It's interesting - in 'Fail Safe,' as well, they didn't back off. We were raised with kind of this spectrum of that Armageddon and lived under it, so those were probably the films. 'Fail Safe' sort of haunted me.
Family entertainment is really very necessary in our culture. Look how profitable they are. It's almost not discretionary. You need to take your family to the movies.
Most modern science fiction went to school on 'Dune.' Even 'Harry Potter' with its 'boy protagonist who has not yet grown into his destiny' shares a common theme. When I read it for the first time, I felt like I had learned another language, mastered a new culture, adopted a new religion.
'Pleasantville' seems tonally ambitious, but it can handle a wide breadth of tone because it's so fanciful.
'Harry Potter' created a generation of readers in an era when kids could have disappeared into the depths of the Internet. That's no small feat. Every book series owes J.K. Rowling a debt of gratitude.
I mean, the wonderful thing about writing a book is that you're getting a finished product at the end of the day. You're communicating directly with the reader.
You can drain the life and nuances and complexity out of things by homogenizing them to make everything harmoniously dull, flat, conflict-free, strife-free.
I mean, what is racism? Racism is a projection of our own fears onto another person. What is sexism? It's our own vulnerability about our potency and masculinity projected as our need to subjugate another person, you know? Fascism, the same thing: People are trying to untidy our state, so I legislate as a way of controlling my environment.
The great seats of power tend to be wide and open, not vertical and soaring. Red Square, Tiananmen Square, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin - all massive but with large open spaces that project an image of might.
Really, each era has its own false nostalgia. We all put a picket fence up around something. For my generation it was the '50s, and for other generations it will be something else. Change is scary for everyone, as is complexity, contradiction, and an uncertain future.
In a complex and troubling world, who wouldn't want to simplify? Everybody does. Everybody wants to simplify and put up a picket fence.
We repress the things we're scared of, but if we just look at and embrace the things we're scared of, it's a much fuller, richer life that's also not as scary.
As time goes by the memories of sitting on the edge of a bed and reading aloud with your kid are going to be very meaningful in your own mental scrapbook.
