Then Nerds Took Over Hollywood I’m there, me, a real person, sitting in a movie theater, popcorn within reach, and I’m watching Superman save the world and I just feel hollow. It just hit me. Enough with the nerds. ___________________ I’m happy that nerds have had their day. It was thousands of years overdue. For most of the history of mankind the specific skill set of nerdness was unappreciated. Back it up to hunter-gatherers days and there’s not much chance for a nerd to impress the tribe, unless they invent a better bow and arrow. Issac Newton was the Albert Einstein of his time, and neither he nor Einstein were appreciated like they deserved; the illiterates of Newton’s time would consider the Law of Gravity to just be common sense; and who among us, even now, could articulate the what’s-the-big-deal about Relativity… The Golden Age of Nerds – you can argue if you want – might have begun with Steve Jobs and The Woz, and a fellow named Gates. Here were nerds making something important, useful, applicable to every member of the tribe. The entire digital age is nothing if not nerd heaven. Here comes Star Wars and Lucas – an absolute nerd – and he brings us entertainment, nerd style, accelerating what had begun on Star Trek. Let’s call Star Wars the mother of nerd movies and here’s the recipe: heavy on technology, light on humanity, spectacular special effects (for the time) and pitiful character development, great gizmos and terrible dialogue, all chained together on a plot borrowed from the ancient stories. And it made money. And we liked it. Because it was different. And since the 1970’s the acceleration of technology (developed by nerds) has provided us decades of movies, all one-upping themselves on special effects. I literally gasped during a scene from Avatar, the floating islands, I gasped, just awed by the whole who-thought-of-this! The comic book stuff, it’s so obvious, how that plays to the strength of the nerd mind and year after year more and more nerds are filling up Hollywood, making the next Star Wars, special effects stun one summer and obsolete the next. _______________________ So back to now, to this me, watching this movie, and yes the effects are delirious with excellence, so why was I so hollow? Here’s my answer: I’m a feeler. I want to feel. The nerd thing is just that, it’s about things. Screw things, they’re just things. I want ideas, not things. What touches me – book, movie, somebody telling me a story – is the oomph. Give me a knot in my throat. Make me embarrassed that I’ve got a tear about to give me away. Make me feel something. You reading this? There’s a Me writing this. Whether you’ve been following these Bedtime Stories for a while or if this is your first one, I can tell you right now that You Know that there is a real person on this end. I feel, and I’m not afraid to feel, which allows me to welcome them, to invite feelings in for morning coffee or a beer after work, and because I am acquainted with feelings I can write about them and make you feel them too. So dear Hollywood, throw us a bone. Just a few a year. Give us movies where we come in with our humanity, and we watch people in their humanity, and they touch us in rare and high places. To make a movie is such an honor, to know that you can reach millions world-wide; so why waste it saying nothing? Say something! For those movies, no nerds. A thinker to direct, a feeler to write. _________________________________ This edition of Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:04:32 +0000
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