FOUR YEARS OF HUNG UP
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Ohhh you’d better believe this is way too long for email. Click the subject line above to read in full.
There’s a line from an interview with Noah Baumbach that I think about a lot. Speaking to the New York Times about Marriage Story, Baumbach was asked about how working with Greta Gerwig, his partner and frequent collaborator,1 has affected his approach to work. “I think I’ve always recognized something in her — the way that I would like to be, both as a person and, now, as a filmmaker,” he said. “I think I grew up in a way where there was this idea that you shouldn’t celebrate. ‘Don’t celebrate because it all might just fall apart anyway.’ Or ‘Don’t celebrate because something better will come and that’ll be the thing you’ll celebrate.’ Greta knows how to celebrate.”
Then the really beautiful part: “I haven’t always been good at enjoying everything,” he said, “but I think I enjoy more now because of her.”
I’m relentlessly critical, especially of myself. I work a lot and write a lot and regularly schedule every day to a degree where even five minutes of difference, or delay, can make four separate plans collapse. But making this newsletter is the greatest job in the world and the best job I’ve ever had. I think I enjoy more — deeper, faster, more frequently — because of it. I don’t know how not to sit in a window seat at Long Island Bar wondering how no one thought to put Alex Karpovsky in Oppenheimer. Anything happens in the news and my first thought is “What will The Morning Show do with this?”2 Ramona Singer has done things on television that would make even the president-elect, a pathologically insane narcissist, want to go back to the drawing board.
Hung Up is a place for all these obsessions, fixations, neuroses — whatever you want to call them. I’m continually struck by how often they are shared: The way we are all in agreement about Taylor Swift’s nails,3 or that I am not the only person haunted like an old Los Angeles hotel by Chance The Rapper’s (now ex) wife decorating their patio, or that as long as I have access to the internet, we will be discussing Drake’s ugly house.
This month marks four years of Hung Up! And almost 500 posts! And one occasion of a guy I’d just met at a party Googling the newsletter in front of me, reading some of the headlines, and saying “Wait these are actually very funny… and Ryan Reynolds really does suck.” It’s endlessly distressing to me that it’s the season finale of magazines and the season finale of Hollywood and the series finale of democracy … and yet! Here is a community of people eager to convene and talk about what the mysterious publicist of the world’s most famous musician will do next.
I usually write a handful of magazine features a year because I like to and because I’m nosy. This year I passed on a dozen. Writing Hung Up just felt like by far the most rewarding work! During year one of Hung Up I wrote, I think, three or four cover stories just to prove to myself that I wasn’t making a mistake by quitting my job to pursue something that just felt right in 2020 when so many other things felt wrong. Fast forward to now, when I didn’t want to spend time on anything that kept me away from this community.4
It sounds so glib to say thank you, and that I can’t believe some of these posts are real. I grew up refreshing the New York magazine homepage to read their Gossip Girl recaps, getting excited for every Gawker post that I would understand approximately 37% of, in college I read Caity Weaver’s Justin Bieber profile so often I have some of it memorized. I think we should talk about celebrities and go see movies and be on our phones too much and gossip about who we like and what we hate. I think we should talk about how good Catherine Zeta-Jones is in Chicago every single day. I think we should genuflect before Zendaya in the blue dress in Challengers every hour. Sometimes the only thing I can do is talk about the movies I love or the Beyoncé key changes I love or the Veep episodes I know by heart.
Making someone you love laugh is the best feeling in the world (the second best, which I often settle for, is just making myself laugh). I think it’s fun, and I think it’s cool. Thank you for sharing it with me! Sometimes the best part of a Hung Up post are the comments, even when you all tell me that I’m the only person who cares about The Morning Show. And if you know Julia Roberts please tell her to let me comment on her Instagrams,5 I have quite a lot to add.
Links on links on links: Some superlatives
Most liked post:
Most read post:6
The first post:
Hung Up’s first live event:
Probably my favorite Friday Post this year:
My favorite headline:
My least favorite headline:7
The unexpected over-performer:8
The one I still re-read and laugh about if we’re being honest:
The one I’m still trying to get to the bottom of:
When writing this newsletter started to feel like a real job:
When writing this newsletter was so fun it really felt like a fake job:
I know this was about a dumb reality show, but this is some of my favorite writing I’ve done this year:
And so was this…
Most angry emails in reply:
This wasn’t a spoiler it was just a prediction! I can’t help that it was kinda right!9
The main characters of Hung Up’s third year:
Tree Paine
What Will Tree Paine Do About Brittany Mahomes
Kate Middleton Needs Tree Paine
The Tree Paine Fan’s Guide to 'The Tortured Poets Department'
Jessica Chastain Auditions for the Tree Paine Biopic
W̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶ ̶i̶t̶,̶ ̶J̶o̶e̶ ̶ Tree Did It, Joe
“I’m Collecting Horcruxes” - Taylor Swift
Threat Level Tree
Club Chalamet
Does The Name Club Chalamet Mean Anything To You
Kinda Need to Give You A Club Chalamet Update
Every Tongue That Rises Against Club Chalamet Shall Fall
She Got Me, Girls
I Want You To Put The Word Out There That We Back Up
Silk Presses Stick Together: Kamala Harris Secures Club Chalamet's Endorsement
And If I Said The Timothée Chalamet Lookalike Contest Benefited Club Chalamet In Ways You Wouldn’t Imagine
Bennifer
The Winner is Bennifer
Jennifer Please
Bennifer Anniversary: He’s Gone, Girl
A Bennifer Alternate History, the Most Embarrassing Celebrity Admission, and what Chaka Khan, Al Green, and Selena Gomez Have in Common
Bennifer: Back to the Streets
Bennifer's PDA (Public Display of Acrimony)
𝓯𝓻𝓸𝓶 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓻𝓬𝓱𝓲𝓿𝓮: Bennifer Redux, From Beginning to End
The Ben in Bennifer is Actually Benny Medina
Bennifer: That Was Them … When
My favorite Hung Up posts about movies:
My favorite Hung Up posts about TV:
My favorite Hung Up posts about music:
My favorite Hung Up posts about celebrities:
Feel free to share your own! Thank you for being here!
And two of their collaborations are their children together.
And what would The Newsroom have done with it?
Okay, yes, I also launched a podcast lol. But you know what I mean!
To be clear, the comments are closed to everyone she doesn’t follow.
(3.2 million views and a 62% open rate omg … yall were sick for this one lmao … )
I liked this post a lot but feel like the hed didn’t sell it properly.
I did not think so many people would care about Hannah Bronfman’s ugly apartment lol! But the texts I got about this in the weeks following this send…
And speaking of being right … you can’t tell me I was wrong!
Been here since the beginning and it remains one of my favorite things to read (and re-read!!). Hungies for life
The moment I knew Hung Up was something so special was a post about you getting a chemical peel. It was so funny and your voice is singular and I’m so happy I’ve been subscribed since the start 🫶🏼