In Tucker's last post about picking Bob Gosse as the director, he said this about our initial meeting:
The meeting went fine, but it was nothing exceptional. It was obvious that he was smart, and it was obvious that he understood the script and had real passion for the material, but well...nothing stood out.
That's not quite accurate. In the car on the way home from the meeting, we talked about our initial impressions of Bob. The quote above is essentially a reiteration of Tucker's original feelings. That's when I said, "you now what worries me a little? He's got those crazy artist eyes. You know those kind of eyes where they make you feel like he's going to get some wild inspiration and then seize hold of it because it's his artistic vision and that's just how it's gotta be."
Working with Bob the last six weeks has dispelled all my concerns, but there is something to the idea of crazy artist eyes. Because he's fucking got 'em. And it's only been in the last couple days, after stumbling across an old picture of Charles Manson, that I've understood what exactly "crazy artist eyes" means. I'll show you
Charlie's got crazy eyes. They are dark, dead unblinking saucers of pain. There's no life in them. Nothing registers.
Bob's got crazy artist eyes. They glint and pierce and do all sorts of other verbs that imply probing and taking in everything. They are like windows into his personal creative process. He's getting inspiration from everywhere. He's getting ideas. He's nixing ideas. He's coming up with ways to make the movie better, and ways to avoid making it bad. I know this because he tells us his ideas and they are, inevitably, reflections of the passion (in a non-gay, non-soap opera way) and fuel you can see in his eyes. A couple of these ideas are going to make it into the movie and will almost certainly make the movie that much better. It's no wonder he's been in relationships with two very attractive, very talented actresses in his day. It's fucking ridiculous.
What I've realized generally over the past six weeks, and specifically over the past few days, is that I've been conflating crazy eyes and crazy artist eyes. Now, I'm sure we will run into a person on the set with actual crazy eyes and s/he will probably be a department head who makes things unnecessarily difficult for everyone around him or her, even the people paying his or her salary. That person will not, however, be Bob Gosse. He's the guy with the crazy artist eyes who doesn't want to take over like a megalomaniac and lead his enthralled minions into the abyss. He just really wants to make great art out of something that's inspired him....and bang hot chicks. That too, probably.
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