Daily Dialogue — May 15, 2014
“You CANNOT make friends with the rock stars. That’s what’s important. If you’re a rock journalist — first, you will never get paid much. But you will get free records from the record company. And they’ll buy you drinks, you’ll meet girls, they’ll try to fly you places for free, offer you drugs… I know. It sounds great. But they are not your friends. These are people who want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of the rock stars, and they will ruin rock and roll and strangle everything we love about it.”
LESTER: Oh man, you made friends with them. See, friendship is the booze they feed you because they want you to get drunk and feel like you belong.
WILLIAM: Well, it was fun.
LESTER: Because they make you feel cool. And, hey, I met you. You are not cool.
WILLIAM: I know. Even when I thought I was, I knew I wasn’t.
LESTER: Because we are uncool. Women will always be a problem for guys like us. Most of the great art in the world is about that very problem. Good looking people — they’ve got no spine. Their art never lasts. And they get the girls. We’re smarter.
WILLIAM: Yeah, I can really see that now.
LESTER: That is what great art is about. The guilt, the longing, you know, love disguised as sex, and sex disguised as love. Hey, let’s face it.: you got a big head start.
WILLIAM: Glad you were home.
LESTER: I’m always home. I’m uncool.
WILLIAM: Me, too.
LESTER: You’re doing great. The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone when you’re uncool. My advice to you — and I know you think these guys are your friends — if you want to be a true friend to them, be honest and unmerciful.
— Almost Famous (2000), written by Cameron Crowe
This week’s theme: Advice, suggested by Aarthi Ramanathan. Today’s suggestion by pgronk.
Trivia: The real life Lester Bangs died of a drug overdose at a fairly young age. Eerily, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who portrays him in this film, would later die of a drug overdose as well.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Hoffman is only in a handful of scenes as Lester Bangs, but he is a critical voice, a Mentor figure to William. Of course, William doesn’t heed Bangs’ advice which sets into motion several key dynamics in the narrative.
Commentary from pgronk: “This exchange resolves the subjective problem of William Miller, the youthful protagonist, enabling him to fulfill his objective goal: write the article on a rock group for the magazine “Rolling Stone”. His subjective struggle has been to be cool, to be popular, to belong to the in-crowd. But his mentor, Lester Bangs, helps him understand and accept that he is one of those people who can never be cool — and that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be a liability; for the sake of his career as a writer, not being cool can be an asset.”
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