Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545081
5 4 P E R S P E C T I V E M AY / J U N E 2 0 2 6 Since its debut, Euphoria has become a cultural phenomenon—starring Zendaya in her Emmy- winning role, the show explores the raw realities of drug addiction, sexuality, trauma, identity and violence in the social media era. Season 3 picks up five years after the events of Season 2 and finds its characters scattered across a fractured American West. When Sam Levinson sent me the first few episodes to read, I was struck by how timely the story felt. They were incredibly compelling, the writing mirroring many facets of our times. Sam tapped into a certain malaise that I personally find present in our contemporary surroundings. At its core, the season follows characters who are each searching for their own euphorias—whether that manifests in desires for fame, fortune or other facets of the American dream. Having spent the past year obsessing about Bob Dylan on my prior project, I couldn't help but think of how Dylan's lyrics have always held a mirror to the times—that restless sense of a world shifting beneath your feet, of old certainties dissolving before new ones take shape. That same undercurrent runs through this new chapter of Euphoria. For me, it was also an opportunity to capture our present moment on screen—something that films I admire have done magnificently. I kept thinking about Paris, Texas (1984) and the way Wenders used the vastness of the American landscape to externalize a profound inner dislocation. Or Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)—sweat-soaked and desperate, shot in the dusty margins of civilization, where beauty and decay exist in the same frame without apology. Sam Levinson wanted to make a kind of modern- day Western, and that ambition resonated with me. Not a romanticized West of sweeping, untouched vistas—but the imperfect landscapes we actually inhabit. Roads scarred by cracked asphalt stretching toward nowhere, power lines cutting across open sky, the signs of chaotic human expanse pressing outward in every direction. C a p t u r i n g E u p h o r i a ' s F r a c t u r e d A m e r i c a B E A U T Y A N D G R I T B Y F R A N Ç O I S A U D O U Y, P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A. BURNING JOSHUA TREE RUE'S DREAM SEQUENCE. ILLUSTRATION BY FRANCOIS AUDOUY. A