My Five Year Plan

I had a job interview on Thursday for a marketing position with a theater (which shall go nameless here - hell, I’ll probably take this post down if they end up hiring me). It didn’t go very well. Things started off promisingly - I interviewed for about an hour with the guy who would be my boss, we toured the facilities, and he seemed really cool. He warned me time and time again that I shouldn’t expect to be able to put any input in on programming, which I nodded in understanding toward.

After this, he took me to the office of his boss. I thought this was just going to be a general meet-and-greet. Suddenly, he left, she had me sit down, and then I got through another hour of interviewing, this time a grill-session on things like how I would market specific upcoming programs (some of which are decidedly uncommercial). She narrowed her eyes curiously: “Are film people our target audience?” Then after all this, she told me that she was looking for someone from the New York area, and I was at a serious disadvantage because I wouldn’t know what shops the hipsters go to, and thus which shops to postcard.

As if I couldn’t learn that sort of thing.

What a horrible way to waste four hours. As I was leaving, I was told I’d hear at some point before next Friday, but I’m not holding my breath. Yuck.

Isn’t this just the worst, least interesting promotional still you’ve ever seen? This looks like a movie about how to properly file a memo.

Anyway: Good way to waste three hours: going to see The Departed on Wednesday with Tim. It’s not a great film, and I find the overwhelming accolades a little suspect, as if the reviewers of America basically got together to collectively tell Scorsese to ’stick to his genre films,’ but it’s certainly very good, with some great performances (Leo and Marky Mark in particular, though Alec Baldwin steals a scene or two). The final sequence, which I won’t reveal here, is simultaneously the most interesting and worst in the film. And the music isn’t used nearly as well as I’ve come to expect - sure, the Patsy Cline stuff is interesting, but “Gimme Shelter” and “Comfortably Numb” don’t really seem to fit their scenes, and what the hell was that Dropkick Murphys song doing?

That said, I was pretty entertained by the entire thing. It’s probably the second best American action movie of the year about undercover police that explores the question of identity in a globalizing society rendered closer and closer by technology.