I am hanging out at home tonight, watching a little "American Idol." I like it better than I used to. I am not sure if this is a format change for the show, but the Idols are playing instruments this year, which I always thought should have been a part of the competition. If I ran the show I would take it a step further and allow them to perform their own songs, if they have any original compositions. I think it allows the winner to be a well rounded performer and not just a singer.
This brings me to the judges. Simon Cowell gets a lot of flack from people for being the "mean" judge. But if you really watch the show and pay attention to what he says, he never really makes his criticism personal. He is just very direct in telling the contestants what he thinks of their performance. He is also the most qualified person on the stage and you can tell by watching the reaction of the singers that his opinion means more to them. When he praises them, they beam.
His counterpoint is, of course, is Paula Abdul. Paula was a singer in the 80s, but not a particularly memorable one. She got her start as a Laker Girl and she has a dance and choreography background. Some nights on Idol she appears to have pounded a few drinks before the show. Paula babbles and she almost never offers any real criticism or advice. She goes by the monicker of the "nice" judge. Often she goes on about how pretty the girls look. She has no edge and no real point of view.
Between the two of them, I really think Simon offers a great public service: He tells people the truth. If somebody who can't sing wants to be a singer, he will tell them they have no hope. Some people think that's mean. In interviews I have heard Simon say that real cruelty is to let people go around and embarrass themselves when they have no talent for what they are trying to do. I agree. In the acting game, there are people with no talent who are wasting a lot of time and money pursuing something that just isn't going to work out for them. We live in world where most people are like Paula, unwilling or unable to tell people anything other than hollow, polite platitudes. What we need is somebody like Simon, who will cut through all the crap and tell us what we need to hear, not what we want to hear. Sometimes the truth stings.
As a performer, I want honest criticism. I want to know what I can do to make a scene better or to improve my work as an actor. If I am wasting my time as an actor, I want to know so I can move on with my life.
I want to be surrounded by people like Simon, I want people to tell me the truth, to tell me that, yes, those pants do make me look fat. Billy Joel wrote a song about this. It's called "Honesty." In it he says, "If you look for truthfulness you might just as well be blind." I think he is largely right. It is difficult to find somebody who cares enough about you to tell you things that may hurt your feelings but are things that you really need to know.
I lived in South Florida for 2 years and they have this Air and Sea Show in Ft. Lauderdale that is really cool. It's similar to Fleet Week in New York and on that weekend the armed forces put on a really cool show/demonstration, right on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale. We went one year and while we were there I saw a young woman who was not very tall and must have weighed at least 200 pounds. She was wearing a thong. It was appalling. Actually it was worse than that. It made me massively uncomfortable. The sad thing was she had friends with her and they didn't have the decency to tell her friend that she looked worse than bad, she looked delusional. She looked desperate.
I want my friends to stop me from going to the Air and Sea Show in a thong. Is that sort of honesty too much to ask?
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