Good morning, everyone. I rarely let you into my closet but I have to share something. I ordered this Big Rock Candy Mountaineering half-zip for my husband last week, and it doesn’t fit him, so it’s mine now. I have worn it almost five days in a row.
Today’s newsletter includes: The New York Times has a new show about New Yorkers (very New York Nico), the repercussions of “comment for link” behavior, a fist fight at one of New York’s most expensive members’ clubs, Cardi B shredded the beauty retail playbook, Puck is hiring, Chris Best feels conflicted about AI writing on Substack, and one of America’s best tailors will be in Brooklyn this weekend.
It’s going to be 44° on Saturday night. Plan your movies wisely. By Teddy Kim.
Stay Tuned is a Feed Me guest column about film and entertainment, written by Teddy Kim. Today, he wrote about what you should watch this weekend.
New releases this weekend: After opening to $15.6 million on just 855 screens last weekend, You Can See Everything goes wide on more than 2,500 screens this weekend. With a reported combined production and marketing budget of under $20 million, the doc is well on its way to turning a nice profit for A24 and everyone involved, which does not include [redacted]. Clayface (I guess it’s now a Skydance movie?) opens as the third DCU movie since the James Gunn reboot, delivering a hard-R body horror film written by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House). Possible Love, which I’ve been talking up for weeks, finally opens in limited release, so go watch it in theaters before it hits Netflix on November 6. Olivia Colman stars in the Sundance hit Wicker, in which her character handcrafts a husband made of… wicker, played by Alexander Skarsgård. There was a time from 2016-2022, when Taika Waititi seemed like one of the hottest directors working. Since then his star has faded some, but he’s back this year with an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel, Klara and the Sun. Jenna Ortega stars as an AI friend keeping a sick girl company. Early reviews have not been great.
Here are some other screenings I’d encourage you to check out in the coming week:
🔨 Friday 10/23 & Sunday 10/25 @ Metrograph — Oldboy (2003) — Park Chan-wook’s revenge masterpiece. If you haven’t had the chance to see this one-of-a-kind anti-family film, I highly recommend checking it out in theaters.
👶 Saturday 10/24 & Sunday 10/25 @ Metrograph — Rosemary’s Baby (1968) — Not just a great horror movie but a great New York City movie. (The Dakota, where there are currently several apartments for sale, is immortalized for all time in this film.) If you just watched You Can See Everything, pair it with this movie about another happy family. On 35mm.
🌲 Monday 10/26 @ Nitehawk Williamsburg — The Blair Witch Project (1999) — The cult classic that made found footage a genre and revolutionized movie marketing. I watched this in theaters a couple years back at Metrograph and it’s a perfect October treat.
🌿 Wednesday 10/28 @ MoMA — Obsession (2026) — The Blair Witch Project of our generation. The breakout film of the year, and maybe the decade, went on to gross more than $500 million worldwide after selling for $15 million at TIFF last year. Followed by a conversation between Barker and Rian Johnson. It’s sold out, but MoMA says a standby line forms an hour before the screening.
This interview is part of a Feed Me feature called Guest Lecture. In this series, I introduce you all to an expert who I’m curious about, and give paid readers an opportunity to ask them anything they want. Past guests have included Brenda Hashtag, Jeremy O. Harris, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Today, Feed Me readers interviewed Chris Best, the CEO and one of the co-founders of Substack. I have had the pleasure of spending time with Chris over dinners in London, while walking along the water in San Francisco, and at various Substack events. I have a lot of respect for him, and don’t think his job is easy. Below, he discusses being “AI-pilled,” Substack’s algorithm, the publishers he thinks are using Substack well, and his relationship with New York City.
“How do you make Substack a place where more readers discover writing they like? As opposed to being a place where they read writing they’ve discovered elsewhere? I discover Substacks primarily on other sites (LinkedIn, etc), and I think that’s a common experience. Or do you not view reader discovery as a primary issue for Substack, i.e. using other networks for discovery is the strategy?” - Zach
This is the point of the Substack app. When all Substack had was email, writers were wholly dependent on other sites to reach new audiences and grow, but the app is really great for this. People use it to read stuff they are already subscribed to, of course, but they also discover a ton of writing and writers.
People discovered long-form posts in the Substack app over 100m times last month, which more than doubled year-over-year. And it’s not just one-off reading: the app drives over 40% of new subscriptions on the platform.