weekend: Adam Meek’s Sundance debut, Union County, is opening in limited release. Will Poulter and Noah Centineo play brothers going through a court-mandated recovery program in a stretch of rural Ohio that the opioid years hollowed out. The feature originally started as a short film Meeks made after sitting in on an actual adult recovery court in Union County. A good part of the supporting cast are real patients and family members playing versions of themselves. Also opening this weekend is The End of Oak Street, David Robert Mitchell’s first feature since Under the Silver Lake. Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor star in this sci-fi movie about a suburban street that gets transported through time and space. Tonally, it’s not what I would’ve expected from Mitchell but it looks like it might scratch that Spielberg itch for everyone left disappointed by Disclosure Day. Finally: It’s not a theatrical release but the first episode of Lanterns, as in the Green Lanterns of DC Comics, is premiering on HBO this Sunday. Despite my superhero fatigue, I have to admit I’m a little intrigued by the trailer for the show, which is going for a more serious, grounded tone, with explicit references to True Detective, Fargo, and No Country for Old Men. Damon Lindelof (Lost, The Leftovers, Watchmen) is a co-creator, which contributes to my optimism. As long as we’re going to get more IP-driven content, I wouldn’t mind if we got something like True Detective in every world.
Here are some other screenings I’d encourage you to check out in the coming week:
⛩️ Friday 8/14 onwards, nationwide — Your Name. (2016) — I’m not surprised to see GKIDS is releasing a 4K remaster of Your Name, which was the highest-grossing anime film of all time when it came out in 2016, earning over $400 million globally. Ten years later, half of Gen Z Americans watch anime on a weekly basis. Anime was pretty much the only theatrical bright spot during an otherwise slow period last fall, when we saw movies like Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc and Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle come out with really strong opening weekends. I love everything by director Makoto Shinkai; his themes of modernity contrasted with tradition, and the impact of freak climate events on our personal lives, are more relevant than ever. You’ll appreciate Your Name if you’re drawn to movies like the Before trilogy, About Time, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
🍍 Friday 8/14 thru Sunday 8/16 @ Metrograph — Chungking Express (1994) — The movie I’ve rewatched the most times in the past seven years. It’s a gorgeous looking film, and as sprightly and fun as In the Mood for Love is serious and melancholic. A big inspiration for films like Moonlight and Waves. Wong Kar-wai’s singular film is really two stories about two heartbroken cops in Hong Kong. With each rewatch, I catch new details that connect the two stories.
🕶 Saturday 8/15 & Wednesday 8/19 @ BAM — High and Low (1963) — One of my top 10 movies of all time. Banish all thoughts of Spike Lee’s remake and make your way over to BAM, where this original masterpiece is screening as part of a Summer in Japan series. You might know Akira Kurosawa for the samurai classics he built partly out of Westerns and Shakespeare: Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress. And if not the original films, you surely know the Hollywood movies they inspired: The Magnificent Seven, A Fistful of Dollars, and Star Wars. Here Kurosawa is working in a more modern register, adapting an American crime novel, to give us a gripping moral dilemma where a man has to decide between his life’s dream and saving an innocent life. The first part unfolds like a tightly choreographed play and then the movie opens up into a police procedural and social drama.
🔪 Sunday 8/16 @ Alamo DTBK & BAM — Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026) — If you missed the limited opening last weekend, director Jane Schoenbrun is doing Q&As for the 3 p.m. showing at BAM and the 4 p.m. showing at Alamo Downtown Brooklyn. The movie opens wide next weekend.
Posting and browsing the Feed Me Job Board is free. This week’s roles were posted from teams at The Strand Bookstore, Getty Images, and a family-owned gourmet food company.
Ari Emmanuel’s live-events company, MARI, reached a deal to acquire ATG Entertainment—including 7 Broadway theaters and 10 West End theaters. Reports the NYT: “ATG is the smallest of the big three Broadway landlords, controlling seven of the district’s 41 theaters. … The company is a bigger player in London, where it operates 10 theaters in the West End. It has a global footprint, operating 70 venues in Britain, the United States, Germany and Spain.”
Mayor Mamdani will abandon plans to replace the Elizabeth Street Garden with affordable housing.
How Long Gone is launching an awards show: The Goneies Awards. This is such a smart move and I wish more creators or small media brands were taking swings like this, but I can imagine organizing an event like this was a fuck ton of work. It looks like most of the heavy lifting is complete on HLG’s end – sponsor secured (Meta’s Threads), venue secured (Racket NYC). Now they just need all of their nominees and winners (artists, journalists, cultural figures, previous guests) to show up. Here’s the thing: Chris and Jason aren’t new to this, they’re true to this. Over the last few years, they’ve given hosting sparkly awards shows a trial run as red carpet interviewers for GQ’s Creativity Awards and Men Of the Year events. I’m curious what they’ll wear. Tickets start at $65.
There is a common thread among some of my favorite scoops from the last few years. Lauren Sherman breaking that The Row was taking over the former Issey Miyake store in Tribeca, Curbed reporting on Emily Weiss’s home buying spree… and of course Feed Me breaking that Erewhon was coming to New York City — they’re all real estate stories. This week, New York Magazine listed a role for a Real Estate Reporter. Whoever takes this job will end up breaking stories about restaurant openings, retail leases, and the outrageous personalities that make up the fabric of New York’s real estate and development circles. Really smart move on whoever pitched this expansion at Curbed.
National Geographic is about to go on a New York City hiring spree. In 2026, most magazines are exceptionally lean operations, perpetually trimming editor and writer positions where they can. Not so at National Geographic, which, despite being among the oldest magazines out there (it was founded in 1888), has been steadily expanding its operation and listing interesting old-school-sounding roles. They just listed five more, including a couple of features editor jobs and a travel editor. Most important to note: These are not just jobs in Washington, D.C., where most of the operation is based. These are New York roles, as the magazine aims to build a new editorial beachhead in NYC. (And I hear there are more New York job listings coming soon.) Maybe you’re looking to get back into print; maybe you’re just looking to make your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents proud.
Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger buy the Lakers for $12.5 billion. Joshua Kushner pivoted from his involvement in trying to purchase a stake of the World Cup (a plan that blew up spectacularly two weeks ago and has FIFA head Gianni Infantino fighting for his job) to buying the Los Angeles Lakers with former Disney CEO Bob Iger for the most amount of money ever paid for a professional sports franchise. This deal comes just days after Jeff Bezos acquired a minority stake of Liverpool FC. Billionaire boys and their toys.
Lucia Pizza is opening on the Upper West Side.
Alex Cooper tried to dodge Andrew Ross Sorkin’s questions about Dave Portnoy (his book alleges that she tried to get out of her Barstool deal by accusing him of sexual harassment), on the account that she’s pregnant. The top comment on this TikTok clip reads, “As someone who has carried a child, I can confirm you can answer questions while carrying them!” Earlier this week, Cooper’s Unwell Network received an undisclosed investment from WTSL, the Silver Lake-backed firm led by Patrick Whitesell, which valued Unwell at $500 million. If you’re taking big girl checks, you should be able to answer big girl questions.
Even though the business of sandwiches seems to be booming (you try getting a table at S&P on a Wednesday afternoon), I hear very little about Subway. However I do see a lot of people talking about Jimmy John’s, a chain I’ve never been to. Restaurant Business published an interesting article about how Subway (under its owner Roark Capital) has been squeezing the franchisees who operate its locations to make uneconomic decisions, like keeping unprofitable stores open and extending hours to be open later. Subway has closed 8,000 stores since it peaked at more than 27,000 locations in 2015. A very funny tidbit in this story: 30% of the chain’s restaurants didn’t participate in a recent deal in partnership with the Disney movie Moana. Their customers missed out on a $1 collectible cup.
A J.Crew executive told the FT that post-Kevin Ulrich leadership, “morale is bad.” Despite rollneck sweater collabs with Collina Strada and Eckhaus Latta, a photoshoot with Patrick Radden Keefe, and a viral influencer trip in Italy, J.Crew’s 2025 full-year EBITDA fell 30% to $180 million. Ulrich’s Anchorage Capital became the majority owner of J.Crew in 2020, and one executive told FT that: “There is a lack of strategic direction of where Anchorage wants to go with this. We want to do cool things, but it’s mismanaged and there is no room for error.” Lisa Greenwald, who spent eight years at the brand as Chief Merchandising Officer, left in 2025. And Brendon Babenzien, who was hired as men’s creative director in 2021 to overhaul J.Crew’s menswear, left earlier this year to focus on his brand, Noah. The amount of executives willing to talk to a newspaper for this story is concerning for the company.
David Remnick is hiring an assistant. Applicants should know how to secure a good table at Han Dynasty (Upper West Side, not East Village, obviously).
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My first pr job out of college was at Subway at an agency. Insane company with the way it’s structured and how other franchisees are penalized , but I genuinely have the funniest stories from that time
Patrick Whitesell is the man who foisted his wife onto jeff bezos.
Anybody who can read between the lines can understand alexs acknowledgement that yes she did threaten harassment claims. What nobodies asking is: might that be little portnoy in her oven?
Suns at $4bln was stupid but lakers at $12.5b might be smart, why is MSG stock not higher??