You remember the 1979 movie Being There:
A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington DC house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television. After a run in with a limousine, he ends up a guest of a woman (Eve) and her husband Ben, an influential but sickly businessman. Now called Chauncey Gardner, Chance becomes friend and confidante to Ben, and an unlikely political insider.
Peter Sellers plays Chance, the wide-eyed empty vessel who becomes one of the most powerful men in the world. People hang on his enigmatic simple sentences – they are in awe in what they believe are profound insights. What he says suddenly makes everything clear to them, and they move on to great success because of his words. He has no clue, but he’s generally happy, in a diffused sort of way – and fame and riches follow. The joke is that his most “profound” explanation of how he arrives at his insights is a simple declarative sentence – “I like to watch.” Eve was unsuccessfully trying to seduce him, and frustrated, when he first said that. But it becomes a mantra, central to the plot. It’s the secret to everything. The other joke is, of course, his name, the real secret of his success – Chance.
The movie isn’t that good – pathetically obvious allegory is, in the end, condescending and patronizing. Yeah, yeah – we get it. But Sellers was nominated for an Oscar – he made something amazing of a quite literally nothing role, and that is then the ultimate self-referential joke. The Oscar voters probably didn’t get the joke. They just thought he was cool.
On the other hand, just watching and leaving things to chance can do wonders. Take the Los Angeles Democratic Presidential Debate, January 31, 2008, at the Kodak Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. JUST ABOVE SUNSET received press credentials and covered the event, live, here, from inside the hall. What was happening outside the hall, just before the debate began, is in the five pages of photographs – The Big Event, Gathering Opinion, The Media (satellite truck with the neon Mickey and Minnie is amusing), Partisans (snake-man for Hillary says it all) and CNN Broadcasting. The tracking software shows the number of visits to the site more than quadrupled.
How to account for this success? That’s easy. As Chauncey Gardner would say – “I like to watch.” And all of this is a product of chance. By chance, in the mid-sixties, it was arriving at a small liberal arts college in Ohio and making a life-long friend of Rick, the News Guy in Atlanta – except then he wasn’t the News Guy. We just got along great – and later, after knocking about the news business and working for the dreaded Roger Ailes, twice, he ended up as part of the team that founded CNN, in with Ted Turner and that crew. Rick has since retired, but he is still tight with the current folks at CNN – and he suggested applying for press credentials, and had a key person at CNN forward the forms, and that was that. Perhaps Chauncey Gardner was a wise man, or chance matters, or something.
Part of what happened has to do with living in Hollywood. You see, being adrift in Southern California after a second divorce, and moderately successful, you have to live somewhere – and Hollywood seemed like a good idea at the time. It could have been the beach, but it was, pretty much on a whim, Hollywood. Why not? As Neil Diamond used to sing, “Palm trees grow, and rents are low…” (really, see him sing it here). So that was that. And after dropping out of the corporate madness, writing and doing photography just sort of happened, as did the transformational development of the internet and site-building software. People dropped by to read the columns and look at the photography (some individuals and designers even bought prints).
And at the end of January it all came together. Suddenly you’re a photojournalist, and political commentator, covering what some thought would be an historic event, a one-on-one debate between the man who could become America’s first black president and the woman who could become America’s first female president. The way the Republican Party is tearing itself apart as the dreaded apostate John McCain seems to have that nomination wrapped up, it seems likely that the next president will be the black man or the woman. This is a big deal, and the event was just up the street. This was odd.
It’s too bad the debate was so bland. After the previous debate in Myrtle Beach, the one where Clinton and Obama really ripped into each other, we all expected fireworks. But they both knew better. That made each of them look bad – angry and petty and mean. Steve Benen captures what happened out here:
I can’t help but think that the last debate, the ugliest of the campaign, annoyed so many people, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama came into tonight knowing they had to be on their best behavior. They had plenty of opportunities to take some shots, but both carefully avoided confrontation.
I can never tell how people are going to respond to these debates - in terms of who “won,” or who had the best “zingers” - but my first-blush reaction is that these two seemed to be at the top of their game. I thought Clinton was stronger on discussion of healthcare policy, which dominated the first hour, while Obama was stronger on Iraq, which dominated the second. (What’s the old expression? “If you’re explaining, you’re losing”? Clinton still seems awkward talking about her 2002 vote. She doesn’t want to admit a mistake, but she also doesn’t want to stand by her previous position. It leaves her in a tough spot, politically and rhetorically.)
I also noted repeated references to John McCain - by my count, four from Obama and two from Clinton. They’re already laying the groundwork for the general election, which is encouraging. (Obama also got a nice dig in on Romney, though at this point, it’s probably unnecessary.)
Benen also adds this postscript:
By the way, did CNN really need all of those cut-away shots to movie stars? Yes, it’s Hollywood, we get it.
David Kurtz pointed out something even odder – “CNN just reporting that tickets to tonight’s L.A. debate between Hillary and Obama are going for upwards of $1,000 apiece.”
Benen:
Now, I like to think that there’s more interest in the presidential campaign this year than in previous cycles, and I’m delighted by the excitement surrounding the Democratic field. But I never thought I’d see the day in which people paid in upwards of $1,000 to see a political debate, which is going to be televised anyway.
All of a sudden, I guess it’s cool to be a political junkie. I knew if I waited long enough….
Well, odd things happen. Call it chance, or fate – or maybe it was the Hollywood factor, as in CNN Democratic debate shatters record. Well over eight million people watched. For one night it really was cool to be a political junkie. And look! – There was Stevie Wonder, and Diane Keaton, and Warren Beatty! (There were young stars too, even if Britney Spears was, at the time, in the hospital down the hill, on psychiatric hold, again.) Call it karma, or something – all the karmic forces of celebrity, and of political and social discontent, and of the sense of economic doom in the air, and of hope and despair, and of the whole world hoping for some sort of change for the better with odd but deadly wars raging, converged in one spot, just down the street. It was time. This might be the place. For one night the world turned its hungry eyes to… Hollywood. Was it chance, or fate? Why not go watch, and document it?
Even the Los Angeles Times seemed to sense something big was up. You saw it in their endorsement:
In the language of metaphor, Clinton is an essay, solid and reasoned; Obama is a poem, lyric and filled with possibility. Clinton would be a valuable and competent executive, but Obama matches her in substance and adds something that the nation has been missing far too long - a sense of aspiration.
The man of the hour, the man the world awaited, was here. And NBC’s political editor, Chuck Todd, said, to borrow that saddest line from that old Billy Wilder film, he was ready for his close-up:
He proved that he belonged on the same stage as Clinton. And that’s an important accomplishment, because you keep wondering whether undecided voters are waiting to see if Obama can prove his mettle for the presidency. There’s a theory that believes just that. And if that theory is true, then last night’s debate could prove to be very important to Obama. The audience was undecided voters and former Edwards supporters, and we’re guessing these folks have a fairly low bar for Obama to prove himself to them, compared to the bar they have for Clinton since they are still not on board with the more well-known candidate.
So, one short block north of Billy Wilder Square, the man proved himself.
The night before, the Republicans held their debate out at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, twenty miles west of Hollywood, so it wasn’t that hard:
The Republicans last night looked like men competing for a chance to lose an election. Tonight, Hillary and Obama looked like they were competing to be President of the United States.
And the disgruntled conservative Andrew Sullivan, now for Obama, calls it this way:
It was, I think, his best debate in the campaign so far. The one-on-one format elevated him instantly and he commanded the stage and the occasion. Hillary Clinton did not do poorly. All her strengths were on show: the policy mastery, the gaffe-free talking points, the Clinton record in the 1990s. But that made his mastery all the more impressive. The good natured sparring helped him. He neutralized her on healthcare and simply cleaned up on the war in Iraq. But most crucial: he seemed like a president. He was already battling McCain. She was still pivoting off Bush. In his body language, he carefully upstaged her, without looking as if he were trying. By the end of the debate, he was pulling her chair back for her.
I’d say that he won the primary election tonight. She is still a formidable candidate and her massive institutional advantage may eventually give her the nomination. But she hasn’t won this primary argument or this primary battle. If she becomes the nominee, it will be because she survived the primaries. He won them.
You know my bias. It’s on my sleeve. But I’ve criticized Obama’s performances in the past and couldn’t find a flaw tonight. A good closer, as I’ve been told for over a year now. You can say that again.
So it was history, or historic.
A friend and a reader in upstate New York, following the real-time commentary here at this site, put it this way:
NO ONE has used the descriptive “statesman.” Obama is a statesman and geez do we need one for a change. And to hold that bearing at his age - I like his tone - like his candor - his interest in listening rather than being The Decider!
Hillary on the other hand is a dressed VERY intelligent street fighter (tactically speaking)!
Rather than the descriptions of the night as humdrum because there were no sparks - I’ll take mature and statesman-like any day. Unfortunately there are too many rednecks among our populace who are only interested in car crashes and blood-letting. So I’m not sure a majority are ready to put demeanor over and ahead of D.C. tacticians. Can only hope so…
As this ended tonight - Mary my wife opened a Dove chocolate heart – with secret messages in the inner foil - this one read… Share a Sunset.
No, JUST ABOVE SUNSET does not mess with Dove confectionary packaging in Rochester supermarkets. It was chance, or fate.
As for the details of the day, here’s a bit more of the karma, just to give you a feel for it.
We were told to pick-up our credentials at 10:00 that morning on the fourth floor at the Kodak. Fine – the trick is to find free parking for a short errand, particularly since Hollywood Boulevard was closed from Highland to Orange, right in the center of things, filled with satellite trucks and cable and lighting and news sets. No problem – just bop down to Sunset, turn left, and parallel Hollywood Boulevard. Then hang a left at Orange, the intersection with the In-and-Out burger place, where Paris Hilton was headed when she was arrested for driving drunk, on one corner, and Hollywood High on the other corner, where Judy Garland and Ricky Nelson went to class, although not at the same time. With luck, there’ll be a slot by the football field – two hours free. Luck held. And the young Hilton woman, driving badly in her signature black ultra-expensive Benz SLR McLaren, was nowhere to be seen. The Mini was safe. Off to the Kodak, a short block north.
Hey, walking through Hollywood when they’ve blocked off the streets is a breeze – no tourists in rental cars cutting the corners, staring at anything but the road and bumping your knees. But even two hours before noon, when most of Hollywood is usually asleep and most everything closed, the streets are starting to fill with political activists. They seemed a happy lot, and no bother. Walk past the CNN Situation Room set at the entrance to the Kodak, and cross the lobby to the escalators – but what’s this? Someone is handing out fliers – a Hillary rally at the Yucca Community Center, nearby, in an hour. No time for that. Off to the fourth floor. Stand in line with the real journalists – chat with a pleasant bearded fellow from USA Today who, since I’m a local, wants to know what a cab will cost him from the Beverly Hills Hotel to LAX. He must have one super expense account. Does he grab a bite to eat at the Polo Lounge there each day? I make a guess about the cab and tell him to practice his Armenian – cabbies are different out here. This isn’t Manhattan. But the line moves and I have a badge.
Back to the car and grab the camera – the parking space is good for another hour. So half the shots from the links above are from that hour – using the press pass hanging around my neck to get close to things and chat with the CNN technicians and PR folks. It’s silly. It’ll do. But then it is home for lunch – download the first batch of shots, pay some bills, catch up on email, and pack the laptop for the event.
A bit before two it’s time to head back – and to forget the free parking tricks. Get up to Fountain and head to the Kodak from the north, as Cahuenga is being kept open. Those two miles take almost an half-hour, but finally, the turn into the Kodak’s giant underground garage. But what’s this? Oh yeah – the bomb squad and the Secret Service folks. They peek in and run a mirror under the Mini, then wave me through – but no one is moving. So I chat with the young fellow with the gun at his hip – football stuff, the Super Bowl and all that. We laugh a lot. He’s a Raider fan, and I like the Steelers. But then things do move.
Park and grab the camera just like the guy in the next slot. He has a ton of camera stuff – and I wait for him, as I’ll probably have to open doors for him. It seems he’s an LA Times stringer. We move toward the elevators, but he slaps himself on the forehead and runs back for his monopod. Fine – bye. Before I set up in the press area I need to take more street shots – there’s supposed to be an Obama rally going on.
There isn’t – so it’s just more street shots, and listening to the chat. I talk with the other photographers. I have my old Nikon D-70 and each Nikon they proudly show me is the new five thousand dollar full-frame D-3, so I feel crappy. The woman from Jet Magazine just got hers and gloats. I make a note to buy a lottery ticket. But then it’s back to the car – stash the camera and grab the laptop and stuff, and on upstairs.
The fourth floor lobby is jammed. Show badge, walk over to another area, put your gear on the floor with all the rest, and let the nice German Sheppard sniff for bombs. It’s a pretty dog, and friendly, and kind of goofy. The guy from the bomb squad is cool – showing off his furry friend and grinning. The FBI lad next to him looks a bit bored. We are not threats. And each of us gets a “clear” slip of paper and heads to the doors – to go through “the mag” – step through the frame, just like at the airport. Yeah, yeah.
The bloggers are up one flight, in a big room with the LA Times folks at the front and the rest of us in the rear, and speakers and monitors everywhere. None of us will see the debate, or the stars in the hall, but there are box lunches and endless soda and coffee and bottle water. That’s cool. And what happened next is in the play-by-play from the evening.
What isn’t there is discovering both laptop batteries failing, rushing down to the car, driving home, grabbing the power cord, driving back, doing the security gauntlet again, and riding up in the elevator chatting with the locally famous Pat Morrison of the LA Times (known for her hats), the doing that upstairs security gauntlet again. Drat. But it all worked out.
Rick the News Guy told me to do the Spin Room after the debate, where each campaign sends out its main strategist to explain what really happened, but I needed to smoke and it seemed stupid. As I told him later, it was a lot of “very important people” being interviewed by other “very important people” under very bright lights. No one seemed to be saying anything startlingly new, and I just slowly passed through, listening, on my way out. I stood right next to Wolf Blitzer for a bit and tried to find some news in his chat with someone, but there was none. Bill Schneider stood alone looking bored. I needed a smoke. I think I’m jaded.
But whole thing was a trip - and the press freebies were cool. I like my new little UBS memory stick that says Los Angeles Times on it. Free food and drink, and a CNN notepad in case I want to play ace reporter. I’m not sure I want to do that.
Anyway, as they say out here in Hollywood, that’s a wrap.
