Weighed, Measured, and Found Crazy

The bad guy Count Adhemar in A Knight's Tale says to the hero William, "You have been weighed. You have been measured. You have been found wanting." Naturally, in the end, William's friends turn these words against Adhemar. The scene resonates with me due to my own insecurity and my long held ambition to make a mark as a writer and movie director. There are a couple of faces that spring to mind as being the sort of disgusting self-styled snob who would go so far as to try to mentally sabotage those of us who have specific goals to achieve. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` Someone running a screenwriting group ostensibly for writers to read and comment on each other's works in progress might be motivated primarily by the need to be the focus and the decider, perhaps pushing what might be called the dogma of Syd Field and Robert McKee format even in a culture where many different storytelling styles might be aching to get exposure and might not survive adaptation into the presumptive blockbuster streamlining. I can say that I have more memory of abuse from those communities than useful feedback. If anything, time can be wasted following the alternate rabbit holes of random opinions given without focused consideration. The preference is for feedback to come from people whose own work you admire and who will look at a draft as indicating what it is you care about and from that how well you are serving that concern. I made the mistake of being candid about my night job, due to the need to travel there after each monthly meeting instead of joining the rest or the writers for a beer. I had a security guard job. If someone chooses to look down on that, they ignore the fact that it did allow me to read screenplays and give considered notes on them. In the realm of sharing notes with strangers, online outlets like Zoetrope.com and Triggerstreet.com were somewhat useful and at least you could tell something about the reviewer by the willingness to rite more than 200 words and the specific relevance to the manuscript at hand. Nothing against the study of Syd Field's Screenwriter's Notebook for example or Story by Robert McKee and various other books about writing but these should be part of a Recommended Reading list and not sources for generic go-to comments to pass off as thoughtful coverage. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` If someone is a toxic person, even though they might appear to believe in the most humane left-wing ideology their fascist heart can be exposed by the tactic of attacking the individual speaker and assigning a pathology to them instead of engaging the arguments with logic and without the expectation that your "facebook friend" is the enemy. Even if it is disguised as a teachable moment, that can tend to be so crass that it is a slap in the face. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` The tricky trap is that there are some who believe or push the principle wherein the mental instability or trauma of a small percentage of those reading or following must set the tone and limitations of what can be said and how it can be said for fear of "triggering" them. While we all might have compassion for someone's trauma, this has escalated to the level of the victim as ruler. If one makes any complaint, he or she will be accused of "playing victim," yet complaints often do have to be conveyed one way or another. If someone has legitimate claim to vulnerability or victimhood, however, it is not a workable situation to stifle and censor all thought that fails to placate that person. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` I don't find it necessary to name names. If someone wants to be an idiot and say that I have spoken out about his/her actions, that is out of my hands. But the principles are more important than the personalities. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` Someone asked for volunteers for a project in her back yard. I responded with an e-mail and mentioned I have a camera I can bring. This was agreed. I was to document. I happened to bring two cameras, the second one being capable of shooting tape for an hour unbroken. So while walking around documenting the volunteer work, I allowed this person to frame up each or three camera positions - each one running an hour - that might be used as part of a demonstration. So I spent some time over there. As essential as the three hour-long shots might have been, there had been no effort to secure this for the project outside of my randomly showing up. As well thought out as the presentation might have been, this person then was not able to firewire onto a capture card of the computers on hand. Documentation of the volunteers on my other camera was easily imported. But I left my camera overnight so more attempts could be made to capture video. When that failed, I returned to pick up my larger camera and I spent another four hours trying to capture and also burn discs. Two discs went fine, but the third shot had some glitches and I wanted to know if I should persist. I e-mailed that there were two discs that turned out but not in full 1080 HD, only DVD quality. I also sent via Facebook a similar message and uploaded sped-up files of all three shots to indicate what was done, noting that at high speed I could be seen waddling around fast and that might be a distraction. I got NO RESPONSE as to the next step from this genius. Do I drop off the two good discs or try to get something out of the third? I had discovered that my camera playback/record heads needed cleaning if I was to record anything again. I looked into taking it in to Canon in Mississauga to get the lens cleaned and heads cleaned. (Turned out that exercise was horrible because Canon workers there won't make money from cleaning lenses or heads, only for a deposit over $300.) Time passed as no phone calls, e-mails, nor Facebook messages were answered. I did my distracting and anxiety-filled back and forth with Canon and their techs trying to scam me. And before I knew it, I was hearing indirectly that the presentation that had been planned never happened. I had gotten through by phone only to be told my timing was strange. I did not press to find out what this meant, and only then did I learn the thing was a bust. I had no indication as to whether I was expected to do more than I had. I had not spend five hours at a semi-friend's place and four more at mine working on that as a prank. There is only one communication style that is worth anything when you have deadlines and specific things that need to be done: Direct, clear communication with a specific intention. There is nothing between the lines in a non-response. There is only disrespect and perhaps madness. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` Ove the course of a year, my only communication to this person was two supportive notes (along with other people) on Facebook threads. One was about being small after being big for a while, and I said, "You are big." The other was about the Netflix series Sense 8 the Wackowskis did. I commented like someone else that even if their content might seem to message-driven and can be a bit much they know how to direct. Finally, a crazy falling out happened (if there was anything to fall out) because I commented on a linked blog that was factually weak. It was complaining about "the male gaze" driving movies and in its three cited examples it included Fifty Shades of Grey and neglected to mention that its director Sam Taylor-Johnson was a woman and that the novelist who had control over the project was also female. It also jumped through hoops with diagrams trying to prove that the geometry of the framing in Mad Max: Fury Road forced the movie to be more respectful to women.... neglecting to mention that Imperiator Furiosa and the whole movie was the product of writer-director George Miller and his 70 year-old male gaze. If you like the heroine of that flick, thank her maker. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` It did not help that a guy I had unfriended a year previous for abuse chimed in for some virtue signaling to throw shade on the ignorant sexist (me). The only lesson I learned from that back and forth and the following morning was as follows: If your Facebook account is beeping whenever someone posts, don't procrastinate about disabling that function. Don't let others and their random input drive your day. Also, make your point and then leave any conversation. There is a tactic some use in which they widen the scope of a discussion beyond the specific item for which you have an opinion. The wider the umbrella, the more disrespectful it is to clarity and the finer points. By the end of it, you can end up with your name all over the page and people seeing remarks out of context. This is baiting. The imbecile who chimed in also lured me to address side-issues and then the next day deleted his own remarks and left mine hanging without context. My own direct message to the owner of the page asking what was really going on was not answered. So I could see the value of my remarks: nothing. I deleted each of my posts. When the owner of the page realized this, there was a manic attempt to paraphrase the discussion with multiple highlights of my name - again to restore the vulnerability of my name being all over the page and this time with less context. I could have sent a printscreen or frame grab to Facebook with a complaint of harassment. That might have been the wise course of action. Instead, the person unfriended me. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` There was some back and forth in Personal Messages trying to get to the bottom of it all, and finding only spin and a completely false recollection of something from 15 years prior. Of the project, the only mention was one of being grateful for my help, although it is doubtful how that could be anything more than ironic. I was told this person likes me but that on Facebook I was a terrible person and a troll. I began to correct the errant memory that had been referred to from the year 2000, and got back a rambling and hyper mess of words telling me not to communicate again. My only response was to go a step further than unfriend and actually block this individual, which I should have done to my shade-thrower the year before. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` I have posted commentary tracks to a few of my short films on youtube, and I started with one for the short that was mentioned from 2000. The sound quality and picture were both murky once I posted it, so I took another stab at it. But because the first version included an allusion to this individual walking from the location, I got indirect feedback on it. The first time around, I had a prop - a VHS tape - and I mentioned something scandalous the self-righteous protester shot which had aired on TV. I had nothing to show from it, but I flipped up the tape guard and pointed at the half-inch tape and said, "There's the nude shot" or something to that effect. The second time, I could not find the tape prop so I let it go. I got an automated e-mail in an account that only a few people knew, advising that am instagram account had supposedly been started by me and that my name was something other than my own. There was a picture of a little boy on the fake account and some message like "I have a podcast." ```````````````````````````````````````````````` When some people get indirect they can be very creepy. I also received a mess of Facebook friend-requests from accounts that seemed fake, like a little girl I did not recognize whose parents I did not know and that was filled with professional-looking photos. Many fake accounts were like dating ads. I had to actually block some so that they would not automatically follow me. I was told that both my troll and this person I had recently blocked were conspiring together to send me these annoyances and also going after the page for my planned film. So their attacks did have quite a great deal of bashing me by name. I know that it caused one friend to stop replying to me (on matters unrelated) and his wife to unfriend and block me. I can only imagine the range of evil slander that has been spread - and over what? If I could anticipate that sort of enemy being killed, I am not sure that I would make an effort to stop that. I look forward to the obituaries of even that mundane level of adversary. ```````````````````````````````````````````````` My generation was raised on Norman Lear, Princess Leia, Mary Tyler-Moore, the Bionic Woman and Murphy Brown. Yet, we are likely to be called sexist for not being excited about the 2016 Paul Feig version of Ghostbusters. There are people who will "other" you and shun you for disagreeing with a sub-issue despite genuinely holding many of the same values. No matter how it is spun, it really may just come down to assholes in sheep's clothing. And mad, mad, mad vindictive jerks cloaked in the flag of decency.

Film Directing as Political Football

If movie directing is becoming a political football, it must be what we call soccer. The goal here will be to diffuse outright falsehoods being promoted. 1. The CBC has already committed to hiring women for at least fifty percent of its positions for directing TV shows. 2. If a script is submitted for funding to the Canadian Film Center or any other entity in Canada, there is an opportunity to indicate gender and visible minority. http://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/entertainment/lack-of-canadian-female-directors-a-political-issue-researcher-says-1.3071157 3. In TV especially, the writers/producers have more say about the content of an episode than the guest director of an episode. So it is false to assume that power resides in the director to turn a scripted lesbian triumph over the patriarchy into a hard-edged macho cop show that condones racism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDHqDEa1ed4 4. There is a "get the job done" work ethic in Assistant Directors, and a "never miss tiara Tuesdays" crew-service perspective that is of great human value on a set but does not have any relationship toward that person directing the audience through the frame once elevated to the job of "Director." Some comedy directors I enjoy keep it simple, keeping the cast in focus while they improvise, but there isn't much room for directing as an art form, by which I don't mean "fancy shots" (a term I hate) but the most appropriate shot for each beat or transition. https://youtu.be/3FOzD4Sfgag?list=PL2w4TvBbdQ3sMABf317ExCob_v6rW2-4s 5. Even though it may be true that having a "beer with the right person" or being "the kind of person people want to have a beer with after a long shoot," may result in getting hired as a Director on a project, it is questionable whether or not that is good news for the craft. Who has time for a beer after each shoot day, and even if that means the wrap party, it is movie lore that Steven Spielberg skips the last shot and wrap party on everything since Jaws - initially out of fear the crew would prank him or get revenge for a long shoot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q4X2vDRfRk 6. The argument that a writer or director must have empathy certainly is valid, but it is more important that the material is presented in a way that engages empathy and it is nearly impossible to tell just how much "empathy" any ambitious person in the film or TV business actually has. If that refers to male empathy for the plight of women who are not employed enough as directors, that is a First World Problem anyone can identify with who does not have that job. Many women hate Woody Allen because of his personal life and the writings of Mia Farrow, but some of the best acting roles for women have his name on them. Some of us might weep in life only when watching a movie or play or reading a book but in life respect ourselves and others enough to put up layers. As the line goes at the end of The Madness of King George, "I have remembered how to seem." So an actor or director feeling something is not the same as an audience feeling it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqFd_niDWA4 7. It has been said that, "Once the script is solid and the casting is appropriate, Ninety percent of the director's job is done." As vital as those aspects are, for the sake of evaluating a movie director, I would focus only on that remaining ten percent which makes as much difference as the microscopic difference of an extra chromosome at conception makes to the grown adult that results. Coppola talks about "performance" meaning the way a director presents on the set as only half of the actual directing and the other is preparation or vision. Being a social butterfly isn't part of it. Coppola has also said that, "A dictatorial reputation comes from the fact that an experienced crew after a while can do certain things by rote" and introducing something new can meet resistance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1D2_bovy20 8. There is little difference between having no script and having no storyboards. Unless the point of excess dialogue is to eat up time and be able to claim a huge number of pages have been covered on a given shooting day. For most of us who are slowly developing projects, there is time to do what we only need time for: sketch the shots to see the movie, how to visually introduce characters, what we need to see and what is more powerful without being focused on. The argument that storyboards "imply a cut" and may cramp the style of the editor may be something to discuss when choosing an editor. Or assistant editor who can be elevated to full credit after the fact and circumvent any politics. For low budget, storyboards respect the time crunch. A look book may additionally be provided to the art department but it is secondary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egwLenvNG0E 9. Anecdote: In a system where the statistics for women in film where far worse than they are now, in the Nineteen Nineties, Ruba Nadda was publishing poetry and making shorts with her sisters using a Bollex and 16mm film and spending her wages from Ontario Hydro to send prints to festivals overseas. She made a feature on black and white 16mm, another in colour, took a producer's course at the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and cast Arsinee Khanjian in her next feature which became Sabah. Atom Egoyan became her mentor. Christine Vachon became executive producer of her next few films. When people talk about influencing cinema to be more diverse, all they have to do is look at Christine Vachon's producing credits or read her books like Shooting to Kill. That's a producer with a voice and ideology that is rare. It comes from an individual and her own networking, not imposed from the top down with false expectations. https://www.facebook.com/The-Adventures-of-Porno-the-Clown-1561237830831389/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel 10. Do some Canadian productions put ideology before aesthetic? When Vincenzo Natalie submitted Cube to the Canadian Film Center Feature Film Project, it would become its biggest success but there was resistance to it because of the attitude, "This isn't the kind of thing we do." In other words, a major statement of visual invention almost didn't make the cut because it wouldn't blur together with small character pieces that pretty much all blend together. I had the pleasure of working on a CFC feature called Clutch toward the end of their shoot in 1998, and made a point to see the film when it was released. There were quirky elements, and it is the last CFC film to date I can remember finding and watching. I have tremendous respect for Norman Jewison's directing. I have And Justice For All, Moonstruck, and Fiddler on the Roof. I respect In the Heat of the Night, and got to see Jewison speak before a screening of Hurricane at the former Bloor Theater in Toronto. But even with my own politics leaning to the left (not leaning so far I topple), buzz words like story and character can ring hollow if over-shadowed by mission statements. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfZYVLRoPTo

What is a "Troll" ?

A central principal or conceit of mine is that intelligent, worthwhile people get the idea of parallel ideas and parallel arguments. If one person presents a post or a link or a set of arguments and another person comes along to examine and refute part of it, we understand that the two arguments co-exist and that the intention is not necessarily to erase the other. Even if a movie is remade, the second statement of the premise is likely to be viewed as an also-ran and a knock-off coasting on a brand, with the original benefitting from a new marketing push in association with the next version. If we are talking about Ghostbusters - as will be mentioned later in this blog - people searching the internet or chancing upon a discussion might like to gauge what kind of support an upcoming reboot will get. My position on most issues is left of the middle. If someone is a zealot at either extreme, that person might find me too aloof on matters that they hold with disproportionate importance. A worthwhile and constructive dialogue must be open to the idea that some people in your community don't believe in cheating their way to a win by lying about the state of the zeitgeist on one issue or another. It may come to a point where on the surface nothing can be said that is tested and true, only what is popular and painless to those on the margins. It is expected that a victim of a crime or abuse might be in such a state of trauma - repressed or actively remembered - that their own behaviour is impacted and they are in danger of becoming offenders in their own life. Being is only intelligible in terms of becoming. And yet, the posture of the victim is growing as if it is a badge of honour and there is now a blind spot where it is verboten to even consider implying that the said victim or champion of the victim could possibly develop the traits of the offender by abusing others. We know someone by how that person treats those he or she does not HAVE TO be nice to. If someone tests or challenges your preferred premise, that person must not be dismissed as a troll or perhaps even cyber-swarmed. That person should be engaged with the expectation that he or she has only the best intentions and wishes the issues to be complete and to fairly represent each voice and angle. Here is the definition found on Wikipedia for "Internet Troll." This is as I understand it and have all along. ************* In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[3] This sense of the word troll and its associated verb trolling are associated with Internet discourse, but have been used more widely. Media attention in recent years has equated trolling with online harassment. For example, mass media has used troll to describe "a person who defaces Internet tribute sites with the aim of causing grief to families."[4][5] In addition, depictions of trolling have been included in popular fictional works such as the HBO television program The Newsroom, in which a main character encounters harassing individuals online and tries to infiltrate their circles by posting negative sexual comments himself.[6][7] **************** Seems logical. Recently, I found myself being told by someone on my Facebook that a comment was "trollish." I argued that it was not. The standard she wanted to go by was that any dissenting view or fact-check under a posted or linked article was a troll. I prefer to treat people as I want to be treated. Ads and random posts appear in my "News" Feed, and randomly if I invest a few moments checking out an article that is posted, I think it is reasonable and welcome to ask a question or point out an error or oversight. My former "friend" or frienemy as it turns out apparently wants a standard where whatever propaganda is being presented must be received in a vacuum of agreement, and any representation of the dissenting voice must be pathologized by a slap-down term like "troll" or "truther" in the case of conspiracies. In this case, it was something rather basic. ---------------------------------------------------------- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ An article link was posted by this person on the topic of "The Male Gaze." Apparently the topic was introduced in the 1960's. I do not recall the blog name or the website, not that I would want to promote it with my vast influence. I first asked a simple question, "Isn't there a "Female Gaze?" The blog or article kicked off by railing against the movie adaptation of "Fifty Shades of Grey." It argued that there was too much erotic view of the female form, as if to appeal to men, despite having a target audience of women. I pointed out that the director of that movie was a woman. The response I got, along with the accusation that my post was "trollish," was that the director may have been influenced by others to put that stuff in. So the woman who is directing doesn't count as contributing to the "Gaze" of the movie, and this person discounts the idea that she might even recognize the beauty of the female form despite being married and ostensibly straight. A lot of women on this person's FB posts will add comments about binary sexuality and fluid this or that, yet not entertain the idea that these factors might be part of the director. If said director is not responsible for what is on screen, then why the fuss about more female directors? (This last part is my own aside now, and was not part of my posts.) The article chose as its second example of the offensive "male Gaze" the unlikely target of Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron, in which it argued that females "aren't shot the same way as men. I pointed out there that the director was Joss Whedon who is a known feminist and a old sort, not to mention the fact that nothing unflattering or leering struck me in the movie. Finally, the blogger/columnist gave qualified praise to Mad Max: Fury Road but stated that the camera strategy forced everything to be in the centre frame so that women could not be pushed off to the side. There is some invocation of the "rule of thirds" in framing invoked, which seems to diminish the fact that the STORY and deliberate DIRECTING of GEORGE MILLER is what actually guided that movie to have strong female characters we care about. It was not "forced" by some sort of centre-framing policy. The research of the person seems to have come from straight out of the rectum. Yet - and I have heard this from a third party who followed the discussion - my posts remained restrained and clearly well-intentioned. The woman who had posted the link and was playing what she called "moderator" by seemed poised for attack from word one. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ -------------------------------------------------------------- Here I am calmly and idly going back on my smart phone as alerts come up, answering whatever post on a Sunday evening, matter-of-fact, and I'm getting kind of a shrill vibe from even the most trivial and innocuous remark. When we got into the trend of women leading films and changes and so on, I remarked that the new reboot of women as Ghostbusters casting Chris (Thor) Hemsworth as their secretary or receptionist is not really a parallel or inversion of the original film, because Annie Potts as Janine was not portrayed as a sex object. The response I got was an affronted spiel along the lines of, "Annie Potts in that movie is super sexy!" Now at that point what am I to say other than reiterate what I have already said, not that I have said anything against Potts. She is funny and an effective character. Sexy isn't a descriptive that I expect she was going for. Any more than Rick Moranis' character would expect to be called sexy. The conversation is like stepping in shit and not being able to scrape it off. And the core of it must be that this person had some sort of spite against me personally from the beginning, despite adding me on Facebook and voicing no objection to past posts over the years. ------------------------------------------------------------ ########################################################################### Then a shark swam into the cove. I would not have noticed if I had not procrastinated about disabling Facebook alerts on my smart phone. It had been giving redundant messages whenever someone replied to whatever. For those alerts, I could wait until when I choose to hit the site myself. But this particular Sunday night I hadn't figured out what to delete or uninstall. So I looked over and saw my old antagonist's name and thought FRIG ! Sure enough, he had put up oner of his boiler-plate bait posts to pathologies me and make an unflattering estimate of my intelligence because I am not reading the script of the party line and not "all in" with whatever zealot intransigence he represents. This post meets the above criteria for a definition of a troll. In fact, I'd say Troll is a weak word for what this guy does. It is harassment, certainly couched in some sort of smug sheep's clothing of ostensibly liberal platitudes and standing up for women which he appears to regard as so fragile that they must be handled with kit gloves and those of us who are not part of a minority (outside of the discussion) are somehow twisted and defending the "status quo." A "like" appeared on his missive around this time. The next day, I was on my laptop and noticed that the like came from the individual who started the thread, and who started a new post to say that she was not moderating or following the thread after a while. . . not mentioning that she had followed it enough to support the most offensive and truly trollish or trollesque post! My antagonist had deleted a couple of his posts over night, leaving my own posts hanging with less context. Knowing that his own had been valued and mine had not, I decided to delete my posts from the thread. I only found out half an hour later that she - the poster of the flawed article link - was upset that I had removed my posts. She said, "Why did you do that. They were important." She then bent over backwards to try to re-tell the story to "followers" of the thread, as if there are pages missing from a Gnostic Gospel. She entreated me to return to the thread, hot-linking my name over and over, only to answer me with what can only politely he called guano. It was all circular. Accusation, my defence, followed by the accusation of being "defensive." Total mind f**kery. It was a merry-go-round that was now eating up a Monday that I had off and which was supposed to be spent on writing and editing. I bowed out, asked her to stop hot-linking my name, and in tern advised that I would stop following the thread. I also ended up clicking "unfollow" of her, since it was clear that any comment on any post could have an unpredictable and soul-sickening result. She responded by de-friending me. I sent one more PM to say something like, "At least that's an answer." &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& ///////////////////// Somewhere in the middle of that, before I had gone to sleep Sunday, I'd sent her a first private message asking if there is anything wrong that I should know about, given the tone of some of her Sunday night replies and the "trollish" accusation. I reminded her that since helping out the previous summer documenting a project of hers I had not heard any reply - timely or otherwise - about what was to be done with footage I had captured and so on. The questions had been time sensitive. I got the feeling she cancelled her project or something, but never got the full scoop. I mentioned the shark/troll that had chimed in on the thread to really mess with me, and apologized for drawing that fly. But I did not hear back until some time after I had asked about her unfriending me. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ She did reply to that. I'll paraphrase rather than paste someone's actual words. She mentioned knowing me for 15 years and liking me in person and having fond memories of the play reading group (she performed a reading of a one-act I wrote in 2001, and did a good job) but then went on to characterize the way I am on Facebook. She also mentioned that the had taken the council of my adversary - the one guy I considered to be a TROLL - whom I had to delete the year before, and who I had failed to block. (I have blocked him since this blow-up, but would have rather not have him seeing and commenting on any of my posts this past year, and have no idea why I have neglected to block him and have somehow allowed him to harass me. It must be discomfort with the settings of the site, which I am a little more familiar with now.) Anyway, it was not encouraging. I can dislike someone and still feel sick if I am rejected. She mentioned a short I made back in 2000, which I would not have thrown in her face and never have. As she describes it, what she signed on for was a western stand-off where two girls fight over an abandoned cigarette in the street. She claimed that she walked off the set because I "added a girl-fight." I mentioned that I don't recall how others characterized the fight, which was part of the script she read and part of the storyboards. If my camera operator whose camera we were using mentioned Russ Meyer, it is beside the point. She had stated that she worried I would "edit in" shots of "nudity or sex" later, which offended me as someone who is only interested in making a straightforward film with no artsy flashes. I reminded her that I did remember her also complaining that there was no craft services table with flies buzzing around and that we did get someone to buy her a bottle of water when she asked for it. She came back with a totally wigged-out lecture about what a hot day it was (not very hot and I hate hot days) and how she wasn't being paid (which she knew going in. She accused me of not even taking "responsibility" for what she complained about and said "there is no apology here" as if I should apologize for questioning or fact-checking a blog she had linked in the news feed. She ended on a note like "please don't contact me again." ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ That's the way to end a conversation that might actually answer questions intended to be rhetorical by someone who can't handle reality. Someone on her page left a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson to the effect of "Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted when I am contradicted." Her friend meant for this to be something to answer the likes of me, but it would have been more appropriate applied to her. I ended up blocking her as well as my main annoyance. But the infuriating thing is this ploy of throwing down an accusation and demanding that it not be answered. On the movie she mentioned, the only reason I have not nursed any animosity over it is that I had another actress who stepped in and saved my ass and did a great job. I got to make the movie people were there to make. I didn't have time to worry about a snack table, but I did ask the remaining people if they needed anything and volunteered to get it. They said they did not and appreciated that time was of the essence. This was a guerrilla-style shoot, less than an hour. I asked how they felt about what was said by the departing actress, and nobody felt the same despite both remaining actresses being principled people themselves. Luckily for me, their principles also included staying with a project they have agreed to shoot instead of abandoning the director and wasting everyone's time. The departing girl had - ironically - flashed her chest in a movie the year before. I won't name the film, but I taped it from City TV and have not het gotten around to trashing the VHS. Just seems hypocritical to me. @@@@@@@ As I reflected on this I recall better times but I also recall an odd moment at the home of the person in question while I was documenting her project on video and having a break with her other guests in her kitchen. The subject of comedy came up and what this or that person likes. I mentioned liking Sarah Silverman. One guy said, with a hint of mustard, "I hear she has a great rape joke." I honestly forget what I said back, but it created no fuss. I could have gone for a quip like, "Your momma is a rape joke." But I likely would not, unless that person were a heckler and I was on stage. I might have ignored his sarcastic intent and the idea that he "hears" and obviously has not heard for himself what Silverman's joke actually was and its context or delivery. I might have said, "Yes, in fact she has a few good rape jokes." I think I mentioned that she also has a great Holocaust bit. I'm a firm believer that comedy can and must include gallows humour and explore the most painful and difficult to process traumas of life. Smokey and the Bandit or Blues Brothers wacky car accidents will not play as amusing to someone who just survived a real car accident or lost someone in one, or killed someone with a car. But that can't be the standard for what is talked about or joked about. Even Blazing Saddles has a couple of "good" rape jokes, as well as frequent use of the notorious n-word. There is definitely a culture or subculture of net nannys playing word police and over-inflating reactions to behaviours and habits and old ideas and slow adaptations to the culture of sales and affirmations and propaganda wrapped up in the fear of a lost audience or a lost market. Sometimes it is fair. It is better to know if Cosby is known by many people as a creep or worse. It is better to know that Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird had more to say in his late seventies and that Scout had to actually get to know him as a human being and get over her disappointment that her dad was not an icon in her head 100% uncomplicated and on-side with all of her own political package deals. I had recently listened to Reese Witherspoon's unabridged audio book of Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, and it was very appropriate timing. People will project. There is little to be done about that. People wrap themselves in a rainbow flag or turn their home country flag upside down when the wrong candidate for them gets into office. But what can be a problem is discarding the heart of politics - that your adversary or opponent on one issue or sub-issue may be an ally on many others. I know a few more intransigent jerks than I thought I knew. I'm better off knowing. I've done my own fearless moral inventory and flipped the finger at one imposed on me by a presumptuous and inexplicably pompous pair of piranha. I don't have to boost myself as any kind of moral example to feel wronged and irritated. But perhaps I have bigger fish to fry.

Likes, Unlikes and Networking

Don't read this blog if your time is tight or you have to operate heavy machinery. Even though it touches on the core issue of divisiveness in human society being easy and connecting being unnecessarily complicated. I don’t like schmoosing and yet since 1984 I have been directing shorts and since 1988 writing a feature script per year along with anything else I’ve written – to mixed results – and I hear a lot about networking, usually showing up in a class of folks who all want to direct or a venue that requires voices raised above the music. I know enough about myself that I am not a screamer and my ideas are subtle enough that they will lose something at high volume. Sometimes you want people to lean in out of curiosity. I once attended an info meeting for Cine-Coup and there among the crowd sitting peacefully was producer and famous A.D. John Board whose posts I constantly see on Facebook and have posted comments on and liked. I had a moment where I realized I am actually hesitating about saying high to a Facebook friend. I walked up and said hi and what do you think and what are you working on – all generic questions and everything BUT the one thing I was too sensitive to ask. Like this is the wrong place and maybe I don’t know him well enough to ask how his cancer treatment is going with bee stings. Half an hour later, I notice he is surrounded by a huddle of other guys I didn’t recognize all having a serious connective conversation – after all, it’s no secret that he has been promoting his documentary about the bee sting experiment for ages and he is all about promoting homeopathic medicine. So I felt very face-palm about that very dot-nose bit of social awkwardness. The guy I knew John through had just lost a wife to cancer, and even my own late father was tough to talk to about cancer, but for me I think I choke when it comes to getting very personal in public. This doesn’t mean that I can’t discuss an ISSUE and stay on the ISSUE and have it be regardless of the reaction it cause. There is a great axiom, “Disregard the fruits of your actions.” I find that it applies when expressing anything in public. There are any number of nutty reasons why people might either ignore a comment or be incited by it. Provocative dress came up in a Facebook discussion recently, as to whether it provokes. If someone is looking to cull through Facebook numbers, I generally hope I make the cut and don’t get abandoned by someone. Even if I don’t notice for another year. I recently discovered that someone had not only dumped me but blocked me so that people in a discussion were reacting to interjections I could not see. I’d be lying if I said I am not curious to hear how I earned that distinction. I suspect that it was meeting this person back home and having less to say than a talkative mutual friend I was with. It’s a bit like the moment on Seinfeld where Jerry first steps out and leaves George to fill silence with Elaine. Except that I had been in a play with this actress, got along well with her, asked her out, and happened to meet her boyfriend who was involved with film and a cool person, then she went back home and we lost touch. But in person if I have been sitting watching a play or in transit and silent it is an effort to get back up to speed to converse. So maybe I seemed like an aloof dick. So that kind of thing I get. I can settle for guess work. Most of the time I can freely interject into any Facebook discussion or under any post that seems like something hasn’t yet been said about a topic. I expect the same on my own posts. People click like or maybe add an element of information that might be lacking or a quip. I find that there are a few Republicans and conservatives who post inexplicable support for things like Fox News but even then I stay on point if I post and it is about the subject and people should assume that my heart is in the right place. I have family members that are more conservative than myself, and I can clash on the issues and scratch my head over a stance, but still wish only the best. Surely I’m not alone in having friends or family with whom there is disagreement on a few items. One thing I’ve learned especially from looking at youtube and imdb discussions is that if I ever achieve a level of fame I will resolutely focus on that axiom of disregarding the fruits of your actions. As a FAN merely supporting an actor or a writer or a filmmaker, or pointing out a problem or a fact, I have had to fend off some serious vitriol. If you post on youtube, folks, be sure to do so under a different account than the one with which your own videos are uploaded or tediously disabled the ratings on each of your videos. There is really no accounting for taste, and if your main observation is that someone is a moron then it won’t matter how much time you invest reasoning with them. But we want to believe the best. Let’s look for reasons to write each other off. Bruce Willis and Kevin Smith have worked together on two movies, Kevin acting in Live Free or Die Hard and then directing Willis in Copout (original screenplay title “A Couple of Dicks”). Their experience on the latter has been discussed and written about by Smith and there is apparently an irreparable rift. I have all of Kevin Smith’s movies and listen to his podcasts, so if you are a hardcore Bruce Willis fan you can hate me for that. I have many Bruce Willis DVDs as well, so a Kevin fan could choose to hate me for that. Does the presence of one desecrate the land occupied by the other? I dunno. I have many Mel Brooks movies and Spielberg movies, but owning 21 Mel Gibson DVDs would cause some to call me “anti-Semitic” for failing to pitch them. Even though Kevin Pollak and company seem to be anti-Gibson [with side-kick Samm Levine being an Inglorious Basterd (sic) and making Nazi references], I still watch every episode of his Chatshow. He in turn has a good relationship with both Smith and Willis, takes no side, and believes neither would care if he did. People either come to the table with a chip on the shoulder and an axe to grind or they don’t. It has very little to do with what sets them off. Not that I or anyone seeks permission to have an opinion or make a judgement, but I’ll use the word permissive as a place-holder until something better comes along and I’ll say that in a permissive society or sphere we may not see a warning or a gauge of the over-abundance of lying and self-protective politeness. Once we understand that jealousy, judgement, and possessiveness are the current sins that are fashionable to acknowledge and your spouse says be careful on the computer not to open the file with the ex-spouse’s name on it because there are candid photos if you have a problem with that then the expectation might be to pretend you can take the shock and look at the pictures and then have to reign in whatever natural discomfort there would naturally be in seeing those images rather than trying to merely distance yourself from the fact that you followed someone who was replaceable and you may also be replaceable. That might be an extreme case of trying to be politically correct in one’s own home, and it might be a bubble that bursts eventually. There might be a growing detachment or suspicion or it might result in a regrettable violent reflex. Plenty of people go around thinking and projecting “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay. . .” and then the dam crumbles and they are shocked to discover what they are capable of. It is unlikely that Loraina Bobbitt expected to cut off her husband’s penis until one time too many he went to sleep after being abusive. Never let the sun set on anger, they say. So a woman like timid-seeming Ms Bobbitt can be provoked to inexplicable violence, either in self-defence, as venting, or pre-emptive attack or in revenge but judged officially as a crime of passion or a moment of black-out, or temporary insanity. So is the same possible for men? In the 1970’s O.J. Simpson was appearing in movies like the Towering Inferno and Capricorn One and he was mentioned on Mork and Mindy as being the figure of worship in Exador’s new religion, an the eighties found him as an accident prone, unlucky Detective Nordberg in the Naked Gun Trilogy. In the Nineties he was the star of a long-running high-rated reality TV show called The Simspon Trial. Police explained to O.J. about DNA technology and reassured him that they would find out who killed his e-wife Nichole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, so O.J.’s reaction was to jump into a bronco for a long chase ready to commit suicide. This somehow didn’t come up until after the trial was over. Could a paragon of sportsmanship and a hero to many be capable of letting his pride and jealousy and the shock of losing anything in life when he is so used to winning snap and maybe black-out and become a horrible murdering thug? The Jury is actually in on that question, but it remains something difficult for people to process. Could he have anticipated this reaction? If he was mad at his ex, could he have gone for a walk like everyone else does? Maybe walking in Los Angeles is not common, so he might not have considered it. Not to seem glib, but if he can’t stand being around his ex he should have made a point to avoid her home and if he has visitation with his children he could hire someone or ask a fiend to pick them up. He did not have to see Ron Goldman driving his old vehicle or put himself in a position where he might see Ron driving his former old lady. I think if people expected the worst of their reactions there would be fewer eruptions of violence. If John Wayne Bobbit expected as a course of nature that frequent abuse of his wife would inevitably cause her to snap and turn the tables, both abuse and the retaliatory incident would have been avoided and it would have been better for the health of his penis. I would be instantly killed by casual female blog readers if I suggested there was anything Nicole could have done to avoid being murdered by O.J.. I don’t know what kind of regular interaction they had after the divorce. I have neglected as a citizen of Canada to read up on every American celebrity and their tragedies. I suspect that someone in O.J.’s position had not built up enough low points in life to cope with the ups and downs and losses that happen in negotiating a marriage and then the Heisman trophy winner and C-list movie participant could not process the rejection inherent in divorce and the vulnerability of his new intimate enemy possibly having enough dirt on him to fully transform his life’s achievements to shit and infamy. That became a self-fulfilling prophesy as he managed to invert his fame with his own horrible alleged actions. What if someone said to you I am free to go rub that celebrated athlete’s face in poop and mock him and make out with my girlfriend in front of him just because it is my right and because he has no legal recourse against me? Would you advise that this is a wise course, because after all in his shoes you know you have the capacity to take the abuse and you assume that he must be the same? And who knows whether Phil Hartman’s model-pretty wife Brynn was feeling like she wasn’t getting enough attention or energy out of the comedic genius who was known to be quiet in person? Maybe she didn’t need much encouragement to snap and shoot him. He likely did nothing to provoke it and she was known to be unstable on the inside as contrast with her pretty exterior. Dominique Dunn had finished shooting Poltergeist (remember her flipping the middle finger to construction workers) and had started shooting the first V Mini-series when her ex-boyfriend showed up and shot her. The same thing happened to the young star of Pam Dawber’s other hit sit-com My Sister Sam. How do people who were your friends or lovers get it into their heads that they can just go over and kill their object of rejection and obsession ? I don’t know. I suspect it is related to the capacity to compartmentalize some of our pain to survive. That might get mis-filed. And yes, I said “object.” I once had some know-it-all sanctimonious thought-police call me on that, “I’m pretty sure you just compared a person to an inanimate object” when I referred to people abandoning their bikes and being shocked when they go missing and expecting that the world will make sure nobody just TAKES what they want. Whatever else we are, ultimately we are all objects. Light falls on us a certain way, as does shadow, and we can dress for the wrong occasion. Remember the season 5 guest villain on Dexter, Jordan Chase the inspirational seminar guru with the catch phrase “Take it!” who turned out to be running an abduction, rape and torture club? Some people TAKE what they want, for whatever reason, for whatever this bike or that child or adult person represents to them. You may not steal, or deliberately hurt anyone, but you know enough to lock your bike and make sure it can’t be easily clipped, and also not to just leave it in a place where people can take their time picking at it while you hit a bar. The guy I argued with once on Facebook, and a woman who chimed in to insult me, don’t know how to set a separate standard for themselves and recognize that others may not be capable or interested in their concerns. It is true that the sales machine does not care a fig about the people it flatters and if an old fuddy-duddy father says to his daughter, “You’re going out LIKE THAT ??!!!” he is not a fascist nor the enemy of freedom and an anti-feminist nor is be a bad parent on the scale of the mother who brings her daughter to a Hollywood party to meet a famous powerful director and leave her alone with him for a “photo shoot” even if he is well known to have lost a pregnant spouse to a murderous cult and lost his family years before in the Holocaust and is likely a guy (talented and great though he may be) who has no good reason to be left alone with an under-aged girl who just wants to be famous. The over-protective parent might be annoying but they are not the enemy. Is it human nature to look for a fight? Is that the glitch embedded into the species? Whether it is the prehistoric man discovering he can use a bone to kill a rival or an AI system like HAL running a spaceship called Discovery that is shaped like a bone, something is off kilter and running things off course. There is a time to lower your head and shuffle away with the cowed, whipped white Eddie Murphy voice, “Okay.” There is also a time – in fact a great many more times – to stand ground and say no and with the obligatory “with all DUE respect” verbally kick somebody in the crotch. There are some cultures where you can punch your mates in the face and still enjoy a beer together. When you’ve been posting on discussion threads for years, contributing this or that perspective, and occasionally the dissenting view on someone’s posts for at least 5 years it is a little galling for a random piece of flotsam to call you a troll. And yet I don’t engage on a personality level and take the person down. I stick to the point. If someone wants to be abusive, I’d rather see them do it in the open where people can see that side of them. Augmenting an open back and forth with a private message that spews naked insult is childish. I’m not sure there is a consensus about where the line is drawn. Some people burn out their circuits without realize it, especially people who view themselves as progressive and aren’t used to losing an argument. And if they are used to it maybe the strategy (without getting into gender the way a certain stand-up comic did) is indeed to change the subject and make it a personal attack in the hopes of provoking a psychological implosion and try to wear you down or demonize. Expect false conceits to be at the core of it – you appear to have THIS position, which means deep down something is wrong with you. I think how can this argument work in a movie. How can it fit? How can it have consequence? A pair of co-workers are discussing Sinead O’Connor being cited as the influence of Miley Cyrus’ wrecking Ball video, O’Connor being badgered by media for a comment, and her deciding the comment can take the form of an article she may as well write herself and that article taking the form of an open letter, because it would indirectly reference her either way. All very logical. Then one of the office guys notices a female co-worker is in ear-shot, and dressed in skimpy attire that seems out of place in a geeky office. He decides to pipe up, “I think the O’Conner letter is slut-shaming, and it creepy me out. She seems to be saying women are responsible for being raped if they dress too provocatively.” “What is provocative?” the other guy asks. “What is being provoked?” “Nothing,” says kissy-face. “Here is some math for you – rapes caused by scanty dress equal zero, rapes caused by flirty or seductive behaviour equal zero, rapes caused by cock teases equal zero.” “That doesn’t sound like math,” quips the other guy. “It sounds like smug bumper sticker campaigning.” Kissy-face has a meltdown and yells incoherently at the other guy and knocks over a chair. He turns to the scantily clad young lady in the room and says it is quitting time and she can she can go home whenever she likes and nice dress and sorry about the discussion which males should not have a voice in anyway. He goes off on a tangent about feminism and accuses the other male of not being a feminist. The other male says, “Feminism is irrelevant in the western world. It’s an umbrella term. I don’t look down on out boss at head office just because she is female. Most people enjoyed 9 to 5 and still watch it and Working Girl (the workplace comedy with Melanie Griffith, not the one apparently about a hooker) and we pretty much agree with equal pay. I’m an ally on many of those kinds of reasonable things. That doesn’t mean I have to hold up the umbrella term feminist and ask myself whether each new issue or position is feminist in order for it to be right. My position on whether a rural doctor should be forced to expand her practice to include performing abortions even if she sees it as murder would not be considered a feminist position. My opinion as to whether two lesbians can get married and adopt would however be considered feminist. Having an umbrella term allows you to demonize me for not fitting all the arbitrary criteria of it. And the jury is still out as to whether dressing sexy attracts the attention of creeps and whether standing at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere is pressing your luck. I have sisters and I’ve heard them and their friends laugh proudly about who they will frustrate at the bar. I’m saying frustrate the wrong person and it is Russian roulette.” “I have control of myself. I’m not being caused to rape just because a woman is hot,” says the kissy-face p.c. guy. “We’re not talking about you or me, “ says the intelligent other guy. “We are speculating about a CRIMINAL. Almost every law exists because of the FUCK-UPS and the stupid and the morally weak. We can find out what sets a rapist off if we can stand to talk to him. But we will be too busy patting ourselves on the head for being superior beings. I have every right to compare a rapist to a hyena and say it’s a bad idea to get out of your vehicle and go pet one. Cee-Lo was accused of putting ecstasy into his ex-girlfriend’s drink, the master of comedy who I won’t name here – a beloved figure – was accused of using cold medication to knock out a woman so he could feel her up. We don’t know if any of that is true but enough people are open to the possibility because they know even a nice person’s head can split open and The Thing can spring out frothing at the mouth. You can be high on drugs or in self-righteous politically correct propaganda. “ “Ignore him, “ kissy-face says to the sexy looking female colleague. She waves goodbye and heads out the door. Both guys steal a glance at her ass. They don’t learn until an hour later when the police arrive that she was brutally raped in the parking lot by a clean-cut rape-culture night-clubber who remains at large. He may have chosen her because she was alone, or maybe because she was in a mini-skirt and stooped to pick up her car keys when she dropped them. If a medical professional ever discovered that his erection took a critical amount of blood from his brain and he had no control as his baser instincts took over, that professional would likely keep it to himself/herself rather than be demonized for a suggestion that does not calm and reassure people that everything they do is A-OK the way most of their input does – from advertisers and lobby groups trying to seduce them every waking hour. The reality is that we share the same dangers in our society and nobody wants a loved one to suffer the attacks that statistics assure us are inevitable. We end up seeing a video Facebook chooses not to take down, where a guy ostensibly angry at his wife for cheating chops her head off, we hear of girls getting splashed with acid in the face for saying no to a marriage proposal, we hear of date rapes and seduction seminars preaching which buttons to press to close the deal on sex. And some people still have the audacity to fucking lecture someone like me for saying so-called Slut Walk is a joke? Of course it is. The media, the music industry, everyone who decides what is cool for the young, the prison culture for example which has contributed some fashion statements, have no sense of consequence. It is over-stimulation, and more so now that we have more distractions. It is all wrapped up with a “you’re okay” rubber stamp. Someone’s dress may not be what causes a guy to snap. Paul Bernardo and Karla looked for “virgins” but that had more to do with age than attire. A “slutty” clad or dressed-down girl may be the virgin just feeding off of sexual tension as flattering, and the girl who has partied heavily, been to gang-bangs and used abortion as birth control more often than condoms may look like the quaint, quiet girl next door. Like the old Eddie Murphy routine about girls who, “raise hell and then move somewhere else and get shy.” But maybe there are safe behaviours and unsafe habits. Maybe there is a street-proofing and failure to street-proof even when people are not kids anymore that a stranger might steal or lure into a car. But in order to practice defensive living the way people know to practice defensive driving it might mean behaving AS IF we have some responsibility. For the way we are perceived and the way we provoke. I mean can you be provocative without provoking? Funny language, ours. By the same token, despite being civil I can be called a troll because I don’t march in lock-step with the popular misconception. When that happens I have to detach and accept that some people believe their own hype and the flattery that comes with being part of the target demographic. People who are still using terms like “Slut Walk” and “slut-shaming” will campaign to get rid of the word, but a) I don’t hear a lot of guys – especially adults – calling women slut. I remember Bill Murray calling Dustin Hoffman “you slut!” in Tootsie as one of the biggest laughs. I’m just as likely to use the antiquated word slattern. You know who does use the word – women, against each other. You know who polices who gets categorized as “that kind of girl” ? Girls. If a female is reputed to be easy, guys won’t launch into a lecture or insults. They’ll just form a line-up. Who sets the “double standard” for whether sexual history is a problem or a benefit? Again, a woman might choose a guy who is confident. If he got that way by getting lucky a lot, so be it. She likely will accept it. A man may or may not require confidence to find a woman attractive. It is not a deal breaker. He can wait for confidence to develop, just as a woman might be patient about the “bad boy” she has fallen for and she might believe she can reform him or tame him. So being “good” or “nice” is something a woman doesn’t demand of a guy to date him. So again a guy has absolutely no incentive to be a virgin other than having no game or no interest in the women available. So again even the term “double-standard” is kind of a joke. It projects on people a deliberate system or intention when there is no actual artificial structure there at all. It is lobby-group-think or magazine-think. It is the quality of thought that goes into devoting one’s University thesis paper to whether and why Batman and Robin are gay, Sherlock Holmes and Watson are gay, and how Anne of Green Gables is a lesbian. If it makes people feel good about themselves, then it is not a total waste of time. But it is also not scientific or logical or credible. There has been in this blog the habit of limiting gender to what is now called “binary” terms. The GBLTQ- and-sometimes-Y alphabet soup of human diversity should factor in and may even support the overall drift. The reason I think it’s great if a transsexual or transgender person wins a beauty contest is that it subverts the beauty contest and undermines it in the eyes of people who love that sort of thing. When the Huffington Post declared that Gloria Steinem has the last word on the Sinead-Cyrus debate and the issue of whether media exploits sexuality too much and youth and looks, she left it at Miss America offering a valuable financial reward and paying for a winner’s education so why not take advantage. But the funders of Miss America and other pageants could easily put their money into other enterprises if putting people through college is the ultimate goal. There are other accomplishments and fields of endeavor that could win someone a prize besides posing in a swimsuit and giving generic answers about world peace. Gloria doesn’t have the last word. There might not be a last word with any issue that has so many moving parts. I am only thankful that I was able to write this one on somebody else’s time. I will get to the bottom it eventually and crack the formula of humorless, arbitrary argument. This is the kind of crap taking up valuable real estate in my consciousness. If I wanted to complicate this I could factor in cultures where it is downright shocking to see bare skin or faces for that matter, and then remember the refrain from the days right after 9/11/2001, "If we stop living the way we do, the terrorists win." I don't know if rapists can easily be traded out for terrorists or vice versa in that idea. That would mean dress as provocatively as you like or the rapists win, and by extenion the patriarchy and puritanical system win and control you. But then while this catch-phrase was going around there was also a crack-down on airport security and a lot of unofficial profiling, certain individuals on the Most Wanted list, a couple of wars got going, and behavior was modified - there was even an additional umbrella over it all "the war on terror," against an abstraction. So if we buy into that old saw then a "war on rape" would have to partly be fought looking past what an individual or most individuals will do or would be capable of and it could be considered an ugly natural element. Then people can start going for walks with bomb-sniffing dogs ready to bite balls off. And maybe wearing something bulky or army fatigues. But pretending that nothing sets off or attracts unwanted attention is just crazy. It's not "blame the victim." It's acknowledge the related elements. Not a fight or a bickering match that can be won in a Facebook thread where it really is still about all-is-well and freedom and choice are the buzz words and not buzz-kill words.

I don't know

That could be the new title of my blog, or my autobiography which I should write and keep on hand in case I get famous and someone asks for it. Because if I had to write it when famous I might be too busy having fun. I say I don't know because though they say write about what you know I think I fill more space by focusing on what I don't know.

I don't know about the word respect. Is it regard? Is it acknowledgement that a person or thing exists? Because I hear people "respect" each other many times who have not earned, say, admiration which is the main word I think respect means. I don't like to throw that word around. How can I "respect" an obstreperous A-hole and have my respect for Nelson Mandela not be devalued?

I don't know about homophobia. Who was the first to coin the term? If I'm writing a script that takes place in 1942, can a character say "homophobic"? I don't know where it comes from. I'm sure the break down has been done before. It doesn't mean fear of same, or fear of people or men fearing men. There are guys I might fear, but not because they are men. I've heard a guy called homophobic because his first fear about going to jail is being sodomized by another inmate. If a woman fears being raped I don't know if anyone would pipe up and call her heterophobic. They might regard the context - say walking alone down a dark street filled with thugs - and give her some credit. But a guy gets the third degree if he fears being raped? I don't know. I thought prejudice was unfairly painting people with a wide brush, and yet I see that go on a lot - by some gay people. Canadian playwright Brad Fraser deleted me from his Facebook because I defended Mel Gibson. When Edge of Darkness was released, Brad posted at least four status updates on his page that were slamming Mel. That's in one day, along with other random updates. I'm lucky if I update my facebook status once a day. But I understand in the case of a high profile playwright it is marketing - he must want everyone to know how brilliant his plays will be if we get around to actually seeing them. In this case, I don't know from brilliant. He didn't seem capable of engaging in reasonable debate. As far as he is concerned Mel is an alcoholic and anti-Semite and don't confuse him with the facts. And so I find Brad Fraser annoying, yet I don't fear him. So is it homoannoya? The folks who run Defamer or TMZ or Out Magazine (assuming that still exists) or even GLAAD seem very willing to disregard the rights and privacy of others, pulling celebrities out of a "closet" even if they are action stars. I don't know if Tom Cruise is gay, but in any case I still consider him cool and responsible as a businessmam. Jodie Foster was right to keep her personal life to herself all those years. It's none of her business, and she has NO obligation to show up at parades and be someone's role model. What if someone's personal kick is the secrecy if being "on the down low"? Who is to say they have a civic responsibility to pay lip service to GLAAD and or any other brand of gossip monger? Jerry Lewis attends a golf tournament in Australia and makes gay joke, so GLAAD asks him to. . .what? Recant what he said? To pretend he doesn't laugh at non-PC jokes. at fat jokes, at fart jokes, at gay jokes? And is a member of the Rat Pack really all that concerned with whether his rainbow stripes are in the right order? How many Dean Martin or Sinatra fans are supposed to give a rat's ass? Hypothetically, what would it serve a movie star with a business and a production company to run to suddenly faunt a love life that heartland America - a sizable market - has not granted equality let alone embraced? Or are they expected to make a mea culpa for all the years they dated the opposite gender? I sense that a lot of these people who claim to be all about personal freedom are quite nasty, rubbing someone's nose in shit, just loving it when Family Values icon Gibson falls off the wagon and sputters incoherent drunken rantings about his own media persecutors (in that case David Geffin and some anonymous rabi and random uninformed yahoos on Youtube). Neil Patrick Harris became cool in Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle, and frankly stayed cool after outing himself. Ellen DeGeneres is terrific. They're also not Brad Fraser. They're not annoying. But I don't know. Maybe they do the same thing he does and I just don't hear about it because I'm not paying attention. Maybe they do a variation of writing a letter to a theater who has rejected a play and trying to find out why it has been rejected. . .gradually trying to back the theater's aquisitions person into dismissing him for a non PC reason when frankly all they have to say is that his work is generally boring and pretty much peaked with the line "Honey, I'm Home - o!" 20 years ago. Now if, because of this, I am called homophobic, it will just be more laziness. It's an easy accusation because it's tough to refute. So it's over used and barely has meaning. There is a big difference between someone getting beaten up in Timmons for "being gay" and someone lingering and prancing in the health club shower hoping to cruise someone and causing some guys to wait it out frozen by the lockers until he leaves. The latter is actually a reasonable and healthy discomfort over someone being rude. As for how someone gets beaten up for being gay, I don't think that means he sand a Shania Twain song in front of the courthouse. I'm assuming it was unprovoked, and hateful prejudiced bullies descended and swarmed the poor little guy. He might have made fun of their plaid shirts or their low I.Q. (those involved in the attack, not the population of Timmons). But I don't know.

I don't know about pro-life and pro-choice on abortion. Some Family organization bought air time during the Superbown on CBS to run a carefully crafted spot promiting what was ostensibly a pro-life message, but I don't know if I get it. I had been told all along was that the pro-life position was "against abortion unless the mother's life is at risk." Notice I'm not even saying health, because that's a legal wording from back in the day. The pro-life position still put the mother's LIFE first. That's just common sense. A bird in the hand. . . But the main thrust of this Superbowl ad was that an NFL player would not have been born if his mother had listened to the doctors (plural) who told her not to go full term. And these presumably weren't abortion providers angling for a gig. So the ad throws out a significant pro-life point. What about the choice part? The mother CHOSE to ignore the doctors because it was her own life to risk. So it was a pro-choice ad, and I haven't seen anyone on the left give CBS credit for being so subversive. They helped write the ad. They were afraid of offending anyone. On the one hand you have the visual reinforcement that gestating fetuses can grow up to be mediocre football players. That has kind of a poor man's Save-Sarah-Connor-So-John-Connor-Can-Be-Born vibe, like the great pro-life movie The Terminator. But how many millions in contributions did that Family Values banner organization spend to promote the choice of the mother to ignore doctors and to under-value the pro-life message by turning ii into something other than a sane and relatable acknowledgement of gestating human beings AND their HOST organism? Was the message intended for any confused young women watching the football game that day? No, it was just for idiots to mark territory and piss off other idiots. Why? I don't know.

New Year Crap-Clear

So I'm sorting through the gym bag that usually keeps vital work-related materials I take to the workplace, pills, work shirt, body spray and random free newspapers I have read on the subway with articles I hadn't finished importing into my brain. Garbage in, garbage out.

I can understand keeping an issue that boasts one of my letters to the editor. Those may not be thrown out except by accident. Whether I should keep them or not. But since it is perfectly acceptable and thoughtful to leave a Metro or Eye Weekly on the subway seat, I have chosen to stuff the most worthless material in my gym bag. So as I throw these papers out it's a review of the year's news that isn't quite news.

Jerry Lewis went to Australia and when asked if he liked playing cricket he said, "That's a faggot game" and did some physical comedy miming use of a cricket bat. So there's an article about GLAAD slapping him on the sturdy wrist and asking him for an apology. Like millions of Rat Pack fans will abandon Jerry for using the "new F-word." It amazes me how lobby groups seem to be in the business of telling people to lie to them. I don't have to pathologize Jerry for being out of touch with the latest edition of Newspeak. But you can understand if he has lingering resentment for the 2002 TV movie Martin and Lewis that was made about him where a guy from Will and Grace - Sean Hayes - played him. I remember saying to a friend after seeing a clip, "I didn't know Jerry Lewis was gay."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318908/

That gives an idea the kind of time and thought wastage results from reading a newspaper.
Did I have to know about that? When Issiah Washington was fired from Grey's Anatomy for calling T.R. Knight the same derogatory term for homosexual, my first instinct was that this is an over-reaction and extremely political (read: cowardly). T.R. crying on Ellen's couch didn't help boost his preferred image as the stoic leading man he was destined to be. Somehow since those articles we have more recent useless information that his role has been reduced on the show since Mr. Washington went to the Bionic Woman (much to the glee of snarky, fey critics). I'll be honest, I thought the Bionic Woman pilot episode was okay and I like Katee Sackoff as a satirical antagonist. A can't comment on Gay's Anatomy, because I've never seen an episode.

Still the new Bionic Woman pales by comparison to the original Bionic Woman and The Six Million Dollar Man which have been mired in a legal dispute between Universal and I forget what company. I try to google it and the term "Million dollar" is pretty common and "Bionic Woman" tends to bring up reference to the new-fangled version.

I seem to be finding a lot of blurbs about the apparent comeback of Tom Cruise after having supposedly killed his career. Imagine Tom Cruise in the early days of Top Gun and Rainman, with Barbara Walters bringing in a psychic to tell him this: "You will be very popular for many years until what kills your career is that you are so happy that you jump on Oprah's couch - but of course that's not enough to REALLY kill your career; you also criticise Brooke Shields."
What else hurt him? Of course Sumner Redstone making a point of saying that his behaviour hurt the box office of Mission: Impossible III. I see in another trash blurb that they have since reconciled and had lunch, but only after Tom had to become head of MGA/UA. Old Redstone seemed to be administering the death blow, and he was motivated because his lovely wife had a head full of this disposable tabloid crap. The guy manages to survive as a top Box office draw with a name like Cruise and what almost sinks him is an old man's wife reading the kind of crap I'm now finally throwing out.

What I can't have the pleasure of physically trashing is the sort of "news" feed you get signing into certain websites for e-mail. How do they choose these columnists? It has never been more true that somebody got a job by giving a blow. Do I really want to see an idiot's list of the "forgettable movies of the year" or a rant against Mel Gibson and the gossip about his marriage? Just another distraction. I have to reign myself in or I'll spend all of my time e-mailing incompetant cyber-columnists. Those that actually have a talk-back e-mail provided. Even then, likely it only bolsters the impression that people are reading the shite.

I won't mention a local Toronto film community that has a pressence on the web and sends out shameless viral marketing. I like the people involved but I've had to withdraw from involvement or the loop of promotions. It's too much. You get double and tripple versions of the same link and it takes up space in your Facebook feed even if you sellect "less from" this friend. And again I've had to confront this mentality and I've been told point blank that their columnists deliberately take extreme and controversial positions - many of which are inarticulate and non-persuasive - to get people fired up and attract feedback. I just thought why make myself crazy. Throw it all out. Ignore, ignore.

Now I'll have to look at my mostly blank Day-timer from last year, with its pages used as a notebook for some random ideas and snippets of dialogue. Maybe I'll actually have more time to plan things to do this year if I'm not wasting a little bit at a time paying attention to the sickening void of pop culture.

I should add another note for the sake of the few knee-jerks who might happen upon this blog and take offence at my issues with GLAAD and groups like them: I'm all for gay marriage and gay adoption and all of those many bench marks of progress that won't have an impact on what I want or have to do in my own life. But we live in a climate where we don't know each other and few intelligent people dare say anything that isn't affirmative. I'm not surprised to see a full-page article about the return of Andrew "Dice" Clay to comedy. People may very well need to listen to something that is expressing a very valid feeling of discomfort. I don't think discomfort should be lumped in with fear and certainly not hated to the point where someone's disinterest or a market's disinterest in something is branded "non-inclusive." I think it's great that the net version of Star Trek has introduced Captain Kirk's gay nephew, but I'm not rushing to find out how that is illustrated. Live long and prosper, as long as I don't have to pretend T.R. Knight is cool. Roddenberry was bucking the system to deal with race and staff the Enterprise with a multi-racial crew, but these days to buck the system is to be politically incorrect and outrage lobby groups.

All of this cluttering my head as I haul fresh new garbage out the door.