5AM RealTalk is a 5AM StoryTalk plog — a podcast blog — where I discuss the highs and lows of my life as an artist and human being living and creating in Australia. Basically, it’s a place to bring us even closer together.
I recommend listening or watching this podcast, but you can read it below under READ 5AM REALTALK FEB. 10, 2026.
On the itinerary today:
🌎America in the shitter, the death of neoliberalism, and racism on the march in Australia
🎨Artists answer the call...or would if not for billionaires
✍ Still waiting for notes on my pilot
✍What happened to all the personal projects I hoped to tackle during my break from this podcast?
🎬 Awards season screeners - wah wah
🎬The problem with ‘28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’, if there is one
🎬The death of nuance and subtlety in cinema according to Netflix
🎬Film students who can’t watch films anymore
🔪Why you should resist the instinct toward ‘content’-style storytelling
🔪 Wes Craven’s philosophy about horror
🔪Horror’s triumphant year in 2025 (i.e., ‘Sinners’, ‘Frankenstein’, ‘Weapons’, and more)
✍ The impact of real-life horror on my work (and yours?)
If you have any questions about what we talk about in this episode, drop them in the comments. Maybe I’ll even address it on the next episode of RealTalk. RealTalk eps are published on podcast players at 6am EST on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month. It’s typically published at Substack a day or two later.
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If you enjoyed this podcast episode, you might also dig these other episodes of 5AM RealTalk:
READ 5AM REALTALK FEB. 10, 2026
Welcome back to 5AM StoryTalk, my friends. This is 5AM RealTalk, a plog where you and I get to talk about what’s going on in my life as an artist, what I’m struggling with, and the arts and its industries in general.
I’ve been away for seven or so weeks, and holy shit, the world’s doubled-down on crazy wherever you look. America is now a full-blown authoritarian state with resistance movements taking on stormtroopers across the country. Canada’s announced neoliberalism was a stupid idea to begin with. And here in Australia, where I live, a party that couldn’t be more racist than Donald Trump if it tried is kicking ass in the polls
We don’t have to get into Venezuela or Gaza or Greenland or what’s in the Epstein Files or - yeah, it’s nuts. It’s nuts.
The good news is, this is when art is needed more than ever in history. When everyone is lost, a Bat signal goes up in the sky and artists rise to the occasion. Well, you’d hope.
Except billionaires now control so many traditional outlets, they’re making sure that doesn’t happen as much as possible. It took white people getting shot on the streets of Minneapolis for Hollywood stars to move past Trump’s threats and start acknowledging fascism might – you know – be bad. Better late than never, right?
In other words, artists are willing and ready but cockblocked at almost every turn.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying, we don’t keep fighting, and in 2026, 5AM StoryTalk is going to lean even more into that effort. The guest list I’ve curated for Season 3 of this podcast certainly reflects that. I think I’ll probably be talking even more about art that’s trying to do exactly that, too.
Speaking of art, maybe I should catch you up on where I am in February, besides scared shitless by the news. As you might recall, this past December I turned in the first draft of a pilot script I’d been commissioned to write. I’m still waiting for notes on that, which doesn’t really shock me. Most people I know are waiting months for notes these days — which is a pretty damn miserable way to create, but that’s the current state of the film/TV industry for you.
I was going to spend my down time over the holidays working on some new projects — and I did to a degree— I’m working on fleshing out two feature ideas I’ve had. Still haven’t started the short story I’ve been trying to get to for months.
My good intentions were interrupted when my book agent emailed to tell me how much he loved some revisions I delivered. That sent me into a bigger rewrite, which is fine because I love this novel so much. I have no idea what’ll happen with it, because the publishing industry has gone as mad as the film and TV industry, but I’m determined that you get to read it one way or another.
As for what I’ve been watching, reading, this sort of thing, I want to tell you I tore through the stack of books on my nightstand and I’ve checked out a load of WGA awards screeners. But alas…no.
You might also recall my wife and I bought a house just outside Melbourne last December. We’ve been renovating it ever since and only just moved in a couple of weeks ago. I honestly don’t know how I got any writing done, but I did. I should be grateful for that. I’ve always said I could write in a fox hole. Hell, I’ve written whole screenplays and more than a few chapters of books on busy public transport journeys.
What I haven’t had time for is enjoying the art I love so much. That changes this month, now that we’ve moved in, as my life gets back to something like normal — whatever normal is these days.
All this said, I did get to see 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
Which brings me to something I’d like to talk about today. The degree to which moviegoers are struggling with watching slower films that don’t conform to their expectations of storytelling — which, if Netflix is right, is now all about trailer moments and over-explaining everything that happens.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck leaned into this a lot while promoting The Rip, a Netflix film that apparently had to be significantly dumbed down — or whatever you want to call it — in order to keep the average couch viewer engaged.
The Atlantic recently published a terrifying article, which you can read here. It discusses how film students today now demonstrate an inability to watch films anymore – despite the fact that, you know, they’re aspiring to make films. It’s pretty grim when you read that they won’t even watch most of what they’re assigned, which is what I thought was the best part of film school —watching and analyzing films with other film geeks.
But today? No, the goal seems to be to make faster, dumber content — not film. Content you can quickly swipe through. Swiping has made our kids dumb. We’ve brain-damaged an entire generation out of being able to enjoy anything that lasts longer than the average shit.
I think that’s reflected in the struggle many have had with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which lacks a loud, propulsive plot like most Hollywood films — a plot, in fact, that is more thematic than “get from x to y to z” to save the day or whatever stupid shit you want out of a film these days.
You have to emotionally engage with it, let the film happen to you, and be capable of interrogating its juxtaposition of horror and despair, on one hand, with unexpected beauty and, most importantly, the possibility of hope in a world that doesn’t seem to want any. It’s a film I’m going to have to see a second time, to really wrap my brain around, but I think director Nia Dacosta and screenwriter Alex Garland put something truly powerful— profound, maybe — on the screen if you leave yourself open to it.
I guess that’s the problem in 2026. Audiences don’t want to work anymore. They want their art obvious. They want it to bludgeon them into submission.
I understand the instinct to bend toward that approach, StoryTalkers. But please, lock that instinct in a lead case, take it out to sea, and kick it overboard. Never listen to it if you want to create something meaningful in this world.
You’ll create, don’t get me wrong. But it won’t matter enough to still be around in 50 years. It’ll be a digital blip. A hiccup. A loud belch that will get a reaction, maybe even a laugh, and then everyone will forget.
Okay, we’re in the final stretch here. I’m not quite there yet, so don’t run just yet.
But I do want to say, if you have any questions about anything I talked about in this episode of 5AM RealTalk, jump into the comments here or the 5AM StoryTalk Podcast at Instagram and hit me with them.
Now, let’s wrap up with a quote, as I like to do. This one is from Wes Craven, who I became friends with – and a collaborator – at the very end of his life. Shitty timing, if you ask me. I’d been a fan of his work since I was a kid, so I just treasured the time I had with him.
Wes, the creator of Freddy Krueger, once said, ““Horror films don’t create fear. They release it.”
I thought of this quote after watching 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple because the film really lives up to Wes’s assertion. This idea that through horror, we can face the thing we otherwise can’t because of how disconcerting it is, how terrifying it is, how unbeatable it otherwise might seem, and…find our way through it to…hope?
At least understanding, the ability to put it in its place, to move past it in some way.
Another reason I thought of this quote is the outstanding year for horror 2025 was. As the world grows scarier and scarier, horror filmmakers stepped up and, more so than any other corner of cinema, took it on. Even the Oscars had to acknowledge the genre was doing what so many other filmmakers weren’t — Zach Cregger’s Weapons, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners were all nominated for a slew of major awards.
In the case of Sinners, a record 16 — including Best Director and Best Picture, two awards that writer, director, and producer Coogler will almost certainly win. A horror film about a white vampire trying to steal Black culture winning Best Picture in 2026 — in Trump’s America? I mean, wow, right?
These are films, like The Bone Temple, that help us face the darkness, what help us make sense of the horror in our real lives.
What a time to be a horror fan!
But also, what a time to be an artist. If you’re an artist, are you feeling the burden of this responsibility, to take on – you know – everything that’s happening right now, let me know what you think about that in the comments.
Okay, that’s it for this episode of 5AM RealTalk. Be sure to come back later this week as I welcome the first guest of 5AM StoryTalk’s third season – writer-director Justin Simien.
Dear White People – both the film and the TV series, the horror film Bad Hair, Haunted Mansion for Disney, and the docuseries “Hollywood Black” that won him an Independent Spirit Award.
I love Justin’s work. I think so much of it is fearless, subversive, and just, you know, brilliant. We’re going to get into storytelling and the challenges of creating something meaningful in an industry town and a seminal piece of art from his life – 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Guys, his take on 2001 is – it’s amazing. Be sure to come on back for that.
Until then, thanks so much for being a part of 5AM StoryTalk. If you were already a fan and have come back for more, amazing — I love you. If you’re a new listener, I hope I justify your time.
I love art. I love talking about art. I’m immensely grateful I’ll get to do it some more with you in Season 3 of this podcast and beyond.
See you around, StoryTalkers!
