00:00Hi, I'm Sarah Michelle with The New Yorker, and this is my starter pack of essentials.
00:05What's hard for me about picking favorites is that I love art, and art is subjective,
00:09and what sometimes moves me at one point in my life doesn't always move me later,
00:14so these are maybe just some things that have affected me over time. How's that?
00:20There's two books that always come to mind when someone said,
00:25I'm not a reader, what do I read?
00:26I would say I love The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I think that one is just one of the
00:33most beautiful.
00:33Talk about transporting you. I know they've tried to make it a movie for years.
00:37I hope it never gets made. I hope it stays a book so that you can always see it the
00:44way you see it, right?
00:45Because then it's not putting ideas in your head, and it's the craziest book if you try to describe it
00:51to someone.
00:52My second book is called Shadows on the Wind, and it's this beautiful book.
00:57It's a Spanish book, so it's a translation, but it's about someone's burning all of this book.
01:02It's like disappearing, and they have to go on this side.
01:04It's just this beautiful allegory of the written word and how it changes.
01:11It's just one of those books that I go back and read again. Wait, oh, there's another one, too.
01:15I also love, like for Love Story, I love Time Traveler's Wife, the book.
01:20That to me is, I'm not a big love story girl, like for reading, but that one to me is
01:24just perfect.
01:26I can go on about books forever. I love books. Books are my passion.
01:28It's my, how I unwind, how I meditate. It takes me to another place.
01:34And I always preface this when I talk about books, which is I just want people to read.
01:39I don't care if you like reading comic books, graphic novels, love story, like whatever it is,
01:43just use that part of your imagination and your creativity to just sort of do something that's different,
01:50that's not all laid out for you.
01:53I'm so motivated by music, and I'm all over the place.
01:56I actually posted my Spotify list this year, and if anything was a description of me,
02:01it was like from Taylor Swift to like hard rap to show tunes, like I am all over the place.
02:09I have a friend named Danny Strong, who I met on the Buffy pilot.
02:14And while his scene did not make it into the show, we loved him so much,
02:17we brought his character back on Buffy.
02:18And him and I bonded over a love of a concept album called Chess.
02:23And it was a Broadway show that he was always jealous of that I happened to have seen.
02:26It only played for like three weeks on Broadway, but I happened to have seen it when I was younger.
02:30And it was my all-time favorite musical, and it had constantly been redone and never worked.
02:36Like in the original, the Russian one, and in the American, the American one.
02:39And then there was a tour, and it was a stalemate or whatever.
02:42And Danny and I have always loved this.
02:43And he said to me, one day, I'm going to bring Chess to Broadway.
02:46I was like, okay, Danny, see how that goes.
02:48And Danny has Chess on Broadway right now, and it's killing it.
02:53And if you get a chance, the best way to listen to Chess is on Spotify and hear all the
02:58different albums.
02:59Because there's concept albums, and then there's live stage shows, and it's different music and all of it.
03:03And now, soon, their cast album is going to come out and add to it.
03:07It is such a cool movie because you can't categorize it.
03:11And it reminds me kind of Ready or Not in the sense of, like, is it a horror movie?
03:14Is it a comedy movie?
03:15This Send Help was an action movie, a horror movie.
03:18It was a love story.
03:19It was, like, a self-discovery.
03:22And, you know, movies like that sometimes fall apart in the third act.
03:25The third act was incredible.
03:26Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien are both amazing in it.
03:28Like, just everything about it.
03:30And it had little nods of old Sam Raimi.
03:32Like, there was a scene that was like, oh, that's Evil Dead.
03:34Oh, that's Grudge.
03:34Like, that's, you know, he did some of his old shots.
03:36And I just, I absolutely loved it.
03:39I know I'm late to the party here.
03:42I just got into Love Story.
03:43My girlfriend, Sarah Pidgeon, plays Carolyn.
03:45And she's just a revelation.
03:47Like, and not to me because I know that that girl is such a star.
03:51And she's so beautiful in it.
03:53And I have now watched the first four episodes numerous times just because I think she's such magic.
03:59But it just brings me back to the 90s in New York, which was when I lived, you know, I'm
04:04born and raised New Yorker.
04:05And seeing Bubbies and the Odeon and Tribeca Grill and old Indochine and the Four Seasons the way it used
04:12to look.
04:13Like, anyone from New York will understand that that was a time of its own.
04:17And, you know, I used to, when I was younger, I used to play in Sheep's Meadow and all that
04:24in Central Park.
04:24And I would see John playing football.
04:26Like, that is, that was my world.
04:28And Carolyn Bessette was such a style icon.
04:31And she was, there was a scene the other night and she had the black slip dress on with the
04:35sweater tied around her waist.
04:37I was like, I used to wear that.
04:39So that's TV right now, just that's making me feel for a time in my life that I lived.
04:45And has, is portrayed so accurately as the time going to the tunnel, going, I mean, just all of it.
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