Tyler Coates

@tylercoates.bsky.social

3724 Followers 247 Following

writer/editor/podcaster/moderator. currently writing for Filmmaker, LA Times, AARP. previously on staff at THR, Esquire, Decider, Flavorwire.

from Pynchon’s Inherent Vice: It wasn't till the middle of rush hour that they let Doc call his lawyer, Sauncho Smilax. Actually Sauncho worked for a maritime law firm over at the Marina called Hardy, Gridley, & Chat-field, and his résumé fell a little short in the criminal area. He and Doc had met by accident one night at the Food Giant up on Sepulveda. Sauncho, then a novice doper who'd just learned about removing seeds and stems, was about to buy a flour sifter when he flashed that the people at the checkout would all know what he wanted the sifter for and call the police. He went into a kind of paranoid freeze, which was when Doc, having an attack of midnight chocolate deficiency, came zooming out of a snack-food aisle and crashed his cart into Sauncho's. With the collision, legal reflexes reawakened. "Hey, would it be okay if I put this sifter in with your stuff there, like, for a cover?" "Sure," Doc said, "but if you're gonna be paranoid, how about all this chocolate, man...?" "Oh. Then... maybe we'd better put in a few more, you know, like, innocent-looking items...." By the time they got to the checkout, they had somehow acquired an extra hundred dollars' worth of goods, including half a dozen obligatory boxes of cake mix, a gallon of guacamole and several giant sacks of tortilla chips, a case of store-brand boysenberry soda, most of what was in the Sara Lee frozen-dessert case, lightbulbs and laundry detergent for straight-world cred, and, after what seemed like hours in the International Section, a variety of shrink-wrapped Japanese pickles that looked cool. At some point in this, Sauncho mentioned that he was a lawyer.
[Amy] Seimetz told the story of how she placed a bet with an early investor, saying she’d surf a famously dangerous wave in Munich if he gave her $10,000 for her first film. She showed up for that early morning surf. The investor didn’t — but they put up the money anyway. As Seimetz and I left the stage, an audience member came up to say he’d broken a rib surfing that exact wave, suggesting that even in the down and dirty world of indie film, there are probably some limits.
the poster for Mile End Kicks, written and directed by Chandler Levack and starring Barbie Ferreira
11. Tell me about an especially memorable moviegoing experience that stands out in your mind. I was 15 when Election was in theaters, and my mom — who by that point had given up and was buying me tickets to R-rated movies — decided, against my suggestion that she do otherwise, to sit through the movie with me. It took roughly five minutes before Mark Harelik’s Mr. Novotny (the teacher with whom Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick had an affair) says directly into the camera: “Her p—— gets so wet, you wouldn’t believe it.” My mother groaned so loudly and I wanted to die sitting in the seat next to her. She’s always complained about how much she hates that movie, and I’ve always complained that she didn’t go see Notting Hill instead.