work days

[gurdonark]

I'm in one of those "arrive at the office at dawn,leave well after dark" modes. Fortunately, I've so far this cycle avoided having to do any midnight dreary times, although I feel as though I might be prone to ponder, weak and weary. Perhaps it's just as well, though. The summer heat I kept waiting for all summer arrived this week. It's been blazing hot during the day. Fortunately, the evenings cool into the 70s.

Yesterday the E! cable network actually showed a documentary on the making of the film "Sixteen Candles". Every picture tells a story, don't it? I have to admit I kind of like those John Hughes teen movies, although "Some Kind of Wonderful", the inverted remake of "Pretty in Pink", is my favorite.

I've been slogging through Alan Cumming's and Jennifer Jason Leigh's "The Anniversary Party" bit by bit. I bought it for very little money at Blockbuster. It's a small film, lots of stars on scale pitching in. Its theme is what the fishbowl of fame does to one. It's curious, though--even though nobody we knew was famous when we lived in LA, the film seems to be about people we knew who were trying to be in "the business", too. I've never met any "movie stars". But I've met lots of people of the "remember the grizzled man in episode 53 of Gunsmoke? That was me!" variety. I've met horror directors of grade ZZZ films, and people who used to be live-ins of famous stars, but now are live-ins of unsuccessful auditions. The great thing about Los Angeles is that so many people move there to remake themselves into different people--people who didn't grow up in the midwest, who weren't teased in high school, who weren't boring suburban kids.

The bad thing about Los Angeles is also that so many people move there to remake themselves. One stereotype that is largely true is that a lot of folks move there with stars in their eyes, thinking it will work their miracle. The problem is that even for those who get a little pixie dust in their lives, nothing really changes. Get a job working on the Disney cartoons? Then instead of thanking the heavens you're no longer teaching community college, complain that you ended up being a background colorist instead of an illustrator. Finally got that job script writing? Great, but it's My Sister Sam for which you're writing. It's good to be ambitious, to want more than you have. But at some point, work has to give you that feeling that "I can do this. This is a way for me to earn an income. This is okay". At some point, one has to be able to define everything in one's life as worth living.

I don't miss the time we spent in the westside of Los Angeles, in the apartment building where everyone was in entertainment but us and the nice accountants across the hall and the doctor downstairs who hated our dog. After the Northridge quake hit, I remember taking my shivering dog out into the hallways (my wife having had the wisdom to be visiting a college friend in Santa Cruz), where all our neighbors were gathered. We all stood and talked like real neighbors, in the dark, listening to the radio tell us how bad an earthquake it had been. For a brief instant, everyone set aside the pretension, the exclusion, and the need to be "hip". We all just chatted like human beings. The time passed--sometimes it takes an earthquake to get people to be pleasant to one another, but getting them to stay that way is more than even a natural disaster can do.

I measure the first moments of true happiness during our time in Los Angeles from the day we moved into the Crescenta Valley, where the only people in "the business" we knew worked as camerapeople, and a sense of neighborhood existed. Life is too short to spend it among people desperate not to be who they really are. I have much to do today, though, and won't worry much about the perfidy of people.

Comments

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

(holds neon APPLAUSE sign!)

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

thanks :)

[amatrixangel.livejournal.com]

Gunsmoke? oh hey! I used to watch that! yes, we are very multi-cultural in Oz :)

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

How funny! I watch Farscape sometimes, too :)
But is it you guys that inflicted Kylie Minogue on us?

[amatrixangel.livejournal.com]

*gawd* - well we had to export our convicts someplace ;p

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Well, that does explain Paul Hogan

[inushnu.livejournal.com]

The question is not what you look at but what you see. --Henry David Thoreau

I have to defend my beloved City of Angels by stating that what you talk of here is common to HUMANITY. We all, every one of us, look at what we have, the job we are lucky to get, the life we live and wish for it to be different, wish for it to be better. Some of us get better at accepting and enjoying this life but we still feel those seeds of doubt wishing to break the casings around their soft bodies and become hard with germination. Just because LA is one of the Big Cities in the world it is going to be subject to HUGE swings of judgement because it draws in certain "types" of people. We are going to notice the pervading trend of the area more because of this mass exodus-type of migration.

I am just tired of the stereotype. People will find, in life, exactly what they look for.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I like LA a great deal. I met some wonderful people there. But the kind of ambition to be famous is a slightly different ambition than the ambition to be merely successful in other ways. I think that the LA stereotype is wrong as to most of LA County, which does not know and could care less about "the Industry".
One thing I learned about LA is that the westside notion that LA only exists in the Westside and the south bay is mistaken. At the same time, I have met folks in the entertainment business who fit the stereotype all too well--sometimes what you see is what there is to see.

[inushnu.livejournal.com]

"ambition to be famous is a slightly different ambition than the ambition to be merely successful.." are you sure about this? Isnt is all ego driven? You want to make a certain amount of money, command a certain amount of status because then you have a certain amount of power.... Its the american dream... actors and "industry" people are just hoping on a bigger scale when the typically ambitious person is thinking not of world domination (cue wry smile) but of community domination. Semantics.........

It is all in the looking glass through which you peer because, even the most superficial of these industry types will be viewed by the tint of glass by which you are using.

What you see is what you want to see, not what there "is to see" as there are no hard truths. Perception is all relative.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I think it is entirely fair to posit that perception enters into this. We all know our own experiences. But I don't necessarily reject my perceptions, merely because they are perceptions. I just know what I perceived.

[sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com]

I disagree with your definition of success as making a certain amount of money, status, and power. I, too, live and work in a Big City that is subject to the same swings of judgement, and I work in the theatre here. Granted, I know many people who are only interested in success and tiny spots TV commercials. But I know also know many people here who are more interested in the success of working hard at something they love for a living, more than they are in monetary success.

I also disagree with the idea that ambition is all "ego-driven." (I could see this in the Ayn Rand sense of the word, but not the standard American use that I suspect you intended.) Actors, directors, artists are all at their worst when they're driven only by ego. Many of these artists do get paid billions of dollars for bad work. But I'm sure that there are people in L.A., like there are here, who want something more than an ego-centric life in film and theatre.

All of this is to say that what you assert about perception being subjective is equally true about success.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I don't define success in terms of money or power, so I'll have to review my post to see where I erred in giving that impression. I don't see the world in Rand objectivist terms, so I'll have to think more on the issue of ego.

I agree that success is a matter of perception.
I have known many artists (actors, writers, etc.) who do quality work and only want to be recognized for it. I think the criticism is entirely fair when it notes that the post over-generalizes based on perception. (as is a related criticism by inushnu. At the same time, in certain moments of time, I have met certain people who had an approach to it I found ambitious in the "wrong" way for the "wrong" things. I guess I got to thinking about this because that movie The Anniversary Party makes this point well. But I know lots of artists, writers and actors who do the right thing--for the right reason. Even if we're only talking about "my perception" of what is right.

Thanks for the comment. Well put.

[sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com]

No, no, I was replying to inushnu's comment. :)

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I'm mixed up again :)

[sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com]

That's all right. This message board format doesn't always make sense. Right after I posted, I thought, "I hope people don't think that I'm replying to gurdonark's comment."

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Life is too short to spend it among people desperate not to be who they really are.

I like that. Thanks!