Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

"The Blair Witch Project" Heather Donahue: When the cheering stopped

In 1999, the cult classic film "The Blair Witch Project" became embedded in the American consciousness.  So many of us wondered if we also could, through our arrogance, get ourselves into a similar fatal situation.  Heather Donahue who wrote and acted in the film was all over the media.  Then, as the saying goes, the cheering stopped.

In her book "growgirl," Donahue recounts the familiar tale of how lost we can become after a major success, at least after the public has moved on to something else.  The problem is that we often can't move on.  We're stuck in the past. The book is how she tried to cleanse herself of the past's hold on her and experiment with fresh paths.

Now that the world seems to be moving faster, the glow of our successes doesn't last as long.  More of us are finding ourselves on the wrong side of time.  Some get back on the right side.  Those include Hillary Clinton, Clint Eastwood, T. Boone Pickens, and Betty White.  Soon to join them might be John Edwards.  The trauma of his recent trial which was ruled a mistrial could catapult him into a whole new space.

Beyond Steve Jobs: Maybe we should be digging elsewhere for lessons to be learned

Question: Am I the only one who has wearied of looking to the life and work of Steve Jobs to find lessons for my own much smaller-sized matters?  The answer to that will determine if there will be any audience for the screenplay Aaron Sorkin is writing for Sony.  According to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, Sorkin will be adapting the Walter Isaacson biography of Jobs for the large screen.

We miss Jobs just as we miss author Christopher Hitchens.  But there are many others out there, alive and well, to inspire and teach us.

No Fall of the House of Murdoch

Enemies, critics, and competitors of News Corp are gleefully enjoying the head Rupert Murdoch squirm and blame in the ethics hearing in the UK.  A leader of deep insights about human nature and the way of the world, Rupert no doubt understands how humiliating his current positioning is.  But, simultaneously he also understands that this crisis, like every crisis since civilization began, will recede into the past. 

Murdoch's present continues to be glorious.  Despite the grilling, the stock went up.  If he sells the newspaper segment, the stock will surge.  Fox managed the Gawker Mole situation quickly and has brought in the long arm of the law. Wannabe rogues will think twice before taking on any part of News Corp.  At home Rupert has a young smart wife who stood between him and a pie aimed at him.  To this day, no one can figure out Rupert's game.

Powerful smart men like Murdoch don't fall.  Others' delight in their discomfort is temporary. 

From Smart to Dumb in 34 Minutes: AT&T's James Hales hero of aging Baby Boomer

I walked from my car in the North Haven, Connecticut parking lot to the AT&T mobile store as if I were headed for the gallows.  The time has come: I had to go from a dumb cell phone to the smart one.  I even wondered if they would allow an aging Baby Boomer like myself into such an advanced wireless center.

Right from the get-go, the transition was lacking both in angst and melodrama.  A Generation Y salesperson actually came to me once I was about 1.5 feet away from the door.  His name was James Hales.  For the next 34 minutes he would gently and patiently lead me through the steps of selecting a phone and the appropriate plan and getting down the fundamentals for use.  We - Hales had that wonderful way of creating the feeling that the two of us were in this together - chose a Nokia.  Then we determined the best plan would not include migrating my Internet service from the current AT&T DLS service to a hotspot through the smartphone. 

That done, what could have been the end of the world didn't end the world.  I asked Hale to set up my voice features, including making a message for when I was wasn't there.  In addition, I pushed it and requested he do my email account too.  That he did. It involved a call to AOL.

The one last piece was for me to learn the fundamentals.  A born teacher, Hales walked me through the basic menu and the swipe-throughs.  They included getting through to the apps, taking a photo, and making video.  He even informed me the software I could download for free from Microsoft for transferring photos from the phone to the my laptop.

I left the store knowing that I had accomplished the most important rite of passage of my career.  I had crossed over from dumb to smart.  I also realized that age has nothing to do with anything.  It's all about not fearing technology.

Every Baby Boomer in Connecticut who hasn't yet made this passage should journey to North Haven Shopping Center on Universal Drive and ask for James Hales.  Tell 'em Jane sent you.

"Footnote" - Passing on the pain from father to son to son

Made in Israel with the dialogue in Hebrew, "Footnote" plays out the ancient theme of passing on the pain. 

A Jewish scholar who goes unrecognized passes on the pain to his son who becomes a Jewish scholar who is recognized.  That son then passes on the pain to his own son who is stuck.  The plot revolves around the Israel Prize.  The award committee accidentally calls the father and notifies him that he is the winner.  The son sacrifices the prize so that his father will have that honor.  The film ends with the award ceremony.  We don't know if the father will have a breakthrough in his relationship with his son and decline the award or continue in his autistic ways and accept the award.

The theme takes on the concrete metaphor of "fortress." Israel itself with its tight security is a fortress.  All the characters are locked in their own emotional fortresses.  We wonder what it would take for them to break out.  As the film proceeds they become more and more trapped.

Anyone who has had a parent-child conflict will be drawn back in time watching the film.  Once the dynamics are set up, they just seem to go on and on.  Often not even the death of the parent ends them.

Madonna: The art & science of comebacks

C.S. Lewis observed that experience is a brutal teacher but we learn, god, how we learn.

With the current volatility in the economy and how the media can upend careers, comebacks are more common.  Or at least the attempt at them.  Also, another force driving comebacks is simple aging and there is a lot of that these days.

So, many of us are watching Madonna, now over-50.  Can she pull off a comeback?  She performed at halftime during the SuperBowl.  She did a film on the Duchess of Windsor.  She produced a new album MDNA. 

It is frequently with some glee that both the official media and twitters opine critically about this comeback.  In FORBES, for example, Roger Friedman reports that album MDNA had the second week biggest drop in sales history.  It went from 359,000 the first week to 46,000 the second.  The first week's numbers were partly due to the CDs included with the sale of concert tickets.

Is Madonna, who always had more than the average share of highly vocal critics, under the microscrope because what she has recently been turning out is not exciting?  Or is it because her aging makes her a target in the entertainment world which can be brutal on those over even 40?

The interesting thing to watch here is what Madonna does, both in the art and science (proven promotional formulas), to remain relevant.  We have noticed how former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has yet to catch on again.  He has tried being a columnist and a talker on TV.  Former politico Al Gore has never really made it back after his splash in positioning global warming as the cause.  His Current TV isn't doing so hot.  Oprah Winfrey is starting out yet again to make OWN a go. 

On the other hand, Hillary Clinton roared back as Secretary of State after her defeat in campaigning for the White House.  Me? To my surprise I have been able to come back yet again.  Most recently it was from the error of trying to have a young - read that "snarky" - voice on the web.  Among others, Gawker panned me.  But here I am back.  My list of clients from the establishment and startups is growing.  If there is a secret to the comeback it is to become hopeless or bottom out.  Henry Cloud has lots of wisdom on that in his book "Necessary Endings."  That dynamic also underlines 12-step programs: Surrender to win.  Before this, my last comeback was around 2004 (Download Geezerguts).

 

"Salmon Fishing in Yemen" - Power of the group, miracle of change

Can there be salmon fishing in Yemen?  Once three human beings come to think that's possible they come together to test out the reality.  Since one of them is a sheik, money is not an obstacle. In the process of pursuing the sheik's vision of bringing life to the desert, the two others change.  In essence, that's the story line of "Salmon Fishing in Yemen."

The two who change are relatively rigid human beings set in their careers.  One is fishing expert Dr. Alfred Jones.  His marriage is not going so hot but neither he nor his wife seem ready to rock the boat.  The other is a traditional career woman who works as a consultant.  Her one act of impulse is to embark on an affair with a man who might go off to war.

The ups and downs of the almost impossible project of bringing fly fishing to Yemen bring these two creatures together.  Jones sees his marriage is over.  Harriet assumes  that her boyfriend has been killed in battle.  The Sheik notices sparks of romance starting. 

But it turns out that the Sheik also changes. When terrorists undermine the project he recognizes that he has to embark on modernization in a different way.  The community has to think it's their idea and it has to begin small.  That's how the future will be made in Yemen.

Jones recognizes he has no past to return to.  Not his old job.  Not his marriage.  Harriet's boyfriend is not dead, it turns out but she has opened herself to a new way of life.

"Salmon Fishing in Yemen" has been called a Baby Boomer film.  The stars are all in midlife, just acquiring wisdom. 

"Albert Noobs" - 2 women posing as men, 2 different stories

"Albert Noobs" plays out the wisdom of the old saying: it's not what happens to you, it's how you handle it.  In the harsh 19th century of Ireland, two babies were born female.  Both decided to pose as males. 

One who called herself Albert Nobbs withdrew into herself, excessively servile in the job of waiter.  The other who called herself Hubert Page leveraged a natural charisma to get what she wanted.  Not only did she set up a life on her own terms and look the world straight in the eye.  She found companionship with a wife.  After that wife died of typhoid fever she zeroed in on the young girl trapped with a bastard child.  For a while, she had had her eye on Helen.  A new kind of life can begin.

The darkness of Noobs's life weighs the film down.  That might be why it received mixed reviews.  However, how Page managed her own life is downright inspirational.

"The Separation" - Iran has smartphones, too much traffic + fundamentalist religious rules

"The Separation" is set in contemporary Iran.  The values are almost Biblical when it comes to social life.  Women keep their head covered and have to ask permission from the husbands to accept a job.  But the technology is 21st century, including heavy reliance on cell phones and too much car traffic.

In this complex environment are caught Simin who wants to leave Iran, her husband Nader who doesn't in order to care for his demented father, their 11 year old daughter Termeh, Razieh a pregnant woman who takes the job caring for the father, and her husband Hodjat who is in deep debt and doesn't know about his wife's job.

As in a Shakespearean comedy, everything goes wrong and then more wrong.  There are no villians.  Not even the overburdened court system which tries to use investigative procedures and be fair.  And just about everyone suffers.  In the end Simin decides to leave Iran, even without her husband.  Who the daughter will stay with is up to her.  The film ends with the daughter tearfully making her decision but it's not disclosed what it is.

One of the myriad themes of this long film is how a system of beliefs can trap good people.  Nader believes it's his duty to take care of his father. Razieh believes in what the Koran dictates, even to the point of calling on her cell phone a religious expert to find out if she can wash the father who has wet his pants.  Simin is trapped by her abstract vision of what a better life will be like.  Termeh, just coming into her own, is bound by primitive loyalty to both parents.  And hothead Hodjat believes he, as a man, must be in charge.

Walking out of the theatre, my companion and I talked about beliefs which had also enchained us and which new ones were calling the shots now.

"My Week With Marilyn" - When we believed a broken heart was worth the experience

Colin, an upper-class Brit who decides to enter the film industry (horror, his family thinks), enters into the experience of his life.  In a light comedy starring Marilyn Monroe and big Brit names, Miss Monroe falls in love with him and he with her.  He has been warned by a number of men that she is the love 'em and drop 'em kind.

The beauty of this true story is that Colin is enough of a man of the world to understand that a broken heart will be worth the pain.  He gives himself to Miss Monroe.  She returns to Arthur Miller, the husband who deserted her while she was making the film in England to return to America to write. 

Colin goes on to become a documentary film maker and a writer.  He never does embrace his family's idea of a proper job.  Miss Monroe goes on to make another light comedy in America which is a smash.  Often people who touch our lives but don't stay in them are the most important forces.