The arts have become too social. No one, perhaps, wrote more passionately about the arts as individual vision, individual expression, individual exploration, than e.e. cummings, in many poems and especially in his huge book-length poem about his journey to the Soviet Union, which represented the opposite of individual values. Today the arts, including the writing arts, have become excuses for social clubs and social events (like readings). Related to this is the absurd importance of the marketplace today and the culturally depressing fact that almost 3 million copies of the new you-know-who book sold in 24 hours. I think of "My Dinner With Andre" again, that insightful and prophetic movie, in which Andre suggests we're in a new Dark Ages. I can believe it. The creation of Homo Consumerus.
An irrelevant if pretty starlet gets a DUI and the media go ape for days. What is the contribution of all this hot air to global warming? I like this notion. It's not fossil fuel. It's human hot air, all this endless babbling and gossip.
If we still have a culture 100 years from now, I wouldn't be surprised if its honored writers from this era are people relatively unknown today, perhaps someone writing a blog for a few dozen readers. An Emily Dickinson of our times, whose writing is kept private but whose writing is existential, a search inward. Writing inside-out, not outside-in in today's fashion.
I need to try and get some sleep.
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2 comments:
Having sold a spec script, I now know something about the 3:14 AM Funk.
Like a drifter in the dark, I'm happy to be out of Hollywood. After the experience, I can't say I have much hope for humanity. Truth: I've never had to deal with so many dumb asses in my life--real jokers who have nothing to say. Trouble is, they're all driving BMWs, which sell like Fords in Southern California.
John O'Hara was right about these people--every lonely soul who ever had a scheme to get rich, and who ultimately failed by his own measure.
Then there is the early morning... and the stories and the characters who come to life, who continue to screw each other; and I somehow feel "lifted" by the whole predicament of being just such a slob.
Best of luck to you and your conscience.
I hear you. I was on the faculty at the first Screenwriting Expo in LA and the experience was so depressing, for the reasons you've stated, that I refused invitations to return ever since. I thought I was at a convention of con men, everyone peddling "secrets" for getting rich as a screenwriter. Very depressing.
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