Better than average ‘quirky’ film ___ 7.5/10

Mike: Take care of yourself a little… so that the people who love you don’t feel like they’re annoying you!

So along comes a simple movie with eccentric characters in a long line of such movies, from, say, Harold and Maude (1971) to Night Shift (1982) Benny and Joon (1993) to Stuck on You (2004) to Sunshine Cleaning Company (2008) to dozens of others over the years. And we tend to like movies in which one or more of the principals is a ‘few bubbles off of plumb.’ When you look at various projects available to Hollywood actors who have ‘made it’—and that designation certainly applies to Jennifer Anniston and Steve Zahn—I feel the better ones take time for some smaller, odder ideas that give them more delight in the performance than cash in the bank. Continue reading →

Some thoughts on ‘being known for being known’
and what it means to the freedom movement

This definition of celebrity—being known for being known—is pretty close to a quote from a an interesting piece I read from a Web article by Daniel Epstein published a couple of years ago in The Weekly Standard of all places[1]. Actually, Epstein was quoting Daniel Boorstin from The Image: Or What Happened to the American Dream: “The celebrity,” Boorstin wrote, “is a person who is well-known for his well-knownness.”[2]

Epstein continues by making a distinction between fame and celebrity: fame being based more on actual achievement, while celebrity especially recently become more the art of being paid attention to by large numbers of people on television regardless of any personal noteworthiness. Probably the most classic example is Brian “Kato” Kaelin, the house guest of OJ Simpson. The Kaelin persona reminds me of the Woody Allen movie, Zelig, in which a nondescript man seeks to blend in and dissemble as if he were one of the famous people himself. Continue reading →