Laurie Shapiro asks: Governor Curie, I read of a movie in your time, Good Will Winning. Will we see that soon?
Conversing with people from a different time, a ways back, with a common past and with considerable likely overlap as you go forward is tricky. I don’t know your future, only my past. And they certainly won’t entirely match up. Indeed they will more likely to substantially diverge, perhaps even massively, not least because we didn’t read about a different future before embarking on ours, but you have and I hope it helps.
You may enjoy better results than we have had. You may suffer worse. The experience we reported in RPS/2044 emphasized broad patterns and lessons, which we hope will overlap, not details which we know will diverge. One exception of avoiding specifics, and there were others too, was mentioning the movie about revolution I happened to star in. So I get your question.
I have three answers.
First, I don’t know if you will see it. Not having such a movie, much less exactly our movie, is one among endless ways your future could differ from our past.
Second, I hope you will get to enjoy such a movie, but I hope much more you will enjoy your own revolutionary project, in your own chosen shape.
Third, why not? Consider, where is Will Hunting? In your time, and in ours before we diverged from you, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote and starred in Good Will Hunting. Minnie Driver helped as did the comic genius, Robin Williams. Casey Affleck lent his voice too. Your and our 1997 movie wasn’t just normally brilliant for Hollywood. It wasn’t just especially sensitive to human nuance. It wasn’t just 97% on your and our Rotten Tomatoes. It had class – and it understood class – and not merely the owning class, and not only the administrative, empowered-work-monopolizing class, but also the working class. Not to mention having the scene that so smartly savaged the security state, NSA, imperial, war machine.
Regrettably, in your time and ours, Hollywood didn’t produce more building on Good Will Hunting’s insights and commitments but, instead, a tsunami of high tech and crime focused works. So, I ask you, don’t you need that screenplay team back, with the agenda they had when younger? Don’t you need “Good Will Winning”? Why not a reunion? Why not another movie that gets it, but this time about winning change? Why not the same screenwriters? Why not as producer, your Danny Glover, and why not, of course, your Minnie and Casey to? I am sure you can think of others who might like to produce a work about a better future, rather than ones about disasters and horrors.
It has become relatively common in your time for people not on the playing field to call for athletes to intervene and act for the good even beyond steps they are already taking. Well, how about those who aren’t on the film field calling for those acting, writing, directing, and producing to do similarly, even beyond steps they are already taking?