The Sly Oyster | culture & entertainment on the sly

Movie producer Brian Grazer, he of A Beautiful Mind and all those other Ron Howard movies you sorta like but ultimately feel conflicted about, is hiring a “cultural attaché.” The position would pay you a cool $150,000 and all you would have to do is be responsible for Mr. Grazer’s cultural education.

Not bad eh?  The problem is that Mr. Grazer is no doubt very exacting.

Michael Rosenberg, the president of Imagine, the production company Grazer owns with Ron Howard, said that about a hundred would-be attachés have e-mailed résumés since word of the job got out. One was Ed Cooke, twenty-six, a British writer and education consultant. His résumé: philosophy-and-psych degree from Oxford, three languages, a demonstrated interest in “the philosophy of cricket.” “This seemed like a job that would suit me,” Cooke said. He’d sent in a list of interesting people: the medieval scholar Mary Carruthers; the cricket star Shane Warne; Dmitri Nabokov.

So um, yeah, it’s not an easy job to get.  But still.  It’s not like dangerous or anything.  A little Google, a little Wikipedia, read a few books, maybe a Power Point presentation or two and presto.

“They have to be really resourceful,” Grazer said. “I like to meet people in dangerous organizations, and my cultural attaché finds out who that person is—who runs the Yakuza, or the Masons, or MI5.”

Oh, okay.  So maybe not so easy, but it sure sounds like the best job possible.  I’m sure a little gumption and curiosity goes a long way in a job like that.  [The New Yorker]