I found this gem this morning, in a story about a possible remake of the movie 9 to 5:
“Tomlin explained that in addition to being a comedy, the reboot would also need to have some bigger meaning behind it. I would like any material that’s just really rich and true and not dishonest and somehow its intention is communicating something better to humanity,” she explained. “I’m interested in any human issue, any human condition, anything about humanity that’s positive or says something meaningful about how we’re living or what we’re doing to each other, any number of things like that. But we like to get the comedy in there.”
There. That right there. All due respect to Lily, that’s exactly why I’ll never watch a reboot, remake, reunion, or sequel of any movie or tv show. Because the stench of self righteous sanctimony has leeched into everything I love.
And I loved 9 to 5. It was pure fluff escapism; just you sitting in a dark room with no distractions, watching talented people tell a good story. That’s what movies are for, a short break from The Grind. We need those breaks now more than ever, much more than we needed them in 1980. But the comedy is an afterthought now; “we make movies to teach you that anyone not in lockstep with our hopelessly naive world view is pure malignant evil. But we’re not opposed to entertaining you if we have any time left”. And that ethic is destroying the very things we used to use to escape it.
West Side Story has a very special place in my heart. It was the first play I ever did, in high school in 1975. Nothing I’d ever done was even remotely relatable to auditioning for a play; there’s only one way to find out you’re good at making it look like you’re involved in an intense in-the-moment confrontation even though you’d spent the last two days memorizing everything you were saying. But I was a natural. It was only my third day at that school, out of my first month in that STATE; I’d never seen a single person in that auditorium before that night, so I knew the couple laughs and gasps I got during my first three minutes on a stage were honest reactions, not supportive gestures from friends.
And that’s all it took. All of a sudden nothing else I was going to be when I grew up mattered. I was 14 years old and just found out what I was supposed to be. I was supposed to be an actor, and that’s the dream I followed. And followed successfully; it didn’t take me long to learn I could easily get any reaction I wanted out of an audience. That’s a mighty useful skill to have; there have been years long stretches where I’d be in the final week of a play and already in rehearsals for my next one.
And what amped me up for my last performance was the same thing that amped me up for all of them, going back to my first one 45 years earlier; the couple dozen to couple hundred people in the audience who just wanted a good night out. I loved that I could give ’em that, that I could keep them wrapped up in the story, and give ’em at least a little break from the real world. Once the curtains go up on a show I’m doing you’re in MY world, and reality has no jurisdiction here. Getting up on that stage, in so many different cities, is the only thing in this world I’ve ever truly loved.
And I’ll never do it again. You think slacktivist armchair feelgoodery is rampant in movies, bubba? Theater is its HOME TURF. I’ve met people who believe being an actor gives them their own personal soapbox; I didn’t know how many believe that’s why theater EXISTS. Not until Facebook, when they’d forget that only 99% of their friends think exactly like them. I saw a very long comment thread on a theater community page a couple years ago, discussing what the point of theater was. In that entire mess I never even once saw the word “entertain.” Some believed theater exists to lecture people about other cultures, some believed it was to teach people ours is racist. Because what a great way to wind down at the end of a hard day; pay for an hour of smug self important suburban kids talking down to you about things they’ve never had a lick of personal exposure to.
That’s not ALL actors of course, not by a long shot. The militant dilettante faction isn’t huge. But it is too big to avoid if you want to work in the business, and they’re the entire reason I don’t anymore. Never dreamed I’d turn my back on the thing I threw my whole adult life at.
When they remade West Side Story recently, people who knew what that show meant to me asked if I was excited to see it. A movie about a white gang vs a Puerto Rican gang in 1950s New York filmed in 2021? Yeah, no. Your culture has taken enough out of me as it is, thanks. Don’t need to see Woke Side Story destroy my high school memories too.
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Bama has been a rodeo cowboy, a professional stuntman, and, for 39 years and counting, a bouncer at various biker bars and redneck rat cage juke joints through the Deep South. He makes cool stuff as Crimson Tied Paragear, using knots his Army Ranger Scoutmaster taught him at Boy Scout summer camp deep in the Okinawan boonies back in 1972.
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