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Week Of August 6, 2007 - Wed / Fri
August 8, 2007
I'd Walk A Million Miles For One Of Your Smiles...
Roaming around the South, you get a rather different perspective on the country. I had a chat today with some older folks who live just out of Charleston, SC. They pay $6.50 for a movie. There is another theater with a $2 double feature (which was also the case in Richmond, Virginia’s landmark Byrd Theater). And there is one screen with “art films.” They never go there.
Meanwhile, I have had more than a couple discussions about how no one is going to the movies anymore. Yes, the dreaded New York Times Slump of 2005 is still infecting the populace, after two years of up box office.
It’s odd to think that you are living on the cutting edge of culture… and I guess I am not. The true cutting edge is out there, somewhere ahead of me and the highly funded pop culture. But living in New York or L.A., the perspective is definitely unlike any other. The irony is that we in the big cities, certainly including those who fund and make television and movies, are behind the mood of the rest of the country by a number of steps. The issue of the cultural chicken and the egg is far more complex than ever seems real.
The most fascinating thing in Myrtle Beach, SC, for instance, was the big box retail concept for everything. Fast food restaurants are big. Mini-golf courses are big. Not big, really… huge. There is a Hard Rock Café in a giant pyramid and a Hard Rock amusement park being built. (Isn’t the brand dead yet? What kind of theme park will a Hard Rock park be?) There is a massive Planet Hollywood in a biosphere, circa 1989. Really, it was like Vegas without the gambling.
But what is the goal? Where is the demand? How much of a single, simple, almost insulting national voice can we have in this country before we lose our individuality completely?
Even the southern gothic mansions in some small towns seem to have been built out of a box. McMansions with big columns and brick walled “basements”/garages. The little details of these small universes seem to be being obscured, bit by bit, in the name of progress. Yet there is still an effort to honor what was, however retrofitted.
Each day I wander around these places that are not my big city home, I find myself wanting to find the businesspeople who are still out there taking personal risk. I look for the privately owned bookstores that cost me 20% more than Amazon or even Barnes & Noble. A little cooking store in Charleston that has participant cooking classes will be tomorrow’s lunchtime activity, learning how to cook shrimp & grits, among other things… just anything that is somehow more connected to the real people who are in this town than another table at another tourist’s restaurant.
It’s not wanderlust, though I am prone to that. It is a passion for the reality of lives. The world is not supposed to be a theme park, I don’t think… other, perhaps, than Tivoli Gardens.
And this is the fight in the media world, isn’t it? The banality of the big boxes keeps spreading and we in the media keep looking down at the people whose previously personal and complex cities are being drowned in the well-drawn mediocrity. It is the same way we look down at America for embracing what we see as crap media, movies and television. But there are not sheep. They are not blind. They do make choices, even if the choices they make are often not choices We agree with.
Thing is, I know that I can never see the true picture in a day here or a day there. I can seek the “real” side of a city, but like anything else of value in life, you can only truly understand if you take/have the time to breath it in so that you stop being aware of your breathing. You have to show new things in the world the respect that time allows… the honestly respectful disrespect too.
Everytime I write about just how blessed I am, in my life, in my work, in the crazy world of show business, I get questioned about it. I don’t have what some have. I don’t want what some have. I do want what some have. I have more than so many. Mostly, I have the freedom to breathe, when I allow myself that indulgence. Yet if I don’t, I will suffocate, my ideas will be stale, and I will start to believe that I know what I cannot.
So it’s sweet tea and local seafood and bbq pork and artists no one has heard of at home and the smell of a new river and some new plants for a few more days. Their world is not more real than our magically unreal one… but it is theirs… and it is life… different but equally valuable, sometimes more valuable… remember, remember, remember…
E Me.
Week Of April 3, 2006 - Life In the Bubble - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of April 10, 2006 - List Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of April 17, 2006 - Review Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of April 24, 2006 - Overlooked Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of May 1, 2006 - Mystery Week - Tue / Wed / Fri
Week Of May 8, 2006 - How We Watch Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of May 15, 2006 - Premature Week - Oscar Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of May 22, 2006 - B-13 Mon / Inconvenient Wed / Fri
Week Of May 29, 2006 - Wed / Fri
Week Of June 5, 2006 - 666 Tue / Iraq Doc Wed / Seattle Fri
Week Of June 12, 2006 - SIFF Mon / SIFF Wed / Fri
Week Of June 19, 2006 - Cinevegas Mon/Deliver Us Wed/Prada Fri
Week Of June 26, 2006 - Pirates Mon / Super Again Wed / Fri
Week Of July 5, 2006 - Wed
Week Of July 12, 2006 - M. Night Mon | You, Me & Wed | Monster House Fri
Week Of July 17, 2006 - 8 A Year Mon / Water Wed / Revamp Fri
Week Of July 24, 2006 - Comic-Con Mon / Gossip Wed / Fri
Week Of July 31, 2006 - Mel G Mon / Talladega Wed / Fri
Week Of August 7, 2006 - Mon / Wed
Week Of August 14, 2006 - No Column Mon / Wed / Snakes Fri
Week Of August 21, 2006 - Snakey Mon / Anniversary Wed / Scoundrels Fri
Week Of August 28, 2006 - Mon Love / Berloff Wed / Fri
Week Of September 4, 2006 - Thur
Week Of September 11, 2006 - TIFF Mon / Bobby Wed / Fr
Week Of September 18, 2006 - Mon / TIFF 1 Wed / TIFF 2 Fri
Week Of September 25, 2006 - Mon / Wed
Week Of October 2, 2006 - Atonement Mon / Wed / Indie Fri
Week Of October 9, 2006 - Flags Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of October 16, 2006 - Mon / Epagogix Wed
Week Of October 23, 2006 - TCIFF Mon / Wed / Catch A Fri
Week Of October 30, 2006 - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of November 6, 2006 - Mon / Dead Girl Wed / Fri
Week Of November 13, 2006 - Bond Mon / Wed / TomKat Fri
Week Of November 20, 2006 - Mon / Thankful Wed
Week Of November 27, 2006 - Mon / Auteur Wed / Blood D Fri
Week Of December 4, 2006 - Mon / Wed
Week Of December 11, 2006 - Mon / Wed
Week Of December 18, 2006 - Mon / Wed / COM Fri
Week Of December 27, 2006 - Wed / Worst of 2006 Fri
Week Of Janiuary 3, 2007 - Best Of 2006 Wed
Week Of Janiuary 8, 2007 - Mon / COM Book Wed
Week Of January 17, 2007 - Little Red Writing Hood Wed
Week Of January 29, 2007 - Mon
Week Of February 5, 2007 -This Thing We Do Wk - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of February 12, 2007 - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of February 26, 2007 - Rough Oscars Mon / Zodiac Wed / Doc & Foreign Fri
Week Of March 5, 2007 - Mon / Fri
March 14 / March 21/ March 28
Week Of April 4, 2007 - Wed / Grindhouse Fri
Week Of April 9, 2007 - Indie Distirbution Mon / Star Ranking Wed / Top 20 Fri
Week Of April 16, 2007 - Mon / Piaf Wed
Week Of April 23, 2007 - Mon / Tribeca Wed / Costner Fri
Week Of April 30, 2007 - Spider Mon
Week Of May 7, 2007 - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of May 14, 2007 - 10 Thing Studios Don't Want Wed / Fri
Week Of May 21, 2007 - Mon / Pirates Fri
Week Of May 28, 2007 - Knocked Up Friday
Week Of June 4, 2007 - Hostel 2 Mon / Ocean's Wed / Seattle Fri
Week Of June 11, 2007 - Sopranos Mon
Week Of June 18, 2007 - Mon / Sicko Wed
Week Of July 2, 2007 - Xanadu Fri
Week Of July 9, 2007 - Mon / Hairspray Fri
Week Of July 23, 2007 - Bourne Mon / Superbad Wed
Week Of July 30, 2007 - Shoot Em Up Mon / Fri
