Monthly Archives: September 2012

09.09.12
by

Owning the room

“They can smell desperation a mile away,” was the harsh assessment from a very successful and wealthy (not the same thing) friend of mine years ago when I was going through a particularly dry employment stage.

“Screw you,” I thought, “I’m not desperate!  And even if I am, the projects I’m pitching are great and I am charming, funny and exude confidence no matter how I’m feeling.  So I know for a FACT you’re wrong and that it doesn’t have anything to do with that!”

“or ….does it?”

After all these years I hate to admit — Yeah, it does.

It’s easy to preach this sort of advice from high atop your pile of money or at your “A” table or house in the snazziest neighborhood in town.   Certainly easier than doing it from a broken down kitchen table in a crumbling studio apartment where you can hear your neighbors’ every footstep at all hours of the day or night.

Well, not necessarily.

The reality is – it’s all about ownership.  Of yourself, of the idea and…of the outcome – meaning you’re not even thinking about whether it’s good or bad, that’s how much you believe in what you’re doing or saying.  The latter is the toughest, especially when you’re desperate.  How do you pretend you don’t care when your very life and livelihood depends on it?  Because your life and livelihood never DEPENDS on it.  Repeat:  It NEVER does.

Workin’ it.

Former President Bill Clinton gave the master class in ownership this past week when he addressed the Democratic National Convention in a highly detailed 48-minute speech on economic and governmental policy that had most of the nation, and worldwide audience, at the edge of their seats.  How do you do that in an age where even the ratings of “30 Rock” and “The Office” have slipped while “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” is enjoying a never-ending ratings surge?

Consider the following wrong answers:

  1. Bill Clinton has a near genius I.Q. (approximately 137) so he can pretty much do anything.
  2. Bill Clinton is rich and not motivated by money so he doesn’t care about success or failure anymore.
  3. Bill Clinton is selling someone else (Pres. Obama) and everyone knows it’s easier to do that than to sell yourself.
  4. Bill Clinton was speaking to a crowd of people already on his side.  He was preaching to the choir!  There’s NO degree of difficulty there!!!

Really.  Isn’t this the guy who was impeached from the presidency in national disgrace, reviled by half of the country and most of its women AND nearly died from heart disease just a few short years ago?  How do you make a public comeback from that no matter how smart you are and how much money you have in our cynically cynical A.D.D. age of fact-checked, slogan-bloated, generically engineered reality?

Here’s a thought – by knowing what you’re saying and standing by who and what you are and what you believe no matter the outcome.

Let’s break those wrong answers down.

Piece of cake.

1. Genius and talent. As a person who has traveled through the businesses of entertainment, politics and academia through most of my life I’ve met some incredibly brilliant and talented people.  I mean, so smart that it might make you never want to utter a sentence again and so talented that you have the urge to never, ever even attempt to try to do anything original in your field because this person has already gotten there and done it way better than you could have ever hoped.

But what I also know is one of the finest female singers I ever heard, who was in my high school class, I’ve never heard from again in my adult life.  And that Van George Serrault, the brilliant artist, never sold a painting in his life. Also, that Sarah Palin was the nominee for vice-president of the United States (I’m partisan, get over it) and ——  – —– (too soon to be that partisan) was actually president.  Plus, there was also that teacher you got stuck with in college (or even high school) who convinced you that even you knew more about a given subject than they did. (Do I need to even mention his or her name?)

As my Dad so wisely told me, “there will always be people more and less smart (and talented) than you.”  The key is what you do with what you have and how hard you are willing to work.  What is it they say in the World of Dated Though They Shouldn’t Be Homilies – talent is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration?

Meaning Bill Clinton didn’t just get up on a podium and espouse a bunch of partisan talking points.  He had lots of statistics, research and thought to back it up.  But he also didn’t list a boatload of genius statistics and expect you to understand it.  He took the time to analyze and synthesize all of the information in order to make his points.  In fact, he did such a good job that even factcheck.org and countless other organizations found his speech to have a total of ZERO stats that didn’t check out.  Talk about arithmetic.

Former Clinton spokesperson Terry McAuliffe confirmed that on a vacation with Mr. Clinton more than a month ago the former president spent innumerable hours each day personally working on this speech, despite being rich enough to have a few other geniuses do the digging and at least one to write it.  And the freedom to not even give it in the first place.  Not surprisingly, he chose none of the above.

I’m rich, bitch!

2. Being rich means not caring about the outcome.  Seriously?  Well, I’ve met several billionaires in my life – that’s with a “B” – and the opposite is true.  A billionaire’s credo: every deal is personal and winning is the only acceptable outcome even if it takes years of double and triple dealing to make it so.  For most active, wealthy people, rather than retirees or dilettantes (because who wants to talk about them anyway), there is always something being worked on – a project or an argument or a personal desire to bring into fruition.  That’s often what made the person wealthy in the first place.  The determination and desire to win, communicate and/or prove the other guy wrong or yourself right.  It’s always personal and there is ALWAYS something at stake.  All the money in the world won’t change deep down inside the fact that – YOU LOST – even when you try your best to convince the world that you don’t care.

Note:  Now let’s not mistake losing for financial failure.  For example, I’ve met many famous (and less than famous) artists, myself included, who do a project that might not make a lot of money or receive mixed to bad reviews, who truly believe and feel that in the end they’ve won.   In the final analysis, the victory can be getting it done in exactly the way you want.  This is universally true for a section of both the wealthy AND the poor.   For the top 1% the loss is usually much more public.  But for the other 99% it can be equally humiliating, or perhaps even invigorating, depending on one’s point of view.

As for Bill Clinton, he’s made many mega-millions through memoirs and high-priced speaking engagements in the years since his presidency AND has even given away billions to solve worldwide problems through his Clinton Global Initiative.

But it’s also taken him more than a decade of hard work and dedication and image rehabilitation to emerge as the most popular living American political figure of 2012, according to recent polls.   All the money in the world can’t buy that.  Ask Meg Whitman, former EBAY CEO who is wealthier than Bubba but whose money couldn’t even lift her to the governorship of California that she so desperately wanted.  Or Ross Perot, whose presidential run against Elvis  Clinton cost him more money than Bill Clinton is now probably worth in total.

Shilling for a living, baby.

3.  Selling someone else is easier than selling yourself. Most writers, directors, actors or any other creative people in film who want to work will at some point find themselves on projects that, to put it kindly, was not their idea, choice or in any way their personal favorite.  In other words, it’s not uncommon in the world to be a “gun for hire” – employed to do the best job using your particular brand of expertise.  Often times you get paid, sometimes you’re doing it for merely the credit, and still other times you’re doing it as “a favor.”  (Yes, people still do those).

I can recall a particular low point myself going to work on a grade “C” Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.  Some designer friends of mine like to recant stories of lugging bags of cut rate underwear from a shopping mall in the middle of nowhere on a 100+ degree film shoot or stacking miniscule pill bottles in a fake pharmacy that will probably never be seen onscreen for a drug store commercial.  The take away here is not how dedicated we all were but that even if you’re working on the crappiest thing in the world at some point it dawns on you that your name will be on it and that, “screw this, I’m gonna make my part of this piece of crap slightly less crappy” even if it kills me AND them (hopefully, the latter).

This is not quite the case with Bill Clinton in his DNC speech since his wife is the President’s Secretary of State and by all accounts relations between the two Presidents have grown much more cordial in recent months.  So that means there is some personal investment. Still, here are several reasons why this speech had to be extremely important to a man who is no longer president:

  1. His wife is Secretary of State AND might herself want to run for president in 2016.
  2. His entire life has been about building himself and the Democratic Party up – meaning he truly believes the first two are what is best for himself and the country.
  3. All presidents are concerned about their legacy and are somewhat egomaniacal (who else would want that job?) despite what they might say to the contrary.

You might think this is “just a job” and “easy money” when you start.  But if you’re any kind of real, high-achieving professional, by the time you finish you’ll swear you were extremely overworked and way, way, way underpaid.

Preach Whoopi!

4. It’s easy to preach to the already converted.  In the early 1970s, my mother told me she was going to vote for Richard Nixon because he promised to end the Vietnam War and she didn’t want me to be drafted.  Well, you can imagine how this went down with me.  I couldn’t vote but was a Chicago 7 revolutionary at heart.  How could my Mom, the person who loved me more than anyone in the world and would swear on a stack of bibles I was innocent even if she witnessed me gun down a busload of senior citizens, betray me like this???  It literally still makes no sense to me.  Because despite my ample persuasive abilities – and as my friends, family and students will tell you, they are formidable – no amount of nagging, cajoling, intellectualizing, tantrums, facts, figures or even tears would change her mind.

Good god, Mother!

Lessons learned at an early age: no matter how friendly your audience is to you, it will take a lot of work to convince them of something they might not want to be convinced of.  You have to be crafty, mature and in most cases, over the age of 17.  (Especially when dealing with my mother).

Bill Clinton’s speech at the DNC certainly roused the attendees in the hall.  But he was shooting for a lot more than that.  He was shooting for undecided voters watching or reading about he said.  He was aiming towards dispassionate Democrats who didn’t particularly think working on this campaign was important.  He was addressing the rest of the world about what he, the President who presided over the greatest economic upturn in the last half century, thought would be the best strategy to solve the world’s problems.

Part of owning the room on any given day is taking nothing for granted and leaving a little bit but not everything to chance.  Compare the text of Bill Clinton’s written speech and the actual version of the talk, complete with 20 minutes of ad-libbing, as Sec. of State Hillary Clinton joked a few days ago that she planned to do.  Then consider Clint Eastwood’s almost totally ad-libbed address at the Republican Convention talking to an invisible Pres. Obama seated in an empty chair.   Several days ago Mr. Eastwood admitted to his local newspaper in Carmel that the idea for his speech came to him moments before he went onstage and that rather than massively prepare he had little idea what he’d do prior his entrance onstage.

Certainly both Mr. Eastwood AND MR. Clinton are hard-working icons who, on any given day, could take on each other.    And if on a film set and not on a political stage, Mr. E would, in particular, have the advantage.

But on that given moment, on those two arguably equal nights, who truly OWNED the room as they spoke?  Think about it.  Then, think about it some more.  Then, take some action of your own.

09.03.12
by

Chair on Chair

Clint Eastwood is an icon.  And if you don’t think so, here is the dictionary.com definition:

Icon:  A person or thing regarded as a representative symbol of something: “icon of manhood.”

No, I did not add the manhood part or appropriate it from some other place to make my point more effectively.  That is the literal, on-the-record given example.

It is dangerous for any one thing or person to be regarded as a gold standard representative symbol of something as Mr. Eastwood proved this past week when he dragged an unwitting Chair onstage in Tampa on the climactic night of the 2012 Republican National Convention.  One reason is that once you’re the international standard for something we all value from your perceived public image, it is inevitable you will one day disappoint.  And that is because the nature of existence is nothing stays the same and that everything in the world is uniquely its own in ways an outsider can never fully know.  An image (or icon) is a mirage – and the very nature of mirage is, it isn’t real.  What it is changes or rearranges, in accordance with the eye or taste of the beholder.  This holds true both for the shelf life of people like Clint Eastwood and for objects such as chairs, who have even less to say about their iconic status than humans do. (Note: “The Eastwood Chair” is now trending internationally and is probably now the most famous chair icon we all know).

Because everything in the world is uniquely its own, this makes it particularly tough for icons – inanimate or living – to be all things to all people.  Why?  Well, for example:

No one human has the same fingerprint.  And as any dog (or any other pet) lover can tell you, no two animals of the same species are exactly the same either.   One can even take this further for, let’s say, ants, who are seldom pets.  I mean, we might not be able to tell the difference between the ants crawling around our backyards or inside our cabinets, but I’d bet that any other ant could. As could another animal/insect of another species.  So how can any one of that or any species ever properly represent all the others not only to their own species but to the rest of the world?

I would argue this is even the same for mass-produced items.  They each have their own microscopic, milli-minutiae quirks that we humans can’t see but that make them who they are.  No item can be exactly what it was when you acquired it or first admired it – or live up to the perception you had of it.   Which is partly because your perception clearly isn’t seeing everything, certainly not as much as what is seen by another like-minded item of its own kind.  Plus, like humans, items also change – if even slightly – as they age.  There is always slight color derivation, a tiny smudge or crack in the armor on the outside.  Or perhaps on the inside, out of view.  I’m reminded of an old Bette Midler monologue that talks about what’s hidden beneath the surface of each and every one of us, no matter how alike we might seem on sight.  One day while walking through the streets of Manhattan, the entertainer ran into a sad, mentally ill lady in a huge Daisy dress who was almost bald and had, substituting for hair, a fried egg on her forehead.  Terrified in those days of her own tenuous emotional balance on reality, Midler mused that she didn’t want to wake up one day and wind up with a fried egg on her own head.  But then, later in her routine, which went from hilarity to poignancy in the space of just a few minutes, she somberly concluded:

“The truth about fried eggs is…everybody gets one.  Some people wear them on the outside.  And some people – they wear them on the inside.”

I prefer mine over easy

 

Meaning nothing can or should really be set up as an icon for anything. It’s a recipe for disappointment and failure on both our parts because you’re never seeing the real, true picture.  Just as the 82 year-old Mr. Eastwood might now disappoint as the universal hyper symbol of Manhood due to his mocking routine of Pres. Obama, who he imagined was sitting onstage with him yelling unlikely nasty retorts from an empty chair – that particular brand of Chair, which hadn’t chosen the spotlight as Mr. Eastwood clearly did and continues to do, has now become the iconic Zelig of inanimate objects and is engendering all sorts of blowback.  Plucked out of obscurity by one icon, said Chair – which doesn’t have a name but has become an unwitting symbol as “The Eastwood Chair” – has various Twitter handles, Facebook pages, portraits, personalities and doctored images it never sought out to begin with.

Scouring the web, it is clear this once unknown single piece of furniture enrages, disappoints, is put on a pedestal, is lampooned and is publicly scorned, deified and idolized.  It is now every bit, and perhaps more, iconic than Mr. Eastwood.  This in itself proves the shallowness of iconic status.  Though sometimes it’s about achievement, it can also come when one is in the wrong place at the right time or even the right place at the wrong time.  Even a casual X Factor like birth can have something to do with it.   I mean, ask Prince Harry.

Leave me outta this!

 As an ordinary Chair myself, actually the Pendleton Chair of the Ithaca College L.A. program, it should be understandable that I’m a little sensitive to what would happen if an ordinary Chair suddenly found itself trending worldwide. Though none of the fellow Chairs that I know are iconic symbols, my position does share a dictionary.com definition with what is now the most Famous Chair in the World whose listing fittingly comes first in our dual definitions on dictionary.com.

Chair:  1. A separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs.

2. to act as chairperson of or preside over an organization, meeting or public event.

Much like Ms. Midler felt pain for the Lady with the Fried Egg on her head, this week my heart has consistently gone out to what is now the world’s most iconic Chair.  So like any good tribesman, I thought I’d reach out and try to be supportive.  Imagine my surprise when The Eastwood Chair (TEC), quite average and quite happy before it began its meteoric rise to fame just days ago, asked if I’d do its one exclusive interview.

But first, an exclusive with The Chair

Me???  Wasn’t a slightly, well, bigger forum, what was needed?  “No,” replied, TEC, the one thing it didn’t want was to fan the fire.  All it sought was just its real POV out there on the record.  Because the one thing it’s sure of after the last few days is that whatever it says, even if it’s to just me, will gain worldwide traction – at least for a few weeks or so.  The following are TEC’s own words and our conversation verbatim.

Me:  Well, this has been quite a week for you, huh?

TEC:  You could say that.  I can’t really say anything.

Me:  That’s kind of a theme in your life, isn’t it?

TEC: (laughs) I guess so.  I hadn’t meant to put it that way but, there you are…

Me:  Does it bother you that other people are now defining you, who you are, on such a, well, global scale?

TEC:  (seemingly tilts back, then forward again) I was really angry at first.  I mean, I was positioned backstage, providing a service.  I like to think of myself that way – service oriented.  I’m functional.  I don’t crave the spotlight on my own.  Someone might sit on me but that doesn’t mean they are me. To suddenly become the thing that everyone’s making fun of…

Me:  It must be difficult.

TEC:  Well, as they say, I was just “born this way” and living my life.  I didn’t intend for the world to react so extremely to me one way or the other, or use me as an example to make fun of, or idolize or to hate on just because someone else is using me like that and causing them to think that way.

Me:  But isn’t that part of the nature of any chair?  For instance, if someone had you in their house and was really angry, they could throw you across the room and break you if they wanted.

TEC:  (withered look) Wow.  I hadn’t ever thought about…(silence) Yes, I suppose they could.  And that would be awful.  I guess I’ve been lucky so far.  But nobody should be defined as something they aren’t simply because of mistaken identity or because a human needs to work out their “stuff “ in a mean way through you.

Me: Okay, well, not to be mean myself but…isn’t that, according to what you just said, your function?

TEC: I said I’m fuctionAL.  I don’t have one specific function. But in people’s minds now I’m this – “thing.” And it can be real negative in people’s minds.  I just want everyone to know that image, those traits they’re putting on me – the arrogance, the cursing, the awkwardness – they’re fiction.  They’re stereotypes.  They have nothing to do with who I really am deep down.   Depending on who is doing the looking and the sitting, I am lots of things deep down.  I am more than the butt of a joke…

Me:  Butt.  Chair.  That’s funny.

TEC:  I’m not laughing.  Sorry, but…

Me: You said it again.  But.

TEC: These jokes are being used to hurt someone.

Me:  Hurt whom?

TEC: I better shut up.  I don’t want to get too political.

Me:  Oh, come on, your secret’s safe.  Hardly anyone reads the blog compared to, let’s say, your Twitter page.

TEC (chuckles):  You mean Twitter pages, don’t you?  I mean, which one?

Me:  (chuckles back) Well, there’s The Eastwood Chair, The Empty Chair, This Seat is Taken, Obama’s Chair, Invisible Obama….

TEC: Stop, please….

Me:  Well, they all don’t have your exact image.  I take it you’ve seen them?

TEC:  I try to stay away.  Also, I’m sort of limited in what I can see unless someone is sitting on me.

Me: Ah, right.

TEC: But I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit to sneaking a few looks.

Me: Care to elaborate?

TEC:  No.

TEC’s least favorite. “That tramp,” it says.

Me:  Fair enough.

TEC:  I mean, aside from that, I’m not sure it’s exactly safe.  I’m only one chair.

Me:  But an important one.  You could be the Rosa Parks of Chairs, if you chose to be.

TEC: That’s a little grand, don’t you think?

Me:  Maybe so.  I’m not saying you have to be or it’s what you should do or a requirement or…

TEC:  I get it.  It’s okay.  Really.

Me:  You want to talk about Mr. Eastwood?

TEC: Not really.  But I suppose I should.

Me: Are you angry with him?

TEC: Yes.

Me:  I thought you’d hesitate.

TEC:  Why?  I’m in an undisclosed location.  He’ll never find me.

Me:  I found you.

TEC:  Actually, I found you, remember?

Me:  Right.

TEC:  And when we’re done, trust me, you won’t be able to find me again.  No personal offense intended.

Me: None taken.

TEC:  But you will hear about me.  And from me.  A movement is growing.  And it’s about more than chairs, one chair or even all chairs.  See, there’s a network out there protecting the real me because the struggle is really about everything…

Me:  You sure are sounding like Rosa Parks to me.  Or at least one of her disciples.

Silence.  The light hits the top of TEC and it appears several inches taller.

Me:  Care to elaborate just a bit more?

TEC: Okay, so it’s about thinking before you use something innocent solely for your own benefit against its will or feeling.  Or dislike or hate something only because of what you think it is.  Or categorize dishonestly one way before you know it – or even if you do know it.  Cause deep down you know you’re being dishonest.

Me:  Is that what you think Clint Eastwood did? 

TEC:  Eastwood’s 82 years old and a huge movie star.  He’s used to doing anything he wants and he comes from another generation.  It’s more about everyone else and what they say and how they react to what they can plainly see right before their eyes.  And – the truth.  (A beat.)  Though let’s say next time I’m around the rich and famous, I’ll be more prepared and blend in.

Me:  Really.  How can you…

TEC:  We have ways.  I can’t reveal everything.  As they say, ultimately, “A chair is still a chair…

Me:  Even when there’s no one sitting there…”

TEC:  Very good.

Me:  It’s a Hal David lyric from a Burt Bacharach song ,“A House Is Not A Home.”  Mr. David just died this week, so…

TEC: Oh, wow. Sorry.  That’s sad.  I didn’t know.  I really liked his music.

Me:  Well, he was 91 so he did have a great life.

EW: And understood the true meaning of a chair.  Unlike some people.

Me:  Maybe one day they will.

TEC: I hope so.

Me: It’s all in the song, if you think about it.

TEC:  I just wish everyone had slightly better taste in the music they choose to listen to.  You know what I mean?