Rufus Wainwright: Bohemian Like You
I was in Park City Executive Producing MTV News’ extensive coverage of the Sundance Film Festival. I interviewed Rufus on his involvement in the forthcoming film, “Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man.” This interview occurred at the Motorola Lounge on Monday morning, January 23, for a program on MTV’s broadband channel, Overdrive, “Sundance Rock Docs.” It is reprinted here for the completist.
BW: Benjamin Wagner, MTV News. So nice to meet you.
RW: Hi, Benjamin.
BW: I’ve been singing “Movies of Myself” all week.
RW: Oooh, goood!
BW: How’s your Sundance been?
RW: It¹s been great. I’m leaving today, which is good. But it’s been fun to be here.
BW: You talk in the film about growing up in and around what you call “Leonard Cohen world,” I wonder if you could elaborate a little about what it was like, and what you were seeing and hearing and feeling.
RW: I grew up in Montreal. There’s this street there called St. Lawrence Street, which is a very interesting street because on one side is the French side of the city, and on the other side is the English side. I grew up on the English side, and now I have a place on the French. St. Lawrence is actually the old Jewish District, and really where Leonard lives is kind of the heart of the old Montreal Jewish neighborhood, which is apt. And I dunno if he does it on purpose or if it¹s just luck, but everything he does — either where he has his house, or what he’s wearing, or what he¹s cooking for lunch — it always has this sort of double meaning, or this spiritual context. I don¹t think he does it on purpose. But where his lives is a very spiritual center of the city.
BW: Could it be you invest him with that because of who he is?
RW: Perhaps. He has so much weight within him, that you kind of go with it. But I know that Leonard is very humble, he really is. And more than humble, he’s actually very shy. But he¹s also a showman. He knows what he¹s doing. He’s a master of perception in many ways.
BW: Tell me about your first experience with his music.
RW: I really became aware of him during the album I’m Your Man. I always had a little bit of a quirky sense of music, quirky taste. I liked Edith Piaf, and I liked opera, and I liked all of these dead people. And my sister, who was much more contemporary and kind of rocking out in her room and telling everybody to screw off, and was listening to I’m Your Man. She was really into that record. So I really owe it to my sister who got me onto him and out of my dead people zone.
BW: There’s a sonic gravitas and texture to Leonard’s work that I hear, especially, in “Want One.” To what degree did that port over to your creative space?
RW: The thing about Leonard is that he’s greatest attribute is creating a perfect marriage between lyrics and music, neither one ever obliterating the other. And it just makes it so much more effective. That’s what I strive for all the time. In fact Leonard and I have talked many times about songwriting and he is always emphasizing, “We wanna hear the words. We wanna hear the voice.” I think I have a very different style, but still that is the aim: to make it as married as possible.
BW: Well, there’s richness and maturity and a substance to your work that relates.
RW: Well I think we’re both definitely romantics in a certain way, very romantic. We kind of act like Bohemians. We like the café smoky places. So I think there¹s definitely a European style going on.
BW: You got a ton of screen time in the film, performing three songs, including beautiful three-part harmony on “Hallelujah.” Is there a lyrical passage or song you can point to?
RW: For me these days the song that’s really talking to me the most … oh, I can’t remember the name. It’s the one where the light comes through … — “Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack, a crack in everything” — What’s it called? “Anthem,” yeah. And I talk about how everything isn’t perfect, but still you have to try anyway, even if it’s not the way it is. I think that’s a very apt song for today, that we just have to keep trying, even though everything is sort of falling apart.
BW: How are you going to follow up “Want One” and “Two”?
RW: I’m going into the studio in the spring for my record. I’m also writing an opera. But that’s just a tease for now. I’ll tell you more about that later.
The Edge: I’m Your Man
I was in Park City Executive Producing MTV News’ extensive coverage of the Sundance Film Festival. I interviewed The Edge on his involvement in the forthcoming film, “Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man.” This interview occurred at the Motorola Lounge on Monday morning, January 23, for a program on MTV’s broadband channel, Overdrive, called “Sundance Rock Docs.” The interview is reprinted here for the completist.
BW: Tell me about your introduction to Leonard Cohen.
The Edge: I first discovered Leonard Cohen’s music back in 1978. I was 17-years-old. Courtesy of a friend who played his album with the track “Suzanne” which in those days we were listening to exclusively punk music the softest we got was like Magazine or some of the experimental music. I don’t know quite how he manages to make his way into our circle of friends but he was different. He was considered in some ways welcome in a way that very few artists were. And he stayed with me. That’s the thing about his work: it stays with you. If you become a Leonard Cohen fan you never stop being a Leonard Cohen fan.
BW: His music has real texture, which I hear in your work. Real sonic soundscapes, a richness. And also his lyrics are so substantive. Can you speak about what in his music resonates with you?
The Edge: Well, I think to understand Leonard’s work, you have to understand his very unusual process for writing. Leonard’s writing process is unique. He might spend years, five years, on one song, coming back to it, rewriting it. And its not necessarily a passive just five years, it’s like he will write multiple verses, he will whittle it down until it’s almost a crystalline, pure form of words, some kind of perfect song. But it takes a long time. So if you’re a lyric fan, as I am, when you hear a Leonard Cohen song, it’s like every word is so perfectly placed, and chosen, it just connects in a very deep way. The first time I heard his songs, that was what hit me.
BW: How do you balance that work ethic, that process, with the urgency of the pop music machine: the next album, the next tour. To what degree has that work ethic been an influence, or something you consider when working with U2?
The Edge: Well I suppose where we as a band and as writers would connect with Leonard is in the need to completely separate ourselves from commercial considerations at the moment where you writing a piece of music, or a lyric. Because it’s the only way to keep it pure, in a sense, is just to ignore what’s going on out there. A friend of ours who is a poet once said, “The best way to write is to imagine that you’re dead,” that you’re writing from this unassailable position. And I think Leonard in some ways is the one who does that the most. He’s really cut off. And it’s his own choice. But he doesn’t really do the 21st Century. He is off, out there, looking for little clues, trying to hear the whispers from the angels. And he comes down with these amazing songs from the mountaintop. Every time he releases something, we get very excited.
BW: In the film, you talk about going some place quiet, that you have to find the quietest place to find God, or the muse. Where do you?
The Edge: For me it’s really about just clearing my head from anything that’s of a trivial day to day nature and looking into something that’s timeliness, something that in some ways I’m not even conscious that I know, or understand, but the unconscious things that we know and understand, if you can somehow tap into that. So you can be in the noisiest place, if you can just find your way into that zone, you can write. And sometimes the quietest place is the worst. I think Charles Bukowski said, “Nothing worth a shit was every written in peace and quiet.” I think there’s an element of truth to that. It doesn’t work always for us to be somewhere silent, but you have to somehow eradicate the din of what’s going on out there to be in yourself quiet, to find those things.
BW: As is requisite here.
The Edge: Mmm hmm.
BW: I would be derelict of my MTV duties if I didn’t ask about progress on the next record.
The Edge: We haven’t really got to the point where we’re thinking seriously about the next record. We’re at that wonderful place where we’re just experimenting, and trying things, just really letting our imaginations go. It’s my favorite phase of making an album because there are no constraints, you just write and explore possibilities. That’s where I am now: loads of possibilities, but nothing concrete.
BW: That’s a terrific line, “Write like you’re dead.”
The Edge: It is a good line. We try to live up to it. But it’s hard.
The Ground Truth
Until yesterday, I thought interviewing Neil Young was going to be my most challenging Sundance assignment.
We have these daily production meetings here in our little condo/office where we run through who’s gonna interview who, and who’s gonna cover what. But I missed yesterday morning’s on account of my “Leonard Cohen” screening. Now, you gotta know that most of my colleagues haven’t seen any films. But I’ve made a point of seeing the films I’m covering. Seems obvious, right? But given days where the margin of time between shoots is measured in minutes, not hours, it’s not so easy to do. So my colleagues may harbor a little bit of resentment. And that may be why I got stuck with a pretty tough assignment: covering “The Ground Truth.”
Today I interviewed three Iraq war veterans, all of whom are under thirty-years-old. One of them, Robert Acosta, graduated high school just four years ago. He served in Iraq after graduating. Now he’s missing his right hand.
Patricia Foulkrod’s documentary, “The Ground Truth,” is an unflinching examination of the war in Iraq, and the psychological and physical tolls of modern warfare. It is some heavy shit. And it’s 180° from the red carpet, celebrity bullshit most Sundancers are interested in.
I interviewed the guys on the roof of The Silver Queen Hotel, right in the center of Main Street. The Self Magazine Luxury Suite was just below us, gifting celebritiues (Shia Lebuff, Tyler Hilton, The Beastie Boys) with thousands of dollars worth of free shit. We could hear revellers and live bands whooping it up on the street below. Skiers and snowboarders were getting in their last runs. And this amazing dude, Marine reservist Paul Reickhoff, says to me, “This war is more important than these guys snowboarding, or Paris Hilton, or any of this other crap.”
Amen, brother.
You may have noticed a thread in my writing that I think we’re in some really scary times. These days feel awfully Aldous Huxley to me: the soma (pharmacudicals), the feelies (Hollywood blockbusters), thought crime (Bush-approved eavesdropping). There’s some crazy slight of hand going on here. And these soldiers are getting the short end of the magic trick.
And that’s sort of troubling to me. I’m all about substance over form, but culture is all about form. Hollywood is all about form. So much of this festival is all about form. Not all of it. There are plenty of events that aren’t all about the red carpet (as I wrote for MTV News tonight). But I’m pretty sure that most people don’t give a shit. The 50,000 chumps partying on Main Street last night certainly don’t.
And that’s part of my discomfort with interviewing these guys. Because to many people, MTV represents that: form over substance. Now, you know me. You know that’s not my bag. But that wasn’t all. I was afraid these guys would think I was some kind of jerk for not serving. Or would think, “Who does this guy think he is?” And yunno what? Asking some dude about what burning flesh smells like, or what it’s like to spend seven weeks in Walter Reed, that’s some scary stuff. Weirder still, in the middle of the interview, I found myself feeling kinda guilty. And I’m not sure why. Because I haven’t done enough? Because I haven’t spoken up enough? I’m not quite sure.
Of course, they were cool with me. They were great guys. They were passionate, and articulate, and really, really deep. It went really well. I was really moved. I believed in these guys. I’m pullin’ for ‘em. I’m gonna make as much noise as I’m able. (Not that they need my help. Paul is one media saavy dude — check out his blog on The Huffington Post).
“It’s not about whether you join or don’t join,” Patricia told me. “It’s about whether you show up.”
I’m Your Man
Saturday night at the Sundance Film Festival, and the MTV News team is in the hotel room watching “Austin Powers.”
Well, not exactly. Smita and I are working. I’m writing a piece on the hip hop doc “Beyond Beats & Rhymes.” Smita’s cutting a piece on music documentaries. Vanessa and Pat are taking a break from cutting news briefs. And Luke is checking out what we’ve got on the web site. But we all have beers in our hands. And “Austin Powers” is on the TV. Seven hundred thirty-five films at the festival, and we’re watching “Austin Powers.” Though it is a pretty funny film.
Ryan, Alyssa, Damien, Josh and SuChin are out shooting a parties package. They’re hitting seven parties in seven hours: GenArt, Entertainment Weekly, Blender (Paris!), Motorola, “Dealbreaker” (Gwyneth!), Premiere, and Boost Mobile. Basically, my worst nightmare. The only parties I plan on attending are my buddy Neil’s, and the Independent Television Service’s 15th Anniversary Party.
Those are my peeps, the documentary types. I met a great house full of ‘em today. In an effort to balance the Us and People magazine vibe of our coverage, I pitched a piece on festival alternative. So we hung out with “Tribe” filmmaker Tiffany Shain and her colleagues (like composer Paul Godwin who scored Tony Kushner’s “Hombody/Kabul” in San Francisco — it all overlaps, huh?) as they ladelled out bowls of matzah ball soup, screened the fill then had a group discussion, all in front of a raging fireplace. They were great people, all very San Fran: arty, interesting, unphased by Gwyneth and Paris and all that EW bologna.
I screened “Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man” this morning. I’m interviewing (get this!) The Edge and one of my favorite singer/songwriters Rufus Wainwright on Monday. All I knew of Cohen was his staggering song, “Hallelujia,” which Jeff Buckley covered on his “Live From Sin-e” EP. Ends up he’s rediculously revered. Everyone from Bono to Nick Cave worship at his alter. And hearing him speak, and hearing his lyrics, I can see why. He wrote some genius lyrics.
Everybody knows the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
The film itself was just o.k. It was basically a tribute concert with some sound bites between songs. But in so much as it made me want to pick up my guitar and write again, well, I guess that makes it some kind of a success.
Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy
Everyone else is out getting their Sundance party on, and I’m inside watching a documentary.
And what an spectacular documentary. I can’t tell you the last time I smiled for two hours staight. Or cried. Or felt this inspired. For “Wrestling With Angels,” Oscar-winning documentarian Freida Lee Mock spent three extraordinary years with one of my heroes, playwright Tony Kushner.
What an inspirational man. He somehow sews together so many disperate elements of my world. Take Maurice Sendak. I love “Where The Wild Things Are.” It was a hugely important book to me as a kid, especially when my parents divorced. Well, Kushner and Sendak are friends, and collaborators. And New York. And politics. And Bethesda. Bethesda! The documentary shows him standing there in front of her, in the exact place I stand every time I run past Her. And as I watch this I feel my eyes well up, and I want them to, and a tear rumbles down my face. And I want it to. I want to feel something. And I do. Deeply.
He is constantly seeking, striving, and becoming. He is constantly pushing. “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Now! Now! Now!” he tells Vassar graduates in his commencement speech. He writes plays, ambitious, amazing, courageous, and powerful plays. My mother dragged Chris and I to “Angels In America.” I remember that New York City felt different when I stepped out of the theater. That’s what great art does. It makes everything different.
As I watch him hail a cab on 70th and Amsterdam, and walk through Strawberry Field, I think to myself, ‘We’re neighbors. I am him. He is me. I can be him. It’s not over. I’m not done.’ “Heartland,” and the resulting post-partum depression, is not the end. I can still be creative. I will still be creative. I can keep making art: books, and records, and documentaries. I’m just getting started for God’s sake.
Walking home, the sky was full of stars, the air was brisk, and smelled of fireplaces. Way up on the mountain, a lone snow cat’s headlight tracked across the slope like a meteor. And I thought, ‘This is why I come here.’ Not for the twenty-three hour days. Not for the pressure, or the anxiety. To be restored. To be inspired. To be surprised by beauty just around the corner.
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Yeah, my condo has a hot tub.
Yeah, I’m at the Sundance Film Festival. Yeah, it’s totally beautiful. Yeah, I’ve already been within two feet of Jennifer Anniston (Brad made a mistake). Yeah, I’ve already nearly bumped into Sting.
But there’s no way I’m going to have a chance to sit in the aformentioned hot tub.
There are ten of us here from MTV News: writers, reporters, producers, editors, and shooters. We’ve been on the ground less than twelve hours. Already, we’re bouncing around like atoms.
And I’d like to tell you more, but I’m into my twenty-third hour awake, my contacts are bone dry, and I’m due in the office (three laptops — only one of which is online — in room 202 of a condo called The Loft) in seven hours.
Plus my freshly-poured Emergen-C is losing its fizz.
Searching For A Heart Of Gold
In twenty-four hours, I’ll be at 33,000 feet.
I’m flying to Salt Lake City, then driving to Park City, to attend the Sundance Film Festival. And I’m kinda nervous.
It’s not so much that I’m nervous about flying. I am. But that’s the price of entry. If the plane goes down, my brother knows what to do (release every song I ever recorded as a massive box set, and use my life insurance money for publicity).
And it’s not so much that I’m nervous about interviewing Neil Young, or Jonathan Demme, or Stewart Copeland. I am. But that’s part of my job. And it’s a controlled situation. They know they’re doing press. They know it’s kind of a drag. Any intelligence I bring to the conversation will be a bonus.
I’m nervous about all the strange people. I’m nervous about being the doofus in the corner.
Last night, a friend of mine told me, “Inclusion and participation are not the same thing.” In other words, one cannot claim that they are being left out, or worse, ostracized, if one is not putting one’s self forth.
I immediately thought of high school. I always felt left out. But maybe I wasn’t participating, maybe I wasn’t engaging because, of course, I was nervous. So it was a dreadful loop. ‘Maybe they won’t like me,’ I thought. ‘So I just won’t bother.’ And eventually, they don’t bother either (or at least it felt that way).
It occurs to me now that being a performer somehow creates a buffer against those feeling of exclusion. By standing on stage, or walking a red carpet, one is automatically excluding one’s self. There is a safe distance between the performer and the audience, the song and the ear, the star and the lens. I’ve used that distance to protect myself, somehow, from uncomfortable situations.
Last year’s Sundance felt a little like high school, and I wasn’t the homecoming king. Heck, I wasn’t even in the homecoming court. At best, I was just another guy at the dance. And — to extend the metaphor too far — my tux didn’t quite fit.
So, here I go again. What’s the difference? What do I know now that I didn’t know then?
I am meant to shine. And, for the first time in my life, I think I’m beginning to see how.
Movies Of Myself
A few weeks ago, a poster for Equinox Fitness Clubs popped up on phone booths all over the city. It reads, “Life is outrunning lesser versions of yourself.”
My initial reaction, as an Equinox member, a runner, and a student of life, was ‘Right on.’ But every time I’ve seen it since — especially walking home from a good workout yesterday morning — it bugs me more and more.
Now, I’m not much of an athlete, but I do have an appreciation for t-shirts with slogans like “Pain is weakness leaving your body.” Maybe a bit much, but when you three hours into a marathon, and you see some dude with that written on his back, it helps a little bit.
And I’m all for exercise as a means of strengthening you inner world: for becoming stronger willed, more goal-oriented. For me, that’s the whole idea. (Well, that, and not developing what my father refers to as a “German Goiter,” aka a Pot Belly, which Wagner men possess in spades.)
It’s the word “outrunning” that I object to. I mean, I get the witty word play. I get that it’s ad copy. But I think it feeds into the prevailing American myth that we can somehow leave ourselves behind, that, with the appropriate amount of exercise, plastic surgery, of just a new pair of jeans, we can be someone else.
But we can’t. We are a product of all our yesterdays. There is no outrunning, there is only running with. We may grow stronger, we may change and evolve — and we should — but we still need to drag or carry or simply jog alongside that former self. It’s still us. He’s still me.
So I cancelled my membership.
Not really. I’ll just wait a couple more weeks until they change their ad slogan to something else, something like “Pain is weakness leaving your body.”
Sing With New Meaning
If I could spend an afternoon with one person, living or dead, I think it would be Martin Luther King, Jr.
You might have expected me to say Mister Rogers. And you might have been right. He was a remarkable man, quietly, patiently reminding us to be the best that we can be.
I don’t know that Fred Rogers and Martin King’s lives intersected, but I like to imagine the meeting. Maybe it was a rally in Pittsburgh. Maybe it was on “Meet The Press.” Maybe (most likely) it never happened. Had such a meeting occurred, however, I’m sure they’d have had plenty to talk about. They had quite a bit in common.
Both were born in the late Twenties (Mr. Rogers on March 20, 1928, Mr. King on January 15, 1929). Both were ministers. Both contributed significantly to the betterment of the country, and in turn, the world. And both men — despite sufficient evidence to the contrary — chose to see the good in us all.
As much as I love (and deify) Mr. Rogers, though, it’s difficult to imagine that he was forced to endure the same hardships as Mr. King. From the outset of his civil rights leadership, Martin was attacked by a fearful, bigoted, backwards America. Though I have seen the video tape of burning crosses, water canons, and tear gas, it is impossible to imagine the rage that he and his peers were forced to so courageously endure.
Despite the stone throwing, the bricks, the bombs, and the bullets, Dr. King preached non-violence. Dr.King preached peace. Dr. King preached in the transformative nature of love. “As I look into your eyes,” he said, “And into the eyes of all of my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you, ‘I love you. I would rather die than hate you.’” Between 1957 and 1968, he traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times in the name of human justice. We are all God’s children, he said. What message could be more timeless? And what message could be more timely? And who could communicate that message more eloquently than Dr. King?
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low; the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked pieces will be made straight: and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope… With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discord of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning.”
And yet, even on the eve of his assassination, Dr. King held his convictions.
The world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a away that men, in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same — “We want to be free.”
Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.
The next evening, The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead.
Carl Wendell Himes, Jr. wrote, “Now that he is safely dead, let us praise him, build monuments to his glory, sing hosannas to his name. Dead men make such convenient heroes. They cannot rise to challenge the images we would fashion from their lives. And besides, it is easier to build monuments than to make a better world.”
I don’t know how to make a better world. I don’t know what I can do. Maybe I need to build a house, or donate money. Maybe I need to run for office, or volunteer. Or maybe I simply need to relentless seek to recognize the good in all of us. Maybe I need to quietly, patiently be the best that I can be. Or maybe I need to repeat to the words of the man who walked the walk, and lived the life that his words so eloquently dictated, until they don’t bear repeating any more.
If you want to be important, wonderful. If you want to be recognized, wonderful. If you want to be great, wonderful! But recognize that the he who is greatest among you shall be a servant. That’s a new definition of greatness. And this morning the thing I like about it, by giving that definition of greatness it means that everybody can be great. Because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve! You only need a heart full full of grace, a soul generated by love, and you can be that servant.
If I could spend an afternoon with one person, living or dead, it would be Martin Luther King, Jr. I wouldn’t have much to say. I wouldn’t have much to offer. I suppose I would sing for him, something hopeful: “Amazing Grace,” or “Here Comes The Sun.” Maybe we’d play a board game, or a few hands of cards. Something to take his mind off his worries. Something to shake the weight of the world from his shoulders. In the end, though, I’d ask him to tell me a story, any story, just to hear him speak. And I’d rest in the strength of that great baritone, and rise up within, the best that I can be.
Street Fighting Man
I’ve never been a huge fan of the peace sign.
Not the one that kids draw and, if they’re from the suburbs, mistake for the Mercedes logo. I’m talking about making a V with your pointer and middle fingers. We have it all wrong in America. Here it’s a lame-duck holdover from Woodstock. “Peace, man!”
Make me puke.
The Brits have it right. For them it means, “Bugger off.” Or V for Victory.
I saw the Wachowski Brothers new film, “V For Vendetta,” tonight. It’s a stunner; another impassioned, graceful, poetic and philosophical spool of super-saturated celluloid from the boys who brought you “The Matrix.” Once again, the brother’s have affixed a target to hegemony, homogeny, demagoguery, and despotism.
And it’s cool as hell.
Painting from palette equal parts Soviet propaganda poster and distopic Orwellian nightmare, The Brothers deliver unto Bush-bashed, Iraq-embroiled, and disaster-fatigued America an unlikely hero, V. And he’s a doozy: Hugo Weaving’s voice (you may remember him as Agent Smith in “The Matrix” Trlogies) behind a Guy Fawkes mask that is reminiscent of a leaner, more maniacal Chef Boyardee.
Forged from fires of wrongful imprisonment, biological testing, and a reign of nationalist, political terror, V wages a bloody, fiery, and rightous rebellion. He brings down Parliament. He blows up Big Ben. And even I — who watched the World Trade Center fall with my own eyes — even I cheered.
Why?
Because, as he tells the power-starved, presidential-plotting Black Bagger, Creedy, just moments before ringing his corrupt neck, “Ideas are bulletproof.” The idea is self-determination. Government is the proxy of the people. No leader knows better than his constituents. He is his constituency. The idea is that people should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.
In an age when Weapons Of Mass Destruction are a foregone conclusion, when surveillance is on every street corner, and the question is not if, but when, we need V. Not for peace. For bugger off. And vendetta.
Bad government often creates good art. Hitler begot Anne Frank. Lyndon Johnson begot Bob Dylan. Ronald Reagan begot Andres Serrano. But lately, I’ve wondered where the rebels are. Where are the defiant, brave and relentless voices?
George Clooney’s “Good Night, And Good Luck,” urged us — through flashback — to ask questions. Steven SpielbergÕs “Munich,” urged us — through flashback — to make history of vengeance. And now, The Brothers say, “Stand up! Be counted! Do something! Your voice matters!”
If only this film had been released during election year. If only movie screens in every strip mall and Cineplex flickered with the cultural sabotage that is “V For Vendetta.” Maybe some 775 soldiers — not to mention thousands of innocent civilians — would still be alive today.
