David Mamet: A Hollywood Icon Gone Conservative

I've been a fan of David Mamet for quite some time. His stage and screenplays are nothing short of iconic and have been celebrated time and time again. If you're unfamiliar with his work, he wrote the plays The Lakeboat, American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross as well as films such as The Untouchables, Wag the Dog, The Edge and Ronin amongst countless others. Needless to say, the man is incredibly talented, skilled and intelligent.

Having grown up, studied with and been surrounded by the arts community, he spent much of his life as a left-wing liberal criticizing capitalist America. However, this view never really shone through in his works which focused more on the tragic nature of human interactions. Over the past decade he slowly came to realize that what he and his liberal friends said and what they lived were quite often two different things.

While he criticized capitalism and American society, he cherished and held tight to both aspects of his home. He even noticed this tendency amongst the far left-wing people he had long admired. It was this contradictory nature that led him to dub himself a "Brain Dead Liberal". In 2008, he even wrote an op-ed for The Village Voice titled David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer A 'Brain-Dead Liberal'. It is certainly worth a read.

In June, Mamet is set to release a new book titled The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture. And in the latest edition of the Weekly Standard there is a very interesting article called Converting Mamet that outlines Mamet's transformation, his skewering of the education system as a thought destroying clone machine and his views on the hypocrisy of liberals who cry foul at a system that they cling to harder than anyone.

The book is supposedly an exploration of Mamet's turning point from the brain dead liberal to a conservative who understands the strengths and opportunity that capitalist Western civilization offers anyone fortunate enough to live in such a system. It's always nice to witness when such an influential writer and a Hollywood icon finally sees through the nonsensical demonization of conservative politics and finds a place for himself.

Where's ACTRA on the censoring of Sun TV?

Last year the arts community -- especially ACTRA, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists -- came down hard on Stephen Harper's government Bill C-10 which would in part effectively cut funding to artistic endeavors that were contrary to public interests. Some, such as director David Cronenberg, went so far as to call this censorship.

Bill C-10 in no way would prevent artists from creating, displaying or performing their works. It was simply telling them that they would have to get support from other sources. That is not censorship. If it was censorship then the government would effectively have a responsibility to fund all artists on demand.

I'm an artist. And I get it.

But where is ACTRA and all these arts community figures now that Sun TV (erroneously called "Fox News North") is under attack by the media on all sides? Where is the arts community when we have so many people calling for this private, non-public funded news outlet to be prevented access to the airwaves?

From Wikipedia: "Censorship is the suppression of speech or other communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body."

Censorship is not the denial of funding from one source. It is suppression. No artist was being suppressed from performing or creating under Bill C-10. Sure they would have to find alternate sources to create their artistic works at the level of expense that would be optimum. But that's not suppression.

Suppression is when we have the media demanding a voice to be silenced. Suppression is when we have politicians wanting voices to be silenced.

And what has the arts community said against these expressions of desired censorship? Well, I'm more likely to hear the birds chirping outside ACTRA's downtown headquarters while standing beside one of Emirates A-380's when taking off on a runway at Toronto's Pearson airport than hear one of their representatives on TV defending Sun TV's free expression.

Why? Because they aren't the champions against censorship they claim to be.

Hypocrites.

It's a Wonderful Life: Or Why We Need More Billionaires

Since I was a young boy I always admired Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life. As a moral and spiritual story it is without parallel.

It only dawned on me today of a hidden lesson in capitalism contained within a specific segment of that film:

I was thinking today about the central argument of wealth-redistribution: what does any wealthy person in the world need all that money for. It was an argument that I myself had considered as valid for the longest time. After all, it's not like they could ever use all that money in their lifetime.

Today the central conceit of that argument finally hit me. Rich people don't actually have all that money.

If one takes the reactionary point of view that rich people are hoarding vast wealth for themselves and not spreading it around, sure you could believe that one never needs that money. But I can't really imagine Bill Gates owning a vault that on a weekly basis he runs into, diving into the money singing, "Look at me! I'm so rich! I can swim in my money! Yippee!"

Of course not.

In reality, they don't actually have that much money in their possession. That money is in investments here, there and everywhere. As such, rich people actually are using all of that money. And not in a self-centered way. It is being used via investment groups or banks to fund other businesses which in turn grows the economy resulting in further wealth for others. And this reclaimed wealth allows more people to invest which results in further growth which results in further prosperity.

As amazing as it is to say, Billionaires are themselves a form of wealth redistribution!

It all relates to that one scene in It's a Wonderful Life perfectly, to which I will paraphrase:

"The far-left is thinking about this all wrong. The money isn't in the rich people's pockets. It's not hidden away in some vault somewhere for them and them alone. It's in your homes. It's in your employers' businesses. It's the means by which you yourself are prosperous."

Every time a rich person buys property and builds a new house -- no, an angel doesn't get it's wings -- they are in effect redistributing their wealth to the people who supply the wood, to the companies that build the nails, to the chemical plants that develop the paint. Every time they furnish that house they redistribute their wealth to the stores they purchased them through, to the manufacturers who built their furnishing, to the raw material suppliers.

And in effect to every single person those channels employ.

By having all of this extra money, Billionaires take very little out of the economy while providing the means to actually build and grow the economy. It's the very reason why government stimulus spending is ridiculously inefficient when compared to broad-based tax cuts. Rich people actually have very little of their money available at any given time. Most of it is being used to build the economy. To grow businesses.

Dare I say... to employ people!

Until the far-left finally realizes that being rich doesn't mean hoarding but in fact means providing the means for economic growth, they will have little positive effect on the economy. We need more billionaires if only so that they can use their money to build the world's economy.

God knows the government ain't any good at it.

Finally saw Inception

I have been a fan of Christopher Nolan since sitting in a theatre and watching the opening sequence to his landmark international debut Memento. What I witnessed in that film was a brilliant mind giving an audience the unique experience of having the protagonist's short term memory loss. He did so by playing a film in reverse turning a simple revenge story into a whodunnit mystery. It was refreshing both in terms of storytelling but also in Nolan's signature style (i.e. flashbacks silently revealing the character's inner monologue).

Since then, Nolan in my opinion has been batting 100. While a remake, Insomnia was equally as compelling, Batman Begins turned the comic book movie on its head, The Prestige was a wonderful period piece thriller and of course The Dark Knight was his The Godfather: Part II sequel to rival the original. As such, many a talent have felt in trustworthy hands to lend their talent to any of his outings. And as a fan, I have come to trust him more and more.

So, when I first heard of Nolan's new cerebral sci-fi thriller Inception, I knew we as an audience were in for a treat. And while I tend to shy away from Leonardo DiCaprio films (I feel he's been overhyped) I knew that there was a reason Nolan chose him. As such, I trusted his decision and waited to see what would happen. This trust was compounded when Nolan also attracted Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Tom Berenger, Pete Postlethwaite, Tom Hardy and his mainstays Cillian Murphy and Michael Caine.

Having finally seen it last night, I can say that Nolan has once again earned my trust.

Inception is an entertaining, mind-bending thriller that is equally exhilarating and thought provoking. To say it is visually intense would be the understatement of the year. The film is stunning to watch taking one's perception of reality and spinning it around while still achieving a beautiful palette of color and motion imagery that masterfully runs between slow motion and frenetic action.

And it once again takes a genre and bends it around backward. In its most basic form, Inception is a heist movie in reverse. Instead of the characters trying to break in and steal something, they are breaking in to plant one thought into a person's head in order to alter his motivations and his actions. How do they do this? They enter his dream, construct a new reality and sink into his subconscious to find what could motivate him and make him self-realize the idea.

In this sense, there is not a stone that goes unturned and not a loose end left. Nolan has clearly thought his subject through a million times to make the film and the plot believable. It's not simply a matter of planting a thought in somebody's head as -- just like an invader in the person's dream -- the subconscious will seek out the foreign entity, reject and attack it. Thus, any world that is created in the dream state can be basically crafted but must have it's details filled in by the subject so they accept it as real.

Believe me... Nolan does not miss a thing in understanding the idea of dreams and how they both can be controlled by us and can control us. As such, he has crafted a film that is truly exceptional.

My only problem with the film actually relates to a problem I had in the Dark Knight. In the Dark Knight, the final climactic battle between Batman and the Joker takes place in a building under construction. During this sequence, Batman has to move between floors and rooms quickly in order to save hostages and take out the Joker's henchmen.

My problem with this sequence was that Nolan did not create a focal point to define for audience precisely where in space the action was happening. As such, anytime Batman moved between a floor or a room -- which under construction all looked the same -- it didn't seem like he was doing anything. While ultimately I understood what was happening logicaly, visually Batman could very well have been fighting the same people in one room or on two floors.

The same thing happens in Inception when Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character has to create a "kick", which in the film is sudden change in gravity that makes people feel like they're falling in order to wake them up from whatever dream they are in. At the time, the characters are all in zero-gravity (you'll have to see it to understand) and so he ties them up and puts them in an elevator and proceeds to attach explosives to the elevator in order to make an artificial gravity.

In this sequence, he has to move around the elevator to cut cables and attach explosives. However, while he is moving around and around, since there is no defined point in space, it is as if he could very well have been in one place for each shot. Of course, you understand that he had to move around the elevator. But visually it doesn't translate without a point in space to define where he is.

That is a very minor point of complaint and is the only problem I had with the film. Apart from that, Inception is brilliant. It ranks up there with Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey in terms of intelligent science fiction that makes you think long after you leave the theatre. And though it is intelligent, it is also thrilling to watch. As such, if you're looking to be wholly entertained while at the same time having something to think about, rest assured you'll love Inception.

As far as I'm concerned, Inception is the best film this year so far.