Episode 43: Fame, Work, and Rock Star Parking

Transcript

when my friends and i had first started driving we sort of had this running bit
where we would pull into you know the parking lot of say a restaurant or something we were
going to out to eat or something we'd pull into a parking lot and we'd park and if you were
right in front of the entrance we would say rock star parking and then if you were a little
further out but still very close we would say movie star parking or superstar parking
and everywhere else didn't matter and i always questioned but never actually looked into anything
about this but i always questioned because it seemed to me growing up that a movie star
like a penultimate movie star is more popular than a than a rock star so i always wondered why
like shouldn't movie star be the one right in front of the door but i've never bothered looking up
whether or not in the general zeitgeist of society do people are people more inclined to view
a very high movie star if you were to rank them in terms of fame or notoriety or you know whatever
you're ranking them based on which one of those would be higher than the other in that ranking
system it's probably one of the most meaningless and stupidest things that has stuck in my brain for
the last 25 years that i've never bothered to actually get an answer to and somewhere it just
kind of takes up this like tiny little fraction of a fraction of brain processing power on just like
a regular basis because i still pull into movie or into uh into parking lots and if i get a spot right
to the door front of the door i still say rock star parking like i have a family at this point i say
rock star parking and they don't have any even know what i'm talking about anyway none of that is the
point of what this this is at all i recently went to see the latest mission impossible movie final
reckoning it did what often happens to me when i when i don't think about certain things i walked
away from that movie thinking to myself wow that was a really cool movie like that was a good movie
i mean it was uh kind of a quintessential blockbuster again not trying to go out for
oscars or something but like in terms of a blockbuster movie really seemed cool then i i got home and i watched a
few reviews on it and as people who critique movies for a living kind of broke it down there's a pretty
strong argument to be made that essentially the action scenes are amazing but the movie itself is
kind of a disaster not a disaster but kind of a mess like it's a lot of exposition there's not a lot
of character development or character moments or anything it's all just sort of a build-up for
giant action set pieces which are some of the best giant action set pieces that we've ever seen
on film but i was clearly dazzled by the spectacle of the movie without paying much attention to the
underlying piece there's a separate topic here which has something to do with this workflow that i go
through where it's like if i form it i i try to stay away from reviews of things i want to form my own
opinion and sometimes then later when i go to get other people's opinions sometimes my opinion will
shift and sometimes it won't and there's something some other episode here about like are you flip
flopping to go with common opinion at that point or are your views being legitimately changed but
once again that's also not what this is about what this all made me think of
tom cruise is held up as the last true movie superstar he's held up as sort of the last of the type of
movie stars that do their own stunts and challenge themselves and go bigger and more and
his his star power alone can sell a movie people who talk about this and make this argument are
typically saying it's not that other actors are bad or not doing a good job or that there aren't
other good ones it's just that he's in a league of his own at this point that movies have become so
much more about franchises and cgi and ensemble sort of casts and these sorts of things that
you just don't get this true movie star anymore and it got me thinking about fame a little bit
and how fame has really changed i would say this this is sort of an internet thing juxtaposing
a movie star and we don't talk about tom cruise because tom cruise again he's kind of in a league
of his own so we'll step it down a notch or that's i shouldn't say step it down we we will we will talk
about other movie actors other movie actors any movie actor is putting out a certain work product
that work product takes time and energy and depending on the movie and the actor a certain amount of
dedication well above and beyond what they would normally do left to their own devices
you know you take a hugh jackman or something uh from deadpool and wolverine where he clearly had
to do a lot of working out and probably some performance enhancing drugs and he had to show up for that in
in his i think he's 50 or something you know that's work and it's hours and he showed up on set
every day i don't know how long they filmed for but i'm sure it was many many hours overall and
there were script readings and there was memorization and there were meetings i'm sure and table reads and
there was all this work that goes into a final product that then gets put in front of people
and it's easy to think to ourselves i think as work a day people oh they have it so easy all they
have to do is make a two-hour movie and they get millions of dollars well yes they get paid tons and
tons of money however there's a lot of work that goes into that and i think that we we don't always
think about that but there is so you juxtapose that that sort of workflow of choosing scripts and
doing table reads and memorizing lines and getting into shape and doing filming days and
and then going to do interviews and press and whatnot afterwards juxtapose that with some of these flash
in the pan kind of reality or social media influencer type of fame stories you know you take something like
the uh the the one that comes to mind most recently is like the hawk to a girl or like the kid who said
i like turtles or like any i don't know any of these people i'm sure that there are many of these examples
you can tell that i don't spend tons of time on social media i don't remember a lot of these but
i i am generally aware of them it's a completely different type of celebrity and in a lot of cases
well in at least in some cases they've been able to take kind of just a moment in time
and extrapolate that out into a whole if not a career then at least some sort of product line or
you know something with some longevity uh it's a product line or a tv show or a reality show or you
whatever but but they there there is some there are there seem to be paths for just these split
second moments in time to to become these much more long-term success stories i find that really
interesting i suppose you know will will there be a time when a you know group of teenage guys who
learn to drive pull up in front of a restaurant and get a good parking space and say like oh
influencer parking i don't know it it doesn't the grumpy part of me really wants to say that it's
it just doesn't seem warranted again i i the celebrity that comes along with being something like a movie star
comes with work quite a bit of work yes there's luck involved and probably nepotism and whatever
whatever whatever whatever but their work product once they're actually doing the work that they're
doing there is effort there they are there there is work product or again going back to the
the parking spot thing same thing with musicians there is work there there is a there is a work product
that comes out of that that that that takes time and effort and energy and talent and all these kind
of things and i feel like a lot of the flash in the pan influences celebrity kind of stuff it it's all it
is is the right place right time like everybody runs around saying and doing dumb shit on a regular
basis like that's that's not a abnormal thing for for for people to experience the difference is that
some of these folks just get it caught on it feels like some of these folks just get it kind of caught
on a video and it just explodes and i just wonder i i just wonder if we're going to glamorize as a society
things that take no work effort to accomplish not really not in the way that again digesting scripts
and ramorizing lines and doing stunts and if we're if we're if we're going to glamorize on the same
level as that simply taking you know seven to ten seconds of a funny video and or or an interesting
video or whatever and that's all it takes it feels like it's one more piece of culture that's moving
toward that very transactional and flash in the pan and disposable type of impermanence i suppose or or
celebrity or fame or that that that the cultural zeitgeist that surrounds these things it's becoming
it has become less there's less gravitas to it there is there is less seriousness to it there is less
work that it takes to accomplish it and so instead of people striving to build out great scripts for
movies or write great books or create great music and an inordinate amount of energy is starting to
be poured into creating what is intentionally designed to be not great small short nothing social clips
and i think we're starting to we may be starting to get to a place where we're no longer rewarding
that intersection of like work and talent very well and and i wonder what that means for the arts
and i wonder what that means for entertainment and look i'm i'm like i get it you know there have been
periods of time where i am much more inclined to sit down and doom scroll through a bunch of youtube
shorts as opposed to sitting down and watching some great film or listening to some great song
so i'm part of this but hearing about again this this this blockbuster movie that maybe you know maybe the
script wasn't great and maybe it was a little jam-packed and overexposed or too much um uh exposition and
but it was still a a real true work product and i think that should be held up in a way that
maybe we're not doing enough of anymore