Jeff Hughes

Love WITI? Update from a free to paid sub here. It’s not pricey and is a business expense. Subscribe nowJeff Hughes (JH) writes DaBearsBlog. And musicals. And about musicals. And about movie musicals. And about movies.Jeff here. No film seems to have excited the New York City filmgoing obsessed—a group that has waited eighteen months to fill dark, subway noise-laden rooms—than Todd Haynes’ documentary, The Velvet Underground. Yes, it’s currently in your living room on Apple+, but not for us. For us, it’s at Film Forum, where a woman a few seats over relayed her story of seeing a Kurosawa retrospective WITH Lou Reed in the late 80s. Can’t get that in your living room. (Well, you can, but you’d have to invite that woman over.)What is so stunning about the film is how intimate the experience feels. The filmmaker’s decision to rest the faces of his subjects on screen for extended periods of time had a near-hypnotic effect. You find yourself studying Lou Reed and John Cale as younger men. You find yourself searching their faces for clues to a puzzle that’s never been solved, and you're sure as hell not going to be the one to solve it. Why is this interesting?I’ve always thought great documentaries fall into two categories: content and form. The content docs captivate you with information. Alex Gibney is the master of this form (Enron, Client 9, Going Clear, etc.), but the binge-worthy, true crime doc drug—of which I must admit an addiction—has elevated the medium from high art, coffee shop conversation to pop culture phenomena. (Tiger King felt like the most talked-about documentary in the history of the country.)The form docs are a trickier enterprise. Whether it’s Errol Morris’ interrotron locking into the eyes of Robert McNamara or DA Pennebaker’s fly-on-the-wall witnessing Elaine Stritch’s cast recording breakdown or Barbara Kopple’s penetrating look at the coal miners of Harlan County, the form docs seem to change the way we look at the world by changing the way that world is framed for us, the viewer. (Great recent examples are 2019’s American Factory and Minding the Gap.) Put succinctly, the great content docs are grounded in what is being presented on screen; the great form docs in how it’s presented.  The great music docs almost exclusively fall into this latter group. Behind the Music episodes are not great documentaries, entertaining though they may be. The Sparks Brothers was an intriguing look at an intriguing band, and History of The Eagles was endlessly entertaining, but ultimately those films are limited by how much the viewer actually cares about the work the band produced. (In both the aforementioned cases, my level is somewhere near zero.) The truly great music docs—The Last Waltz, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Stop Making Sense—captivate you with the originality of their storytelling.Velvet Underground doesn’t fit the mold. It’s relatively straightforward in its structure, yet never feels that way. The film seems to live on the fringes of linearity, just as the band lived on the invisible fence dividing the frail concepts of "pop culture" and "subculture". This is not a documentary about a band. It is a documentary about art; about artists; about a particular time in a particular place; about the ephemerality of greatness. And most importantly, these themes are stylistically addressed as if the artists themselves had a hand in the filmmaking. This is not just a documentary about The Velvet Underground. It is a documentary of The Velvet Underground. As far as documentaries go, this is that rare achievement that fits comfortably in both the great content and form categories. (JH)Color of the Day:Of all the brands to accidentally leave out of yesterday’s WITI, I feel most ashamed for not including Financial Times salmon. I was properly ridiculed in WITI Slack for my oversight. A few other good ones people mentioned: Bianchi Celeste, navy blue, and Louboutin red. (NRB)Quick Links:This weird xtra normal video (remember that?) apparently caused quite the stir in the world of Google engineering a decade ago. It’s about the difficulties in getting work done at the company as an engineer. (NRB)Steven Johnson, whose essay on his use of DevonThink inspired my use of Evernote, has a new newsletter called Adjacent Possible where he’s writing a lot about thinking tools. (NRB)Per thinking tools and Steven Johnson, another one of his ideas called a “spark file” (just a text file you right random ideas in) was the inspiration for a recent post of mine on adapting the format for product ideas. (NRB)[Sponsored: Atlas Bars are GMO-free and keto-friendly with 15 grams of protein and just a gram of sugar. We love them. Use this link for WITI readers to get 20 percent off. Get started with the sample pack.]--WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.Funding climate action. Philanthropy can be a powerful source of funding pitched at addressing societal problems: in 2020, US-based grant makers alone disbursed nearly $64 billion. How much of that targeted the climate-change challenge? Just $320 million. That's not enough, given the scale of the problem and the urgent need for climate action. A new article goes deeper on how philanthropy can step up, especially in three focus areas. --Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing.

The Documentary Edition 

Jeff Hughes (JH) is a 13 handicap, but with his improved driving in his early-season outings, he expects to get that down to 11 by season's end.Subscribe now"Everyone needs money. That's why they call it money."- David Mamet, HeistJeff here. About a year ago, news began to circulate among the golf media that the Saudis—through their Public Investment Fund, and with the fiercely unlikeable Greg Norman as their frontman—were preparing to throw an unholy amount of money at some of the current greats of the game in an attempt to launch a rival league to the PGA Tour. The news was met with a mixture of moral outrage (the word "bonesaw" often featuring prominently) and a sort of glib flippancy ("who would ever leave the PGA Tour and its AMAZING pension plan?")The proposal wasn't taken seriously because there wasn't much reason to take it seriously. You see, this isn't the first time such a coup was floated in the game of golf. Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer stirred these waters in 1983. Norman himself attempted to build a "world tour" in 1994. Both failed. And then Eldrick “Tiger” Woods showed up in 1997, and with him came more money than the game had ever imagined. The PGA Tour tanned themselves in the warm, bright rays of Tiger’s star for 25 years.  But unlike those previous attempts in the game of golf, or other potentially-disrupting sports leagues like the USFL and XFL, LIV Golf appears to have a signature advantage: there is no business model. Why? No one can say for sure, but prevailing wisdom says it’s because the Saudis have (a) significant financial resources and (b) no apparent interest in turning a profit. LIV is giving out signing bonuses north of $100 million to some of the game’s top players, including Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, and Bryson Dechambeau. They are playing their first event outside London this weekend with a borderline professional field and the largest purse in the sport's history. And they are doing all of this without a broadcast partner and devoid of sponsors! The PGA Tour's response. If you play their tour, you are banned from ours.Why is this interesting?Sportswashing, or using money in sports to improve a regime's reputation, is almost an afterthought at this point. The Saudis have nearly a billion dollars invested in Formula 1, a sport that has seen its popularity skyrocket in the wake of its popular Netflix series. That silence you hear? That's the complaining of Newcastle United supporters, who went from one of the Premier League's worst sides to one of its best in just a matter of months. What changed? The Saudis bought them and spent more money in the January transfer window than any club in Europe. If your expectation is that GOLF will be the sport to finally take the moral high ground, well, then you just don't know very much about golf. There are still many questions to be answered about this new project. It has a wonky team format no one quite understands. It is struggling to find an avenue to the world ranking points its participants would require to be eligible for the sport’s major championships. They have staffed the worst branding people in corporate history. But none of that will matter if they continue poaching some of the game's best while laying the groundwork for the future by guaranteeing money and starts (almost as valuable as money in golf) to some of the world's top amateurs. The PGA Tour will likely survive in one form or another. But its days as the preeminent entity in the sport of professional golf seem to be coming to an end unless they can somehow combat the uncombattable: an unlimited reserve of cash and no desire to see a return on it. (JH)Subscribe now—WITI x McKinsey:An ongoing partnership where we highlight interesting McKinsey research, writing, and data.Quantum computing just might save the planet. Exponentially more powerful machines could make possible major reductions in emissions, putting the goal of limiting global warming within reach. Don’t miss a new article on how quantum computing could revolutionize the fight against climate change.—Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Jeff (JH)—Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).