Emily St. James is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in Vox, The A.V. Club, and the New York Times. She is the co-creator of the podcast Arden and a writer on the TV series Yellowjackets.
I'm back! But I'm also really sleepy, due to the after-effects of jet lag, and a cold Libby and I seem to have picked up in our travels. So this might not be as thorough as you're expecting! Regardless... Charles writes: You write a
I spent the whole day preparing for a vacation, then seeing a couple of my favorite movies at the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival (this is a must if you can afford it and/or get volunteer/media access). So this might be more perfunctory than usual! But we'
(The bible for The Bible was particularly complicated.) If you read enough stuff about TV writing, or creating a TV show, you'll see a sorta cryptic phrase come up quite a few times: the show bible. But what is this thing? Where does it come from? How do
Just pretend that I inserted a little song about getting email, sung in the voice of Strong Bad, right here. Then proceed to read the rest of this newsletter! Billy asks: I loved those Primers you did for the AV Club a couple years ago. On your Tumblr, you said
Earlier this week, I received a lengthy question from a reader for the mailbag, which, in essence, boiled down to "How do I write a movie review that goes beyond: I liked this part, and I didn't like that part?" At first, I figured I would
When I saw Southland Tales, director Richard Kelly's second feature and follow-up to Donnie Darko, which is considered by many (even my former colleague and film fiasco lover Nathan Rabin) to be an epic boondoggle, for the first time, it was shortly after the film's release
I have been sick, sick, sick this week, so writing newsletters has escaped my grasp. But here I am, with answers to a few of your questions! Leah has a follow-up question to my last newsletter, about interviewing people: I recently had the opportunity to interview someone (it never got
When I was first starting out in my journalism career – and even in my criticism career – having to do a big interview would keep me up nights. I remember that I once did a big interview for the Los Angeles Times with Ryan McPartlin, the guy who played Captain Awesome
Welcome to the latest Friday mailbag! I write this installment as my wife browses Redfin and mumbles about the truly unfortunate interior decorating choices of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. Myself, I enjoy green, velvet curtains hung everywhere, and I don't care who knows it. Emily writes,
Chevy Chase changed my life. I know, I know. He's changed all of our lives. But what I mean is that I can point to a before and after moment in my life that involves Chevy Chase. Let me take you back to the spring of the second
Time for another mailbag! You folks need to send me some more questions. I almost had to beg my wife to send one in (and, actually, maybe I'll answer hers, because it was really interesting). Maxwell asks: Wasn't Late Night with Jimmy Fallon awesome? That was
A couple of weeks ago, I was having dinner with a TV writer friend, and we were talking about the show This Is Us, a series both of us liked, more or less, but that both of us also had significant problems with. And yet the show was such a