It's been said that writers are inherently sadistic in the way they create their work, putting perfectly innocent fictional characters through conflict and trial just for fun. And it follows that the creation affects and then consumes the creator, thereby making her masochistic. I've always blamed this for--among other vices--continuing to watch and read things that constantly give me anguish at all the catching up I have to do, in my search for Optimal Awesomeness.
Some call it nirvana,
others salvation. My fierce northern ancestors called it Valhalla. And as long as I am not at the great feasting table, I am tortured. It's a method called the double-bind, which if youse a English majer you'll find when rooting around some Beckett one dusky autumnal twilight, trapped and paralysed eternally. This is the effect of the double-bind: paralysis. And when applied to writing is that little devil known as Writers Block.
So that being said, I have come to terms with my masochistic nature because although I habitually--compusively--seek out music and books and film that make me ache for admiration, the opportunity to wax rhapsodical as prelude to their Optimal Awesomeness is cathartic.
If I wrote screenplays and the OA was strong with me I would have written Arrested Development, Weeds, and...yeah:
But just the screenplay, because I thought I was too good for a vampire book. And because of the casting.
I have a mean case of the gots-ta-have-its with
Brad Neely. He's been around for a while--an artist friend turned me onto his cartoons "Baby Cakes" and "The Professor Brothers." It's comically genius, you'll see.
But now I've found his essays, and I'm having fun. Here's one that's more joyful than achey, mostly because it makes me think about Brad Pitt. It's about Brad being a sort of unfair but necessary illusion in our sad, vapid little lives. It's called
"Brad Pitt: God Substitute.
(excerpt)
“Brad Pitt is the perfect man.”
The promotional period for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was on, and I was hearing it again.
The radio, the smiling entertainment shows, my friends; everyone needed to say it.
“He’s better than us.”
“Just look at him.”
Brad Pitt is the biggest movie star on the planet. But, while waiting for the movie’s release, I began to ask myself, “What is a Brad Pitt movie?”
I knew to expect the usual guilt brought on by jealousy, admiration, and basic inadequacy.
But after light investigation I came to a very flimsy conclusion: A Brad Pitt movie is never about his character, but rather about other characters reacting to his stasis, his perfection and his flat out otherworldliness.
(See: Hopkins in Meet Joe Black, the elder brother in A River Runs Through It, the entire family in Legends Of The Fall, Statham in Snatch, the team in Oceans, the entire sane world in Twelve Monkeys, Norton in Fight Club, Redford in Spy Game, Ford in Devil’s Own, his friends and the court in Sleepers, Robert Ford and crew in The Assassination of Jesse James By That Coward Robert Ford, and most definitely in the case of Cate Blanchett’s character withering in his glow throughout Benjamin Button.)
Often, the stories in his films are even told in the first person perspectives of those dealing with him. We watch as they evolve, adapt, and grow in order to comprehend him, to abide in his shadow. They tell us about him.
He has come among us. He is the new version, the knower, the seer. He need not develop for he has long sense arrived at stillness, at godhood.
>>end transmission
All hail the Ubermensch!!
I love how he just crumbles at the end. Don't you just love that? He's right, you know. And I haven't even seen all those movies. But now I will, because now I know it'll be like stepping into a Starbucks after traveling so far out of the country my gravity feels off but then ahhhh thank you Father Capitalism for driving out foreign markets to make way for your big, strong, market-competitive gimmicks to cradle me in your familiar, methodical bosom. No disappointments, just treats.
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