Get Shorty

I saw an interview with Danny Devito talking about, among other things, Get Shorty. He said the movie was about confidence.

That made me want to check it out.

Devito’s character in the movie was not very impressive. Maybe that was the point. Travolta, now, he was great. His character was riveting.

I don’t know if it was because the acting was so great. I can’t really think of a particularly dramatic moment for him.

It’s just he was so active, he did so many amazing things. Chili Palmer, nobody got in his way. He got the stuff done.

Confidence. Well maybe. Is that what it takes to get things done? Interesting that Devito, a movie star, would choose that aspect to focus in on.

I think it might be something else.
In the movie itself, Palmer says that he would not go about business the way Zimm did. He wouldn’t go through his shrink’s other client, who happens to be the personal trainer of the great movie star.

He says he would just go ask him.

Of course, for Palmer, little barriers like walls and locked doors are trivial.

I don’t know how attuned he was to psychological barriers. Not so much, I would think. But he never had to encounter any in the movie. Weir, the coveted star, just faded before his direct approach.

The movie put the film industry and organized crime in the same category. Position, territory, it seemed like it was all the same things but different titles.

Do you remember?

I’m taking a night class for writing. This one happens to be a Memoir writing class.

It fit my schedule.

But it’s also a very interesting style.

One of our assignments is to read a memoir and do a presentation about it.

My lazy impulse is to do a report on a book I’ve already read. When I stop to think about it, I have read a lot of memoirs:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Travels With Charley by Steinbeck

Walden by Thoreau

Earth Horizon by Mary Austin

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolfe

Paradise, Piece by Piece by Molly Peacock

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

As Far As You Can Go Without A Passport by Tom Bodett

Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers

On The Road by Jack Keruoac

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman

Grass Soup by Zhang Xianlang

Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott

Citizen 13660by Mine Okubo

Maus by Art Spiegelman

San Francisco Stories by Derek Powazek

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston

Those are the ones I just remember, the ones I’ve read already (or at least started).

I love all of them. But maybe I should branch out and try reading something new.

Mr. Personality

There is so much wrong with this, I can hardly begin.

But did anyone else notice the glaring irony of Miss Princess going on and on about looks not being important (‘I been around so many good looking guys that I just can’t stand, because they rely on their looks…’)

all this, and they show footage

OF HER PUTTING ON HER MAKEUP

!!!!

Repeat after me:

DOUBLE STANDARD