By Salim Garami
What's good? Apologies because I don't have much to say or talk about this week, except remark on how I'm still in a pretty pleasant mood moving out of Thanksgiving weekend and into the holiday season.
And part of what prolonged my pleasant mood was to find an admittedly 2-year-old video of movie star Keanu Reeves on promotional tour promoting John Wick in Japan discussing his admiration for martial arts film legend Sonny Chiba (of The Street Fighter or Kill Bill fame), influencing his physical choreography and style. Lo and behold, Chiba was in the studio ready to meet with Keanu. The Matrix star is suddenly starstruck tond begins waxing rhapsodic over Chiba's work. Seeing a household name in the industry be taken aback by the presence of figure that certainly isn't as well-known internationally as Reeves brought a smile to my face...
It also reminded me of the pleasant news that had been spreading since a week ago... about how Greta Gerwig, for her feature directorial debut Lady Bird (which has been gaining a lot of goodwill and recently dethroned Toy Story 2 as the best-reviewed movie on Rotten Tomatoes), wrote letters to Justin Timberlake, Alanis Morrisette, and Dave Matthews gushing about the influence their music had on her life and particularly the song she'd request rights to use for Lady Bird ("Cry Me a River", "Hand in My Pocket", and "Crash into Me" respectively).
Letters that Greta Gerwig sent to Alanis Morissette, Dave Matthews and Justin Timberlake, respectively, requesting their songs for Lady Bird. pic.twitter.com/T9t8MrE7OX
— Robertsom (@justrobertsom) November 21, 2017
It's an attempt at formality that can't help feeling open-hearted and sincere about what their music means to her as a person and an artist, probably doing more to secure their place in Lady Bird more than any stuffy "Please and Thank You" letter would have done.
And then the announcement of the Grammys' nominations for this year while these moments were stirring in my mind brought recollections of the time Grammy winning hip hop artist "Chance the Rapper" Bennett was photobombed in the middle of an interview at the MTV Video Music Awards last year and his absolute lack of calm when he realized who just posed for a photo - Beyoncé, not only another Grammy winner but probably one of the biggest names and faces in the world, so it's understandable how easily Chance would start hopping in excitement like that and humbling how even someone as big as Beyoncé admires the still-green-but-already-brilliant Chance's work.
These stories are more than just wholesome moments in an industry that thrives on support and cheer for artists to get ahead. They're also reminders that they're people just like us who totally have their own darlings and icons that they look up to on a poster aspiring to rival them in their accomplishments. They're the sort of things that energize and inspire their work, the love they have for other art shaping what they look for in creating their own. In any case, do you have a favorite moment of an artist fangirling over another artist?