I’ve been hearing a lot lately about the “hard left,” nervous right-wingers inventing a new bogeyman, someone else to scare themselves with. The “dirtbag left,” which once referred to the preeminent political media podcasters of the late-2010s and early-2020s, is now passé—when the hosts of True Anon are profiled in The New York Times, you know the movement’s over. What movement? Someone other than Trump, someone other than Hillary, or Kamala, or Joe. Yes, we did it, Joe, but what’ve you done for me lately? I enjoyed reading Russ Smith’s (a friend) consternation over Kamala Harris’ cash-in “memoir” 107 Days [https://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/a-reward-for-losing] and its relentless promotion, but I’d like to clarify why this book is being pushed so hard: men don’t read, but women read; Kamala Harris is a woman, ergo, you’ve got more than half the world’s population right there.
That’s the kind of fuzzy math her campaign was into. Mr. Fincher would never allow it. He always says, “It’s $600,000 a day to rent the soundstage. Why knock off at four in the afternoon if you haven’t gotten it exactly right? I don’t want to have to come back for reshoots any more than you do.” Given $1.5 billion, I’m sure My Director and My Sensei would make many more movies, glorious movies, in sparkling Technicolor and widescreen SuperScope, CinemaScope, TechniScope, every ‘scope’; I know my Sensei likes wider anamorphic lenses because he “doesn’t like the background separation from the actors,” while My Director shoots spherical and adds lens flare in post. Go figure. I can’t.
I’m sitting in a room, getting fitted for a costume. I’ll be playing a waiter in a soul food restaurant—they’ve told me to start thinking about accents, about patois. Sorry, excuse me? I’m not trying to ruin my career like that guy that played Jar Jar Binks. Did you know he was suicidal after the movie came out? I would be, too: acting in a Star Wars film is as low as you can go as an actor. When you’re starting out, you take what you can get, and you hope for something like Cutter’s Way: a film that’s really confusing the first time you watch it, and one of the lead actors is really annoying, and the ending is really bad and ambiguous, but then you watch it again five years later and you love it just as much as everyone else.
John Heard’s career wasn’t what it should’ve been. True, he was a total asshole on most sets, but John (a friend) simply had a combative personality. I’ve been told that I’ve been “combative” today simply because I don’t want to do a Willie Best impersonation. I don’t even know what scene we’re shooting—wait, Lena Dunham is here? What? This is getting crazy. I’ve never seen Brad Pitt so supplicant. I’ve gotta meet this chick… there aren’t many people on Earth that I can’t call “a friend,” and she’s one of them… but wait… maybe she’ll try to eat me… or enslave me as her pet… hmmm… well, I’m okay with the latter. Fuck your way to the top, Benny. Just don’t get stuck in the oven.
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