A Lack of Empathy

It's odd, I feel rather guilty about not losing sleep over this Hurricane business. I don't feel much of a connection to MS and LA (the state codes), so I guess that has something to do with it - I don't know anyone affected by it...I know a few people from the area, but they all live around here. I sort of feel like a dick.

A teacher comes into SPO today and wants to set up a relief something or other. My attitude was - "Huh?" This is a production office designed to help students make movies and you want us to raise money for hurricane relief? I was confused. I asked her, "Do you want to know how to donate to relief efforts? Or do you want SPO to try to raise money?" I said it with some snarkiness because, well, I'm a dick, and I hate people who are really insistant that others do good deeds. She was like, "Well, I don't want to cause work for you guys, it's just you did something for the Tsunami."

During the Tsunami someone put a big ugly cardboard box outside with a pink sign asking for books to donate. No one gave any books and I don't think anyone had any idea of how to get the books to Malaysia. After a couple of months, Mark Harris was cleaning his house and wanted to conveniently get rid of some books and dumped them into the box. I'm sure the orphaned Indonesians were interested in how to make cheap documentary films. I think Sho ended up taking some of the books to read. It was a spectacular relief effort on the part of the Cinema school.

Maybe the teacher should force her students to donate to the Red Cross...I could see that happening. Or maybe she was just trying to find an excuse to talk to me. Grrrrr.

On a similar note, I was hanging with a liberal friend of mine (who am I kidding, all of my friends are liberal), and he said to me in utter seriousness - "all this crazy weather shit has to do with global warming. Don't you think?" It's a tough thing for me to think about, because they question is really, "Don't you think the Republicans are fucking everything up?" Because the fact is, I ain't no scientist and he isn't either...we don't know whether this has to do with global warming or not, and furthermore, if it did, what we could do to ameliorate it?

When I fantasize about being an influential filmmaker, sometimes I think about what I would do differently and how I would empower folks to make bolder, more interesting films...and then I think, god, that would be really awful and the films I'd probably encourage would be out of touch with what people want to see. We all think we know better, but we probably don't, and given the same options and similar circumstances, we'd make the same stupid decisions our leaders and filmmakers do.

I guess my point is - if Al Gore were President today, I bet Katrina would still have happened. And I also bet if I were head of Sony Pictures Classics the box office would still be down.