On a bit of a personal note this weekend, it’s been more or less 12 months since my wife and I said, “Hey, let’s try New York for a year.” The sheer luck of being able to make such a decision isn’t lost on us and the experience, one I’ve dreamed of for some time, was a fruitful and rewarding one. And in just a few days, it’ll all come to a close.
Personally, it was hugely necessary. The seven-year-itch really got to me in LA and I had to get out of there for a while. I’d recommend living in New York to anyone, particularly if you’re in your 20s (which are behind me). Certainly before you’ve settled anywhere that has you set in your ways at all. This is a living organism and you’re part of something much bigger here. That is never lost on you, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, day in and day out. At least that was my experience. That’s part of what makes it one of the most special places on the planet.
However, as much as I’ve loved this excursion, and as much as this reboot has been good for the spirit, it’s made me realize how much Los Angeles really is my home, how much my love/hate relationship with it had settled somewhere in my bones, like a family member. I’m very much looking forward to going back.
Professionally, doing the circuit from New York, experiencing the Oscar madness in a completely different environment, it was eye-opening. The community is much smaller here, the gatherings full of the same handful of AMPAS faces, and that made for an interesting change of pace. On this beat, Los Angelenos and New Yorkers live in their own bubbles, and that tunnel vision is separately fascinating. But getting a different perspective on things (though it’s certainly quite similar in many ways) was weirdly rewarding.
More rewarding, though, was spending some time in the trenches with the media community and personalities out here, a number of whom I had never met. So many of us exist to each other as Twitter usernames, email addresses, commenter handles — not flesh and blood, not real stories and the eye-to-eye divulgence of who a person is. That’s the great irony of the internet, the lie that it brings the world closer together. It really just pushes us farther apart.
Anyway, with that bit of dubious philosophizing out of the way, I have to say it’s been a pleasure to meet and share the same air with Mike Ryan, Mark Harris, Stu VanAirsdale, Nathaniel Rogers (finally!), Matt Patches, Lane Brown, Chris Rosen, Glenn Kenny, Umberto Gonzalez, Matt Singer, Peter Labuza, Dave Gonzales and my HitFix colleague Josh Lasser, as well as the countless New York publicists who facilitated my work and made the transition a seamless one. The same goes for the New York area folks I had already met at this far-flung locale or that and with whom I could finally spend more than a few fleeting moments — Jordan Hoffman, Eric Kohn, Kate Erbland, Alan Sepinwall, Edward Douglas, Katey Rich, Tomris Laffly, etc.
And anyone I may have carelessly neglected to mention, know it was but a slip of the mind.
I’ll be gearing up for another cross-country trek back to LA in the next week, so Guy will be the dominant voice around here for a bit. By the time I’m back and re-established, it’ll be just about time for the Telluride Film Festival to give us an early glimpse at the circuit ahead. Until then, there are a handful of Big Apple bucket list items yet to check off. But boy has it been swell.
So long, New York.