philosophy in film

[iambiguous]

Some say that Infamous is to Capote what Valmont is to Dangerous Liasons. In other words, movies that are basically about the same thing [and the same people] that came out at about the same time.

But:

Though both of these films received generally good reviews, the critics clearly preferred one over the other. Here it was Capote:

RT:

Capote: 90% fresh rating on 181 reviews
Infamous: 73% fresh rating on 146 reviews

Two accounts:

npr.org/templates/story/stor … Id=6259809
pacejmiller.com/2010/08/29/c … mous-2006/

I actually liked both of them about equally. Besides, the story itself is compelling. Especially if you have read Capote’s book. Both films more or less do it justice in my view.

Still, it was after I watched this rendition that I was compelled to reread the book.

It basically revolves around the gap between this quintessessential New York intellectual and the Heartland folks as it pertains to the slaughter of the Clutter family out in Holcomb, Kansas. And on both sides of the law. These people simply do not know what to make of this “fruitcake” writer that has descended upon them. That is until he starts dropping names — Bogie, Sinatra, Gardner, Monroe — and it all quickly gets turned around.

But then there is the considerably more haunting gap between this part of the film and the murders themselves. And then the gap between the murderers and all of those reacting to them with horror and disgust. Or, for Capote, with fascination.

And yet, in particular, there is the complex, enigmatic relationship between Truman Capote and Perry Smith. To what extent does he genuinely care about him…and to what extent is he basically just molding and manipulating him into becoming the “character” he wants him to be in the “novelization” of those cold blooded murders in Kansas?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infamous_(film
trailer: youtu.be/jZw8ORyIbLI

INFAMOUS [2006]
Written and directed by Douglas McGrath

[b]Diana Vreeland: Everything about him is designed to rivet: The appearance, the demeanor, and, of course, the voice.

…

Gore Vidal: The voice? To the lucky person who has never heard it, I can only say: imagine what a brussels sprout would sound like, if a brussels sprout could talk.

…

Diana Vreeland: Here’s a word I loathe: eccentric. Eccentric is a word that boring people use to describe someone I think of as interesting. A great many people think of me as eccentric simply because when I have my shoes polished, I have the entire shoe polished. Top, sides and soles. Some people think it eccentric that every morning I have my maid iron my money. When I told Truman I had my maid iron my money, you know what he said? Here’s what he didn’t say: “How eccentric.” Here’s what he did say: “How wonderful.” [/b]

See what I mean about the gap between “these people” and the folks out in the Heartland?

[b]Truman: I want to explore how a crime like this affects a town…where everyone trusts each other.
Editor: It may be preferable that we don’t know the identity of the killers.
Truman: Exactly! Because what I imagine everyone is now afraid of is, “Who among us did this horrible thing?” It used to be you’d look at someone and think, “There’s old Mr. Busybody.” Now you think…“Did he do it?”

…

D.A.'s Secretary: I’m sorry. The D.A. doesn’t take calls from strange women.
Truman: Who says I’m strange?

…

Nelle Harper Lee [to the camera]: Truman’s parents deserted him at an early age…leaving him with elderly relations in my town. And Truman always disguised his shame over the absence of his parents with grand tales of adventure and glory. “My daddy can’t be here, he’s an aviator.” “My mother’s a photographic subject but they’re coming for me” he would always say. “They’re coming for me.” Every year at Christmas our elementary school did a pageant through the center of town. And one year, Truman wrote his parents that he was the star of the pageant…though he was only a snowflake like me. But, no matter, it worked. They wired him to say they’d take the train from New orleans and get there just in time for the pageant. They even said they’d stand right by the cannon in the square so they could cheer him on. Well, we marched through townand as we got closer to that cannon I could see him straining to see his parents. When we got to that cannon, he stopped forgetting we were supposed to be marching in time to the music. He stopped and he stared…They had not come. I thought for a minute he might break. And then he threw his arms up in the air and twirled himself all the way over. A cartwheel. And then again. And again all the way down the street till his tears were gone.

…

Dectective Dewey: No reporter has special access.
Truman: Sir, I’m not writing a news story. I’m from The New Yorker magazine. I’m writing a psychological study of a village and how that place is affected by a vicious crime. I will not be careless in my depiction. I shall labor over every word, every sound. The final result must be just so…as dazzling and unique as a Faberge egg.
Dewey: Right. And I got a crime to solve.
Truman: But I don’t care whether the crime is solved or not.
Dewey: Well, I sure as hell care. The Clutters went to our church. They were friends of my family’s. No access.

…

Truman [about the Kansas townspeople]: Do you think everyone keeps calling me “lady” to be mean, or can they honestly not tell?

…

Truman [in a grocery store at the Velvetta cheese display]: Could this be all the cheese?
Mrs. Dewey: Well, how much do you need?
Truman: Mine is a matter of quality, dear, not quantity.
Mrs. Dewey: Oh, you mean other types of cheese. Goodness, no. Not here. Are you staying for Christmas?
Truman: Yes, we are.
Mrs. Dewey: What will you and Mrs. Capote do for your Christmas supper?
Truman: Well, if this is the only cheese I find, Mrs. Capote and I might try cyanide.[/b]

By “Mrs Capote” she means Nelle.

[b]Dewey: Truman, you like football?
Truman: Not much. Though I must admit it always sends shivers up my spine when the men get inside that little huddle and whisper.

…

Truman: My goodness, I love shawls. I have several. I think the prettiest one is the one Jennifer Jones gave me.
Mrs. Dewey: Jennifer Jones? The movie star?
Truman: Yes. We were in Rome making a picture called Beat the Devil and I was struggling to write a scene for Bogie when I began to feel the most inhuman pain.
Dewey: Bogie? You mean Humphrey Bogart?!
Truman: I mean Mr. Lauren Bacall, yes. I was trying to write a scene for him and Peter in which they both…
Mrs. Dewey: Wait a minute. Who’s Peter?
Truman: Peter Lorre. But I had a terrible impacted tooth, and so John…
Dewey: Wayne?
Mrs Dewey: Garfield? Kennedy?
Truman: Huston. John Huston, the director.

…

Dewey: Did you meet Humphrey Bogart?
Truman: Meet? My dear, every night we had drinks and dinner and, once, poker!
Dewey: You played poker with Humphrey Bogart?!
Truman: I had a disadvantage in that I didn’t know the game in the way that Bogie or Frank did.
Both Deweys: Frank?!
Truman: Sinatra. Experience had taught them things a relative novice such as myself may not know, like, well…did you know that three of a kind beats a pair? So, I did not defeat Mr. Humphrey Bogart at cards but you may be interested to know I soundly beat him at something else.
[they all lean forward in rapt attention]
Truman: Arm wrestling.[/b]

Great scene. In other words, now they are impressed.

[b]Farmer [to Truman and Nelle]: Herb was one of the most respected ranchers in this state. If there was a list that told you how to succeed with honor…well, he just did everything on it. You see, he worked hard, he took care of his family and when he went to church, he just didn’t get his time card punched. No, he went in and he listened. And I’ve always believed that whenever you do something right it gives you a little bit of weight so that you come to feel rooted to this earth, you know? Solid. Secure. Now what scares me is that, well, sometimes, out of nowhere a bad wind blows up. Now it could be cancer, could be drink, could be some woman that don’t belong to you. And despite the weight that’s holding you to the ground when that wind comes, it picks you up light as a leaf and it takes you where it wants. We’re in control until we’re not. Then we’re helpless.

…

Truman: I think this story is bigger than an article. I think it’s a book.
Nelle: I can see that. But non-fiction, right?
Truman: Yes, of course it will all be true, but…
Nelle: But what? Either it is or it isn’t.
Truman: You’re not understanding. I wanna to bring fictional techniques to a non-fiction story.
Nelle: What fictional techniques? The ones where you make stuff up?
Truman: Excuse me, if I were gonna make stuff up you think I’d bother taking all these notes?
Nelle: You obviously plan to turn Bonnie Clutter into some faux poetic recluse when what it sounds like is that she was just thrown off by her menopause.
Truman: What is your stupid fucking point?
Nelle: That you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing. The truth is enough!
Truman: I must say I don’t appreciate this lecture from you of all people. To Kill a Mockingbird was based on true things, and you sure improved that.
Nelle: Right. It’s a novel! Reportage means re-creating, not creating.
Truman: This is a new kind of reportage!
Nelle: I’ll say.[/b]

Then they catch the killers.

[b]Nelle: This kind of changes your book.
Truman: You’re telling me. Of course, if I thought it was hard getting the townspeople to open up how in heaven’s name will I ever get the killers to talk?

…

Sheriff: No press inside the prison.
Truman: I have many connections in government. Perhaps I could have someone call, explain what I’m doing?
Sheriff: You’d pretty much have to know the president of the United States before I’d let you visit these boys.[/b]

Guess who Truman knows?

[b]Hickock: You want to write a book about me? If my jackass teachers could hear you say that! Did you ever write a book?
Truman: Certainly. My first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, was heralded by critics as the most exciting literary debut since…
Hickock: Yeah, okay.You a queer?
Truman: Yes.
Hickcock: Because I’d let you suck me. I’m not a queer, but letting you suck my dick don’t make me queer. It makes you queer. A mouth’s a mouth.
Truman: Well, thanks, I guess, but no.

…

Smith: What kind of stuff does Tennessee Williams write? I know his name, I just can’t think what are his books.
Truman: He’s a dramatist. He wrote A Streetcar Named Desire.
Smith: That Brando was in?
Truman: The very same.
Smith: Marlon Brando is the fucking king! Now, he’s one of my two favorite actors.
Truman: Who’s the other?
Smith: Humphrey Bogart.

…

Smith: See, this is why I don’t wanna to talk to you! If you want to make me look like some asshole, you will.
Truman: Perry, I never judge my characters.
Smith: Well, here’s something for you to remember all 100 percent of. I am not a character. I’m a human-fucking-being!
Truman: Perry Edward Smith! I am writing this book with or without you. Now, you can get involved, so I can make you a three-dimensional human being or you can continue this foolishness and I will head straight back to New York and write what I want!

…

Truman: When you’re talking to Dick and Perry, they seem like perfectly nice boys. To be frank, I’m much more concerned for my safety around Norman Mailer.

…

Smith [in a letter to Truman regarding the pornography Truman sent him]: “Dear Mr. Capote: It was extremely solicitous of you to send me those periodicals. But I regret to inform you that the reading material was repellent. My future will soon be determined. But there are only two outcomes: Life in prison or death. So, whether I have a short time remaining or a long time to come I owe it to my mind to fill it with things of beauty and intelligence.”[/b]

So, Truman send him books that he has written:

[b]Smith [in the next letter]: “Dear Mr. Capote: Thank you for the reading material. It was much more intellectual than the pussy pictures you sent before. However, though the stories are told well I, ultimately, did not like them, because I thought the writing lacked kindness.”

…

Truman: I want you to know. I have given my whole life to one effort…the creation of a great work of art.
[Smith laughs]
Truman: Please don’t laugh at me.
Smith: My whole life…all I’ve wanted was to create a work of art. I sang, nobody listened. I painted, nobody looked. Now, Dick and me, we murder four people. And what’s gonna come out of it? A work of art. I’m laughing at me.

…

Smith: You want me to open up, but I don’t think you can understand me.
Truman: Why not?
Smith: It was your books. I thought you looked down on the people you were writing about like you were sneering at them…If I’m gonna put my heart in front of you I need to know I’m doing it with someone who will listen to it and not make a joke out of it like you did with Holly Go-fucking-lightly. You can’t write my story because your idea of suffering is so far from mine.
Truman: It’s not. I promise.
Smith: Goodbye.

…

Smith [after he grabs Truman, clamps his hand around his mouth and drags him into his cell]: So, I’m sympathetic, am I? You been looking out for me, have you? What’s the title of your book? The “sympathetic” one about me? I know the title. The fucking guard told me, and it’s not sympathetic. It’s called In Cold Blood, isn’t it? It is, isn’t it? It’s called In Cold Fucking Blood! You sold me out, you shit after I opened myself up and gave you everything. Well, you’re not gonna get away with it. One sound out of you and you’ll join the Clutters in hell.

…

Truman: In Cold Blood is the title of my book, but it’s not exactly what you think. You boys did a monstrous thing. And the public and their prosecutors are calling for your blood. If they get what they want, they will kill you not in a senseless moment of passion, but with scrupulous premeditation. That is the legal definition of “in cold blood.” This title is a condemnation of their plans.
Smith: But not only their plans.
Truman: No. No, not only. Look, you did a terrible thing. You’re not innocent. That doesn’t mean you’re not a human being. I want people to see that.
Smith: I’m not talking to you until I’ve read what you’ve written.

…

Nelle: So how’s the book?
Truman: Well, it’s coming. I have to leave in a couple days for their trial.
Nelle: That’s all pro forma, right? They’re not contesting anything, are they?
Truman: No, they hope for life, not death. Death would be better for the book. It would satisfy the readers more, and it would make the title work too. Honey, I’ve worked harder on this than anything my whole life. I don’t want it ruined just because a jury makes a dumb decision.

…

Truman [after Smith and Hickcock are sentenced to die]: Will you appeal?
Smith: Dick wants to. But we’ll hang. We should.
Truman: You think hanging is fair?
Smith: It’s funny. Last night I was laying awake and thinking: What is punishment? Being in jail isn’t punishment, if you didn’t like it on the outside. And neither is death, if it was painful to live.

…

Smith: I’ll tell you what punishment is for me.
Truman: What?
Smith: It’s hoping there’s someone for you. And after years of no one you find him and you can’t have him.

…

Babe: Do you have any word yet about when the book is coming out?
Truman: I don’t know. You simply cannot conceive of the agony. I’ve worked on this book ceaselessly for four years pouring the whole of myself into it, head and heart. And then to be waiting like this…unable to publish what I’ve done until they’re hanged.

…

Jack [to the camera]: On death row, you may only write two letters a week. Every week, for five years Perry wrote both letters to Truman.[/b]

After they are hung and the book is published…

[b]Bennett Cerf: It made him the most famous author in America and very, very rich. He moved to Manhattan where, oddly, he had a very good view of the place he had left.

…

Nelle: Who ever knows what our hearts will want? Who can defend themselves from it Seeing what’s happened to him since…well, despite the bravado that only appears to be confidence…I have come to feel with great heart-sickness that there were three deaths on the gallows that night.

…

Bennett Cerf: He never wrote anything big again. Just collections, fragments pulled together. God knows he didn’t have to write, not after all that money on In Cold Blood. It’s funny. It made him, and it ruined him.

…

Jack: You know, in his will Perry left everything to Truman.

…

Nelle: America is not a country where the small gesture goes noticed. We’re not a country like France, where charm – something light or effervescent – can survive. We want everything you have, and we want it as fast as you can turn it out.

…

Nelle: I read an interview with Frank Sinatra in which he said about Judy Garland: “Every time she sings, she dies a little.” That’s how much she gave. It’s true for writers, too who hope to create something lasting. They die a little getting it right. And then the book comes out and there’s a dinner. Maybe they give you a prize. And then comes the inevitable and very American question: What’s next?

…

Nelle: But the next thing can be so hard…because now you know what it demands.[/b]

Of course, after To Kill a Mockingbird there really wasn’t anything that came “next” for her either.

[iambiguous]

The first thing you wonder is this: Could this be based on a true story? In other words, are there men [and women] like this hired to break up relationships others do not approve of? After all, if you’ve got the dough [or want the dough], why not?

And, theoretically, they don’t have to be rich and beautiful, do they?

Anyway, that’s what Alex, Melanie and Marc do. They get hired to split people up. On the other hand, they’re principled. They will only consent to do so when the women are “not knowingly unhappy”. Well, most of the time. And these men are shits. Well, most of them. Alex then becomes a sort of role model for the women. He teaches them to look for men more like, well, him.

In other words, after spending some quality time with the loving, kind, sensitive and intelligent Alex, they begin to fathom just how pathetic the man they are now with really is.

Some of their plots are really elaborate. Like something out of Mission Impossible. Perhaps then we shouldn’t take this one too seriously. In fact, why not just watch it as though it were a spoof of programs like this. Or think Healy from There’s Something About Mary. Only a little bit less screwball. Except for the parts where it’s a little bit more.

You know what’s coming of course. But things get complicated just enough to make it all worth while. It’s not only a screwball comedy. Like, for example, the 32,000 euros Alex owes to the “hard guys”. One in particular. The nut thug.

The ending of course is perfectly pat. To a fault one might say. But I wouldn’t have expected less.

IMDb

Screenwriter Laurent Zeitoun got the idea of the film from something that happened in his family, when one of his cousins was in love with someone who didn’t treat her well and he told his uncle that they should hire an actor skilled in improvisation to split up the couple.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbreaker_(2010_film
trailer: youtu.be/t3PuZo8qLxo

HEARTBREAKER [L’arnacoeur] 2010
Directed by Pascal Chaumeil

[b]Melanie [to Marc]: Tears work everytime…

…

Alex [as Pierre]: It’s too late for me. I’m far away from here.
Florence: I know. Gisele told me. Your divorce. Your breakdown.
Alex: I can’t fall in love again. But you…you…you deserve the best.[/b]

In other words, not the asshole she’s with now. So she dumps him. Mission accomplished!

[b]Brother [handing Alex an envelope with the money inside]: Then it’s agreed. My sister will never know I was involved.
Alex: You know our rules.
Brother: And if she ever returns to that jerk…
Alex: A full refund.
Brother: Has that ever happened?
Alex: Never.

…

Alex [voiceover]: Women in couples come in three catagories: happy, knowingly unhappy and unhappy without knowing it. I work on the final category. My name is Alex Lippi. I break up couples for a living.

…

Melanie [to the camera]: We’re here to help women who are with jerks. Our goal: to open their eyes. Our method: seduction. We never intervene for religious or racial reasons. Alex never sleeps with them. And most important, we don’t intervene unless the woman is unhappy.[/b]

Even if she doesn’t really know it yet.

Alex [to the camera]: …and anything goes.

And he really means is.

[b]Marc: Mozart didn’t do an opera on an accordion.

…

Juliette: I’ll pay you double to go. My father won’t know.
[he shakes his head]
Juliette: How much?
Alex: Stop it.
Juliette: Maybe you don’t want money. Ever wanted a quickie with a woman about to get married? Let’s do it in the fitting room. No panties. Just lift up my dress.

…

Alex [on the phone to Marc]: The nympho is in my room! She’ll screw everything up! Work something out!

…

Alex [after Marc knocks the “nympho” out cold]: Are you out of your mind?!
Marc: You said anything goes. Make up your mind.

…

Alex: I’ll wake the volcano…

…

Juliette [to Alex]: I feel good with you. You don’t try to impress me. You’re natural, without lies or pretense. [/b]

The look on his face? Take a wild guess.

Alex: Wait. You’ve woken me, Juliette. I haven’t felt this alive in ages.
Juliette: I feel alive thanks to you too.
Alex: Hold on, please. Let me finish. For me, it’s too late. I’m far away from here…

Sound familiar? Only this time he really means it!

Dad [to Juliette]: You are a serious, independent woman with a brilliant career. But what are you trying to prove by marrying Jonathan? I have nothing against him. He’s wonderful, smart, brilliant, and no doubt very kind. But he’ll bore you to tears.

I know he bores me to tears.

[b]Melanie: It’s a real shame. After all, you really liked her. What was last night like?
Alex: A dream.
Melanie: Never mind. With your pretty looks, you’ll soon find a Sandrine or a Karine or whatever…and forget her name after the sex.

…

Juliette [while she is walking down the aisle at her wedding]: How much do you pay a guy to seduce your daughter?
Dad: Not a thing. He refused my money.

…

Dad [to Juliette]: There’s a car parked outside with the keys in the ignition.
[pause]
Dad: Just in case.

…

Alex [to Juliette]: I hate Roquefort, I’d never seen Dirty Dancing, I think George Michael is crap, and my thigh’s just fine. I don’t know if I’m good enough for you. I don’t have a jet or an apartment. I sleep in my office. But I know I need to see you every day.[/b]

See, a spoof. But not to worry about Alex. She is loaded.

[iambiguous]

This story will either blow you away or leave you tied up in knots. Or, if you’re like me, both. Of all the “true crime” docs I have seen over the years, this one has gotten stuck in my head like very few others.

If nothing else it exposes just how agonizing that gap can be between what you want [and what is just] and what [sometimes] you are forced to accept in order to be left with anything at all.

You put yourself in their shoes and you think: What would I have done?

Here David and Kathleen Bagby are confronted existentially with a gut-wrenching injustice. But they only have certain options availablle. So, in order to see their son’s child [their grandchild], they had to forge a relationship with the woman who had murdered their son. Again, try to imagine yourself here. The person who gunned down in cold-blood someone you dearly loved is calling all the shots and you have no choice but to go along with her in order to have access to your loved one’s child. You have to talk to her on the phone, interact with her in complete civility, smile for the camera. Or else. And all the while you just want to strangle her.

Dr. Andrew Bagby was murdered by his ex-girlfriend, Dr. Shirley Turner. And she was pregnant with his child at the time. This is Zachery. The film was made by Andrew’s friend Kurt for Zachary.

One thing for sure: In so many crucial respects the legal justice system in Canada is just as fucked up as the one here in America. There is the law…and then there are those in position of power [authority] who can bend and twist it to their own ends.

And, basically, crimes like this seem to cry out: It could happen to you. After all, in so many respects, these are just “ordinary people”.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Zacha … His_Father
trailer: youtu.be/OtyY0CXdiNo

DEAR ZACHARY: A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER [2008]
Written and directed by Kurt Kuenne

[b]Child: Why are you sad?
Father: Why? Oh, I’ll tell you about it someday.
[he shows the child a photograph]
Father: Do you know who that is?
Child: Andrew.
Father: Do you know who Andrew is?
Child: I don’t know. Why did Andrew get killed?
Father: Because somebody hurt him, buddy.

…

Kurt: On the afternoon on November 7th 2001, my sister called to tell me that doctor Andrew Bagby, my closest friend since the age of 7, had been killed. My name is Kurt and I’m a filmmaker. Andrew appeared in every movie I made growing up. I decided to make a movie, to travel far and wide, to interview everyone who ever knew and loved Andrew.

…

Mother: I called the Sunnyvale Police Station, and they gave me another number, and then I got through to Sgt. Krulac, and he said, “Your son is dead under suspicious circumstances. Have you got any idea why he was in the park?” I said, “My son is dead? Murdered?” He said yes. And then I called David. And I said to him, “Andrew’s dead.” And he said, “No!” And I heard him throw the phone.

…

Father: A couple of policemen met us at the airport in Pittsburgh. Took us over to the hospital. Bill and Clark picked us up and took us over to Bacha’s Funeral Home in Greensburg. And then he took us down a stairway. Gurney at the other end…with a white sheet over a body. And I went over to him and when we could see his face I said, “It’s really him.” I kissed him and held him, and Kate kissed him and held him and kissed him some more. Tears are dropping on him, of course, and Kate went to wipe one of those away off his cheek, and a plug came out where he’d been shot in the left cheek. Oh, God. She pushed it back in and cried some more. After that, I lost it. I just ran outside and screamed. I was so fucking mad, I couldn’t see straight. God damn it, I hated. I’ve never hated like that. Didn’t even know who I hated. Didn’t know who it was then. Just knew that somebody purposely put him there. Whoever that is is a monster.

…

Kurt [to Zachary in the film]: And while I raced to rescue your history, your grandma and grandpa quit their jobs, dug into their savings, and gave up everything to move to Newfoundland to fight for your future.

…

Dr. Simpson [a friend]: I remember the morning that Shirley showed up. He said, “You’ll never guess who showed up on my doorstep at 5:30.” And I said, “Who?” He said, “The psychotic bitch.” And I told him, I said, "You know, Andrew, when I break up with somebody and put them on a plane and send them 1,300 miles away, and they knock on my front door, I’m going out the back door and I’m calling the police."He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Andrew.” I said, “Be serious. Nobody drives 16 hours after you’ve just broken up with them.” I said, “Do not meet her in private.” He said, “What can happen?”

…

Kurt: …and with that the government of Canada let a probable pre-meditated first degree murderer walk the streets…

…

Matt [on phone]: Kurt, this is Matt Oetinger. I just got a call from Mrs. Bagby. The abbreviated version is what’s her name, that bitch, held a press conference and announced she’s 4 months pregnant with Andrew’s baby. They can’t prove it until the child’s born. If it is true, the Bagbys are going to sue for custody.

…

Lawyer: We’re coming up with agreements with this accused murderer. And then Shirley Turner would come up with something else just at the moment when it was all looking good. She always did that so that it was extended.
Mother: It was like, “I don’t have to pay for my lawyer. You have to pay for yours, so the longer I can make it, it’s better. You’ll run out of money.”

…

Kurt [to Zachary]: When your grandma and grandpa first arrived in Canada, they were told, “The law is slow.” And they weren’t kidding.

…

Kurt: February 15th. Prosecutor Mike Madden acknowledged that the extradition request had been received. They adjourned until March 11th, when they decided they’d reconvene to select a date for the extradition hearing on March 25th, where they decided to set the date for the extradition hearing for May 27th, where they got caught up debating the French-versus-English translations of Section 32 of the Extradition Act, and decided to adjourn for a specific translation until June 11th, a hearing which lasted five minutes, at which Judge Derek Green said he wasn’t in a position to rule on the translation and they would adjourn again until July 30th…September 19th. The extradition hearing finally began, and evidence was finally presented. But just as everything was moving along smoothly, Shirley’s lawyer Randy Piercey threw a wrench into the works. Because the “authority to proceed” with these hearings provided by the minister of justice early that year had failed to specify subsections (i) or (ii) of Section 229(a) of the criminal code, the authority to proceed was invalid, the 90-day limit to amend it was now past, and therefore all extradition proceedings against Shirley should be dropped so she could get on with her life. Judge Derek Green now had to rule on whether or not to throw out the entire case, which would take place on October 18th, which was delayed four days until October 22nd, where Judge Green told Piercey to forget about it and said they would continue with the extradition hearing on November 14th.

…

Father: And then, of course, the unthinkable happened again. They let her out of jail again. And we had to give him back.

…

Kurt: Shirley was out of money and out of a lawyer, so she wrote directly to Judge Derek Green, who responded through his secretary with instructions on how to write her own appeal of his decision to incarcerate her while awaiting an order from the minister of justice to surrender her to the States.

…

Mother: She was let back onto the streets by Judge Gale Welsh. JUDGE GALE WELSH.

…

Kurt: Welsh refused to even consider Prosecutor Mike Madden’s argument that Shirley’s appeal was frivolous, even though multiple Legal Aid Commission attorneys had reviewed her appeal and refused to waste their time representing her.
Mother: I knew that we were going to be seeing Shirley Turner walk free the minute that woman walked into the room. Judge Welsh…she was almost fawning over her.

…

Mother: And here I am having to listen to this and the judge fawn on this woman. And Welsh actually asked an accused murderer to promise she’d behave herself. “If I make an order giving you judicial interim release, it would be on the basis that you would not attempt to flee or hide or avoid subsequent judicial proceedings related to this matter?” “Yes.” “Is that completely understood by you?” “Yes, I completely understand.” And here are David and I as if we don’t even exist. And we don’t exist. They don’t care about us. They don’t even care about the victim.

…

The judge’s ruling: “Dr. Turner’s detention is not necessary in the public interest. While the offence with which she is charged is a violent and serious one, it was not directed at the public at large. There is no indication of a psychological disorder that would give concern about potential harm to the public generally, as her crime, while violent, was specific in nature.”

…

Father: She is saying, in effect, if I understand that sentence, even if she did it, she’s not a danger to the community because she’s already killed the only one she wanted to kill. He’s the one she was mad at. He’s dead. So she’s not likely to kill again. And I find that logic absolutely atrocious. Most of us do not kill people who anger us. We go kick a door, scream and shout, some of us throw a punch, but we don’t set them up and kill them. You have here a human being who thinks they have the right to kill other people who anger them. And you still let them out in the general populace. I find that appalling.

…

Kurt: She was again let go on $75,000 in sureties, not one penny of which had to be paid. And with that, the government of Canada let a probable pre-meditated first-degree murderer walk the streets…
[long pause]
Kurt: …again. And they gave you back to her.

…

Father: And after that, things got really weird.

…

Interviewer: Can you describe what that process was like for you?
Mother: Disgusting! Oh, disgusting!!
Father: But going up to the door, I mean, was…Having to be with her was just nauseating.[/b]

Brutally nauseating. This is, after all, “the bitch” that murdered your son.

[b]Father: We religiously did not talk about the case. She’d try to suck us into conversation. Like, she’d talk about, “Was Andrew’s hair light when he was a baby?” And we’d just shut up. I thought it was like being at war. Nobody wants to do it, but you got to do it. So facing this bitch…that’s the price we had to pay to make sure we had a good connection with Zachary.

…

Kurt: Shirley decided to hold a birthday party for you at McDonald’s.
Mother: She started to open presents. Well, he wasn’t interested in presents. He wanted to get down. So, when he got down, he made for me. Shirley was very, very angry. So she said, “He loves you more than me. Why don’t you take him?!”
Father: Zachary always, from the time he could choose, would choose Kate over her. That was obvious, and other people talked about it. Kate is a warm and loving mother. She was a phony mother.[/b]

And then…

[b]Newspaper headline: TURNER, SON FOUND DEAD. MURDER-SUICIDE.

…

Father: Rage. Absolute vicious rage. Someone has done that to someone you love. If the person who did this had been here, I’d kill them. Period. No questions. KILL THEM!! STRANGE THAT FUCKING BITCH RIGHT HERE!!![/b]

She killed their son. Now she killed her son’s son. And then it is revealed how she went about this…

[b]Mother: And the policeman who found him said that, um, he had wrapped him in a blanket rather than a plastic bag and, uh, he and another officer carried him gently back. And he made very sure that he kept the body very far away from the wicked woman who had murdered him.

…

Mother: When I sit here, I hate her so much. When we came here, David and I realized what Shirley Turner was. She was the devil. But people think that you’re some kind of basic religious nut if you believe in the devil. I haven’t prayed since Zachary died. I haven’t.

…

Father: THIS IS WHAT THAT FUCKING BITCH DIDN’T KNOW!! Or maybe she did know. This is what she’s leaving. Maybe she did know. If she thought about it at all, she didn’t give a good goddamn! And this is what I hate her for. I hate her for a lot of things. Stealing the rest of Andrew’s life and virtually all of Zachary’s life and then this. Leaving us like this.

…

Father: The best shot we had at keeping Zachary alive was if I kill her myself. Other than doing that, I can think of no other way to save Zachary from that bitch. But I didn’t do it. 'Cause I trusted government to do its job. Government is supposed to stop that so I don’t have to do it personally. In this case, they didn’t even get her off the street and they even gave her a baby to look after.[/b]

And then one by one the film maker exposes the role that each government offical played in this debacle.

[iambiguous]

The professional hit man as philosopher: Get with it. Millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars, in a speck on one in a blink. That’s us, lost in space. The cop, you, me… Who notices?

His philosophy basically being nihilism. And, as a nihilist myself, I would never deny that his path is certainly one that can be rationalized in an essentially absurd and meaningless world. You simply embrace a survival of the fittest [narcissistic] point of view and you go out and you take what you want. Your concern then being only with those who might object to that. Those who might come in between you and getting what you want. But then you merely acquire the necessary skills to smoke these folks before they smoke you.

The hook, of ccourse, is that, deep down inside, it’s thought that most women want to meet him and most men want to be him: Most people - same job, same gig, doing the same thing 10 years from now. Us, we don’t know what we are doing 10 minutes from now.

And how cool is that? Max, of course, is not cool. He drives a cab. His dreams are cool though. Sort of. He just never really acts on them. It’s always “someday soon” instead. But then he bumps into Vincent. The irony is everything here.

Most folks had a hard time wrapping their head around the fact that here the nihilist thug is Tom Cruise. Mr Scientologist as the amoral asshole? In fact, per IMDb, this is the only film that Cruise ever played the “bad guy”. So, of course, at the very least he had to be “cool”.

IMDb

[b]According to Michael Mann, Vincent is one that is able to get in and out of anywhere without anyone recognizing him or remembering him. To prepare for the movie, Tom Cruise had to make FedEx deliveries in a crowded LA market without anyone recognizing him as Tom Cruise.

There are no opening credits to the film, nor title. The only credits seen are at the end, starting with “Directed by Michael Mann”. The title is at the end.

There were 17 different versions of Max’s taxicab.[/b]

IMDb FAQ: imdb.com/title/tt0369339/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_(film
trailer: youtu.be/9BDx6ZPHV4w

COLLATERAL [2004]
Directed by Michael Mann

Annie [in the cab]: Take pride in being good at what you do?
Max: What, this? Oh, this is… This is… No, this is part-time. This is a fill-in job. Pay the bills. But I will be the best at what I do. But that’s something else.
Annie: What else?
Max: Just shaping up some things. Limo company I’m putting together. Island Limos. It’s gonna be like an island on wheels.

That’s his dream. In fact, it has been now for years.

[b]Max: I’m not in this for the long haul. I’m just filling in, you know. Just temporary while I’m getting some things shaped up. This is just temporary.
Vincent: How long you been driving a cab?
Max: Twelve years.

…

Max: He, he, he fell on the cab. He fell, he fell from up there on the motherfucking cab. Shit. I think he’s dead.
Vincent: Good guess.
Max: You killed him?
Vincent: No, I shot him. Bullets and the fall killed him.

…

Vincent: Okay, look, here’s the deal: you were gonna drive me around tonight and never be the wiser, but el gordo got in front of a window, did his high dive. We’re into plan B. Now, we gotta make the best of it. Improvise. Adapt to the environment. Darwin. Shit happens. I Ching. Whatever, man. We gotta roll with it.
Max: “I Ching”? What are you talking about? You threw a man out of a window.
Vincent: I didn’t throw him. He fell.
Max: Well, what did he do to you?
Vincent: Nothing. I only met him tonight.
Max: You just met him once, and you kill him like that?
Vincent: What, I should only kill people after I get to know them?

…

Vincent: Max, six billion people on the planet, you’re getting bent out of shape cause of one fat guy.
Max: Well, who was he?
Vincent: What do you care? Have you ever heard of Rwanda?
Max: Yes, I know Rwanda.
Vincent: Well, tens of thousands killed before sundown. Nobody’s killed people that fast since Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Did you bat an eye, Max?
Max: What?
Vincent: Did you join Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Whales, Greenpeace, or something? No. I off one fat Angelino and you throw a hissy fit.
Max: Man, I don’t know any Rwandans.
Vincent: You don’t know the guy in the trunk, either.

…

Vincent [to Max]: Okay, if it makes you feel any better, he was a criminal involved in a continuing criminal enterprise.
Max: What are you doing? You just taking out the garbage?
Vincent: Yeah. Something like that.

…

Vincent [to Max as two cops approach the cab]: You’re a cabby. You’ve talked yourself out of a ticket. Just, please, man, don’t do anything. Don’t let me get cornered. You don’t have the trunk space.

…

Cop: Hey, is this blood up here on your windshield?
Max: Yeah, uh, yeah. I hit a deer.
Cop: You hit a deer?
Max: Yeah, over on, uh, it was on Slauson.
Cop: A South Central deer?

…

Max: I never learned to listen to jazz.
Vincent: It’s off melody. Behind the notes. Not what’s expected. Improvising, like tonight.
Max: Like tonight?
Vncent: Most people, ten years from now, same job, same place, same routine. Everything the same. Just keeping it safe over and over and over. Ten years from now. Man, you don’t know where you’ll be ten minutes from now. Do you?

…

Daniel [to Vincent]: So Miles comes through that door. Before you know it, he’s up on the bandstand, jamming with the band. I mean, the dude was so focused, man. Plus, he was kind of a scary cat anyway, man. I mean, everybody and their momma knew you don’t just come up and talk to Miles Davis. I mean, he may have looked like he was chilling, but he was absorbed. This one hip couple, one of them tried to shake his hand one day. And the guy says, “Hi, my name is…” Miles said, “Get the fuck outta my face, you jive motherfucker, and take your silly bitch with you.” You know? That’s…That was Miles, man. That’s the way he was when he was in his musical headspace. Fierce.

…

Vincent: How’s this? I’ll ask a question. A jazz question. Now, you get it right, we roll. You disappear tonight.
Danieal: If I walk out of here tonight, I will go so far away, it’ll be just like I was dead. Okay, lay it on me.
Vincent: Where did Miles learn music?
Daniel: I know everything there is to know about Miles.
Vincent: Then let’s have it.
Max: Music school. He got into music school, right?
Daniel: His father was a dentist, East St. Louis. Invested in agriculture, made plenty of money. He sent Miles to Juilliard School of Music, New York, 1945.
[Vincent shoots him in the head three times. Then he leans over the dead man’s body]
Vincent: Dropped out of Juilliard after less than a year. Tracked down Charlie Parker on 52nd Street, who mentored him for the next three years.

…

Vincent: Limos, huh?
Max: Don’t start.
Vincent: Hey, I’m not the one lying to my mother.
Max: She hears what she wants to hear. I don’t disillusion her.
Vincent: Yeah, right. Maybe she hears what you tell her.
Max: Whatever I tell her is never good enough anyway.
Vincent: It’s always been that way. They project onto you their flaws. What they don’t like about themselves, their lives, whatever. They rank on you instead.

…

Vincent: So, what is this “driving a cab temporarily”? It’s just all bullshit, huh?
Max: It is not bullshit.
Vincent: Twelve years isn’t temporary, Max.

…

Vincent: You’re out of options, Max. Just take comfort in knowing you never had a choice.

…

Felix: Do you believe in Santa Claus?
Max: No.
Felix: Nor do I. Nor do I, but my children do. They are still small. But do you know who they like even better than Santa Claus? His helper, Pedro el Negro. Black Peter. There’s an old Mexican tale that tells of how Santa Claus got so very busy looking out for the good children that he had to hire some help to look out for the bad children. So he hired Pedro. And Santa Claus gave him a list with all the names of all the bad children. And Pedro would come every night to check them out. And the people, the little kids that were misbehaving, that were not saying their prayers, Pedro would leave a little toy donkey on their window. A little burro. And he would come back, and if the children were still misbehaving, Pedro would take them away, and nobody would ever see them again. Now, if I am being Santa Claus, and you are Pedro, how do you think jolly Santa Claus would feel if one day Pedro came into his office and said, ‘I lost the list.’ How fucking furious do you think he will get?
Max: I think… I think you should tell the guy standing behind me to put his gun away.
Felix: What did you say?
Max: I said, I think you should tell him to put the gun down before I rip it out of his hand and beat his bitch-ass to death with it.

…

Max: I picked up a tail.
Felix: Federal?
Max: I don’t know, you tell me. That’s why I tossed the list. The workups, all of that shit. To protect, in part, your ass. What do you think, I like coming in here? But, hey, shit happens. Gotta roll with it. Adapt. Improvise. Darwin. I Ching. The fat man, the penthouse guy, the jazz man. That leaves two.

…

Vincent: I’m full of shit? You’re a monument of it. You even bullshitted yourself, “All I am is taking out the garbage, killing bad people.”
Max: Well, that’s what you said.
Vincent: You believe me?
Max: Then what’d they do?
Vincent: How do I know? You know? They all had that “witness for the prosecution” look to me. Probably some major federal indictment of somebody who majorly does not wanna get indicted.
Max: So that’s the reason?
Vincent: That’s the why. There’s no reason. There’s no good reason, there’s no bad reason to live or to die.
Max: Then what are you?
Vincient: Indifferent. Get with it. Millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars and a speck on one in a blink. That’s us. Lost in space. The cop, you, me, who notices?[/b]

And then there is all the shit philosophers come up with to make that all go away in a world of words. Or all the shit religionionists come up with to make it all go away in God.

Max: Anybody home? And…And all the standard parts that are supposed to be there in people, in you…they aren’t. And why haven’t you killed me yet?
Vincent: Of all the cabbies in L.A., I get Max, Sigmund Freud meets Dr. Ruth.
Max: Answer the question.
Vincent: Look in the mirror. Paper towels, clean cab. Limo company some day. How much you got saved?
Max: That ain’t any of your business.
Vincent: Someday? Someday my dream will come? One night you will wake up and discover it never happened. It’s all turned around on you. It never will. Suddenly you are old. Didn’t happen, and it never will, because you were never going to do it anyway. You’ll push it into memory and then zone out in your barco lounger, being hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life. Don’t you talk to me about murder. All it ever took was a down payment on a Lincoln town car. That girl, you can’t even call that girl. What the fuck are you still doing driving a cab?

Then Max calls his bluff:

Vincent: Slow down.
Max: It’s gotta be perfect. It’s got to be perfect to go. Risk all torqued down. I could’ve done it anytime I wanted to.
Vincent: Red light.
Max: But you know what? New news: It doesn’t matter anyway. What does it matter anyway? We’re all insignificant out here in this big-ass nowhere. The Twilight Zone shit. Says the badass sociopath in my back seat. But you know what? That’s the one thing I gotta thank you for, bro. Because until now, I never looked at it that way. What does it matter? It don’t, so fuck it. Fix it.
What do we got to lose anyway, right?

In other words, that, at times, very big gap between essential meaning and existential meaning. We can’t have one but that doesn’t mean we can’t find some measure of fulfilment in the other. For some, a hell of a lot.

[b]Vincent: Max! I do this for a living!

…

Vincent [near death]: Hey, Max. A guy gets on the MTA here in L.A. And dies. Think anybody will notice?[/b]

[iambiguous]

Most of us, like Kyle, are not really able to grasp all of the “tech stuff” relating to time travel.

So, how realistic is the science behind all of this? Ah, but even the scientists themselves grapple with “metaphysical” questions like this.

And then, in turn, there are all of the “philosophical” implications of time travel. And the imponderables that revolve around the extent to which flesh and blood human beings might be to nature what a terminator is to Skynet. In other words, are we all just “programmed” by whatever it is that’s “behind existence” to act out some ontological “truth” that has compelled the universe [multiverse?] to unfold as it must from the “very beginning of time”?

Just think about it. Kyle Reese goes into the future to save the life of Sarah Conner. Sarah Conner is the mother of John Conner who is the one who sent Reese into the future. And if that isn’t bizarre enough it is Kyle who impregnates Sarah with John!!

To wit: Sarah: Should I tell you about your father? Boy, that’s a tough one. Will it effect your decision to send him here, knowing that he is your father? But if you don’t send Kyle, you can never be. God, a person could go crazy thinking about this.

And talk about dasein! Of course, Sarah Conner’s identity is what you might call one in six billion. Talk about contingency, chance and change! And imagine being snuffed out just because your name is listed in the phone book.

Fascinating stuff. Or maybe none of this stuff really matters at all. Maybe it’s just best to sit back [as most no doubt do] and be entertained by an intriguing sci-fi flick. One of those truly epic “but there was one man who taught us to fight back…” films where everything is clearly black and white.

And it surely is entertaining. But one suspects it is the combination of both that prompted every single critic at Rotten Tomatoes [51] to give the film a thumbs up. After all, there are very, very rew films that have garnered a 100% fresh rating at RT when you reach 50 critics total.

Look for the Governor of California. No, the other one.

IMDb

[b]Arnold Schwarzenegger worked with guns everyday for a month to prepare for the role; the first two weeks of filming he practiced weapons stripping and reassembly blindfolded until the motions were automatic, like a machine. He spent hours at the shooting range, practicing with different weapons without blinking or looking at them when reloading or cocking; he also had to be ambidextrous. He practiced different moves up to 50 times.

O.J. Simpson was considered for the Terminator, but the producers feared he was “too nice” to be taken seriously as a cold-blooded killer.When O.J. Simpson was still in the running to play the Terminator, a mockup movie poster was done with him instead.

The Terminator was filmed on a very tense set, e.g. Schwarzenegger didn’t enjoy the prosthetics, because the wires of the red eye burned a lot of the time; for the arm scene, he had to have his real arm tied behind his back for hours. James Cameron also shot the carjacking scene without a permit. Anyone who came up to him with lame ideas wound up irritating Cameron, e.g. Cameron waxed an idea of the Terminator drinking a beer and acting silly (like in ET) because that just couldn’t happen.

Gilda Radner, Susan Sarandon, Glenn Close, Rhea Perlman, Sigourney Weaver, Cybill Shepherd, Jane Seymour, Anjelica Huston, Bridget Fonda, Lori Loughlin, Kim Basinger, Jodie Foster, Melanie Griffith, Christie Brinkley, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ally Sheedy, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, Kay Lenz, Liza Minnelli, Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey, Miranda Richardson, Rosanna Arquette, Meg Ryan, Heather Locklear, Jennifer Grey, Madonna, Amy Irving, Teri Garr, Margot Kidder and Tatum O’Neal were all considered for the role of Sarah Connor before it was offered to Debra Winger. However, Winger declined before filming began. [/b]

As for the terminator himself, Mel Gibson turned the role down. And, aside from O.J Simpson, Tom Selleck, Kevin Kline, Randy Quaid, Sylvester Stallone and Michael Douglas were also considered for the role.

Oh, and Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke and Sting were considered for the role of Kyle Reese.

IMDb FAQ: imdb.com/title/tt0088247/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator
trailer: youtu.be/c4Jo8QoOTQ4

THE TERMINATOR [1984]
Written in part and directed by James Cameron

[b]Title card: The machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire. Their war to exterminate mankind had raged for decades, but the final battle would not be fought in the future. It would be fought here, in our present. Tonight…

…

Kyle: What day is it? The date!
Cop: 12th… May… Thursday…
Kyle: WHAT YEAR?!

…

The Terminator: The 12-gauge auto-loader.
Gun Shop Clerk: That’s Italian. You can go pump or auto.
The Terminator: The .45 long slide, with laser sighting.
Gun Shop Clerk: These are brand new; we just got them in. That’s a good gun. Just touch the trigger, the beam comes on and you put the red dot where you want the bullet to go. You can’t miss. Anything else?
The Terminator: Phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range.
Gun Shop Clerk: Hey, just what you see, pal!
The Terminator: The Uzi nine millimeter.
Gun Shop Clerk: You know your weapons, buddy. Any one of these is ideal for home defense. So, uh, which will it be?
The Terminator: All.

…

Nancy: Sarah, come here. It’s about you. I mean, sort of. Incredible. You’re not gonna believe this. You’re going to love this.
Sarah: What?
Newswoman on TV: “Once again, Sarah Connor, 35, mother of two, brutally shot to death this afternoon.”
Nancy: You’re dead, honey.

…

Lt Traxler: I can hear it now. He’s going to be called the god-damned phonebook killer.

…

Kyle [to Sarah]: Come with me if you wanna live.

…

Kyle: Do exactly what I say. Exactly. Don’t move unless I say. Don’t make a sound unless I say. Do you understand? Do you understand?!
Sarah: Yes. Please. Please don’t hurt me.
Kyle: I’m here to help you. I’m Reese. Sergeant Tech-Com, DN38416. Assigned to protect you. You’ve been targeted for termination.

…

Sarah: This is a mistake. I didn’t do anything.
Kyle: No, but you will. It’s very important that you live.
Sarah: This isn’t true. How could that man just get up after you…
Kyle: It’s not a man. A machine. A Terminator. Cyberdyne Systems model 101.
Sarah: A machine? Like a robot?
Kyle: Not a robot. A cyborg - cybernetic organism.
Sarah: No. He was bleeding.
Kyle: Listen. The Terminator’s an infiltration unit. Part man, part machine. Underneath it’s a hyper-alloy combat chassis. Microprocessor controlled. Fully armoured, very tough. Outside it’s living human tissue. Flesh, skin, hair, blood… grown for the cyborgs.
Sarah: Look, Reese, I don’t know what you want…
Kyle: Pay attention! The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. They look human… sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot. I had to wait till he moved on you before I could zero him.
Sarah: Look… I am not stupid, you know. They cannot make things like that yet.
Kyle: Not yet. Not for about 40 years.
Sarah: Are you saying it’s from the future?
Kyle: One possible future. From your point of view… I don’t know tech stuff.
Sarah: Then you’re from the future, too. Is that right?
Kyle: Right.
Sarah: Right.

…

Kyle [to Sarah]: Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

…

Sarah: Reese. Why me? Why does it want me?
Kyle: There was a nuclear war. A few years from now, all this, this whole place, everything, it’s gone. Just gone. There were survivors. Here, there. Nobody even knew who started it. It was the machines, Sarah.
Sarah: I don’t understand.
Kyle: Defense network computers. New… powerful… hooked into everything, trusted to run it all. They say it got smart, a new order of intelligence. Then it saw all people as a threat, not just the ones on the other side. Decided our fate in a microsecond: extermination.
Sarah: Did you see this war?
Kyle: No. I grew up after. In the ruins…starving…hiding from H-K’s.
Sarah: H-K’s?
Kyle: Hunter-Killers. Patrol machines built in automated factories. Most of us were rounded up, put in camps for orderly disposal.
[Pulls up his right sleeve, exposing a mark]
Kyle: This is burned in by laser scan. Some of us were kept alive…to work…loading bodies. The disposal units ran night and day. We were that close to going out forever. But there was one man who taught us to fight, to storm the wire of the camps, to smash those metal motherfuckers into junk. He turned it around. He brought us back from the brink. His name is Connor. John Connor. Your son, Sarah, your unborn son. [/b]

Come on, would you believe him?

[b]Dr. Silberman: So you’re a soldier. Fighting for whom?
Kyle: With the 132nd under Perry. From '21 to '27.
Dr. Silberman: That’s the year 2027?
Kyle: That’s right. Then I was assigned under John Connor.
Dr. Silberman: Who was the enemy?
Kyle: A computer defence system built for SAC-NORAD by Cyberdyne Systems.
Dr. Silberman: I understand. And this computer thinks it can win by killing the mother of its enemy. Killing him, in effect, before he’s even conceived. A sort of retroactive abortion?

…

Dr. Silberman: Why didn’t you bring any weapons, something more advanced? Don’t you have, uh… ray guns? Show me a piece of future technology.
Detective [chuckling]: Ray guns?
Kyle: You go naked. Something about the field generated by a living organism. Nothing dead will go.
Dr. Silberman: Why?
Kyle: I didn’t build the fucking thing!
Dr. Silberman: Okay, okay. But this cyborg, if it’s metal…
Kyle: Surrounded by living tissue!
Dr. Silberman: Oh, right, right.
[Silberman shuts off the VCR screen on which the police and Sarah have been watching the interview]
Silberman: This is great stuff. I could make a career out of this guy! You see how clever his part is? How it doesn’t require a shred of proof? Most paranoid delusions are intricate, but this is brilliant!
[he turns the machine back on]
Dr. Silberman: Why were the other two women killed?
Kyle: Most of the records were lost in the war. Skynet knew almost nothing about Connor’s mother. Her full name, where she lived. They just knew the city. The Terminator was just being systematic.
Dr. Silberman: Uh-huh. Well, let’s go back to what I was…
Kyle [interrupts]: Look! You have heard enough! I have answered your questions! Now, I have to see Sarah Connor!
Dr. Silberman: I’m afraid that’s not up to me.
Kyle: Then why am I talking to you? Who is in authority here?
Dr. Silberman: Please, I…
Kyle [interrupting again]: Shut up!
[He looks into the camera]
Kyle: You still don’t get it, do you? He’ll find her! That’s what he does! That’s ALL he does! You can’t stop him! He’ll wade through you, reach down her throat and pull her fuckin’ heart out!!!

…

Sarah: So was it John that sent you here?
Kyle: I volunteered.
Sarah: Why?
Kyle: It was a chance to meet the legend. Sarah Connor, who taught her son to fight, organise, prepare from when he was a kid. When you were in hiding before the war.
Sarah: You’re talking about things I haven’t done yet in the past tense. Are you sure you have the right person?
Kyle: I’m sure.
Sarah: Oh, come on. Do I look like the mother of the future? I mean am I tough, organized? I can’t even balance my checkbook. Look Reese, I didn’t ask for this honor and I don’t WANT IT, ANY OF IT!

…

Cleaning Man at Flophouse: Hey, buddy. You got a dead cat in there, or what?
[the Terminator visualizes: ‘POSSIBLE RESPONSE: YES/NO; OR WHAT?; GO AWAY; PLEASE COME BACK LATER; FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE; FUCK YOU’]
The Terminator: Fuck you, asshole.

…

Sarah: What have we got? Mothballs… corn syrup… ammonia. What’s for dinner?
Kyle: Plastique.
Sarah: That sounds good. What is it?
Sarah: It’s a nitroglycerin base. It’s a bit more stable. I learned to make it when I was a kid. Make sure there’s none on the threads. Like this. Screw the end cap on. Very gently.
Sarah: You must’ve had a fun childhood. [/b]

A whole different kind of world, a whole different kind of narrative.

[b]Sarah: So much pain.
Kyle: Pain can be controlled. you just disconnect it.
Sarah: So you feel nothing?

…

Sarah: Come on. No. Kyle. Come on. - Come on.
Kyle: Leave me here.
Sarah: Move it, Reese. On your feet, soldier. ON YOUR FEET! MOVE IT!!

…

Sarah: You’re terminated, fucker![/b]

[iambiguous]

Among other things, it’s a film about identity in the modern world. Which makes it a necessarily complex endeavor that will always be open to interpretation.

A “person” is always more or less understood from a point of view. And we either come to grasp the extent to which we, in turn, come to see our own “self” in this manner or we do not.

Around others we project a “persona”. We wish them to think of us in a particular way and so we have an assortment of masks that we can wear to suit whatever it is that we think is in our own best interest. Meanwhile others are doing much the same. And so our interactions can easily become the most convoluted of “games”.

But “in our head” there is the occasional [or frequent] turmoil that revolves around making that crucial distinction between the “person” and the “persona”. Where [really] does one stop and the other begin?

After all, what does it mean to speak of an identity if you are isolated from others? Instead, it is only when we interact that we come into contact with how others see us. Which makes us question how we see ourselves. And then when that interaction leads to conflict, we are forced to accommodate differing perceptions such that we can continue to interact with the least dysfunction. And that is when points of view can devolve into political disputes that precipitate all manner of consequences.

And Elisabet is a successful actor. Playing parts, playing roles – becoming another – is particularly engrained in her personality. What then is Sister Alma here? Who then is Sister Alma here?

Roger Ebert’s review is a good place to start here: rogerebert.com/reviews/great … rsona-1966

Or Susan Sontag’s reaction: thomas-hersey.wiki.uml.edu/file/ … ersona.pdf

Now ask yourself this: What does the opening sequence [and the one in the middle] have to do with any of this? The erect penis, a spike driven into a hand, bodies in the morgue, the boy on the bed.

Or, what is the significance of Elisabet’s horrific reaction to the news report of a monk who set himself on fire to protest American involvement in Vietnam? Or to the photograph of victims of the Holocaust? “I” in the context of great historical events that necessarily dwarf the individual.

And finally the part that no man can ever understand – the part about pregnancy and giving birth. Or the part about aborting the pregnancy and not giving birth.

IMDb

[b]According to himself, Ingmar Bergman fell in love with Liv Ullmann during the making of the movie.

Susan Sontag wrote that she considered Persona the greatest film ever made.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(1966_film
trailer: youtu.be/XZsU_ACYSAA

PERSONA [1966]
Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman

[b]Sister Alma: You wanted to talk with me, doctor?
Doctor: Have you been to see Mrs. Vogler yet, Sister Alma?
Sister Alma: No, not yet.
Doctor: Let me explain her situation and the reason why you have been hired to care for her. Mrs. Vogler is an actress, as you know. During her last performance of Electra, she fell silent and looked around as if in surprise. She was silent for over a minute. She apologized afterward, saying she had got the urge to laugh. The next day the theater rang, as Mrs. Vogler had not come to rehearsals. The maid found her still in bed. She was awake but did not talk or move. This condition has now lasted for three months. She has had all sorts of tests. She’s healthy both mentally and physically. It’s not even some kind of hysterical reaction.

…

Sister Alma: I might not be able to handle her.
Doctor: Handle? In what way?
Sister Alma: Mentally.
Doctor: Mentally?
Sister Alma: If she won’t speak or move because she decides not to, which it must be if she isn’t ill, then it shows that she is mentally very strong. I might not be equal to it.

…

Sister Alma [to Elisabet]: I’m interested in film and theater, but I don’t go very often. I have a tremendous admiration for artists. I think that art is of enormous importance in people’s lives, especially for those who have problems.

…

Sister Alma [aloud to herself or to the camera]: It’s funny. You can go about as you please…do almost anything. I’ll marry Karl-Henrik and have a couple of children, which I’ll have to raise. All of this is predestined. It’s inside me. It’s nothing to think about. It’s a safe feeling. I have a job that I like and enjoy. That’s good, too…but in another way. But it’s good. Good.

…

Doctor: Elisabet, I don’t think there’s any point in your staying at the hospital. It’s just hurting you to be here. Since you don’t want to go home, I suggest you and Sister Alma stay at my summer house by the sea. Don’t you think I understand? The hopeless dream of being. I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being - not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. Suicide? No, too vulgar. But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don’t have to lie. You can shut yourself in. Then you needn’t play any parts or make wrong gestures. Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn’t watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you’re forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you’re genuine or just a sham. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don’t speak, why you don’t move, why you’ve created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you’ve left your other parts one by one. [/b]

In some respects, she could be saying this to me.

Sister Alma: Elisabet? Can I read you something from my book? Or am I disturbing you? It says here: “All the anxiety we bear with us, all our thwarted dreams, the incomprehensible cruelty, our fear of extinction, the painful insight into our earthly condition, have slowly eroded our hope of an other-wordly salvation. The howl of our faith and doubt against the darkness and silence, is one of the most awful proofs of our abandonment and our terrified, unuttered knowledge.” Do you think it’s like that?
[Elisabet nods her head]

You can see why Woody Allen was in thrall to Bergman.

[b]Sister Alma [to Elisabet]: Katrina and I lay there completely naked and sunbathed…dozing off and on, putting sunscreen on. We had silly straw hats on. Mine had a blue ribbon. I lay there… Iooking out at the landscape, at the sea and the sun. It was kind of funny. Suddenly I saw two figures on the rocks above us. They hid and peeped out occasionally. “Two boys are looking at us,” I said to the girl. Her name was Katarina. “Let them look,” she said, and turned over on her back. I had a funny feeling. I wanted to jump up and put my suit on, but I just lay there on my stomach with my bottom in the air, unembarrassed, totally calm. And Katarina was next to me with her breasts and big thighs. She was just giggling. I noticed that the boys were coming closer. They just stood there looking at us. I noticed they were very young. The boldest one approached us and squatted down next to Katarina. He pretended to be busy picking his toes. I felt very strange. Suddenly Katarina said to him, “Hey, you, why don’t you come over here?” Then she took his hand and helped him take off his jeans and shirt. Suddenly he was on top of her. She guided him in and held his butt. The other boy just sat and watched. I heard Katarina whisper in the boy’s ear and laugh. His face was right next to mine. It was red and swollen. Suddenly I turned and said, “Aren’t you coming to me, too?” And Katarina said, “Go to her now.” He pulled out of her and then fell on top of me, completely hard. He grabbed my breast. It hurt so much! I was overwhelmed and came almost immediately. Can you believe it? I wanted to tell him to be careful not to make me pregnant when he came. I felt something I’d never felt in my life…how his sperm was shooting inside me. He held my shoulders and bent backwards. I came over and over. Katarina lay there watching and held him from behind. After he came, she took him in her arms and used his hand to make herself come. When she came, she screamed like a banshee. The three of us started laughing. We called to the other boy, who was sitting on the slope. His name was Peter. He seemed confused and was shivering there in the sunshine. Katarina unbuttoned his pants and started to play with him. And when he came, she took him in her mouth. He bent down and kissed her back. She turned around, took his head in both hands, and gave him her breast. The other boy got so excited that he and I started all over again. It was just as nice as before. Then we had a swim and went our separate ways.

…

Sister Alma [to Elisabet]: No, you don’t understand. You don’t understand what I’m saying. You’re unapproachable. The doctor said you’re healthy, but I wonder about your madness. You’re acting healthy so well that everyone believes you. Everyone but me, because I know how rotten you are.

…

Sister Alma: Anaesthetise me… throw me away! No, I can’t, I can’t take any more! Leave me alone! It’s shame, it’s all shame! Leave me alone! I’m cold and rotten and indifferent! It’s all just lies and imitation, all of it!

…

Sister Alma: What are you hiding under your hand? Let me see. It’s the photo of your little boy. The one you tore up. We must talk about it. Tell me about it, Elisabet. Then I will. lt was one night at a party, isn’t that right? It got late and quite rowdy. Towards morning someone in the group said: “Elisabet, you virtually have it all in your armoury as woman and artist. But you lack motherliness.” You laughed because you thought it sounded silly. But after a while you noticed you thought about what he’d said. You became more and more worried. You let your husband impregnate you. You wanted to be a mother. When you realized it was definite, you became frightened. Frightened of responsibility, of being tied down, of leaving the theatre. frightened of your body swelling up. But you played the role. The role of a happy, young, expectant mother. Everyone said, “Isn’t she beautiful? She’s never been so beautiful.” Meanwhile you tried to abort the foetus several times. But you failed. When you saw it was irreversible… you started to hate the baby. And you wished it would be stillborn. You wished the baby would be dead. You wished for a dead baby. The delivery was difficult and long. You were in agony for days. Finally the baby was delivered with forceps. You looked with disgust and terror at your squealing baby and whispered: “Can’t you die soon? Can’t you die?” The boy screamed day and night. And you hated him. You were scared, you had a bad conscience. Finally the boy was taken care of by relatives and a nanny. You could get up from your sickbed and return to the theatre. But the suffering wasn’t over. The boy was gripped by a massive and unfathomable love for his mother. You defend yourself in despair. You feel you can’t return it. So you try, and you try… But there are only cruel and clumsy meetings between you. You can’t do it. You’re cold and indifferent. He looks at you. He loves you and he’s so gentle. You want to hit him because he doesn’t leave you alone. You think he’s disgusting with his thick mouth and ugly body. His moist and pleading eyes. He’s disgusting and you’re scared.

…

Sister Alma: No! I’m not like you. I don’t feel like you. I’m Sister Alma, I’m just here to help you. I’m not Elisabet Vogler. You are Elisabet Vogler.

…

Sister Alma: Many words and disgust, unbearable pain, the nausea. Try to listen to me. Repeat after me… Nothing. Nothing. No, nothing.
Elisabeth: Nothing.
Sister Alma: There. That’s right. That’s how it should be. [/b]

[iambiguous]

The big picture? Well, there’s always the part about sustaining your very existence. Can’t get around that, right?

But once subsistence itself is reasonably secure [and you can pay the bills] the picture can become more idiosyncratic. It just depends on how you come to embody a particular frame of mind given all the factors in your life that predisposed you to go down some paths rather than others.

Here though the context is particularly unique. It is not likely that most of us will become entangled in something quite like it. Instead, we can only imagine how close we might have come to it.

The broader context?

From the novel the film is based on:

We all crave latitude in life, yet simultaneously dig ourselves deeper into domestic entrapment. We may dream of traveling light but accumulate as much as we can to keep us burdened and rooted to one spot. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Because – though we all muse on the theme of escape – we still find the notion of responsibility irresistible. The career, the house, the dependents, the debt – it grounds us. Provides us with a necessary security, a reason to get up in the morning. It narrows choice and ergo, gives us certainty. And though just about every man I know rails against being so cul-de-saced by domesic burden, we all embrace it. Embrace it with a vengeance. Douglas Kennedy

But when something extra-ordinary does happens – you catch your wife cheating on you and you kill the man – everything changes. What then is the “big picture”?

Another sojourn into identity. In other words, another labyrinth. Though the circumstance were very different, it reminds me of Dr. Stephen Fleming’s existential sojourn in the film Damage. As though to follow it into one possible future.

Here however he takes the identity of the man he kills. The man he always wanted to be. But never was. And yet when you become someone else there is always the possibility of it all unraveling. And it does. In fact the ending here is almost impossible to imagine given the beginning.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Picture_(2010_film
trailer: youtu.be/HYjnpYoiJEU

THE BIG PICTURE [L’Homme Qui Voulait Vivre Sa Vie] 2010
Written in part and directed by Eric Lartigau

Paul [to Anne]: There’s a time in life when you have new priorities. We made a choice for the kids. Kids change everything.

It changes the “big picture”. It certainly changed mine

Paul: You’ll be gone? Where?
Anne: Dead.
Paul [gagging on his drink]: Cut it out. I nearly choked.
Anne: I’m dying.

An ancient conflict in the modern world:

[b]Paul: Don’t accuse me of not supporting you. I even suggested you quit your job to write. I always believed in you. I work like crazy to give you that freedom so that one of us would fulfil their dreams.
Sarah: No, no, no, Paul. You made me give everything up to stay home. You crushed me. You locked me in a bubble so I’d fail. Losers attract losers. That’s the truth of it.
Paul: You’re seeing someone else, aren’t you?
Sarah: That would make it easier.

…

Paul [at a dinner party]: Did I cross a line? I get it. Semantics. That’s off-limits too? I know why. It takes us back to literature, and literature’s off limits. No literature. So what do we do?
Sarah: Paul…
Paul: Yes? You tell us, Sarah Bovary.

…

Paul: How long?
Greg: How long what? Sarah and me? A few weeks, I guess. I don’t recall the date and time.
Paul: And you…
Greg: What? What do we do? Everything you can think of. Don’t worry, I have no intention of marrying her. I can’t keep her in the Paul Exben lifestyle…Why are you here? To beat me up? What do you want? You want to talk? Cut a deal? You want us to share her? Count me in. Let’s be modern.

…

Greg: Know what she can’t stand about you? The self-loathing. You play the victim but it’s all down to you. You pussied out. You got scared. You bailed on photography.
Paul: And you made it?
Greg: No, no. But I’m still in there fighting. I didn’t give up.
Paul: Shut the fuck up. You’re nowhere.
Greg: Face it, you loser. You make money. Another guy fucks your wife. [/b]

His last words. Though it was more an accident. Still, everything changes. On to the next picture.

Paul [in an email to Sarah]: “Sarah, it’s Paul. I can’t imagine the violent shock you’ll get reading this. The day you left I went to see Greg. I killed him. It was an accident. I realized that whatever I did, I had lost you all. I made the decsion to die, to vanish. Our children’s father is dead. It was the only way to avoid their father being a murderer.”

Then he deletes it.

Bartholome [to Paul]: Look at them. They believe your story. They even buy the idea that your talent only emerged here. So…enjoy it. Enjoy it. What difference does it make?

[iambiguous]

A film about the folks who go about the business of war. Read all about them: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry

Generally, you find these folks to be among the most patriotic citizens around. You can never have too much “national security” as far as they are concerned. Providing of course you buy their stuff and not the competitors. But there is so much money to be doled out, the pie can be sliced to accommodate practically everyone.

Of course when you are in this business you may or may not need to rationalize it. But here these folks aren’t unlike the rest of us. If you do need to there are any number of narratives from which to choose. And if you don’t you just reduce the moral implications down to this: what moral implications?

In fact, in this regard, Yuri is a cynic’s cynic. And he can wax philosophical about it in ways you will never, ever come upon on the evening news. He is simply above all that political bullshit. He tells you straight how things really are. Nothing at all like the panel discussions on the PBS News Hour or Meet the Press.

He embodies nihilism. And he embodies it in the manner in which most folks imagine nihilism to be: fuck the world…I just want mine, Jack.

Now, there is a reason why “no US studios would back the film. International finances were secured instead.” And that is because this fim is a devatating indictment of the military industrial complex. Our own in particular:

Yuri [to Jack]: The reason I’ll be released is the same reason you think I’ll be convicted. I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of these men are the enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss - the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year - sometimes it’s embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can’t be seen supplying. So. You call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I’m a necessary evil.

Now, this may not be an entirely accurate portrayal of how these things unfold out in the real world. But only a complete fool would imagine that it is instead the way in which our own government portrays it.

So, are you one of them?

This is based on actual events:

IMDb

Nicolas Cage’s Yuri Orlov is largely based on the exploits of international arms dealer Viktor Bout, a former Soviet officer, who was finally arrested by Thai authorities in March 2008. Bout, known as the “Merchant of Death,” was trying to make a deal with American agents who were posing as FARC insurgents when he was apprehended. After languishing in a Bangkok prison awaiting extradition by the US, he was tried, found guilty and awaits sentencing in a Manhattan prison. The quote from Orlov seems appropriate, “I know that just because they needed me that day didn’t mean that they wouldn’t make me a scapegoat the next.” As a further reference, Orlov’s father is named Anatoly just like Bout’s father.

And/or:

Yuri Orlov is a composite of five real arms dealers.

IMDb

[b]According to Andrew Niccol, the filmmakers worked with actual gunrunners in the making of the film. The tanks lined up for sale were real and belonged to a Czech arms dealer who had to have them back to sell to another country. They used a real stockpile of over 3,000 AK-47s because it was cheaper than getting prop guns

In an interview on the cable channel Spike, Director Andrew Niccol admits to becoming an arms dealer himself. There is a scene with 3000 AK-47s which the director bought for use in the movie and later resold (at a loss) because it was cheaper than getting 3000 props. He concluded that since he took a loss on the guns that he was not a very good arms dealer.

The character, Colonel Oliver Southern, is an obvious nod to Lt Col. Oliver North who was tried, and ultimately pardoned, for selling arms to Iran to raise money to support the Contra movement in Nicaragua.

Before shooting the scene where tanks were lined up for sale, the filmmaker had to warn NATO, lest they think a real war was being started when they see satellite images of the set.

The character of Andre Baptiste is loosely based on famous warlord, and ex-leader of Liberia, Charles Taylor.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_War
trailer: youtu.be/ke79K4bO4P8

LORD OF WAR [2005]
Written and directed by Andrew Niccol

[b]Yuri [voiceover]: There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That’s one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?

…

Yuri [voiceover]: You don’t have to worry. I’m not gonna tell you pack of lies to make me look good. I’m just gonna tell you what happened. My name is Yuri Orlov. When I was a boy, my family came to America…but not all the way. Like most Ukrainians, we congregated in Brighton Beach. It reminded us of the Black Sea. I soon realized we just swapped one hell for another.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: Oh! I did lie about my name. It’s not really Yuri Orlov. There have been few occassions in the 20th century when it has been an advantage to be a Jew. But to escape the Soviet Union, our family pretended to be Jewish. Little about my life has been Kosher ever since.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: My father took his assumed identity to heart. He was more Jewish than most Jews…which drove Catholic mother crazy.
Father: How many times? I can’t eat shellfish. It is trayf.
Mother: You are not Jewish.
Father: I like it. I like the hat to remind us there is something above us. I like that. I’m going to temple.
Mother: You are not going to temple. You go to temple more than the Rabbi!

…

Yuri [voiceover]: Selling a gun for the first time is a lot like having sex for the first time. You’re excited but you don’t really know what the hell you’re doing. And some way, one way or another, it’s over too fast.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: Here I have been running away from violence my whole life when I should have been running towards it. It’s in our nature. The earliest human skeletons had spearheads in their heads and ripcages.

…

Arms Fair Salesman: Sir! Sir, may I interest you in the shoulder fired S-37 surface-to-air missle? It’s the old Chinese model. Not so effective against modern military aircraft but deadly if used against a commerical airliner.

…

Weisz [to Yuri]: I don’t think you and I are in the same business. You think I just sell guns, don’t you? I don’t. I take sides.
Yuri: But in Iran-Iraq war you sold guns to both sides.
Weisz: Did you ever consider that I wanted both sides to lose? Bullets change governments far surer than votes.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: When the United States leaves a war zone they generally don’t take the munitions. It costs more to bring them back then to buy new stock.

…

Yuri Orlov: I had a flair for languages. But I soon discovered that what talks best is dollars, dinars, drachmas, rubles, rupees and pounds fucking sterling.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: Selling guns is like selling vacuum cleaners. You pound the pavement, take orders. I was an equal opportunity merchant of death. I supplied everyone but the Salvation Army. I sold Israeli-model Uzis to Muslims. I sold Communist-made bullets to Fascists…I even shipped cargo to Afghanistan when they were fighting my fellow soldiers. I never sold to Osama bin Laden. Not on any moral grounds: back then, he was always bouncing checks.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: There is no problem living a double life. It is the triple or quadruple lives that get you in the end. Back then I carried a French, British, Israeli and Ukranian passport and student visa for the U.S. But that is another story. I also packed 6 different briefcases depending on who I was that day and the region of the world I was visiting.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: Without operations like mine it would be impossible for certain countries to conduct a respectable war. I was able to navigate around those inconvenient little arms embargoes. There are three basic types of arms deal: white, being legal, black, being illegal, and my personal favorite color, gray. Sometimes I made the deal so convoluted, it was even hard for me to work out if they were on the level.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: Even when I was up against an overzealous agent, I had a number of methods for discouraging a search. I routinely mislabeled my shipments “farm machinery.” And I have yet to meet the lowly-paid customs official who will open a container marked “radioactive waste” to verify its contents. But my personal favorite is the unique combination of week-old potatoes and tropical heat…Most importantly I kept a number of intelligence people on the payroll to supply their colleagues with counter-intelligence.

…

Yuri [voiceover, of Ava]: You can’t force someone to fall in love with you but [with money], you can definitely improve your odds.

…

Yuri [voiceover of Ava]: From my experience, some of the most successful relationships are based on lies and deceit. Since that’s where they usually end up anyway, it’s a logical place to start.

…

Father: Is this how you want to be remembered?
Yuri [chuckling]: I don’t want to be remembered at all. If I’m being remembered, it means I’m dead.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: During the Cold War, the Red Army stationed nearly one million troops in Ukraine because of its strategic military importance. The day after the wall came down, paychecks stopped coming. There is nothing better for an arms dealer than the combination of disgruntled soldiers and warehouses full of weapons.

…

Yuri [to Dmitri of the new Russian leaders]: The ones who know don’t care anymore, and the ones who care don’t know.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: Those 45 years of mutual hatred between the East and the West had generated the highest weapons build-up in history. The Soviets had guns coming out of demon hole. Huge stockpiles and now no enemy.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: The end of the Cold War was beginning of the highest time in arms dealing. Arms bazaars for guided missiles. Unguided missiles. Mortars. Mines. Armored personnel carriers. Whole tank divisions. The most sophisticated fighting machines built for war with America that never happened. Thanks to me, they finally get to shoot in anger. I have a feeling it wasn’t exactly what Comrade Lenin had in mind when he advocated the redistribution of wealth. But I wasn’t the only one offering a crash course in capitalism…I had rivals.

…

Yuri: You have gotten so rich selling guns for the CIA you can’t seem to get that ideology completely out of your head.
Weisz: Now it is harder to determine which side one is on. Things have become more complicated.
Yuri: No. It has gotten simpler. There is no place in gun running for politics anymore, Simeon. I sell to leftists, and rightists. I sell to pacifists, but they’re not the most regular customers. Of course, you’re not a true internationalist until you’ve supplied weapons to kill your own countrymen.

…

Weisz: Instead of cutting each other’s throat it may be beneficial if we work together. What do you think?
Yuri: You know what I think? I think you are the amateur now. I think you should go with your instincts, with your first instinct. I am the same man who was not good enough for you before and I am just not good enough for you now.
Weisz: The problem with gunrunners going to war is that there is no shortage of ammunition.
Yuri [voiceover]: This was the chaos that the old guard had always feared. As far as they were concerned, I was giving arms dealers a bad name. But they could hardly report me to the Better Business Bureau.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: Of all the weapons in the vast soviet arsenal, nothing was more profitable than Avtomat Kalashnikova model of 1947. More commonly known as the AK-47, or Kalashnikov. It’s the world’s most popular assault rifle. A weapon all fighters love. An elegantly simple 9 pound amalgamation of forged steel and plywood. It doesn’t break, jam, or overheat. It’ll shoot whether it’s covered in mud or filled with sand. It’s so easy, even a child can use it; and they do. The Soviets put the gun on a coin. Mozambique put it on their flag. Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian people’s greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists. One thing is for sure, no one was lining up to buy their cars.

…

Yuri [when a gun is aimed at him point-blank]: Oh, the new MP-5. Would you like a silencer for that?

…

Yuri: I must point out that, when shipped seperately, the weapons and the aircraft both comply with the current Interpol trade standarts and practices.
Jack: We both know that is an obscene bureaucratic loophole. It’s gonna be closed any Goddamn day.
Yuri: But it’s not closed now. While certain people might interpret this cargo suspicious, thank God, we are living in a world where suspicion alone does not constitute a crime. And, where men like you respect the rule of law.
Yuri [voicover]: I was as guilty as sin, but Valentine couldn’t prove it. He was the rarest breed of law enforcement officer. The type who knew I was breaking the law, but wouldn’t break it himself to bust me.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: The pillaging didn’t die with my Uncle. After the wall came down, $32 billion dollars worth of arms were stolen and resold from Ukraine alone. One of the greatest heists of the 20th century.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: The primary market was Africa, Eleven major conflicts involving twenty three countries in less than a decade. A gunrunner’s wet dream. At the time the West couldn’t care less, they had a white war in what was left of Yugoslavia.

…

Andre Baptiste Jr.: Can you bring me the gun of Rambo?
Yuri: Part One, Two, or Three?
Andre Baptiste Jr.: I’ve only seen Part One.
Yuri: The M60. Would you like the armour piercing bullets?

…

Yuri: Ava doesn’t know how you pay all this. We don’t talk about it. How many car salesmen talk about their work, huh? How many cigarette salemen? Both their products kill more people every year than mine. At least, mine has safety switch. Those guys can live there work at the office. So can I.
Vitaly: Goddam! You are good!

…

Yuri [voiceover]: I’m not saying I didn’t have setbacks. It’s not called “gunrunning” for nothing. You’ve gotta be fast on your feet. Some revolutions blow over before the guns even get there. There’s nothing more expensive for an arms dealer than peace.

…

Yuri [on the phone]: Truce? What do you mean truce? The guns are already on their way. Peace talks? Alright. Forget it! I’ll re-route the shipment to the Balkans. When they say they’re gonna have a war, they keep their word.

…

Yuri [getting rid of the “evidence”]: Come here, come here! Don’t be shy. Free samples. Help yourself! OK! Free samples! Tell your friends! Come on ! Help yourselves! No charge! Everything goes! Guys, guys! Come on! Move it! Guns! Grenades! Take them all! Everything goes for free! Take the whole crate! Bullets! Guns! Grenades! Hooray! That one’s got your name on it! Don’t forget the bullets! Everything goes for free! Guns, grenades, RPGs!
Yuri [voiceover]: What a cargo crew Heathrow Airport does in a day took a bunch of malnurished Sierra Leonean locals ten minutes. By the time Agent Valentine got there, you could find more guns on plane full of Quakers.

…

Jack: Why are we playing games? You traffic in arms.
Yuri: Trade.
Jack: Trade. Traffic. You get rich by giving the poorest people on the planet the means to continue killing each other. Do you know why I do what I do? I mean, there are more prestigeous assignments. Keeping track of nuclear arsenels - you’d think that be more critical to world security. But it’s not. No, nine out of ten war victims today are killed with assault rifles and small arms - like yours. Those nuclear weapons sit in their silos. Your AK-47, that’s the real weapon of mass destruction.
Yuri: I don’t want people dead, Agent Valentine. I don’t put a gun to anybody’s head and make them shoot. But shooting is better for business. But, I prefer people to fire my guns and miss. Just as long as they are firing. Can I go now? You got nothing on me. Except cuffs.

…

Jack: Since you’re so concerned with the law, you must know that I am legally permitted to hold you for 24 hours without charging you. You might ask why I would do that, and I can assure you it’s not because I enjoy your company, because I don’t. No. The reason why I will delay you for every second of the permissible 24 hours is I’m delaying your deadly trade and the deaths of your victims. I don’t think of it as taking a day away from you, but giving a day to them. Some innocent man, woman or child is going to have an extra day on this Earth because you’re not free. So I will see you in 23 hours and 55 minutes.

…

Yuri: I sell people means to defend themselves Ava.
Ava: That’s all Yuri. I see the news, I see those pictures.
Yuri: There is nothing illegal about what I do.
Ava: I don’t care if it is legal. It’s wrong. Please! Stop!
Yuri: It makes no difference if I stop. Someone will take my place the next day.
Ava: Let them. We have enough.
Yuri: It’s not about the money.
Ava: Then what is it?
Yuri: I am good at it.

…

Jack [listening to Yuri on a tapped phone]: He must be lying. He’s talking.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: Thank God. There are still legal ways to exploit developing countries But the only problem with an honest buck is that they are so hard to make. The margins are too low. Too many people doing it.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: She might have understood if the combination was last four digits of my social security number, my birthday even her birthday. But not Nicholai’s. My son’s birthday unlocked with the government would later describe as “a catalogue of carnage”.

…

Yuri [voiceover…back in business]: Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names: Liberation this, Patriotic that, Democratic Republic of something-or-other. I guess they can’t own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors Than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.

…

Vitaly: We can’t do this deal.
Yuri: The fuck, we can’t. What is the matter with you?
Vitaly: Look! Look over there! As soon as we hand off the guns, these people are going to die.
Yuri: It’s not our business.
Vitaly: They killed the boy just now as young as Nicky.
Yuri: Vitaly, it’s what we always knew. We can’t control what they do.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: Only half the guns were gone. So, I was still entitled to half the diamonds. If I took them I was lost. If I left them I was lost.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: The massacre played out just as Vitaly predicted. But, then, half dozen other massacres happened in Sierra Leon that week. You can’t stop them all. In my experience, you can’ stop any of them. They say, “Evil prevails when good men fail to act.” What they ought to say is, “Evil prevails.” I now shared more in common with the leader of that country God seemed to have foresaken. We saw something in each other neither one of us liked or, maybe, we were just looking in the mirror. I paid a Monrovian doctor 20 dollars to remove the bullets from Vitali’s body and write a bogus death certificate. I should have paid him more.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: There are two kind of tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want, the other is getting it.

…

Yuri: Enjoy it.
Jack: What?
Yuri: This. Tell me I’m everything you despise. That I’m the personification of evil. That I’m what – responsible for the breakdown of the fabric of society and world order. I’m a one-man genocide. Say everything you want to say to me now. Because you don’t have long.

…

Jack: I don’t think you fully appreciate the seriousness of your situation.
Yuri: My family has disowned me…my wife and son have left me…my brother is dead. Trust me, I fully appreciate the seriousness of my situation. But I promise you. I won’t spend a single second in courtroom.
Jack: You are deluded.
Yuri: I like you Jack. Well, maybe not. But I understand you. Let me tell you what is gonna happen. This way you can prepare yourself.
Jack: Okay.
Yuri: Soon there is gonna be a knock on that door and you will be called outside In the hall, there will be a man who outranks you. First, he will complement you on the fine job you have done and you are making the world safer place that you are to receive commendation and a promotion and then, he is going to tell you that I am to be released. You’re gonna protest. You’ll probably threaten to resign/ But in the end, I will be released. The reason I’ll be released is the same reason you think I’ll be convicted. I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of these men are the enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss - the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year - sometimes it’s embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can’t be seen supplying. So. You call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I’m a necessary evil.

…

Yuri [voiceover]: You know who’s going to inherit the Earth? Arms dealers. Because everyone else is too busy killing each other. That’s the secret to survival. Never go to war. Especially with yourself.

…

Title card: This film is based on actual events. While private gunrunners continue to thrive, the world’s biggest arms supplers [by far] are the U.S., U.K., Russia, France, and China. They are also the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council[/b]

[iambiguous]

Three’s company? Three’s a crowd?

Which three of course. Here there will always be any number of existential contraptions possible. The one in this film is going to be as unique as any other.

Like, for example, the one here: youtu.be/1Aej9wmoQ7M

Anyway, in my view, the place to start when probing the potential for intellectual, emotional and sexual entangments in this sort of relationship is here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She_Came_to_Stay

This novel really had a profound impact on all of my “romantic relationships” over the years. And on more than one occasion I was involved in triads. And, for sure, it was ever present while watching this particular film.

Friends. Lovers. Friends and lovers. And all that you risk when [one way or another] that line is crossed. You can only be more or less aware of it. And then more or less calculating in coming up with something that resembles a resolution. Jules weighs everything and offers up a solution that is least likely to tear them apart. Or for a time, anyway.

And then there is the part about gender. And the politics of gender. It’s not called Jules and Jim for nothing. The women seem important only insofar as they allow us to feast on these two men bonding over the course of all those years. But then these things can only really be understood and discussed within the context of particular historical and cultural boundaries. It’s futile to try to imagine we can judge the behaviors of others based on some optimal frame of mind. Here the relationships unfold before, during and after the First World War in Europe. What can any of us here really know of living through those events?

IMDb

[b]Francois Truffaut was so nervous on the opening night, he decided to see a Marx Brothers film instead of his own.

One of the earliest foreign films to be distributed in the US by two Harvard students, Cyrus Harvey and Brian Halliday, under their newly formed company, Janus Films. Janus went on to distribute all sorts of classic foreign films and is now owned by Criterion.

François Truffaut hated filming love scenes, which is why Jim and Catherine’s big scene is shot in half darkness.

Henri-Pierre Roché’s original novel was based on his own experiences as a young man. The original Catherine was still alive when the film was released and even attended the premiere incognito.

François Truffaut was greatly saddened when Henri-Pierre Roché died before he could see how Truffaut filmed his novel. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_and_Jim
trailer: youtu.be/x5IAYIUKTaI

JULES AND JIM [Jules et Jim] 1962
Written and directed by François Truffaut

[b]Catherine: You said, “I love you,” I said, “Wait.” I was going to say, “Take me,” you said, “Go away.”

…

Narrator: It was the roughly sculpted face of a woman whose calm smile startled them. It was on display in an open-air museum on an Adriatic island. They decided to see it at once. They had identical outfits made. They spent an hour by the statue. They admired it silently and said nothing till the next day. Had they ever seen such a smile? Never! And if they did? They’d follow it. They came home filled with this new revelation.

…

Narrator: Catherine had the statue’s smile. Her nose, mouth, chin and forehead had a certain provincial pride. lt was like a dream…

…

Jules: Will you spend the evening with me and Catherine? l told her all about you. Catherine’s anxious to know you better. But not this one, Jim. Okay? [/b]

We know what that means, of course.

[b]Jim: She’s a strange mixture.
Jules: Her father was an aristocrat. Her mother came from the masses.

…

Jim [watching Catherine dump crumpled letters on the floor and lighting them]: What are you doing?
Catherine: Burning old lies.

…

Jim [handing her a small bottle]: What is it?
Catherine: Sulfuric acid, for the eyes of men who tell lies.

…

Jules: Would you mind if I marry Catherine? Answer me frankly.
Jim: Is she made for a husband and children?
Jules: I’m afraid she’ll never be happy here on earth. She’s an apparition, not a woman…

…

Catherine [on the play]: I liked that girl! She wants to be free and live each moment of her life.
Jules: Jim doesn’t look pleased.
Jim: The play’s vague and complacent, showing vice to preach virtue.
Jukes: We don’t know when or where it takes place. He doesn’t say if the heroine’s a virgin or not.
Catherine: That’s unimportant!
Jim: Yes, if the story was only sentimental, but he says the hero’s impotent…plus his brother in a homosexual and his sister-in-law is a nymphomaniac! We need more physcial details on the heroine.
Catherine: That’s all you think about!
Jules: Absolutely, Madam, and because of you!
Jim: No psychology tonight, Jules!
Jules: No, it’s metaphysics! A wife’s fidelity is important…a husband’s is secondary.
Jules: Who wrote “Woman is natural, therefore abominable”?
Jim: Baudelaire, on certain women of a certain world.
Jules: Not at all! He meant women in general! He described a young girl… Monstrous scarecrow, assassin of Art… little fool, little bitch… the greatest idiocy linked to the greatest depravation! Wait! He said more. lt’s amazing that they allow women in churches What have they to discuss with God?
Catherine: You’re both idiots!
Jim: I said nothing! I don’t have to agree with Jules at 2 AM.
Catherine: Then protest!
Jim: I protest!
[Catherine suddenly leaps from the wall, twenty feet into the river]
Narrator: Jim fixed Catherine’s leap in his mind and made a sketch of it although he’d never drawn before. He felt a burst of admiration and in his thoughts sent her an invisible kiss.

…

Gilberete: How’s Jules?
Jim: No news since he married Catherine. I’m afraid of killing him in the trenches.[/b]

They were forced to fight on opposite sides. The war however is treated as though it were just one more event in their lives.

[b]Narrator: Jules’s country had lost, Jim’s had won. But the real victory was they were still alive.

…

Jules: I need to talk to you. How do you find Catherine?
Jim: Marriage and motherhood agree with her. She’s not so much a grasshopper, more like an ant.
Jules: Beware! True, she maintains order and harmony in our home. But when all goes too well, she becomes discontented. Her attitude changes and she whips out her words. She claims the world is rich and one can sometimes cheat a bit…but she first asks God for forgiveness, sure that she’ll get it. Jim, l’m afraid she’ll leave us.
Jim: lmpossible!
Jules: No. She’s already gone off. For six months I thought she wouldn’t come back. I can feel she’s ready to leave again. She’s no longer completely my wife. She’s had lovers. Three that I know of – one on the eve of our wedding as a farewell to her youth…one as revenge for something I did…and Albert.

…

Narrator: Jim wanted Catherine but stifled his desire more than ever. She mustn’t leave. Was he reacting on Jules behalf…or on his own? Perhaps she weas seducing him, though Jim was far from sure of it.

…

Jules: The disgusting part of war is it deprives a man of his own individual battles.

…

Jim: I remember a gunner I met in the hospital. While on leave he met a girl in a train and they talked between Nice and Marseilles. As she left she gave him her address. For years he frantically wrote her daily from the trenches on wrapping paper by candlelight As the shells fell, his tone became more intimate At first he wrote Dear Miss and ended with My sincerest respects. In the third one he called her My little fairy and…then it was My adorable fairy…and then I kiss your hands…then I kiss your forehead. Then he spoke of the photo she’d sent and of the breasts he imagined under her housecoat. Soon he said I love you terribly. One day he wrote her mother, asking for the girl’s hand. He became officially engaged without ever seeing her again. The war went on and the letters became more and more intimate. I clutch you to me, my love I hold your adorable breasts, I clasp you to me naked. When she replied a bit coldly he begged her not to be coy because he might die any moment. lt was true. To understand this extraordinary deflowering by mail you need to know the violence of trench warfare…the collective madness and the presence of death each second. Here’s a man who fought in the war and yet he also waged his own personal battle…and completely conquered a woman from afar. He was hospitalised with a head wound like you, but wasn’t as lucky as you. He died on the eve of the armistice.

…

Jules: Jim, Catherine wants nothing to do with me. I’m terrified she’ll walk out of my life completely. The last time I saw you two together…you were like a married couple. Jim, love her! Marry her and let me see her. I mean, if you love her, stop thinking of me as an obstacle.

…

Narrator: One Sunday Catherine decided to seduce Jules. While Jim read downstairs, she took Jules up to her room. ‘‘No, no!’’ said Jules. ‘‘Yes!’’ said Catherine. Jim tried not to feel jealous but nevertheless he was.

…

Catherine: You’re my Jim, I’m your Catherine. That’s fine! You wrote me a lot about your affairs. I have my own. You said goodbye to your loves. I went to say goodbye to mine. You can hold me in your arms all night but nothing more. We want a child together, right? lf we do it now I won’t be sure if it’s yours. Understand?

…

Catherine: I want to sleep alone tonight
Jim: Why?
Catherine: Because!
Jim: Explain it!
Catherine: There’s nothing to explain!
Jim: I’ll be good and sleep next to you.
Catherine: That’s not true! I don’t care about your goodness. I’m disgusted. This child we’ll never have is a nightmare! lt’s like taking a test. I can’t stand it!
Jim: But our love is what counts.
Catherine: No, I count too. And I love you less.

…

Catherine: I’m 32, you’re 29. When you’re 40 and I’m 43, you’ll want girl of 25 and I’ll be left alone like a fool.
Jim: Maybe you’re right. l’ll leave tomorrow A 3-month separation!
Catherine: Are you hurt? Then I’ll stop being hurt. Because we mustn’t suffer at the same time Once you stop suffering, l’ll start.

…

Narrator: Then Jim received a letter from Jules. “Your baby died after a third of its prenatal life. Catherine wants total silence between you.” So they’d created nothing, Jim thought, “it’s fine to want to rediscover the laws for human life, but how practical it must be to conform to the ecxisting ones. it’s best to stick to the existent laws. We played with the seed of life and lost.”

…

Jim: I’ve something to tell you.
Catherine: Tell me.
Jim: In a novel you loaned me I found a passage you’d marked. A woman on a ship gives herself mentally to an unknown passenger. It struck me as a confession… of how you explore the world. I have flashes of curiosity too. Maybe everyone does. I control mine for you, but I’m not sure you control yours for me. I agree with you. For love a couple isn’t the ideal. Just look around us! [/b]

Then she pulls out the gun. But no one is shot. That, however, is only a reprieve…

[b]Catherine: Jim, I have something to tell you. Will you come with me?
[she gets in the car and Jim follows her]
Catherine: Jules, watch us!
[He does. He watches as Catherine drives the car off the bridge into the river]
Narrator: Jules would never again fear that she would cheat on him, or simply die…because now it had happened. The bodies were found entangled in the reeds. Jim’s coffin was larger than life, dwarfing Catherine’s at it’s side. They left nothing of themselves but Jules and his daughter.

…

Narrator: Had Catherine loved conflict for conflict’s sake? No. But she’d bewildered Jules with it to the point of nausea. A sense of relief flooded over him. Jules] and Jim’s friendship had no equivalent in love. They delighted together in the smallest things. They accepted their differences with tenderness.

…

Narrator: The ashes were put in urns and sealed away in separate vaults. Jules would have mixed them together. Catherine had wanted hers to be strewn from a hilltop but that wasn’t permitted [/b]

[iambiguous]

This one stirred up some of controversy [from one or another faction] regarding the appropriateness of doing a film focusing on the problem of sexual harassment on the job. Why in the world many wondered would a film of this sort focus the beam on a man being sexually harrassed by a woman when the overwhelming preponderance of instances of this is the other way around?

For example:

articles.sun-sentinel.com/1994-1 … harassment

There’s just no getting around the political reactions a film like this will generate.

Of course we all know by now that sexual harrassment is not about sex at all. It’s all about power instead. Actually, I have never bought into that. Not entirely. Especially given the fact there are so many men out there who think about sex, well, almost constantly. I think the part about power revolves more around the consequences. Around the punishments that either are or are not meted out. That’s why, since the advent of the modern feminist movement, women have been able to shift the balance somewhat more in the direction of their own interests. Indeed, some folks argue that, in this respect, things have gone “too far”.

And that begets the part where the primordial impulses embedded in the sexual libido bumps [or collides] into the “either/or” mentality of “the law”. Things can get unimaginably convoluted then, can’t they?

In fact, one might reasonably argue that, when push comes to shove, our sexual libido is so hard wired into the limbic system, it is bound to beget all manner of divisive entanglements when we interact. Whether that be on the job or not. It’s miracle perhaps that we have managed to contain it to the extent that we have.

IMDb

In the United Kingdom, the film’s poster was removed from Liverpool bus shelters because it was considered too sexually suggestive, especially in light of the fact that Liverpool County Council had just run an ad campaign promoting the safety of their buses to women traveling alone at night.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disclosure_(film
trailer: youtu.be/lhukT5fEN3M

DISCLOSURE [1994]
Directed by Barry Levinson

[b]Susan: Oh, Tom, you are the one person I know who sucks up to the people below you.

…

Price [to Tom]: Remember the first cell phones, the way you lugged it around? People were amazed. It was like showing a Polaroid to a bushman. Now, if it’s bigger than a credit card, it’s too inconvenient.

…

Tom: How’s the job search going?
Price: Did I tell you what they told me? I was “surplussed.” Ever hear that word? If they wanted a euphemisn they should’ve said, “sodomized.” You don’t see it coming. You go along, and then one day there’s no room. Boom. No more room for you. Smaller, faster, cheaper, better. I was making 150 a year. Big money. Boom. Gone.
Tom: Why don’t you call Cindy…make an appointment? I’ll see if I can help out.
Price: Cindy. Pretty name. Used to have fun with the girls. Nowadays she probably wants your job.

…

Tom: Wait a minute. I might be out of a job?
Phil: Don’t get paranoid all of a sudden.
Tom: I’m a quick learner.
Phil: You wouldn’t make somebody VP and not let them appoint their own team. How would that look?
Tom: Phil, am I out of a job?
Phil: Come on, Tom. I’m already out on a limb.

…

Mark: Will this affect the spin-off?
Tom: This is a technical division. She doesn’t know the difference between software and a cashmere sweater.
Mark: What aren’t you telling us?
Tom: I might be out of a job. Is that enough? You know what it’s like out there?
Mark: He said something about the spin-off.
Tom: They didn’t tell me about me! You think they’ll tell me about the spin-off?!![/b]

In other words, sexual harrassment aside, it’s business as usual in corporate America. Machinations. And then more machinations.

[b]Mark: Meredith Johnson. Who is she? Let me guess: attractive?
Mary Anne: What does that have to do with anything?
Mark: Nipples like pencil erasers?
Tom: She’s attractive. Very attractive.
Mark: Sleeping with Garvin?
Don: That’s why he bought the Nordic Track!
Mark: It’s a curse to be me. Life holds no surprises.
Mary Anne: This is such a cliche.
Mark: How do you think a cliche becomes a cliche?
Mary Anne: You mean like, “Size doesn’t matter”?..All I know is that any woman has to be twice as good as a man and work harder for less pay.
Mark: See that, Hunter? Cliche grande.
Mary Anne: How do you think a cliche becomes a cliche?

…

Tom: This merger means everything to Garvin.
Stephanie: Well, give a man a $100 million and you create a frustrated billionaire.

…

Meredith [up on the podium]: We offer, through technology what religion and revolution have promised but never delivered: Freedom from the physical body. Freedom from race and gender…from nationality and personality, from place and time. Communicating by cellular phone and hand-held computer, PDA and built-in fax modem, we can relate to each other as pure consciousness.[/b]

And this was back in the mid-nineties.

[b]Mark: What’s she want to see you at 7 about?
Tom: I’m sure it’s the problems with Arcamax. We gotta get in sync before these Conley guys ask questions.
Mark: She doesn’t give you a boner? Because, you know, I definitely have lift-off. What about you, Don? You got a woody?
Don: She’s very nice.
Mark: Come on, Tom, you have a sexual urge every 20 minutes. It’s a physiological certainty. It’s hard-wired into your limbic brain. You can’t fight it. Why would you want to? Live a little. I mean, ten years from now, you’ll need a forklift to get a hard-on.

…

Meredith [about Susan]: I guess it can be a bit inhibiting
Tom: What’s that?
Meredith: Domesticity
Tom: Oh, you’d be surprised.
Meredith: Oh, I don’t imagine you can jump her from behind just because all of sudden you get excited just by the way you she bends over to just to pick up the soap. You remember that… don’t you?
Tom: Yeah, I remember that.
Meredith: And you miss it, don’t you?
Tom: I have my compensations.
Meredith: Oh course… that’s life. A series of trade-offs.

…

Meredith [to Tom]: You stick your dick in my mouth and now you get an attack of morality?!

…

Catherine’s assistant: So you were kissing.
Tom: Yes. And then she began to rub me.
Catherine: Rub you where?
Tom: You know…
Catherine: Your penis?
Tom: Yes.
Catherine: And?
Tom: I don’t feel comfortable talking about it.
Catherine: Because I’m a woman?
Tom: Because you act like it’s a game.
Catherine: Mr. Sanders, why are you here?
Tom: I want to know what my options are.
Catherine: What your options are?
Tom: I wanna know whether I can sue her for sexual harassment.
Catherine’s assistant: Well, to do that, you have to convince a jury that you were alone with Miss Teenage New Mexico and you said no.
Catherine: Sexual harassment is not about sex. It is about power. She has it, you don’t. If you sue, you’ll never get another job in computers. If you don’t, they’ll bury you in Austin. Sue, and it’s news. Don’t, it’s gossip. If you sue, no one will believe you. If you don’t, your wife won’t. They will make your life hell for the next three years until this case goes to trial. And for that privilege, it’s gonna cost you a minimum of $100,000. Do you not think it’s a game, Mr. Sanders? It’s a game to them. How do you feel about losing?

…

Tom: They said she’s not gonna press charges. Why? She’s accused me. Why stop there? Why not press charges? Meredith didn’t press charges because she couldn’t. DigiCom is planning a merger with Conley-White. It is supposed to happen this Friday. They think that we are as conservative as they are. With a scandal, Conley going to bed with Katie Couric, waking up with Jessica Hahn. Garvin is out $100 million.
Catherine: I think we might make a plaintiff out of this guy yet.
Tom: No, a potential plaintiff. I don’t have to sue. I just threaten to sue.
Catherine: That’s a very dangerous game. Are you willing to play it?
Tom: Fuck them.
Catherine: Now you’re talking my language.
Tom: For the next three days this loose cannon is in a position to put a lot of pressure on this company.
Catherine: And they on you, Mr. Sanders. They on you.

…

Garvin [to Phil]: This is America, goddammit. The legal system is supposed to protect people like me!

…

Phil: It gets worse. His lawyer is Catherine Alvarez.
Garvin: Oh, great. She’d change her name to “TV Listings” just to get it in the paper.

…

Cindy: I’ve got a Catherine Alvarez on 2.
Tom: Thanks, Cin. Could you close the door please?

…

Susan: Obviously, something happened. Did you have sex with her?
Tom: No!
Susan: Think first. Because if you’re lying–
Tom: No, I said, no. She kissed me, and she unzipped my pants, and…
Susan: And?
Tom: And that was it. Nothing happened.
Susan: Nothing happened? How did it get that far?
Tom: You think I encouraged her?
Susan: Her hand was in your pants?
Tom: Yeah, but nothing happened.
Susan: How did that happen?

…

Susan [to Tom]: An “old girlfriend”. Like I’m surprised. That’s about as exclusive as the White Pages!

…

Susan: They’ll try to destroy you.
Tom: It won’t go that far.
Susan: It’ll take over our life! Depositions and whispering and legal fees for some damn personal vindication. And all anyone remembers is that you were involved in something sleazy. Do you have a lawyer?
Tom: Catherine Alvarez.
Susan: Great. When are we on Hard Copy?

…

Tom: But if it had happened to you…
Susan: You know how many times it’s happened to me?
Tom: Wait a minute. You never said this ever happened…
Susan: You’re so narcissistic. Nothing ever happens until it happens to you.
Tom: You should’ve said something.
Susan: I do what women always do. I deal with it. I do not make a federal case. Now go in there tomorrow and work it out.
Tom: Right. I should have just shut up and fucked her.
Susan: Just apologize. Apologize and get your job back.
Tom: Apologize?! Wait, I got a better idea. Why don’t I just admit it? I’ll be the evil white male you’re all complaining about. Then I can fuck everybody. Me, apologize to them, Susan? They call me a rapist and I apologize? Come on. This is a joke. Sexual harassment is about power. When did I have the power? When?

…

Susan: You told me you didn’t have sex.
Tom: I didn’t.
Susan: What about…
Tom: I didn’t have sex with her.
Susan: What is it, Tom? She’s trying to quit smoking?
Tom: I’m telling the truth.
Susan: How could you do this?
Tom: She did it. That’s the point.
Susan: You saw this woman alone. You had wine, a back rub, you kissed. And then this non-sex sex thing. You took off her panties. Those are facts.
Tom: So what? So what?
Susan: Those don’t happen unless the man wants…
Tom: I was cornered.
Susan: You let it happen!
Tom: I did not let it happen!
Susan: How could you? How could you let that woman into our lives?!

…

Catherine: You’re afraid she’s telling the truth.
Susan: Yes.
Catherine: What he did, he did out of weakness.
Susan: Hardly makes it better, does it?
Catherine: I can’t get in the middle of your relationship with Tom…but the fact is she broke the law, and that makes the difference.
Susan: Ms. Alvarez, forty-eight hours ago my husband’s penis was in another woman’s mouth. I don’t think there’s anything in the law that can help me deal with that.

…

Tom: She got to you, didn’t she?
Don: What do you expect? They’re stronger, they’re smarter and they don’t fight fair. It’s the next step in human evolution. Like the Amazons. Keep a few of us around for sperm and kill the rest.

…

Garvin: As I understand it you both had a chance to get it off your chest. Your version of what happened. Now I want it to stop.
Tom: What I got off my chest was not a version.
Garvin: It’s always somebody’s version. That’s the legacy of the modern age. We have information but no truth. Flashes of electrons in a grain of sand.

…

Garvin: She made a pass, that’s all. Put her hand on you. You could have decided it was flattering. You could’ve taken it off. You could have handled it many ways, but this vindictiveness…
Tom: It’s against the law. I’m employed by her. I work for her.
Garvin: No. You work for me. That’s what I’m saying. After all these years, why didn’t you come to me? Not go hire this lawyer.
Tom: Maybe I should have.
Garvin: I mean, why can’t you just forget it? Work together like adults and everyone makes a pile of money. What’s wrong with that?
Tom: Things have gone too far.
Garvin: Things can go back.

…

Mary Anne: You know, it’s funny how you always assumed it’d be you who got the job. Lewyn assumed it would be him or you. But nobody ever thought for a second it might be me. Isn’t that funny?
Tom: That’s not true. You were always on the list.
Mary Anne: Really? Let me guess: “Hunter, not someone you’d follow into battle. Too much of a team player. No killer instinct. Doesn’t have those tools.” What is that all a code for?
Tom: What are you saying…are you on Meredith’s side?
Mary Anne: I studied engineering for eight years. I was the only woman in that department. You know what I did? I worked. You think I’m on Meredith’s side?

…

Tom [to Catherine]: It’s Levin, not Lewyn.

…

Catherine: Ms. Johnson, just so I’m clear on what today’s story is would you define for me “consensual sex”?
Meredith: Sex where both parties are willing participants.
Catherine: How many times did we hear Mr. Sanders say “no” on that tape?
Meredith: I don’t know, I was too busy listening to my underwear being torn off.
Catherine: Thirty-one. Thirty-one times. Doesn’t no mean no?
Meredith: Sometimes “no” means that person wants to be overwhelmed, dominated. But the way we’re supposed to have sex nowadays, we’d need the UN to supervise.

…

Catherine: No means no. Isn’t that what we tell women? Do men deserve less?
Meredith: Well, when he really wanted to stop, he didn’t seem to have any problems doing it, did he?
Catherine: And that’s when you got angry.
Meredith: Of course I got angry. So would anyone.
Catherine: Don’t we tell women that they can stop at any point?
Meredith: Haven’t you ever said no and meant yes, Mrs. Alvarez?
Catherine: Up until the moment of actual penetration…
Meredith [interrupting]: The point is he was willing. That tape doesn’t change anything.
Catherine: The point is you controlled the meeting. You set the time. You ordered the wine. You locked the door. You demanded service and then got angry when he didn’t provide it. So you decided to get even, to get rid of him with this trumped up charge. Ms. Johnson, the only thing you have proven is that a woman in power can be every bit as abusive as a man!
Meredith: You wanna put me on trial here? Let’s at least be honest about what it’s for! I am a sexually aggressive woman. I like it. Tom knew it, and you can’t handle it. It is the same damn thing since the beginning of time. Veil it, hide it, lock it up and throw away the key. We expect a woman to do a man’s job, make a man’s money, and then walk around with a parasol and lie down for a man to fuck her like it was still a hundred years ago? Well, no thank you! [/b]

These things do get complicated.

[b]Email on Tom’s computer: “It’s not over. Nothing is what it seems. Solve the problem. A FRIEND”

…

Tom: Hi, Stephanie.
Stephanie: Must be difficult. So much going on, and nobody giving you information.
Tom: It’s been a crazy week.
Stephanie: I remember I had a friend. She was one of the first women who moved really high up. You know what it’s like in the high rooms - every day putting out fires, but it turns out, the job wasn’t anything she thought it was, and she was looking the wrong way when they fired her.
Tom: Interesting.
Stephanie: The truth usually is, once you get to it.

…

Tom [on the phone]: Catherine, has my contract gone out already? Shit. What does the contract say about firing me? They can fire me for cause, can’t they? For incompetence? The problem with the drives is not with the programming or the design. It’s with the production line, and that’s my responsibility. This whole thing tomorrow…they’re setting me up.[/b]

Thus: Solve the fucking problem! So, he does. And that changes everything. But that part has nothing at all to do with sexual harrassment. Still, it sure is fun to watch. The part about Malaysia. Meredith in Malaysia. Though not the part that folks like me tend to focus in on.

Meredith: I’m surprised you didn’t come to gloat.
Tom: Gloating is underrated. I actually came here to pick up the Arcamax files.
Meredith: Some very smart people underrated you.
Tom: Thank you, Meredith.
Meredith: Not including myself. I beat you. I beat you fair and square. Garvin lost his nerve. It was his brilliant idea to fire you for incompetence. Him and Phil. And I’m the one getting fired.
Tom: I’ve never seen you play the victim. It’s the only good quality you had.
Meredith: I’m just playing the game the way you guys set it up, and I’m being punished for it.
It’s fine. I’ve had calls from 10 head-hunters with job offers in the last hour. Don’t be surprised if I’m back in 10 years to buy this place.
Tom: Did it ever occur to you, Meredith, that maybe I set you up?

But in fact that is simply not true. It was only a series of lucky [scripted] coincidences that led him to this point.

[b]Tom: You a chemistry major, Spencer?
Spencer: Yeah, I am.
Tom: I know a chemistry professor there, Dr. Arthur Friend. A. Friend. I don’t know if he teaches freshmen or not.
Spencer: I’m his research assistant.
Tom: So if Dr. Arthur Friend was in Nepal, for example, you’d have the keys to his office and password to his computer?
Spencer: Yeah.

…

Tom: Your mother’s an extraordinary woman.
Spencer: You just figured that out?[/b]

[iambiguous]

Well, if there have to criminals in the world why can’t they be more like Jack Foley. Witty, urbane, intelligent, charming. And he always goes out of his way to make sure that when he is breaking the law nobody gets hurt. Just the banks. And they’re insured.

So, here is one of those proverbial “bad guys that you can root for”. A character straight out of Elmore Leonard. Literally, as it were.

Besides, the banks are in cahoots with all those scumbags that embody crony capitalism.

As for the FBI agent, Karen Sisco is basically a “good guy” too. In other words, she’s not the kind the governemnt employs for stuff like this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

Or one of Hoover’s thugs.

One thing though doesn’t seemed to have changed much:

Ray [Detroit detective]: You want to tell me why you’re coming to me instead of the F.B.I.?
Karen: I go to the F.B.I., the first thing they’re gonna do is send me to get some coffee.

Give or take the occasional Agent Starling?

Instead, she goes after scum of the earth assholes like Maurice “Snoopy” Miller. And tussels with creeps like Kenneth.

So, the whole point here is to focus Karen and Jack. Him on one side of the law looking like George Clooney, and her on the other side looking like Jennifer Lopez.

IMDb

[b]Michael Keaton reprises his role as “Ray Nicolette” in a cameo. He originally played him in another Elmore Leonard novel-adapted film, Jackie Brown.

The exterior of Ripley’s mansion is that of an actual house. The interior was a set. The owners of the mansion liked the look so much that they asked for the plans of the set.

Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton did their cameos free of charge.

Steven Soderbergh saw this film as a conscious decision on his part to climb out of the arthouse ghetto. He had to do a film like this because half the business was still off-limits to him.

The scenes at Glades were filmed at Angola Prison in Louisiana where 500 real cons were used as extras.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Sight
trailer: youtu.be/A_GOrRyhABg

OUT OF SIGHT [1998]
Directed by Steven Soderbergh

[b]Jack [robbing a bank]: Take one of those big envelopes and put as many hundreds, fifties and twenties as you can pack into it. Nothing with bank straps or rubber bands. I don’t want any dye packs. I don’t want any bait money. Start with the second drawer and then the one over there, under the computer. It’s okay, Loretta, the key’s right there next to you. No bills off the bottom of the drawer. Is this your first time being robbed?
[Loretta nods]
Jack: You’re doing great.

…

Jack: No! No! No! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
Cop: I think you flooded it.

…

Adele: Well, seeing as you have so much luck with cars, Buddy thought it might be better to bring two. He got this guy he says you know from Lompoc, Glenn something.
Jack: Glenn Michaels.
Adele: Yeah, that’s him. Buddy says Glenn thinks you guys are real cool.
Jack: He did, huh. Well, tell Buddy if I see Glenn wearing his sunglasses I’ll step on 'em. I might not even take 'em off first. [/b]

Glenn is played by Steve Zahn. He dam near steals the show.

[b]Karen [in the trunk with Jack]: You were in Lompoc USP, the federal penitentiary. I’ve delivered people there. So basically you’ve spent half your life in prison.
Jack: Basically. Yeah. If I go back now, I do a full thirty years, no time off. Can you imagine looking at that?
Karen: I don’t have to. I don’t rob banks.

…

Jack: Take your sunglasses off.
Glenn: I see better with them on.
Jack: You don’t take 'em off or I’m gonna throw 'em off the overpass while they’re still on your head.

…

Buddy: The guy’s bragging that he won a thrown fight. Fucking pathetic.
Jack [looking at a glowering Maurice]: Dangerous is what it is.

…

Glenn [to Jack and Buddy]: Oh, I see, you guys are cynical.

…

Jack [pointing to a sign that says “Quiet Please”]: Hey! Sign says “shut the fuck up,” or can’t you fellas read?
Maurice: The fuck you talkin’ to man? You got a problem over there, Foley?
Jack: Yeah, I got a problem: this is the dumbest fuckin’ shakedown in the history of dumb shakedowns. Five hundred bucks for a pillow?
Maurice: That’s right.
Ripley [to Foley]: It does seem a little high, doesn’t it?

…

Jack: First of all, if he kills you, he’s not gonna get any more money out of you.
Maurice: Well, the man don’t just have to die, Foley. I mean, he could accidentally hurt himself falling down on something real hard, you know? Like a shiv, or my dick?

…

Jack [watching Maurice’s bodyguard approach him in the prison library]: Uh oh.
Maurice: You’re fucked up now, man. That’s Himey. Protege of mine. Ranked number thirty-two in the federal prison system.
Jack Foley: Thirty-two?
Maurice: That’s right.
Jack: Outta what? Twenty?

…

Karen [on the phone]: There’s a guy here on the task force right now. Maybe I should put him on the phone, let you two work it out.
Jack: You won’t do that.
Karen: Why not?
Foley: Because you’re having too much fun.

…

Buddy: Okay, you saw her. That’s all you get.
Jack [watching Karen go up to Adele’s apartment]: I guess Adele’s in good hands.
Buddy: Sure looks that way.
Jack: (finally): Let’s go to Detroit.
Buddy: Now you’re talkin’.

…

Jack [to Buddy]: First thing we do, we get to Detroit, we find Glenn, then we find a window to throw him out of.

…

Glenn [to Maurice]: I think you’re forgetting, this is my whip.

…

Jack: Whose blood you have on your shirt?
Glenn: Shit, man, these guys are fucking crazy!!

…

Ripley [in prison]: Tell me something. It must take a lot of balls to walk in a bank with a gun, stick it up?
Foley: I don’t know. I never used a gun.
Ripley: You’re kidding?
Foley: You’d be surprised what all you can get, if you ask for it the right way.

…

Karen: What’d you fight, middleweight?
Kenneth: Light to super-middleweight, as my body developed. You go about what, bantam?
Karen: Flyweight.
Kenneth: You know your divisions. You like the fights? Like the rough stuff? Yeah, I bet you do. Like to get down and tussle a little bit? Like me and Tuffy, before she got run over, we used to get down on the floor and tussle. I say to her, “You a good dog, Tuffy, here’s a treat for you.” And I give Tuffy what all good bitches love best. You know what that is? A bone. I can give you a bone, too, girl.
Karen: You’re not my type.
Kenneth: No, that shit don’t mean nothing to me. I let the monster out, you gonna do what it wants.

…

Karen: I gotta go Kenneth.
Kenneth: No, no, we gonna tussle first.
[he grabs her arm, she hits him in the head with her baton]
Kenneth: Damn it! What the fuck was that?!
Karen: You wanted to tussle. We tussled.

…

Jack: Tell me something, Buddy. You know anyone who’s actually done one last big score and gone to live the good life?
Buddy: Look, Jack, there’s always a chance we’ll walk out’ve there with nothing. I say let fate decide.
Jack: Let fate decide? What’re you, the fuckin’ Dali Lama now?
Buddy: My sister believes in fate, but not hell. That’s why she stopped praying for the lost souls since you don’t hear that much about purgatory anymore. But every day she asks her boss to pray I don’t fuck up. Whatta you think, you think there’s a hell, Jack?
Jack: Yeah, it’s called the Glades Correctional Institute. I’m sure as shit not going back there, or anyplace like it.
Buddy: Oh, they put a gun on you, you’ll go.
Jack: They put a gun on you, you still have a choice.

…

Ripley: You know, I wasn’t sure you’d show up. But I was pretty sure that, if you did, you’d throw the job in my face. Understand something, Jack. Up to this point, everything you’ve done with your life means absolutely nothing in the real world. Less than nothing. You’re a bank robber. This is not a marketable skill. There are no old bank robbers out in the world living on pensions. You know this. That’s why you’re here right now. Today, I’m offering you a lousy job at a lousy wage. You think you’re better than that? Fine. Show me. Show me that you’re really willing to change and we’ll talk about something better. A lot better. But first, Jack, you gotta earn it.
Jack: How, Dick? The way you earned it? By marrying some rich broad who owns the company, selling it off a piece at a time, then divorcing her? What is this Knute Rockne, pull yourself up by the bootstraps bullshit? Back in prison, guy like you, place like that, you were ice cream for freaks. You were a goddamn dumpling. Maurice and a dozen other guys coulda bled you till you had nothing. Till you were nothing. I saved your ass. So you’ll pardon me if I don’t wanna sit on a fuckin stool all day saying “sign in here please” or “hey, pal, you can’t park there.” Okay, Dick? I can’t fucking do it, Dick.

…

Andy: Hi. I’m Andy. We’re ad guys. We flew in from New York this morning to pitch Hiram Walker Distillery, present this test-market campaign for their new margarita mix. What we do, we show this guy who looks like a Mexican bandido, you know, with the big Chihuahua hat, the bullet belts…he pulls out his six-gun and…
Karen: Andy. Really… who gives a shit?

…

Jack: It’s like seeing someone for the first time, and you look at each other for a few seconds, and there’s this kind of recognition like you both know something. Next moment the person’s gone, and it’s too late to do anything about it.

…

Jack [to Karen]: I know a guy who walks into a bank with a little glass bottle. He tells everyone it’s nitroglycerine. He scores some money off the teller, walks out. On his way out, the bottle breaks, he slips on it and knocks himself out. They get him. The “nitro” was Canola oil. I know more fucked-up bank robbers than ones who know what they’re doing. I doubt if one in ten could tell you where the dye pack is. Most bank robbers are fucking morons. To go to bed with a bank robber for kinky thrills, as you say, you’d have to be as dumb as they are. I know you’re not dumb, so why would I think that? Why would you think I might think that?

…

Jack: We made it, didn’t we?
Buddy: All you gotta do is get in.
Jack: I’m going back inside.
Buddy: I’ll go with you.
Jack: No, you dump the van, meet me at the airport. I’ll take one of Ripley’s cars.
Buddy: Jack…
Jack: Listen, Buddy, the shit that’s about to go down, you’ll be on the phone with your sister for a month. Let me do this part alone. I’m saying this isn’t your problem. Far as I’m concerned, we’re square.

…

Jack: What kind of name is Hejira?
Hejira: It’s Islamic.
Jack: What’s it mean?
Hejira: The Hejira was Mohammed’s flight from Mecca in 632. Brothers in Leavenworth gave me that name.
Jack You were in Leavenworth?
Hejira: For a time.
Jack: What’s that mean?
Hejira: Means, when the time came, I left.
Jack: You broke out?
Hejira: I prefer to think of it as an exodus from an undesirable place.
Jack: And how long was it before they caught up with you?
Hejira: That time?
Jack: There were others?
Hejira: Yeah. That was the ninth.
Jack: The ninth?!
Hejira: Ten, you count the prison hospital in Ohio I walked away from.
Jack: You must be some kinda walker. And so now you’re off to Glades.
Hejira: Apparently, yeah. I was supposed to leave last night with the lady marshal, but for some reason she wanted to wait.
Jack: (looking at Karen): She did, huh.
Hejira: I guess it’s cheaper to take us both down in one van.
Jack: Yeah, could be. Or maybe she thought we’d have a lot to talk about.
Hejira: Like what?
Jack: I don’t know. It’s a long way down to Florida. [/b]

[iambiguous]

Just because you have heart disease and need a heart transplant [which may or may not save your life] doesn’t make you any less a creature of dasein.

Which is only to point out the obvious: that any particular one of us who wakes up tomorrow to news like that is going to react in different [sometimes very different] ways. Is there then a “right way” to react? No. But there are surely ways that are more constructive than others. Which does not mean that it is ever going to be within your reach. There are just too many variables that might come into play.

Let’s face it, when that particular rubicon is crossed we are all more or less on our own.

This of course being the Big One. The news from the doctor. Usually cancer or heart disease. And it is all the more brutal [or certainly can be] when you a 1] still young and 2] live your life passionaitely as, say, a dancer.

But his story is intertwined in the lives of others. The film is similar to Robert Altman’s Short Cuts. Snippets of lives seeming to be from different planets that all manage to become intertwined such that we see the parts that bring us all together and the parts that pull us all apart. So that means stories that revolve around, among other things, class, race, gender and ethnicity. And sex. And love. And around those who live their lives [more or less] and those who live [more or less] in a world of words.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_(2008_film
trailer: youtu.be/ZC9Rr4QLf58

PARIS [2008]
Written and directed by Cédric Klapisch

[b]Doctor [looking at Pierre’s beating heart on a screen]: Your heartbeat is regular. The treatment seems to be working. But…
Pierre: But? But what…?

…

Elise [sister]: You sounded weird on the phone.
Pierre: Well, I…I’m sick. It’s a heart thing. My days may be numbered. They’re not too optimistic. I may need a heart transplant. Even then I may not pull through. They say 50% but… I guess that means 40%.
Elise: What does that mean, a 40% success rate?
Pierre: Well, 40% means a 60% chance it won’t work, that it’ll be useless. You know, I feel like my life has barely started and now…

…

Elise: How long have you known?
Pierre: It started 3 months ago. It took me a month to go to a doctor. Then all the tests and everything…I’ve known for a month.
Elise: Why didn’t you say anything?
Pierre: Because… I don’t know. We haven’t seen each other in a long time. And…I didn’t wanna tell everyone.
Elise: I’m not everyone. I’m your sister, your family…you don’t give a shit!
Pierre: There! That’s it!
Elise: “That’s it?” That’s what?
Pierre: I may die, I tell you…and you fucking yell at me!

…

Roland [history professor]: The very idea of popularization depresses me completely. I’m not sure we do any great service to history, or the audience, by democratizing everything. It’s not some expert’s caprice. When I watch those educational programs on the national networks with my colleagues elucidating on Louis XVI, the Commune, the French Revolution, the history of World War II…I’m not sure they’re of much use.

…

Roland: Remember my old professor, Vignard?
Philippe: The thesis advisor who liked you so much.
Roland: I don’t want to become Vignard. He’s become this hideous old fossil, rambling on about stuff that interests nobody. I feel like, if I go on like this, giving my little courses, skulking around libraries, consulting absurd archives, I’m doomed to become Vignard. [/b]

He’s torn in other words.

[b]Roland: When I saw that magnificent girl, I thought beauty really is horrible. Added to youth, it’s completely unfair. Almost indecent. I studied her face, her eyebrows, her eyes, her mouth. Her face was sublime. And I thought, why? Why her? Why is she so beautiful? And why are all the others so…not ugly… but, let’s say, banal, invisible? There’s something horrible…Beauty really is disgusting!
Marjolaine: Did you see her after class?
Philippe: That’s not his style.
Roland: Well, I almost did.
Marjolaine: Really? And?
Roland: Obviously, some kid beat me to it. The idea of waiting on line was depressing.

…

Pierre [discussing his nieces and nephew]: We’ve gotta be honest and say I’m gonna croak.
Élise: That’s not certain.
Pierre: Then it’ll be a nice surprise.

…

Elise: Your uncle has…a serious illness. A very, very serious illness. He may even die. That’s why we moved into his place. Because I’d like to take care of him.
Daughter: Why are you telling us all this?
Elise: Because it’s the truth, sweetie.
Daughter: Are you gonna die, for sure?
Pierre: Well, no. They don’t know. They may cure me. But still…I don’t know. Even if I do…We all die. We just don’t know when. And we want it to happen as late as possible. But if it happens, it’s no big deal. You just have to be prepared.[/b]

Right. And how hard can that be when you’re in your 20s?

Roland [to the camera]: Baudelaire said that work had “neither head nor tail.” It was a modern form of poetry, fragmented, “without meter or rhyme.” He justifies his desire to compose prose poems, by saying, “Above all, enormous cities, with their incalculable interconnections, beget this obsessive ideal.” Today’s cities also have “neither head nor tail.” Paris is a fragmented wellspring of men, stories, eras, monuments, places…Let us also try to discover that universe in a fragmented way. To discover, in those scattered shards, why, “Here, all is order and beauty, luxury, calm and voluptuousness.”

Cut to a barren landscape in Africa, a truck filled with people about as far removed from Paris as one can imagine.

Pierre: I just had one beer. I had such a craving.
Doctor: With your daily cocktail of beta blockers, Digoxin, Captopril and Carveditol, one drop of alcohol and you vomit. You have to save your strength. You can’t live the same way.
Pierre: I get that but sometimes it’s hard.
Doctor: We’re gonna have to see each other regularly. I have the results of your tests. The whole team met yesterday. All your doctors. Endocrinologists, shrinks, everyone. We’ve all studied your file and come to the same verdict. Our suspicions have been confirmed. I won’t lie. This heart isn’t working.

You before, you after.

[b]Roland: I’m sorry. No offense, but I don’t believe in this. I’ve always found all this stuff ridiculous.
Psychiatrist: All what stuff?
Roland: Well, you, this…The couch, psychoanalysis. I find it completely stupid. I find it moronic.
Psychiatrist: Really? Then why did you come?
Roland: I don’t really know why I came. But the problem isI don’t believe in it. You have to be completely naive to do this.
Psychiatrist: To do what?
Roland: Well, to go there. To tell your life story, your childhood, that whole Oedipus complex thing. “I’m so attached to my mommy. How much do I owe you, Doctor?” Isn’t that kind of pathetic?
Psychiatrist: No.
Roland: I can’t imagine that lying on that couch and blathering on for hours about your past can, I don’t know, heal wounds. I’m pragmatic. You understand? I’m concrete. All that guru stuff’s not my thing. I’m the opposite of naive. I only believe in what I see.
Psychiatrist: And what do you see?
Roland: Well…I’m an historian. In my field, we follow tangible leads.You’re thinking, “This guy’s really sick. He’s really sick. He came but he won’t admit he’s really sick. He acts like he’s in great shape. He’s acting out his defense mechanisms,” as you say. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?
Psychiatrist: No, no. I’m listening. But you came here, so you must feel that something’s wrong. You talk about tangible leads. What tangible things led you here?
Roland: Well, I…I started a new job a few weeks ago. I’m doing a sort of popularization thing for TV. The other day, I completely snapped. That’s never happened to me before. I’m afraid now. I’m afraid. It’s an anxiety I can’t wrap my mind around. It’s weird. I don’t understand it. I’ve always been pretty good at analyzing things. Digging up what’s not working, solving problems. That’s my basic activity, solving problems. I spent my… I’m sorry…I just can’t… It’s completely stupid. Crying like an idiot! You’re good! You won!
Psychiatrist: No, I haven’t won a thing. You know, I don’t take pleasure in seeing you cry.
Roland: It’s no big deal.
Psychiatrist: Yes, some things are a big deal. You’ve admitted that you’re suffering.

…

Pierre [to Elise]: This may be my last Christmas. And I may never make love again…

…

Daniela: I gotta tell you something. I’m not waxed.
Pierre: No problem. Beggars can’t be choosers.

…

Pierre: Okay, it’s here.
Elise: You’re sure? You really don’t want me…
Pierre: I’d rather you didn’t come. I feel like I’m going to the gallows. No drama, no goodbyes, no kisses.
Elise: If you say so.
Pierre: I’ll see you again. One way or another.

…

Pierre: That’s Paris. No one’s ever happy. We grumble. We love that.
Cab driver: The demonstration, you mean?
Pierre: Yeah, right. They don’t know how lucky they are. Walking, breathing, running, arguing, running late…They don’t know how lucky. To be just like that, carefree in Paris.[/b]

[iambiguous]

Yet another adaptation of this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses

The ones most of us are familiar with are the films: Dangerous Liaisons, Valmont and Cruel Intentions.

This one is from China. So, naturally, it will be reflected in the narrative. It is also takes place in 1931. In Shanghai.

But the gist of the story is the same. Two cynical, narcissistic and supremely arrogant aristocrats have nothing better to do than toy with the lives of others. And why not. The lives that they toy with are embodied by the sort they feel little but disdain for. Lives, in other words that, for all intents and purposes, may just as well be at one with “the masses”.

In fact, this is only imaginable among those who have the wealth and the power [and the free time] to engage in such exploits. The part about class then is understood.

Not that the marks themselves aren’t also one of them. But they have basically come to drearily embody a frame of mind that has been drummed into them from birth: this is normal, this is not. Pedestrian minds, in other words. Minds more concerned with acting out what is expected of them in “society”, than in exploring a world that is deemed to be out of bounds.

As a consequence, my own reaction here is one of ambivalence. I admire their iconoclastic sense of being off the beaten path. They live lives that basically scoff at all that is deemed “proper”. But they are not content to pursue this lifestyle only among themselves. Instead, they engage in but one more rendition of Nietzsche’s “will to power”. They are of the master class. And if you are not one them then you must be a slave. And of course all is permitted with respect to those they deem to be little more than sheep.

And yet even “down there”, you occasionally bump into folks of great beauty and substance. Or at least enough to entangle you in your own web. The law of unintended consequences can come crashing down on anyone. For example, you might fall in love with the mark.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangerous_ … (2012_film
Trailer: youtu.be/Cvr0SoL7Au4

DANGEROUS LIAISONS [Wi-Heom-han Gyan-Gye] 2012
Directed by Jin-ho Hur

[b]Woman: Fan. I missed you so much.
Fan: Were we meeting today?
[she sees Lily rising naked from Fan’s bed, approaching them]
Woman: Who are you? Fan - who is this woman?
Fan: Lily.
Woman: But you said I was your one and only!
Lily: So she’s ‘the barnacle’.

…

Jieyu: You want lo seduce her? The newspapers say she’s like a goddess. She’s not your usual type.
Fan: I’m growing sick of Shanghainese women.
Jieyu: Even me?
Fan: You’re the exception of course.

…

Fan: Shall we bet?
Jieyu: What’s the bet?
Fan: I bet I can get her into bed.
Jieyu: You’re serious? You’ll lose spectacularly.
Fan: We’ll see who wins and who loses.
Jieyu: Fine. It’s a bet. What are the stakes?
Fan: Name it.
Jieyu: The land at the mouth of Soochow Creek. I want to build a port there.
Fan: Okay.
Jieyu: And if I lose? What would you like’?
Fan: You.
[long pause]
Jieyu: Okay. If you win, I’ll give myself to you.

…

Fan: How is it you can control anyone?
Jieyu: To capture a man’s heart, you have to play games.
Fan: I really can’t figure you out.
Jieyu: Since being widowed at 20, I’ve lived in a man’s world. A poker face is the key to survival. Even if under the table my wounded hand bleeds my face still wears a smile.

…

Jieyu: I only just realised…you’re in love with young Dai. Ever thought of marrying him?
Beibei: Mama says I have to marry Mr Jin.
Jieyu: Do you love Mr Jin?
Beibei: Mama says I don’t have to love him. He’s rich. I just have to marry him.
Jieyu: Men are all alike. If they have money and power. They ruin the lives of young women.

…

Mrs. Shu [after seeing the nudes Dai had done of Beibei]: What did you two do?!
Dai: Mrs Zhu, Beibei gave herself for art.
Mrs. Shu: Gave herself?
Dai: You… you misunderstand. It’s art. It’s about beauty.
Mrs. Shu: What do you want? You after our family’s money?
Dai: I love Beibei.
Mrs. Shu: Ridiculous! You’re the son of a lowly rickshaw puller. You think you’re good enough for Beibei’? That you’re her social match? You should know your place!
Dai: My father may be poor. But he’d never sell his own child for money.

…

Mrs Shu [to Jieyu while Fan listens in out of sight]: You know, I called Fenyu the other day and warned her to beware of Xie Yifan. For a good woman to fall into his clutches it’d be like being bitten by a dirty blowfly.[/b]

In other words, Beibei is as good as…screwed.

[b]Fan: This blowfly will bite that cow’s little darling. We’re both onto the same prey now.
Jieyu: And the other one?
Fan: I can’t work her out at all.
Jieyu: Is that so? Perhaps you are you in love with her?
Fan: Love? My whole life, I’ve only ever loved you.
Jieyu: Careful. If you love, you lose.
Fan: Of course.

…

Madam Du: Fenyu, you seem pre-occupied of late.
Fenyu: I’m fine.
Madam Du: Be at ease in the world. The heart like a floating cloud. The mind like a flowing stream.

…

Fan: She’s extremely sensitive. If it weren’t for Fenyu. I might never have met such a woman.
Jieyu: You’re in love with her.
Fan: No I’m not.
Jieyu: You are. She’s touched your heart.
Fan: Impossible. I was only playing the lover to conquer her.
Jieyu: If what you’re feehng isn’t love, there is no such thing as love.
Fan: All I’ve done has been for you. She was just our wager.
Jieyu: If she’s just a wager, then you’re only halfway there. Abandon her and you’ll have succeeded. Then you can come and collect your reward.

…

Lily [to a sleeping Fan]: Fan. Fan. Your proper lady is here.
Fan: What?
Lily: You called her. Fenyu, Fenyu. Have you forgotten’?

…

Fenyu: Tell me what’s going on.
Fan: Let’s finish this.
Fenyu: What do you mean?
Fan: Let’s separate. I’m tired of you.
Fenyu: Fan, say you’re joking.
Fan: I said I’m tired of you. You were the wager in our bet.
Fenyu: Who’s ‘our’? What sort of wager?
Fan: It was about your chastity. If I got you to bed, that finished it.
Fenyu [shocked]: Why are you doing this to me? Why are you doing this to me? Tell me why you’re doing this? Are you even human?!!
Fan: I was always like this.

…

Fan: I’ve ended it with Fenyu.
Jieyu: Is that so? Fan. I’ve got a guest coming.
Fan [grabbing her]: We ought to celebrate. You have to. It’s my right. I won the bet.
Jieyu: I don’t take orders. You know why I never remarried? So no man could ever order me around again.
[he throws her to the bed…kisses her…she laughs in his face…he slaps her]
Fan: Why are you doing this?
Jieyu: Because you love her. I just pushed you a wee bit and you gave up the woman you love. What a pity. Xie Yifan - you lose.
Fan: I want my prize. I WANT IT NOW!
Jieyu: I said the loser has no right to the prize.
Fan: If you turn me down, I will destroy you.
Jieyu: What did you say’?
Fan: I’ll destroy you.
Jieyu: As you wish.[/b]

Or, as the Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil, put it: “War!”

[iambiguous]

This is definitely a man’s world: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One

Think Days of Thunder based on a true story. But Formula 1 cars go even faster. And not just around and around a track. In fact, these men are racing against each other at speeds of up to 220 miles per hour. And out on public roads. Basically they are driving “vehicles that are little more than gas-filled, rolling bombs”.

Yes, there have been women who drove formula 1: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fe … ne_drivers
Here though the women seem to need but one talent: being born drop dead gorgeous.

This is one of those films about folks who live in a world that you are either a part of or you are not. And if you are not a part of it what can you really know about it? And in this world there are those who actually race the cars and those who do not. It’s pointless therefore to think that someone not of this world [and not racing the cars] can ever hope to critique it much beyond the generalities of, say, social-psychologists probing the “motivation” of men who are willing to “risk death” around every turn.

You wonder: How would a philosopher pin this all down? For example:

Lord Hesketh: Men love women, but even more than that, men love cars.

So: Is this true? Is it true objectively?

But the men themselves are no less individuals. They have their own subjective trajectories that may or may not overlap the narratives of others. James Hunt’s seems to revolve around achieving and then dealing with this: youtu.be/J-_30HA7rec

And above all else there are the “sponsors”. In which we learn that above all else in turn this is just another business to lots of “corporate types”. I mean, the cars and the drives are veritably plastered with them.

Look for the horrors of being a burn victim.

IMDb

[b]Despite having to bend the truth in some areas, the film was warmly received by the most discerning critics, namely, the Formula One industry. When Rush was pre-release screened at the German Grand Prix in July (2013), the audience comprised a group of F1 drivers, team bosses, and British motor sports magnate Bernie Ecclestone. Director Ron Howard declared that the experience was his toughest ‘reality’ test since screening his Apollo 13 (1995) for NASA’s astronauts and mission controllers in 1995. Nevertheless, Rush received a standing ovation.

When Niki Lauda first saw ‘Rush’ he said “Shit! That’s really me.”

The James Hunt/Niki Lauda 1976 race depicted in the film, was the last Formula One event staged on Germany’s notorious Nürburgring Nordschleife (North Loop), since the lap was deemed far too hazardous.

Daniel Brühl and Chris Hemsworth weren’t allowed to drive a real Formula 1 car so they had to use Formula 3 vehicles with fake F1 bodywork instead.

The real Niki Lauda claims the movie was entirely accurate. However, the film took creative liberties of the James Hunt and Lauda rivalry. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_(2013_film
trailer: youtu.be/05rzPnZ6lxw

RUSH [2013]
Directed by Ron Howard.

[b]Niki [voiceover]: Twenty five drivers start every season in Formula One, and each year two of us die. What kind of person does a job like this? Not normal men, for sure. Rebels, lunatics, dreamers. People who are that desperate to make a mark, and are prepared to die trying. My name is Niki Lauda, and racing people know me for two things. The first is my rivalry with him…
[cut to James Hunt]
Niki: …I don’t know why it became such a big thing. We were just drivers busting each other’s balls. To me this is perfectly normal, but other people saw in differently. That whatever it was between us went deeper. The other thing I’m remembered for is what happened on 1st August 1976, when I was chasing him like an asshole…

…

Title card: SIX YEARS EARLIER

James [voiceover]: I have a theory why women like racing drivers… It’s not because they respect what we do, driving round and round in circles. Mostly they think that’s pathetic and they’re probably right. It’s our closeness to death. You see the closer you are to death the more alive you feel, the more alive you are. They can see that in you they feel that in you. My name is James Hunt. My father is a stock broker, my sister is a barrister, and my brother is an accountant, and I…well I do this. It’s a wonderful way to live, it’s the only way to drive, as if each day is your last. [/b]

So, is this bullshit? Tell me it doesn’t depend on who you ask?

Lord Hesketh [after Gemma sees James vomiting]: Nothing to be worried about. Does it before every race. Good sign, actually. Means he’s stoked.

The rivalry begins:

[b]Niki: Hey, asshole! That was my line. I had that corner.
James: You mean the one that you spun out of and finished facing the other way? I think that corner had you.
Niki: That move was total suicide. What if I hadn’t braked? We’d have crashed.
James: But we didn’t, did we? Thanks to your impeccable survival instincts.
[James mocks him by making chicken sounds]
Niki: Fuck you! What’s your name?
Lord Hesketh: James Simon Wallis Hunt. Remember it, my little Jerry friend.
Niki: It’s very simple. Hunt, it rhymes with cunt! A word that happens to describe you perfectly.

…

James [accepting a “driver of the year” award]: My parents always wanted me to be a doctor or a stockbroker or something. They gave me the first-class education, but that went all terribly wrong and I ended up with you lot…I mean, I have a hot head, an inability to tolerate discipline…I fall out with people left and right. The only creatures I’ve ever really loved or treated honorably are budgerigars. So in any normal area of life, I’d be, or I am, a total liability. The only thing I’ve got going for me is I’m quick in a car. So thank you for this and for acknowledging that. I’m going to give it to my father and tell him to put it on the mantelpiece and imagine it’s a first-class degree in medicine.[/b]

Budgerigars? These: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budgerigar

[b]Lord Hesketh: Actually, credit where it’s due, we got the idea from Niki Lauda. Bought his way in rather than mess about in the lower divisions. I thought: "Bloody hell, he’s right. " No sponsorship, Superstar. I hope you approve. No vulgar logos for cigarettes or condoms. Just plain white with the flags. And racing overalls with a patch that reads "Sex. Breakfast of champions. "
James: So when do we start?
Lord Hesketh: Soon as you’re ready.
James: Ready? I’ve been waiting for this my whole life.

…

Suzy: He only wanted to show me his pride and joy. Rhymes with “boy”, if you ask me. And “toy”. God, it’s so flimsy, for something that costs so much. There’s no comfort, no protection, nothing.
James: No, it’s just a little coffin, really. Surrounded by high-octane fuel, in here. Being driven round 170 miles per hour. To all intents and purposes, this thing’s a bomb on wheels.

…

Clay: “Ferrari family, our good friend Clay Regazzoni.” You are family and friend to the commendatore as long as you win. The minute you don’t, ciao, ciao.
Niki: I totally understand. It’s business. I would do the same.
Clay: But it isn’t just business, is it? What we do. It’s passion, love. Which is why we are prepared to risk our lives for it.
Niki: Not me. If I had more talent and could earn better money with something else, I would.

…

Niki: You hear that noise when you accelerate? Your fan belt is loose.
Marlene: My What?
Niki: And when you brake, your foot goes all the way down, which means there’s air in the system.
Marlene: Anything else?
Niki: No. Apart from the rear brakes are worn out, the front right tire is a bit soft, which explains why you’re weaving so much.
Marlene: How can you tell?
Niki: My ass.
Marlene: Sorry?
Niki: God gave me an OK mind, but a really good ass which can feel everything in a car.

…

Marlene: Who are you, should I know you?
Giovanni: What, you don’t know? He’s Niki Lauda: Formula One driver and he just signed with Ferrari.
Marlene: Him?
Giovanni: Yes!
Marlene: Impossible.
Giovanni: Why?
Marlene: You know, Formula One drivers. They have long hair, are sexy and their shirts are open to here.
Niki: Thank you.
Marlene: Yes? Anyway, look at they way he’s driving – like an old man.
Niki: There’s no need to drive fast, it just increases the percentage of risk. We’re not in a hurry, I’m not being paid. Right now, with zero incentive or reward, why would I drive fast?
Marlene [whispering in his ear]: Because I’m asking you to.[/b]

Mutt and Jeff:

James: With a car like that, the rest of us never stood a chance, did we?
Niki: Maybe the car being so good has something to do with me.
James: Come on, Niki. You’re in a Ferrari. I’m in a Hesketh. Equal terms, the way it was in Formula 3, I’d beat you and you know it.
Niki: Never. You might win one race, maybe two, because you’re aggressive. But in the long run, over the course of a season, no chance.
James: Right. Why is that?
Niki: Because to be a champion, it takes more than just being quick. It’s the whole picture. You’re just a charger and a party guy. That’s why everybody likes you.
James: Try saying that and tell me you’re not jealous.
Niki: Why would I be jealous? Think about it. All that affection, all those smiles, is a sign of disrespect. They don’t fear you. Whereas compared that to me…
James: Yes, compared to you, whom no one likes.
Niki: Right.
James: Not even his own teammates.
Niki: Right. Because I’m a serious guy. I go to bed early, I look after myself, after my car.
James: Yes, you’re very well-behaved.
Niki: I go to work, kick ass. And then, after the race, I go home instead of going to bars and talking all this bullshit with all these assholes.

Then the part about “sponsorship”: what the “sport” is really all about for some.

[b]Lord Hesketh: Do you know what the date it is today?
James: Yes. It’s November, the 14th. Why?
Lord Hesketh: Do you have any idea of the significance of that date?
James: I don’t know. Time to start killing pheasants?
Lord Hesketh: Actually, it’s the deadline for securing sponsorship for the forthcoming Formula 1 season. Which elapsed at midnight last night and we didn’t attract any.
James: Well, so? We aren’t looking for sponsorship. Like you said, condoms an cigarettes, vulgar, right?
Lord Hesketh: Right. Except we are, or were. I’ve made something of a miscalculation. The economics of Formula 1, the realities thereof. It turns out not like the lower divisions at all.
James: What are you saying?
Lord Hesketh: I’m saying it’s over, Superstar. The banks have stepped in, started laying everyone off. Probably even have to sell this place.

…

Suzy: Why don’t we go away at the weekend? Skiing. Before I go back to New York.
[no response from James]
Suzy: Talk to me, James. Don’t make a stranger of me.
James: You know, Suzy, only a stranger would invite me skiing when they know I haven’t got a fucking drive.
Suzy: I can’t watch this.
James: What were you hoping for anyway? A well-adjusted knight in shining armour?
Suzy: No danger of that.
James: Let me give you some advice. Don’t go to men who are willing to kill themselves driving in circles looking for normality.
Suzy: I never expected normality. God knows I walked into this with my eyes open. I just hoped I’d married someone who is half as impressive on the inside as he is on the outside!
James: At least there’s something behind the facade.
Suzy: James…
James: Fuck off to New York, dear. There must be a moisturiser or an eye shadow somewhere that needs your vapid mush to flog it.

…

Mclaren: I’ll come straight to the point. Our esteemed lead driver…Fitti-fucking-paldi…has ditched us for another team at the last minute. And we need a replacement Fortunately a few hands have already gone up, good people. Jacky Ickx.
James: I’m quicker than Jacky.
McLaren: But he’s consistent, dependable. A grown-up.
James: Right, and will he go for that gap when no one else will? Will he put his life on the line the day it really matters?
McLaren: The sponsors like him.
James: What do you want, a driver or a brush salesman?
McLaren: We wanna be successful.
James: Yes, so do I. But that means beating Niki Lauda, not being a show pony for sponsors.[/b]

And then there’s this part:

[b]Niki: So, five races in, how’s it going so far?
James: It’s fine. Just got a little problem with an Austrian rat and his team of Italian cheats who’ve destroyed my car.
Niki: What are you talking about?
James: About the race in Spain I won.
Niki: Yeah, in a car which is not legal.
James: Five eighths of an inch too wide. You know that doesn’t have the slightest effect on speed. But you complained and your team of lawyers leaned on the authorities. Now we’ve had to rebuild the car and it’s become a monster.
Niki: At least it’s a legal monster.
James: You’ve had to resort to cheating.
Niki: You’re driving an illegal car and call me a cheater? Pathetic. Rules are rules.
James: Yes, and rats are rats.

…

Niki: Do you really think it upsets me, James, calling me a rat because I look like one? I don’t mind it. Rats are ugly, sure, and nobody likes them, but they’re very intelligent and they have a strong survival instinct.
James: Wonderful.

…

Niki: Happiness is your biggest enemy. It weakens you. Puts doubts in your mind. Suddenly you have something to lose.
Marlene: When you call happiness an enemy, then it’s too late. Then you’ve already lost.

…

James: Cancelling the race means that you would effectively win the championship. So I can see why this suits you just fine.
Niki: Why? There won’t be no points for me either.
James: No, but there’d be one race less where I, or anyone else here, could catch you.
Bubbles: James is right. This is just tactics!
Driver: Maybe he’s just frightened.
Niki [angry]: Which asshole said this?! Yes, of course, I’m frightened, and so are you. I accept every time I get in my car there’s 20% chance I could die, and I can live with it…but not one percent more.

…

Newscaster: In Formula 1 today, victory celebrations were muted after a horrific accident involving world champion Niki Lauda. Due to safety concerns before the race, the Austrian had said he would not take part, but in the end he did. He was making up for lost time when he went off the track, puncturing the Ferrari’s fuel tank. Lauda was taken to Manheim Hospital with severe burns. The incident reminding us again of the dangers of Formula 1. Niki Lauda was trapped for almost a minute in a searing inferno of 800-plus degrees.

…

James: Niki…
[then he sees Niki’s scarred face]
Niki: It’s that bad, huh?
James [Shrugs]: No.
Niki: In hospital, I asked them straight, no bullshit, how bad my appearance would be. They said in time, it would be fine. But it won’t. I can tell, seeing your reaction. I will spend the rest of my life with a face that frightens people.
James: You know, Niki, I tried to write you a letter at the time, to apologize. The drivers’ meeting in Germany, before the race, I swayed the room.
Niki: Yes, you did.
James: That race should never have gone ahead.
Niki: No, it shouldn’t.
James: So in many ways, I feel responsible for what happened, and…
Niki: You were.
[pause]
Niki: But trust me…watching you win those races while I was fighting for my life, you were equally responsible for getting me back in the car.

…

Italian Journalist: How are you feeling, Niki?
Niki: Fine.
American Journalist: Niki, can you confirm to us exactly which procedures you’ve had and the expectations for your recovery?
Niki: Sure. I had a skin graft operation, where they put half my right thigh in my face. Now it doesn’t look too good, but one unexpected advantage is it’s impossible to perspire through a skin graft, so sweat will never run into my eyes again, which is good for a driver.
[laughter from the journalists]
Spanish Journalist: When they heard about your condition, Ferrari immediately hired a replacement driver, Carlos Reutemann.
Niki: Yeah. Before even reaching the hospital.
German Journalist: Is Reutemann driving today, too?
Niki: Yes, and keen to make an impression. So let’s see where Mr. Reutemann finishes and where I finish today.
American Journalist: James Hunt and McLaren have caught up a lot while you were away.
Niki: Yes. So is there a question now, or are you just trying to piss me off?
[laughter from the journalists]
German Journalist: Do you still think you can win?
Niki: Yes, of course. I have the better car. And possibly I’m the better driver. But he’s a clever guy, and he’s used his time well while I was lying half-dead in hospital… to win some points.
British Journalist: And what did your wife say when she saw your face?
[Niki pauses]
Niki: She said, ‘Sweetie, you don’t need a face to drive. You just need a right foot.’
[laughter from the journalists]
British Journalist: I’m being serious. Do you really think your marriage can survive with the way you look now?
Niki [furious]: And I’m being serious, too. Fuck you. Press conference over.

…

British Journalist: James, are you all right?
James: Good, yeah. Listen, I think I’ve got something for you on that last question, about Niki.
British Journalist: You heard about that?
James: I did.
[he shoves the journalist into the maintenance room]
British Journalist: James…
[he punches the journalist in the stomach and closes the door before proceeding to punch him in the face and shove him to the ground]
British Journalist: Please, James…
[Hunt grabs the journalist’s tape recorder and stuffs it between his mouth]
James: Now go home to your wife and ask her how you look.
[Hunt punches the tape recorder on the journalist’s face before he walks away]
James: Prick.

…

Niki [after droppoing out of the final race of the season]: It’s too dangerous.
Pit crew boss: Niki, you want me to say there was a problem with the car, for the media?
Niki: No. Tell them the truth.

…

Niki: Do you fly?
James: No. I don’t think they’d insure me.
Niki: You should try. It’s good for discipline. You have to stay within the rules, stick with regulations, suppress the ego. It helps with the racing.
James: And there I was thinking you were about to wax lyrical about the romance of flight.
Niki: No, that’s all bullshit.

…

Niki: When do you start testing? Next week?
James: No. What, are you nuts? I didn’t just win the biggest thing in my life so I could get right back to work.
Niki: Why? You have to. To prove to all the people who will always say you just won it because…
James: Because of what? Because of your accident? Niki, is that other people, or is that you? I won, okay? On the all-important day, when it came down to it, we raced on equal terms, equally good cars. And I put my life on the line, and I saw it through.
Niki: And you call that winning?
James: Yes.
Niki: The risks were totally unacceptable. You were prepared to die. To me, that’s losing.
James: Yes, I was. I admit it. I was prepared to die to beat you that day. And that’s the effect you have on me. You’d pushed me that far. And it felt great. I mean, hell, isn’t that we’re in this for? To stare death in the face, and to cheat it? Come on, there’s nobility in that. It’s…it’s like being knights.
Niki: You English, you’re such assholes. You know my position. Twenty percent risk.
James: No, no, no, Niki, don’t bring the percentages into this. Don’t be a pro. The minute you do that, you kill what’s good about this. You kill the sport.
[Long pause, before James’ party calls him from his plane]
James: I’ve got to go.
[points at Lauda’s plane as he walks away]
James: Careful with this thing.
Niki: James.
[James stops]
Niki: You know, in hospital, the toughest part of my treatment was the vacuum. Pumping the shit out of my lungs. It was hell. And while doing it, I was watching television. You winning all my points.
James: Your points?
Niki: ‘That bastard Hunt,’ I would say. ‘I hate that guy.’ And then one day, the doctor came and said, ‘Mr. Lauda, may I offer a piece of advice? Stop thinking of it as a curse to have been given an enemy in life. It can be a blessing, too. A wise man gets more from his enemies than a fool from his friends.’ And you know what? He was right. Look at us. We were both a pair of kids when we met. Hot-headed jerks in Formula 3. Disowned by our families. Headed nowhere. And now, we’re both champions of the world. It was not bad, huh?
James: No, it’s not bad.
Niki: So don’t let me down now. I need you busting my balls. Get back to work.
James: I will, Niki, I will. But I intend to enjoy myself first. Some of life needs to be for pleasure. What’s the point of having a million cups and medals and planes if you don’t have any fun? How is that winning?

…

Niki [voiceover]: Of course he didn’t listen to me. For James, one world title was enough. He had proved what he needed to prove. To himself and anyone who doubted him. And two years later, he retired. When I saw him next in London, seven years later, me as a champion again, him as broadcaster, he was barefoot on a bicycle with a flat tire, still living each day like his last. When I heard he died age 45 of a heart attack, I wasn’t surprised. I was just sad. People always think of us as rivals but he was among the very few I liked and even fewer that I respected. He remains the only person I envied. [/b]

[iambiguous]

Rick is a “lone wolf”. And in his world that means he has come to be rather cynical about most things around him. Only around him now are the Nazis. So he has to factor that into his calculations. But it’s not an insurmountable obstacle.

Or not until it is. And it is now because out of the past comes the only woman he ever loved. And though this too is just one more rendition of a “man’s world”, even men like Rick are willing to make exceptions when the woman is a dead ringer for Ingrid Bergman.

And Casablanca itself is a character here. It’s that place where scrupples are bought and sold everyday. Where human life is “cheap”. And where everything really important seems to revolve one way or another around money or who you know or blind luck.

The bottom line [one of them] seems to be this: That once you have made the decision to stick around and interact with others [as Rick did cynically or not] there are always going to be new ways in which all the pieces can fit together. Some you can control or handle but some you cannot. Even if you’re Rick.

This one is all about being at the intersection of the personal and the political. There are those who will see it only from a distance, while others are hopelessly entangled in it day after day after day.

Anyway, it’s not for nothing that many consider this to be one of the greatest screenplays ever written. And very, very few lists of the “best films of all time” don’t have this one in the top 10.

IMDb

[b]Casablanca, Morocco, was one of the key stops for refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe, which is why the original playwrights chose the city for the setting of their play

Many of the actors who played the Nazis were in fact German Jews who had escaped from Nazi Germany.

In the 1980s, this film’s script was sent to readers at a number of major studios and production companies under its original title, “Everybody Comes to Rick’s”. Some readers recognized the script but most did not. Many complained that the script was “not good enough” to make a decent movie. Others gave such complaints as “too dated”, “too much dialog” and “not enough sex”.

Ingrid Bergman’s line “Victor Laszlo is my husband, and was, even when I knew you in Paris” was almost cut from the film because during that time it was deemed inappropriate for a film to depict or suggest a woman romancing with another man if she were already married. However, it was pointed out that later in the film she explains that she had thought Laszlo was dead at the time, and the censors allowed the line to stay in.

The letters of transit that motivate so many characters in the film did not exist in Vichy-controlled France - they are purely a plot device invented by the screenwriters. Playwright Joan Alison always expected somebody to challenge her about the letters, but nobody ever did. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca_(film
trailer: youtu.be/EJvlGh_FgcI

CASABLANCA [1942]
Directed by Michael Curtiz

[b]Narrator: With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of the Americas. Lisbon became the great embarkation point. But, not everybody could get to Lisbon directly, and so a tortuous, roundabout refugee trail sprang up - Paris to Marseilles… across the Mediterranean to Oran… then by train, or auto, or foot across the rim of Africa, to Casablanca in French Morocco. Here, the fortunate ones through money, or influence, or luck, might obtain exit visas and scurry to Lisbon; and from Lisbon, to the New World. But the others wait in Casablanca… and wait… and wait… and wait.

…

Strasser [German major]: By the way, the murder of the couriers, what has been done?
Renault [Captain of police]: Realizing the importance of the case, my men are rounding up twice the usual number of suspects.

…

Ugarte: Too bad about those two German couriers, wasn’t it?
Rick [indifferently]: They got a lucky break. Yesterday they were just two German clerks. Today they’re the ‘Honored Dead’.
Ugarte: You are a very cynical person, Rick, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.
Rick: I forgive you.

…

Ugarte [who sells exit vesas]: You despise me, don’t you?
Rick: If I gave you any thought I probably would.

…

Ugarte: Rick, think of all the poor devils who can’t meet Renault’s price. I get it for them for half. Is that so… parasitic?
Rick: I don’t mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one.

…

Ugarte: You know, Rick, I have many a friend in Casablanca, but somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust.

…

Yvonne: Where were you last night?
Rick: That’s so long ago, I don’t remember.
Yvonne: Will I see you tonight?
Rick: I never make plans that far ahead.

…

Renault: What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Renault: The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.

…

Renault: Rick, there’s going to be some excitement here tonight. We are going to make an arrest in your cafe
Rick: What, again?
Renault: This is no ordinary arrest. A murderer, no less. And if you are thinking of warning him, don’t put yourself out. He cannot possibly escape.
Rick: I stick my neck out for nobody.

…

[Rick and Renault discussing Victor Laszlo’s chances of escaping Casablanca]
Renault: This is the end of the chase.
Rick: Twenty thousand francs says it isn’t.
Renault: Is that a serious offer?
Rick: I just paid out twenty. I’d like to get it back.
Renault: Make it ten. I’m only a poor corrupt official.

…

Renault: My dear Rick, you overestimate the influence of the Gestapo. I don’t interfere with them and they don’t interfere with me. In Casablanca I am master of my fate! I am…
Police Officer: Major Strasser is here, sir!
Rick: You were saying?

…

Strasser: What is your nationality?
Rick: I’m a drunkard.
Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world!

…

Strasser: Are you one of those people who cannot imagine the Germans in their beloved Paris?
Rick: It’s not particularly my beloved Paris.
Heinz: Can you imagine us in London?
Rick: When you get there, ask me.
Renault: Hmmh! Diplomatist!
Strasser: How about New York?
Rick: Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.

…

Strasser: Aha. Who do you think will win the war?
Rick: I haven’t the slightest idea.
Renault: Rick is completely neutral about everything.
Strasser: He was not always neutral. We have a complete dossier on you: Richard Blaine, American, age 37. Cannot return to his country. The reason is a little vague. We also know what you did in Paris, Mr. Blaine, and also we know why you left Paris.
[hands the dossier to Rick]
Strasser: Don’t worry, we are not going to broadcast it.
Rick [reading]: Are my eyes really brown?

…

Ilsa: Play it once, Sam. For old times’ sake.
Sam: I don’t know what you mean, Miss Ilsa.
Ilsa: Play it, Sam. Play “As Time Goes By.”
Sam: Oh, I can’t remember it, Miss Ilsa. I’m a little rusty on it.
Ilsa: I’ll hum it for you. Da-dy-da-dy-da-dum, da-dy-da-dee-da-dum…
[Sam begins playing]
Ilsa: Sing it, Sam.
Sam [singing]: You must remember this / A kiss is still a kiss / A sigh is just a sigh / The fundamental things apply / As time goes by. / And when two lovers woo / They still say, “I love you” / On that you can rely / No matter what the future brings / as time goes by.
Rick [rushing up]: Sam, I thought I told you never to play…

…

Rick: Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.

…

Ilsa: Can I tell you a story, Rick?
Rick: Has it got a wow finish?
Ilsa: I don’t know the finish yet.
Rick: Well, go on. Tell it - maybe one will come to you as you go along.
Ilsa: It’s about a girl who had just come to Paris from her home in Oslo. At the house of some friends, she met a man about whom she’d heard her whole life. A very great and courageous man. He opened up for her a whole beautiful world full of knowledge and thoughts and ideals. Everything she knew or ever became was because of him. And she looked up to him and worshiped him… with a feeling she supposed was love.
Rick [bitterly]: Yes, it’s very pretty. I heard a story once - as a matter of fact, I’ve heard a lot of stories in my time. They went along with the sound of a tinny piano playing in the parlor downstairs. “Mister, I met a man once when I was a kid,” it always began.
[laughs]
Rick: Well, I guess neither one of our stories is very funny. Tell me, who was it you left me for? Was it Lazlo, or were there others in between or…aren’t you the kind that tells?
[Ilsa tearfully and silently leaves. Rick’s face falls in his hands sadly, knowing that he’s said all the wrong things]

…

Strasser: You give him credit for too much cleverness. My impression was that he’s just another blundering American.
Renault: We musn’t underestimate “American blundering”. I was with them when they “blundered” into Berlin in 1918.

…

Renault: By the way, last night you evinced an interest in Señor Ugarte.
Laszlo: Yes.
Renault: I believe you have a message for him?
Laszlo: Nothing important, but may I speak to him now?
Strasser: You would find the conversation a trifle one-sided. Señor Ugarte is dead.
Ilsa: Oh.
Renault: I am making out the report now. We haven’t quite decided yet whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape.

…

Ilsa: Last night I saw what has happened to you. The Rick I knew in Paris, I could tell him. He’d understand. But the one who looked at me with such hatred… well, I’ll be leaving Casablanca soon and we’ll never see each other again. We knew very little about each other when we were in love in Paris. If we leave it that way, maybe we’ll remember those days and not Casablanca, not last night.
Rick: Did you run out on me because you couldn’t take it? Because you knew what it would be like, hiding from the police, running away all the time?
Ilsa: You can believe that if you want to.
Rick: Well, I’m not running away any more. I’m settled now, above a saloon, it’s true, but… walk up a flight. I’ll be expecting you. All the same, someday you’ll lie to Laszlo. You’ll be there. Ilsa: No, Rick. No, you see, Victor Laszlo is my husband. . . and was, even when I knew you in Paris.
[She walks away into the cafe as Rick stares after her in stunned disbelief]

…

Ferrari [to Laszlo]: Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you out of Casablanca, and the Germans have outlawed miracles.

…

Annina: Monsieur Rick, what kind of a man is Captain Renault?
Rick: Oh, he’s just like any other man, only more so.

…

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Renault: I’m shocked…shocked to find that gambling is going on in there.
Employee [handing him a wad of cash]: Your winnings sir.
Renault: Thank you. Thank you very much.

…

Strasser: There are only two other alternatives for him.
Ilsa: What are they?
Strasser: It is possible the French authorities will find a reason to put him in the concentration camp here.
Ilsa: And the other alternative?
Strasser: Perhaps you have already observed that in Casablanca human life is cheap.

…

Rick: Do I have to hear again what a great man your husband is? What an important cause he’s fighting for?
Ilsa: It was your cause, too. In your own way, you were fighting for the same thing.
Rick: I’m not fighting for anything anymore, except myself. I’m the only cause I’m interested in.

…

Ilsa [pulling out a gun]: All right. I tried to reason with you. I tried everything. Now I want those letters. Get them for me .
Rick: I don’t have to. I’ve got them right here.
Ilsa: Put them on the table.
Rick [shaking his head]: No.
Ilsa: For the last time, put them on the table.
Rick: If Laszlo and the cause mean so much to you, you won’t stop at anything. All right, I’ll make it easier for you.
[he moves closer to her].
Rick: Go ahead and shoot. You’ll be doing me a favor.

…

Rick: Don’t you sometimes wonder if it’s worth all this? I mean what you’re fighting for.
Laszlo: You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we’ll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.
Rick: Well, what of it? It’ll be out of its misery.
Laszlo: You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe in his heart.

…

Renault: Ricky, I’m going to miss you. Apparently you’re the only one in Casablanca with less scruples than I.

…

Rick: And remember, this gun is pointed right at your heart.
Renault: That is my least vulnerable spot.

…

Rick: Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then, and it all adds up to one thing: you’re getting on that plane with Victor where you belong.
Ilsa: But, Richard, no, I… I…
Rick: Now, you’ve got to listen to me! You have any idea what you’d have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten, we’d both wind up in a concentration camp. Isn’t that true, Louie?
Renault: I’m afraid Major Strasser would insist.
Ilsa: You’re saying this only to make me go.
Rick: I’m saying it because it’s true. Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.
Ilsa: But what about us?
Rick: We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have, we, we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.
Ilsa: When I said I would never leave you.
Rick: And you never will. But I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that.
[Ilsa lowers her head and begins to cry]
Rick: Now, now…
[Rick gently places his hand under her chin and raises it so their eyes meet]
Rick: Here’s looking at you kid.

…

Renault [t ohis men]: Major Strasser has been shot…
[he looks over at Rick]
Renault: …round up the usual suspects.

…

Renault: It might be a good idea for you to disappear from Casablanca for a while. There’s a Free French garrison over at Brazzaville. I could be induced to arrange a passage.
Rick: My letter of transit? I could use a trip. But it doesn’t make any difference about our bet. You still owe me ten thousand francs.
Renault: And that ten thousand francs should pay our expenses.
Rick: Our expenses?
Renault: Uh huh.
Rick: Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. [/b]

[iambiguous]

Another “screwball comedy” from the Coen Brothers. In other words, each and every character here has one or another screw loose. But that’s the point. They are meant to be hyberbolic. Caricatures. But only as a way of suggesting that the folks they represent in “real life” are often not all that far removed from them at all.

And we all know that they’re not, right?

After all, there are are lots of insufferable rich folks who get divorced. And they do employ these insufferably expensive attorneys to beat the other side’s insufferably expensive attorney to a pulp. And thus [in their world] whoever gets the most in the end wins.

So, it’s mostly just a game. Sure. But there are rules of course. This is, after all, the law. But then some are considerably better at bending [and breaking] it than others. And nobody – nobody – does prenups like Miles Massey. In fact, he is a legend in the field. But then Miles has never quite come up against someone as deviously ruthless as Marylin Hamilton Rexroth Doyle. In fact she may be even more cunningly duplicitous than he is. Indeed, even with Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy [his very own Tenzing Norgay] he may be no match for her.

The assumption here being they are all being made fools of. At least that’s the assumption I made.

Look for America’s Funniest Divorce Videos. Oh, and look for Gus to nail asses. In fact, look for asses to be nailed here left and right.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intolerable_Cruelty
trailer: youtu.be/AdUZV8flgbA

INTOLERABLE CRUELTY [2003]
Written in part and directed by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Miles: Yes, your husband did show remarkable foresight in taking those pictures, and, yes, absent a swimming pool, the presence of a pool man would appear to be suspicious. But, madam, who is the real victim here? Let me suggest to you the following. Your husband, on a prior occasion, had slapped you–beat you. I think that word is not inappropriate.
Bonnie: No, I…
Miles: Let me finish, please. I’m not concerned with who slapped whom first. Your husband, who had beaten you repeatedly…
Bonnie: No, no, he never…
Miles: Please–repeatedly – was at the time brandishing your firearm.
Bonnie: It was his gun.
Miles: And we’ll get it back for you. Trying, in his rage, to shoot an acquaintance, a friend of long standing.
Bonnie: They never really cared for each other.
Miles: And if not for your cool-headed intervention, his tantrum might have ended this schmo’s life and ruined his own. As for the sexual indiscretion which he imagined took place, wasn’t it in fact he…who was sleeping with the pool man? No? Am I going too far here?

Of course we know what really happened, don’t we? But a good lawyer never lets the fact’s interfere with, say, a just verdict.

[b]Wrigley: Life is compromise.
Miles: That’s not life. That’s death. Struggle and challenge and ultimate destruction of your opponent—that’s life. Let me ask you something. Attila the Hun, Ivan the Terrible, Henry the Eighth. What do they have in common?
Wrigley: The same middle name?

…

Miles: Now, Mrs. Gutman, do you know a man named David Gonzalez?
Mrs. Gutman: Well, he’s the tennis pro at the club.
Miles: The tennis pro? Then why are your letters addressed to him, ""Dear David and Goliath’'?

…

Rex: Look, can’t we have a civilized discussion about this?
Marylin: Our lawyers can.

…

Miles: Now, sir… tell me your troubles.
Rex: My wife has me between a rock and a hard place.
Miles: That’s her job. You should respect that.

…

Miles: So you propose, that in spite demonstrable infidelity on your part, your unoffending wife should be tossed out on her ear.
Rex: Is it possible?
Miles [considers it]: It’s a challenge.

…

Miles [to Marilyn]: Your husband had told me you were the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. I didn’t expect the most beautiful woman I’d ever met.

…

Miles [to the waiter]: I’ll have the tournedoes of beef. The lady will have the same.
[he turns to Marilyn]
Miles: I assume you’re a carnivore.
Marulyn: Oh, Mr. Massey, you have no idea.
Miles: Miles, please. Tell me more about yourself.
Marilyn: All right, Miles. Let me tell you everything that you need to know. You may think you’re tough, but I eat men like you for breakfast. I’ve invested five good years in my marriage to Rex and I’ve nailed his ass fair and square. Now I’m going to have it stuffed, mounted, and have my lady friends come over and throw darts at it.

…

Gus: …and those Rottweilers were a menace, man!
Miles: I told you she had dogs.
Gus: You didn’t tell me they had a hard on for Anus Africanus!

…

Gus: What are you talking about? “Tell Tale Signs”? Look, I see a ass. I nail it. I don’t sneak around sniffing the sheets. God damn it! I’m Gus Petch!

…

Wrigley: Who are you looking for?
Miles: Tenzing Norgay.
Wrigley: Tenzing Norgay? That’s someone she slept with?
Miles: I doubt it. Tenzing Norgay was the Sherpa that helped Edmund Hillary climb Mt. Everest.
Wrigley: And Marilyn knows him?
Miles: No, you idiot. Not the Tenzing Norgay. Her Tenzing Norgay.
Wrigley: I’m not sure that I actually follow that.
Miles: Few great accomplishments are achieved single-handedly, Wrigley. Most have their Norgays. Marilyn Rexroth is even now climbing her Everest. I wanna find her Norgay.
Wrigley: But how do you determine which of the people on here are…
Miles: How do you spot a Norgay?
Wrigley: Yeah.
Miles: You start with the people with the funny names.

…

Miles: “Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flattery, for where a heart is hard they make no battery.” Mrs. Rexroth, do you know those lines?
Freddy: Objection, Your Honor.
Judge: Grounds?
Freddy: Uh, poetry recitation?

…

Miles: Your Honor, I call Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy.
Bailiff: Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy.
Guard #1: Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy!
Guard #2: Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy!
Guard #3: Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy!
Freddy [to Marlyn after vseeing the shock on her face]: Problem?
Marylin: Puffy.
Wrigley [to himself]: Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy! Tenzing Norgay…[/b]

This guy steals the show.

[b]Miles: Now, Baron, I am curious about her visit of five years ago. January 1998. Can you remember any specific request she made at that time?
Baron: Yes, I can.
Miles: And what, at that time, did she tell you she required?
Baron: She said that she required… a husband!
Miles: Now, that is an unusual request. Did she specify what kind of a husband she was looking for?
Baron: She said she wanted a very rich husband. She wanted to know the businesses and the wealths of our various eligible guests.
Miles: Were there any other specifications?
Baron: She spe-cif-i-cated a silly man. She spe-cif-i-cated a man who, though clever at making money, would be easily duped and controlled. She spe-cif-i-cated a man with a wandering pee-pee. How you say? A philanderer whose affairs would be transparent to the world. Finally, a man whom she could herself brazenly cuckold until such time as she might choose to, uh - We would say, “faire un coup de marteau sur des fesses.” You would say, “make hammer on his fanny.”
Miles: Tell us, Baron - Did you introduce her to such a man?!!
Baron: Sir, I am the concierge!
Miles: And to whom did you introduce that calculating woman?
Baron: I introduced her…
[he points to Rex Rexroth]
Baron:: …to that silly man.
Miles: Let the record show that the Baron has identified Rex Rexroth as the silly man!

…

Freddy: Objection, Your Honor: strangling the witness.
Judge: I’m going to allow it.

…

Miles: Please, no calls. I’m feeling a little fragile.
Receptionist: I’m sorry, Mr. Massey, but I felt certain you’d want to know. Marilyn Rexroth wants to see you.
Miles: Marilyn? Uh… When did she…?
Receptionist: She’s here now.
Miles: Is she armed?

…

Marilyn: Now, is it my understanding that the Massey prenup has never been penetrated?
Miles: That is correct. Not to blow my own horn, but they devote an entire semester to it at Harvard Law.

…

Miles: She can’t really love this dope, can she?
Wrigley: Who? Uh, who loves who?
Miles: Matylin Rexroth. She signed a prenup for an oil millionaire.
Wrigley: A…Massey…prenup?
Miles: Yeah.
Wrigley: Well, then she is not after his money. “Only love is in mind if the Massey is signed.”

…

Miles: You know why I hate this town, Wrigley? You see, people get to Las Vegas, and all of a sudden, the rules of the moral universe don’t apply. When God is dead, all things are possible. I saw an ad in the paper. “No-fault divorce. Two week divorce without a lawyer”. Made me sick to my stomach. "No-fault divorce.‘’ Good God. Talk about your oxymoron.

…

Marylin: No, no, no, no, no, this is all wrong.
Miles: What? Is it the kilt?
Marylin: Do you love me?
Miles: More than anything.
Marylin: Can I trust you?
Miles: Yes, you can trust me.
[Marylin grabs the Massey prenupt and tears it up]
Miles: Darling, you’re exposed!
Marylin: A sitting duck.

…

Branco: I hereby declare the 12th Congress of the National Organization of Matrimonial Attorneys Nationwide…open. As our first order of business, it is a privilege to call to the podium our keynote speaker. From the Los Angeles firm of Massey, Myerson, Sloan and Gurolnick, a man whose name is synonymous with bitter disputes and big awards, Miles Massey.
Miles: Thank you, Branco. In the world of…In the world of matrimonial law, there are…In the world of matrimonial law, there are multiple tactics…
[he tears the speech up]
Miles: Friends. This morning I stand before you a very different Miles Massey than the one that addressed you last year on the disposition of marital assets following murder/suicide. I wish to talk to you today not about technical matters of law. I wish to talk to you about something more important. I wish to talk to you from the heart…because today…for the first time in my life, I stand before you…naked…vulnerable…and in love. Love. It’s a word we matrimonial lawyers avoid. Funny, isn’t it? We’re frightened of this emotion, which is, in a sense, the seed of our livelihood. Well today, Miles Massey, is here to tell you that love need cause us no fear. Love need cause us no shame. Love is…good. Love is good. Now I am of course aware that these remarks will be received here with cynicism - cynicism; that cloak that advertises our indifference and hides all human feeling. Well I’m here to tell you that that cynicism, which we think protects us in fact destroys - destroys love, destroys our clients and ultimately destroys ourselves. Colleagues - when our clients come to us confused and angry and hurting because their flame of love is guttering and threatens to die, do we seek to extinguish that flame so that we can sift through the smoldering wreckage for our paltry reward? Or do we fan this precious flame - this most precious flame - back into loving, roaring life? Do we counsel fear or trust? Do we seek to destroy or build? Do we meet our clients problems with cynicism, or with love? The choice is of course each of ours. For my part I have made the leap of love and there is no going back. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last time I will address you… as the president of N.O.M.A.N.-- or as a member. I intend to devote myself to pro bono work in East Los Angeles…or…one of those other…God bless you all. [/b]

We’ll see how long this Miles Massey lasts. Won’t we Marilyn…

[b]Miles: Sh-- Sh-- Sh-- She won’t–She won’t suffer, will she?
Wheezy Joe: Not unless you pay extra.

…

Miles [getting off the phone]: My God.
Wrigley: What?
Miles: That was Marvin Untermeyer. He was Rex Rexroth’s personal attorney.
Wrigley: Yes? What do you mean, he was?
Miles: Rex had a massive coronary in the middle of a business meeting. He’s dead.
Wrigley: Well, I’m very sorry to hear that, but you two weren’t… close, were you?
Miles: Marvin said that Rex’s will was four years old. Never redrafted it. He was stinking rich. Everything goes to Marylin.
[they both scream in horror knowing that Wheezy Joe is on his way to kill her]
Wrigley: She’s not poor. She’s richer than you. She is exposed. No prenup.
Miles: She is a sitting duck. We can’t kill her.
Wrigley: Exposed. Why kill the only woman you’ve ever loved when she’s the richer party?
Miles: She’s rich. And I love her. I don’t need to kill her. [/b]

These things do get complicated.

[iambiguous]

Another kind of “screwball comedy”. A Bill Murray screwball comedy.

Imagine all the real Bob’s out there watching this. Oh, sure, they recognize that in many respects the Bob here is just a cartoon character reflection of them. But that doesn’t make their ungodly symptoms go away. Think Melvin Udall taken to the absolute extreme.

You see, Bob and the modern world are simply not in sync. There is absolutely nothing that he is not neurotic about. Elevators, for example.

And being rather neurotic myself, he has my sympathies.

On the other hand, are they really making fun of Bob here? Or, in the end, is he actually the most sympathetic cartoon character of them all?

And then there is this: What about Leo? Another caricature, no doubt about it. A hopelessly smug and narcissistic asshole. The sort of clod who imagines the whole world revolves around his brilliant existence. That and his brilliant book.

It goes without saying then that by the end of the film, Leo is the patient. On the other hand, I wouldn’t last a single fucking day with Bob.

IMDb

[b]According to Richard Dreyfuss, he and Bill Murray did not get along during filming.

Woody Allen was suggested for the role of Leo Marvin.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_About_Bob%3F
trailer: youtu.be/ptmP1lziJw4

WHAT ABOUT BOB? [1991]
Directed by Frank Oz

Bob [out loud to himself]: I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful…I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful…I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful.

Actually, he doesn’t look at all like he does.

[b]Dr. Godswell: Listen Leo, I’m quitting my practice for a while, I’m leaving town. And I have one patient I’d like to refer to you.
Leo: Exactly what kind of case is it Godswell? He’s not psycothic is he?
Dr. Godswell: No! No…nothing like that! Listen, his name is Bob Willey. He pays early, he comes on time. He just needs someone brilliant.

…

Leo [on the speaker]: Claire, If a Bob Willey calls, schedule him for a short interview right after I get back from my vacation.
Clire: He’s already called Dr Marvin. Twice. He’s your next apointment.

…

Bob: The simplest way to put it, I have problems. I worry about diseases, so, I have trouble touching things. In public places it’s almost impossible. I have a real big problem moving.
Leo: Talk about moving.
Bob: As long as I’m in my apartment, I’m ok. But when I go out, I get…weird.
Leo: Talk about weird.
Bob: Talk about weird? Well, I get dizzy spells, nausea, cold sweats, hot sweats, fiber blistures, difficulty breathing, difficulty swallowing, blurred vision, involuntary trembling. dead hands, numb lips, fingernail sensitivity, pelvis discomfort…
Leo: So the real question is, what is the crisis? What is that you’re truly affraid of?
Bob: What if my heart stops beating?! What if I’m looking for a bathroom, I can’t find it and my bladder explodes?! Have you ever heard of Tourette’s Syndrome? Involuntary shouting profanity?
Leo: It’s exceptionally rare.
Bob: SHIT-EATING SON-OF-A-BITCH! BASTARD! DOUCHE-BAG, TWAT, NUMB-NUTS, DICKHEAD, BITCH!!!
Leo: Why exactly are you doing this?
Bob: If I fake it, then I don’t have it. It’s the same with the cardiac-arrest.[/b]

Bill Murrary [at his best] demonstrates it.

Leo: Are you married?
Bob: I’m divorced.
Leo: Would you like to talk about that?
Bob: There are two types of people in this world: Those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don’t. My ex-wife loves him.
Leo: I see. So, what you’re saying is that even though you are an almost-paralyzed, multiphobic personality who is in a constant state of panic, your wife did not leave you, you left her because she liked Neil Diamond?
Bob [thinks about it]: So, you’re saying that maybe, maybe I didn’t leave her because she likes Neil Daemon, but maybe, she left me?
Leo: Yes.

Next up: Baby Steps.

Bob: All I have to do is just take one little step at a time, and I can do anything! Baby step throughout the office, baby step throughout the office. Baby step throughout the office.
Leo: That should give you a lot to digest while I’m on vacation.
Bob: Va…vacation?

Uh-oh.

[b]Leo [after talking to Betty on the phone]: That patient, the one who called before, Bob Wiley, he committed suicide.
Fay: Oh, Leo, how horrible.
Leo: Oh well, let’s not let it spoil our vacation.

…

Bob: DR MARVIN! DR LEO MARVIN!! DOCTOR MARVIN!!!
Fay: Honey, is someone calling you? Right over there.
Leo [he turns and sees Bob…the look on his face is priceless]: Oh my God!

…

Leo: I don’t understand…why won’t you dive ?
Siggy [his son]: With all the horror in this world, what difference does it make?!

…

Leo: When I was growing up, I thought diving was fun!
Anna [his daughter]: I thought you were born grown up daddy.

…

Mr. Guttman: Hello, Dr. Marvin. The house looks good.
Mrs. Guttman: Burn in hell, Dr. Marvin!

…

Leo: Family conference! Family conference! All right, now, I don’t want any of you letting Bob into this house.
Siggy: Why?
Leo: Why?!
Fay: Sweetheart, aren’t you overeacting just a little bit?
Leo: Good, we found an agreeement. Family conference is over.

…

Bob: I’m sailing! I’m sailing! I’m sailing! I’m sailing![/b]

Tied to the mast as it were.

[b]Mrs Gutman [to Leo]: Hitler!!

…

Leo: I’m a failure.
Fay: What?
Leo: I’m going on national television tomorrow as an expert on human behaviour, and in the space of the last hour, both of my childrens told me that they hate me. [/b]

Well, he is an asshole.

[b]Siggy: I mean, my Dad just dropped me in the water, without warning me first. I mean, I nearly drowned! My whole life flashed before my eyes!
Bob: Wow, you’re lucky you’re only twelve.
Siggy: It was still grim.

…

Leo [to the Gutmans]: WHAT ARE YOU STARRING AT?? I HAD THE RIGHT TO BUY THIS HOUSE!!!

…

Leo: Don’t you understand? This man is crazy! I mean, for all we know, he could be a mass murderer!
Fay: Oh Come on Leo! He’s a sweet guy! He’s perfectly harmless! Maybe a little neurotic, but not crazy.
Leo: Don’t you realize, that everything he’s done, violates the doctor/patient relationship? And now he’s in there, with our son!
[meanwhile in the son’s room]
Siggy: Bob?
Bob: Yeah?
Siggy: Are you afraid of death?
Bob: Yeah…
Siggy: Me too. There’s no way out of it. You’re going in to die…I’m going to die. It’s going to happen. What difference does it make if it’s tomorrow or 80 years?

…

Siggy [to Bob]: What’s Tourette’s Syndrome?
[a smile creeps across Bob’s face]

…

Bob: Shit-for-brains!
Siggy: Butthead!
Bob: Dingleberry butt!
Siggy: Snot face!
Bob: Vulture Vomit!
Siggy: Turkey tits!

…

Fay [after Bob steals the show on Good Morning America]: You were great Bob!
Anna: You really were!
Siggy: You were incredible! I mean, after dad choked you saved him!

…

Siggy: Why do you need to keep Bob out of the house?
[Leo goes to the door and opens it…there’s Bob]
Leo: You think he’s gone? He’s not gone! He’s never gone!!
Bob: Is this some radical new therapy?
Leo: YOU SEE!!

…

Bob [telling a joke in a mental institution]: The doctor draws two circles and says “What do you see?” the guy says “Sex.”
[everybody laughs]
Bob: So the doctor draws trees, “What do you see?” the guy says “sex”. The doctor draws a car, owl, “Sex, sex, sex”. The doctor says to him “You are obsessed with sex”, he replies “Well you’re the one drawing all the dirty pictures!”

…

Bob [riding in Leo’s car: It was an interesting morning, fruitful. But it lacked the intensity that you and I generate together, the sparks that we get one-on-one. We just gotta figure out a way to work around your schedule. Could we work afternoons? Two to four? Three to five? Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday?
Leo: AHHHHHH!
[he slams on the brakes, gets out of the car, walks around, and opens Bob’s door]
Bob: Are you saying you’d rather work mornings?
Leo [nearly incomprehensible]: GET OUTTA THE CAR!

…

[Leo has a rifle pointed at Bob]
Bob: What are we doing?
Leo: Death Therapy, Bob. It’s a guaranteed cure.

…

[Leo is strapping a bomb to Bob]
Leo: This is black powder, Bob. One teaspoon of this stuff can blow up a tree stump. There we go!
Bob: And, how much is this?
Leo: Twenty pounds.

…

Leo: You understand, don’t you? There’s no other solution. You won’t go away.
Bob: I will.
Leo: No, you won’t. You’re just saying you will! But then, after I don’t kill you, you’ll show up again. And you’ll do something else to make everyone in my life think you are wonderful and I’m a schmuck. But I’m not a schmuck, Bob, and I’m not going to let you breeze into town and take my family away from me, just because you’re crazy enough to be fun

…

Anna: Daddy you’re all right?
Leo: I’m fine! I’m fine! I’m fine! I’m fine! Now that Bob’s gone.
Anna: Yes we know…
Leo: You do? How? I didn’t hear it go off!

…

Leo: The bags I put around your neck Bob, where are they?
Bob: In the House. Why?

…

The Gutmans: Burn! Burn! Burn! Burn!

…

Fay [to Leo in a mental institution]: Leo! Can you hear me?!
Anna: Daddy it’s me Anna!
Lily: Leo, it’s me Lily, your sister!
Fay: We don’t care about the house! Come back to us! The worst is over!
Siggy: Yeah dad! How much worst can it get?
[cut to Bob getting married to Lily][/b]

[iambiguous]

All too often a film like this will revolve around some great achievment on the part of black folks in which the inspiration [or impetus] for it all is provided by white folks. But not this one. Here it’s black folks down to the bone.

And this all unfolds in Texas in the early 1930s. Here it’s the all black world and the all white world. In fact one of the debates revolves around whether or not blacks should be permitted to attend public universities. So the last thing some will be thinking is that this will somehow end up at Harvard University.

And that’s the crucial point here: the part about thinking. It is simply understood by black leaders at the time that education is the key – it’s the vital ingredient for sustaining the rennaisance that had been sparked in, for example, Harlem around that time. Of course, it was understood by others that education alone would never be enough. Not without taking the struggle to the streets. The part about political struggle, in other words.

But the part about education sparks debates still today in many black communities: how to instill this frame of mind in young people when more than just a few look upon education as “trying to be white”.

Also, since this revolves around debate, it necessarily revolves around the rules of language, around logic, around what we night claim to believe and what we can actually demonstrate is true rationally. And here it is always the logic of the progressive, liberal, leftwing folks that prevail. And, more or less being one of them myself, I’m on board. But I’m also far too cynical [these days] to imagine the world can really be changed merely by using “words for swords”. There are simply too manny ways to rationalize any political agenda when all you have are them. So, from the perspective of moral nihilism, there can be no clearcut winners and losers here. In too many instances it comes down to conflicting [and subjective] judgment calls.

Then there is this part: Resolved: Tenant farmers have the right to organize.

IMDb

[b]This movie was the first since 1979 to be allowed to film on Harvard’s campus.

The film features both Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker, as well as a young actor named Denzel Whitaker.[/b]

You’ll swear he is the son of Forest Whitaker…but he’s not.

On December 19, 2007, Denzel Washington announced a $1 million dollar donation to Wiley College so they could re-establish their debate team.

The team today: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiley_College#Debate_Team

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Debaters
trailer: youtu.be/JnezpSJwr8c

THE GREAT DEBATERS [2007]
Directed by Denzel Washington

[b]Melvin: I’m going to introduce you to some new voices this semester. There’s a revolution going on. In the North. In Harlem. They’re changing the way Negroes in America think.

…

Henry: What’s a professor doing in the middle of the night dressed like a cotton-chopper?
Melvin: What is a student doing in the middle of the night throwing his life away?

…

Melvin: ‘‘Resolved: Welfare discourages hard work.’’ Miss Booke, you’ll argue the negative. All right. Welfare takes away a man’s strongest reason for working, which is survival. And that weakens the will of the poor. How would you rebut that, Miss Booke.
Samantha: I would say it does not. Most of the New Deal goes to children, anyway, and to the handicapped, and to old people…
Melvin: Is that fact, or conjecture?
Smantha: lt is a fact.
Melvin: What’s your source?
Samantha: The president.
Melvin: Of the United States?
Samantha: Yes, sir.
Melvin: That’s your primary source? You spoke to President Roosevelt personally?
Samantha: Of course not. I did not speak to him personally, but I listened to his Fireside Chat.
Melvin: Oh, a radio broadcast. Any other sources?
Smantha: Well…
Melvin: Any other sources?
Samantha: Yes, there are other sources. Like that look in a mother’s eyes when she can’t feed her kids. Without welfare, Mr. Tolson, people would be starving.
Melvin: Who’s starving, Miss Booke?
Samatha: The unemployed are starving.
Melvin: Mr. Burgess here. He’s unemployed. Obviously, he’s not starving. Now, I drew you in, Miss Booke. You gave a faulty premise, so your syllogism fell apart.
Samantha: ‘‘Syllogism’’?
Melvin: Your logic fell apart. Major premise: the unemployed are starving. Minor premise: Mr. Burgess is unemployed. Conclusion: Mr. Burgess is starving. Your major premise was based on a faulty assumption. Classic fallacy. Who’s next?

…

Melvin: Mr. Farmer, tell me the irony in the name ‘‘Bethlehem Steel Corporation.’’
James: Bethlehem is the birthplace of Jesus, Prince of Peace, and Bethlehem Steel makes weapons of war.
Melvin: Very good. Sit down.

…

Henry: A brilliant young woman I know was asked once to support her argument in favor of social welfare. She named the most powerful source imaginable: the look in a mother’s face when she cannot feed her children. Can you look that hungry child in the eyes? See the blood on his feet from working barefoot in the cotton fields. Or do you ask his baby sister with her belly swollen from hunger if she cares about her daddy’s work ethics?

…

Samantha: Is your father Dr. James Farmer?
James: Yes… yes, he is.
Samantha: I’m taking theology from him, and that man speaks in tongues. French, Greek, Hebrew, Latin…How many languages does he speak?
James: Seven languages.
Samantha: Seven languages. He must be the smartest man in Texas.
James: Well, that’s not saying much.

…

James: We do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do.

…

Melvin: Denigrate. There’s a word for you. From the Latin word “niger”, to defame, to blacken. It’s always there, isn’t it? Even in the dictionary. Even in the speech of a Negro professor. Somehow, “black” is always equated with failure.

…

Melvin [to the debate team]: Anybody know who Willie Lynch was? Anybody? Raise your hand. No one? He was a vicious slave owner in the West Indies. The slave-masters in the colony of Virginia were having trouble controlling their slaves, so they sent for Mr. Lynch to teach them his methods. The word “lynching” came from his last name. His methods were very simple, but they were diabolical. Keep the slave physically strong but psychologically weak and dependent on the slave master. Keep the body, take the mind. I…and every other professor on this campus are here to help you to find, take back, and keep your righteous mind…because obviously you have lost it. That’s all you need to know about me, Mr. Lowe.

…

Sheriff: Now, we got some white fellas from up north come into our town. They’re stirring up trouble between our coloreds and our whites. They say that we need to make a union: the sharecroppers and the workers all together, colored and white. They need to make a union? And they say that there was some kind of secret meeting last night down near the lake.

…

Student: Resolved: unemployment relief should be ended when the Depression ends. I traveled back through history to 1536, when the first Poor Laws of England were mandated. In those days, the dole – or welfare, as we call it – was funded by voluntary contributions. But, as time passed, the English devised the Allowance System, the first unemployment relief, only now it was paid with involuntary contributions, more commonly known as taxes. The Allowance System was a disaster. The only real unemployment relief is to give a man a job. But to do that, you have to give the economy life, not tax it to death.
Student: When capitalism was young, the old puritanical concept of duty was, ‘‘He who does not work shall not eat.’’ That made sense when there was more work than men willing to do it. But those days are gone. Now there are millions who want to work, but find themselves standing in breadlines. Now, should they not eat because there are no jobs? People, today we need a new concept of duty: the right of the individual to demand from society just as much as he gives to society. [/b]

Two reasonable arguments, yes?

[b]Ham: Mr. Tolson, when I came here today, I saw the sheriff outside watching your house. What’s going on?
Melvin: Maybe you should ask the sheriff.
Ham: I’ve been hearing a lot of rumors about what you’re doing. My dad just called the Dean last week and asked, ‘‘What is a communist doing teaching at a good Methodist college?’’
Melvin: My politics are my business, Mr. Burgess, and l promise you that they will not endanger the team.
Ham: But, sir, it is being endangered. I came to Wiley College to be educated, not investigated.
Melvin: I understand that.
Ham: I don’t want to be dragged into anything. If my parents find…I’m sorry. Mr. Tolson, please. Just tell me you’re not a communist. Otherwise…
Melvin: Otherwise what? Otherwise what?
Ham: My father says I have to quit.
Melvin: As I said, my politics are my business.
Ham: I guess I have to resign.

…

Samantha [at a debate]: The state of Oklahoma is currently spending five times more for the education for a white child than it is fitting to educate a colored child. That means better textbooks for that child than for that child. I say that’s a shame, but my opponent says today is not the day for whites and coloreds to go to the same college. To share the same campus. To walk into the same classroom. Well, would you kindly tell me when that day is gonna come? Is it going to come tomorrow? Is it going to come next week? In a hundred years? Never? No, the time for justice, the time for freedom, and the time for equality is always, is always right now!

…

Dr. Farmer: Listen, there are people around town who aren’t very happy with your off-campus activities. They’re calling you a radical. In fact, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find out one morning when I woke up that you were strung up to a tree.
Melvin: They’d have to catch me first.
Dr. Farmer: This is serious, Melvin. Very serious.
Melvin: A hungry Negro steals a chicken, he goes to jail. A rich businessman steals bonds, he goes to Congress. l think that’s wrong. Now, if that makes me a radical, a socialist, a communist, so be it.
Dr. Farmer: Amen. Amen on that.
Melvin: Jesus was a radical.
Dr. Farmer: Careful.
Melvin: Yes, He was. Jesus was a radical.
Dr. Farmer: Mental institutions are filled with people who have confused themselves with Jesus Christ.

…

James: What do you want us to do?
Melvin: Debate Harvard.
Henry: Harvard?
Melvin: Harvard University. They’re the reigning national champions. If we defeat them, we defeat the best.
Henry: Mr. Tolson, sir, with all due respect, um, Harvard ain’t going to debate us, not little old Wiley College in Marshall, Texas.
Melvin: They know who we are, Henry. I’ve been writing them letters, sending them articles.
Henry: But how do we get a letter back?
Melvin: By continuing to win. Dr. Farmer has informed me that Howard University is going to be at Prairie View next week. We annihilated Fisk. If we eliminate Howard, we will have beaten the two best Negro colleges in America, and I can guarantee you that I will see to it that Harvard does not ignore that.

…

Henry: You’re never gonna forget what you saw out there, do you understand? You’re never gonna forget what you saw out there. Hanging’s the easiest part of it sometimes. Sometimes they cut the little fingers off, your toes, your nose, your ears. Sometimes they cut your privates off. Sometimes they skin you alive. You’ll never be able to forget. What do you think he did? He didn’t have to do nothing, James! He didn’t have to do nothing! ln Texas they lynch Negroes! Do you understand?
James: So it doesn’t matter how good we are, does it? This is all useless.
Henry: What are you talking about?
James: I mean we’re just a bunch of Negroes debating each other on subjects we all agree on.
Henry: Now, James, don’t talk like that, all right?
James: Why not?
Henry: Because you can’t!

…

Melvin: Resolved: Capitalism is immoral. We will be arguing the affirmative.
Henry: To a bunch of Wall Street bankers.

…

Melvin: [after Samantha slaps Henry hard across the face]: Resolved.

…

Harland [Harvard student greeting the Wiley debate team at the train station]: Just so you know, you’ll be staying on campus in Douglas Hall. I’ve got to tell you, this debate is stirring up a lot of excitement.
Henry: Really?
Harland: Oh, yeah. It’s gonna be broadcast all over America.

…

Henry [reading aloud a letter from the Harvard debate committee]: ''We have been informed by Tau Kappa Gamma 'that your team delivers ‘canned speeches’ : arguments written by faculty rather than students. Therefore, we are changing the topic. You will have the same amount of time to write new arguments as the Harvard team: 48 hours."
James: Coaches help students all the time.
Henry: ‘‘Both teams will be delivered the same reference books. Our new topic: Resolved: ‘Civil disobedience is a moral weapon in the fight for justice.’ Wiley College will be arguing the affirmative.’’ [/b]

Oh well, so much for the morality of capitalism.

James [at a debate]: In Texas they lynch Negroes. My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his neck and set on fire. We drove through a lynch mob, pressed our faces against the floorboard. I looked at my teammates. I saw the fear in their eyes and, worse, the shame. What was this Negro’s crime that he should be hung without trial in a dark forest filled with fog. Was he a thief? Was he a killer? Or just a Negro? Was he a sharecropper? A preacher? Were his children waiting up for him? And who are we to just lie there and do nothing. No matter what he did, the mob was the criminal. But the law did nothing. Just left us wondering, “Why?” My opponent says nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral. But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow south. Not when Negroes are denied housing. Turned away from schools, hospitals. And not when we are lynched. St Augustine said, “An unjust law in no law at all.” Which means I have a right, even a duty to resist. With violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.

[iambiguous]

Nobody wants to slide into the winter of their discontent with a serious health problem. But there are any number of actual circumstances that can make it all the worse. And this can often depend on where, fortuitously, you just happen to reside; and on what particular “healthcare model” the government there subscribes to.

Here in America of course it often comes down to every man, woman and child for themself. In other words, if you don’t have the bucks [or the right insurance] you can be quite out of luck. Then the horror stories begin mount up daily. And, of course, those are the ones the liberals tend to focus on.

But there are other horror stories as well. For example, those that revolve around a government that practices a “healthcare model” that revolves more around, well, the government itself. Corruption, bureaucracy, indifference and the like. And, of course, those are the ones the conservatives tend to focus on.

Mr. Lazarescu is Romanian. And this is the healthcare model in Romania: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Romania

But: Just how typical are the events here? Is this what others in Romania can expect in the same set of circumstances?

From RT:

Each doctor who examines Mr. Lazarescu arrives at a different diagnosis, and his emergency treatment is incessantly postponed. The physicians are deaf to the entreaties of the patient, and they are devoid of sympathy for the elderly Mr. Lazarescu as he again plunges into the Bucharest night.

So, obviously, it works better for some there than for others. But, just as obviously, so does the healthcare model here in America.

The bottom line being this: that, the older you get – here, there or anywhere – the more you have to endure the inevitable: that, when it comes to your health, it is always never nothing. The rest is who you happen to be and where you happen to be when that something is serious. This and the sad part that revolves around wealth and power. Around class in other words.

Oh, and just because your health is sliding down into a sinkhole doesn’t mean that all the other shit you have to endure goes away. And this too is here, there and anywhere.

Anyway, we watch this and we think that, sooner or later, this may well be us. It can reach the point where they have to operate immediately on your brain in order that you might live long enough to go home and die of cancer.

A snapshot of the human condition at its grimmest.

IMDb

[b]The ambulance attendant suspects early on that Lazarescu has colon cancer, and this is eventually confirmed. The actor playing him died of that disease several years later.

The man’s full name is Dante Remus Lazarescu. Dante wrote of the circles of hell. Remus was a co-founder of ancient Rome, killed by his twin. Lazarescu reminds us of Lazarus, who was lucky enough to find someone who could raise him from the dead. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Mr._Lazarescu
trailer: youtu.be/OB5BktF00_Y

THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU [Moartea Domnului Lazarescu] 2005
Written in part and directed by Cristi Puiu

[iambiguous]

There was once a time when, in order to be the weather man on television, you had to be a girl. A young girl. A pretty girl. And usually stacked. And almost always white. And the last thing you needed to be was a meteorologist.

Boy, has that changed. At least in the bigger markets. Now most of the weathermen actually are men. And they do have advanced degrees in meteorology. So they actually know what the hell they are talking about.

Well, David Spritz isn’t one of them. He is about as plastic [read shallow] as the culture that mass produces him by the millions. He’s all on the surface, going though the motions at work, at home and all the places in between. He’s the flesh and blood equivalent of fast food. He even admits it.

Nobody respects him. In fact, they always seem to be throwing things at him. In public, as it were. Like and Frostys and Big Gulps and Chicken McNuggets.

So, is all of that about to change?

Maybe. But in the interim all he really craves is to leave behind the plasticity of the local market in order to become the same rendition of himself in the national market.

Bottom line: You don’t have to be a weather man in order to be a weather man.

And then the part about growing old. The part about cancer. The part about dying. No wonder so many folks gave this one a big thumbs down.

Still, look to learn a lot about archery:

Dave: We warm up…then do basic focus drills, stuff you never think about. Like closing an eye without moving your face because your face is the anchor point for your hand that allows you to focus. You have to keep your triangle against a lot of force. We do draws for a half hour, then releases. That’s called “loosing,” when you release…Accuracy equals focusing on a point. Gravity pulls an inch a yard. You point up. But you have to factor in wind…which is the most difficult part.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weather_Man
trailer: youtu.be/vZIIKsnM6MM

THE WEATHER MAN [2005]
Directed by Gore Verbinski

[b]Dave [voiceover]: People recognize me sometimes. Some are dicks.

…

Man on the street: It’s getting cold.
Dave: Yeah.
Man on the street: What’s the Nipper this week?
Dave: Thursday.
Man on the street: Thursday’s the Nipper? All right!

…

Dave [voiceover]: My father is Robert King Spritzel. He won the National Book Award when he was 28. And the Pulitzer when he was 33. President Carter called him a national treasure. He was a great writer.[/b]

So, Dave aims to impress him by becoming the weather man on Bryant Gumbal’s “Hello America”. Only Robert has just found out he has terminal cancer. Even great writers die.

Robert: What happened?
Dave: I got hit with a Frosty.
Robert: Why? Why did you get hit with a Frosty? What is a Frosty?
Dave: A Frosty is a shake from Wendy’s.
Robert: Why would someone throw a shake at you?
Dave: That happens sometimes.
Robert: People throw shakes at you?
Dave: Stuff. People throw stuff at me sometimes…if they don’t like me, or something.
Robert: But they don’t know you.
Dave: From TV.
Robert: But you just read the weather.
Dave: Well, I predict it.
Robert: You don’t have a degree in meteorology.
Dave: Well, I make suppositions…

On the other hand, he gets paid $240,000 a year to do that. Not counting all the dough he makes doing “appearances”.

[b]Dave [voiceover]: Every couple months, someone throws something at me. A shake, a burrito once. Why? My name partly, I guess. I changed it for professional reasons, my first station manager suggested it - he said it sounded refreshing and that they wanted that quality. That may be true, but it’s also annoying. I know that.

…

TV viewer: What kind of name is Spritz? It’s a bullshit name. It’s a TV name. He’s bullshit. He’s an asshole. I don’t like his face. His asshole face.

…

Dave [voiceover]: The other thing, my job is very easy. Two hours a day, basically reading prompts. I make $240,000 a year plus appearances…which are, you know, not comfortable for me…but lucrative.
[cut to him and a woman fucking]
Dave: Also, it makes other things easy, being on TV. Everything’s easy. Yeah. I receive a large reward for pretty much zero effort and contribution. The shakes and stuff are a reaction to that, I think.

…

Dave: Why are you here, anyway?
Robert: I came to talk to Noreen about an issue concerning Shelly.
Dave: Well, you can talk to me. I’m her parent, too. So? What?
Robert: Shelly dresses in clothing not appropriate for her… clinging stuff.
Dave: All kids wear… Dad, it’s a different generation.
Robert: They call her camel toe.

…

Dave [voiceover]: A camel toe is pretty much what Robert said it was. It’s basically just when you can make out more than you should.

…

Noreen [reading Dave’s note about her from their group session]: “Throughout marriage, BJs lacked enthusiasm. Had difference of opinion over how important that was. I thought very.” You know what, Dave? You want to know why my BJs lacked enthusiasm? I hated you. I hated your hair. I hated your ugly legs, your forearms. I hated kissing your lips, Dave. Okay? And that’s why I lacked enthusiasm when your cock was in my mouth.

…

Dave [voiceover]: How did I fuck this up? Seriously. What if I remembered the tartar sauce? Would things be different? Would Robert die not thinking I’m a jerk-off…a jerk-fuck? [/b]

Tartar sauce?

[b]Noreen: Don’t forget the tartar sauce.
Dave: Just call the order in, Noreen, and quit busting my you-know-what, okay?
Noreen: You always half-listen to what I’m saying to you!
Dave: I heard you. Tartar sauce. Tartar sauce. Tartar sauce. Tartar sauce. Tartar sauce, tartar sauce, tartar sauce, tartar sauce.

…

Dave [voiceover looking at the ass of a woman on the street wearing tight jeans]: Man, I’d like to put my face in there. Right in there. Tartar sauce. My hips are cold. Tartar sauce. That’s when you know its cold. I like eating pussy. Tartar sauce. A lot of guys don’t. Well maybe they do. Maybe that’s just black guys. Tartar sauce. What happened to the guy who was trying to fly around the world in a balloon? Did he make it? I should put some espionage or stolen plutonium in my novel. Tartar sauce. Spice it up. Neil Young. Fuck, its cold. Neil Young. Wh-why am I thinking about Neil Young. Neil Diamond. Neil…Theres not a lot of famous Neils. Is this Wednesday? I wish I had two dicks. I thought the whole family was going to learn Spanish together this year. That never really happened. I haven’t had a Spanish omelette in a long time. Here we go.[/b]

Does he forget the tartar sauce? You bet.

[b]Robert: David, sacrifice is…To get anything of value, you have to sacrifice.
Dave: I know that, Dad. But I think if we continue down this road it’s going to be too detrimental for the kids. It’s just too hard.
Robert: Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy. Easy doesn’t enter into grown-up life.

…

Dave: You know when I was in school, I guess the hardest thing was how other kids can be a little mean…names, and stuff. Do you ever get called names?
Shelly: Like what?
Dave: I don’t know, like, dummy if you miss a question, or…or camel toe?
Shelly: Yeah… camel toe.
Dave: Do you know why?
Shelly: Why, what?
Dave: Why you get call you camel toe.
Shelly: Yeah.
Dave: Why hon?.
Shelly: Because, camel toes are tough. They can walk all over the desert and all the hot rocks. I’m tough.
Dave: That’s right. It’s because they’re tough.
[pause]
Shelly: I think they make car tires out of camel toes.[/b]

Then there’s the other kid, Mike.

[b]Robert: Mike got arrested.
Dave: What?
Robert: He fucked his drug counselor’s car up. They were on their way to a movie.
Dave: A movie?
Robert: Mike said he was trying to suck him off. Then Mike chucked a rock through his car’s passenger window. What is this sucking and chucking rocks? I mean, what is this?
Dave: What did the guy say?
Robert: He said Mike tried to jack his wallet. What is this sucking and chucking and jacking and fucking-up, Son? He’s 15 years old! What is this shit?!

…

Dave [voiceover]: My mom discovered an idea known as a living funeral in a book she read to help her with Robert dying. It’s where someone’s family and friends gather like they might at the person’s funeral only when the person’s alive, so they can see everybody.

…

Dave [voiceover]: But the whole thing about all of it…all the getting hit with stuff…the whole thing is, who gets hit with a fucking pie, anyway? Did anyone ever throw a pie at Thomas Jefferson? Or Buzz Aldrin? I doubt it. But this is like the ninth time I got hit by…
[then it dawns on him]
Dave: Clowns get hit with pies!
[then he beats the shit out of Mike’s drug counselor]
Dave: I mean, I’ll bet no one ever threw a pie at, like Harriet Tubman, the founder of the Underground railroad. I’ll bet you a million fucking dollars.

…

Dave [voiceover]: The first time I was struck with something, a chicken breast from Kenny Rogers. I was standing next to a garbage pail. I thought it might’ve been an accident, that they were throwing it out. The second time, it hit me square on the chin, a soft taco. Then, pop. A falafel. McNuggets. Always fast food. Fast food. Shit people would rather throw out than finish. It’s easy. It tastes all right, but it doesn’t really provide you any nourishment.
[pause]
Dave: I’m fast food.

…

Dave: I got the job.
Robert: New York? That’s terrific. That’s a remarkable income. That’s more money than I ever made, that salary.
Dave: Yeah.
Robert: That’s quite an American accomplishment.

…

Dave [voiceover]: I remember once imagining what my life would be like, what I’d be like. I pictured having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passed, few ever became any qualities that I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer. Until finally they got reduced to one, to who I am. And that’s who I am, the weather man.

…

Dave [voiceover from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade]: I’ve been doing the show for a few months. People don’t throw things at me anymore…maybe because I carry a bow around. I don’t know. I go back to Chicago weekends to keep it steady with Mike and Shelly…come back, do the weather. So…the forecast? Come on. Another man is with my family. Things didn’t work out the way I predicted. Accepting that’s not easy but easy doesn’t enter into grown-up life. I’ll take this American accomplishment. That’s where I live…behind Fire Brigade 47. Okay. But in front of SpongeBob. Hello, America. [/b]

Bottom line: If you can’t beat them, join them. I mean, how fucking pathetic is that?!