Alan Horn's diary

March 31, 2008

Is Scarlett Johansson Jewish? I wasn't sure so I looked it up online. Several sites said yes, but I don't know if I can trust them. Many people believe that everyone is Jewish (i.e., Hitler was Jewish), just as there are many people who feel that everyone is gay (i.e., Hitler was gay).

Personally, I wish that everyone were gay except for me and Scarlett Johansson.

February 9, 2008

In an entry here a couple of weeks ago I mentioned the failure of Bob Dylan, or anyone else, to explain his wearing of whiteface makeup on the 1975 Rolling Thunder Tour. But of course Dylan is always like that. As anybody who’s ever read an interview with him understands, he’s incapable of telling anyone what they’d like to know.

I remember reading one where he was asked to account for his appearance on the 1991 Grammys to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award. The Gulf War was going on at the time, and his decision to perform “Masters of War” was generally taken to be an anti-war statement. But the rendition was strangely rushed and slurred, and upon receiving the award Dylan said something thought cryptic even for him: "My daddy once said, 'Son, it's possible to become so defiled in this world that your own mother and father will abandon you. And if that happens, God will always believe in your own ability to mend your ways.'"

Dylan explains, “I don't remember the time and place my father said that to me, and maybe he didn't say it to me in that exact way. I was probably paraphrasing the whole idea, really--I'm not even sure I paraphrased in the proper context. It might've been something that just sort of popped in my head at that time.”

He goes on to talk at some length about how disappointed he’d been that some other performers originally scheduled to appear along with him that night in his honor had subsequently withdrawn. He denies in passing that “Masters of War” is in fact an anti-war song.

The interviewer counters, “But certainly you knew by playing ‘Masters of War’ at the height of the Gulf War, it would be received a certain way.”

Dylan: “Yeah, but I wasn't looking at it that way.”

So the one element in this murky episode that seemed clear to everyone is off-handedly thrown into doubt.

When pressed to shed some light on his acceptance speech--which, while otherwise hard to know what to make of, at least seems to imply that God can be counted on--Dylan suggests that he believes just the opposite: “If we know anything about God, God is arbitrary. So people better be able to deal with that, too.”

The interviewer asks helplessly, “Is there something about the word ‘arbitrary’ that you would like to clarify or perhaps that I'm not understanding?”

Dylan: “No. I mean, you can look it up in the dictionary. I don't consider myself a sophist or a cynic or a stoic or some kind of bourgeois industrialist, or whatever titles people put on people. Basically, I'm just a regular person. I don't walk around all the time out of my mind with inspiration.”

Which last sentiment, at least, I can certainly identify with.

February 3, 2008

In LA for the day to visit a talented friend who hasn’t been feeling herself lately. In fact, she’s landed in a psychiatric hospital for the second time this month. I was going to bring her some magazines but as her face was on the cover of all the ones in the gift shop, and frankly not looking its best, I decided on chocolates.

She greeted me in the distinctive Scandinavian accent I’m told she has adopted since the beginning of her present stay. While I cannot say it marks much of an improvement in terms of her mental stability, it does lend an intriguing, Garbo-esque resonance to her conversation.

There were a number of topics I had been asked to avoid, and most of what she told me I’m not able to disclose. But I can relate that she seems to have developed a good therapeutic relationship with the psychiatrist in charge of her case. In fact he appears to have sparked an interest in her in Reform Judaism, and she quizzed me intently about how one goes about converting. I promised to find out and send her some materials.

Her appetite remains healthy, I was pleased to note. I spent only twenty minutes with her--all that anyone, including immediate family, is allowed these days--and yet I was there a lot longer than the chocolates I brought.

January 28, 2008

It seems like I can’t help myself. This morning I once again put on the song “Beautiful” by the popular singer Christina Aguilera, and as usual it set off a crying jag the moment the full band kicked in.

As usual, too, there was only one way to stop it: two full hours of Anal Cunt through my headphones at the maximum volume.

January 19, 2008

Put on Bob Dylan’s album Desire this morning. It brought me back to 1975, when I caught the Rolling Thunder Tour in Springfield, Massachusetts on two nights running.

Thrilling music. I do remember being puzzled by the whiteface makeup Dylan wore on stage.

Many people were. But Dylan’s own explanation in a published interview clears thing up: “I saw it in a movie once.”

Desire starts out well with “Hurricane.” Fine storytelling, lovely violin line, good politics. One wishes someone would do something of this sort for Mumia Abu-Jamal. One of the best things about the song is its showing Rubin Carter not merely as a victim but as someone with his own worth and dignity.

But a few tracks later there’s “Joey,” which celebrates the murdered mobster Joey Gallo for, among other things, strikebreaking: “They threw him in the hole one time for tryin' to stop a strike.” It’s an appalling line, as bad as this mix of racism, national chauvinism, and paranoia from the chillingly reactionary Slow Train Coming album: “Sheiks walkin' around like kings, wearing fancy jewels and nose rings, / Deciding America's future from Amsterdam and Paris.”

I notice my copy of Desire is getting scratched up. Could it be time to invest in a compact-disk player?