I was in Vegas last weekend, and I’m going to London on Wednesday. I’ve never been a big traveler. I think – if I’m to be honest – it’s because there’s generally a lot going on in my brain, and so I often crave less stimuli than more. I wasn’t sure if my brother (who I’m visiting) will be crazy busy, and so if my vacation consists of me working on my latest instead of wandering around London, well, hell, there’s that – it’s still a vacation. I’ve been to Abbey Road, I’ve been to Shepperton Studios, I’ve been to Leicester Square, pretending I was in American Werewolf in London. Hell, I even had drinks and dinner with Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost a day after seeing Hot Fuzz, so how I top that this time, I have no idea. Suggestions welcome. I’ll be there from the 21st through the 28th. Which is why I begged my way into the Indy screening this weekend. Curious to see how that will play. I’m happy to see it before I will hear anyone else’s reactions, other than the test screenings, and a friend who told me it was a miss, instead of when I return, when the picture will be autopsied.
Writing is primarily a narcissistic act. I read something this week about someone dying, and I couldn’t get over how the writer inserted himself into the person’s life in a way that made him the main focus of the narrative. When you write, it is always about your perspective, your take. To make yourself the focus of that is like putting a hat on a hat. When I wrote for the DVD Journal, the editor always removed first person pronouns unless absolutely necessary. I get that even more now. Granted, when you write about someone else, you have to cede that your perspective is your own, I mean I just wrote about Doug Holm from my perspective, but in doing so I thought the point was to say how Doug shaped my life, not to say how I knew him, and how cool I was to know him, or whatever nice things he did for me in the context of “how awesome is that?” 90% of the super-awesome things that happen to me I don’t share (like getting a blow job, etc.) simply because all it does is engender distaste, jealousy or annoyance from the reader. I only want to talk about those things in the context of a discussion. That is to say, if I quote someone super-awesome saying something that I witnessed, I might trudge that out if the situation calls for it, but I’m not going to drop “Ghostface Killer and I were hanging out on Tuesday, and we got really high and had sex with groupies” just cause. Even though that didn’t happen. Though I wish it did. But if it did, I would only write about it to be an asshole. And I might do that, but probably not. I would probably keep it to myself.
I linked an article about Sex and The City on the boards, and Devin wrote an article about dude-distaste for the movie. I never liked the show, but I never liked Friends on the same principle. What was great about Seinfeld is that the stars were not super-photogenic. I like my ennui and every-day problems and that sort of stuff told from the perspective of schmucks. If Daisy Steiner wasn’t on the verge of being chubby, if that wasn’t an issue for the character, then I wouldn’t love her, and it defines her relationship with Twist. But the interesting thing about the combination of those two essays is something I have been thinking about and incorporating into something I’m working on lately, which is that men want to be super-heroes, and women want their Prince Charmings. This can be read that men and women want men to be men. The problem is that men are codified by violence and alpha-ness, and in the 21st century, that has less and less place in our society. I haven’t hit a dude in years. Probably decades. Which all ties into the fact that so many rom-coms are actually geared towards dudes. Like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Money and power still trump shit (which ties into the earlier sentiments), but everyone wants either to be thrown against a wall or throw someone against a wall and fuck them. It’s just that our society, with A.I.D.S. and date rape issues, and all that make it harder and harder to gauge if that’s cool.
And no one wants to be asked “Would you mind if I throw you against a wall and fuck the living shit out of you?” Though I’m sure I would say that just because I find it funny. Perhaps I might.