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Photographs. Stories. Mischief.

THE EMU COMMANDDAVID SCOTT HOLLOWAY

The journal

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The Theranos Cinematic Universe

I’ve Seen Everything

For weeks, Elizabeth Holmes has been making me think about Patrick Stewart. I arrived here through a series of entirely unreasonable associations.

The title of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s incredible documentary, You Can See Everything, has been following me around New York. Subway posters. Movie trailers. Ads online. Every time I saw it, I heard Patrick Stewart’s voice.

“I’ve seen everything. Yeah. I’ve seen it all.”

If you’ve seen his appearance on Extras, you probably hear it too. If you haven’t, please take a few minutes:

Watch Patrick Stewart in Extras.

Stewart plays a version of himself, talking to Ricky Gervais’s character, Andy, an extra hoping for a little help with his career. Stewart has a screenplay of his own. Inspired by Professor X, he would play a man who can control things in the real world with his mind. He has given considerable thought to using this ability to make women’s clothes fall off.

Andy keeps looking for a plot. Stewart keeps explaining that he’s seen everything.

It is painfully awkward. I love it.

Since hearing that Stewart died, I’ve been thinking about how much of his work I admire. I put Logan, with his devastating performance as an aging Professor X, among the three best superhero films ever made. But this ridiculous conversation might be my favorite thing he ever did.

There’s something magical about an actor of his stature being willing to play such an absurd version of himself. He lets all that authority, that voice, that accumulated respect, serve this deeply stupid idea. And he commits completely. The fictional Patrick Stewart sees nothing embarrassing about his screenplay. He seems to think it’s a great idea.

Gervais and the brilliant Stephen Merchant wrote the episode, but Stewart’s performance is what sends it over the top for me. I love that someone so widely respected was willing to risk looking this ridiculous.

Which brings me, somehow, back to Elizabeth Holmes.

I saw You Can See Everything on opening night, with Patrick Stewart’s voice already firmly lodged in my head. When Holmes said the title aloud, I imagined her attempting to use Professor X’s psychic abilities to control everyone around her.

This is probably not the response the filmmakers were hoping for. It brought me considerable joy.

There’s another connection in there somewhere. Stewart playing a fictional Patrick Stewart. Holmes seeming to perform a version of Elizabeth Holmes. And Fielder, who so often feels like a character Nathan Fielder invented and then committed to inhabiting indefinitely.

He is exceptionally good at making an awkward situation last longer than anyone wants to bear. Stewart would have fit right in.

I’ll remember Patrick Stewart for plenty of things. But I’m especially grateful that he lent his magnificent seriousness to this nonsense, and that, twenty years later, it can still ambush me on a subway platform.

What a wonderful way to remain in someone’s head.

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“So long and goodnight…”

Some people feel the soul of New Jersey in a Springsteen song. Last night, I felt it in a hotel bar when they started playing My Chemical Romance.

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This Or That, Makeout NYC.

Same kiss. Different vibe.

A couple making out in a dark nightclub. I held my flash overhead, and he glanced up just as I took the photograph. In color, the light on the red wall looks a little like a heart. In black and white, he looks like a vampire.

Romance or horror. A familiar distinction.

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Clueless

It’s basketball season again, which always brings me back to NBA on TNT.

For a couple of years, I photographed NBA on TNT without really knowing anything about basketball. I knew Michael Jordan was the greatest player who ever lived. Apparently, other people had opinions about this, too.

My ignorance occasionally required an explanation.

Once, during the All-Star Game, I was heading from a hotel to the venue when a producer told me to ride with Kenny Smith. As I climbed into the SUV, Kenny said, “Hey, no photos in the car, okay?”

“Sure, no problem. I’m crawling in back and sleeping until we get there.”

He smiled and gave me a thumbs-up.

When we arrived, there was a crowd. People were calling out “Yo, Jet!” and yelling his name, thrilled to see him.

“Oh, weird,” I said. “Were you a ball player?”

“What? Yeah, man. I should be in the Hall of Fame.”

I knew Kenny as one of the hosts of the show I worked on. I thought he was a sports commentator, like Ernie Johnson. I usually saw him next to Shaq and Charles Barkley, which apparently had done something to my understanding of scale. Ask me about fighters or skateboarders. Those were my people.

Years later, thanks to my partner, basketball became a regular part of our evenings. I watched hundreds of games. I developed favorites, loyalties, and opinions that nobody had asked for. I loved an unexpected pass. I loved watching someone sink a three from an unreasonable distance.

I became, among other things, a very big Steph Curry fan.

Then, while adding photographs to my archive, I came across this frame of Curry and Chris Webber on set at the 2013 NBA on TNT Social Media Awards. I recognized Steph immediately. Such a young face, but unmistakably him. One of my all-time favorite players, standing in front of my camera.

I opened the metadata. Where his name should have been, I’d left a blank.

At the time, I had no idea who he was.

This has become a recurring theme in my life. I find myself in the middle of something; I do my job, and move on. Years later, I learn enough to appreciate where I was and who was standing right in front of me. By then, of course, I can’t go back and pay better attention.

There’s something funny about becoming a fan of someone and then discovering you’ve already met. There’s a little regret in it, too. I wish I remembered more about that day. I wish I’d known enough to enjoy it the way I would now.

But I’m glad I made the photograph.

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Twenty-Three Years Ago. Still Today.

I made these photographs in Washington, DC, twenty-three years ago for the book America 24/7. Looking at them together now, I’m struck by how easily they could have been made today.

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Relief Sculpture

THE GREATEST STREET ART IN THE WORLD is currently in Kingsland, Arkansas about 150 miles away from where I graduated from college. See it now, while you can.

It is… Remarkable.

One of the things that I love about street art is its fleeting nature. The best street art is temporary. It is impermanent. It will quickly degrade, be altered, or simply fixed, which is what I expect will happen to the Johnny Cash silhouette that was leveled up by a talented and hilarious marksman.

I’m sure the city or the county will swoop in to fix the water tank pretty quickly. My advice to them would be don’t.

Hear me out. Obviously, I know that something will need to be done, but what if they recognized the gift that this well-aimed artist gave them. This could easily be a tourism draw. When was the last time that Kingsland got this much attention? Probably not in my lifetime.

Much like the response to Shepard Fairy’s original Obama piece that he put on the side of a building in Washington, DC or literally ANY of Banksy’s pieces anywhere in the world, people will travel to see them. This could be a boom for the local restaurants and other businesses. This is also the best shooting news to find it’s way into the media in well over a decade. That has to appeal to a lot of Arkansans too.

I think they should make it a fountain of some kind: Install a collection tank on the ground to collect the stream. Install a pump to return the water to a fountain which could be installed in a compartment built in the water tank, behind The Man in Black. Water made Hot Springs, Arkansas famous.

It could totally work. I’d be willing to bet that the city could get a grant from the Walton Arts Foundation to pay to build and maintain the fountain. I really want to see this happen and if anyone in central Arkansas wants to take this project on, I would be willing. to help in whatever ways I can, including helping write your grant proposal.

Johnny Cash keeps on giving to his hometown. What other ideas of how the town could capitalize on its new recognition?

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