In the blink of an eye, we went from 2019 to 2026. Didn’t Joker just come out? Wasn’t Parasite awesome? And Uncut Gems? Didn’t you see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood five times? “Way more than that,” My Sensei says. Well, yeah, duh, you, like, made it and everything. How many pages was the shooting script? “I don’t use a shooting script.” Really? Then what are those pages in that new coffee table book about the movie? Those are the revised pages from the master script that I bring in every day and work from scratch. My first job of work when I get to the set is rehearsing with the actors and blocking the scene, and then I start putting marks down, the camera crew comes in, lights start going up. I haven’t written out a setlist the night before a day’s shooting since Pulp Fiction.”
On NBC, Katie Couric is ringing in the new millennium. “It’s the last day of the year. The final day of the century. The eve of a whole new millennium today, Friday, December 31, 1999.” 2025 was such a bust that they’re airing reruns of old New Year’s Eve celebrations. You have to admit, analog broadcast television looked better than our current hi-def sterile digital world. Living in a Hollywood Movie Set Trailer, I have cable for the first time in years, and people don’t look good anymore. Everyone has bad plastic surgery, everyone’s on drugs, and everything is so low-rent it makes you feel poor by association. Like, wow, I must be poor if I’m watching this shit. They call it “slop,” Tone, and it’s cooking the kids and the elderly in crazy numbers. Okay. I’m done scheming. 2026 is going to be about honesty and hard work. My Sensei hasn’t made a film since 2019, and when I asked him if he’s got anything cooking, if he’s anything from his “antenna to God” (Bic Flair Pens). He gets bristly and leaves me to watch the ball drop on 2000 alone.
Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper are somewhere doing more blow and MDMA than any of you could ever survive, and we’re here, living in America, empowered with freedom of speech, something France doesn’t have. Brigitte Bardot did nothing wrong. She had opinions. So do I. Such as: video games should be stigmatized for anyone over the age of 12. Some of my friends think it should be illegal, but that would only make it more enticing. It needs to be uncool—worse, semi-perverse. No, just perverse. Video games are disgusting. I’m just being honest.
Would Stanley Kubrick have played video games? “I know he did,” My Sensei says. What games? “Super Mario 64.” Didn’t that come out in 1996? “Yeah, that’s why Eyes Wide Shut took so long to make.” What about the internet? “Oh, he had a modem, too, and he was playing Quake and Doom and shit. He was furious about it, just as much as the chess, but he didn’t have anyone to play with so he hired people off the street to compete against him in LAN parties while he waited for deliveries and film to be developed. It was nuts. Harvey told me the whole thing, he said he just told Kubrick to fuck off after the first time he made him do 90 takes of a scene.” What was the scene? “Harvey walking through a door.” Any dialogue? “The word ‘Yes.’”
Stick to the plan, says My Sensei, and stop making sense where you should be learning. Can you hear me calling? Don’t stop the music—can’t stop the music. We’re all a part of something beautiful. Much love and respect, where due, to all in the New Year.
My Sensei says he’ll hold onto his well wishes for now.
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