Book Club

I watched a movie on the plane trip from Denmark to Iceland (The Greatest Showman) and two more a few days later on the flight from Iceland to the USA (The Disaster Artist and Phantom Thread).

If you want to talk about any of those, ask me a question.

The first movie I saw when I got home was a weekend matinee of Book Club. Turns out that one of my former students is a producer on the picture.

I was beaming with pride when I read her credit in a way that matches the grins on the faces of the four co-stars of Book Club.

I sent my former student an email of appreciation.

Hi, Alex.
Last week I returned home after teaching in Copenhagen for a (wonderful!) semester, and my mother wanted me to take her to see this movie she had seen advertised. 
You already know I’m about to say that movie is Book Club.
We went to a matinee yesterday, laughed a lot together, and then I was delighted to see your credit come up on screen.
I am a media studies scholar of a certain age, and it’s really nice to see more films with characters of all ages as well as delightful to find a movie my mother wants to see that is also entertaining to me.
Before we went to the movie, I broke with habit and skimmed the review of Book Club in The New York Times and was pleased to see that it acknowledges the positives of the film. 
There is space for a wide variety of films in the “marketplace” (literal and figurative), and effective criticism should (as this review does) acknowledge that different films serve different purposes.
I’m proud of you, Alex, and happy for the success you are finding.
Take care,
Mary
She wrote back that she was happy I liked the movie, that the creative team is trilled people are connecting with it, and that she “loved making a movie for women!”
I like to think of it as a movie featuring women that men (especially men of a certain age) might enjoy, too.
Regardless, it is important to have a range of people and experiences represented on screen, and this gentle story about transition is sure to resonate with a number of people underserved in popular narratives that dominate the media landscape.
It is nice (refreshing, even, given the cynicism of our age) to find characters to root for and stories that lift us up, regardless of the age and gender of the viewer.
Good for you, Alex. Keep up the good work.

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