Stardate 01312003
The kind of journalist (or whatever) I am … hovering somewhere between THE NATION and THE ENQUIRER just above the black bog of obscurity, where I’m sure some ancient, many tentacled, chthonic being is waiting for me to stir the waters and wake him, I flutter between the question of “What Matters” and “What’s Fun.” I’m trying to blend the two but in the meantime I just appreciate the dialectic.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
The actress Tilda Swinton (ORLANDO, VANILLA SKY, ADAPTATION), said at the Frameline Video Close-Up session at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, that “people should be looking at people [not ‘actors’].”
So if you are looking for gossipy tidbits about our very favorite stars (and let me tell you, I’ve got a big chub for George Clooney these days) you won’t find it this time. This is going to be a journey into the very nature of reality – the deep structure of our culture – that ticking time bomb of people in chains pulling at each other’s shackles.
HACK THE PLANET!
My friend Gigi explained it thusly: “You should be able to get very deep with your ideas but its no fun to stay there. You have to come up and flit about the surface.”
I think a good follow up show to JOE MILLIONAIRE would be to interview the women and ask them about their motivation, explore their desire to be a rich man’s wife, their desire to let the whole thing be filmed, how they feel about the media and representing themselves to the media and how they felt after they found out they were about to be the next Darva Conger. Exhibitionism and Narcissism as the twin currents fueling their Cinderella fantasy. The Princess and The Wedding is the underlying story of all these women’s lives. And bring in the element of living in a media(ted) culture and we get … THE BACHELOR. I’m a Princess. I’m having a Wedding Fantasy. I’m on TV. I have fulfilled the ultimate expression of self in our society. I can die now.
The Princess and The Wedding – a tale of American Girlhood. The next Disney animated feature. I have to give Disney credit for making THE PRINCESS DIARIES about a young woman coming to power, rather than finding her prince. Although, it wasn’t that deep of a message. But it had Wienerdog (Heather Matarazzo) from WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE in it. That gave it kind of an edge. Anne Hathaway, the princess, she of the diaries, is currently in NICHOLOS NICKLEBY with Allen Cumming, who has a heavy Scottish accent and its weird to hear him the way he sounds naturally.
As most of you know, there this whole Middle East thing going on. You’ve heard the sound bytes. You’ve heard the rhetoric. You have most likely made up your mind about what we should do.
I like that when a politician or a businessman or a religious leader says, “We should go to war,” they never mean themselves. They mean the young men and women who got bad grades in school and wanted to get some kind of security and joined the armed forces and are being asked to sacrifice their lives. I have yet to hear a soldier say on CNN, “I am ready to die for my country to have a secure oil supply.”
I know this is not only about oil. And the war protests are not only about the impending war. It is about a shift in power – who’s got it, why do they want it, what are they doing with it and why they are trying to hold on to it. The world is shedding the past and new thinkers are involved in a dynamic conversation about what we need to do now considering where we are at in terms of quality of living and what we need to do now and in the future to maintain a healthy world for ourselves.
The left isn’t ignoring the present – we are wrestling with it and trying to break the cycles of the past to bring fresh inspiration to our culture. We are watching the monkey chase the weasel and we wonder why they don’t just stop and go off and do something else. What is it that draws them to each other in the first place? After Iraq, then what? Really. What? We go back to looking for Osama Bin Laden?
The left values dialogue – that is why it seems there is no clear platform. There are however, several theme areas such as “sustainability” which is an umbrella term covering the intricate web of people interacting with the economy, with each other, and with the natural world.
Humans/Economy/Environment is the most important conversation our society can have right now. We have to look at the logical conclusion to our current way of life and take action right now. We are decades behind where we should be in the U.S. in creating a Green Economy.
So I have a short playlist I call the “get real” set.
“Generals and Majors” – XTC
“Sowing The Seeds of Love” – Tears for Fears
“Ball of Confusion” – Love and Rockets
“Don’t Argue” – Cabaret Voltaire
For fun, put your MP3 player on repeat and get lost in that loop until you grok it. That’s more education than I cram into this little column.
At the moment of enlightenment, when you finally “get it” you’ll need some soul medicine, so put in HEAVEN OR LAS VEGAS by The Cocteau Twins and live your new religion.
Oh wait, that’s MY religion.
That was the longest introductory paragraph ever for a Entertainment Column. But that’s good, you stuck with me this far. I told you where we were going when we started out a few minutes ago.
Bonne Raitt, Martin Sheen and Joan Baez guest starred at the San Francisco Rally for Peace. Martin Sheen, who plays the President on TV gave an impassioned speech that sounded just like acting. But as long as he gets the gossip columnists to talk about it as celebrity interest. You wonder if we aren’t all in on this thing together. Bonnie Raitt is a sweetheart and a Bay Area local too.
I went to an awesome bonfire at the beach. Every year for the past ten years a group of people have been getting together on Ocean Beach to burn their Christmas trees. As the crowd grows larger, the longer and higher the fire burns. They had a big pot of cioppino going and everyone brought seafood and dropped it into the soup. I didn’t waste my chance to burn entire Christmas trees so I chucked two or three of them into the enormous ring of sand and watched the fire swallow them in a single, enraptured gulp.
It was a family affair. Some kids started in on “99 Bottles of Beer” and wouldn’t stop. Another guy brought his guitar and entertained a few strays with their folksy songs. Someone brought real coffee, in an insulated, catering strength, coffee dispenser. Aoooga! That night there was a full moon and the silica in the sand sparkled with the bright moonlight. Nobody seemed to notice but once I pointed it out they were all as starry-eyed as I was about it. It was neat!
Oh yeah, there was another Superbowl. And people were excited about the ads. Why don’t interesting short films get as much attention as 30 second advertisements? I think it would be cool if the networks showed short films as part of their programming day. Would the world be the worse off if the cast of FRIENDS had two fewer lines each episode? I guess you could call them “interstitials” with no other purpose than to add to the cultural conversation. I love coming up with ideas that are totally in the realm of possibility and then working to implement them.
Sundance came and went. Jeffrey Wells had a lot to say and the good folks at Hollywood Bitchslap had an army of writers covering the films and the scene. I was supposed to go, but you know, things don’t always work out the way you want. And I was honing in on an interview with Marilyn Manson. After seeing him in BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, I suddenly became interested in what he might have to say about our culture, although the publicists would rather I just stuck to talking about PARTY MONSTER, the Michael Alig story starring Macauley Culkin.
Those wacky publicists. I was talking to Josh from the BLAIR WITCH PROJECT last year and I said, “Publicists like to think they control the process [of how everything is represented in the media]” and he emphatically told me, “Publicists DO control the process.”
So thanks to Josh, I had to go out and prove him wrong and do everything my way.
Poppy Z Brite set me straight about where she was during Spookycon.
Hi Thom,
Just for the record, I didn't spend Spookycon hiding in my hotel room –
I was more sociable than I've been at any con in years (not that I've
attended many in the past few years). Most of the other guests were
friends I hadn't seen in several years, and I was happy to catch up with them. I kept telling Darren he could schedule me for more events, but he didn't, so I spent most of the con attending other people's readings, eating Chinese food, and attending parties. I do admit to absconding on Sunday to take the tour of Alcatraz, which I've wanted to do for more than ten years, and it was well worth it.
I do wish I'd been able to meet up with you, if only so you could see
that the "she probably doesn't show up on film" comment is way, way out
of date. I was amused to overhear two attendees discussing my decidedly non-Goth "fashion" sense: "I heard she was wearing a football jersey." "No WAY!" (I'm afraid I was.)
Poppy Z. Brite
Fine. If that’s how you wanna play it Poppy Z, if that is indeed your REAL name.
Ms. Brite's new novel THE VALUE OF X, is just out from Subterranean Press. The follow-up, LIQUOR (a later story about the same characters), will be out from Crown in Spring of 2004.
Back to Tilda Swinton – That was an amazing live interview conducted by David Thompson, author of THE NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM. Did you know, and this only adds to mystique, that she went to the same girl’s school as Lady Diana Spencer? A school of which she says, “We were told that we would be the wives of the leaders of tomorrow. I didn’t think that applied to me.”
“Derek Jarman and I would have been burned as a witch [back when they did that sort of thing],” Tilda explains, “because we both have third nipples.” The third nipple, it was believed, was the teat that nursed the witch’s homunculus familiar.
When asked the almost inevitable question of the advice she had for a wanna be independent film maker, she replied with such a sublime answer it nearly brought a tear to my eye, “In advanced capitalism, the artist has no illusion of patronage. You just have to do it.”
And then she went on to explain how the idea that you need several million dollars to make a film is not only “crippling” but “pure rubbish.”
Tilda’s ideas about performance are just as compelling as the roles she has chosen to play and she only does what interests her. In the upcoming film TEKNOLUST, she plays four clones.
Peace out, compadres.
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