Category Archives: Just Sayin’

06.02.12
by

Common Indecency

The 21st century’s great debate

Show business is littered with rejection and is not for the faint of heart.  But there is a chasm as deep and as wide as the one separating Donald Trump and reality between rejection (meaning “no”) and just plain indifference.  Or worse yet, and much more simply put and deadly – encouragement that goes nowhere vs. good old-fashioned real support.

I’ve said this before but it’s worth repeating – most creative people – or for that matter ANY person – would in the long run much rather hear a “no” from a producer, director or studio/network head or boss than a “perhaps” that in hindsight was clearly never to be.  I came of age in a world when people doing that kind of stuff would say things like “Maybe,” “I’ll get back to you,” “I’m not sure” or my past personal favorite – “I didn’t get your/your agent’s/your mother’s message.”

Of course, the latter can’t realistically work anymore because of cell phones; Facebook; Twitter; Skype; or our beloved text.  So because of our love for all things Apple (except in many cases, the real fruit) if you try that old excuse – you are, as they say in Hipster McHipville – “busted.”

Still, you can only be busted if someone has the nerve to publicly or even personally bust you.  And these days it’s amazing how much everyone is getting away with for fear of death (being shot); firing (confronting a lying boss or co-worker); or love (I don’t want to be alone because, well, it’s lonely out there).  It’s a literal field day for common indecency or inconsiderate behavior or cavalier entitlement – so much so that the kind of rude, dismissive insensitivity I’m talking about is actually considered much more usual than indecent and, in many circles, has actually become the norm.

Here’s a quick example.

More than a little while ago, a very influential person in the biz I’ll call “A List” was very enthusiastic about reading a piece of my work so I quickly dispatched it ASAP, per A.L’s exact instructions.  Time went by.  Like a few months.  That alone is the amount of accepted period you’re supposed to give someone to read anything though I’ve never really understood why since over the years I actually read both “Prince of Tides” (688 pages) and “Gone With The Wind” (558 pages) in less minutes (And, trust me, my script was far shorter than several chapters of either).  “Aaaah, but was it as good,” you ask?  Well, you can’t really tell that until you read it, can you? Certainly “A list” couldn’t tell at that point.

Let’s call him Mr. A List

Anyway, after some months I did contact “A List” who profusely apologizes and says he/she has every intention of reading it but — can I send it again?  Given the fact that I might have even exhibited this behavior (“we’re all busy!”) once or twice myself to people (and mea culpa to those people), I actually buy what “A List” is selling, don’t get offended and make another dispatch.  Okay, many more months go by and though I’m a bit pissed off, I’m over it.  Until one day, someone mentions “A list” and I think – you know, I’d like to know the truth.  If “A List” didn’t like it, I’m at least a grown up chronologically.  I can handle it – much better than I can handle, well — crickets.

So of course I contact “A List” again and get profuse yadayadayadas with promises and mea culpas and everything except, well, a blood panel and pledge of a first born (not that I’d have any use for either).  Then even more time goes by.  And more.  And guess what happens?

And finally – I give up.

Except – many, many more months go by and this week I get a message from “A List” about another unrelated matter as if none of the above ever happened.  “A List” is friendly even though we’re certainly not anything more than good professional acquaintances.  We get this new matter out of the way and I think – “well, should I?”  And finally I decide: “uh, no.”  (My behavior is what’s called in life and the biz as – cutting your losses).  I do get upset for a day and start wondering if what I sent was actually bad (it wasn’t) until I realize the truth of what I already knew all too well — this is the way “A List” is if matters are not urgent or there isn’t some very grand personal gain for A.L in this and that, mostly, it’s not personal.

However – is it acceptable?

Certainly it isn’t from friends, family or lovers – but in the course of common courtesy and decency in show or anything other business – if it is, then WHY or WHEN did it become acceptable???

To put it another way, as someone who likes confrontation and “Revenge” (and not just the television show), how did “A List”’s behavior become the “norm” without any sort of repercussions and should I have let him/her off so easily since, obviously, there’s freedom of choice here?

“You’re talking about business, where different rules apply,” you say?

Well then, I suppose we could ask the upwardly mobile young Mom my sister traveled up the elevator with yesterday at a Century City medical building.  Said Mom was munching on an apple and maneuvering her snazzy baby carriage into the large space so neither my sister (in one corner) or the woman running late (in the other corner) could get out.  Fine.  My sister didn’t feel well anyway and didn’t really want to move before they got to her floor.  But as the elevator traveled and stopped at another floor on the journey, the door opened and two very elderly people tried to hobble in.  I say tried because one determined senior did manage it on a cane because Mommy decided to move an inch.  Then there was another crunch of the apple.  But no other movement as the second senior assumed there was no more room in the elevator carriage and Mother Mary (not her real name) wasn’t moving another centimeter even though there was clearly a good foot or two of space if she chose to navigate a bit.  But she didn’t and my sister, usually no shrinking violet, was too tired to channel the Chair and chastise the young Mom for being so selfish because she had an ear infection and, well, we all know how we are when we are sick.  We (for example) might end up screaming:

Oh – move your frickin’ kid, lady – don’t you have grandparents???  Put down the goddamned apple and show some respect because if you’re lucky, you’ll be that old one day. And I hope you are or I am because then I’ll grab your cane and trip you with it, you – you, poser!!

Care for another apple?

I guess this young woman is even worse than the lady I saw a few weeks after I bought my new Volkswagen Beetle five years ago.  Now you have to know, I have a soft spot for “The Bug” because when I was a teenager all the cool older guys used to drive them and I, more than anything else, wanted to be that – or have that – meaning…. well, you know what I mean (and if you think about it you’ll really know).  In any event, I finally got one – The Bug.  And I’m at the mall parking lot, inside of it; still admiring it’s mine, starting the engine, and carefully looking all ways many times before pulling out because The Bug deserves respect.  Gingerly, I slowly begin to back up when – SUDDENLY this lady in a BMW comes barreling up the parking structure, stops at my level on her cell phone and looks around.  I breathe a sigh of relief until she steps on the gas, makes a hairpin left turn and comes REALLY close to blindsiding my back end until I slam on the brakes.  I stop, breathe and begin to start again because she’s now idling, talking on her phone waiting for me.  Except she’s not.  And not paying attention and then barrels through again, this time barely missing me but managing to speed into the parking spot next to mine.

I breathe, open my window and motion – “what’s going on?”

“Watch where you’re going!,” she says, still on her phone and now pulling out of the space again.

“Excuse me, “ I respond, “you’re on your cell phone not looking and you’re telling me to watch it?”

She continues chatting on her cell, backing up once again, and I say, “Excuse me?”

To which she responds:  “Okay, fine.  Why don’t you take your little bug and go now.”

Roughly how it went down

Having coincidentally promised the sister I just told you about that I would not start fights in cars anymore because she read an article about someone’s brother who got killed during a road rage incident that month, I backed off and silently left.

Though to this day I’m still giving that woman the finger and keep an ice pick handy unless (or until) we meet again.

I’m not proud of this behavior but felt it important to provide some instances non-show business related.  Which finally brings me to what happened to a student of mine interning in L.A. last year.

An Oscar-nominated actor whom this student loved and looked up to was going to be working on a small video shoot my student was working on.  My student was so excited – this actor not only acted in classy movies but did all kinds of creative other stuff in the biz (and still does) and was close enough to my student’s age to allow the student to think that hard work, lack of ego and creativity could make anything possible and be a model for the student in how he/she would guide his/her career.  Until said actor showed up on the shoot and was nasty and dismissive and mocking to every single person on the crew (yes, it’s true).  He even mouthed off to my student, who was slating each scene (for those who don’t know – that’s the clapboard that gives the scene info: Take 1, and Take 2).
“You think you’re important because you can do that?” Mr. Oscar Nomination But Not Winner snarkily snapped.  “Well, do you?”

Take… a hike

Needless to say, my student shrunk into nursery school size – but not quite as tiny as his tiny new view of Mr. “Oscar Never Was,” who I would like to tell to eff off because the truth is he’s not quite good enough to be acting that way and will probably not have a movie career in 5 years.  But hey – at best I’m decent enough not to say it so FRANCLY out loud and shame him in front of a room full of strangers.  Or am I?

Yes we know that for every one of these instances there are others where people are incredibly nice, helpful and understanding – willing to lend a hand to their fellow man or to those less fortunate.  That’s a given.  But somehow those people are becoming less and less the norm and more and more the exception.  The norm is not necessarily extremely rude, but it’s not extremely positive either.  And what is extremely rude? Well, the line has shifted both publicly and privately.  Take Donald Trump.  Please!!!

Now obviously I’m as snarky, or even more snarky, than the next person if I’m pushed far enough, or even if a video I want to watch is hopelessly buffering.  Or even when I’m trying to open an email and I get the dreaded multi-colored mini computer beach ball telling me, “not so fast, Mister.”  But I am also not commonly indecent enough to loudly talk on the cell phone in the supermarket or local doctor’s office in a way that will enable you to both hear the conversation and feel like I’m talking to you about my kidneys or bran requirements.  I have also not spent so much time alone on my computer or at home watching television that I don’t know how to enjoy a movie at a public movie theatre without talking all through it to my date or putting my feet up and my coat on or beside the empty seat next to me in a crowded multiplex.

Or finally, not that self-centered that in my profession I can’t take the time to say what I mean or mean what I say – behavior that many in this country claim to be the American way but that, frankly, I don’t see much of anymore – certainly not even in our actual movies.

No, I’m not that way.  Or at least I like to think I’m not.   Or maybe — that’s what we all say.

05.18.12
by

Listen

There is something both great and awful, yet at the same time scary, offensive and exhilarating —  about listening.  How many activities can engender such a range of responses and emotions?  Not many unless you count the reaction to the renewal of NBC’s “Whitney” or thoughts on the new Adam Sandler trailer “That’s My Boy” and feedback concerning the voice Mr. Sandler is using to play Dad to the movie’s title character.  But who wants to get into all that now, anyway, even in the safe space confines of a user-friendly (one hopes) Internet blog.

The death of singer supreme Donna Summer this week got me thinking about listening, as opposed to my usual rants about being heard. At one time not so long ago, Ms. Summer’s sultry yet powerful voice played on many more radios than Rush Limbaugh’s ever did but, unlike Limbaugh, her voice was a clarion call to an emerging culture of people who were tired of the way things were and wanted the society to, if not change, at least be broadened enough to include something a little bit more colorful and different.  That was, until, disco sort of imploded upon itself (sort of like what’s happening to Limbaugh at the moment), and created a backlash that sent Ms. Summer’s music underground until decades later when it was sort of okay to listen to her again in a nostalgic, albeit kitschy way.

Dancing Queen

Though I was no Disco baby, I never did lose my taste for a Summer record like “Last Dance,” “MacArthur Park” or even “On The Radio” – all of which I listened to as a young person who, at least on the inside, felt different enough to hear what she had committed to vinyl (uh, yeah, vinyl) over and over again.  I think this was due, in part, because it made me think and, more importantly, feel things I had never felt, or dared to feel before.   For those not getting this last statement – use your imagination.  For those still not getting it – phone a friend (girl OR boy).  Or better yet – listen yourself to her very first hit international hit in the confines of your own study, crib or own safe space.

Music is one way to listen – or not to – but these days, of course, there are a lot more, partly because there are many more outlets. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean there is more worthy stuff to hear.  The challenge is – choosing what to listen to.  Now I’m not one of those armchair liberals who only listen and look (the latter often a requirement of listening in the 2012 age) to those who agree with me – that would be boring.  But that doesn’t mean that my version of listening requires me to watch what passes for news on Fox Broadcasting (I have Jon Stewart to siphon that off) or expose my diminishing hearing to anything within the smell zone that the cigar-chomping Limbaugh chooses to Rush at me.  There are variations of the ilk I will watch or read – pundits or even bigots that make my blood boil at a little lower temperature (Peggy Noonan the former, or Tony Perkins of something called the Family Research Council, being the latter).  This is just in the off chance I can learn something or be forearmed in the very off chance that they might, at some point, or even now, be listening to me.  (A long shot, I know, but, like Bill Clinton, I try in my mind’s eye to still live in a little town called Hope).

Best cheeseburgers in town.

I honed my listening skills as a young reporter, a field where you are pretty much forced to listen to everything in an effort to synthesize and tell the “real story” of an event to people who are depending on you for the truth.  Well, at least that’s the way I learned it back in journalism school.  Unfortunately, times have changed.  Back then most writing and reportage was not about advancing an agenda but actually attempting to get all sides and then tell the most truthful version of it that you could in your own, inimitable fashion.  This does and did not mean that many stories – both news and features – didn’t have a point of view.  Of course they did.  Since complete objectivity is a human impossibility it is a given that the retelling of anything will be synthesized in some way given that mere mortals are telling it.  But as any decent filmmaker knows, POV doesn’t change the actual story elements – it merely shifts focus and moves the audience in a direction.  It is then up to the audience to do what they will with the information given to them.

Or not given.

That’s a trick too.  When no one is listening or reading or watching hard enough, merely arranging the same facts a certain way can cause people to interpret the story exactly the way you want them to.  But that’s pretty much only in the case of people who are not really listening or at least are not practiced listeners. Which, these days, means pretty much everybody.

Everyone. Everywhere.

If we, as storytellers (professional or just plain folks like us), don’t listen we won’t have enough information to tell the story the way it is because we won’t be able to recognize that there are indeed missing details.  And our version will become someone else’s faulty version – someone who is depending on us for the truth – and then they will retell it to yet another who creates still another version with a lack of proper information or facts that we provided them in the first place.   One need only look at the political situation in the Middle East or the “true love” choices on “The Bachelor” to get confirmation of that.

Certainly, we all listen differently and most of us are too busy looking for either work or validation or love or money (sometimes all four) to be focused on getting to the bottom of anything.  That is, unless the real story will provide us with one of the four  (see “The Bachelor” or “Bachelorette”).   In some ways, this was always the case.  We humans usually don’t listen hard enough unless we can get something out of it.  Or, to put it another way: “what’s in it for me?”

Stlll, the baseline was – how do I put this – a bit higher.  There was a time when television news was required by law to present both sides.  But that was abolished under Pres. Reagan’s FCC in 1987.

There was also a time when there was no:

– free porn on a small screen in your home whenever you wanted it

– 1,438,928 cable TV stations vying for your attention

– opportunity to listen to as much of Donna Summer, Adam Sandler, or anyone else you wanted without charge if you clicked the right set of keys on a laptop computer anywhere in the world.

Can you do better?

Chair Translation — we’ve gotta raise the bar – just a tad, or even a hair.  Or two.  Even if it’s calmly trying to discuss and investigate whether the news story your friend posted on Facebook is little more than someone else’s faulty retelling of someone else’s rant.  Or asking your friend, lover or family member to calmly tell you what they are saying and then stepping back and spending more than five minutes deciding for yourself how much you want to believe or whether you want to take at least another five or even ten minutes to do some investigating on your own.   Which might then lead you to talk to someone else about this very situation.  A situation (and NOT the “Jersey Shore” kind) this person might very well be interested in or have pertinent information about, but found that said story in the form you are advancing had never crossed their path.  And that, in turn, can do or change all kinds of things.  Or if not, forge the discovery of yet another “something else”.  Something that might not have been heard before if someone wasn’t listening to you (or vice versa) in the very first place.

All of this can be done to the tune of the Donna Summer record of your choice if you so desire.  Or perhaps, simply, in silence.  I suggest the latter but certainly understand the former, depending on your mood.