Are You Kamphey Approved?

Why was a film about financial crisis have a ticket price of 18 dollars?  The film needed to get to people that would keep the message going.  This was not a film that gives solutions by any means.  It merely stokes the fire of discussion.  That’s why it was sold to people who pay eighteen dollars to see a film and then a “town hall” meeting of five old white dudes.  Yes I will go there.  I was the youngest person in the audience but not the whitest.  Actually I should amend that statement.  I was BY FAR the youngest person in the audience and by far the tannest.  Everyone was white and some even apparently came from work wearing their white collar and tie.

Everyone in that room was doing alright financially.  They had a job or were retired.  They had drove up in their Suburban Ultramodern Vehicles and had a nice dinner out with their husbands and wives before heading to this special event, read the newspaper that morning and had checked their email many times today.

Why do I know this and can say such stereotypical statements?  Because that’s what I heard with my own ears while sitting in the audience for 20 minutes before the start of the movie.  Someone mentioned they could have printed out a coupon for tickets that they got in an email.  What thriftiness.. oh wait.. he forgot to print it out.

My mom refused to come to see this movie because it was 18 dollars.  My parents haven’t gone to the movie theater in about ten years… at least according to them.  I think it’s a pretty accurate estimate.  They didn’t go tonight. I went alone.

There were jeers and there were cheers.  I hate when people clap at the end of a movie and documentaries make people want to clap.  The message is that this is a complicated problem that can’t be solved or even informed within the three hour limit most documentaries have that aren’t directed by Ken Burns.  This needs to be discussed. That is why it was such a great idea to make the film an event.  Combine it by getting together these five guys to talk about the issue.  The discussion was as nuanced and even more so, than the film itself.  I personally got lost in the numbers and jargon but I want to know more.  I think that’s more important than getting anything out of those particular two hours.  Passion, and the transfer of passion, is powerful.  Good things can infect and spread like diseases.  Would a good disease be an ease?

This documentary made me come back to my computer and write a blog post that my parents will never read.  Are my parents going to watch this movie? No.  This movie is getting exactly the audience it was made for.  It’s amazing.  It’s starting the discussion at exactly the demographic which has the solutions in their grasp.  Some people are so smart.  If you are reading this blog post then you should go see this movie.  You have the power.  The power to make change.  Now that I think about it and think that everyone who votes should see this movie, I think I’ll buy this movie for my parents.  They need to know more about the world and know they aren’t the only people who are going through this.  That the problem is on all levels.  It’s the top down and the bottom up.

Oh and I got in the mail today, Yes Man, this book that I have been excited to read for over two months now.  I read the first 10 pages and it’s crap.  It’s too sugary.  It’s saying things that it itself is not holding up to.  I’m not sure if it’s fact or fiction, but it doesn’t matter, it’s bad either way.   If it really a journalistic effort then it’s overwritten. If it’s fiction then it’s not an engrossing story.  I don’t care about this guy as much as he wants me to.  I don’t want to say Yes. I want to stop reading this stupid book.

Why do I bring Yes Man up?  Because I.O.U.S.A. is a great film because it does what it was supposed to.  It makes people talk about a problem.  Yes Man is a bad book because it doesn’t do what it was supposed to.  It makes me angry and tell people not to read this book.