Your job
Posted December 23rd, 2003 by Sean WilliamsI have spoken about the kind of directors that I really like already, but lemme just sum up. I don’t want you to try to teach me how to act. I want you to say “this is how this looks, this is too slow, come in from stage right, take your time with this passage, move down center on this line, remember what happened three scenes ago, exit stage right using the other door.” I’ll do all the rest.
And, along those same lines, don’t raise the fucking terrorist alert. Do your job. Keep me safe. Or don’t do your job and we’ll find someone who can. I can’t worry about any goddam attacks, none of us in New York can. We’re *working*.
You have the greatest military force and intelligence gathering facilities at your fingertips. *I DON’T*! What do you want me to do? You want me to panic, you want me to thank you for the warning about an attack you couldn’t stop? You want to make sure you can say “I told you so”? What, exactly, motivates you to tell me to be scared?
I’m not even one tiny shred scared. I am a student of history, (barely coherent most of the time, I know, but a student nonetheless) I know how tenuous the human condition is, I know how many hours I have to finish my life, to do my work and have babies and love and get sick and grow old and die. I know the limitations on my possibilities, and I just don’t have it in me to worry about what *you* should be taking care of.
Katherine Hepburn said of Meryl Streep, “I don’t like her. You always see all the work she’s doing, all those gears and whistles burning up the screen.” Exactly.
*MAN*, would I bang Katherine Hepburn.
Anyway, don’t tell me to be careful. Don’t waste my time. You’re just saying that to make it seem as if you are working overtime. You want me to see you wringing your hands and wiping the sweat off your brow while you “fight terror”. You idiot, terrorists want us to be terrified, that’s the whole point. All they want is for us to have some sort of national fear index, some way of weighing the crippling terror we are carrying around.
You bought into it, Bush & Co. You’re like the cops in Die Hard who follow the terrorist handbook and cut off the power to the building so that they can get into the safe. You called it a “crusade” you idiot. You said “this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.” You’re just so incredibly stupid, so clumsy, so befuddled and so calculating.
Well, I’m not gonna be scared. Right now I’m scared because Jordana is in the hospital getting her stomach checked out. My family is two hours away and I have to drive with drunks in order to get there. My friends, and my family, have love lives in disarray, and I am waiting to see if I can start making money at the job I’ve been promised.
I am already worried. About my real life. About *REAL THINGS*.
So above all else, above the Christ-as-a-philosopher, above the anti-gay and anti-women laws, above the attempted destruction of our ecology, above all the obvious reasons, the fact that you decided to raise the terror threat index two days before Christmas and made my brother insane with worry, that’s why you will never get my vote. Jackass.