Five Great Reads: Wet Mess, finding Kodi Smit-McPhee, and how to shoot like a pro

Top of the weekend to you all. Some weeks the world comes at you faster than others, and my aching eyeballs suggest it’s been a hectic one. Which may explain why at least one of this week’s great reads had me welling up. You’ve been warned.

1. Paris Olympics photographers share their secrets

Let’s step away from the Raygun discourse for a moment to celebrate the unsung heroes of Paris: the photographers.

With the broadcasting rights held tightly, most news outlets were forced to rely on stills to complement their reporting. And from surfer Gabriel Medina levitating to, umm, Snoop Dogg feeding a horse, the snappers delivered.

The photographers behind the lens of 25 spectacular shots share their secrets.

Agustín Marcarian on shooting the men’s 100m final: “In the end, all that mattered from my position was to freeze the moment – and how well I did!”

How long will it take to read: Six minutes.

Further reading: We drill down on the celebrated photo of Gabriel Medina walking on air.

2. ‘I exist outside of gender’

Drag queen or drag king? “Drag thingy-king,” says Wet Mess, who loved Mrs Doubtfire as a child and is now taking their fusion of costume, dance, lip-syncing and avant-garde theatre out of the queer clubs and on to the stages of the Edinburgh festival.

As the performer sees it, being non-binary or trans allows you to “change and redefine yourself”. They talk to Adam Needham about the “joyful humanness” of their Edinburgh show, Testo, and their mixed feelings about RuPaul’s Drag Race.

How long will it take to read: Three minutes.

Further reading: Australia’s Zoë Coombs Marr delivers my standout of the 10 funniest jokes from the Edinburgh fringe.

3. A former IDF soldier’s ‘profoundly disturbing’ return home

When the Israeli scholar Omer Bartov returned from his adopted home in the US to give a university lecture on campus protests against Israel, he faced a protest of his own. A group of mostly IDF reservists, some recently returned from the Gaza frontline, chanted loudly outside the theatre until he invited them inside and listened to their stories.

Bartov writes that the young students had developed a way of thinking, revved up by incendiary rhetoric from Israel’s politicians, not unlike what he had observed when studying German soldiers in the second world war: “a logic that allows one to destroy entire populations and to feel totally justified in doing so”.

“The Israeli public long ago became inured to the brutal occupation that has characterised the country for 57 out of the 76 years of its existence. But the scale of what is being perpetrated in Gaza right now by the IDF is as unprecedented as the complete indifference of most Israelis to what is being done in their name.”

How long will it take to read: Sixteen minutes – but it’s split into seven stanzas, so take your time. It’s a lot.

4. Discovery of an Australian child star

Sian Cain’s oral history of Romulus, My Father morphs into a tribute to the “intense, remarkable maturity” of Kodi Smit-McPhee – then a 10-year-old unknown, now one of Australia’s best actors with recent star turns in The Power of the Dog and Elvis.

The film is based on Raimond Gaita’s memoir of life as an immigrant’s son in 1960s Victoria. Gaita says the message from the screenwriter when Smit-McPhee was discovered was simple: “They found a miracle.”

The highlight: The story of Gaita and Smit-McPhee’s first meeting at the shoot’s wrap party will warm the cockles, I promise.

How long will it take to read: Five minutes.

Further viewing: Unless you can make it to the Melbourne international film festival on 17 August, no streaming providers offer the film on their subscription service. Once they’ve sorted that out, let’s hope Gettin’ Square is next.

5. The surprising shame of pet loss

“Some people are aghast to hear that it might be harder for someone to lose an animal than a person,” says Diane James, head of pet loss support at a UK charity. There are myriad reasons: we often spend more time with the pets in our lives than the people; we mostly grieve for them alone or as a couple rather than as a community; we may have had to make the heartbreaking decision to have them euthanised.

Zoe Williams digs into what not to say when someone’s pet has died, and why compound grief can make the loss even harder.

Read the comments: This is one story where it’s OK to break the golden rule of the internet. BYO tissues.

How long will it take to read: Between three and 30 minutes (depending on how deep into the comments you go).

Further reading: Find a stray cat? That might be the cat distribution system at work.

Sign up

If you would like to receive these Five Great Reads to your email inbox every weekend, sign up here. And check out out the full list of our local and international newsletters, including The Stakes, your guide to the twists and turns of the US presidential election.