AMERICAN IDOL-

SXSW...It's almost here.

Nine days of film. Panels? You bet. Director Q&A's? Oh, golly yes!
Yes, everything a film geek like "Yours Truly" could hope for.
So, yeah... I'm giddy.

Enough about me being a nerd.

I got a chance to interview Thora Birch the other day. I will eventually post that interview here, until then, I wanted to mention is how refreshing it is to have my preconceived notions smashed.

I, like many others, have seen Thora on the screen since she was a little girl. Certainly most people reading this have seen her in American Beauty. Great performance, especially since she was only sixteen years old at the time of filming. As we see people on the silver screen we have a way of idolizing the performers. That idolization also tends to separate the viewer and the actor. It's that separation that allows our assumptions of that person to grow wildly. In our imaginations they can begin to have powers beyond the mortal man. Godlike and magical. How else can they exist in two places at the same time? On screen and in real life?

Gotta be magic.

If not magic, then maybe something else. But, certainly, something extraordinary.

Either way it is easy to forget that movie stars are, well,... people.

As I was talking to Thora about her latest film, we got off topic. She started talking about directing some shorts with her brother and how funny he is and so on. And somewhere during the conversation she transformed from an actor doing a contractually obligated piece of PR work to a really cool chick talking about her brother and that part of life. In just a few seconds she went from being an on screen Idol to a person.

My preconceived notions of who she might be were destroyed. And she reminded me that we are are all people who are connected by our friends, family and the everyday things. Honest, true and beautiful, Thora is named for the Norse God of Thunder. Yet, is was the wisdom and subtly of Athena that she gently reminded me that on some level we are all connected. That we are all the same.

Thank you, Thora. You really are a Goddess.