Auld Reacquaintance
I have discovered that I don’t listen to as much music around the house as I used to. After a decade and a half of living alone, while I still love music, what I have discovered that I need, subconsciously, are other human voices. My father is a fan of classical music, and has always had a strained relationship with public radio, which was the primary source for intelligent classical programming, but which featured talk, talk, talk ninety percent of the rest of the time. For whatever reason, he had little use for listening to other people; it wasn’t what he needed as part of his background. Whereas, while I like the comfort of listening to familiar music — and, perhaps as part of my father’s influence, much of that music was comprised of orchestral film scores — for the last several years my primary source of internal stimulus and conversation has been podcasts.
In talking with my friend Meggie, I discovered that what I thought was normal parasocial behavior — of imagining myself in conversation with the podcast hosts, figuring out how I would answer the questions being posed if I were ever to be a guest — was not entirely typical. It is, perhaps, born more out of a combination of using podcasts as a substitute for human interaction and a wistful male ego that aspires to one day accomplish something that would lead to being sought after as a guest that leads me to practice my answers to questions from people I will never meet.
Much of my podcasting still is primarily sourced from personalities involved with either the Largo/UCB Los Angeles comedy nexus, or prominent figures from BBC4 panel shows, and are usually trivia shows or film podcasts. So there’s a degree of interactivity built in to the format, making the parasocial relationship not so surprising (he justifies somewhat defensively…). Much in the way that Jeopardy is built around the audience trying to see if they would do as well as the contestants, I listen to podcasts with an ear toward how I might have performed. Which, incidentally, almost happened: I was an alternate contestant for the touring Boston episode of Ask Me Another…, I got to dodge the bullet of actually losing live on air, and got preferred seating to safely maintain the listener relationship. The producer told me that, as an alternate, the next time I attended a performance I would be able to jump to the front of the queue and be selected. I laughed and said that I wasn’t likely I’d be in Brooklyn on a random Tuesday or Wednesday night, but that I’d keep that in mind. Seven years later, the producer has moved on from the show and I wonder both: if that offer has expired, and also if that’s why I still live in this zone of thinking that I need to keep on my toes in terms of possible participation.
So I wander around my apartment answering lots of questions being asked of other people. I’m trying to choose what my favorite starter, side, main course, drink, and dessert would be in the Dream Restaurant, I’m trying to figure out what film I first remember seeing, which film I loved as a kid and think is shit now, and which film that people hate but I love and conversely which film people love but I can’t stand, and I’m determining how I would have rated a movie on a scale of 0 to 99 when I first saw it in 1999, and how those ratings would have changed today? But those are all year-’round reflections and inquiries. The timely, seasonal question over on Doug Loves Movies has been: what is the holiday movie that contestants have chosen as their favorite? Read the rest of this entry »
LE CARRÉ DIEM: Pro Patria Mori
A couple weeks ago, it was announced that David Cornwell, who had written under the pseudonym John le Carré for decades, had died. I may have found out, most banally, on Facebook, where I have subscribed to his fan page. I had enjoyed the announcements that spun out of there, most recently about the paperback edition of Agent Running In The Field — a book which I had purchased eagerly in hardback the week of its release, spurred on, no doubt by earlier announcements issuing from that same source.
It stung to hear of his passing, for entirely selfish reasons. There is literally no one on the planet who will live forever, but certain people take on the character of eternity regardless, particularly if they pre-date one and continue to flourish during one’s significant life changes. I mentioned in my Le Carré film adaptation recap series that I came to him on two fronts. The first was during a Michelle Pfeiffer-soaked adolescence ignited by her whisky-husk voice in the vinyl Catwoman outfit, but confirmed by her appearance in The Russia House, where her glamour was downplayed by the costumers and elevated by the text.
But the other source was the BBC television adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, which I did not truly deconstruct on the (still partially unfinished) series. Upon rewatching the film for the blog entry, I found myself incapable of disentangling my feelings about the film from comparisons to the miniseries. Much in the way that I don’t feel myself wholly capable of judging the Knightley/Macfadyen Pride & Prejudice, because I’m not watching it as a movie so much as I’m watching it as a condensed version of the Ehle/Firth miniseries, I can’t get Alec Guinness out of my head while watching Gary Oldman. And more than just the performance, I’m judging Alfredson on his choices in interpreting the script versus the more luxurious prior effort. It’s not really fair.
It’s additionally unfair because my attachment to Guinness’ George Smiley is significantly sentimental. Read the rest of this entry »
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