00:00Hi, I'm Paul Meskel, and this is my starter pack of Cultural Essentials.
00:04I've been kind of racking my brain to come up with a different answer in terms of a film
00:09that has had a lasting impact on me or to say something different,
00:15but it hasn't really changed in terms of something that consistently ruins my day
00:20in the best sense of the word, which is Derek C. Francis' Blue Valentine.
00:24I remember seeing it in drama school. I remember being so profoundly moved by it.
00:28I remember being so frightened by the performances in terms of seeing both sides to the thing
00:36that I think for most of us is the most alive thing in our life,
00:40which is these romantic relationships and the kind of inception of those things
00:44and the death of those things. I've always found it so moving,
00:47and the performances and the way Derek directs that film just... I think it's a perfect film.
00:54I haven't lived with it for long enough to know if it's going to be the thing
00:57that changes my life, but at the moment I'm listening.
01:00It's a cultural essential at the moment for me. It's an artist called Jake Minch is his name,
01:05and it's a new record that he has out called George.
01:08He's got a lyric in the last song called Twice, where he's like,
01:13it sounds not romantic, and the song isn't romantic, but there's this concept of, like,
01:17being in a relationship with someone and you're both sucking on the end of a clogged straw,
01:23but if you're drinking, I'm drinking. And I was like, oof.
01:26I was never gonna love you right, but I'd love you more than I ever had yet.
01:32So if you're drinking, I'm drinking.
01:36That's like a crazy observation and kind of this weird image that I just felt was so strong
01:43and just as a record, I hadn't listened to him before, and I think he's really, really brilliant.
01:48There's a book I was actually talking about earlier today. It's a book called Department of Speculation by Jenny Offal,
01:56and I read it during the pandemic for the first time.
02:02It's probably the book that I've reread the most, and I just love the form of it so much.
02:08It's very much, I would say, if you like Blue Valentine as a film, it lives in the same family.
02:15I think the way that you are subjectively with the protagonist who's unnamed is just like a wonderful capsule of
02:27a relationship
02:27and the concept of falling in love and falling out of love and what it's like to raise a child
02:33within all of the chaos of that.
02:36And I just loved it very much, so that's culturally essential for me.
02:42I was late to the game with Severance and watched the first season in anticipation of the second season
02:50in terms of what that show is doing in terms of what they're doing behind the camera and in front
02:57of camera.
02:58And having watched an actor like Adam Scott and just the cast in general and what I expected of him
03:06having seen his work before versus what he's doing,
03:08particularly in the second season, I was like, ooh, this is really, really great work in the way Ben Stiller
03:15directs it.
03:16And my friend Susie Lavelle, who shot Normal People, shot the second season.
03:20And there's really brilliant artists involved in that. The writing is so satisfying and can't wait for season three.
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