Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Video Didn't Kill this Hollywood Star

In spite of today's world of instant information, living halfway around the world from most of the headline makers still means some sort of delay in hearing things.  It usually takes me at least a day, maybe more, to hear about the latest Hollywood news coming out of the US. Personally that delay works just fine with me.  In all honestly, I could care less if Snooki marries a Kardashian from one of the Housewives shows while on a tropical photo shoot. The Royal baby, Obama's dog, Sean Penn's latest Chilean cause..none of them rate high enough to get me to click on the link to read more about it.  I'm not judging those who do watch, I am just saying that I could not care less if I physically tried.

More often then not, I have no earthly idea who is in or out. I only watch shows because I like them...not because of a newsworthy scandal   I honestly admit that I only know who Ryan Gosling is because of Pinterest. Even then I have to add that Pinterest is the ONLY place I know him from.  I'm fine with that. My brain is occupied with more important bits of data.  My children's birthdays, how many loads of laundry I need to do per day to keep us all in knickers and socks, the future birthplace of James Tiberius Kirk, and most of all the release date of Star Trek Into Darkness.  You know...the essentials.  

This morning I was reading Facebook and I saw a shared link to a televised awards show speech given a few days ago.   There was a video of Ashton Kutchner on some teen awards show.  It should be fairly obvious that I glossed over it immediately and scrolled down to George Takei's post. A day without Takei is like a day without sunshine to me.  No Hollywood pretty boy is going to disturb my fascination with a hilarious gay septuagenarian champion of geeks and scathing maligner of morons. Not happening.

After my daily devotional I noticed a few more friends were sharing the awards video and some were making some very positive comments about it.  Intrigued, I decided to watch the video.  Replace the word intrigued with the phrase wanting to stay in bed another few minutes and that is a slightly more accurate portrayal of my justification for watching the video. It was 6:30 in the morning and no one had posted any video of cute kittens. Leave me alone.

Watching this video was literally eye-opening as I had started to doze off again.  I'm glad I woke back up for it. This time there actually was something worth watching.  This is a speech I wish I had heard as a teen.  It's a speech I'm going to have my kids watch.  This isn't some vapid Hollywood pretty boy accepting teen praise with a bored voice.  He actually said something important, something that mattered.

I'm paraphrasing here but essentially his speech boiled down to this: Opportunities come from work.  The sexiest trait a human can have is intelligence.  Everything else is a marketing ploy.  People who tell you how the world must be are no smarter than you; you decide what your world should be.

This is most interesting and important video short to come out of Hollywood in many years. Never fear though, I haven't drunk so much of the cool-aid that I don't realize that Ashton has a movie coming out to shill for and I only put the odds at 50/50 that it wasn't an act for show. No such thing as bad press and Mr. Kutchner is superb at manipulating social media.  In this case though, I don't care if it was fake or not.  His words reflect honestly what I believe to be true.  It was a beautiful display of celebrating honor, intelligence and not meekly taking what is handed to you.

Are you listening Hollywood, Entertainment and Media outlets?  More of this, less of Snookied Kardashians.

And to you Chris Kutchner, whatever your were reasons for speaking up, I thank you.  It was nice to finally care about something I saw about a famous person. Other than George Takei of course.  He's a given.