Phil's Challenge

Phil has “tagged” me for this list. (Actually, if you read his post, it’s sort of a “untag” type tag, but the challenge was issued.)

My first instinct is to agree with Phil that this is a waste of time, but that’s what I do on anyway this blog, so because I hate to turn down a challenge…

I’m going to bend the rules slightly and NOT reprint the whole list. If you want to see the whole list go to Phil’s blog. As for my dream occupations:

1).　　Actually Brett and I always used to talk about opening our own pizza shop and running it according to Anarchist-Communist principles. That is, paying everyone the same wage, dividing the wealth of the pizza shop equally among the employees, and have all decisions about the business made by the employees themselves. We were thinking about calling it, “Commie Pizza,” or something like that.

I’d also like to open a bookstore and fill it up with radical books, or just books that interested me. I don’t think I’d ever make a living that way, but it’s a nice dream.

2). I don’t think there’s a word for this, but I’d like to be involved in movies. Only I’d like to have complete control over everything, be able to spend all the money I want, make movies on whatever subject interested me, and get help from all sorts of talented people. (This is supposed to be fantasy, right?)

I’ve always been interested in movies, but aside from the obvious problem of lack of talent, I don’t think I could handle working in a studio environment. I’d want to be in control of everything, want to have a lot of money to spend but make movies that would probably only attract a small audience. And I don’t think I could handle other people tinkering with my ideas. And I would make my movies too long because I couldn’t handle cutting out anything.

But I’ve always thought I had a lot of cool idea for movies, provided they could be transferred right from my head to the big screen. A lot of my favorite books I would love to see adapted into good movies. Like “Man’s Fate” by Andre Malraux. If ever a philosophical book could make a good movie, it would be this one since the action sequences are already written in.

Also I think a lot of historical events and historical figures would make good movies. The life of Pulcher Clodius, for example, would make a good movie because he lived such an interesting life and interacted with so many legendary historical figures.

Also I’d like to make a good movie about the 60s. There have been a lot of movies about the 60s, but they all suck. “1969”, “Panther” and “Steal this Movie” were all some of the worst movies ever. I think the reason is because most of the movies try to cram every cliché about the 60s into a two-hour movie. Or they deal with subjects that are much too vast.

A good movie would focus in not on the whole decade, or on the whole life of one individual, but on a particular event. Like the Columbia student strike in 1968 would make an excellent movie if done right.

I also thought it would be cool to do a movie about the Japanese Student movement. It could be seen through the eyes of an American protagonist to make it accessible to the American audiences, but it could be chalked full of old Japanese music and tributes to old Japanese movies.

I guess on the last one Tarantino sort of beat me to the punch with “Kill Bill” (minus the student politics part). But I was thinking of this idea before “Kill Bill” came out, honest.

Okay, right, now how many more of these dream occupations do I have to do? I’ve just gotten through the first couple, and already I’m writing a thesis. See, this is why I can never be a writer; I have no sense of brevity.

I give up on the last ones. I don’t know, I agree with Phil that community organizer sounds cool. Also I’d like to be a “professional gadfly” like Ralph Nadar.

As for people I’m going to “tag”………….Actually, you know what, with apologies to Phil I don’t think this game is all that interesting after all. I’d be much more interested in getting people to respond to my previous challenge of “Books that changed your life.” Preferable with reasons attached to the list. Phil, you being the most well read person I know, you’d be on the top of my list to tag with this one. As would Bork (he hasn’t been blogging in a while), Peter, Deano or really anyone who is reading this. And Matt or Tom, I’d love to hear your reasons.