philosophy in film

[iambiguous]

How good is this documentary? At RT it got a 100% fresh rating on 39 reviews.

If you start out knowing little or nothing about Fred A. Leuchter [like me] you think this is going to be a documentary about the death penality. That and the technology used to carry it out. But then you are wondering: where does the part about “the fall” of this guy come in? How does he go about that? And that’s when the film shifts gears. Not only across space but across time itself. We are taken back to death on a truly massive and monstrous scale. And once Leuchter stumbles into this it’s all she wrote. We shift from the technology of death to the ideology of genocide. And then to the denial of it.

Oddly enough what motivated Leuchter to get into the death business was his alleged humanitarian concern that executions were actually a form of state sanctioned torture. If capital punishment was to be the law of the land at least make it more “civilized”.

As for denying the Holocaust, many will surely be incensed that Leuchter and his ilk were even given the opportunity here to make their case at all. And I think it can even be argued that, when push comes to shove, Leuchter was given the last word. At the end, the arguments seemed to shift from examining the Holocaust to speculating on whether or not Leuchter might have been persecuted for the role he had played here.

IMDb

All of the states which bought one of Leuchter’s lethal injection machines have subsequently stopped using them because they were too difficult to operate and maintain.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Death: … uchter,_Jr.
capital punishment worldwide: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_cap … by_country
trailer: youtu.be/niBw8JakaFg

MR DEATH: THE RISE AND FALL OF FRED A. LEUCHTER [1999]
Directed by Errol Morris

[b]Leuchter: I became involved in the manufacture of execution equipment because I was concerned with the deplorable condition of the hardware that’s in most of the states’prisons, which generally results in torture prior to death.

…

Leuchter: The human body is not easy to destroy. It’s not easy to take a life humanely and painlessly, without doing a great deal of damage to the individual’s body. Excess current cooks the tissue. There have been occasions where a great amount of current has been applied and the meat will come off the executee’s body like meat coming off a cooked chicken.

…

Leuchter: The first jolt disrupts or destroys the individual’s central nervous system. Current is then applied for a time approaching one minute. The adrenaline is being driven out into the bloodstream. The second jolt now seizes the pacemaker a second time. There’s now no adrenaline left to restart the pacemaker. The person is dead. If the voltage does not exceed 2,000 volts throughout the execution, the individual’s pacemaker is not permanently seized. In some minutes later the individual’s heart restarts itself on its own and the person is now alive again. They would have to call all the witnesses back, strap the vegetable back into the chair and reelectrocute him.

…

Leuchter: I came into the execution field from a back-door standpoint, because I was very concerned about the humanitarian aspects of death by torture, similar to what happened in the state of Florida two years ago with Mr.Jesse Tafero, where they actually set the man’s head on fire. Once the chair broke in half in the state of New York, and the individual lay writhing on the floor of the death chamber crying for 35 or 40 minutes while the carpenters repaired the chair. They burnt the transformer up. Fortunately, due to the quick thinking of the prison electrician, they had some cable, they ran some wires over the prison wall and tapped into the outside power line…without the consent of the power company, but there was no objection later. They had one execution where the transformer caught on fire and blew up, and it occurred in such a sequence that all it did was knock the individual unconscious. He came out of it with no apparent brain damage, no problem. Six months later they repaired the electric chair and they did successfully execute him.

…

Leuchter: Many of the electric chairs were built by inmates and electricians who had no idea of what they were building. They took a picture of another state’s electric chair and made something that looked like it.

…

Leuchter: With electrocution, unconsciousness takes place in 1/240 th part of a second. Gas chamber, within three or four minutes. And with the gallows it doesn’t matter, because you’re being dropped almost immediately after being brought onto the scaffold. None of the procedures require that somebody lay on a gurney for 35 minutes looking at a ceiling.

…

Leuchter: As you’ve probably guessed by now, I am a proponent of capital punishment. Uh, I’m certainly not a proponent of capital torture.

…

Leuchter: Another thing that we do is, our electric chair contains a drip pan. All executees, during the execution, lose control of their bodily functions. They urinate and defecate in their pants, on their chair. This normally winds up on the chair and on the floor directly beneath the chair. This is a disgusting thing when it occurs. It’s a very inhumane thing to allow a person who’s being executed, a human being… who should be afforded the greatest dignity of all because he is losing his life-- It’s a disgusting and a degrading thing to allow him to defecate… and, quite frankly, piss on the floor.[/b]

Shifting the gear:

[b]Leuchter: Because of my expertise in the construction of execution equipment, I was asked to testify by the defense team of Mr. Ernst Zündel, a German national living in Canada for some 20 odd years who published a pamphlet.: “Did Six Million Really Die?”

…

Zundel: We can solve the mystery of the gas chambers…in Auschwitz and all these other places…if we find an American expert, because America is the only country that dispatches people with gas. You can’t open up the phone book and say “gas,” then “chamber,” then “experts,” and out come ten Fred Leuchters. No. There was nobody. Fred Leuchter was out only hope.

…

Robert Jan van Pelt: Zündel is on trial for publishing false history, for publishing books of Holocaust denial. He needs to prove that what others see as false history is true history. Fred Leuchter is their trump card. He will be the scientist who will reclaim from those ruins evidence that killing didn’t happen there.

…

Robert Jan van Pelt: Leuchter’s a victim of the myth of Sherlock Holmes. A crime has been committed. You go to the site of the crime and with a magnifying glass you find a hair or a speck of dust on the shoe. Leuchter thinks that is the way reality can be reconstructed. But he is no Sherlock Holmes. He doesn’t have the training. It was not that he brought any experience, the specific experience needed to look at ruined buildings. The only experience he had was design modifications for the Missouri gas chambers in Jacksonville.

…

Robert Jan van Pelt: Auschwitz is like the holy of holies. I prepared years to go there. And to have a fool come in, coming completely unprepared, it’s sacrilege. Somebody who walks into the holy of holies and doesn’t give a damn.

…

Leuchter: I expected to see facilities that could have been used as gas chambers. I expected to see areas that were explosion-proof. I expected to see areas that were leak-proof. There have to be holes in walls or areas where they had exhaust fans and pipes. There has to be something to remove the gas after it’s been put into the room. There has to be some kind of device to heat the chalk pellets and sublimate the gas to get it to go into the air. These things didn’t exist.

…

Robert Jan van Pelt: Auschwitz today is very, very different from the place it was during the war. Everything has changed three or four times since that camp operated as an extermination camp…If Leuchter had gone to the archives, if he had spent time in the archives he would have found evidence about ventilation systems, evidence about ways to introduce Zyklon B into these buildings, evidence of gas chambers, undressing rooms. But then, of course, I don’t think he knows German, so it wouldn’t have helped very much.

…

Robert Jan van Pelt: Leuchter has said a number of times that the place wasn’t touched. Just open your eyes. You realize that this is utter nonsense. Virtually every brick, which was located in in one place, has been relocated to another place. Where are all the bricks of the crematoria? It’s an interesting question. There’s some mountain of bricks in Crematorium Five, but for the rest there are no bricks. I think I know where they are. The real places to sample are the farmhouses to the west of the crematoria, the farmhouses where people are living, children are playing, dogs are barking. These were rebuilt after the war with bricks of the crematoria. This site has been turned inside-out. What was inside the camp is now outside the camp.

…

Leuchter: All of the forensic samples that I took were brought back to the United States and sent to a lab here in Massachusetts that was highly recommended. They were not told what the samples were or where they came from. They were told that they were materials that would be involved in a court case relative to an industrial accident and they should be prepared to testify and they should certify all of the samples. All of their tests came back. And they did several types of tests… to determine whether or not there was any hydrogen cyanide. They were negative. These facilities never saw any gas. For virtually 40-odd years I believed unquestionably that there were gas chambers at these concentration camps. When I found that there weren’t, my next question is, what do I do about it?

…

Shelly Shapiro: There is no slippery slope for Mr. Fred Leuchter. The man is an anti-Semite. There are hatemongers in this country, and he’s one of them. He handed over his entire life and reputation to the cause of spreading hatred. He didn’t stop. He kept on going. He could have gotten out at any time.[/b]

Does the gear shift again here? You decide:

[b]David Irving: He’s been destroyed as a human being. He’s had his marriage destroyed. He’s had his life destroyed. I frankly am surprised he didn’t go and commit suicide, jump under a train. He saw everything he had built up in his own quiet, humble way destroyed by these people he had never met, whom he had offended. All he did was take the bucket and spade and go over to Auschwitz and come back with the samples. And that was an act of criminal simplicity. He had no idea of what he was blundering into. He wasn’t putting his name on the line because he had no name. He came from nowhere, and he went back to nowhere.

…

Leuchter: Of course I’m not an anti-Semite. I have a lot of friends that are Jewish. I’ve lost Jewish friends, too, because of what’s happened. I bear no ill will to any Jews anyplace, whether they’re in the United States or abroad. I bear a great deal of ill will to those people that have come after me, those people who have persecuted and prosecuted me. But that’s got nothing to do with them being Jewish. That only has to do with the fact that they’ve been interfering… with my right to live, think, breathe and earn a living. As far as being a revisionist-- At this point, I’m not an official revisionist, but I guess I’m a reluctant revisionist. If my belief that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek makes me a revisionist, then so be it. They’ve expressed their unquestioned intent of destroying me simply because I testified in Canada, not because I have any other affiliation with any anti-Semitic organization, not because I’m affiliated with any Nazi or neo-Nazi organization. I have no work. I haven’t sold a piece of equipment in almost three years. And I have no idea if this situation is gonna change.[/b]

[iambiguous]

This is the first film in the history of Australian cinema to win 13 of the awards it was nominated for. In second place, The Piano, with 11.

At RT it got a 83% fresh rating on 64 reviews. But this film is so good I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be inside the head of someone who would describe it as rotten! How the fuck is that even possible? I guess a lot of this must be, uh, subjective?

And talk about a labor of love: the writer/director spent 7 years creating it.

This film is on my list of the top ten movies ever made. Even if that does change constantly. One thing for sure: it goes on the shelf of movies I watch over and over and over again.

No matter how many times it is done in film, the emotional and sexual awakening of a “teenager” is always something to behold. No longer a child but not yet quite an adult, most of us then are at our most vulnerable. Here things can unfold that – for better or for worse – will follow us to the grave. And all the philosophers in the world are never able to pin down what ought to unfold. There are just too many combinations of factors that get tangled up in too many combinations of contexts and relationships. You are either able to relate to them here or you are not. What draws me most to this character is how she pulls you in and pushes you away in equal measure. She is in way over her head at times. But, in reacting to her, some quickly get in way over their own. It’s just that some imagine themselves to be so much more sophisticated. Compared to what?

And then there’s the part where those who are comfortably off pass moral judgments on those who are struggling just to put some food in their belly. And the part about the different options some have to fill those bellies.

As with many films of this nature what we see is invested as much in what we don’t know as in what we do. Or think we do. The narrative barely scratches the surface. Much like the main characters. But some try harder than others.

In the end she is back where she started. A bit wiser perhaps but what does that really mean in the world we live in.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somersault_(film
trailer: youtu.be/skLxA1guNRY

SOMERSAULT [2004]
Written and directed by Cate Shortland

[b]Joe [to Stewart]: This is the smallest most bullshit part of the world and you think you’re a kingfish for being in it.

…

Richard [to Joe after they kiss]: I don’t think you know what you want.

…

Bianca: My brother has Aspergers.
Heidi: What’s that?
Bianca: Do you know what empathy is?
Heidi: Kinda.
Bianca: It’s like if you feel pain I can understand or if I’m happy you can tell. Well, he can’t. So he can’t make friends.
Heidi: Why not?
Bianca: He just says exactly what he thinks. He doesn’t know how it’s going to make the other person feel.[/b]

And, in our own way, we are often the same way. We can only go down so far in reacting to others. We can’t actually be inside their head.

[b]Irene: I told you when I gave you this room I didn’t want any trouble.
Heidi: Yes, I know. I just…
Irene: You just what?
Heidi: I’m sorry, Irene.
Irene: No, you’re not soryy. You’ll be saying sorry til the cows come home…that’s your type.
Heidi: It was an accident.
Irene: An accident? Walking around naked and drunk at three in the morning is an accident?
Heidi: Yes.
Irene: You can pack your things and go. I need the room now.
Heidi: Why? Is your som getting out of jail?
Irene: What?!
Heidi: Is he getting out?
Irene: No. He won’t be getting out for a very long time.
Heidi: He must have done something really bad then.
Irene: Yes, he did.
Heidi: What…what did he do?
Irene: He killed a man. He walked into a 7/11 and shot a man in the stomach. Is that what you wanted to know?

…

Heidi: My Mom’s not really dead.
Irene: What?
Heidi: Before I came here I did something really, really bad. I kissed her boyfriend. And she looked at me…she looked at me like she didn’t know who I was anymore.[/b]

[iambiguous]

As with films like Mindwalk the “action” here revolves around folks discussing things said to be of a “philosophical” or “scientific” or “religious” nature. Intellectuals exchanging words about the world we live in. As such much depends on the extent to which the words and the worlds can be linked together intelligibly. Then on to what is offered in the way of demonstrating the truthfulness of the alleged relationships.

After all, if someone told you they had lived for 140 centuries and it was “time to move on” what sort of proof would satisfy you?

So, it’s an unrealistic premise. But that is just the sort of thing – the device – that can trigger all manner of speculation from intellectual sorts.

In a way though this sort of thing exasperates [even infuriates] me. Why? Because it is just a reminder of what it means to be a mere mortal. In other words, I will go to the grave oblivious to the answers we seek regarding the most intriguing questions of all. It’s fun and it’s fascinating to speculate about this stuff but make no mistake about it: we’ll never really know.

Or almost certainly never will. When I was young I would imagine all the answers that would be forthcoming. And there were answers. But what science has most succeeded in doing is reminding us of just how mindboggling whatever reality might actually be is. And the more mindboggling whatever the very, very big and the very, very small is the wider the gap between that and the infinitesmally tiny and utterly insignificant part our own 70 odd years must play in it.

And nope: Not a single reference to political economy. None that I picked up. By and large it was pure liberal humanism.

IMDb

The film is loosely based on the Transylvanian legend of Krim Rosü (Krim Red in English), a man said to have lived thousands of years.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_from_Earth
trailer: youtu.be/lVMhEAI3pvg
review from philosophical films: philfilms.utm.edu/1/man-earth.htm

THE MAN FROM EARTH [2007]
Directed by: Richard Schenkman

[b]Harry [insistent]: You are creating the mystery here…you obviously have something you’d like to say. Say it.
John [Hesitant]: Maybe… I… There is something I’m tempted to tell you I think, I’ve never done this before, I wonder how it will pan out. I wonder if I could ask you a silly question?
Art: John, we’re teachers, we answer silly questions all the time.
John: What if a man from the upper Paleolithic survived until the present day?

…

John: I had a chance to sail with Columbus, only I’m not the adventurous type. I was pretty sure the earth was round, but at that point I still thought he might fall off an edge some place.
[incredulous looks all around the room]
Art: Look around John, we just did!

…

Dan: There’s absolutely no way in the whole world for John to prove his story. Just like there’s no way for us to disprove it. No matter how outrageous we think it is, no matter how highly trained some of us think we are, there’s absolutely no way to disprove it! My friend is either a caveman, a liar, or a nut. So while we’re thinking about that, why don’t we just go with it.

…

Dan: A medical test might be a way of proving of what you’re saying.
John: I don’t wanna prove it.
Art: So, you’re telling us this the yarn of the century and you don’t care if we believe it or not?
John: I guess I should’ve expected you to… You’re not as crazy as you think I am.
Edith: Amen!
Sandy: I’ve always liked you.
Edith: Well, thank you dear.
Sandy: Well, that’s changing.

…

Art: What you’re saying, it offends common sense.
John: So does Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, that’s the way nature works.
Dan: Yeah, but your story doesn’t fit into nature as we know it.
John: But we know so little, Dan. We know so little. I mean, how many of you know five geniuses you strongly disagreed with…one you’d like to strangle?

…

Dan: Time… you can’t see it, you can hear it, you can’t weigh it, you can’t… measure it in a laboratory. It is a subjective sense of becoming, what we are, in stead of what we were a nanosecond ago, becoming what we will be in another nanosecond. The whole piece of time’s a landscape existing, we form behind us and we move, we move through it slice by slice.
Linda: Clocks measure time.
Dan: No, they measure themselves, the objective referee of a clock is another clock.
Edith: All very interesting, but what has it got to do with John?
Dan: He, he might be man who lives outside of time as we know it.

…

Will: If I shot you John, you’re immortal? Would you survive this?
John: I never said I was immortal, just old. I might die. And then you could wonder the rest of your incarcerated life what you shot…

…

Harry: I can give you the ten commandments in ten words: “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t.”

…

Harry: Edith, I was raised on the Torah, my wife on the Qu’Ran, my eldest son is an Atheist, my youngest is a scientologist, my daughter is studying Hinduism, I imagine there is room there for a holy war in my living room, but we practice live and let live.

…

Art: Taken alone, the philosophical teachings of Jesus are Buddhism with a Hebrew accent…kindness, tolerance, brotherhood, love…a rootless realism acknolwedging that life is as it is here on earth…
John: And that’s what I taught, but a talking snake made a lady eat an apple, so we’re screwed. Heaven and Hell were peddled so that priests could rule through seduction and terror.

…

Edith [talking about God]: He’s everywhere. We just can’t see him.
Harry: Pfft. If this was the best I could do, I’d be hiding, too.

…

Dan [to John]: I’m going home and watch Star Trek for a dose of sanity.[/b]

[iambiguous]

How bizarre?

Well, after the first scene with the Chihuahua you have your answer: really bizarre.

It’s hard to believe at times that this is the same director who gave us Audition above. An altogether different kind of horror film.

Lots of films about the yakuza and the culture it entails. But none quite like this one, I can assure you. It’s one of those films that right from the start you know anything can happen. Like the guy sitting in the middle of a vacant lot looking at porn—half his face is yellow, half his face is white. “It’s a bone”, he says, motioning to the flat tire.

It sort has a plot. And it sort of makes sense. But then all really surreal horror films do. Human reality, for example. If you look at it in a certain way.

Don’t get it? That’s like saying you don’t get dada.

IMDb

The liquor store-owner’s American wife knew no Japanese, and had to read her lines phonetically off cue cards posted above her head. She proved to be absolutely hopeless at anything resembling proper pronunciation or competent acting. Director Takashi Miike found the result interesting and expanded it into an eery “Breaking the Fourth Wall” moment.

It’s priceless.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gozu
trailer: youtu.be/8UxmYnNI4H0

Gozu [Gokudô Kyôfu Dai-Gekijô: Gozu] 2003
Directed by Takashi Miike

Ozaki [to the yakuza boss]: Everything I’m about to tell you is a joke. Don’t take it seriously. See that dog outside?
Boss: Dog?
Ozaki: Dog.
[the boss goes over to look…it’s a tiny little chihuahua]
Ozaki: Don’t stare. It’s a trained yakuza attack dog. It kills only yakazu made men.
Boss: That little dog?
Ozaki: Yes!
[Ozaki walks out the door, grabs the tiny dog and smashes it onto the sidewalk…then he grabs the dog’s leash swings it around and around and hurls it against the window]

The scene is just so mindboggling you almost find yourself laughing at it.

[b]Man in restaurant [to Minami]: Ya ain’t from Nagoya, are you?

…

Cop: You ain’t from Nagoya, are you?[/b]

No, and you never want to be either.

[b]Cop: What does this Shiroyam crew do?
Minami: Forget it. I’ll find it myself.

…

Minami: You fuckin’ pressed my brother?!

…

Ozaki [now a woman]: Minami…did your circumcision go well? Well show me. Wow, so that’s what a circumcision does.Your weiner looks just like Frankenstein’s.

…

Ozaki [as a woman to Minami listening to noises coming out of her crotch]: Wanna have sex? If you feel like having sex, make sure you wake me up first.

…

Boss: You’ve totally lost me.
Minami: I can hardly believe it myself. But this woman is our Brother!
Boss: Minami…do you want to go to the dump? Keep talking nonsense and I’ll take you myself.

…

Boss: I can’t get it up without this.[/b]

Uh, let’s just say it involves a soup ladle sticking out of his ass.

Ozaki [as a woman, now wearing the crotchless panties she gave Minami when she was his brother…and staring at his circumcised penis]: Wow. Come here. Put it in me. Wow!

Don’t ask what comes next.

[iambiguous]

Imagine if Romy and Michele were, say, a bit more cynical. Self-consciously, as it were.

It’s all about being an oddball. But even here it is sometimes a lot easier said than done. For example, what if your way of being odd isn’t the one others approve of? What if, in other words, you are not not conforming in the right way? Or what if you’re an oddball but don’t really want to be? Or what if you just stumbled into being one due to circumstances beyond your control?

There’s just no getting around it: In the world of “creeps and losers and weirdos” it’s always never nothing.

Still, what most oddballs do share in common is 1] knowing that they don’t want to be [or clearly are not] normal but 2] not knowing exactly what to put in its place. So many will settle on whatever works…whatever might distract them until the day they die.

Well, this oddball anyway.

And then there are those oddballs who come to think that maybe, just maybe, being normal really isn’t so bad after all.

IMDb

[b]The Coon Chicken Inn was a real restaurant chain, founded in 1925 in Salt Lake City. However it folded in the late '50s and never changed its name to Cook’s Chicken, as in the film. The ‘Coon Chicken Inn’ poster that Enid submits as her final piece for art class was painted by Robert Crumb.

According to director Terry Zwigoff, Steve Buscemi was so uncomfortable playing the role of Seymour that whenever shooting was finished for the day, he would immediately change his clothes so he could look completely different.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_World_(film
trailer: youtu.be/rq6AOc0ATnU

GHOST WORLD [2001]
Directed by Terry Zwigoff

Graduation Speaker: High school is like the training wheels for the bicycle of real life. It is a time when young people can explore different fields of interest and hopefully learn from their experiences. In coming to terms with my own personal setback, I have been able to learn that I don’t need to rely on drugs and alcohol, and that I’m very lucky that more people besides myself and Carrie weren’t injured in the accident. And I have learned that to overcome life’s obstacles you need faith, hope and, above all, a sense of humor.
[as everyone else applauds, Enid and Rebecca look at each other and laugh]

Oddballs, in other words.

[b]Enid: God, what a bunch of retards.
Rebecca: God, I know. I thought that chipmunk face was never going to shut up.
Enid: I know. I liked her so much better when she was an alcoholic crack addict. She gets in one car wreck and all of the sudden she’s Little Miss Perfect and everyone loves her.

…

Enid: These assholes are saying I have to go to summer school and take some stupid art class.
Rebecca: Why?
Enid: God, I didn’t think that just because you get an “F” you have to take the whole class over again.

…

Rebecca: So, what do you do if you’re a Satanist anyway?
Enid: Sacrifice virgins and stuff.
Rebecca: Well, that lets us off the hook.

…

Sidewinder Boss: Hey! Hey! You! How many times I tell you? No shirt, no service! Get the hell out of my store! What do you think this is, Club Med?
Doug: It’s America, dude. Learn the rules.
Sidewinder Boss: Learn the rules? YOU learn the rules! We Greeks invented democracy!
Doug: You also invented homos.
Sidewinder Boss: Fuck you!
Doug [with a mouthful of beef jerky]: You wish. You gotta buy me dinner first![/b]

Doug isn’t my kinda oddball. But he comes close from time to time.

[b]Josh: Aren’t there like a million places like this?
Enid: This is the ultimate. It’s like the Taj Mahal of fake '50s diners.

…

Masterpiece Video Clerk: Hello, welcome to Masterpiece Video. How may I help you this afternoon, sir?
Customer: I’m looking for a copy of 8 1/2.
Clerk: Is that a new release, sir?
Customer: No, it’s the classic Italian film.
Clerk: Yes, sir. I’ll just check that on the computer for you, sir.
[he types on the computer]
Clerk: Yes, here it is. 9 1/2 Weeks with Mickey Rourke. That would be in the Erotic Drama section.
Customer: No, not 9 1/2, 8 1/2. The Fellini film?
[the clerk looks at him blankly]

…

[Enid takes Rebecca to a “party” at Seymour’s place, which is really just a gathering of nerdy record collectors]
Jerome: Some records I will pay serious money for, provided they’re a sincere V-plus. Other than that, I just prefer to have them on CD.
Steven: But CDs will never have the presence of an original 78.
Jerome: Wrong! A digital transfer adequately mastered will sound identical to the original. Do you have a decent equalizer?
Steven: I have a Klipsch 2B3.
Jerome: Well, obviously the problem! You expect a 10 band equalizer to impart state-of-the-art sound? Dream a little dream, it’s never gonna happen!
Rebecca [to Enid]: I totally, totally hate you.

…

Paul: It has a enlarged centre hole and a hair-crack.
Seymour: But the crack is so tight it’s completely inaudible.
Paul: But a tight hair-crack is just that - a crack. I don’t collect cracked records. I only pay premium on mint records. Seymour, you know that. Please.
[he walks away. Enid, who has been listening, goes up to Seymour]
Enid: So what was all that about enlarged holes and tight cracks?

…

Enid [looking at Seymour’s record cabinet] Are all these records?
Seymour: I’ve got about 1500 78’s at this point. I’ve tried to pare down my collection to just the essentials.

…

Enid: [looking at all the classic memorabilia in the room] Look at this room. This is like my dream room! Look at all this stuff…You are, like, the luckiest guy in the world. I would kill to have stuff like this.
Seymour: Please, go ahead and kill me.
Enid: Oh, come on, what are you talking about?
Seymour: Well, you think it’s healthy to obsessively collect things? You can’t connect with other people, so you fill your life with stuff. I’m just like all the rest of these pathetic collector losers.
Enid: No, you’re not, you’re a cool guy, Seymour!
Seymour: If I’m so cool how come I haven’t had a girlfriend in like four years? I can’t even remember the last time a girl talked to me.
Enid: I’m talking to you. You know, I bet there are tons of women who go out with you in a minute. I know I could you a date in, like, two seconds.
Seymour: Good luck.
Enid: I mean it. You leave everything to me. I’m gonna be your own personal dating service.
Seymour: Yeah, well, we should get back.
Enid: By the end of this summer, you’re gonna be up to your neck in pussy.
Seymour: Jesus!

…

Enid: God! How can you stand all these assholes?
Rebecca: Some people are OK, but mostly I just feel like poisoning everybody.
Enid: Well, at the least the wheelchair guy is entertaining.
Rebecca: He doesn’t even need that wheelchair, he’s just totally lazy.
Enid: That rules!
Rebecca: No, it really doesn’t. You’ll see, you get totally sick of all the creeps and losers and weirdos.
Enid: But those are our people.

…

Maxine: It’s really quite something to see you all grown-up like this, Enid. I’d love to know what you’re doing now. I can’t help but feel I had some small part in how you turned out. What’re you studying? You were always such a smart little girl.
Enid: I’m taking a remedial high school art class for fuck-ups and retards.

…

Seymour [to Enid]: Now I remember why I haven’t been anywhere in months. It’s simple for everybody else. You give them a Big Mac and a pair of Nikes and they’re happy. I can’t relate to ninety-nine percent of humanity.[/b]

Well, that’s still almost an entire percentage point more than I can.

[b][Enid is looking through some posters at Seymour’s place and discovers this grotesque, racist caricature of a black man’s face - the logo of Coon Chicken Inn]
Enid: What the…? What is this, Seymour?
Seymour: Oh, that. I borrowed that from work about 15 years ago. I guess it’s mine now.
Enid: What, are you a Klansman or something?
Seymour [sarcastically]: Yeah, I’m a Klansman.

…

Enid [looking at the racist logo of Coon Chicken Inn]: So, I don’t really get it…Are you saying that things were better back then, even though there was stuff like this?
Seymour: I suppose things are better now, but…I don’t know, it’s complicated. People still hate each other but they just know how to hide it better.

…

Customer: Do you serve beer or any alcohol?
Enid: I wish. Actually, you wish. After about five minutes of this movie you’re going to wish you had ten beers.
Cineplex Manager: What are you doing? You don’t ever criticize the feature.
Enid: Why? What’s the difference? I mean, we already got his money.
Cineplex Manager: Look, that’s the policy, OK? If you want to make up your own rules open up your own theater.
Customer: …and let me have lots of butter on it.
Enid: Here you go. Smothered in delicious yellow chemical sludge.
Cineplex Manager: What the hell is wrong with you?
Enid: What? I was just joking around with the customers. It’s my shtick.
Cineplex Manager: Well, lose it! And why aren’t you pushing the larger sizes? Didn’t you get training about upsizing?
Enid: Yeah. But I feel really weird. It’s pretty sleazy.
Cineplex Manager: It’s not OPTIONAL!
[he leaves her]
Enid [rolls her eyes] Jesus.
[a customer comes up to the counter]
Soda Customer: Hi, can I get a medium 7-Up?
Enid: Medium? Why sir, do you not know that for a mere 25 cents more you can purchase a large beverage? And you know, I’m only telling because we’re such good friends, medium is really only for suckers who don’t know the concept of value.

…

Enid: Aren’t you going to get the phone?
Seymour: Let the machine get it. I have no desire to talk to anyone who might be calling me.

…

Enid: How come in all that time I was trying to get you a date, you never asked me out?
Seymour [surprised]: You’re a beautiful young girl, I couldn’t imagine you’d have any interest in me except as an amusingly cranky eccentric curiosity.
Enid: At least you’re not like every other stupid guy in the world. All they care about is guitars or sports.
Seymour: I do hate sports.

…

Seymour: I know I’m just a dork.
Enid: Seymour, you are not a dork.
[he shows her the entry about the fake date]
Seymour: Sure I am.
Enid: You are such a stupid idiot. Did you even look through the rest of the book? See? You’re like…my hero.[/b]

[iambiguous]

The T word: Trans. Then the S word: Stealth.

It’s mindboggling what Bree has to go through in order to become who she really wants to be. So how can any one in their right mind doubt the underlying motivation behind her commitment.

Fortunately even in the 7 years since this film came out the political narrative in America has come closer and closer to accepting this motivation as sincere and genuine. But there is still a very, very big chunk of the population out there that wants to blast this [and the rest of the LGBT movement] back into the stone age.

Only a fool would actually risk being too optimistic about it. Not in what some still construe to be Amerikkka.

And then there is Stanley and his gay son. But that’s just another way of saying Bree and her gay son. Of course Toby doesn’t know that. Yet. And then…just like that…things get very complicated.

Like, for example, the parts that God and religion play. As in different strokes for different folks.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transamerica_(film
trailer: youtu.be/1F4Dckw274Q

TRANSAMERICA [2005]
Written and directed by Duncan Tucker

[b]Dr. Spikowsky: Medical procedures to date?
Bree: The usual electrolysis, three years of hormone therapy, facial feminizatiom surgury, brow lift, forehead reduction, jaw re-contouring and a tracheal shave.

…

Dr. Spikowsky: How can I help you if you won’t be honest with me.
Bree: You can sign that consent form. Please.
Dr. Spikowsky: The American Psychiatric Association catagorizes gender dysphoria as a very serious mental disorder.
Bree: After my operation not even a gynecologist will be able to detect anything out of the ordinary about my body. I will be a woman. Don’t you find it odd that plastic surgery can cure a mental disorder?
Dr. Spikowsky: How do you feel about your penis?
Bree [giving up]: It disgusts me. I don’t even like looking at it.
Dr. Spikowsky: What about friends?
Bree: They don’t like it either.

…

Bree [to Toby]: I’m from the church of the potential father.

…

Toby [to Bree]: I’m not marrying you.

…

Toby: And these shoes. Three dollars, a dollar fifty each. You know how much these things are worth in Japan?
Bree: Three dollars?
Toby: Like 500 dollars. Japanese people kill for old Nikes.
Bree: Then you probably should avoid wearing them in Japan.

…

Toby: Did you know that the Lord of the Rings is gay?
Bree: I beg your pardon.
Toby: There’s this big, black tower, right? And it points right at this huge burning vagina thing, and it’s like the symbol of ultimate evil. And then Sam and Frodo have to go to this cave and deposit their magic ring into this hot, steaming lava pit. Only at the last minute, Frodo can’t perform, so Gollum bites of his finger. Gay.

…

Bree: This isn’t my fault, Toby. You never told me why you didn’t want to come home.

…

Trans friend: Mary Ellen, come here, Felicia is showing us her new vagina.

…

Trans friend: We were just telling Toby about the transsexual lifestyle.
Toby [to Bree]: Not what you used to in church, huh?

…

Toby: Dude, I thought you were a real guy.
Transman at party: We walk among you.

…

Toby: So, you’re gonna cut your dick off for Jesus?
Bree: They don’t “cut it off!” It just becomes an innie instead of an outtie.
Toby: Ew.

…

Toby: Beef jerky?
Hitchhiker: No thank you. I’m a Level 4 Vegan: I don’t eat anything that casts a shadow.

…

[the Hitchhiker steals Bree’s car]
Toby: Oh shit!
Bree: My purse! My hormones! You dirty motherfucking hippie!
Toby: My dog book was in that car!!

…

Toby: How come an Indian wears a cowboy hat?
Calvin: Well, I guess it’s because it keeps the sun out of my eyes better than a head band and a couple of eagle feathers.

…

Bree [getting ready to face her parents]: Shit. I mean darn. No, I mean shit.

…

Elizabeth: Look at your life. You’ve never been able to stick to a decision. I mean, 10 years of college and not a single degree. How do you know you won’t change your mind about this, too?
[pause]
Bree: Because I know.
Elizabeth: Don’t do this awful thing to yourself, please. I miss my son.
Bree: Mom, you never had a son.

…

Elizabeth [crying]: We only tried to do the best for you.
Bree: Is that why you tried to have me committed?
Elizabeth [shouting]: You tried to kill yourself!
Bree: Because you tried to have me committed!

…

Toby: Beauty is relative.
Bree: Not my relatives.

…

Toby: Your parent’s house is a lot nicer.
Bree: My parent’s house comes with my parents.

…

Toby: I thought you said you were Jewish.
Bree: Half-Jewish…through my father. So it’s technically the wrong half. And you’re only a quarter. The wrong quarter.[/b]

[iambiguous]

The first thing that always pops into my head: What about all the thousands upon thousands of “freaks” throughout the course of human history who went to grave never having fortuitously bumped into someone like the good doctor. For them it is Heaven or bust.

In the interim there really isn’t anything at all that one or another capitalist hasn’t managed to turn into a commodity. Human deformities were often particularly lucrative. They could be sold as entertainment. To the masses, for instance.

And then there are the scientists. And the doctors. Those in particular who treat him less as a commodity and more as a…specimen.

What strikes me is the sheer monotony of his life. They all assume he is an “imbecile”…so they assume that nothing can reach him. And so hour after hour and day after day he is left with nothing to distract him save his meals and the photograph he has of his mother. But here again the doctor turns the tide.

And the surreal juxtaposition of God and this particular creation. Merrick read the Bible and he knows it quite well. But he does indeed embody the manner in which the Lord works in mysterious ways. It was God no doubt that led Treves to him. Some will surely argue that.

And then there is the freak that some become [or are made into] once they have achieved fame. Can you even begin to imagine it all unfolding today? Fortunately for Merrick it is the wealthy aristocrats who by and large rescue him from the mob.

Gaps between film and “reality”:

[b]According to the Wikipedia entry on ‘The Elephant Man’, there are several historical inaccuracies that stand out. First, the events at the railway station happened before Merrick stayed at the hospital. Second, Merrick went to Europe on his own accord and was never kidnapped. Third, Treves never “rescued” Merrick from the completely fictional character of Bytes (who was “seemingly modelled after Robert Newton’s characterisation of Bill Sykes in David Lean’s 1948 film adaptation of Oliver Twist”).

Additionally, in order for Merrick to speak there were several operations to facilitate his ability to talk. Merrick was also quite secure financially from the work he did in the freak shows–he would have been incapable of performing any other work in those days. Finally, his name was not “John” but “Joseph”.[/b]

IMDb

[b]Following the death of the real Joseph “John” Merrick, parts of his body were preserved for medical science to study. Some internal organs were kept in jars, and plaster casts were taken of his head, an arm, and a foot. Although the organs were destroyed by German air raids during the Second World War, the casts survived and are kept at the London Hospital. The makeup for John Hurt, who played Merrick in the film, was designed directly from those casts.

Merrick’s condition was undiagnosed at the time of his death. Later studies of his skeleton and the casts made of his body led researchers to suggest he suffered from neurofibromatosis (NF) type I, a genetic condition that 1 in 4,000 persons suffer from. The NF Foundation used the movie as a fund raising tool and credited it with making the disease more widely known. Later examination, including CT scans of the skeleton, lead researchers to believe he suffered from Proteus syndrome, a much rarer condition than NF. A scientist in 2001 speculated that Merrick may have suffered from a combination of neurofibromatosis type I and Proteus syndrome. In 2003, researchers used surviving DNA samples from Merrick in an attempt to determine his unique condition. However these tests were inconclusive and the cause of Joseph Merrick’s medical condition remains unknown.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elephant_Man_(film
Joseph [John] Merrick: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Merrick
trailer: youtu.be/ye4YTZOq2fk

THE ELEPHANT MAN [1980]
Directed by David Lynch

[b]Bytes: Life!.. is full of surprises. Consider the fate of this creature’s poor mother, struck down in the fourth month of her maternal condition by an elephant, a wild elephant. Struck down!.. on an uncharted African isle. The result is plain to see… Ladies and gentlemen…The…Terrible… Elephant… Man…

…

Dr. Trevers [to his colleagues]: He is English, he is twenty-one years of age and his name is John Merrick. Gentlemen, in the course of my profession I have come upon lamentable deformities of the face due to injury or disease, as well as mutilations and contortions of the body, depending upon like causes; but, at no time have I met with such a dearaded or perverted version of a human being as this man. I wish to draw your attention to the insidious conditions affecting this patient. Note, if you will, the extreme enlargement of the skull … and upper limb, which is totally useless. The alarming curvature of the spine … Turn him, please … … the looseness of the skin, and the varying fibrous tumors that cover 90% of the body. And there is every indication that these afflictions have been in existence, and have progressed rapidly, since birth. The Patient also suffers from chronic bronchitis. As an interesting side-note, in spite of the afore-mentioned anomilies, the patient’s genitals remain entirely intact and unaffected. So then, gentlemen, owing to this series of deformities: The congenital exostoses of the skull; extensive papillomatous growths and large pendulous masses in connection with the skin; the great enlargement of the right upper limb, involving all the bones; the massive distortion of the head and the extensive areas covered by papillomatous growth, the patient has been called, "The Elephant Man.’

…

Dr. Fox: You never mentioned his mental state.
Dr. Treves: Oh, he’s an imbecile, probably from birth. Man’s a complete idiot… Pray to God he’s an idiot.

…

Dr. Treves: You can talk…

…

Dr. Treves: All you do is profit from another man’s misery.
Bytes: Do you think you are netter than me?
Dr. Treves: No, I never said that.
Bytes: You wanted the freak to show to those doctor chums of yours, to make a name for yourself. You my friend. I gave you the freak on trust…in the name of science…and now I want him back!

…

Gomm: Can you imagine the kind of life he must have had?
Dr. Treves: Yes, I think I can.
Gomm: I don’t think so. No one could possibly imagine it! I don’t believe any of us can!

…

Mrs. Treves: I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Merrick.
Merrick: I’m very pleased…
[John begins to cry]
Dr. Treves: What is it, John? What’s the matter?
Merrick: It’s just that I-I’m not used to being treated so well by a beautiful woman…

…

Merrick [after seeing pictures of Dr. Treves’ family]: Would you care to see my mother?
Dr. Treves [surprised]: Your mother? Yes please.
[John pulls out a small portrait]
Mrs. Treves: Oh but she’s…Mr. Merrick, she’s beautiful!
Merrick: Oh, she had the face of an angel! I must have been a great disappointment to her.
Mrs. Treves: No, Mr. Merrick, no. No son as loving as you could ever be a disappointment.
Merrick: If only I could find her, so she could see me with such lovely friends here now; perhaps she could love me as I am. I’ve tried so hard to be good.
[Mrs. Treves begins to cry]

…

Merrick: There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time now.
Dr. Treves: What’s that?
Merrick: Can you cure me?
Dr. Treves: No. We can care for you, but we can’t cure you.
Merrick [matter-of-factly]: No. I thought not.

…

Mothershead: Sir! I don’t quite… I don’t quite understand why it is you allow that sort of people in there.
Dr. Treves: Why? Because he enjoys it, and I think it’s very good for him.
Mothershead: Yes, but, sir, you saw the expression on their faces. They didn’t hide their disgust. They don’t care anything about John! They only want to impress their friends!
Dr. Treves: I think you’re being rather harsh on them, don’t you, Mrs. Mothershead?
Mothershead: I beg your pardon!
Dr. Treves: You yourself hardly showed him much loving kindness when he first arrived, did you?
Mothershead: I bathed him, I fed him, and I cleaned up after him, didn’t I? And I see that my nurses do the same. And if “loving kindness” can be called care and practical concern, then I did show him loving kindness, and I am not ashamed to admit it!..If you ask my opinion he is only being stared at all over again.

…

Merrick: Night time…

…

Plumed Dwarf: Luck, my friend, luck. Who needs it more than we?

…

Merrick: I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man![/b]

[iambiguous]

I suspect there are no plans in Hollywood to remake this one. And not just because they don’t make all that many “epics” anymore. To say this was a whole different time may well qualify as the mother of all understatements. Or surely it falls somewhere in, say, the top 1,000.

And my own political perspectives are now busted to the point I really don’t know anymore if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Most of these folks were genuinely commited to making this a world more fit to live in. And that meant redistributing the world’s wealth and power. And that meant revolution. But then it gets all tangled up in means and ends. And in the limitations human reality seems to impose on idealism situated anywhere along the moral and political spectrum.

But this is the sort of life I pursued myself: always in the midst of intellectuals, artists, writers, political radicals. Endless discussions into the wee hours of the morning. And endless arguments that never ever got resolved. The constant struggle to find some sort of balance between the “personal” and the “political”. And also at a time – “the Sixties” – rather far removed from the world as I know it today. I’m just considerably more cynical about the whole experience than most others.

What the film does expose rather well [if only incidentally] is how the ruling class functions to sustain itself: through the law, through the police and the army, through the corporate media, through the cronies in the government. But capitalism in America has always managed historically to sustain a rather sizable middle class. And that always acts as a buffer against radicalism.

This is the story of John Reed. The only American to be buried in the Kremlin. Or one of the very few. Over here though he spent as much time railing against his “comrades” as against the capitalists. That’s always been a big factor on the left: factionalism. A veritable alphabet soup of organizations all claiming to represent the true interests of “the people”. In fact, it’s always easier to name the problem than the solution. Let alone actually organize a movement to achieve one.

But what extraordinary lives they led. And what an extraordinary love story.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reds_(film
article in Vanity Faire: vanityfair.com/culture/featu … reds200603
trailer: youtu.be/WjjRDJ039FI

REDS [1981]
Written in part and directed by Warren Beatty

[b]Chairman of the Liberal Club: What would you says this war is all about, Jack Reed.
Reed [he stands up]: Profits.
[He sits down]

…

Reed: All right, Miss Bryant, do you want an interview? Write this down. Are you naïve enough to think containing German militarism has anything to do with this war? Don’t you understand that England and France own the world economy and Germany just wants a piece of it? Keep writing, Miss Bryant. Miss Bryant, can’t you grasp that J. P. Morgan has loaned England and France a billion dollars? And if Germany wins, he won’t get it back! More coffee? America’d be entering the war to protect J. P. Morgan’s money. If he loses, we’ll have a depression. So the real question is, why do we have an economy where the poor have to pay so the rich won’t lose money?

…

Reed: Economic freedom for women means sexual freedom, and sexual freedom means birth control.

…

Max Eastman: I’ll walk you home.
Emma Goldman: Why? I won’t hurt anyone.

…

Reed: Look, what does a capitalist do? Let me ask you that, Mike. Huh? Tell me. I mean, what does he make, besides money? I don’t know what he makes. The workers do all the work, don’t they? Well, what if they got organized?

…

[repeated line]
Jack: I got a taxi waiting.

…

Emma Goldman: I think voting is the opium of the masses in this country. Every four years you deaden the pain.

…

[repeated line]
Bryant: I write.

…

Bryant: He has the freedom to do the things he wants to do and so do I. And I think anyone who’s afraid of that kind of freedom is really only afraid of his own emptiness.
O’Neill: Are you making this up as you go along?
Bryant: I’d like you to go.
O’Neill: Why?
Btyant: Because I don’t like to be patronized. I’m sorry if you don’t beleive in mutual independence and free love and respect.
O’Neill: Don’t give me a lot of parlor socialism that you learned in the Village. If you were mine, I wouldn’t share you with anybody or anything. It’d be just you and me. We’d be the center of it all. I know it would feel a lot more like love than being left alone with your work.

…

O’Neill: I’d like to kill you, but I can’t. So you can do whatever you want to. Except not see me.

…

Reed: Louise, I love you.
Bryant: No, you love yourself! Me, you FUCK! When you’re not fucking other people, that is!

…

Reed: I’m just saying that the revolution in this country is not going to be led by immigrants.
Bryant: Revolution? In this country? When Jack, just after Christmas?
Reed: Well what do you think we could’ve done with the steel strike if we’d been ready? 30,000 party members all armed with a unified theory and program leading 365,000 steelworkers? What it takes is leadership. And we gotta get it by getting recognition from Moscow. Now I have to go.
Bryant: You don’t have to go. You want to go. You want to go running all over the world ranting and raving and making resolutions and organizing caucuses. What’s the difference between the Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party except that you’re running one and he’s running the other?
Reed: I’ve made a commitment.
Bryant: To what? To the fine distinction between which half of the left of the left is recognized by Moscow as the real Communist Party in America? To petty political squabbling between humorless and hack politicians just wasting their time on left-wing dogma? To getting the endorsement of a committee in Russia you call the Internationale for your group of 14 intellectual friends in the basement who are supposed to tell the workers of this country what they want, whether they want it or not?[/b]

Yep, been there. Just under considerably less momentous circumstances.

[b]O’Neill: Russia. Russia.
Bryant: Are you really that cynical?
O’Neill: I’m really that cynical.
Bryant: Gene, if you had been to Russia, you’d never be cynical about anything again. You would have seen people transformed. Ordinary people.
O’Neill: Louise, something in me tightens when an American intellectual’s eyes shine and they start to talk to me about the Russian people. Something in me says, “Watch it. A new version of Irish Catholicism is being offered for your faith.” And I wonder why a lovely wife of Louise Reed who’s just seen this brave new world is sitting around with a cynical bastard like me instead of trotting all over Russia with her idealistic husband. It’s almost worth being converted.

…

O’Neill: Jack dreams that he can hustle the American working man, who’s one dream is that he could be rich enough not to work, into a revolution led by his party. And you dream that if you discuss the revolution with a man before you go to bed with him, it’ll be missionary work rather than sex. I’m sorry to see you and Jack so serious about your sports. It’s particularly disappointing in you, Louise. You had a lighter touch when you were touting free love.
Bryant: Boy, you’ve become quite the critic, haven’t you, Gene? Just leaned back and analyzed us all. Duplicitous women who tout free love and then get married, power-mad journalists who join the revolution instead of observing it, middle-class radicals who come looking for sex and then talk about Russia. It must seem so contemptible to a man like you who has the courage to sit on his ass and observe human inadequacy from the inside of a bottle. Well, I’ve never seen you do anything for anyone. I’ve never seen you give anything to anyone, so I can understand why you might suspect the motives of those who have.[/b]

So, who wins?

[b]Grigory Zinoviev: Comrade Reed, you have a place on the train! You have a place on the train of this revolution. You have been like so many others, the best revolutionaries. One of the engineers on the locomotive of this train that pulls this revolution on the tracks of historical necessity laid out for it by the Party. You can’t leavve us now. We can’t replace you. Why do you have to leave? To see your wife? Last year at the International Congress I learned my son was very ill with typhus. I didn’t go to see my son because I knew I was needed where I was placed by the Party. Would you like to abandon this moment in your life? Would you ever get this moment again?

…

Goldman: Jack, I think we have to face it. The dream that we had is dying in Russia. If Bolshevism means the peasants taking the land, the workers taking the factories, Russia’s the one place where there’s no Bolshevism.
Reed: You know, I can argue with cops, I can fight with the generals. I can’t deal with a bureaucrat.
Goldman: You think Zinoviev is nothing worse than a bureaucrat? The Soviets have no local autonomy. The central state has all the power. All the power is in the hands of a few men and they are destroying the revolution. They are destroying any real hope of Communism in Russia. They are putting people like me in jail. My understanding of revolution is not a continual extermination of political dissenters, and I want no part of it.
Reed: You sound like you are a little confused about the revolution in action. Up to now, you’ve only dealt with it in theory. What did you think this thing was going to be…a revolution by consensus? A revolution where we all sat down and agreed over a cup of coffee?
Goldman: Nothing works. Four million people died last year. Not from fighting war…they died from starvation and typhus and a militaristic police state that suppresses freedom and human rights and nothing works.
Reed: They died because of a French, British and American blockade that cut off all food and medical supplies and because counter-revolutionaries have sabotaged the factories and the railroads and the telephones, and because the people, the poor ignorant, superstitious, illiterate people, are trying to run things themselves, just as you always said they should, but they don’t know how to run them yet. Did you really think things would work right away? Did you really think that revolutionary social transformation would be anything other than a murderous process? It’s a war, E.G. and we gotta fight it like we fight a war, with discipline, with terror, with firing squads or we just give it up.[/b]

Same with the repression. The entire capitalist world is doing everything in its power [and from all sides] to bring the Bolsheviks down. So the reactionaries set up the political conditions whereby the state has little recourse but to impose draconian “national security” measures. Look at what the ruling class here imposes on us [re the Patirot Act, NSA spying etc] in order to fight “global terrorism”! No firing squads, no gulags of course. But look at the threat!

Emma: Lousie, how in the name of god did you get into Russia?!

[iambiguous]

There are only so many directions we can go. And one of them is down. And sometimes you go so far down you get desparate. And when you get desparate you’ll do all sorts of desparate things in order to get back up. Or even just to be less far down. And that [more likely than not] is when the law of unintended consequences can kick in. Really kick in.

Like you kidnapping a boy north of the border who is in turned kidnapped from you by others south of the border.

What’s crucial is that you have some understanding of what it is like to be around someone who drinks all the time. Their thinking is not always clear. And the only way they can get through the tough parts is through the bottle. But it is precisely when times are tough that you need you be the most clear-headed.

Here though you’re just thankful she isn’t a monster. Lots of them out there. Instead, she experiences something that helps to transform her into something she clearly was not when the narrative begins. But that part never really goes away. So, for all pratical purposes, she has become two different people.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_(2008_film
trailer: youtu.be/YTu0UK11M-w

JULIA [2008]
Directed by Erick Zonca

[b]Elena: You know, the people here, they’re really nice to each other. You can feel safe here. And we can help you. I know you. You live right across from me, we’re neighbors.
Julia: Well, I’m not really down with the good neighbor shit.

…

Julia: Where the fuck am I?

…

Mitch [to Julia]: I’d like to tell you something here. If you’re not careful, you could lose it all in one night-- in one bad night. I’ll tell you about the old Mitch, okay? The old Mitch, who was a real fucking drinker, could drink you under the table any fucking day of the week, believe me. A disaster for my family, but I didn’t give a fuck. And one bad night one of my kids gets in the way. And I just-- I just wanted to push her, but that’s not what I did. What I did is I hit her. All this rage came out of me. I wanted to do some real fucking damage. My fist came down on her. She just went-- What is she, eight years old? Skinny little arms-- she went flying against that wall. She dropped right there, not breathing. My wife goes running over to her, picks her up, takes her to the hospital. Saved her life–my little Lucy. You know what I did? I went in there and I went to sleep. Passed out. Just another night. 13 years–haven’t seen them since.

…

Julia: It’s simple, Nick. Okay, listen here. I go with her to kidnap the kid. I get the kid. Sweet, okay. And then – here’s the kicker – we kidnap the kid from her!

…

Julia: Elena, are you saying that you don’t have the money now yourself?
Elena: Well, money doesn’t matter. I don’t have the money, okay? I don’t have any money. He has all the money. He’s gonna give it and God’s with us.
Julia: God’s with us? God’s with us and you don’t have the money?!
Elena: No, I don’t have it, but…
Julia: I owe that money! That’s my money, you fucking psycho!
[Julia slaps her across the face]
Elena: My baby! Even an animal keeps its babies. Even a bitch keeps its babies. Help me! Somebody help-- help me!

…

Julia: She has to be careful, Tom. Because of your grandfather. He really hates her, you know? On account of her being Mexican. You know that? Which, by the way, makes you half Mexican. I betcha he doesn’t talk to you about that. Huh? I bet he’s really really sweet to you. He’s a fucking racist to her.

…

Julia: The fucking cops were there! I saw them, you fucking bastard. Liar! I saw them.
Grandfather: The money was dropped. I did my part, now where is Tom?
Julia: You don’t give a shit about seeing your kid again.
Grandfather: Julia Harris, we know who you are. We’ll pay, but I want Tom. If you lay a hand on him, you are fucking dead!

…

Mitch: Is the boy all right?
Julia: Yeah, he’s fine.
Mitch: Just don’t hurt him.
Julia: Don’t hurt him? Is that what you think of me, Mitch? And I suppose you-- I suppose that’s what you told him, right? That I’m some-- what? alcoholic degenerate moron?
Mitch: No, that’s what he thought before I talked to him.

…

Julia: You know what is going to be the first thing they do when they get that kid back? They’re gonna come looking for me. And they’re gonna find me And they’re gonna fucking crucify me. I am fighting for my skin here, Mitch, and I am dead without that money.

…

Mitch: We all knew that Elena’s stupid insane story about getting her kid back was bullshit. We heard it over and over again at meetings. Why is it that you are the only one who believed her? Why? You’re dangerous to this kid, Julia, because you’re a danger to yourself.[/b]

She is truly as fucked up as he thinks she is. But is she also a moral monster?

[b]Santos: I will feed that fucking kid’s face to my dog.
Julia: I’m not the mother, asshole. Right? I don’t give a flying fuck what you do to him. You’re not the one who kidnapped that kid, Santos. Let me tell you: I did. Yeah, take it in. You didn’t ask the family for a ransom. I did! You know for how much? $2 million. Oh yeah. Today you lose, I win. ¿Entiendes, fuckface? Here’s my deal: You get exactly half. I’ll do the math for you-- that is $1 million. Okay? When I get the kid back.
Santos: I can’t believe this.
Julia: Read The L.A. Times, you stupid shit. My fucking face is all over it. You don’t know who I am? I’m Julia Harris. I kidnapped that little shit. And I need a gun.

…

Julia [to Tom]: I’m taking you to your mother.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Based on a true story. So, is it still true today? And why isn’t it true for all kids in impoverished, “busted” communities? That’s the part that is almost always missing of course. If only every single teacher in every single classroom like this could be like him.

Which does not lessen how extraordinary the achievement was. But it does tend to take the onus off “the system”. As one teacher says, “If you want higher tests scores than raise the economic level of this community.” It shouldn’t have to predicated solely on these really extraordinary [exceptional] teachers.

It’s one of those schools though where he is hired to teach computers but the school doesn’t have the money to buy them. A school where someone is hired to teach physical education but they have him teaching math instead. A school where kids who want to learn have to hide their books from the homeboys…or be thought of contemptuously.

So, naturally, he sets out to teach AP calculus to a “bunch of illiterates”.

Three takes on it:

Washington Post after Escalante died:
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co … 01518.html

an article from Reason.com, a liberatarian website:
reason.com/archives/2002/07/01/s … -revisited

And from NPR:
npr.org/templates/story/stor … =124491340

And then there was the cheating controversy. Did they? Well, they decided to take the retest. 3 was passing, 5 a perfect score. Virtually all of them scored either a 4 or a 5.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_and_Deliver
trailer: youtu.be/GRtjlUfqJNg

STAND AND DELIVER [1988]
Written in part and directed by Ramón Menéndez

[b]Escalante: Tough guys don’t do math. Tough guys fry chicken for a living.

…

Escalante: Did you know that neither the Greeks nor the Romans were capable of using the concept of zero? It was your ancestors, the Mayans, who first contemplated the zero. The absence of value. True story. You burros have math in your blood…So, a negative times a negative equals a positive. Why?
[the whole class looks at him blankly; he sighs deeply and shakes his head]

…

Escalante [to Chuco]: I am El Cyclone, from… Bolivia. One-man gang. This classroom is my domain. Don’t give me no gas, or I’ll jump on your face and tattoo your chromosomes… If the only thing you know how to do is add and subtract, you will only be prepared to do one thing: Pump gas.

…

Escalante [to students]: There will be no free rides, no excuses. You already have two strikes against you: your name and your complexion. Because of those two strikes, there are some people in this world who will assume that you know less than you do. Math is the great equalizer…When you go for a job, the person giving you that job will not want to hear your problems; ergo, neither do I. You’re going to work harder here than you’ve ever worked anywhere else. And the only thing I ask from you is ganas. Desire.

…

Escalante [to Chuco]: Go to woodshop and make yourself a shoeshine box. You’re gonna need it.

…

Escalante: It’s not that they’re stupid, it’s just they don’t know anything.

…

Student: Kimo, this stuff don’t make no sense unless you show us how it works out in the real world.[/b]

So he does.

[b]Escalante: I want to teach calculus next year.
Principal [laughing]: Boy, that’s a jump.
Raquel: That’s ridiculous. They haven’t even had trig or math analysis.

…

Raquel: I’m thinking about those kids. If they try and don’t succeed you’ll shatter what little self-confidence they have. And these aren’t the types that are going to bounce back.

…

Escalante: Calculus was not made to be easy. It already is.

…

Escalante: You’re like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there!

…

Escalante: Do you want me to do it for you?
Pancho: Yes.
Escalante: You’re supposed to say no.

…

Escalante: Do you think the students cheated?
Raquel: Mr. Escalante, you put these kids under an awful lot of pressure. They would have gone to any lengths to please you.
Escalante: You didn’t answer my question.
Raquel: Well… every night when I go to bed, I watch the television news. I see a lot of people go on trial. They always deny everything, or their lawyers say they were insane at the time. A lot of them get off. But I believe that most people who get caught today are guilty. Don’t you?
Escalante [angrily]: Yup. I know what you mean.

…

Escalante: You know what kills me…it’s that they lost the confidence in the system they’re now finally qualified to be a part of. I don’t know why I’m losing sleep over this. I don’t need it. I could be making more money, with less hours, and have people treat me with respect.
Fabiola: Respect? Jaime, those kids love you.

…

Dr. Pearson: If you’re so confident of your students abilities why not just encourage them to retest.
Escalante: Why should I?
Dr. Pearson: If you don’t everyone will assume they cheated.
Escalante: Everyone will assume they cheated if they do.

…

Escalante: Those scores would have never been questioned if my kids did not have Spanish surnames and come from barrio schools. You know that.

…

Escalante: There is something going on here and we all know what it is.
Dr. Ramirez: Nobody has the right to accuse me of racism.
[shouting]
Dr. Ramirez: NOBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO ACCUSE ME OF RACISM!!

…

Claudia: You’re afraid that we’ll screw up royally tomorrow, aren’t you?
Escalante: Tomorrow’s just another day. I’m afraid you’re gonna screw up the rest of your lives.

…

Title card: In 1982 Garfield H.S. had 18 students pass the A.P. Calulus Exam. In 1983, 31 passed. In 1984, 63 passed. In 1985, 77 passed. In 1986, 78 passed. In 1987, 87 passed.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Gee, this is original:

The futuristic society depicted is one where separation of church and state no longer exists. Citizens have been drug-induced, then controlled by the government who gives their authority as coming from an imagined higher being. The society is free from worry, fear, want, or sadness… however, it is also a society that is void, sterile, lacking creativity, sex, love, and emotion.

Or maybe not?

After all, in most dystopias [of the totalitarian, communist ilk] God is displaced by the souless State. But otherwise these are generally the same trade offs, right? The rugged individual is more inclined to risk the worry, want, fear and sadness in order to be able to create her own world on her own terms. All the rest of us will settle for the nanny state. The mentality of the strong vs the mentality of the weak. As though complex human interaction is able to be reduced down to this.

Besides, what one person construes to be a sterile environment another deems to be clean.

Some years ago I had imagined scenarios such as this to be highly improbable. Now with technologies that simply boggle the mind I find myself becoming more and more convinced they are inevitable. Big Brother really is looming larger and larger with each passing year. It is only a matter of waiting for a calamity big enough to set it all in motion.

In the end though he gets…free. And we have absolutely no idea what that means. Only that it all seems rather bleak out in this particular world.

IMDb

[b]George Lucas apparently named the film after his San Francisco telephone number, 849 1138 - the letters THX correspond to letters found on the buttons 8, 4 and 9.

To provide the large number of extras required, George Lucas contacted the Synanon drug rehabilitation facility. He found many recovering drug users who were required to be shaved bald for the drug program anyway.

Some of SEN’s dialogue is taken from speeches by Richard Nixon.

The sounds of the police motorcycles are the sped-up sounds of women screaming together in a tiled bathroom.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138
trailer: youtu.be/vOoLUmo-a0I

THX 1138 [1971]
Written in part and directed by George Lucas

[b][repeated line]
Robotic Voice-Over: Are you now, or have you ever been?

…

Female voice: What’s wrong?
Man on monitor: I just bought one of these yesterday, and it doesn’t fit my consumer, and the store doesn’t have any of the other kind.
[LUH presses a button]
Male voice: For more enjoyment and greater efficiency, consumption is being standardized.

…

Female voice (medicine cabinet): If you feel you are not properly sedated, call 348-844 immediately. Failure to do so may result in prosecution for criminal drug evasion.[/b]

Get it?

[b]OMM [to THX 1138 in “confession”]: Thou art a subject of the divine, created in the image of man, by the masses, for the masses. Let us be thankful we have an occupation to fill. Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents and be happy.

…

OMM: Let us be thankful we have commerce. Buy more. Buy more now. Buy. And be happy.

…

[hologram plays in background while THX looks for LUH]
Hologram: Combined with economic advantages of the mating structure, it far surpasses any disadvantages in increased perversions. A final tran - An infinite translated mathematics of tolerance and charity among artificial memory devices is ultimately binary. Stimulating rhetoric…
THX 1138: LUH?
Hologram: …absolute. The theater of noise is proof of our potential. The circulation of autotypes. The golden talisman underfoot is phenomenon approaching. And, in the history of now, all ethos are designed.

…

Trial Prosecutor: Economics must not dictate situations which are obviously religious.

…

SRT: How shall the new environment be programmed? It all happened so slowly that most men failed to realize that anything had happened at all.

…

SRT: Well, maybe you are right. Maybe there’s something wrong with the computer. I don’t know, it’s a strange life. Cybernetics, genetics, lasers and all those things. I guess I’ll never understand any of that stuff. Guess maybe holograms are not supposed to.

…

SEN: You know, when I was at school, it was all very different. We used to stay in bed all the time. Combined primary economics… Combined primary economics was a bottle about this big.
[holds hands two feet apart]
SEN: Took a week.
Child: Wow!

…

Female voice [over P.A.]: Changeable. Alterable. Mutable. Variable. Versatile. Moldable. Movable. Fluctuate. Undulate. Flicker. Flutter. Pulsate. Vibrate. Alternate. Plastic.

…

Voice [over P.A.]: It sounds like shell dwellers.

…

[THX’s case has been terminated…it’s overbudget]
Chrome Robot: Please come back. You have nothing to be afaid of. We have to go back. This is your last chance to return with us. You have nowhere to go. You cannot survive outside the city shell. We only want to help you. This is your last chance.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Controversy tended to surround this one.

Is he a pimp more or less than he’s a musician more or less than he’s an entrpreneur? Pimps, after all, make their living off prostitutes. And some are known to be particular brutal and exploitative in this regard. And then there is the question of how black men are invariably portrayed cinematically “in the hood”.

As Wesley Morris, film critic of the Boston Globe noted: “Some will find it chicly inspired, recalling blaxploitation’s heyday with its grimy urban realism. Some will rightly find it corny, absurd, and an insultingly limited presentation of options for the most disenfranchised African-Americans.” Full review here:

boston.com/ae/movies/article … flow_isnt/

What some folks are looking for are the progressive characters to set the reactionaries straight. But what if “in reality” they don’t exist? What if it is just the “grimy urban realism” out there instead? Here the protagonist “evolves” though. He starts out little more than a thug and then begins to recognize there are other ways to relate to the women in his life. Still, Bill Cosby comes through loud and clear at times.

The power of music – of creating music – jumps right out at you here. There is just something about it that reaches deeper inside us than any other art form. Or it does for me. And [as some will insist] it doesn’t have to be classical or jazz either. The blues, rock and rap in particular trigger a whole other kind of subjunctive reaction to the world we live in.

Terrence Howard’s performance here is really beyond putting into words.

Look for Kyle.

IMDb

[b]The film is dedicated to Sam Phillips, the man who discovered Elvis Presley and founded Sun Records. Phillips’ do-it-yourself aesthetic inspired Craig Brewer to write the film.

Although there are numerous references to famous Memphis-based musicians in the film, Craig Brewer deliberately avoided any direct references to Elvis Presley. In an interview, Brewer said: “That was a rule. No Elvis.”

Terrence Howard interviewed 123 pimps and 78 prostitutes over a period of two and a half years. This process included living with four separate pimps for various periods, including a month-long stint in a Memphis bordello.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustle_%26_Flow
trailer: youtu.be/otn1YORTxDo

[b]Note: some explicit language[/b]

HUSTLE AND FLOW [2005]
Written and directed by Craig Brewer

[b]Djay: See… man ain’t like a dog. And when I say “man,” I’m talking about man as in mankind, not man as in men. Because men, well, we a lot like a dog. You know, we like to piss on things. Sniff a bitch when we can. Even get a little pink hard-on the way they do. We territorial as shit, you know, we gonna protect our own. But man, he know about death. Got him a sense of history. Got religion. See… a dog, man, a dog don’t know shit about no birthdays or Christmas or Easter bunny, none of that shit. And one day God gonna come calling, so you know, they going through life carefree. But people like you and me, man, we always guessing. Wondering, “What if?” You know what I mean? So when you say to me, “Hey, I don’t think we should be doing this,” I gotta say, baby, I don’t think we should be doing this neither, but we ain’t gonna get no move on in this world, lying around in the sun, licking our ass all day. I mean, we man. I mean, you a woman and all, but we man. So with this said, you tell me what it is you wanna do with your life.

…

Djay [to john]: Look here, baby, it break down like this: Twenty in the front, forty in the back.

…

Shug: Hey, Stevie Wonder! We hungry.

…

Nola: How come Lex gets to work out of that strip club, and I can’t?
Djay: Because we done been over this ten times, Nola. You got what they call a bad equilibrium. And it ain’t your fault, you just knock into shit. I put you on that stage in them heels, tricks gonna be yelling, “Timber.”
Nola: I’m in heels out here every day. You don’t see me fall down once…
Djay: Because you sitting, Nola. Ain’t that much of a fall to the floor.

…

Key: Djay, things don’t always come together just because you want them to, all right, man? Look, just because you got the bacon, the lettuce and tomato, hell, man, that don’t mean I’m gonna give you my toast.

…

Key: Look, man, I know you done learned a whole mess of shit hustling out on the street, right? Let me tell you what I learned while working on my job. There are two types of people: those that talk the talk and those that walk the walk. People who walk the walk sometimes talk the talk but most times they don’t talk at all, ‘cause they walkin’. Now, people who talk the talk, when it comes time for them to walk the walk, you know what they do? They talk people like me into walkin’ for them.

…

Nola: Everybody else says my hair looks sexy.
Lex: And then they nut.

…

Djay [to Nola]: Baby, this is some hard shit right here. Trying to take what’s in your head, man, and put it into words that fit together like a puzzle.

…

Yevette: You wanna know what I’m feeling? I’m thrilled! Okay, thrilled. What woman wouldn’t want her husband spending all day in a house full of hos?

…

Djay: What’s all this shit again?
Key: Drink holders. Poor man’s soundproofing.

…

Shelby: Hey, man.
Djay: You Mormons is some brave motherfuckers.
Shelby: No, I’m Shelby.

…

Djay: Who the fuck is this nigga, man?
Key: That’s Shelby, he plays piano in my church. I thought he could help us develop our sound.
Djay: You know he’s white, right?

…

Djay: If I can pimp $20 hos out the back of this motherfucking Chevy, I can pimp Skinny.

…

[repeated line]
Key: Kill them fans.

…

Key: It’s just that we want radio play, right? You got a song called “Beat That Bitch,” they might hear that and think that’s degrading.
Shelby: But that’s if you’re calling a woman a bitch. This sounds like a tearing-the-club-up song.
Djay: Man, I ain’t trying to call no ho no bitch.
Shelby: Yeah, I mean, besides, most of the bitches I know are guys.
Key: Look, man, y’all preaching to the choir, all right?
Shelby: If you had to say something different, other than “beat that bitch,” what would you say?
Djay: I don’t know. Shit. Stuff like… “Stomp that ho.”

…

Djay: I’m here trying to squeeze a dollar out of a dime, and I ain’t even got a cent man.

…

Djay: Nola, I need that microphone.

…

Nola: Don’t ever do that to me again, D.
Djay: What? I ain’t…
Nola: No, I ain’t some fucking cash machine, where you can get shit for free. I gotta have a say in what I do! I’m not gonna suck dick every time you come up short!

…

Shug: I get like this because I’m pregnant and everything…but, you know, letting me sing on the…on the demo and everything like you do…well, it just… it made me feel real. Real special. And…I mean, I know y’all gonna be moving on and moving up and y’all gonna get real good people to sing, you know, back up for you and everything…but I just… D, I need you to know it meant the world to me. Thank you so much, D.

…

Djay: Hey, Skinny! What the fuck happened to you, man?
Skinny: What the fuck did you just say?
Djay: I don’t mean no disrespect and all. I just remember when your first underground crunk hit the motherfucking streets, man, that shit flew through Memphis like a motherfucking typhoon. Y’all was there, man. Nigga couldn’t even walk halfway down the block without the pavement crumbling underneath his feet because some cat was bumping your shit out the back of his Caddy, man. We just miss you, Skinny, that’s all.

…

Skinny: You stand by your product, nigga?
Djay: Is a pig’s pussy pork?

…

Djay [pulling the cassette tape he gave Skinny up out of the toilet]: Skinny, man. Tell me this shit just fell out your pocket, man. Skinny? Hey, bitch. You tell me this shit fell out your pocket, man.
Skinny: Hey, hey, hey, man.
Djay: Hey, what, man?
Skinny: You know what you could do?
Djay: What can I do, man? You tell me what I can do, man.
Skinny: You can suck my dick, bitch.
Djay [shoving the tape in Skinny’s mouth]: Hey, bitch, why don’t you suck on this shit? Motherfucker!

…

Djay: Hey, how’s Nola, man?
Key: Nola? Let me tell you something, man. That girl got a mode all her own. She hit the bricks running. For some reason, she got it stuck in her head that she was in charge. Man, she hit every shake joint, radio station in Memphis and then some. I don’t know how she did it. That girl got skills. [/b]

[iambiguous]

A really controversial film. Some being incensed by the graphic violence, some being incensed by the manner in which a rape scene is depicted: With the rapist apologizing and the woman saying “hold me, hold me”.

There are parts of the world many deem to be “civilized”. But they are still part of the world in which a man is either man’s man or he is [or can be] savagely ostracized by those who willl bust a nut trying to prove to everyone that they most certainly are. Sometimes it can even drive a weaker man – a mathematician, say – to explode into just the sort of violence the manly men crave.

And the more deeply you become enscounced in the world of working class provincials the more likely you will encounter this sort of thing. A lot more id floating about. And stupidity. And even in the 40 odd years since this film came out that hasn’t really changed much at all.

Let’s face it, some women are attracted to the “bad boys” more so than to the, uh, acedemic sorts. Maybe it’s scrambled up in the genes somehow. And maybe you can unlearn it if born and bred on the other side of the tracks. Or become…educated.

But we all draw a line in the dirt somewhere. And when the thugs cross it we either go to the “law” or we confront them ourselves. Which is the more “manly” thing to do? And which is more likely to bring on dire consequences?

IMDb

[b]The title comes from the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu, who wrote, “Heaven and earth are not humane, and regard the people as straw dogs.”

In the scene where Dustin Hoffman’s character first enters the local pub, Sam Peckinpah was unhappy with the other actors’ reaction to this stranger entering their world. Eventually, he decided to do one take where Hoffman entered the scene without his trousers on. He got his reaction, and these are the shots shown in the final film.

According to the Peckinpah biography, “If They Move … Kill 'Em!,” about one-third of the viewers walked out of the movie’s first preview, presumably put off by its violence.[/b]

That was back then. Nowadays you can have this much violence before the opening credits end.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_Dogs_(1971_film
trailer: youtube.com/watch?v=IQjQIXzFCRA

STRAW DOGS [1971]
Written in part and directed by Sam Peckinpah

Tom: What I am, I am.

A man’s man in other words.

[b]Handyman: I hear it’s pretty rough in the States. Bombing, rioting, sniping, shooting the blacks? Can’t walk down the streets, they say. Was you involved in it, sir? I, mean did you take part? See anyone get knifed?
David: Just between commercials.

…

David: What was so funny with them?
Amy: They just think you’re strange.
David: Why because I’m American?
Amy: No. No. Just strange.

…

David: Why don’t you wear a bra?
Amy: Why should I?
David: You shouldn’t go around without one and not expect that sort to stare.
Amy: Look, if you could hammer a nail, Venner and Scutt wouldn’t be out there.

…

David: I have a grant to study possible structures in stellar interiors and the implications regarding their radiation characteristics.
Reverend Hood: Radiation. That’s an unfortunate dispensation.
David: Surely is. Yes, indeed.
Reverend Hood: As long as it’s not another bomb.
[pause]
Reverend Hood: You’re a scientist - can you deny the responsibility?
David: Can you?
[pause]
David: After all, there’s never been a kingdom given to so much bloodshed as that of Christ.
Reverend Hood: [beat] That’s Montesquieu, isn’t it?
David: Oh, really?
Louise Hood: Who’s he?
Reverend Hood: Somebody well worth reading.[/b]

Here he is alienating one of the few folks in town who has read Montesquieu…and is not a thug.

[b]David: We leave all the doors unlocked. It could have been anybody passing.
Amy: “Anybody passing”? David, a complete stranger comes into our house, decides to strangle our cat and hang her in the bedroom wardrobe? Somebody passing?!

…

Amy: You’re a coward…and I’m a coward. Plain and simple.

…

David [sort of firmly]: Ok, you’ve had your fun. I’ll give you one more chance, and if you don’t clear out now, there’ll be real trouble. I mean it.

…

Amy: David, give Niles to them. That’s what they want. They just want him. Give them Niles, David!
David: They’ll beat him to death.
Amy: I don’t care! Get him out!
David: You really don’t care, do you?
Amy: No, I don’t.
David: No. I care. This is where I live. This is me. I will not allow violence against this house.

…

David [to Amy]: Listen to me. You know what happens if they get in now? They’ll kill us all. They’ve gone too far to back down now. You understand that?
[Amy nods her head]
David: We’re dead if they get in.

…

David: Jesus. I got 'em all!

…

Henry: I don’t know my way home.
David: It’s okay. I don’t either.[/b]

[iambiguous]

John Wayne once complained that The Wild Bunch set to crumpling all the mythologies once embedded in the way most folks remembered [or wanted to remember] the “Old West”.

Closer to how it actually was in other words: considerably more capricious, chaotic and violent. A place where justice is bought and paid for. Meaning a place where [like any other place] one thing never changes: you follow the money. Or, in one particular case, the washers.

Mostly this is about the wild wild west coming to a close. Here we’re now well into the 20th century. And this bunch is mostly beyond the retirement age of the outlaw. There’s that classic scene where the wild bunch are in a Mexican town when an automobile drives in. Dutch looks on astonished and says, “Now what in the hell is that?!” That is the future. That is capitalism about to explode the world of “cowboys and Indians” to bits.

As for the “good guys” hunting them down, they’re worse than the bastards they’re chasing. And then it all gets entangled in the Mexican Revolution. The rich and the powerful up here and the rich and the powerful down there calculating the most propitious ways in which to divide up the pies.

Of course the women here are little more than chattel.

IMDb

[b]Supposedly, more blank rounds were discharged during the production than live rounds were fired during the Mexican Revolution of 1916 around which the film is loosely based. In total 90,000 rounds were fired, all blanks.

The name “The Wild Bunch” originally came from real-life western outlaw Butch Cassidy. At age 30 he started his own gang of outlaws, who were quickly christened “The Wild Bunch” by the press.

According to Harrigan, Thornton is Pike’s Judas goat. A Judas goat is an animal trained to lead others into a slaughterhouse. Its life is spared as it “betrays” its own kind.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Bunch
trailer: youtu.be/Joq_eXYL6HI

THE WILD BUNCH [1969]
Written in part and directed by Sam Peckinpah

[b]Pike: If they move, kill 'em.

…

Crazy Lee: Feathers flew like a turkey! Well, they shouldn’t have run; they shouldn’t have run.
[Deke shoots him]
Crazy Lee: Well, how’d you like to kiss my sister’s black cat’s ass?

…

Pike: You boys want to move on or stay here and give him a… decent burial?
Tector: He was a good man, and I think we oughta bury him.
Pike: He’s DEAD! And he’s got a lot of good men back there to keep him company!
Lyle: Too damn many!
Dutch [sarcastically]: I think the boys are right. I’d like to say a few words for the dear, dead departed. And maybe a few hymns’d be in order. Followed by a church supper. With a choir!

…

Angel [Gazing across the Rio Grande]: Mexico lindo.
Lyle: I don’t see nothin’ so lindo about it. It just looks like more of Texas as far as I am concerned.

…

Tector: Silver rings.
Dutch [angry]: “Silver rings”, your butt! Them’s washers! Damn!
Lyle: Washers. Washers. We shot our way out of that town for a dollar’s worth of steel holes!
Pike: They set it up.
Lyle: “They”? Who in the hell is “they?”
Sykes [laughing hysterically]: “They”? Why, they is the plain and fancy they, that’s who “they” is! Caught you, didn’t they? Tied a tin can to your tail. Led you in and waltzed you out again. Oh my, what a bunch! Big tough ones, hunh? Here you are with a handful of holes, a thumb up your ass, and a big grin to pass the time of day with. They? Who the hell is “they?”
Pike: Railroad men… bounty hunters… Deke Thornton.

…

Pike: Go on…go for it. Fall apart.

…

Pike: We gotta start thinking beyond our guns. Those days are closing fast.

…

Pike: This was supposed to be my last. I’d like to make one good score and back off…
Dutch: Back off to what?

…

Pike [talking about the railroad]: There was a man named Harrigan. Used to have a way of doin’ things. I made him change his ways. A hell of a lot of people, Dutch, just can’t stand to be wrong.
Dutch: Pride.
Pike: And they can’t forget it…that pride… being wrong. Or learn by it
Dutch: How ‘bout us, Pike? You reckon we learned from bein’ wrong, today?
Pike: I sure hope to God we did.

…

Dutch: They’ll be waitin’ for us.
Pike: I wouldn’t have it any other way.

…

Pike: Being sure is my business.

…

Don Jose [to Pike]: We all dream of being a child again, even the worst of us. Perhaps the worst most of all.

…

Pike [looking at the car]: I saw one just like it in Waco.
Lyle: Running on steam?
Pike: No, on alcohol or gasoline.
Sykes:: You know what I heard? I heard they got one of those things up to north that can fly.
Tector: That was a balloon, you damned old fool.
Pike: No, the old man is right. They’ve got motors and wings and go 60 miles in less than an hour. Going to use them in the war.

…

Angel: Would you give guns to someone to kill your father or your mother or your brother?
Pike: Ten thousand cuts an awful lot of family ties.

…

Dutch: Damn Deke Thornton to hell!
Pike: What would you do in his place? He gave his word.
Dutch: He gave his word to a railroad.
Pike: It’s his word.
Dutch: That ain’t what counts! It’s who you give it to!

…

Sykes: I didn’t expect to find you here.
Deke: Why not? I sent them back; That’s all I said I’d do.
Sykes: They didn’t get very far.
Deke: I figured.
Sykes: What are your plans, now?
Deke: Drift around down here. Try to stay out of jail.
Sykes: Well, me and the boys got some work to do. You want to come with us? It ain’t like it used to be; but it’ll do.[/b]

[iambiguous]

So, what’s the difference between a serious man and a serious Jewish man? Well, scrap all the crap about God and religion and there’s really no difference at all. Shit happens to everyone. Some are just better than others at turning it all into a joke.

What sets this particular rendition of thumping suburia apart from all the others is simple: It’s the Coen Brothers rendition. Parts of it unfold in a threatre of the absurd. It can mean whatever you want it to mean. And that is then interchangable with whatever meaning anyone else wants it to be. But in the end at least everyone is too busy laughing to give it much thought.

Still, meaning is everywhere here. Or, rather, the search for it is. Is it found? Sure, if you believe its been found. And, sure, it’s the meaning you give it if you believe that too. But most of the characters here don’t seem too convinced. Or it sounds like the meaning they convey is both derived from and dispensed by rote. Or they are too busy actually living their lives [or too cynical] to give a crap about stuff like that.

Bottom line? It’s all fucking hopeless. But at least we can grin while we bear it.

You do learn a lot of new words here. Well, if you’re not Jewish. So I thought I would provide the “goys” with a glossary:
focusfeatures.com/article/a_ … a_glossary

IMDb

[b]In his argument with the Columbia House records employee over the phone, Larry Gopnik repeatedly rejects the album Abraxas by Santana. Abraxas is a Gnostic term for God, particularly a God who encompasses all things from Creator of the Universe to the Devil, and an etymological root for “abracadabra”. It is thus implied that Larry Gopnik is vehemently rejecting mysticism, pantheism, and magic.

The opening scene in which a wife stabs a man supposed to be dead, believing he is a dybbuk (evil spirit in Jewish mythology), is according to the Coens just supposed to establish the mood of the movie. “We thought a little self-contained story would be an appropriate introduction for this movie. Since we didn’t know any suitable Yiddish folk tales, we made one up,” they said. Roger Ebert offered an alternative interpretation that the scene was the origin of a curse.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Serious_Man
trailer: youtu.be/n-XiCCgLOg4

A SERIOUS MAN [2009]
Written and directed by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

[b]Larry: So, uh, what can I do for you?
Clive: Uh, Dr. Gopnik, I believe the results of physics mid-term were unjust.
Larry: Uh-huh, how so?
Clive: I received an unsatisfactory grade. In fact: F, the failing grade.
Larry: Uh, yes. You failed the mid-term. That’s accurate.
Clive: Yes, but this is not just. I was unaware to be examined on the mathematics.
Larry: Well, you can’t do physics without mathematics, really, can you?
Clive: If I receive failing grade I lose my scholarship, and feel shame. I understand the physics. I understand the dead cat.
Larry: You understand the dead cat? But… you… you can’t really understand the physics without understanding the math. The math tells how it really works. That’s the real thing; the stories I give you in class are just illustrative; they’re like, fables, say, to help give you a picture. An imperfect model. I mean - even I don’t understand the dead cat. The math is how it really works.

…

Larry: Mr. Brandt keeps mowing part of our lawn.
Judy: Does that matter?
Larry: What?
Judy: Is it important?
Larry: It’s just odd.

…

Larry: Actions always have consequences! He pounds the desk for emphasis. In this office, actions have consequences!
Clive: Yes sir.
Larry: Not just physics. Morally!
Clive: Yes.
Larry: And we both know about your actions.
Clive: No sir. I know only about my actions.
Larry: I can interpret, CLIVE. I know what you meant me to understand.
Clive: Meer sir my sir.
Larry: Meer sir my sir?
Clive: (carefully enunciating his words) Mere…surmise…Sir.
[Clive gravely shakes his head]
Clive: Very uncertain.

…

Son: Dad…fix the aerial. We can’t get F Troop.

…

Clive’s Father: Culture clash. Culture clash.
Larry: With all respect, Mr. Park, I don’t think it’s that.
Clive’s Father: Yes.
Larry: No. It would be a culture clash if it were the custom in your land to bribe people for grades.
Clive’s Father: Yes.
Larry: So… you’re saying it is the custom?
Clive’s Father: No, this is a defamation. Grounds for lawsuit.
Larry: Let me get this straight: you’re threatening to sue me for defaming your son?
Clive’s Father: Yes.
Larry: But it would…See…if it were defamation there would have to be someone I was defaming him to, or I… all right, I… let’s keep it simple. I could pretend the money never appeared. That’s not defaming anyone.
Clive’s Father: Yes. And a passing grade.
Larry: Passing grade.
Clive’s Father: Yes.
Larry: Or… you’ll sue me.
Clive’s Father: For taking money.
Larry: So he did leave the money.
Clive’s Father: This is defamation!
Larry: It doesn’t make sense. Either he left the money or he didn’t.
Clive’s Father: Please. Accept the mystery.

…

Larry [on phone]: There’s some mistake. I’m not a member of the Columbian Record Club.
Dick Dutton: Sir, you are Lawrence Gopnik of 8419 Fern Hill Road?
Larry: No, I live at the Jolly Roger.
Dick Dutton: Okay, well, you received your twelve introductory albums and you have been receiving the monthly main selection for four months now…,
Larry: “The monthly main selection?” Is that a record? I didn’t ask for any records.
Dick Dutton: To receive the monthly main selection you do nothing.
Larry: That’s right! I haven’t done anything!
Dick Dutton: Yes, that’s why you receive the monthly main selection. The last one was Santana Abraxis. You…
Larry: I didn’t ask for Santana Abraxis!
Dick Dutton: You request the main selection at the retail price by doing nothing. It is automatically mailed to you. Plus shipping and handling. You’re about to get Cosmo’s Factory, sir. The June main selection. And you haven’t…
Larry: Look, something is very wrong! I don’t want Santana Abraxis!
Dick Dutton: You had fourteen days to listen to Santana Abraxis and return it if you weren’t completely satisfied. You did nothing. And now you…
Larry: I didn’t ask for Santana Abraxis! I didn’t listen to Santana Abraxis!
Dick Dutton: We can’t make you listen to the record.

…

Larry: No, I- well, yeah… sometimes… or… I don’t know; I guess the honest answer is “I don’t know”. What was my life before? Not what I thought it was. What does it all mean? What is Hashem trying to tell me, making me pay for Sy Ableman’s funeral?
Rabbi Nachtner: How does God speak to us? A good question.

…

Rabbi Nachtner: You know Lee Sussman.
Larry: Doctor Sussman? I think I - yeah.
Rabbi Nachtner: Did he ever tell you about the goy’s teeth?
Larry: No… I- What goy?
Rabbi Nachtner: So… Lee is at work one day; you know he has the orthodontic practice there at Great Bear. He’s making a plaster mold - it’s for corrective bridge work - in the mouth of one of his patients, Russell Kraus. The mold dries and Lee is examining it one day before fabricating an appliance. He notices something unusual. There appears to be something engraved on the inside of the patient’s lower incisors. He vav shin yud ayin nun yud. “Hwshy 'ny”. “Help me, save me”. This in a goy’s mouth, Larry. He calls the goy back on the pretense of needing additional measurements for the appliance. “How are you? Noticed any other problems with your teeth?” No. There it is. “Hwshy 'ny”. “Help me”. Son of a gun. Sussman goes home. Can Sussman eat? Sussman can’t eat. Can Sussman sleep? Sussman can’t sleep. Sussman looks at the molds of his other patients, goy and Jew alike, seeking other messages. He finds none. He looks in his own mouth. Nothing. He looks in his wife’s mouth. Nothing. But Sussman is an educated man. Not the world’s greatest sage, maybe, no Rabbi Marshak, but he knows a thing or two from the Zohar and the Caballah. He knows that every Hebrew letter has its numeric equivalent. 8-4-5-4-4-7-3. Seven digits… a phone number, maybe? “Hello? Do you know a goy named Kraus, Russell Kraus?” Who? “Where have I called? The Red Owl in Bloomington. Thanks so much.” He goes. It’s a Red Owl. Groceries; what have you. Sussman goes home. What does it mean? He has to find out if he is ever to sleep again. He goes to see… the Rabbi Nachtner. He comes in, he sits right where you’re sitting right now. “What does it mean, Rabbi? Is it a sign from Hashem, ‘Help me’? I, Sussman, should be doing something to help this goy? Doing what? The teeth don’t say. Or maybe I’m supposed to help people generally, lead a more righteous life? Is the answer in Caballah? In Torah? Or is there even a question? Tell me, Rabbi, what can such a sign mean?”
[pause as the Rabbi drinks his tea]
Larry: So what did you tell him?
Rabbi Nachtner: Sussman?
Larry: Yes!
Rabbi Nachtner: Is it… relevant?
Larry: Well, isn’t that why you’re telling me?
Rabbi Nachtner: Okay. Nachtner says, look. The teeth, we don’t know. A sign from Hashem? Don’t know. Helping others… couldn’t hurt.
Larry: No! No, but… who put it there? Was it for him, Sussman, or for whoever found it, or for just, for, for…
Rabbi Nachtner: We can’t know everything.
Larry: It sounds like you don’t know anything! Why even tell me the story?
Rabbi Nachtner: [chuckling] First I should tell you, then I shouldn’t.
Larry: What happened to Sussman?
Rabbi Nachtner: What would happen? Not much. He went back to work. For a while he checked every patient’s teeth for new messages. He didn’t find any. In time, he found he’d stopped checking. He returned to life. These questions that are bothering you, Larry - maybe they’re like a toothache. We feel them for a while, then they go away.
Larry: I don’t want it to just go away! I want an answer!
Rabbi Nachtner: Sure! We all want the answer! But Hashem doesn’t owe us the answer, Larry. Hashem doesn’t owe us anything. The obligation runs the other way.
Larry: Why does he make us feel the questions if he’s not gonna give us any answers?
Rabbi Nachtner: He hasn’t told me.
[Larry puts his face in his hands in despair]
Larry: And… what happened to the goy?
Rabbi Nachtner: The goy? Who cares?

…

Don: Was Rabbi Nachtner helpful at all?
[Larry gives a helpless shrug. Don rolls his eyes]
Don: What…did he tell you about the goy’s teeth?

…

Larry [standing in front of this gigantic chalkboard plastered with mathematical equations]: X squared, so that delta x equals the square root of .077 A squared minus zero, from which we derive the square root of .077 A squared. And also the uncertainty in P is equal to the square root of bracket P squared minus bracket P squared which also equals the square root of H over A squared. Which lets us delta X, delta P equals the square rootof .077 A squared H over A, and 1.74 H bar. Okay? The Uncertainty Principle. It proves we can’t ever really know what’s going on. But even though you can’t figure anything out, you will be responsible for it on the mid-term.

…

Danny: What’s sodomy, Dad?

…

Marshak’s Secretary: The rabbi is busy.
Larry: He didn’t look busy!
Marshak’s Secretary: He’s thinking.

…

Larry: You’ve got to pull yourself together!
Arthur: It’s all shit, Larry! It’s all shit!
Larry: Arthur. Don’t use that word.
Arthur: It’s just fucking shit!
Larry: Arthur! Come on!
Arthur: Look at everything Hashem has given you! And what do I get! I get fucking shit!
Larry: Arthur. What do I have. I live at the Jolly Roger!!
Arthur: Now I can’t even play cards!!

…

Judy: Sy had so much respect for you, Larry. He even wrote letters to the tenure committee.

…

Rabbi Marshak: When the truth is found to be lies.
[the rabbi clears his throat]
Rabbi Marshak: And all the hope within you dies. Then what?
[the rabbi clears his throat again]
Rabbi Marshak: Grace Slick. Marty Balin. Paul Kantner. Jorma…
Danny: Kaukonen.
Rabbi Marshak: …something. These are the members of the Airplane. Interesting. Here.
[He gives Danny back his radio]
Rabbi Marshak: Be a good boy.

…

Larry [answering the phone]: Hello?
Dr. Shapiro: Larry, Dr. Shapiro. Larry could you come in and discuss these X-ray results? Remember the X-rays we took?
Larry: We can’t discuss them on the phone?
Dr. Shapiro: I think we’d be more comfortable in person. Can you come in?
Larry: When?
Dr. Shapiro: Now. Now is good. I’ve cleared some time now.[/b]

[iambiguous]

You could spend hours and hours trying to explain to the really tough guys how closely they resemble cartoon characters…but it wouldn’t do you any good. They are just too invested in the narrative. What has become meaningful in the world revolves around being in the gang. And being in the gang means butting heads with all the tough guys in the other gangs. And butting heads with the cops. And butting heads with the squares. There’s just not enough time in the day to think about anything else.

The fish rumble because that’s what rumble fish do. But it’s not like they’re doing it for any…cause. Instead, it’s just another macho bullshit rendition of fight club. Only the first rule here is to stay alive.

In fact, the only thing that might alter their course is someone who sees through the narrative as just that—as one particular way of looking at the world in a world where there are lots of other ways of looking at it as well. Ways not all that obvious when [basically] you’re just a loser. Or a little whacked up in the head.

Or maybe not a loser at all. Or not even crazy. Maybe just suffused with this nihilistic sense of not really fitting into what so many others ascribe to all the sane winners.

IMDb

[b]Matt Dillon had read the book a few years before doing the movie, and in an interview with S.E. Hinton, said that it was his favorite book. Hinton said that when someone told her that “Rumble Fish” was their favorite book, usually “they were in a reformatory”.

A clock can be seen in [practically] every scene of this movie.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_Fish
trailer: youtu.be/7voEoWRKbAE

RUMBLE FISH [1983]
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

[b]Midget: Hey, Rusty James. Biff Wilcox is Looking for you.
Rusty James: I’m not hiding’.
Midget: Says he’s gonna kill you.
Rusty James: Sayin’ ain’t doin’.

…

Rusty James: I love fights! This reminds me of the old days when we had rumbles. Heroin ruined the gangs. Ask my brother. A gang really meant something then.

…

Motorcyle Boy: What is this? Another glorious battle for the kingdom?

…

Motorcyle Boy: What do you think California’s like?
Rusty James: Like all that shit in the movies. Blondes walkin’ around. The Beach Boys. Palm trees, the ocean. How was the ocean?
Motorcyle Boy: I didn’t get to the ocean. California got in the way.
Rusty James: California got in the way? I thought California was on the coast.

…

Father: Strange lives you two lead.
Rusty James: Strange? At least I’m not a lawyer on welfare.

…

Benny [voiceover]: Time is a funny thing. Time is a very peculiar item. You see when you’re young, you’re a kid, you got time, you got nothing but time. Throw away a couple of years, a couple of years there… it doesn’t matter. You know. The older you get you say, “Jesus, how much I got? I got thirty-five summers left.” Think about it. Thirty-five summers.

…

Motorcycle Boy: You know, if you’re going to lead people, you have to have somewhere to go.

…

Motorcycle Boy: California’s like a beautiful, wild… beautiful, wild girl on heroin… who’s high as a kite, thinkin’ she’s on top of the world, not knowing she’s dying even if you show her the marks.

…

Alley Mugger #1: You got any bread?
Rusty James: What?
[guesturing at the 2nd mugger]
Rusty James: He’s not gonna bash us even if we got bread?
Alley Mugger #2: Sure, that’s it.
Steve: Progressive country. Intergrated mugging.

…

Motorcycle Boy: I mean, blind terror in a fight can easily pass for courage.

…

Steve: The Motorcyle Boy. I don’t know why someone hasn’t taken a rifle and blown your head off.
Motorcycle Boy: Well, even the most primitive of societies have an innate respect for the insane.

…

Steve: You don’t see colors, do you? You’re deaf too, Rusty James said. What does it all look like to you?
Motorcyle Boy: Like black and white TV with the sound turned low.

…

Rusty James: How can you tell if someone is crazy?
Benny: Can’t always…Depends on how many think he’s crazy.

…

Smokey: You know, if there were gangs around like in the old days, I’d be running things, not you. You’d be second lieutenant. You might have gotten by for a while on the Motorcycle Boy’s rep, but you have to be smart to run things. You ain’t got your brother’s brains. It’s nothing personal, Rusty James, but nobody would follow you into a fight because you’d get people killed - and nobody wants to be killed.

…

Father: Every now and then, a person comes along, has a different view of the world than does the usual person. It doesn’t make them crazy. I mean… an acute perception, man… that doesn’t, that doesn’t make you crazy.
Rusty James: Could you talk normal?
Father: However sometimes… it can drive you crazy, acute perception.
Rusty James: I wish you’d talk normal ‘cause I don’t understand half the garbage you’re saying. You know? You know what I mean?
Father: No, your mother… is not crazy. And neither, contrary to popular belief, is your brother crazy. He’s merely miscast in a play. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river… with the ability to be able to do anything that he wants to do and findin’ nothin’ that he wants to do. I mean nothing.

…

Patterson the Cop: What’s the big interest in the pet store all of a sudden?
Mr. Dobson: They’ve been hanging around here.
Motorcycle Boy: Take a look at the fish.
Patterson the Cop: You’re crazy. You’re really crazy. And, you know, I’ve known all about it all along.
Motorcycle Boy: But they belong in the river.
[guesturing at the fish]
Motorcycle Boy: I don’t think they would fight if they were in the river. If they had room to live.
Patterson the Cop: Someone ought to get you off the streets.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Ex-con from Britain sets out to investigate the mysterious “accidental” death of his daughter in Los Angeles. Seeks out another ex-con to help him. And in the course of pursuing this he finds himself sinking down into in all the corrosive phlegm that L.A. expectorates on a daily basis. If you get up high enough into it.

He goes around blowing people away, sure, but it is made rather clear that you probably would do the same thing to creeps like this. Come on, hasn’t Stacy earned the right to be blown away? Under the circumstances, as it were. Think Dexter without a code.

Done a million times, true. But the execution here takes us beyond the genre that is commonly called “the thriller”.

Here the protagonist comes to finally understand how he himself had unwittingly participated in his own daughter’s demise. He had set the dominos up to fall years before. But it leaves out just enough to make you realize you will never really be able to piece it all together with any real satisfaction. It is more about the complex manner in which human relationships unfold…precipitating consequences which we have no real way of grasping fully at the time. We can only try to learn from them as best we can.

The editing here is fantastic.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limey
trailer: youtu.be/0h_iD1us304

THE LIMEY [1999]
Directed by Steven Soderbergh

[b]Ed: I want to tell you, Jenny stood right in front of these guys – tough guys – eyeballing them, checking them out. She made me feel like she was covering my ass.

…

Terry: Did you ever dream about a place you never really recall being to before? A place that maybe only exists in your imagination? Some place far away, half remembered when you wake up. When you were there, though, you knew the language. You knew your way around. That was the sixties.
[pause]
Terry: No. It wasn’t that either. It was just '66 and early '67. That’s all there was.

…

Wilson: What are we standing on?
Ed: Trust.

…

Stacy: You know, I’d tell you to blow it out your ass, but my dick’s in the way.

…

Uncle John: We makin’ trouble for someone?
Stacy: Yep.
Uncle John: Which kind?
Stacy: The forever kind.

…

Stacy [to Uncle John]: What’s the smartest thing that ever came out of a woman’s mouth? Einstein’s cock.

…

Wilson: How you doin’ then? All right, are you? Now look, squire, you’re the guv’nor here, I can see that. I’m in your manor now. So there’s no need to get your knickers in a twist. Whatever this bollocks is that’s going down between you and that slag Valentine, it’s got nothing to do with me. I couldn’t care less. Alright, mate? Let me explain. When I was in prison - second time - uh, no, telling a lie, third stretch, yeah, third, third - there was this screw what really had it in for me, and that geezer was top of my list. Two years after I got sprung, I sees him in Arnold Park. He’s sittin’ on a bench feedin’ bloody pigeons. There was no-one about, I could’ve gone up behind him and snapped his fuckin’ neck, wallop! But I left it. I could’ve knobbled him, but I didn’t. ‘Cause what I thought I wanted wasn’t what I wanted. What I thought I was thinkin’ about was something else. I didn’t give a toss. It didn’t matter, see? This berk on the bench wasn’t worth my time. It meant sod-all in the end, ‘cause you gotta make a choice: when to do something, and when to let it go. When it matters, and when it don’t. Bide your time. That’s what prison teaches you, if nothing else. Bide your time, and everything becomes clear, and you can act accordingly.
DEA Agent: There’s one thing I don’t understand. The thing I don’t understand is every motherfuckin’ word you’re saying.

…

Wilson: I’m looking for a different kind of satisfaction.
DEA Agent: You’re not from around here, are you?

…

Wilson: What could this deal have been, to set in motion such an unfortunate chain of events?
DEA agent: Could have been anything. A shitload of heroin imported from somewhere or other. The usual scumbags involved. But the thing about scumbags is no matter what they do with drugs, it’s harder to move the money. The money. In my line of work, you follow the money.

…

DEA agent: Your daughter, Mr. Wilson…she had a fondness for dangerous men.

…

Ed: Do you understand half the shit he says?
Elaine: No, but I know what he means.[/b]

[iambiguous]

You might say he lived a full life. And, depending on which side of the moral and political divide you resided, he was either a sinner or a saint. Most legends are. If you believe in that sort of thing.

Let’s call them, say, as some did, Southern white trash.

They’re all still just narratives. What it really comes down to is the extent to which you get to make up your own. That’s always been more important than whatever the narrative happens to be. And some folks do get to make them up for all the other folks to follow.

There is always going to be a culture of celebrity wherever you ago. It’s just that, back then, there weren’t nearly as many celebrities to go around. But then there were also a lot less folks to whorship them. There’s Jesse James before and Brad Pitt [who played him] now. And, push coming to shove, it is surprising how little really has changed. It’s just the technology that has blown it up to what it is today.

This film takes us into the world the outlaws knew among themselves. In some ways [as always] they were just like you and I. And in other ways, nothing of the sort. That’s the way it always works for all of us: There’s the inside looking out and the outside looking in. Sometimes it’s a fair resemblance and sometimes it’s not. But they can never be an exact match. Not even from the inside.

Is this the way Jesse James died? Doesn’t make much sense to me. It seemed more like a suicide when he took off his gun belt. But I don’t really know the “real history” here. The wiki account made it appear as though Jesse had no real suspicions of Bob at all. But the film seems to convery just the opposite.

IMDb

According to Andrew Dominik, Brad Pitt had it put in his contract that the name of the movie was not to be changed.
Of all the Films made about Jesse James, his descendants have claimed that this is the most accurate.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Assass … obert_Ford
trailer: youtu.be/qp2ppYB9fDo

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD [2007]
Written and directed by Andrew Dominik

[b]Narrator: He was growing into middle age, and was living then in a bungalow on Woodland Avenue. He installed himself in a rocking chair and smoked a cigar down in the evenings as his wife wiped her pink hands on an apron and reported happily on their two children. His children knew his legs, the sting of his mustache against their cheeks. They didn’t know how their father made his living, or why they so often moved. They didn’t even know their father’s name. He was listed in the city directory as Thomas Howard. And he went everywhere unrecognized and lunched with Kansas City shopkeepers and merchants, calling himself a cattleman or a commodities investor, someone rich and leisured who had the common touch. He had two incompletely healed bullet holes in his chest and another in his thigh. He was missing the nub of his left middle finger and was cautious, lest that mutilation be seen. He also had a condition that was referred to as “granulated eyelids” and it caused him to blink more than usual as if he found creation slightly more than he could accept. Rooms seemed hotter when he was in them. Rains fell straighter. Clocks slowed. Sounds were amplified. He considered himself a Southern loyalist and guerrilla in a Civil War that never ended. He regretted neither his robberies, nor the seventeen murders that he laid claim to. He had seen another summer under in Kansas City, Missouri and on September 5th in the year 1881, he was thirty-four-years-old.

…

Bob Ford [to Frank James]: Folks sometimes take me for a nincompoop on account of the shabby first impression I make, whereas I’ve always thought of myself as being just a rung down from the James Brothers. And I was hoping if I ran into you aside from those peckerwoods, I was hoping I could show you how special I am. I honestly believe I’m destined for great things, Mr. James. I’ve got qualities that don’t come shining through right at the outset, but give me a chance and I’ll get the job done- I can guarantee you that.

…

Charley: Hey, Dick, you ever diddled a squaw?
Dick: Shh…
Charley: Come on, you can tell me. I’ve always wanted to lay down with a redskin.
Dick: Well, Charley, there’s a feeling that comes over you gettin’ inside a woman whose hands have scalped a congregation.
Wood: There’s a thunderous sound that comes from their cooch on account of the fact that they birth a child standing upright like a wild animal.
Charley: What’s it sound like?
Wood [with a wink]: Whatever a thunderous cooch sounds like, Charley. I don’t know.
Dick: No, they got a noisy quim on account of the fact that they use their cunnies as a saddlebag to carry tundries across the planes.
Charley: Come on, what’d it really feel like? It feel good? Come on. Fess up, now.
Dick: I like you, Charley.
Wood: I like you too, Charley.

…

Dick: You can hide things in vocabulary.

…

Ed: Yeah, sure, she’d been with other people…but the kind of things she said to me… people just don’t say unless they really mean it.
Dick: “My love said she would marry only me/And Jove himself could not make her care/For what women say to lovers/You’ll agree One writes on running water or on air.”
Ed: My God, that’s good. Let’s write her that.
Dick: Nah. Poetry don’t work on whores.

…

Narrator: The James Gang committed over 25 bank, train and stagecoach robberies… from 1867 to 1881. But except for Frank and Jesse James… all the original members were now either dead or in prison.

…

Charley: Bob’s got plans for the James boys I can’t even get the hang of. They’re that complicated.
Frank: Yeah? Well, you can just get shed of that idea. Because after tonight, there’ll be no more shenanigans. You can jot that down in your little diary. September 7th, 1881, the James Gang robbed one last train at Blue Cut…and gave up their nightriding for good.
Charley: Well, how are you gonna make your living?
Frank: Maybe I’ll sell shoes.

…

Jesse [to Bob]: I can’t figure it out. Do you wanna be like me…or do you wanna be me?

…

Bob: You know what I’ve got right next to my bed? The Train Robbers, or a story of the James Boys, by R.W. Stevens. Many’s the night I’ve stayed up with my mouth opens and my eyes open, reading about your escapades in the Wide Awake Library.
Jesse: They’re all lies, you know.
Bob: 'Course they are.

…

Martha: What did you and Dick get into a scrape about?
Wood: Well, he tampered with my daddy’s wife while a pork chop burned on the skillet, so I shot him.

…

Bob [after shooting Wood in the head]: He’s still sucking air. But I think he’s a goner.

…

Bob: How’s that leg?
Dick: Full of torment, Bob. Thanks for askin’.

…

Jesse: Have you seen Wood Hite lately?
Charley: No. Not at all.

…

Governor Crittenden [to Bob]: Jesse James is nothing more than a public outlaw who’s made his reputation by stealing whatever he could and by killing whoever got in his way. You’ll hear some fools say he’s getting back at Republicans and Union men for wrongs his family suffered during the war, but his victims have scarcely ever been selected with reference to their political views. I’m saying his sins will soon find him out. I’m saying his cup of iniquity is full. I’m saying Jesse James is a desperate case and may require a desperate remedy.

…

Jesse: You ever consider suicide?
Charley: Can’t say that I have. There was always something else I wanted to do. Or my predicaments changed or I saw my hardships from a different slant; you know all what can happen. It never seemed respectable.
Jesse: I’ll tell you one thing that’s certain; you won’t fight dying once you’ve peeked over to the other side; you’ll no more want to go back to your body than you’d want to spoon up your own puke.

…

Charley: Bob isn’t much more than a boy to most appearances, but there’s about two tons of sand in him and he’ll stand with his shooter when that’s what’s called for. And he’s smart too-he’s about as intricate as they come.
Jesse: You’re forgetting that I’ve already met the kid.

…

Bob: They gave me ten days.
Charley: For what?
Bob: Arresting him.
Charley: You and me, huh?
Bob: It’s going to happen one way or another. It’s going to happen, Charley, and it might as well be us who get rich on it.
Charley: Bob, he’s our friend.
Bob: He murdered Ed Miller. He’s going to murder Liddil and Cummins if the chance ever comes. Seems to me Jesse’s riding from man to man, saying goodbye to the gang. Your friendship could put you under the pansies.
Charley: I’ll grind it fine in my mind, Bob. I can’t go any further than that, right now.
Bob: You’ll come around.
Charley: You think it’s all made up, don’t you? You think it’s all yarns and newspaper stories.
Bob: He’s just a human being.

…

Jesse: You know, I’m real comfortable with your brother. Hell, he’s ugly as sin, he smells like a skunk… and he’s so ignorant he couldn’t drive nails in the snow…but he’s sort of easy to be around. I can’t say the same for you, Bob.
Bob: Well, I’m sorry to hear you say that.

…

Narrator: Jesse slept with Bob in the children’s room that night. And Bob remained awake. He could see that there was a gun on the nightstand. He could imagine its cold nickel inside his grip…its two-pound weight reached out and aimed.
Bob: I need to go to the privy.
Jesse: You think you do, but you don’t.

…

Narrator: And so it went, Jesse was increasingly cavalier…merry, moody, fey…unpredictable. He camouflaged his depressions and derangements with masquerades of extreme cordiality, courtesy…and goodwill towards others. But even as he jested, or tickled his boy in the ribs Jesse would look over at Bob with melancholy eyes…as if the two were meshed in an intimate communication. Bob was certain that the man had unriddled him…had seen through his reasons for coming along…that Jesse could forecast each of Bob’s possible moves and inclinations and was only acting the innocent in order to lull Bob into stupid tranquility and miscalculation.

…

Jesse [his last words]: Don’t that picture look dusty?

…

Narrator: The resulting prints sold for 2 dollars apiece and were the models for the lithographed covers on a number of magazines. Soon a thousand strangers were making spellbound pilgrimages to the cottage…or were venerating the iced remains in Seidenfaden’s cooling room. The man who offered 30,000 dollars for the body of President Garfield’s assassin sent a telegram to City Marshal Enos Craig offering 50,000 for the body of Jesse Woodson James… so that he could go around the country with it…or at least sell it to P.T. Barnum for his Greatest Show on Earth. Another photograph was taken of the renowned American bandit… nestled in his bed of ice. And it was this shot that was most available in sundries and apothecaries…to be viewed in a stereoscope alongside the sphinx the Taj Mahal, and the catacombs of Rome.[/b]

Bob and Charlie parlay their fame into a stage production of the assassination:

[b]Narrator: By October of 1883, Bob Ford could be identified correctly by more citizens than could the president of the United States.

…

Narrator: By his own approximation, Bob assassinated Jesse James over 800 times. He suspected no one in history had ever so often or so publicly recapitulated an act of betrayal.

…

Dorothy: Why did you kill him?
Bob: Well, he was gonna kill me.
Dorothy: So you were scared and that’s the only reason?
Bob: Yeah. And the reward money.
[long pause]
Dorothy: Do you want me to change the subject?
Bob: You know what I expected? Applause.
[laughs to himself]
Bob: I was only 20 years old then. I couldn’t see how it would look to people. I was surprised by what happened. They didn’t applaud.

…

Narrator: He was ashamed of his persiflage, his boasting, his pretensions of courage and ruthlessness; he was sorry about his cold-bloodedness, his dispassion, his inability to express what he now believed was the case- that he truly regretted killing Jesse, that he missed the man as much as anybody and wished his murder hadn’t been necessary. Even as he circulated his saloon he knew that the smiles disappeared when he passed by. He received so many menacing letters that he could read them without any reaction except curiosity. He kept to his apartment all day, flipping over playing cards, looking at his destiny in every King and Jack.

…

Narrator: Edward O’Kelly came up from Bachelor at one P.M. on the 8th. He had no grand scheme. No strategy. No agreement with higher authorities. Nothing but a vague longing for glory, and a generalized wish for revenge against Robert Ford. Edward O’Kelly would be ordered to serve a life sentence in the Colorado Penitentiary for second degree murder. Over seven thousand signatures would eventually be gathered in a petition asking for O’Kelly’s release, and in 1902, Governor James B. Ullman would pardon the man. There would be no eulogies for Bob, no photographs of his body would be sold in sundries stores, no people would crowd the streets in the rain to see his funeral cortege, no biographies would be written about him, no children named after him, no one would ever pay twenty-five cents to stand in the rooms he grew up in. The shotgun would ignite, and Ella Mae would scream, but Robert Ford would only lay on the floor and look at the ceiling, the light going out of his eyes before he could find the right words.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Not often that you get a remake of a foreign film that is actually equal to [or even better than] the original. Nine times out of ten it’s more like the remake of, say, Tzameti 13.

But, as noted below, Hollywood does insist on making it all a bit less explicit…and grim. But still no less compelling. It’s easy to imagine flawed characters like this. It’s easy to imagine them becoming entangled in circumstances like this.

This one is all Al Pacino though. He nails insomnia. In particular how it can play havoc with the rest of your life. I know because I have been there myself. And not just once.

And let’s face it there aren’t too many jobs where a chronic lack of sleep can spell disaster for your judgment like being a police detective. It might, for example, get someone killed. Or send an innocent man to prison.

What makes this “procedural” most interesting of course is the manner in which the cop and the killer exchange roles as the cat and the mouse. Who has the most to lose if the whole truth comes out. But what is ever the whole truth? “Just the facts, Ma’am”, sometimes doesn’t cut in in this day and age.

Here he does the right thing. But it could easily have gone the other way. Or been construed by someone else as the wrong thing.

IMDb

Some more explicit or dark details were changed from the original Norwegian film Insomnia such as: the dead dog Dormer shoots in this film is alive in the original; Dormer does some reckless driving to scare the dead girl’s friend, in the original he grabs her between the legs; Dormer and the hotel clerk share their thoughts a lot in the film, in the original they flirt a lot and he almost rapes her; the extremely downbeat ending in the original has been changed.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insomnia_(2002_film
trailer: youtu.be/IbeKqA36j6A

INSOMNIA [2002]
Directed by Christopher Nolan

[b]Detective: We know about forensics work here. The body gave us nothing.
Dormer: She gave us plenty. All this trouble, all this care. Why?
Det. Burr: He knew her.
Dormer: He knows we can connect him to her.
Detective: This isn’t a random psycho? Crime of passion?
Dormer: Maybe. But whatever happened, his reaction wasn’t passionate. He didn’t panic. Didn’t chop her up or burn her. He just thought about what we would be looking for and then calmly removed all those traces.

…

Dormer: So how far away is the school?
Det. Burr: It’s 10:00, Detective Dormer.
Dormer: You bet.
Det. Burr: At night.
Dormer: So when does it get dark here?
Det. Burr: It doesn’t. Not this time of year.
Dormer: Yeah, I heard about that.

…

Dormer: Randy, this whole thing you’re doing, you know, this “fuck the world” act. Now that might work with your mama. It might even work with a couple of these local cops, who have known you long enough to figure you’re too dumb ever to kill anyone without leaving a couple of witnesses and a signed confession. Ain’t gonna work with me, because I know things, you understand? I know you beat your girlfriend. I know she was seeing somebody else. Somebody she might have even gone to see after she walked out on you Friday night. Now, you’re gonna tell us who that somebody might be? Or are you so fucking stupid, you’re going to leave yourself as the last person to see Kay Connell alive?

…

Dormer [to Warfield]: Don’t presume to know what happened. You weren’t here. But then, you never are, are you? You’re always safe behind some desk, reading your bullshit reports. And that is why I have nothing but contempt for you. You and all the assholes like you risk nothing, spend all day sucking the marrow out of real cops when you never had the balls to be one yourself.[/b]

This is an age old conflict. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t.

[b]Finch [on phone]: Will, what are you doing? I try to help and you’re running around like a maniac. Were you gonna kill me? How would you explain that?
Dormer: No one gets too upset when child murderers are brought in feet first.
Finch: There’s no evidence I killed Kay. You only know because I told you.

…

Finch: I respect your profession. That’s why I write about it. I wanted to become a cop after school. I couldn’t pass all the tests.
Dormer: You should’ve tried Internal Affairs. They’d have taken you.

…

Finch: Killing changes you. You know that. It’s not guilt. I never meant to do it. It’s like an awareness. If life is so important, how could it be so fucking fragile?

…

Dormer: You trying to impress me? Because you got the wrong guy. Killing that girl made you feel special. ut you’re not. You’re the same pathetic freak I’ve been dealing with now for 30 years. You know how many of you I caught with your pants down?
Finch: I never touched her like that.
Dormer: No, but you wanted to. Now you wish you had. Best you could do is clip her nails. Now you’re so different. You don’t get it, do you? You’re my job. You’re what I’m paid to do. You’re about as mysterious to me as a blocked toilet is to a fucking plumber. Reasons for doing what you did? Who gives a fuck?

…

Finch: Motivations are everything, Will. What did you see through the fog? I saw pretty clearly, didn’t I? I saw you take aim and shoot your partner in the chest. I heard him say, “Get away from me!” Why? Anything to do with Internal Affairs investigation? All that tension in your department?
Dormer: You think I’m that easy?
Finch: I’m saying that’s how it looks. Maybe even how it feels. How did it feel when you found out it was Hap? Guilt? Relief? Suddenly, you’re free and clear. Did you think about it before that moment? What would it be like if he wasn’t there anymore? Doesn’t mean you did it on purpose though.

…

Finch [holding up a tape recorder]: Dormer! Wild card!

…

Finch [on phone with Dormer]: Kay called and said she and Randy had had a fight. She wanted to come over and talk, meet me at her place. She comes over, she’s distraught, a little drunk. She starts telling me how Randy and Tanya were carrying on. I only wanted to comfort her, hold her I kissed her and got a little exited and then she started laughing at me. She didn’t stop laughing. Did you ever have someone laugh at you, Will? You know, when you’re really vulnerable, laughing their ass off at you? Someone you thought respected you? Ever have that happen, Will? I just wanted to stop her laughing that’s all. And then you know, I hit her. A couple of times, just to stop her. Let her know, a little respect. Randy did it all the time, I think she even liked it when he did it. I mean she never blamed him, she never wanted to leave him. But now I do it, she starts screaming she wouldn’t stop. She’s terrified, she’s screaming her head off, I put my hand over her mouth. And then I get really scared, I mean, I’m scared shitless, more scared than I’ve ever been. And I’m more scared than her, and then everything’s clear. There’s no turning back. After that, I was calm. Real calm. You and I share a secret. We know how easy it is to kill someone. That ultimate taboo, it doesn’t exist outside our minds. I didn’t murder her. I killed her. But it just ended up that way.

…

Det. Burr [to Dormer]: A good cop can’t sleep because he’s missing a piece of the puzzle. And a bad cop can’t sleep because his conscience won’t let him. You said that once.

…

Dormer: There’s this guy, Wayne Dobbs, 24. Works part time at a copy store. Every day he watches this 8-year-old boy…waiting for his carpool across the street.
Rachel: This is one of your cases?
Dormer: Yeah. Hap and me. A year and a half ago. For six months, he watches this kid. Finally gets up the nerve. He goes down, grabs that boybefore the carpool comes takes him back to his apartment and keeps him there for three days. He tortures him and makes him do things. And, finally, he’s had enough. He gets a rope. He hangs the boy in a storage space in the basement of the build ng. But he didn’t do it right. Little boy’s neck didn’t break,so he dangled there for a while and then died finally from the shock.Landlord found the bodyfive days later. The second I met this guy, Dobbs, I knew he was guilty. That’s what I do. That’s my job. I assign guilt. You find the evidence, figure out who did it, and then you go get them and put them away. This time there wasn’t enough evidence. And it’s reasonable doubt to a jury because a jury never met a child murderer before. But I have.
[pause]
Dormer: Anyway, I went and took some blood samples from the boy’s dead body and I planted them in Dobbs’ apartment. I could feel it there. This is gonna catch up with me. I don’t do things like that.
Rachel: So how did it catch up with you?
Dormer: Internal Affairs is coming down on our department. Hap, he was gonna cut a deal and bring me straight into it. They would’ve reopened Dobbs’ case, he would’ve walked. Now that won’t happen. And I don’t know how I feel about that. But Dobbs was guilty. Dobbs needed to be convicted. So the end justifies the means. Right?
Rachel: I’m in no position to judge.
Dormer: Why not?
Rachel: Two kinds of people live in Alaska. The ones who are born here, and the ones who come here to escape something. I wasn’t born here.
Dormer: Why don’t you tell me what you think? Here. Now. In this room. You and me. Please.
Rachel: I guess it’s about what you thought was right at the time. Then, what you’re willing to live with.

…

Det. Burr: You shot Detective Eckhart. And Finch saw you do it. Did you mean to shoot Hap?
Dormer: I don’t know anymore. I don’t know. I couldn’t see him through the fog, but when I got up close he was afraid of me and he thought I meant to do it, so maybe I did. I just don’t know anymore.

…

Det. Burr: Nobody needs to know. You didn’t mean to do it, and I know that, even if you don’t.
[She tries to throw the shell casing into the water, but he stops her]
Dormer: No, don’t…
Det. Burr: Why? Why?
Dormer: Don’t lose your way.

…

Dormer: Let me sleep. Just let me sleep.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Based on a true story: the director’s own. There really was a Trees Lounge. And Tommy here is Steve there. More or less.

My father was an alcoholic. It brought a lot of turmoil and dysfunction to my family. So I made a promise to myself that I would abstain from drinking alcohol until my daughter had gone out into the world able to function on her own. And I kept that promise. But one of the consequences of that is how few bars I ever frequented. I’d be in one from time to time with family and friends and significant others…but I don’t have any real understanding of the world that Tommy was immersed in. The bar scene.

And Trees Lounge ain’t exactly Cheers.

What seems apparent here is this: that crap we put up with around the family drives some to put up with crap that [eventually] unfolds in the bar. Only there alcohol fuels the dysfunction all the more. So I don’t think I missed much. And you can always just walk away from your family.

Bottom line: You relate to this sort of people or you don’t. Class is everywhere here. But we all say things that, at the time, we believe. We’re being sincere. But then shit happens and we can never sustain it.

IMDb

[b]Steve Buscemi once was an actual ice cream truck driver on the streets where his character is shown driving such a truck.

After the original Trees Lounge shut down, Steve Buscemi bought the sign and restored it to use for his movie, although he was not able to use it. He then gave it to a woman who worked at Trees Lounge for 40 years.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trees_Lounge
trailer: youtu.be/lMQLclxC7bU

TREES LOUNGE [1996]
Writen and directed by Steve Buscemi

[b]Vic: You’re a weak man.
Tommy: Yeah, I know. That’s why I drink it straight. The ice cubes are too heavy.

…

Marie [to Mike]: You don’t go to work every day. You go to the bar every day.

…

Connie: Excuse me, hon, but you’re gonna have to leave. You have no ID and you’re not 21.
Debbie [who is 17]: I’m waiting for my boyfriend…he’ll tell you how old I am.
Connie: Who is your boyfriend?
Debbie: Tommy Basilio.
Connie: TOMMY!!

…

Tommy: No, Jerry is allright. Saved my life once.
Debbie: What, he was gonna kill you but he changed his mind?

…

Tommy [immitating Marlon Brando from “On the Waterfront”]: I coulda been somebody, instead of just an ice cream truck driver, which is what I am, let’s face it.
Debbie: Who was that, Jerry Lewis?
Tommy: Jerry Lewis? You thought that was Jerry Lewis?!

…

Tommy [to Theresa]: He’s a little old man. Can’t you take some of the wrinkles out? You’ve given birth to Mr. Magoo.

…

Tommy [to Theresa]: I know, but now I’m even worse. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just, I, I just feel like…I don’t know what I feel. I don’t. I don’t feel anything. Except lost.

…

Jackie: Don’t talk like an idiot, Stan.
Stan: Don’t call me an idiot, Jackie.
Jackie: Then don’t talk like one, Stan.

…

Tommy: Everybody’s fucked up, but nobody wants anybody else to think they are, but everybody knows they are anyway.[/b]