The Sundance Institute just sent me an email about their annual Risk-takers Gala Benefit, which happened over a month ago. I wouldn't mention it here except for the embarassingly corporate kiss-ass inclusion of Starbucks Chief Global Strategist Howard Schultz as one of their "risk takers" for, what the press release calls, business decisions that "are inclusive of artists, music and technology." Oh yeah, and giving gobs of money to Sundance. Ironic that there's no mention of the fact that Starbucks is a predatory multinational corporation that has destroyed cultural diversity, resisted unionizing and contributed to the mallification of the world. Now that's risky!

I wonder how Robert Altman and Tony Kushner felt about joining the stage with the Starbucks CEO. Either way, my main reason for highlighting this email was Kushner's acceptance speech--a funny, political, and illuminating rant that is available here. My favorite bit is this:

"I’ve never really considered myself a risk taker as an artist. For one thing, risk-taking implies courage, and I’m nervous about excessively valorizing the making of art by overemphasizing the amount of courage actually needed to do it. What ten consecutive seconds of life does anyone face that doesn’t require courage? With everything from the ecosystem to geopolitical sanity to secular pluralist constitutional democracy, the balance of powers and the rule of law crashing in sharp pointy splinters down around our ears, not to mention the economy and well basically the entire moral spiritual philosophical and political legacy of the Enlightenment, if not in fact of the Renaissance and post-dark-ages humanism, all engulfed by and fighting against drowning in a huge roaring tsunami of militarist, nationalist, fundamentalist madness, meanness and pinheadedness, it’s hard to talk seriously about taking risks as an artist when no risk any artist faces making art remotely compares to the risk any artist, any person faces just getting out of bed, taking a shower and walking out his or her front door in the morning."

And then, of course, finding a cup of coffee that isn't a Starbucks.