34
“READ ME SOMETHING,” Jeevan said, on the fifty-eighth day. He was lying on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling, and he’d been drifting in and out of sleep. It was the first thing he’d said in two days.
Frank cleared his throat. “Anything in particular?” He hadn’t spoken in two
days either.
“The page you’re working on now.”
“Really? You want some overprivileged philanthropist’s thoughts on the
charity work of Hollywood actors?”
“Why not?”
Frank cleared his throat. “The immortal words of a philanthropist whose name I’m not allowed to divulge but who you’ve never heard of anyway,” he said.
What I like to see is when actors use their celebrity in an interesting way.
Some of them have charitable foundations, they do things like try to bring attention to the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan, or they’re trying to save the white African rhino, or they discover a passion for adult literacy, or what have you. All worthy causes, of course, and I know their fame helps to get the word out.
But let’s be honest here. None of them went into the entertainment industry because they wanted to do good in the world. Speaking for myself, I didn’t even think about charity until I was already successful. Before they were famous, my actor friends were just going to auditions and struggling to be noticed, taking any work they could find, acting for free in friends’ movies, working in restaurants or as caterers, just trying to get by. They acted because they loved acting, but also, let’s be honest here, to be noticed.
All they wanted was to be seen.
I’ve been thinking lately about immortality. What it means to be remembered, what I want to be remembered for, certain questions concerning memory and fame. I love watching old movies. I watch the faces of long-dead actors on the screen, and I think about how they’ll never truly die. I know that’s a cliché but it happens to be true. Not just the
famous ones who everyone knows, the Clark Gables, the Ava Gardners, but the bit players, the maid carrying the tray, the butler, the cowboys in the bar, the third girl from the left in the nightclub. They’re all immortal to me.
First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.