Last Week Was A Movie 🎥
One could even say it was a film festival
Neighbors,
We ended last week on a high note, attending the Loose Ends & Friends Film Fest on Thursday and hosting our end-of-year holiday party at the studio Friday.
There were not many Z’s caught over the course of those forty-eight hours. We sprinted to get our new interview with Kat Abughazaleh out the door (more on that below), then instantly turned around to deplete our social batteries.
It felt like a fitting end to 2025, given all of the wonderful, hectic, and deeply fulfilling endeavors this year has brought. I know I’m certainly looking forward to recharging between now and New Year’s.
If you’re joining us here after saying hello at the film fest, here’s your official welcome to the neighborhood. We share new interviews and essays (along with upcoming events) through this space—scroll on for my Sunday column, Five Things I Think (I Think).
— NGL
P.S. Last blog, Moy reviewed creator Mackenzie Chang’s new documentary, The Girls Bathroom (2025). You can read it here.
1.
I think you should make things that are evergreen. This time last year, I put a ton of pressure on myself to complete a project by the end of 2024. It was a short narrative documentary about the Cheeseball Man vs. Cornhead Killer boxing match, and it was called How To Live A (More) Whimsical Life.
What started as a John Wilson-inspired jaunt through New York City became something more, as I pieced the story’s puzzle together and attempted to place it within the cultural moment (a not-so-small election had just occurred, after all).1 In my head, I told myself speed was my friend, and this story would lose relevance once the ball dropped.
Fast-forward to Thursday night, when I had the opportunity to screen the film in front of over three hundred and fifty people at the historic Ramova Theatre, a year after I shot it. This was my first time watching a real audience watch this little thing I spent many, many nights and weekends writing, editing, rewriting, and reediting.
It was pretty surreal. People laughed at the right moments. Dead silence seeped through the crowd two-thirds through (a reaction I had hoped for). Both during the intermission and after the fest, a dozen or so attendees came up to me, sparking conversations about the “irony epidemic” and beyond.
To come full circle: I’m glad I didn’t rush the film out the door last year. I did, in fact, release it on YouTube in March, but that extra two months of editing throughout January and February (in my opinion) strengthened the project considerably. And by the time submissions for Loose Ends & Friends rolled around, I felt like I had something on my hands that was just as relevant in 2024 as it is today.
Thanks to the homie Noah Guardado, the CBW Media team, and the rest of the folks behind the fest for selecting my piece—and hosting an incredible event. I’m grateful for all the pinch me moments these last several years have brought me, but this one might take the cake on a personal level.
I recut a new version of the film for the fest, but you can watch the March version below if you haven’t already (they’re pretty similar save for some small tweaks).
2.
I think theaters are having a comeback. The film fest’s venue, the Ramova, was built in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood in 1929. According to Block Club Chicago, it was a “sister theater” to the iconic Music Box in Lakeview.
Just like the Music Box, walking into the Ramova is a sight to behold:
The interior was designed in the “atmospheric” style of the 1920s, with an auditorium meant to resemble Spanish courtyards and stars on deep blue ceilings that would glimmer before each movie.
Unlike the Music Box, the Ramova struggled to stay open over the years, closing its doors in 1985…until finally reopening as a music venue in 2023. From my understanding, Thursday night was the first time films were screened in the venue since the eighties.
Maintaining historic venues sounds like a nightmare. Block Club reported that the city of Chicago spent three hundred and fifty thousand dollars on repairing the Ramova’s roof alone, just so someone would come in and buy it.
Yet nights like Thursday are a reminder of the role physical spaces like theaters play in building social infrastructure for a city. Another venue, The 400 Theater in Rogers Park, opened its doors in 1912—but ended its one-hundred-and-eleven-year-run in 2023, citing post-pandemic struggles. This month, Block Club reported The 400 had found a new owner, who had this to say:
“Independent theaters enrich local culture by offering spaces for shared experiences, and I look forward to partnering with the community to make The 400 a cultural anchor once again.”
With competition across streaming, social media, and video games, the box office may never reach its pre-pandemic highs again. Nevertheless, 2026 is shaping up to be a big year for theaters, as they rebrand themselves as community hubs.
3.
I think more people should show up to holiday parties dressed up as a snowman. I was taking several people up the elevator to our studio for Friday’s Holiday Function when I turned around and saw a man in a snowman costume staring at me.
“Do I know you?” I asked.
“No,” he replied calmly.
“So you, like, simply have the confidence to show up to parties with people you don’t know dressed up as a snowman?” I followed up.
“Pretty much, yeah,” he said.
Joey was, in fact, invited by someone else at the function. And over the course of the night, I got to know him a little better. He actually works full-time as a “professional mascot,” a career path he landed upon while attending the University of Oregon. Joey played the Oregon Duck (one of the most famous mascots in sports) for a couple years during college.
All of a sudden, one opportunity led to another. These days, he works various roles, including performing internationally with the Harlem Globetrotters (and documenting the journey).
I had several out-of-body moments Friday night where I looked up and realized that our goal of making the space a “living room for the city” has come into focus. We had about forty people show up to the studio over the course of the night, from creators and cinematographers to designers and writers.
Everyone brought the festive cheer, including plenty of colorful Christmas sweaters. But if you want to leave an impression, I think it’s required you pop out as a snowman.
Them’s the rules.2
4.
I think I owe Team One a Polaroid. It’s become a tradition for marquee gatherings at the studio to end with a game of Fishbowl. We split the room in three, and this time around, Team One closed things out in dominant fashion.
Typically, winners reserve the right to a Polaroid flick, earning premier placement on the studio’s designated Polaroid Pole. Unfortunately, our Polaroid camera decided to stop working right around this time, and Team One was robbed of their chance for legacy-altering glory.
Oh well. We still got this one on the digicam.
5.
I think you should watch our new interview with Kat Abughazaleh. In May, we stopped by the offices of 26-year-old TikTok creator, journalist, and misinformation researcher Kat Abughazaleh, who had recently kicked off her campaign for Congress. We asked her questions we received from real Chicagoans, profiled her for Issue Six of the print magazine, and even interviewed her live at the July Block Party.
Now, with just forty days to go until we drop our two hundred-page, collector’s edition magazine—our last print issue of Creator Mag—we recorded a follow-up interview with Kat. And it’s out now on our channel.
Over the last six months, Kat has been a leading face of anti-ICE protests in Chicago—even being indicted by the Trump Administration in October. Her anti-authoritarianism messaging and creator-centric communication style (such as raising over one hundred thousand dollars via livestreaming) is resonating, as she’s currently polling tied for first place in her race.
Given everything that’s transpired in her campaign, it felt right to feature Kat as the first of three “re-interviews” for our upcoming season. You can expect notes from my conversation with Kat in our next newsletter (slated for Tuesday), but for now, I hope you enjoy watching the full thing.3
Thanks for reading! Shoot us a reply, comment, or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—we respond to them all.
If you’ve never watched How To With John Wilson on HBO, I couldn’t recommend it more.
Joey told me he rented the snowman costume from a costume shop in the city specifically for our event. I believe this counts as crossing the threshold from “Commit to the Bit” to “Marry the Bit Entirely.”
Typically, we publish every Sunday and Thursday. Christmas just so happens to fall on the latter this year, so we’ll be back in your inboxes a couple days early!