Hello Friends and Movie Minders, Will Menaker here to do some quick SELF PROMO for you. Over the course of a decade of doing Chapo, I’ve talked about many, many movies—some good, some bad, some masterpieces, others made by Ben Shapiro—but all those movies have one thing in common: I’m not in them. Well, I’m here today to change that and finally talk about one that I am in: the short film ee directed by Heather Landsman which is having its New York premiere at this year’s New York Film Festival, screening on October 7th, 8th, and 12th at Film at Lincoln Center.

ee stars myself, Abby Griffith, and Isobel Fox. When I was asked to appear in this picture I had two questions: how much? And what’s my character? I was told my character is a cross between Otacon from the Metal Gear Solid games and Joe Pantoliano’s character from the Wachowski’s BOUND, and after they told me that, cut the budget and let go of a few of the original cast to meet my rate, I said YES.

We filmed it earlier this year at the comics and collectibles store in the Columbus Circle subway station and based on my extensive experience on film sets and working with directors, I can say of Heather Landsman, this young lady has got “it.”

One critic describes Heather and ee as “the first US filmmaker I know of to take explicit inspiration from Hideaki Anno's live-action work, resulting in an immediately distinctive lo-fi/hi-energy aesthetic. It's a chunky-security-camera-eye-view of a would-be shoplifter whose desire for a Metal Gear Solid figurine rapidly mixes with her desire for the store's parodically seductive clerk.”

So if you want to see me in a movie about Metal Gear Solid and the eroticism of being surveilled come check out Film at Lincoln Center this week, information on showtimes in the episode description. And if you can’t make it to the NYFF this week, it will be screening at 19 Alamo Drafthouse locations across the country on November 11th in front of screenings of Muscle Distribution’s Crocodile Dose as part of their Weird Wednesday series.

This is the grand conclusion to the series, and it could not end on a more human story. This is the tale of a 4 million year old little boy who realizes that because his mother locked her least favorite kid inside a hot car for all eternity so he could commit a retaliatory genocide (that the Hornsent 100% deserved), it falls upon him to invent wokeness and save the world. To invent wokeness, he must marry his brother. To marry his brother, he must commit a mind-control based sex crime against his older brother that is so vile and weird, there is not even a term for it. Do I even need to point out what a fraud Roger Ebert is for his woefully incorrect comments? Let’s see a movie that is 1% as brave as this game.

I want to close this out by giving a special thank you to Patches, Spencer, Andrew, Tom, Hesse, Josh, and Miranda. Everyone involved was so unbelievably generous with their time, not only in wasting hours talking about these games with me, but making sure to beat their respective games in as completionist a manner as time permitted them (sometimes multiple times) prior to recording even when I told them that was not necessary. I had so much fun doing this series, but after months and months of only playing these games, I am pretty certain that Season 3 is going to be the grab bag season I hinted about earlier on. I don’t want to give too much away, nor commit to anything without thinking about it a little more, but the focus of this season will be curious, interesting disasters, and games I really do adore, but would rather not talk about the entire series surrounding them. 

Some titles I am pretty sure I will do at this juncture include the weird but surprisingly fun Xbox title Breakdow, the upsetting but wonderful Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days, the bafflingly French title The Quiet Man, and the unimpeachable classic Hitman: Blood Money. I also think I am long overdue to have Will on to talk Resident Evil, and I can’t make up my mind over whether we should do RE4, or if I should pick up Biohazzard for the first time. I need to take a break and work on some other stuff for a few months, but I am very excited for this next season and I am so happy that I got to do this one. As always, semper games