Pieces of Eight.

So yesterday I went to Disneyland to attend the World Premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. We got to ride several rides for free with no lines, free churros and Coke etc. throughout the park, and all in all were made to feel like VIPs. Just wandering around the park (which was closed to everyone but Premiere guests) I saw Cuba Gooding, Jr., Masi Oka, Ashley Scott, Chad Michael Murray, Emma Roberts, Mary McDonnell, and Jon Voight, and then of course at the event itself most of the major cast of the film showed up (minus Kiera Knightley, who I think is filming another movie right now). Hans Zimmer led a wonderful live performance of some of the orchestral score from the film, and I was particularly intrigued by the lovely and emotive first violinist, who wore a large red flower in her long dark hair.

The movie itself was a phenomenon, and I suspect fans of the Pirates franchise will either love it or hate it. To me it seems the logical next step in the progression, as the second was more artistic and less formulaic than the first, with fewer embarrassingly on-the-nose lines in the script. At World's End verged on avant-garde. In particular there is a tremendously long, surreal, dreamlike sequence that does nothing whatsoever to advance the plot, but that had me ecstatically spellbound. You'll know it when you see it (and Johnny Depp fans will probably find themselves spellbound regardless of whether you enjoy the artistic merit of the sequence). But most notably to me as a writer, the script was noticably absent of the clunky lines that littered the first movie and to some extent the second. Even some scenes that simply begged for cliches (a conversation between Will and Elizabeth about trust, for example) were written freshly, sharply, and with a sort of maturity that surprised me in a PG-13 film.

Incidentally, "pieces of eight" refers to the Spanish dollar or eight-real coin, which was often cut into halves, quarters, or eighths and was at one time the most widely used currency in the world. (It's okay, I didn't know that either.)

After the film there were some of the most astonishing fireworks I've ever seen, and then they gave us all goody bags to take home, which included, I kid you not, a portable Nintendo game system.

I'm in love with this town. I'm in love with its excess, its grandeur, its silliness. I know I should be ashamed that I'm receiving free electronics while people are starving, but I'm not, and if that makes me a terrible person, so be it. I can't help but believe strongly that the one doesn't cause the other. I believe that there can be magic and luxury and excess in this world without the necessity of humiliation and misery and degradation for the "have-nots." I believe that the good things of this life should be accessible to everyone, and if it were in my power to make such a world, I would.

I'll see what I can do.