Thursday, September 11, 2008

Okay, I feel better now. I am off obsessing about Sarah Palin, at least for now anyway. Now I am much more enveloped in the news that we have been carrying out clandestine operations in Pakistan without the government’s awareness. I’m trying to read more, but my knee jerk reaction is that Bush and his guys are those kids on the playground that just cannot solve any problem without hitting someone. I am fearful that something will happen before the election that will ensure a scared population running into the arms of it’s brave war veteran. Which reminds me, how about how McCain ended his convention speech like it was a rally of prisoners of war who just had to focus and overcome? That was weird. I could see why he was a person who survived in combat and a war prison. It was almost a maniacal look in his eye. But honestly, that is the last quality that we want in a president. And now he’s coupled up with a religious conservative. These are two scary ingredients in our increasingly possible presidential soup.

Yesterday I edited together (well, my editor edited, I sat and commented) the audience interviews that were done after the filming of “Letting Go of God” over a year ago. They are so good! I am so moved to have had people say such nice things. On the movie front, it looks like Showtime is buying the rights to play the film for a year and there will be a “premiere” during primetime (that means between 8 and midnight) sometime early next year. But in the meantime, I have the right to distribute the DVD on my own. Which means that finally nothing is stopping me but just getting it out there. I was planning to release it in November (at least in my latest calculations) but now I am going to try to get it out there as soon as I can. Maybe by mid-October. I am sorry there’s been so many ups and downs with this. I could write reams about the indie-film process, but I’ll spare you. Looks like a quiet little personal release and then when the film is on Showtime I will do national publicity then. Or I mean, try to anyway. Everything is so different than 10 years ago, it’s like a whole different world out there. I have gotten a few letters from people asking that the film have Spanish subtitles. This is a good idea, but may slow me down in terms of getting it out. My husband then suggested Latin subtitles, which made me laugh really, really hard. Latin subtitles!!!!!!!! That is hysterical. But jesus, now I have to find a Latinist. And all for the laugh of seeing the option on the DVD menu. But I think it might be worth it.

Okay, back to what I am not obsessing about. The most condescending thing about the Palin nomination is that McCain is banking on the fact that political and national and international problems are too complex to be simple. And Palin draws in the simple thinkers.

We did not evolve brains that easily grasp worldwide intangible problems. It’s not easy for us to see far into the future and far back into the past and check our emotions and behave rationally – at least not without discipline and effort. We evolved brains that loved gossip. And the thing about Sarah Palin, her nomination and what it did to me, is that I fell for it. I got caught up in the gossipy junior-high aspect of it, even in my outrage it was a qualitatively different emotional surge for me than the regular outrage I have about politics. It DID feel like I was in high school. Although I have to say, I don’t even think I did that in high school!

When I pass all the gossip rags at the newsstand, I always feel sad about how many of them there are, how acceptable it is for grown men and women to read them. And yet it worked on me. And on many more people than me, too. In a way it doesn’t matter if we hated her or loved her, we were drawn in – captivated, unable to look away, fascinated. Sarah Palin has drawn in a whole group of people who would otherwise not really care that much. And even among those of us who do care already, we were hoodwinked by the drama.

In any case, I am still reading everything, listening to everything, hoping against hope, calculating odds, the whole gamut. I guess to me that is not obsessing, it's just... intense interest. HA.

4 comments:

Petra said...

Sarah Palin scares me - my uterus, my brain, every cell in my body is truly frightened by what she believes and stands for.

I initially thought that McCain vetting her (after having met her ONLY TWICE, once the DAY before he announced her nomination) was a big ole joke. It was meant to make everyone run screaming and then, when he announced his REAL choice for VP, we would all be relieved and no one would complain.

Unfortunately, I think that might not be the case.

What gets me crazy is how many women think she is the RIGHT "choice" (sadly, pun fully intended) because she has ovaries. McCain is pandering to the neo-conservatives and so many others are just running behind like the blank-eyed lemmings they are.

The first time I saw her, I thought, "I bet Lorne Michaels wishes Tina Fey were still around." But you know what, Julia? You could TOTALLY faux Palin! Of course, if I have my way, you'd get to mock her for the next nine weeks and then be out of a job.

*sigh*

: ) P

psychenaut said...

Thank you for posting your thoughts about Sarah Palin, Julia. You've been able to sum up quite a bit of the McCain campaign's pre-calculated emotional impact by choosing her. She's a candidate for the masses of religious people I'm surrounded by in Utah, including my own family. She reminds me so much of them, unfortunately not in a good way.

Oh and, WELCOME BACK!

MrPlayerHater said...

Welcome Back! The one good thing about Palin is that you back to the blogging. I found myself checking your site again lately wondering, "What does Julia think about all this?"

I keep thinking about the movie Juno. And the ironic coincidence that this all comes from Juneau. "Juneau for VP! What other shenanigans can she get into?"

Todd S. said...

I could write reams about the indie-film process, but I’ll spare you.

Maybe just a partial ream on the indie-film process?

It would be a very insightful post for, say, some no-name indie-filmmaker in Ohio to see what you went through to get your film to audience/market.

I read posts about you and others that I consider to be 'in the know' of the entertainment machine and wonder if it's something that I can crack or am I just resigned to letting people download my stuff off of the 'net.

I realize that I took one sentence that really didn't fit with the whole theme of your post to comment on, apologies for derailing the comments, it just caught my attention because my first thought was 'yes...PLEASE write about the process.'