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Life in the hotel bubble is strange. I met these ladies in the hallway of the Ritz in San Francisco, they thought the whole idea of publicity was a little uncivilized, “if people like your film they’ll go.” I secretly agreed, but I tried to explain how times have changed since they were alive, how the machine doesn’t want films like this to exist and you have to fight for an audience. They seemed to tolerate my ambition, but in their quite way, I felt like they knew better.


People wearing uniforms get paid to lay out slippers in your room and hundreds of other rooms all day long. Just like this with one foot forward. I feel very uneasy about my participation in this whole thing, but there seems to be now way out. Should I wear them and honor their labor? Or is it a sign of solidarity to the slipper people if I don't use them? I wonder if they have nightmares about slippers? They lay out the towel and only have one slipper? Or is it worse to have three slippers and they have to hide the third? The bad slipper. Don't we all have a third, bad slipper to deal with?


I'm so confused. Am I supposed to use both hands? Are we, as hotel guests, that afraid of not having enough? And missing a call?


Press begins with an 8:00 breakfast interview and continues all day in elaborate windowless rooms. Strange, but whatever city you're in they look the same, they look exactly like this.


The carpet from another windowless room.

At about 5pm everyday a black car picks me and Lou up, takes us to the airport, we fly to the next town, check in at about 9pm, eat room service together, I listen to Lou’s script idea wherein Lucifer is actually a Buddhist - not as odd as you might think. I go to sleep and dream that my relationship with my girlfriend is a series of different flavor cough drop bags hanging from a rope, like laundry. She and I are small white balls that move down the rope and enter each bag becoming the different flavors, each flavor being a different part of her, and then we move on to the next bag. I wake up, try to call my actual living breathing girlfriend but she’s in a very different time-zone so all I get is missing her all day, like carrying around five dollars worth of nickels in my pocket. We begin our next day of press, we meet a new person every half hour, they come and go so fast, like David in Denver and Hugh in Minn - These guys actually run the theaters where people will watch the film. David brought me to his Mayan Theatre, a beautiful old theatre that was going to be demolished. A very magical movie is playing there right now...


If you haven't seen this already I highly recommend you go right now and treat yourself to something made with love.

The blur of kind humans continues for days: There was Ruth the DJ from Minneapolis - Is she my mom? Can I go to her house and play with her border collie and maybe she’d cook dinner? The DJ in Denver who didn't look 68 at all, the girl in Chicago who took a picture of me sitting on Lou, the man in SF who thought Lou's role was subversively feminine, the guy in Denver who said the film was Romantic (as in Romantic literature) because Romanticism is based in loss, the radio station that didn't seem to care about their phone ringing loudly while we were on air, the guy in Chicago that knows Chris Ware! Can I know Chris Ware if I live in Chicago? And Ira Glass too?


This Gentleman in Denver wore a shirt with all the planets listed in order – “Why?” – “So I’ll remember” – “Oh”. He asked us to draw a circle. Then he asked “how do you stand?” We stood up and showed him how we stood. Should I be concerned that he didn’t have a tape recorder? Then there were all the amazingly polite and patient people who drove us from place to place. The driver in SF had the most elaborate understanding of fog you’ve ever heard, it’s all about heat rising and mountain ridges trapping it or something. If I were smarter I could blow your mind with his fog knowledge, but I’m just a very tired passenger in his beautiful town car.


I'll just sleep and hope I get back to the cough drop bags.

Posted at August 11, 2005 10:09 AM