Hello, Here Is My Attempt To Introduce And Explain The Hard Pass
A couple of Sundays ago, I was sitting at a bar during the NFC Championship game when a longtime friend asked if she could tell me something that might upset me. Now, there's really no good way to answer this question. No matter what I say, the chances are, after, my mood is going to be drastically changed. I wound up answering the way most people do, with a passive, "Okay?"
"You need a purpose in life."
What stood out here is this assessment was hard to argue with since, over the last few months, I've been telling people, "I have no purpose in life." I'm not a scientist, but I could see an alignment of opinions here. (Ironically, the person who told me this is a scientist.) Now, I kind of say it in one of those ways that's both a joke, but also somewhat true. For instance, if someone asks if I can feed their cat on a Tuesday at 2pm, the most likely answer is, "Oh, yeah, no problem, I have no purpose in life anyway."
In reality, I do have some purposes. But since my decade-long employment at Uproxx ended in 2024, a lot of my main purposes have eroded, to the point I've become very bored.
In December, I got an email from a longtime reader named Ted (hello, Ted, the existence of this newsletter is your fault) who mentioned he had been linked to an interview I did with Brendan Fraser by my former Uproxx coworker Brian Grubb, asking where my newsletter was so he could subscribe. I had no newsletter to offer, then felt a little stupid I hadn't really considered starting one. Though, now that I have a newsletter, I think it would be a nice power move on Ted's part to pass.
To give it the hard pass, if you will.
Here's the thing, I'm terrible at pitching stories. It's not a gift I possess. There are people who are annoyingly great at this. I was a staff writer from 2010 until 2024 and I was blessed with editors who all hired me with the instructions, "Just go do what you do." Yes, I had to let them know what I was working on, but it was rarely a pitch and I was allowed to do some kinda nutty things – at Huffington Post I was allowed to call someone with the name "John Carter" in every state to ask of they were going to see the movie John Carter – with some notable exceptions.*
*The funniest rejection I received during this era was when I worked for Movieline in 2010. My editor, Stu VanAirsdale, asked what I was working on. I told him I wanted to recap the David Spade sitcom Rules of Engagement, which somehow aired seven seasons on CBS. But I wanted to treat it like I was recapping Lost (which I did at Vanity Fair for its final season), looking for clues to its deeper meaning and developing wild speculation and theories about where this was all headed. Stu responded, "I'm not going to let you do that."
My point is, I haven't pitched much since my staff job ended. I fear rejection and I know I'm not good at it, which will lead to rejections, which, as I said, I do not like. Though, my favorite pitch was my first one to Empire magazine. I adore Empire and, once I was free to write anywhere, they are the first place I pitched. They told me, "No idea is too out there." So I pitched a deep dive on the 1984 film The Last Starfighter, which I assumed would be an easy "I'm not going to let you do that." Anyway, this piece now exists, in print, in a magazine, with beautiful art by Paul Shipper (who did movie poster art on little known projects like Avengers: Infinity War.)
Most of the stuff I've done post-Uproxx is me being asked to do something and I say, "Yes." But, when I have pitched and a pitch is turned down, usually an editor will say something like, "We have to pass." I'm a very "in the moment" writer and when I have an idea, I just have to do it then. And most of my ideas are (a) hard for me to explain and (b) stupid enough I can't imagine anyone paying me to do them. So a lot of things I'd like to do just never happen because they either get turned down or I just never pitch them in the first place.*
So, from now on, they will live here at The Hard Pass.
*Also, pretty much everything I've done since Uproxx ended is an interview or some sort of intense feature. Which, honestly, was what I was looking for at the time. (This all culminated in an Andor cover story for Empire, which was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.) But, perhaps, I over-corrected a bit too much and now I find myself missing the daily "nonsense" post where I get to just write.
When a writer switches outlets, my mindset is usually, "Okay, so, I still just click on the link you're posting on social media and it takes me to your piece, right?" This is probably how you will experience this site. At the same time, on the other side of it, my experience will be different because, in the past, I received a salary and a benefits package for doing this. The Hard Pass does not give me these desired things.
How to set the pricing tiers is a quandary for me. I thrive on accolades. I like them. I like hearing from people who enjoyed something I worked on. So, putting something behind a paywall for a handful of paid subscribers is not appealing to me because I do like to write for the masses. At the same time, if you are generous enough to be a paid subscriber: (a) I need to provide something special for these kind folk, and (b) the more paid subscribers I have, the more guilt I will feel to update this site/newsletter. In other words, the more paid subscriptions I have, the more enthusiasm I will have to update this site/newsletter often. I would like this to be "a purpose in life."
(Also, if this site/newsletter is appealing to you, I do want you to be involved. If you have questions or topics you want me to cover, please email me and let me know at mikethehardpass@gmail.com)
I started writing in 2007 on a Blogspot blog because I was bored at work. Gawker started linking to it on a daily feature called Blogorrhea. After this I had a modest readership, then I started to get offers to write for actual media outlets. Two years after starting that Blogspot blog, all of a sudden I was writing for New York and Vanity Fair. But like our pal Sam Rothstein* up there in that lead image from the end of Casino, I'm right back where I started. And that's that.
*If there's ever an opening in the Sam Rothstein Dancers, I would be interested.
