Las Vegas, NV
Coeur D’Alene, ID
Perhaps in need of an update to my queue of escapist, romantic, heist films now that the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair is going on 12 years old… I’ve been watching Anthony Zimmer a lot lately. It’s the French film starring Yvan Attal and Sophie Marceau that The Tourist was based on, only much better. Its available on Netflix instant through September if you’re curious.
“You Have to Take the Dive” - Maurice Sendak
(Source: youtube.com)
Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.
Jonze had never written a movie script before, but to him this seemed no impediment. “I never knew how to do anything before I did it, really,” he reasons.
“Those are the situations that I find the most exciting. It’s most fun just to decide, ‘Okay, I’m going to choreograph this. I’ve never choreographed before, I’ve never really danced before, but I know what kind of dancing I like, so I’ll do that.’ ”
It seems to him that such resolutions are less leaps of grandiose self-confidence than a way to reprise the unworried and unfettered creativity of childhood. “Like, if you were going to make a fort in your backyard,” he says, “you’re not going to go, like, hire someone to make your fort or go buy plans. You’re just going to have an idea for it and go make your fort.”
I sometimes meet people who say, I’m going to be this and I’m going to be that. You feel kind of bad for them because they’re limiting themselves. It’s different from having an enthusiasm for something and seeing where life takes you. I feel lucky to never have planned to go into what I did. I always just said, “All I want to do is make things, whether it’s drawing or writing.” If I’d said, “I’m going to be a director,” it probably wouldn’t have happened.
