philosophy in film

Some things [as they say] have to be seen to be believed. But other things, even after you’ve seen them, you are at a loss to explain what exactly it was that you saw. You can barely express what you think you have seen. And be prepared for those who believe they have seen something entirely different.

The blurb on the back of the dvd: “From the nightmarish imagination of György Pálfi comes Taxidermia, a surrealistic assault on the senses following three generations of men [an obese speed eater, an embalmer of gigantic cats, and a man who shoots flames out of his penis], who are damned from birth.”

There are lives of others we can barely begin to imagine. But then we have wonder in turn: can they not barely begin to imagine our own lives as well?

TAXIDERMIA
Written and directed by György Pálfi

English language trailer:
youtube.com/watch?v=F_TReXQ_K1M

Of all the ways in which to imagine yourself dying, this has surely got to be one of the most harrowing…

If the end of this film stays stuck in your head longer than it stayed stuck in mine you have my sympathy. Yet there are people who claim this is actually a “happy ending”! If you are one of them then, by all means, let’s discuss it here.

When something torments us, what are we willing to endure in order just to know what happened?

THE VANISHING [Spoorloos] 1988
Directed by George Sluizer

Raymond: Let’s see…12cc is equal to…How much do I have? Yes, 18 minutes, 54 seconds. 18 minutes, 54 seconds is equal to 17 miles, more or less. That leaves me a margin of 3 or 4 minutes. That’s not bad. Not bad.

An anal psychopath? And yet he seems so normal.

[b]Raymond: At Martinez’s, you wanted to crucify anyone who kidnapped young girls. I even asked, “What if I’d done it?” You laughed in my face!

…

Rex: Sometimes I imagine she’s alive. Somewhere far away. She’s very happy. And then, I have to make a choice. Either I let her go on living and never know, or I let her die and find out what happened. So I let her die.

…

Rex: Know what I’m afraid of? That he’ll stop sending postcards. What if he’s dead? Then I’ll never know.

…

Television journalist: In this crowded square in Arles, there might be a murderer. You might see him, but you won’t realize it. He’s just another face in the crowd.
Daughter: Daddy, look! There we are!

…

Journalist: Do you have any idea what kind of person he could be?
Rex: I think…no, I’m sure…he’s…he’s very intelligent, can go unnoticed, and is a total perfectionist.[/b]

Bingo?

[b]Rex [from interview on tv] I hope this gentleman is listening. There’s something I want to tell him. I want to meet you. I want to know what happened to my friend. To know that, I’m prepared to do anything. I don’t hate you. I don’t hate anything. But I need to know. I need to know.

…

Raymond: Mr.Hofman. I’m the man you’re looking for.

…

Raymond: You can kill me. I acknowledge your right to do so. I’ll take the risk. But I’m banking on your curiosity. You want to know what happened to Saskia.

…

Raymond: Everyone has those thoughts, but no one ever jumps. I told myself: “Imagine you’re jumping.” Is it predestined that I won’t jump? How can it be predestined that I won’t? So, to go against what is predestined, one must jump. I jumped. The fall was a holy event. I broke my left arm and lost 2 fingers. Why did I jump? A slight abnormality in my personality, imperceptible to those around me. You can find me listed in the medical encyclopedias under “Sociopath” in the new editions.

…

Rex: What did you do to her?
Raymond: I’ll tell you. I promised you that. But the only way to tell you, is to make you share the exact same experience.
Rex: You’re completely insane.
Raymond: It doesn’t matter, really.
Rex: So she isn’t dead?
Raymond: Drink.

…

Raymond: Mr.Hofman, I’ve been analyzing what goes in your head for the last 3 years. You can leave. Even go to the police with the keys. But then, you’ll never know what happened to Saskia. On the other hand, drink and you’ll know. In less than 1 hour, I guarantee you.

…

Raymond: So?
Rex: I told myself: “Imagine you’re drinking.” Where is it predestined I won’t drink? So, to go against what is predestined, I must drink.

…

Rex [screaming]: HELP! HELP!..HELP!!..[then plaintively] Saskia…Saskia…

…

Newspaper headline: MYSTERIOUS DOUBLE DISAPPEARANCE AFTER SASKIA WAGTER HER FRIEND REX HOFMAN[/b]

Is this just a metaphor for all the other metaphors that have attempted to capture both the meaning and the meaninglessness embedded in both our industrial and post industrial world?

Insert “I” and pick one.

On the other hand: Jack Nance: “You guys get way too deep over this business. I don’t take it all that seriously. It’s only a movie.”

In any event, Pernell Roberts was sure a lucky guy.

From IMDb:

“The mutant baby was apparently created from the embalmed fetus of a calf, although David Lynch has never confirmed this or described how he articulated it. During filming when he watched rushes, he even had the projectionist cover his eyes when takes with the baby were playing, so that no one would know how it was made. After completing the film, Lynch reportedly buried the ‘Embalmed Calf’ in an undisclosed location.”

You can’t help but wonder then: If it was dug up how much would it go for today on ebay? How much would you pay?

ERASERHEAD
Written and directed by David Lynch

[b]Mrs. X: It’s Henry isn’t it? Mary tells me you’re a very nice fellow. What do you do?
Henry: Oh, I’m on vacation

…

Mr. X: I thought I heard a stranger. We’ve got chicken tonight. Strangest damn things. They’re man made. Little damn things. Smaller than my fist. But they’re new. Hi, I’m Bill.
Henry: Hello there. I’m Henry.
Mrs. X: Henry works at LaPelle’s Factory.
Mr. X: Oh. Printing’s your business? Plumbing’s mine. For 30 years now. I’ve watched this neighborhood change from pastures to the hell-hole it is now!

…

Mary X: Mother, they’re still not sure it is a baby!

…

Lady in the Radiator: [singing] In Heaven, everything is fine. In Heaven, everything is fine. You’ve got your good things. And I’ve got mine.

…

Beautiful Girl Across the Hall: I locked myself out of my apartment [pause] and it’s so late [long pause] Where’s your wife?
Henry: She must’ve gone back to her parents, again. I’m not sure.
Beautiful Girl Across the Hall: Can I spend a night here?

…

Henry: Oh! You are sick![/b]

Films like this come out all the time. They purportedly take us “inside” Wall Street and show us how it really works. We get introduced to the Gordon Gekkos [Milken, Boesky et al] who pull the strings behind the curtain. The idea being that if it weren’t for these greedy miscreants the “system” would work more equitably for all of us. And, sure, up to a point that is true. But rarely are we introduced to the other half of the equation…to the folks who play the “cronies” in “crony capitalism”. In other words, to the political ruling class in Washington. What folks like Marx and Engels referred to as our “political economy”.

BARBARIANS AT THE GATE
Directed by: Glenn Jordan

[b]Ross: I love this: “CEO F. Ross Johnson routinely presses $50 bills into the hands of wine stewards.” $50 bills! Jesus, it’s been years since I tipped that little.

…

Ross: Every penny you think I’m pissin’ away here comes back to us dressed up as a nickel"

…

Don: Renoir
Ross: Ballpark?
Don: $20 or $30 million.
Ross: Is that with the frame?

…

Don: Monet.
Ross: Yeah, right, tons of it.

…

Ross: I’ve never been a big fan of debt.
Kravis: Debt can be an asset. Debt tightens a company.
Ross: It does wonders for the sphincter, too.

…

Ross: All we have to do is just stay cool until Ed gets the test results on Premiers. You just watch, those babies are gonna turn the whole company around.[/b]

To wit:

[b]Ross: Bottom line?
Scientist: Well of all the people we surveyed the results were just about uniform
Ross: Uh huh.
Ed: They all said they tasted like shit.
Ross: Like shit?
Scientist: Shit was the consensus, yes sir.
Ross: They all said that? Nobody liked them?
Scientist: Fewer than 5%
Ross: You said the results were gonna be terrific
Ed: Well there’s nothing wrong with 5%, Ross, I’ll take 5% of the market anytime of the week
Ross: How much are we into right now?
Scientist: Right now?
Ross: To date, to here, to now?
Scientist: Upwards of 350.
Ross: We’ve spent 350 million dollars and we come up with a turd with a tip? God almighty, Ed! We put enough technology in this project to send a cigarette to the moon and we come up with one that tastes like it took a dump?
Ed: We haven’t even talked about the smell.
Ross: Oh, what did they say that was like? A fart?
Ed: Yep.
Ross: Oh, you’re not serious! They really said that?
Scientist: We have an awful lot of fart figures.
Ross: Tastes like shit and smells like a fart! Got ourselves one hell of a product on our hands…it’s one unique advertising strategy I’ll tell ya that.

…

Ross: How do we get them shitless?!!

…

Ross: And what the hell is wrong with the draw?! You need an extra set of lungs just to take a drag!
Scientist: It’s a little difficult.
Ross: A little difficult?
Scientist: It’s what we call the hernia effect.
Ross. Is that what we call it? There’s another great billboard for you! What do we do, give a truss away with every pack? “Warning: This cigarette can tear your balls off!”

…

Ross: Wherever you light one up you’re in the shithouse!

…

Linda: You sure Ross, they’re that bad?
Ross: Trust me. We huffed and we puffed and we came up with a filtered Edsel. If I could, I’d burn everyone of them except you can’t set fire to the fuckers.

…

Ross: If you’re not happy with the new brass, your sererance deal plus your 50,000 shares of Nabisco, you could walk away with 7 million bucks, maybe more. We’re not talking just “fuck you” money, we’re talking “walk everybody” money!
John: Fuck everybody, right Ross.

…

Vernon: You don’t think the shares will get a big boost once we start selling Premiers?
Ross: Well, uh, they’re still a crap shoot.

…

Kravis: Of all the people in the world, why Peter Cohen? Shearson has no real experience with leveraged buyouts. You sure don’t start with the biggest one ever.

…

Peter: Trust me, in a week this is a done deal.

…

Linda: Peter and Henry speak the same language.
Ross: Hell, I speak bullshit. I picked it up on my first day in New York.

…

George: And what’s Ross’s deal, also somewhere between zero and one hundred percent?

…

George: We’re just offering you a variety of options.
Peter: Well, you can stick that one up a variety of asses.

…

Ross: Anyone in this crowd not worth at least nine figures and they think you’re on food stamps.

…

Dick Cavett [on television]: You want to know what $20 billion could get you these days? How about, you could retire 1% of our national debt. Or you could buy your own B-1 bomber. You could buy each of the homeless and every single person on the planet a Big Mac, an order of fries and a coke. You could buy 80 million vowels on Wheel of Fortune or you could send Dan Quayle to the University of Indiana Law School for 6.8 million years.

…

George: Sure glad you guys don’t make cigars.
Ed: Smoke bothers you?
George: Only if I am in the same city with it.
Ed: Fucking beautiful…

…

Teddy: You’re meeting with Kravis now? That’s why we’ve been sitting around waiting, killin’ time, choking on those new shit cigarettes?
Ross: Where did you get a Premier?
Teddy: In the other office.
Ross: Nobody’s supposed to smoke those.
Teddy: I don’t think that’ll be a problem.

…

Teddy: Ross, let’s stand at the gate and push the barbarians back!

…

Caroline: Do you honestly and truly need Nabisco? Aren’t there any other companies that would make you just as happy?
Kravis: It’s not the company, it’s the credibility. My credibility. I just can’t sit on the bench and let other people play the game. Not my game…Not with their rules.

…

George: We’ve got our own Deep Throat!

…

Jim: Are they as bad as they said?
Ross: Premiers? I’ll level with you. When they were being tested some people suggested we roll them in toilet paper.

…

Ross: Premiers. Perfect name I thought. Titanics would have been a better one.

…

Linda: This town worships success. What it roots for is failure.

…

Ross: And fuck you, Tom Brokaw.

…

Ross: Jesus, this newspaper article makes me look like the greediest son of a bitch in the world!

…

Ross: However it turns out, your opinion of me means an awful lot in my life, Charlie.
Charlie: We’re down to the numbers now, Ross, that’s all that matters [after Ross leaves the office] Now I know what the “F” in “F. Ross Johnson” stands for.

…

Peter: I’m telling you we play right into Kravis’s hand if we don’t raise our bid. They’re laying low to clobber us. This is just a head fake. It’s a PR job.
Linda: Well, if it is it is a masterful one.
Peter: I don’t mind those once in a while. Just for a change.

…

John [in the elevator]: Ross.
Ross: Do me one favor, John, don’t wish me luck.

…

Kravis: We are not interested in open-end bidding.
Charlie: Give us just one hour.
Kravis: All right. You pay our expenses to date and we’ll wait.
Charlie: How much are we talking about?
Kravis: I’d say it comes to a hell of a lot more, but we’ll settle for $45 million.
Charlie: $45 million for one hour [pause] I think I can sell it.

…

Charlie: In the end, the deciding factor…the one that made the Kravis offer more attractive…was the fact that you were not part of it. Nobody is going to deny there isn’t a fair amount of greed going around these days. I guess it’s just a question of how much greed is fair. This, yours, was over the top. It was simply too naked.

…

Ross: I just dropped by to say thank you. For making me a hero with the stockholders. $25.7 billion dollars for the company. In their wettest dreams they never thought they’d get that rich.[/b]

Hollywood uses the beautiful people of course but it is applicable to almost everyone: men [most men] think with an organ other than the one women do. Then it’s just a matter of arguing back and forth about nature vs. nurture.

Also, if you’re the man, it helps to be more beautiful than the women you are fucking over. And this is one exceptional dude. Or is it more along the lines that the women are hardly fleshed out at all. Two of them but he is the one Toback chooses to give loads of dimensions to.

And a key question: What would be his reaction if he found out that they were doing the same? Well, they were. Is there a way then in which to circumscribe commitment rationally?

Anyway, I wasn’t suppose to [according to all the critics] but I really liked this movie. I still do, in fact.

TWO GIRLS AND A GUY
Written and directed by James Toback

[b]Carla: Blake Allen.
Lou: Yeah. That’s his name. Who are you?
Carla: His girlfriend.
Lou: I’m his girlfriend. I’m his girlfriend.
[long pause]
Carla: American Airlines, flight 11?

…

Carla: “You Don’t Know Me”. No wonder it’s his favorite song. It should be his anthem.

…

Carla: …he figured if one of us didn’t work out then the other might. What he didn’t count on was both of us working out.

…

Lou: Oh my God, I am going to cut it off. I’m going to sclice it off sliver by sliver with an electric meat slicer!

…

Blake: Every other girl on earth, to me is like something that came from under a rock. It’s disgusting to me. It makes me fucking sick! It disgust me! It’s like smelling vomit.
Lou [coming out into the open]: Including me?
Blake: Wow. Whoa. This is a shock. This is a surprise. Okay, this is a massive shattering shock. But I must say as difficult as it will be to believe me at this moment, there’s an absolutely legitimate explanation.

…

Blake: Do you want the truth?
Carla: No, we want another lie.
Blake: No, seriously. The truth. The truth, um…
Lou: Look at him. The very words “the truth is” make him draw a blank.

…

Blake: I have lied about nothing except sexual fidelity.

…

Blake: I may have been hiding parts of my life from both of you to avoid causing pain. But I didn’t say anything to either one of you that I didn’t whole-heartedly mean.
Carla: If you believe what you just said it’s worse than if you don’t.

…

Blake: What am I concealing?
Carla: You may not even be aware of it.
Lou: Lying comes like breathing to you.

…

Blake: I am an actor. And actors lie.

…

Lou: You’re a lying, mugging, misogynistic, unemployable, short, loft-inheriting, piece-of-shit fraud…Fuck you!
Blake: I’m short now too, huh? I’m like 5-10!

…

Blake: I’m not saying it was okay. I knew it was wrong. But the rightness that I felt, gave me a way of justifying it, of seeing it the way I wanted to so that I could continue.[/b]

We suspect of course that this is just more self-serving bullshit. But that doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t be in his situation and actually mean it. To me it still comes down to reciprocity.

So, when the table is turned:

Carla: You think I don’t even know what sexual temptation is? I couldn’t understand on your higher plane of sexual aliveness? How many men do you think I’ve slept with since I’ve been with you?
Blake: None.
Carla: More.
Blake: One.
Carla: More.
Blake: Two. I know you are lying…
Carla: More
Blake: Three. I know what you’re doing. You’re just…
Carla: More.
Blake: Four.
Carla: Yeah, four, but maybe it was three because one was Vitorio, and he was a repeat…

On she goes, then:

[b]Blake: I don’t like this.
Carla: Do you still love me? Am I still the one?
Blake: I can’t even look at you!

…

Blake: I just know that you would never do it because if you had you wouldn’t be reacting with such anger to what I did if you had been doing it yourself. Because if you have, then you are so much more fucked up than I am![/b]

Then Lou:

Three girls. Yeah, I did it with three girls.

So, Blake “less than 10”, Carla 4 and Lou 3. Then the inevitable donnybrook: What is love?

Gia Carangi was one of the first “famous” people to die from AIDS. She was also thought to be the world’s first “super model”.

But the world of high fashion – “Fashion is not art. Fashion isn’t even culture. Fashion is advertising…and advertising is money” – is just another “industry”. People are used until they can be discarded.

But no one forced her to shoot the dope into her veins. No one forced her to contribute mightily to the wreckage that became her life. But I don’t pretend to understand the rationalizations of a character in a movie. Even if the character depicts someone who actually existed.

GIA
Directed by: Michael Cristofe

[b]Gia: Look, this was a free trip to New York. If I had known you were looking for Marcia fucking Brady, I woulda stayed home.

…

Wilhelmina: You know, dressing like a motorcycle tramp is somewhat interesting for a 17 year-old girl. Talking like one is not. In fact, talking at all is not really required in this profession…or even encouraged.

…

Wilhelmina: Just be yourself.
Gia: Okay, yeah. What is that?
Wilhelmina: Oh, darling, if I could answer that for you or for me, well, life on this planet would be a very different proposition.

…

Gia: Go see, go see, go see, go see somebody else. I ain’t no good at this. I ain’t no good at this at all. But even if you are good at it, what, exactly, are you good at?

…

T.J.: Have you ever had sex with a man before?
Gia Yeah, once.
T.J.: And?
Gia: And I could have done that with a German Shepard

…

Gia: Are you nervous?
T.J.: Yeah.
Gia: Am I making you nervous?
T.J.: Yeah.
Gia: Well, good, that’s the idea.

…

Gia: You scare the shit out of people so they can’t see how scared you are

…

Kathleen: Know that old joke, how can you tell when a junkie’s lying? Her lips are moving? It’s not funny.

…

Gia: I have to go…I have to go. Where the fuck does everybody go when they have to go?

…

Mike: Every model has a moment…I mean, the ones who make it at all…and whether or not they can parlay that moment into some kind of a career, well, that’s the gamble, isn’t it? 'Cause the moment is a very short time. It’s here and then it’s gone, just like most of these girls. They’re here and then they’re gone.

…

Mike: Your look is not spring. Your look is nuclear-fucking-winter

Billy: Hi, I’m Billy. You’re very pretty. I’ll bet you’re a model.
Gia: Why? Do I look stupid?

…

Gia: Where are you going?
Linda: You don’t have any clothes on.
Gia: Don’t change the subject.

…

Gia: I’d tell them that you don’t have to be anybody. Because I’d know that being somebody doesn’t make you anybody anyway.

…

T.J.: Sex was really easy. There was sex everywhere. It didn’t really mean too much. Love, love was the hard thing to find. Even if you were looking for it, which not too many people were. And even if you found it, which not too many people did, even if it was right there in front of you. No; how could you see it with all the sex in the way?

…

Girl at Group Therapy: Wait a minute. What am I supposed to feel here? Sorry for you because you’re beautiful? Because you made ten thousand a minute doing fuckin’ nothing? “Oh it was so hard, so terrible, they treated me so bad.” Listen girl, you had a free ride. And you fuckin’ blew it. And me? I’m some kid from Ohio, reading fashion magazines, looking at your picture and thinking I’m supposed to look like that. And going fucking crazy because I don’t. Because nobody told me it was a lie. Because the magazine doesn’t come with a label that says, “Caution: This is a lie. Nobody looks like this.” Not even you.

…

Nurse: Gia, listen. There’s something more serious going on which caused your infection. Something they’re calling Acquired lmmune Deficiency Syndrome. Maybe you heard about it?
Gia: No. How did I get it?
Doctor: Well, we’re really just finding things out…and you’re the first woman I’ve known about. Although, intravenous drug users seem oto be in a specially high-risk group. So you probably got it from a contaminated needle.
Gia: How do I get rid of it?

…

Kathleen: You have to understand. In those days…nobody knew. People were scared. I was scared. She must have been scared too.

…

Kathleen: She died around 10 o’clock in the morning. They tried to pick her. They tried to pick her up off the bed, and she…The flesh just fell off her back. It just fell off.

…

Gia [from her journal]: Life and death, energy and peace. If I stop today it was still worth it. Even the terrible mistakes that I made and would have unmade if I could. The pains that have burned me and scarred my soul, it was worth it, for having been allowed to walk where I’ve walked, which was to hell on earth, heaven on earth, back again, into, under, far in between, through it, in it, and above.[/b]

The first thing this film reminds you of is dealing with any automated phone answering system. And also the second and the third thing.

This might be called a black comedy if it wasn’t so damned cartoonish. Delightfully so, in fact.

And who does Harry Tuttle remind you of? Of course: Rupert Pupkin!

BRAZIL
Directed by Terry Gilliam

[b]Sam: I only know you got the wrong man.
Jack: Information Transit got the wrong man. I got the right man. The wrong one was delivered to me as the right man, I accepted him on good faith as the right man.

…

T.V. Interviewer: How do you account for the fact that the bombing campaign has been going on for thirteen years?
Mr. Helpmann: Beginners’ luck.

…

Arresting Officer: This is your receipt for your husband…and this is my receipt for your receipt

…

Jack: [about his wife’s cosmetic surgery] Remember how they used to stick out?
Sam: Oh, um yes. I always used to wonder if they were real.
Alison: My ears?

…

Kurtzmann: [on Buttle] You see? The population census has got him down as “dormanted.” Uh, the Central Collective Storehouse computer has got him down as “deleted.”
Sam: Hang on.
[goes to a computer terminal]
Kurtzmann: Information Retrieval has got him down as “inoperative.” And there’s another one - security has got him down as “excised.” Administration has got him down as “completed.”
Sam: He’s dead.

…

Harry: Listen, this old system of yours could be on fire and I couldn’t even turn on the kitchen tap without filling out a 27b/6…

…

Mrs. Terrain: Really, Sam when are you going to do something about these terrorists?
Sam: What? Now? It’s my lunch hour. Besides, it’s not my department.

…

Jill: Doesn’t it bother you the sort of things you do at Information Retrieval?
Sam: What? I suppose you’d rather have the terrorists.
Jill: How many “terrorists” have you met, Sam, actual terrorists?
Sam: Actual terrorists? Well, it’s…it’s only my first day.

…

Sam: I assure you, Mrs. Buttle, the Ministry is very scrupulous about following up and eradicating any error. If you have any complaints which you’d like to make, I’d be more than happy to send you the appropriate forms.

…

Sign outside a mall at Christmas time: CONSUMERS FOR CHRIST

…

Santa Claus: What would you like for Christmas?
Little girl on his lap: My own credit card.

…

Sam: You don’t exist anymore. I’ve killed you. Jill Layton is dead.
Jill: Care a little necrophilia?

…

Tuttle: You okay?
Sam: Tuttle!
Tuttle: Call me Harry.

…

Helpmann: He got away from us, Jack.
Jack: I’m afraid you’re right, Mr. Helpmann. He’s gone.[/b]

Sorry, no happy ending this time.

There’s the way we want the world to be and there’s the way the world actually is. Success or failure in this world [the world as it is] revolves around 1] your capacity to understand that gap in any particular context and 2] your capacity to open and close it at will. In a word: power. The rest is the politics that revolves around it.

The things you will do when you are able to convince yourself you really don’t have any other choice. But then others will still judge you as though you did. And [of course] as though there really is only one right choice.

Most folks in the “civilized” world think that’s just the way the world works “down there”. Or “over there”. And since this is a liberal narrative the “system” is “exposed” in the end when the “good guys” do the “right things”. And they are the good guys doing the right things. But it’s not really the right system that is being exposed.

TRAFFIC
Directed by Steven Soderbergh

[b]Francisco: [about how he is going to assassinate Eduardo Ruiz] I want to use a bomb.
Helena: Are you kidding? Can’t you just shoot him or something?
Francisco: I don’t really like guns. You shoot someone in the head three times and some pinche doctor will keep them alive.

…

Ruiz: This is coercion.
Gordon: Coercion. That’s a pretty big word for a fisherman.
Castro: Big-ass word.
Ruiz: Oh, yeah? I know another big word: immunity.

…

Ruiz: We hire drivers with nothing to lose and throw a lot of product at the problem. Some gets stopped. Enough gets through. It’s not difficult. Look, boys, this has worked for years. It’s gonna continue to work for years. NAFTA m akes things even more difficult for you because the borders are disappearing. Do you realize in the next year or two Mexican trucking companies are gonna be able to go from the States to Mexico and back again with the same freedom as U.P.S., D.H.L., FedEx? It’s gonna be a fucking free-for-all…You guys remind me of Japanese soldiers on deserted islands who still think world war two is still going on. Let me be the first to tell you that your government surrendered this war a long fucking time ago.

…

Tourist Woman: Don’t you wanna know what kind of car it is?
Tourist Man: Yeah, it’s a brown Ford Explorer…
Tourist Woman: - Look, it was right here, it’s been stolen, I wanna file a report.
Sanchez: A report, will not help you find your car.
Rodriguez: Eh; the police won’t find your car.
Tourist Woman: You ARE the police!
Rodriguez: [he writes down a number and hands it to her] You gonna call this man and he’ll find your car for you.
Tourist Man: I don’t…I don’t get it.
Tourist Woman: How is this guy gonna know who has our car?
Rodriguez: …the police will tell him.

…

Sanchez: So, the Scorpion and Salazar are working together, and they’re making a move on Juan Obregón? Do you know how much he would pay for information like that? A lot!
Rodriguez: Take off your sunglasses.
Sanchez: What?
Rodriguez: I said, take off your sunglasses.
Sanchez: Why?
Rodriguez: I’m not kidding, Manolito. Take off your sunglasses.
[Manolo removes his sunglasses]
Rodriguez: We will keep our mouths shut!

…

Rodriguez: It’s all about the money.

…

Seth: Now you see?
Caroline: Let’s do some more.

…

General Landry: You know, when they forced Khruschev out, he sat down and wrote two letters to his successor. He said - “When you get yourself into a situation you can’t get out of, open the first letter, and you’ll be safe. When you get yourself into another situation you can’t get out of, open the second letter”. Well, soon enough, this guy found himself into a tight place, so he opened the first letter. Which said - “Blame everything on me”. So he blames the old man, it worked like a charm. He got himself into a second situation he couldn’t get out of, he opened the second letter. It said - “Sit down, and write two letters”.

…

Wakefield: I can’t believe you brought my daughter to this place.
Seth: Woah. Why don’t you just back the fuck up, man. “To this place”? What is that shit? Ok, right now, all over this great nation of ours, ‘hundred thousand white people from the suburbs are cruisin’ around downtown asking every black person they see “You got any drugs? You know where I can score some drugs?” Think about the effect that that has on the psyche of a black person, on their possibilities. I… God I guarantee you bring a hundred thousand black people into your neighborhood, into fuckin’ Indian Hills, and they’re asking every white person they see “You got any drugs? You know where I can score some drugs?”, within a day everyone would be selling. Your friends. Their kids. Here’s why: it’s an unbeatable market force man. It’s a three-hundred percent markup value. You can go out on the street and make five-hundred dollars in two hours, come back and do whatever you want to do with the rest of your day and, I’m sorry, you’re telling me that… you’re telling me that white people would still be going to law school?

…

Wakefield: On another note, General, we were talking about supply. What about demand? What are your policies toward treatment of addiction?
Salazar: “Treatment of addiction”? Addicts treat themselves. They overdose, and there’s one less to worry about.

…

Helena Ayala: My husband was working on something he called “the project for the children”. Were you aware of this?
Juan Obregón: I don’t know. Perhaps I remember something…
[Helena reveals a Spastic Jack doll]
Juan Obregón: If you want to smuggle narcotics in Senore Espastico Jacobo, that is nothing new, Senora.
Helena Ayala: No, not in. The doll is cocaine. High-impact, pressure-molded cocaine. It’s oderless. Undetectable by the dogs. Undetectable by anyone…

…

[Robert Wakefield has offered the drug dealer a bribe for information about his missing daughter]
Drug Dealer: Who in the FUCK do you think you are? Where the fuck do you think you are, and why the fuck don’t I just put your ass in a dumpster?
Wakefield [Shaking, scared]: I… I got money…
Drug Dealer: [Infuriated] I got money!
Wakefield: I’ve got a thousand dollars in my pocket; it’s for you.
Drug Dealer: If I want your money man, I will TAKE your money!

…

Ruiz: The worst part about you, Monty, is you realize the futility of what you’re doing, and you do it anyway. Wish you could see how transparent you are…Let me tell you something. You only got to me because you were tipped off by the Juarez cartel who’s trying to break into Tijuana. You are helping them. So remember…you work for a drug dealer too, Monty.

…

[Carlos has just had Arnie killed]
Helena Ayala: Who was on the phone?
Carlos Ayala: Oh that was Arnie. He can’t make it to the barbeque[/b]

It might be interesting to interview Charlie Kaufman on the meaning of identity. As it relates to the meaning of irony, for example. Or dasein?

BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
Directed by Spike Jonze
Written by Charlie Kaufman

[b]Craig: You don’t know how lucky you are being a monkey. Because consciousness is a terrible curse. I think. I feel. I suffer. And all I ask in return is the opportunity to do my work. And they won’t allow it because…I raise issues.

…

Craig: I was thinking about what you were saying the other day, about the orientation film being bullshit.
Maxine: Yes?
Craig: I think maybe you’re on to something.
Maxine: That and fifty other lines to get into a girl’s pants.

…

Craig: Can I buy you a drink, Maxine?
Maxine: Are you married?
Craig: Yes, but enough about me.

…

Maxine: Tell me a little about yourself.
Craig: Well, I’m a puppeteer…
Maxine: [turns to bartender] Check!

…

Craig: [as Maxine Puppet] Tell me, Craig, why do you like puppetering?
Craig: [as Craig Puppet] Well Maxine, I’m not sure exactly. Perhaps the idea of becoming someone else for a little while. Being inside another skin - thinking differently, moving differently, feeling differently.
Craig: [as Maxine Puppet] Interesting, Craig…

…

Craig: There’s a tiny door in my office, Maxine. It’s a portal and it takes you inside John Malkovich. You see the world through John Malkovich’s eyes and then after about 15 minutes, you’re spit out into a ditch on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike.
Maxine: Sounds great! Who the fuck is John Malkovich?

…

Craig: The point is that this is a very odd thing, supernatural, for lack of a better word. It raises all sorts of philosophical questions about the nature of self, about the existence of the soul. Am I me? Is Malkovich Malkovich? Was the Buddha right, is duality an illusion? Do you know what a metaphysical can of worms this portal is?

…

Lotte: Don’t stand in the way of my actualization as a man!

…

Charlie Sheen: Truth is for suckers, Johnny Boy.

…

Maxine: Meet you in Malkovich in one hour.

…

Malkovich: I have seen a world that NO man should see!
Craig: Really? Because for most people it’s a rather enjoyable experience.

…

Malkovich: This portal is mine and must be sealed up forever. For the love of God.
Schwartz: With all respect, sir, I discovered that portal. It’s my livelihood.
Malkovich: It’s my head, Schwartz, and I’ll see you in court!

…

Maxine (to no one in particular): The way I see it, the world is divide into those go after what they want and those who don’t. The passionate ones, the ones who go after what they want, may not get what they want, but they remain vital, in touch with themselves, and when they lie on their deathbeds, they have few regrets. The ones who don’t go after what they want, well, who gives a shit about them anyway?

…

Craig [in agony]: No, I’ve fallen in love, and this is what people who’ve fallen in love look like!!

…

Craig: It’s just a matter of time before Malkovich is nothing more than another puppet hanging next to my work table.

…

Charlie Sheen: You’re nuts to let a girl go that calls you Lotte. I tell you that as a friend.

…

Craig: What happens when a man goes through his own portal?

…

Craig (in Malkovich): There is truth, and there are lies, and art always tells the truth. Even when it’s lying

…

Bing: Malkovich, the puppeteer, shows us a reflection of ourselves, our frailties and our, you know, desparate humanity. That’s what makes him one of the most relevant artists of our time.

…

Craig [in Malkovich]: As the poet said, “The puppeteer’s voice need not merely be the record of man. It can be one of the pillars, the props to help him endure and prevail,” and I believe that.

…

Maxine: Where the fuck am I?
Lotte: We’re in Malkovich’s subconscious.[/b]

Then there is this:

Malkovich: Ma-Sheen!
Charlie Sheen: Malcatraz!

A little help please.

Fortunately, I’m not qualified to pass judgment on those who deem themselves qualified to pass judgment on everyone else. Pop art and politics? Does the word bullshit ring a bell? Nothing can’t be co-opted once it gets entangled in consumption. And Valerie Solanas wasn’t the first “serious artist” to get fucked over trying to sneak in the back door. And it didn’t help that she may well have been a lunatic.

I SHOT ANDY WARHOL
Directed by Mary Harron

[b]Valerie: Give me fifteen cents, and I’ll give you a dirty word.
Maurice Girodias: What’s the word?
Valerie: Men.

…

Edie Sedgwick: What’s it about?
Valerie: It’s about how sleazy and disgusting men are. In the end the mother kills her son. It’s a comedy.

…

TV Reporter: Why do you spend so much of your time making underground films?
Warhol: They’re easier to make than paintings
TV Reporter: Do you think painting is dead?
Warhol: Uh, no.
TV Reporter: Well, do you think the theatre has more relevance?
Warhol. No.
TV Reporter: Do you think that pop art has become repetitive?
Warhol: Uh, yes.
TV Reporter: Which of the modern painters do you find most significant?
Warhol: Oh, I like all of them.

…

Paul Morrisey: The Factory is a lot like the old MGM star system.
T.V. Reporter: You serious?
Paul Morrisey: Oh, yes. We believe in stars. Actually, they’re very similar to the Walt Disney kids. Except, of course, that they’re modern chidren, so they take drugs and have sex.

…

Candy Darling: I want to find the ad for Valerie’s play. I’m playing the ingenue. Oh, here it is. “SCUM, Society For Cutting Up Men is looking for garbage mouth dykes, butch or fem, with some acting ability. Experience not necessary. To appear in garbage mouth dykey anti-male play. A comedy called Up Your Ass.”

…

Valerie: You got to go through a lot of sex to be ready for anti-sex.

…

Candy Darling: I’m called Candy Warhol now. Cashing in.
Warhol: Why not…

…

Warhol: Candy, we were wondering, how often do you get your period?
Candy Darling: Everyday, Andy. I’m such a woman.

…

Paul Morrisey: You call this a groovy light show. I’d rather sit and watch the clothes dryer at the Laundromat. Oh, look. It changed color. Where’s a love child? They’ll get a kick outta this. Only a hippie would find this even remotely interesting, but I’ll tell ya. You spend one day with the hippies, and you realize how truly refreshing and unpretentious, hard core, New York degenerates are.

…

Valerie: You’re a guy? My god, I thought you were a lesbian.
Candy Darling: Thanks, a lot of people say that.

…

Maurice Girodias: I’m interested in you. After all, I specialize in the subversive.

…

Bridgid [after the gang at the Factory has read Valerie’s play Up Your Ass]: It’s too digusting. Even for us.

…

Ondine: What the fuck is a gay bar? Can you tell me? What is that? As a homosexual, I will not go! I will not go to one! Why should I be segregated?
Fred Hughes: You’re right, you should be isolated.

…

Paul Morrisey: Valerie, why don’t you just have yourself committed to an insane asylum just to spite them. I’m sure they would never think to look for you there.

…

Epilogue

Valerie Solanas was sentenced to three years in Matteawan State Hospital for the Ciminally Insane. After her release she was often homeless. She died of pneumonia in a wlefare hotel in San Francisco in 1989.

The SCUM Manifesto has been published many times all over the world. It is now a feminist classic.[/b]

If you do not find these characters creeps does that make you one yourself? Or are you just intent on getting away with the same things? A con within a con within a con.

This is a fascinating film of deception. And not just because it cost $6,000 to make, opened in one theatre and grossed only $43,000.

This was Nolan’s first feature. His next? Memento. It grossed $25,000,000. A few years later a film he directed grosssed over
$1,000,000,000. That’s one billion. Though [in my opinion] no where near as absorbing.

Cobb is what some would call, “fiendishly clever”. Meaning they want to be just like him.

FOLLOWING
Written and directed by Christopher Nolan

[b]The Young Man: The following is my explanation–well, more of an account of what happened. I’d been on my own for a while and getting kind of lonely and bored. And that’s when I started shadowing.
The Policeman: “Shadowing?”
The Young Man: Shadowing. Following. I started to follow people.
The Policeman: Who?
The Young Man: Anyone at first. I mean, that was the whole point…somebody at random, somebody who didn’t know who I was. I’d just see where they went, what they did and go home afterwards.
The Policeman: Why’d you do it?
The Young Man: Um, to see where they went. Anyone…I mean…How can I explain? You ever, um, been to a football match just to let your eyes rise and go over…drift across a crowd of people…and then slowly start to fix on one person? And all of a sudden that person isn’t part of the crowd anymore. They’ve become an individual, just like that. This became irresistible.
The Policeman: So you followed women?
The Youngman: No, I didn’t follow women. It wasn’t a sex thing. I followed anybody. I just wanted to see where they went, what they did.
The Policeman: You were playing secret agent?
The Young Man: No, I’m a writer. Well, I want to be a writer anyway. I was, um, gathering material for my characters. Well, to begin with. After a while l, um, spotted the dangers. I’d become hooked.

…

The Young Man: It was supposed to just be completely random. And when it stopped being random, that’s when it started to go wrong. When I started to follow people --specific people – that’s when the trouble started.

…

The Young Man: Other people are interesting to me. Have you never listened to other people’s conversations on the bus or on the tube? Seen somebody on the street that looks interesting or is behaving slightly oddly or something like that? Wondered what their lives involved, what they do, where they come from, where they go to?

…

The Yound Man: You watch somebody’s behavior, and it raises a hundred thousand questions, and I wanted to ask those questions, and I wanted to know what the answers were, and so I’d follow people to try and find out.

…

The Young Man: Most important rule was that even if I found out where somebody worked or where they lived, then you’d never follow the same person twice. That was the most important rule. That was the one that I broke first.

…

Cobb: You take it away to show them what they had.

…

Cobb [holding up a pair of lacy black panties] Saucy, eh? Found these in the last flat.
[he puts them in the pockets of a pair of trousers]
I think I’ll just give them something to, uh, chat about.
The Young Man: Why would you want to do that?
Cobb: She’ll find them in his trousers and ask him what he’s been doing.
The Young Man: Yeah, but why would you want to fuck up their relationship?
Cobb: Don’t you listen? You take it away…and show them what they had.

…

Cobb: [finding a house key under the doormat] Bing-fucking-go.

…

The Young Man [panicky]: She got a second look at me! She recognized me! That sort of thing makes me nervous.
Cobb: If you’re so worried about your appearance, change it. A new haircut, set of clothes, your mother won’t even recognize you. Just because you break into people’s homes doesn’t mean you need to look like a burglar.

…

Cobb: You’re developing a taste for it…the violating, the voyeurism…it’s definitely you.

…

Cobb: Everyone has a box.

…

The Blonde: What was all that about?
Cobb: You. Your stuff, anyway. He’s gonna deal with it himself.
The Blonde: Meaning?
Cobb: Meaning he took the bait and he’s hooked.

…

The Blonde: Cobb noticed you following him days before he actually approached you. Initially, he thought you were police. And then he followed you.
The Young Man: He followed me?
The Blonde: He followed you and realized you were just this sad, little fucker waiting to be used.[/b]

And so [it turns out] was she.

Simone deBeauvoir warned us it might come to this. Well, if only in America.

What starts out with the promise of everlasting bliss sinks down into “the deepest layer of prehistoric frog shit at the bottom of a New Jersey scum swamp”.

And this happens countless times now in our “modern world”.

Slapstick aside what is really endearing here is how a part of Oliver is completely oblivious to what the hell is going on. Right up to the end. He is so entangled in his own ego he can only see the world through it. And there must be millions like him. There might even be a few in here.

WAR OF THE ROSES
Directed by Danny Devito

[b]Oliver: l’m sorry. You were just rambling on…
Barabara: Tell your own story next time you care so desperately what everybody thinks. Fuckface!
Oliver: They’re my bosses.
Barabara: They’re Gavin’s bosses, too. But that didn’t stop him from getting a footjob at dinner.

…

Oliver: God, l hope they didn’t notice what a jerk l am.
Barbara: They never seem to.

…

Oliver: You sold liver to our friends?

…

Barbara: Somehow earning the money felt different from the money l get cashing a check. lt made me feel like trading in the Volvo on one of those four-wheel drive things with the big, knobby tires and the 200 horsepower engine. So l did. l’m gonna pick it up tomorrow.
Oliver: Thank you so much for telling me. And you think that you… need this? l mean, the Volvo was a fine car.
Barbara: l’ll pay for it with my own money.
Oliver: How much does it cost?
Barabara: All right, l know it was kind of crazy but l just wanted it, OK? [pause] $35,000.
Oliver: So you only have to sell 700 more pounds of pâté.

…

Oliver: What the hell is wrong with you?!
[cut to Gavin’s office]
Gavin: lf you’re with a woman for any length of time, eventually, you’ll ask her that question. lf she doesn’t answer, that’s trouble. And when trouble begins, it comes at you from directions you would never expect.[/b]

Then a scene that seems [to me] oddly out of place: a serious reflection on the lives we live.

Oliver: All those lives going on out there. People we’ll never meet experiencing things we’ll never know.
Gavin: We can’t know. ln your own life, by this point, you think you know what’s gonna be but…
Oliver: But you don’t know.
Gavin: You don’t know. lt’s always just when you think you got it figured out when, bingo, something comes along and knocks you right on your ass.

Back to the farce…

…

[b]Oliver: l think you owe me, after this many pretty goddamn good years of marriage, a solid reason. l worked my ass off to make enough money to provide you with a good life, and you owe me a reason that makes sense. So let’s hear it. Come on. Let’s hear it. Let’s hear it!
Barbara: Because when l watch you eat, when l see you asleep, when l look at you lately, l just wanna smash your face in.

…

Divorce lawyer [ reading Oliver’s at-death’s-door letter] ‘‘All l am and all l have, l owe to you.’’ You wrote this, Mr Rose?
Oliver: Excuse me, Mr Thurmont, you tiny, little, worm-like, infinitesimal prick, may l have a word with my wife, please?
Divorce lawyer: Certainly.

…

Oliver: l may have let you have the house, but now you’ll never get it. You. Will. Never. Get. That. House. Do you understand? You will never get that house!!
Barbara: We’ll see.

…

Barbara: Maybe l shouldn’t have let you see that letter.
Divorce lawyer: Dear girl, by the time this is all over, you’ll think of today as one of your lighter moments.

…

Gavin: What do you call 500 lawyers at the bottom ofthe ocean? An excellent start. l used to resent jokes like that. Now l see them as simple truths.

…

Oliver: You owe me. You’ve gotten more out of knowing me than l’ve got out of knowing you.
Barbara: l’m not even gonna ask you what that means. l found this house! l bought everything in it!
Oliver: With my money! lt’s a lot easier to spend it than it is to make it, honeybun!
Barbara: You might not have made it if not for me, sweet cakes!

…

Oliver: The red areas are hers. The yellow areas are mine. Green is neutral. The kitchen was difficult, but Barbara came up with the idea of time allotment.
Gavin: This seems rational to you both?
Oliver: Yeah.
Gavin: Why don’t you let her have the house? There are other houses. And other women.
Oliver: No, no, no. l’m going to win because l’ve got her to accept the ground rules.
Gavin: Oliver, there is no winning in this. lt’s only degrees of losing.
Oliver: But l got more square footage!!

…

Gavin: Sometimes l wonder what might have happened if l’d taken her offer. But l didn’t. l should have seen her toes in the pit of my crotch as a cry for help.

…

At 15 l became an evolutionist, and it all became clear. We came from mud. And after 3.8 billion years of evolution, at our core is still mud. Nobody can be a divorce lawyer and doubt that.

…

Oliver: So, how am l supposed to respond to that? You’re telling me you wished l was dead?!
Barbara: l thought it was important to mention.

…

Oliver: We haven’t passed any point of no return.
Barbara: l have.
Oliver: l’m not convinced. Nobody who makes pâté this good can be all bad.
Barbara: That depends on what the pâté is made of.
[long pause]
Woof.
Oliver: Bennie?!
Barbara: A good dog to the last bite.

…

Barbara: Have you ever made angry love?
Gavin: Is there any other way?

…

Oliver: You weren’t even multiorgasmic before you met me!
Barbara: You really expect me to keep on reassuring you sexually even now when we disgust each other?

…

Gavin: There are two dilemmas that rattle the human skull. How do you hold onto someone who won’t stay? And how do you get rid of someone who won’t go?

…

Barbara: I would never humiliate you like this!
Oliver: You’re not equipped to, honey.

…

Mr. Fisk: [Speaking to the other guests after seeing Oliver urinating on the stove] A family tiff seems to be developing. I don’t know if we should leave, but I definitely advise skipping the fish.

…

Oliver: [Oliver and Barbara pass each other on the stairs] Stinking bitch!
Barbara: Dumb bastard!
Oliver: Slut!
Barbara: Scum!
Oliver: Filth!
Barbara: Faggot!
[Passes Susan the maid]
Barbara Rose: Morning Susan.

…

Oliver: [after almost hitting Susan with a thrown chair] Oh, I’m sorry, Susan. I thought you were Barbara.

…

Oliver: I think I can swing this over to the balcony.
Barbara: Stop it! Stop it! stop it! I loosened the bolt, I was gonna drop it on you.
Oliver: Oooh. That’s a good one

…

Gavin: Maybe it’s not natural to stay married to one person for life. My parents did it. 63 years. A few of 'em good![/b]

Troubled kids? Our modern culture seems to mass produce them by the tens of thousands. Where does all that rage come from if not lives tossed and turned in a dog-eat-dog struggle to survive from paycheck to paycheck. These working stiff parents beget working stiff kids. As if there could be any other result. The solution has got to political. But most working stiff parents like most working stiff kids keep getting farther and farther removed from that. It’s really fucking hopeless. Or at least way, way, way beyond the sort of “psychological counciling” that comes to the rescue here.

That’s mostly just scripted.

But these are “just kids”: dope, rock and roll, cartoon character super heroes, professional wrestlers, video games. And in some ways [whatever the “reason”] they do seem to be just “a bunch of fucking losers.” They go outside the box only to reinforce it all the more.

MANIC
Directed by Jordan Melamed

[b]Lyle: I’m gonna count to three and if you don’t get up I’m gonna kill you. Don’t think I won’t do it, either. One… two…
Kenny: Did they tell you?

…

Lyle [in group therapy session]: “Who is the most important person in your life?” I don’t really think I’ve met that person yet. But honestly, I think it’s just as well 'cause I mean, I almost hope that…I almost hope that I never do meet him 'cause if I do I know he’ll just fuck me over.

…

Dr Monroe: You know, I sure can’t make you tell me, Lyle but I would really like to know what you think justifies hurting someone to the point where you almost kill them. I’m just curious how someone as seemingly intelligent as you could hurt another human being that bad and have no remorse for it whatsoever.
Lyle: He deserved it.

…

Lyle: My dad beat me up a few times when I was a kid. And this guy Chris knew about it. He thought it was really funny. Now he doesn’t think it’s so funny. If you say you wouldn’t do the same thing you’re fucking Iying.

…

Sara: You know Calabasas is full of fucking J.A.P.s and daddy’s girls. I didn’t exactly have the debutante thing goin’ on. One day I saw her at McDonalds with the nose job crew. That was before I knew my place, so I sat down. My friend rolls her eyes and she says: ‘What, you actually think you’re good looking? ‘Cause you walk around like you’re all hot and you’re really not.’ Then the whole table started to laugh. And I cried for about three days and then I fuckin’ resurrect, you know? I just realized that everyone I knew was fucking full of shit. And that’s when I started doing whatever the fuck I wanted and not giving a flying fuck what people thought. So I don’t really have any friends. I don’t need any.
Tracy: We’re friends.
Sara: [softly] Yeah

…

Chad: That’s gotta be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life!
Sara: Don’t fucking call me stupid.
Chad: I didn’t say you were stupid, butch, I said your opinion was stupid, because it is!
Sara: Wolverine has steel plates in his bones
Chad: [interrupting] So what?
Sara: And Batman has a little fucking belt and a little fucking cape. What the hell is he gonna do with that? Wolverine would take him down in 2 seconds.
Chad: Batman is so much smarter, and so much more of an intelligent fighter then like
Sara: [interrupting] What is he gonna do? Throw fucking razors?
Chad: he knows like 8 different types of martial arts, he’s like a ninja…
Sara: Batman is fucking homo.
Chad: Batman is not a homo. Batman bangs the hottest chicks in Gotham city, left and right, okay? He’s a PLAYER!

…

Dr. Monroe [to Lyle]: Do you think you’re the only one who gets pissed off and wants to fucking rage? I can break shit. I can scream like a motherfucker! All day long! [kicks a chair] Now what? Kenny’s still fucked up, and I’m still miserable. I guess I gotta break some more shit. [flings a chair across the room] Get up, Lyle. Get up right now, Lyle. Get up! OK? Didn’t work. I’m still pissed off. Maybe I need to fuck something else up now, huh? Maybe I need to punch somebody in the fucking face! Is that the solution? [pause] No, that ain’t the solution, man. So what do I do? I just get on with my fucking life and I try to make something of it. Why are you here, man? Why are you alive? Do you want to be alive? Life is a struggle, Lyle. That’s it. It’s a struggle. That’s the way it fucking is. Can you handle that? Can you handle that, Lyle?

…

Dr. Monroe: Lyle, I’m not gonna give you some hokey bullshit speech and tell you that if you come to some epiphany about your dad you’re gonna make a breakthrough and everything’s gonna be pizzas and blow jobs. Because the fact of the matter is it’s quite possible that you’re gonna have this rage within you somewhere until you die, man. Either you’re gonna learn how to live with it or you’re just gonna go on like you’ve been doing until you kill yourself or kill somebody else.[/b]

What is High Art? Well, it’s everything that doesn’t make Low Art Hgh Art.

What art is can always be deconstructed into babble whenever you start to talk about What Art Is. And it only gets all the more excriciating when you shift gears to what Great Art Is. Though there are “serious artists” no doubt who become infuriated when they hear stuff like that.

Anyway, a leaky ceiling and nothing is ever the same.

[Ally Sheedy and Patricia Clarkson are so good in this movie I can’t watch them in other films without their performances here spilling over.]

HIGH ART
Written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko

[b]Lucy: You need some help, G.
Greta: Look at yourself, Lucy.

…

Lucy’s mother: What did you do to yourself? C’mon, tell me! What kind of problem?
Lucy: I don’t know. It’s not really a problem. It’s more of an issue.
Lucy’s mother: You just said a problem. Now it’s an issue. Is it a problem or an issue?
Lucy: Both. I have a love issue, and a drug problem. Or maybe I have a love problem, and a drug issue. I don’t know.

…

Arnie: I’ll wait for you, ladies. Enjoy your fight.

…

Lucy: Where do you think I’ve been all week?
Greta: With the teenager.

…

Syd: The composition is so skillful that it seems really spontaneous, almost like a snapshot.
Lucy: I think it was a snapshot.
Syd: Well, it’s like cultural studies or semiotics. Philosophy, you know? Foucault, Derrida, Kristava, whatever.

…

Syd [looking at one of Lucy’s photographs]: Really, it ties into Barthes’ whole conception of photographic ecstasy. The way he explores temorality and memory and meaning. I sounds really dry in the text, but when I’m looking at your pictures, I really feel like I understand it.

…

Lucy: I haven’t been deconstructed in a long time.
Syd: Yeah, I bet you hate that.
Lucy: I don’t hate it at all.

…

Harry: I have to say, Lucy, I love your older work. I find the realism incredibly honest.
Dominique: Lucy, I think your work has a certain allure right now—a cultural currency that we’d like to explore with you.
Lucy: A cultural currency?
Dominique: A certain cachet.
Harry: If I can interrupt, Lucy, I think Dominique is saying that the public can appreciate the rigor of your work now—the intimacy and desolation of your subjects.[/b]

Talking about What High Art Is in other words.

[b]Arnie [preparing to shoot up]: I’m gonna feel so fuckin’ good in about one fuckin’ second.
Greta: I thought that was for me, Arnie.
Arnie [feeling the high]: No. That was definitely for me [pointing to another needle] that’s for you.
Lucy: You guys are so glamorous.

…

Syd: I haven’t slept with Lucy.
James: Are you working up to it?
Syd: I don’t know.
James: Well, I think you have to start knowing.

…

James: I guess you’re…you’re really at the center of it all now, aren’t you? You’ve got your power job, you got your hipster friends. All that access. I mean, it’s the real shit.

…

Syd: I’m tring to get somewhere. And all I get from you are these slurs about my job and the people that I’ve met and how pretentious and meaningless and idiotic it is and…You know what? It’s not meaningless to me. This is what I care about. I mean, what do you care about, James? I mean really—what?

…

Syd: Where’s Lucy?
Arnie: Um, she died this morning.
Syd: That is a really fucked up thing to say to me. You don’t know shit about me and Lucy, and I don’t know what Greta has been telling you, but she is fucking gone.
Arnie: Just stop it, okay?
Syd: No! You don’t understand!
Arnie: It doesn’t fuckin ’ matter! [Long pause…then he gets out of the car]
[then it slowly dawns on Syd that Lucy really is dead][/b]

A really powerful scene.

The soundtrack is great too.

youtube.com/watch?v=4CcFGWfxjAM
youtube.com/watch?v=sNWXThu9N6Y

Go ahead, try and convince these bastards that what they do is immoral.

More than anything, this culture creates predators—folks who are pathologically selfish. Someone who is conventionally selfish considers the interests of others but chooses only that which will further his own. A pathologically selfish person will not take other people into account at all. Everyone is just a means to his own end.

Of course the guys on Wall Street and on K Street will insist that what they do is different. And it is. Except for the parts that are exactly the same.

Yet the folks who are the victums here are often driven by the same thing: the greed that comes from accummulating fast bucks.

And this story is based on the actual experiences of the screen writer.

BOILER ROOM
Written and directed by Ben Younger

[b][opening lines]
Seth: I read this article a while back, that said that Microsoft employs more millionaire secretary’s that any other company in the world. They took stock options over Christmas bonuses. It was a good move. I remember there was this picture, of one of the groundskeepers next to his Ferrari. Blew my mind. you see shit like that, and it just plants seeds, makes you think its possible, even easy. And then you turn on the TV, and there’s just more of it. The $87 Million lottery winner, that kid actor that just made 20 million o his last movie, that internet stock that shot through the roof, you could have made millions if you had just gotten in early, and that’s exactly what I wanted to do: get in. I didn’t want to be an innovator any more, i just wanted to make the quick and easy buck, i just wanted in. The Notorious BIG said it best: “Either you’re slingin’ crack-rock, or you’ve got a wicked jump-shot.” Nobody wants to work for it anymore. There’s no honor in taking that after school job at Mickey Dee’s, honor’s in the dollar, kid. So I went the white boy way of slinging crack-rock: I became a stock broker.

…

Jim: I am a fucking millionaire. And guess how old I am. Twenty-seven. You know what that makes me here? A fuckin’ senior citizen.

…

Jim: People come to work here for one reason: to become filthy rich. We’re not here to make friends. We’re not savin’ the manatees. You want vacation time? Go teach third grade.

…

Jim: Parents don’t like the life you lead? “Fuck you, Mom and Dad!” See how it feels when you’re makin’ their fuckin’ Lexus payments.

…

Seth: Its strange to think how that knock changed everything, everything. Hey don’t get me wrong here, I don’t believe in fate, I believe in odds.

…

Richie: When was the last time you closed something huh? You couldn’t close a fuckin’ window you moron!

…

Greg: I hope this is better than the last batch of shit you gave me. Produced more wood than Ron Jeremy. I don’t want you to yell, “Reco!” anymore. Know what you should yell? “Timber!”

…

Seth: I had a very strong work ethic. The problem was my ethics in work.

…

Jim: And there is no such thing as a no sale call. A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can’t. Either way a sale is made, the only question is who is gonna close? You or him? Now be relentless, that’s it, I’m done

…

Jim: You have to be closing all the time! And be agressive. Learn how to push. Talk to 'em. Ask 'em questions. Ask 'em rhetorical questions. It doesn’t matter. Anything. Just get a ‘yes’ out of 'em. ‘If you’re drowning and I throw a life jacket, would you grab it?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Good. Pick up 200 shares. I won’t let you down.’ Ask 'em how they’d like to see 30, 40% return. What are they gonna say? ‘No, fuck you, I don’t wanna see those returns’?"

…

Jim: They say money can’t buy happiness? Look at the fucking smile on my face. Ear to ear, baby.

…

Jim: Anybody who tells you money is the root of all evil doesn’t fucking have any.

…

Greg: Now there’s two rules you have to remember as a trainee, number one, we don’t pitch the bitch here.
Seth: What?
Greg: We don’t sell stock to women. I don’t care who it is, we don’t do it. Nancy Sinatra calls, you tell her you’re sorry. They’re a constant pain in the ass and you’re never going to hear the end of it alright? They’re going to call you every fucking day wanting to know why the stock is dropping and God forbid the stock should go up, you’re going to hear from them every fucking 15 minutes. It’s just not worth it, don’t pitch the bitch.

…

Greg: The most important thing you gotta know right now is that you can be whoever you wanna be on the phone. Do what you gotta do. Say what you gotta say…Just keep the cocksucker on the line.
Seth: Yeah but how can I do shit like that? Isn’t there a compliance officer here?
Greg: No. No, man. Everybody does that shit. Are you kidding? Even on Wall Street.[/b]

Their compliance officer works for them. He’s a “fuckin’ chimp”.

[b]Seth: I wish my dad could’ve stepped into the casino just once. He would’ve had to be impressed: four employees, an organized payroll, huge client list. You know, it’s funny looking back. The illegal business I was running was the most legitimate thing I had going. I looked my customers in the eye and provided a service they wanted. Now, I don’t even look at my customers and I push them things they never even asked for.

…

Seth: Come on, I asked you for months about shit going down here and you told me to shut the fuck up. You said, get ready to be a millionaire!
Chirs: That’s right. Shut the fuck up. That’s all you had to do. Didn’t you learn anything?
Seth: I learned how to fuck people out of their money.

…

Father: I spoke to Howard Goldberg over at Prudential. You lied again, you unbelievable piece of shit. You lied to all of us. He told me about J.T. Marlin. It’s a chop shop, Seth. You’ve being selling their shit all this time. How many people have you fucked over? Tell me, how many?

…

Father: This is worse than the casinio. This is stealing. You’re destroying people’s lives.[/b]

Friends with money. But they come upon it in such an unusual way. And these friends are really arrogant, smug, elitist bastards. They loved to humiliate those beneath them. Which was practically everyone they came across. Cameron, for example. It was, therefore, rather satisfying to watch them [and their friendship] fall apart at the seams. But that’s just me.

Unfortunately, the biggest scumbag of them all hits the jackpot in the end. Pinned to the floor by a knife driven through his shoulder.

While we cheer him on.

SHALLOW GRAVE
Directed by Danny Boyle

[opening lines]
David: I am not ashamed. I have known love. I have known rejection. I am not ashamed to declare my feelings; take trust for instance, or friendship. These are the important things in life. These are the things that matter, that help you on your way. If you can’t trust your friends, well, what then. What then? Oh, yes. I believe in friends. I believe we need them. But if one day you can’t trust them any more, well, what then. What then?

Then this:

[b]Alex: It’s not every day I find a story in my own flat.
Juliet: It’s not a story, Alex. It’s a corpse.

…

David: Is this what they always look like?
Juliet: Yes.
David: I’ve never seen a dead body before. I saw my grandmother, of course, but I don’t suppose that counts. She was alive at the time.

…

David: It’s a sick idea Alex. It’s sick.
Alex: Go ahead then, telephone. Telephone the police. Tell them it’s a suitcase full of money and you don’t want it.

…

Juliet: Are you all right?
Alex: No.
Juliet: Then let’s spend some money.

…

David: You paid 500 pounds for this?
Juliet: That’s what it cost, David.
David: No, no, that’s what you paid for it. 500 pounds is what you paid for it. We don’t know how much it cost us yet. For you two to have a good time, we don’t know the cost of that yet.

…

Juliet: I can’t do it.
Alex: But Juliet, you’re a doctor. You kill people every day.

…

Alex: Cameron, what a surprise!

…

Alex: His family? Drugged-up, suicidal fuck-ups don’t have families.

…

Alex: If you can’t have it - spend it - then what use is it? None. It’s all for nothing. I didn’t get into this for nothing, so that I could have nothing.
David: Yeah, and you didn’t saw his feet off.

…

Alex [in agony]: It’s in the loft! In the loft!

…

Alex: They went up there alive and came back down dead! Did you notice that? The difference, I mean: alive, dead, dead, alive, that sort of thing? It wasn’t difficult to spot. He killed them both

…

Alex: God, you two are sensitive! All I’m doing is implying some kind of ugly sordid sexual liaison. I’d be proud of that sort of thing.

…

Juliet: It’s about me and David.
Alex: The perfect couple, I should say.
Juliet: You mustn’t take it so badly.
Alex: Don’t worry. I’d do exactly the same thing, only I don’t think I’m his type.

…

David: Don’t be so coy, dear. You’re going to Rio.
Juliet: What?
David: That’s right. Rio de Janeiro, on your own. You should know. You bought the fucking ticket! [to Alex] Did you see that? I bet she didn’t show you that before she sent you up there. What did she say? We’ll split it together, you and me, fifty-fifty? [to Juliet] But I bet you didn’t say you’d split on him.[/b]

Mathematics and murder. Though not necessarily in that order.

I’m terrible at solving these puzzles. But no less so at solving lots of other puzzles embedded in human interaction.

The plot’s a bit hard to believe but not the mind obsessed enough to pursue it. The irony once again revolving around the gap between what this mind believes is true and what in fact is true instead. And this gap is a doozy.

What then is the mathematical equivalent of human psychology?

FERMAT’S ROOM [La habitación de Fermat] 2007
Written and directed by Luis Piedrahita, Rodrigo Sopeña

[b][first lines]
Galois: Do you know what prime numbers are? Because if you don’t, you should just leave now.

…

Hilbert [reading from a letter he received]: “If you are capable of solving the following puzzle, which I don’t doubt, you will be invited to a weekend gathering with the most ingenius mathematical minds. Sincerely, Fermat.”
Friend: What’s the puzzle?
Hilbert: A sequence of numbers — 5-4-2-9-8-6-7-3-1 — You have to find the pattern.[/b]

Consider Rosetta Stone before you try it yourself.

[b]Hilbert: The more you study logic, the more you value coincidence.

…

Hilbert: This reminds me of the riddle about the shepherd who has to cross the river in a boat with a sheep, a wolf and a cabbage. You know it? Only two can go in the boat. For example, the shepherd and the sheep, or the shepherd and the cabbage. You have to work out how he can cross the river without the wolf eating the sheep or the sheep eating the cabbage.
Pascal: Why would a shepherd bring a wolf? What’s more, I don’t see what it has to do with this situation.
Oliva: Perhaps Professor Hilbert meant that one of us is the shepherd; another, the wolf; another, the sheep; and another, the cabbage

…

Hilbert: Kepler’s old problem about how to pile up spherical forms.
Galois: It’s still unsolved, no?
Pascal: The fact is, mathematicians worry about stupidities with no practical application.
Galois: It’s not stupid to be famous for solving a problem. It should be any mathematician’s dream.
Pascal: Then I’m not any mathematician.
Hilbert: I recently read a study about the human being’s most common impossible wishes—to fly and to be invisible, not to resolve mathematical enigmas.

…

Pascal: When you investigated Fermat and got all that information, do you remember if he was a murderer?

…

Galois: What happens if we don’t solve it in one minute?
Pascal: The wall is moving…The room is shrinking.

…

Galois: You think it’ll resist?
Pascal: Pressure is unpredictable. It can turn coal into dust or a diamond.
Hilbert: Was that Archimedes?
Pascal: No, MacGyver.

…

Policeman: Don’t you know that 28% of people who die on the roads travel like you, without their safety belt?
Fermat: So all the rest, the other 72%, die with their belt on.

…

Oliva: I won’t fit!
Pascal: If your head fits, your body fits.
Oliva: Try fitting your ass into a helmet![/b]

One of the numerous puzzles they must solve to keep the room from shrinking:

[b]Pascal: In the False Land, all the inhabitants always lie. In the True Land, all the inhabitants always tell the truth. A stranger is trapped in a room that has two doors. One door leads to freedom, the other doesn’t. The doors are guarded by a jailer from the False Land and another from the True Land. To find the door to freedom the stranger can only ask one question to one of the jailers, but he doesn’t know which is from the False Land and which is from the True Land. What question should he ask?

…

Hilbert: Then I really was first. I resolved Goldbach’s Conjecture before anoyone…[/b]

oops

[b]Oliva: Why don’t we just admit we’re going to die.
Pascal: We’ll die at the same age as Galois, Sabuco and Pascal but David Hibert died in his 80s. This guy wasn’t intending to die. This room was a test of our intelligence. There must be a way of passing it.

…

Oliva: What will you do with that?
Galois: It’s a problem. If I publish this demonstration just as it is, Efren Cuevas will go down in history and he’ll have won. But if I publish it with my name, it wouldn’t be ethical, but it would be the easiest for me, and take a load off my mind.
Pascal [taking the proof and tossing it into the lake]: Problem solved.
Galois: But why?! It was the solution to a problem unsolved for over 250 years. How can you do that to the world?
Pascal [looking around] The world is as it was.[/b]

And to this day Goldbach’s Conjecture remains unsolved.

Yes, the same Walter Herzog who made Gizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World and Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

From Wiki:

“Although plot details and many of the characters in Aguirre come directly from Herzog’s own imagination, historians have pointed out that the film fairly accurately incorporates some 16th-century events and historical personages into a fictional narrative. The film’s major characters, Aguirre, Ursúa, Guzman, Inez, and Florés, were indeed involved in a 1560 expedition that left Peru to find the city of El Dorado. Commissioned by Peru’s governor, Ursúa organized an expeditionary group of 300 men to travel by way of the Amazon River.”

A long time ago and far away. But in some respects it is just around the corner. Might can make it right. And madness can make it all the more grueling to endure.

As with Ran you can mute the sound and the sub-titles. Just let it all flow by visually.

AGUIRRE THE WRATH OF GOD [Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes] 1972
Written and Directed by Werner Herzog

[b]Gaspar: Our indian slaves are useless. The changing climate kills them off like flies. Most of them die of colds. We don’t even have time to give them a Christian burial.

…

Aguirre: Perucho, don’t you think the cannon might be a little bit rusty?

…

Inez: You are our last hope.
Gasper: Thou lettest man flow on like a river and Thy years know no end. As for man his days are like grass, as a flower in the field so he blossoms. For when the wind passes over it and it’s gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more. You know, my child, for the good of our Lord the Church was always on the side of the strong.

…

Pedro: Don’t be afraid. Aguirre would never dare to rebel against the Spanish crown.
Inez: We are not in Castile here.

…

Perucho: La la la la la…la la la la la

…

Runo [to Flores]: The Spaniards gave me the name Balthasar but my real name is Runo Rimac. It means, He who speaks". I was a prince in this land. No one was alowwed to look directly into my eyes. But now I’m in chaims like my people. Almost everything was taken from us. I can’t do anything. I’m powerless. But I am also sorry for you because I know there is no escape from this jungle.

…

Gasper [to Runo]: Has this savage ever heard of our savior Jesus Christ? And of our mission to spread the true word of God? [to the Indian] This is the Bible. It contains the words of God that we preach to bring light into the darkness of your world [to Runo] Does he understand at all, that this book contains the Word of God? [to the Indian]: Take it in your hand, my son.
[the Indian brings the Bible to his ear to hear the Word of God]
Runo [translating]: He says, it doesn’t talk.
[the Indian drops the book]
Gasper: Kill him for blasphemy!

…

Fernando: All the land to our left and all the land to our right now belongs to us. I solemnly and formally take possession of all this land. Our country is already six times larger than Spain, and everyday we drift makes it bigger.
Aguirre: Have you seen any solid ground that would support your weight?

…

Aguirre [to Perucho]: That man is a head taller than me. That may change.

…

Aguirre: I am the great traitor. There must be no other. Anyone who even thinks about deserting this mission will be cut up into 198 pieces. Those pieces will be stamped on until what is left can be used only to paint walls. Whoever takes one grain of corn or one drop of water… more than his ration, will be locked up for 155 years. If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees… then the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the wrath of god. The earth I pass will see me and tremble. But whoever follows me and the river, will win untold riches. But whoever deserts…

…

Aguirre: Mexico was no illusion!

…

Aguirre: My men measure riches in gold. It is more. It is power and fame.

…

Gasper [from his journal]: February twenty-second. The suffering is dreadful. Most men have fever and hallucinations. Hardly anyone can stand upright. The soldier Justo Gonzales drank my ink, thinking it was medicine. I can no longer write. We are drifting in circles.

…

Okello: [Hallucinating] That is no ship. That is no forest.
[Arrow hits him]
Okello: That is no arrow. We just imagine the arrows because we fear them.

…

Aguirre: When we reach the sea we will build a bigger ship, sail north and take Trinidad from the Spanish crown. From there we’ll sail on and take Mexico from Cortez. What great treachery this will be! Then, all of New Spain will be in our hands and we’ll stage history like others stage plays. I, the wrath of God, will marry my own daughter and with her I’ll found the purest dynasty the earth has ever seen. Together, we shall rule this entire continent. We will endure. I am the wrath of God! Who else is with me?![/b]

All the others are dead.

There are countless ways for a child to “come of age”. This is one of them.

Just before each bout of introspection the lens shifts to the vast expanse of the cosmos itself. For, among other things, perspective. But how much can a child really know about all the things that shape [and then reshape] the “adult world”? Like being a mother too sick to love her own child.

MY LIFE AS A DOG [Mitt liv som hund] 1985
Directed by Lasse Hallström

[b]Ingemar: Just think of Laika, the space dog. They stuck her in a Sputnik and blasted her into outer space. Wires in her brain and in her heart showed how she was doing. I don’t think she felt too hot. For five months she circles the planet until her food ran out. Then she starved to death.

…

Gunnar: Was she nude?
Ingemar: Yes.
Gunnar: Stark naked? No clothes at all?
Ingemar: Nope.
Gunnar: How were the melons?
Ingemar: I don’t know. I didn’t really look.
Gunnar: I bet you saw something though.
Ingemar: I think they were hot.
Gunnar: I see. Uh, next time I’ll go with you, that guy can’t be trusted.
Ingemar: Don’t worry. He doesn’t care about her, only the lines.
Gunnar: Sure! That son of a bitch!

…

Berit: I had no idea you were so curious. Did you see much?
Ingemar: Everything.
Berit: If you keep this up, they won’t let you take communion in church.
Ingemar: It was worth it.

…

Ingemar: Actually I’m lucky considering how things could be. You’ve got to compare things, get a frame of reference…You’ve got to keep a sense of proportion. This guy wanted to beat the record at jumping over buses on a motorcyle. He lined up 31 buses. If he’d settled for 30, he might have survived.

…

Gunnar: By the way the artist is now world famous. It’s true. I could hardly believe it either. He exhibits all those naked ladies of his in the States. What a lucky guy. It twists you up inside.

…

Berit: Oh, you’ve got to see the sculpture. It’s still only a model but I’ll be up in the square in Kalmar.
Worker: That’s not all that will be up.

…

Grandmother: Yes, indeed, life is difficult at times. It’s not easy being left over.

…

Ingemar: Strange, but I can’t help thinking about Laika, But it’s not good to think too much.

…

Saga: I’ve grown. I don’t think binding will help any more. That means no more soccer for me.
Ingemar: It’s not that bad.
Saga: Take a look.[/b]

I think she’ll still fool them for a year or two more.

[b]Saga: What’s wrong, do you need tweezers to pull it out?

…

Saga [to Ingemar barking like a dog]: What are you supposed to be? That dog of yours? It’s dead. Haven’t you caught on to that yet?

…

Ingemar: Keep them in suspense, you bastards!

…

Ingemar: You’ve got to compare things. Take Laika, for instance. They must have known they couldn’t bring her down again. They knew she would die. It was like putting her down.

…

Ingemar [weeping]: Why didn’t you want me, Mama? Why didn’t you want me?[/b]

Yet she wanted him dearly.

You’ve good taste in movies.

I might come around to throwing in a few movies (if you don’t mind) when I’m in the right mood.

Anyhow, just wanted to compliment your taste.