Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Got Schooled

At the ID party I went to, I introduced Garrett Wang to an acquaintance named Carl Bressler. I could look up the name on IMDB but I'm feeling lazy. He's a producer of some sort, one of the movies being Smoke Signals, which is why I introduced him to Garrett. Garrett kinda looks Native American these days and he knows it!

Mr. Bressler may be a producer, but to me, he's some sort of philosophy guru. The first time I met him, with very little introduction, I asked him a pretty deep question: What's more important to success — adaptability or persistence?

To some, the answer seems obvious, but to me, it's a toss up. I mean, Bruce Lee and the Chinese philosophers all talked about the oak tree being too rigid and breaking in a storm, while the bamboo bends and sways and continues to thrive.

Mr. B said persistence was the key to success. To which, I nodded my head enthusiastically and thanked him for his wisdom.

At the party, Mr. B was talking to Garrett about his acting career, which Mr. B knew nothing about until I informed him of the Star Trek gig. So Mr. B asked Garrett what he wanted to do. He said, "I want to be the first Asian contract player on Saturday Night Live."

Mr. B said, "Why don't you write Lorne Michaels and ask him then?"

"I don't know, I never thought of it before," said Garrett.

"Always give opportunity a chance to say 'yes,'" said Mr. Guru.

I, of course, fawned and danced in circles for all the people at the ID party to gawk at. I must've looked pretty silly, now that I think about it. But it was pretty good "the secret" kind of stuff to hear, at precisely the right moment. And so I said, "Whenever Carl and I have a conversation, he always gives me something pretty amazing to think about."

The previous time I met Mr. Guru, it was at a restaurant on Melrose. I was with my ex at the time, and I probably introduced Mr. Guru to her as some kind of guru. Plus, it seems others have become accustomed to asking him for worldly advice as well, and so I asked him if he had opinions about "The Secret." He said, one, it was a nice repackaging of what has already been written. And two, he said the woman who wrote the book and did the video actually interviewed him a few years ago. This shouldn't surprise me but it did.

Anyway, I explained to my ex that I asked Mr. Guru what was more important, persistence or flexibility. Mr. Guru forgot what he answered, so he asked me what his answer was.

I should've made him answer the question again, but I told him what he said.

"That makes sense," he said, "because it allows for both answers. With persistence, you get flexibility as well."

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