In the Eyes of God

Two rival agencies are competing ruthlessly to sign the “promising” young screenwriter/filmmaker Edward Foster, yet nowhere throughout the play is the title, much less the subject of his project, ever mentioned. Sure, “people are looking at it,” he is told, but only as a vehicle to reposition themselves at the trough of the Hollywood star machine is left unsaid. That’s because concern about content, product and people is always an impediment to the efficient maximization of any sales campaign. What is being fought over in this ultimate exercise of social Darwinism is the promise of a dream—a dream of riches, fame, success and public adulation everyone is willing to pay for, to offer their bodies for, to sacrifice their loved ones for, to die for. If the corporate hedonism of America that gave us Robert Milliken, Gordon Gecko and Enron is reflected in the eyes of God, then those eyes are made, as we might have suspected, of celluloid.