March 31, 2004

It’s the day before April Fools Day, but I’m not fooling…

I am having the intense urge to be relentlessly self-indulgent today. Or is it an urge to stop being so self-indulgent for a moment?

After all, the treadmill is great until you start to think too much about the fact that you are on a treadmill. The view is great until you start taking it for granted. And the hard part of dieting is not eating healthy, but not eating what is unhealthy.

The great and horrible thing about making movies is that in the end, the result is all that is really remembered. As soon as The Passion of The Christ opened and we were all about to start counting Mel Gibson’s profits, that became the story. Had someone been killed for reasons of religion following a showing, that would have been the predominant story. But either way, there would have been some sense of closure and the freedom to move on.

Entertainment journalism, as it is, offers no such closure. There is the opportunity to create new outlets, as my partner and I have at MCN. There is a thrill to building something new. And there is great joy in maintaining and reinventing something you care about each day.

But I am so tired of carrying some of the baggage (or is it garbage) around with me each and every day. As in any life endeavor, one grows. And while forgetting where you come from is a horrible notion, finding your feet caught in the cement of your past is equally horrifying.

I’m going to stop now, before I start naming names. But I will relay this… last night I told my young nephew that if he found himself doing something morally that he would be embarrassed for others to know about, he should probably reconsider what he was doing.

I was embarrassed yesterday that I even had to have a conversation with someone who was pushing his prayer for the failure of a filmmaker. I was embarrassed to find someone who I respect continuing to make terrible mistakes in their news stories simply because there is no valid editorial perspective at most newspapers these days. I was embarrassed by my callousness in the face of my own ability to wreak minor havoc in the lives of others.

I have many reasons to be happy. And I will again soon. There were a few significant things I wanted to write about in today’s column. They will turn up in the days to come. But every once in a while, you see the shiny objects that are catching your eye as what they are… the shiny objects of the moment.

In the face of the freedom to do as we wish, what do we choose to do? And how can we face the deep, dark, truthful mirror and know if the reflection is true?

We define our humanity every day. Begin…