December 2025 Patreon round-up: 2025 American Generations Reflections + Advanced Script for Mirrors of Kane narration & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast

Following last year's tradition, even though there is a bonus $5/month tier reward I could have featured in the top image, I'm going instead with the $1/month advance - in this case, a screenshot of Susan Alexander Kane overwhelmed by the opera house lights, linked to the narration script for an upcoming video about her. As for the higher tier, in addition to the Twin Peaks Conversations episode on Jane Austen and David Lynch (covered in a separate cross-post earlier this month), I did write a reflection on various generations in the year 2025 (following responses to 2023 and 2024), which was published this morning. Perhaps at some point in upcoming years I will highlight an image associated with that recurring essay project but for now I'll stick with the world of fictional New Yorker Charles Foster Kane rather than real, contemporary New Yorkers Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump (who is, like Kane, both a New Yorker and a Floridian - he also once cited Kane as his favorite film in this bizarre analysis).

This month wraps up my exclusive rewards on the $5/month tier - from now on, I will offer advances on both tiers. Cross-posts will appear on this site less frequently than before (probably alongside project updates at the end of each season), usually to highlight written pieces like a TWIN PEAKS Character Series entry or script for another video essay narration. In 2026, my entire focus will be on wrapping up four projects: Mirrors of Kane, Lost in Twin Peaks, the TWIN PEAKS Character Series, and Journey Through Twin Peaks.

What are the December rewards?

December 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - 2024 American Generations Reflections + TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast

In months when I'm not covering a particular film or TV show for the $5/month tier, I tend to use a group shot of Twin Peaks characters as my top image for a public round-up. These represent the $1/month tier advance entry from my TWIN PEAKS Character Series without giving away which particular character I've written about (since the ranking is supposed to be a surprise until the eventual public reveal). I go this route even when there's another $5/month reward to highlight, usually because that reward is a Twin Peaks Conversations episode which I've already highlighted in a separate cross-post. That was certainly the case this month when I spoke with John Thorne again, this time for his Devious Dreams book on Mulholland Drive; while part two is linked below I already promoted this discussion on this site a few weeks ago. However, there also happens to be a bonus $5/month reward this month: a long written piece in which I explore the year 2024 through several different generations as part of an ongoing project which will hopefully lead to a video essay in the distant future (this is the second year I've offered this bonus, as the video will span 2023 - 31 and I want to prepare the ground with contemporaneous assessments). Why not use an image associated with this subject atop December's round-up?

Well, frankly, I found most of those potential images to be less than enticing both aesthetically and politically. If I'm trying to get people excited for my Patreon work, it's probably best not to frontload either a generic demographic chart (whose generational definitions I probably don't even use myself) or some photo of Trump smirking with eighties celebrities and/or grifting YouTubers (then again, politics always makes for the best clickbait so maybe I've shot my SEO in the foot). None of this is to say the piece isn't worth reading. It was certainly satisfying to write everything down, and hopefully others find my musings insightful and relatable, and not too heavy on generalizations...pardon the quasi-pun. Still, I figured we'd all be better off with a perplexed Gordon Cole and the gang leading the way this time.

What are the December rewards?

January 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Films in Focus podcast #1: The Red Shoes, True Detective: Night Country viewing diary (first part) & 2023 American Generations Reflections + TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance

January 2024 was the busiest month on my Patreon in five years - maybe ever. Not only did I offer the usual Twin Peaks character study for all patrons, kick off a new film podcast, and initiate a new reward system involving patron selections (including ten different polls or updates), I also offered bonus features for the $5/month tier: an ongoing viewing diary for the series True Detective: Night Country (the fourth season of the show whose every episode I covered in the past) and an essay reflecting on the past year in culture and politics through a generational lens. The crown jewel, however, was a podcast on Michael Powell's and Emeric Pressburger's Technicolor ballet masterpiece The Red Shoes - a film I'd never covered and barely if ever even mentioned in my previous work. Suggested by longtime patron Laurence Figgis, the popular pick cleared two rounds of voting including a run-off against Punch Drunk Love, with which it was tied after the first round. Watching this movie for the first time in decades, I was struck by the complexities of the art vs. romance, passion vs. comfort menage a trois trapping rising ballerina Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) between composer/lover Julian Craster (Marius Goring) and impresario/mentor Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook)...

What are the January rewards?

Announcement: Considering the "Generations" video essay (& series) for the end of 2022

UPDATE 2023: The project has now been delayed until later in the 2020s, once Journey Through Twin Peaks is complete. The rest of this post is the original write-up from 2022...

Yesterday I significantly updated my "Plan for Journey Through Twin Peaks" & more tracking page to reflect a new goal for 2022-23. The "Generations" video is something I've been discussing for months without quite formally announcing. Here's the description for that project:

Use found footage, popular music, and my own scripted narration to produce a video essay, ideally 10-15 minutes but hopefully no more than half an hour, surveying the "MAGA Meltdown" era (2015 - 22) through the eyes of each generation living through this period: the unnamed "future" generation (born in or after 2014), the zoomers (born 1997 - 2013), the millennials (born 1980 - 96), generation X (born 1963 - 79), the boomers (born 1946 - 62), the silent generation (born 1929 - 45), the greatest generation (born 1912 - 28), and the lost generation (born in or before 1911). The concept is based on my "Seven American Generations" post from several years ago, and would continue as a series in future years covering past seven- or eight-year eras through these same generations, at younger ages, alongside earlier generations.

Read on for more details (plus a status update on other work).