Melissa Jo Peltier's Open Salon Blog

The Cruelty of Critics

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 13:04:07 -0400

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.
Elbert Hubbard

I just read a review of the movie "Henry's Crime" where the critic, predictably, played on the riff that "This movie is criminal!"

How witty. How terribly creative.

When did it become acceptable for critics to be so gratuitously cruel to filmmakers in their reviews? Ad hominem attacks at specific actors, writers and directors seem to be the norm these days. Was it always thus? Perhaps it was. Or is it the new age of the internet, where Snark is a cheap substitutes for intelligence and wit...where angry people in their pajamas pound away on their keyboards, raging at the world?

The same critics who so savagely pan such a small, low-budget, character-driven movie like "Henry's Crime" are often the critics who give a pass to multi-million dollar flops like "The Tourist" and the "Transformer" movies. These are films that have the budgets equal to or larger than the GNP of small undeveloped countries. Yet it's the small films, the ones that filmmakers poured their hearts into, that actors sacrificed salaries and perks for, that struggle just to break even in DVD sales and airplane viewings, that get the most ugly, cutting vitriol from critics who have the power to make or break such a tiny film at the box office.

These same critics publicly bemoan the lack of small, character-driven films made by Hollywood. News flash: there ARE filmmakers making these films. They have to beg, borrow, and steal to get the money to make these films. They spend years of their lives struggling to make their films. And because they're small films, with no budget for advertising and promotion, critics can effectively kill them with a few scathing reviews. Some critical outlets - the New York Times, for instance - do have this power. Thus, the cycle is perpetuated - small character driven films never make money. So Hollywood rarely makes small character driven films. And it becomes more and more difficult for the indie filmmakers - the ones who are already doing it for love rather than money - to get any support at all.

That, to my mind, is what's "criminal."

I haven't yet seen Henry's Crime, although it was one of the selections at the Woodstock Film Festival along with the film I produced in 2009, "White Irish Drinkers." I certainly plan to see it. As a struggling filmmaker, writer and artist, I always go and support the work of other artists, and my friends in the artistic community do the same for me. Hollywood is a cutthroat, competitive word and having spent most of my career working in television and feeling the attendant pressures and stresses, I am grateful for the encouragement and comraderie that my fellow worker bees in the hive are always there to offer. That's the beauty of film festivals. While there certainly is a competitive undercurrent, it's possible to let that negative energy go and just enjoy the other indie films, the creative environment, and the wonderful, appreciative audiences. You undoubtably won't love every film you see, but you always leave with a great appreciation for the incredible amount of work, dedication, thick skin and sheer dumb luck it invariably took, just to get the film from the page to the screen and in front of the audiences for which it was intended.

Reading that review of "Henry's Crime", however, allowed me to feel for another filmmaker the frustration and anger I've felt at reading some of the reviews of our own film. We have been all over the world with "White Irish Drinkers", and without exception, the audience response has been remarkable. To watch the movie in a theater where people lose themselves in the emotion; where they jump to their feet and applaud, gasp, cry, laugh - that in itself was worth the herculean effort it took to make a film for $600,000 in 17 days. In fact, the Woodstock Festival voted us winners of the Audience Favorite award for best narrative feature film. I'm not saying we made Citizen Kane - certainly not. And there are plenty of reasons not to like our movie. Not everyone can relate to it; it's sentimental flavor is definitely not everyone's cup of tea. Some people are offended by the 4-letter words in the colloquial dialogue. But overall, it has moved people - enough, in fact, for some viewers to come back and see it a second and third time. Reading the audience reviews here on Rotten Tomatoes, on our website, and elsewhere, the majority of the responses reflect the kind of powerful positive reactions we've seen in the many festivals and word of mouth screenings where our film has shown. People FEEL our film. Many identify with it, perhaps even too strongly. It is a small film with very small ambitions - a reflection of the very real blue-collar Brooklyn world writer/director John Gray grew up in, and his own experiences coming of age in a family where love and dysfunction competed for the souls of each individual. The film asks a very simple question - what if the world you know isn't good for you, but it's all that you know? If you feel you have a talent, do you dare leave behind what's comfortable and risk it all? Or is it better to make the safe choice, even if it's really not the best thing for you? These are simple questions of a basic film genre, the coming of age film, and from the audience responses we've received in the past two years, we know we've succeeded.

Mr. Gray recently spoke to film classes at Drexel University about the making of White Irish Drinkers and said, "To read some of the critics of our film, you'd think I'd committed a crime, just making it."

Who are these people who wield so much power? Recently, Elvis Mitchell, the highly respected head critic for MOVIELINE, was let go from his job because the director of the audience favorite, SOURCE CODE, busted him on having written a scathing review based on an early version of the script, NOT the final movie. On our own Rotten Tomatoes page, there's a review of "White Irish Drinkers" written by someone who admits he came in halfway through the movie at Toronto (thinking it was something else), and hated it. Interestingly, our best reviews came from critics who viewed our film in darkened theaters along with our appreciative audiences, the way all films are ideally meant to be seen. Often, the more powerful film critics actually refuse to see movies in theaters. They insist on getting screener DVD's instead. Though most "ordinary" people watch movies on their home sets nowadays rather than in theaters, with critics, filmmakers have no guarantee that the people who have the power to make or break their movies actually watch the entire film, or that they watch it distraction-free. Are they texting during the film? FACEBOOKing? Being interrupted by phone calls or children? Who knows. Having judged films and television programs for the TV Academy and Writer's Guild Awards myself, I can tell you from experience, just the fact that awards judges haven't been served their lunch yet can affect their perception of a selection. This alone has helped me accept criticism toward my own work, realizing how arbitrary and subjective an impression can be.

Then there are the inbred prejudices against certain actors, directors, and genres. I wonder if "Henry's Crime" suffers from the general critic's dislike of Keanu Reeves, just as "White Irish Drinkers" seemed to fall prey to an overall disdain for television director/writers in general and the creator of the critically dismissed (but overwhelmingly beloved by audiences) "Ghost Whisperer" in particular? There were many hateful, personal digs at Mr. Gray's background in television as an excuse for what the reviewer loathed about the movie. David Schwimmer seems to have suffered that same disdain of someone trying to rise above the "television ghetto" in the critics' assessment of his powerful film, "Trust". Yet audiences responded strongly to all three of these films, in Woodstock and in Toronto.

Where is the disconnect?

On the other hand, critics can have a wonderfully positive affect on a small film - look at the well-deserved success of "Win-Win" this year - an audience and critical favorite. I left that film smiling, feeling a new sense of hope for character driven films and their ability to reach and touch the public. Last year's "City Island" made me feel the same way. When critics single out and praise small films like these - "Winter's Bone," "Frozen River" - they can raise something that would have gone unnoticed to the status of Academy Award contender. Critics serve a function, like everyone in the business of art and art-making, and in cases such as these, they can be downright heroic.

One thing I have learned from this experience, however; gratuitous cruelty and sneering disdain has become the new discourse of the world. It can crush an independent film at the box office, as it has crushed so many we've seen fail theatrically this year.

Yet the audiences are the ones that count. Two women in tears, coming to speak to us after the Philadelphia premiere of "White Irish Drinkers" on Friday. "I loved this film. That was my life on the screen." One little old man, standing up and literally shaking his fist, "How could the critics have panned this film? This isn't a film. This is real life!"

That's why we do it. We have to remember that. As much as it hurts to be publicly savaged by the likes of someone who thinks it's witty to call a movie with "crime" in its title "criminal", that's the price we pay for the privilege of doing what we do. We have to remember that we are in the storytelling business in the first place because we want to reach people, to make them feel. We want to share our own joy and pain and reach out to others so that both filmmakers and viewers feel a little less alone in the world.

No amount of hateful, bitter words on the page can take that blessing away from us.

Remembering Daddy (My Friend and Colleague)

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:02:21 -0500

“When Daddy smells a flower, he doesn’t just smell the flower and move on. He goes and smells one petal. Then he smells another petal. Then the next one, and the next one, and he doesn’t stop smelling until he’s smelled every petal.”

That’s what Cesar Millan told me last week about his amazing pit bull, Daddy, who passed away on Friday at the age of 16. Cesar and I had flown up to Berkeley to go meet with the Pine Street Center, a group of researchers who have successfully taught dogs to sniff out cancer in human breath samples. When I say successful, I mean a 90% success rate of detecting breast, lung, pancreatic and ovarian cancer at stages 1,2,3, 4 and even stage zero. Yes, the dogs can detect cancer even before modern medicine is capable of discerning it. One of the scientists there told me, “Science has nothing anywhere near as accurate as a dog’s nose.”

We are working on our fifth book together, Cesar and I, and for it, Cesar wants to meet with people at the cutting edge of dog training (what Cesar does on the show Dog Whisperer, of which I am one of the executive producers, isn’t training at all. So many of his critics get that so wrong. It’s rehabilitation – he focuses his “training” efforts on the owners, teaching them to take responsibility for what they are communicating to the dog). What we learned at Pine Street, of course, is the clinic dogs weren’t really “trained” to smell cancer. They already knew how to do it. What the Pine Street folks taught the dogs was how to tell us when they smelled cancer. This is the kind of dynamic that fascinates Cesar right now. He believes that the future of dog training won’t be finding new ways to teach dogs tricks or human words like “sit, stay, come” and “heel.” It’s really training ourselves how to recognize and utilize the miraculous instincts and abilities that dogs already possess. Really, in Cesar’s mind, our dogs have always had much more to teach us than we to teach them.

I’ve been blessed to have known and loved and worked with Daddy since Cesar first came into the lives of my MPH Entertainment partners and myself back in 2004. In fact, Daddy came with Cesar the very first time the soon to be christened Dog Whisperer walked into our offices. Cesar and his wife and business partner, Ilusion, came into our conference room together, followed off-leash by a tough looking golden pit bull with what seemed like a tiger-sized head. While his appearance indicated ferocity, his demeanor was mellow, gentle and tolerant. During our first conversation, Daddy crawled under the conference table and lay down at my feet. I kicked off my shoe and started rubbing his belly, a distraction he enjoyed so much he soon stretched out on his back to get the full tummy rub treatment. We didn’t know it then, but Cesar always brought Daddy along to business meetings, in order to silently observe his behavior. Cesar trusted Daddy’s innate reaction to people and animals implicitly. If Daddy had reacted negatively to us, Cesar told us later, he simply wouldn’t have done business with us. Flocks of other producers had visited him at his Dog Psychology Center and all it took for Cesar to decide to send them away was to notice a negative reaction from his pack. “You can lie to a human, but you can’t lie to a dog,” he always says.

Working with Cesar over the years and traveling to direct Dog Whisperer episodes now and then, I’ve had the amazing experience of watching Daddy at work. Just like the seeing-eye dog that knows its job is to guide its blind owner across the street, Daddy somehow understood that his job was to help other dogs that didn’t have his serenity, wisdom and balance. A famous science-based animal trainer I interviewed the other day said to me, “I don’t know what you mean by balance.” It may be tricky to explain in words, but I know that anyone who had the good fortune to meet Daddy would understand exactly what Cesar means when he uses this term. Daddy exuded balance from every pore, and I have personally watched the mere fact of his presence turn a fearful Vizla into a courageous walker; a lazy bull terrier into a playful puppy; an aggressive German Shepherd guard dog into a laid-back friend. Cesar learned early in the Dog Whisperer’s history that if a particular case seemed to stump him a little, it was time to call in Daddy to get his insight. By raising Daddy in a loving, peaceful yet challenge-filled environment, around all manner of different dogs and people, Cesar succeeded in channeling the dog’s powerful pit bull energy into something few people think that the breed is capable of: Daddy grew up to be a teacher, a guru, a healer.

About two years ago, Cesar recognized that Daddy – though no less enthusiastic about his canine life’s work - was beginning to slow down noticeably. He took the opportunity to let Daddy himself choose a pit bull puppy who would become his successor, as Cesar’s right hand dog and the new ambassador of this much- maligned breed. I’ve watched this blue pit puppy, “Junior”, blossom from a winsome pup to an energetic adolescent with rippling muscles and forelegs of steel, under Daddy’s tutelage. Having Junior as his adopted “grandson” also gave Daddy an added purpose in life and brought out the still-active puppy in him during his waning years. I saw Junior today, just a day after Daddy’s departure, up at Cesar’s ranch, happily digging in the dirt and leaping about with Cesar’s other dogs. I’m sure he’s got some grieving to do, but like his mentor, his default setting is balance. I have no doubt that he will take up Daddy’s mantle with pride and purpose.

Daddy’s passing Friday wasn’t totally unexpected by those of us who loved him. While we were traveling to Pine Street, Cesar told me that Daddy’s health had been deteriorating rapidly over the past couple weeks since I had last seen him. There was no one thing that was wrong – it was just that extreme old age had taken its toll on his once strong and sturdy body. He was totally deaf, nearly blind, and could barely walk due to crippling arthritis. For years, Cesar had exercised him in the pool and given him weekly massage and acupuncture treatments to keep that affliction at bay, but even those therapies weren’t helping anymore. Daddy was also showing signs of a canine version of dementia. Watching a fine specimen of dog like Daddy fade away is a powerful reminder that all beings on this planet – even the strongest and fittest among us - are only here on a lease, one that eventually will run out. The last time I saw Daddy, he was able to recognize me and wag his tail, but there wasn’t a lot of passion in it.

There are some animals (and a few special humans) that seem to bring with them into this world inexplicably magnetic souls. It’s like they know they are a part of something larger than all of us, and if we’re lucky to be around them and remain open, we too can taste a bit of that eternity. Whenever I was around Daddy, I felt a palpable sense of peace and serenity. Up at Cesar’s ranch today, I swear I could still feel his presence in the cool, humid air. He will, of course, live on through his television appearances, some of which are in episodes that haven’t even aired yet. Just a couple months ago during a filming, he coaxed a fearful cell-phone search dog out from its hiding place under a desk - just by showing up and offering to lead. He wasn’t “trained” to do this – he just knew. Even in his infirmity, he still carried that magic with him, everywhere he went.

The fact that Daddy never passed a flower without smelling every single petal is a metaphor for his long – in dog years, anyway – life. Rest in peace, my pit bull friend. You changed my life, and I feel so blessed to have known you.

My Joe Wilson Fantasy Comeback

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:09:12 -0400

Not that I'd pretend to second guess our President, who seems to be able to keep his head above the fray of petty partisanship with grace and dignity most of the time.

It's just that I wouldn't have been able to remain so polite.

Here's an alternative version of the scene, as it unfolded in my addled brain, oversaturated as it is with the recent epidemic of outlandish wingnuttery:

Obama: "....the healthcare plan will not cover anyone who is in America illegally..."

Republicans: (Generally grunting like Neantherthals and squealing like a pack of unruly preschool students)

Joe Wilson: "You Lie!"

Democrats: Hisses, boos, shocked outbursts. Republicans: More grunts, a few hoots

Obama: " Whoa. Whoa. Hold up a minute there. This is a session of Congress. Not a speaker's corner. Let's take a breath here."

The room quiets down a bit.

Obama: "Representative Wilson. Joe Wilson from South Carolina. That was you, wasn't it, who just called me a liar?"

Silence. Democrats turn all eyes toward Wilson. Republicans start looking around in any other direction but toward Wilson.

Camera finds Wilson in the chamber, red-faced and sputtering.

Obama: "Hey, this is America, you've got a right to speak your mind. Stand up, Representative Wilson. You've clearly got something you want to say. What were your words? 'You Lie'?' (with ironic disbelief) That's what you really said? 'You Lie?'

Wilson looks around in a panic. The camera is on him.

Obama: "I've got to admit, it takes guts - or (with irony) something - to stand up in front of all of your fellow Congressman, in front of the entire United States of America watching today - and openly accuse the President of the United States - your Commander in Chief" - of lying. To feel confident enough to break protocol - and the general rules of decency and respect usually honored in this chamber - to shout out something as clearly inflammatory as that, you must have some pretty compelling evidence and facts at your fingertips to prove your point."

He pauses for dramatic emphasis.

Joe squirms.

Obama: "Well, Joe? Let's hear that evidence right now. If you're going to call your President a liar, let's hear exactly how you came to that conclusion."

Wilson stutters. He's speechless. Mortified. His fellow Republicans are quiet. Lots of eyes looking at the floor, the ceiling.

Obama: "Okay then. I guess Joe isn't currently prepared to back up his accusations here today. I'm not surprised. And this is what I mean, folks, when I say, I want to hear all real proposals, and real solutions to this problem, but I will not waste time on those who want to shut down the debates solely in the name of partisan politics."

Roar of applause from Democrats. The camera is on Wilson, who looks like he wants to disappear, and the Republicans in his near vicinity, who look as if they want to throttle him then and there.

Obama: "Now, moving on....this plan..."

What Obama actually did, of course was by far the smarter thing politically, taking the higher road. I wouldn't make it as a politician. I can be a little hot blooded. Like my old pal, Joe "Carolina Liar" Wilson.

But I did get some personal satisfaction when I ran that little scenario for myself in the cinema of my head.

I'm Just Not That Into Me*

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:02:01 -0500

*(Title graciously loaned me by its creator, the multi-talented writer-comedienne, Jacqueline Kabat http://www.jacquelinekabat.com)

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
Blaise Pascal

I’ve found the above quote in other forms, but this version of it pretty much sums up the bleak feeling of existential angst, futility and isolation I felt after going to see He’s Just Not That Into You as my “hooky noontime movie” yesterday.

Just a hunch, but my reaction was probably not the filmmakers’ intention for its audience.

After seeing this cute, well acted, often witty but ultimately inconsequential rom-com, I felt the raw edges of a hole knawing into the pit of my stomach. I walked out of the Lincoln Square Cinemas into the biting frost and felt the ulcer grow, reaching the bottom of my heart, sprouting cold, bony claw-fingers, and starting to tug and poke roughly at my most tender and buried parts. I’ve known this hole well; for most of my adult life, in fact. Since Junior High school. Since the moment I came to the realization that, although I was supposed to grow up and become an accomplished woman who would make something of her life, whatever it was that I made, it wouldn’t really count unless I was part of a stable, successful relationship with a man. Stable and successful, unfortunately, were not adequately defined. As suggested by the movie, they could mean, “Any guy who likes you enough to stick around.”

In He’s Just Not That Into You, Ginifer Goodwin plays a hapless singleton who is so frantic to find a guy to like her that she misreads signal after signal. She doesn’t choose these guys, mind you – they’re set-ups, or they choose her – but in her mind, if only just one of them would like her, then everything in her life would be okay. Jennifer Connolly plays her friend, a wife who, having badgered her longtime college boyfriend into marriage, gets an unfaithful husband in return – unfaithful with Scarlett Johansson, to add supreme insult to injury. Jennifer Aniston is cast as the only one of three sisters without a boorish husband to pick up after. And Drew Barrymore wants to find love so badly that she considers a video chat holding a mug of coffee to be a “coffee date.”

What struck me so profoundly is the fact that every one of these women is living her life in a kind of limbo, waiting to be the chosen, rather than act the chooser. Their lives, their futures, their hopes and dreams pivot precariously on the decisions made by the men around them. Played by a group of fine actresses, these characters struggle to have hearts and souls beyond their glib lines and flattering costumes – but functioning within the constrains of the film’s plot, they are merely lovely marionettes, waiting desperately for someone to pull their strings so they can finally dance to life.

Chillingly, any one of these women could have been me at some stage of my life. Reacting, not acting. Waiting, not pursuing. Paralyzed into a false helplessness and terrified of the image that still plays in my head in my darkest hours – of becoming a lonely, withered bag lady muttering aloud to passersby and pit bulls – forgotten, of no consequence, not making sense to anyone, let alone myself.

For me, the pattern begins in 9^th grade. I hear though the Junior High School grapevine that a boy, “Paul,” likes me. He wants to go out. I don’t know Paul at all. I’ve never spoken to him. But he’s cute and popular, and I’m not. I should be flattered, everyone tells me. How can I say no? I think it lasts all of three weeks. (Weeks are like dog years in the Junior High School dating world, remember).

Do Paul and I ever have a conversation? I don’t remember any. I do remember making out for the very first time in my life with him. We are in his parent’s basement with another “couple,” and Moody Blues “Knights in White Satin is playing on his father’s state of the art Hi-Fi. When the words “Breathe Deep the Gathering Gloom” burst through the speakers, I explode into hysterical laughter, even though Paul’s tongue is still squirming deep in my mouth. He spits, I choke. It's a surreal moment and I feel like an idiot, but I just can't stop giggling at the irony of it all. This guy’s tongue is in my mouth, and he has no idea who I am! Maybe that’s why he breaks up with me a few days later. My ego is bruised, but thankfully, not my heart.

Next there's “Danny,” who is a friend of Paul’s, also a jock, one of the popular kids. I don’t know Danny either. I have no classes with Danny. I have even less in common with Danny than I have with Paul. But Danny also “likes” me. One day I am walking home from school and Danny bursts out from an alley behind a block of stores, nearly knocking me off the sidewalk with his proclamation that he, too, “likes” me. He wants to go out with me. Well, sure! I mean, as long as he likes me, do I really have to know anything about him? I should be grateful, having boys bursting out from behind buildings because they “like” me. Who am I to refuse that kind of attention? What kind of bitch would presume to say “No?” I keep to myself the question that is already eating away at me inside, “How can you like me if you don’t even know me”. None of the other girls I know ever ask that question, so I guess I'm not supposed to, either. Danny and I go out for three or four months. He breaks up with me because I won’t go to third base, and I cry in my mother’s arms.

Fifteen years later, I ran into “Danny” at reunion. I swear, I didn’t even remember his name, let alone going out with him. He kept bringing up incidents to remind me, and I honestly couldn’t place him! When I finally did, I couldn’t keep from laughing. He said, “I showed your picture to my frat brothers in college and they told me I was an idiot to dump you.” I guess those frat brothers must have known me so very well, too, to understand what a caring, intelligent deep-feeling soul I was. A picture is worth a thousand words, after all.

Fast forward to an ostensibly more grown-up me, age 29, just out of an ill-advised marriage to a much older guy that I had drifted into right after my mother died. Though I was doing quite well at a very competitive career, I’d been with my ex since getting out of college, and realized that, in the real world, I still hadn’t learned anything more about dating or relationships than I knew in Junior High School. Once the wedding ring was off and men started to take notice again, I found myself still unable to say “No thanks,” even if I wasn’t remotely interested. After all, who was I to reject some nice man who actually deemed me worthy of his time and attention? What if - even if I didn’t find the guy attractive – he knew something I didn’t and would turn out to be “the one”? What if this guy was the last guy on earth who would ever find me attractive again? What if this was my last stop on the road to Bag Lady Hell?

Newly single, I had some dreary, boring dinners with some totally unsuitable men. To get myself through these evenings, I fortified myself with wine and turned up the charm. I told fascinating stories. Always the storyteller, I embellished on colorful incidents from my life, acted out movie plots, and shared juicy gossip. Basically, I took on the entire burden of the night’s entertainment, and I was damn good at it. The result was, the poor guy naturally thought we’d both had a good time. He’d be dismayed when I never returned his follow-up calls. Like a heel (though there was never sex involved), I’d disappear from sight, let the phone ring off the hook, change my routes to work, stop frequenting the same places I thought I might run into them. The truth was, I never wanted to go out with these guys in the first place. I had said “yes” to be polite. I still hadn’t learned the lesson that, as a woman, I was allowed to do my own choosing. I didn’t respond to their calls because, as a woman, I’d never learned how to assertively say “No, thanks” without feeling terribly guilty. Instead, I chose the cruelly passive aggressive route and just ignored them.

My lack of assertiveness and good intentions turned me into the very bitch I’d been so afraid of becoming in Junior High School.

Ironically, today I happen to be with someone who Is Just That Into Me. And I’m every bit Just That Into Him. We’ve known each other for nine years, been together for six, and been married just under three. He’s the sexiest man on earth, my favorite person to hang out with, to talk ideas with, and the person I’d most like in my lifeboat when escaping off the Titanic. I relish the joy of his company; yet feel perfectly fine being on my own in the world without him, alone, or with my other friends. Sharing my life with him even makes growing old seem more like an adventure than an inevitable punishment. So in the arena of modern relationships, my current cup runneth over.

But yesterday afternoon,HJNIY brought back a flood of hurt from years past that I didn’t even know I’d harbored…years where being myself, by myself, wasn’t only not enough – it was something to be dreaded and avoided at all costs. I watched Ginifer Goodwin try and mind-read the guys who might be interested in her, with little thought as to who she might be attracted to herself. Like the me of days past, she wasn't seeking someone with whom she might truly connect who sparked something in her that made her think, “That’s someone who can add to what I’m already building for myself;" instead, her script subtext read,"Maybe that's the guy who can fill up this bleak empty hole that's always been inside of me.” I watched a film that showed men and women acting out games that reduced our interactions to cartoon-like approximations of true connections. And I realized I’d played out much of my adult relationships in that same, pathetic way.

It brought to the surface a pain I’d lived with but never really felt, incapable of understanding that living a full life by myself, for myself was possible or even allowed. Years passed, and I never earned that peace and privilege of sitting in Pascal’s quiet room, alone.

The truth was, for most of my adult life, I just wasn’t that into me – and I’m just now realizing that I came perilously close to letting a good one slip away. The best one, in fact.

Me.

Escape from MILF Island*

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:01:54 -0500

The cliché used to be this: comfortable family man in his 40’s realizes the finish line is now in sight, dumps faithful but too familiar wife and kids, buys sports car, hair plugs, and runs off with 20-something. How many LIFETIME movies have followed this tired plotline? Cliché’s become clichés because there is a truth to them; my grandfather did this to my grandmother and then 12 year old mother back in ’45; my uncle to my aunt and then 12 year old cousin in ’72. While friends and colleagues of this mid-life runaway male traditionally looked askance at his blatantly narcissistic behavior, society sighed with a tacit acceptance, sometimes even tinged with admiration. The unspoken assumption was that men are carnal beings until the end, while the women who are their chronological partners basically run out of sexual steam at midlife. They may make perfectly good mothers and companions, but for a vital, red-blooded man, they’re just not doing it anymore. Never mind that families were shattered and generations of kids – girls in particular – grew up with abandonment issues.

Every once in a while, you’d here about a married woman shaking things up in the much same way. Generally, these were women who had married and born children in their teens and early twenties. Come the onset of their middle years, they realized they had never experienced living for themselves and exploded. Unlike their male counterparts, they were always judged harshly.

Until the era of the MILF.

An attractive woman I know – let’s call her, "Beth" –recently found herself facing her 45^th birthday. Despite the worshipful second husband she’d married at 34, she decided her sexual desirability hadn’t yet been affirmed enough for one lifetime. So, after brutal workouts, Spartan dieting, and tens of thousands of dollars in various youth-enhancing procedures and treatments, she jetted off to a women-only “City Slickers”-style Dude ranch and roped herself a genuine 20-year old Dude (the ranch employees apparently were not all women.) Returning home, Beth informed her baffled spouse that she had finally “found herself”; that she deserved a second adolescence, and that she’d rather re-invent herself as an overage Smirnoff bar girl than continue in the role of upper-middle class suburban mom that she’d played for the past ten years. As her ten and seven year kids old looked on in horror, Beth began dressing like Britney Spears, donning a cowboy hat, chain smoking, and, after the affair with the young cowboy was finished, lining up dates before she’d even moved out of the home she was now calling her “gilded cage.” When her devastated spouse begged her to at least wait until they’d officially separated, her response was, “I have to act now, while I’m still hot."

Beth had gone from being a frustrated MILF to a ruthless Cougar in less than a year.

In other news, pop star and mother of three, Madonna, celebrated her own 50^th year by tempting a 33 year old sports hero away from his wife and child, dumping her husband of 8 years, and posing provocatively in bandages. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1121343/As-Madonna-poses-ANOTHER-raunchy-album-picture-doing-70.html

Somebody, get me off MILF Island!*

Being on the wrong side of 45 myself, recently remarried and with a fifteen-year-old stepdaughter who already looks like a supermodel, I absolutely understand the panic that both Beth and Madonna seem to be experiencing. 45 seemed to be a watershed year for me biologically – since then, I’ve observed my face and body changing more rapidly than during the early part of my fourth decade, and I’m dancing as fast as I can to stem the damage. Vanity, thy name is Mid Life Crisis. I fantasize about being able to walk around in the world shaded by an edge-softening fog filter – remember those carefully composed, slightly blurred shots of Captain Kirk’s love interests in the original Star Trek? At night, I clandestinely scour magazines and the Internet for the secret to youth that is, if not eternal, at least extended. On the street and in the supermarket, I’m assaulted by tabloid cover photos of “Hottest Women Over 40” juxtaposed next to “Plastic Surgery Disasters”; “Sexy Celebrity Moms” next to “Caught On Film: Stars With Cellulite.” The conflicting messages seem to be: Yes! You certainly can be gorgeous and vital after 40, but make sure you get the right surgeon. Sure! Aging can be sexy, but the natural signs of it are horrific and to be ridiculed.

In fact, thanks to cover girls such as Madonna, Teri Hatcher, Heather Locklear, and the supreme high priestess of MILF island herself, Demi Moore, the rest of us mortals are left with the nagging feeling that it’s simply not acceptable to be over 40 and look over 40 anymore. 40 is the new 20 – or at worst, the new 30 - and you’d better be the poster girl for that slogan, or else you are somehow lazy, undisciplined, unhealthy, or just plain stupid. Never mind that few ordinary women can afford the youth-prolonging injectibles, nips, tucks, and even regular gym workouts readily available to celebrities and the financially comfortable. Nicole Kidman’s china doll visage is not only the Holy Grail these days. It’s become the gold standard.

Mind you, I’m speaking as someone who’s bought into way too much of this toxic propaganda. I could tell you I use Botox three times a year because of hormonal migraines…but that is obviously not the whole truth. I’m constantly dabbling in the dubious alchemy of the latest time-staying lotions, potions, treatments and procedures. But I often wonder, how long do I have to keep this up? Just how “hot” am I supposed to look at 47? Must I look 30 when I’m 50? 40 when I’m 60? And if Madonna is now the poster child for 50 and 70 is and the new 50, does it then follow that I should be able to pull off fishnet stockings and a funnel bra when I’m 70?

Memo to Madonna: the bandage photos look fabulous, but they’re not helping the rest of us out here.

Madge’s impressive photo shoot indicates to me something much more troubling than the natural desire to look and feel the vitality of youth for as long as humanly possible. It’s not just the pressure to maintain a dewy face and toned figure that’s the issue here; it’s the desperate quest of so many women to make a spectacular last stand on the crest of their sexual peaks. Defining our bodies as sexual currency has become so ingrained in us, it seems, that we’re making runs on the bank the moment we suspect our stock is beginning to drop.

When such panic born of desperation happens on Wall Street, it’s not a pretty sight. When it happens in the homes and families of middle aged women – famous or not – it can appear embarrassingly pathetic. And everything else that’s really important in life seems to fall away.

It’s sad that we have come to expect this kind of sturm and drung on the front pages of the tabloids. But remember that beneath the airbrushing, even celebrities are real-life women, feeling real-life panic. After all, for many of them, their looks are their livelihoods. And as long as our culture dictates that adult women outlive their usefulness once they can no longer pass for under 35, their lot is to conform or fade away. No wonder they’re grasping for the boytoys and the bandages. And no wonder the rest of us are infected by the same desperation.

Even Jennifer Aniston, barely 40, is rushing to get in as many semi-nude magazine covers as she can before running down the clock.

Meanwhile, back in the land of mortals, what happened to Beth’s family remains a senseless tragedy. Two young children now have to grapple with the fact that their mother chose to chase her own inevitably fading youth rather than nurture and rejoice in theirs. Her still bewildered husband rattles around alone in the gilded cage, wondering what he could’ve done differently. And another hopeful contestant alights on MILF Island, seeking those ever-elusive waters that will stop time in its tracks.

*Title credit due to the brilliant Tina Fey, who created the fictional television show, “MILF Island”, on NBC’s 30 Rock. http://www.nbc.com/30_Rock/