Last year’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall has nothing to do with 19th Century Brit Lit or any BBC-esque adaptation of the aforementioned. Except, by a stretch, in that maybe that film’s Russell Brand is my titular casting choice if ever the BBC produces a biography of Oscar Wilde. Directed by Terry Gilliam.
With that tenuous link established, the groundwork has now been laid for a foray into Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s pathetic protagonist Peter, and how this silly little movie has become my most recent talisman in my quest to solve my life.
I’m Peter. I wake up and the first thing that pops into my head is Peter’s pathetic autobiographical song: “Peter you suck. Peter you suck. Peter your music is fucking terrible. Peter you suck, Peter you suck. You don’t do anything of value. Peter you suck. Go write some music. But instead you sit and write these bullshit songs. It’s so self-loathing. Go see a psychiatrist. I hate the psychiatrist. Go see one anyway.”
Being unemployed sucks one’s ego dry. Ego vampire. My anemic little ego is a husk of its formerly vibrant, overblown self. It is not that I loved my job or even my line of work so very much. In fact, I frequently felt that my line of work was vapid, manipulative and self-absorbed. But it was lucrative and I was good at it. Am good at it. Am I still good at it? How would I know?
My husband sits me down and hits me with The Talk. The Talk that essentially is the stake in the heart of my ego. You have so much talent. Why are you not living up to your potential? Has he been reincarnated as my high school counselor? My husband is the reanimated corpse of Mr. Wolcott.
I want to ask him what I wanted to ask Mr. Wolcott. How the hell would you even know? How would you know what my potential is? Why do I have to live up to my potential when so many other people do not? How would you even know if I have any talent at all.? Maybe I am a talentless, egomaniacal hack. Maybe I suck. Maybe I suck. Maybe my writing is fucking terrible. Maybe I suck. Maybe I suck. Maybe I don’t write anything of value.
Poor Peter. Poor me. I’m a cliché. I’m a self-loathing, doubt-riddled cliché. I thought I had escaped Mr. Wolcott and all his expectations when I left high school. Apparently I married him.
Peter’s friends keep urging him to do something creative, to work on his Dracula Musical. I love that: His Dracula Musical. Peter’s Dracula Musical becomes the vessel for all his energy, his creativity, his newly emerged life force. It becomes his raison d’etre.
Bram Stoker was the business manager for the Lyceum Theater when he wrote Dracula, so he had a paying gig while he penned his particular Dracula Musical. Shouldn’t I have that paying gig while I work on mine? Was he riddled with doubt and saddled with a mummified ego, as I am?
Screw Bram Stoker. I need to work on my Dracula Musical. I don’t exactly know quite what it is or what shape it will take. I don’t even know if I suck or if my writing is fucking terrible or if I can write anything of value.
I watched the end of Forgetting Sarah Marshall 5 times (thanks, Youtube). Just the ending. The Dracula Musical. That contagious, ebullient mood of victory and of inner demons vanquished. The muppets. The potential realized. I want that Dracula Musical ending.
