Shooting up with the rich

Pictured is 'Running From Crazy' Director Barbara Kopple,
Mariel Hemingway and Bobby Williams at the 2014
Sedona Film Festival.As a kid in Seaside, Calif., my brother and I would get excited when it was homemade macaroni and cheese night. We were stoked to finally get cable and we didn't get a VCR until after most of our friends already had one. We saw hookers on street corners, watched used condoms float down the gutter, and got accustomed to the wail of police sirens. We'd seen people who had been shot, heard the pop of pistols at night - yet I was still more afraid of the living dead than I was crime.

And on television we saw stars and celebs, heard about their problems, and marveled at their triumphs, pushing our own meager mountains aside to allow them into our hearts. And that life of torment, caviar and limos, divorces and adoration, expensive narcotics and bad choices, was like a dream for a kid who grew up knowing that to make eye-contact with someone on the street invited trouble. Look down. Always watch your feet. Don't say anything. 'The Wolf Gift'
By Anne Rice.
Theirs was a beautiful torment. Like soft rain on a hot day. It could prove bothersome, but never terrifying on a daily basis. We flocked to the warm rain they offered. We listened to their plight, cradled an incredibly uninformed, yet fierce opinion, and bought into the silky tales sold by the media like a child in Santa's lap.

We want (what has come to be known as) the one-percent to climb under the sheets and coo us to sleep.

The Sedona Film Festival offered a peek into the lives of privilege and entitlement seldom seen on the street. Anglo pompousness permeated the two film events we made it to see. The sense of wealth and influence smelled-up the air, as did the sense of curiosity - those hoping to meet and be seen by the somewhat-famous celebrities who appeared at this year's festival.

Mariel Hemingway, who screened her life-story/documentary “Running From Crazy,” offered a glimpse into the Hemingway family's tendency for bad decisions and suicide and I was left wondering, had she finished her education, would things have turned out differently for her? If money were an object (for that family, it's no object), would she have been a little less inclined to do what she pleased? Were she poor, not a young rocket shot to fame thanks to her grandfather, the one family member who understood poverty, would she be able to afford her treatments, her property, her ability to explore the truth she found in her own soul? Not likely.

It's not her fault she was born wealthy, but like most families of privilege, what one does with that wealth is crucial. Hemingway's path to enlightenment, after watching the film, felt incomplete and under-appreciated. The audience adored her. They applauded and stood when she strolled on stage. And I wondered if I missed some important point. Or was I the only one in the audience who couldn't afford to skip along her path of holistic bliss?

I finished reading "The Wolf Gift" by Anne Rice the same night. Having a thing for werewolves and Rice's storytelling, I couldn't wait to sink my teeth into it. Reuben, the main man of the tale, quickly became a character I could not identify with in the least. He can have whatever he wants, doesn't have to work, owns a sweet ride and has first world-issues that would make even the most uninspired trust-fund baby jealous. Later we meet Stuart, a younger werewolf, who also happens to have a bit of money and a family life only six-figure salary-earners could relate to. I wrapped up the book wondering if only one-percenters can afford adventure these days, if we only feel sorry for those who could never know how good they had it. I wondered if only one-percenters read these days, if only one-percenters mattered.

The poor, I figure, just aren't interesting.