Quote of the week
Australian Robert Townshend interrupts his study of bamboo for this observation:
On the subject of commercial achievement, one wonders why great corporations, and Hollywood studios amongst them, seem to have such scorn for the extraordinary entrepreneurs who made their corporations and studios possible. If you asked the typical Harvard MBA, CEO or Hollywood boss whom he most admired, it would probably be the charismatic figurehead of a quasi one-party state in Africa or South America, Bono, or a fashionable theocratic figure like the Dalai Lama. Or Al Gore.
Plutocrats who would rage if their limo broke down on the way to a Darfur benefit would look at you in bewilderment if you suggested that Soichiro Honda was a benefactor of mankind. For the modern corporate man, a titan like Honda is the guy who was dumb enough [to] do all the work and take all the risks. Wouldn’t know an executive bonus if it bit him on the bum.
What studio boss would be willing to make All the Vice President’s Men, story of cover-ups by a major British climate authority to aid in the dispersal of the West’s wealth and dismantling of its industries? Couldn’t happen in real life. Besides, Redford has moved on to corruption in 1950s quiz shows, Hoffman is maybe practising his Venezuelan accent for the definitive Hugo Chavez biopic.
Actually, I think I’d like to see a Soichiro Honda biopic. They could call it Dream.
Jeff Brokaw »
30 November 2009 · 12:22 pm
This ties in nicely with this Richard Feynman quote I saw this morning:
Feynman was a true genius who helped people get smarter. The Al Gores of the world actually make people dumber.