What am I supposed to be doing as an artist right now?
Something, anything.
The hills of Los Angeles have this strange effect of amplifying distant sound. From our house in Mount Washington, we can hear the fireworks that go off every night there’s a game at Dodger Stadium. This Sunday I heard the echoing fireworks bouncing off the hillside too early. I looked up the schedule to see if there was a game and whether it had just ended and then realized… it wasn’t Dodger Stadium, it was the machinery of the state firing tear gas at my fellow Angelenos.
I had to drive through Pasadena yesterday to pick up some gear for a shoot I’m flying to today (hi from the skies!), and on my way home noticed police helicopters swarming overhead. ICE agents were staying in a hotel around the corner from my route, and a growing crowd was assembling to protest the hotel’s decision to host these unwelcome thugs who have been whisking people away into detention centers, tearing families apart, and doing it all indiscriminately. A squad of cops on motorcycles cut me off as I was just trying to make my way through the intersection to get on with my work.
I know a lot of you are in LA, and so you already know this, but for those of you who don’t live here, despite what some news organizations and politicians would have you believe, over the past week Los Angeles has not been a war zone. A very small corner of downtown LA has been home to peaceful protests which law enforcement has consistently chosen to violently attack with horses, clubs, pepper spray, and tear gas. They’ve fired “less than lethal” rounds point blank at journalists and people trying to go home. The police, and the national guard, have repeatedly chosen to enact violence on people who are simply trying to stop their friends, families, and neighbors from being kidnapped illegally and deported without any due process. If any single American loses their right to due process, we all do.
Since I started the newsletter, I’ve done my best to remain (relatively) apolitical and (relatively) on topic. I know people aren’t coming here to read my thoughts on current events, they’re coming here to read my thoughts on Hollywood.
Well I wanted today to write about how those two things are not separate. Art is politics, everything is politics.
So, if you aren’t interested in hearing about any of this, you can skip this one. If you just want to hear about the “art” part of things, I wrote a piece “Why make art while the world is burning?” that I think focuses more on the power and purpose of art.
But I don’t think art is all that meaningful in times like these. So I wanted to talk about my journey over the past few years (yes, there will be some “writing for Hollywood” talk) and how it’s impacting where my head and heart have been over the past week of insanity.
As always, thank you for reading. And being a part of Hollyweird.
WHAT IS MY RESPONSIBILITY AS AN ARTIST (RIGHT NOW)?
When I first moved to Los Angeles it was the summer of 2016. I stayed on a friend’s couch in Silverlake and then sublet an empty unit in that same complex for a month while I went to meetings to try to get jobs. I had signed with WME (I have since left WME and am now a UTA Man), and signed a deal with Lionsgate optioning an original script of mine. They were also paying me to rewrite it. I’d made it in Hollywood, as far as I was concerned. This deal was more money than I’d made from my entire writing career cumulatively to that point.
But it took months to get paid. I immediately realized I wasn’t going to be able to afford this sublet and decided to bail, moving down to Orange County to stay in my parents’ spare bedroom while I worked, commuting to and from LA for general meetings. This was still the era of in-person meetings. I wouldn’t even have needed to be in California if this had happened later. The presidential election was in full swing, and Orange County was a red congressional district. I had volunteered for and donated to the Sanders campaign, but now that it was down to the wire, I volunteered for the Clinton campaign, making calls, and also went door to door in red congressional districts across California to try to turn them blue.
The day after Trump won the election, I remember driving up to Los Angeles for a meeting with a company about turning a play of mine into a television series. We spent the first 40 minutes of the meeting talking about “the state of the nation,” and then eventually I had to pivot the conversation towards “would you guys want me to tell you what the pilot might look like?” Obviously, this show never got made. We never even had a follow up. I drove back to Orange County in a daze.
Hollywood, greater Los Angeles, and the country felt like it was in that same daze. But surprise quickly became anger, an extremely useful political tool! I went to a lot of protests in 2017. I called and wrote to my representatives (political, not writing career). I wrote to my former reps. I wrote to my parents’ reps. I felt angry, and active, and engaged. I’d like to think I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. Donating. Campaigning. Organizing. And I was of course writing. Trying to build a career.
By the summer of 2020 I was doing the best I could to remain politically involved while also trying to avoid getting sick. My wife and I both had pre-existing conditions that made us particularly concerned about getting covid. I knew if either of us came down with it, it would most likely be serious.
In October of 2020 we both got sick. This was still prior to vaccinations. This was still prior to reliable testing. We were staying at the time in a house in a small town in Washington and the nearest available covid test was over an hour’s drive away at an emergency clinic being run out of a shipping container in Seattle. But we didn’t really need the test to know. Neither of us could breathe, we had fevers, we had bouts of adrenaline that would suddenly cause our heart rates to spike frighteningly, dangerously high. The house had two stories and we couldn’t go up or down the stairs. I bought a pulse oximeter and watched my O2 levels drop to medically troubling lows as my heart raced. I looked up where the nearest emergency room was and discovered they were turning away patients because they didn’t have room. At night I would lay on my stomach because I’d read that helped with shortness of breath. It helped a little.
We drove home during the anxious period in which the election results were still unclear, and got to LA right as it was officially declared that Biden had won the presidency. I remember there was a giant fucking party all the way up and down Sunset Boulevard all day. We were too sick to attend. We’d been sick at that point for six weeks.
We stayed sick. We pretty quickly realized we had what sounded like Long Covid, and spent the rest of 2020, 2021, and 2022 doing everything in our power to recover. We also kept working. We didn’t have a choice. Even in the house in Washington, I took a few zoom meetings with people about projects, and then would crash onto the couch where I’d have to ice my head for an hour to recover. Emma was producing a film. We had to earn money. We had to keep our careers alive. Even during a global pandemic.
When I’m having a particularly bad flare up of symptoms or fatigue, I wonder if we’d been able to fully rest if we would have recovered more quickly. But what were we supposed to do? Film is a precarious industry. We needed to make things to survive. Sick or not. My health insurance (which is very good) comes thanks to my union, the WGA. If I don’t earn enough, we don’t keep it. We saw a lot of doctors. A lot of naturopaths. Sought a lot of help. And it slowly did help, but it felt like a part-time job.
Neither of us is fully recovered. We are very much improved, but not back to normal. As people and politicians tried their best to “get back to normal,” we were not. And encountering a profound physical transformation for the worse was a stark reminder that there was no such thing as normal available to us anymore.
You can read this as a metaphor for climate change. A metaphor for our country’s descent into fascism. A metaphor for venture capital’s pillaging of one industry after another. Or it can just be the fact of the matter. We were fundamentally changed, and worse off for it. And could see that despite the drive to return to “how things used to be,” we were as a society willfully choosing to ignore how things actually were. In the present moment.
During the run-up to the 2024 election I noticed myself feeling extremely apathetic. I couldn’t muster the energy. I was too tired. Physically, from my new disability, but also emotionally. After years of trying to get the government to care to do anything to help anyone, I felt burned out. After years of trying to get the medical establishment’s help and being met consistently with either dismissal or active gaslighting, I was tired of bureaucracy. After years of hoping the Democratic party might do anything to keep its promises to younger, progressive voters and instead getting texts asking me for $5 to help a sundowning president I wouldn’t trust to operate simple machinery, let alone the entire federal government, I felt demoralized.
After the election, I could tell that Hollywood was also feeling different. I wasn’t having any strangely emotional meetings with executives in which we talked about our fears for the nation. Instead, it was “business as usual.” Things were actually extremely… business-y.
The general vibe I was picking up in the entertainment business was… we just need to keep working. After crippling industry contraction, and a long work stoppage (so that workers could attempt to carve out even a tiny piece of the enormous revenues), people just wanted to get back to work. Even if there’s a fascist dictator in office, “we just need to get back to “normal.”” It felt to me like there was a quiet determination in Hollywood to just… try our best to ignore the status quo. To keep our heads down, stay in our lane, and just make our little entertainment.
And I’ll admit I’d begun to cope the same way. If I’m just a regular guy who needs to earn a living and keep my health insurance, what am I supposed to do about the decay of democratic norms? I have watched as petitions, and marches, and protests, and massive political expenditures have resulted in… Trump winning again and doubling down on wiping his ass with the constitution. I’m a decade older. I’m worse off physically. I’m better off in my career.
The fascist playbook had worked on me. I had been beaten down. Not into believing that what was happening was “good” (it’s not!), but into believing that all I can really do is try to take care of myself and my loved ones. That all I can do is my little job and try to stay safe and stay sane and make it through.
But… this is not good enough. I’m sorry, but it’s not.
As I’ve watched my neighbors this week be (illegally) kidnapped by ICE, as I’ve watched families all across the country be torn apart, as I’ve watched my Senator be pinned to the ground and handcuffed by the FBI, as I’ve watched Kristi Noem threaten to remove Los Angeles and California’s elected officials (my elected officials!) simply for the fact that they disagree with the Trump administration’s unconstitutional actions, I’m feeling that anger rising again. It’s not enough to just try to keep your head down and keep doing the work. Obviously, it isn’t. Of course it isn’t.
What should I be doing, as an artist, right now? As someone who works in Hollywood?
Yes, making art is good. Making art matters too. Art is politics, yes. Just as everything is politics. And so I do think you can and should be making art that hopefully impacts hearts and minds. That’s what I’ve been focused on. And people need entertainment. Of course. But making art in this moment is not enough. It simply isn’t. And telling yourself it is is an excuse. I know, because it’s the excuse I’ve been telling myself for the last few years.
I am aware that “posting” is not political action. If the last decade has taught me anything about the efficacy of social media as a political tool it is that it’s most effective at making us feel like we’re doing something without really doing something. But, as someone with a (moderately sized) platform, the very least I can do is state my position clearly. The very least I can do is ask you all to please contribute financially to some organizations that are actively working to help the people most harmed by this administration [see below]. The least I can do is pledge to do more.
I’m asking you to do the same. One of the primary tools of a fascist state is to atomize the population into individuals who cannot form a unified opposition. America was already uniquely positioned, as the American obsession with individualism has really become a political system of “everybody is on their own.” When we’re all on our own all we can do is try to survive each day. It’s what I’ve personally felt I’ve been doing since 2020. But we are not on our own.
We’re in this together.
So what is your obligation as an artist right now? To do everything you can to stand up for your neighbors. To protect not just your family, but everyone’s families.
And as an artist, you are uniquely suited to this moment. We need creative thinkers to help organize protests with clear messaging, protests that take advantage of the media, protests that understand that one of our most powerful tools is the camera.
Please, if you don’t live in Los Angeles, consider donating to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. They are fighting to help immigrants nationwide and could use our help.
Please, if you do live in Los Angeles, consider donating to this GoFundMe raising funds for the families of 14 local garment workers who were detained by ICE this week.
Please, wherever you are, do something to help your local community.
Please, call your reps (not your talent reps, your elected officials).
Please, get out on the streets.
Please do something, anything.
Okay, fine, SOME movie stuff for you
I had the pleasure of curating a list of 5 science fiction films to watch with your dad for Father’s Day. You can check that list out in Axios’ newsletter “Finish Line” here.
