tongue and groove

why the Oscars blew it.

poor James Franco. i'm not going to waste time reading any reviews of this year's Oscars telecast, but i suspect that his work as co-host will take a lot of blame for why the show sucked. but i don't think it was his fault.

last Thursday he posted a photo to his Whosay account of what appeared to be the telecast's writing room. take a look, and make sure you note the large man with the Prince Valiant haircut, red glasses and blue t-shirt. you know who that is, right? Bruce Vilanch. for anyone who might not know, Vilanch has been writing jokes for the Oscars shows for over 20 years. some of you may know him for his uproariously funny work (NOT) as a performer and joke writer on Hollywood Squares. (although it might sound like i do, i mean no disrespect to Mr. Vilanch. he's clearly carved out a very successful career for himself in mainstream Hollywood comedy.)

this, to me, is the crux of the problem: the people who run the Oscars telecast still think we're living in a Hollywood Squares world.

the Academy acted like it wanted to rocket the show into relevance by casting James Franco and Anne Hathaway as hosts. this was breaking the mold! this year was going to be different! this would surely get the kids to watch!

the first sign of trouble in my opinion was when the opening montage (which had been pretty good up to that point) suddenly presented us with the aging Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox in their Back to the Future roles. if you really wanted to skew younger demographically, i'm not sure i'd have gone with a reference from 1985. but that's just me.

i'm trying to understand what the thought process was in the writers' room when someone suggested, "hey, you know what would be really great and funny? let's have 94-year-old Kirk Douglas teeter out there on his cane to present!" or: "i know! we'll put Anne in a tux and then she can sing a really corny song about Hugh Jackman. and then we'll send James out dressed like Marilyn Monroe! because she'll be dressed like a man...get it?! that'll KILL!" because nothing skews hipper than a sight gag that Hollywood's been doing since Uncle Miltie days.

the only reason i even watch televised awards shows anymore is to read the accompanying Twitter snark. if Twitter didn't exist, i wouldn't even waste my time--i'd just watch the video clips online the next day. Twitter's the only thing that makes it tolerable. the only time i laugh is when i'm reading tweets.

during Sunday's show, the consensus on Twitter seemed to be that James Franco was baked. i laughed at all the tweeted Franco jokes as much as the next person, but i actually didn't think he was stoned. (though if he wasn't, he probably wishes he'd been.)  :)  maybe i'm old-fashioned, but he seems to come from a pretty tight-knit family. i guess i have a hard time believing that he'd have his parents and grandmother sitting 3rd row center just get really high before he performed in front of them. i felt bad for him. he could only do what they asked him to do, and they didn't ask him to do much. and the tone was all off. Anne Hathaway is a lovely, adorable young woman and a good actress. but she was coming off like a gushing, fawning cheerleader rather than a host. it would have been even weirder for Franco to adopt her tone. so he was left to stand there in his tux, next to Anne and occasionally recite some corny words written for him by a roomful of highly-paid Hollywood writers.

he was taking some bashing online for his backstage posting, but maybe firing off those photos and very short videos during the show was the only thing helping him get through the show. i was watching the video clips as he posted them and i found one of them very telling. James is with Jordan (Rubin, i think). he says that Jordan is the head writer and points out that it's all his responsibility. Jordan says there are other writers--that he can't take all the credit. to which James replies that, no, it's his responsibility. Jordan says James has improvised a lot. James insists that he's said the lines as they were written for him. watch.  :)

what was the point of Billy Crystal's appearance? (and why in god's name was he given a standing ovation?) was that a nod to the 60+ crowd to say: we didn't forget about you--here's someone you know and love. and just to drive the point home--and make sure that the 80-somethings didn't feel left out--they also included Bob Hope. because lord knows, nothing says 2011 like a hologram Bob Hope.

James Franco often blazes his own path and last night was no exception. and with a mother like Betsy, it's no surprise. my favorite quote from this profile of her last week: "If your partner doesn't understand creativity, just find somebody else." from reading about Betsy and her husband, it's clear that the Franco kids were raised in a home where creativity was not only encouraged, but valued:

"My kids are very, very inspiring to me," said author Betsy Franco. "They are so fearless. I consider myself fearless, but no way, by comparison, when I see what they are doing. If you are willing to fail, you can pretty much do anything. If you pick yourself up and keep going, you can do anything."

James Franco, some will say that you failed as an Oscars co-host. i applaud you for being willing to try it. i'd even argue that it was the Academy and its writers that failed you.

and where is James Franco today? based on this photo, my guess would be he's right where he wants to be...back at school.

Maya Stein

This week's featured interview at La Salonniere is with poet Maya Stein of San Francisco. If you enjoy and appreciate writing, poetry, road trips, photography and/or catering, I hope you'll check it out because you'll find all of that in the interview and more. Maya's words are truly inspiring, and there's an extra-special treat at the end. ;)

You can read the entire interview here.

If you like what you're reading at La Salonniere, I hope you'll take a moment to subscribe. Thank you for visiting and reading.

screenwriting

this is a fascinating interview with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. Happy Oscars Sunday!

too many cooks

TECLOPOLIS

if you can spare 12 minutes, this is a beautiful stop-motion film. gorgeous visuals. brilliant storytelling.

LeAnn Locher

Blogger, foodie, master gardener, podcaster and a passionate believer in social causes--what's not to love about LeAnn Locher? I'm so very pleased to feature LeAnn at La Salonniere this week. In her interview, we discuss storytelling, gardening, podcasting, LGBT aging, IFC's funny new series, Portlandia, and her adorable maltipoo, Wink. She even gives us a couple of simple food crafting ideas.

You can read LeAnn's La Salonniere interview here. Enjoy!

watching who i'm watching

it's always a great morning when i open my email to discover that my IN box contains Colleen Wainwright's monthly newsletter. if you're not already receiving this monthly missive of Communicatrix goodness, do yourself a favor and sign up here. in this month's issue, Colleen wrote about a tip she got years ago as an actor--to "watch who you watch." i like that because it dovetails nicely with the curation i already do at Twitter (and, oh, how i love my Twitter). it's also in the same vein with the conversation we've been having on my last couple of posts--about flowing towards one's natural purpose.

here's where i should probably interject that when i'm talking about natural purpose, i'm not necessarily talking about work or a job or a career path. maybe my natural purpose is to lie in a hammock under a palm tree on a tiny Caribbean island.  ;)  (----> Little Cayman, Nov. 89)

as part of Mondo Beyondo, i've been doing a lot of watching who i'm watching. i wrote recently here that often people have suggested that i write. yet if i had a really profound desire to write, maybe i wouldn't have to be told to do it.  i often find myself expressing myself with words because others have told me i have a knack for it. left to my own devices, i'm much more drawn to images. i don't have a Twitter list for "writers," but i do have one for "films." i often don't know the titles of songs and very rarely listen to lyrics, yet can feel powerfully moved by music. i'm not moved by the words, but by the rhythm and melody.

other things, people, places i watch...travel, nature, geopolitics, musicians, artists (of all stripes), humor, beauty, photography, (yes) writers, travelers without a permanent home, collages, dreamers, the seduction of media, cities, rural settings, the desert, rivers and lakes, sun, vintage anything, actors, dance, plays and musicals, solitude, introverts, creativity, community, bookstores, genealogy, the changing landscape of friendship, long-form blogging, Twitter, trains, travel trailers, small spaces.

it's all just a process of boiling-down, isn't it? a distillation of ideas. a sifting and culling and winnowing down to get to the essence of what makes one tick.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

~T. S. Eliot

natural human purpose

this morning i read Gretchen Rubin's assay, Why I No Longer Worry About Having a "Personal Style."  the line that really jumped out at me was this:

I don’t want to think too much about making authentic choices about things I don’t authentically care about.

in my previous post i found myself wondering if big dreams are really only big dreams if we have an audience for them. as we share more and more of our private lives and selves online, it's hard not to fall into the trap of caring about certain things simply because everyone else seems to. at times, the blogosphere and its offshoot, social networking, can feel like high school 2.0, filled with cliques, competition, comparisons, striving, disappointment and hurt feelings.

we can end up caring about our "personal style" not just in our closets and homes, but also in the online environments we create and share. we manipulate our image and style via the photos and videos we share. some develop a certain look online. some develop a look that's appealing to so many people that they spawn copycats. we might look around and think that if only our blogs, images, wardrobes, homes and art looked like that person's over there, then maybe we'd have lots of commenters, followers, fans and subscribers, too. but do we stop to ask ourselves if we authentically care about any of it? or do we adopt caring about it out of a need for acceptance and/or connection? sometimes it seems to me that we're so caught up in witnessing each other's lives that we forget to live inside our own. who are we doing this for?

please know i'm not judging anyone's choices--this is just me sharing what i'm thinking about these days. asking myself, as Gretchen wrote, what i authentically care about. as part of Mondo Beyondo, i created a list of big dreams, yet when i opened the list a week later to re-read it, i found myself wondering: whose dreams are these? are these really my dreams? do i authentically care about them, or are they dreams that someone with my skills, talents, interests should/would/could have? did i write them just to have something to write, or was that really my heart speaking?

if you missed it yesterday, i hope you'll check out my La Salonniere interview with Patti Digh. the last question i posed to her was about desire lines...about natural human purpose. i guess that's what i'm trying to get at: what's my natural purpose? not the one i'm adopting because others have, but the path i would naturally gravitate toward without any outside influence. it's there that my truest big dreams reside.

does it count if no one claps?

i read a post early this moring about big dreams and something that's been tickling the back of my mind for awhile leaped forward. does it count as a big dream if no one notices? do all of our big dreams have to have an audience?

we live so much of our lives in public now. anyone and everyone can blog, tweet and Facebook. we upload photos and videos by the thousands to document our lives. we connect with thousands of people we may never meet in person via social networks. but where do our dreams--our biggest, heart-centered dreams--fit into all of this? do they only matter if we accomplish them to a chorus of cheers from our support network? is a big dream by its very nature something that must have outside validation? does it count less if we do it just for ourselves and keep it private?

Patti Digh

i can think of no better person to interview at La Salonniere on Valentine's Day than Patti Digh, a woman who reminds us daily to make our actions heart-centered. Patti is loved by so many around the world and rightly so. i'm honored that she shares some of her wisdom in a La Salonniere interview here.