☕ 5AM CoffeeTalk: August 2026

A monthly rundown about my life as a professional artist, art lover, and human being trying to survive the 21st century - good and bad, glorious and frustrating, hilarious and stupid

So, how did your July go, StoryTalkers? Mine was…good? I sound hesitant there, I know, but that’s only because it’s been some time since a whole month passed where I felt the sum of it was a net positive, so to say.

With regard to work, I’ve received incredibly positive feedback on my feature spec, which I’ll discuss more with you at a later date. My TV pilot commission’s second draft is going swimmingly. But really, the victory has been in my personal life where one wonderful event rolled into the next. We had family visit for two weeks, my wife and I celebrated major birthdays, and…well, the other thing I’ll tell you more about at the end of this rundown. It’s mental when you consider it, but in 2026, a month where there are no major fires to put out feels like an impossible victory. Well, personal fires I mean. The rest of the world is burning down — literally — the result of billionaires and bought-and-paid-for political leaders driving our planet over a cliff. With any luck, the uprising starts next month, but, hey, I’ve been saying that for about a decade now and it somehow feels no closer. Have you any of you guys received any updates yet about when that’s happening?

For newcomers to 5AM StoryTalk, 5AM CoffeeTalk is a quirky monthly rundown I use to share quick bites of information with you about the arts and what’s happening in my life here in Australia. If you enjoy how I think and talk about culture and the world, then what you find here could help point you toward art, events, and news/ideas that you’ll enjoy, too. Oh, and remember it serves as a sort of sibling series to The Brew that I publish as part of the podcast here.

Jump into the comments and share some of what’s been exciting, challenging, provoking, destroying, etc. your creative mind this past month. I want all the bloody details. Let’s make this a two-way conversation — or, er, given how many StoryTalkers there are, a totally not awkward group chat.

SOMETHING YOU SHOULD REMEMBER

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called ‘leaves’) imprinted with dark-pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time - proof that humans can work magic.” — Carl Sagan

When you see videos of machines destroying books so that their human masters can scan them and use them to train AI, know that is not the only point of this violent act. Nor is it to create better AI. The goal is and always has been to transform every aspect of our lives into information that the powerful can control our access to, alter to suppress or even break our imaginations (and, thus, ability to resist), and, maybe most importantly, reduce us to both intellectual and physical slavery. They want all of existence to be transactional in order to maximize their profits and strip you of your humanity, in the process. Your resistance is all that stands in the way of their success.

SOMETHING I DID

I turned 50, as I said above. I spent the day mostly alone, sitting by firesides in cafes and pubs. Writing. Reading dozens of lovely, moving, hilarious emails and text messages from friends and families. Wishing my parents were still here to have called and sung happy birthday to me. Reflecting on where I’ve been, where I am, where I want to go. Suddenly terrified about the future I’ll have to watch my kids grow up in, suddenly lonelier than I’ve ever been because I’ve lost so many and so much in my life, suddenly more alive than I’ve ever felt before, suddenly aware I need a haircut.

SOMETHING COOL ONE OF MY FRIENDS DID

My dear friend Frank Spotnitz — “The X-Files” alumni, brilliant writer, and powerhouse UK-based producer — just got a greenlight “The Trial of Louise Woodward”. It’s a long-gestating project that will be coming your way from HBO — created by Matthew Barry (Industry) and directed by the always brilliant Susanne Bier (The Night Manager). Congrats, Frank — and well done not giving up. Hopefully our project together is next!

Read Matt Grobar’s article at Deadline.

Read my artist-on-artist conversation with Frank:

Q&A: TV Showrunner Frank Spotnitz on What He's Learned from Trading Hollywood for Europe

SOMETHING I ATE

I've wanted to try one of Tokyo Lamington's famous lamingtons here in Melbourne for eight months now. Unfortunately, my schedule and the shop's don't align as neatly as I'd like. But I drove past it recently with my eldest son on our way to check out the Highlander 40th anniversary restoration the big screen. Tokyo Lamington was open. My son consented to the unscheduled stop, but insisted he wasn't interested in one of these strange foods he'd never heard of. Playing it cautious, I opted for a Milo lamington in case he wanted to try a bite. He decided he did, sitting in our backseat. When he gave me the box back, there was only one bite left, which he apparently felt obligated to share with me.

The nibble I got to try was delicious.

And so begins another months-long quest to try a lamington from Tokyo Lamington.

SOMETHING I READ

This is easily one of the most intriguing, often validating, and ultimately inspiring things I’ve read this year. I’ll be considering it and, likely, referencing it for a very long time.

For anyone with an Internet connection and a little discretionary income, the contemporary moment offers a superabundance of seductive distractions. Why then the pervasive mood of emptiness? Why are so many at once overstimulated and bored?

Welcome to the era of decadence without pleasure.

Read Michèle Mendelssohn and Charlie Tyson’s article at The Guardian.

SOMETHING ELSE I DID

For those who enjoy updates about the films I share with my 11-year-old son as part of his arts education: we finally got to see Highlander on the big screen in all its 40th anniversary restored glory.

My son’s verdict was that it was only “pretty good”.

His mother and I are now discussing rehoming him with a more appropriate family. We ask that you respect our privacy during this difficult time.

SOMETHING I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO

This trailer for Wicker is batshit crazy in the most magical, delightful way. I will follow Olivia Colman anywhere, but I didn’t expect that love for her work would lead to watching her spend two hours having hot sex with a man made of wicker. Is there even a name for this kind of fetish?

SOMETHING THAT ME LAUGH

An author was offered $2.4 million for their first novel and a follow-up.

Hollywood came calling.

Then, everything started to blow up.

The author had used AI as a tool.

Questions began to multiply about the chain of title since the courts have made clear you can’t copyright AI-originated material because…you know…stolen.

Now, a multi-million-dollar deal might be going away.

Keep that in mind as you use AI to help you crack your outline, write your text, and pass other people’s work off as your own because you didn’t like how hard writing is. Giant corporations aren’t going to overlook how you might open them up to costly lawsuits.

Read Mike Fleming’s article at Deadline.

SOMETHING I WATCHED

“Widow’s Bay” is an extraordinarily fun show to spend several nights of your life on. I almost never engage in the first season of a TV series released on a streamer, but the word of mouth behind this one was too much for me to ignore, as it turns out. My wife and I gave it one episode, to see if we felt confident it would justify our time, and I think we only made it ten minutes in before we committed to the whole thing. Creator Kate Dippold’s horror-comedy will make you laugh, then jump, then laugh a lot more. But not one line of wonderful dialogue would work this well if not for the performances of its perfect cast — especially Matthew Rhys and Kate O’Flynn.

SOMETHING I LISTENED TO

Not quite three years ago now, Shane MacGowan of the Pogues died too young at 65 years old. His funeral was an opportunity for so many of his musician friends to assemble and honor him with song. Amongst them was fellow Irishman Glen Hansard who, with Lisa O’Neill and the Dubliners’ John Sheahan, performed the Pogues’ iconic song “Fairytale of New York”. Unfortunately, the musical eulogy of sorts hits even harder now.

That’s because Hansard died on July 29th, even younger than MacGowan — only 56 years old. He was killed in a motorcycle accident in Dublin after performing at a nearby pub.

SOMETHING THAT MADE ME SCREAM

I suppose this will make the Christian Right happy because without so many queer characters on our screens, the number of sinful queer people in the real world will inevitably drop, too. That’s because, as we all know, being exposed to LGBQT+ characters might infect you with the Gay. Thus, America will end up more wholesome, like it was in the 50s, when queer people didn’t exist at all. Anywhere. Except at Rock Hudson’s pool parties.

Read John Russell’s article at LGBTQ Nation.

SOMETHING ELSE I ATE

My wife asked me what I wanted her to make for my birthday dinner. I went with lamb stew and New York-style cheesecake with cherries on top. She’d never made lamb stew before, but thanks to a little guidance from Jamie Oliver and her own natural gift for improvisation, she nailed it. The cheesecake, which she had also never made from scratch before, was also perfect.

SOMETHING ELSE I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO

The original films revolution in Hollywood is slowly gaining steam. I think there are now more originals coming our way from major studios/streamers that I’m looking forward to than those based on IP — a major reversal of the cinematic ecosystem of the past decade. What do you make of this trailer for Mayday from Apple? It looks like a fun two hours to me, but that might be because, A, I always enjoy Ryan Reynolds, B, Reynolds appears to be playing the straight me to Kenneth Branagh of all actors, and, C, that Neil Diamond needle drop.

SOMETHING I READ ON SUBSTACK

This is an absolutely brilliant interrogation of why Christopher Nolan chose to include the character of Sinon in his adaptation of The Odyssey — a character who doesn’t appear in either of Homer’s poems. But also, why Nolan very likely chose to cast Elliot Page, a trans actor, in the part.

Superb work here, Flint Del Sol!

Actually, Nolan IS kind of making a point about trans people

SOMETHING THAT GAVE ME HOPE

Read Ted Johnson’s article at Deadline.

SOMETHING YOU MIGHT’VE MISSED

As Ted Gioia wrote when he shared this article in a Note: “The world Silicon Valley has created for us.”

Read Joe Wilkins’s article at Futurism.

SOMETHING ELSE THAT MADE ME LAUGH

Christopher Nolan recently told the BBC that he had put away his Oscars in his office. When his son asked why, Nolan said he found them daunting to look at as he worked on the script for The Odyssey.

His son’s reply: “But you didn’t win any for writing.”

SOMEONE YOU SHOULD FOLLOW ON SUBSTACK

This month, I’d like to point you toward Alec Worley, who is responsible for the newsletter Agent of Weird: Exploring the Write Fantastic. He’s a writer of many things, from comic books to fiction to thoughtful pop culture analysis that always makes you think. His articles are an easy click because you feel like you’re in the warm company of someone who genuinely cares — and is enthusiastic — about his subject matter. I recommend you start with this piece, if only because it’s the one that introduced me to Alex: “Aliens (1986): How to Write a ‘Mission Briefing’ Scene That Doesn’t Suck”.

SOMETHING ELSE THAT MADE ME SCREAM

This photo by Cheney was taken on July 4th in Washington, DC. I’m looking forward to reading that it’s won a Pulitzer.

SOMETHING ELSE I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO

Longtime StoryTalker Lou Tilsley is a fellow Jaws lover and brought a play about the making of it up to me yet again in 5AM StoryTalk’s comments section. As I have a trip to London being plotted at the moment, I thought I’d look it up again to see if I might finally be able to catch it. Well, lo and behold, The Shark Is Broken by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon is coming to Melbourne in October. My friend filmmaker Greg McLean and I are going to check it out together now!

SOMETHING THAT MADE ME CRY

Sam Neill has died, and I shook when my wife told me of his sudden, unexpected passing. He was one of those actors I desperately aspired to write for from a very early point in my career and, only 18 months ago, a script I wrote specifically for him was submitted and rejected with a very kind note. Mortality was at the heart of it, and it seemed he, still in the midst of his cancer battle, was not up for it.

At the end of the day, what I really wanted was to work on the script with Sam and hang out on set with him and just get to know this man who had moved me and made me laugh and helped define Australia for me on screen – from My Brilliant Career, to Sirens, to The Dish and so many others – even though he never actually became an Australian citizen. Later, when Sam’s success in international cinema was secure, he still endlessly returned to local Australian – and New Zealand – screens to support the cultures that had given him so much. One of my favorite TV performances from him was a straight-faced, but completely unhinged guest spot on “Rake” where he played a man accused in court of having sex with…his dog. I’ve only laughed that hard at an episode of TV on rare occasions.

Sam elevated everything he touched as an actor and, later, embraced his role as a national icon in unexpected ways — from becoming a social media star to publicly embracing the raw honesty he had brought to so many parts. You could see the latter somewhere as casual as an episode of “Australian Story”, which followed him home to New Zealand to explore his roots. There, he brought you to tears talking about his childhood, his parents, and a world that has disappeared in many ways. On “The Assembly”, an autistic journalist asked him about the most valuable lesson he learned from his parents. The question rattled Sam; he let us see it, too, and offered up a moment of profundity in response. His discussions about his fight with cancer were no less powerful.

This vulnerability — in his work and his life — is key to Sam’s legacy, I think.

You see, from early in his career, Sam modeled a new kind of masculinity for Australian and Kiwi men – constructed from erudition, wit, kindness, and, as I said, vulnerability. It’s not that other Aussie actors of his generation couldn’t deliver the same, but Sam did it so effortlessly that it counterintuitively began to seem like…strength. We might always first remember Sam as Dr. Alan Grant from Jurassic Park, but that character’s coldness, his discomfort with the world around him, must have made him one of the most difficult performances of the actor’s career.

I’ll miss your work, Sam. I wish I’d been able to have a laugh on set with you. I’m not alone.

SOMETHING ELSE I DID

My wife Lindsay has always wanted to renew our wedding vows in a ceremony with family and friends. Unfortunately, the United States’ descent into a fascist state has put us off the idea of returning their to do it. That left her convinced it would never happen. But this past month, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law visited Australia for the first time, giving me the opportunity to give my wife one hell of an anniversary present. That’s because he married my wife and I 15 years ago this year; she was my wife’s Maid of Honor.

Next, I found a florist to recreate my wife’s bouquet and a baker willing to make a pumpkin cake with maple cream cheese frosting — the latter being a tall order because Aussies don’t do sweet pumpkin anything. Our friends in Victoria then had to make their way to a beautiful small country town with a historic pub with a stunning private room with a fireplace (one family even crashed into a kangaroo, totaling their car, but still showed up). Lastly, I convinced my wife that my in-laws were going to watch our kids while I took her out for a four-month-early anniversary night out. That got her in an anniversary appropriate dress and her wedding shoes. I wore my wedding jacket, shoes, and tie.

When we ultimately arrived, guests shouted, “Surprise!” as she screamed and cried. Our sons, in matching orange bowties, marched forward to greet her like the proudest little men in the world, walked her down the aisle, and then stood next to us as we got remarried by her brother.

It was perfect, start to finish.

Best part is, my wife won’t expect me to perform another grand romantic gesture for a very long time, so I think I’m probably off the hook until at least 2035.

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