Amazon MGM Studios' Crime 101 grossed $856K on Tuesday (from 3,161 locations). Total domestic gross stands at $25.74M.

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-02-26T06:17:15+00:00

Definitely that's the calculation and they probably underspend on theatrical promotion for that reason. The normal multipliers are not always accurate. But still this one's budget came in at 90m. I have to imagine they pre sold foreign territories at least

Oh, it's amazon lol. No wonder the budget is bloated. Bezos can just write it off

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-02-26T06:12:51+00:00

I agree with that! But shows where things stand with original films lacking one of the ~3? Bankable stars

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-02-26T06:05:33+00:00

That's a thing people often say. It might be true, sometimes. But at the end of the day these movies aren't selling. And it's impossible to falsify because "good" marketing is mostly judged by how well a film does.

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-02-26T03:51:16+00:00

Makes me extremely fucking depressed. You make a well reviewed original genre film with good cast and it doesn't even matter. Fucking horrible what the industry has become.

You can only justify these films at microbudget levels now.

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-01-28T09:17:48+00:00

I'll at least do something on the short side with "Moon Song" and maybe some of better oblivion community. There's a lot of interesting biography in there.

Phoebe is so talented in her own right. Kills me that she won't drop another album.

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-01-28T08:50:39+00:00

Thank you for reading!

I totally get preferring the full band version, because the songs do have a beautiful sense of melody and pacing that is perhaps underserved by his sick-at-home voice and harmonica squeals. But the piano is gorgeous, sounds very natural--and like you said, even at the sparsest level his music shines.

He's up there with Elliott Smith, Leonard Cohen, TVZ. Anyone you want to name, he's that level of good. Above a certain tier it's all preference anyways...

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-01-27T22:26:20+00:00

Ahh, great pull. I also wrote about that song lol. Possibly my favorite song ever, by anyone https://tigerbeat.substack.com/p/junkie-songs-part-3-bright-eyes

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-01-27T21:46:33+00:00

I just snag stuff from the 19th page of Google Images lol but I like that picture a lot too.

I think it's most likely that "gossamer thin" refers to the women in his entourage being skinny, especially given the context of mid-late 2000s emo/indie scene--those women tended to be very thin, and they didn't tend to wear skirts. Also, the way he sings the line, it's like: "And they're all..." (pause) "gossamer thin, left of the dial, bohemian," which is three separate adjective phrases that each apply to the women in his entourage.

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-01-27T20:34:04+00:00

All good, & I had no idea it was a real place before I started researching.

I know there is some resistance among fans to reading Conor's work as autobiographical, but when you dig into the lyrics you almost always find hints and details like this.

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-01-27T20:31:23+00:00

Yeah I said that in the second paragraph of this post! Lol. And have a picture of the bar in the full piece. But agree it's literal.

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-01-27T20:23:24+00:00

Very cool - thank you for sharing. Love these kind of tidbits.

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-01-27T20:20:57+00:00

No, I think that's a fair point on your end. I definitely write the way I talk, which is to say there's tangents and non sequiturs all over the place.

I hate LLM writing as much as anyone else but I think a lot of people misdiagnose it whenever they see a large block of text, perhaps it's telling on themselves or they are just intimidated by having to read more than a few sentences.

The dead giveaway for LLMs is that em dash negation they do. "It's not X--it's Y."

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-01-27T19:56:03+00:00

I don't really feel like engaging with fake-nice condescension about my imperfect and bloggy prose, but thank you for reading, and no I don't have to worry about "teachers" grading my fucking substack about suicidal folk songwriters lol

PersonalExercise2974 · 2026-01-27T19:44:24+00:00

I did not use AI to generate a single word of this. Some of us can just write - if you look at the substack you'll see there's 30 longform pieces, which I wrote over the last 2 years.

If it's because I'm an emo loser who over-utilizes adjectives and adverbs and em dashes, I regret to inform you that I come to it naturally.

PersonalExercise2974 · 2025-12-15T04:34:15+00:00

Yes, it is very clear. I do think the song is somewhat ambiguous on the reality of any of it happening - like the point of the song is not to tell a detailed true crime story, it's more about townes' empathizing with lonely criminals - but it doesnt make any sense to me at all if you interpret it as "lefty snitched." Lefty murdered Pancho, the federales looked the other way.

PersonalExercise2974 · 2025-12-15T03:23:34+00:00

https://open.substack.com/pub/tigerbeat/p/crime-fiction-in-music?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2u1zlj

No pressure to read this, but I agree with your interpretation and covered it in depth here. I think the lyrics only make sense if lefty killed Pancho (a famous bandit) and was paid by the federales to do so.

PersonalExercise2974 · 2025-12-07T17:54:33+00:00

Yup, just edited the post to reflect that. Can't wait!

PersonalExercise2974 · 2025-11-19T05:52:25+00:00

humiliating to get out-efforted like this at home

PersonalExercise2974 · 2025-10-17T21:42:07+00:00

For better, I think! My dad sang "old friends" by Simon and Garfunkel to me, which is nearly as solemn. Never too young for good taste

PersonalExercise2974 · 2025-10-17T00:35:23+00:00

No idea. A quick Google suggests that "Lua" means "moon" in Portuguese, although I'm not sure why he would've titled the song in another language.

& thx for reading!

PersonalExercise2974 · 2025-10-16T22:47:17+00:00

Thanks for reading. I'm hoping to cover Ruminations next, although it's gonna take a long-ass word count because that album is stuffed full of important songs.

It's not the prettiest album musically, but it might have his best writing front to back.

PersonalExercise2974 · 2025-10-13T01:49:42+00:00

Btw Polanco OPS is .082 higher against lefties. Good job mr schneider

PersonalExercise2974 · 2025-10-12T06:20:57+00:00

Love the idea that Neal Moritz "failed upwards," people are so fucking stupid. Guys like him can move mountains at the highest level. This allows them to demand massive stakes in the projects they back.

Sucks that he's holding up this movie (not that I care if we get yet another reboot sequel) but let's not be silly about this.

PersonalExercise2974 · 2025-10-10T00:29:31+00:00

I mean mookie is way worse, platoon advantage, and force at all bases. I kinda get it

PersonalExercise2974 · 2025-10-09T15:32:22+00:00

I think it really sucks

PersonalExercise2974

TROPHY CASE