days 10 & 11: hollywood drama

I missed posting anything for yesterday.  My friend got tickets to see the 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc at the Detroit Film Theatre and she invited me to go.  The film was accompanied by the Rackham Symphony Choir, performing composer Richard Einhorn's Voices of Light, a dramatic sort of medieval chanting in Latin and French written to accompany the film.  It was all just breathtakingly beautiful...the film and the music. The movie consists almost entirely of close-up shots of people's faces throughout the trial of Joan of Arc.  It is said that the actress who played Joan, Renee Jeanne Falconetti, gave the best performance in any film, ever.  She stands steadfast in her convictions and though she's scared and crying and fearing her fate, she stands her ground.  The emotion she expresses with just the tiniest nostril twitch was really amazing--let alone the tears pooling over and glistening on her eyelashes. Just gut-wrenchingly beautiful.  And painfully sad. 

After all the emotions of the last week and a half, you'd think such a movie would be hard to digest--and it was--I found myself still on the verge of tears even as we got to round 2 of the standing ovation for the musicians and choir.  But it was good to see it.  It was a good reminder that there is beauty in the world...and brutality...far, far greater than we can possibly imagine.  My employment problems are trivial.  And fleeting.  And the wine that followed after the movie softened the blow.  It was good to have a blurry wine-infused night of girl talk.  

This week brought another twist to our own ongoing drama.  We got word that a bid for our assets has been made by Lowell Potiker, son of the founders of our company.  Things are quickly under way to get things up and running again.  It sounds like most of us will get invited back to our jobs in a very short time (end of the month was mentioned...and that's next week!)

I know I'm not alone in feeling a lot of uncertainty.  On the one hand, this seems like a miraculous turn of events--worthy of a Hollywood script--the son of the founders swoops in and rescues us from the evil holding company, gives most of us our jobs back, puts the company back on track and viola! Happy ending.  

But the reality is quite different.  Many people have already found jobs or are on the way to other jobs (maybe me too).  Or even if they don't have anything, would they want to go back? And then there's the business--many people who held key positions on hot projects might be gone.  Many vendors, merchants and clients would be reluctant to do business with us again.  Plus, now they've seen us with our pants down.  They know about our financial situation.  Would people still want to do business with our company knowing what they now know?  And what of all those debts? The bankruptcy absolves them, I think, but why would any of those companies we owed money to ever want to work with us again?  And everything we dropped last week when this happened will be very behind.  It sounds like a mountain of headaches.  Something a sane person would run away from.  

But a little part of me is intrigued by the idea of being back with my old Entertainment family in a "new" company that holds dear a spirit that was lost over the years as we got bought and sold several times over.  That spirit has been kicked around by wicked corporate overlords--notables like John Menard and Barry Diller (who visited us once for a lunch meeting after he bought us and someone had to rush out and buy china plates because Mr. Diller would not use paper plates).  That spirit was muddied and bruised, but a little glimmer of it was always still there.  What if we could get it back and we could get the "old Entertainment" back?  Could we rise from the ashes??  

Ugh...the drama...it's been a lot to take.  I'm still going to follow through on my current path...I'm still attending the 2-day job seeker's seminar next week.  I'm still going to do my 2nd phone screen interview with Quicken next week.  I'll just take it a day at a time and see how this story unfolds.