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So it is you, reader, who is willing to allow me to lay before you, in this written assay, the results of my enquiries into the twin natures of Art and Moral Judgment. My object in such an auspicious undertaking is the delineation of that transcendental ground wherein the aesthetic and ethical nobilities of human nature are inextricably wound.
I, Garry Marshall, creator and showrunner of “Happy Days,” director and screenwriter of “Pretty Woman” and “New Year’s Eve,” whose credits include “Georgia Rule,” “Runaway Bride” and “Beaches” with Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey—I, a mere Poet, feel myself feint and falter, and yet it seems that the Almighty Creator Himself beckons me rise to this task.
So to begin, fair reader, I entreat you ask yourself: if it is not Moral exigency what drives the artist, then what is Art?!
Indeed, Morality, it would seem, begs us consider it Art’s partner in that great dialectical dance we know as History—fie, fie, Goddess! I recall in an inspired and spellbound trance, possessed by my own genius, telling Ashton Kutcher that in his declaration of love to Julia in the narrative conclusion of “Valentine’s Day” (perhaps my greatest contribution to cinematic history), to think of film as the annihilation of self by means of form in service of the Moral good. I beseeched him: “Kill death! We live eternally inside a painting!”
Indeed, I would reply to that young friend of Beauty and Truth who wants to learn from me how he can satisfy that Moral impulse in his breast, in the face of all the opposition in his century (indeed, I, Garry Marshall, have faced in my century the very same) that all great Art, in service of the Moral Good, must face this opposition, for it is the urgency of Goodness in the face of Evil that births the creative impulse and inspires true Beauty! Muses, I invoke thee guide my pen! What mighty deeds from artistic causes spring!
Fools! Fools! You think me mad? You think me boastful? Dare you meet your own gaze, as Narcissus, in the watery looking glass of my own artifice?
Julia Roberts, I defy thee know thyself! Henry Winkler, I dare thee to know thyself! Richard Gere, break thy crude, craven forms so that thou might better know thy own self! It is our lot as artists to turn cruelty into fairness, fairness into Moral exigency, Moral exigency into Art, and so to live forever on the ethereal plane.
I am Garry Marshall.
