There's no accounting for taste

H and I can't agree on a movie to see, so we're going to the same theater, going to two different films, and fortunately come out within minutes of one another.

She wants to see I'M NOT THERE. This sounds too cute for me. Besides, I recently saw an excellent documentary about Dylan at the Newport Folk Festivals and don't want to spoil the memory of it.

I want to see NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. This sounds too dark for her. Heavy dramas and dark comedies, my favorite two genres, are not her thing.

Also in the taste department: got a phone call from H's brother-in-law, who loved Juniper Tavern. What's nice about this is that he's lived on the east coast all his life and doesn't know or remember squat about the Rajneeshi. Around here, folks still put the story in the context of our local history, which reduces its reach. Here we have someone who appreciates it for its broader appeal. I like that.

I thank the gods of serendipity for the two major accidents that make it even available to watch today: the young director who got it done in the first place, which never would have happened if a. he weren't in Portland to see his girlfriend while the play was running and b. he didn't have the personal connections to get it to Oregon Public Television on very short notice; and a writer friend finding a VHS tape of the television premier and giving it to me so I could make a DVD and get it on the web. So easily none of this could have happened, and JT would be another play that comes and goes without dynamic visual record.

Indeed, just about everything that's happened in my career to a significant positive degree has been accidental. You have to have the right material -- but you also have to be in the right place at the right time with it. You only control the former. And "right material" is defined by something YOU value. Alas, my dramatic and entertainment values are in a small minority in this culture.

Along the same lines, my agent recently shared that film executives are asking him all the time if he has anything like Little Miss Sunshine. Interesting. Maybe the commercial moral is, whenever there's an odd hit, something different, quickly clone it and send it out.

I am hoping this for THE BRAZEN WING, which my agent was marketing before the strike and will continue to market after the strike. The upcoming THE BUCKET LIST is a male-male version of the same kind of story, getting a terminal illness and doing all you can before it strikes. With Freeman-Nicholson, this may be a hit. If it is, then BW is in the same genre and of the same spirit. (And may have been there first, actually.) Interesting.