Marilyn Monroe and brazilian pianist Bernardo Segal at Elia Kazan’s birthday party, September 1955.
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Also. Watch old movies. Read classic books, and try to understand the truths, if any, that are universal in them to apply to us. You can learn a lot about truth from Sunset Boulevard even if it was shot in a time before social media was invented. You can learn an incredible amount from Rilla of Ingleside even if it was written way back before World War II.
Truth is truth, no matter how much time passes or how much our minds and cultures change. And back then, there were simply more movies and stories about plain, common-sense truth. Not about “your truth” and “my truth” or “my experience vs your experience.”
Just stories that highlighted reality as reality, and taught lessons like there was such a thing as good and evil.
Who cares if they’re in black and white?! Who cares if Snow White’s voice is super high-pitched? Who cares if there’s no steamy teenage love-triangle?
I used to hate mushrooms but then gradually, after eating them over and over in different dishes, i started associating the flavor I used to hate with things I love, and now I’ll eat mushrooms by themselves. I used to find the way some little kids scream-laugh annoying, but then I started working with them, and realizing that the scream-laugh means they’re genuinely delighted and they don’t care what anybody thinks in that moment, and sometimes I could even be the one to cause the scream-laugh—and now I love that sound, because I associate it with good and wonderful things. Plus, I’m just around it more often, so I’m used to it. That’s the first step.
You realize you can change your tastes, right? You can train them? It’s the same with old stories.
Get off your phone. If you’ve got time to scroll, read a book that was written before the 60s. If you’ve got time to scroll, turn on a classic movie. I’d start with East of Eden or Sunset Boulevard. See what truths are in there that are timeless, that every human from the dawn of time till the end of the world could stand to be reminded of.
Just go eat some real food, enough with the junk diet.
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Andy Warhol and Nico at a party for Elia Kazan's book "The Arrangement" at the Brentano's bookstore in New York, March 1967. Photo by Robert Lebeck
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Dorothy McGuire, John Garfield, and Director Elia Kazan during production of GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT (1947)
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