Welcome to FAT City

Welcome to The Content Report, a newsletter by Vince Mancini. I’ve been writing about movies, culture, and food since the late aughts. Now I’m delivering it straight to you, with none of the autoplay videos, takeover ads, or chumboxes of the ad-ruined internet. Support my work and help me bring back the cool internet by subscribing, sharing, commenting, and keeping it real.

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Since this is my newsletter and no one can tell me what to do, I figured I’d update you all about another project I’ve been working on. For the past few months, I’ve been working with Fresnoland on developing a food section. Fresnoland is a non-profit newsroom here in Fresno — another alternative to ad-slop media along with subscription models like this newsletter, though in this case free to read — and some of us around here figured local food coverage would be something we should have.

And now we have it! A whole “Food” vertical, with writing and editing by yours truly, and a companion newsletter, FAT City. (Did you know Fresno’s airport code is FAT? That was a fun little lightbulb moment, later than I would’ve liked in the process, with all due respect to Hunter Thompson’s mayoral campaign).

I wrote a lengthy, self-indulgent letter from the editor for our first newsletter, introducing myself and explaining the thought process behind the whole thing — a sort of Fresno Manifesto. A Fresnifesto, if you will.

Anyway, I don’t expect every reader of this newsletter to care about the specific goings-on of food in California’s San Joaquin Valley, but it’s also free, and you can sign up for the newsletter part here.

I will excerpt some of my opening salvo below:

Congratulations! You are looking at the first installment of FAT City, the weekly newsletter of Fresnoland Food. Years from now, you’ll be able to tell your friends “actually, I prefer their older stuff.”What is FAT City?

Put simply, FAT City is the weekly newsletter for Fresnoland Food.

Put more complicatedly, FAT City is dedicated to a few simple truths: That decent food coverage is part of what makes a city livable. That without a great food scene, a city isn’t really a city. And that without great food coverage, no food scene can truly thrive.

We believe that one of the most bedrock functions local journalism can provide is to answer those basic questions, like “Where’s the fire?” Maybe just behind that one is “Where can I get a decent bite to eat?”

For answering the former, there’s Fresnoland. For answering the latter, now, there’s Fresnoland Food (which you can also find on Fresnoland under the “Food” heading, and in newsletter form from FAT City). We’re here because we believe that food and civic health are inextricable.

Food is how we connect, it’s how we innovate, it’s how we celebrate our traditions, even when we don’t realize we’re doing it, when we think we’re just fulfilling our most basic need. I might go as far as to say that eating out is the oldest form of community, in the same way that people say prostitution is the world’s oldest profession.

That’s FAT City. It’s… about food.FAT is more than just an airport code. It’s a state of mind.

As the fifth-largest city of America’s first-largest state, we’re often overlooked. Of course, flying under the radar isn’t always a bad thing. Ample parking, the ability to get a reservation without being a celebrity, and rarely waiting in long lines because your favorite spot went viral on Instagram are just some of the benefits Fresnans regularly enjoy. Still, there are times when a little recognition would be nice – if not for the accolades, then at least as a helpful guide.

As the nation’s food basket, we’ve been the “farm” in so many bigger cities’ “farm-to-table” dining for years. And yet, we don’t have an outpost of Eater. The travel mags tend to skip us entirely. Michelin doesn’t even send scouts here. For a city of more than half a million people, Fresno is a veritable coverage desert.

That being said, it’s not really our style to whine for attention or demand that outsiders take us “seriously” (self-seriousness, in fact, is our kryptonite). One of the best things about this place is the DIY spirit. If something doesn’t exist here, we just build it. Every weekend, taco trucks spring up anywhere there’s space for a grill. All over the city, mom-and-pop operations take over the abandoned shells of national chains like hermit crabs. Where else can you get al pastor in an auto shop or eat a glorious diner breakfast in a building that used to be a Wendy’s? Only in FAT City, baby! (We won’t try to make that a thing, but it felt right this once).

FAT City is our attempt to bring that DIY spirit to food writing. If the big-name food outlets don’t want to come here, that’s okay. We have good people living here, and we can do it ourselves. You can’t really impart local knowledge without being a local anyway.

There’s some more autobiographical information about yours truly in there, some of which you might already know, and you can read the rest over there.

Sign up if you want to read local restaurant lists and profiles, or maybe if you just want to support the project and don’t mind getting another email once a week.

Is the Musician Biopic Dead Yet?

The Michael Jackson biopic, Michael, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jermaine’s son, Jafaar as Michael, opens this weekend. It looks like the review embargo lifted last night (I don’t believe I ever got a screening invite, never a good sign), and surprise surprise, everyone hates it.

These are some of the reviews listed as positive:

(Sidenote, have you noticed that RottenTomatoes, a website created to be a database for movie reviews, makes the actual reviews harder and harder to find with every redesign? This speaks to the central issue with ad-supported media: actual readers love movie reviews, but advertisers and ad sales people hate them, so everyone does their best to profit off of them while simultaneously working hard to pretend they don’t exist. Cool system.).

It's very much a hagiography swathed in glitter and flash and, in the moment, it does what it sets out to do. Just don't expect to walk away learning anything new. -Kristen Lopez.

For "Michael" to function as the crowd-pleasing celebration it's being marketed as, it requires a willful, collective amnesia as to what is to come in his life after this picture's credits begin to roll. -Dominic Griffin

Michael Jackson deserves a stronger film that everyone involved is capable of doing. -Julian Lytle

This sparkly kid gloves treatment of a creative wunderkind whose own demons don’t get explored in this chapter might be oft putting to some viewers, but for those who want to see the pop icon’s early years they likely won’t want it to stop. -Jeffrey Lyles

In the end, Fuqua's Michael is a beautifully performed but carefully curated story. It celebrates more than it questions and remembers more than it reveals. -Linda Marric

This guy channels Uncle Michael in uncanny ways, and simply sells this performance with all the right dance moves and sharp dramatic talent to make us believe Michael Jackson is once again with us. -Pete Hammond.

Bless Pete Hammond’s heart, the man was writing AI slop before AI even existed. As Bret from the Frotcast put it, “Pete Hammond is every movie’s grandma, and he thinks they’re very nice.”

While I’d love to say that the terrible reviews are a sure sign that Michael will bomb, Deadline claims the early tracking numbers are predicting a hit.

REVISED, UPDATED: Lionsgate‘s Michael is bound to be a chart-topping hit when it opens on April 24. Three-week tracking today indicates an opening north of $60M+, potentially besting the previous box office highs for musical biopics set by 2015’s Straight Outta Compton ($60M) as well as 2018 Freddie Mercury and Queen movie Bohemian Rhapsody, which bowed to $51M.

Advance tickets sales at this point in time, which includes presales for early-access fan screenings on Wednesday, April 22, point to a thriller 3-day start that’s north of $50M. Even with big movies on tracking, such as The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Project Hail Mary, which can impact long-term tracking on new titles, Michael still looks great. Exhibitors already have seen the movie, and the reaction has been very positive on what has been a challenging production for the film produced by the Jackson estate.

I still have a hard time believing that’s true. For what it’s worth,the Bob Marley biopic opened with $28.6 million, and supposedly made $180 million. Those are just the numbers, I don’t think I know anyone who has actually seen it.

These movies — biopics about famous musicians, that is — used to be automatic Oscar contenders, but lately it seems they’ve been banished to the shadow realm of solid money-makers that are basically invisible to broader culture. And for obvious reasons: getting them made at all requires rights to the music, which in turn requires the permission of the relevant estates, most of whom lately seem far too protective of the artist’s persona to get anything approaching interesting, let alone real.

If we couldn’t get an honest biopic about Freddy Mercury, did you really think we would get one about Michael Jackson? And if a movie about him doesn’t touch on pedophilia, Neverland Ranch, drug and plastic surgery issues, and none of his children looking like him, what’s the point, really? We have Michael Jackson’s nephew doing a Michael Jackson impression to sing his favorite songs while covering none of the controversies? The musician biopic is still big business, but from an artistic standpoint it has all the cultural purchase of Carpool Karaoke or Celebrity Lip Sync Battle.

The last good one starred Robbie Williams as a chimp. Give me Jackie Jormp Jomp or give me death.

New Movies?

Things have been pretty slow. I saw The Christophers last week (Steven Soderbergh) — review to come — but this week’s brings us a few interesting titles other than Michael.

Mother Mary

Supposedly this opened last week, but not near me.

The film follows the relationship between a fictional musician and a famous fashion designer. "There may only be one of us left standing when this is over." Long-buried wounds rise to the surface when iconic pop star known as "Mother Mary" reunites with her estranged best friend and former costume designer Sam Anselm on the eve of her comeback performance. [FirstShowing]

I barely heard a thing about this, and the synopsis doesn’t sound like much, but any new David Lowery joint is an automatic “yep” from me. Green Knight for life. Anyone who combines existential noodling with visible jism is okay by me.

Broken Bird

Horror horror horror. She’s a mortician. I bet some spooky stuff happens.

Desert Warrior

Vertical has revealed an official trailer for the movie Desert Warrior, an action thriller set in ancient Arabia, made by filmmaker Rupert Wyatt. This was filmed a while ago in Saudi Arabia but has been struggling to get a final theatrical release until this year - apparently the director even briefly left due to “creative differences” during post-production but then returned to finish editing it before its recent premiere at the Zurich Film Festival last year. [FirstShowing]

Creative differences? Shelved release? Distributed by Vertical? Sounds like it could be a beautiful disaster. Rupert Wyatt, incidentally, made Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the goofy, fun installment of the Planet of the Apes reboot series with James Franco and John Lithgow, before they turned excruciatingly self-serious. Those ones, which everyone seems to love (blegh) were directed by Matt Reeves.

I don’t know why, but Anthony Mackie in a serious period piece is very funny to me.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy opened last week, and I haven’t seen it, but from what I can gather, it promises to answer the age-old question: who the fuck is Lee Cronin?

I’m not going to see the movie, but I keep seeing the trailer and it’s a fun one. I feel like in a different media environment, “Don’t worry, grandma, it’s fun being dead” would be the trailer line of the year.