feeling listless

People Duncan Cambell from The Guardian is interviewing former Hollywood madame Heidi Fleiss when her sweetheart, Tom Sizemore appears and suggests that he be interviewed as well. The journalist explains he hasn't anything prepared and the actor suggests they just do something off the cuff. It's a revealing interview, fulfilling Glen Gould's edict that the best way to find out about a person is to ask them about subjects outside their profession:

"There was talk after September 11 that films might become more thoughtful, more cerebral, more engaged... "Bullshit - we have the memory of a mosquito. Most young people don't know the second world war happened. They don't know who Churchill is. Where are our statesmen? Who are these mothers running the country? Jack Kennedy - maybe he liked to go with whores - who cares? He was a statesman. Who's Tony Blair? He's the US's publicist."

I think the issue is that the people that we look up to no longer have political power. To me, Anthony Hopkins or Sean Connery feel more like the statesmen of old.