Friday, November 26, 2010

Who's the star of your biopic?

The star of the new film “The King’s Speech” is Colin Firth, playing George VI of England. He doesn’t look anything like the King. He looks better. There’s probably someone on the West End Stage that does resemble George VI but not someone who can open a movie. Helena Bonham Carter plays his wife Queen Elizabeth, who also looks like someone else. Casting is 50% of a production according to Director Peter Bogdanovich and he’s probably right. I just saw “Fair Game” and Sean Penn and Naomi Watts do actually look very similar to the protagonists. But the more important question is: who do we want to play us in our biopic? I would have opted for Gordon MacRae when I was in my 20’s, Marcello Mastroianni when I was in my 40’s and then I’d have to pull a Colin Firth to impersonate me today, when I am a wreck and not screen worthy. Oh well, you can always play your story in your head a lot better than anyone else in the world. There aren’t many roles for the elderly actor. I saw “Ghost Writer” this year and Eli Wallach had a small part. He looked wretched, ill and almost at death’s door. So we can’t go there. Ed McMahon once asked Johnny Carson what he was most afraid of, and Johnny answered, “Abe Vigoda nude”. Frightening!

Monday, November 8, 2010

Karl Marx (and others) explain our economy to us.

The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go out to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save—the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour: your capital. The less you are, the more you have.
Marx on the socially involved life. Moral: Help save the economy by living.

The net gain in money values is a more convincing reality than productive work or human livelihood.
Thorstein Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class. Moral: work on Wall St.

Desires still remain extremely enlarged while the means of satisfying them are diminished day by day. And, thus, on every side we trace the ravages of inordinate and unsuccessful ambition kindled in hearts which it consumes in secret and in vain.
Alexis de Tocqueville 1845 Moral: avoid BMW commercials..

“Free and poor! What fun!” The heiress of the fantastic “Diamond as big as the Ritz”
exclaims in anticipation of its demise and her escape. Her beau from the outside world corrects her, deadpan, “It’s impossible to be both together. People have found that out.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald Moral: Money makes the world go round.

The superrich make lousy neighbors; they buy a house and tear it down and build another, twice as big, and leave. Their money is a kind of poverty.
John Updike,”Slum Lords” Moral: downsize and stay content.

The US Tax Code is 16,000 pages long. Moral: Find a legal hiding place in it.

This is the only club where the bouncers throw the customers in…so drink, for Christ’s sake drink!
Ronnie Scott MBE, London jazz club owner Moral: Eat, drink and be merry