TMS Update: Something Completely Different

(Paramount Pictures)

So, you might have noticed January and February on The Meggie Sue were very review heavy and with less deep dives and think pieces than usual. My ‘Muse of the Week’ series has only gotten two updates so far this year. This isn’t because I’m suddenly super busy in real life and don’t have enough time for my writing career. In fact, it’s closer to the opposite. For the first time in almost a decade I feel a lethargic writer’s block might be dangerously lingering, and from various influences. The first week of 2026, I was officially let go from the last publication still featuring me as a columnist, and almost a year after I started noticing other movie reviewers experiencing the same. This is the second publication to tell me they’ve decided to go in a ‘different direction’ and not include reviews in their arts and entertainment columns. Not exactly encouraging for the journalism and film criticism communities, especially with online writers having to challenge growing AI after already being forced to work around SEO during jobs. I don’t even want to know what this ‘AI writer’ position I keep seeing on my LinkedIn suggestions is. I received bad news from a different line of work near the end of February as well. It’s taken a lot longer than I was hoping for this newsletter to take off in popularity even though my articles generally do pretty well exposed on social media and search engines. I really, really don’t want to compromise my passion for writing by using my skill as simply a meal ticket in another field. In more recent months I feel like my fun, little pieces on entertainment and pop culture seem pointless in the grand scheme of serious things going on in the world and country. And while I am aware that things like movies, music, art, etc. can be an effective distraction from worries, it can still be a struggle to feel motivated if these things directly affect you. I could do a pithy, thinly veiled political commentary like I did before the election or even just a listicle on some startling prescient films. Believe me, there are plenty of classic pictures suddenly feeling relevant these days, whether it’s Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951) or Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange (1971) or Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog (1997) or Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002). Instead, I’m going to share three timeless monologues that have been running through my mind for almost a whole year and keeping me levelheaded. Things are starting to slowly look up for my schedule in March, so I’m going to choose to see this is a positive sign; and try not to dwell on the fact that I got a letter last week revealing the water bill is going up 10% in April, a small cup of rice at my favorite Mexican takeout is now $2.75, and a bot DM’d me on Tumblr asking if I’m looking forward to Jesus Christ returning to Israel this year.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Dir. Frank Capra

Wri. Sidney Buchman, Myles Connolly

“Now you’re not going to have a country that can make these kind of rules work, if you haven’t got men that have learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose…It’s a funny thing about men, you know. They all start life being boys. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if some of these senators were boys once. And that’s why it seemed like a pretty good idea to me to get boys out of crowded cities and stuffy basements for a couple of months out of the year. And build their bodies and minds for man-sized jobs, because those boys are going to be behind these desks some of these days. Hey, that seems like a pretty good idea. Getting boys from all over the country, boys of all nationalities and ways of living. Getting them together. Let them find out what makes different people tick the way they do. Because I wouldn’t give you two cents for all your fancy rules! If behind them they didn’t have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness. And, uh, a little looking out for the other fella too.”

Network (1976)

Dir. Sidney Lumet

Wri. Paddy Chayefsky

“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Thugs are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it! We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. We sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad, worse than bad…they’re crazy! It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone!’ Well, I’m not going to leave you alone…I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest, I don’t want you to riot, I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad! You’ve got to say, ‘I’M A HUMAN BEING, GOD DAMN IT! MY LIFE HAS VALUE!’”

The Great Dictator (1940)

Dir-Wri. Charles Chaplin

“I’m sorry. But I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible. Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men. Cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world. Millions of despairing men, women, and little children. Victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed. The bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes. Men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives. Tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel. Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men. Machine men with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines, you are not cattle. You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th chapter of Saint Luke, it is written the Kingdom of God is within man. Not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power. The power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world. A decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!”

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