Ghost In The Machine

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellow,

I met up with Jefe and Manda for lunch today. They were full of fun and news and opinions about films, as always. 

Jefe really wants me to watch "Oppenheimer". He gets quite passionate. He wants me to love it as much as he loved it. I tried to explain that I don't think we go to movies for the same reason.

He loves the cinematography and the sound and the artistic and intellectual experience. That's not why I go.  

I go as a social thing. I loved seeing Barbie and sitting near Fazzy and hearing her hooting with laughter. 

I loved that time I saw "Skyfall" in Scotland and when Albert Finney shouted, "Welcome tae Scotland!" and the whole crowd cheered. 

I loved when Robert De Niro gave his "baseball" speech in "The Untouchables" and the whole audience gasped in unison.

A film like "Oppenheimer" doesn't have whooping and laughing and hollering and gasping. At least, I don't think. 

So I can wait for it to come to tv. 

Poor Jefe was perplexed.

We ordered coffees and they all came with teddy bears in the foam. Even if you don't like coffee I think you should order them just for the art.

Speaking of which, I've been watching, "The Andy Warhol Diaries" on Netflix. It just seemed like good timing. I'd recently rediscovered Songs for Drella by John Cale and Lou Reed. 

It's a series of songs about Andy Warhol written and performed by the pair back in 1990. I remember watching it on Channel 4 and being fascinated enough to buy a book on The Factory, even though I have really no artistic sense whatsoever and it all means nothing to me.

Watching the Netflix show is a similar experience to the book. Warhol worked very hard to eliminate his personality. At least in public. On the show, his words are articulated by an AI and it seems perfectly appropriate because his voice in life was so very impassive and "oh gee that was so nice" and non-committal. 

The show talks about his loves and his tragedies but it's strange to hear his words about them. I don't think it's that nothing touched him. I think it's that he became an expert at acting like nothing touched him.

He wanted to be a machine, he said. Because machines have no feelings and no problems. 

It's an odd sort of non-existence. But it must have been a lie because people clearly loved him. From his diary it's hard to understand. But maybe even his diary was performance art. Another exercise in removing his personality from the equation. 

I'm not an impassive person myself. You may have noticed. I need the whoop and holler of the crowd. And to whoop and holler along with you.

And that is why Oppenheimer in the cinema is not for me. 

S.