Hollywood at Home

We spent the day driving to Santa Fe to drop off some of Britton's sculptures at the foundry. We did a couple other things and then went to The Bishop's Lodge for dinner. Shortly into the dinner I found out that once again our waiter was an actor. I can't remember the last time I went to Santa Fe and had a waiter that wasn't an actor, but I am sure it was over 5 years ago at least. New Mexico is second in the US, after California for the amount of films made here.
Not only does everyone here want to be an actor or actress, but many move here from California thinking it is a smaller pool to choose from and that they have a better chance. I don't know what things are like in LA, but I did go to a casting call once, it was for The Missing with Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett and there was an unbelievable amount of people there. I went because I had nothing better to do and a friend wanted me to go with them and I was totally blown away by the amount of people lined up. There were hundreds of people there and this was the last hour of the day, it had been going on for 8 hours.
We actually have a friend who is an actor. You wouldn't know who he is if I mentioned him by name, but if I told you what movies he was in and what part he played you would know who I am talking about. He has the right attitude, he has made most of his money off of other things and does movies purely for fun. Most of the waiters in Santa Fe will have their dreams of fame and fortune crushed.
We spend too much time as a society making Hollywood glamorous and cool. We need to spend some time making scientists and others who can really help society glamorous and cool and then maybe young people will be really attracted to those professions and make a real difference in the world.