A couple of nights ago, my mom and I checked out Time Stands Still as guests of one of the show’s producers, Patrick (whom I met through Felix; I swear, that guy is like the hub of the entire world). I’ve said before that I don’t really like going to plays – I think it’s a little PTSD from seeing too many six-hour-long Godot productions in college – but oh my god, was this play ever extraordinary. I also don’t usually like Laura Linney – I find her sort of exhausting to watch – but she was…beautiful.
So the play is about a journalist couple, Sarah (Laura Linney) and James (Brian D’Arcy James) dealing with the aftermath of their wartime experiences, but what it’s really about is the importance of truth-telling in journalism, and whether creating a record of tragedy is useful in terms of effecting change in the world. There’s a moment when Mandy (the adorable Cristina Ricci, who plays the much younger girlfriend of Sarah’s editor, effortlessly played by Eric Bogosian) tells Sarah the story of watching a documentary about a baby elephant that was separated from its mother by a sandstorm, and bursts into tears at the thought that the filmmakers wouldn’t just put down the cameras for a minute and help the baby find its mother. “But that wouldn’t be telling the truth,” Sarah counters. “Animals die in the wild all the time, and our job is to tell the story.”
Does all this sound like the makings of a boring play? It’s not; not in the least – and I am someone who is sensitive to boringness in plays. It’s amazing. It’s inspirational without being preachy, thoughtful without being overbearing.
I talked to Kendrick about the issues raised in the play at length, and he asked me which side I was on: do I believe that the truth should be told at all costs, that the job of the journalist is to create an accurate record, or do I believe that there are times when the camera should be left at home? All I can say about this: man, it’s a good thing that I’m not in the news business. I would most certainly set the camera aside and get that baby elephant to its mom. I get why the story is important, but screw the story: I would not be able to maintain a professional distance in the face of tragedy, no matter the cost, and maybe that’s a failing of mine…but it’s also my truth.
And by this I don’t mean that I’m a hero, or that I don’t think that the principles of journalism are immensely important. I mean that to me – to me – there many, many things that would stand in the way of picking up a camera in the face of tragedy and knowing that my job was to keep taking pictures no matter what. If presented with the choice between bringing home a photo that would generate thousands of dollars in aid and bandaging a wound (or just turning around and running away, because I didn’t want to die), I don’t know that I would do the right thing. I don’t know what the right thing is, but I would not trust myself in a situation like that. And maybe that makes me a coward. But I believe that attention to an individual moment – to the specific requirements of a single event – is oftentimes more important than adherence to a general principle. In other words, I think that flexibility is vastly more important than consistency.
I write a blog that, at least to some extent, is a diary of my day-to-day life. And you guys – by which I mean my readers – know me pretty well by now. But what you don’t know: in the past few weeks, I’ve been dealing with some tough stuff. And the reason that you probably didn’t have the faintest idea that anything was wrong is that I don’t believe that truth-telling trumps all. It’s not that I don’t want to share everything; it’s that I think that some things are more important than sharing. Simply: I think that care and compassion trump all. Love. Family. Friendship. And if that means I skip over some facts, or prioritize discretion over abandoned openness…well, so be it.
There are some times when you just need to put the camera down.
NY Times review of the play HERE.
