Yes, the Music Supervisor.  Someone needs to tell this guy that just because you can afford “All Along the Watchtower” and it has the word “watch” in it, that it doesn’t necessarily belong in this movie.  Music is a powerful thing in a film – it can support and tweak the meaning of a scene or a film as a whole, and when used poorly, it becomes a clanging gong proclaiming to all the viewers that “This is a movie!  You’re watching a movie that some guys in Hollywood made. . .don’t suspend disbelief!!!”

And it wasn’t just that one song. . .Ride of the Valkyries was misused as well. . .the Sound of Silence was pretty cliche and Hallelujah, while getting credit for using the Leonard Cohen original rather than the Buckley version, was just odd. . .

I might write more about other misses, but this one just got under my skin. . .

You see, I have this theory about business. I have no problem with people making money doing something they are passionate about. . .and most small business owners, as well as the people who start what become large businesses, are usually doing what they do out of passion. But when the entrepreneurs leave a company, when the professional business people, the people who are passionate about nothing but business itself, take over – then I start having a problem. That’s when corporations start operating based solely on money, and that’s when bad things start to happen.

But when that strong leader, that entrepreneur, is still in control, any company, of any size, can still be a good thing – it can still be about more than just money. While Walt was alive, the Disney corporation wasn’t about money, it was about movies and tv and theme parks; it was about entertainment, about making people smile. He did things that had no visible financial upside, things no accountant would okay in a million years, but he did them and they ended up making more money than an accountant would dare to dream of in his spreadsheet.

All the things that make Disney the name that it is came from this kind of brilliance, this kind of vision. Feature length animated movies, imaginative television shows, and the theme parks. These all sprang out of passion and not a balance sheet, and it shows. A true Disney movie; Snow White, Cinderella, Fantasia, they are all magic. And underneath the overpriced admission tickets, the ever-present souvenirs and expensive food, the theme parks are truly amazing places designed to do one thing – make you smile.

But when Walt died, things changed. Disney went through a pretty bad spot. Without his vision, Disney became about ROI and package deals and merchandising rights. Those were dark times, filled with blatant money grabs (I’m looking at you Bambi 2 and Little Mermaid 3.) There were some high points, a revival when Aladdin and The Little Mermaid came about, but true to form, the Disney Corporation milked that “formula” for all it was worth and drove it into the ground (see Home on the Range.)

But they did do something right, almost in spite of themselves. During that time, they had an animator working for them named John Lasseter. John worked on some of mediocre, budget constrained movies before the Little Mermaid revival. Then he got interested in animating with computers. The “leaders” at Disney decided this was too expensive and they fired John. With a computer geek named Ed Catmull, he formed a little company called Pixar, and with the help of Steve Jobs, they got Disney to finance a movie called Toy Story. If you’ve watch “The Pixar Story,” you know they almost messed that one up as well and After the runaway sucess Pixar and Disney had, Michael Eisner almost completely messed things up by pushing Pixar away, just when Disney needed them most.

But someone’s prayers were answered, and Eisner retired, leaving Bob Iger in charge. And it turns out, Bob Iger knows his limitations. He knows he’s a business person and not the visionary leader Disney needs to keep it from falling into the morass of P&L sheets and TPS reports. So Bob Iger has found a new Walt, a new leader to keep Disney focused on what it’s true purpose is: John Lasseter. Iger has put Lasseter, the animator Disney fired back in the 80s, in charge of just about everything creative Disney has: movies, theme parks, you name it.

With Lasseter in charge, I think I can keep loving Disney.

At night the seagulls fly
over Pier 11 downtown
through the night sky turned
arc-sodium orange by
pollution and the reflection
of the city lights

The sky becomes a screeching
carpet of them sometimes,
until they light on the
railings and stare at the
people who linger too late
waiting for a way off the island

Why do they come here, in
a city full of harbors?
Why do they blanket
a concrete peninsula
to pass the night?

Is this their bar?  Their
after-hours pub?  Or is it
more like a zoo where they
can watch the odd creatures
that slink along the cracked
asphalt below them as they
fly – free to leave this island
whenever they choose.

I seldom understand old Uncle Walt’s quote better than when I am in Las Vegas.  The conservationist piece of me is sickened by the excess, by the greed of a city built on the fortune of a few and the misfortune of many.  The purely sensual part of me, however, is mesmerized by the beauty of all that neon and glass: the I.M. Pei ripoff that is the Luxor, the burlesque of Roman architecture at Caesar’s Palace, the silly piratical theming of Treasure Island.  They are, to that sensual piece of me, beautiful reflections.

That sensual piece of me also understands the wonderful, greedy chaos of the casino floor.  I am fascinated by light; the way it shines and reflects and shapes the world.  I try to capture that in my photography, and there are few places with light as unique and varied when you stand in the midst of the quarter-slots and video poker machines.

The same goes for the Strip itself – the hotels and signs and streetlights all come together into their own crazy tapestry of light.  Now, I love the view of the LA Valley from the corner of Sunset and La Cienega at night, and the New York Skyline from Jersey at sunset, but Vegas at night is something all its own.  Gawdy, over-the-top and somehow it reminds me of an insane Impressionist Masterpiece.

The epitome of the contradiction I find in myself while in Las Vegas are the fountains in front of the Bellagio Hotel & Casino.  The sheer audacity and waste of a man-made lake in the middle of a desert is staggering – think of what that water could do in sub-Saharan Africa  But I cannot deny the awe and beauty of that water being rocketed skyward in tight choreography to music.

The first time I went to Vegas, I spent most of the night walking up and down the Strip, from where the old Frontier used to be, south to the Luxor and back.  I barely remember the corner-lurkers handing out escort cards and “free” show tickets, but I remember each and every hotel, and finding that Whitman-esque contradiction in myself.

So stay tuned – we’re almost there!

For now, I’ll leave you with a picture I’m pretty proud came out of my camera.