“I dislike comedy; never get the jokes. True for TV as well as ancient lit.”
– Anne Carson
Since the publication of her now classic book Eros the Bittersweet a quarter century ago, Anne Carson has become one of the most acclaimed classicists, translators, poets and essayists of her generation. In one of her most acclaimed translations, If Not, Winter, Ms. Carson translated and presented the complete works of Sappho, including the fragments, revealing what has been lost as well as what was written in a way that is striking, showing Sappho’s genius as a poet but also serving as a reminder of what has been lost to time.
Ms. Carson is also a noted poet and essayist who writes about love and desire, longing and despair, heartbreak, what has been lost and how we fill those voids that have been left in our lives. In Autobiography of Red, a novel in verse, she retells the myth of Herakles’ tenth labor where he slays the monster Geryon. In Ms. Carson’s contemporary telling, Herakles steals the boy’s innocence and breaks his heart. In her recent book Nox, she tackled a much more personal subject, her relationship with her late brother and his death, composing a hauntingly beautiful book that certainly stands as one of the great books about grief.
Ms. Carson also achieved pop culture notoriety when in the first episode of The L Word, a discussion of Carson’s work became an elaborate seduction scene. That a book about love in ancient Greek literature could serve as such a catalyst is odd enough, but that Ms. Carson could be mentioned by name makes her the rare writer and public intellectual with a reputation to be so noted. Given all that, it seems in poor taste to note that the characters in The L Word largely misunderstood the book.
Her most recent book is Antigonick. A translation of the classic play by Sophokles, the book, published by New Directions, is one of the best designed books of the year and a unique reading experience. Ms. Carson hand-lettered the text of the play, which isn’t presented like most plays but incorporated within pages of artwork. As is the case with her previous book, Nox, Antigonick is unique and a reading experience that can’t be replicated electronically. Ms. Carson was kind enough to agree to speak with us about the book and her work and we exchanged a series of emails in which she demonstrated that her passion for literature and the Greek classics has not dimmed, but that she is uninterested in discussing personal topics. Despite her lack of interest, she did answer the questions. As she said in response to a different question, “Canadians are dutiful.”
“There was nothing exciting about playing the violin or the recorder.”
– John Digweed
It’s hard to believe that it has been ten years since the seminal dance album, Renaissance: The Mix Collection, was released. Now Sasha and John Digweed have teamed up to digitally remix and remaster the album for the modern age. I got a chance to talk with Digweed about the long influence of his work.
“To go from being a waiter to making a film with my best mates is just amazing.”
– Nick Frost
Due to the success of Shaun of the Dead, co-stars Nick Frost and Simon Pegg are now international movie stars. The DVD has recently been released in America and it’s loaded with cool extras like audio commentary, casting tapes, Simon Pegg’s video diary and Edgar & Simon’s pitch to the studio. I got a chance to talk to both Pegg and Frost in New York City.
“Although I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict I still feel that drugs should be legalized.”
– Greg Behrendt
Comedian Greg Behrendt has had a banner year. His book with Liz Tuccillo, He’s Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys, has sold almost 2 million copies, his standup act is popular enough to sell out large venues and the sitcom he worked on, Committed, is doing well. Behrendt kickstarted his career working with Un-Cabaret, honing his unique voice through standup.
Last week I saw the movie Kumare. It’s a tremendously important film that I really hope gets a lot of notice. But it’s a movie that will be widely misunderstood. Take, for example, the review in the June 29th issue of Entertainment Weekly. They say:
American filmmaker Vikram Gandhi adopted the singsong Indian accent of his elders, grew his hair long, posed as a guru, and found followers in Phoenix. And while he was at it, he kept cameras rolling to make this dubious Borat-esque documentary. Gandhi tries to dodge criticism of his mocking scam by rationalizing that even a phony wise man can offer real solace. Besides, he says, he learned something about sincerity — not to mention the value of film festivals as fertile ground for publicity stunts.
Now, I like Entertainment Weekly. I’m even a subscriber. But I’m not at all surprised that they were unable to grasp the point of this movie. As they say, this is a movie about a guy of Indian descent who posed as a guru and filmed it. But what Vikram Gandhi did was not in any way a “mocking scam” nor is this film at all “Borat-esque.” As Borat, Sasha Baron Cohen played his character and the reactions it got for laughs. And while there are plenty of funny moments in Kumare, Vikram is dealing with a much more serious and important subject. But it’s a subject that I doubt the writers at Entertainment Weekly have much close contact with and so perhaps I can forgive them for completely missing the point.
As I’ve often written in this blog and in my books, I am highly uncomfortable in my Buddhist robes. Even though I am entitled to wear the golden colored sash (called an o-kesa) of a so-called “Zen Master,” I rarely take the damned thing out of the box it lives in, in the bottom of my closet. This is because as soon as you put something like that on a certain segment of the people you meet start reacting to you in ways that I find highly bizarre and off-putting.
Uniforms are powerful and significant. This is why the police, our “boys in blue,” dress in special clothes. It’s why the President of the United States always has a red tie. It’s why priests of all religions dress up in funny outfits. People really respond to that stuff.
Vikram had a serious interest in why certain well-heeled middle-class Americans are so easily drawn to pretty much anyone with a funny accent who puts on a set of robes. His first idea was to make a documentary film about actual gurus. But what he found disgusted and deeply disturbed him. He uses a few of the interviews he conducted for this unfinished project in the early part of the movie. And some of them are really chilling.
The one that bugged me most was Bhagavan Das who says, “If I was a twenty year old girl, I would love hanging out with me. What could be more fabulous than having sex with a really spiritual mystical person?” Vkram cuts this together with shots of a slightly spaced out but very attractive young blonde who says of Bhagavan Das, “He’s the new teacher of this age, of this world. He’s someone who has the answer, I believe.” Yep. And the answer is in his pants.
Bhagavan Das, in case you were wondering, is an old teacher of Ram Dass, the guy who wrote Be Here Now, and has been milking his association with Ram Dass for the past forty years (he even titled his own book It’s Here Now (Are You?)). He was a hippie who went to India and became a yogi then made a lot of famous friends including Jimi Hendrix. Which is fine. But I saw him in that video and it’s hard to imagine sex with a dude that hairy would be all that fabulous for a twenty-year old girl.
I don’t want to draw this into yet another of my rants about the matter of spiritual teachers who sleep with their students. I wrote two books that go deeply into that subject. But it’s just one of the things that drove Vkram to undertake the important social experiment he documents in this film.
By putting on some orange robes and imitating his grandmother’s Indian accent and mannerisms, Vkram discovered that there are people out there who are willing to believe just about any damned thing as long as it’s spoken by someone who appears to represent some kind of mystical spiritual tradition from the mysterious East. He has them doing air guitar moves and getting little penises drawn on their foreheads. Not only that, he tells them straight up that the thing he’s drawing on their foreheads is a dick and they still let him do it.
These are not dumb people either. They are intelligent, educated and sincere. Nor does Vkram try to make them look like fools. Over and over again he takes pains to point out that pretty much anyone could potentially fall for this kind of thing if they were seeking “The Answer” outside of themselves.
But as the guru Sri Kumare, Vkram has a message. And his message is that the answer is always within each of us. That we do not need to seek it in someone else. He intends to prove that by first luring his followers in with the scam of the guru Sri Kumare and then revealing to them that he’s really just a guy from New Jersey. I won’t give away the ending. But suffice it to say, it’s pretty intense.
The thing is, though, as Entertainment Weekly failed to understand in spite of saying it in their review, “even a phony wise man can offer real solace.” Sri Kumare, phony as he is, ends up doing his followers some actual good. That’s because Vikram, the man inside the Sri Kumare guise, is at heart a good guy who truly does want to help — even if that wasn’t what he initially set out to do. He’s not trying to scam these people. He’s trying to make a very important point. Sure he’s also trying to get a hit movie out of it. And I really hope his movie is a hit because a lot of people need to see this film.
It’s going to upset a certain segment of the audience who will see themselves in Sri Kumare’s followers and feel that they’re being played for fools. And you know what? It ought to upset them. That is precisely the point. But this is going to make it tough for Vkram to get the film seen by the people who most need to see it. It would be sad if the only people who get into the film are those who see Sri Kumare’s followers as a bunch of idiots and who mistakenly believe they’re above all that.
As for me, who very definitely is one of the people who needed to see this movie, it’s got me thinking again about the whole matter of spiritual uniforms and the role of the teacher in the spiritual quest. It’s true that the answer is within each and every one of us. But it’s also true that most of us need someone else to help us see that. The film Kumare demonstrates this in a very concrete — and highly entertaining — way.
The question it raises for me is this; Does it really even matter if the teacher has any sort of grounding? Can anyone at all put on some robes and, if he or she is at least a decent person, act as a guide for others? Why should I insist that anyone I would pass my lineage on to be extremely balanced before I give them the paperwork that lets them wear one of those silly golden colored sashes? My tentative answer is, on the one hand pretty much anyone who is even just a bit balanced can help others find balance. But such a person could only help their followers to a limited degree.
Also, as Vikram in the guise of the guru Kumare discovered, putting on those robe can make you act differently. When people start to trust in you, as they trusted in the phony Sri Kumare, any decent person will feel the need to try and be worthy of that trust. This may be why Dogen extolled the virtues of wearing the o-kesa, calling it “the great robe of liberation.”
But those robes can also be a dangerous weapon. Putting on the robe may make a decent person inclined to act more decently. But a less decent person can use its mojo to get all kinds of things like money and sex and power. The movie Kumare only hints at the extent to which one can abuse such power. But the real world provides plenty of examples.
“I often feel like my Los Angeles is never represented accurately onscreen.”
– Alex Kurtzman
This is one of the only times I’ve spoken to Alex Kurtzman by himself. He’s usually part of the screenwriting duo of Orci and Kurtzman. He and his partner Bob have written films like Transformers, Star Trek and Cowboys & Aliens. The duo also co-created TV’s Fringe. Forbes Magazine called them “Hollywood’s Secret Weapons” and considers them “the force behind $3 billion in box office.”
Not only was I getting Kurtzman solo, but he made time for me at a moment I couldn’t believe. He had just returned from a nationwide tour promoting his new movie, People Like Us, and as soon as he got home from the airport he called me. I know what it feels like to travel. I would not be coherent after a flight and a drive. I guess that’s why I’m not a screenwriter.
People Like Us is also Kurtzman’s directorial debut. It is the personal story of a debt-ridden investor (Chris Pine) who grudgingly returns home for his father’s funeral. When the will is read, he learns he has a sister (Elizabeth Banks) and nephew, whom he meets but doesn’t quite fully introduce himself to.
If you thought talking robots or space aliens were hard to explain, here’s a situation that would take a Hollywood mastermind to sort out. Luckily Kurtzman was on the case. He couldn’t keep his original title, which was Welcome to People, but Kurtzman explained how he dealt with a human drama. After we asked about all the other big movies he’s writing and producing, Kurtzman left us with some screenwriting theory advice too.
In the hours following the carnage that took place at the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, there was a remarkable flood of moving reactions from across the internet. It’s been more than a week since that awful night, and online communities remain one of the greatest allies for the victims.
Seventy of the innocent movie goers that entered Theater 9 excited to enjoy The Dark Knight Rises, ended the tragic evening either spread out among seven local area hospitals or in the morgue because of wounds inflicted by gunfire. Many of the victims were in serious or critical condition, and a total of twelve didn’t survive that night. Doctors and surgeons scrambled to help all of the victims, but their efforts were hindered by a blood shortage. Websites such as Lets’s Be Friends Again helped promote an emergency call for blood in this time of need.
A well-intentioned, if somewhat misguided, viral post requesting that Christian Bale visit the victims also did the rounds on Facebook. With dozens hospitalized in need of blood, a celebrity appearance was what the city wanted, but not what the city needed. More groups rose up and made efforts online to promote blood donation. Social media kept the blood drives fresh on everyone’s mind as the feeds were filled with images and articles encouraging donations.
It wasn’t just blood the patients in the hospital were in dire need of though. Many of the injured were without health insurance. A local standup comedian, Caleb Medley, was shot in the face that night. His medical bills quickly rose well into six figures; all the while, his wife Katie was in labor with their baby, Hugo. The family doesn’t have insurance and they fear the bills the young couple could be facing will haunt them for the rest of their lives. CalebMedley.com was established to accept donations to help ease the couple’s medical bill burden. With the help of social media, the story was picked up by major news organizations.
The city also got what it wanted. On his own accord, without contacting his publicist, Christian Bale showed up in Denver to visit the victims. No one would have even known Bale made an appearance if it hadn’t been for people tweeting and posting to Facebook from the hospital. Bale also visited the memorial set up near the theater.
Amazing acts of generosity and kindness have come through the social media networks, but that isn’t to say that everyone is sympathetic and respectful. Amongst all the calls for blood donations and the thousands of well wishes, social media feeds were beset with posts politicizing the issue, most of these honed in on the issue of gun control. Now, I am not saying that this isn’t the time to talk about gun control, but both sides used this disaster as an excuse to further polarize the debate, when in fact an air of pragmatism and compromise is needed if we are to effect lasting change for the better. In the middle of the raging gun control debate, were those who complained that this wasn’t the time to discuss the issue. In reality, this is the perfect time to discuss all issues that tie into this catastrophe, and guns are part of that.
My quick note on guns: While I don’t agree with absolute gun control, I can’t fathom why civilians are allowed to legally purchase military grade weapons, like the assault rifle that was firing at my friends and I. As for those who’ve posted comments along the line of “if only someone else in the theater had been armed,” your logic is flawed and misinformed. The coward in question opened fire on a crowd of unsuspecting moviegoers in a dark and confined space, dressed in full combat armor, neck and head covering included. More people firing guns would have only added to the confusion and senseless violence.
My final message to everyone on the internet is to just do the best you can with the resources available to you. This event has proven the power of social media networking. This is a power that each of us exercise every day. Whenever you ‘like’ or repost an article for your friends to see, that message gets passed a little further and becomes a bit louder. All I ask is that you start watching what messages you pass. As I asked of the media in my first post, please stop posting or reposting pictures of the shooter, or articles specifically about him. Stop giving him the attention and infamy he craves, and stop helping to write his name into the history books.
My personal challenge to everyone using social media: Convince Steam and the creators of the Batman Arkham series to put all affiliated games on sale for one day with proceeds going to the Aurora Victim Relief Fund.
A.J. Focht is a student, writer, and self-identifying geek. He has a BA in English, and is currently pursuing his Master’s degree at the University of Denver. He is a regular contributor to SuicideGirls. His work is also featured in Kush Magazine.
