June 17, 2005

The other afternoon
My wife and I
Took a little ride into
Beverly Hills
Went to the private school
Our oldest child attends
Many famous people send their children there
This teacher says to us
"We have a problem here
This child just will not do
A thing I tell him to.
And he's such a big old thing.
He hurts the other children.
All the games they play,
he plays so rough...
"Hold it teacher
Wait a minute
Maybe my ears
Are clogged or somethin'
Maybe I'm not understanding
The English language
Dear, you don't seem to realize
My life is good
My life is good
My life is good, you old bag
My life, my life..
- Randy Newman, 1983

Las Vegas, NV - The Palms. I intended to write about 4, the Russian film that my jury awarded at the Seattle International Film Festival in the New Directors category. The film is playing at LAFF in the next 10 days. It is very, very challenging... as in some people will absolutely despise it. They won't be 100% outed until the second act, but if you start getting irritated by life on the farm, you might as well head out the door then... it's not getting any more accessible.

I also wanted to write about Gus Van Sant's Last Days, which is a somewhat fictionalized, very Van Sant take on the last days of Kurt Cobain which premiered in Seattle. This movie will also piss off a significant portion of its audiences. I, personally, was not the biggest fan of Elephant, though I did find it kind of mesmerizing. Perhaps it is my own growth that in a second film of a very similar tone and style - also centered on the banality of death - I was drawn in completely. When someone who saw it here at CineVegas suggested that it needed cutting, I was incredulous. The film is a tone poem, slowly filling the creases of your brain, with even less action than Elephant... what would you cut if you were going to cut it? I guess there is something to be said for not trying an audience's patience for too long. But when it comes to films that are so definitively a director's vision, I find the picking of nits a very odd thing indeed, not unlike picking a particular brush stroke to attack in a Picasso. You can do it, but... why?

The New American Filmmmaker's jury went for Swimmers... which I didn't see, so I have no urge to write about that

I have to say, I'm having a bit of a movie star moment these days. I've spent the last few weeks traveling, staying in luxury hotels, overly concerned with my own amusement. And I don't even have a million dollars or the completely financial freedom to be or do or go anywhere I want at any time or people telling me how wonderful I am at every turn. Yet, when arriving in Vegas and finding myself in the Rio... the vibe of the room just didn't make me happy. And I got cranky. And as assoholic that makes me, I can afford the cost of a hotel room and the free one was making me finicky.

Now, I imagine having unlimited choice about almost everything material in the world. My mind wanders to that doc on Elton John where you saw how he took over two floors of a hotel with entire suites for his clothes, which travel with him everywhere so he never has to be without that perfect handkerchief or g-string or suit as the mode takes him. And I start to think, I get that.

If I had just twice the income I have, I wouldn't be going to tkts for theater tickets or making any more effort than asking a concierge to arrange top notch seats at a whim. Imagine if I had 100 or 200 times my income! What kind of asshole needs Evian instead of Dasani? An asshole whose perspective on the cost of that request is the same as "regular people's" perspective on being able to pick one of five pairs of shoes out of their closet in the morning.

Reflectively, people who do not own five pairs of shoes exist by the hundreds of millions - and the conspicuous consumption of celebrity is both breathtaking and horrifying. And let's not just thing about the hundreds of thousands being spend on Tom Cruise's world tour to promote War of the Worlds... there is The Today Show spending tens of thousands (at least) to cover it with a reporter on Cruise's train and satelliting in from each country.

Millions of children will go to bed hungry tonight.

None of this excuses the behavior of some celebrities. And of course, not all celebrities are grubbers. But the system is pretty much designed to enforce the mindset and behavior.

The average ballplayer for The New York Yankees is paid over $3 million... but the business is still very profitable. So should the ballplayers not make that money and leave it all to Steinbrenner?

Anyway...

My thought when starting this was the discussion of the weight of ultimate freedom. The more freedom you have to have anything you think of, the more of an asshole you seem to become... whether you really are an asshole or not.

I dropped a line in a column from London about being an advantaged person. A number of friends, most of whom have a lot more than me, asked me what I meant. And as I write this on the patio of The Palms, host of the CineVegas festival, having chosen this restaurant from hundreds I could have lunched at today, looking over a pool full of people whose lives at home are much more challenging than mine, free to wander, free to see whatever show I like without thinking about the money, free to gamble, etc, etc, etc... it is a life of privilege.

I am not nearly as free as many of the people in this business. And I will be less free than I am today next week. But the freedom to be finicky... from needing to eat to choosing your food... from just being happy to be traveling to wanting the right hotel... from flying to Europe to flying first class... from renting to owning to owning a mansion...

The urge to be treated well seems perfectly reasonable. But our perspective on what "well" means changes, the better we are treated. And as I wander around Vegas, I see so many people who want, want, want.

And so ends today's blathering on about the human condition. I'm going to the pool. Did I mention that my Blackberry is not receiving messages properly and that I am at the absolute end of my rope? Doesn't it know who I am?!?!? Have the concierge find me if you need me.

E-ME. How much is too much?