I (Heart) Not You

Protagonist

Do you have free will? If you do, stop reading right now (I know you can as you are the master of your actions), because I'm about to recommend a documentary about four people who don't have free will. You wouldn't be able to relate.

Yes, it's Protagonist, my favorite movie from the Sundance film festival, and it comes out tomorrow. Okay, you caught me, in my Sundance article, I ranked it #2, but awarding Hounddog the #1 spot was merely a protest vote (since everyone else hated that movie so much). If I'd been totally honest, I would have ranked that #3.

Protagonist is about four people who didn't like something about themselves and so tried to do the opposite, only to finally realize that they didn't change anything and were living lies. That's also (coincidentally) the general theme of my own screenplay. But I didn't tell that to director Jessica Yu at Sundance after her screening, because that's exactly what the guy in front of me told her, and she didn't look impressed and eager to direct his script; she looked terrified.

The reviews of this movie I've read focus on the extremism of each of the characters, theorizing that they didn't have the energy to sustain it (a kid abused by his father becomes a bank robber, a gay man becomes a Christian preacher, the son of a Jewish woman and an abusive Nazi man becomes a left-wing terrorist, and a wimpy kid becomes an expert in martial arts).

But really the movie is about the fate of identity. You can make an improvement or have a misstep here or there, you can gain or lose weight, you can dress better or worse, you can change where you live or who you kiss, and you can make decisions that will wildly alter your material fate (I'm probably leaving a few potential human actions out of this)... but no matter how much you attempt to change something about your fundamental character beyond a superficial level, it will always fail, and you will always be essentially the same person.

This movie is fascinating because it shows four people who try to change one specific thing about themselves but ultimately can't, because the fate of their personality had other ideas.

If you're in New York, which I hope you are since you're reading a blog about the darn place, you can see it with director Jessica Yu in attendance at the IFC Center at 8:05 pm on Friday.

But I wouldn't suggest pitching your fatalism-tinged scripts to her. You'll just make the woman uncomfortable.

End of an Era

For those I (Heart) Not You readers that haven't been keeping tabs on Beat Jeremy Coon, I finally got around to posting my last entry there, an interview with Jeremy Coon. If you were ever curious about the man I called my nemesis, this interview will teach you a few things. Jeremy Coon goes off on everything from Bonnie Coover to when you should shoot the hostage. And for those of you who don't know Jeremy Coon from a raccoon, you should read it, if only to learn how to produce a movie and make $44 million, tax free.

Plight of a blog writer

Sometimes I come here to check if there's any new entries to read. Then I remember that I have to write something before I can read it. It's the tragedy of the blog writer, and the reason most of the population prefers to remain blog readers, rather than create their own.

Moshe Kanovsky's Last Moment

On Friday, April 13th, 2007 I was taking a broker class on the 11th floor of The Empire State Building. Breaking the monotony was a sudden thump and a slight tremor in the room. The teacher, a man named Sandy, stopped speaking and just looked at us, dumbstruck. To me, it sounded like someone had dropped a large safe on the floor above us.

We looked outside, where a crowd had already developed to point, gasp, and stare in our vicinity. Sandy sent his secretary downstairs to find out if we were under attack, and/or on fire. The downstairs people didn't feel like answering any questions, except to hint that we weren't at risk of annihilation. That was good enough for Sandy, and we finished the class, albeit a little uneasily.

Later we found out that the thump was a man named Moshe Kanovsky, a young lawyer who had jumped to his death from the 69th floor of the Empire State Building, landing on a platform on the 30th floor. Here he is, studying the Torah:

For a while, I was haunted by this thud. I read everything I could about Moshe, but there wasn't much in the newspapers, besides that his body-parts had scattered all over. One article concluded with a quote from a bus driver saying, "Only in New York. Only in New York." An idiotic thing to say, though technically true, since there is only one Empire State Building in the world, and thus New York is the only place someone could jump from it.

I found some blogs about Moshe that provided a little more insight. He was known to be depressed; one woman said Moshe had asked her to marry him and she had refused but that they had stayed friends after that; a couple others said there had been a number of Orthodox Jews committing suicide fairly recently. He came across as a nice, depressed guy.

But my own personal experience with Moshe will always be limited to the last moment of his life - the thud of his body on that landing, the shaking of the room, and the stunned expression on the face of my teacher.

At Bowery and Bleeker

This should really be an Idea Province, but since this is New York-related, I'm putting it here.

If I wrote a song, it would be about a made-up intersection in New York - like Delancy and Houston or Broadway and Ave. D - and what life was like there.  Obviously life would have to be pretty crazy there, since these intersections are impossible. Unfortunately, my mind doesn't seem to express itself in a song type of way. I can rhyme, but not in the way that makes good songs. I've only written one serious poem, and even that is more of a short story than a poem.

By the way, if I get even a single comment asking me to post that poem here, I will. Because so far The Atlantic Monthly and the New Yorker haven't responded. And I sent it to them over a year ago.

The Great Manhattan Mirror

Everyone agrees that the only reason to live in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx or Eastern New Jersey instead of Manhattan is that you actually have a better view of Manhattan from these places. While inside of Manhattan, you can see Manhattan closer up, but only a very narrow portion of it - the few buildings surrounding you. You get no overall sense of the city as a whole.  Even worse, if you are at the edges of Manhattan, you actually have a clearer view of Brooklyn, Queens or New Jersey than you do of Manhattan! How depressing is it to walk up 1st Ave. and have your clearest view be of that lifeless CitiBank tower in Queens? Obviously this reality is what forces Manhattan-lovers outward to the grimy, joyless, impoverished boroughs.

My solution to this flight is a giant mirrored wall, as tall as the Empire State Building, encircling the coasts of Manhattan. This way, no matter where you are in Manhattan, all you'll ever be able to see is Manhattan. This will be especially clear from the top of large Manhattan buildings, which previously offered majestic views of... Brooklyn squalor. Another advantage of this wall is that the mirror will be on both sides, so that if you're not in Manhattan, you'll just see your own sorry Manhattan wannabe borough reflected back at you.

Everyone will come back to Manhattan at once.