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2009, 3:45, 8mm, b/w
Audio engineer: Itamar Leopold
Cinematographer: David Shushan
Special thanks: Jesse Eric Schmidt
The disparity in American payrates incongruently meets at the poles--the celebrity and homeless person. A stand in for the bygone aristocracy, the American celebrity is virginal demigod allowed the maximum hedonism possible. He or she exists above the law or basic ethical consideration in the sense that trespassing those thresholds only sends he or she further into stardom. The homeless, as a stated group, portray a Grecian chorus, unidentified or individualized. And yet both class's economic reality is a function of their unique identity. Celebrities often maintain their celebrity simply by being who they are (e.g. late Zsa Zsa Gabor, Paris Hilton). And while a mendicant may lack national name recognition, his financial reality remains a function of his identity as a homeless person. A frequent explanation for a homeless person being home is his or her lack of money, due to a lack of employment, due to some other characteristic. In short, they don't do anything productive and so not having money seems the logical conclusion. But celebrities don't necessarily do anything productive, either. In the case of actors specifically, the measure of type-casting reinforces that identity, perpetuating the celebrity to the point of self-impersonation.
Cold Readings posed a situation wherein the payrate poles were momentarily collapsed, confused, or reinvented. Filming took place at San Francisco's Civic Center, the Club Med for Northern California's homeless population. Daily access to the public sphere's last bastion, the library, as well as plenty of lawns, bus interchanges, and one of city's seven subway stations attracts non-specific destinationed individuals, as well as city officials. Passersby, who almost assuredly were individuals without a permanent address, were paid at a rate of $60/hour to read quotations from celebrities regarding the latter's first encounter with something. No rehearsal or second take was allowed. For a moment, the tales of struggle, both personal or more superficially creatively, were uttered by a more believable voice.
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