Category: <span>Editorial & Opinion</span>

In Downtown Pensacola, a form of comedy is practiced that sends shivers down the spine of the average onlooker and irrational laughter from those afflicted. A style practiced that even saying the words can cause looks of terror: Improvisation Comedy. Improv has become one of the most influential forms of humor over the past last half century, and while many can exist in a major city like Chicago or New York, we have one we can call our own: “Improvable Cause”

In 1998, a reporter named Felicia Gayle was found in her home stabbed to death in St. Louis, Missouri. In 2005, Marcellus Williams was convicted of Gayle’s murder despite the lack of his DNA at the crime scene. Williams spent two decades on death row after his conviction in the early 2000s. The U.S. Supreme Court denied the request for a stay and on September 24th, he was executed by lethal injection. 

These are the kind of words used by the mysterious eponymous corporation at the heart of 2024’s most controversial horror film “The Substance” to describe the product’s effects on their customers. A dangerously underground substance, the drug comes into the attention of recently fired actress Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) who just lost her job as main host of an aerobics program for reaching the age of 50, a deliberate move by the network (manifested by a rather quirky performance by Dennis Quaid playing the unsubtly named “Harvey”) to grab much younger, “hotter” talent.