“Is this is what you do with Eternity?” asks Andie MacDowell.
It’s Groundhog Day, again. As I’ve often said, it’s one of my favourite movies of all time, partly because I think that Groundhog Day with Bill Murray is actually a very serious movie masquerading as a light, funny movie. If I were ever called upon to teach a course in say, ethics or karmic redemption, that film would definitely be on the syllabus. I particularly love it because it manages to ‘teach’ a lesson without being preachy or condescending.
It was a good day today, one I wouldn’t remind reliving (although not forever, to be sure).
There was the review in Georgia Straight. And it didn’t rain today. A pat on the back from the boss didn’t hurt either.
Experiencing a law of Musical Economics
I’ve been going to Gamelan rehearsals twice a week now, because of our upcoming concert on February 21st. It’ll be at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. In fact, I’m learning firsthand a rule that my father has codified after many years of performing music:
Arno’s Law of Remuneration
The amount of money that you will receive for a concert is inverse to the amount of effort expended in preparing and giving the performance.
This means that if you don’t work hard on a concert program, if it’s something you’ve played many times and comes together easily, you’ll be paid well. If it’s hard music that you have to practice and rehearse a great deal, forget about any payment. My father played Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue many times. So many times, that the last 10 or so performances were probably a snap, and sure enough, they paid well. But if he played Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunnaire, or perhaps Leon Kirchner’s Sonata Concertante for Violin and Piano (I remember that was incredibly difficult because I turned pages for it but I really liked it nevertheless), he didn’t get a penny.
The music for this concert that I’m playing in on the 21st is very hard. Yup, I’m getting bupkis.
Today we went to the movies. At 10 AM, that is. The Vancouver International Film Festival is this week (and next week, too). We saw two documentaries, back to back. The first was the extremely grim (and powerful)”The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror”, and the second was the sweet and quirky “Souvenir of Canada” by Douglas Coupland (based on his book of the same name). I really like like Coupland, for his light-hearted but sophisticated sense of humor, his knack of putting his finger on social movements and trends (he is the originator of the term ‘Generation X’), and of course in this case, the subject matter he’s been writing on lately (Canada). I also envy him; He and I are nearly the same age, and now he is living in Vancouver as someone returning home. As fond as I ever grow of this place, I fear that I will not feel completely ‘at home’ here for a long, long time. I always feel as if I’m walking on eggshells: Did I cut in line without realizing it? Did I say the right thing to the clerk at the register? Is my accent not native enough? Do I know enough about hockey, Terry Fox or Canadian politics? Do I know too much about American politics (actually, Canadians on the whole know more about American politics than the average American does!) I feel as if I’m often on my guard, trying not to stick out too much. The opener for conversations, which is that I’ve recently moved here from Boston is always good for a few exchanged sentences (that’s what a conversation piece is for, after all). After that, it seems to be difficult. People are anxious to understand the why of it, and then when I explain that, things can get quiet. Maybe people are just wary of those Americans who come up here and are nasty to them because they (the Americans) need to convince the Canadians that they’re wrong, etc.
All I know is that Douglas Coupland is a lucky guy. He gets to move back here, live in Vancouver, and (I assume) feel perfectly at home.
I’m determined to do at least a couple of entries per week here. I know that I’ll have some more to write about early next week (planning a trip), but for now, it’ll have to be something mundane. We just finished dinner (lamb shanks, cooked in a nice braise of carrots, celery, onions, red wine, chicken broth and herbes de provence) and now I’m thinking about the movie I saw last night: Empire Records. It’s one of those movies that has two key features:
- It has a large, ensemble cast with people who turn up later in lots of movies. For instance, George Lucas’s American Graffiti had Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Harrison Ford, Kathleen Quinlan and even Suzanne Sommers (who will always be remembered as the mysterious Blonde in the T-Bird).
- It seems to mark a point in an an era that is absolutely a watermark. You can point to that movie and say, ‘yeah, that was absolutely 1999/2000, as is the case with 200 Cigarettes (which also had a lot of famous people in the cast, including Ben and Casey Affleck, Dave Chappelle, Janeane Garafalo, Kate Hudson, Jay Mohr, Martha Plimpton, and Christina Ricci (wow!). My all-time favorite move like this is Reality Bites (with Ben Stiller and Janeane Garafalo again, as well as Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Swoosie Kurtz, and Renée Zellweger), which technically should have been too late for me to identify with (history says I was 34 when it came out), but somehow it feels like the movie I can point to and say, ‘yeah, that was my era too’.
At any rate, Empire Records is another one of them (and it also stars Renée Zellweger, so I guess there could be a sort of Kevin Bacon game amongst these types of big ensemble movies). The big cast in Empire Records includes Ms. Zellweger, Liv Tyler (yowza!), Anthony LaPaglia, Robin Tunney, Debi Mazar and even Tobey Maguire (although his scenes ended up on the cutting room floor). And you can point to it and say ‘1995′, which is when it was shot and takes place. Absolutely 1995.
I wonder what the film that typifies the early 2000 decade will be? I don’t think it’s been made yet (although I suspect the movies the last few years will be known for will be Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11). We may or may not know the movie when we see it. I doubt if anybody realized that American Graffiti, Reality Bites, 200 Cigarettes or Empire Records were so emblematic of their time and that so many of the cast would be so busy afterward.
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