The American dream is no longer about accomplishment – it is about achieving a Kardashian-level of fame. We’ve become a society that values the famous more than we do the virtuous.

This desire to be seen, to be known, to be recognized (no matter your dubious accomplishments) is insidious, teaching people that having your own reality show is the ultimate American achievement.

For anyone that thinks that happiness comes from being on screen (or having millions of Twitter followers), I’d recommend The Winner Stands Alone, a thought-provoking novel by Paulo Coelho. He’s the author of The Alchemist, a global phenomenon of a book about the authentic pursuit of your dreams.

Set in the glamorous world of the Cannes Film Festival, The Winner Stands Alone starts out as a murder-mystery but is more a meditation on the desire for fame. It’s a cruel book, at times, as it illustrates the lengths that the aspiring will go to become members of the “Superclass” – and the hollow center that they encounter once they arrive.

It’s a great book for anyone who wants to go to Hollywood, exposing the phony and worthless nature of the “fame game.”

The Winner Stands Alone is far from a perfect book. With all of Coelho’s novels, characters and dialogue are largely secondary to the parable that he wishes to tell. Everyone sounds like Coelho, the wise teacher.

The Alchemist is about following your dream; The Winner Stands Alone is about the danger of following someone else’s.

I’m a fan of Seth Godin, particularly his book, The Dip, which is about knowing when to quit and when to keep going. His thoughts on traditional publishing are also really compelling – it’s an industry that is broken. I read just about everything he writes.

Purple Cow is one of his older works, published in 2003 and updated last year. Purple Cow is a book that will push you to create something extraordinary. Godin’s basic point is that we don’t remember ordinary experiences, like the airline that got you to your destination on-time or the meal that was merely OK. Instead, we become passionate over excellent, “above and beyond” service and products. We rave about them to our friends and neighbors, which is the best marketing there is.

And about the only marketing that works.

Which is Godin’s point – in order to break through the clutter, we must create the truly extraordinary. Do work that scares you, that’s on the edge. Don’t be like other people – be unique.

A compelling idea, but one that probably doesn’t deserve a whole book (even a slim one). After a while, it’s the same story of iconoclasm again and again. Also, some of the examples are dated now, like JetBlue as a paragon of customer service and Godin’s comment about mobile phones being commodities at this point – obviously written before the iPhone.

But if you’re a fan of Seth Godin, or are currently working on a new product and need some inspiration, then it’s worth checking out.

Note: The 2010 edition includes an appendix containing stories of companies and organizations that have adopted the Purple Cow philosophy successfully.

It’s hard to imagine but booze was once outlawed in DC. The Prohibition era is the subject of a fascinating new book by local author Garret Peck.

He’s an excellent speaker with an encyclopedic knowledge of the city. I wrote an article for the Pink Line Project about his book talk, where he shared what life was like when Washington was “dry.”

Think the Polaroid is dead?

New media doesn’t replace old media; it complements it. While millions of people are snapping photos with iPhones, a select few carry on with the cameras your grandparents once employed.

The results can be seen at The Polaroid Retrospective II show at the Lamont Gallery. Running until the end of April, this is a fascinating exhibit that demonstrates the artistic possibilities of low-fi cameras. The little square photos which line the brick walls of this gallery aren’t perfect, their not crisp, they don’t have the slick sheen of digital photography – and that makes them all the more charming and personal.

Update: check out my article on this great show.

The March DC Film Salon offered tips from Allied Integrated Marketing on promoting your independent movie or documentary. The salon is a free monthly networking opportunity for film and video professionals.

The meetup began at six, allowing filmmakers plenty of time to mingle before the presentation started at 7. There were about forty people at the super-hip Gibson Guitar Room, one of my favorite venues in DC. Located near the Verizon Center, it’s a beautiful space complete with a piano and scores of electric guitars.

After showing a “sizzle reel” (a flashy intro movie about their agency), Ivory Zorich and Gloria Jones from Allied Integrated Marketing shared their expertise on how to bring a film the attention it deserves. Allied Integrated Marketing is a marketing agency that specializes in the entertainment industry. They have offices around the country, including a small one in DC.

Ivory and Gloria shared examples of how they promoted the films that they represented. Their talk held some interesting tips for anyone promoting a product:

• All marketing is local these days. Even in Washington, newspapers want to see a local angle. You can’t just have a story about a movie – you have to tie it to the local community somehow. For example, if one of the stars is from the area.
• Secondary press partners are key. These are smaller publications like the City Paper that are easier to pitch too.
• Use niche marketing. For example, with the film Sin Nombre, they targeted Latino audiences. Milk was aimed at the LGBT community.
• Tastemaker screenings are another useful marketing tactic. These are preview screenings for “tastemakers” in the community, i.e., influential people who love movies.
• Partnerships. If you have a documentary about AIDS, then you should partner with AIDS organizations to get the word out.
• New media. They mentioned Brightest Young Things as a “hipster” site to reach out to. (I am not hip – I find BYT to be unfathomable.)

One question I had was, “How do you measure results?” That’s difficult to do, according to Ivory and Gloria. It’s hard to tell if a movie’s success comes from PR or something else. I think that’s part of the reason why the field can be so frustrating to people – if I bought Google Ads, I can track how they’re performing. But how do you measure schmoozing tastemakers?

Still, these are all excellent ideas for getting the word out about your movie, or your product. The most important thing is to think about your movie from the perspective of the audience, and tailor your efforts accordingly.

Check out my latest article for the Pink Line Project on local filmmakers – this time I look at Silent Code Features. This local production company is helmed by Anthony Greene, a screenwriter I’ve known for a couple years now. He writes very punchy, topical scripts.

Out of the four films by Silent Code that I saw at a special screening on March 12, the one that I liked best was “The Favor.” Greene handles controversial material with a deft touch. It’s also a very funny film.

Last night was opening night for DCist Exposed, a gallery exhibit of some of the most interesting photos from around the Washington region. Read my FAQ to learn more about this interesting show which, by the way, runs until March 27 at Long View Gallery.

After hanging out there for a couple of hours, drinking beer and talking to photogs, what did I learn?

• Long View is almost too cool to be in DC. It’s enormous, sparse and separated by historic Blagden Alley by just a glass garage-style door. Last year, it played host to the opening party of DC Week too. One drawback: only two little bathrooms in the back, not ideal for large crowds served beer.
• I cannot tell the difference between the various varieties of Yeungling that they served last night.
• Giving the photogs and DCist staff name tags was an excellent idea. You could easily spot the show’s participants.
• From Samer Farha, one of the show judges, learned that Mpix was a good place for prints and Apex in Virginia was a great place for framing. We both agreed: insanely expensive to print at home.
• Brian Mosley informed me that you don’t have to go too early down to the Mall on July 4th to get a shot like this. I find this hard to believe.
• Art lovers bought photos on opening night, including this classic shot of a stunned-looking Mayor Fenty. The photographers don’t know who buys their pics.
• Selling tickets in advance was a brilliant idea. No fire marshals and there was plenty of room for everyone.
• Heather Goss, who started DCist Exposed, has about five different jobs. But not to worry, she’s apparently a machine.
• People liked my line in the FAQ I wrote for the Pink Line Project about the DCist commentators being a “riotous crew of misfits.” That’s me literary background.

Be sure to check out these great photos of the night from Vincent Gallegos. Can’t wait til next year!

Update: more great pics from DCist!

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart starts off as a hilarious farce, an inventive look at the future gone wrong. All your paranoid fears about the Department of Homeland Security are well-represented as a bureaucratic error throws Lenny, the book’s narrator, into absurdist peril.

But the novel is much deeper than that. It’s not just a farce, it’s an honest and painful look at a nightmare vision of America. In this dystopia, our country is obsessed with sex and shopping, in hock to the Chinese and teetering on the edge of financial collapse (not too different from today).

The book steadily grows darker and darker as history unravels – we feel for the characters who are so clueless about the inevitable reckoning. And we feel for this country, all the values we hold dear – democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty – all imperiled by decades of folly.

That’s what this book is about – Lenny’s collapse into middle age is mirrored by the collapse of America. Ultimately, it’s a very upsetting book. You don’t want the country to end up this way. The book is dark and funny but it’s also a warning to us as a nation to get our act together. Otherwise, the future will be very cruel.

The Washington Post recently had an article about DC in the movies, highlighting director James L. Brooks for really getting Washington. From All the President’s Men to his latest, How Do You Know?, he displays an excellent understanding of the culture of the city.

We’re not like Chicago or LA or New York. The people here are different, with their own unique challenges and motivations. New Yorkers may think that, just like there are no good bagels in DC, there’s no real “there” in Washington. It’s a transient city, with no realness about it. (Or, as a friend of mine from NYC once said, there’s no “bounty” to it.)

There’s a grain of truth to that assessment – it is a transient city, drawing in and expelling different political classes with each election. But most DC residents don’t work on Capitol Hill. They somehow manage to function without being part of the political class.

Members of the Tea Party view Washington as Babylon, center of sin and wickedness, where overpaid bureaucrats extract the wealth of the nation. I am not one to say that government is great. In fact, having worked in government myself, I think that government tries to do way too much. However, most feds I’ve known have a strong sense of service and in no way match up to the stereotype of government officials.

The rare movie that really understands the people of Washington is James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News. In this workplace drama, Holly Hunter plays Jane Craig, a TV news producer. She’s driven, a workaholic with an uncompromising faith in the honest tenets of journalism. Albert Brooks is Aaron Altman, her friend and an on-air correspondent. He’s secretly in love with her.

Into this world comes William Hurt. He’s a telegenic, on-the-rise reporter. With his slick manner and phony emotions, he represents everything that Jane hates and fears about the future of the news. It’s style over substance and, despite her beliefs, she finds herself falling for him.

Despite being made more than twenty years ago, there’s so much that this film gets right about Washingtonians:

1. The city is filled with people who want to change the world. Jane has a religious belief in the power of news. An early scene shows Jane giving a presentation to an audience of news reporters, trying to explain an important policy change that all the news broadcasts missed. But the journalists are bored by this, which Jane finds intolerable.
2. We’re fast-talking know-it-alls. Despite being from the South, Jane has the “rapid patter of the overeducated” (that’s how I described Washingtonspeak in my book). A running joke in the movie is Jane telling taxi drivers which routes to take, for she knows better than they do. Aaron is even worse – he’s shown in a flashback delivering a valedictory address where he insults the quality of the education that he’s received.
3. Work and life are intermingled. Broadcast News presents work as family. For all the characters, there’s no real life outside of the office, where they find love and companionship. And when there’s a layoff (because the network couldn’t program Wednesday nights), it’s brutal.

These themes are expressed in this funny exchange:

				PAUL
		It must be nice to always believe
		you know better.  To think you're
		always the smartest person in the
		room.

				JANE
			(from her depths)
		No, it's awful.  Oh my, it's awful.

I remember seeing the movie not too long after it came out. I hated it. The characters are really unlikeable, and redeemed only by the performances of Holly Hunter, Albert Brooks and William Hurt. Would you like to be friends with a know-it-all like Jane? Do you want to have no work/life separation? Is your job a job or a holy mission?

The movie was too real for me – I know ambitious folks just like this. I’ve worked in places where a sense of mission was used as an excuse to mistreat employees. And I’ve seen what happens when the pursuit of fulfillment in work goes wrong.

Over the years, my attitude toward Broadcast News has mellowed. Certain things are still grating. Aaron in the movie is just a needy jerk. His insecurities are supposed to be charming but that Woody Allen schtick has aged badly.

And the ending is tacked-on. Things come to a climax where everything gets resolved, tragically. Jane is alone in a cab.

And then there is another ending, seven years later. A happier one. Sometime in those seven years, magically, everyone found a way to change and be happy.

Beware movies where a title card comes up reading, “Years Later.” That’s when the screenwriter has written themselves into a box and needs to get out of it. Surely, we can’t leave Jane alone and unhappy – this is a comedy.

Despite its flaws, Broadcast News is the best way to experience a little of what it’s like to actually live in DC. Maybe you won’t become a career-driven workaholic, but you’ll certainly be surrounded by them. And you’ll have to cope with crusaders, confident that they know best, whether it’s recycling, caroling on the Metro or how to mix a cocktail. People here also talk way too fast and have their own ideas about how to get from Dulles to Dupont.

Like the city itself, I have a love/hate relationship with this movie. Broadcast News gets too much right – and just a little wrong – to be comfortable viewing for me. For those outside of DC, it’s probably the best way to experience life in Washington, getting just a taste of life in the city from the comfort of your living room.

A good chunk of the recently released WikiLeaks documents deal with the problem of a nuclear-armed Pakistan in the grip of radical Islam. Despite the billions of dollars in US aid they receive, they are unwilling to cut ties with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

One diplomatic cable on the New York Times site is called Will Extra Aid Persuade Pakistan to Cut Ties to Extremists? American diplomats discuss whether giving Islamabad more money will lead them to cut ties with the Taliban.

The author concludes:

There is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance levels in any field as sufficient compensation for abandoning support to these groups…

Islamic terrorist groups like the Taliban are key element of Pakistani security. They provide a hedge against India by securing Afghanistan and by causing problems for India in Kashmir.

Pakistan is tragedy writ large. It is a nation that was born in chaos of partition and embraced radical Islam to survive.

Shame by Salman Rushdie illuminates the birth of this tragedy. This was the book that Rushdie wrote just before The Satanic Verses – and one that’s far more critical of Islam.

Shame is a fable set in a country that’s “not quite Pakistan”. It chronicles the political history of the country. In the book, the dictator Zia ul-Haq, who brought sharia law to the country, is portrayed as General Raza Hyder. Like the real Zia ul-Haq, he overthrows democracy and uses Islam to unify the country and suppress the people. But the shame of a country born in violence cannot be undone.

Shame is the first book by Rushdie that I ever read and his best. It’s a savage parody – magic realism but grounded in reality. And perhaps key to understanding Pakistan and why American efforts to democratize it are doomed.