You Never Know Who's Watching 📺
Plus: Four other things I think (I think)
blog.sixty-one // The whole team was in town this past week, as we hopped on the train up to Rogers Park and took some photos for our next print edition.
It’s a busy time production-wise here for us in the studio. The magazine—and our upcoming slate of videos—are coming together, and we can’t wait to see some of you at “Short Story Long” next Saturday.
Speaking of which: If you’re interested in attending, tickets are still available here. We have a great group coming together for an entire day of stories, performances, and more. We’re also trying to make this event as accessible as possible, so if you have any questions, reach out!
Hope everyone’s having a great holiday weekend. Here’s Five Things I Think (I Think).
— NGL
P.S. Last blog, we talked with content strategist Eric Villa about what people get wrong when it comes to “retention editing.” You can read it here.
One :: I think you truly never know who’s following along with your work. Last week, I was catching up with a really talented filmmaker from New Zealand who is currently based in Japan.
She mentioned that she’s been keeping up with this space over the last couple months, reading each new edition. It seems like you guys have really been building something out in Chicago, she told me.
I’m paraphrasing here. But it reminded me of an out-of-body experience I had one day when I was chatting with Isaiah “Steezy Kane” Shepard. Isaiah is a prank creator and aspiring filmmaker; I profiled him for our third Creator Mag cover story way back in 2022.
A year after that story ran, Isaiah told me that one of the lead screenwriters from Dave—Lil Dicky’s semi-autobiographical FX television series, a show that’s served as a big inspiration for Isaiah—had reached out to him. The writer was interested in hearing more about Isaiah’s Hollywood dreams, and the pair traded tales from their respective journeys through the entertainment world.
Eventually, Isaiah had to ask: How did you hear about me?
The writer responded: Oh, I read a story about you in this magazine called Creator Mag.
I believe that if you pursue a creative career over the long run, you have to care on a personal level. While external milestones matter, the most vital factor is intrinsic motivation. You just have to keep showing up.
Nevertheless, whether it’s a writer who’s reached the peak of Hollywood—or someone on the other side of the world—you never really know who’s following along, hanging onto every word you spilled onto a blank page. And off of that…
Two :: I think moments matter. They’re the magical currency we hold onto when we’re in “The Hole,” a term my friend Donovan uses to describe the creative process.
If we feel stuck, if we question our direction as we navigate this topsy-turvy game of pursuing our unique form of art (in a world where commercialization is becoming ever-more efficient, at that), we need to return to those capital-M Moments.
The isolation inherent to creative work can be challenging. Yet the memory of what our work has meant—and what our work can mean, the heights it can reach—is the fuel that keeps us moving forward.
Moments serve a purpose. And if we string enough moments together, our purpose becomes even stronger.
Three :: I think there’s an art to editing that’s entirely different than writing. I’m talking about editing writing specifically here—not video editing.
Taking on guest submissions and building them into the skeleton of our upcoming print zine has been a new experience for our team. For me, it means spending more time in Google Docs, editing words other than my own.
When push comes to shove in my writing, I tend to lean into my voice and never look back. Sure, this means I sometimes trade a more coherent argument or cleaner copy for home run swings that just might fall short. But as the AI slop slowly closes in on us all, I’d rather read the piece from someone who has something fresh to say—even if it’s a bit sloppy, or crude—rather than robotic, pitch-perfect prose generated by ChatGPT.
Working with our guest contributors is cool because they all bring such different voices to the table compared to what we’ve run with in the past. Some of them are professional journalists; others have never published their writing anywhere at all.
Yet in collaborating with contributors so far, it’s been a fun challenge keeping their voice intact—while also editing for grammar, as well as our evolving Creator Mag style.*
Four :: I think production is always a rollercoaster, no matter the scale. One of the breakout shows of 2025 has undoubtably been The Studio, which follows Matt Remick (played by Seth Rogen) as he gets promoted to head honcho of a fictional, storied movie studio called Continental.
The Studio is unabashedly self-referential. Rogen has shared in interviews that many of the episodes’ plots are based on real-life horror stories shared by producers and Hollywood execs. On top of that, everyone from Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard to Olivia Wilde and Anthony Mackie shows up to play a caricaturized version of themselves.
To double down, even making the show had its own production craziness. The Ringer recently published an oral history of the of the season finale, which sees Remick and his ragtag Continental team run around the Venetian Hotel and casino floor in Las Vegas…while tripping on shrooms.
Funny enough, the hotel was still open as Rogen and Co. made the finale. Behind-the-scenes, they were actually scrambling to film, and it didn’t help that ten thousand tourists were hanging around—mouths agape—to ponder why Bryan Cranston was eating an entire lobster in front of their faces.**
Stories like these make you realize that even those at the height of their powers (with a Apple TV+ budget, at that) are still figuring out how to make shit happen on the fly. That part of production never really seems to change.
Five :: I think media makers and creators are finding new ways to reengineer the concept of the magazine. Whether or not you publish print, you’ve probably figured out that it’s really hard to make something by yourself over a long period of time.
Sure, there’s the burnout element, as well as the desire for creative collaboration. But at a certain point, you also hit a wall—what new things do I have to say?
Popular podcast host and brand consultant Chris Black recently jumped on the Mixed Signals show to say this:
“One of the more popular fashion newsletters is called Magasin…she hired a menswear writer, she hired a design writer.
That’s just a magazine. And that’s great, [because] I don’t know if there’s a single voice I want to hear from that much.”
Black goes on to share that he still believes gatekeepers are cool, which is why he writes a regular column at GQ. If you’re interested in where media is headed, this episode is worth a listen.
Thanks for reading! Shoot us a reply, comment, or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—we respond to them all.
* For those wondering, our style can be described as Substack-meets-Masterclass-meets-The Economist-meets-The New Yorker.
** Light spoilers; apologies!