philosophy in film

[iambiguous]

Class society is one thing, caste society something altogether different. With caste your position in society may as well be metaphysical. It is written in the stars for all time to come by the gods themselves. Or so it must seem to some. Of course the introduction of capitalism into an ethos such as this was bound to spark…changes. After all, if there is one thing that seems to translate well up and down the social ladder it is money. If you’ve got that how untouchable can you really be?

To me this is a foul and festering agglomeration of misogynistic, racist customs that are passed off simply as The Way Things Are. It is a retrograde political order disguised as a Holy tradition. A young “servant girl” is raped and it all gets twisted into its opposite—she is never not the victim here. Meanwhile the child of the lower caste girl will be raised in the upper caste family. But only perhaps if, as he grows older, he becomes “fairer”. He will himself be seen as a member of the upper caste while his mother remains near the bottom of the ladder. She will have to call him [her own son] Master! And all that is necessary for this kind of “reality” to be so is that these people believe it is.

Or perhaps Vanaja will part from the Mistress and the son will be sent to her. The son becomes a member of a lower caste and subsists as his mother might from day to day. How is he better off then?

So basically you enter a world here invested in mores considerably at odds with our own. Most of us however will insist they are the indoctrinated ones and that we came to our own life of our own free will. And up to a point that is true given the cultural gaps. But contingency, chance and chance don’t go away just because you are raised to think in one way about them rather than another. Instead it is in how you come existentially to think about it one individual at a time.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanaja_(film
click on “vanaja film”

VANAJA [2006]
Written and directed by Rajnesh Domalpalli

[iambiguous]

This is a film that was generally panned by the critics. At RT it got only a 33% fresh rating. And only 9 critics bothered to see it at all! I can understand why. There are many things about it that shouldn’t have been about it at all. But the story itself is simply mindboggling.

And I was drawn into it for a number of reasons. First of all, it is based on the actual 1995 collapse of the Barrings Bank in London, England:

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barings_Bank

Barings? It was only the world’s oldest private bank.

And this was clearly a warning not heeded by the banking industry. After all, this revolved around those very same complex banking transactions that would eventually bring the world economy itself to near collapse. The film came out in 1999. Less than ten years later…

I guess more folks should have watched it. Not that it would have changed much if they had. The difficulty here is in the translation from microeconomics to macroeconomics. Only a tiny percentage of the world’s population has even the vaguest of clues as to how these transactions even work…let alone able to predict the dire consequences that can unfold “out in the world” all the rest of us live in. I mean don’t ask me to explain what the hell happened here. Not with any specificity.

And Nick Leeson surely embodied the mentality of those who brought it about. At wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Leeson

This goes way beyond greed. This is about men and women who were [and still are] monomanically obsessed only with making money.

And then there’s the part about “caning”. You know, in Singapore. Remember Michael Fay? There are just some behaviors “over there” that are not tolerated. Mooning women in a bar for example. And then the earthquake in Kobe. The guy couldn’t catch a break.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_Trader_(film
trailer: youtu.be/7B8fGmKjNEM

ROGUE TRADER [1999]
Written in part and directed by James Dearden

[b]Nick [voiceover]: lt was thanks to Maggie Thatcher opening up the City of London that yours truly from Watford came to be working for a posh outfit like Barings.

…

Nick [voiceover]: lndonesia was one of the new ‘‘tiger economies’’ everyone was getting so excited about. ‘‘Emerging markets’’ they were calling them and Barings was one of the first to see their potential. The rewards were high. But so were the risks.

…

Nick: I’d never even heard of Barings before I started working for 'em. It’s not like there’s a Barings Bank in Watford.
Lisa: Well, you’re a big hero back in London, they think the sun shines out your arse.
Nick: Really? I was beginning to feel like one of those Japanese soldiers, you know, still stuck out in the jungle 20 years after the war.
Lisa: What’s it like here? They tell it’s not safe to go out at night.
Nick: That’s bollocks, the locals are great. Best thing about this place is it’s not still full of pompous ex-colonials who think they were born to rule the world. That’s what I love about Asia, anyone can make it, it doesn’t matter which stupid school you went to.
Lisa: When they told me I was going to Jakarta I had to look it up on a map.
Nick As a matter of fact, so did I.

…

Nick [voiceover]: My team were young, they were hungry, and they didn’t have a clue.
[to the others]
Nick: A futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell a specified amount of a commodity at a specified price at a future date.
[they look at him blankly]
Nick: Alright, um…It’s like if I agree to sell you this cup of cappuccino, which I don’t yet own, at 45 cents a month from now, if I can buy the cappuccino at say, 43 cents, I make a profit. If the price goes the other way, I have to pay more and I lose. It’s timing, it’s buying and selling at the right moment. Sometimes expresso might be the best deal, or salt or pepper. The truth is we’re not buying and selling anything real. lt’s just numbers - contracts based on the value of the Nikkei, the Tokyo stock market.[/b]

Jesus. This “team” he created didn’t even know what the hell futures trading was! One guy was more concerned that the color of their trading jackets was “unlucky”.

[b]Bonnie: Nick, what’s the difference between initial margin and variation margin?
Nick: lnitial margin’s a down payment on each futures contract that we trade. We don’t pay in full until a contract matures. But in the meantime the value of each contract may go up or down. So SlMEX calculate our positions on a daily basis. They’ll ask for more money if the market goes against us. That’s variation margin.

…

Nick: lt’ll be all right so long as we balance the books by the end of the month.
Bonnie: How?
Nick: We trade on our own account until we wipe out the losses, then we use money from the client account and pay it back with next month’s profits.
Bonnie: You mean, gamble?
Nick: Relax, Bonnie. That’s all the market is. One giant casino!

…

Nick [voiceover]: That was the worst part - Lisa thinking l was this brilliant success. lf she only knew what a fuck-up l really was! When l wanted the market to go up, it went down. lf l wanted it to go down, it went up. lt was hard not to take it personally.

…

Bonnie: Nick? Nick! l just worked out the balance in the eights account. The losses are over $10 million!
Nick [on the trading floor]: Keep your fuckin’ voice down! Look, there’s no need to panic.
Bonnie: There’s not enough in the client account to make margin payments.
Nick [grasping the meaning of that]: Right…[/b]

Time to rob Peter to pay Paul. But that works. Things turn around and he is sky high. His new philosophy: If you keep doubling up you’re bound to win. Until…

[b]George: What if the market doesn’t rise, uh? What if it falls?
Nick: l’ve gambled and won before. l can gamble and win again.

…

Nick [to police officer with the women he mooned]: Oh, you’ve got to be jokin’!
Police officer: No laughing matter. Outraging a lady’s modesty is a very serious crime in Singapore.[/b]

But, once again, “it was the profits” that saved him. But that’s about to change.

[b]Nick [voiceover]: We were close to the end of another year and l was deeper in the shit than ever. Barings wanted me to speak at their annual group conference in London. l was their star trader, and they wanted to know the secrets of my success. lt didn’t bear thinking about.

…

Nick [voiceover]: I felt sick going into the office…seeing all the people l’d been avoiding for months. It was one thing to con people over the phone, quite another to do it to their face.

…

Nick [voicover]: lt was crazy going back. l couldn’t hope to survive the end-of-year audit. There was that little matter of the 7.8 billion yen which l’d fabricated to plug the hole in the five eights account.[/b]

This is where the expression “shoot the moon” comes in. You know, “go for broke.”

Wei Wei [over the phone]: This is Wei Wei from Coopers & Lybrand. ls that Nick?
Nick: Speaking.
Wei Wei: l’m compiling the end-of-year audit. There seems to be a big hole in the accounts. l’m missing the 7.8 billion yen receivable from SlMEX.

The look on Nick’s face: Gulp.

[b]Wei Wei: I need three pieces of paper. One: confirmation from SLK that the 7.8 billion yen will be paid. Two: sight of your bank balance to show it’s been received. And three: a note from Ron Baker saying he’s aware of the deal and approves it.

…

Nick [voiceover]: And so, with scissors and paste, l created $78 million out of thin air. This was forgery, pure and simple…and there was no going back.

…

Nick [aloud to hmself]: What have you done now, Neeson…what have you done now?

…

Nick [looking into the mirror]: I, Nicholas Leeson, have lost 50 million quid…IN ONE DAY!

…

Tony: He doesn’t do things by the book, Ron. He just doesn’t respect the rules. Is he really the kind of person we should be employing at Barings?
Ron: Oh, fuck the rules, Tony. It’s barrow boys like Nick who are turning the City of London around. You can’t run a modern financial centre with a bunch of Hooray Henries.

…

[Nick imagines himself tapping his glass at a dinner to draw the attention of all the Barings Bank executives]
Nick: Excuse me, I have an announcement to make. I know that some of you are worried about our exposure in the market and you’re probably wondering about the identity of our mystery customer X. Well, the fact is he doesn’t exist. We are the customer, Barings. And if you look properly at the five eights account, which is not a client account at all, it’s an errors account, you’ll realise that it’s concealing losses in the region of 200 million pounds. No, I tell a lie, it’s more like 230 after today.
[he then imagines them all suddenly starting to vomit in shock.]

…

Nick [voiceover]: I was living from day to day, hoping for a miracle. I wasn’t running a position any more. The position was running me.

…

Simon [to Nick]: You listen to me now, right. You don’t fight the market, man. Even if you can make the margin calls, what happens when the contracts expire? The way the market’s going, your losses could be catastrophic!

…

Peter [getting off the phone]: That was the Sultan of Brunei’s office. They’ve decided not to proceed, they believe the risks are too great and the time too short in view of the need to have a rescue package in place by the time the markets open again in the Far East.
Simon: Is there really no one else?
Peter: We’ve tried everyone. It’s hopeless. I therefore have to inform you that Barings is insolvent and will go into immediate liquidation.
[Peter bursts into tears]

…

Simon [on phone]: Peter Barings has gone on TV and said there’s been a conspiracy. They’ve lost 800 million quid!
Nick: I lost nowhere near that. It was more like 300 million!
Simon: But Barings didn’t do anything Friday. Now the word’s out, the market’s crashed.
Nick: Bloody idiots!
Simon: They think you’ve run off on your yacht.
Nick: What?!
Simon: l know. But listen, mate. You’ve got no friends here now, so just get the fuck out of Asia. Get back to London, Australia, anywhere. Just get out!
Nick: We’re tryin’.
Simon: Oi, Nick…get yourself a good lawyer.[/b]

By this time his picture is on the front page or cover of every newsparer and magazine in town.

[b]Nick [on plane fleeing Asia]: Did you say we stop at Abu Dhabi?
Lisa: Yeah.
Nick: That’s where they cut your hands off for stealing.
Lisa: Oh, don’t be ridiculous! They just stone you.

…

Nick [voiceover]: That was when it hit me - the enormity of what l’d done. Whatever happened, l knew things were never gonna be the same again.

…

Nick [voiceover]: And that’s it, more or less. That’s the end of my story. Barings was eventually sold to the Dutch bank lNG for the princely sum of one pound. Lisa’s got a new life as a flight attendant for Virgin Atlantic. l hear she’s got herself a new fella. As for me, l fought unsuccessfully against extradition…from Frankfurt to Singapore on charges of fraud, forgery and breach of trust. l was sentenced to six and a half years in prison. Despite rumours of secret bank accounts and hidden millions, l did not profit personally from my unlawful trading. To be absolutely honest sometimes l wish l had. [/b]

[iambiguous]

Jamie by a landslide. I mean it’s not even close. Well, not if I was Nola Darling. But [as it turns out] she is just not a one man woman. Okay, fine, I hope she knows what she’s doing. But just as lots and lots of men [and the occasional woman] recognize how exceptional Nola is, she rolls the dice here and risks losing what many, many women would recognize as an exceptional man in Jamie.

But that’s the gamble, I suppose.

Just so long as it’s not Greer! The guy takes 20 minutes to get out of his gym clothes. Every wrinkle must be addressed. And he could never love anyone anywhere near as much as he loves himself.

And Mars? Maybe on Mars. To me he is just obnoxious. But he calls it being funny.

In part, this is a film that revolves around a keen observation from Jamie. He notes that for each of us there is another person somewhere out in the world that we would be most compatable with. Our “soul mate”. But the problem is the odds are very slim that we will find this person. He/she could live right down the street…or reside in another country. But how do we increase the odds that we will make contact? And if you are one of lucky few and you do find this person…how do you make sure you don’t, as Jamie puts it, “blow it.”

So, does she? Or, instead, does he? Yeah, like there is a right answer.

IMDb

Because the film’s budget was so tight, there were no retakes of any scenes.

How tight?

Whenever the cast broke for a meal, Spike Lee would tell them not to throw away the aluminum soda cans because he would turn them in for recycling money.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She’s_Gotta_Have_It
trailer: youtu.be/xtK9qknAhtE

SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT [1986]
Written and directed by Spike Lee

[b]Jamie [to camera]: I believe there is only one person, one person in this world, who was meant to be your soul mate, your lifelong companion. The irony is rarely do these two people hook up. They just wander about aimlessly. But if you are lucky, and you do find that person, you can’t blow it. Nola was that person.

…

Nola and the dogs:

Dog #1: You so fine, baby, I’d drink a tub of your bathwater.
Dog #2: Congress has just approved me to give you my heat and moisture seeking MX missle.
Dog #3: I just want to rock your world.
Dog #4: Baby, it’s got to be you and me.
Dog #5: You may not realize it tonight, but you are sending out some very strong vibes. May I continue? Well, you’re lonely, you’re alone, you’re sad, you’re confused, you’re horny. You see, you need a man like me to understand you, to hold you, to caress you, to love you. You need me. What’s your number?
Dog #6: I know I only saw you for the first time in my life a minute ago, but I love you.
Dog # 7: Look, baby, let’s go to my house right now. Let’s do the wild thing. I mean let’s get loose.
Dog # 8: I got my B.A. from Morehouse, my M.B.A. from Harvard. I own a new BMW 318i. I make 53 thou a year after taxes, and I want you to want me.
Dog # 9: Girl, I got plenty of what you need. Ten throbbing inches of USDA, government inspected, prime cut grade A tube steak!

…

Jamie [spotting Nola by chance on the street]: Nola, I don’t want to chance not seeing you again. Whatever you want to do I’ll do, wherever you want to go I’ll take you. Will you see me?

…

Mars [to the camera]: What about Nola Darling? What do you want to know? I thought she was a freak. You know, freaky-deaky? You ask why I’d continue to see her? Do I look like a retard? I’m not crazy. The sex was def! Nola had the goods and she knew what to do. Look, all men want freaks. We just don’t want them for a wife.

…

Jamie [to the camera]: Now I know you’re thinking how do I know she was telling the truth about Opal. Well, Nola couldn’t lie, even if she wanted to. It wasn’t her nature. She could be brutally honest.

…

Greer [to the camera]: I was the best thing that ever happened to Nola Darling. She worshipped me. Oh, we were something else together. When we walked down the streets, heads turned. She was a little rough when I first started going out with her. Typical Brooklyn tackhead. But I refined her. I encouraged her to read more, exposed her to new ideas. Why you should have seen the way she dressed. It was I who made her a better person. I molded her. Greer Child was the scultor and Nola Darling was but a mere lump of clay.

…

Greer [to Nola]: You know, if you weren’t fine, I wouldn’t even bother with you.

…

Mars [begging Nola not to dump him]: Please baby, please baby, please baby, baby baby please!

…

Jamie [to the camera]: I got sick and tired of feeling like a spoke on a wheel, which is what I was. To Nola, we are all interchangable, simply parts of a whole. And it didn’t matter who, just as long as it was a warm body. Nola had no devotion, allegiance or loyalty whatsoever. When she whispered, “Jamie they don’t matter, don’t matter at all”, that was no consolation at all. That “you can’t tell the player from the scorecard” shit had to go. When we’d be making love I found myself wondering who or what other men had been in this bed with her besides the two I knew about doing things to what I thought was mine. I had done enough sharing to last me a lifetime. Nola hurt me to the core but she’s gotta have it.

…

Jamie [whispering into Nola’s ear]: “One day you’re gonna wake up in this bed and I’m gonna be long gone.”[/b]

Time to see the good doctor. Turns out though she’s not sick at all. She’s not a sex addict apparently. She just has a healthy sex drive. And don’t men love that.

[b]Greer [to Nola at the Thanksgiving dinner]: How much longer must I tolerate these ignorant low-class ghetto Negros?

…

Mars: Jamie, you’re okay. With Nola, you get four days, I’ll get three.
Jamie: That’s mighty black of you.
Mars: But I get the weekends though.

…

Nola’s nightmare:

Woman #1: There goes that home wrecker.
Woman #2: I know she’s trying to steal my man.
Woman #3: You no-good sleeping around stank bitch!
Woman #1: You know I don’t blame Greer, I blame her. She knew he was mine.
Woman #3: If Nola had loved Jamie, it would be different.
Woman #2: Love? Oh, come on, she just fucks them and leaves them.
Woman #1: It’s sisters like her that are corrupting our men.
Woman #2: The few good ones left. I’ll be damned if she takes Mars from me, I’m four months pregnant!
Woman #3: The decent black men are all taken. The rest are in prison or homos.
Woman #2: I’ve gone to bed alone too much already. I’m from Brownsville. We don’t play that shit!
Woman #3: So what should we do to her?
Woman #2: Let’s set the bitch on fire!
Woman #1: Your fucking days are over!
Woman #3 [lighting matches]: This girl will never steal another man again.
[Nola wakes up screaming]
Nola: Fire! Fire! Fire!

…

Opal [arriving at Nola’s]: Hi, Jamie.
Jamie [leaving Nola’s]: You can have her.

…

Nola: It’s really about control, my body, my mind. Who was going to own it? Them? Or me? I’m not a one-man woman. Bottom line.[/b]

[iambiguous]

The first voice we hear is Maria Bartiromo’s. That…irked me. She plays herself as one the news media’s Money Honeys. CNBC. And who advertizes throughout the day on CNBC? Only the biggest corporations in the world. In particular those companies in the “finance industry”. So how objective is CNBC going to be in reporting the business news when these folks earn their living selling advertising to the very entities they are reporting on? At best anything pertaining to Wall Street will be reduced down to a morality play. In other words, capitalism as a political economy is nowhere to be seen. Instead, there are the good capitalists and the bad capitalists. The bad capitalists, of course, being the folks that are just a bit too greedy. The cutthroat capitalists who just use people until they are used up. Then dump them somewhere.

They may even break a few laws along the way. Or lie to their loved ones. About a lover, for instance.

A lover who dies when this particular capitalist falls asleep behind the wheel of a car. And then the whole world begins to crumble all around him. Really, as Letterman would say, “I wouldn’t give this guy’s troubles to a monkey on a rock.” Unless it has script approval.

This is also a peek inside the world economy. Here there are so many different players in so many different parts of the globe. Some are corporations. Some are governments. Some are murky agglomerations of both. And since information is everything here there are that many more chances of being given the wrong information. Or of leaving something out of your calculations. And it’s like With Nick Leeson above: it can always go either way “in the market”. The guy can be history or a hero.

The world, it seems, is cold.

Actually, though, most of the stuff above is, well, incidental. This is really just more more potboiler about the callous, calculating capitalist who makes tons of money but in doing it the way he does loses the love and the respect of his innocent daughter. It happens, sure. But what does that really have to do with arbitrage?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage_(film
trailer: youtu.be/C5OPeax63-4

Arbitrage [2012]
Written and directed by Nicholas Jarecki

[b]Maria Bartiromo: But you took a huge bet on the housing crisis in the middle of the biggest boom in housing anybody has ever seen. Why?
Robert: I’m a child of the '50s. My father welded steel for the Navy, and my mother worked at the V.A. They lived through the Depression, Pearl Harbor, and the bomb. They didn’t think that bad things might happen. They knew that bad things would happen.
Maria: Is that what’s happening now?
Robert: When I was a kid, my favorite teacher was Mr. James. Mr. James said world events all revolve around five things. M - O - N - E - Y.

…

Ellen: It’s all going to be fine. It always is. Just follow the plan.
Robert: And what is that plan?
Ellen: Confidence equals contract.
Robert: You sound like a fortune cookie.
Ellen: They are your words, actually.
Robert: Then you married an idiot.

…

Ellen: But seriously, Robert, how much money do we need? Do you want to be the richest guy in the cemetary?

…

Jimmy [to Robert]: Hey, Yo. So that’s it? You get in a bind and you call the only nigger you know?

…

Syd: The situation would be manslaughter.
Robert: What would you advise such a person to do?
Syd: There’s about fifty things that person wouldn’t have thought of. Fingerprints, DNA, cell phone records. If that person were closing a merger with a large bank, any arrest could derail the transaction.

…

Det. Bryer [interrogating Jimmy]: So, you were asleep and the phine rings and it’s a wrong number?
Jimmy: Right.
Det. Bryer: Why do you accept the charges on a collect call from a wrong number? And then you stay on the phone for a minute and a half with a wrong number. What the fuck do you talk about? Area codes?

…

Robert: This is a trust, in your name, assets of two million dollars. Take a look at that.
Jimmy: Are you serious? You think money’s gonna fix this? Huh?
Robert [perplexed]: What else is there?

…

Robert [about a copper mine deal in Russia]: There is so much money coming out of this. You can’t believe it. You can’t stop it. And yes. I am the oracle. I have done housing and arb’d credit swaps. I’ve done it all. And yes! I know it is outside the charter, but it is fucking minting money! It is a license to print money! For everybody! Forever! It’s God!
Brooke: Until?
Robert: Until it’s not. The money is trapped. I can’t get it out. Probably never will.

…

Syd: What’s baffling to me, despite your sentimental history together, is why you would put your family’s future in this kid’s hands.
Robert: He’s not like us.
Syd: Is that a good thing?

…

Robert: Just for the record. What you did is way beyond the money.
Jimmy: Nothing is beyond money for you, Robert. We both know that.

…

Ellen: You broke our little girl’s heart.
Robert: That’s how it all works, Ellen. You know that.
Ellen: I know, but she didn’t.
Robert: She’ll be better for it. The world is cold.
Ellen: Then you’re gonna need a warm coat.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Somewhere between Mickey and Frederick. That was me for years. Now I don’t even take that seriously. Life is all of the terrible things that Frederick rails against…and the horror is all the more visceral because, as Mickey insists, there is no fundamental meaning out of which to make sense of it all. But while many critics complained that Allen bowed to the will of the producers and made the film ending more upbeat, who is to deny that life really is about all the distractions [and relationships] that make the shit parts bearable.

And then there are all the funny parts.

As much as anything though the narratives here revolve around a clash of well-beings. We speak altruistically of it but more often than not well-being construed by one can involve taking it away from another. We’re all looking for similar things but there are only so many of these things to go around. As when we find ourselves falling in love with the same people. And then we have to fit ourselves into the wants and needs of others when what we really want and need [or often do] are things to be entirely different. These upper middle class New Yorkers are just more sophisticated in grappling with the complexities that can arise. Which is to say they take them more seriously by, in part, recognizing how vulnerable we can all become in a very ambiguous world.

Basically, it’s how Allen is able to intertwine the Big Questions into the trials and tribulations of a life lived from day to day. Somehow we have to strike a balance. The only difference is that Allen is far more obsessed than others with how this plays out in a meaningless world. The tug of war for him is always considerably more amplified. Or distressing.

Look for The Abyss.

IMDb

[b]Woody Allen was originally going to have a more downbeat ending, but the studios asked him to make it more upbeat.

After actors Max von Sydow and Barbara Hershey finished filming their characters’ break-up scene, the film crew gave them a standing ovation.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_and_Her_Sisters
trailer: youtu.be/Qtgw38Yq2Qs

HANNAH AND HER SISTERS [1986]
Written and directed by Woody Allen

[b]Lee [to Elliot]: Frederick sold a picture. One of his better drawings, a beautiful nude study. Actually, it was of me. It’s a funny feeling to know you’re hung naked in a stranger’s home.

…

Mickey: Standards and practices? Okay, why all of a sudden is the sketch dirty?
Standards and practices: Child molestation is a touchy subject.
Mickey: Read the papers. Half the country’s doing it.
Standards and practices: But you name names.
Mickey: No, we don’t name names, we say “The Pope.”

…

Dr. Wilkes [to Mickey]: Well, yes, I guess the dark side of the spectrum is…uh…brain tumor.

…

Mickey: If I have a tumor, I don’t know what I’ll do.
Gail: He didn’t say you had a tumor.
Mickey: They don’t tell you. Sometimes the weaker ones will panic.
Gail: But not you.

…

Gail: But there’s nothing wrong with you.
Mickey: Then why does he want more tests?
Gail: He has to rule out things.
Mickey: Like what?
Gail: I don’t know. Cancer.
Mickey: Don’t say that. I don’t wanna hear that word.
Gail: But you don’t have symptoms.
Mickey: What do you mean? I’ve got the classic symptoms of a brain tumor.
Gail: Two months ago, you thought you had a malignant melanoma.
Mickey: Naturally, I, I…The sudden appearance of a black spot on my back!
Gail: It was on your shirt!

…

Mickey [aloud to himself]: I’ll make a deal with God. Let it just be my ear. I’ll go deaf and blind in one eye. I don’t want a brain operation. I’ll wind up like the guy with the wool cap who delivers for the florist!

…

Frederick: I’m not interested in what your interior decorator thinks!
Dusty: I can’t commit to anything without consulting her first. That’s what I have her for, okay?
Frederick: This is degrading. You don’t buy paintings to blend in with the sofa.
Dusty: It’s not a sofa - it’s an ottoman!

…

Mother [to Hannah]: Holly takes after me. I would have been a great dope addict.

…

What Mickey expects to hear:

Doctor: Mr. Saxe, I’m afraid the news is not good. If I can show you where the tumor is…and why we feel that surgery would be of no use.
Mickey reacting: It’s over. I’m face to face with eternity. Not later, but now. I’m so frightened, I can’t move or speak or breathe.

What Mickey does hear instead:

Doctor: You’re just fine. There’s nothing here at all. And your tests are all fine. I admit, I was concerned, given your symptoms. What caused this hearing loss, we’ll never know. But whatever it was, it’s not anything serious. I’m very relieved.

…

Gail: What do you mean, you’re quitting? Why? The news is good. You don’t have cancer…
Mickey: Do you realize what a thread we’re hanging by?
Gail: You’re off the hook. Celebrate!
Mickey: Can you understand how meaningless everything is? Our lives, the show, the whole world.
Gail: But you’re not dying.
Mickey: I’m not now. When I ran out of the hospital…I was so thrilled. I’m running down the street and then…it hit me. So I’m not gonna go today, not tomorrow…but eventually I’m going to be.
Gail: You’re just realizing this now?

…

Frederick [to Lee]: You missed a very dull TV show on Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips, and more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason they can never answer the question “How could it possibly happen?” is that it’s the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is “Why doesn’t it happen more often?”

…

Frederick [to Lee]: You see the whole culture. Nazis, deodorant salesmen, wrestlers, beauty contests, a talk show. Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling? But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers. Third grade con men telling the poor suckers that watch them that they speak with Jesus, and to please send in money. Money, money, money! If Jesus came back and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.

…

Elliot [to himself]: What passion today with Lee! She’s a volcano. It was totally fulfilling… just as I’d dreamed it’d be. That’s what it was. It was like living out a dream, a great dream. Now I feel very good and cozy next to Hannah. Hannah is very real and lovely. She gives me a very deep feeling of being part of something. She’s a wonderful woman, and I betrayed her. She changed my empty life…and I paid her back by banging her sister. God, I’m despicable!

…

Mickey [to himself]: Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds… but none of them knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do. I read Socrates. He used to knock off little Greek boys. What the hell’s he got to teach me? And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said the life we live, we’ll live over and over…the same way for eternity. Great. I’ll have to sit through the Ice-Capades again. It’s not worth it. And Freud, another great pessimist. I was in analysis for years. Nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated the guy finally put in a salad bar.

…

Holly: I love songs about extraterrestrial life, don’t you?
Mickey: Not when they’re sung by extraterrestrials.

…

Holly: I was so bored.
Mickey: You don’t deserve Cole Porter. Stay with groups that look like they’re gonna stab stab their mothers.
Holly: I’m open to new concepts.
Mickey: And you snort so much cocaine! What do you do, carry a kilo around in your purse?
Holly: This crowd wouldn’t know the difference. They’re embalmed.

…

Priest: Why would you like to convert to Catholicism?
Mickey: I have to believe in something or else life is just meaningless.
Priest: But why did you make the decision to choose the Catholic faith?
Mickey: First of all, because it’s a very beautiful religion. It’s strong and well-structured. I’m talking about the against school prayer, pro-abortion, anti-nuclear wing.
Priest: So at the moment you don’t believe in God?
Mickey: No, and I want to. I’ll do anything. I’ll dye Easter eggs if it works. I need some evidence. I gotta have proof. If I can’t believe, life isn’t worth living.

…

Mickey: I don’t understand. I thought you’d be happy.
Father: How can we be happy?
Mickey: Because I’m finally giving God serious thought.
Father: Catholicism? Why not your own people?
Mickey: I got off on the wrong foot there. I need a dramatic change.
Father: You’ll believe in Jesus Christ. But we raised you as a Jew. Why Jesus Christ? Why not become a Buddhist?
Mickey: That’s totally alien to me. Look, you’re getting on in life. Aren’t you afraid of dying?
Father: Why be afraid?
Mickey: You won’t exist! That doesn’t terrify you?
Father: I’m alive. When I’m dead, I’m dead.
Mickey: Aren’t you frightened?
Father: I’ll be unconscious.
Mickey: But never to exist again?
Father: How do you know? Who knows what’ll be? I’ll either be unconscious, or I won’t. If not, I’ll deal with it then. I won’t worry now.
Mickey: Mom, come out of the bathroom.
Mother: Of course there’s a God, you idiot. You don’t believe in God?
Mickey: Then why is there so much evil in the world? On a simple level, why were there Nazis?
Mother: Tell him, Max.
Father: How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I don’t know how the can opener works.

…

Elliot [to his shrink]: For all my education, accomplishments and so-called wisdom, I can’t fathom my own heart.

…

Hare Krishna disciple: You’d like to become a Hare Krishna?
Mickey: I’m not saying I wanna join…but you believe in reincarnation so I’m interested.
Hare Krishna disciple: What’s your religion?
Mickey: I was born Jewish, but last winter I tried Catholicism. It didn’t work for me. I studied and tried, but for me it was: “Die now, pay later.” I just couldn’t get with it.
Hare Krishna disciple: You’re afraid of dying?
Mickey: Yeah, naturally. Aren’t you? In reincarnation…does my soul pass to another human? Or would I come back as a moose or an aardvark?

…

Mickey [to Holly]: I remember very clearly I walked the streets, I walked and I walked I didn’t know what was going through my mind, it all seemed so violent and unreal to me. I wandered for a long time on the upper west side, it must have been hours. My feet hurt, my head was pounding, and I had to sit down I went into a movie house. I didn’t know what was playing or anything I just needed a moment to gather my thoughts and be logical and put the world back into rational perspective. And I went upstairs to the balcony, and I sat down, and the movie was a film that I’d seen many times in my life since I was a kid, and I always loved it. I’m watching these people up on the screen and I started getting hooked on the film. I started to feel, how can you even think of killing yourself, I mean isn’t it so stupid. Look at all the people up there on the screen, they’re real funny, and what if the worst is true. What if there is no God and you only go around once and that’s it. Well, ya know, don’t you wanna be part of the experience? You know, what the hell it’s not all a drag. And I’m thinking to myself, Jeez, I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I’m never gonna get, and just enjoy it while it lasts. And after who knows, I mean maybe there is something, nobody really knows. I know maybe is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that’s the best we have. And then I started to sit back, and I actually began to enjoy myself.[/b]

Come on, admit it: What else is there?

[iambiguous]

Exploring the human mind experimentally. Altering its state just to see what happens. In an isolation tank for example. On mushrooms. What happens here has never actually happened yet. At least not to my knowledge. But the mind is mysterious. It is like no other matter there has ever been. If for no other reason that no other matter is discussed with respect to a “duality” or a “soul”.

This is really what science fiction is all about. It extrapolates from what we think we already know about something now and projects that into the future. There we are able to speculate about it further in whatever manner we wish. The idea is to provoke thought about lots of truly fascinating things. The line between fact and fiction can be drawn in so many different places. This one takes the expression “the naked ape” to a whole other level.

Both the book and the movie are based on the work of John C. Lilly: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly

But I digress: With respect to my own emotional relationships with others, Eddie comes about as close to it as I am ever likely to get. With the possible exception perhaps of Stephan from The Heart in Winter. At least with respect to cinema. I simply do not to experience them as others would seem to describe their own. Love in particular. It’s all part and parcel though of the mystery of human consciousness. Why this way and not some other? And why does it exist at all given the seeming mindless nature of all other matter?

IMDb

[b]Author Paddy Chayefsky disowned this movie. Even though the dialogue in the screenplay was almost verbatim from his novel he reportedly objected to the general tone of the film and the shouting of his precious words by the actors, this conflicting with director Ken Russell typical style of wanting heightened performances. Paddy Chayefsky had not seen the film before he took his name off the credits, the script being credited to “Sidney Aaron”, a pseudonym for Chayefsky, the two names being Chayefsky’s real first and middle names. Director Ken Russell and Chayefsky fought constantly during production, Russell maintaining that almost nothing was changed from Chayefsky’s script and stating that he was “impossible to please.”

In a 1981 interview with ‘The New York Times’, actress Blair Brown said many of the actors and crew tried out the isolation tank. William Hurt actually hallucinated, while Brown found it very peaceful.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_States
trailer: youtu.be/MbYT3UclhNY

ALTERED STATES [1980]
Directed by Ken Russell

[b]Arthur: What are we looking for?
Eddie: I don’t know…yet.

…

Emily: What sort of work do you do?
Eddie: Toxic metabolite stuff. We’re replicating Heath’s and Friedhoff’s strategies trying to find maverick substances specific to schizophrenia.
Emily: So you don’t think schizophrenia can be reduced to a single etiological agent?
Eddie: I’m not even sure it’s a disease.
Emily: You think madness is simply another state of consciousness?
Eddie: There’s a body of evidence to support that.

…

Eddie [to Emily]: I’ve always been interested in interior experiences, especially the religious experience. The only reason I’m working with schizophrenics now is the religious experience is so significant in schizophrenia.

…

Eddie [telling Emily about the death of his father]: I stopped believing in God. It was very dramatic. My father died a very protracted and painful death of cancer. I was 16 years old and very fond of my father. For the last few weeks he was in a coma. One day I thought I heard him say something. I leaned over him…my ear an inch away from his lips. “Did you say something, Pop?”. Then I heard the word he was desparately trying to say, a soft hiss of a word. He was saying…“terrible”…“terrible”. So the end was terrible, even for good people like my father. So the purpose of all our suffering is only more suffering. By dinnertime I had dispensed with God altogether. I never had another vision.
[pause]
Eddie: I haven’t told anyone this in ten years. I’m telling you now because I think you have a right to know what kind of a nut you might be getting mixed up with here.
Emily: Arthur was right. You are a fascinating bastard.

…

Emily: You are a Faust freak, Eddie. You would sell your soul to find the great Truth. Well, human life doesn’t have great truths. We’re born in doubt, die in doubt. We spend our lives persuading ourselves we’re alive. And one way we do that is we love each other.

…

Eddie [to Emily]: There’s a lot of religious delusion among acute schizophrenics. Some guys say schizophrenics are physically different from the rest of us.

…

Eddie: Emily’s quite content to go on with this life. She insists she’s in love with me - whatever that is. What she means is she prefers the senseless pain we inflict on each other to the pain we would otherwise inflict on ourselves. But I’m not afraid of that solitary pain. In fact, if I don’t strip myself of all this clatter and clutter and ridiculous ritual, I shall go out of my fucking mind. Does that answer your question, Arthur?
Arthur: What question was that?
Eddie: You asked me why I was getting divorced.
Arthur: Oh, listen, it’s your life.

…

Eddie: What dignifies the Yogic practices is that the belief system itself is not truly religious. There is no Buddhist God per se. It is the Self, the individual Mind, that contains immortality and ultimate truth.
Emily: What the hell is not religious about that? You’ve simply replaced God with the Original Self.
Eddie: Yes, but we’ve localized it. Now I know where the Self is. It’s in our own minds. It’s a form of human energy. Our atoms are six billion years old. We’ve got six billion years of memory in our minds.

…

Eddie: Memory is energy! It doesn’t disappear - it’s still in there. There’s a physiological pathway to our earlier consciousnesses. There has to be; and I’m telling you it’s in the goddamned limbic system.
Mason: You’re a whacko!
Eddie: What’s whacko about it, Mason? I’m a man in search of his true self. How archetypically American can you get? We’re all trying to fulfill ourselves, understand ourselves, get in touch with ourselves, face the reality of ourselves, explore ourselves, expand ourselves. Ever since we dispensed with God we’ve got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life.[/b]

Hear, hear?

[b]Eddie [to Mason]: It wasn’t an ischemic attack! It wasn’t a seizure. You saw the x-rays, Mason. There was clearly something anterior to the larynx that looked like a laryngal sack. That’s strictly simian! I obviously regressed! To some quasi-simian creature.

…

Mason: It looks to me like the architecture is slightly abnormal.
Dr. Wissenschaft [looking at the x-ray of Eddie]: Somewhat? This guy’s a fucking gorilla!

…

Emily: He doesn’t love me. He never loved me. I was never real to him. Nothing in the human experience is real to him.

…

Eddie: You saved me. You redeemed me from the pit. I was in it, Emily. I was in that ultimate moment of terror that is the beginning of life. It is nothing. Simple, hideous nothing. The final truth of all things is that there is no final Truth. Truth is what’s transitory. It’s human life that is real. I don’t want to frighten you, Emily, but what I’m trying to tell you is that moment of terror is a real and living horror, living and growing within me now, and the only thing that keeps it from devouring me is you.
Emily: Why don’t you just come back to us?
Eddie: It’s too late. I don’t think I can get it out of me anymore. I can’t live with it. The pain is too great.[/b]

Only apparently it’s not. All we need is…love?

[iambiguous]

Even a film that succumbs to fantasy or the supernatural can manage to provoke an interesting discussion. This one did. For a few days anyway.

I have never believed in werewolves. But it is also entirely true that human existence is just the end of the line [for now] with respect to the evolution of life on earth. The wolf is locked up inside all of us somewhere. The limbic system for example.

But then so is testoserone. In men, in particular.

This is all about “the male battle”. Making your mark and then marking your terriotory. And nothing brings out this “survival of the fittest” mentality quite like capitalism. But not all men measure up, do they? But the fantasy here really revolves around folks [men and women] who have to take shit from people they have no respect for. And then being to imagine themselves turning it all around.

Of course, you can’t help but wonder: If this stuff was all real would I want that wolf bite? Oh, yeah. I wouldn’t think twice about it.

Alas, the last third of this movie is where it all just crumples. Oddly enough, they reshot the last third because they were unsatified with the original footage. I can only shudder to think what that must have been like. It started out as a psychological thriller that provoked you into thinking about human behavior and then devolved into a run of the mill horror film. Why do I suspect that’s what the producers insisted on.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_(film
trailer: youtu.be/JBwwLfog4Yo

WOLF [1994]
Directed by Mike Nichols

[b]Charlotte: How did you get him to sign the contracts?
Will: I did it the old fashioned way.
Charlotte: What do you mean?
Will: I begged.

…

Party guest: I do not think of Time-Warner as a multinational media conglomerate but as decent caring people because I just do not believe that money always implies ruthless ambition, Mr. Alden. Am I insane?
Alden: I would say so, yes.

…

Alden: Look, Will, it’s nothing personal. You are clearly a man of taste and individuality, which I prize. But these days, not only in corporate America but all around the globe, taste and individuality are actually something of a handicap.
Will: Well, just out of curiosity, on what basis did you pick my successor, vulgarity and conformity?

…

Laura [to Will]: What are you, the last civilized man?

…

Laura: My father just fired you, didn’t he?
Will: Demoted actually. I’ve been offered a choice between no job and a job no one would want.
Laura: So what will you do?
Will: I’ll probably take the job no one would want. I don’t have the courage to be jobless at my age.

…

Charlotte: What else can you do without hands?
Will: We’ll see.

…

Mary: Is the worm turning, Mr. Randall?
Will: The worm has turned and it is now packing an Uzi, Mary.
Mary: It’s about fucking time, sir.

…

Stewart: I love you Will. I know how ridiculous that sounds but I do…You’ll never forgive me for this will you?
Will: No.
Stewart: Okay, but still I would like your permission to ask Alden to forget about that Eastern European thing…and keep you on as senior editorial consultant. Will you let me do that?
Will: I’m going to get you Stewart.

…

Roy: Two things, how many investors do we have?
Will: I don’t know. Haven’t called any yet.
Roy: But you want me to say it anyway?
Will: Yes.
Roy: Second thing: Is any of this true?
Will: Not yet.
Roy: You are my God.

…

Aldin: It doesn’t really matter to my daughter what your name is Mr. Randall. What is important to her is that you are unemployed and inappropriate and that I don’t approve of you.

…

Will: What do you do?
Laura: Why do you care?
Will: I don’t. I was just making polite conversation.
Laura: I’d rather not discuss what I do.
Will: You know, I think I understand what you’re like now. You’re very beautiful and you think men are only interested in you because you’re beautiful, but you want them to be interested in you because you’re you. The problem is, aside from all that beauty, you’re not very interesting. You’re rude, you’re hostile, you’re sullen, you’re withdrawn. I know you want someone to look past all that at the real person underneath but the only reason anyone would bother to look past all that is because you’re beautful. Ironic, isn’t it? In an odd way you’re your own problem.
Laura: Sorry. Wrong line. I am not taken aback by your keen insight and suddenly challenged by you.

…

Dr. Alezias: I was recently told that I am dying…speaking of mystical and terifying experiences…I would like you to bite me.
Will: What?
Dr. Alezias: I would like you to bite me. I ask you to honor me with your bite. And I too will become a demon wolf.
Will: You’d rather be damned than die?
Dr. Alezias: Damnation is not a part of my system of my beliefs. And it feels good to be a wolf, doesn’t it?

…

Stewart [watching Will piss on his shoes]: What are you crazy?!
Will: No. I’m just marking my territory, and you got in the way.
Stewart [wiping his shoes]: Nice. Real nice. Suede shoes.
Will: Asparagus.

…

Charlotte: I never loved Stewart. It was a mistake Will. I’m going to talk to him. Stewart, never for one moment, meant anything to me.
Will: You think that makes it better? That you betrayed me over and over again with a man that ment nothing to you? To know that you betrayed me for nothing?[/b]

The rest is “the last third of the film”.

[iambiguous]

There’s no way I can really address this film without collapsing into cynicism. After all, my own moral and political convictions have long since fractured and then fragmented into splinters of what they once were. I don’t see the glass either half full or half empty anymore. I see it shattered on the floor in a thousand pieces.

All that’s left here [for me] is the “rule of law” and “democracy”. Both predicated on moderation, negociation and compromise. Only any attempt on my part to situate this “out in the world” brings me back full circle: to the futility embedded in cynicism. And would I really be willing to die for them?

What these folks are against – fascism, repression, cruelty, intolerance, oppression, mindless conformity etc. – seems clear enough. But what exactly would they put in their place? And how would they grapple with the historical reality of political economy? Instead, it’s all about the idea of justice and freedom and fairness…and things said to be for the good of us all.

Even the guy who wrote the book is appalled:

In the original graphic novel, V’s cause was anarchy, not freedom. Alan Moore was very critical of the movie for changing what he called the “anarchy vs. fascism” structure of his graphic novel into what he saw as an exploration of “American neo-liberalism vs. American neo-conservatism” that should have been set in the U.S. instead of Britain.

But either way this film makes no bones about it: violence is a part of the agenda. Those in power will simply never allow things to be otherwise. But those in power here [like those who oppose them] are more like cartoon characters than anything else. Everything is black and white, good and evil. The only real ambiguity seems to revolve around the relationship between means and ends. In particular what the “good guys” are willing to rationalize in order to bring the “bad guys” down. Even torture is okay.

After all, for The Cause you die not only with dignity…but with a feeling of serenity. A noble death. An entirely scripted death in an entirely scripted revolution. I’m sure the powers that be were shaking in their boots when this film came out. On the other hand, the film was distributed by Warner Bros. Studios, a subsidiary of Time-Warner.

These guys: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film
guy fawkes at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes
guy fawkes night at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night

V FOR VENDETTA [2005]
Directed by James McTeigue

[b]Evey [voiceover]: Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot… But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and I know, in 1605, he attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. But who was he really? What was he like? We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I’ve witnessed first hand the power of ideas, I’ve seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them… but you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it… ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love…And it is not an idea that I miss, it is a man…A man that made me remember the Fifth of November. A man that I will never forget.

…

Prothero [on the tube]: USA… Ulcered Sphincter of Arse-erica, I mean what else can you say? Here was a country that had everything, absolutely everything. And now, 20 years later, is what? The world’s biggest leper colony. Why? Godlessness. Let me say that again… Godlessness. It wasn’t the war they started. It wasn’t the plague they created. It was Judgement. No one escapes their past. No one escapes Judgement. You think he’s not up there? You think he’s not watching over this country? How else can you explain it? He tested us, but we came through. We did what we had to do. Islington. Enfield. I was there, I saw it all. Immigrants, Muslims, homosexuals, terrorists. Disease-ridden degenerates. They had to go. Strength through unity. Unity through faith. I’m a God-fearing Englishman and I’m goddamn proud of it!

…

Tweed Coat Fingerman [to Evey]: By sun-up if you’re not the sorriest piece of ass in all’a London…you’ll certainly be the sorest!

…

V: I can assure you I mean you no harm.
Evey: Who are you?
V: Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask.
Evey: Well I can see that.
V: Of course you can. I’m not questioning your powers of observation; I’m merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.
Evey: Oh. Right.

…

V: Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.[/b]

Top that Zorro!

[b]The pitch:
V: Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone’s death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you’ve seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.

…

V [to Evey]: …A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. Alone, a symbol is meaningless, but with enough people, blowing up a building can change the world.
Evey: I wish I could believe that was possible. But everytime I’ve seen the world change it has been for the worse.

…

V [as “The Count of Monte Cristo” ends]: Did you like it?
Evey: Yes. But it made me feel sorry for Mercedes.
V: Why?
Evey: Because he cared more about revenge than he did about her.

…

Evey [watching a news report about Prothero’s death]: V, yesterday I couldn’t find my ID. You didn’t take it, did you?
V: Would you prefer a lie or the truth?
Evey: Did you have anything to do with… that?
V: Yes, I killed him.
Evey: You…? Oh god.
V: You’re upset.
Evey: I’m upset? You just said you killed Lewis Prothero!
V: I might have killed the fingerman who attacked you, but I heard no objection then.
Evey: What?
V: Violence can be used for good.
Evey: What are you talking about?
V: Justice.
Evey: Oh. And are you going to kill more people?
V: Yes.

…

Delia: Oppenheimer was able to change more than the course of a war. He changed the entire course of human history. Is it wrong to hold on to that kind of hope?
V: I have not come for what you hoped to do. I’ve come for what you did.

…

Delia: You’ve come to kill me, haven’t you?
V: Yes.
Delia: Thank God.

…

Delia [V gives her a rose]: Are you going to kill me now?
V: I killed you 10 minutes ago.
[shows her hypodermic needle]
V: While you slept.
Delia: Is there any pain?
V: No.
Delia: Thank you. Is it too late to apologize?
V: Never.
Delia: I’m so sorry.
[she dies]

…

Evey: Is everything a joke to you, Gordon?
Gordon: Only the things that matter.

…

Valerie: I know there’s no way I can convince you this is not one of their tricks, but I don’t care. I am me. My name is Valerie. I don’t think I’ll live much longer, and I wanted to tell someone about my life. This is the only autobiography that I will ever write and God, I’m writing it on toilet paper.

…

Valerie: I remember how different became dangerous.

…

Sutler: I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of chaos and oblivion. I want everyone to remember why they need us!

…

Dominic: What do you think will happen?
Finch: What usually happens when people without guns stand up to people with guns.[/b]

And when the people with the guns stand up to the people writing the script?

V [to Evey]: The time has come for me to meet my maker and to repay him in kind for all that he’s done.

[iambiguous]

Who does this better than Altman? You stick a whole bunch of different characters into a whole bunch of different narratives and then somehow when the end credits scroll up they all seem to fit into…

But that is always up to us isn’t?

God. Government. Politics. Celebrity. The Entertainment Industry. Love. Sex. All this and so much more. And in lots and lots and lots and lots of cuts.

Of course the times have changed considerably since back then. In some respects we may as well be living on a different planet. But you’ll recognize all the parts that will probably never change. Or have actually gotten considerably worse.

These “show business” folks are pure plastic. On the other hand, they do have to put on an act for the “fans”. But take all that away and they still don’t go down a whole lot deeper. Or maybe it’s me—I just don’t get it.

As for the music, well, some folks like it more than others.

Look for the second coming of Tocqueville.

IMDb

[b]The film was very much improvised by the actors, who used the screenplay only as a guide. They spent a great amount of their time in character, and the movie was shot almost entirely in sequence.

Robert Altman originally wanted Susan Anspach to play Barbara Jean, but she refused because she wanted more money. Ready to film in Nashville with no one cast in the role, Altman at the last minute offered it to Ronee Blakley, who was working as a back-up singer in Nashville at the time and had contributed some songs to the film. Blakley ended up receiving an Academy Award nomination for her performance.

Faced with an impending rainstorm which threatened to ruin filming of Barbara Jean’s assassination (with no recourse, as the production’s budget had run dry), Robert Altman reportedly screamed at the sky, ordering the rain to stop. The rain did indeed stop, and filming of the scene was completed.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_(film
trailer: youtu.be/m3wi0GUqF-U

NASHVILLE [1975]
Directed by Robert Altman

[b]Opal: Good Lord love a duck!
Bud: This is a choir… a black choir… from, uh, part of… from Fisk University here in town.
Opal: Good Lord! The lady singing is… is she a missionary?
Bud Hamilton: No, she’s not. She’s a gospel singer. She’s the wife of our attorney.
Opal: I was making a documentary in Kenya… and there was this marvelous woman who was a missionary. That’s why I asked if she was a missionary. She was sensational. She was converting Kukuyos by the dozens. She was trying to convert Masais. Of course, they were hopeless. They have their own sort of religion. Look at that. That rhythm is fantastic. It’s funny… You can tell it’s come down in the genes… through ages and ages and hundreds of years, but it’s there. I mean, take off those robes and one is in… in… in darkest Africa. I can just see their naked, frenzied bodies… dancing to the beat of… Do they carry on like that in church?
Bud: Depends on which church you go to.

…

Hal Philip Walker: Who do you think is running Congress? Farmers? Engineers? Teachers? Businessmen? No, my friends. Congress is run by lawyers. A lawyer is trained for two things and two things only. To clarify - that’s one. And to confuse - that’s the other. He does whichever is to his client’s advantage. Did you ever ask a lawyer the time of day? He told you how to make a watch, didn’t he? Ever ask a lawyer how to get to Mr. Jones’ house in the country? You got lost, didn’t you? Congress is composed of five hundred and thirty-five individuals. Two hundred and eighty-eight are lawyers. And you wonder what’s wrong in Congress. No wonder we often know how to make a watch, but we don’t know the time of day.

…

Opal: I need something like this for my documentary. I need it. It’s… It’s America. Those cars smashing into each other… and all those mangled corpses…

…

Albuquerque: See, what happened is, he made a million dollars on a fly swatter, because it had a red dot in the center.

…

Star: You look like a guy I was in the navy with. He wouldn’t bathe, so we had to pee in his bed to get him discharged.

…

Lady Pearl: That’s John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Well, he…he took the whole South, except for Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky. And there’s a reason he didn’t take Tennessee. But he got 481,453 votes, and the asshole got 556,577 votes. Now, the problem we got here… is anti-Catholicism. These dumbheads around here, they’re all…Baptists and whatever, I don’t know. Even to teach ‘em to make change over the bar you gotta crack their skulls, let alone teach ‘em to vote for the Catholic…just because he happens to be the better man. And all I remember was just lookin’ at that TV set and seein’ it all, seein’ that great fat-bellied sheriff sayin’, "Ruby, you son of a bitch. " And Oswald…and her in her little pink suit. And then comes Bobby. Oh, I worked for him. I worked here, I worked all over the country, I worked out in California, out in Stockton. Well, Bobby came here and spoke and he went down to Memphis and then he even went out to Stockton California and spoke off the Santa Fe train at the old Santa Fe depot. Oh, he was a beautiful man. He was not much like John, you know. He was more puny-like. But all the time I was workin’ for him, I was just so scared - inside, you know, just scared.

…

Opal [In an automobile junkyard]: I’m wandering in a graveyard. The dead here have no crosses, nor tombstones, nor wreaths to sing of their past glory, but lie in rotting, decaying, rusty heaps, their innards ripped out by greedy, vulturous hands. Their vast, vacant skeletons… sadly sighing to the sky. The rust on their bodies… is the color of dried blood. Dried blood. I’m reminded of…of an elephant’s secret burial ground. Yes. Cette aire de mystère. Cette essence de I’irréel. These cars are trying to communicate. O cars, are you trying to tell me something? Are you trying to convey to me some secret…
Kenny Fraiser: What… Excuse me?
Opal: Oh, excuse me! I thought I was completely alone. How embarrassing. Oh, you’re a musician!

…

Opal [speaking into a micro recorder as she walks through a school bus parking lot]: The buses! The buses are empty and look almost menacing, threatening, as so many yellow dragons watching me with their hollow, vacant eyes. I wonder how many little black and white children have yellow nightmares, their own special brand of fear for the yellow peril…Damn it, it’s got to be more…positive. No, more negative! Start again. Yellow is the color of caution. No. Yellow is the color of cowardice. Yellow is the color of sunshine. And yet I see very little sunshine in the lives of all the little black and white children. I see their lives, rather, as a study in grayness, a mixture of black and…Oh, Christ, no. That’s fascist. Yellow! Yellow, yellow, yellow. Yellow fever…

…

Barbara Jean [she finishes singing a song at her concert]: Thank you. I wanna tell you all a little secret which you might not know, and that is that last night I thanked my lucky stars that I could be here at all to sing for ya. I heard on the radio this little boy, nine years old. Sometimes a deejay’ll play a tune and ask everybody to phone in and say how they like it. I was listenin’, and this little nine-year-old called in. The song had voices in the background, like the way they use backup voices these days, soundin’ like little munchkins. He called up, the deejay said, “How old are you, son?” The boy said, "I’m nine, and I think it’s gonna be a hit. " The deejay said, “Why?” "Because it had those chipmunks in it. " And I thought that was so cute, because, well, I can sing like a munchkin myself. I’m real fond of The Wizard of Oz. Plus, I live out, you know, just a ways off of Interstate on the road to Chattanooga. So you can see why I kinda related to that. I think me and the boys are gonna strike up another tune for you now. Let’s go, boys. I think there’s a storm… seems like it’s a-brewin’. That’s what my grandaddy used to say before he lost his hearin’. Once he got deaf, he never talked much no more. ‘Cept sometimes he’d say “Oh, gosh” or “Durn it” or “My word!” My granny’d go around clickin’ her teeth to the radio all day. Boy, was she a lot of fun, and cooked my favorite, roast beef. She was a sweetheart. She raised chickens too. She, um… Did you ever hear a chicken sound? You know how chickens go? Here, chick, chick, chick. Here, chick, chick, chick. Anyway, I guess we’d better strike up this tune before it’s too late. Okay, boys. The first job I ever really got… Grandma… She’s the one who clacked her false teeth to the radio. She taught my mama how to sing, and my mama taught me. One time she took me, ‘cause we was gonna get a new Frigidaire. She took me to the Frigidaire store where the man was advertisin’. This record was goin’ ‘round, and Mama told him I knew how to sing. He said, "If she learns this tune, I’ll give y’all a quarter. " So Mama and I went home… And then what happened? Let’s see, I think… Uh, yeah. We went home and I learned both sides of the record in half an hour. We went back and told him that I’d learned ‘em, and he said, “Let me hear,” so I sang both sides of the record instead of just one. So he gave us cents, and we went across the street and had us a soda. Ever since then I been workin’. I don’t… I think ever since then I been workin’ and doin’ my… - Come on, come on. - Supportin’myself. Anyway…
Barnett [comes up on stage and starts to pull her from the microphone]: Hey, hey. Hey, hey.
Barbara Jean: Am I all right? Am I all right?
Barnett: Oh, you’re fine, darlin’.

…

Opal: What is your name?
NormanL Norman.
Opal: Norman. Please, Norman, I…I make it a point never to gossip with servants.

…

Howard K. Smith [on a television news broadcast]: Little more than a year ago, a man named Hal Phillip Walker excited a group of college students with some questions. “Have you stood on a high and windy hill and heard the acorns drop and roll? Have you walked in the valley beside the brook, walked alone and remembered? Does Christmas smell like oranges to you?” Within a commencement speech, such questions were fitting, perhaps, but hardly the material with which to launch a presidential campaign. Even those who pay close attention to politics probably saw Hal Phillip Walker and his Replacement Party as a bit of frost on the hillside. Summer, if not late spring, would surely do away with all that. Well, now that summer, along with presidential primaries, is heavy upon us and the frost is still there, perhaps we should take a closer look. Hal Phillip Walker is, in a way, a mystery man. Out of nowhere with a handful of students and scarcely any pros, he’s managed to win three presidential primaries and is given a fighting chance to take a fourth - Tennessee. A win in that state would take on added significance, for only once in the last fifty years has Tennessee failed to vote for the winning presidential candidate. No doubt many Americans, especially party-liners, wish that Hal Phillip Walker would go away, disappear like the natural frost and come again at some more convenient season. But wherever he may be going, it seems sure that Hal Phillip Walker is not going away. For there is genuine appeal, and it must be related to the raw courage of this man. Running for President, willing to battle vast oil companies, eliminate subsidies to farmers, tax churches, abolish the Electoral College, change the National Anthem, and remove lawyers from government - especially from Congress. Well at this point, it would be wise to say most of us don’t know the answer to Hal Phillip Walker. But to answer one of his questions, as a matter of fact, Christmas has always smelled like oranges to me.

…

Albuquerque [singing]: It don’t worry me, no, it don’t worry me. You may say that I ain’t free but it don’t worry me.[/b]

[iambiguous]

The true story of a “mild-mannered” guy who needed some excitement in his life. And the story being true always makes the film more interesting for me.

Gambling. I just do not get it. And, for folks like Mahowny, the money seems to be beside the point. At least until they lose a ton of it. Instead, it is the “thrill” they feel doing it. But this guy ain’t exactly a “whale”. Not unless you count the bank’s money. Once he starts using that though the sky is the limit. He does, after all, have access to $20 million. And boy do the casinos have milking suckers like him down to a science!

And boy does he gamble! He bets on everything: horses, sporting events, casino games. He doesn’t really even make the effort to do it intelligently. For example, he bets a thousand on all the National League home teams winning, and a thousand on all the American League teams losing. Or he bets wholesale on all the “underdogs” winning.

And dice, the roulette wheel, blackjack? It’s all basically luck. Where’s the thrill in that?

Ironically enough this guy works in a bank [as the assistant manager] and banks are always gambling too. Only for them it is even more of a sure thing. Unless they take the gambling to Wall Street. And even then all they have to be is “too big to fail”.

Wow. At first, I didn’t even recognize Minnie Driver

IMDb

[b]The real person Dan Mahowny is based on is now a consultant for a company that investigates fraud. And while this is not technically a remake, the film The Borrower is based on the same true story. The character’s name was changed to Dan Mahowny, in part because his real name (Brian Molony) was very similar to the name of the Canadian Prime Minister at the time (Brian Mulroney).

The movie’s budget was about ten million dollars, which was also roughly the amount that the real person Dan Mahowney is based on stole from the bank he worked for.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owning_Mahowny
trailer: youtu.be/YH8mh8e8L_c

OWNING MAHOWNY [2003]
Directed by Richard Kwietniowski

[b]Psychologist [to Mahowny]: Some folks believe that everyone has a public life, a private life and a secret life.

…

Frank [to Dan]: Do I make you do business with me?

…

Casino employee [watching Mahowny bet]: He’s making some pretty big bets…on impulse. No consistent pattern.
Casino manager: My kind of guy.

…

Dan [to Doug]: Would you take these chips, please. And don’t give them back to me no matter what I say.

…

Marvin [to Dan who just lost 300,000 dollars]: You want some ribs? Got plenty. But no sauce.

…

Casino employee: He told her he was only interested in Lady Luck.
Casino manager: No sex, no booze, no drugs. All he cares about is the next hand. He’s a beauty! I love him!
Casino employee: The iceman.

…

Frank [to his partner]: Do you know why he wants to win? So he has the money to keep losing. How fucked up is that?

…

Dan: How much for the bags?
Car Rental Girl: They’re free for customers.
Dan: Great, can I have one?
Car Rental Girl: Well, you’re not a customer, so…
Dan: Okay… how much for the bags?

…

Casino employee #1: Will you look at this? The Iceman is playing $70,000 a hand! He’s busted the table!
Casino employee #2: Holy shit!

…

Investigator: You’ve got a gambling problem, right?
Dan: No…
[chuckles]
Dan: No, sir.
Investigator: Come on. You didn’t get a buzz out of it?
Dan: I have a…financial problem. A shortfall.

…

Psychologist: How would you rate the thrill you got from gambling, on a scale of one to 100?
Dan: Um…hundred.
Psychologist: And what about the biggest thrill you’ve ever had outside of gambling?
Dan: Twenty.[/b]

Here’s the thing though: He never looks thrilled. Even win he’s winning. How he mostly looks is fevered.

Ttile card: Dan Mahowny received a 6 year sentence for fraud. He married Belinda on a three day pass in Enterprise, Ontario. He has not placed a bet since his arrest.

[iambiguous]

It might be said this movie is about a lot more than baseball. The foibles embedded deeply in the human condition for example. And the parts of life that just ain’t fair. In fact, there are parts here that just break your heart.

Another Antonio Salieri. He loves what he does but he is just not gifted enough to be anywhere near as good as he needs to be to go all the way to the top. Instead, the gods have the gall to stick him with the task of helping management nurture a moron who is so blessed.

And then there is Annie. Trust me: she knows a lot more about life than just baseball too. And all the other stuff about her is to die for.

It’s a peek inside a world that most of us know little about. And maybe because we don’t really care to. But in some respects the baseball here is more real than the the stuff in the “show.” After all, for some of folks here it really is all about the love of the game.

And what this is is a great love story. Both on and off the field.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_Durham
trailer: youtu.be/kqqdEwFz4mU

BULL DURHAM [1988]
Written and directed by Ron Shelton

[b]Annie [voiceover]: I believe in the Church of Baseball. I’ve tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn’t work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there’s no guilt in baseball, and it’s never boring… which makes it like sex. There’s never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn’t have the best year of his career. Making love is like hitting a baseball: you just gotta relax and concentrate. Besides, I’d never sleep with a player hitting under .250… not unless he had a lot of RBIs and was a great glove man up the middle. You see, there’s a certain amount of life wisdom I give these boys. I can expand their minds. Sometimes when I’ve got a ballplayer alone, I’ll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him, and the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. 'Course, a guy’ll listen to anything if he thinks it’s foreplay. I make them feel confident, and they make me feel safe, and pretty. 'Course, what I give them lasts a lifetime; what they give me lasts 142 games. Sometimes it seems like a bad trade. But bad trades are part of baseball - now who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, for God’s sake? It’s a long season and you gotta trust it. I’ve tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.

…

Annie: Right, honey, let’s get down to it. How was Ebby Calvin LaLoosh?
Millie: Well, he fucks like he pitches - sorta all over the place.

…

Larry: Who’s this? Who are you?
Crash: I’m the player to be named later.

…

Crash: Well, my triple-A contract gets bought out so I can hold some flavor-of-the-month’s dick in the bus leagues, is that it? Well, fuck this fucking game!

…

Nuke: I don’t hit no man first.
Crash: All right, then…
[he tosses him a baseball]
Crash: … hit me in the chest with that.
Nuke: I’d kill you!
Crash: Yeah? From what I hear, you couldn’t hit water if you fell out of a fucking boat.

…

Crash: Come on, Rookie, show us that million dollar arm…'cause I got a pretty good idea about that 5 cent head of yours.

…

Crash: I’m Crash Davis your new catcher. You just got lesson number one: don’t think; it can only hurt the ball club.

…

Annie: These are the ground rules. I hook up with one guy a season. Usually takes me a couple weeks to pick the guy - kinda my own spring training. And, well, you two are the most promising prospects of the season so far, so I just thought we should kinda get to know each other.
Crash: Time out. Why do you get to choose?
Annie: What?
Crash: Why do you get to choose? I mean, why don’t I get to choose, why doesn’t he get to choose?
Annie: Well, actually, nobody on this planet ever really chooses each other. I mean, it’s all a question of quantum physics, molecular attraction, and timing. Why, there are laws we don’t understand that bring us together and tear us apart. Uh, it’s like pheromones. You get three ants together, they can’t do dick. You get 300 million of them, they can build a cathedral.
[Crash laughs]
Nuke: So is somebody going to go to bed with somebody or what?
Annie: Honey, you are a regular nuclear meltdown. You better cool off. Ha ha, ha ha!
[to Crash as he stands up]
Annie: Oh, where are you going?
Crash: After 12 years in the minor leagues, I don’t try out. Besides, uh, I don’t believe in quantum physics when it comes to matters of the heart.
Annie: What do you believe in, then?
Crash: Well, I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.
[pauses then winks and walks away]
Crash: Goodnight.
Annie Savoy: Crash…
Nuke: Hey, Annie, what’s all this molecule stuff?

…

Nuke [interrupting Annie who has him tied to the bed and is reading Walt Whitman to him]: Excuse me…are we gonna fuck or what?

…

Larry: Is Annie as good as they say?
Nuke: No, man, we didn’t fuck. She read poetry to me all night. It’s more tiring than fucking.

…

Crash [to Nuke]: Your shower shoes have fungus on them. You’ll never make it to the bigs with fungus on your shower shoes. Think classy, you’ll be classy. If you win 20 in the show, you can let the fungus grow back and the press’ll think you’re colorful. Until you win 20 in the show, however, it means you are a slob.

…

Annie: Listen, sweetheart, you shouldn’t listen to what a woman says when she’s in the throes of passion. They say the darndest things.
Nuke: Yeah, you said “Crash”!
Annie: Honey, would you rather I were making love to him using your name, or making love to you using his name?

…

Crash: Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls - it’s more democratic.

…

Nuke: Why’s he always calling me meat? I’m the one driving a Porsche.

…

Nuke: God, that sucker teed off on that like he knew I was gonna throw a fastball!
Crash: He did know.
Nuke: How?
Crash: I told him.

…

Skip: You guys. You lollygag the ball around the infield. You lollygag your way down to first. You lollygag in and out of the dugout. You know what that makes you? Larry!
Larry: Lollygaggers!
Skip: Lollygaggers.
Skip: What’s our record, Larry?
Larry: Eight and sixteen.
Skip: Eight… and sixteen. How’d we ever win eight?
Larry: It’s a miracle.
Skip: It’s a miracle. This… is a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball.

…

Nuke: How come you don’t like me?
Crash: Because you don’t respect yourself, which is your problem. But you don’t respect the game, and that’s my problem. You got a gift.
Nuke: I got a what?
Crash: You got a gift. When you were a baby, the Gods reached down and turned your right arm into a thunderbolt. You got a Hall-of-Fame arm, but you’re pissing it away.
Nuke: I ain’t pissing nothing away. I got a Porsche already; a 911 with a quadrophonic Blaupunkt.
Crash: Christ, you don’t need a quadrophonic Blaupunkt! What you need is a curveball! In the show, everyone can hit heat.
Nuke: Well, how would you know? YOU been in the majors?
Crash: Yeah, I’ve been in the majors.
Player: You were in the show?
Crash: Yeah, I was in the show. I was in the show for 21 days once - the 21 greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains.

…

Nuke: You told him I was gonna throw a deuce, didn’t you?
Crash: Yup

…

Crash: It’s time to work on your interviews.
Nuke: My interviews? What do I gotta do?
Crash: You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re gonna have to study them, you’re gonna have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down: “We gotta play it one day at a time.”
Nuke: Got to play… it’s pretty boring.
Crash: 'Course it’s boring, that’s the point. Write it down. Write, write – “I just wanta give It my best shot and, Good Lord willing, things’ll work out.”

…

Nuke: The other day Crash called a woman’s pu… pussy… um, well, you know how the hair is kind of in a V-shape?
Annie: Yes, I do.
Nuke: Well, he called it the Bermuda Triangle. He said that a man could get lost in there and never be heard from again.

…

Crash: I never told him to stay out of your bed.
Annie: You most certainly did.
Crash: I never told him to stay out of your bed.
Annie: Yes you did.
Crash: I told him that a player on a streak has to respect the streak.
Annie: Oh fine.
Crash: You know why? Because they don’t - they don’t happen very often.
Annie: Right.
Crash: If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting laid, or because you’re not getting laid, or because you wear women’s underwear, then you are! And you should know that!
[long pause]
Crash: Come on, Annie, think of something clever to say, huh? Something full of magic, religion, bullshit. Come on, dazzle me.
Annie: I want you.

…

Teddy [broadcasting on the radio]: I’ve never seen Crash so angry. And frankly, sports fans, he used a word that’s a no-no with umpires.
Millie [after Annie snaps off the radio]: Crash must’ve called the guy a cocksucker.
Annie: Mmmmm. God, he’s so romantic.

…

Annie: Oh, my.

…

Annie [voiceover]: Baseball may be a religion full of magic, cosmic truth, and the fundamental ontological riddles of our time, but it’s also a job.

…

Annie [voiceover]: I stopped worrying about Nuke. Somehow I knew nothing would stop him. The world is made for people who aren’t cursed with self awareness.[/b]

[iambiguous]

This is one more film the plot of which revolves around the gap between the way folks imagine the government works and the way it actually does “behind the scenes” and among those at or near the top. Is it realistic? For someone like me that is pretty much beside the point. The point is the shadow government does exist. It’s only a question of just how egregious the gap is.

The current scandal revolving around the NSA for example. What we know about it now versus how much of it is still under the water? Let’s just hope things don’t get as fucked up as they are here.

This is a thriller. But it is a David Mamet thriller. So don’t expect a lot of explosions. But apparently these “soldiers” are pretty much authorized to do whatever it takes to get the president’s daughter back. Only some things [as they say] are not at all what they seem. And we can only guess how far removed it might be from the real thing.

One thing for sure: There aren’t going to be many abductees like Laura Newton.

This is [incidentally?] about human sex trafficking. Countless numbers of young girls abducted and turned into sex slaves. And God sees all.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking
stats in the US alone: thecoveringhouse.org/act/resourc … mentation/

Is the plot farfetched? Sure, but aren’t they all.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartan_(film
trailer: youtu.be/IDzM_hQ54Wg

SPARTAN [2004]
Written and directed by David Mamet

[b]Scott: I’m looking for my niece…
Bartender: Oh yeah? 'Cause a lot of guys come in here looking for someone else’s niece…

…

Curtis: I fucked up. I tried to help.
Scott: Yeah, well, that’s usually when people do fuck up.

…

Scott: I’m just a worker bee.

…

Grace: Nice knife.
Scott: Yeah. Got it off an East German fella.
Grace: He give it to ya for a gift?
Scott: No. As I recall, he was… rather reluctant to part with it.

…

Curtis: …there’s a slave trade going on of American women. They sending you in?
Scott: We’ll leave that to our betters.
Curtis: Why don’t you ask them?
Scott: Why would I want to know? I ain’t a planner, I ain’t a thinker. I never wanted to be. You got to set your motherfucker to receive. Listen to me. They don’t go through the door, we don’t ask why. That’s not a cost, it’s benefit. Because we get to travel light. They tell me where to go. They tell me what to do when I get there.[/b]

The perfect fucking soldier for the powers that be: Yes Sir! It’s time for his wake up call.

[b]Scott: How you fake the DNA?
Donny: You don’t fake the DNA. You issue a press release.

…

Scott: There was a king, and he had a daughter, and she was abducted. The king, he swore to protect her, but while he was indulging himself shamefully, she was abducted. They tried to get her back but failed. Now, the king’s advisors, they knew that if she came home, she would reveal the king’s shame to the country. So they told the king that she was dead.

…

Avi [to Scott]: We know this house. Maskala is a suburban villa in Dubai. Some people operate a halfway house there for young women they have coerced or drugged into spending their short lives as whores for Arabian tourists. Of late, the girls have been, in the main, from the former Sov bloc. Now and again, a North American girl, if she is exceedingly lovely …blond, usually blond…will unfortunately find her way to Dubai. They travel drugged. They are tidied up and sold. For some reason, most of them are sold to Yemen. The girls are generally held in Dubai till the end of the month when the merrymakers fly in to examine their purchases and take them home.[/b]

Again, how far is this from reality?

[b]Avi: You heard of the private sector? That’s where you found me.
Scott: Well, then sell me something.

…

Laura: Fuck it. I don’t want to go home. Nobody there cares about me. I’m just a whore. I’m just a little whore.
Scott: Yeah, how’d you get like that?
Laura: I was raised by wolves.

…

Scott [to Laura]: Look, you go home some wave their hats, some turn their backs. It’s all the same. None of them know where you’ve been. It’s all the same. You tough, Honey? I think you’re tough.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Why Star 80? Of course: Paul Snider’s vanity plates.

Her gift is being beautiful and his is making money off it. Only in America. Or mainly in America, anyway.

Hugh Hefner actually sued the producers of the movie for portraying him as they did. In other other words, they probably nailed him. Though not to a cross. I just watched a documentary on Marylin Monore. Hefner paid 50 bucks for the calendar nudes. It put the magazine on the map and he doesn’t even bother to contact her…to thank her. In his own way, Hefner is as much a slimeball as Snider.

She still sounds a lot like Tracy here. And in some ways she is. At the beginning. But the world that Snider throws her into has absolutely nothing to do with the one Woody Allen introduced her to in Manhattan.

The first thing that pops into your head: How could she not know he was a psychopath? And of course by the time she does find out it is too late. Eventually, she gets too big for his britches. He’s a crass nobody who turns everything he touches into shit. And he just keeps getting smaller and smaller the bigger she gets. And then around the suave and sophisticated Hugh Hefner [and his suave and sophisticated gang of celebrities] he’s like that bull in the china closet. Only on steroids.

Incredibly, she marries this guy. Really, there must be something about the real Paul in the actual relationship they are leaving out here.

IMDb

[b]Filmed in the apartment where the real Dorothy Stratten was murdered.

Bob Fosse made Paul Snider the main character in the film because he identified with his character the most; he even told Eric Roberts that when he played Snider, he was really playing Fosse, if Fosse had not been successful.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_80
trailer: youtu.be/wEXOAULm-Xk

STAR 80 [1983]
Written and directed by Bob Fosse

[b]Dorothy [voiceover]: It took me 5 months to shoot my Playboy layout. They took over 20,000 pictures.

…

Man: He showed me some polaroids and wanted me to do some test shots. We made a deal. If she got accepted I got a $1,000. That’s the usual finder’s fee that Playboy pays, a thousand.

…

Dorothy’s mother: Who is this “us”, Paul? I don’t see any naked pictures of you. I don’t see you with your privates hanging out…I don’t know. She wouldn’t even walk around the house in her nightgown before she met you.

…

Snider: I do love her.
Dorothy’s Mother: What did you say?
Snider: I said I love her.
Dorothy’s Mother: Funny - I could’ve sworn you said ‘I love IT.’

…

Snider: Have you met him yet?
Dorothy: Who?
Snider: Who? The man! Hugh Hefner.
Dorothy: Oh, he is wonderful. Like a father.
Snider: Where are you calling from?
Dorothy: Mister Hefner’s house.
Snider: You mean the mansion?!

…

Dorothy [voiceover]: Playboy’s motto is “The girl next door”. They look for girls that are wholesome and fresh and young and naive. They look for all that. So most of these girls do have that kind of background.

…

Interviewer: What about your mother? How did she feel about your photos in Playboy?
Dorothy: She didn’t like it at all at first. But then she started getting calls from friends congratulating her; she said she started to feel like a movie star.

…

Snider [aloud to himself—imagining he is confronting Hefner]: Well, you can take your magazine, you mansion and your movies and shove’em ALL up your ass!

…

Snider [to the whole world for all intents and purposes]: I found her, you didn’t. I found her.

…

Dorothy: What’s wrong with Paul?
Hefner: Well, he’s got the personality of a pimp.

…

Geb: Paul, you gotta realize Dorothy is every man’s fanatasy. Every man who sees her or sees her pictures in a magazine is going to be coming after her. And there’s always gonna be someone who is richer than you, more famous than you, has a longer penis than you…and there’s nothing you can do about it.

…

Dorothy [to Aram]: The more he fails, the more he seems to hang on to me.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Even though many will decry the narrative here as biased, let’s not forget one thing: it is not only the folks on the right who level this charge at Stone. Folks on the left have their own complaints. Mainly that Nixon and the political realities portrayed here barely skim the surface in regards to what Marx and Engels construed to be the capitalist political economy.

Watergate was a blip on the screen of Nixon’s “crimes”. More to the point was the manner in which he sought to take the “shadow government” to unprecedented heights [or depths]. Operation Chaos, Operation Cointelpro, the bombing of Cambodia. Stone barely hints at that. And it is basically the kind of stuff that Barrack Obama is still doing today. Only Obama still has 9/11, “terrorism” and “national security” to fall back on. As long as the occasional Boston bombers come along most folks are more than willing to give up a little privacy. And the military industrial complex folks are always ready, willing and able to take advantage of that.

The most important thing is this: All these folks were playing by the rules of realpolitik. None of them had any illusions about the sort of democracy they teach the kids in civics texts.

Of course the thing about human reality is this: however much you try to embed it in history you can never really evade the part that is buried deep down inside the individual man or woman. It’s how the two come together in someone who makes it all the way to the top that is explored here. Stone takes us back to the beginning and shows how Nixon’s parents and siblings and community and times shaped and molded him into someone he would not otherwise have been had his upbringing been entirely different.

But even here it is only from the point of view of particular folks who are also just aggregations of “I” and “we” and “them” situated out in a particular world.

IMDb

[b]In Hong Kong, the movie was given a title that translated to ‘The Big Liar’.

Oliver Stone said he voted for Nixon in '68, based on his pledge to end the war in Vietnam.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_(film
trailer: youtu.be/dO2LWKpeyI8

NIXON [1995]
Directed by Oliver Stone

[b][Repeated line]

Nixon: Cocksucker!

…

Nixon [to Al Haig]: People have forgotten. Such violence. The tear gassing, the riots…burning the draft cards…the black panthers. We fixed it, Al, and they hate me for it. 'Cause it’s Nixon. They always hated Nixon.[/b]

I know I did.

[b]Ehrlichman: Well, sir, it turns out one of the people implicated is still on the White House payroll.
Nixon: Who? Not another damn Cuban?
Haldeman: No sir. A guy named Hunt. Howard Hunt, sir.
Nixon [Fear creeping on his face]: Hunt? Howard Hunt?

…

Murray Chotiner [on losing the 1960 Presidential election to John F. Kennedy]: They stole it fair and square.

…

Kissinger: If a Rockefeller can’t be the President of the United States then what is the point of democracy?

…

Mitchell: You need Pat, Dick. In '60 she was worth five, six million votes.
Nixon: Yeah. Don’t worry. I’ll use the old Nixon charm.
Haldeman [to Zieglar]: Who could resist that?

…

Haldeman: Okay, who’s next?
Ziegler: The Negro. We gotta have a Negro.
Black man in the audience: Mr. Nixon, sir. We-We all know that you have built your career on smearing people as Communists. And now you are building your campaign on the divisions in this country stirring up hatred and turning people against each other.
Haldeman: What the fuck’s he doing? He’s making a speech! Cut him off.
Technician: I can’t. This isn’t Russia.
Haldeman: He sounds like a negro. He’s saying all these negro things! What’s he doing?
Ziegler: He sounded white when we screened him.
Haldeman: Well, he doesn’t sound white now. He sounds like Angela Davis.
Black man: When are you going to tell us what you really stand for?
Haldeman: Put on a commercial.
Technician: There are no commercials. You bought the whole half hour, baby.
Black man: When are you going to take off that mask and show us who you really are?

…

Ziegler [to cameraman]: Bag that spook. Go to the little girl.

…

Hoover: I want to see him, Clyde.
Clyde: Edgar, he works in the kitchen.
Hoover: Not the boy, you idiot. Nixon.

…

Haldeman: You know, if Hunt and the others are C.I.A why don’t we just dump this back in the C.I.A.'s lap…let Dick Helms take the fall?
Nixon: Because. Because Helms knows, knows too much. If there’s anyone in this country who knows more than me…it’s Hoover and Helms, and you don’t fuck with Dick Helms, period.
Haldeman: All right. But why, if Kennedy was so clean in all this, didn’t he cancel Track 2?
Nixon: Because he didn’t even know about it. The C.I.A., uh, never told him. They just kept it going.[/b]

Competing shadow governments? But how are folks like you and I ever to really know the truth here?

[b]Nixon [after the Kent State shootings]: I’d like to offer my condolences to those families. But Nixon can’t.

…

Nixon: Do ever think of death, Dick?
Helms: Flowers are a continual reminder of our mortality. Do you appreciate flowers?
Nixon: No, no they make me sick, and they smell like death. I had two brothers die young… Well let me tell you. There are worse things than death.
Helms: Yes?
[special effects have turned Helms eyes completely black]
Nixon: There’s such a thing as evil.[/b]

Helms has Nixon by the balls. He knows all the secrets.

Helms: You must be familiar with my favorite poem by Yeats, “The Second Coming”. Black Irish. Very moving. “Turning and turning in the widening gyre the flacon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is lost. The best lack all conviction. And the worst are full of passionate intensity.” But it ends so beautifully ominous. “What rough beast, its hour come round at last. Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.” Yes this country stands at such a juncture.

Forunately for him Reagan was right around the corner.

[b]Nixon: She got it, Bob. 19-year-old college kid.
Haldeman: What? Who?
Nixon: She understood something it’s taken me 25 years in politics to understand. The CIA, the Mafia, those Wall Street bastards…
Haldeman: Sir?
Nixon: The Beast. 19-year-old kid. She called it a wild animal.
Haldeman: Yes, sir.

…

Mao-Tse-Tung: Is peace all you are interested in? The real war is in us. History is a symptom of our disease.

…

Kissinger: Your writings have changed the world, Mr. Chairman.
Mao-Tse-Tung: Bullshit. My writings mean absolutely nothing. I want to know your secret.
Kissinger: My secret, Mr. Chairman?
Mao-Tse-Tung: How a fat man like you gets so many girls.
Kissinger: Power, Mr. Chairman is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

…

Mao-Tse-Tung: You are too modest, Mr. Nixon. You are as evil as I am. We are the new emperors. We are both from poor families and others pay to feed the hunger in us. In my case, millions of reactionaries. In your case, millions of Vietnamese.

…

Nixon: Presidents don’t threaten, Jack. They don’t have to.

…

Ehrlichman [to Haldeman]: This is all about Richard Nixon. You got people dying because he didn’t make the varsity football team. You got the Constitution hanging by a thread because the old man went to Whittier instead of Yale.

…

Ehrlichman: And what is this Bay of Pigs thing? The president goes white every time you mention it.
Haldeman: It’s a code or something.
Ehrlichman: Well, shit, even I figured that out.
Haldeman: I think he means the Kennedy assassination. They went after Castro and in some crazy way it got turned back on Kennedy. I don’t think the old man knows what happened. But he’s afraid to find out.
Ehrlichman: We created Frankenstein with these damn Cubans.

…

Dean: Can I ask you a question? How the hell do you have the temerity to blackmail the President of the United States?
Hunt: That’s not the question, John. The question is: why is he paying?

…

Haldeman [to Erhlichman]: You do know that you and I are next, right?

…

Hunt [to Dean]: John, sooner or later, sooner, I think, you’re gonna learn a lesson that’s been learned by everyone who’s ever gotten close to Richard Nixon. That he’s the darkness reaching out for the darkness. And eventually, it’s either you or him. Your grave’s already been dug, John.

…

Dean [to Nixon]: This is the sort of thing that Mafia people do, washing money and so forth. We just don’t know about these things because we’re not criminals.

…

Nixon: They can’t impeach me for bombing Cambodia. The president can bomb anybody he likes.

…

Nixon [referring to the tape transcripts]: How can you let this shit go through? Look. This. Nixon can’t say that.
Aide: Well, you did say it, sir.
Nixon: Never! I never said that about Jews. Makes me sound like an anti-Semite.
Aide: We can check the tapes again.
Nixon: No need. I know what I said. Have you lost your mind? Look, Al! Nixon can’t say this! “Niggers. Niggers.” It can’t say that!
Haig: We could delete it. We’re doing the best we can.
Nixon: Well, it’s not good enough!
Aide: Would you have us black it out, sir? We could write “expletive deleted.”

…

Nixon [on TV]: … because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.
Kissinger: Oh, God, I think I’m going to throw up.

…

Nixon [to a portrait of Kennedy]: When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are.

…

Nixon: Always remember: others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.[/b]

Yeah, he really did say that. I think.

[iambiguous]

Show me a big city without lots of corruption and I’ll show you la la land. Well, maybe not me but I’m sure there are folks in each one of them who can. In fact, in New Orleans there is said to be a “culture of corruption”. And I think this means that sooner or later you’re going to have to accept it is somehow hard-wired into the human condition…genetically. And not just down there.

Still, some argue the police are paid such a paltry sum relative to the risks they are asked to take, a little corruption is probably even moral. Especially if the money comes from the “criminal element”. But once you go down that road the pesky problem then resides in deciding just how much corruption is too much corruption. I mean, who really cares if the cop gets a free meal in a local restaurant? But then some of them pursue the long con. Big dope money and murder. Five million dollars worth. And to keep that under the rug cops will even kill other cops. And no one is too high up.

Things get tricky here in particular when the woman prosecuting the case becomes involved with the cop accused of corruption. Morality [even legality] ain’t so black and white when love and lust become entangled in it. But, in the end, it’s all strictly routine.

IMDb

The production company was aided greatly in its ability to film in and around New Orleans by the state’s Film Commission. Shortly after this film (which is about political corruption) premiered, several members of the Film Commission were indicted in a kickback scandal.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Easy_(film
trailer: youtu.be/Ic2AhqLWuI0

THE BIG EASY [1986]
Directed by Jim McBride

[b]Anne: You don’t see anything wrong with accepting free meals? The restaurants expect extra protection in return. And they expect the officier to overlook any code violations.
Remy: Well if all the codes were enforced in this city, you wouldn’t have a single restaurant that could stay open.
Anne: So now you are defending organized corruption?
Remy: I’m not defending anything. This is New Orleans. Folks have a certain way of doing things down here.

…

Anne [Anne and Remy are on the scene of a triple murder]: Why don’t you believe that the killers were cops?
Remy: Because if they were cops, they would’ve stayed right here. And when we arrived, we would’ve found plants, guns, knives, all kinds of evidence that they resisted arrest. That’s somethin’ every cop in the world knows how to do.
Anne: That sure doesn’t surprise me.
Remy: Oh yeah? Well, you probably know how to bribe a jury too, don’t you?
[smiles wickedly]
Remy: Even though you probably never have, huh?

…

Remy: Hey, did you meet my brother?
Anne: Kind of.

…

Detective [to Remy]: Chew all you want asshole, we’ve got it all on video tape.

…

Remy: Oh, man, now they’re killing retards.
McCabe: Then why ain’t you dead?

…

Lamar: New Orleans is a marvelous environment for coincidence.

…

Anne: You’re a cop for God’s sake, you’re supposed to uphold the law, but instead you bend it and twist it and sell it. I saw you take that bribe and, and resist arrest and tamper with evidence and perjure yourself under oath.
Remy: Don’t forget I ran a red light too, huh.
Anne: You still think it’s funny, don’t you? Why don’t you just face it, Remy? You’re not one of the good guys anymore.

…

Sgt. Guerra: Sorry boys, but you know I have to pat everyone down.
Ed: Andre here scared of the dark!
Det. DeSoto: Dark, Hell! It’s a jungle out there…
[he emptyies his pockets of three guns, two knives, brass knuckles, a black-jack, and a baton]
Det. DeSoto: And if that don’t work, I piss on 'em.

…

Remy: If I can’t have you, can I have my gator?

…

Remy: You taught me a lot when I first came on the job, Jack. What was okay. What wasn’t okay. Is dealing heroin okay? Is murder okay?[/b]

[Stuart]

A year of philosophy in film, I noticed.

[iambiguous]

Can you dig it? Fuckin’ A!

One of those films often described as a “cult classic”—like El Topo, Rocky Horror, Eraserhead, Streets of Fire etc…

Anyway, if there’s one thing that might bring all the gangs together it is taking on the cops. And in a dystopian world dystopian gangs need dystopian cops.

Bizarrely enough real gang members sometimes played havoc with the production. In part because they weren’t cast in the film themselves! And then there was the mc, The Mongrels. An actual gang that was paid each day to protect the film trucks and equipment.

And when the film played in theatres? Well, that in and of itself sparked episodes of violence. Consider:

According to the filmmakers on the Ultimate Edition DVD, the film was going to be a big hit after the movie was #1 at the box office charts despite negative reviews from critics (it earned $3.5 million in its opening weekend). However, word of mouth and a couple of incidents killed the film’s momentum. According to Walter Hill, what had happened was gangs were attracted to the film and they had saw their rival gangs and caused violent incidents. Paramount Pictures panicked and decided to pull the movie out of theaters.

Negative reviews? On the contrary. It received a 94% fresh rating at RT on 32 reviews

To me the appeal is more the way in which you are taken into this weird world of every imaginable gang font. They all have their own “look”…and there are dozens and dozens of them. All of which are treated by the members as family. This is their narrative. This gives their life meaning. It’s their whole world. In other words, fuck that dasein bullshit. They’re, uh, soldiers. 60,000 of them. Against 20,000 cops. Curtis just wants to change the narrative from us against us to us against them. Or did until he was shot dead.

The women here are “chicks”. And mostly they are few and far between. Apparently “sometime in the future” conpletely dispensed with feminism. Unless you count Mercy. What a man!

Instead, it is the as per usual idiotic macho bullshit that is just taken for granted here. And it’s hard to believe this film was made 10 years after Stonewall.

Look for Dexter’s dad and…Samuel Jackson?

IMDb

[b]Loosely based on Xenophon’s “Anabasis”, the account of an army of Greek mercenaries who, after aligning themselves with Cyrus the Younger in the battle of Cunaxa (401 BC) in his attempt to seize the Persian throne, found themselves isolated behind Persian enemy lines.

The Warriors aimed to create “tribal feeling of going into battle together, of loyalty, of support and shared goals” and to have “the audiences’ sympathy as they fight off all the other gangs in the city”. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warriors_(film
trailer: youtu.be/RhIRuAsiFQQ

THE WARRIORS [1979]
Directed by Walter Hill

[b]Cochese: We’re going in there with nothing?
Snow: We’re going like everybody else: nine guys, no weapons.

…

Cyrus: Can you count, suckahs?! The future is ours. If you can count.

…

Cyrus: The problem in the past has been the man turning us against one another. We have been unable to see the truth, because we have fighting for ten square feet of ground, our turf, our little piece of turf. That’s crap, brothers! The turf is ours by right, because it’s our turn. All we have to do is keep up the general truce. We take over one borough at a time. Secure our territory… secure our turf… because it’s all our turf![/b]

If only this was a lesson the “the workers of the world” had heeded. Anyway some clown [the Nihilist sort] shoots him dead and this dream is over too.

Warrior: We were at the meeting in the Bronx. We’re going home to Coney, the train’s messed up by the fire and dumps us here.
Orphan: What are you talking about? How could there be a meeting without the Orphans?
Warrior: You didn’t miss anything. A lot of heads got busted.
Orphan: You think the Orphans ain’t with it? That we ain’t well known?
Warrior: We didn’t say that.
Orphan: We got a heavy rep. Mess with us, you’ll find out.
[he shows him a clipping from a newspaper]
Orphan: You see that? Our raids are in the paper.
Warrior [sarcastically]: That’s really heavy.

And so on and so forth. The mentality of a gangbanger. Only played by cartoon characters

[b]Swan [to Mercy]: Why don’t you just tie a mattress to your back?

…

Mercy: I see what’s happening next door and down the block, belly hanging down, five kids, cockroaches in the cupboard. I’ll tell you what I want. I want something now. This is the life I got left. You know what I mean? You get it, Warrior? Get it?[/b]

Nope, not really.

Swan: This is what we fought all night to get back to?

The Wonder Wheel in other words.

[iambiguous]

The gap between the things [and people] we desire and our capacity to understand this desire…rationally?

You would think these things might be less obscure. Otherwise why would we desire them. Well, it just doesn’t work that way. And not only that but the human condition absurdly embodies this sort of thing. And, more often than not, it is expressed through love and lust. And the occasional explosion. Alas, terrorism is never all that far removed from farce.

The farce being [perhaps] the manner in which we can go about the pursuit of our own private concerns largely oblivious to important events out in the world…events that can have catastophic consequences. It is the perfect environment for pop culture and mindless consumption to flourish. The world of frivolously intertwined narcissists.

But we all connect the dots in our own way. Though oftentimes this is entirely obscure to others.

One character in particular here is so farcical it takes two actresses to play her. And by sheer coincidence [no doubt] both are ravishingly beautiful.

Nothing is as it seems here. Much like the lives we actually live.

IMDb

[b]Final film directed by Luis Buñuel.

Maria Schneider, frequently nude in Last Tango in Paris, walked off the film in protest at the amount of nude scenes.[/b]

There must be a “director’s cut” out there somewhere. And here no one is reaching for the butter.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Obscu … _of_Desire
trailer: youtu.be/9xyedMel424

THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE [Cet Obscur Objet du Désir] 1979
Written in part and directed by Luis Buñuel

[b]Valet: I used to work in a restaurant. One regular, an elderly German, always used to quote one of their philosophers: “If you go with women, carry a big stick.”
Mathieu: That’s not funny.

…

Judge: Today’s terrorists are clearly fascinated by danger. Some may be politically motivated, but most are in it for the risk, the exploit. Just you wait, they’ll be on the sports page soon.

…

Mathieu: I never stop thinking about you.
Conchita: Neither do I.

…

Conchita: I’m mozita.
Mathieu: Mozita? What is that?

…

Mathieu: Whose is that?
Valet: It’s my TV set, sir.
Mathieu: What’s it for?
Valet: To lend to the young lady. They say it deadens the mind.

…

Mathieu: Must I wait much longer?
Conchita: If I give you what you want you’ll stop loving me.
Mathieu: You only stay for my money.
Conchita: Unlike you, money means nothing to me. I know where to find it.

…

Mathieu: What is he doing here?!
Conchita: He got thrown out of his hotel. He slept here the past three night. Relax, we sleep back to back. Just like you and I.

…

Conchita: You’ve never understood me. You think you’re chasing me and that I won’t have you. It’s the opposite. I’m the one who loves you, and who wants you for life.[/b]

Unless, of course, it is the opposite of that.

Conchita: You just don’t understand women. You think that by giving me a house, you own me. But you don’t.

Smack, smack, smack, smack, smack.

PA announcer: Several left left groups, known to the public as the P.O.P., the, P.R.I.Q.U.E., the C.L…A.W., and R.U.T. have suddenly joined forces in a vast campaign of bombings, under the direction of the R.A.B.J., the Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus. These wanton and incomprehensible bombings are designed to disrupt our society and spread total confusion. A number of far-right terrorist groups, notably the P.A.F. and the S.T.I.C., say they will meet the challenge of the extreme left.

BOOM!

[iambiguous]

The entire cast consist of folks who live in the area. None of them are professional actors. In other words, films just don’t get much “smaller” than this. The “sets” were their own homes. And most of the dialogue is improvised. I can imagine the reaction of some: What the hell was that all about?!

But there is just something about how it all comes together that makes it one of my favorite films.

Here we have this weird small town “love triangle” in which there really isn’t much love at all. Instead, it’s all tangled up in the complexity of becoming these people. And then out of this complexity someone is murdered. It’s like watching a storm pop up on radar.

Some of course will sniff: “Who cares? Why should we give a damn about people like this anyway? They couldn’t be any flatter, less interesting.”

And yet there are millions upon millions of “working class folks” much like this. Parochial sorts who live in, well, a bubble. And for years I was one of them. So I’m particularly torn. Of course there was once a time when the bubble was literally all folks knew. But nowadays we have “entertainment” options that can bring the whole world into focus. We begin to see the gaps between the way we live and the way others live. And this can precipitate all sorts of convoluted emotional and psychological reactions.

So: Is the culture [here in America] the way it is because of people like this or are people like this the way they are because of the culture? One thing for sure: the folks who own and operate it don’t lose much sleep sorting it all out.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_(film
trailer: youtu.be/HN9tYb7Q1jA

By the way, good luck trying to figure out what exactly the trailer has to do with the film itself. The doll parts must be symbolic of something I suppose. Maybe the way more flesh and blood folks are put together too.

BUBBLE [2005]
Directed by Steven Soderbergh

[iambiguous]

As with the rich [if only in their own way] the truly, truly beautiful are not like you and I.

Well, some of them aren’t anyway. They have their own set of rules. They come and go as they please. And some folks make allowances for them they would never make for others.

And who really knows where nature ends and nurture begins here. Especially when grappling with the wild ones. After all, where does Moudan end and Meimei begin. The innocent little girl, the worldly woman. All in one.

And then there are the stories of those who just “disappear”. Some spend the rest of their lives wondering about them. Some spend the rest of their lives searching for them.

Let’s face it, most of us will spend the rest of our lives wanting to be loved like this. If we can talk ourselves into believing one can be loved like this.

Besides, nothing lasts forever.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou_River_(film
trailer: youtu.be/-RuY4_AFmHs

SUZHOU RIVER [Suzhou He] 2000
Written and directed by Ye Lou

[b]Meimei: If I leave you someday would you look for me? Like Marder?
Lou Ye: Yes.
Meimei: Would you look for me forever?
Lou Ye: Yes.
Meimei: Your whole life?
Lou Ye: Yes.
Meimei: You’re lying.

…

Lou Ye [voiceover]: I like to take my camera to the Suzhou River…and just drift along West to East through Shanghai. There’s a century worth of stories here and rubbish…which makes it the filtiest river. Many people live here anyway making a living on the river. They spend their whole lives here.

…

Lou Ye [voiceover]: Videographer. Pay me and I shoot anything. Weddings, parties…I’l even shoot you pissing or having sex if that’s what you want. But don’t complain if you don’t like what you see. Cameras don’t lie.

…

Lou Ye [voiceover]: But the story is not so simple. There’s more to it. Maybe Mardar’s not simply a courier. What if Xia-Ho has some criminal connections? And what if she and Mardar are lovers?

…

Mardar: You’re good at singing, aren’t you? Sing him something.[/b]

So much for young love. The look on her face…

[b]Moudan: How much did you get for me?
Mardar: 45,000.
Moudan: 45 thousand? I’m that cheap?
Mardar: What?
Moudan: I’M THAT CHEAP?!!

…

Lou Ye [voiceover]: A few days later Mardar came to see me again. He ranted for a long time. He knew it was me who had him beaten up…but he wasn’t angry. If I would let him go on looking for Moudan he would give Meimei back to me. What was he talking about? The bastard screwed up my life but still had the nerve to smoke my cigarettes and drink my vodka and keep me up all night with his nonsense about love.

…

Mardar [to Lou Ye]: I’m going away for a while. Do you think Moudan is still alive? I feel she is still alive, somewhere in the city. I need to keep looking for her.[/b]

And he finds her. Working in a pharmacy. Half way between Moudan and Meimei. Or he imagines that he does. Or Lou Ye imagines that he does.

[b]Meimei: I thought it was just a story. I didn’t think Moudan really existed. I thought he was lying. I thought it was me he wanted.

…

Meimei: If I leave you someday would you look for me? Like Marder?
Lou Ye: Yes.
Meimei: Forever?
Lou Ye: Yes.
Meimei: Your whole life?
Lou Ye: Yes.
Meimei: You’re lying. Things like that only happen in love stories.
Lou Ye: You don’t believe me?
Meimei [shaking her head]: No, I don’t.

…

Lou Ye [voiceover]: In the morning I went back to see her. There was so much I wanted to say to her. But I was too late. She was gone.
[he finds a note she had written]
Meimei: “Find me if you love me”

…

Lou Ye [voiceover]: It was the best damn drink I ever had. It reminded me of the days I had with Meimei. I could run after her, look for her like Mardar. I could go back to my balconey and wait for her to appear on the bridge walking with her arms crossed. And then this love story of mine might go on. But I won’t because nothing lasts forever. So I’ll just take another drink and close my eyes…waiting for the next story to begin.[/b]