Runners, Film People, the General Public

Malcolm Parry, a local columist with the Vancouver Sun, has to be one the greatest stand up guys there is - period. Malcolm, I fucking love you. Period. It's hard to do what Malcolm does and be nice. But he somehow manages to do it. Even when he inadvertently takes a photo of someone with their mistress or girlfriend rather than their wife and it gets posted in his Gossip Column... You'd like to be a fly on the wall for those converations.

(So does Sandra Thomas at the Vancouver Courier for that matter - being a stand-up broad and all)

Malcolm was one of a handful of people who didn't treat me like shit and who didn't shy away from talking to me last night at this bizarre little film industry soiree called "ROUGE".

Of course, Malcolm has also covered leprosy colonies in his line of work...

Plus, he himself has just recovered this past year from a serious bout with real cancer. None of the nancy-boy stuff I have.

Last night I accompanied a friend - yes, a "friend" - to something called "ROUGE", a film industry schmooze-fest. I thought it might be good for her business. I knew at least a hundred or so people there last night. After all, I am getting a little long in the tooth. And this was out of the at least five or six hundred people in attendance at the event, maybe more. Fuck do these people take themselves seriously. And would someone please teach these people how to dress? I thought I was at an eighties-fest.

Many of the people (Okay, I am actually speaking specifically of women here) in the crowd recognized me - as they should have, many of them having done something as harmless as doing business with me over the years, if not actually having slept with me (Hey, it's been a fair number of years and Vancouver is a small town) - and after having made eye contact with me, they - the ungrateful cows - actually turned away from me and melted into the crowd. Beating a coward's retreat if ever there was one. Whatever happened to hello, by the way this is my husband? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, we're all grown-ups here, we all know the drill.

Looking like I do these days, I can fully understand their reticence at saying hello - and then again I could have been a really lousy piece of tail. But I doubt it. Me, I would have at least been curious why I looked like a piece of carrion left out for the vultures...

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be in the film industry. Especially in Vancouver. If you have any real talent, you end up in Toronto, Los Angeles, or New York. In fact the film industry in Vancouver is filled to the brim with self-absorbed, self-centered and self-interested people who have failed at every other job they have ever tried in life. Including selling cars. Notice the reoccuring (sp?) theme of "self".

But you have to divide the people in the film and television business between those in front of the camera and those behind it.

Behind the camera - smarts are the way to go. Although people who generally end up there - behind the camera that is - finally realize they are too ugly to be in front of the camera, hence the transitional move. There are a few exceptions to the rule of course. You know who you are. Spare me the notes about how incredibly talented you are and how incredibly hard you have worked.

In order to make a living before the camera in Vancouver as a woman - and it's a tough, brutal gig - there are a few criteria - you must be pretty of course - and it doesn't hurt to have the ability to suck a golf ball up thirty feet of garden hose. Really talented, unique women, who aren't blonde with big tits, who can't be pigeon-holed into cookie-cutter roles, and who won't do the Producer or the Director, suffer mightily.

For pretty boys, you must be able to suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. And mostly they're dunb as a sack of hammers. And in Vancouver the pretty boys wear far more hair-care product and make-up than the girls. It's kind of creepy actually. Like early David Bowie band wannabes.

I think they saw Johnny Depp one too many times in Edwards Scissorhands, and Pirates of the Caribbean, et al.

Johnny Depp can carry it off... The rest of you boys - and there is not a real man among them to all appearances - need to get over yourselves. Like, now!

Like the female exceptions to the general rule, the good male talent writes their own material, finances it with their blood and a pact with the devil, shoots it, and finds a way to make art.

The thing that will save the Vancouver film industry in the end is the small pool of really talented men and women who will say fuck it to all the bullshit and go out and do it on their own. They already are, and some of the results are breath-taking. If only they could make a decent living at it.

But for the rest of the pretty boys, get the fuck out from in front of that mirror, stop fixing your hair and your make-up and do something real with your life. Snow-boarding, skate-boarding and playing in a bad garage-band don't count.

Stop posing. Start doing. Get real.

I know saucers that are deeper than these people.

Give me runners and civilians every time.

I am astonished about the amount of e-mail I have been getting since I started my "Cancer Boy" schtick. Surprised the F**K out of me to be frank.

I will answer any questions I can, or refer you to someone who actually knows what they really talking about.

As for the runners. You know who you are. You are the salt of the earth. Good things will happen to you.

You have held me up when I almost fell down.

And when I was falling down, you picked me up.

You keep me going.

Runners. Real people accomplishing real things.

The rest of the world could learn a thing or two.

Against everyone's advice I ran 27-28K this morning.

Average heart rate 123. Have to prepare for Stormy's 64K.

My body hurts.

I shouldn't be driving my car, because of my lightheadedness.

I have fallen down a couple of times because of dizziness.

And I am having trouble keeping my food down.

Thank Christ I've finally found a way to lean out.