Real No Impact Man

by Yervand Kochar

When the second plane flew into the World Trade Center, our family friend, Albert, who was watching the attack on TV in Armenia, had a major heart attack. His sister was working in the second tower. Three hours later, she called him. Her voice was trembling; she had a nervous breakdown but she was uninjured. My friend heard the good news in the emergency room. He died two weeks later at the age of 54.

Albert was the last casualty of 9/11 that I know of. Although, I am sure there are more people who were indirectly impacted by the attack to some serious and even fatal degree.

Albert was also famous for his devastating sense of humor, so when I read about the highly heralded eco-melodramatic documentary “No Impact Man,” I vividly imagined Albert ripping this self-righteous excretion of bored urban utopians a new one.
Here’s the premise from the “No Impact Man” film website:

Colin Beavan decides to completely eliminate his personal impact on the environment for the next year. It means eating vegetarian, buying only local food, and turning off the refrigerator. It also means no elevators, no television, no cars, buses, or airplanes, no toxic cleaning products, no electricity, no material consumption, and no garbage. No problem – at least for Colin – but he and his family live in Manhattan. So when his espresso-guzzling, retail-worshipping wife Michelle and their two-year-old daughter are dragged into the fray, the No Impact Project has an unforeseen impact of its own.


This is so cute; I am going to melt now. This kind of eco-experimentation is cute when it is acted out in Manhattan of 2009 and it is tragic when it is experienced in Armenia of 1992 where Albert lived in the center of the capital, Yerevan, in a neo-classically influenced apartment building with massive wooden doors.

Those doors ignited my imagination; as a kid, I even wrote a poem in which I visualized the doors as a portal to a different dimension. Years later, in the cover of a pitch-black winter night of 1992, my friends and I dismantled and stole those century-old doors, chopped them into many pieces and shared them among ourselves for wood to heat our homes. We had to because we had no electricity and it was incredibly cold.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia found itself engaged in full-scale war with Azerbaijan. As a consequence of the deliberately interdependent Soviet infrastructure, Armenian’s economic and energy routes lay through Azerbaijani territory. The Azerbaijani blockade that followed (and is still in place) cast the unprepared and newly formed Republic of Armenia into a horrible economic and energy crisis.

Not only there was a scarcity of supplies in every arena, but there was virtually no gas or electricity to heat our homes. For two years, we would have electricity for a total of two hours a day.

Those winters—which, of course, happened to be some of the coldest in the modern history of Armenia—caused many deaths of unprepared people in their own homes.

The daily two hours of electricity were anticipated with the devotional reverence of a desert tribe welcoming rain. People would try to squeeze in anything from laundry to cooking, watching TV to just enjoying the magic of the electric bulb.

When the hours of electricity expired, like cavemen we would gather around the fireplace, quiet and collectively depressed, with no impact on the world or even on our immediate surroundings. Only in times like that is one capable of understanding the true magic and liberating power that technology gives to man. The ability to be free and proud, strong and happy, are based not on our merging with nature but on our ability to master nature, to control and oppose its powers, to use our reason and skill to elevate ourselves from the dark and wild realm of frightened beasts struggling merely to survive under the whim of capricious surrounding.

Two hours of electricity during the cold winter was not enough to heat our homes and city apartments, so people started chopping trees on the streets and parks for firewood.

Old beautiful trees were rapidly disappearing from city streets, turning the famously green Yerevan into a bare skeleton of itself. People needed heat to survive—between preserving trees and watching babies freeze to death; there was not much of a choice.

The demand for firewood was huge, though, and people became protective of their territories. Tree chopping gangs, armed with axes and machetes, formed to protect their neighborhood trees and distribute the wood among them.

In savagery and ragged outlook, these gangs were not much different from prehistoric territorial tribes. Police would not dare to confront them, especially when their own reservoir of gas was almost non-existent and they could not even promptly respond to many serious emergencies.

Fierce fights would ensue if someone tried to cut a tree in someone else’s yard or park. My friends and I, soft and spoiled city slackers, were now thrown into this anarchic struggle for life, spending hours in bread lines and chopping wood, dismantling wooden doors and benches in the parks to which we used to be taken by our parents in our not-so-distant childhood.

It was through chopping wood that I came to identify with Abraham Lincoln in such a way that years later I would make a very personal film about his legacy.

There was something comforting in knowing that the President of that faraway country that my friends and I idealized so much would also chop wood and go through harsh times before he was able to make an impact… and boy, we wanted to make an impact!

From our shared experience of the ‘dark age’ we carried out a zealous urge to make an impact, to claim our existence in the family of nations, to tell everyone that we are alive, that we are human, that we matter, that we want to achieve something, and that we don’t want to perish in this damn darkness of animal fear.

And then there is, of course, Albert, who was fatally impacted by the acts of 19 evil men whom he’d never met or heard of. Sorry for the doors, my friend. I’ll plant a tree in your memory in this faraway land that you and your sister loved. I’ll plant it for all the trees that I had to cut back home. Those beautiful trees that helped us survive through the nightmares of those ‘unimpactful’ winters of ‘92 through ‘94.

HUNG UP

by The Stranger

How does a parent, older brother, sister, relative or friend reply to a child’s innocent question “What does THAT mean? ” when they are driving in a car, or walking along a street somewhere these days and they see a signboard promoting the cable TV show HUNG? At which point is a child or youngster expected to know the meaning of that word? And what are we to make of a culture ramming a word like that down our collective throats?

I was channel-surfing a couple of nights ago, and suddenly there was a promo for the new season of Beverly Hills 90210 and here’s what I caught of it: two female high school students talking about a hot guy on the show. And one of the girls says “He’s huge,” and she has both of her hands indicating a width of ten to twelve inches, and the next line she says to her girlfriend is … “BIG AND MEATY!!” This promo was aired on prime time network TV. Again, what does a parent say to a child who asks “What are they talking about, mommy (or )daddy?

What’s happening to us as a country, a culture? One of the things that’s happening is that we are becoming ever more crass, vulgar and cheap by the second. I never imagined I’d be living in a time when things that were once considered too cheap, coarse and in bad taste to be even expressed in mixed company would be exposing themselves to me in my living room during prime time, or there in front of me on signboards as I simply move about the city I live in.

Television is reducing us all collectively to our lowest common denominators. Brainwashing degeneration into us. Think I’m kidding? I’m not. Television is the anti - Christ today. And its addicts walk around like zombies glued to the TV screens that have been reduced to bite size components they carry around in their hands twenty-four hours a day.

When’s the last time you’ve seen a person under the age of thirty-five NOT walking around or driving or doing almost ANYTHING at all when they weren’t glued to a screen in their hand? And the level of addiction appears to grow exponentially with the image these zombies have of themselves as someone attractive, desirable, or upwardly mobile.

Whether or not they actually are any of those things is beside the point - it’s the image they have of themselves that they are, may be, or wannabe perceived that way that glues them to the cell phones in their mitts. To them, using the latest technological gadgets, or to be seen using them are so many proclamations of honor proclaiming “See how hot, how in demand, how connected I am!” But the real question is: CONNECTED TO WHAT??

(Pictyre by http://www.flickr.com/photos/30894058@N03/2934189914/)

The answer to that one is simply how lost and addicted these zombies appear to be to everything that lies outside themselves. How dislocated they appear to be to the well-springs of their own existence - THEIR OWN BEING.

So, Michael Jackson died of an over-dose of drugs. The doctor who gave him the shot that killed him will be made out as the villain. But the doctor who gave him that shot was simply some schmuck who was willing to go just one step farther than the next guy - to make a buck. Michael Jackson put him on his payroll simply because the doc could be persuaded to give the king of pop what he wanted whenever he wanted it. End of story.

Michael Jackson is simply the latest example, as were Elvis and Marilyn Monroe - of the spiritual vacuity that is …. AMERICA - the crassness, vulgarity, and most of all the GREED that has been and is today the life-blood of the land of the free.

A greed that is anything but free. A greed that is costing us as a country, a culture, a land - the innocence of our youth, a constant and unremitting decline in the human values of decency, kindness and good taste that has resulted in a spiritual impoverishment deteriorating everything that once made us - America The Great.

Michael Jackson got everything out of life that he, like our culture at large, lusts after the most. Finally, just before his 51st birthday, Michael Jackson, after years of gorging himself on those values, found himself still alive, if one whose life consists of hiding from life can actually be called to be among the living - simply took matters into his own hands and decided to end it all himself, by having himself shot up with a drug that would end his dis-ease, with himself and his life.

I think the thing that people feel most regarding the death of the so-called and self-proclaimed king of pop - is sadness, not for him per se, but for - ourselves - because it puts us all, on some level, in touch with how separated we‘ve become, as a nation, from all that is real, true - and quite simply, all that is missing in the fabric of how we live our lives in 2009.

Yah, Michael Jackson got everything he ever wanted, all right, except unconditional acceptance from anyone he really cared for, or a genuine intimacy with anyone NOT on his payroll, or even someone who might have offered him real friendship, not for being the king of pop, but for being simply a human being who hungered all his life for the one thing he never received from anyone on a personal, intimate level - unconditional LOVE.

LIPSTICK JUNGLE

by The Stranger
When did it become the norm that male actors on TV began wearing lipstick? I haven’t heard anyone bringing this up. But, surely I can’t be the only person to have noticed this. Haven’t read anything in print either. Is it just me, or is this - or not …. WEIRD?

Recently I purchased one of those new, incredibly clear picture LCD TV‘s. Prior to that, I had an old RCA. It was good enough, but now and again, even watching that TV, I would see an actor on a show, and wonder “Is that guy wearing lipstick? Example: the guy who plays Superman on SMALLVILLE. Well, on my new TV I can see clearly and without a doubt that, this actor DOES, in fact, wear lipstick. And I can see clearly that he’s not alone, not by a long shot.

Guys on TV have begun looking like Michael Jackson in real Life. But WHY? Is it because of Hi Def? Or is it something else? I mean, yeah well sure I’ve always noticed a woman’s lips, as well as her lipstick. That, to me, is part her allure. But what the hell’s going on here? Are we now expected to pay attention to a man’s lips these days? And, if so, who in the Hell came up with that one?

There’s a a new show on the tube called THE MENTALIST. And the actor playing the lead is good. He’s attractive without the hi-lites to his hair, and the lipstick he wears on the show. And I’ve thought that maybe he could be a star. Anyhow, I saw that actor’s face on the cover of a TV magazine that’s out now, and I read some of the article on him in it. And, in the article, he’s quoted talking about another actor’s penis. And, all of a sudden whatever charisma this actor may or may not have, simply went up in smoke. Here he was talking about something that, in my opinion, is simply in bad taste, especially in a family magazine. And, yet its not that dissimilar to a lot of the references to the male organ proliferating TV shows these days. All of a sudden though, that actor seemed to me to be no different than most other performers these days - who are - making spectacles of themselves, whenever they have the chance to expose themselves. What he exposed to me was a lack of class, and taste. And a desire to run with the crowd. I’m not a prude.
But it seems to me that there is one quality these days that no one in show biz no longer knows anything about - MYSTERY.

Movie Stars, some of them, once had that quality. But its gone, baby, gone these days. And the culprit is the boob tube. Most actors these days have about as much charisma and mystery as Regis & Kathy Lee, or Regis and whoever the Barbi Doll is that he’s teamed up with at the present time. OK, I know her name is Kelly Ripa. TV seems to flatten and homogenize performers, chewing them up, and spitting them out. One minute they’re discovered, the next they’re old news; over-exposed. Think Tom Cruise. The only way Mr. Cruise could come up with, to at least offset the jumping up and down on the couch on Oprah, was to completely disappear for awhile. I know he’s due out soon in a new film, but I’m not so sure the public may soon, if ever, forget the weirdness of his TV exposures.

I’d had enough of him before his bad luck run on TV. If I never see him in a film again, I won’t miss him. Tom Cruise never had mystery. But I think people thought he was cute, and I guess his big career on film may have accounted for at least some interest or admiration on the part of the public.

Lastly, there is Clint Eastwood. Opening recently in a new film, Gran Torino. Sometimes I have a kind of admiration for Mr. Eastwood, sometimes I absolutely do NOT. For example, I admired the fact that a couple of years ago with the success of Million Dollar Baby, he escorted his mother to the Academy Awards. I remember feeling “How cool is that?” What a lovely thing to do, and to share with your mother. But then, there are times that I feel Mr. Eastwood is amazingly fond of promoting himself, and in ways that, to me, seem really at odds with the way he seems to want the public to view his image, as a man‘s man.

I remember, in the film Every Which Way But Loose, which I believe he directed in addition to starring in, there was a scene of Clint and his co-star ( the Orangutan, Clyde ) sitting in the front seat of a truck. And I noticed that Mr. Eastwood had his arm positioned in the window of the truck in such a way as to show off his flexed bicep. In other words, he was showing me he wanted the viewer to notice his muscularity onscreen. That he had a hot bod. Or rather, that he thought that he did, and that’s what he wanted the audience to notice. An example of unabated narcissism. Exactly what’s at work again in his image of himself in all the ads for Gran Torino.

No one at Warner Brothers Studio, the studio that bankrolls all of Mr. Eastwood’s films tells Mr. Eastwood what he can or cannot do. He is completely in charge of every aspect of all of his films, including the image of himself that’s used to promote himself in the ads for his films. Having said that, tell me if the image Mr. Eastwood is using to promote in all the ads for that film doesn’t want you to notice how toned and lean and how absolutely buff Mr. Eastwood is? Here’s a dude pushing eighty, who wears a form fitting T-shirt, and angles himself into camera precisely so that you’ll notice how flat his stomach is and what a lean machine he is, and what a hottie this image is supposed to tell us that - he STILL is.

I’m sorry, Mr. Eastwood, but you look more like a geriatric male model than a real person to me in those ads. Also, the rumors floating around that this might be your swan-song performance as an actor are simply manipulation, on your part. You want an Academy Award for your acting, and that’s the way you’re promoting yourself as an actor to get it. By telling the Academy its their last shot to vote for you, their last chance to give you an Oscar for your acting.

Without having to see the film, I can tell from all the promos for the film, you are simply doing Dirty Harry, yet one more time, no matter how you appear to be dressing this project up. Its another example of Clint Eastwood blowing away all the bad guys, by the end of the film. Yah, right its your last role as an actor - until the next script comes across your desk that’s about some old geezer who blows away the next wild bunch of bad guys. And gets to say lines like “I finish things - that’s what I do.” Indeed.

But the truly amazingly disappointing thing to me about you is the fact that, yes, you ARE almost eighty years old, and yet, incredibly - you are still trying to promote yourself as a sex symbol. Instead of giving us a character who looks and behaves like a real person of a rather mature age, a character who’s lived long enough to give an audience something, perhaps a kind of a HUMANITY, or a richness and depth and generosity of spirit we might be inspired by, someone we might be able to identify with - instead, what we get in Gran Torino is yet another of the cartoon macho men/comic book pseudo - superheroes you’ve specialized in your whole career as an actor.

To me, there is something a bit perverse and downright weird about a man your age being so concerned - about his looks, about his own image in the way that you appear to be. And working so damn hard to show us what a truly macho, tough guy you think you are. Yes, I’m feelin’ lucky today, punk - but not quite lucky enough to want to see Gran Torino without knowing how bored I’d be spending a couple of more hours watching YOU onscreen doing what you’ve been doing for far too long now, again in this film, too. But, hey, that’s just me. Oh well, at least, Mr. Eastwood, as far as I can tell from the ads and promos of Gran Torino - you don’t appear to be wearing lipstick.

Manifesto of Denouncement of Leftist Establishment’s Use of Movies and Art for Propaganda

The mindset that permeates the arts today is undeniably leftist, in bondage to leftist ideologies and serving political and social goals of the movement.

This humiliating servitude is poisonous for humanity. Art is where laboring humanity goes to be soothed with light, to cast their cares away and see beauty where they saw none before. Art, therefore, is beyond left and right. It must not serve any ideology and must not become an instrument of any mass movement. It should not involve mass amounts of money from private funds of the rich to soil the minds of the middle class.

The Marxist approach of using art as a hammer of social change is absolutely destructive to the essence of art as much as Marxist ideology was and still is destructive to the actual social order whenever applied.

There is not a more dangerous place where this tragic ideology is played out than in the movies, TV and any medium that reaches millions at a time.Movies are particularly destructive when used to slay minds for an ideology, since the medium has a threefold power of visuals, sound and music in one space.

It is not the subject of the movies that should be free from political undertones. It is the goal of art that must not be political. Art must transcend politics through the power of beauty. Art must give ‘a living water’ not a muddy political solution. Any political and social solution is incomplete and for an artist to act as a proponent of a political change or, worse, as its propagator is a violation of the basic principles of art.

Anti-human and naturally rejected radical leftist ideology has grounded itself in the cultural mainstream and attempts to coin itself into a standard by using movies above all. By using movies as the spokes of a propaganda machine, they destroy the very essence of the art of moviemaking and hinder its progress. Today movies are corrupt; they serve purposes of various corporate-political structures. They are not moved from within but only by external movements of organized entities. Many filmmakers have become ‘useful idiots’ for a well-structured mechanism that is abusing the evolution of filmmaking as an art.

Regardless one’s political views, one must not allow filmmaking to be the whore of a democratic-socialist party, environmentalist movement, anti-war movement, gay movement, racial equality movement, sexual liberation movement and all these movements and isms…

Propaganda is destroying movies and culture in general. Truth is beautiful and it needs to be simply shown. It is lies and only lies that need propaganda to live. All the technology and money cannot save movies today from the boredom and tastelessness of an establishment sanctioned social realism style. Yet, all that money can indoctrinate masses of innocent people, unaware of the truth of history, as it is veiled in lies and deceit to the viewer.

We denounce any form of abuse of filmmaking by any movement. If democrats want to win elections, let them do it using their own political means. LET ART BE FREE! If environmentalists want to save the globe from melting, let them drive less limousines and fly less private jets. LET ART BE FREE! If the anti-war crowd wants the troops out of Iraq, let them protest all day long but LET ART BE FREE!

We denounce any form of political agenda buying us by sponsoring our festivals and giving us grants. We denounce film as a tool to be used as a form of manipulation and mass hypnosis. We denounce the use of subliminal messages and subtle implications that promote your causes and ruin our ART.

You have your goals we have our own. If we believe in your causes we will help in other ways but we will not use art to do your work for you anymore. If you are so confident in your message of truth, then go and convince people and talk to them directly. Take away your political apparatchik implants from our fields of dreams. We need to produce ‘a living bread’ not manufactured ideological meat you need to sell to your voters and consumers.

We need to bring beauty down to the world again and allow truth to speak volumes through the screen without complying with your cultural establishment’s anti-art plan.

Years of leftist control of the movie industry have proved to be ruinous and impending the growth of movies as an art and entertainment form.

We denounce your establishment to use our minds and control our freedoms anymore. Have the guts to finish your damn revolution on your own without mass mind control!

Let the movies and art alone and remember that your days are counted for we have risen!

Jeani DiCarlo & Yervand Kochar

THIS IS GOD

by The Stanger

This isn’t a religion thing. Or a gender thing. Or an age thing. In fact, I’m not at all sure what kind of a thing this is. Its happened to me four times in my life. Once in a movie theatre. Three times in the course of simply living my life. Four times I’ve heard the same voice, say the same thing to me, in completely different circumstances, at different periods of my life.

The first time was in a dentist chair. In Dr. Hill’s office. He was the only dentist I had ever gone to. And on one particular day, it was to be the last time I would ever have an appointment with him, because he was retiring.

Dr. Hill was a man I had never really had a conversation with. He was so painfully shy that it always seemed inappropriate to make any attempt at small talk. And I wasn’t exactly into small talk myself. I’d see him sometimes at family parties. But I never knew for sure exactly whose friend of the family he was. He was always just Dr. Hill, our dentist. He was married. That’s all I knew of his personal life. And I knew this, too: he never charged any of my family for his dental services. Ever. How exactly that came about I never found out. But I did know why. I was from a large family of eight children; Dad was a truck driver. That was the reason.
He never said a word about that to anyone. He simply did his work. And never charged our family a cent.

Anyhow, on this last day in his dental chair, there we were, Dr. Hill and I. He, working on my teeth. Me, with my mouth open. With really nowhere else to look except up into his face. He wore glasses, and was bald. There was a meekness, a humility and a kindness to that face. And, always that almost aching shyness. Both of us aware that this wouldn’t be the last time we’d ever see one another. There’d still be family parties. But it was to be the end of our dentist/patient relationship.

We weren’t having a conversation when the moment happened. He was just working away, and I was there looking up into his face when out of nowhere this voice comes to me and it says: “This is God.” And in that moment I knew who Dr. Hill was. And everything about him was, in that moment, poetry and grace. The work he was performing. The manner in which he was doing it, and for how long he‘d been extending this service. And suddenly, too, I had the awareness that this moment was my last chance to see what I hadn’t seen before. That moment happened a very long time ago. And yet I’ve never forgotten it. Never will.

The next incident happened every single time I ever set foot in his shop. The shop of Willie the shoemaker. I haven’t gone into the shop in years. But its still there, on the same street, Cahuenga Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood. When I moved to another part of town, I stopped going to Willie’s. I never had a conversation with the man except once. I was picking up a pair of shoes from Willie one time and I noticed a picture of Paul Newman on the wall and I asked “Is he a customer?” And Willie said “Yes.” That’s all. Nothing more.

There wasn’t one time that I ever went into Willie’s to drop off or to pick up a pair of my shoes that if Willie was there in the store waiting on me that I didn’t hear that same voice say exactly the same thing to me that it had said that last time in Dr. Hill’s office: “ This is God.” There was something about Willie, in the way he looked at me. In the way he waited on me. I felt lifted up into some higher place because of the way Willie looked at me. It was also the way he way he performed his duties as a shoemaker.

Its hard to describe, but one of the words I used before seems to also be the best one to use in this instance also: GRACE. I know the reason I don’t stop by Willie’s these days. I’m afraid he won’t be there. That someone else will be. And that if Willie no longer works there, to me the place won’t mean what its always meant to me: the place where God works. The shop still says Willie’s Shoe Repair on the window of it. Somehow I’m not up to checking it out. Maybe one day I’ll change my mind.

The next incident took place in a movie theatre. A revival house where I had gone to see the film IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, for the first time. I was loving it. Every moment of it. And then came the scene around a dinner table. Jimmy Stewart talking to his father in the film. And he says to his father, something like: “Dad, did I ever tell you what a great guy you are?” And the actor playing the father has his head down staring at the dinner table when he hears this line; his hands are folded on the table in front of him.
And there was something about the way that actor responded to those words, with silence and absolute stillness that allowed me to see and feel the love and depth of feeling passing back and forth between the father and the son, that absolutely heightened that moment. Made it, to me, INDELIBLE. And, in the middle of it, and it really is only a moment in the film as I was watching the actor playing the father, I heard a voice say “This is God.”

There are some films I love so much I won’t watch them because I’m afraid of wearing out the phosphorus or gossamer quality of the magic of the film. A bunch of years go by and then I’ll watch it again. And every time I see that film, at that moment in the film, when I see the actor who plays the father at the dinner table - I hear that same voice say: This is God.”

The most recent incident began happening several months ago. The man’s name is Erwin. He could be an illegal immigrant. He speaks almost no English. And his job is that of a parking lot attendant. In the heart of Hollywood. I see him four days a week. When I pull into the lot in my car to drop it off on my way to work. Willie directs me to where I should park. And, without my ever having to ask him to do it, he gives me a space where my car may be safe from dents caused by other cars. He’ll even hold a spot like that for me until I show up.
And every morning as I enter the lot, and in the evening as I’m leaving it, Erwin nods to me, and smiles. As though he’s happy to do this for me.

I’ve thought to myself : “Maybe I should offer to pay him.” But I’ve also wondered if perhaps that would reduce the kindness he’s been extending to me to something based on a monetary exchange. And that maybe what he’s doing has nothing at all to do with money. I noticed a pair of shoes in my closet recently that I had stopped wearing. Noticed Erwin’s shoes were the same size, and gave them to him. And when I see him these days, those are the shoes he’s wearing.

But his smile, and his kindness haven’t gotten any more so than from the beginning. To me they look the same as the first time I ever saw the man. Erwin could be in his forties, or maybe older. He has a weathered look. As though he’s worked a lot with his hands, worked a lot outdoors. He’s very quiet. And alert. He appears to be happy as he works.

Sometimes I see him kicking a ball around the lot. He could have been a soccer player. But there is something in his eyes … a kindness one doesn’t often see these days that’s unmistakable. A look I marvel at. Because Erwin has a very taxing job. During the summer he’s out in the heat all day, and he’s told me he works there in that lot seven days a week.

One of the summer days it was mild, and I said to him “Its nice today.“ And Irwin said “America is wonderful!“ And there was this broad smile on his face. Each time I’ve ever seen Erwin, from the very first time until the last time just a couple of days ago, the moment I see him a voice says to me: “This is God.”

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.

PARIS, NO MERCI, ( Not France )

The Stranger

A new Documentary was screened recently at the Toronto Film Festival: PARIS, NOT FRANCE. A film about Paris Hilton. What can possibly be next? A documentary about Kathy Lee Gifford? Or Oprah Winfrey’s non-lesbian girlfriend?

There will be interest in the film. But from who? That’s the question. And what could anyone hope to learn or care to learn about a celebrity whose main ambition in life is to be famous? That she’s self-centered? Who could that possibly be news to? That she’s dumb, except on behalf of her own relentless self-promotion? Who could that be news to, as well?

In the review of the film was a comment that Ms. Hilton was at the premiere, and that “as is her habit, she had nothing to say.” That’s not a habit, that’s a fact of who she is: its not that she’s being savvy or coy - its that she truly has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to say. All she craves is our attention and once she has it - there is no there, there.

I remember being struck by a response in a newspaper article she gave shortly after she got out of jail last year when she was asked if jail-time had changed her in any way in terms of any new insights about herself or life in general, and she replied: “Yes, I would like my voice to be deeper when I get upset.” No there, there, at all. No way, no how. Here, to me, is what is truly scary: there are people who admire and want to be (like) Paris Hilton. Pubescent girls. Not only, but I’m afraid - primarily. What does this say about the values of these young persons? About the households they are being raised in? About their parents?

A new film opens also this week: THE WOMEN. Women in the entertainment industry, with the exception of one of them - Diane Lane,* have become BORING. When they talk about themselves these days all they want us to know is how powerful and self-sufficient they are. How STRONG and MACHO. How strong the relationships with the other women in their lives are.

I find myself wondering if, because of how strong these ties are to the women in their lives if they ever talk to one another about how focused they are on their own looks and how desperate they are to be seen as sex objects? These days when I see these women on TV, over the age of let’s say thirty two, and the ceiling is dropping fast, being interviewed, the first thing my attention goes to are the faces, and how much work they’ve had done on them. Many of them look like guppies with swollen lips: i.e. Calista Flockheart, to name just one.

Meg Ryan stars in THE WOMEN. Here’s an actress that began fooling around with her face when she was in her late twenties. Has messed around with it continually since. So much so that the review I saw of the film declares that she “now has the face of Goldie Hawn.” YIKES!! Dat ain’t no complement!

Recently I’ve seen interviews of Carol Burnett and Mary Tyler Moore. Who’ve both had wonderful careers in the entertainment industry. But, my God - look at their faces!! The work they have both had done on those faces! For who …. for what? And mostly - WHY?? Don’t either of them have any idea at all that their successes never had a thing to do with them being sex objects, or their looks. And everything to do with something God given - their talent. Or maybe they’ve both simply had way too much time on their hands. Its like they’ve no concept at all of the phrase …. “aging gracefully.”

Diane English directs THE WOMEN. She made her name on Murphy Brown. So its no surprise to learn the film, or rather, her version of the story of the film is a love story between two women. What else is new? Men? Nah, there isn’t a man mentioned as even being in the film, except for some cheating bastard of a husband who is married to Meg Ryan’s character in the story.

Why are women today having so much plastic surgery done on themselves? It certainly can’t have anything to do with men. Because, to hear women talk these days, men are almost always left out of the equation. Women want to be thought of as so self sufficient they no longer need men. Men are no longer essential to women is what these women would have us believe. So then, who is all the plastic work being done for? Other women?? I mean, last time I checked there were just two sexes in the world.

I can’t remember the last time I read about or heard a woman connected with the entertainment industry talking about the man in her life as being great, or charming or even OK. Or that the reason she cares about her looks having anything at all to do with men. With these women, its as though there are no men at all on the planet.

How refreshing it would be to have Meg Ryan say the reason she’s had so much work done on her face (and who knows what else ) has had everything to do with the fact that she desperately needs to be thought of as beautiful and desirable and sexy by the opposite sex, more than anything else in her life. And that she’s been desperately seeking this since her late twenties, at least.

For years women in the entertainment business bitched about men having all the power ….
Men having all the best parts in films .… the best careers …. that men relegated women to careers as mere sex objects. I wondered to myself what might happen when women got their shot, got into some positions of power - what might they do? The answer: absolutely nothing new.

The few women in power simply use their position to make chick flicks. Actresses like Sandra Bullock, and Bette Midler when they attained power surrounded themselves with women in their careers, left men completely out of the picture - and have paid the price:
they made movies no one cared to see.

They completely overlooked the fact that the reason they both became stars in the first place had everything to do with MEN writing and directing and photographing them, and creating stories that made the public fall in love with them. When women got their chance, all they’ve done is to do to men what they accused men of doing to them.

I’m bored to death with the women in the entertainment industry. All your talk about strength and power and self-sufficiency: GET OVER IT!! Maybe one day, one of you will begin to suspect something you have completely overlooked today: the greatest movies ever made were celebrations of the complementary energies - the polarity between men and women, not women and women.

WOMEN ( of the entertainment industry) - PLEASE …. PLEASE….

GET REAL!!! You don’t ever catch Paris Hilton talking or behaving that way. And who is more real than Ms. Hilton? Come on - she even has a sex tape of herself to prove it. And now there’s a documentary on her, as well. So there!

Anyhow, why sugar coat it? What I really want to say is this: the MOST BEAUTIFUL, SEXY AND POWERFUL WOMEN are NOT those being photographed or filmed on camera.
And for sure, they are NOT actresses, models or the so-called singers. They’re nowhere near the entertainment industry.

The most beautiful, sexy and powerful women are those in grocery stores, behind cash registers; the CHECKERS. Those in restaurants and coffee shops, the WAITRESSES, who take our orders and serve us, the public. LADY BUS DRIVERS , SECRETARIES and RECEPTIONISTS - the women we interact with on a daily basis all across America. Who serve and perform the most vital and essential jobs and services in the workplace that make our country the greatest in the world. I’m not being flippant. I mean it. They are pound for pound, and inch for inch some of the most gorgeous physical specimens I have ever seen on the planet. Also the most intelligent, charming, and sexy. Period!

And they don’t need smoke and mirrors and plastic work to present themselves to us. Because, by and large they simply cannot be bothered to be that desperate or even overly concerned about what they look like. They’re too busy being the real women of America. And, in my opinion, the real role models. For my money, they should be the ones getting all the press coverage, having documentaries made about them, not the Paris Hiltons of the world.

These are the women who enjoy men. Enjoy sharing the planet with them. Beauties too relevant and truthful to spout off feminist jargon about how powerful they are, how independent and self-sufficient they are, and that they don’t need men blah, blah, blah. If you don’t believe me, you haven’t been paying attention to the real world. You’ve been taken in by the media and the artificial world, that has never been the real world which is the entertainment industry.

The biggest decision a Paris Hilton has each day is trying to decide which shade of lipstick, or panties to wear. The women I’m referring are too busy making our country run and run smoothly to have any time at all for the superficial concerns and values of the Paris Hiltons, or Madonnas, of the media and entertainment worlds.

We’ve lost sight of who the real stars in our culture are. They’re not the privileged hotel heiress wannabes, or fifty year old crotch grabbers, unimaginably self-centered and living solely on behalf of the most superficial concerns, values, and goals imaginable. No, the women I’m referring to, the REAL WOMEN OF AMERICA possess a generosity of spirit that begins where the self-love of a Paris, Madonna, or Janet Jackson stops!

I’m referring to all the women in our society today NOT in the entertainment industry - who are being overlooked, simply because they have way too much class, character, self-respect, and genuine love in their hearts and spirits to make spectacles of themselves. Think I’m kidding? Try to find a sex tape on-line or for sale in a video store of one of them. To these ladies, making love isn’t something you do to get noticed. Or something you use in a documentary about yourself to promote yourself.

It's something a lady does because her heart and soul: her SPIRIT- is made of it: LOVE. And if some guy is lucky enough to be on the receiving end of that kind of a blessing being extended to him - he begins to discover why he’s alive, what he’s here for. And, if he’s smart his every action for the rest of his life is his way of serving up to that blessing, of showing that he’s worthy to receive it. And any guy who’s lucky enough to know what the hell I’m talking about here, knows that his heart pumps not blood but GRATITUDE - for HER.

I’m sorry, Paris. But where you are concerned, and this is just one person’s opinion: THANKS BUT NO THANKS - AND I DO NOT MEAN FRANCE!! I mean you, Ms. Hilton.


* Diane Lane’s a fox - what can I say.