A Brief History of Silly Idea
How a middling pun became an absurd niche event
THE EVOLUTION
June 2006.
My friend Kyle confessed she hadn’t seen many Meryl Streep films.
I suggested we watch multiple classics from Streep’s filmography in one evening.
“Let’s call it a Merylthon.”
Later, my friend Kyle sent out this email to schedule our hangout
But we didn’t actually follow through with the idea…
I’m sure we were talking about Meryl that week because trailers for Meryl’s latest film “The Devil Wears Prada” were probably everywhere. It was opening in theaters the day after Kyle wrote this email.
The word Merylthon is yellow in these screenshots because I searched for the word in my old Yahoo account and a five emails popped up.
Five times throughout the last 17 years.
Email #2. July 2007.
Email #3. May 2008. A third email to Kyle about this idea.
Email #4. February 2009. I added “Merylthon” to a list of potential date night activities with my then boyfriend.
Email #5. July 2011. I tried roping my grad school pal Britta into my schemes.
Years pass and no puns were remembered.
February 2019: I learned that the exact length of a marathon was 26.2 miles.
Logically, this would mean that a Merylthon was 26.2 consecutive hours of Meryl Streep movies.
I thought maybe I could rope in some friends an attempt a Half-Merylthon.
13.1 hours (or 786 minutes.)
Just for fun, I wrote down all the running times of her films and figured out which configurations added up to a Half-Merylthon exactly.
I wrote about my process of choosing the films in a previous post of this newsletter.
My first attempt at programming a Half-Merylthon:
The Devil Wears Prada: 110 minutes
Doubt: 104 minutes
Adaptation: 115 minutes
The Prom: 130 minutes
Into the Woods: 125 minutes
Marvin’s Room: 98 minutes
Death Becomes Her: 104 minutes
= 786 minutes
Then, during the pandemic, I heard about groups of friends renting out movie theaters so they could watch a movie together without a mask - like normal times.
I had never thought about making the Merylthon a bigger event than a party in my living room.
January 2023. I wrote to a local repertory theater and asked if I could rent out a theater for an entire day, from 10am to 11:30pm.
They wrote back:
I wrote to a few others. One theater quoted me around 5k.
I couldn’t pay that kind of money, so obviously I would have to charge for tickets.
I also thought that the only way to incentivize people to sit for 13.1 hours was if they were making money for themselves.
Or if they were fundraising.
I thought back to other “-a-thons” of my youth. Remember the Jump-a-thon, where you’d jump rope and raise money for cancer? You’d get sponsored by friends or teachers or godparents five cents per minute you jumped rope, and at the end you’d tally up how much people owed you.
I imagined people getting friends and family to sponsor them per minute they participated in the Merylthon. Every minute would be accounted for. I wanted to make Merylthon punch cards and get a time punchers. Even if you needed to go to the bathroom, you’d have to punch out and then punch back in with one of these babies.
I thought I’d give the money to a national charity that Meryl already supported - Equality Now! or Heffer International were options. She could at least get behind the fundraising piece of this if she were ever thinking of sending me a cease and desist letter.
After a few more emails, the theater eventually declined to host the event.
Selling tickets for an all-day marathon event was risky. Would anyone show up to the theater at 10am to watch Doubt? Doubtful.
I was inspired to simplify. A Merylthon was whatever I said it was. It would be a weekend festival of double features.
From February to May, I started putting my idea into a Google Spreadsheet so I could help people understand the potential scope of the idea. Here are some screenshots from my initial presentation.
March. My upstairs neighbor Russ connected me to his friend Luis who worked at the newly renovated 4 Star Theater in the Richmond District.
I eventually got on a call with Luis and Adam, the owner of the 4 Star Theater in the Richmond District.
4 Star loved the idea of a fundraiser event. They liked the punny Double Feature Titles: Doubt Becomes Her, Into the Silkwoods, She-Devil Wears Prada, and Mama Julia!
Other Double Feature ideas:
The Bridges of August: Osage County
Postcards from the Post
Music of the Heartburn
Ironweed Lady
The double headers showed the range of characters and experience Meryl Streep has played over years. Importantly, they also provide ample inspiration for the drag artists who I imagined would perform during each intermission.
I wanted the charity who would receive the funds to be local. I approached Queer LifeSpace and their Executive Director, Ryan McCarrigan to see if they would want to be the recipient of all the funds raised. Queer LifeSpace provides affordable mental health and substance abuse services to the Bay Area’s LGBTQIA+ community. I have benefited so much from counseling and therapy throughout my life, so partnering with Queer LifeSpace added a personal connection that motivated my pro bono efforts.
The same day I spoke with Ryan and ended up sharing my Google Slides at a work ‘Breakfast and Chill’ - about learnings or projects outside of work.
Ryan and QLS proved to be a true partner in this project - and once he came on to help, the Merylthon truly took off.
May 2023.
Very early on, I moved forward with any idea that would promote the Merylthon and also made me laugh. I imagined a video with a bunch of women named Meryl talking about sharing their name with a famous actress. So I put a call out for other Meryls on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram - anywhere I could.
On May 31, I knew zero people named Meryl.
By the end of July, I had an excel spreadsheet of almost thirty I had been in touch with about interviews.
Overall, I spoke with 20 women named Meryl - and two men named Merrill and Meryll. Edited version of those interviews became our first trailer:
July 2023. We built a website:
If you haven’t clicked on that link yet, here’s some feedback from one of our Instagram followers/fans/lovers about our website:
An early poster idea:
In July, we commissioned paintings for our Double Features from local artist Silky Shoemaker:
We originally had programmed Into the Silkwoods (Into the Woods and Silkwoods) which was a far superior pun than Into the River Wild. But one morning I got a text from 4 Star Theater saying that Fox/Disney wouldn’t make a DCP (digital file) and only had a film print for screening. I emailed Silky right away and unfortunately, she had already painted ‘Into the Silkwoods.’ Based on her amazing painting, we decided rather than have her paint an entirely new painting, we’d figure out the best movie to add to the scene she already painted. The River Wild was chosen because we loved the idea of seeing Action Meryl next to Musical Meryl, Gail Hartman doesn’t get enough love as an action hero, and - importantly - we could paint a river around the tower and replace the characters. I was so sad to see Cher with the ‘Cher’ nametag replaced; the visual gag of the Witch climbing up Rapuzel/Cher’s hair didn’t quite land now that it was David Strathairn.
She made one of our hero illustrations, Meryl as Miranda:
We commissioned these illustrations by local illustrator Harry Nordlinger.
In the meantime, we created proposals for potential sponsors like Merrill Lynch or Merrell Sneakers.
Local businesses like Hi-Tops gave us some money (thanks Jesse!), and others donated to our silent auction.
I made promotional videos that mashed up the two movies of the Double Feature as if the films characters were talking to each other. I started posting them in mid-August, about two videos a week.
Doubt vs. Death Becomes Her
She-Devil vs. The Devil Wears Prada
Mamma Julia!
Into the Woods vs. The River Wild
More of these videos can be found on our Instagram page.
We commissioned local painter and muralist Serge Gay Jr. to create our primary festival poster. We asked to see a ‘Star Wars’ like poster of lots of memorable Meryl characters. I personally asked that Sister Aloysius was front and center at the top - and that Madeline Ashton and Miranda Preistly were next in line.
To promote the intermission drag shows, I worked with Fauxnique to create a short video of her lipsyncing to a famous Meryl moment in Postcards from the Edge.
I designed promo images for each queen:
For our Sunday panel before the Mamma Julia! screening, we booked a panel of film nerds to answer the question “Meryl Streep: Queer Icon?” - and recorded it for a podcast that I’ll release at a later date.
Panelists included Joshua Grannell (Peaches Christ), Inkoo Kang (The New Yorker), Micheal Foulk (Queer Theory 101) and hosted by Sanjay Hukku. Unfortunately, Dylan McKeever was unable to attend at the last minute.
September 2023. We hung posters all around Clement St near the theater, the Castro and Hayes Valley.
…made a tongue-in-cheek Meryl trailer:
…and then dropped the final Merylthon Trailer, two weeks before the event.
And that’s the play by play evolution of the most time-consuming pro bono absurd idea-turned-bonkers-film-festival I’ve ever attempted…
I’m curious: What’s the most absurd idea that - despite the odds - you were able to manifest?
Stay tuned for Part 2: The Merylthon Experience, where you’ll hear me say:
“….and here we have a jar of diced onions collected from the set of her 2009 film “Julie & Julia,” graciously donated by the Meryl Museum…”