The Hollywood Issue - 14 Actors Acting - James Franco, Natalie Portman, Matt Damon and More - NYTimes.com -- this reminds me of a Fran Lebowitz quote from the Scorsese HBO documentary:
Everyone talks about the effect AIDS had on the culture in the sense - I mean, people don't talk about it anymore, but when they did talk about it - they talked about like what artists were lost, but they never talked about this audience that was lost.
You know, when people talk about why was the New York City Ballet so great? Well I mean it was because Aroldingen, Jerry Robbins and people like that, but also that audience was so - I can't even think of the word. I mean, if Suzanne Farrell went like this instead of like this, that was it! Oh she might as well just kill herself! There would be like a billion people who knew exactly every single thing. There was such a high level of connoisseurtian of everything that people like this were interested in, of everything, that made the culture better. You know, a very discerning audience, a very - an audience with a high level of connoisseurtian is as important to the culture as artists. It's exactly as important.
Now, we don't have any kind of discerning audience. When that audience died - and that audience died in five minutes. Literally, people didn't die faster in war. And it allowed of course, like the second, third, fourth tier to rise to the front. Because of course, the first people who died of AIDS were the people who, I don't know how to put this, got laid a lot. OK. Now imagine who didn't get AIDS. That's who was then lauded as like, the great artists.
You know, if the other people hadn't died - if they all came back to life and I said to them, "Guess who's a big star? Guess! You'll never guess who has a show on Broadway! Guess who's like a famous photographer?" They would fall on the floor! Are you kidding me?! Because everyone else died. Last man standing. The loss of that audience had a terrible effect, and a terrible effect on me - and not just a sad, personal effect on me - but a terrible effect on me because everything has to be broader. I mean, I don't do that. Everything has to be more blatant; on the nose; broader. Because obviously they're not going to pick up little subtleties.
Things in the culture that had nothing to do with the New York City Ballet - you know, it just got dumbed down dumbed down dumbed down... all the way down.
