AJ McDougall, Author at Bright Wall/Dark Room

JoinedMarch 17, 2026

Articles2

AJ McDougall is a reporter for the New Jersey Star-Ledger and a former staff writer at The Daily Beast. Her work can also be found in Vanity Fair, Vice, and Vogue. When not chasing a story, she enjoys rewatching Monty Python’s Flying Circus, thinking about John Cazale, and digging to the bottom of the neo-western horror bargain bin.

A Nice Place to Live

AJ McDougall·

Issue 147: Summer Blockbusters

Nostalgia is cheap, and plenty of films peddling it have died on the vine. What sets Back to the Future apart is not that it is nostalgic, but that it grasps nostalgia as a production, a site of labor. It doesn’t remember the past; it re-manufactures it, to spec, on a studio lot.

Simulacra and Simian

AJ McDougall·

Issue 145: Comedy Happy Place

Somewhere around the middle stretch of Project Better Man, our screenings stopped functioning as viewings in the traditional sense and began operating more like gatherings—loosely structured civic events organized around a shared bit. We were no longer watching Better Man; we were watching the idea of Better Man, and watching ourselves watch it