American Hustle

Mama never told me it would be like this.

As a matter of fact, my mother still doesn't know how the world works. Like most people, she wants to believe you work hard, marry right, put your nose to the grindstone and it all works out.

But it doesn't really happen that way at all.

My father knew. And always got in trouble for it. No one wanted to hear what he had to say, except the people who made a lot of money on his words, lawyers and property owners whose land was taken by the government whom my father convinced the amount offered was unjust. He had some big victories. My father got a flat fee, under the law appraisers must, but attorneys got a third of the increase, and when the gap is between seventy nine thousand and a couple of million...you love my dad.

But regular people did not.

Because my father always wanted to lift the end of the carpet, to uncover the truth.

As he told me more than once, "there are no miracles."

The person driving a hundred thousand dollar car with no visible means of support... He's inherited millions, or is on the way to bankruptcy. Because if it looks inexplicable, it is.

So they tell us to work hard, get into a good college and it will all work out.

Only it doesn't.

Let's forget the losers. Those who drop out, who watch reality television and dream of winning a hundred grand. Because a hundred grand doesn't go far, and it certainly doesn't last. Winners don't only score once, but again and again. Which is why the smart people become record executives, not recording stars.

So you graduate from college and take a job at the factory. Call it the law firm, the bank, the brokerage house. You think you're winning, but you're afraid of risk, like Jennifer Lawrence's character in this movie you don't like change.

But change is constant. Winners know this. And adjust on the fly.

Naked ambition is plentiful.

The smarts to pull it off?

I don't know how accurate this movie is. Probably not very. But the moral of the story...there's truth.

Small time players want fame. They think if they get their name in the paper, they've won. I've never understood the people who allow their houses to be featured in the real estate section, even the multi-million dollar trophy homes in the "Wall Street Journal" "Mansion" section. Oh, you're unaware of this Friday feature? This is where the nouveau riche keep score. But the truly rich don't want their name anywhere, they don't want any light upon their affairs, because if you comb through their history...it's ugly.

Kind of like independent promotion. How did your record go to number one?

And who can you trust? Your spouse? Your lover? Nobody?

You've got no real friends, it's only business. And those who you're not in business with, if they've got time for you at all, it's only until it conflicts with their shot, because everybody's hustling.

That's how the record business was built. By lying, cheating, independent scumbags. The most revered man in modern record business history? Ahmet Ertegun? They did a feature on him in the "New Yorker" but they didn't mention that he specialized in underpaying his artists, if he paid them at all. Because those writing for magazines...they don't understand. Just like those working for the government.

How did Eliot Spitzer get in trouble?

It was his personality. He thought he was bigger than the game, lived outside the law.

As do most of the winners in society. They don't do what's right, but what's expedient. And the great unwashed buy the image, because they never get to meet the men and women they adore.

Kind of like the musical stars. If you think they're nice, friendly people you haven't met any. They're oftentimes mercurial pricks who step over others to succeed. Kind of like Madonna. A brilliant person who used Jellybean and so many more to achieve her goal, to the point where she's revered and you overpay to see her.

But she's smart. She understands you use what you've got. That most of what you need to win is not taught in school. You employ cunning and manipulation to make others feel good as you achieve your goal and leave them behind. Yup, no one talks shit about Madonna, because they were glad to get picked for the role. She chose THEM!

Which is kind of how Bridget Anne Kelly got used and abused by Chris Christie. Hell, she may be out on the sidewalk today, but she was close to power for years.

She and her cronies may have messed up traffic, but they didn't think it was wrong because that's what winners do, bend rules. And sometimes the cops get them, the press outs them, but then the game continues, because new players are born every minute and the public has a short attention span, because their lives are so lame they've got to put the winners on a pedestal. Or as Helen Kushnick told Jay Leno..."I've been serving you steak dinners for the last eighteen years, I just haven't bothered showing you how I slaughtered the cow." Yes, Jay Leno was a nice guy, a good comic, but he never would have succeeded without Kushnick, who fought for him and held off all comers.

So you watch a movie like "American Hustle" and the unsophisticated see Amy Adams's tits and Bradley Cooper's perm and the unannounced cameo by, spoiler alert, Robert DeNiro. But the sophisticated see an accurate reflection of life not only in the seventies, but today. Where hustlers are independent, they never work for anybody else other than themselves. Where you win by constantly adjusting the formula, not by consulting the textbook written by a professor who never earned a legitimate dollar himself. Where the thrills are visceral and you never know who to trust and you try to avoid getting caught and very few win. Big.

So I applaud the makers of this movie. Because they accurately reflected life in these United States. The only question is whether the audience is smart enough to understand this. To realize no matter how much education you've got, that does not mean you can win. That music business school will prepare you for a nonexistent job at the label, but it'll never teach you how to be the next David Geffen or Irving Azoff.

The winners write history. They see laws and morals as something to be bent.

You may not like it, but it's the truth.


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