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The Editor's Blog
Contemplations and digressions from Filmmaker's Editor-in-Chief by Scott Macaulay
Scott Macaulay’s Final Editor’s Letter as Filmmaker Editor-in-Chief
The following is Filmmaker co-founder and editor-in-chief Scott Macaulay’s final Editor’s Letter, from the Winter 2026 print issue.
Edit a magazine for 33 years and by the time you must write a final editor’s letter, you have plenty of examples to draw from. Knowing that some day I’d be writing this send-off, I’ve found myself taking note of all the departing missives that have come across my coffee table and screens—quite a few, given the tumult across the film, non-profit and journalism worlds these past decades. There’s the most common type of farewell: plucky, somewhat anodyne, with the promise not to fade into obscurity, ending with notes of gratitude and a cheerful “see you at the movies.” Then, there’s bitter railing against changing economies, tastes, modes of readership—an approach usually accompanying a publication’s shutting down, which, fortunately, Filmmaker is not. (For the first time, I’ll just be a reader, looking forward to what its reimagined future brings.) Then, there’s the more pointed critique, perhaps penned by a writer leaving a publication who assails various powers-that-be for perceived timidities and mission drift, a blasting that usually leads to announcement of a Substack—and later, if you’re lucky, being named chair of a major news network.
My final editor’s letter will be none of these, perhaps because—like all the editor’s notes for the past 33 years—I’m writing it at the last minute, after the rest of the magazine is put together. I can’t say that’s a surprise, even though I told The Gotham in March that I was ready to step down and focus solely on producing and have had almost a year to draft it. Part of my procrastination has been simply wondering exactly what to say about co-founding this magazine in 1992 and being at its helm since that I haven’t written here on our 10th, 20th and 25th anniversaries. I’m under no illusion that you, dear reader, remember those pieces, but I do, and reciting the journey of this publication from a freelance passion project to side hustle to something with aspects of a “job”—the latter mostly after the rise of the web, when I could no longer forget about Filmmaker for six weeks out of every quarter and had to deal with (meaning reply to or ignore) a daily email barrage of “interview opportunities” and publicist pleas—felt both lazy and redundant. (That said, I nonetheless do go down this memory lane, albeit with more color and detail, in my conversation this issue with my Filmmaker co-founders, Karol Martesko-Fenster and Holly Willis.)
Still, knowing this is the last editor’s letter I’m writing for a magazine that has accompanied me for the majority of my adult life, that took up so many evenings in various midtown NYC office buildings in the pre remote work days, and later ran shotgun with me on film sets, in edit bays and mix studios, at film festivals and while occasionally on things known as “vacations,” in hospital rooms and across a pandemic, has created perspective. (“You worked off laptops before there were even laptops,” former IFP executive director Catherine Tait once told me.) The distinct eras of this magazine are clearer, from its first decade—when it was conceivable that readers initially learned of many films by reading our pages—to its present day, when poster reveals and trailer drops break on social media and we focus on long-form interviews and articles that try to make sense of our filmmaking world rather than being purely reactive or obedient to its accelerated, anxious news cycle. The magazine was born out of the risk-taking excitement of the messianic indie hustle, as James Schamus puts it in this issue, and we’ve certainly channeled that idealistic, sometimes reckless imperative over 33 years. At the same time, I hope that, while being very much a part of the world we cover, we’ve been able to cast a necessary critical eye on it, and that we’ve captured the feelings of filmmakers excited by their first festival acceptance or distribution deal as well as the pains of those struggling to figure out their paths after a slew of stinging rejections.
I’ve always said that one mark of a good director is someone who is able to get what’s in their head onto the screen. It’s harder than it looks, and for many starting out, who have always remained my imaginary Filmmaker ideal readers, traversing the fantasy of filmmaking requires an understanding of the process—not an idealized one preached by people who don’t make movies, but a realistic one guided by people who do. That’s why a connection to film production has been this magazine’s differentiator, with filmmakers involved each issue as writers and interviewers, not just subjects. Community is another important foundational idea; as mentioned, we’ve always been ground-level with the world we write about. And, finally, our editorial has been truly independent, and for their support I want to thank the IFP and IFP/West, who were our early publishers; our current publisher, The Gotham; and these organizations’s successive staffs, boards and executive directors—the latter while I’ve been here being Catherine Tait, Dawn Hudson, Michelle Byrd, Joana Vicente and Jeff Sharp. I and our writers have been grateful for that freedom.
As you’ll see in a few pages, there’s an expanded Reflections section here built around the ideas of practice and independence, along with just a bit of nostalgia and well-intentioned rabble-rousing. I couldn’t think of a better final cover story than my friend Gaspar Noé’s interview with Oliver Laxe about Sirāt, my favorite film of the year. I’m also grateful to another friend, Amalia Ulman, for interviewing Jim Jarmusch about his latest, the elegant and subtle Father Mother Sister Brother. Jarmusch has been a pioneering American independent filmmaker who has appeared in our pages for years, so it feels especially right that he is in this final issue of mine. The last time I interviewed Laura Poitras was in Berlin, before the release of CITIZENFOUR, so I was grateful to talk to her again about the electrifying new Cover-Up. We have our annual awards season Sound & Visionaries below-the-line profiles as well as the work of our fine columnists, who I thank for their dedication, intelligence and camaraderie. And as the final piece in the book, we have our director of editorial operations, Vadim Rizov, with a fascinating look at Gregg Araki’s process for restoring Mysterious Skin, which Peter Bowen wrote about for our Spring 2005 issue.
Speaking of Vadim, this is his final issue of Filmmaker, too. He’s been at his position for a third of my tenure here, and I believe both you and I have been the lucky beneficiary of his spiky intelligence, editorial rigor, fine writing and irrepressible urge to call out the lazy thinking and orthodoxies all of us in this world can so easily find ourselves falling into. He’s been a valued editorial partner, expanding Filmmaker’s coverage into international and experimental cinema and documentary and systematically deploying his eagle eye for framing, frame rates and formats in service of cinematography deep dives. Thank you to the rest of this issue’s team, as well: our extraordinary designer, Charlotte Gosch, who’s productively and beautifully guided and pushed us aesthetically; ace copy editor Amy Monaghan, who, among many other achievements, has made sure that all our quote marks are curly, which is no small feat; and life-saving fact-checker and proofreader Forrest Cardamenis, who’s been working night shifts this issue with his newborn.
There are many others I’d like to thank for their fine work and collaboration—too long a list! But a few key staff over the years: co-founders Karol Martesko-Fenster and Holly Willis; business development head Richard Miller; publisher Steve Gallagher; senior editor Peter Bowen; advertising heads Ian Gilmore, Jeryll Adler, Kari Fields and Reggie Dvorin; managing editors Mike Jones, Matt Ross, Jason Guerrasio and Nick Dawson; designers Diane Ferrara, Angela D’Erasmo, Caspar Newbolt and the late Shai Zauderer and Wayne Van Acker; West Coast editor Chuck Stephens; and Andre Salas, our former circulation manager who passed away earlier this year.
And you, of course. My final act of recognition is my own gratitude for the privilege of covering such a dynamic, unruly, stimulating and impressively resourceful world during times of much upheaval. If any part of this job has been easy, it’s that there’s never been a shortage of fine work and exciting new makers to highlight for you in these pages. Thank you for the readership, feedback, pushback and, especially, the community. I hope you enjoy this last issue of mine.
Sincerely,
Scott Macaulay
Editor-in-Chief
