Jeff Goldblum: I Was A Fan Before He Became A Millennial Icon
5 March 2021
Some of you are already familiar with the Jeff Goldblum lines referenced on my home page, while other readers have asked about them. Those questions have prompted this posting, which explores lines from two of his movies that have lodged in my subconscious, along with some memorable music.
When I told Max that Jeff Goldblum would be my next topic, he replied that Goldblum is a millennial icon. I shouldn’t be surprised because an internet search of Goldblum uncovers attributes like quirky and idiosyncratic performances. Goldblum’s first movie was “Death Wish,” which I saw in Shreveport in 1974. He played one of three thugs who assaulted Charles Bronson’s wife and daughter, leading Bronson to vigilantism. Since then, Goldblum has appeared in 46 movies.
In the 1983 movie “The Big Chill,” Goldblum played journalist Michael Gold, one of eight affluent, 30-something baby boomers who attended the University of Michigan together. They reunite in a South Carolina mansion for a weekend, following the suicide death of one from their group. Billed as a comedy-drama, the eight confront their mortality and realize that while they aspired in college to change the world, they have become part of the world in the 15 intervening years. During one episode of soul searching, Michael is asked about his career at People magazine, and he replies: “Where I work, we have only one editorial rule. You can’t write anything longer than the average person can read during the average crap. I’m tired of having all my work read in the can.” A February 7th article in the Sunday Review section of The New York Times prompted me to spend more time on these lines.
The article recounted an interview with Michael Goldhaber, a retired theoretical physicist, who popularized the term “attention economy” in a 1997 Wired magazine article after the term was coined in 1971 by Herbert A. Simon, a psychologist and economist. Simon recognized that the rapid growth of information causes a scarcity of attention. Subsequently, the internet has accelerated our bombardment by information, allowing a limitless number of people to seek our attention. The term regards “paying attention to something” as a transaction, which gives value to that thing while devaluing other things that are deprived of our attention. Goldhaber notes that the attention economy has destabilizing effects, such as its bestowal of “disproportionate benefits for the most shameless among us” and its deprecation of other characteristics such as modesty and humility. Further, Goldhaber likens the effects of the attention economy to pollution, where a resource, our attention, continues to exist, but its quality is diminished.
These insights provide the link between the reference on my home page and Goldblum’s “Big Chill” lines. That is, my sensitivity to the demands of the attention economy is why I limit my postings so they can be read in the can, er … I mean, to no more than two pages. The Times article closes with a maxim from writer Howard Rheingold, which we should all heed: ”Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention.”
Ten years after “The Big Chill,” Goldblum delivered the second quotation that I find noteworthy. In “Jurassic Park,” he portrayed Ian Malcolm, a mathematician and proponent of chaos theory, who had been hired as a safety consultant prior to the park’s opening. The park owner and his scientists explain that the park’s dinosaurs were denied the male chromosome during their development, thereby genetically engineering an all-female herd. Malcolm responds, “The kind of control you are attempting is … it’s not possible. If there is one thing that the history of evolution has taught us is that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands into new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully maybe even dangerously.” When asked mockingly if he thinks that the all-female dinosaurs will breed, he replies, “No, I’m simply saying that life, uh, finds a way.”
I’ve used this line on a number of occasions and was disappointed when I did not find multiple expositions about it on the internet. Simply, the statement is a recognition that humans overestimate their knowledge and ability to control things. Further, some forces are so strong as to be beyond control and respond in an unforeseen manner when challenged in certain ways. While we regard Malcolm as a hard scientist, this line is equally applicable in a variety of social settings.
Backed by 47 soundtracks, Goldblum can be associated with a myriad of music. The baby boomers among you may be anticipating my providing a link to one of the songs in “The Big Chill.” After all, the film’s soundtrack was compiled into an album that was so successful that it spawned a second album. The two albums contain 21 songs from the 1960’s and early 1970’s that remind us of the people we were or hoped to be. The tracks place a heavy emphasis on Motown, and I guarantee they will make you want to dance around your kitchen (provided you ain’t too proud to beg).
However, 11 years after Jurassic Park, Goldblum was in a movie that incorporated music in a much more innovative way. In “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” Goldblum played Alistair Hennessey, the foil to Steve Zissou, played by Bill Murray. Directed by Wes Anderson, the film is superficially a spoof of Jacques Cousteau, to whom the film is dedicated. It has been described as “a strange film … about family, … revenge, and … the relentless intrusion of reality into a life carefully cultivated.” The most striking aspect of the film is its music featuring a host of David Bowie songs, performed mostly by Brazilian singer, Seu Jorge. Bowie later commented, “Had Seu Jorge not recorded my songs in Portuguese, I would never have heard this new level of beauty which he has imbued them with.”
Max’s favorite song from the movie is “Rebel Rebel” while my favorite is “Queen Bitch,” which is played at the movie’s end while credits are rolling. It is performed twice, first by David Bowie and then by Seu Jorge. Consider leaving a comment as to which you prefer, or if you would’ve preferred a link to “The Big Chill.”
Lagniappe (for Jon): Chick Corea. Jazz keyboardist, Chick Corea, died from cancer on February 9th at the age of 79. The winner of 23 Grammys, he was instrumental in the birth of jazz fusion, a genre that reinterprets jazz by combining its traditional characteristics of harmony and improvisation with elements of other genres such as rock, funk, and rhythm and blues. In the 1960’s, Corea played with Miles Davis before forming his own bands, first Return to Forever and then Chick Corea’s Elektric Band. He visited Madison regularly in the 1980s. Corea is joined by Al Di Meola on guitar, Stanley Clarke on bass, and Lenny White on drums in this 1976 recording of “The Romantic Warrior.”