The Room

“I’ll Record Everything”

You fear an empty Room…?

 I couldn’t win. Whatever I said made me guiltier.

“I go for ride now,” Tommy said as he got up and headed to the door. “I don’t want to talk now. I go get fresh air — maybe see girl or something. You have audition and I don’t want to spoil. We talk tomorrow.”

I got into bed with psychic spiders crawling all over me. Was this just a pretext for Tommy to throw me out of here? Had I really done something wrong by talking about Tommy with my friend? Tommy had walked me into a minefield of paranoia and left me there all alone.

When I woke up the next morning I could hear Tommy snoring in the other room. I thought, You have built a human relationship on a foundation of asbestos.

I mangled my Viking callback, which was held next to a restaurant appropriately called the Stinking Rose. All I could think about was whether I was going to be homeless at the end of the day.

When I got back to the apartment Tommy was once again on the phone. I knew he’d had his meeting with the late Stella Adler at around the time I was forfeiting my Viking role. “These Stella Adler people,” he was saying to whoever was on the other line, “they’re all behind schedule. Not as good at acting as I thought. They don’t even understand the subconscious. You know what, I’m sorry. I do my way.” He looked over at me. “Well, I have to go now. My friend is here.” He’d really doused that word in kerosene and set it on fire. For a long few seconds after hanging up he didn’t say anything. He was sitting on a chair, not making eye contact, his hands folded in his lap, smiling a hideously false smile. “And how was audition?”

I stared right back at him. “Not good. It was better the first time.”

“Oh, come on. I’m sure you did good job.”

“Yeah. Sure you are.”

He stood up. “Let’s go for a spin and talk about stuff.”

I was nervous to go anywhere with him. I knew something bad was going to happen if I did. But if I didn’t go with him now, it meant the last two years of our friendship were based on my being a stupid, trusting idiot, and I didn’t want that to be true. I followed Tommy to his car. A few minutes later he was turning left on Sunset, not saying a word but driving faster than I’d ever seen him drive : the speed limit. Then he floored it. My hands flew out to grip the dashboard. “Tommy,” I said. “Slow down.”

He veered recklessly around one car, another. “This guy from yesterday at the door—I guess he like you, huh? Best friend?”

“Tommy, what is this really about?”

“And your goofy friend. You talk to him all the time, huh? You tell him all these things.” His mouth was set at an ugly angle. He was driving slower now but somehow just as recklessly.

“Tommy, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Why you talk about me?” His voice was slightly more aggressive.

“I don’t even know what—”

“Why you talk about me to this friend? Why? You talk about Jean Shelton! You talk about football! You talk about acting! My place! Why do you talk about me?” He was screaming at the windshield, hunched over his steering wheel, too disgusted to look over at me. “Why do you talk about me? I thought I trust you, and you talk about me!”

Now I was scared. Tommy had completely lost control of himself. What was he so afraid of? I knew, then, that this was how Tommy’s Planet operated. I wondered if the reason he didn’t have any friends was that they all, eventually, wound up here : untethered, lost in space.

“Tommy!” I said. “I don’t even know why you’re so upset!”

“Why do you do this? Why do you do this?” He wasn’t hearing me. He was lost in the orbit of his own rage.

All I had told my hippie friend about Tommy was simple stuff, basic stuff—fond stuff, even. I told him that Tommy was always willing to try new things, things he had no prior interest in, like playing football. I described his openness to new experiences. I told him how good Tommy could be, and how kind he often was, once you got to know him. I told him how grateful I was to Tommy that he let me live in his place, that he was the only one to tell me to keep going when everyone else in my life had urged me to give up. I know you don’t trust him, I said to my hippie friend, but Tommy really is a good guy, deep down.

Tommy turned off Sunset Boulevard and pulled over — pulled over on the very street Joe Gillis uses in Sunset Boulevard while trying to avoid those loan sharks, after which he discovers Norma Desmond’s mansion. But I didn’t know any of this at that moment. I didn’t know that I was living Joe Gillis’s life in twenty-first-century form.

“Look,” Tommy said, more calmly, and I knew instantly that he’d been preparing this speech for a while. “I decide I’m moving to Los Angeles to be actor. I just want people to leave me alone. I can’t have anyone around at this time. Now is time you find your own place. I cannot trust you. The feelings go away.” Tommy held his thumb and forefinger apart and squeezed them shut. That was our friendship now : a molecule’s width of nothing.

This felt like a bad dream. Tommy was so oily with menace that all I wanted to do was run. The person whose support had meant so much to me was gone.

I got out of the car and started walking away. Everything I’d worked for, I thought, was done. I’d wound up exactly where my mother had predicted I would. The tears in my eyes proved it.

The next thing I knew Tommy was driving beside me, urging me to get back into his car. “I’m sorry, Greg,” he said, gulping the words. “I’m sorry I yell at you. I can trust you. You know that. You can stay in apartment.”

That was all this ridiculous tirade had been about. Tommy was still capable of hurting and affecting and controlling me, and knowing that he could do all these things was, to him, the very stuff of relief. Now that Tommy had this dark assurance, all between us was, in his mind, fine. But it wasn’t fine. I now knew that everything my mom and friend had said about Tommy was right. There was something twisted and poisonous inside him — something potentially dangerous, even. It was just a matter of time.

I got back in the car and said, “Okay,” but I never again looked at Tommy in the same way. I started searching for a new apartment that night.

eleven

“I’ll Record Everything”

No one leaves a star. 

That’s what makes one a star.

—Norma Desmond, Sunset Boulevard

Sensitive

Sensitive The Untold Story trailer (2020)

Watch full documentary "Sensitive - The Untold Story" 

on www.sensitivethemovie.com

In 1991 Dr. Elaine Aron made a discovery that revolutionized 

how we view 20% of the population that are highly sensitive (HSP). 

Her research was the subject of the groundbreaking documentary 

Sensitive-The Untold Story, featuring Alanis Morissette. 

"....well, I knew something was up when My Family 

was looking at me, somewhat strangely; 

and I remember probably about 10 years ago, 

My Father and I were sitting down --

I was hosting a show in Canada 

and he was having A Moment, 

and I was crying about 

something intense (for me), 

which he'd gotten USED to, 

I suppose -- at that point he said to me, 

he said "Alanis I'm so sorry 

we just never really knew 

what to DO with you..... 

We were at a loss --" "

That DEFEATIST RESPONSE

Adam Curtis Wipe 2014 on Vladislav Surkov

"That DEFEATIST RESPONSE has become part of a new System of Political CONTROL -- 

and to understand 

HOW this is happening : 

You Have to Look 

to Russia.

This is Vladislav Serkov -- who is a Hero of Our Time.

Serkov is one of President Putin's advisors, and has helped him maintain his Power 

for 15 YEARS -- but he has done it in a very new way.

He came originally from the

avant-garde art world -- and those who have studied his career say that what Serkov has DONE is to import ideas from the world of Conceptual Art 

into the very heart of politics.

His aim is to undermine 

People's PERCEPTION 

of The World, 

so they never know 

What is REALLY Happening.

Serkov turned Russian Politics into a behwhildering, constantly changing piece of Theatre -- he sponsored all kinds of organisations, from Neo-Nazi Skinheads, to Liberal Human Rights Groups..... He even backed parties that were OPPOSED to 

President Putin.

But The Key Thing IS that 

Serkov then let it be KNOWN 

that this is what he 

was doing -- 

which meant that no-one was SURE 

what was ‘Real’, and 

what was ‘Fake’.

….or, of Course —

Vice-Versa

Planet of The Birdmen

You don’t yell at a sleepwalker. 

He may fall and break his neck.

—Joe Gillis, Sunset Boulevard

 .

“So you lived in L.A. for a while?”

“No,” he said. “Was like . . . commute. I would fly to L.A. on Thursday for class and fly back home the same night.”

I’d never heard anything so ridiculous. How did he afford that?

“I know, so crazy,” Tommy said. “But I have to take class. I want to be filmmaker. I make movie in class. I got A minus.”

“You made a movie? What was it called?”

“Robbery Doesn’t Pay,” Tommy said proudly. “Tiny little thing. Shot on the super-eight.”

He showed me a couple of frames of the tiny little thing, which consisted of a large, hairy-looking guy in a white T-shirt casing an L.A. neighborhood for a car to steal, all of it scored to Orgy’s cover of “Blue Monday.” Surprisingly, Tommy wasn’t in the film.

“Enough for now,” Tommy said. “Time to rehearse.”

We ran through the scene a few times, after which I suggested we put the scripts away and go off book. Tommy was hesitant but agreed. To give him a minute to prepare, I asked to use his restroom. There I found a professional makeup mirror and a pair of rusty twenty-five-pound dumbbells on the floor next to the toilet. Above the toilet was a large framed poster of the Disney character Aladdin.

Going off book turned out to be a bad idea. Tommy couldn’t remember anything, not even lines made up of nothing more than “Yes” or “No.” When he couldn’t remember his lines he waved his hands around, shouted, made up new lines, or did all those things at once. His mouth and mind had trouble establishing any lasting connection to each other; English was obviously not Tommy’s first language, but I was beginning to wonder if it was even his third or fourth. When he wasn’t being hysterical, he was critiquing my performance. “It has to be big,” he kept saying. “It has to be powerful.”

Of course this guy loves Brando and Dean, I thought. They’re captivating actors because they know exactly when to yell, when to floor it. Tommy believed you had to floor it for the duration of every scene.

What on earth compelled this man to want to act? His money explained his condo, his Mercedes, his weekly acting-class commutes to Los Angeles, but nothing I’d seen or heard so far explained him. I was no longer rehearsing a scene; I was private investigating another human being.

“What’s Street Fashions USA?” I asked him, in the middle of our scene, motioning toward one of the shopping bags in the corner.

Tommy looked over at the bag, suddenly uncomfortable. “I do marketing — you know, retail stuff.” He stopped himself. “My God! You are such nosy person!”

I found it hard to believe that this guy could do marketing for Fangoria magazine, much less fashion. The Street Fashions USA locations listed on the bag were Haight Street, Beach Street, and Sutter Street. But the bags were cheaply printed; the Levi’s logo didn’t appear to have its standard, trademarked look.

“You don’t seem like a retail guy to me,” I said.

Tommy took this with a good-humored shrug. “You don’t know me yet. I have many skills.”

“So why acting?”

Tommy’s hands retreated into his pockets and I sensed him fight some small, quick battle over how much to tell me. “Well, you see, since I was little kid, it’s always been my big dream to be actor, for long time. I try Los Angeles, et cetera, but it didn’t come out right. Then I have business here, so I stop the acting. But then, to make long story short, I had accident. I was driving and got hit by guy who runs the red light.”

He’d said this so quietly, and soberly, that I didn’t dare say anything.

“It was pretty bad,” he went on. “Like wake-up call, you could say. I was in hospital for many weeks. After that, I decide to go back to my acting dream.”

He picked up his playbook and we continued rehearsing. After a few read-throughs, Tommy asked if I wanted to grab dinner. I suggested a Chinese place called Hunan on Sansome Street. While waiting for our food, Tommy once again began to tell me that I could succeed as an actor if I wanted it enough. “You can be star, but you have to be more powerful. When you are aggressive in scene, this is worth one million dollars.”

“What about you?” I asked, not trusting the thickness of what he was laying on me.

Tommy didn’t answer that question. Instead he started playing with his chopsticks, which he’d learned to use, he said, when he was living in Hong Kong. But I brought him back to the question: “What about you, Tommy? Tell me.”

Tommy set his chopsticks aside. “For me,” he said, “I always wanted to have my own planet. Call it Tommy’s Planet. Build a giant building there, you see, like . . . Empire Tower. Some casino thing. My planet will be bigger than everything.”

I found myself unexpectedly charmed by this burst of subdued bravado. It wasn’t obnoxious. It was sort of endearing. I felt like I’d just asked a child what he wanted to be when he grew up. And a child had answered me, honestly, with no adult filter telling him what was and wasn’t possible.

“Your own planet,” I said. I wanted to laugh but I couldn’t. In fact, I had goose bumps. This man sitting in front of me had no detectable talent, did everything wrong, wasn’t comfortable saying how old he was or where he was from, and seemed to take an hour to learn what most people picked up in five seconds. Still, for that moment I believed him. I believed he could have his own planet.

“Yeah,” he said, looking up. “I see this big thing and big light and big events with stores and hotel and movie. All these things all together. It will be spectacular.” He reached for his glass of hot water but hesitated before lifting it to his mouth. Tommy peered at me from beneath his large protruding brow. “And you can live in my planet, if you decide. Maybe I let you stay for little while.”

What did I think of living on Tommy’s planet? I wasn’t sure. What I was sure of was that Tommy had something I’d never seen in anyone else : a blind and unhinged and totally unfounded ambition. He was so out of touch, so lacking in self-awareness, yet also weirdly captivating. That night there was this aura around Tommy — an aura of The Possible. Stick with him, I thought, and something would happen, even if I had no idea what that something might be. Maybe that was it : Tommy made me listen to the right voices in my head. This big, childish vision of his—what was it if not every actor’s secret dream?

My own planet was increasingly icy and lonely and minor. And while I did not rule out the possibility that Tommy’s Planet was a civilization-ending comet headed my way, what if it wasn’t?

“Here,” Tommy said. “I have present for you.” He handed me a red-white-and-blue pen, the casing of which bore the Street Fashions USA logo. He gave it to me as though it were a sacred scepter, as though I’d passed some test. When I looked more closely at the pen, I saw something else : a tiny globe with the words TOMMY’S PLANET printed across it.

 

“My planet will be bigger than everything.”

“People Are Very Strange These Days”

You don’t yell at a sleepwalker. 

He may fall and break his neck.

—Joe Gillis, Sunset Boulevard

Laurie Luhn

Laurie Luhn speaks out against Ailes

Roger Ailes ran Fox News by projecting Power rather than Trustworthiness. NPR takes a renewed look at the network in light of this summer's revelations.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Now a look at what drove former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes. After a former anchor filed a lawsuit against him this summer, other revelations came fast - accusations of sexual harassment, women paid to walk away and critics intimidated. Finally, Ailes was forced out in July. Here's NPR's David Folkenflik.

DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: For years, Fox News has had towering posters at its headquarters bearing a slogan that's also a common refrain on the air.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED NEWSCASTER: You're watching the most Powerful name in news, Fox News.

FOLKENFLIK: I promise you've never heard The Washington Post or ABC News describe itself that way. Many people talk a lot about Fox's conservative ideology, and many think that the harassment scandal is all about sex. But to understand how the place operated under Ailes, you cannot overlook the projection of power.

GABRIEL SHERMAN: He saw himself as literally saving the country, that he was the only force standing up to the liberals and President Obama.

FOLKENFLIK: This is Ailes' biographer, Gabriel Sherman.

SHERMAN: And this is the way he spoke about himself. And so when you talk about that, you see your news network as the tool or the mechanism to exert that Power.

FOLKENFLIK: Power works in many ways. Take how women are presented on Fox.

JANE HALL: On Fox, I felt, when I looked at it, I was uncomfortable at the way that I saw a number of these women dressed.

FOLKENFLIK: Jane Hall was a media critic and commentator on Fox News for a decade.

HALL: They were professional women, but they were dressed in clothing that really sexualized them.

FOLKENFLIK: In lawsuits filed against Ailes, the Fox News hosts Gretchen Carlson and Andrea Tantaros said Ailes would ask them to twirl around, to dress suggestively, essentially to perform for him. Fox News' female bookers, producers and on-air personalities have told NPR that many women were urged to select their outfits from those provided by Fox - always short dresses or skirts, never pants, necklines that plunge, hair extensions and false eyelashes. Television is a visual medium that prizes looks. Jane Hall says this is different. She has studied depictions of women in media.

HALL: I know that if you have a fully clothed man and a woman less clothed, that's a Power situation, and you're communicating that the man has the Power, the man has the Authority.

FOLKENFLIK: Fox introduced glass top tables for its female hosts and a specialized leg cam - a camera that lingered on the physique of certain women there.

HALL: I didn't know at the time I was there that there was such a thing as a camera that focused on women's legs, so that's really reprehensible.

FOLKENFLIK: Some women at Fox were expected to identify attractive younger colleagues to be introduced to Ailes. This should not have come as a surprise. In his 2014 book, Gabriel Sherman reported two previous instances of sexual harassment by Roger Ailes. One occurred 35 years ago. Shelley Ross was invited to lunch by Ailes to talk about working for a late-night program on NBC.

SHELLEY ROSS: It was a very big deal.

FOLKENFLIK: The offer, Ross says, was contingent on something that stopped her cold - the demand she enter into what Ailes called a sexual alliance.

ROSS: He clearly was looking for something, some work relationship that was meaningful to him.

FOLKENFLIK: Ross refused, but ultimately took the job after Ailes apologized profusely. Ross later became a senior news executive at ABC and CBS. She says Fox News should give a full, public account of what happened. This summer, two dozen women have talked to a law firm investigating sexual harassment claims against Ailes at Fox. Former Fox News booker Laurie Luhn alleges that Ailes filmed a private sexual dance she performed at his request. She says Ailes let her know he'd keep the recording to ensure her loyalty. In 2011, Fox paid Luhn more than $3 million after she alleged years of sexual extortion. Again, Shelley Ross.

ROSS: For every person like Roger Ailes, there are enablers around him.

FOLKENFLIK: Fox staffers sifted through employees' phone records, text and emails on company equipment to see what was being said about Ailes and to whom. Several Fox News staffers told me they feared their phones were being tapped, too. Ailes had cameras installed to monitor news rooms and corridors, and he set up a war room to discredit Gabriel Sherman, too.

SHERMAN: He had reason to be paranoid. We now know that he was a man who was bent on keeping his history of sexual harassment secret from the world.

FOLKENFLIK: Fox News' top lawyer, Dianne Brandi, is denying the latest allegation that she had a private investigator acquire the phone records for a reporter for a liberal press watchdog called Media Matters. That, too, would have legal implications. David Folkenflik, NPR News, New York.