Introducing... The Ned Ludd Radio Hour!
Also: thoughts on why a New Yorker short story bombed at the box office
I’m going to post a quick, depressing musing about the current state of cinema below this, but I wanted to essentially send this newsletter out to introduce The Ned Ludd Radio Hour.
Readers of Future Proof will possibly have picked up on the fact that I have been teasing, for a little bit, the possibility of expanding the themes of this newsletter (and my Medium blog) into podcast form. Podcasting, after all, is my normal domain. The Ned Ludd Radio Hour is just that: a technology podcast for people who are scared of technology. You can listen to the first episode below:
The first episode is with Gavin Mueller, an academic at the University of Amsterdam and author of Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Were Right About Why You Hate Your Job. We're talking about AI, automation and how human sense of purpose can survive all that. I’ve got a bunch more episodes already recorded (with some excellent guests), which will be dropping on a weekly basis from now. But I also want your help in, firstly, promoting the show, and secondly, finding me good guests. If you think you – or someone you know – would be a good person for me to chat with, drop me a line to nick@podotpods.com (please put the name of the podcast in the subject line, if possible, otherwise I might miss it). They don’t have to be a tech sceptic – they can be a tech evangelist, even better – I just want to speak with people who have interesting views on, and experiences with, the world of tech.
I hope you enjoy the first episode. Feel free to feed back to me any thoughts. You can join the sub-reddit here (it currently has 1 member: me) or follow on all the usual places by going to NEDLUDDLIVES.COM.
Listen on Apple. Listen on Spotify. Listen on Acast.
I was lucky enough (or unlucky enough, depending on your cultural perspective) to attend a preview screening of Cat Person last week.
Cat Person, for those who don’t know, is the feature film adaptation of Kristen Roupenian smash-hit New Yorker short story of the same name. The story followed the brief relationship of a college student with a slightly older guy, who may or may not have owned cats. It was a real zeitgeisty piece, reflecting the ambiguity of modern sexual politics, and a lot of people read it (which is by no means the default when it comes to a New Yorker short story).
Anyway, the film adaptation is about to hit UK cinemas, starring Emilia Jones (daughter of Aled, fact fans) and Nicholas Braun (cousin Greg from Succession). After the screening I attended, there was a Q and A between the director – Susanna Fogel – and Lena Dunham, creator of one of the best TV series of modern times, Girls. And I want to paraphrase what Dunham said in her introduction, which was something along the lines of… “there was a period of several months where everyone was talking about the story, ‘Cat Person’. It was a real water cooler moment for ages…”
Cat Person, the feature film adaptation of this story that everyone was talking about for months, was produced by StudioCanal (in partnership with The New Yorker Studios) for a reported budget of $12m. It has been on release in the US since October 6th and has, so far, a domestic gross of $51,112. That would – just about – buy you a 2024 Cadillac CT4‑V.
The observation that I’m making is not a novel one. We live in a world of small, compressed bubbles. And Dunham is right: almost everyone I know socially did read the “Cat Person” short story when it was published. But “almost everyone I know socially” is approximately 0.0000375% of the global population. The cultural penetration of the New Yorker is both enormous in the decision making echelons where it matters, and tiny within the great pool of the general public. 1.2m people, globally, subscribe to the New Yorker, which is an amazing figure for any magazine. It’s about 14% of the population of New York City, 0.362% of the US population, and 0.0171% of the global population. And those are just the people who buy the magazine – god knows how tiny the percentage of people who actually read the New Yorker is (it is, after all, primarily something to have in your house, to make you look smart).
The fact that the movie has been panned by critics doesn’t help. It reduces an already waning interest in the piece. But I think it’s a salient lesson in marketing. You might think, if you are a member of the New York literati that, of course, the film of “Cat Person” would sell itself. Millennials will be queuing around the block at arthouse theatres to see how the twisty little tale had been re-imagined for the big screen. The truth is that the moment was smaller, briefer and much further away than Dunham, in her efforts to market the film, remembers it.
What you’re left with is an elliptical marketing campaign. A title that tells you nothing. A poster that tells you nothing. An adornment “based on the SENSATIONAL New Yorker short story” that tells you nothing (and will act as a warning to some theater goers). Nothing stays hip for long, and the differing commercial imperatives between a story nestled in the pages of a venerable, subscriber funded, magazine, and film that has to stand on its own two feet (and cost $15 a ticket) are huge.
Trailer for The Ned Ludd Radio Hour below: