New Year, New Me? (Spoiler Alert: Probably Not)

Yes, this my actual passport photo—feels like it’s giving off the right vibes for this piece.

Hey there! It’s been a minute, I know. Well, more like half a year, really since I updated this last. So yeah, 2022 finally burned out a few days ago and along with it went the last several months where I wasn’t writing on here, but staying busy all the same.

We wrapped up the year finally getting to go on tour again, so my hijinks with WHM took me to Toronto, Denver, SLC and Phoenix.

While all the stops on the tour were a blast in their own ways, I was more than beyond thrilled to return to Toronto, where we did a show on the horrendous sequel, Saw IV, which of course was shot entirely in some Toronto warehouse because the poor people in those films never get to see the light of day.

I was most thrilled to get back to Toronto because that city is where I made a big stand professionally several years back. My first trip to the Toronto International Film Festival was a high water mark for me because it was the first time in my career I was hitting a festival and not staying back at the office as an assistant. Over the years attending the fest, I was able to meet so many amazing people who work in this business and it became an annual sojourn I was more than happy to take each September.

When the Pandy took out TIFF for 2020, and then eventually 2021, I had no idea when I’d ever get back north and get my next fix of Toronto. Then, as some of you may have heard, last May began the great implosion of my Old Place, the week before Memorial Day weekend. Those awful few days saw me become the first of nearly a dozen people to resign or find other work in protest of the direction that institution was heading. Unsurprisingly, every single person who left played a key creative role in the organization. Ah, the corporatization of non-profit arts orgs…

[Side Note: While it was incredibly hard leaving that place, and indeed, I miss all of my dear friends still there, it’s also very satisfying watching the leadership of that organization flop around like a dying fish stuck on a hot dock.]

Being out of the programming game for TIFF 2022, I was genuinely curious when I’d get back to Toronto, a city where I’ve met so many amazing people, had so many rad times, eaten so much good food and so on.

For years we’ve wanted to start touring internationally with WHM—indeed, there was some chatter about a London show before COVID that never materialized—and finally this October, we got the chance to spread our wings just a little bit more.

We Hate Movies plays the Royal Theater - 10.27.22

And you know what? We had a god damn blast!

The folks at the theater were great, our Just For Laughs handler was the nicest, funniest of gentle Canadians, the audience was totally rad (minus one drunk that had the cops called on him) and we also got to finally meet some good friends IRL we had before only chatted with on the interwebs.

Toward the end of the show, and I think you hear this on the recording that we’ll hopefully release this summer, I got a little emotional thanking folks for coming out and being so welcoming. I was so tickled to be back in Toronto, I really was! It was at that moment up there on stage that I realized, hey, maybe things will turn around after all?

So let’s hope that I’m right. Let’s hope that 2023 is a new year packed with professional and personal highs, not just for myself and the WHM fam, but for us all. And it’s on that note that I’ll plant this flag: it’s time to get back in the game.

As WHM continues expanding its brand and dips its toes into some new waters this year, I’m looking to expand my portfolio as well. Because let’s face it, if I keep on my late night, high-out-of-my-mind habit of Taco Bell delivery, the only kind of expanding I’ll be doing is my t-shirt size. So, I have to get a move on.

And it starts here with this site. I’m very grateful for our friend Rafa Sarmento doing this fabulous illustration for my new header on here. What I love about his work is that it shows me in the professional place I’ve felt most at home in over 20 years of working in the film world: the projection booth. While I haven’t threaded a projector in years, this placement of me in The Booth is a nice reminder for me about where this all started. And not for nothing, Rafa also made me look a little buffer than I actually am, which is to say not at all, so thanks for that as well, bud!

This site covers one goal: more writing. But I don’t want to stop there. I’m eager to see where I fit in the film world now, a free agent looking for a place (or places) to play—I’m not sure I want to pledge fealty to a single institution ever again. You never know, but WHM will always be my first professional priority so it makes sense to me to bounce around and take freelance, one-off and part-time gigs. Whether that’s curating new film series somewhere, moderating Q&As, introducing screenings, podcast guesting, writing for other places that aren’t my own website… I’m open. So feel free to give me a buzz—andrew@andrewjupin.com—and let’s chat.

Okay, so that’s my spiel. Those are my thoughts heading into 2023. I felt like if I put all this down somewhere, it might help manifest all I want to come our way. I hope I can make this a destination for your eyeballs and sincerely, I look forward to seeing you at the movies.