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actor friend of mine tells the following story: He was working as
a lunch-shift bartender at a swank Beverly Hills restaurant. The
customers were all talking about a terrible plane crash that occurred
earlier that morning. A well-known agent stopped by the bar while
waiting for his lunch guest to arrive. He overheard two customers
talking about the crash. It was the first he had heard of it. "How
many people died?" he asked. They told him that the death count
was somewhere between three and four hundred. He winced. "Oh,
man, how awful," he said. "So was there anybody on the
plane?"
He didn't mean
anyone anyone. He meant anyone show business anyone.
He meant anyone I have pretended to be best friends with in the
past anyone. People who are not in show business — or,
to be more specific, people who do not live in the 310 or 212 telephone
area codes — are an impenetrable mystery to those of us who
do. What movies they watch and why, what television shows they choose
and why, what they eat, why they eat it, when they work, what they
drive, and especially how on earth they seem to make do on such
skimpy salaries — these thoughts obsess our waking hours. Figure
them out and the world is yours. That's the chief irony of this
most ironic business: Only those with the common touch can afford
to live like kings. Steven Spielberg is so tuned in to the sensibilities
of ordinary Americans that he no longer needs to be around them.
Ever.
But it's not
like we don't notice when big things happen. Since September 11th,
people out here have been frantically trying to read the national
mood: Do they want stories about terrorists? Do they not want stories
about terrorists? Are comedies going to be big? And in an era of
renewed patriotism and wartime unity, will Hollywood still be able
to rely on the federal government as its catchall villain?
Hollywood,
though, has a chaotic and haphazard way of stumbling right over
the national mood. Of our six key genres — action/suspense,
romantic drama, comedy, romantic comedy, thriller, and plain old
drama — one of them has to fit the national mood, and only
the first, the action picture, really seems out of the mix for a
while. If there's one thing we all learned on September 11th, it's
that big exploding things aren't thrilling, and that Bruce Willis
is not on the airplane to save the passengers and kill the terrorists.
The action picture's predictable and happy ending can't compete
with September 11th's tragic fade out.
That's what
we're all thinking about out here, as we wait an extra 15 minutes
in the morning to have our cars searched and sniffed. The FBI has
reported that the major studios may be targets of further terrorist
attacks, so our cars are stopped at the studio gate, our mail is
x-rayed and checked for anthrax, dogs sniff our tires, and the formerly
friendly, casual gate guard — a man I have waved to twice daily
for ten years — demands to see my studio ID, and when I tell
him I can't find it, demands that I either find it, or in the future,
stay home.
As of this
morning, anthrax spores have been found in areas of Washington,
DC and New York. So far, Hollywood has been spared. But in this
most insecure and status conscious of towns, there is a slight sliver
of the feeling of being left out, like we're suddenly not on the
"A" list of people important enough to poison. This is
hard for us to swallow — I mean, if we were going after the
really important people, we'd certainly hit us. Maybe we'll be lucky
and be overlooked. Or maybe we'll be lucky and be attacked. It all
depends, I guess, on whether you're a normal person, or just know
what normal people want.
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