#42: Fishing with John
Hey loves,
It’s been two weeks, I KNOW. Here’s the thing. It’s probably going to be two weeks from here on out. I have what is probably *too much* going on and I want this newsletter to be a treat and not a burden to read or write. Believe it or not, I care a lot about this little project and making it worth your time and mine!
This week, I got knocked on my ass for 3 full days from the J&J COVID vaccine,* which started this week’s delay. And while that sucked (and was totally worth it!), it made me realize no one’s going to be devastated if we take this thing down to twice a month, yeah? You’ll hang with me, right? Right!
Thank you. Love you.
*I had COVID back in March which is why it was so terrible for me! I got vaccinated the same day and place as one of Josh’s friends who never had COVID and while I was writhing around in a fever dream, Josh texted him and asked how he was doing. His reply? “Little headache. Little sore arm.” So . . . don’t be scared! Go get it!
#42: Fishing with John
Director: John Lurie
Country: United States
Year: 1992
Runtime: 147 minutes
Language: English
**As always, this post contains spoilers**
CW: Fishing?
This is gonna be a short one, friends. Watching Fishing with John felt like watching 6 episodes of something that could only be chalked up to “ya had to be there.” And the there is “a young white guy in 1992.” I just...didn’t get it.
Briefly, the premise is a guy named John Lurie, a musician, painter, and writer whom I was totally unfamiliar with, takes his famous friends to various locales to go fishing. The narration (provided by Robb Webb, who was the voice of 60 Minutes) is a parody of a crime show or nature show narration, often adding dark jokes and exaggerating the scenarios. The bulk of the show is John and his guest having short conversations.
I WILL say, I think I’m still recovering from Henry V, so this was enough of a departure from that nightmare to be somewhat enjoyable.
Episode 1: Montauk with Jim Jarmusch
John picks up Jim in Manhattan and it is immediately giving me Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee vibes. Josh says I’ll recognize Jim Jarmusch once I see him and he is wrong. I have no idea who this person is.
They’re going fishing for shark, it turns out. They go out on a boat in the ocean.
I thought this show was going to be like Oprah except on a boat with some half-assed fishing in between. But it’s...just a fishing show. They’re serious about fishing! They catch some fish to use as bait and I gotta say, the sound of fish flopping around on the wet floor of a boat is the fucking WORST.
John says about fishing: “In a way, it’s totally immoral.” To which Jim replies, “In a way, it’s perfectly normal.” So deep, guys.
Jim tells a story about a woman who was swimming in the ocean and was surrounded by dolphins who kept poking her in the boob so hard they left a bruise. So she got the bruise checked out and it turned out she had a cancerous tumor right where they were poking her. So, further evidence (as though the dolphin Lisa Frank design weren’t enough) that dolphins RULE.
They get a 12-foot blue shark weighing almost 133 lbs on the line (on the fishing line, not on the phone) and they battle it for almost an hour. They get it to the surface and release it.
Episode 2: Jamaica with Tom Waits
Tom and John are in a canoe on a river. Of course, Tom starts singing almost immediately.
They meet their fishing guide, Leon. The next day, they take a smaller boat to a bigger tug boat. Tom is wearing shorts and motorcycle boots.
Tom is quiet and it turns out he’s super queasy. ME TOO, TOM.
“I would hate to throw up such a beautiful breakfast,” he says. So they go back to land and play a card game with some locals all night. Tom has a great time.
They try again the next day, fishing for red snapper in calmer water.
Tom can’t put his bait fish on the hook because he already looked at him and says, “I can’t do it now that we have a relationship.”
Tom catches a red snapper and puts it in his pants because that once helped him get out of a depression. There’s so...very little to say about that.
He also says, “I knew I should’ve brought cheese. I’ve caught all my big fish with cheese. How often does a fish get to enjoy the finer cheeses?”
They get back on land and walk through the jungle to their home. Tom is grumpy about it.
Episode 3: Costa Rica with Matt Dillon
John and Matt take a tiny prop plane to the Costa Rican jungle. They ride horses to meet their guide and John's gets a little wild.
They meet their guide, Don Marino. They do a “traditional” pre-fishing dance that seems in bad taste.
They take a motorboat (speedboat? What’s the difference?) out on the water alone.
John asks Matt, “You know those people who say they don’t care what anyone thinks about them. Do you think that's ever true?”
Matt replies, “Maybe some people.”
And that’s about all they say to each other the whole time. They don’t catch any fish and they wonder if they didn’t do the dance with enough sincerity. By the end, they end up catching a couple of fish.
They return to the city and do the fishing dance in the streets.
Episode 4: Maine with Willem Dafoe
I LOVED THIS EPISODE.
Willem and John ride snowmobiles on a frozen lake. With dramatic music playing, they take off their goggles and Willem says, “Here.”
They build their own icehouse which looks like shit but is also impressive. Willem suggests they zip their sleeping bags together and when John is hesitant, Willem says, “ya know what, I get kinda sweet when it comes to bed time.”
Excuse me, do I love Willem Dafoe? Is he a very charming, normal person? All signs (in this show) point to yes!
They drill a fishing hole with an auger and Willem tells John a story about eating roadkill from a friend who hit a deer.
They don’t catch any fish and are very hungry; all they have to eat is cheese crackers. There’s actually a very cute scene where John is hungry and asks Willem for peanut butter crackers and Willem digs around in his pocket and keeps finding cheese crackers and just keeps pulling cracker packets out of his pocket and saying, “Cheese on cheese. Cheese on cheese. Cheese on cheese.”
Anyway, they’ve been out there for like a week! Willem proposes they pretend they’re hunter-gatherers and they’ve just had a bad day and that maybe this will help them not take food for granted ever again.
The narrator says they are out there for 11 days without catching any fish, but that sounds like a lot, right? I think that’s a joke. The end is a blurry montage of John and Willem stumbling around, disoriented on the ice. The narrator says, “On January 19th, John Lurie and Willem Dafoe died of starvation.”
I dunno, it just seemed like these guys were actual friends IRL and it showed!
Episodes 5 & 6: Thailand with Dennis Hopper
I HATED THIS EPISODE.
I told Josh I had never seen a single Dennis Hopper movie and then he listed like 5 that I have seen and then I thought, hmmmm...I think that’s worse because I had and still have no real idea who Dennis Hopper is. I don’t know that man.
They arrive in Thailand and ride around in a van. Dennis says, apropos of nothing, “I had a girlfriend once say I was treating her like a doormat. I never could understand that until recently.” John thinks Dennis said “Teresa” instead of “recently” and they laugh and laugh. And I wonder...has Dennis Hopper ever asked a woman a follow-up question?
They stop at a cantina and all Dennis eats is candy.
They go out on the boat the next day. Dennis catches one small fish and they take a break to play table tennis.
They go back out and Dennis catches a stingray. They canNOT figure out how to release it. This stays an unsolved mystery, folks!
Their captain, Lon, drops them off at a squid fishing boat where “curious foreigners” are not particularly welcome and the crew are not “particularly friendly.” Because much of the show is sensationalized/a lie it’s hard to believe what’s true or what’s a spun narrative for comedic or dramatic effect, so who knows.
On the boat, Dennis tells a story about how Cole Porter kicked him out of his house once because Dennis told Cole that he had too many “yes men” around him. Cole ended up writing him a nice note later, but “some girlfriend or wife or something ripped it up in some sort of fit of female passion.” Totally unrelated, can you believe this guy was married five times?? Incredible.
They take a very long boat ride into the night.
John asks Dennis if anyone has ever told him he looks like a murderer, to which he responds, “Yeah, my wife.” Again, five wives! What a mystery.
The captain gets an SOS from another ship and they believe it’s because of a giant squid, so they skedaddle. In the morning, John and Dennis have been “abandoned” by a terrified crew, so they wander around Thailand. They borrow a fishing boat and go out on their own.
They don’t catch anything. They get back on land and go to a restaurant. John wonders why people dress so absurdly on vacation, but Dennis doesn’t care about the conversation.
The End
Listen, I will own the fact that I thought this show was going to be something it wasn’t. I was hoping for some real heart-to-hearts because those are always fun even if you don’t know who any of the people are. That’s not what this was. I also was annoyed, save for the Willem Dafoe episode, that it still felt like a performance. I couldn’t tell what the line was between reality and production and I’m sure that was partially the point, but it’s not for me, I guess!
Not to get too binary, but I would love to hear from any women who have seen this show and liked it because so far I’ve only heard from dudes in their late 30s/40s who like it.
Josh reminded me that there was nothing like this show in 1992 and it was ahead of its time which is cool but also...so was GoGurt...I don’t know, I just didn’t care about it.
Onward! Up next is Lord of the Flies from 1963! I have never read the book and my sweet babies, I have somehow managed to get this far without even knowing what it is about. Should be fun? See you there!
XOXO,
Steph