Future Bard

The most chilling movie I've ever seen was so boring, it made me fall asleep.

After dozing off, I woke up to a sequence from Joe Gould's Secret that was brutal in its honesty. It was like my own Christmas Carol; I've seen The Ghost of Christmas Future.

New Yorker staff writer Joe Mitchell finally confronts this charismatic, irascible son-of-a-bitch Joe Gould.

Gould is a local legend with the artistic elite in 1940s New York City. He's labored for years on his "oral history of the world." Gould has devoted his entire life to producing a real history, derived not by chronicling titans, but by talking and listening to common folk.

Gould claims his tome runs over a million word long, but no publisher will read it.

Mitchell intervenes and gets a publisher to meet him on the street as a personal favor. Joe Gould freaks and offers weak excuse after weak excuse - no one will read it, my handwriting is terrible, the manuscript is scattered all over Long Island with my friends - until you realize, there is no manuscript.

You've heard incisive, moving excerpts of the "oral history" throughout the film. You want it to exist. But it's all in Gould's head. It doesn't exist.

The film doesn't stop there though.

Later on, Mitchell confronts Joe Gould: the manuscript doesn't exist. It doesn't because you've been too lazy to write it down.

Joe Gould stares out the window with a silent sadness that only a failed writer knows.

I don't want to ever stare like Joe Gould. And right now, if my life ended. I would.

I've had professors, peers, even one of the producers of The Godfather films, say I have a gift for writing. They want to see my work.

But I write little. I finish less. I publish and share nothing. I am Joe Gould.... for now.