Sophie from That Final Scene

inside the wild plan to turn movie theaters into fitness centers for your brain (+ a filmstack challenge) A radical blueprint on transforming our dying theaters into cultural fitness centers. And a Filmstack Challenge!

Sean Baker followed me after I diagnosed why cinemas are actually dying, and now I just published my solution: transforming movie theaters into cultural gyms.

Here's the blueprint I just wrote:

the death of cinema & how to bring it back to life (part 1) I paid £20 to watch someone scroll through pasta recipes during a r*pe scene, and that's not even the worst part of going to theaters in 2025.

A really great read on the death of cinema. Looking forward to reading the solutions. Well-researched. open.substack.com/pub/thatfina... @thatfinalscene.bsky.social

what you're risking while watching elon musk risk tesla When billionaires can't escape mathematical reality, we all learn what we've actually mortgaged.

How Wall Street manipulates TIME ITSELF to escape accountability: These are the lessons from MARGIN CALL that explain every financial crisis you've lived through.

ADOLESCENCE is terrific. Television doesn't get better than this. I know it's easy to hate on Netflix when so much of their content is garbage, but they sure as hell earned my monthly subscription with this one.

did i just invent the formula for underrated directors? A term that reveals more about us than the directors we apply it to.

I tried to create a mathematical formula to identify "underrated" directors and accidentally proved why the whole concept is flawed.

After watching the latest episode of THE WHITE LOTUS, I’m calling it a frustrating season. If water guns is the plot device we get by the half-season mark, then we no longer have a slow burn. We have a no burn.

Even if the finale is a bloody massacre, it doesn’t make the journey worth it.

jeremy strong, kieran culkin, and the cost of caring too much On visible ambition and the mortifying ordeal of being too earnest for your own good. When did effort become our culture's ultimate ick?

jeremy strong, kieran culkin, and the cost of caring too much
open.substack.com/pub/thatfina...

Absolutely! I go into this in much more detail (and nuance) in the full essay 🤗

jeremy strong, kieran culkin, and the cost of caring too much On visible ambition and the mortifying ordeal of being too earnest for your own good. When did effort become our culture's ultimate ick?

I've got much more to say about this whole phenomenon—the class dynamics beneath it, how it shapes creative industries, and why I'm done pretending not to care. Full essay here: (14/14) www.thatfinalscene.com/p/jeremy-str...

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We've built a culture that celebrates the appearance of effortless success while mocking those who show their work. Maybe that says more about our own fears than about the people brave enough to care openly. (13/14)

The most electric performances—in acting, writing, any creative field—come from precisely that willingness to look completely undone by wanting something. To risk appearing uncool in pursuit of something meaningful. (12/14)

For what it's worth, Culkin himself doesn't play this game. In his Oscar speech, he directly addressed Strong: "Jeremy, you're amazing in The Apprentice. I love your work. It's f---ing great." Real recognizes real. (11/14)

This isn't about who "deserves" the Oscar—both delivered extraordinary performances (though I do have a fave!). It's about how we've turned caring deeply into something embarrassing, something to be hidden rather than celebrated. (10/14)

What's fascinating is how this plays out beyond awards shows. In every industry, we celebrate the "natural genius" while side-eyeing the visible striver. The dropout billionaire over the immigrant founder who meticulously built their business. (9/14)

We've developed a strange relationship with authenticity in 2025. We claim to value realness but recoil when it arrives unfiltered. Remember Timothée Chalamet's SAG speech where he admitted wanting "greatness"? Same reaction. (8/14)

The internet's response? Immediate mockery, especially contrasted with Culkin's reaction—simply posting a photo of himself drinking champagne on a Parisian balcony with "LET'S FUCKING GOOOOO". One approach read as desperate, the other as cool. (7/14)

When Oscar nominations dropped in January, the pattern repeated. Strong released a heartfelt statement about his lifelong devotion to acting alongside a childhood photo of himself outside the 1993 Oscars. (6/14)

The profile highlighted Strong's elaborate preparation: staying in character off-camera, requesting real tear gas for scenes, sending character-related texts at 3am. The internet collectively decided this was cringe rather than commitment. (5/14)

This divide began years ago with Strong's infamous 2021 New Yorker profile. The headline alone—"On 'Succession,' Jeremy Strong Doesn't Get the Joke"—framed his intensity as somehow embarrassing compared to his more "chill" castmates. (4/14)

Culkin's speech was charming as ever, dropping f-bombs and making the audience roar with his "four kids" callback to his wife (that last part was a bit weird ngl). Meanwhile, social media filled with comments about Strong's intense face, continuing a narrative years in the making. (3/14)

When the Best Supporting Actor envelope opened Sunday night, cameras caught Strong's split-second reaction before cutting to Culkin's triumphant walk to the stage—a perfect visual metaphor for Hollywood's two approaches to success. (2/14)

🧵 The Oscars just crowned Kieran Culkin, but I can't stop thinking about the reaction shots: Jeremy Strong's face told a story about how we treat people who show their hunger vs. those who make success look effortless.

Let's unpack this... (1/14)

my pleasure aw ♥️

the problem with severance is me Or how I learned to love being the perfect Apple customer.

The goats aren't the weirdest thing about Severance. It's that I pay a trillion-dollar company to show me how evil trillion-dollar companies are. My full Substack piece explores my journey through cognitive dissonance and why I can't look away: (14/14) www.thatfinalscene.com/p/the-proble...

When future media scholars excavate the streaming wars, they'll marvel at how Severance pulled off its greatest illusion, convincing us that mandatory workplace viewing could become voluntary obsession. Going delulu never looked this stylish. (13/14)

Does acknowledging my complicity diminish my pleasure? Hardly. The tension between Severance's corporate funding and its artistic rebellion doesn't undermine its impact—it magnifies it. The perfect trojan horse made possible by our collective Stockholm syndrome. (12/14)

Stiller's team hijacks corporate resources to create art that interrogates the very systems funding it. But this makes me the ideal Apple customer: I mentally rebel while financially complying. My outrage is just another metric in their quarterly report. (11/14)

We're all innie viewers trying to make sense of fragmented narratives controlled by outie corporations. We refine numbers without understanding their significance. We gather for uncomfortable workplace memorials, applauding watermelon busts of colleagues we barely knew. (10/14)

When Tim Cook shows Apple's quarterly profits, I picture executives in AirPod-white earbuds sorting subscriber emotions into digital refinement bins. "Severance viewership up 230% quarter-over-quarter!" they chant, high-fiving over our collective severed consciousness. (9/14)

The waffle parties aren't for Mark and Helly—they're for us. Forget quarterly bonuses; we pay THEM for the privilege of decoding their puzzle boxes. The incentive program targets viewers, baiting us with revelations always one payment period away. (8/14)