If You Need Me I’m Here
The new way of life with regard to movies seems to be that when a studio wants to release a film they partner with one of the established streaming platforms like Netflix, Prime or Apple much like they used to partner with a distributor and then eventually sell the TV rights to an HBO, Cinemax or Showtime. The truth is that I have little or no idea how movies got distributed and even less about how they get into circulation these days. I have a friend who made several movies after his banking career. Most of us at one time or another have been asked to invest in his movies. I finally got around to letting myself get caught and I invested $50,000 in a sequel of his first and most successful film. I have never completely “gotten” the comedy of either the original or the sequel, but that has not stopped them from being a success. Surprisingly enough, I have so far gotten back about $75,000 in a series of quarterly distributions, which are starting to dwindle in size, but are still trickling in. We are in what the movie biz calls “the back end”, arrival at which is already a good thing and means everyone is happy with the movie and its success.
As most of my friends and family know, I am a movie buff. When I lived in New York City, I would go see two or three movies a week if there were releases that had any interest to me. I once met Ron Howard to whom I was introduced as a serious movie buff. I told him about the frequency of my movie attendance, to which he reacted with envy and amazement. He was living in Connecticut at the time (apparently the antidote for Hollywood as I understand that Paul Newman, Robert Redford and many other top stars choose to live there as a “normal” place away from Manhattan and Hollywood). He said he never had the time to see that many movies and wondered if it was so much easier to do so living in the City. There is no doubt it is easy, but I fully expected it would be easy out here as well given how many theaters there are around us. But, of course, I haven’t been to one movie this year thanks to the pandemic. So, without even realizing it, I have taken notice to the ads on cable TV for the release of new movies on the streaming channels. The first of those premiers was the release by Apple of the Tom Hanks movie, Greyhound, the story of the battle for the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic during WWII.
I wanted the big screen experience, so I chose to watch it on my Living Room TV, on which I am quite adept at switching from cable to Netflix or Prime. But to get to AppleTV+ (why are all the streaming channels going with the +?), I needed to go through the internet option and, in a word, it was a bitch. I’m not even quite sure how I made it work, but I did manage to watch the movie. There have been several other AppleTV+ premiers launched on their streaming network since then and every time I tried to connect I was unable. I tried to sign up for this or that, but it all failed and I gave up. Then this Friday I saw that the new Bill Murray movie, On The Rocks, was debuting on AppleTV+ and I had that sinking feeling that while I would like to see the movie, I would again be met by the connection problems. In fact, I resigned myself to not even trying. Then tonight, after watching Blood Diamond on Prime in the late afternoon (I had worked myself into a lather pruning the ever-so-prickly pink Bougainvillea tree), I was clicking into the streaming menu and suddenly there was AppleTV+ queued up first on the list. I don’t remember ever seeing Apple on the menu at all, and I even looked yesterday through the entire menu. So, somehow, AppleTV+ must have negotiated a deal with Samsung overnight?
What was even more amazing was that they had also negotiated a banner above the streaming choices for On The Rocks, so that one could just click through to the movie, which I did. That took me through an Apple sign-in protocol that ended with them telling me I was already signed up. I have no idea how that will all play out the next time I want to watch AppleTV+, but I’m hoping that when the time comes, AppleTV+ will still be in good graces with Samsung.
At the end of the movie, which was only so-so, Bill Murray says to Rashida Jones, playing his daughter, “if you need me I’m here.” The point of the comment is that he has spent most of the movie inciting her to believe that her husband is cheating on her. He is clearly a man of means (we only ever see him with his car and driver and going to the best New York restaurants, where he is known as a regular), and he is bored with his life, so he interferes with his daughter’s. It is all with good intentions, but the “if you need me I’m here” line is ironic given Murray’s near-disastrous efforts.
I have always been an engaged and attentive absentee father for all three of my children. I think I could get a unanimous consent from the kids on that. I have also always believed that my biggest job at this stage of their lives is to work hard to NOT intervene and instead leave them alone to live there lives. That is my way of playing the “if you need me I’m here” card. I have had all of my kids at one time or another tell me that I should not play that card. It seems they think it sounds like I’m making an excuse for not staying close to them and involved in their lives. But actually, its just the opposite. I was raised by a mother who believed she did the best for me by making me take responsibility for my own decisions past a certain age. That age turned out to be seventeen, and I made plenty of mistakes all on my own. But that, I believe, has served me very well over the years by making me fearless in making decisions and venturing forth in any number of directions where others might fear to tread. I want that for my kids and yet I want to be there for them for support and encouragement if they need and want me. It is a parenting approach I believe in and have no intention of abandoning at this late date.
So, I’m hoping that all three of my kids read this post all the way to the end (they all say they read my blog, but I have my suspicions). Be thankful that your father isn’t Bill Murray and that I don’t have any desire to put anything on the rocks other than perhaps a Diet Dr. Pepper.