philosophy in film

A great movie that just happens to use the Navy as a prop? Nope, the military here is a lot more than that. I know because I spent three years in the Army. But [as expected] it leaves out the part about American foreign policy and the military industrial complex. But then you have to make allowances for a film this engaging.

And, yes, yet another cynic bites the dust. It seems that flying jets and the love of a good woman is what it took this time. Maybe I ought to give it a try.

All that aside the film captures dramatically how life can spin you around and around and around. Some things are beyond your control and some things depend almost entirely on what you are able to with them.

IMDb

According to “High Concept”, Charles Fleming’s biography of producer Don Simpson, the producer was alleged to have said to the auditioning Debra Winger, “There may be somebody else for this part. I need somebody fuckable. You’re not fuckable enough.”

Like, uh…

Kristy McNichol and Brooke Shields were each offered the role of Paula, but both turned it down.

And here are four actors who turned down the role Richard Gere finally took: John Travolta, Jeff Bridges, Kurt Russell and [believe it or not] John Denver.

Jack Nicholson turned down the Gunnery Sargent Foley role played by Louis Gossett

Wiki

Richard Gere balked at shooting the ending of the film, in which Zack arrives at Paula’s factory wearing his naval dress whites and carries her off the factory floor. Gere thought the ending would not work because it was too sentimental. Director Taylor Hackford agreed with Gere until, during a rehearsal, the extras playing the workers began to cheer and cry. When Gere saw the scene later, with the music underneath it (“Up Where We Belong”) at the right tempo, he said it gave him chills. Gere is now convinced Hackford made the right decision. Screenwriter Michael Hauge, in his book Writing Screenplays That Sell, echoed this opinion: “I don’t believe that those who criticized this Cinderella-style ending were paying very close attention to who exactly is rescuing whom.”

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN
Directed by Taylor Hackford

[b]Byron: I’m out at sea three weeks out of every month, and when I’m back at port I don’t have time for this daddy stuff 'cause that’s not who I am.
Young Zack: That’s okay, sir
Byron: Wait a second, kid, you don’t understand. I’m too old for this. I don’t care what the Navy says. This is no place to bring up a kid like I told you on the telephone. You’re better off at that state school back in Virginia.
Young Zack: I’m never going back there. They treat me like shit.
Byron: Maybe that’s not for you to say. Goddamit, don’t look at me that way. What happened to your mother had nothing to do with me.
Young Zack: It did. You said you were gonna come back. You promised.
Byron: Is that what she said? That’s a female lie. That’s bullshit! That’s a lie!
Young Zack: I found your letters. I read them right after she did it. You said you were gonna come back for us. You said you loved her, and she believed you. You’re a liar!

Zack: Get ready. This one will blow you away.
Byron: Nothing you do is ever going to surprise me. Tell me.
Zach: I joined the Navy.
Byron: You joined the Navy?
Zach: That’s right, I did. I’m on my way to Port Rainier, this officer’s training school over there.
Byron: What for?
Zach: Jets. I want to fly jets.

Byron: I just don’t want to see you do something you’ll regret. You got to give up six fucking years of your life if you want to fly. Six fucking years, with the most uptight assholes on earth.

Foley: I expect to lose half of you before I’m finished. I will use every means necessary, fair and unfair, to trip you up, to expose your weaknesses as a potential aviator and as a human being, understand? The price at the other end is a flight education worth one million dollars! But first, you got to get past me!

Sid: It’s grown out more than an inch, pal.

Paula: So, you got a girl, Mayo the wop?
Zach: No, Paula the Pollock. And I ain’t looking for one either.

Zach: I should have walked away.
Paula: Zack, he didn’t give you a choice.
Zach: A man’s always got a choice.
Paula: Where did you learn to fight like that?
Zach: I don’t want to talk about it.
Paula: All right [pause] You know, it wouldn’t kill you to open up to me.
Zach: What do you want? You want to fuck? Come here. Take your clothes off. I’ll give you a good fuck.
Paula: Where’s that coming from?
Zach: Get on the bed.
Paula: I wouldn’t fuck you now if…
Zach: Then get the hell out! I don’t need this shit!!
Paula: Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m not some whore you brought in here. I’m trying to be your friend, Zack.
Zach: Then be a friend. Get out of here.
Paula: Fine. Fine. Man, you ain’t nothing special. You got no manners. You treat women like whores. If you ask me, you got no chance of being no officer!

Foley: You never know when you’ll trip up, Mayo. It could be the grades…or it could be some character flaw that comes out under stress.

Foley: In every class, there’s always one joker who thinks that he’s smarter than me. In this class, that happens to be you. Isn’t it, Mayonnaise?

Foley: Mayo, I want your D.O.R.
Mayo: No sir. You can kick me outta here, but I ain’t quitting.
Foley: Get into your fatigues, Mayo. By the end of this weekend, you’ll quit.

Foley: Wave good-bye to your buddies, Mayonnaise! Oh, I forgot. You don’t have any buddies, do you? Only customers!

Foley: Look over there, Mayo. Look at her. She decided to stay instead of taking liberty this weekend. She may not make it, but she’s got more heart and character than you’ll ever have!

Foley: You can forget it! You’re out!
Mayo: Don’t you do it! Don’t! You… I got nowhere else to go! I got nowhere else to go…I got nothin’ else. I got nothing else…

Zach: Sid…
Sid: Yeah?
Zach: Thanks.

Zach: My old lady took a bottle of pills one day when I was at school.
Paula: Oh, God.
Zach: The thing that got me about it…She didn’t leave a note. She didn’t… Nothing. She just checked out. I always hated her for that.
Paula: Oh, God. That must really hurt.
Zach: Hurt? No. No. You’re all alone in the world. Once you got that down, nothing hurts anymore.

Lynette: Paula…just how far would you go to get Zack? Would you let yourself get pregnant?
Paula: No way, Lynette. Would you?
Lynette: Well…I never used to think I’d do something like that. But I don’t know anymore. Nine weeks just ain’t long enough for a guy to fall in love with you.
Paula: That doesn’t justify trapping him or getting pregnant. I can’t believe you’d think that. It’s real backward.
Lynette: It ain’t any more backward than the way these hotshot assholes use us till they’ve had enough, then ditch us like we’s trash.

Bunny: Comes a time, right after survival training, they start to believe they can make it without you.
Paula: [referring to Zack] They said he’d already left, didn’t know when he’d be back.
Bunny: If he ain’t called by now Paula, he ain’t gonna call.
[Paula runs out crying]
Lynette: [angrily] Bunny!
Bunny: [bitterly] May they all crash and burn.

Mother: Let him go. Don’t trick him or trap him.
Paula: I wouldn’t do that. I’d never try to trap him.
Mother: If you find him, you’ll say anything. You will.
Paula [agonizing over it]: Mama, you’re right.

Zack: [getting ready to eat in the mess hall] Sit. Adjust. Pray. Attack.

Zach: It’s like your brother getting killed. It’s the same damn thing - him getting killed instead of you. That’s why you promised to marry Susan. You do everything out of some bullshit code of ethics.
Sid: It may be bullshit to you, but I wasn’t raised that way! We’re responsible for the people in our lives. That’s all that separates us from the animals! I’m not like you, Mayo. I can’t shit on people and sleep at night.

Lynette: Sid…There’s no baby.
Sid: What?
Lynette: I’m not pregnant. I got my period this morning. There’s no baby, Sid.
Sid: I’ll be goddamned. [then, after thinking about it] What do you say we get married anyway? I love you! I don’t think I really knew that till just now, just this second. I have never been happier in my life than I have in the last seven weeks. I’ve never felt so relaxed, and I’ve never felt so loved for who I really am. Lynette, marry me. Make me the happiest man in the whole world.
Lynette: I’m sorry, Sid. But I don’t want to marry you. I really like you, and we’ve had ourselves some really great times, but I thought you understood. I want to marry a pilot. I want to live my life overseas…the wife of an aviator!
Lynette: [Getting visibly angry with Sid, whom she now considers a total loser] Damn you! Goddamn you! Nobody D.O.R.'s after 11 weeks! NOBODY!

Zach: What did you tell him about the baby?
Lynette: That there isn’t one…as of today. I got my period this morning. I couldn’t believe it. He still wanted to marry me.
Zach: What did you say?
Lynette: I said no, of course. I don’t want no Okie from Muskogee. I can get that right here.

Zach: Why can’t I learn? Just like her all over again. Just like her.
Paula: Zack, don’t do this to yourself. You didn’t kill your mother. You didn’t kill Sid. They killed themselves. There’s nothing you could have done about it.
Zach: I got to leave. Want money for a cab or something?
Paula: I don’t deserve that. You’re not the only one that’s feeling awful. Maybe I had something to do with it. I knew what Lynette was doing.
Zach: Look, you got no problems! Another class will come through soon. You and Lynette… right back into business!
Paula: That’s not fair. I never lied to you. I never did what Lynette’s doing. - I’m not Lynette. I love you. I’ve loved you since I met you. Don’t you understand?
Zach: No! I don’t want you to love me! I don’t want anyone to love me. I just want out!

Zach: Sir, this officer candidate requests permission to see you in private… Sir.
Foley: [gently] … Mayo, the whole class already knows about Candidate Worley, and we’re sorry.
Zach: Oh, I bet you are.

Mayo: I never would have made it without you.
Foley: I know.
Mayo: I’ll never forget you.
Foley: Get the hell out of here.[/b]

This is a true story. But truer for some than for others.

Like other communities organized crime families revolve around rules and rituals. You do the same thing in the same way over and over again. This way you know that what you do is necessary. It weights everything down: right, wrong…good, bad.

Punishment, reward.

But this is always in an endless tug of war with power.

Joe becomes Donnie in part because it feels good to be weighted down. And damn near anything will do.

We also learn that most of these guys are…pretty fucking dumb. And scary.

Here’s what I can’t figure. Why doesn’t the mob make it a requirement that anyone who is just “a friend of mine” commit some major crime. Like, say, murder. Every undercover cop would be exposed then. What am I missing?

IMDb

In Joseph Pistone’s report, he lists Lefty, Lefty Guns, Lefty Two Guns, Half Cocked, and Horse Cock as false names for Benjamin Ruggiero (Pacino)

The film’s version of “Lefty” Ruggiero is an amalgam of the real “Lefty” and the real “Sonny Black” Napolitano.

The movie ends with the implication that Lefty was killed after being “sent for”. In real life, the FBI intercepted Lefty on the way to being killed and arrested him. Sonny Black, however, was “sent for” and subsequently murdered, his body turning up a year later on Staten Island. The individual who had orchestrated his murder, Joe Massino, wasn’t convicted until 2005. Lefty was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, extortion, distribution of a controlled dangerous substance, and running an illegal gambling operation; he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but received early parole in 1992 after it was discovered he was suffering from terminal cancer. He died of lung cancer in 1994.

DONNIE BRASCO
Directed by Mike Newell

[b]Lefty: You know who you’re talkin’ to, my friend?..In all the five boroughs, I’m known. Forget about it. I’m known all over the fucking world. Anybody ask anybody about Lefty from Mulberry Street. You’re pissing up the wrong fucking tree.

Lefty [to Donnie]: I got 26 fucking hits under my belt and you’re the one he’s scared of. Hah!

Lefty: A wise guy’s always right. Even when he’s wrong, he’s right.

Lefty: There’s the boss. And, under him, there’s the skipper. You know how this works?
Donnie: Yeah, it’s kinda like in the army.
Lefty: Bullshit. It ain’t nothing like the army. The army is some guy you don’t know telling you to go whack some other guy you don’t know.

Lefty: [to Donnie] When I introduce you, I’m gonna say, “This is a friend of mine.” That means you’re a connected guy. Now if I said instead, this is a friend of ours that would mean you are a made guy. A Capiche?

Lefty: Wise guy don’t carry his money in a wallet. Wise guy carries money in a roll. Like this. Beaner on the outside…That mustache—you gotta get rid of that mustache. That’s against the rules. And get a pair of pants. No jeans. This ain’t a fucking rodeo. Dress like I dress.[/b]

Apparently, it’s against the rules to have a mustache in the FBI too.

[b]Joe [to his FBI contact]: I got him. I got my hooks in him.

Lefty: I’ll die with you, Donnie. But anything happens, I’m responsible.

Joe: Seven days a week I’m out there busting my ass and this is the kind of shit I have to come home to.
Maggie: You said it would be three months. It’s going on two years.

Donnie: Sonny Black is your friend. What’s the big deal?
Lefty: Friend? What friend? The whole time Sonny Black’s in the can he’s got a family, he’s got a mistress. He’s got a mistress for the mistress. I watched out for all of them. Me. I was the only one. Nobody else gave a fuck. 200 fazools, week in, week out.
Donnie: Exactly. Why are you worried then?
Lefty: Donnie, sometimes I thing in that orphanage they dropped you on your fucking head.
Donnie: How am I supposed to know if you don’t explain it to me?
Lefty. I know how a hit gets set up. You think I don’t know that? How many times have I been on the other end of that phone? Twenty-six times.
Donnie: Right, but you just got finished saying that you and Sonny Black are friends.
Lefty: Donnie, I got sent for. In our thing, when they send for you, you go in alive, you come out dead, and it’s your best friend that does it.

Lefty: Whackin’ the boss…another thing I get left out of.

FBI contact: What’s forget about it?
Joe/Donnie: Forget about it is like if you agree with someone, you know, like Raquel Welch is one great piece of ass, forget about it. But then, if you disagree, like A Lincoln is better than a Cadillac? Forget about it! you know? But then, it’s also like if something’s the greatest thing in the world, like mingia those peppers, forget about it. But it’s also like saying Go to hell! too. Like, you know, like “Hey Paulie, you got a one inch pecker?” and Paulie says “Forget about it!” Sometimes it just means forget about it.

Sonny Black [to Donnie]: You belong to me now. That’s it.

Maggie: Joe, I want a divorce.

Sonny Black: You know what to do when you find that rat, Lefty.
Lefty: Could be I found him already.

Nicky: C’mon Donnie, let’s fillet this fat fuck.[/b]

The last words he ever spoke.

[b]Lefty: Nicky was a rat because Sonny Black says he was a rat. Who the fuck am I? Who am I? I’m a, a spoke on a wheel. And so was he, and so are you

FBI Agent [to Maggie]: Standard procedure is that he checks in with us every day. Now maybe he might miss a day or two but it’s been three weeks now.
Maggie: I want you to tell me where my husband is. I demand that you tell me where he is.
FBI agent: We can’t tell you because we don’t know. If he gets in touch with you, you have to talk sense into him.
Maggie: You want me to help you out? You want me to help the FBI that used my husband and sucked him dry?

FBI agent: Mrs. Pistone, there is a war going on in the Mafia family where Joe is undercover. Three leaders of a rival faction have been murdered. He’s right in the line of fire not because he’s one of us but because he is one of them.

FBI agent: We’ve got to pull him out. Help us. He’ll listen to you.
Maggie: You think so? He was here a week ago. He snuck into the house after I was asleep. He didn’t even wake me up. Didn’t even say hello to me. He came to get a sports coat.

Lefty: We got the contract to kill Sonny Red’s kid. Now, this thing gets done right…when the books open up, I’m proposing you for membership. You know what that means?
Donnie: Yeah.
Lefty: What?
Donnie: It means I can’t fuck it up.

Lefty [to Donnie]: You gonna be a made man. A Capiche?

Joe [to Maggie]: This job is eating me alive. I can’t breathe anymore. If I come out alive, this guy Lefty dies. They’re gonna kill him because he vouched for me…because he stood up for me. I live with that everyday. That’s the same thing as me putting the bullet in his head myself. I’ve spent all these years trying to be the good guy in the white fucking hat. For what? For nothing. I’m not becoming like them; I am them.[/b]

We are made to sympathize with Lefty here. But let’s not forget who he is: He himself has already “whacked” 26 others.

[b]Donnie Brasco: You think I knew that was a federal boat? You think I’m a fucking rat…?
Lefty: How many times have I had you in my house? If you’re a rat, then I’m the biggest mutt in the history of the Mafia.

Lefty [to his wife after being “sent for”]: And listen to me, if Donnie calls tell him if it was gonna be anyone, I’m glad it was him. All right?

Afterword:

The evidence collected by “Donnie Brasco” led to over 200 indictments and over 100 convictions. Special agent Joseph Pistone lives with his wife under an assumed name in an undisclosed location. There is still a $500,000 open contract on his head.[/b]

I can still add and subtract. And multiply. Though I’m not too sure about division anymore. This is a movie about math and I am more or less lost when it comes to anything beyond, well, arithmetic. But then most of us are, right?

On the other hand, mathematicians have often been portrayed as being rather deficient regarding most everything else.

In any event, I’ve always been more intrigued by the things in which there seem to be no “proofs”.

Catherine. Is she crazy? How do we prove it? Some people are so far out in left field it just makes sense to try to pull them back in. But others are out there for a perfectly good reason and fuck those meddlesome “members of the family” ever intent on saving them. From themselves in other words. I like wackos myself. The kind that know the difference between being and not being too far gone. The truly self-contained iconoclasts.

And what can we prove today about going insane?

IMDb

The plot of the original play was based on the life of John Nash, professor at Princeton, who won the Nobel Prize for his work in game theory and also spent many years suffering from schizophrenia. His story was later adapted into A Beautiful Mind.

wiki

[b]Since 1993 (when Andrew Wiles first claimed to have proven Fermat’s Last Theorem), there have been several feature films about mathematicians, notably Good Will Hunting (1997), A Beautiful Mind (2001) and Proof (2005).

The mathematician Daniel Ullman says: “Of these three films, Proof is the one that most realistically illustrates the world of mathematics and mathematicians.” Timothy Gowers of the University of Cambridge, a Fields Medalist, acted as mathematical consultant, but Ullman praises the director too: “Madden should be credited with capturing the feeling of the mathematical world.”[/b]

{PROOF}
Directed by John Madden

[b]Robert: I hope you’re not spending your birthday alone.
Catherine: I’m not alone.
Robert: I don’t count.
Catherine: Why not?
Robert: I’m your old man. Go out with friends.
Catherine: Yeah, right.
Robert: Aren’t your friends taking you out?
Catherine: Nope.
Robert: Why not?
Catherine: For your friends to take you out, you generally have to have friends.

Catherine: Wait.
Robert: What’s the matter?
Catherine: It doesn’t make sense.
Robert: Sure it does.
Catherine: No.
Robert: Where’s the problem?
Catherine: The problem is, you are crazy.
Robert: So?
Catherine: So you said a crazy person would never admit that.
Robert: Ah. I see.
Catherine: So?
Robert: It’s a point.
Catherine: So how can you admit it?
Robert: Well because, I’m also dead.

Hal: Some friends of mine are in this band. They’re playing in a bar on Diversey. They’re good. They have this song called “i.” You’d like it. Lowercase i. They just stand there. They don’t play anything for three minutes.

Catherine [to her well meaning but hopelessly officious sister]: I’m fine, you know. I’m totally fine. And then you show up here with these questions. Like, “Are you OK?” with that soothing tone of voice. And…Oh. The poor policemen. I think the policemen can handle themselves. And bagels and bananas and jojoba. And “Come to New York.” And vegetarian chili! I mean, it really pisses me off, so just save it.[/b]

I hear that!!

[b]Catherine [at the church service before her father is buried]: Wow. I can’t believe how many people are here. I never knew he had this many friends. Where have you all been for the last five years? I guess to you guys he was already dead, right? I mean, what’s a great man without his greatness? Just some old guy. So you probably wanna catch up on what you missed out on. Um… He used to read all day. He kept demanding more and more books. I was getting them out of the library by the carload. There were hundreds. And then one day I realized he wasn’t reading. He believed aliens were sending him messages through the Dewey decimal numbers in the books. He was trying to work out the code. He used to shuffle around in his slippers. He talked to himself. He stank. I had to make sure he bathed, which was embarrassing. Then he started writing 19, 20 hours a day. I got him this huge case of notebooks. He used every one. I dropped out of school. You see, he was convinced that he was writing the most beautiful, elegant proofs. Proofs like music. I’m glad he’s dead.

Hal: You sure read a lot of math books.

Catherine: I didn’t find it.
Hal: Yes, you did.
Catherine: No, I didn’t
Hal: You didn’t find it?
Catherine: I didn’t find it. I wrote it.

Hal: I know how hard it would be to come up with something like this. You’d have to be your dad at the peak of his powers.
Catherine: Just because you and the rest of the geeks worshipped him does not mean he wrote the proof.
Hal: He was the best. My generation hasn’t produced anything like him. He revolutionized the field twice before he was 22. I am sorry. It’s too advanced. I don’t even understand most of it.
Catherine: You think it’s too advanced?
Hal: Yes.
Catherine: It’s too advanced for you.
Hal: You could not have done this work.
Catherine: But what if I did?
Hal: Well, what if?
Catherine: It would be a real disaster for you. Wouldn’t it? You and the other geeks who barely finished their PhD’s, who are marking time doing lame research, bragging about the conferences they go to. Wow. Playing in an awful band and whining that they’re intellectually past it at 26, because they are!

Catherine: Am I on that list?
Claire: What?
Catherine: “Square away crazy sister.” Check.

Catherine: Dad, I think we should get some sleep.
Robert: Not until we talk about the proof!
Catherine: I don’t want to talk about it.
Robert: Goddammit, open the goddamn book! Read me the lines!
Catherine: [reading from Robert’s Notebook] “Let X equal the quantity of all quantities of X. Let X equal the cold. It is cold in December. The months of cold equal November through February. There are four months of cold, and four of heat, leaving four months of indeterminate temperature. In February it snows. In March the Lake is a lake of ice. In September the students come back and the bookstores are full. Let X equal the month of full bookstores. The number of books approaches infinity as the number of months of cold approaches four. I will never be as cold now as I will in the future. The future of cold is infinite. The future of heat is the future of cold. The bookstores are infinite and so are never full except in September…”

Catherine: [voice over] How many days have I lost? How can I get back to the place where I started? I’m outside a house, trying to find my way in. But it is locked and the blinds are down, and I’ve lost the key, and I can’t remember what the rooms look like or where I put anything. And if I dare go in inside, I wonder… will I ever be able to find my way out?

Catherine: …and there’s no way to prove that I wrote it.
Hal: No. But we could sit down, we could talk it through and determine if you couldn’t have.[/b]

It’s hard to get your mind wrapped around the fact this guy is The Dude!

You reach a point in life where you figure you’ll be dead and gone without ever knowing if there is someone else “out there”. Films like this are just the attempt to imagine what it might be like if there are. And if they ever make it down here.

I think it is reasonable to assume we will never be the ones who go out and find them. Not in my lifetime. After all: “The star nearest to the Sun is Proxima Centauri. Astronomers measure the distance between stars in units called light-years. A light-year equals 5.88 million million miles. And Proxima Centauri is 4.3 light-years from the Sun.”

All the usual Hollywood tropes are on display here. But it’s still a film well worth your time.

IMDb

The role of Starman originally went to Kevin Bacon.

Sorry, but I can’t even imagine that.

wiki

This script was being developed at Columbia at the same time as another script about an alien visitation. The studio did not want to make both, so the head of the studio had to choose which film to make; he decided to make this one and let the other script go to a rival studio. The other script was for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Clip from the ending [with some great music]

youtube.com/watch?v=w4KHF4gUlPQ

STARMAN [1984]
Directed by John Carpenter

[b]Starman: I send greetings.
Heinmuller: What the hell’s going on here?
Jenny: I’m being kidnapped!
Starman: Greetings.
Heinmuller: You better let her go pal, I’ll give you some greetings.

Jenny: How’d you do that? Those little gray jobs?

Shermin: I think the balloon has gone up, sir.

Jenny [to starman]: I have to go to the bathroom. The ladies room. The rest room. It’s when a person has to…uh…oh, to hell with it. Figure it out myself.

Jenny: You want to know what kidnapped is? It’s being dragged out of your house in the middle of the night by some—whatever you are…being forced to drive all night with a gun pointed in your side and not knowing where you’re going or what’s going to happen to you after you get there. So, if you’re going to shoot me, go ahead…becasue Iwould rather be shot than go on being scared to death.
Starman: I mean you no harm, Jenny Hayden.

Starman: Okay?
Jenny: Okay? Are you crazy? You almost got us killed! You said you watched me drive, you said you knew the rules!
Starman: I do know the rules.
Jenny: Oh, for your information pal, that was a yellow light back there!
Starman: I watched you very carefully. Red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast.

Fox: Do you seriously expect me to tell the President that an alien has landed, assumed the identity of a dead housepainter from Madison, Wisconsin and is presently out tooling around the countryside in a hopped up orange and black 1977 Mustang?

Fox: What the hell are we talking about here?
Scientist: We’re hypothesizing a technology that’s 100,000 years ahead of us. We’re the ancients, Mr. Fox.

Deer Hunter: What’s the matter, cried when you saw Bambi?
Starman: Define ‘Bambi’?
Deer Hunter: Huh?
Jenny: He doesn’t understand, he’s not from around here.
Deer Hunter: [laughs] You don’t speaka English, huh? Heh-hey!
[walks away snickering]
Jenny: [to Starman] Steer clear of that bozo.
Starman: Define ‘bozo’?

Starman: Define “shit”.

Starman: Shit!
Jenny: Don’t mind him. He’s just learning English.
Roadhouse Waitress: Well, he’s got a hell of a start on it!

Jenny: No, no. You eat that last. Sandwich first, dessert last.
Starman: Why?
Jenny: I don’t know. It’s just how it’s done.

Cook: What’s your line?
Starman: Line?
Cook: Work. Whaddya do when you’re not hitchin’ rides?
Starman: Oh, I make maps.
Cook: Make any money?
Starman: I make maps.
Cook: Well, you don’t get rich cookin’ either!

Cook: You’re not from around here, are you?

Starman: Jenny, there is something I must tell you. I gave you a baby last night.
Jenny: No that’s impossible. I told you, I can’t have a child.
Starman: Believe what I tell you.

Starman: Define “giant jackpot”.

Fox: Shermin, you are finished. I will have you eviscerated for this.
Shermin: Well, as much as I hate to stoop to symbolism.
[Shermin takes a puff from cigar and blows smoke into Fox’s face][/b]

Never been to a French prison. But the guy who made the film hired lots of men who had. The film is said to be a realistic portrayal of what the conditions are like. The rest [as usual] is politics. And not the voting kind.

This is a world in which so much revolves around simply surviving from day to day. Among monsters. And it is the monsters who run the prison. So you become a monster too. The bigger the better. And then there are the monsters outside the prison. It’s a world most of us could not possibly be farther removed from.

And Malik is always asking the same questions: What am I willing to do in order to survive? And what do I really have a choice regarding?

Malik is an Algerian immigrant who gets sucked into a gang of Corsican mobsters. The world he lives in now is surreal to say the least.

And what an unimaginably vicious dog-eat-dog world of thuggery. And then, for some, they still have to fit in the family they love. And cancer.

IMDb

[b]To ensure the authenticity of the prison experience, Jacques Audiard hired former convicts as advisers and extras.

Prior to making this film, Jacques Audiard had screened a film to prisoners in France. Shocked by the conditions in the prison facility, he decided his next film would take place in one.[/b]

A PROPHET [Un Prophète] 2009
Written and directed by Jacques Audiard

[b]Chef de détention: Any family on the outside?
Malik: No, sir.
Chef de détention: No one to wire you money?
Malik: No, sir.
Chef de détention: Friends inside, or outside?
Malik: No one, sir.

Cesar: Just remember one thing. Now that you’re in on it, if you don’t kill him, we’ll kill you.

Ceasar’s thug: Your turn now. You be the girl.

Santi: [handing Malik a bag of gifts] From César Luciani. You’re now under his protection.

Vettori: These fucking Arabs! At least dogs fuck in silence.

Ryad: One day I saw a job ad. For security guard. I didn’t have a dog, so I bought one secondhand. I didn’t know, so I got a rottweiler. Know what they’re like? And his name was Tyson. He came with the name Tyson. He was humongous! See this? This was the size of his poops. He took enormous dumps. Bigger than mine. So I work in a store. A big supermarket. I leave the dog to sniff around. I go outside for a cigarette. Then I try to go back in. I couldn’t. He didn’t always recognize me.
Malik: Your own dog?
Ryad: But he was crazy. Tyson was a psycho. I go inside and he comes charging towards me. I panic, reach out my arm. He grabs me like this. I take out my mace, spray him. He lets go. I run out, scared shitless. What do I do? I leave him inside. Soon the employees start coming. I didn’t know they used a back door to go inside. The hound had a field day. He tore every last one to pieces.

César: If you weren’t spying, what were you doing? Making fun?
Malik: If I was making fun, I’d never have told you.

Cesar: Llbanez will transfer you to the cell next door. I’ll have you made a porter. You’ll get paid, shop at the commissary, walk anywhere you want. You’ll be my eyes and my ears.
Malik: And the others?
Cesar: What, my friends? You watch them too.

Malik: If you want a favor, learn to ask.
Hassan: What do you want?
Malik: What can I get out of it?
Hassan: Respect.
Malik: Do I look Corsican?

Sampierro: César said you ask no questions.
Malik: César said I’d be paid.

Cesar [looking over at the Muslims]: Am I crazy or do they keep multiplying? Soon they’ll bring out the rugs. Before, we ruled the yard. Good thing they’re dumb. If they stopped thinking with their balls they would have evolved more.

Malik: [his hands tied] Is this necessary?
Lattrache: Doesn’t bother me.

Lattrache: You’re their Arab. They protect you.
Malik: No, I work.
Lattrache: What’s the price? You rat? Run errands? Suck them?
Malik: What the hell?
Lattrache [pulling a gun on him]: Why does an Arab work for the Coricans? You belly-dance? You their waitress?

César: I’m going to ask a favor of you, not because you work for me, but because I trust you. Understand the difference?
Malik: I’m not sure.

Malik: Want to know how I feel?
César: I couldn’t care less.

Malik: Are you Jacky Marcaggi? Don’t talk! I can’t hear! Just nod…Your pal Luciano sent us to kill you. I won’t. I’ll leave him to you. Take your revenge![/b]

There are rats and then there are rats. But what does it take to be one kind rather than the other?

Same thing as with Donnie Brasco: Costello wants to know if Billy is a rat, working for the cops. Well, order him to hit the next guy he wants whacked. Order him to commit a major crime. Would he if he were a cop? Isn’t that what gangs do?

Of course, Frank…he’s kind of a rat himself, isn’t he?

What must it be like to live in a world where you really can’t trust anyone around you. A world where every other word out of your mouth [and every other word you hear] is probably a lie. And one in which you have to pretend to be someone else. Slipping in and out of very different frames of mind.

And somehow this is all about “being Irish” too—as though there must be a gene for that.

IMDb

[b]Mark Wahlberg based his performance on the police officers who’d arrested him about two dozen times in his youth, and the reactions of his parents who had to come bail him out with their grocery money.

The only remake of a foreign film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.

The Departed, and the character of Francis “Frank” Costello (Jack Nicholson), is loosely based on the story of Whitey Bulger [born 1929], a Boston Southie considered by Law Enforcement to be one of the last Irish mobsters. Bulger often gave information to John Connolly, an FBI agent, on the Italian Mafia in Boston, in order to take over the city himself. Bulger spent his career as a psychotic killer and even ran guns for the IRA in the 1970s. Even after Bulger stopped passing on actual information to the FBI, Connolly still protected him from the Staties. Bulger was captured in Santa Monica, CA in 2011 after being on the run for over 15 years and is currently awaiting trial after pleading not guilty to nearly 50 criminal charges.[/b]

wiki

Film critic Stanley Kauffmann describes a major theme of The Departed as one of the oldest in drama—the concept of identity—and how it “affects one’s actions, emotions, self-assurance and even dreams.”

Maybe, but not the way in which Donnie Brasco experienced it. The persona did not become the actual point of view.

Andrew Lau, the co-director of Infernal Affairs, who was interviewed by Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, said, “Of course I think the version I made is better, but the Hollywood version is pretty good too. [Scorsese] made the Hollywood version more attuned to American culture.”

THE DEPARTED
Directed by Martin Scorsese

[b]Frank: I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me. Years ago we had the church. That was only a way of saying we had each other. The Knights of Columbus were real head-breakers; true guineas. They took over their piece of the city. Twenty years after an Irishman couldn’t get a fucking job, we had the presidency. May he rest in peace. That’s what the niggers don’t realize. If I got one thing against the black chappies, it’s this - no one gives it to you. You have to take it.

Frank: You do well in school?
Young Colin: Yeah
Frank: Good. So did I. They call that a paradox.

Frank: Church wants you on your place. Kneel, stand, kneel, stand. If you go for that sort of thing, I don’t know what to do for you. A man makes his own way. No one gives it to you. You have to take it. “Non serviam.”
Young Colin: James Joyce.
Frank: Smart, Colin. Guineas from the north and down Providence try to tell me what to do. And, uh, something maybe happens to them. Maybe, uh, like that.
[cuts to Costello executing two people on beach]
Frank: Jeez. She fell funny.
[chuckles at the dead bodies]
Mr. French: Francis, you really should see somebody.

Frank: When you decide to be something, you can be it. That’s what they don’t tell you in the church. When I was your age they would say we can become cops, or criminals. Today, what I’m saying to you is this: when you’re facing a loaded gun, what’s the difference?

Billy: Look at it this way: You’re a black guy in Boston. You don’t need any help from me to be completely fucked.

Billy: You a psychiatrist?
Dignam: Well, if I was I’d ask you why you’re a Statie making 30 grand a year. And I think if I was Sigmund fuckin’ Freud I wouldn’t get an answer. So tell me, what’s a lace-curtain motherfucker like you doing in the Staties?
Billy: Families are always rising or falling in America, am I right?
Queenan: Who said that?
Billy: Hawthorne.
Dignam: [makes a farting sound] What’s the matter, smartass, you don’t know any fuckin’ Shakespeare?

Queenan: We have a question: Do you want to be a cop, or do you want to appear to be a cop? It’s an honest question. A lot of guys just want to appear to be cops. Gun, badge, pretend they’re on TV.
Dignam: Yeah, a lot of people just wanna slam a nigger’s head through a plate-glass window.
Billy: I’m all set without your own personal job application. Alright, Sergeant?
Dignam: What the fuck did you say to me, trainee?
Billy: [to Queenan] With all due respect, sir, what do you want from me?
Dignam: Hey asshole, he can’t help you! I know what you are, okay? I know what you are and I know what you are not. I’m the best friend you have on the face of this earth, and I’m gonna help you understand something, you punk. You’re no fuckin’ cop!

Mr. French: [calmly] Hey, hey, hey… do you know me?
Billy: No, no.
Mr. French: Well, I’m the guy that tells you there are guys you can hit and there’s guys you can’t. Now, that’s not quite a guy you can’t hit, but it’s almost a guy you can’t hit. So I’m gonna make a fuckin’ ruling on this right now. You don’t fuckin’ hit him. You understand?
Billy: Yeah.

Dignam: My theory on Feds is that they’re like mushrooms, feed 'em shit and keep 'em in the dark.

Frank: I’m going to have my associate search you.
Billy: No, no one’s fucking searching me. Searching me for what?
Frank: Contra-fucking-band. Take your shoes off.
[French slams Costigan into a chair]
Mr. French: Shoes.
Frank: [to Costigan] I knew your father.
Billy: Yeah? You know he’s dead?
Frank: Oh, sorry. How’d he go?
Billy: He didn’t complain.
Frank: Yeah, that was his problem.
Billy: Who said he had a problem?
Frank: I just said he had a fucking problem. There’s a man who could have been anything.
Billy: Are you trying to say he was nothing?
[French slams Costigan onto a pool table and continues his search]
Frank: I’m saying he worked at the airport.

Frank: Who let this IRA motherfucker in my bar?
[the man looks startled]
Frank: [laughs] Only kidding. How’s your mother?
Man in Costello’s Bar: Oh… I’m afraid she’s on her way out.
Frank: [walks away] We all are. Act accordingly.

Colin: What Freud said about the Irish is: We’re the only people who are impervious to psychoanalysis.[/b]

No, not really.

[b]Frank: Good day, father.
Older Priest: Good day, Francis.
Frank: You recall our chat? Little boys. Sucking on their peckers, etc… and so forth. I am as God made me. Is that your rationale? May I remind you - in this archdiocese, God don’t run the bingo.
Young Priest: May I remind you - that pride comes before the fall.
Frank: How’s Sister Mary Teresa doing? Had a tasty relationship before she took her vows.
[Costello hands the priests a nude of the nun]
Frank: Enjoy your clams, cocksuckers.

Billy [to Madolyn]: You sit there with a mass murderer. A mass murderer. Your heart rate is jacked, and your hand… steady. That’s one thing I figured out about myself in prison. My hand does not shake…ever

Billy: So, do they all come in here and cry your cops?
Madolyn: Sometimes they do yeah. If they’ve had to use their weapons…
Billy: Use their weapons? Let me tell you something. They signed up to use their weapons. Most of them. But they watch enough TV so they know they have to weep after they use their weapons. There is no one more full of shit than a cop…except for a cop on TV.

Dignam: Hey, what do you think…you can pop somebody and there’s a special card to play? That guy, Jimmy Bags whose jaw you broke happens to work undercover for the Boston Police Department.
Billy: Look, I’m going fucking nuts, man. I can’t be someone else every fuckin’ day. It’s been a year of this. I’ve had enough of this shit!

Billy: When are you gonna take Costello, huh? I mean, what’s wrong with taking him on any one of the million fucking felonies that you’ve seen him do, or I’ve seen him do? I mean, I mean, he murdered somebody, right? The guy fucking murders somebody, and you don’t fucking take him! What are you waiting for, honestly? I mean, do you want him to chop me up and feed me to the poor? Is that what you guys want?

Billy [to Madolyn]: Two pills? Great. Why don’t you just give me a bottle of Scotch and a handgun to blow my fucking head off?

Madolyn: Why is the last patient of the day always the hardest?
Billy: Because you’re tired and you don’t give a shit. It’s not supernatural.

Frank: If these chinks wanna nuke Taiwan anytime in this century, they better shape up and show me $1 million dollars! What we generally do - in this country! - is one guy brings the item, and the other guy pays him. “No tickee, no laundry”!

Frank [to Billy]: They didn’t figure we had a Navy.

Billy: [to Frank Costello] You accuse me once, I put up with it. You accuse me twice… I quit. You pressure me to fear for my life and I will put a fucking bullet in your head as if you were anybody else. Okay?
[Frank drops something. He reaches under the table and pulls up a gun. He looks at it as if he’s never seen it before and then points it at Billy]
Frank: You got something you wanna… ask me?
Billy: Look, you’re seventy fucking years old. One of these guys is going to pop you. One of your own guys is going to pop you. As for running drugs, what the fuck. You don’t need the money or the pain in the ass, and they’re going to catch you.
Frank: I haven’t “needed the money” since I took Archie’s milk money in the third grade. Tell you the truth, I don’t need pussy any more either… but I like it.

Billy: Frank, how many of these guys have been with you long enough to be disgruntled, huh? Think about it. You don’t pay much, you know. It’s almost a fuckin’ feudal enterprise. The question is, and this is the only question, who thinks that they can do what you do better than you?
Frank: The only one who could do what I do is me. A lot of people had to die for me to be me. You wanna be me?
Billy: I probably could be you, yeah. Yeah, I know that much. But I don’t wanna be you, Frank. I don’t want to be you.
Frank: “Heavy lies the crown”…that sort of thing?
Billy: Yeah.

Ellerby: Queenan is dead. I’m your boss now.
Dignam: I don’t give a fuck, I’d rather hand in my papers first.
Ellerby: World needs plenty of bartenders - two weeks, with pay!

Frank [to Colin]: One of us had to die. With me, it tends to be the other guy.

Frank: Fucking rats. It’s wearing me thin.
Mr. French: Francis, it’s a nation of fucking rats.

Frank: How the fuck did this happen?
Colin: You’re an FBI informant? Are you fucking kidding me?
Frank: Grow up!
[laughing]
Frank: Of course I talk to the FBI.
Colin: Do they know who I am?
Frank: I…I never gave up anybody who wasn’t going down anyway. Nobody knows nothin’.
Colin: Frank… Frank. Do they know about me?
Frank: I know about you, Colin. You know I’d never give you up. You’re like a…
Colin: What, like a son? To you? Is that what this is about? All that murderin’ and fuckin’ and no sons?
[They shoot at each other]
Colin: Fucking rat prick!!

Colin: Okay.[/b]

How many reading this will be familiar at all with this particular war? Or, when push comes to shove, are they all pretty much the same: flailing testosterone.

The folly of war here is matched only by the folly of those fighting it. And that’s nothing compared to the folly of those fomenting it. The blind leading the blind doesn’t come close to describing it.

They argue less about what the war is being fought for than they do who started it and who is committing the most atrocities. According to “the world”: the Serbs. But at the time of the conflict a woman I worked with [a Serb] made it a point to put that in perspective day after day.

Then there’s the problem of language. Here are life and death situations that can sometimes come down to figuring out a way to communicate whether or not there are mines. They all know what mines are but they have only a primitive way in which to talk about them.

Think Catch 22 with [at times] even bigger idiots.

wiki

No Man’s Land (Bosnian: Ničija zemlja) is a 2001 war drama that is set in the midst of the Bosnian war. The film is a parable and marked the debut of Bosnian writer and director Danis Tanović. It is a co-production among companies in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Italy, France, Belgium and the UK. The film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2001.

NO MAN’S LAND [2001]
Written and directed by Danis Tanovic

[b]Ciki: Do you even know what’s the difference between a pessimist and an optimist?
Soldier: No, what?
Ciki: A pessimist thinks things can’t be worse. An optimist knows they can

Nino: What made you want to ruin this beautiful country?
Ciki: Us? You’re crazy. You wanted to separate not us!
Nino: Because you started the war!
Ciki: You started it!
Nino: You started it!
Ciki: You started it!
Nino: You started it!
Ciki: [aims the gun at him] Who started the war?
Nino [after long pause]: We did.

Nino: Why?
Ciki: Because I’ve got the gun and you don’t.[/b]

Later:

[b]Ciki: Why?
Nino: Because I’ve got the gun and you don’t. By the way, who started the war?
Ciki: We did.

Cera [who is laying on a bouncing betty]: I hope those aren’t my cigarettes.
Ciki: When I took them, I didn’t know you’d need them. But now I hope . . .
[lighting one up and taking a drag, then putting it into Cera’s mouth]
Ciki: …that you’ll die of cancer.

UNPROFOR Colonel Soft: Captain, you know perfectly well that there is nothing that I can do without the approval of the General Assembly of the United Nations. I don’t think the General Assembly will convene itself specifically to deal with the problems of two unknown men trapped in no man’s land.

Ciki: Cera, here come the Smurfs!

UN Sargent: What a fuck up!

Jane Livingston [reporter]: Neutrality does not exist in the face of murder. Doing nothing to stop it is, in fact, choosing. It is not being neutral.

UN Soldier: Fuck, what a job. They say a mine expert only ever makes one mistake.
UN Sargent: Two mistakes. The first is when he chooses the job.

Bomb disposal expert: This is the mine under the man? I can do nothing. It’s impossible to de-activate once the mechanism is on. This man is already dead.

Ciki: You’re all the same! And you vultures film it. You get good money? Does our misery pay well?

Cameraman: You’re sure you don’t want me to film the trench?
Jane Livingston: No. A trench is a trench. They’re all the same.[/b]

Of all the characters I have seen in all the films I have viewed [lots and lots and lots] Stephane comes closest to capturing the manner in which I view myself “out in the world”. In other words, he is a relatively innocuous sociopath. Which is to say he does not feel as others seem to; but he is able to blend in as though he does. But his is also the same heart in Spring, Summer and Fall. I don’t know the extent to which one is “born this way”. I have always felt this way. And later in life, as I became more and more familiar with human identity as dasein, this frame of mind became all the more entrenched.

Here is the scene that captures this best:

youtube.com/watch?v=oJzPd1WeTOk

I don’t see him as resentful of Maxime [or others]. Okay, maybe a little. Or, yeah, sure, sometimes, alot. Mostly though I see him as unable to be other than what he is. His congenital predisposition perhaps. Or maybe I simply project the manner in which I see myself into this character on the screen. It is so rare that I see myself in others cinematically. And never at all “in reality”.

IMDb

Emmanuelle Béart actually learned how to play the violin for the part.

wiki

An important part of the film is the use of chamber music by Maurice Ravel, played by Jean-Jacques Kantorow (violin), Jacques Rouvier (piano) and Philippe Muller (cello). New Zealand musician Jeffrey Grice appears in the film in the role of the pianist.

The music is superb. Excerpt. Sort of.

youtube.com/watch?v=20CxzzwBMs4

A HEART IN WINTER [Un Coeur en Hiver] 1992
Written and directed by Claude Sautet

[b]Stephane [voiceover]: Maxime and I have known each other so long, we didn’t need words. We work together but he is the boss.

Stephane [voiceover]: Maxime needs to expend himself. He is at one with his body. He so loves to win that losing for me becomes a pleasure. Life hangs lightly on him.

Stephane [voiceover]: Maxime never asks where I go or who I see when we aren’t together. Which is fine by me.

Stephane [at Helene’s bookstore]: It’s odd that in three-quarters of these books, when thay talk about love, whether it’s an airport novel, a masterpiece or a cook book it’s the same vocabulary. Overflowing.
Helene: And you find that obscene?
Stephane: No. As written it is often beautiful.[/b]

Then the classic discussion about Art and the masses:

[b]Daniel: What upsets me, as I wrote in my last book, is that on the pretext that it’s all culture some rate a pop video alongside a Claudel play, a Piero Della Francesca or the Ravel sonata our friend is playing. The confusion is unprecedented. It’s all lumped together, pell-mell.
Regine: People can still choose.
Daniel: Yes, but with everything meriting equal attention concensus of opinion becomes a wooly horror. I believe in a certain mental vigilance. Is that pompous?
Lachaume: No. We’re listening. It’s the voice of tradition.
Daniel: Tradition! So I’m a reactionary.
Lachaume: No, you speak for an anxious elite in a world threatened by democratic excess.
Daniel: I’ve fought elitism all my life.
Camille: There’s confusion, I agree. If culture is still a privilege it isn’t reserved for quite so few.
Daniel: It’s worse, all these clueless clodhoppers in the museums.
Camille: Yes, but if in this museum a clodhopper’s life is changed by a work of art, isn’t that something?
Stephane [to Camille]: You almost agree. For you, too, there’s the sensitive individual in the blind masses.
Camille: I didn’t say that.
Maxime: No, you said there’s a natural selection of people destined…
Camille: No not at all.
Maxime: You said some see things that others don’t.
Stephane: Yes. That’s what you said.
Camille: Yes. I mean, no. But…I exclude no one.

Lachaume: And you? You have no opinion?
Stephane: No.
Camille: None?
Lachaume: He’s above the debate.
Stephane: I hear contradictory arguments, all valid.[/b]

Bingo. But:

[b]Camille: We all cancel each other out, we can’t talk about anything anymore?
Stephane: A tempting prospect, I guess. I don’t have your goodwill.
Lachaume: We respect your silence.
Camille: In speaking, one risks sounding stupid. Not speaking you may appear intelligent.

Regine: I’d never met Stephane socially. He’s so disagreeable.
Maxime: You have to know him. It’s all a game he’s playing.

Helene: You establish a real intimacy.
Stephane: It was she who came to me.
Helene: But it’s what you were waiting for.
Stephane: Let’s say, what I hoped for.
Helene: Are you in love with her?
Stephane: In love?
Helene: I know you bristle at the word.
Stephane: No, it disorients me. Let me think. No, I don’t think I am. No.
Helene: Anyway, it’s Maxime she loves.
Stephane: Yes. At one point though I did get the impression she would rather be having dinner with me than with him.

Camille: He said he was coming, but he didn’t. He seemed put out when I called.
Regine: But you told him to stay away.
Camille: I’m not talking about Maxime. I’m talking about Stephane. I don’t vunderstand. When he’s there, he’s there. Then suddenly it’s as if I didn’t exist.

Camille: You might have sruples about seeing me because he is your friend.
Stephane: There’s no friendship between us.
Camille: No friendship?
Stephane: No. We’ve been partners for years. We complement each other.
Camille: He thinks of you as a friend.
Stephane: I can’t prevent that.
Camille: I don’t believe you.
Stephane: Why? Because it’s not something one admits? But it’s true. Are you shocked?
Camille: No. Saddened.
Stephane: Misusing words is sad.
Camille: You devalue them and everything else…You aren’t like that. Nobody is. It doesn’t happen. It’s a pose.
Stephane: What do you want? Do you want me to invent reasons, traumas? Unhappy childhood, sexual frustration, career nipped in the bud?

Camille: You act as though emotions don’t exist. Yet you love music.
Stephane: Music is the stuff of dreams.

Camille: I’m feeling low, Maxime. I don’t feel good about myself. And not because of the sonatas.
Maxime: Stephane…

Camille: It’s like…a pressure.

Camille: It was you I played for…I spoke to Maxime. About us. It was hard. He heard me out. I told him what’s happened. I want you. It’s not like me but I had to tell you.
Stephane: Camille…I don’t think I can give you what you are looking for.
Camille: You want it to. I know you and accept you as your are. I don’t mind about this close world you built around yourself long ago. I’m here for you. Look at me…You can’t go on living like that. You must see that you’re changing.
Stephane: Camille…You’re beautiful. You’re going to be a great musician. You have almost a surfeit of gifts…But you’re fooling yourself. You insist on seeing me as you imagine me…as someone else. But I’m not that person.
Camille: Don’t deceive yourself. It’s so simple.
Stephan: I must tell you the truth. I’d decided to seduce you, without loving you…probably to get at Maxime…You don’t understand Camille. You talk of feelings which don’t exist…to which I have no access. I don’t love you. [pause] You know…
Camille: Don’t talk, please. Don’t look at me.

Camille [later, in a restaurant]: We can’t leave it like this. I can’t accept it. Say something.
Stephane: Camille, I told you the truth.
Camille: You know you didn’t. At the studio that day it rained, I didn’t imagine your attentiveness.
Stephane: That’s my job.
Camille: Don’t tell me I was just like some musician on TV.
Stephane: No. Certainly not.
Camille: Your way of looking at me…
Stephane: I was sincere.
Camille: Everything we said to each other.
Stephane: But we didn’t say anything.
Camille: Oh, but we did. Or was it I who…No, it’s not possible. It’s not…possible. But why?
Stephane: I told you why.

Camille: But if it was just to get at Maxime, you should have fucked me. Sordid, but at least it’s life.

Camille: Ah, it seems he loves music because it’s the stuff of dreams and has nothing to do with life. You know nothing of dreams. You have no imagination, no heart, no balls![/b]

What does it mean to “have” things like this? Are there switches your brain you can turn on like there on the wall for lamps?

Lachaume: What did you have in mind? Disrupting things. The pleasure of demystification? But one can’t demystify feelings.

No more than Lachaume [very ill] cannot not die.

[b]Maxime: I went to see Lachsaume. He’s not well. He’s suffering. Doesn’t talk anymore. He wants to die.

Amet [to Stephane regarding Lachaume’s wish to die]: He’s been asking for three days. But I can’t. I can’t.[/b]

So, Stephane does it.

These are the kind of “terrorist cells” that prompted Dubya Bush to raise the security alerts over and over again. Especially as we got closer and closer to elections. And no one does farce better than the pols in Washington.

Alas, the closest thing to threats they have now are still on TV. Homeland, for example.

The “terrorists” are far more dangerous to each other.

I’m trying to imagine how actual Muslims who embrace jihad would react to the way in which they are portrayed here; as, well, buffoons. I smell fatwas looming.

Me, I don’t have a dog in this fight. If you know what I mean.

But, okay, sure: there are plenty of religious fanatics out there that really are dangerous. But not nearly as dangerous [sometimes] as those charged with hunting them down. In me own opinion, of course.

FOUR LIONS
Written and directed by Christopher Morris

[b]Barry: How can you do a jihadi video with a box on your head?!

Barry: Bollocks, I’m a liability? I am the Invisible Jihadi! They seek him here, they seek him there, but here’s not there, he’s blowing up your slag sister!
Omar: Invisible? Right. Like the time you got on the local news for baking a Twin Towers cake and leaving it at the synagogue on 9/11?

Omar’s Uncle: Is he as stupid as he looks?

Hassan: [Raps at community meeting]: I’m the Mujahideen and I’m making a scene / Now you’s gonna feel what the boom-boom means / It’s like Tupac said, “When I die, I’m not dead”/ We are the martyrs, you’re just smashed tomatoes / Allahu Akbar!
[Audience screams as Hassan detonate his suicide belt releasing party streams]
Hassan: [Looking at the audiences] Oh, what, man? Come on. What? Just cos I’m Muslim, you thought it was real?

Barry [to Hassan]: These are bad times, bro. Islam is cracking up. We got women talking back. We got people playing stringed instruments. It’s the end of days.

Jihadist at Pakistani training camp to Omar and Waj: You fucking Mr. Beans!!

Waj: Maybe it was God’s will I would do my video so…so maybe it’s not my fault.
Omar: No it’s your fault. It was God’s will that you were acting like a complete idiot, apparently. But it was definitely your fault.
Waj: So, if that was God’s will, then I am God’s fault?

Barry: Bomb the mosque!
Faisal: The Masjid?
Barry: Yeah, the masjid, the mosque. But we go in dressed like kuffars. They think it’s the unbelievers attacking, so all the Muslims rise up and fight back. Start things up proper, big time, fast-track, the final days – total war![/b]

You know, like the Weather Underground and the SLA. People actually do think like this!

Faisal: But my dad goes to the masjid. What if he’s in the masjid?
Barry: Has your dad ever bought Jaffa orange?
Faisal: Once or twice.
Barry: Right, he’s buying nukes for Israel. He’s a Jew.

The look on Faisal’s face? Priceless.

[b]Omar: We have instructions from the Emir to bring havoc to this bullshit, consumerist, godless, Paki-bashing, Gordon Ramsay “Taste the Difference” specialty cheddar, torture endorsing, massacre-sponsering, “Look-at-me-dancing-pissed-with-my-nob-out”, Sku1 Uncovered, “Who-gives-a-fuck-about-dead-Afghanis?” Disneyland!

Faisal: Let’s bomb Boots. They sell condoms that make you want to bang white girls…

Omar: The next time Barry tells you to do something—don’t.

Omar [to Ahmed]: Have you got 150 quotes from scholars saying we can’t squirt a water pistol?

Barry [lining up bolts for the bomb]: Jew. Gay. Fed. Sodomite. Gynecologist. Innocent bloke? Doesn’t exist. Leonard Cohen.

Barry: [after car breaks down…again]: Fuck, Fuck, fuck it!
Omar: Did you fix this then, Barry?
Barry: Yes, I fixed it!
Omar: Did ya?
Barry: It’s the parts…they’re Jewish.
Omar: What parts in a car are Jewish?
[pause]
Omar: Hmm?
Faisal: Spark plugs.
Barry: Spark plugs! Jews invented spark plugs to control global traffic.

Barry [looking down at a garbage bag containing what’s left of Faisal]: It was a martyr’s death.
Waj: Gone to paradise.
Barry: He disrupted the infrastructure.
Omar: How did he do that?
Barry: He took out a sheep.
Omar: Did he?
Barry: Attacked the food supply.
Omar: So what is he lads, is he a martyr or is he a fucking jalfrezi?
Barry: He’s a martyr. He’s part of the war.
Barry: What war? The war on kuffar sheep?

Waj: We’ll blow something up.
Omar: What we gonna blow up Waj?
Waj: The Internet. We’ll blow up the internet for brother Faisal.

Ahmed: Why not come to our study group, Omar?
Omar: What, and get a four-hour dose of that face? The floaty face of the wise bird, hovering on a million quotes, about to do a massive wisdom dump on my head. Forget it.

Omar: Faisal’s dead. He was carrying explosives and he tripped over a sheep. They’re total idiots, Sof.
Sofia: Well, it must have been God’s plan for him to be blown up on a sheep.
Omar: Come on Sof. How can that be God’s plan?
Sofia: Well, it can’t be God’s plan to leave the lads with Barry, can it?

Omar: Sof, I can’t even get them to stir their tea without smashing a window.

Omar: The police found Faisal’s head. The head you said you buried five feet under your shed. It fell out of a tree onto a dog.
Barry: Good. Dogs contradict Islam.
Claude: I told you it was a knee.
Barry: That was a head. It was obviously a head.
Calude: It had a hinge!!

Barry: You cannot win an argument just by being right!
Omar: No?
Barry: No.
Waj: I think maybe you can, Barry.

Omar [to Waj]: Bro, I swear, Bro, I may ask you to blow yourself up but I will never ask you to piss in your own mouth.[/b]

Like Barry did.

[b]Omar [near the place where they will all blow themselves up]: Waj, don’t listen to your brain, bro. The devil gets in there. What you’ve got to do is listen to your heart. Remember? What’s your heart say?
Waj: It say, “it’s wrong Waj, don’t do it”.
Omar: And what’s your brain say?
Waj: It says, uh, “we’re here together, strapped up, and it would be like, well, pathetic to cop out now.”
Omar: Right, um…
Barry: So, he should listen to his brain.
Omar: No, he’s got to listen to his heart, Barry. And this is Waj’s brain we’re talking about, Sorry, Waj.
Waj: No, I agree. I’m thick as fudge.
Barry: His brain says do it, so his brain’s got to be right!
Omar: That can’t be his brain, right? That’s his heart, Barry.
Waj: But it feels like my brain, brother.
Omar: Okay, this is what happened. What’s happened is that the devil has confused you. He’s swapped around your brain and your heart. So, don’t listen to what you think is your heart 'cause that is actually your brain in disguise as your heart. And what you thought is your brain, that’s your heart.
Waj: My brain is my heart.
Omar: You got it.

Barry: You just killed the special needs donkey!

Sniper 1: [into walkie-talkie] The bear is down. Repeat, the bear is down.
[to other sniper]
Sniper 1: We got the bear.
Sniper 2: I think that’s a Wookie. That’s a Wookie!
Sniper: No it’s not! It’s a bear!
Sniper: [into walkie-talkie] Is a Wookie a bear, Control?
Control: The bear target has changed. The bear target is now a honey monster.
Sniper 1: Is a honey monster a bear?
Control: A honey monster is not a bear.
Sniper: A honey monster is a bear. The honey monster is down. He was a target. He was a bear.
Sniper 2: The honey monster is not down, control. We have a Wookie down.
Control: What’s a Wookie?
Sniper 1: A bear. It’s a bear!
Sniper 2: No, it is a wookie. You just shot it as a bear.

Waj [answering his cell phone]: Omar?
Omar: Waj?
Waj: Are you in paradise, bro?
Omar: No, I’m in a cafe. Where are you?
Waj: I’m in a kabob shop.

Waj: I’ve got hostages and everything. Just like x-box Counter Strike.

Waj: When I press the clicker just think about taking out kuffar.
Hostage: But there’s no kuffar here, bro.
Waj: Yeah, but…Brother Fasial, he’s a martyr and he only blew up a sheep.
Hostage: I think you might be confused, brother.
Waj: I’m not.
Hostage: You look confused.

Waj [to Omar]: Tell me what to do, bro, I think I might be confused, but I’m not sure!

Malcolm Storge MP: The report makes crystal clear that the police shot the right man, but as far as I’m aware, the wrong man exploded.

TV newsman: This footage, taken from an American spy plane appears to show two trainee Mujahideens struggling with a rocket launcher, accidently firing it at an Arab training camp and blowing up Osama bin Laden.[/b]

So, much for Obama’s claim, right?

It’s not for nothing this film got a 96% rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

It’s a rather thumping take – cinematically – on American corporate/consumer culture. And certainly a funny one. And the ending is sublime: cynical to a T.

A fucking gem. Don’t die before you watch it.

IMDb

In his autobiography, Garry Marshall (who played the casino manager) wrote that he was initially exasperated by Albert Brooks demanding take after take of their scene. But once he saw the rushes and realized that his frustration made his character funnier, he deferred to Brooks’s comic judgment.

A true classic.

LOST IN AMERICA:
Written and directed by Albert Brooks [1985]

[b]David: Sleeping?
Linda: Yes.
David: Maybe we shouldn’t move.
Linda: (sitting up) Oh God. What’s the matter now?
David: Nothing. It’s just time to ask these questions.
Linda: No. We’ve sold our house and bought another one. These questions should have been asked before…You’re just nervous about tomorrow. You’ll get your promotion, don’t worry. We’ll move into our new house and we’ll be happy, okay?

David: Maybe we should’ve gotten a house with a tennis court.
Linda: Why? We don’t play tennis.
David: Sure we don’t play tennis. We don’t have a court. When you have a court, you learn.

Linda: I don’t believe you. One minute you want a tennis court, the next minute you’re worried about the movers packing a box? My God. Sometimes I wish we were a little more irresponsible.
David: What does that mean?
Linda: Nothing. Look, get some sleep, okay?
David: What do you mean “nothing”? If you’re saying we should be more irresponsible, I imagine you mean we’re too responsible? Is that right?
Linda: Well, sometimes I think that we are too controlled, yes.
David: Oh, I see. Well, tell me something? How do you go out and buy a four-hundred-thousand- dollar house and let a moving company pack everything and get maids and servants and live the good life and not be controlled?

Linda: I’m going to hate this house.
Patty: What are you talking about?
Linda: When the contractor left this morning, I was all alone there and I sat in the middle of the living room and I got so sad. I got this preview of the next ten years, I just started shaking. I’m so unhappy. I don’t like anything anymore. I don’t like my job. I don’t like my life. I don’t like anything. I feel dead.

David Howard: Shut up Brad! Your song stunk, I hate your suit and I could hurt you!

David [to Paul who just fired him]: It’s all right. I leave gratefully. But before I do I think the people in this office ought to know what went on here today. Don’t have lunch with this man! He’ll want to take you to lunch. Don’t go! He’ll tell you all about the future, how good it will be. I’ve seen the future. It’s a bald-headed man from New York!

David [to Linda]: Phil will buy that boat from that stupid boat catalog he’s been making me look at for the last two months, and he will crash that boat off Catalina Island, and he will drown and die and seals will eat him.

David: Linda, quit, I’ll wait right here.
Linda: Why - I can’t quit now.
David: Yes you can!
Linda: No I can’t!
David: I did!
Linda: I know, but even if I wanted to, my boss isn’t here, there’s no one I can quit to.

David [to Linda]: It’s time to get out. We have to touch Indians.

David: This is what we talked about when we were 19. Remember we kept saying “Let’s find ourselves,” but we didn’t have a dollar so we watched TV. Linda, this is just like Easy Rider except now it’s our turn. We can drop out and still have our nest egg.[/b]

Nest egg. Look for that expression to pop up again.

[b]David: We don’t want to stay in Las Vegas. It represents everything we left. This is the worst money-grubbing place in the world.
Linda: Yeah, I know. But just for tonight. Wouldn’t it be fun to have room service, make love in a big bed and watch porno movies.
David: Porno movies? But we want to touch Indians.

David: What’s this?
Bellman: Junior bridal suite.
David: Gee, I gave a guy a hundred bucks to get the best bridal suite in the house. Is there a senior bridal suite?
Bellman: I don’t know.
David: But I gave him $100.
Bellman: I don’t know.
David: Can I get into this room? Is there a big living room that goes here?
Bellman: I don’t know.
David: Do you think there’d be a way to get one large heart mattress? I don’t think you can push those together.
Bellman: I don’t know.
David: Not at all?
Bellman: I don’t know.

Linda: What do you think?
David: I think if Liberace had kids this would be their room.

Casino security: Hey, you can’t come in here dressed like that.
David: I saw Electric Horseman. An animal rode through here with lights on.

Linda: [repeated line, at the roulette table] Twenty-two, twenty-two, come on back to me, twenty-two, come on back to me!

Linda [still droning on, as though in a trance] : Twenty-two. Twenty-two. Twenty-two.
[It hits twenty-two]
David [whooping]: All right, all right. I’m sorry. How much?
Croupier: $35.
David: We’re up.
Linda: We’re still down.
David: How much?
Linda: Down.
David [going over to the casina manager]: How much?
Pit boss: Down!
David [to Linda]: What does that mean? How much have you lost?
Linda: Everything.[/b]

Everything:

[b]David: The cash in the room, you took that?
Linda: Yes.
David: You cashed your personal checks?
Linda: Yes.
David: You didn’t touch the traveler’s checks.
Linda: Yes.
David: No! The core of the nest egg!!

David: Why didn’t you tell me when we got married that you were this horrible gambling addict? It’s like when you have a venereal disease - you tell somebody!
Linda: But I’ve only gambled twice in my life. This was the second time

David: If you pick up that Keno card, I’ll kill you.

David [to Shuster the Casino manager]: My wife and I have dropped out of society and we are just going to roam across the county and find ourselves…We lost out nest egg here.
Shuster: I realize you lost a great deal of money. Your room and your food. Comped. Free.

David: Here’s my idea. As the boldest experiment in advertising history, you give us our money back.
Shuster: I beg your pardon?
David: Give us our money back. Think of the publicity!I mean, the Hilton, for example, they have billboards all over L.A. where they put the faces of the winners of those slot machines. Now, those people win a couple hundred thousand dollars, but the hotel is getting millions of dollars of publicity with those billboards because people drive by and say, “Gee, the Hilton looks like a nice place. Look at those smiling people.” So, what about a billboard with my wife and I on it and we would be smiling and there would be a saying, something like, “These people dropped out of society, they couldn’t take it any longer, but they made a mistake. They lost their nest egg at The Desert Inn, but The Desert Inn gave it back.” This gives the Desert Inn…Vegas is not associated with feeling.
Shuster: First of all, those people on the signs, they won. You lost…If we give you your money back everyone will want their money back. Gamblers will say, “Hey, go to the Desert Inn. If you lose, you’ll get your money back!”

Shuster: We’re finished talking.

Linda: Why don’t we talk about we are going to do now. Our dream is the same, we just don’t have any money. And we should stop saying that we don’t have any money because we do have some.
David [in a monotone]: We have $802.

David: Why didn’t you wake me up? We could have talked.
Linda: I didn’t understand it until now.
David; Oh great. Well, I’m glad you understand everything. Unfortunately, I’m still screwed up. And we don’t have the money to fix me. You’re fixed. And now we have a couple of hundred for me. $100,000 for you, $100 for me. And I think I was sicker than you to begin with!

David: Say it! Say it! Say, “I LOST THE NEST EGG.” Go on, say it!!!

Linda: In the movie you are basing your whole life on, Easy Rider, they had nothing. They had no nest egg!
David: Bullshit! They had a giant nest egg. They had all that cocaine!

David: Weren’t you scared? What were you talking about?
Linda [of the man who had picked her up hitch hiking]: Oh, God. I - He was telling me his whole life story. He was divorced. He got kicked out of the Army. He couldn’t keep a job. Do you know he escaped from prison?
David: What did he do?
Linda: Well, to hear him tell it, he says those two guys were dead when he got there.

Employment Agent: What was you previous salary?
David: $80,000 was the base salary and then I was on a bonus situation which would give me anywhere between $15,000 and $25,000 more. Generally around $100,000 a year.
Employment Agent: What bring’s you around these parts? Trying to double up on that income?

Employment Agent: I have jobs, but coming from your position and salary you wouldn’t be interested in them.
David: You don’t know me. I might love it.
Employment Agent: A crossing guard.
David: A crossing guard. What is that? At a school?
Employment Agent: Where else have you seen them work?
David: What does that pay?
Employment Agent: $100,000
[he bursts out laughing]
David: What does it really pay?
Employment Agent: It pays $5.50 an hour plus benefits.
David: And the benefits meaning?
Employment Agent: You get a ride to and from school if you need it.
David: Can’t you wrack your brains? Isn’t there an executive file? Or maybe you have a white=collar box or something?
Employment Agent: What sort of box would that be?
David: Just a box for higher paying jobs.
Employment Agent: Oh, I know! You mean the $100,000 box!

David: Well, I’m glad I could be your morning entertainment. But I want to tell you something. I made a statement. I made a statement.
Employment Agent: A statement?
David: Yes. Did you see Easy Rider?
Employment Agent: No. But I saw “Easy Money.” Rodney Dangerfield, I like him.

David: Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had a lot of fun these last two weeks. Things didn’t go like we hoped but if we’re still together now, after what happened, we won’t split up. That makes me feel great, and I’m real happy.
Linda: Isn’t that wonderful? I told you this would be a blessing.
David: Right. But given our ages and these jobs, we won’t see another nest egg for…ever. I think that there has to be some better way to rebuild than this. I thought of a plan that might speed things up and I thought maybe I should sound it out with you.
Linda: Really? I was kind of thinking the same things, too.
David: You were?
Linda: I was.
David: What is it?
Linda: What was your plan?
David: My plan is not a plan, just a back-up. What’s your plan?
Linda: I was thinking we go to New York as fast as we can.
David: And I eat shit?
Linda: Yeah.
David: My plan, too!

David: Brad![/b]

Forgetting the plot points of the film—art, performance, a striving for perfection, the clash of fiercely competitive personalites, sex, madness etc.—think about what it is they are dancing to. This:

Thomas:

We all know the story: virginal girl, pure and sweet, trapped in the body of a swan. She desires freedom, but only true love can break the spell. Her wish is granted in the form of a prince.But before he can declare his love, her lustful twin, the Black Swan, tricks and seduces him.Devastated, the White Swan leaps off a cliff, killing herself. But, in death, finds freedom.

Does that even matter? The simplistic [anachronistic] absurdity of the narrative? Or is the film itself an exercise in irony—the attempt to expose this in the ambigities that abound between the characters?

Being “evil” seems to revolve here around “letting go” and that seems to revolve somehow around sexuality. But how this is so is left to…each one of us?

The difficulty for viewers is that sometimes we don’t know what is true and what is only perceived to be true in the mind of someone who is obviously losing her own.

Or this just a horror film?

IMDb

The budget on this film was so tight that when star Natalie Portman had a rib dislocated during a lift and she called the producer for help. She was told that the budget was so low they had no medic. She stated that if they needed to cut items from the budget they could take away her trailer, instead of the medic. The next day her trailer was gone.

[Note: Some explicit dialogue]

BLACK SWAN
Directed by Darren Aronofsky

[b]Thomas: We open our season with Swan Lake. Done to death, I know. But not like this. We strip it down. Make it visceral and real…But which of you can embody both swans? The white and the black?

Thomas: The truth is when I look at you all I see is the white swan. Yes you’re beautiful, fearful, and fragile. Ideal casting. But the black swan? It’s a hard fucking job to dance both.
Nina: I can dance the black swan, too.
Thomas: Really? In four years every time you dance I see you obsessed getting each and every move perfectly right but I never see you lose yourself. Ever! All that discipline for what?
Nina: [whispers] I just want to be perfect.
Thomas: What?
Nina: I want to be perfect.
Thomas: [scoffs] Perfection is not just about control. It’s also about letting go. Surprise yourself so you can surprise the audience. Transcendence! Very few have it in them.
Nina: I think I do have it in me

Thomas [to Nina about Lily’s dancing]: Watch the way she moves…imprecise, but sensual. She’s not faking it. Pay attention.

Nina: Beth! I’m so sorry to hear you’re leaving the company.
Beth: What did you do to get this role? He always said you were such a frigid little girl. What did you do to change his mind? Did you suck his cock?
Nina: Not all of us have to.

Thomas: I got a little homework assignment for you. Go home and touch yourself.

Nina: What happened?
Thomas: She walked into the street, got hit by a car. I’m sure she did it on purpose.
Nina: How do you know?
Thomas: Everything Beth ever did came from within. From some dark impulse. It’s what could make her so thrilling to watch. Even perfect at times. But also destructive.

Thomas: That was me seducing you. It needs to be the other way around.

Erica: Has he tried anything with you? He has a reputation. I have a right to be concerned, Nina. You’ve been staying late so many nights rehearsing. I hope he isn’t taking advantage.
Nina: He’s not.
Erica: Good. I just don’t want you to make the same mistake I did.
Nina: Thanks.
Erica: Not like that. I just mean as far as my career was concerned.
Nina: What career?
Erica: The one I gave up to have you.
Nina: You were 28 and only in.
[stops]
Erica: Only what?
Nina: Nothing.
Erica: What!
Nina: Nothing.

Lily: I can’t believe he calls her that. It’s so gross.
Nina: I think it’s sweet.
Lily: Little princess? He probably calls every girl that.
Nina: No way! That’s just for Beth.
Lily: I bet he’ll be calling you little princess any day now.
Nina: I don’t know about that.
Lily: Sure he will. You just got to let him lick your pussy.

Erica: Do you have any idea what time it is?
Nina: [drunk] Uh… late?
Erica: Where have you been?
Nina: To the moon!
Lily: And back.
Erica: You’ve been drinking.
Nina: Ding ding ding ding!
Erica: What else?
Nina: Huh?
Erica: [raises voice] What else have you been doing?
Nina: Oh, you want to know their names?
[laughs]
Erica: You need to sleep this off.
Nina: No, there were two. There was Tom, there was Jerry.
[laughing]
Erica: [interrupts] Be quiet, Nina!
Nina: And I fucked them both!
Erica: [yells] Shut your mouth!

Nina: I felt it…perfect. It was perfect.[/b]

Was it? How the hell would I know?

The language here is English but these folks are sunk so far down in Dublin’s working class you will never understand them without subtitles. That alone speaks volumes about what you are about to see.

Of course conservatives will look at lives like this and say it makes no difference. Everyone is born with the equal opportunbity to make it in life. It’s all up to each of us as individuals.

And [theoretically] that may well be true. And these kids really are rather resourceful. But, hey, who is kidding whom.

KISSES [2008]
Written and directed by Lance Daly

Dylan: You better go back.
Kylie: Are ya gone mad?
Dylan: They’re not after you.
Kylie: Well, after breaking your kitchen window and bursting the pipes I’m going to be reefed out of it too.

Reefed out of it? Don’t ask. Me anyway.

[b]Kylie: What really happened to him?
Dylan: You know what happened to him. He ran off.
Kylie: That’s not what everybody says.
Dylan: What do they say?
Kylie: That your Da killed him…he killed him, Dylan. Everybody knows. He dumped him in the canal.
Dylan: They just had a big scrap. No one got killed, alright?

Gardiner Street woman: How you lose your brother?
Dylan: He ran away two year ago. Said if he didn’t, he’d kill me Da, and the prick wasn’t worth going to jail over.
Gardiner Street woman: He would kill his own father?
Dylan: Yeah. I would too. I hate the fucker.
Gardiner Street woman: But you’d go to jail.
Dylan: I’d make it look like an accident. Anyway, they can’t put you into jail until you’re eighteen.

Dylan: Your man was a bit old for ya.
Gardiner Street woman: I like old. Old has money.
Dylan: So you kiss him for money?
Gardiner Street woman: No. He is kind to me. And I have nothing to give him, only kisses.

Gardiner Street woman: When you kiss, you give or you take.

Kylie: It’s going hard.
Dylan: I know, yeah. Sorry.
Kylie: What ya thinking about?
Dylan: I don’t know.
Kylie: About me?
Dylan: No. I don’t know. It just goes like that by itself.
Kylie: Yeah I know.
Dlyan: How do you know?
Kylie: Me uncle made me put his in me mouth.

Kylie: Hey mister, are you Bob Dylan?
Dylan Impersonator: Who are you?
Kylie: Kylie Lawless. His name’s Dylan.
Dylan Impersonator: Yeah? Good name you got there, Dylan. So, what you doing kids? Bit late to be out.
Kylie: We’re after running away.
Dylan impersonator: Oh yeah. I know that feeling. I’ve been running away all my life.
Kylie: What are you running away from?
Dylan Impersonator: Myself mostly. Same as everyone I guess.

Kylie: How would you kill your Da? It’s not easy to kill a grown man, Dylan. Especially if you haven’t got a gun.
Dylan: I’d stab him.
Kylie: Stabbing wouldn’t kill him.
Dylan: I’d beat him with a hammer.
Kylie: Yeah, I’m sure you would!
Dylan: I’d drop something on his head from the bathroom window. A flower pot.
Kylie: That wouldn’t kill him, it’d just knock him out for a few hours.
Dylan: I’d kill him when he’s knocked out. I’d stand on his throat and hold his nose.

Kylie: [after Dylan helps Kylie escape from being abducted]
[Kisses her on the cheek. A pause]
Kylie: How’d you do that?
Dylan: Just closed my eyes and went for it. It’s all I had to give ya.
Kylie: You what?
Dylan: The kiss.
Kylie: No, ya fucking edjeet, hanging onto the car. How’d you do that?

Kylie: We can look out for each other. You were right, though. There is no devil. Just people.

Kylie: Is it him?
Dylan: No, but it may as well be.[/b]

Something terrible happens. And then the rest [like the reaction itself] is contingency, chance and change. The same as all that led up to it.

This is just one particular existential trajectory. But they don’t call it a rabbit hole for nothing.

For me it all revolves around dealing with a terrible tragedy with or without a faith in God. Just as with so many other things.

Then there is the “parallel universe” subtext. Though more “rational” isn’t this just another narrative about losing and yet not losing someone at the same time. In this universe your son gets hit by the car but in another universe he doesn’t.

To me it all reflects the manner in which we need [and utilize] psychological defense mechanisms to help us cope with the things we either don’t understand or cannot control.

This is another film that attempts to give voice to all that. It’s just better at it than most. Well, for an upper middle class couple living in New York, anyway.

IMDb

John Cameron Mitchell was attracted by the script, and by the personal fact that at 14, he lost his 10-year-old brother to a heart problem; “It was a sudden, unexpected event. It defined a family forever and recovering from it was something we’re still doing.”

wiki

The director of a 2010 stage production of Rabbit Hole, Robert A. Norman, declared, "The 2010 movie version starring Nicole Kidman lacked the humor and hopefulness of the stage script…However, Abaire, who wrote both the stage play and screenplay, believes, “For the film, we cut so much that worked in the play that I worried we had cut all the laughs. But there were all these other laughs I didn’t know were there.”

RABBIT HOLE
Directed by John Cameron Mitchell

[b]Becca: People just don’t scream at you for no reason.
Izzy: Sure they do, you should get out more.

Becca: You can’t keep doing this. You’re not a kid anymore.
Izzy: I didn’t know there was a cutoff date.
Becca: Well there is. For acting like a jackass, there’s a cutoff date…

Sam [at support group]: We just have to remind each other that it was just part of God’s plan. And we can’t know why. Only God can know why.
Ana: God had to take her. He needed another angel.
Sam: He needed another angel.
Becca: Why didn’t he just make one then?
[Silence. They all turn to Becca, confused.]
Becca: Another angel. I mean, he’s God after all. Why didn’t he just make another angel?[/b]

Here of course she is taking away the only rationalization afforded these folks. Though that is not her intention. Instead, it is more an expression of her own despair in not having it available to her.

[b]Becca: I’m just not ready yet, Howie. I’m sorry if you think that’s abnormal–
Howie: I don’t.
Becca: Then what’s the problem?
Howie: We need to at least head in that direction, which might feel strange at first, but…
Becca: But you wanna have sex.
Howie: Well don’t say it like that.
Becca: You’re trying to rope me into having sex!
Howie: I am not. I wasn’t roping you into sex.
Becca: Al Green isn’t roping?

Nat: No group tonight?
Becca: Howie’s there. It’s too much God talk for me, so…
(silence on the other end)
Becca: What.
Nat: Nothing. It’s just some people find that comforting.
Becca: Yeah, well, it pisses me off.
Nat: You know, Becca, when your brother died, I found the church very helpful.
Becca: I know. I know you did, but that’s you. That’s not me, and Danny…Danny isn’t Arthur.
Nat: You know, I brought you to church every Sunday.
Becca: Let’s not start this again, okay, Mom? I’m just…I’m just calling about the cake.
Nat: You’re not right about everything, you know? What if there is a God?
Becca: Then I’d say he’s a sadistic prick.
Nat: All right, Becca, that’s enough.
Becca: “Worship me and I’ll treat you like shit.” No wonder you like him. He sounds just like Dad.

Howie: Your sending the dog to your mother’s.
Becca: There was a lot going on, Howie. The dog got under foot.
Howie: Right. And he was a reminder.
Becca: Yes, he was a reminder, and I wanted one less reminder around here.
Howie: And since you never wanted the dog.
Becca: Oh, for godssake.
Howie: Well if I hadn’t bought the dog–
Becca: And if I hadn’t run in to get the phone or if I had latched the gate–
Howie: I left the gate unlatched!
Becca: Well I didn’t check it! I’m not playing this game again Howie. It was no one’s fault.
Howie: Not even the dog’s. Dogs chase squirrels, boys chase dogs.
Becca: I know that.
Howie: He loved that dog! And you got rid of it!
Becca: Just like I got rid of the video.
Howie (losing it): It’s not just the video! I’m not talking about the video, Becca! It’s Taz, and the paintings, and the clothes, and it’s everything! There are no pictures of him around! There’s nothing! You have to stop erasing him! You have to stop it! YOU HAVE TO STOP!

Jason [the boy who hit Becca’s son in the accident]: It’s a thirty zone. And I might’ve been going thirty-one. Or thirty-two. I would usually look down, to check, and if I was a little over, then I’d slow down obviously. But I don’t remember checking on your block, so it’s possible I was going too fast. And then the dog ran out really fast, so I swerved. I didn’t know…I didn’t know.
[pause…a connection between them]
Jason: I thought you should know. I might’ve been going a little over the limit. I can’t be positive.
Becca: It’s okay.
Jason: Okay.
Becca: I know, okay?
Jason: Thank you.

Howie: Why didn’t you tell me about Jason?
Becca (simply): For the same reason you don’t tell me why you come home reeking of pot.

Becca: Does it ever go away?
Nat: No, I don’t think it does. Not for me, it hasn’t - has gone on for eleven years. But it changes though.
Becca: How?
Nat: I don’t know…the weight of it, I guess. At some point, it becomes bearable. It turns into something that you can crawl out from under and carry around like a brick in your pocket. And you…you even forget it, for a while. But then you reach in for whatever reason and - there it is.

Becca: Do you think they’re real?
Jason: Parallel universes? I think it’s basic science. If space is infinite, then everything is possible.
Becca: So somewhere out there, there’s a version of me – what? – making pancakes? Or at a water park.
Jason: Wherever, yeah. Both. Laws of probability. There are tons of you’s out there, and tons of me’s.
Becca: So this is just the sad version of us.
Jason: I guess.
Becca: But there are other versions where everything goes our way.
Jason: Assuming you believe in science.
Becca: Well that’s a nice thought. That somewhere out there I’m having a good time.

Howie: It’s so quiet.
Becca: That’s because I slipped Taz a couple Ambien.
Howie (smiles): You’re funny.
Becca: You think I’m joking?

Becca: [voiceover] And then what?
Howie: [voiceover] I don’t know…Something though.[/b]

I love music. But I don’t particularly care for rap. In part because its more about the words than the way in which I use music for emotional sustenance. More irony, in other words.

I know practically nothing about this world. So I’ll have to take their word for it.

Rap can be politically astute. But so much of it is not. And some of it seems down right reactionary. The rhymes are always aimed at stumping on and humiliating one or another opponent. At least they are here.

The players here are mostly lumpen sorts who have two ways “out of the hood”: shooting hoops or rapping*. What’s the catch then? He’s white.

And he is one of the teeny tiny percentage of home-boys who might actually do it.

*Or you can win at bingo.

IMDb

The title is a reference to an actual road in Michigan that separates Detroit proper from seven northern suburbs. Eminem grew up near 8 Mile Road and also filmed parts of his “The Way I Am” video on 8 Mile.

8 MILE
Directed by Curtis Hanson

[b]Wink: Look, I’m telling you man, I’m on my way. And I’m takin’ you with me. You’re the franchise, baby.
Rabbit: The franchise? I’m takin’ a fuckin’ bus to work, man.

DJ Iz: Man, do you know how many abandoned buildings we have in Detroit? I mean, how are you supposed to take pride in your neighborhood with shit like that next door? And does the city tear them down? No, they too busy building casinos and taking money from the people.
Future: [Talking to Iz while rolling another joint] Shut yo preaching ass up! Don’t nobody care about that shit.
DJ Iz: Did you care when that crackhead raped that little girl? You think that woulda’ happened if he didn’t have an abandoned house to take her to?
Cheddar Bob: They caught him didn’t they?
Future: Yeah, they caught him. Dumb motherfucker went back to the house. How stupid could a nigga be?

Future: I had a lotta names, baby. I used to be called Maximum, Brimstone, Godfather D. Big D. None of ‘em worked, you-know-what-Ima-sayin’? 'Til one day someone said I was the future of hip-hop in Detroit. And that was it.

Alex: So, I hear you’re a real dope rapper.
Rabbit: A “dope rapper?”

Rabbit: Shit wrong with a free demo.
Future: Free comes with a dick up your ass, Jimmy.

Stephanie: Me and Greg are having problems.
Rabbit: He found out about the eviction?
Stephanie: No.
Rabbit: The settlement check ain’t coming?
Stephanie: No, it’s comin’ it’s comin’… it’s our sex life.
Rabbit: [disgusted] Mom, I don’t wanna hear this shit.
Stephanie: I mean it’s good, it’s real good. He just doesn’t like to…
Rabbit: [interupting] Mom, I don’t wanna hear this!
Stephanie: [complaining] Greg won’t go down on me.
Rabbit: [even more disgusted] Mom!!

Rabbit: Hey Sol, do you ever wonder at what point you just got to say fuck it man? Like when you gotta stop living up here, and start living down here?
Sol: It’s 7.30 in the morning, dawg.

DJ Iz: That’s why brothers need to sign themselves a deal. I’m telling you record labels supply niggas with the kind of benefits they need.
Sol: Dawg. We sign us a deal you can take the motherfucking benefits, we’re talking Bentley’s and Benjamins not Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
Future: Look to tell you all niggas the truth, I don’t give a fuck about none of that. I just wanna hit 31 and a 3rd on the box you know what I’m saying? One of them strong songs on JLB.
DJ Iz: No what we need to do is save that shit up and put it into some savings bonds every week, stack it and build our own studio.
Future: Savings Bonds?
Sol: [to DJ] Let me ask you a question Dawg. How the fuck are we brothers? We need fine bitches and fat rides, not no goddamn savings bonds.
Rabbit: That’s all we ever do is talk, man. All of us never do shit about nothin’. We’re still broke as fuck and live at home with our moms.

Rabbit [to Future]: You ain’t the future of shit, bitch. You’re just David fucking Porter.
Future: You know, do what the fuck you want, man, 'cause I don’t give a shit anymore.[/b]

Detroit basically had 10 mile 20 mile 30 mile from the designated area of the city that was young. “Streets” were named after distant. How do I know that coming from somewhere else outside of the US, someone told me. :slight_smile:

IMDb

A girl who thinks she is a combat cyborg checks into a mental hospital, where she encounters other psychotics. Eventually, she falls for a man who thinks he can steal people’s souls.

Really, that’s what the movie is about. There’s just something about the character Cha Young-goon, however, that keeps me fixated on the screen. And if someone told me this was based on a true story I really wouldn’t know how to react. Bizarre doesn’t even come close to it.

The blond eyebrows, for example.

And, if you can believe it, the guy who directed this also directed Oldboy.

For however much this might help you, here’s a trailer for it:

youtube.com/watch?v=1KaOLDZe2GI

IMDb

Su-jeong Lim got her weight down to just 39 kg to shoot this film.

I’M A CYBORG BUT THAT’S OK [Ssa-i-bo-geu-ji-man-gwen-chan-a] 2006

Written and directed by Chan-wook Park

[b]Attendent: Her grandmother thought she was a mouse.

Cha Young-goon: If only I had just one purpose for existing too.[/b]

That turns out to become an atomic bomb “to end zee world”.

[b]Cha Young-goon: Last night I stole Thursday.

Park Il-sun: Psycho.
Cha Young-goon: I’m not a psy-cho. I’m a cy-borg.

Cha Young-goon: Mom, I think I’m a cyborg.
Young-goon’s mother: …What is that?
Cha Young-goon: I think it’s kind of like a robot?
Young-goon’s mother: …Have you missed your period? Anything you want to eat? Like radishes?[/b]

Radishes, you see, were the only thing her beloved Granny would eat.

[b]Rain: The judge said something that only I could hear: “Defendant Park-lL will eventually vanish into a dot. You shithead!”

Rain: They say there is no cure for being anti-social. But the doctor says to have hope. Sometimes it goes away on its own 30 or 40 years later. Though ususally that 30 to 40 years are spent in prison…This is my fifth hospitalization in four years. With steady labor, I can manage the hospital and medication costs. But do you think I can hold out for 40 years like this…without vanishing into a dot?

Cha Young-goon [to an hallucinated Granny]: Just wait. I will get you your dentures…and kill them all.
Grannny: The purpose of existence is…of existence is…of existence is…

Doctor [after Cha Young-goon recovers from electric shock therapy]: Are you okay?
Cha Young-goon: Yes.
Doctor: Who am I?
Cha Young-goon: Dr Choi Seul-ki.
Doctor: Who is the president of Korea?..It’s okay. It’ll come to you. That kind of memeory skips back soon.
Cha Young-goon: I never knew it in the first place.

Rain: Your Granny vanished like a dot.

Granny [being taken away in an ambulance]: The purpose of existence is…of existence is…of existence is…

Rain [to Cha Young-goon]: I have to cut the skin to open the door.[/b]

You believe what you think is true. But I’ll be damned if I know what to think is true here.

There are people to this day who believe this is an actual documentary of “England’s loudest band”.

Warning:

If you have never seen this movie before DO NOT VIEW IT WHILE EATING. You could very easily choke to death laughing. Really. No bullshit. I almost did watching the scene when Derek gets stuck in the fucking pod.

Look for [among others]: Bruno Kirby, Ed Begley Jr., Billy Crystal, Howard Hessman, Paul Shaffer, Fed Willard, Fran Drescher, Angelica Huston.

IMDb

[b]The actors are all competent musicians, and the soundtrack is actually them playing.

Much of the dialogue was ad-libbed.

After the film opened, several people approached director Rob Reiner telling him that they loved the film, but he should have chosen a more well known band to do a documentary on.

Ozzy Osbourne has stated that when he first watched the film, he was the only person who wasn’t laughing…he thought it was a real documentary.

This is the only movie on IMDb that is rated out of 11 stars.

Rob Reiner was originally going to be one of the band members, but ended up directing the film after Harry Shearer commented that “he didn’t look good in spandex”.[/b]

wiki

[b]A 4½ hour bootleg version of the movie exists and has been traded among fans and collectors for years

In 2002, This Is Spinal Tap was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry.

Critics praised the film not only for its satire of the rollercoaster lifestyles of rock stars but also for its take on the non-fiction film genre. David Ansen from Newsweek called the film “a satire of the documentary form itself, complete with perfectly faded clips from old TV shows of the band in its mod and flower-child incarnations”

The movie cut a little too close to home for some musicians. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Dee Snider and Ozzy Osbourne all reported that, like Spinal Tap, they had become lost in confusing arena backstage hallways trying to make their way to the stage. Singer Tom Waits claimed he cried upon viewing it and Eddie Van Halen has said that when he first saw the film, everyone else in the room with him laughed as he failed to see the humor in the film.

U2 guitarist The Edge said in the documentary It Might Get Loud that when he first saw Spinal Tap “I didn’t laugh, I cried,” because it summed up what a brainless swamp big-label rock music had become.[/b]

THIS IS SPINAL TAP
Directed by Rob Reiner

[b]Marty: So in the late fall of 1982 when I heard that Tap was releasing a new album called ‘Smell the Glove,’ and was planning their first tour of the United States in almost 6 years to promote that album, well, needless to say I jumped at the chance to make the documentary, the, if you will, rockumentary that you’re about to see. I wanted to capture the, the sights, the sounds, the smells, of a hard-working rock band on the road. And I got that. But I got more, a lot more

Marty [reading from review]: “This tasteless cover is a good indication of the lack of musical invention within. The musical growth of this band cannot even be charted. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry.”
Nigel: That’s just nitpicking, isn’t it?
MARTY: ‘The Gospel According to Spinal Tap’: “This pretentious ponderous collection of religious rock psalms is enough to prompt the question: “What day did the Lord create Spinal Tap and couldn’t he have rested on that day too?” The review for “Shark Sandwich” was merely a two word review which simply read “Shit Sandwich”.

Limo driver: Excuse me… are you reading “Yes I Can”?
Band groupie: Yeah, have you read it?
Limo driver: Yeah, by Sammy Davis, Jr.?
Band groupie: Yeah.
Limo driver: You know what the title of that book should be? “Yes, I Can If Frank Sinatra Says It’s OK”.

Nigel: You can’t really dust for vomit.

Ian: The Boston gig has been cancelled…
David: What?
Ian: Yeah. I wouldn’t worry about it though, it’s not a big college town.

Bobbi: You put a greased naked woman on all fours with a dog collar around her neck, and a leash, and a man’s arm extended out up to here, holding onto the leash, and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it. You don’t find that offensive? You don’t find that sexist?
Ian: This is 1982, Bobbi, c’mon!
Bobbi: That’s right, it’s 1982! Get out of the '60s. We don’t have this mentality anymore.
Ian: Well, you should have seen the cover they wanted to do! It wasn’t a glove, believe me.

Ian: They’re not gonna release the album because they have decided that the cover is sexist.
Nigel: Well, so what? What’s wrong with bein’ sexy? I mean there’s no…
Ian: Sex-IST!

Nigel: Really the young girls quite fearful—that’s my theory. They see us on stage with tight trousers. We’ve got, you know, armadillos in our trousers. I mean it’s really quite frightening…

Nigel: Look…this guitar still has the tag on, never even played it.
Marty: [points his finger] You’ve never played…?
Nigel: Don’t touch it!
Marty: We’ll I wasn’t going to touch it, I was just pointing at it.
Nigel: Well…don’t point! It can’t be played.
Marty: Don’t point, okay. Can I look at it?
Nigel: No. no. That’s it, you’ve seen enough of that one.

Nigel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and…
Marty: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel: Exactly.
Marty: Does that mean it’s louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel: Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty: I don’t know.
Nigel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty: Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel: [pause] These go to eleven.

Marty: The last time Tap toured America, they where, uh, booked into 10,000 seat arenas, and 15,000 seat venues, and it seems that now, on the current tour they’re being booked into 1,200 seat arenas, 1,500 seat arenas, and uh I was just wondering, does this mean uh…the popularity of the group is waning?
Ian: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no…no, no, not at all. I, I, I just think that the…uh…their appeal is becoming more selective.

Nigel: It’s like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black.

Marty: Given the history of Spinal Tap drummers, uh, in the past, do you have any fears, uh, for your life?
Mick: When I did join, you know, they did tell me - they kind of took me aside and said, “Well, Mick. It’s, you know, it’s like this…” And it did kind of freak me out a bit. But it can’t always happen to every, can it? I mean, really…
Marty: Because the law of averages…
Mick: …The law of averages…
Marty: …Says you will survive.
Mick: Yeh

[Nigel is playing a soft piece on the piano]
Marty: It’s very pretty.
Nigel: Yeah, I’ve been fooling around with it for a few months.
Marty: It’s a bit of a departure from what you normally play.
Nigel: It’s part of a trilogy, a musical trilogy I’m working on in D minor which is the saddest of all keys, I find. People weep instantly when they hear it, and I don’t know why.
Marty: It’s very nice.
Nigel: You know, just simple lines intertwining, you know, very much like - I’m really influenced by Mozart and Bach, and it’s sort of in between those, really. It’s like a Mach piece, really. It’s sort of…
Marty: What do you call this?
Nigel: Well, this piece is called “Lick My Love Pump”.

Artist: Um, I’m not understanding it. What do you mean “the actual piece?”
Ian: Well I mean…I mean when you build the actual piece.
Artist: But this is what you asked for, isn’t it?
Ian: What?
Aetist: Well this is the piece.
Ian: This is the piece?
Artist: Yes.
Ian: Are you telling me that this is it? This is scenery? Have you ever been to Stonehenge?
Artist: No, I haven’t been to Stonehenge.
Ian: The triptychs are…the triptychs are twenty feet high. You can stand four men up them!
Artist: Ian, I was…I was…I was supposed to build it eighteen inches high.
Ian: This is insane. This isn’t a piece of scenery.
Artist: Look, look. Look, this is what I was asked to build. Eighteen inches. Right here, it specifies eighteen inches. I was given this napkin, I mean…
Ian: Forget this! Fuck the napkin!!![/b]

You know what’s coming! And the look on David’s face!!

[b]David: I do not, for one, think that the problem was that the band was down. I think that the problem may have been that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. Alright? That tended to understate the hugeness of the object!

Ian: Nigel gave me a drawing that said 18 inches. Now, whether or not he knows the difference between feet and inches is not my problem. I do what I’m told.
David: But you’re not as confused as him are you? I mean, it’s not your job to be as confused as Nigel!

Derek: David and Nigel are both like, uh, like poets you know like Shelley or Byron, or people like that. The two totally distinct types of visionaries, it’s like fire and ice, basically, you see, and I feel my role in the band, is to be kind of in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water, in a sense.

Jeanine: Oh, no! If I told them once, I told them a hundred times: put “Spinal Tap” first and “Puppet show” last.

Jeanine: We’ve got a big dressing room, though.
David: What?
Jeanine: Got a big dressing room here…
David: Oh, we’ve got a bigger dressing room than the puppets?

[Asked by a reporter if this is the end of Spinal Tap]
David: Well, I don’t really think that the end can be assessed as of itself as being the end because what does the end feel like? It’s like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say, if the universe is indeed infinite, then how - what does that mean? How far is all the way, and then if it stops, what’s stopping it, and what’s behind what’s stopping it? So, what’s the end, you know, is my question to you.

David: I’ve always, I’ve always wanted to do a collection of my acoustic numbers with the London Philharmonic.

Marty: David St. Hubbins…I must admit I’ve never heard anybody with that name.
David: It’s an unusual name, well, he was an unusual saint, he’s not a very well known saint.
Marty: Oh, there actually is, uh… there was a Saint Hubbins?
David: That’s right, yes.
Marty: What was he the saint of?
David: He was the patron saint of quality footwear

Marty: Do you feel that playing rock ‘n’ roll music keeps you a child? That is, keeps you in a state of arrested development?
Derek: No. No. No. I feel it’s like, it’s more like going, going to a, a national park or something. And there’s, you know, they preserve the moose. And that’s, that’s my childhood up there on stage. That moose, you know.
Marty: So when you’re playing you feel like a preserved moose on stage?
Derek: Yeah.

Nigel: [on what he would do if he couldn’t be a rock star] Well, I suppose I could, uh, work in a shop of some kind, or… or do, uh, freelance, uh, selling of some sort of, uh, product. You know…
Marty: A salesman?
Nigel: A salesman, like maybe in a, uh, haberdasher, or maybe like a, uh, um… a chapeau shop or something. You know, like, “Would you… what size do you wear, sir?” And then you answer me.
Marty: Uh… seven and a quarter.
Nigel: “I think we have that.” See, something like that I could do.
Marty: Yeah… you think you’d be happy doing something like-…
Nigel: “No; we’re all out. Do you wear black?” See, that sort of thing I think I could probably… muster up.
Marty: Do you think you’d be happy doing that?
Nigel: Well, I don’t know - wh-wh-… what’re the hours?[/b]

In today’s world this might be called a fairy tale. But that can only be my own rendition of “today’s world”. One thing for sure: it never happened to me.

Call it perhaps a more whimsical take on contingency, chance and change.

There’s before and then, among other things, before begets an inner child of the past. We all have one. We are only more or less aware of it.

This seems to be more about having an imagination than whatever it is you actually do with it. Also, for some, in particular contexts, the fantastic is not only preferable but necessary.

My own imagination [given birth in a narrative that was, let’s say, weird] is particularly fantastic.

This movie is worth it if only to watch what Amelie does to that rotten son of a bitch grocer Collignon!

Note: The narrator is André Dussollier who played Maxime in A Heart In Winter above

IMDb

The traveling gnome was inspired by a rash of similar pranks played in England and France in the 1990s. In 1997, a French court convicted the leader of Front de Libération des Nains de Jardins (Garden Gnome Liberation Front) of stealing over 150 gnomes. The idea was later used in an advertising campaign for an Internet travel agency.

Well, that explains that.

Hipolito is a reference to the secondary character Hippolite Terentyev, an unlucky philosopher, from the novel ‘The Idiot’ (1869) by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The main character of the novel is a person who is innocent, naive and immensely kind just like Amelie - most likely the film was inspired by the book.

wiki

The film was attacked by critic Serge Kaganski of Les Inrockuptibles for an unrealistic and picturesque vision of a bygone French society with few ethnic minorities. “If the director was trying to create an idyllic vision of a perfect Paris,” Kaganski argued, “He removed nearly all black people.[9]” Jeunet dismissed the criticism by pointing out that the photo collection contains pictures of people from numerous ethnic backgrounds, and that Jamel Debbouze, who plays Lucien, is of Moroccan descent.

AMELIE [Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain] 2001
Written and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

[b]Narrator: Deprived of playmates and slung between a neurotic mother and an iceberg father, Amelie retreats into her imagination.

Narrator: Amelie has one friend, her pet fish Blubber. Alas the home environment has made Blubber suicidal.

Narrator: Like every year, her mother had taken her to church to light a candle so that Heaven would send her a little brother. The divine answer came minutes later. Alas, it wasn’t a newborn that fell out of the sky but a tourist from Quebec, determined to end her life. Amandine Poulain, born Fouet, is killed outright.

[Amélie hands a begger some money]
Beggar: Sorry madam, I never work on Sundays.

Narrator: Amélie still seeks solitude. She amuses herself with silly questions about the world below, such as “How many people are having an orgasm right now?”
[scenes of orgasms taking place]
Amélie: Fifteen.

Narrator: And finally, on the night of August 30, 1997, comes the event that will change the life of Amélie Poulain totally.
News reporter: “Good evening. The Princess of Wales, Lady Di died this afternoon in a car crash.”[/b]

This cause Amelie to drop a ball that rolls across the floor hitting a wall tile that comes loose. She removes it and reaches inside. And there is the small tin box that “changes her life totally”.

[b]Narrator: Only the first man to enter the grave of Toutankhamon may understand how Amélie felt when she discovered the treasure that had been hid by a little boy. Amélie suddenly has a luminous idea. She is going to find the owner of this box and return his treasure to him.

Amelie imagines her own demise: On the evening of a bright day in July, while holiday-makers enjoy themselves on the beach in the carefreeness of the sunny days and while in Paris, the strollers, overcome by the heat gaze at the trails of smoke of the fireworks, Amélie Poulain, also known as “the godmother of the rejected”, or “the madonna of the cast-offs” succumbs to exhaustion. In the streets of Paris, struck with grief, millions of mourning anonyms gather for the funeral cortège to show in silence their great sorrow of being forever orphans. What a strange fate, that of this young woman deprived of herself, yet so sensitive to the charm of the little things in life. Like Don Quixote, she pitted herself against the grinding windmills of all life’s miseries. It was a losing battle that claimed her life prematurely. At barely 23, Amelie Poulain let her young tired body merge with the ebb and flow of universal woe.

Amélie [to her father, who is not paying attention]: I had two heart attacks, an abortion and did crack while I was pregnant. Other than that, I’m fine.
Father: Good.

Narrator: Amélie has found Nino’s photo album and his “lost” posers. Any normal girl would call the number, meet him, return the album and see if her dream is viable. It’s called a reality check. The last thing Amélie wants.

Voice on phone: Palace Video, King of Porn. Good morning.
Amelie: I call about the ad.
Voice on phone: You’re over 18?
Amelie: Yes.
Voice on phone: Shaved?
Amelie: Sorry?
Voice on phone: Are you shaved? Fur pie doesn’t sell these days.

Narrator: Nino is late. Amelie can only see two explanations. 1 - he didn’t get the photo. 2 - before he could assemble it, a gang of bank robbers took him hostage. The cops gave chase. They got away…but he caused a crash. When he came to, he’d lost his memory. An ex-con picked him up, mistook him for a fugitive, and shipped him to Istanbul. There he met some Afghan raiders who too him to steal some Russian warheads. But their truck hit a mine in Tajikistan. He survived, took to the hills, and became a Mujaheddin.[/b]

Or, 3, he’s just late.

[b]Raymond: Is she in love with him?
Amélie: Yes.
Raymond: The time has come for her to take some real risks.
Amélie: Well yes, she’s thinking about it. She’s thinking of a stratagem.
Raymond: Yes, she likes stratagems, doesn’t she?
Amélie: Yes.
Raymond: She’s a bit of a coward. That’s why I can’t capture her look.

Josef Stalin dubbed in propaganda film excerpt: If Amélie chooses to live in a dream-world and remain an introverted young woman, she has every right to.

Hipolito: Failed writer, failed life…I love the word “fail.” Failure is human destiny.
Joseph: It’s gasbag time!
Hipolito: Failure teaches us that life is but a draft, a long rehearsal for a show that will never play.
Joseph: I bet he stole that.
Hipolito: I do have some original ideas, but people always steal them.
Joseph: Meaning?
Hipolito: You’d better get used to it.[/b]

This is a fable about something but I don’t pretend to understand the inner working of Tim Burton’s brain. Something about being or not being evil in suburbia. Edward seems to bring out the best and the worst in people. And not necessarily in that order.

IMDb

[b]Some of the topiary that Edward makes in the movie can be seen permanently at the New York City restaurant Tavern On the Green.

Johnny Depp said only 169 words in this film.

Tom Cruise was considered for the role but ultimately did not take it because he wanted a happier ending.[/b]

wiki

[b]Michael Jackson lobbied hard for the part, but was unsuccessful.

Tom Hanks turned it down in favor of The Bonfire of the Vanities.

Both Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel gave the film a negative review. Ebert stated that “Burton has not yet found the storytelling and character-building strength to go along with his pictorial flair. The ending is so lame it’s disheartening. Surely anyone clever enough to dream up Edward Scissorhands should be swift enough to think of a payoff that involves our imagination.”[/b]

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS [1990]
Written and directed by Tim Burton

[b]Peg: Good morning, Joyce.
Joyce: Why, Peg, have you gone blind? Can’t you see there’s a vehicle parked in my driveway?

Peg: Okay, dear, which one did you like best? There was the Winsome Wahini, which looked charming on you, or the Bahimini Bliss.
Young girl: I like them both.
Peg [reaching for her order pad]: Well, great.
Young girl: You don’t actually think I have any money do you?

Peg : Why are you hiding back there? You don’t have to hide from me - I’m Peg Boggs, your local Avon representative and I’m as harmless as cherry pie…
[sees Edward come toward her]
Peg: Oh - I can see that I’ve disturbed you. I’ll just be going now…
Edward [plaintively]: Don’t go.
Peg: [sees his scissor hands] Oh, my. What happened to you?
Edward: I’m not finished.

Kevin: Can I bring him to show and tell on Monday?

Bill: Sweetheart, you can’t buy the necessities of life with cookies.

Jim: I’d give my left nut to see that again.

Officer Allen: Will he be OK, Doc?
Psychologist: The years spent in isolation have not equipped him with the tools necessary to judge right from wrong. He’s had no context. He’s been completely without guidance. Furthermore, his work - the garden sculptures, hairstyles and so forth - indicate that he’s a highly imaginative… uh… character. It seems clear that his awareness of what we call reality is radically underdeveloped.
Officer Allen: But will he be all right out there?
Psychologist: Oh yeah, he’ll be fine.

Jim: [after seeing Edward accidentally cut Kim] Hey! Now you’ve done it!
Kim: It was just a scratch Jim, really!
Peg: What’s going on?
Jim: Call a doctor, he skewered Kim!
Kim: He didn’t skewer me![/b]

I don’t think anyone should understand the workings of someone that creative, it’s just a marvel to see his thought processes on canvas in this case, although I don’t rate everything he has done I was charmed by this movie.

Evil and Eggplant can go screw themselves. :wink: