FUCK COMMITTEES
(I believe in lunatics)
It’s about the struggle between individuals with jagged passion in their work and today’s faceless corporate committees, which claim to understand the needs of the mass audience, and are removing the idiosyncrasies, polishing the jags, creating a thought-free, passion-free, cultural mush that will not be hated nor loved by anyone. By now, virtually all media, architecture, product and graphic design have been freed from ideas, individual passion, and have been relegated to a role of corporate servitude, carrying out corporate strategies and increasing stock prices. Creative people are now working for the bottom line.
Magazine editors have lost their editorial independence, and work for committees of publishers (who work for committees of advertisers). TV scripts are vetted by producers, advertisers, lawyers, research specialists, layers and layers of paid executives who determine whether the scripts are dumb enough to amuse what they call the ‘lowest common denominator’. Film studios out films in front of focus groups to determine whether an ending will please target audiences. All cars look the same. Architectural decisions are made by accountants. Ads are stupid. Theater is dead.
Corporations have become the sole arbiters of cultural ideas and taste in America. Our culture is corporate culture.
Culture used to be the opposite of commerce, not a fast track to ‘content’- derived riches. Not so long ago captains of industry (no angels in the way they acquired wealth) thought that part of their responsibility was to use their millions to support culture. Carnegie built libraries, Rockefeller built art museums, Ford created his global foundation. What do we now get from our billionaires? Gates? Or Eisner? Or Redstone? Sales pitches. Junk mail. Meanwhile, creative people have their work reduced to ‘content’ or ‘intellectual property’. Magazines and films become ‘delivery systems’ for product messages.
But to be fair, the above is only 99 percent true.
I offer a modest solution: Find the cracks in the wall. There are a very few lunatic entrepreneurs who will understand that culture and design are not about fatter wallets, but about creating a future. They will understand that wealth is means, not an end. Under other circumstances they may have turned out to be like you, creative lunatics. Believe me, they’re there and when you find them, treat them well and use their money to change the world.
Tibor Kalman
New York, June 1998
Margaret Kilgallen’s letter to Aaron Rose about showing with Jeffrey Deitch, excerpted from the book, “Young, Sleek, and Full of Hell”.
An Open Letter to Ann Coulter by John Franklin Stevens 
Dear Ann Coulter,
Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren’t dumb and you aren’t shallow. So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult?
I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night.
I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have.
Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next.
Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift.
Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more.
After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me. You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV.
I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash.
Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor.
No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much.
Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.
A friend you haven’t made yet,
John Franklin Stephens
Global Messenger
Special Olympics Virginia
Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas' letter of resignation to his agent
As I thought about what happened, I continued, increasingly, to be horrified by it. You are agents. Your role is to help and encourage my career and my creativity. Your role is not to place me in personal emotional turmoil. Your role is not to threaten to destroy my family’s livelihood if I don’t do your bidding. I am not an asset; I am a human being. I am not a painting hung on a wall; I am not a part of a chess set. I am not a piece of meat to be “traded” for other pieces of meat. I am not a child playing with blocks. This isn’t a game. It’s my life.
What I have decided, simply, after this period of time, is that I cannot live with myself and continue to be represented by you. I find the threats you and Rand made to be morally repugnant. I simply can’t function on a day-to-day business basis with you and Rand without feeling myself dirtied. Maybe you can beat the hell out of some people and they will smile at you afterward and make nice, but I can’t do that. I have always believed, both personally and in my scripts, in the triumph of the human spirit. I have abhorred bullying of all kinds — by government, by police, by political extremism of the Left and the Right, by the rich — maybe it’s because I came to this country as a child and was the victim of a lot of bullying when I was an adolescent. But I always fought back; I was bloodied a lot, but I fought back.
I know the risks I am taking: I am not doing this blithely. Yes, you might very well be able to hurt me with your stars, your directors, and your friends on the executive level. Yes, Irwin and Barry are friends of yours and maybe you will be able to damage my relationships with them — but as much as I treasure those relationships with them, if my decision to leave CAA affects them, then they’re not worth it anyway. Yes, you might sue me and convince UA and God knows who else to sue me. And yes, I know that you can play dirty — the things you said about Guy in your meeting with me are nothing less than character assassination. But I will risk all that. Rich or poor, successful or not, I have always been able to look myself in the mirror.
I am not saying that I don’t take your threats seriously; I take your threats very seriously indeed. But I have discussed all of this with my wife, with my fifteen-year-old boy and my thirteen-year-old girl, and they support my decision. After three years of searching, we bought a bigger and much more expensive house recently. We have decided, because of your threats and the uncertainty they cast on my future, to put the new house up for sale and stay in our old one. You told me of your feeling for your own family; do you have any idea how much pain and turmoil you’ve caused mine?
I think the biggest reason I can’t stay with you has to do with my children. I have taught them to fight for what’s right. What you did is wrong. I can’t teach my children one thing and then, on the most elemental level, do another. I am not that kind of man.
So do whatever you want to do, Mike, and fuck you. I have my family and I have my old manual imperfect typewriter and they have always been the things I’ve treasured the most.
Barry Hirsch will officially notify you that I have left CAA and from this date on Gay McElwaine will represent me.
Sincerely,
Joe Eszterhas
People simply empty out
In 1969, publisher John Martin offered to pay Charles Bukowski $100 each and every month for the rest of his life, on one condition: that he quit his job at the post office and become a writer. 49-year-old Bukowski did just that, and in 1971 his first novel, Post Office, was published by Martin’s Black Sparrow Press.
15 years later, Bukowski wrote the following letter to Martin and spoke of his joy at having escaped full time employment.
(Source: Reach for the Sun Vol. 3; Image: Charles Bukowski, via.)
8-12-86
Hello John:
Thanks for the good letter. I don’t think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don’t get it right. They call it “9 to 5.” It’s never 9 to 5, there’s no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don’t take lunch. Then there’s OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there’s another sucker to take your place.
You know my old saying, “Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.”
And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.
As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can’t believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?
Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: “Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?”
They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.
Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:
“I put in 35 years…”
“It ain’t right…”
“I don’t know what to do…”
They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn’t they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?
I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I’m here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I’ve found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system.
I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: “I’ll never be free!”
One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.
So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.
To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.
yr boy,
Hank
A CANDID PROPOSAL FROM AN ADVERTISING FIRM’S CREATIVE DIRECTOR
By: Andrew Gall, McSweeney’s
Dear esteemed prospective client:
I can’t wait to get started on this exciting new advertising campaign for your product/service. It is truly a great opportunity.
By entering into this freelance contract with me, I agree to provide you with the following materials for your new advertising campaign:
- A mood board session, in which my team will provide you with 2-3 mood boards that, while appearing to be simple pictures clipped from magazines and then pasted onto black foam core, are, in actuality, THE FUTURE FOR YOURBRAND’S DIRECTION. These pictures will be edgy and artsy and will take your brand into a new edgy and artsy direction. There will be at least two photographs of Ashton Kutcher.
- A dozen made up words related to your product that will “draw consumers in.” These shall include, but not be limited to, words with the following suffixes: “–tastic,” “-tacular,” and “–riffic.” Also, while you probably already know this, I was the one who came up with the word “crumbelievable” in 2007 to describe the Keebler company’s new line of coffee cake cookies. It goes without saying that following the institution of this new word as a product line tagline, sales proceeded to go through the roof.
- A logo exploration that includes at least five unique logo designs. These will consist of differently sized circles and in one case the words will be rotated to a landscape rather than a portrait view. If you want your actual company name below the logo, that will be part of round two and will require additional dollars and conceptual exploration time.
- Five conceptual print advertising ideas that don’t actually contain your logo or company name at all.
- Three television storyboards for proposed television commercials. The explosions, large groups of people, and time of year you will see depicted in these storyboards will be occurrences that can only be shot in New Zealand, so these three ideas must be shot in New Zealand in order to be an effective advertisement for your product/service. This is non-negotiable.
- At least one media-agnostic concept that involves a Rube Goldberg machine.
- A direct mail concept that you won’t open or ever see. (It’s actually a piece of my son’s lined notebook paper with sketches of monsters on it, not that it matters.)
- A web homepage layout, which will be a rough sketch with black pen on white paper, on which I will have taken the liberty to draw boxes to indicate where you should put your web content. If you’d like to see this concept “come to life,” it will require an additional estimate and 5 more weeks of conceptual exploration time.
- A mobile device layout, which is a new offering. This will be a slightly smaller version of the web homepage layout. This, as a “new media” offering, is not part of the standard scope of work and will require additional funds and weeks of conceptual exploration time.
- Fourteen unique PR stunts that include ways to build a “buzz” for your brand. Half of these will be ideas for celebrity endorsements or involvements that aren’t possible either because you can’t afford them, the celebrity actually hates your product/service, or because the celebrity is dead or fictional or trademarked (e.g., Aquaman). The remaining seven will all involve putting a large billboard somewhere in Times Square in various locations.
- Two-to-Six “viral” ideas that involve a cat.
Please find enclosed my contract, which I request that you sign and return at your earliest convenience.
Again, my sincerest thanks for considering me for this project.
Sincerely,
Andrew Gall
Freelance Advertising Professional
An open letter to my mom for not buying me an iPhone 5 (even tho I just got an iPhone 4S)
By: Carles, Hipster Runoff
Dear mom,
First and foremost, you are a BITCH. This letter isn’t just about the smartphone that you won’t buy me. It’s about you being a TOTAL BITCH whenever you get the opportunity. I’m not bitter, I’m honestly just sayin’. I sometimes curse your name and wish for your death because of the CRAPPY FOOD that you cook and the way you treat me like that time you wouldn’t let me go to the movie’s for Sarah’s birthday and EVERYONE was there and I felt like such a loser the next Monday at school when every one had inside jokes and I was just this loser who had to go to the viewing of your dead brother.
Why the fuck did we just get iPhone 4S’s LITERALLY just 5 days ago? REally mom? You don’t read tech blogs? U didn’t see this coming?
I get it mom. You pay for the cell phone bill. Unlimited data. Unlimited texts. I use the majority of the daytime minutes on our Family Plan. You think this doesn’t matter, but it DOES. iPhone 5 kicks so much ass and I’m gonna look like such a loser laggard with my iPhone 4s. Kids at school will LAUGH at me and my dumb phone. They will bully me. I know you will tell me that I shouldn’t care what they think, and that they are not my true friends. You are right, they USED to be my true friends before this new phone came out and ruined my goddamn life.
You are TEARING THIS FAMILY APART.
I get it. You just got me the iPhone 4s because our contract just expired and before that you had me on this PIECE OF SHIT Blackberry. Even though that’s what I wanted a few years ago because my friends were all on Blackberry Messenger and I didn’t want to be one of those poor people on ‘smartphones’ who use Android and try to claim it is all better.
I’m so fucking lucky you won an iPad in your company raffle and I got to become commonlaw owner of it so that I could maintain an instagram account. Thank fucking god.
Now this guy who replaces Steve Jobs tells me that there’s a fucking iPhone 5??? I just bought (my mom just bought) a fucking iPhone 4S! WTF. My mom shoulda known better. Doesn’t she read tech blogs at her fuckin job? I have no idea what you do, honestly, mom. But seriously, stop making me feel guilty every time you buy me a $400-$600 device. It’s just part of staying with the times, like food, water, and shelter. We gotta stay connected.
I hate my shitty iPhone 4. I want to kill that Siri bitch. I’ll bet she’s way smarter on iPhone 5.
I had the WORST feeling that the girl at the Sprint Store had no fucking clue what she was talking about. She kept trying to get us to by Samsung Galaxy S III’s. I wouldn’t wipe my ass with that piece of shit. I need a fucking phone that plays MP3s. I need a phone that looks cool and syncs up with my MacBook Pro.
I NEED that 4 inch screen. My screen totally fucking sucks. It is so small. My phone is so bulky. It can barely fit in my pocket. It is such a dinosaur. I feel like I am carrying around a 50 pound weight just for people to make fun of me. It is LITERALLY like a scarlet letter, and I am walking around feeling #shamed.
In closing, THANKS A LOT mom for fucking EVERYTHING up once again. You always want me to go to therapy, but I think YOU are the only loony person who belongs in therapy for thinking that you can get away with ‘providing for your son’ on the cheap. I know it has been hard since dad left, but I’m beginning to understand why the hell he got away from you. Mistakes like this. It’s one thing after another.
When are you going to pull it together? I’m 29 years old and still waiting for you to finally love and support me. Like, not just financially (has been rough to find a career after my 7 years at college) but I just wanna feel like you ‘get’ me and my needs as a technological consumer. Why can’t you just keep up?
Can you just get me an iPhone 5 and I’ll sell the old one on Craigslist and I’ll give you some of the money or take you to Outback Steak House or something. But seriously mom, you are a BITCH.
DOESN’T LOVE YOU,
your son
PS: Please buy some more Chips A’hoy at the store. We’ve been out for 2 days. WTF else are you buying? I need my cookies, BIYATCH!
(Editor’s note: I’m torn. I love the MOCA. I also recognize that change, while sometimes hard to bear at first, turns out to be better in the long run. Here’s hoping.)
Welcome to the NFL, here's your new life
Dear Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III,
You have been mentioned in the same breath for the last several months. And soon you will go 1-2 in the draft. It’s a testament to your fantastic talent that there’s still uncertainty – although very little – about where you’ll end up. But once you get drafted and shake hands with Darth Vader, your lives will diverge and you will be immersed fully in the identity of your new employers.
Immediately following the draft, you will board a private jet to your new cities, where you will step off the plane as Hope. The first stage will be a media event. All stages, in fact, will be media events. Whether leading your teams to triumph or failing miserably, every breath will be a public affair. For better or worse, your privacy is gone.
After the necessary posing and hand shaking and I’m-excited-to-be-a-part-of-this-organization-isms, you’ll be escorted into the locker room and shown your new stoop. It will look identical to all other stoops. And until you retire, this will be the only room on the planet where you’re safe, and where your struggle is understood.
Your last name will be unceremoniously taped over your locker and you’ll be gripped once again with the feeling of uncertainty that comes with a new beginning. The NFL is a man’s world, and even when secure in the blossoming of one’s own manhood, the question is unavoidable: Am I man enough?
You’ll be issued your playbooks – if you haven’t already – and you will dive in headfirst. The fate of every professional football player is determined not only by his talent but by his circumstance. The offensive system is not up to the player. The plays that are called: he must run them. The blocking prowess of his lineman: he cannot affect it. The willingness of his coach to cater a rigid offensive system to his unique talents: he does not decide it. His defense: he does not control it. The mental health of the team at large, which will determine the efficiency of the work environment: he does not control that either. He is one man, and on his back the city jumps, expecting that his legs alone will deliver them.
And there will be failures. Andrew, there will be times during practice when you will be outplayed by free-agent camp bodies who will never play a down of pro football. And RG3, there will be times when you will look so shitty that anyone watching will declare you a bust, and the team’s hopes lost. Yet it is through these tunnels that all players must pass — the Hall of Famer and the Never Will Be. The knowledge of this common struggle will unite a team in defiance of the conventional wisdom that suggests otherwise. Remember for every interception thrown, there is an interceptor in triumph. For every touchdown thrown, there is a defense in defeat. Leadership requires an acceptance of this, and will not work without it. A leader who lacks this perspective will lead no one but himself.
Chances are, you both already know this. But it is a nuance that is lost on the media. Simply showing the game on television is not enough. It must be accompanied with an explanation for why it happens. And this is where they fail us. Media knowledge isn’t so much knowledge at all, but sensation, flashed across a screen to stir the unbalanced longings in the heart. Out in society, you will be forced to choose: Do I prop up the myth or do I speak the truth? Or more directly: Am I the character they have created or am I me?
If this paradigm weren’t enough on its own, you will have a bucket full of non-football things to think about. First, everyone who meets you will see dollar signs. Everyone will want to “help you out.” When someone wants to sell me something or persuade me, I want no part of them. Yet if either of you are dismissive of strangers, you risk damaging your image, which you have been taught to protect. Do not worry about this. If you give your ear to fools, they’ll chew it off.
After negotiating your contracts, you both will surely buy a house in an affluent suburb where no 22-year-old would be happy living. Your new neighbors will be rich as well, facelifted, lipo-sucked, Xanaxed and dripping in diamonds, simply delighted to welcome you to the neighborhood. You will commission an interior decorator, recommended by a neighbor, to furnish your home. This will guarantee it feels nothing like Home. And someday, when all of this is over, you’ll walk through and gaze upon the marble columns and the embroidered drapes like artifacts in a museum, wondering why you ever listened to that woman.
And there’s more. You’ll buy a few cars, attend charity events and autograph signings, do endorsement deals, film commercials, go to golf tournaments, meet local investors and owners and politicians and more rich people on more Xanax and the surreal will become the real. The game that you fell in love with as a child will seem lost; a thump on the floorboard of your new Mercedes, swerved at high speeds to avoid a shadow in the night. The sights and sounds and smells of football, sensual memories that stir the passions in the soul, will be reconceived and recategorized, buried behind newer, odorless versions.
With all of this pushing against you, the role of friends and family becomes very important. There are people in this world to whom you’re just Andrew and Robert. Son, brother, lover, friend. You need to lean on these people when the Weirdos start to make sense. You need to run to the familiarity of genuine friendship. But even in this, there will be a loneliness, because, as a defense mechanism, you will have assumed a piece of your new identity, and your loved ones won’t understand it. Caught in between these two worlds you’ll drift. You’ll feast on the fruits of excess, and will only grow hungrier. You’ll dine with familiar faces, and find you’ve lost the taste. And so you’ll get in your Mercedes on your days off and drive to the facility and watch film. Ah yes. Football. That’s what this is all about.
And your ability to keep this all in perspective will determine how you perform on the field. Once the whistle blows on Sundays, you’ll be released from captivity, and you’ll be free for three hours to truly live your dreams on the grandest scale you can imagine, against the best athletes on the planet. You will win or you will lose, but then the football game will end. The NFL game never will. Godspeed, boys.
Nate Jackson played for the Denver Broncos for six years.
