So, who do you want to pick up the phone at 3am?

Not the french guy.  But then, he can't run for president of the united states.  not yet.  life is becoming the truman show.  i wonder how peter weir feels these days about that?  i am at the computer, pulling down images of the holocaust for this animatic i am putting together.  i am working on adapting a beautiful book into an animated documentary.  i won't even say what book it is until this goes through, because i am so nervous.  it's a collaberation, really, between myself and the producers, and i am worried that the artist won't like it.  it's such a personal piece.    okay, i'll tell you.  the book is amazing and it is called "i was a child of holocaust survivors", an illustrated memoir by bernice eisenstein.  but i am dying pulling out these images, and i am wondering how such events ever happened and how they continue to happen, every day, all over the world.  and when will it stop?  can it stop?  is it the nature of being human?  all this violence?  and this is partially what i have been exploring in all my film work.  humankind's capacity for violence.  and how it is in all of us.  it is not some weird pathology of a murder, or a serial killer, or a gang, or a culture.  it is in all of us and we have to see that.  that's like in the french guy, where elizabeth murray tries to protect herself from the outside environment.  like all of us, she wants to be safe.  to surround herself with all those things that make her feel safe: friends, lovers, family, a home, a job, lovely things... but you can't protect yourself from yourself.  the violence is within you.  she just wants to help, but she lands up hurting everyone around her. meanwhile, the french guy is so self-absorbed he doesn't notice the carnage that is going on around him, and he is being more than cruel to his lovely french maid. but, in the end, is his arrogance the unwitting cause of a death that he'll never know about?  it's all different levels of violence, from the seemingly inconsequential to the horrific.  it's not like the french guy has a big message to throw out there, but it's kind of about taking responsibility.  we are all responsible for everything.  for all that is good and all that is bad.  because there is only us.  and no matter what you believe in... creationism, evolution... whatever...  we are all variations on a theme... surely, we have the capacity to learn something while we are here?  where do we begin?