The new season of Karina Longworth’s long-running show about Hollywood’s Golden Age concerns the late periods of previously-successful directors. Late periods are rarely kind to artists. Most end up spinning their wheels or grasping desperately for relevance but falling well short.

I’ve enjoyed watching or rewatching some of the movies she covers. Fritz Lang’s The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse is a hoot; Howard Hawks’ Red Line 7000 isn’t good but is very watchable, like a naive art version of a Godard; Alfred Hitchcock’s Family Plot is one of my favorites of his, but that’s probably because I hate most of his celebrated work and he was mostly drunk and disengaged while making this one. I didn’t bother with John Ford and Frank Capra because I’ve had my fill of them both. She covered Otto Preminger today and I’m hoping to watch Such Good Friends tonight.

The question of whether to keep going when the world is telling you not to bother has been a leitmotif most of my life, so watching legends struggle and falter is extra moving to me. There’s something to be said for doggedly staying your course. At the same time, who wouldn’t want a graceful exit?

Bob Dylan will probably die onstage performing some version of one of his classics that not even his diehard fans will recognize. They keep showing up to catch sparks from the past. That’s how it is with these last movies of the greats too. If you squint, you get glances from Psycho and Metropolis and The Big Sleep, but with eyes open, it’s rarely that pretty.

The dream is Rembrandt but the likely reality is Picasso—a doddering old man making grotesque caricatures of his greatest hits. Maybe the prospect of stopping is even worse than that of embarrassing yourself.

Get your copy of Babbitt directly from Bezos’ Bazaar. Plenty of Babbitt and Moby Dick art still available too. I’ll put up some of The Marvel Universe ones up soon.

RIP Roberta Flack & David Johansen