It occurred to me during the movie, as I reflected on writer Charlie Kaufman's singular oeuvre, that in all his major scripts thus far (even Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, an underrated movie), that Kaufman gets it. Life, that is. He understands, in a way that is very organic and instinctive and vital, how much of our individual realities and interpersonal situations are intrinsically entwined with our perceptions -- of ourselves, of the people around us, of the situations we find ourselves in, of the events that either occur indirectly around us or happen directly to us.
It's all part of a non-linear continuum; a movie that is constantly being re-edited as it gets replayed. That girl you took home that one night gets hotter and hotter every time you think about her or tell your friends about her; that embarrassing situation you found yourself in that one time gets some details tweaked until it becomes easier to live with. It doesn't change at all how the girl really looked, or how that situation really went down; but those little alterations and adjustments that you unconsciously (or even deliberately) made indirectly affect everything you subsequently do and say, and how you perceive them. Life is less defined by constant dynamism than by inertia and clutter, and so too are our perceptions of it.
It's also the understanding that life tends not to be dogmatic; it does not hew closely to holy writ, nor is every happenstance a blessing or a test. Sometimes things are just not about us; they just happen. Most of all, though, the core of Kaufman's writing is a sense of grace; that people who strive are at least deserving of as many chances as they might need to get it right, whether or not they actually get those chances, whether or not they ever manage to get it right (and, of course, they never do, because we never do). It is at once a highly idiosyncratic vision, and yet a universal one, one thankfully bereft of the subtle emotional propaganda that dominates the majority of films, be they fluffy rom-coms or Hungry Man explode-everything-in-sight action retreads.
This is all pretty obvious I think, so basic and fundamental, these quickie fortune-cookie bromides about the complexities of life, that I feel a bit silly even laying it all out like this. But there are certain people who absolutely do not get it.
George W. Bush, and his apparently endless supply of brain-dead iconodules, are such people. Rather than even, say, viewing reality through the idiosyncratic prism of a Charlie Kaufman, they have completely divorced themselves from the whole deal.
Bush “likes somebody he sees as having overcome potential disadvantages, because he sees himself as having done that,” says Paul Burka, executive editor of Texas Monthly magazine and a close follower of the president.
Burka attempts to elaborate on this, as if it hadn't already told us everything we needed to know.
Ann Richards always said that Bush "was born on third and thinks he hit a triple," but that Bush doesn't see himself in that light at all. He sees himself as having had to struggle all his life. He wasn't thought of as smart, he didn't make good grades, he was rejected by the University of Texas law school, he was a playboy before he met Laura, and something of a ne'er do well afterward: he lost a congressional race, he didn't make it in the oil business, and he drank too much and goodness knows what else.
At age 40 he was the archetypal unsuccessful son of a successful father. Then he stopped drinking, overnight, and took control of his life, and no one did it for him. As I encountered him in his first 100 days as governor in 1995, you could see him evolving into a political force that Texas politics hadn't seen since LBJ, and for the first time in his life (except for marrying Laura) he was pleased with himself.
You may not agree with this self-image, but that's the way he sees himself. He was a nobody (even if he was the son of a president) who was headed nowhere, and he made himself into somebody. Certainly the advantages kicked in at some point--his name, his father's business and political network--but that was after he had turned his life around.
It's astonishing, simply astonishing. The man got the absolute most elite education one can possibly even dream about in this great nation of ours -- because of his name. He attended Yale and Harvard, despite his well-chronicled attitude and piss-poor performance -- because of his name. His dad handed him several businesses, bankrolled and stocked with the usual laundry list of boot-lickers and curriers of favor, and W just came in once a week and told dirty jokes.
He was basically indulged and allowed to party away the first 40 years of his life, something only a child of privilege (hello, Paris Hilton) can get away with in this paycheck-to-paycheck world. Most alcoholics don't get interventions from Billy Graham, and then handed control of a baseball team. Blue-collar people simply cannot afford to be useless until they're 40. Call it class warfare if you like, but it's a fact.
His political career opened up for him because of his father's seemingly endless connections, and he socked away quite a tidy profit from the sale of the Rangers -- a profit that would make Hillary and her pork bellies blush. And all he did was trade Sammy Sosa, get the citizens of Arlington to pay for a new stadium, and eminent domain hisself some land for the parking lot. Not a bad day's work.
But we're full circle -- back to our perception of ourselves and of the world around us, and how that affects the decisions we make, big and small, and the people we associate with, and every other little detail that populates the set design of Our Movie. Now, we have here a fella who sees himself as some sort of Gary Cooper tough guy, though he never fought; he thinks he boot-strapped himself out of "disadvantage", though said disadvantage was entirely self-inflicted, and in spite of being handed every single perk of privilege one could hope for. He has been given far more second chances than he would ever give anyone else.
His decision-making process is directly related to his self-unawareness. He is aggressively incurious (a seemingly oxymoronic phrase, yet amazingly true), brags that he doesn't read newspapers or watch anything but FOX News, and has made sure that everyone who gets close to him is a yes-man. Nobody can tell him nuthin'. The reg'lar folk he so insists he's one of will pay the price for probably a decade or two, and as always, somebody else will eventually have to come in and clean up the Boy Wonder's messes.
Maybe some fine day, we can march en masse into Lacuna, and wipe the pathetic memory of George W. Bush and his feckless nonsense from our minds. It can't come too soon.
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