Erin Brockovich by Susannah Grant http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/07/one-of-realini-top-100-best-movies-erin.html - 10 out of 10

 

Erin Brockovich by Susannah Grant http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/07/one-of-realini-top-100-best-movies-erin.html

10 out of 10

 

 

This is an exhilarating, outstanding, inspiring story and furthermore, a true one, about a single mother who struggles to make ends meet, to begin with,  and then she proves she has almost all the Character Strengths identified by the co-founder of Positive Psychology, Martin Seligman, http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/11/flourish-by-martin-seligman-i-ii.html from resilience to courage, vitality…

 

Julia Roberts is radiant in the leading role and she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading role for her performance, along with multiple other trophies – I have read an article in Variety about a less respectable episode, connected with the making of another Oscar winner, including for best actress

The producer for Shakespeare in Love tells the public that Julia Roberts was the initial choice and besides, the had been crucial in getting the funding, with her out of the project, it would be difficult to have it advance – the star had been made worldwide famous by Pretty Woman, but still lacked savoir faire

 

The new celebrity was determined to get Daniel Day Lewis for the role of William Shakespeare and she was told he is filming and is thus not available (he was involved in the making of one of the series of brilliant works for which is considered one of the crème de la crème, In The Name of The Father) but that did not work

Julia Roberts sent Daniel Day Lewis some gift (was it roses, I can’t remember) and insisted she will get her way, but when she did not, in spite of her unjustified confidence – the fantastic actor explained again that he is already acting in another motion picture – get the partner she wanted, she almost sabotaged the film

 

The team would bring in young actors – was it Jude Law or is this just a memory lapse- but Julia Roberts was not interested, proffered various flimsy criticisms, eventually refused the names proposed and ultimately abandoned the production, and as we know, it would be Gwyneth Paltrow that wins the day

Which reminds me of what we can read in a holy text of the business http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/02/adventures-in-screen-trade-by-william.html Adventures in The Screen Trade by luminary William Goldman, among so much incredible information, we learn of the breakthrough of three iconic artists, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando and James Dean, they all had their first chance when Montgomery Clift would pull out of Somebody Up There Loves Me, On The Waterfront and East of Eden, respectively…

 

Erin Brockovich is to be admired for her humanity, the perseverance with which she followed her goals – meaningful ones at that, such as we find at ‘Happiness Activity No 10: Committing to Your Goals-picking one, two or three significant goals that are meaningful to you and devoting time and effort to pursue them’ explained in The How of Happiness http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-how-of-happiness-by-sonja.html by Sonja Lyubomirsky

The single mother finds that the PG&E, The Pacific Energy Company in California, is polluting the area in which it operates at catastrophic levels, so much that the people who live nearby, children included, have become severely ill, and the audience learns about cancers, colons, intestines and other organs that had been affected

 

However, the company is worth many billions and boasts about their size, the capacity they have to sustain a long drawn court case, extending over years, while their opponents will not have the means, firepower to endure such a fight, which initially is indeed unbalanced, for there is Erin and the lawyer Ed Masry aka the phenomenal Albert Finney, with their meagre resources to engage in the mother of battles

Still, this is a super woman that we have at the center of the action, and she knows no limits, she can be insulting, unsophisticated, vulgar, but she is brave, smart, determined, hardworking, focused, has a fantastic memory, proved when they have to unite forces with other lawyers and they speak of the six hundred families

 

The new allies say that they will fill in the ‘holes in the files’, and Erin retorts that ‘there are no holes’, and when they say that the files have no phone numbers, Brockovich asks which ones, and she means she knows them all and demonstrates that she does not only have numbers in her incredible mind, but all other details

So she is also a magnanimous, wonderful human being, deeply involved in the lives of the people she wants to help, victims of outrageous trauma, she is not here for the money, yes she wants them to get the medical treatment, compensation they deserve, but she is far from the archetypal counselors and lawyers.

 

The lawyer profession was the one with the highest rates of suicide, divorce and depression, and to add insult to injury, in America they had multiple jokes with them, like this one - Scientists have decided to stop testing medicine on lab rats and instead work on lawyers, and this for three reasons:

1.            People get attached to rats

2.            There are not enough lab rats

3.            There are some things even rats won’t do

 

Now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world  – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html