Judd Hirsch is my new guiding light
Reflections on artistic pursuit, inspired by 'The Fabelmans', my elementary school acting career, and also Ethan Hawke
The holidays are all about family, but theyâre also about how to deal with family, which of course is why God invented movies. Card-carrying (though still unemployed, if youâre reading this, Bob Iger) WGA member that I am, every December my mailbox FLOODS with screeners of all shapes and sizes1, the bounty of Hollywood 2022 on full display. Sure, my brother and sister-in-law may be baking pies or placing thoughtful gifts under the tree, but Iâm the one lighting up Apple TV with still in theaters entertainment. You canât buy that sort of insider access!
Over a week, the Fogs watched and/or attempted six movies:
Guillermo del Toroâs Pinocchio
The Banshees of Inisherin
The Fabelmans
Babylon
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Top Gun: Maverick
âMaverickâ was the hands-down favorite, âGlass Onionâ a close-second. Individual gripes followed from there. âBabylonâ had too much elephant shit; âBansheesâ was âtoo Irish.â Trying to corral your familyâs movie tastes is no different than figuring out the perfect mouthfeel for Goldilocksâ porridge.
But this Substack isnât about Jens and Leslie Fogâs cinematic preferences (at least not directly), itâs about mine. And the movie that walloped me in ways I was absolutely not expecting? âThe Fabelmansâ.
Iâd mostly written it off prior to last week. Hadnât we already gotten like 35 wanking âfilmmaker origin storyâ movies in Fall 2022 alone? âEmpire of Lightâ2, âBardoâ, âArmageddon Timeâ â Hell, even âClerks IIIâ fits neatly in the genre, which I will be sure to unpack in a future newsletter. It did not seem necessary to learn how the most popular, successful director of all time got that way.
AND YET.
Messy though âFabelmansâ is â sometimes a meaningful dramatization of divorce, other times a very pretty-looking Wikipedia entry, most times Michelle Williams doing âFiddler on the Roofâ cosplay â thereâs one scene that rocked me to my core and, for whatever the Oscars are worth, will definitely net a Best Supporting Actor nod.
Judd Hirsch shows up maybe 45 minutes into the movie as Steven Spielberg/Sammy Fabelmanâs Great Uncle Boris, there to console his niece after the death of her mother. Aside from bringing some much needed Jewish (as opposed to George Santos-style âJew-ishâ) energy to the table, he gifts us an absolute barn-burner of a monologue, telling Sammy just what his cinematic dreams will cost. I wish I could link to a video, but hereâs the transcribed version:
âYou love your sisters, your mama, your papa â except this [points to editing machine], this I think you love a little more. Art will give you crowns in heaven and laurels on earth, but it will tear your heart out, and leave you lonely. Youâll be a shanda3 for your loved ones, and an exile in the desert.â
In the words of my people (Millennials)⌠I felt that.
đ¨đŹ What even IS art? đ¨đŹ
Art is, in my humble and personal experience, a difficult thing to talk about. The word itself sometimes makes me want to scream, used as it is to describe everything from nursery school finger painting to âDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madnessâ, as broad and empty a signifier as the word âhipsterâ became by 2010. What is art? No one knows! Itâs anything born from your heart, but also itâs anything you do. You just living â that too, Dear One, is a form of art. This sentence is art. The period at the end of this sentence, chosen from all other possible forms of punctation, is art.
A million poets writing with a million quill pens could never come up with a perfect definition of art, which is arguably the reason we keep at it, whatever it is. And some of us build our whole goddamn lives around this indefinable thing, largely to our own detriment! Weâre moths to the flame, or âjunkies,â as Judd Hirsch declares earlier in the monologue.â We probably couldnât quit even if we wanted to.
Iâve read a lot of books these past few years, usually of the self-help variety, that frame art as an act of âplayfulnessâ or âjoy.â You know exactly the books Iâm talking about! Theyâre fine â even good â written by people I respect, but something about their cheeriness has always felt slightly insincere. YES, creativity is a balm for the human spirit. YES, art can guide you toward your heartâs truest calling or whatever. But itâs also, logistically speaking, antithetical to what society at large promotes; it operates at cross-purposes with the demands of family, of health, of financial security. Elizabeth Gilbert can gently whisper in my ear about the âBig Magicâ of artistic pursuit all she wants, but itâs easier to do so when youâre a long-since-established, world-famous author. For those of us still struggling to find our footing, art involves genuine risk. Even fear. And thatâs where Boris Fabelman (this would not have been his last name, coming from Sammyâs motherâs side) got me â some acknowledgment of the cost.
Creativity for Dudes
The last play I acted in was called âMagic Carpet Ride Around New Jerseyâ, which premiered at Central School in Haddonfield, NJ for the Fall 1994 season. I played the part of âBillâ; my big line was âwe have to get to Menlo Park to see the wizard, Thomas Edison!â which I like to think I gave some real Claire Daines oomph. In 1997, now in middle school, I read for âBobâ in âThe Games That People Playâ, written by someone named Bob Frankel and produced by Mrs. Oakley, famously the most dramatic sixth grade English teacher. âBummer!â was the only line she gave me to read. I did not get the part.
All through high school I watched the fall and spring productions, in awe and envy of the theater kids. They did âOklahomaâ, âSpoon River Anthologyâ, âSouth Pacificâ. To me, Haddonfield Memorial High School might as well have been the Winter Garden Theatre. Dave Caulk and Stephanie Scott might as well have been the white teenage Leslie Odom, Jr. and Renee Elise Goldsberry. I wept when they took their show-ending bows. I told myself that swimming, which now dominated my afternoons and weekends, was the only thing preventing me from trying out for these shows. Obviously I couldnât commit to a full rehearsal schedule. It had nothing to do with fear, I donât know who told you that. Dave Caulk??
(This is clearly the beginning of a much longer essay, maybe even memoir, chronicling my own Sammy Fabelman internal struggle, in this case between chlorine and the âGleeâ-esque world I longed to be a part of but was too scared to embrace.)
âŚAnyway, like I said, Iâve wrestled forever with ART and its role in my life, even as a (semi-) working professional television writer with an IMDB page and everything. Even now, even having been paid to fucking do it, art can feel frivolous, some elevated hobby lacking in seriousness. This is unquestionably why I react so poorly to its branding as something like âplayâ or âmagic.â It feels a lot less lame when itâs compared to âsticking your head in a lionâs mouth,â which in the case of Judd Hirschâs former Vaudevillian character was quite literal.
Earlier this year, I stumbled on a great talk from everyoneâs favorite greasy-bearded ex-boyfriend, Ethan Hawke, who much like Gilbert et al advocates for âgiving yourself permission to be creative.â
Watch it in its entirety if you get a chance, but hereâs the most salient bit for me:
âThereâs a thing that worries me sometimes whenever you talk about creativity, because it can have this kind of feel that itâs just nice, you know, or itâs warm, or itâs something pleasant. Itâs not! Itâs vital. In⌠telling our story, weâre starting a dialogue, you know, and when you do that thereâs this healing that happens, and we come out of our corners, and we start to witness each otherâs common humanity, we start to assert it, and when we do that? Really good things happen.â
In the⌠I guess you could call it âcreative motivationâ space, itâs ultimately semantics whether you respond to this or that person. (Thereâs obviously a gendered component here, too, something I donât think is coincidence but also donât think is problematic. Sometimes dudes need dudes! In the Greek sense or otherwise!) Judd Hirsch in âThe Fabelmansâ spoke to me. Ethan Hawke in his wizened âMaya Hawkeâs dadâ era speaks to me. Whoever speaks to you, may they do so with renewed aplomb in this just-opened, promising new year.
I mean literally one shape and size
Empire of Shite
Yiddish word for disgrace and nothing to do with Shonda Rhimes and/or Shondaland. Although honestly âShandalandâ would be an amazing name for a production company