"All Access"

There's this quark-like organization called the Sherwood Oaks Experimental College, which simultaneously does and does not exist. It has no physical presence except in the body of its founder, Gary Shusett. This virtual school exists to serve the creative community in Los Angeles, chiefly by creating the usual sorts of seminars, but with built-in opportunities to meet the participants and/or pitch to them. (The all-important "pitch" is where you briefly describe your project, hopefully in such a way as to make the pitchee decide that it sounds like the greatest movie idea since Gunga Din and should be filmed immediately. Which, of course, almost never actually happens.) This past weekend, partly in conjunction with the Writers Guild Awards, Gary staged what was called the "Screenwriters All Access" weekend.

The basic idea was simple: he would invite Hollywood players of all stripes to participate in panel discussions, and afterward, we participants would mob the front of the room in an unholy mass and try to get some face time with whichever panelist we thought might best Make Our Dreams Come True. But sometimes this basic model was improved upon: a lunch wherein a panelist would sit at your table and you could have a conversation at length; or breakout sessions in which the mob would break into smaller groups that could sit down with an individual panelist for a while. There were also traditional pitching sessions, and sometimes these elements could combine: thus, on Saturday Marc and I pitched City of Truth to Bridget Tyler from Red Wagon, then half an hour later Bridget ended up at our lunch table.

There was a kind of Socratic dialectic happening when all the panels were considered together. On the one hand there were the agents and the executives, who were all about numbers and trends; on the other hand were the writers and the directors, the people talking about art. If you were able to reconcile these very different discussions, you might begin to construct a synthesis, a framework for navigating your way through this town where both sides of the equation are inescapable.

Just one example of the numbers-and-trends people: a production company executive who flat-out told all we young screenwriters, "Don't write what you're passionate about." This guy was only interested in the surefire thing, the movie that did not resemble some past hit but was a carbon copy of some past hit. In other words, he doesn't give a fig for the artistic side of the equation and only wants to look at properties that will make his company, and him, more money. What was worse, he was proud of his position, and clearly considered himself quite daring and bold for having the guts to Speak Truth unto us.

He is, of course, a moron. A smart moron but still a moron. When introducing himself, he made an exaggerated claim about some software he helped design that is now quite famous, and said that now that he had all that money he could turn his attentions to whatever he wanted; and this is what he's choosing to do with his time on earth. All that money, all those possibilities, everything he could be doing with wealth and power, and he chooses to make cookie-cutter movies that say nothing, and then to go sit on panels, crush the dreams of dreamers, and act all proud of himself as some kind of innovator. He is the worst that Hollywood has to offer, and I was glad when Bridget-from-Red Wagon (a company with some real movies to its credit, and good ones, like Gladiator, Jarhead and Memoirs of a Geisha) told me that this guy will almost certainly be out of the industry within three years. It's a damn shame that someone just like him will certainly move in to take his place.

But by happy chance, after this panel finally concluded (I eventually exercised my critic's prerogative, and fell asleep on them), another came up comprised of the directors Nicholas Meyer, Richard Benjamin, Pen Densham and Henry Jaglom. They proved to be an unexpectedly great combination, with some serious credits to their name: Meyer is a terrific writer/director whose work includes Star Trek II (the best of them all), The Day After and Time After Time; Benjamin, the well-known comic actor, also directed the utterly wonderful My Favorite Year, with Peter O'Toole gallavanting gloriously; Densham is probably best known as the screenwriter of Kevin Costner's Robin Hood movie (the end result was not his fault, he didn't direct it); and Jaglom is a longtime indie stalwart who is probably best known for directing Orson Welles in his last screen role. They were all very bright, with well-considered opinions about directing, about film, about art.

But it was Nick Meyer who said the most valuable thing I heard the whole weekend. It was, simply, this: "There is no formula." As he said it, I realized that every seminar of this sort is crammed full of people who are trying to find The Formula, the to-do list that will, once completed, make them into Hollywood players. They believe that this formula is a closely-guarded secret, kept in a vault somewhere in the Valley, but that every once in a rare while someone might just decide to spill the beans and reveal the formula, if only you can schmooze them well enough at an event like this one. But Meyer said it plainly and inescapably: "There is no formula." There is no single path through the Hollywood jungle, everyone's experience will be unique to him/herself, and there's really nothing he can tell anyone about how to make films or how to succeed in the film industry.

I talked to him afterward and he only reinforced the point. He came up in the biz back in 1971, and it's all so different now that his story would be meaningless to anyone today. It's exactly for this reason that he avoids ever telling personal anecdotes at events like this one (and anecdotes are the life's blood of pretty much everyone in town when he gets up in front of a crowd): because he doesn't want people to think for a second that if they just do what he did in a given circumstance, then they too will succeed like he did. But it's not true.

Eventually the "all access" part of the weekend just kinda disappears: by Sunday evening, as the Writers Guild Awards were gearing up one floor down, Gary Shusett started rounding up the Big Names and herding them in to talk to us for a few minutes. But by then there was no chance of actually talking to any of these folks: David Milch, J.J. Abrams, Oscar nominees Michael Arndt and Guillermo Arriaga, Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry, Jon Cassar from 24 and B.J. Novak from The Office, even CAA chairman Rick Nicita, they came in for a few or for several minutes, said whatever was on their minds, maybe answered a question or two, and then they were gone with the next celebrity on his/her way in. It was fun, but I had already learned everything I needed to learn two days before.

Eventually, Marc ended up as a panelist himself. As a writer/producer who actually had gotten his movie into theaters, he was one step ahead of most of the other attendees, so Gary put him on an early-Sunday directors' panel. We worked out a joke before he went up: "Yesterday I was one of you guys, sitting out there, which is an example of how fast the industry can turn." (Laugh number one.) "And in about an hour I'll be sitting with you guys again, which is also an example of how fast the industry can turn." (Laugh number two.) Funny how people were treating him just that little bit differently after he'd been one of the panelists....

Really, the most valuable part of such a weekend is networking. We met some tremendous people, such as Autumn McAlpin, a terrific columnist from the Orange County Register whose work I've been enjoying today, and Maurice Daniel Oulay, an African-born filmmaker currently working on a documentary about poverty in Africa that I'm looking forward to seeing. (To name only two of the many.) It's impossible to know which of these new contacts might prove invaluable someday; a few years ago, Marc was at a Film Independent event and happened to be seated next to someone who is now our new business partner, Monica Kim. Any chance encounter at such an event could prove to be the crucial turning point in a career; and since we now know that there is no formula, these contacts are really the best--perhaps the only--reason to go.

The Wheels of Justice

The court appearance was down by the airport, and as it happens, I've got a friend who lives close by: Monica Kim, the production designer on Zen Noir and, as it happens, our new business partner. (Say wha? Yeah, I'll get to that in a couple days--not much time to write today, for reasons that I will also talk about in a couple other days.) And since Monica has a three year old (the delightful Alexander), she's always up pretty early. So I was able to beat the worst of the morning traffic, visit with nice people, have a gooey cinnamon bun, and then went off to the courthouse to do my part in making a Bad Guy go away.

Or not.

See, a while back I picked a face out of a photo line-up, but only with about 60% confidence that he was actually the right person (turns out that when there's a knife involved, the only thing you really pay attention to is the knife). The person that face belongs to was arrested for a home-invasion robbery. But since my ID wasn't conclusive, he was never charged with my robbery--therefore there was no reason for my being there. Or, as the young and harried Assistant D.A. said to me, "Geez, I have no idea how you ended up on the subpoena list. I'm very sorry."

And so I nodded, assured them I am happy to help in any way I possibly can with any other aspect of, you know, my case, got back in my car and drove away in what was now height-of-rush-hour traffic.

Never even got to see the accused. Maybe the sight of a real person, rather than a photo, might have triggered my memory more effectively, but I'll never know. The wheels of justice, they are made of stone. Grinding slowly along a stone road. And they're square.

J'accuse!

There was that first twinge of worry when I came home last week and found an envelope from the L.A. Police Department wedged into the doorjamb, because that's just one of those things that will always make you nervous, like your phone ringing at three in the morning. But inside the envelope, I was delighted to find a witness subpoena from the detective in charge of my robbery case. (This link should bring you to a page with all my previous posts on this subject.)

Someone has been arrested and arraigned, and the preliminary hearing is tomorrow. Curiously, his name isn't Hispanic at all, which might just mean that the person arraigned is the ringleader, which would suit me just fine. (I will hold off on actually recording his name in a public place until he's a little further along the road toward establishing his massive, overwhelming guilt.)

(I am so tempted to pull a Python here [from "The Mouse Problem" in episode two]--"A typical case, whom we shall refer to as Mr A, although his real name is Arthur Jackson, 32A Milton Avenue, Hounslow, Middlesex." But I won't.)

At the prelim, they are (according to the court's website) chiefly interested in determining whether there is sufficient evidence to bind the accused over for trial, and I hear from the detective that there is one other victim who will be testifying. So this is just the beginning of a long process, and there are a thousand ways it could all fritter away into nothing. But here's hoping that tomorrow I get to do my part, my tiny part, to make it that much less likely that someone else out for a nice walk doesn't have to deal with thugs with knives.

The North Ring Road

Been a while since I blogged, hasn't it? That's largely because I've been busy doing essentially the same stuff: pushing along sales of the Zen Noir DVD and soundtrack. (The DVD is now available on Amazon, and the soundtrack can be downloaded from iTunes, either as a whole album or by the single track. Go on, spend some money, you know you want to!)

So there hasn't been much new to report on from that front, and I haven't really had time to discuss, say, the President's recent State of the Union or anything like that. (Though I will mention how disappointed I was--advance word had been that Bush might actually say something significant about the environment, but in the end he had almost nothing new to say, even with an important new report about to appear--a stark reading of our collective future that already appears to have been watered down.)

But that's all the stuff I don't have time to talk about. Instead, I'm going to tell a little story, about asking directions in Ireland, simply because it's amusing and I like to tell it.

Several years ago, my grandparents were living in Kinsale, County Cork, Republic of Ireland. It's a beautiful little coastal town with the best food in the country (the cooperative they created, called the Good Food Circle, was a stroke of genius), and for several years after their retirement, my grandparents ran a bed & breakfast. By the time of this story, however, they had already retired from their retirement, moved to a smaller house on Worlds End, and I went over by myself to pay a little visit. Spent a few days in Dublin, then rented a car to drive down.

As you can see from the map, Kinsale is just south of the City of Cork; and having made the trip before, I was hoping there might be a way to avoid having to drive through the city center, some sort of country road that might bypass the city altogether. So I stopped in a little town just north of Cork, and ran into a pub in order to use the Gents'.

Long metal trough; sound of rain on a tin roof. As I stood there, one of the bar's patrons, a regular if ever I saw one, came wandering in and stood next to me. Torrential downpour on a tin roof. As I stepped away and washed my hands, he zipped up, looked over and said something that sounded more or less like "Wassonweeyuh?"

I blinked, looked at my watch, and said "A little after three."

"No no," he said. "What's on with ye?"

"Oh!" Been a while since I've heard a good "ye," so I figured the guy was friendly, let's ask him about the roads 'round Cork.

"Ah. What ye do, you see, is you take the Nort' Ring Road to the east do y'see, that'll bring you right round the town."

But as he said this, another of the pub's regulars had come in; gutterspout emptying into a tin can. But he heard what the first guy had said and suddenly interjected: "No, no, no. If he takes the Nort' Ring Road it'll bring him right t'rough the center of town, which is just what he said he was tryin' t'avoid." Zip, step back, advance. "No, what you yis do is you take the Nort' Ring Road to the west, d'ye see, and that'll take yis right round the town."

Back to the first gentle soul: "Are ye mad, Liam? If he takes the Nort' Ring Road to the west it'll take him to fuckin' Kilkenny!"

I left them there, continuing to argue about the best way to go right 'round the town, and set off again in the car. Reached the North Ring Road and headed east. Sure enough, it looked like it was bringing me right into the center of town, so I stopped and doubled back. Retraced my route and, this time, went west on the North Ring Road. The miles passed, I was indeed avoiding the city, the land was all the gentle rolling green of Ireland with no sign of stone cities and traffic. But the signs, they weren't right--by now, shouldn't I be seeing signs for Kinsale? Why instead was I seeing--"Oh crap!" I said, and stopped and turned around, shortly after the first sight of a sign reading "Kilkenny."

I retraced my steps yet again, went east again, went right through the very heart of the City of Cork, dealt with all the traffic, and finally reached my grandparents in Kinsale. Warming up with a nice cuppa, I asked them, "How exactly do you get 'round the city?"

"Oh heavens," said my grandmother. "You can't do that."

In Which I Watch American Idol So You Won't Have To

So here I am, the last guy in America who's never seen American Idol. Until now. (And no, I'm not going to post a link to it. You can just go find it yourself. So there.) Their new season has begun, and the crew are on the road, visiting Minneapolis and Seattle in search of talent--or the opposite of talent, in many cases. Most of you probably already know this, but it's all new to me. So I watched about twenty minutes of Tuesday's show in Minneapolis, and about an hour of last night's Seattle program. But bear in mind that a lot of that hour was spent fast-forwarding through the many many commercials (geez but I love my TiVo!), and then fast-forwarding through the worst of the very bad singers.

Which brings up Point No. 1: if in Minneapolis they began with a stadium full of 10,000 contestants, then clearly there's a screening process before anyone ever gets into the room with Simon, Paula and Randy. Just as clearly, then, the screeners are deliberately letting in some awful, awful singers. The only reason for this is, plain and simple, exploitation. Put them in a room with mean ol' Simon (and man is he mean--as a person who has often sat on Simon's side of an audition table, I would like to apologize for Simon and swear to you that most of us would never behave like that to an auditioner--and anyone who does is simply an asshole and you don't want to work with him) and let him abuse that person so that we in our comfy little homes can feel all superior because at least we're not that doofus. This is what you call exploitation: the ritual abuse of some poor schmuck so that we can feel better about ourselves. It is also monstrously conformist: the strange and the hapless are willfully preyed upon, thus reinforcing standards of "normalcy" and further ostracizing those poor souls who don't quite fit in--all this in a show that is supposedly about finding unique talents, people who stand out from the crowd. Sure the winners stand out--but only in the right way. You can see it happening in these roadshow tryouts: some poor girl with a weight problem and a penchant for pink fishnet walks in, and already Simon and his cohorts are smirking, already they're coming up with something awful they can say to this poor person.

What's saddest is that on some level, at least a few of these sad sacks must know they're going to be abused, but they accept it so they can get on television. That's the quiet agreement that allows shows like this to exist at all, a cruel compact between abuser and abused; television as the ultimate Enabler.

On the flip side, there is Point No. 2: stardom ain't as easy as all that. Take the juggling kid in Minneapolis. (If Simon is ever murdered there's going to be a long list of suspects, and this kid would have to be on the list.) When he got rejected, brutally of course, he ran out of the room swearing a blue streak; and when a family member reminded him he's only 16, he wailed "But I wanted to start out famous!" To which the only real response is "Well there's your problem right there, kid." Because if there's any one thing that I learned above all else during my years as an actor, it's this: your performance isn't for you, it's for the audience. The only reason to get up in front of people and do a song or a dance or a recitation or whatever is to provide entertainment and, even better, a little enlightenment. To make people laugh or cry or sigh with recognition; to make them lean forward in their seats, transfixed by what they're seeing on the stage. But if you're performing because you get off on applause, then please, Simon, go ahead and say whatever you want to say because these are the sorts of people who need to be shunted well clear of the performing arts.

This is not to say that you shouldn't enjoy what you do; in fact you should, you should totally get off on the performance. But your pleasure in the work should be directly proportional to the audience's pleasure in the work, and that may be hard to measure sometimes: everyone's faced a dead audience from time to time, only to discover after the fact that what seemed dead was in fact a deep but undemonstrative appreciation. Then of course there are the artists who are doomed to be misunderstood in their own lifetimes, the Van Goghs of the world; but the trouble here is that way too many lousy artists convince themselves that they're the new Van Gogh and continue on much longer than they should. And you could see these people, too, on the Idol shows the past two nights: the ones who vowed that despite their brutal rejection at the hands of Simon, Paula and Randy, they would go on undeterred, their resolve only strengthened by the cruel hand of societal rejection. Only one guy said, when interviewed, that his rejection had been a wake-up call; he may have been the only realist in that entire crowd of 10,000 people.

So. Is American Idol evil? Well of course it is. Is it addictive anyway? Of course it is; that's why it's so evil, because once you start to watch it's very hard to pull yourself away again. Does it manage to make points about the American obsession with stardom and self-delusion? Yes it does, but it makes that point while at the same time reinforcing the problem on a scale previously unimagined. Even more to the point: will I watch this program again?

Damn. Yeah, I probably will.

P.S.: After American Idol ended last night, I then pivoted to a movie I had recorded a few weeks ago, Everything is Illuminated, which Liev Schreiber adapted and directed from the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. Now this, this is art. Really truly Art, and why on earth I spent so much time talking about the pop claptrap of American Idol when I could have been talking about the illuminations of this movie is beyond me.

A Good Step in the Right Direction

FISA Warrants

Extremely welcome news from the Bush administration today: they have apparently given up on the idea of conducting warrantless wiretaps on whomever they choose. But the phrasing, at least as reported by the Associated Press, just kills me: the Justice Department "has decided to give an independent body authority to monitor the government's controversial domestic spying program." Which is of course complete nonsense: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court always had the authority to monitor the government's surveillance activities; in fact the FISA Court was set up specifically for that purpose, and the only reason the Justice Department is "giving" the authority to the court is because the Justice Department illegally stole it in the first place. It's a bit like a thief stealing your car and then demanding gratitude when he gives it back to you.

Particularly when the thief gives it back only because he's afraid of prosecution. I suspect rather strongly that this action was only taken because of the the new Democratic Congress, and the prospect of harsh legislative review (in fact, Mr. Gonzalez is scheduled to appear tomorrow before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Pat Leahy was for sure going to have some strong questions about FISA). Surely the Attorney General and the White House Counsel's office understand perfectly well that no matter what sophistries they employed to justify their willing defiance of FISA regulations, it was all completely unconstitutional; and so, knowing that the Congress was about to actually do what it's supposed to do and put the brakes on this travesty, they decided to be, oh I guess they'd call it magnanimous and "give" the authority back to the FISA court. Isn't that just peachy of them?

That's one small step for a lawyer; one giant leap for freedomkind. (Even if all it does is get us back where we started.)

A Simple Plan

The Bush Administration is fond of claiming that those who oppose their Iraq war policies fail to offer any plans of their own, that they are quick to judge but never offer anything constructive in return. They justify this nonsense with some mildly-clever semantics: Bush said in his radio address Saturday, "Members of Congress have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully. But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success."

But of course it's all in how you define success, isn't it? And if you declare over and over again that a troop withdrawal amounts to "cutting and running," then it cannot possibly result in success and is, therefore, not really a plan at all. "To oppose everything," Bush said, "while proposing nothing is irresponsible." This allows the President and his henchmen to claim that only they are offering any real, cogent plan for the disposition of Iraq and that complaints from Democrats and/or Congress are mere politicking at the expense of our valiant boys (and girls) in uniform.

Pure poppycock. There have been plenty of alternative plans proposed. I promised a plan of my own yesterday, and it's pretty simple: this one right here, from the Iraq Study Group. I won't get into all the ins and outs of why it's a better plan, because I just don't have enough time right now (see below), but take a look at it--I really think it speaks pretty well for itself.

Buy Our CD!

Meanwhile, off in a completely different direction, I will take just a moment to note that the Zen Noir soundtrack, composed by Steven Chesne, is now on sale on our website (we've got some samples up, too, so you can hear a bit for yourself). People who've seen the movie almost universally praise the soundtrack, so we're very happy to put Steve's superb work out in a format where people can enjoy it in its own right.

Purge the Surge

In an interview Sunday night on 60 Minutes, our president worked hard to justify the "surge" in troop levels that will send another 21,500 soldiers into harm's way in Iraq. It was part of a PR blitz following his speech last Wednesday, in which he announced his decision. And maybe I was still in an indulgent holiday mood, because I really tried to give this latest plan a fair shake, to look at it from every angle and try to decide whether or not it represents any kind of possibility for success. I even had myself half-convinced. But now, no. Not anymore. I kept working it all over, and finally decided that it was just the latest in a long series of bad ideas.

On the face of it, it doesn't seem like an awful idea. At its heart it seemed to admit that things had been done wrong in Iraq and that, even more unusually, we were prepared to learn from our mistakes. The president said as much in his speech: "Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: there were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have." If you accept this premise, then Mr. Bush's plan does indeed seem to address these deficiencies: more troops, in order to hold areas that have been cleared of insurgents; and political restrictions removed so that troops can enter areas that had previously been declared out of bounds and clear out any insurgents who might be hiding there.

But there are major problems with all of this, and straight off the bat there is this: a third major factor in why the U.S. has heretofore failed in its nation-building effort in Iraq, namely, American incompetence and cronyism. As Rajiv Chandrasekaran has detailed in his book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, Americans recruited for administrative/oversight jobs in Baghdad, the very people responsible for the reubilding efforts that were crucial for restoring a sense of normalcy to the country, were hired not because they had expertise in these tasks (in some cases no expertise in anything) but because they were Bush loyalists. Because they gave the right answer when asked who they had voted for in 2000 (an actual question to some job applicants).

As for the additional troops, there is a major, and obvious, objection that the President did not address: adding 21,500 troops brings us back up to a number we've already had in the country before. If it wasn't enough then, why would it be enough now? Because of the "restrictions" that will now supposedly be removed? Well then that brings up my third principal objection: does anyone believe that the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq will really allow U.S. troops to enter Shiite areas hunting for death squads? Will any squadron ever be allowed to pursue and capture Moqtada al-Sadr? Of course not; we all know that there will be cosmetic "restrictions" wiped clean, but nothing substantive will change. Meaning that these fresh troops simply restore us to levels we've already seen, with no effect; and the meaningful restrictions in place before will remain in place. Net effect: zero. But with a yet-unknown toll in American lives.

So, then, what is Bush's real purpose? It can only be this: A) force Democrats, now in control of Congress, to take a stand against the surge so that they can be painted as soft on terrorism in the next general election; and B) delay the inevitable failure of the Iraq mission till Bush is out of office, so that said failure can be blamed on the next guy. That is why 21,500 more American lives are being put at risk.

Then there's this howler: on 60 Minutes, President Bush said this, which deserves to be quoted in full:

We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and I believe most Iraqis express that. I mean, the people understand that we've endured great sacrifice to help them. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq.
PELLEY: Americans wonder whether . . .
BUSH: Yeah, they wonder whether or not the Iraqis are willing to do hard work necessary to get this democratic experience to survive. That's what they want.

That made me start hollering at the TV set. We bomb their country, ruin their society, kill tens of thousands (current estimates are of 34,000 Iraqi dead last year alone), and they're supposed to be grateful? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

No, he's not kidding. This, this is how he thinks. President Bush really truly believes that by getting rid of Saddam Hussein, he has liberated the Iraqi people and set them on the road to freedom and democracy--American-style freedom and democracy, which is the only kind that counts. It demonstrates a complete failure to understand a different culture, not to mention a truly breathtaking arrogance and paternalism that is, unfortunately, typical of imperialists throughout history. ("Take up the White Man's burden, / And reap his old reward-- / The blame of those ye better / The hate of those ye guard--" Kipling, "The White Man's Burden.")

Next time: a plan for victory that has nothing to do with a troop surge.

Candlelit

Friday morning I woke up early to the voice of an unsettling wind. Since I was planning to walk to work that day, I wondered whether the wind betokened rain; and once that thought had entered my head, it was impossible to get to sleep again. Since it was only half an hour before my alarm was supposed to go off, I got out of bed and looked out the front door: trees whipping, debris scampering, sound roaring from here to there, but no rain. Okay then. I sat down at the computer and was just about to check e-mail when the power went out. Then came on. Then went out. And this time, stayed out.

But one of the great things about home is how well you can maneuver in the dark. I made my way to the drawer with my wonderful LED flashlight, then dug out the candles and lit them. The time came for my alarm to go off but of course it didn't, because suddenly it wasn't that sort of a world anymore. It was a world where an atomic clock-linked alarm means nothing, and if I hadn't happened to awaken early I might have slumbered on long past my time--unless the deeper, more mysterious internal clock (which is frightfully accurate) had kicked in, which it probably would have.

I'm not sure how well I would take to a several-days outage (no TV? Aaaaghhh!), but for a morning, or a couple hours in the evening, it can be wonderful. (Although I remember an all-nighter back in Chicago at the height of summer when the only thing to do was get out of my boiling apartment and go to a movie--along with absolutely everyone else in the neighborhood.) Lighting a candle reminds me of what the world was like for almost all our history, before Mr. Edison had another of his fiendish ideas and transformed everything. For one thing, it reminds me how different the world is at night, or in those pre-dawn hours when the sun is still just a promise. The world is quieter at night, and it should be: something about night demands quiet, which is why loudmouths shouting on the Sunset Strip are so offensive. As a definitive Morning Person, my whole psyche is shackled to sunlight: when the sun comes up, I begin my day (alarm clocks really are almost beside the point); and when the sun goes down, it's only through the intervention of electric lights that I am able to fool myself into going on for a while--but as any of my friends can tell you, my head doesn't usually work as well once the sun sinks away, I'm not as productive, not as creative, not much good at much of anything, which is why so often I find the blinking lights of a TV set about all that interest me come nightfall.

Except, again, when the power goes off. I light a candle and the world is transformed: the light is not steady, it dances, and the shadows jump and twirl. Suddenly nothing is fixed, nothing is certain; and the front door seems less solid, and every sound is infused with meaning and danger. And you know what? All this is good for me; good for us. The electric light has made the world too certain, too knowable; we need a little more uncertainty in our lives.

Because certainty breeds security, and security breeds the need for more security. Once we feel safe, we get addicted to it and demand to feel yet more safe. Next thing you know, we're putting leashes on our children, sacrificing our freedoms and tolerating utter nonsense at our airports. If it weren't for electric light, we would not be so obsessed with tyrannical safety because safety (the electric illusion of it, not the real thing) would not be a constant; it (the real thing, not its glowing simulacrum) would be occasional, and fleeting, and we would know on a regular basis what it is to have that thrill of fear when something goes bump in the night.

(Our scary movies are almost never about the creatures of the night, and the music they make, not anymore; now they are more often about the ways in which our ordered society can break down and fall apart. Sociopaths and maniacs with saws, people who have stepped outside of ordered society and brought their knives with them.)

So I lit my candles, ignored the television, and did some reading. By candlelight, and by the growing sunlight of an unsual dawn, with the wind howling outside, as if to remind me, loudly and vigorously, that it can all be taken away. For more than just a morning, some day.

Compare and Contrast

All right, class, now listen up: here is your--Ashley, please put that away--here is your assignment. Two famous people just died, so we are going to--Ashley, I said to, okay, thank you--we are going to compare and contrast. So open up your laptops, pick whichever websites most appeal to you--please don't all use Wikipedia, okay?--and let's discuss--Ashley! Please!--let's compare and contrast our two recent dearly departed: James Brown and Gerald R. Ford.

What's that? Yes, I know, celebrities usually die in threes, but no third person seems to have offered themselves up to complete the troika, so--it's a word, look it up, Ashley, you know how to do that, right?--so we're just going to limit ourselves to these two. Of course, heh, you know, if there were going to be a third, given how completely unlike Ford and Brown are, you'd have to find someone completey unlike them, and who knows, maybe this guy will be the third.

So now let's--yes, Ashley? Why yes, I did just say that James Brown and Gerald Ford were completely unlike. That's actually--did you notice that all by yourself? Huh. Imagine that. So yes, comparing them will be something of a challenge, won't it? You'll just have to assume that this challenge is exactly why I--no, you may not go to the restroom. Because I said so. Because class will be out in ten minutes. So let's just--listen, can we just get down to it, please? Thank you.

First off, James Brown and Gerald Ford were both famous. That's definitely something they had in common. And as we have all recently learned, there is nothing in the world better than being famous. Both of them were famous for falling: President Ford fell once, and was mocked for it for years by Chevy Chase; Mr. Brown fell to his knees all the time while performing "Please Please Please," but it was all just part of the act. James Brown elevated the pride of black people through his song "Say it Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud," and Gerald Ford saw black people through the window of his limousine sometimes.

And for contrast? Anyone? Yes, Ashley, what--yes indeed, that's quite true. James Brown helped invent funk music, he did indeed. But Gerald Ford--who was many things, and who we all should honor for ending the Watergate nightmare--Gerald Ford was never funky. A gold star for Ashley!

East Coast Time

Last Christmas, the weather was mild and the trees were down; this year, it keeps raining pretty much every day, and the humidity is back to what I remember from my long damp childhood, but at least the trees are back up (or carted away). Haven't seen a single blue tarp across a single wind-ravaged roof. And unlike last year, this year I had plenty of time to spend at home in Miami/Ft. Lauderdale.

Which was good, considering the cats.

Last Christmas, my mother had two-and-a-half cats (one was indoor part of the time and out in the garage part of the time), plus a brace of outdoor cats who were being fed but never allowed inside the house. No problem. This year, one of the outdoor cats had died, the indoor/outdoor cat was entirely indoors, and the two remaining outdoor cats had also come indoors, for a total of five. I walked into the house, I sat down, said hello to the very bashful two new cats, began the getting-reacquainted process, and then started sneezing. Two hours later my defenses had been wiped out and a cold was beginning. (My mom was sick; my sister was sick; the bugs were just waiting for their opening, and boy did they get one.)

So for several days I had all the get-up-and-go of a tree stump. It was a good thing I had all those extra days at home, because I needed them to get the shopping done. Friday and Saturday were the most intense, as if I hadn't already been down here for a week. But now it's all done, and I get to relax and enjoy the season. Just had the Christmas Eve dinner at Mom's house, with the lovely roast beast, then tomorrow I go to Dad's, and if I'm lucky my brother will be able to get me into the Dolphins game on the cheap, since he's bartending there. (The last time I went to a Dolphins game was probably in 1973, when they were rather better than they are now.)

It may be my last simple Christmas. Mom in Miami, Dad in Ft. Lauderdale, and my aunt and grandfather up in Port St. Lucie. (In fact, even this year it wasn't so simple--my Mom's cold and mine preclude us from going up to Port St. Lucie this year, which is a very great shame.) But Dad will be moving to Dallas next year for business reasons, and suddenly I can't just fly to one airport and be within driving distance of everyone. Holiday-time life gets more complicated after this, which I have been terribly aware of the whole time I've been down here, trying to enjoy the moments as well as I can before things change.

But who knew? Who could ever have guessed that among all the traditional holiday pursuits I would also end up eating homemade beef jerky and watching a young idiot shoot a bottle rocket out of his ass?

And on that note: Merry Christmas!

Four Days of Accounting

I am, to put it mildly, arithmetically-challenged. Failed four straight semesters of math during junior high, partly because I was just plain lazy and never did the homework, but the underlying reason for that was that it was just so damn hard that, given my recent discovery of acting, there were other things I found much more interesting. (And by the way, summer school in Florida in the late 1970s was a joke--the math classes were so simple that they in no way made up for what I hadn't learned during the normal school year. I was able to advance from one grade to another on time, but I learned nothing.)

The company I run with Marc Rosenbush, Zenmovie LLC, exists in part to oversee the distribution of Zen Noir both theatrically and on DVD. (The theatrical run just officially ended in Chicago last week, by the way--so if you want to see it, DVD is now your only option, unless you live in New York City. And hey, the DVD just happens to be for sale right here! Isn't that incredibly convenient?) One of my functions within the company, for the moment, is the bookkeeping. Once we've made a little more progress toward recoupment, we'll hire someone who actually understands what they're doing to keep the books. But until then, it's just me and Marc, working our way through stuff a little at a time.

Bear in mind, though: math and I are not on speaking terms. With words, I can pretty do what I want. They are concrete yet pliable, their structures and possibilities perfectly clear in my mind. But numbers, which are supposedly these solid, dependable things--the number 2 always means the same thing no matter what its context--still, somehow, slip and slide from my grasp. They're liquid, and any time I try to work my way through a formula, it always dances away from me. Programs like Excel and QuickBooks help a lot, but it's still always Garbage In Garbage Out, and I am, unfortunately, all too capable of inputting an awful lot of garbage.

Nonetheless, on a couple occasions we've been able to get some help. Our friend Kellie over at the Spiritual Cinema Circle is an accounting whiz, and on Sunday, Marc and I drove up to her home and spent a few hours discovering how everything we'd done had been wrong. She showed up how we really needed to set up our accounting, then Marc and I met up again several times this week and executed her changes--a process that is, as of this morning, still not quite finished, but it's almost there.

Plenty of things I still don't fully understand. How is a Cost of Goods Sold category different from a normal Expense? Dunno. What exactly constitutes a Selling Expense and what an Operating Expense? I sorta-kinda understand this one, but there are still plenty of entries that seem to straddle both possibilities. But the nice thing is that after Kellie's help, I don't necessarily have to understand everything--I can just do again what we did before, in exactly the same way, and it should all work out.

Of course, I imagine that back in junior high I kept thinking something like "it should all work out" too, and we saw how that went.

Muslimania!

Even before he takes office, I'm starting to really like newly-elected Congressman Keith Ellison. As has been extensively reported, Mr. Ellison will become next month the nation's first Muslim member of Congress, and this alone has been enough to draw to the surface some of the worst of our ordinarily-repressed prejudices. Supposedly-upstanding media commentators, the self-appointed guardians of our nation's soul, have managed to flatfoot themselves over and over again concerning Mr. Ellison.

Take, for example, the already-infamous interview that CNN's Glenn Beck conducted with Mr. Ellison on November 14th. In it, there was this delightful attempt to not sound prejudiced despite the fact that the question was inextricably bound up in, and inspired by, Mr. Beck's prejudices:

BECK: OK. No offense, and I know Muslims. I like Muslims. I've been to mosques. I really don't believe that Islam is a religion of evil. I -- you know, I think it's being hijacked, quite frankly.
With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, "Let's cut and run." And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."
And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.

Let's see now, where to begin? Shall we start with the whole "Some of my best friends are Muslims!" preamble? No, that one's self-evident. Certainly Mr. Beck has a point in asserting that Islam has been hijacked by extremists, although I think it's truer that we in America don't pay attention to the millions of good practicing Muslims except when a few of them do something extreme; and then we make that awful leap we have made so many times, in assuming that all Muslims must think like the extremists.

(Note that I have been careful not to assume that Mr. Beck represents the thinking of all Republicans or conservatives. He's out on the fringe, even if he is a member of "mainstream media" stalwart CNN--and the whole point of this blog entry is to demonstrate how the mere fact of Mr. Ellison's election has been drawing these bald-faced bigotries out into the open for once.)

Then there is Mr. Beck's conflation of Democrats with "cut-and-run" appeasers who must therefore be secretly in league with the terrorists, a spectacular three-way failure of logic because none of those things follows from any of the others. Democrats are not ipso facto appeasers; appeasers are not ipso facto in league with terrorists; people in league with terrorists are not ipso facto Democrats; and so on. But unless you are willing to automatically assume that all three elements of that so-called syllogism are in fact congruent, then Mr. Beck's next question--nay, his next demand--"Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies" becomes impossible.

Any by the way, Mr. Ellison's response to this bit of blatant bigotry was remarkable for its grace, as he seemed to immediately forgive the undertones of the question and, in fact, willingly dignified it with a dignified answer:

ELLISON: Well, let me tell you, the people of the Fifth Congressional District know that I have a deep love and affection for my country. There's no one who is more patriotic than I am. And so, you know, I don't need to -- need to prove my patriotic stripes.

To which Mr. Beck, backpedaling like crazy, responded "I understand that. And I'm not asking you to," then moved on to talk about Somalians in Mr. Ellison's district. But of course he was asking exactly that, and bravo to Mr. Ellison for how well he handled this embarrassing interview.

Two weeks later, along came Dennis Prager in his column on Townhall.com, in which he harrumphed about the fact that Mr. Ellison plans to use a copy of the Koran when he is sworn in next month. This is a little better argued from a logical point of view, but it still amounts to one giant whopper. Where does Mr. Prager go horribly wrong? Right here: "America is interested in only one book, the Bible."

Well no, not really. Even Mr. Prager, later on in his column, notes that the collective Bible includes both the Talmudic Old Testament and a New Testament that is not a part of the Jewish religion, and no one denies that Jews have been a major part of American life for centuries. So Jews are not "interested" in "the Bible" per se, only a portion of it. There are perhaps three million Muslims living in the U.S., and of course they respect the Bible but it is the Koran they are most "interested" in. And let us not forget the Native Americans we displaced, who have never had any interest in the Holy Book we so often used as justification for stealing their land.

From this assertion, everything else follows. "If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress." But in fact, setting aside the Congress for a moment, two Presidents did not swear on a Bible: Theodore Roosevelt didn't use a book at all, and John Quincy Adams was sworn in using a lawbook as his preferred text. Furthermore, another incoming member of the next Congress, Hawaiian representative Mazie Hirono, plans to use no religious text at all next month. The Constitution--which is the only text that matters, the one whose primacy all elected officials are required to affirm--specifically requires that "no religious test" be used to determine whether a citizen can serve as an elected official.

(Again, not all conservatives think alike--elsewhere on Townhall.com, Michael Medved quite properly argued against Mr. Prager's conclusions, and Tucker Carlson has done so as well.)

Mr. Prager then argues as follows:

...imagine a racist elected to Congress. Would they allow him to choose Hitler's "Mein Kampf," the Nazis' bible, for his oath? And if not, why not? On what grounds will those defending Ellison's right to choose his favorite book deny that same right to a racist who is elected to public office?

An interesting question, but more than a little specious. For one thing, anyone so devoted to their racism that they would insist on using "Mein Kampf" as their swearing-in text probably has enough of a history as that kind of a racist that they are extremely unlikely to actually get elected. In other words, even a mildly-informed electorate would prevent such a swearing-in by never electing the guy in the first place. But if such a person should be elected, then sure, let him use whatever book he wants. But because "Mein Kampf" is genuinely and legitimately offensive to millions of Americans--let alone other members of Congress--such a person would be instantly marginalized in Congress and, almost certainly, thrown out of office two years later. That's the logical fallacy, you see: "Mein Kampf" is inherently offensive; the Koran is not. Mr. Prager doesn't seem to understand this either--or perhaps, despite his many protestations to the contrary, he really does equate the Koran with "Mein Kampf."

And that would just be sad. Enough with him. But bravo to Mr. Ellison, a genuinely progressive voice in the Congress. Recently a news crew followed him around Washington during his orientation, and he seemed like a completely decent guy, a little disoriented as he tried to figure his way around the halls of power. I like him already, and I look forward to his contributions to the national discourse.

Wealth

I am, as I have said before, not-yet-rich. I live from paycheck-to-paycheck like so many people do, and when a change in my expenses happens (as it will next month when my rent goes up--even though it's rent control--and my parking space gets more expensive as well), then it's a real struggle to find the extra money. Extra money that buys me nothing extra, it just keeps things as they are. This struggle gets truly depressing sometimes, like when friends invite me somewhere and I don't go because I can't afford it.

But for perspective, there's this: the Global Rich List, a website that allows you to plug in your annual salary and see where your income ranks against the rest of the world. My income--my not-yet-rich income that just barely covers what I need it to cover, with almost nothing left over--nonetheless puts me in the top 1% of everyone on the planet. And if that don't turn your head and make you feel a little stupid about your belly-aching, then there's no hope for you.

Go to the site. Put in your income. Marvel at the result. Then go and donate some money somewhere--you are far more blessed than you ever realized, and it's time to give something back.

Interpreting Shakespeare

Recently I've been watching a lot of Shakespeare. The estimable people at Janus Films, who run the Criterion Collection of DVD releases, put out a set of Laurence Olivier's three Shakespeare films (Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III), and I got a copy as a birthday present. (For the record, Olivier also filmed Othello, Merchant of Venice and King Lear, and appeared in an early film of As You Like It, but he didn't direct any of these--and the Othello film was essentially a taping of his stage production.)

It occurs to me that not everyone may remember who Olivier is. I often fall victim to this problem--as one of the great actors of the 20th century, Olivier looms as large in my awareness as, let's say, the Pope does for Catholics. (Plus I'm a bit of an Anglophile, and I've always loved British actors--even today, Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Hopkins and the impossibly brilliant Ian Holm are among my favorite actors, while the Australians have lately become a force unto themselves.)

Since I have often acted in Shakespeare's plays, and I've read everything at least once, it was by no means the first time I had seen these three films. But it was interesting nonetheless to see them in order like that--and in the Richard III film, there is the particular opportunity to compare Olivier's approach to Shakespeare with that of his great rival, John Gielgud, who plays the Duke of Clarence in that film.

Acting styles come and go like clothing fashions, and if you doubt me, just find a recording of John Barrymore doing soliloquies from Hamlet. In 1936, Gielgud directed a production of Romeo and Juliet in which he had the unusual idea of casting himself as Romeo and Olivier as Mercutio; then after six weeks, they switched roles. The production has become legendary as one of those moments when acting styles seemed to turn on a dime, because Gielgud's Romeo was all beauty and grace, while Olivier stressed the physical and the dynamic. There are no recordings of these performances; but in Richard III, you can watch Gielgud performing (very beautifully) Clarence's long dream speech, and then watch any of Olivier's speeches as Richard, and get a very clear sense of the difference between the two styles.

When I was younger, I appreciated Gielgud but I adored Olivier. Lately, those impressions have switched places. It makes sense: as a young man, Olivier's vigorous, youthful approach was thrilling, while Gielgud's more refined performances didn't have the same immediate, visceral impact. But in Olivier's autobiography, he wrote something that I found particularly interesting (sorry, I don't have the book in front of me so I can't quote it directly): he said that in his approach to the soliloquies, he often picked certain specific lines and really hammered away at them while, in a sense, glossing over the rest of the speech. He cited one of Lear's speeches, writing that in his own head, the speech was essentially "Dad-dah dah-dah dah-dah dah-dah dah-dah / How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is / To have a thankless child!"


It may be the most honest thing he ever wrote about his own work--because with that in mind, suddenly I can see this approach in just about every aspect of these films. They are all collections of great moments, with somewhat loose connections between them. And those great moments are usually designed to showcase Olivier himself to great advantage, and are usually announced by a particular stentorian yell that is essentially identical from production to production. It became the chief weapon in his arsenal of acting tricks, and after hearing it a few times, I have to admit, I began to dread its appearance.


Gielgud, on the other hand, was the most beautiful speaker of verse in the twentieth century, with a velvet voice and a subtlety of approach that I have never seen equaled. He was a member of the great Terry family (Ellen Terry was his great-aunt), and as such represents perhaps the apotheosis of that late-19th century style: forceful but never florid, refined but never precious, and with a complete command of his craft so that every line received its due weight rather than rushing on to the next big moment.

It's interesting that Olivier's reputation is as a very natural, realistic actor of Shakespeare (at least compared to Gielgud), because now I find his work particularly mannered. Maybe that's because Kenneth Branagh's recent performances have been quite a bit more realistic and natural than Olivier's ever were, as I think anyone could see by comparing his 1989 Henry V to Olivier's in 1944. Speaking as a child of the Vietnam generation, as Branagh is as well, I find his anti-war interpretation of the play considerably more interesting than Olivier's rah-rah rouse the troops version, and I love the fact that when he filmed Hamlet he did the whole thing, leaving the script essentially uncut. (Yes, I know, it's a long script, which is why most directors cut it from four and a half hours down to about three; but there have been any number of uncut productions that have demonstrated, over and over again, that the play in its entirety works brilliantly, beginning with Maurice Evans's reportedly-sensational production in 1938.)


But what's particularly interesting, to me at least, is that if you look at Branagh's as the third great interpretive style of Shakespeare performance, it is almost full circle back to Gielgud--or maybe it's more accurate to say that his work represents a successful melding of both Gielgud and Olivier: frequently thrilling like Olivier, but with the yearning and the beauty of a Gielgud performance. Alas, as a director, Branagh suffers in comparison to Olivier, largely because of an unfortunate fondness for too-low comedy (witness Michael Keaton's awful Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing).

The cycle will spin on, of course. One day, Branagh's performances will seem mannered and unrealistic just as Olivier's are beginning to now; and what I think magical in my forties may seem tired when I have reached my sixties (and am, perhaps, more than a little tired myself). It is all, as Shakespeare said, a part of the very purpose of theatre, "...whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." And that's why this stuff matters, not just to me: an acting style is as much a reflection of its time as anything else; it hints at who we are at a given moment. Once upon a time, the value of a beautiful Gielgud performance was self-evident; then, during World War II and immediately after, we valued a man of action such as Olivier, even in the refined setting of a Shakespeare play; and now we appreciate a natural, unmannered performance like Branagh's, in this time when mannerism and affectation are so out of favor and "authenticity" is all. (Never mind that much of what we think of as authentic is in fact exactly the opposite--Eminem is not Marshall Mathers, no matter what he says.) What's unfortunate is that Branagh's Shakespeare work, while popular, doesn't matter in the way a Shakespeare performance once mattered--now we want the overheated bang-bang of What's-his-name's Romeo + Juliet, with action and guns substituting for the text. That's a damn shame, but it is, again, a reflection of its time. A movie may seem fixed and immovable, but as one's own perceptions shift with time and age, one realizes that even a movie is malleable, a constantly shifting mirror reflecting not only its own age but ours as well.

Burning Man

On November 3rd, a man named Malachi Ritscher set himself on fire near the off-ramp of a Chicago freeway. (Here's the AP story.) Apparently he was a long-time political activist who had suffered from bouts of depression; and, plainly emulating the 1963 death of Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc, Mr. Ritscher made the unimaginable decision to emulate Duc's act of extraordinary protest.

I just went through a Google search for Mr. Ritscher's name, and of the first 100 results, not a single one was for a mainstream news source: no CNN, no New York Times, not even the Chicago Tribune or Sun-Times covered a local story. Only the indie paper Chicago Reader, which I remember well from my years there, picked up the story. (To be more precise: according to the Reader, apparently the Sun-Times ran a small article before it knew who had immolated himself or why; since then, nothing until it reran the AP article this morning.)

Mr. Ritscher's suicide note read, in part, "If I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country.... If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country." Much of the discussion, what there has been of it, has turned on the question of whether Mr. Ritscher's problems with depression somehow invalidate his act of protest. Was he, some wonder, ever clinically diagnosed, or was it an undiagnosed mental illness, or was it perhaps a simple low-level depression such as many suffer through from time to time? I suppose that some of this results from the example set by Thich Quang Duc, a monk who suffered from no mental illness, who indeed, according to witness David Halberstam, never once moved or cried out during his ordeal. Thus Duc's motives are pure, thus his act had meaning. By implication, then, Ritscher's motives were impure (because he was, you know, sick in the head, a mental defective, CRAAAAAZYYYYY), therefore his act had no meaning.

This argument is absurd--particularly when put forth in the usual blunt-instrument terms of conservative bloggers. (Read and weep.) If it was purely a question of depression driving someone to suicide, then why was it so politically overt? Typically, when someone attempts suicide in order to get attention, it is exactly that: an attempt, a cry for help. The method chosen would therefore be something with a reasonable chance of suriving; self-immolation ain't that. Once you pour gasoline on yourself and light a match, well, that's all there is to it, you're gonna die.

Plainly, Ritscher was trying, in his last moments on earth, to make his death mean something. And even if it was partially motivated by the awful circumstances of depression, making his death a political act was a last attempt to make his life, and his death, meaningful and effective, just as Duc's death had been. It must follow, then, that this was not a petty, self-involved death, a kind of mental implosion, a black hole of personality collapsing in on itself; it was a last attempt at expansion, at significance, from a man who had devoted much of his life to political activism. In his suicide note he wrote, "My position is that I only get one death, I want it to be a good one. Wouldn't it be better to stand for something or make a statement, rather than a fiery collision with some drunk driver?"

Mr. Ritscher was not a "moonbat," not "an aging hippie loser" who recognized the pointlessness of his liberal life and just decided to end it all. He voluntarily chose to endure what is perhaps the most painful of all deaths in the last hope that it might mean something. The fact that the mass media have so thoroughly ignored that sacrifice makes it all the more tragic.

The Happy Place

It's hard to overstate how much I love the Thanksgiving holiday. Four-plus days off from work; I don't have to travel anywhere, and what with my friend Ezra's fondness for taking in Thanksgiving orphans such as myself, I don't even have to do anything--just show up at a specific time, carrying a bottle of wine, then sit back with friends and eat, drink and maketh the merry.

It wasn't always thus. Back in college, the holiday was too short to fly home, but the dorms closed so I always had to find someplace to stay. This was particularly awkward my Freshman year, when I found myself at a cast party the weeked before Thanksgiving, essentially begging the gathering for a place to stay. I found one (and ended up having a memorable vegetarian Thanksgiving that consisted, as I recall, of rice, rice and rice); but the next year I ended up staying at the YMCA on Huntington for the holiday, which was a whole different kind of memorable. (The infamous "Hail Mary" pass from Doug Flutie to Gerard Phelan came that particular weekend, and I watched the game on a tiny TV in a tiny room at the Y, sitting on my tiny bed and staring at the screen--remember, I'm a Miamian, so I was rooting for the Hurricanes, not for B.C.--while yelling things in complete shock.)

But things change, and my Thanksgivings slowly got better and better, until I am now where I am, ridiculously happy with my holiday. I ended up seated next to the utterly wonderful Sarah Underwood (she was also in Outta Sync), whom I hadn't seen in months; and at a certain point during dessert, I felt it come over me. "Ah, there it is," I said to the nice people near me (it was a very long table that covered, I think, at least two time zones), "my stomach just reached its happy place."

And then, as is always the way of things, instead of stopping there I finished what was on my plate and my stomach promptly moved to the "overstuffed and overwhelmed" place. But so what? It's not like I had any place to be; or any place I would rather be.

Then today, I scratched an itch: the single most distressing casualty of the Zen Noir distribution has been that for weeks I have had absolutely no time to do any writing. (Although I have to say--the fact that our DVD kept selling all through Thanksgiving day, in surprisingly good numbers, was also extremely pleasant.) So this morning, I sat down with my "Marathon" script and made just a tiny little change; a texture thing, really, although it does tie up a storyline that had been left dangling, and without a line of dialogue being spoken. I'd realized weeks ago that I needed to tie up that loose thread, I even knew what to do; even so, it wasn't till today that I could actually sit down and do it. It felt spectacularly satisfying.

The release of the movie will end quite soon, when we open in Chicago. I won't be traveling for that, and after that we only have to keep DVD sales moving along. At last, I should be able to get back to what I really do, writing. About bloody time.

At the same time, the stories out of Iraq today are so horrifying that I simply can't look at them. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to think about such things, but not now, no, not now.

All Around the World

It's pretty amazing, the thought that people around the world will soon be watching Zen Noir. The DVD went on sale Tuesday (you can order it right here, with a host of free special gifts, for a limited time) and there was a lovely stretch of the day when we were selling something like 100 copies per hour. But even more remarkable was the thought of where those DVDs are going: all across the United States, of course, particularly to those places where the theatrical release could never reach; and it's not such a surprise to find them going to Canada and the U.K. and (particularly) to Australia, where sales have been particularly strong; but there are also sales to Israel and Jordan, to Malaysia, to Brazil and Sweden and South Africa, and that's just from a haphazard look at today's sales.

This is where film has it all over theatre, frankly. The reason to make art, in any form, is to have it seen and appreciated by an audience. In theatre, unless you have a mega-blockbuster like Phantom of the Opera that can set up a dozen road companies while also playing for years in London and New York so that tourists from across the world can come see it, even the best play will only be seen by people within, probably, no more than 100 miles of the theatre. (And the people who would travel that far are rare--we had a few who traveled when we did Signal to Noise, but that was really to see Neil Gaiman when he came to our special preview.) Then of course there's the time limit--a play is doing very well if it lasts longer than six weeks, but people can watch Zen Noir six decades from now. On six continents, no less.

This is really blowing my mind right now; it also leaves me seriously humble. And all I did was work on the film--it's Marc who's really responsible for it, whose story and ideas are right now being shipped across the world.

For the time being, the DVD is only available on our site, at the link above. It'll probably end up on Amazon and Netflix someday, although really truly I have no idea when that might happen; but for now, since there are still plenty of production expenses, etc. to recoup before we can start sharing the wealth with the actors and producers (who worked and have seen no rewards yet), we're understandably eager to rack up as many sales as we can--and not at Amazon's discounted rate. And so far it's working out just fine, as those little boxes make their way around the globe.

(One woman bought twelve copies, and in her "Comments" space she wrote "Well that's Christmas taken care of." Not that I'm trying to plant ideas in your head or anything...)

Did Dean Do It?

Well, yay.

But it's curious that in all the self-congratulation I've heard from Democrats and the various media mouths, I haven't heard Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean's name mentioned once. (I know he was on The Daily Show last night, but I haven't yet had a chance to watch it.) All the attention was going to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the Clinton-era insider who oversaw the national Congressional effort, and to Chuck Schumer, Emanuel's counterpart in the Senate. It's deserved praise, to be sure, but still it seemed a bit peculiar that Dean wasn't being mentioned. Can it be a coincidence that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid had both opposed Dean's chairmanship? (I'm not trying to spin out some kind of conspiracy theory here, I'm just trying to give some credit where it might be due.)

There was an interesting article in the New York Times last month about Dean, in which writer Matt Bai followed Dean to Alaska as he sought to further implement his "fifty-state strategy." The basis of the idea, according to Mr. Bai (paraphrasing Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher), is simple: "...Democrats do better with rural and small-town voters when they frame their positions as values rather than as policy prescriptions. This is not an entirely new insight, but to Dean it is critically important. In his mind, it means that any voter in any state can be a Democrat, if only you bother to talk to him, and if only you make the right kind of argument." And after the upheavals of the 1950s and 1960s, as demographics and political allegiances shifted, the once-mighty Democratic machine started ceding whole swaths of the country's electorate to the Republicans. Instead of adapting to the new reality their focus narrowed, a little bit at a time, election after election, finally reaching the point that during the 2004 election, 18 states were completely ignored by John Kerry and the Democratic Party.

Dean sought to do a 180 on that idea, hence the fifty-state strategy. Even places like Alaska, a sparsely-populated state where Republicans outnumber Democrats 2-to-1, needed Democratic party organizers on the ground, raising money and directing it to the right places. I won't summarize Mr. Bai's main points any more than that, instead just referring you again to his article, but will instead pivot to my own main point:

How much of the responsibility for this historic Democratic sweep belongs to Howard Dean?

Obviously, there are certain realities this election cycle that weren't so real just two years ago: the disgust of the electorate with just about every aspect of the Bush White House is plainly the dominant factor. Republican scandals that just kept on comin' had a hell of a lot to do with it, too. And without the public perception that the wheels were coming off the Republican train, Dean's strategy might have died an early death: it was dependent upon raising a sufficient amount of money to fund all those new state organizations, and without local Democrats getting excited about their prospects and therefore donating more money to the cause, Dean could never have executed his grand plan. (Indeed, as Bai reports, the Congressional fund-raising wings of the party were much more successful at keeping parity with their Republican counterparts than Dean's apparatus was--which is why the Republicans were able to spend so much more money on advertising in the last days of the campaign. Not that it ended up helping.)

There were significant gains in states like Iowa, Kansas and Colorado, which the conventional wisdom would have listed as solidly red states, the kind where a party doesn't bother wasting money because there's no way for a Democrat to win. And again, a lot of that can be attributed to the Republican implosion (what effect, for example, did the Ted Haggard debacle have in his home state of Colorado?), but how much did it help that there was a stronger Democratic field organization already in place in Colorado, and in Kansas and Iowa and elsewhere, to take advantage of such opportunities when they arose?

Remember: only a few months ago, conventional wisdom proclaimed that the chances of Democrats taking back the House were fair to decent, with a 15-seat gain "within the realm of possibility," but that retaking the Senate was nearly impossible. But more and more races--in more and more unlikely states--just kept opening up. And the party was able to capitalize on a big percentage of those opportunities.

So I'm just asking: with all due thanks to Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, how much should we also be thanking the outsider who no one else seems to be thanking?

(P.S. Sidney Blumenthal's post-election dissection of the "house of kitsch" that is the Bush Administration is extraordinary. I hadn't seen these clowns in this light before, but I think Blumenthal nails it.)

Oddments

The Zen Noir DVD

It will be released on November 14th. The best place to purchase it, for the time being, is from our very own website, here. (There won't be an actual "click here to purchase" link till the 14th, but the link above should at least get you in the neighborhood.)

The commentary tracks are a lot of fun--particularly Marc's conversation with Brad Warner, author of Hardcore Zen, about the Buddhist principles underlying the film. I'm not a Buddhist but, as you might guess, I've learned a lot about it from working on the movie, and the part about Buddhism that I find the most attractive is exactly what Brad talks about in his book: the imperative for every Buddhist to question authority, to accept nothing as writ. As a punk-rocker (and not a "former" punk-rocker, either), Brad's discussion with Marc is definitely not polite and New Age-y, it's irreverent and a little blasphemous and a hell of a lot of fun. We could have loaded up the DVD with deleted scenes and whatnot, but for my money, this particular commentary track is alone worth the price of admission.

Don't Forget to Vote

I am just about the biggest believer in voting you will ever find. For one thing, I keenly appreciate the part of citizenship that most people like to ignore: the responsibilities incumbent upon every citizen. It's why I'm such a fan of jury duty, for instance: we get plenty of benefits from being American citizens, and aside from paying taxes we rarely get asked to give anything back. But voting is the number one, tip-top item on that list, and I never miss a chance.

Besides--if you don't vote, you give up any right to complain about the government. Simple as that.

Am I excited about Democratic prospects? Not quite. For one thing, rampant gerrymandering has me worried (I really wish that last year's attempt to revamp California's redistricting process had passed); and the possibility of election fraud has me worried as well. Besides, even if Democrats do regain control of one or both houses of Congress, then they have to actually govern--and given how rotten things are at the moment, there are so many gigantic problems to fix that it may be too late for anyone to do any good. Thus allowing Republicans, in two years, to claim that Democrats didn't do any better than they did, thus allowing people to go back to voting for the Republicans who screwed things up in the first place.

Sadly, perception is everything in an election, and recent reports that Republicans are making a last-minute surge in the polls suggest they might actually be able to pull themselves out of the fire. Because if people start to think the Republicans will win again, then the Republicans will probably win again. Here's an example of why:

Back in the 1980 election (Reagan/Carter), there was a significant third-party challenge from Illinois Congressman John Anderson. I was still too young to vote, but my mother was an Anderson supporter. On voting day, she found herself in line with the usual assortment of fellow neighbors, and they got to talking. People asked Mom who she was going to vote for and she said Anderson. "Oh, I like him," they almost all said.

So Mom naturally asked, "And are you voting for him?"

"Oh, no, no."

"But if you like him, why don't you--"

"Because he's not going to win."

So there you are. If it looks the Republicans might win, they will probably win. No one wants to "waste" a vote by voting for a loser, because apparently being part of the winning team is more important than actually making sure your team wins.

Yes, a Very Nice Weekend, How 'Bout You?

It's freakishly warm for November, but surely that's just an anomaly and not part of, let's say, global warming. In any event, it made for a nice weekend, even if I did have to spend almost all of Saturday going over accounting issues for the upcoming DVD release (got to know the right way to count our money!) and a good part of Sunday indoors yet again, working in Final Cut to put together what will eventually a director's reel for Marc. (We will send it out with copies of our next script, for maximum impact.)

But even with all of that, there was more time this weekend for catching up on movies, and even for some reading, than there has been in quite a while, and I'm awfully grateful for it.

And you?

A Break in the Case?

Some time has passed, and now a perfect storm of identity-theft action seems to be beginning. After the robbery on Sept. 25th, there was one use of a stolen credit card, but that charge, for whatever reason, never fully posted with the bank and so it was impossible to track it. Then nothing at all happened, except at my end, as I tried to deal with all the unexpected ramifications of the theft.

But when I came home Wednesday night, there were a half-dozen messages on my answering machine. One was from Cingular Wireless, which told me that someone had tried to open one or more cellphone accounts using my information; and another was from my bank, telling me that someone had tried to ask the bank to mail a replacement credit card to an address in the Bronx. There was also a call yesterday from Dell Computer, which had someone on the other line at that very moment, trying to open an account in my name. Thanks to the fraud alerts I placed with all the credit-reporting agencies, these merchants all contacted me and I sure as hell told them that the other people on the line were bad, bad people.

But the way I look at it, each of these attempts represents another opportunity to catch the bastids. For example, the attempt to have a replacement credit card mailed to the Bronx means that I now have an actual street address in the Bronx, plus a couple of phone numbers. Now it could turn out that that address is a vacant lot or something, because it sure does seem stupid for the thieves to actually give their address in a traceable manner. Then again, thieves are not always rocket scientists, so maybe they really are that stupid.

(As proof, I offer this from the always-delightful News of the Weird: "New Yorkers Donald Ray Bilby, 30, in July, and Abdullah Date, 18, in August, were, respectively, convicted and arrested for sending anthrax threats to authorities in envelopes that each contained their correct return addresses. (Date allegedly also included a taunting note reading, 'Catch me if you can.')")

Of course, I don't hold out much hope that anyone at that New York address will lead back to the two guys out in front of University High School that night. Most likely, they sold my wallet to someone for maybe a hundred bucks cash, and the buyer sent it on to his contact in New York, and there's probably an identity-theft ring that processes information from thefts all across the country. In which case, it becomes less likely that they're stupid enough to actually give out an address, but you never know, and it's all worth following up.

This morning, by coincidence, I got called in by the police to look at a photo line-up. I have given the address and the phone numbers and all the particulars to the detectives, and we'll see what happens. That's all I can do: try to keep ahead of the ID theft brigade, and relay anything potentially useful to the authorities. I really truly wish this all weren't so damn time-consuming, but that's my new reality so okay, that's what I'll do.

In the Meantime...

...there's this, a photo I took of the Getty Villa on the coast. Went there yesterday with some friends and, despite occasional interruptions by phone calls relating to the bad people, it was a very nice day. As you can probably tell.

The Candy Calendar

Aaaaiiiieeeee! It's the day after Halloween and there's candy everywhere! Heeeeellllp!

When I moved out here to Californ-eye-ay, I promptly gained about fifteen pounds. After all, I'd never had a car before, so in Boston and Chicago I walked everywhere; now suddenly I became one of those SoCal drive-around-the-corner types. Plus, age does what it does, and that robust metabolism that used to just burn weight whether I exercised or not slowly became less effective, something I could could keep in check in Chicago because I belonged to a health club across the street from where I worked. But here, I couldn't afford a health club and the weight practically leaped onto me. It was a bit like standing on a scale and watching as the dial just kept moving.

The weight gain seemed to stabilize at fifteen-plus, and then with a little bit of effort I dropped five--but there it stayed, for a long while. Until a couple months ago, when I watched Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me and had a little bit of a freak-out. I went into the kitchen and did a little basic math: looked at everything I had eaten on just that one day, how many calories, how many grams of fat, etc. Made a few adjustments, mostly simple things like removing potato chips from my diet, that sort of thing--taking the absolute worst parts of what I ate, losing them, but not trying to fundamentally alter the diet itself. I had no inclination to go vegetarian or anything like that; I just wanted to see if little steps could produce measurable gains.

They did. Slowly slowly, pounds began to slip away. From week to week there was little difference when I got on the scale; but over the course of the past several months, I realized I had lost five pounds, then seven, then ten--I was back to my pre-Los Angeles weight. My belt was two notches tighter. I didn't feel so damned self-conscious about certain types of clothing. This, of course, made me ambitious: could I perhaps keep the trend going? Why, if I could lose another fifteen pounds, that would put me back at college weight! Wouldn't that be great?

But it's the day after Halloween, and everyone with excess candy is leaving it out in places where I can, you know, see it. I mean, what's a fella to do in the face of such endless temptation? Exercise some impulse control? Oh, please!

It's interesting, though--after a couple of those tiny M&M's packs, I began to feel a sugar buzz rushing up on me. Used to be I could pound back M&M's for hours; now I'm really feeling them. That, I think, is probably a very good thing; if anything is to help me master that particular impulse, feeling sick after too much candy can only be to my benefit.

But geez--Christmas is coming up, and that's when vendors start sending boxes of candy and donuts and cookies and things. Aaaaiiieeee!