Dear Gossips,  

Awards season has broken my brain, and I am incapable of being serious at this point, so let’s talk about Austin Butler. Specifically, let’s talk about the TikTok that went viral this week from the French premiere of Dune: Part Two, in which French basketballer Etienne Ca asked Austin about his favorite childhood movie, and Austin name-checked Sergio Leone’s 1966 spaghetti western classic, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. 

 

Some guy on TikTok—don’t explain this man to me, I do not care—reacted with, “You can just say Toy Story.” 

Not even getting into telling a guy who says he likes a cowboy movie to like a different cowboy movie instead. Everyone tried to make this about TikTok and attention spans, or maybe the supposedly young people problem of not watching films from before 1999 (streaming is making that an everyone problem! There’s a real dearth of older films on streaming platforms!), or maybe a broader point about cultural incuriosity, but I think it’s a generational thing, specifically, it’s a basic cable thing. 

 

Austin Butler is a young guy, just 32, but he’s also juuuuuust old enough to have grown up with “whatever’s on”. What are you watching? Whatever’s on. Tivo/DVRs didn’t become common until the 2000s, streaming wasn’t the standard until the 2010s. Austin’s Nineties childhood was probably the last era of “whatever’s on”. And you know what was on a lot? Westerns! My brother and I spent an entire summer obsessed with Pale Rider and whisper-yelling “preeeeeaaaaaacherrrrrr” at one another because that movie was just on all the time.

 

Besides, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly isn’t a deep cut. It’s a very popular Clint Eastwood film, it’s been homaged and referenced to death in other films, it’s a touchstone piece of cinema…or it was until streaming started decimating everyone’s awareness of older films. I do kind of worry about what happens to like, society, when we’re all hermetically sealed into our individual little algorithm bubbles, but for now, I’ll settle on spotting the generational divide between the “whatever’s on” kids and the “on demand” kids. 

Also, if you’re wondering why Austin Butler, a legitimately tall person, not just a Hollywood tall person, looks like a shrimp, it’s because Etienne Ca is six-foot-ten. Six feet and ten inches! Imagine all the top shelves he can reach! No top shelf too top shelf! Oh, to be top shelf tall!

Live long and gossip,

Sarah