Too fast to live, too young to die

And so goes the tribute by Eagles to James Dean.



James Dean was 24 when he passed away, and I get reminded of him during the Formula One season – he was a movie actor who liked to race, and he died while racing. He went to the legendary Lee Strasberg acting school and received two posthumous Oscar nominations.

If he had been alive, he would have turned 80 years old on Feb 8.

I must have been 10 or 11 years old when Levi’s advertisement featuring him came out and I went gaga over his looks. Recently, I saw a sparkle in the eyes of the 60+ lady who works in my office when I mentioned him.

From present days, an actor who reminds me of James Dean is Heath Ledger. He was 28 when he died, and was awarded an Oscar posthumously. Incidentally, Heath’s father is a racing car driver.

I had earlier written about what attracts actors to negative roles – there is speculation that Ledger’s role as Joker resulted in his untimely death. Additionally, do a few young men have intuition that they will not be around for long and hence want to try all that they can before their time is up? James Dean was experimental and had sexual relationships with men and women. Ledger was always thinking and had difficulty sleeping – he resorted to medication finally.

Talented, good-looking, well-appreciated – both of them had it all. Their untimely death will forever make us think of their untapped potential. If they had been alive, what else could have been possible?

R.I.P

The Social Network (2010)

“The Social Network” is about how Facebook was conceived as an exclusive club first, how the idea grew into something much bigger and continued to rate high on the coolness quotient, how Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) became the youngest billionaire in the world, how he cheated on his best friend Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield, who has also acted in the interesting "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"), and how he has dealt with lawsuits.

At Harvard in 2003, a boy of above-average intelligence thinks what he does is the best thing in the world – there is little respect shown to his girlfriend’s intelligence or subject choice. After getting rejected by her, he decides to write an algorithm that compares the photos of girls in his college and gets those who know them to rate the photos. He blogs when he is drunk and compares women to farm animals. He meets two rich twins and their business partner after the photo-comparison application becomes hugely popular. He doesn’t hesitate in asking his rich Brazil-born best friend to sponsor his idea and later doesn’t oppose diluting the best friend’s stake to 0.03% from 34%. He falls for the vision shown by Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) and agrees when he says,"Drop the 'The.' Just 'Facebook.' It's cleaner”. He knows what it is like when things don't go in accordance to his wishes. He looks disinterested while he is processing and retaining every bit of what is being said. He feels left out of exclusive clubs. He loves Facebook.

The movie has everything going for it – perfect casting all across, a tight storyline, dialogues that are intelligent and raise uncomfortable questions that linger, and characters who are of similar age as me. For the record, I really enjoyed Jesse Eisenberg’s performance as Mark. He confirmed one thing to me – I can deal with the arrogance of investment bankers better than the arrogance of technology geeks.

The movie also reminded me of the issues I had with facebook initially – the trivialization of relationships and ease of rejection, the ability to establish independent personas – one in the real world and one (or more) in the world of facebook, the disappearing boundaries between personal and professional worlds, the manifestation of negative behaviour like stalking and lurking.

Facebook is now valued at $65 billion. While watching the movie, I wondered what Mark felt about having an Oscar-winning movie made on his life so early on. He is 26 years old and is still growing the company. He has only dated Priscilla Chan – the movie paints a different picture.

The sibling had watched the movie soon after it was released and had excitedly told me to watch out for the twin brothers in the movie. I watched the movie yesterday and told her that it was the same actor who played the role of the Winklevoss twins. His name is Armie Hammer. You should read about how he played both roles here – there is a model who stood-in for some of the scenes, and then his face was digitally replaced with that of Armie.

Technology makes the impossible possible?!

I am going to leave you with two thoughts. The first one - you might want to read this review. The second one -

Marylin Delpy: What are you doing?
Mark Zuckerberg: Checking in to see how it's going in Bosnia.
Marylin Delpy: Bosnia. They don't have roads, but they have Facebook