From Bottoms, in theaters now
Do painters get painter’s block? Do sculptors get sculptor’s block? Do potters get potter’s block? If they do I’ve never heard tell of it. If they don’t, why the hell not? I’ve heard people claim that writer’s block is a myth. This is said by people who either don’t write or can’t imagine anything that is not within their own experience. In other words they lack imagination.
Lacking imagination does not merely mean you cannot conjure stories, it means you lack empathy. You cannot conceive of things outside of your world. This is a common affliction among conservatives in the United States. They are cold-hearted precisely because they have no empathy and they lack empathy because they have no imagination. Their thinking is stilted, stifled and stuffed.
I have no segue to introduce the fact that I saw a new film called Bottoms at an actual movie theater on Sunday (Berkeley’s last — theater, not Sunday). It was an absurdist comedy centering around two lesbians in high school who form a sort of fight club. Their motives are not necessarily pure but like a latter day Mean Girls there is a redemption arc and a helluva story in the bargain. There are also many laughs some courtesy of former Cal and NFL football player Marshawn Lynch who plays a teacher named Mr. G. He starts one class by saying that the holocaust was real and it all stemmed from the Treaty of Versailles and he wants his students to act out said treaty. That’s some innovative teaching. Marshawn improvised a lot of his lines and that was a really good call by the director. Bottoms was great raunchy fun with much to say about high school, sexuality, masculinity and friendship. I look forward to more from the young director, Emma Seligman.
Last night I watched Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, courtesy of the Criterion Channel. It is a documentary about the great biographer Caro and the even greater editor, Gottlieb who are still working in their late eighties. Caro rocketed to fame with his 1975 bio of Robert Moses, The Power Broker and has since produced four volumes (when the hell is the fifth coming?) of a biography on Lyndon Johnson. Meanwhile Gottlieb has edited over 700 books including Catch-22, True Grit, all of Toni Morrison’s oeuvre and books by the likes of Michael Critchon, Bill Clinton, Ray Bradbury, Lauren Bacall, Salman Rushdie, John Cheever, John le Carre and many, many more. The film is about both men as individuals and also on their long collaboration. They are extremely admirable individuals whose contributions have been incalculable. It was moving, inspiring and thought-provoking. Lizzie Gottlieb, one of the subject’s daughter, directed.
For reasons too complex to get into I have today off. It is my pleasure to be writing here now. It is also my sad lot to be as depressed as hell. Merciful heavens but does life feel grim and awful and full of foreboding and terrors and heartache and pain and anguish and do I feel worthless and hated and a complete failure. I’ve experienced this enough to know that it won’t last but I can’t FEEL that it won’t last. It feels forever as obvious and ugly as death. It’s not the worst level of depression, If it were I’d not be able to write. How terrible to think I’ve suffered worse than this. How grateful to be writing and alive and healthy. There’s tomorrow.
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