Outside the Art Institute of Chicago, reading The Matrix and Philosophy , which is philosophers responses to The Matrix. Something he’s learned—maybe the empty real world is in preparation for a new world.He called in sick today to read and to go visit the museum. He is auditioning for Rosencrantz and Guildinstern are Dead and Tom Stoppard, who wrote it, is directing it (I think that's what he said!). He is an actor.
He's reading another book too, which is deep and difficult to read too much of at one time, so he’s sprinkling in the Matrix book, is An Actor Prepares, by Constantin Stanislavski. The book is about the authenticity of acting, that an audience can tell whether an actor is just mechanically portraying the genre or if he’s really feeling it and has become unconscious of his self.
His favorite actors, who he admits are probably both very good mechanically as well as are able to feel the actual emotion—Ethan Hawke and Christian Bale, who acted in American Psycho.
His favorite book. He gave a low whistle. Hmmm. Then, responded definitively—Pure Drivel, by Steve Martin.
Why? Woaah.
Note to self: these are difficult questions.
His answer: It’s brilliant and funny and captures a lot of feeling of the modern day. You can only talk about what’s deep and meaningful in an ironic way. He gets across, tries to talk about the difference between reading literature so you are reading literature, over using and using badly placed Proust quotes. It’s the criticism of intellectual pretension.
If he were to write his own book it’d be fiction. Someone trying to come to grips with the bigness of the world, something no one ever really grasps. Everyone walks by here, he said waiving to the people on the street, thinking they are the centers of their universes. I am just a passing figment.
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