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Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” inhabits the mind of such a performer, one whose psyche has at some point suffered a crippling blow. Its heroine seeks perfection of ballet, her craft, but proves ill-suited to the character creation process. Performers have all sorts of methods and philosophies on the subject, but most seem to say that any performance is in some way grounded to the self. But what about one who has very little self to ground their performance to?

Natalie Portman stars as Nina, the aforementioned ballerina. It’s her best screen performance, one that conveys the distress of a tortured soul coupled with roiling psychological repression. That’s apart from the physicality of portraying a top-tier ballerina, for which she reportedly trained for 10 months. Those only accustomed to her popular image as either, a) the Effervescent Love Interest, or b) the Deeply Concerned Love Interest, are in for a surprise.

Nina lives with her mother (Barbara Hershey), one of those stage mothers who lives vicariously through their child’s talent under the guise of paternal love and concern. There’s a uneasiness in their rapport. Nina’s room is decorated like a child’s, she walks on eggshells, and Mom meticulously tracks her movements lest a moment of the day go unaccounted.

If Nina’s home life is ruled by her mother, work falls under the authority of Thomas (Vincent Cassel), the director of the New York ballet company.  He decides that they will “re-imagine” the great ballet “Swan Lake,” with Nina in the lead thanks to her violent rebuttal to one of his sexual advances. Thomas knows she’s perfect for the virginal, flawless White Swan, but wants to see her seductive and electrifying side as the Black Swan. Since Nina appears to have never even had a romantic or even sexual experience in her life, this presents a great challenge, one poised to shatter a psyche already teetering on the brink of madness. Lily (Mila Kunis), a dancer from San Francisco, has the provocative edge perfect for the Black Swan, making her the obvious competition, though her friendly overtures tear a hole in Nina’s fragile reality.

Aronofsky unfolds the rapid degradation of Nina’s world as a horror film, very reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion” and with flavors of David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive.”  If the setting for a horror picture is one’s mind, then the menace comes from the torments of the imagination and the brutality inflicted on the body. “Black Swan” might not be the first film with moments that emphasize the excruciating physical toll professional dancing can take on the body, though I suspect it might reach the most audience members.

In a sense,“Black Swan” represents a stylistic advance from Aronofsky’s previous film, “The Wrestler,” though it also loses that picture’s heart. Portman’s character is never afforded the pathos that allowed Mickey Rourke to give such an enthralling, heartbreaking turn as another performer, a washed up pro-wrestler whose life knows no bottom. Nina’s collapse thrills but simultaneously retains a cool detachment from our sympathies, her naiveté effectively stripping away much of the humanity that allows an audience to become truly invested in a character’s fate. We don’t really know her, because there’s not much to know.

Aronofsky also directed 2000’s “Requiem for a Dream,” a film about drug addiction so hyper-actively nightmarish in tone and style that it should be screened to high school students in lieu of near worthless anti-drug lectures. With “The Wrestler,” he demonstrated a capacity for character studies. This falls somewhere between the two, impressive in its ways, though not nearly as good as either.

Kaplan’s essay is too detailed to summarize here, but there are a few criteria that crystallize exactly why most films don’t resonate with audiences.  So if you’ve ever wondered why it is that a movie just didn’t do it for you, even if it was entertaining, this may help explain it.

By the way, Kaplan is quick to point out that this is not an exercise in snobbery.  “Popular art” does not necessarily mean “bad art,” and “high art” doesn’t have to be boring and pretentious.

Shape vs. Form

When we watch a movie, we are usually focused on the movie itself, and not on our experience of the movie.  We are interested in outcomes as opposed to the unfolding of events.  We are engaged by curiosity, but not by suspense.  It’s like looking at a sketch of Michelangelo’s David as opposed to beholding the sculpture in all its glory.  We have traced a shape but not experienced a form.  In other words, we don’t have to do any work as a viewer.  It’s all predigested.

Think about the difference between Little Miss Sunshine and Mulholland Dr. I enjoyed the former, curious about how it would end, and let it happen to me.  With the latter, the experience of the mystery unfolding is itself the purpose of the film.  I was engaged entirely by suspense.  We impose ourselves and our perception onto Mulholland Dr., whereas we merely recognize and acknowledge Little Miss Sunshine.

You might say that with Little Miss Sunshine, we engage in recognizing the film as opposed to perceiving it.

Reaction vs. Response 

There is a subtle difference between reacting to a film and responding to it.  Kaplan describes it thusly:

“A reaction…is determined by the initial pre-planned external stimulus, while a response follows a course that is not laid out beforehand, but is shaped by a process of self-stimulation then and there.  Spontaneity and imagination come into play; in the aesthetic experience we do not simply react to signals, but engage in the creative interpretation of symbols.  The response to an art object shares in the work of its creation, and only thereby is a work of art produced.  But in popular art, everything has already been done.”

This is why David Lynch never explains his work.  He prefers that viewers watch his work over and over again, finding new things, expanding and deepening the experience.  You cannot sit back and just watch a David Lynch film.  You must immerse yourself in it.  You must respond to it.  Your active interaction with the film is one thing that turns it into a work of high art.

Meanwhile, even an intelligent and enjoyable film like Michael Clayton merely provides signals for the audience.  We have seen this kind of thriller before.  While we may care what happens to George Clooney’s character, we feel a certain nagging comfort that things are going to turn out okay — not in terms of the plot, but that we will be able to exit the theatre remaining the same as when we entered.

Associated Emotions vs. Expressed Emotions 

Think about those moments in a movie that made you reach for the tissues, as tears well up in your eyes.  When watching popular art, you associate your own emotional experience with the emotional moments unfolding onscreen.  The movie is conveying the emotion — it is merely transmitting it to you.  The movie is just a relay station between past (your experience) and present (as you watch it).   Kaplan says we “lose ourselves not in a work of art, but in the pools of memory stirred up.”

With high art, the movie itself expresses and actually embodies emotion.   It gives us understanding of, and thereby mastery of, our feelings.  Think about most romantic comedies.  Are we engaged in the movie because we want the two stars to get together and feel good about it, or are we really and truly feeling and understanding what love is?  The love we see in Notting Hill is merely our own projection and product of wish-fulfillment.  Meanwhile, the tragic love of Mulholland Dr. is wrapped up in the film’s very form and content.

The experience of death as embodied in Dying Young, Jacob’s Ladder, Ghost, and Philadelphia really offers nothing beyond associated emotions.  Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one understands this.  However, The Sweet Hereafter transcends virtually every other film ever concerned with the topic.  This heart-wrenching and mesmerizing film expresses what death is like for those left living.  When death visits our community, we find ourselves moving through time — past (as we remember the deceased), present (as we cope with the loss), and future (we imagine life without them).  So to does The Sweet Hereafter shift across time, form mirroring content, always delivering with it the actual emotional experience of death.

“Popular art leaves our feelings as it found them, formless and immature…The feelings  are lacking in depth, whatever their intensity.  In a fully aesthetic experience, feeling is deepened, given new context and meaning. 

Seeing vs. Finding 

One of Kaplan’s most significant points is that high art can only be identified as such if we literally attach ourselves to the work and create a dialogue with it.  The dialogue can be unconscious or conscious, and it can be psychological, emotional, spiritual, or symbolic.  We do not just see ourselves reflected in the work, but “truly find ourselves there.”

Going back to the tearjerker, Kaplan says that with popular art we “do not participate in the action of the drama but only react to it, that is, re-enact feelings we have not made truly our own.  The tears are real enough, but they have no reason, only a cause”.  We have been stimulated to cry.  Our feelings are sincere, but they go nowhere.  We do not perceive the deeper meaning of our tears.  As Kaplan points out,

“The tear-jerker provides an occasion for the tears it invites, but why we weep lies outside the occasion and beyond our perception…popular art provides situations that make it easy to see ourselves in its materials, but high art enlarges and transforms the self that has been brought to the aesthetic encounter”.

In other words, did the movie you just watch change you in some way?  How you define that change is entirely subjective, thus making any judgment regarding a film’s aesthetic categorization subjective, as well.

So, Is It Art? 

I consider the vast majority of films to be popular art.  That doesn’t make them good or bad films.  It just makes them popular art.   I’ve listed a few contemporary films below as candidates for being considered high art.  Remember, these are more than just great films.  They must fit the above criteria.

However, I think there is a third category that we might call “quasi-high art”.  These are works that have a mixture of the qualities I’ve discussed.  Films like Birth fall into this category.  The film swings for the fences, and has a wildly misunderstood and controversial scene in it.  At its core, however, the film is about grief and not entirely different from The Sweet Hereafter.

Is it art?  That’s for you to decide.  One overriding criteria that might give you a clue is whether the movie you just watched stimulates conversation about more than just the plot.   Good luck.

High Art? 

Eraserhead, Eyes Wide Shut, Last Year at Marienbad, A Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Psycho, Rear Window, Mulholland Dr., The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Apocalypse Now, The Sweet Hereafter, Schindler’s List, Unforgiven, Blue Velvet, The Conversation, No Country for Old Men, Inland Empire, A Serious Man, The Usual Suspects, Koyaanisqatsi, The Thin Blue Line.

The series, which began in June 2009, is now winding its way towards the home stretch and I wanted to bring your attention to this first-rate piece of work before it comes to an end.

IP, a 20,000 mile road trip without a plan. A sort of Zen and the art of free spirit wanderlust.

Co-directed by Austin Lynch, along with his friend Jason S., IP continues to mine some of the rich terrain and wonderful characters which David Lynch brought to the screen in the satisfyingly moving 1999 film, “The Straight Story.” (God bless Richard Farnsworth.)

IP posts a new episode every 3 days. We have opportunities to meet some plain ol’ folks and a few others who are a bit more colorful that ‘the team’ discovered as they traveled around our great country over the course of 70 days. The interviews, which are well photographed, edited and scored into 3-5 minute segments; allow each of the subjects to share bits of their lives in a way that is spontaneous, organic and refreshingly real. ‘The team’ as Lynch refers to them, at the top of each episode, also includes Sabrina Sutherland/producer along with Angie Schmidt and Julie Pepin/interviewers.

As someone who enjoys a good documentary, I can tell you this work  is right up there. The ease, at which the subjects seem to appear on camera, is a testament to the filmmakers skills and ability to use the existing space, allowing their characters ‘to be present and in the moment’. As always, it’s in the little things. Small details. Images. Sounds. The music by Dean Hurley and Stoll Vaughan is oh-so-fine. The people, the situations each magically different as night and day. 

Take Jess, from the first episode, who ‘the team’ found sitting by the side of the road, in Needles, CA. An Army veteran, who served in Vietnam, talking about his wife leaving him and a bushel full of regrets, among them, not being able to see his Dad before he died. 

Or Rey, an art school teacher from Springer, NM, who served ‘the team’ fresh biscuits and jalapeno jelly. A man who enjoys life, however he ordered his coffin early so he could sleep in it, to get ‘the feel’.

There’s, Anthony, who ‘the team’ found riding his bike down on Cherry St., in Dumas, AR. A soft-spoken, good natured man who talked about growing up in Detroit, his family and son Robert, who was killed in a drive-by shooting. 

Another time, we meet, Mrs. Dennis, a sweet lady from Vicksburg, MS, who is married to a preacher. A good woman who shares her secret to living a long life. 

Further on up the road lives, Nick ’Batso’ Maccharoli, from Stratford, CT. A man of many talents who while struggling through life has worked hard to make something of himself. 

There’s Joe, Edward Devenport and 114 other men and women all just a mouse click away. 

As I mention earlier, the story of Alvin Straight was an indication of just how ‘tuned in’ David Lynch is to everyday people. He ‘gets it’. He understands, appreciates the simple beauty of our human condition. Like all great artists, he is drawn to it. As he states, “it’s something you can’t stay away from.” The man is a major presence here and I, for one, am grateful for his contribution. The filmmakers have much to be proud of. This is good work. Others in Hollywood should take a lesson and learn.

When all is said and done, it’s about the people and their stories. American heart and soul. Everyday folks treated with respect while having their say. Are you listening Janeane Garofalo?

Say what you will about David Lynch, the man is a gifted, rare bird in Hollywood. Much like the late John Cassavetes, he’s a true independent spirit, forever marching to the beat of his own drum.

Interview Project, is a film experience which will entertain, educate and perhaps enlighten you.

Please, stop by. Check it out. And if you like what you see…tell a friend.

 Take care.

Directors get too much credit when a movie goes right, and too little blame when a movie goes wrong.  There are certain directors, however, who get credit even when movies go wrong.  Here, then, are my top ten overrated directors of all time… 

10.  Ridley Scott:  Ridley Scott has, for some odd reason, received accolades that far outpace his actual accomplishments.  He’s made one entertaining film, Gladiator, and a host of second rate films masquerading as masterpieces.  Blade Runner is a bizarre and massively overpraised mess.  Thelma and Louise is liberal tripe, although it does provide the best imagistic summary of modern feminism: two irritating “independent” women driving themselves off a cliff.  White Squall is the single most depressing film ever made.  Black Hawk Down is loved by conservatives because it isn’t anti-military, but that’s about the only praiseworthy element to a film that is an endless series of quick cuts between white guys who look alike in their helmets.  Who’s been killed?  Who’s still alive?  You have no way of knowing.  Then there’s Kingdom of Heaven, which is an homage to the “religion of peace” and a slap at Christianity through and through.  Alien is slow.  GI Jane is hysterically terrible.  Plus, it’s got Orlando Bloom, who has about as much charisma and credibility as Al Gore.  Scott is a key player in the rise of the infernal shaky-cam, which is not only biologically inaccurate (the human eye adjusts for bodily movements), but incredibly annoying.  For that alone, he should be exiled to a land without cameras. 

9.  Michael Mann: All style, no substance.  

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8.  David Lean:  Everything Lean made is too long by at least half an hour.  I know it’s mortal sin to suggest that Laurence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Ryan’s Daughter are anything less than masterpieces, but … they’re all less than masterpieces.  Great Expectations was good.  Everything else was downhill. 

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7.  Darren Aronofsky:  Aronofsky is a talentless dud who has bamboozled his way into Hollywood upper echelon.  Every film he’s ever made is a disaster. Pi is a jumble of nonsense that starts nowhere and goes nowhere.  It may be the worst film ever made.  Watching it made me want to rip out my own retinas, then replace them through surgery, then rip them out again.  Of late, Aronofsky has been spicing up his chaotic, disordered crap with explicit lesbian sex scenes, a stylistic trait he apparently cribbed from David Lynch (don’t worry, we’ll get to Lynch shortly).  Requiem for a Dream is noteworthy only in that Aronofsky somehow convinced Jennifer Connolly to participate in a lesbian scene involving mutual anal sex and a dildo (the scene, by the way, is meant to be depraved, but therein lies Aronofsky’s problem: he’s got to have sympathetic characters before we feel bad for them).  The fanboy press is already agog over rumors that his newest ode to depravity, Black Swan, will feature a sex scene between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis.  Clearly, his target audience is pathetic losers in college dorms looking for an excuse to watch girl-on-girl action in the name of art.  Not one of his films has been a major commercial success. Yet somehow, someone keeps giving him money.  It’s enough to make one question the existence of a beneficent God. 

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6.  Mike Nichols: No.  Just no.  The Graduate is contemptible and snort-worthy spoiled 1960s-child angst.  The ending of that movie alone makes it unworthy of human viewing.  All future directors take note: having your main characters staring blankly into nothingness is not an ending.  It is a cop out.  Nichols’ directorial style is ordinary and he picks bland material.  And he was an icon for the Baby Boomers.  If that’s not a sign of their mental disturbance, I don’t know what is. 

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5.  David Lynch:  Pure and absolute suckage, with the exception of The Elephant Man.  Lynch is one of those annoyingly “deep” directors we’re all supposed to puzzle over.  Forget it.  There’s nothing worth puzzling.  He’s as empty as they come, and he makes up for it with graphic sex scenes, just like his imitator, Aranofsky.  John Nolte calls Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, “Mesmerizing, sexy, frightening … and all driven by a visionary director who created a hypnotic puzzlebox unlike anything we’ve seen before or will again.”  Uh … no.  This movie makes no sense, doesn’t try to make sense, and then fills the vacuum with Naomi Watts and Laura Harring feeling each other up.  This ain’t great moviemaking.  It’s Vivid Entertainment spliced with the worst of Raymond Chandler.  Unfortunately, that just about sums up Lynch’s career. 

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4.  Quentin Tarantino:  I recently watched Inglourious Basterds and marveled at Tarantino’s skill.  But he is a gifted high school child given a camera for his birthday, and entranced with his knowledge of cinema.  Which means, in simple terms, he doesn’t know how to tell a story.  His films are Wagnerian: long periods of boredom and “artistic” violence punctuated by moments of utter brilliance.  To paraphrase William McAdoo on Warren G. Harding, Tarantino’s films are like an army moving over a landscape in search of an idea.  Sometimes Tarantino’s films actually capture a struggling thought and bear it triumphantly a prisoner … until the idea dies of servitude and overwork. Tarantino is to homages and gore what James Cameron is to spectacle.  Unfortunately, he is also to plot what Cameron is. 

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3.  Woody Allen:  He’s pretentious and unbearable.  His movies are like nails screeching on a chalkboard, only with less humor.  He is as nerdy as Peter Orszag, but he acts out his fantasies and illuminates his insecurities in film and expects us all to watch.  It’s okay for a director to be self-centered – Orson Welles was famously self-centered.  But you actually have to be an interesting person in order to spend that much time focusing on yourself.  Allen isn’t.  He’s a whiny narcissist with sexual inferiority issues.  And no one except for him cares about the status of his penis.  As a side note, he made Diane Keaton into a “legitimate actress,” which alone should qualify him for the Seventh Circle of Hell. 

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2.  Martin Scorsese:  In the musical Damn Yankees, a group of hapless baseball players sing the following lyric: “You’ve gotta have heart / All you really need is heart!”  Martin Scorsese never saw that musical.  His films are entirely devoid of anything resembling likable characters.  They are cold and calculating and ruthless – and boring.  Nobody cares what happens to Leonardo DiCaprio in The Departed (in fact, in one screening I saw, people cheered when he got it in the head).  The Aviator takes as long to tell as Howard Hughes did to live.  Gangs of New York featured a brilliant performance from Daniel Day Lewis, and not much else (on a side note, there is no excuse for killing Liam Neeson in the first ten minutes of a film).  Casino is nasty, brutish, and long.  Goodfellas is similarly disgusting – you feel the need to take a shower after watching.  Why anyone would want to spend several hours of his/her life with coke-snorting Ray Liotta and Co. is beyond me.  The Last Temptation of Christ is baffling.  The Color of Money is a snooze-fest (if you want to see a directorial clinic rather than Scorsese’s garbage, try Robert Rossen’s The Hustler, to which The Color of Money is a sequel).  Raging Bull is gross.  Mean Streets is gross and soporific.  Taxi Driver is perhaps the most overrated film in Hollywood history — dreary, grungy, and subzero.  Scorsese has never seen a main character he liked, a villain he hated, or a pair of editing scissors. 

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1. Alfred Hitchcock: He’s not even close to the worst on the list, but he’s certainly the most overrated.  He never made a great film.  He was the Stephen King of the silver screen: he made films with great premises, but he never knew where to go from there.  The psychoanalysis at the end of Psycho is laughable.  North by Northwest relies on the tried-and-true random helpful coincidence to save our hero, time and again.  It brings to mind one of Twain’s rules of writing, directed toward Fenimore Cooper: “the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.”  Not so much for Hitchcock.  Spellbound once again relies on amateur psychoanalysis.  Notorious is the same movie as Rebecca.  Rear Window makes one reach for the fast-forward button.  Vertigo makes one reach for the cyanide.  The Birds quickly becomes inane.  If you want to see good Hitchcock, rent Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  Restricted to the one hour medium, he’s at his best.  Left to his own devices, he’s slightly better than mediocre. 

Whom would you nominate?

Members of the Hollywood community have signed a petition to have Roman Polanski released from jail. When is the Hollywood community also going to demand the release of 58 year old rapist Bruno Vece?

On January 31st 2009 the past finally came back to haunt Bruno Vece who has been jailed for 20 years for sexual crimes he committed decades ago. Bruno Vece, of Loram Way, Alphington, had been found guilty of raping an underage girl in the late 1970s.

What Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, David Lynch and other Hollywood elites need to know about Bruno Vece is that he has built a new life since he committed these crimes over 20 years ago; he’s a new man with a new family and now it has been destroyed.

Bruno Vece needs Hollywood’s help.

The jury had unanimously convicted him after the woman told them how Vece was an intimidating man who, when she was a child, warned he would kill her if she told anyone.

Bruno Vece is not a famous director and that’s his downfall. Yet Roman Polanski is no different than Bruno Vece and thousands of other sexual predators that are out there now starting new lives while their victims live in the pain of a forced past. Shame on Hollywood for not helping Bruno Vece and other child rapist in the world that need their voice.

And please do take a moment to give to the Hollywood Fund For Moral Illiteracy…

Source:

Woody Allen
Wes Anderson
Darren Aronofsky
Jonatham Demme
Stephen Frears
David Lynch
Martin Scorsese

Full list: (it might have been quicker to name who didn’t sign the petition)

Fatih Akin, Stephane Allagnon, Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Wes Anderson, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Alexandre Arcady, Fanny Ardant, Asia Argento, Darren Aronofsky, Olivier Assayas, Alexander Astruc, Gabriel Auer, Luc Barnier , Christophe Barratier, Xavier Beauvois , Liria Begeja , Gilles Behat, Jean-Jacques Beineix, Marco Bellochio, Monica Bellucci, Djamel Bennecib, Giuseppe Bertolucci , Patrick Bouchitey, Paul Boujenah, Jacques Bral, Patrick Braoudé, André Buytaers, Christian Carion, Henning Carlsen, Jean-michel Carre, Mathieu Celary, Patrice Chéreau, Elie Chouraqui, Souleymane Cissé, Alain Corneau, Jérôme Cornuau, Miguel Courtois, Dominique Crevecoeur, Alfonso Cuaron, Luc et Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Jonathan Demme, Alexandre Desplat, Rosalinde et Michel Deville, Georges Dybman, Jacques Fansten, Joël Farges, Gianluca Farinelli (Cinémathèque de de Bologne), Etienne Faure, Michel Ferry, Scott Foundas, Stephen Frears, Thierry Frémaux, Sam Gabarski, René Gainville, Tony Gatlif, Costa Gavras, Jean-Marc Ghanassia, Terry Gilliam, Christian Gion, Marc Guidoni, Buck Henry, David Heyman, Laurent Heynemann, Robert Hossein, Jean-Loup Hubert, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Gilles Jacob, Just Jaeckin, Alain Jessua, Pierre Jolivet, Kent Jones (World Cinema Foundation), Roger Kahane, Nelly Kaplan, Wong Kar Waï, Ladislas Kijno, Harmony Korinne, Jan Kounen, Diane Kurys, Emir Kusturica, John Landis, Claude Lanzmann, André Larquié, Vinciane Lecocq, Patrice Leconte, Claude Lelouch, Gérard Lenne, David Lynch, Michael Mann, François Margolin, Jean-PierreMarois, Tonie Marshall, Mario Martone, Nicolas Mauvernay, Radu Mihaileanu, Claude Miller, Mario Monicelli, Jeanne Moreau, Sandra Nicolier, Michel Ocelot, Alexander Payne, Richard Pena (Directeur Festival de NY), Michele Placido, Philippe Radault, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Raphael Rebibo, Yasmina Reza, Jacques Richard, Laurence Roulet, Walter Salles, Jean-Paul Salomé, Marc Sandberg, Jerry Schatzberg, Julian Schnabel, Barbet Schroeder, Ettore Scola, Martin Scorsese, Charlotte Silvera, Abderrahmane Sissako, Paolo Sorrentino, Guillaume Stirn, Tilda Swinton, Jean-Charles Tacchella, Radovan Tadic, Danis Tanovic, Bertrand Tavernier, Cécile Telerman, Alain Terzian, Pascal Thomas, Giuseppe Tornatore, Serge Toubiana, Nadine Trintignant, Tom Tykwer, Alexandre Tylski, Betrand Van Effenterre, Wim Wenders.

EDIT: new names

Isabelle Adjani
Antoine Aronin
Paul Auster
Morgane Beauverger
Candice Belaisch-Goldchmit
Yamina Benguigui
Pascal Bruckner
Jessika Cohen
Philippe Corbé
Jean-Paul Dayan
Katarina De Meulder
Arielle Dombasle
Nathalie Faucheux
Corinne Figuet
Pierre Forciniti
Louis Garrel
Albert Gauvin
Johanna Gozlan
Davide Homitsu Riboli
Taylor Hackford
Isabelle Huppert
Neil Jordan
Thierry Kamami
Milan Kundera
Gaelle Lancien
Claude Lanzmann
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Sam Mendes
Camille Meyer
Patrick Mimouni
Yann Moix
Mike Nichols
Sandra Nicolier
Marie Nieves Perez Neël
Salman Rushdie
Carine Sarna
Ysabelle Saura Del Pan
William Shawcross
Olivier Soares Barbosa
Steven Soderbergh
Nil Symchowicz
Danièle Thompson
Eugenia Varela Navarro
Diane von Furstenberg
Scott Foundas
Margaret Walker
Elsa Zylberstein

On April 4, Sir Paul McCartney will headline the “Change Begins Within” benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall, with proceeds going to the David Lynch Foundation. Among those filling out the roster include Ringo Starr, Donovan, Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, Moby, Paul Horn, Bettye LaVette and Crow.

The David Lynch Foundation is dedicated toward spreading Transcendental Meditation to the masses in hopes of bringing us inner – and world – peace. The concert, according to the folks behind the event, “will raise funds to teach one million at-risk children to meditate – giving them life-long tools to overcome stress and violence and promote peace and success in their lives.”

That doesn’t sounds bad … especially when you compare it to comments Lynch has made in the past regarding his foundation’s work: “America urgently needs at least one university to teach the science of peace—and to actually promote peace in the world.”

Is anybody else changed out by now?