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Would a flat white produce a good show?

This article first appeared on my newsletter, Future Proof, and is reproduced here because some people are very kind, generous and physically beautiful, and subscribe to that newsletter. You can join that well-groomed crew, if you’re sufficiently big-hearted.

A few years ago, I was reviewing the film Mid90s, directed by Jonah Hill. The film is fine, I should add, but my review opened with a long spiel about its distributor, hipster outfit A24, and excoriated how they had become more of a lifestyle brand than anything else. They had just released a series of scented candles, each pegged to one of the genres in their catalogue, so you could watch, say, Hereditary while sniffing the Horror candle or Moonlight with a nose-full of the scent of Drama. The editor of that piece insisted on cutting that whole opening paragraph, noting, fairly, that the film was not even distributed by A24 in the UK.

Currently in the A24 shop you can buy things like a buttplug-shaped Auditor of the Month Trophy Candle (not sure what film this is even linked to) for $60, a set of black A24 monogrammed sports socks for $12, a set of Maruhiro x A24 ceramic teacups for $45 or a tiny ceramic pin of Florence Pugh’s screaming face, for just $10. The distinctive aesthetic identity of A24 and its films has made this a profitable endeavour (many, if not most, of the items for sale on their…