BEING (not) THERE

by The Stanger

The actor Paul Newman passed away last week at the age of eighty-three. I was momentarily struck by the news when I first heard it. I’ve loved some of the films he was in, notably Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Hustler, Hud. Less than a week later, I’m over it, or rather him.

Wonder why? Perhaps its to do with this: those movies were good, as were the stories and characters he portrayed in the films. And he performed them well. He was, to me, entertainment. Something more in an actor is required for me to feel in my heart - LOSS. The kind of feeling one can experience losing a loved one. I had a dog named Shep when I was a boy whom I’ve never completely gotten over losing. Probably, never will.

I once saw a documentary on James Dean. In it was a screen test for the film East Of Eden in which two actors were being tested for the same role (Cal): James Dean and Paul Newman. There was footage of both actors being interviewed together onscreen. And I noticed that the only one of the two my eye went to was not Paul Newman, but James Dean. They weren’t acting. They were simply being there on-screen together. And one of them, in the presence of the other completely disappeared. I found myself thinking about that.

Wondering why? Both actors were close to the same age. Newman was actually a few years older than Dean. But Dean’s face told a different story than Newman’s. His face looked as though it had seen more of life, had suffered some, been knocked around. Newman’s simply didn’t. One face had more character in it than the other, more depth. More PRESENCE.

Such a mysterious and compelling word: presence. No one knows much about it. Everyone recognizes it when they see it. No one knows where it comes from or how to get it .What’s mysterious about it also is that a person who is a performer can have it in person and not on film. Two examples: Elvis Presley and Madonna. Elvis wanted to be James Dean. Madonna’s wanted to be Marilyn Monroe. Both Elvis and Madonna have no presence on screen.

No matter the power of their superstar status - nothing happens onscreen. Put Elvis on stage, and he didn’t have to do anything except BE THERE; he was magic. He had IT onstage. Put him on film as an actor, and he had nothing. His films made money. It had nothing to do with his acting. And all to do with what he looked like to mostly teen age girls. And that’s pretty much what we have today.

Actors called superstars, whose films make money, because of their looks: Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, Wil Smith, Angelina Jolie. And, oh yah - Miley Cyrus: but her popularity isn’t because of her looks. Its because of her voracious appetite for attention, the limelight; her immense need to be the center of attention, to be famous, a Superstar. But getting back to the others, it is only about their looks and nothing else.

I remember reading an article once on Brad Pitt in which the writer remarked that it looked like the worst thing that had ever happened to him was that maybe, once, he hadn’t gotten some part he’d auditioned for. I guess I remember that because that’s my response to him whenever I see him onscreen. After ten minutes I’m bored. That wasn’t true for me with James Dean, Steve McQueen, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Vanessa Redgrave or John Wayne - but only when he wasn’t playing The Duke. I mean his presence in these movies: The Searchers, Red River and The Quiet Man.

There’s an actor making a comeback of a sorts today who once had presence, or some of it: Mickey Rourke. He had it in Diner. But then he began to destroy it by falling in love with the image he had of himself and the one he turned to cosmetic surgery chasing after. Sure he hurt himself by his own destructive behavior. But the real reason Hollywood stopped hiring him was that he no longer resembled Mickey Rourke. He began to look like a plastic, cosmetic version of himself. He’s opening in a film soon that there’s been some good press on: The Wrestler. I wish him well. But he makes me think that presence is a gift that a person can lose if he isn’t careful.

In fact, when I saw The Island of Dr. Moreau, I remember feeling that Marlon Brando was missing something I never imagined I’d see him without: presence. In his case, he destroyed the great gift of the presence he once had in great abundance because of his own - laziness. He lived a life of indulgence and decay for so long that the gift somehow vanished. I knew his life was running out when I saw that.

To cut to the chase: PRESENCE is a spiritual energy. And the reason I no longer often see films today is because PRESENCE is no longer a quality America values. Simply because our culture has nothing to do with the spiritual and everything to do with the material. Nothing to do with depth and everything to do with the superficial. Nothing to do with the lasting or eternal and everything to do with the momentary.

Another name for America is GREED. A country in which almost everyone is lusting after one thing and one thing only: MONEY. It’s a land whose inhabitants want only one thing: to be millionaires. And the fact that there are no real actors today with genuine presence is because as a culture and a country, we get that which our collective unconscious values and demands, and only that. The people we call stars today, political or cinematic, are the reflections of our own collective unconscious as a nation, as a culture. Its why Bush is in office. And even more to the point … Cheney.

Presence has been replaced by addiction: to technology. Try to find a person under the age of thirty walking or being anywhere (or sitting behind a wheel) without a cell phone in their hands or glued to their ear. People no longer walk down the street; they talk down the street, on phones.

When’s the last time you saw a person moving through space unattached to some form of technology? Its all become addiction and hypnosis to screens, to technical gadgets. Under the guise of multi-tasking. Is that what the Metro driver Sanchez was up to when his negligence caused the deaths of so many people recently? Was he multi-tasking or had he simply become addicted to distracting himself from BEING THERE on job where he was supposed to be, by text-messaging someone instead? Oblivious to his responsibilities as a conductor? A wake up call if there ever was one.

How many times while driving in your car have you glanced into a car around you to notice the person behind the wheel completely unconscious of their responsibilities as a driver, completely engrossed in a conversation on a cell phone? How many times have you thought to yourself “There’s an accident waiting to happen?” The one that recently happened was one such: Big Time!

Kinda hope and pray these days that soon, our collective unconscious may demand once again something more from those we look to as guides, as inspiration , examples, heroes: Stars. Whether they are running the country, or gracing the silver screen. Individuals who display something more than merely their looks or will power - who may, once again, demonstrate the real thing …PRESENCE. Individuals who are more than addicts to technology, greed, self-love. Individuals who inhabit space ….life itself, with a grandeur and a grace that communicates the supreme spiritual potential each of us carries within our own hearts and souls. Sometimes other human beings can lead us in the direction of our own awareness of the most that we can be. I think that, once, that’s what some politicians and movie stars were about: FDR …James Stewart (IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE).

Here’s looking at you, kid, and to the possibility of seeing once again someone in office, or up there on the silver screen, who can give us a sense of really and truly …BEING THERE.