The Drive

I've been thinking about this since last week when I saw Speed Racer. It really was a fun movie, and at the heart of it, a movie about family and what brings people together.

I never was a Speed Racer fan. It was before my time, and even when I'd hear older boys talking about it, I just didn't get it, but the Wachowski Brothers' film really got me. The graphics were breathtaking and the actors weren't eclipsed by it, which can happen in some graphic-heavy films. The whole film was an effective, united effort, and everyone and everything in it was quite wonderful!

Some of the writing was really beautiful too. Susan Sarandon's speech as the mother, saying that watching her son race was like watching a master artist paint made me think of watching my little brother play the drum-set for the first time. He was 16, but had been playing since he was 12 while I was away at college and art school, and I was astounded watching him. It was just like watching a master painter at work.

And Racer X, the mysterious mentor figure in the film, gives great encouragement to Speed Racer, asking him what drives him. "We drive because we have to," he says. And it made me think of my friend, Tina, who started her own herbal magazine 7 years ago, and who I always encouraged to write, just as she encouraged me to act.

Whenever we had rough days, we'd always ask each other, "Well, what else would you do?" And we both agreed and still agree we HAVE to do our art, because it satisfies us like nothing else can.

So when I got off the elevator yesterday, going to an audition, and the maintenance man in my building said, "I wish I was like you....When you get old, you lose The Drive..." I looked at him, he who seemed so young for his 50 years of age, and I said, "Hang in there, man. No matter what, you gotta grab each moment."

And he said, "That you do!"