{"id":1755,"date":"2012-09-05T12:09:23","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T12:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=1755"},"modified":"2012-09-06T12:38:05","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T12:38:05","slug":"nobody-cares-about-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=1755","title":{"rendered":"“Nobody cares about art”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

David Cowan, beta version, with Matt Dorsey, Wolverine wannabe, far right<\/p><\/div>\n

David Cowan paid a visit to Casa Dorsey a few days ago, since we missed him when we were doing our one annual vacation last month in Southern California where our son and daughter both work now. I\u2019ve known David since he was about knee-high, one of my son\u2019s lifelong friends who has moved to L.A. to seek his fortunes as a screenwriter. He was back in Rochester visiting family and friends and stopped in to catch up. He\u2019s bearded now, wears cool shoes, and comes up with about 250 new ideas for movies in the course of a week. Talk to him for ten minutes and he\u2019ll get out his phone and jot a movie idea that has somehow accidentally slipped out of your mouth as some tangential comment about life. He\u2019s an excellent writer, but that doesn\u2019t guarantee anything in the game he\u2019s playing. It\u2019s all about the high concept and the story. You can let the other hired help punch up your script with those annoying details like realistic courtroom terminology or medical nomenclature. (Why bother getting granular with the details when, if you send an entire novel to somebody in Hollywood, you\u2019ll see a dozen movies spun off of it over the next six years\u2014sufficiently changed to avoid litigation of course.) You can\u2019t own an idea. So how screenwriters actually make a living is something apparent only to that disembodied eye at the top of the pyramid on the back of a dollar bill.<\/p>\n

Cowan\u2019s genuinely funny, too. He had a sardonic piece about Kanye published in the New Yorker\u2019s<\/em> Shouts and Murmurs department not too long ago. He’s also had some short skits, Sex Therapy<\/a>, written with his friend Joey Power, produced and posted at Funny or Die<\/a>. So, after half an hour of catching up, I asked whatever happened to that witty screenplay he\u2019d shown me about the art world, Picasso Schmicasso<\/em>, which he\u2019d co-written with Power. It was an amusing take on what artists will do to succeed, and it started with a quote I loved, from Picasso: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain one once we grow up.” Word! Can I say word<\/em> at my age, with my ethnicity and with that uncool exclamation point? Hm, I named this blog represent<\/em>. So, hell yeah!<\/p>\n

So I asked him whatever happened to the script. \u201cMy agent liked it. Everyone she showed it to liked it. Nobody bought it.\u201d Sounded familiar: it\u2019s wonderful, but . . .<\/em>\u00a0 Everyone praised the screenplay for its wit, its dialog, the story, the structure, you name it. So why didn\u2019t anyone bite? Maybe because they probably photocopied all the bits they liked for use elsewhere and then handed it back? No, she had a different angle.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe told me, Nobody cares about art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most people with a career in art will sneer and dismiss those four words. Don\u2019t distract me with the opinions of the Philistines! Who cares!<\/em> But there\u2019s as much truth in his agent\u2019s perspective on his rejections as there was in the screenplay itself. Just four words, a wonderfully blunt and unambiguous declaration, nobody cares about art. <\/em>It <\/em>serves as a powerful reproach that ought to be printed out and posted everywhere anyone makes or sells visual art. It\u2019s the koan every artist ought to be trying to solve, instead of worrying about fame, money, exhibition histories, reviews, honors or tenure. Why the hell doesn\u2019t anyone care about what you do? I guarantee, the vast majority of people don\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Cowan paid a visit to Casa Dorsey a few days ago, since we missed him when we were doing our one annual vacation last month in Southern California where our son and daughter both work now. 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