philosophy in film

[quote=“obe”]
Bobby Fischer ascribed: Saw him in Santa Monica, in a sea side hotel playing, then heard he was homeless in downtown skid row, a strange haunting figure, then heard about the girlfriend, living in Hungary in exile. Too many coincidences, his was not fifteen but fifteen thousand minutes of contempt, but what was all that about? I would not believe it if it stared me right in the face, at least that would be the impression of most. But what would you like, whole milk or half and half in your coffee? Full of decisions i would say the course of everyday life.

Now meant as a comment en passant, an unusual move, sometimes not at all in the usual course of things, but don’t get me wrong, there may be lapses , when nothing but nothing happens, but overflowing vacuously staring, as if asking for no reply, in the vein of say, Gertrude Stein.

Contempt, is a French movie, an early Godard. The thema ultimately rests on a Holderlin poem: here is a sample from Dichterberuf (The poet’s vacation)

A different task and calling given to poets!
We serve the Gods alone, so that,
more closely and always freshly,
they will hear our friendly heartbeats.

Yet another example of just how mysterious the ways of God must be. Of course there are other ways to look at it. But you can always fall back on that if all the other ways are even less palatable. You just have to believe in God.

Besides, what else is there but the brute facticity of nature. Things just are what they are. Shit happens. And there is no sense in looking for some ultimate reason that isn’t there.

This however is only one particular way in which I imagine some of us reacting. Me for instance. I try to imagine being Rocky and am not able to. But then I recognize there are so many other terrible afflictions that are endured daily by the innocent. And Rocky’s condition only occurs in 1 in 22,000,000 births. Should we thank God for that?

And Rocky at least had lots of folks around who loved him. A whole motorcyle gang for example.

And then there was his mother. No one would ever doubt for a second how much she loved her son. But in some respects she did not exactly embody the best of all possible worlds as parents go. She was a bit of a wild woman. A full-fledged one percenter. Sex, drugs and rock n roll. She wasn’t always, well, dependable.

“Looks”. In this culture it is sometimes the center of the universe. Something Rocky Dennis no doubt could have written a book on.

IMDb

[b]Eric Stoltz spent so much time under heavy makeup that when he arrived for the post production party he had to present I.D. to security to prove that he was Eric Stoltz. Also, when he got there he had to introduce himself to some of the cast and crew because many of them didn’t know what he really looked like.

Florence “Rusty” Tullis, the mother of Rocky Dennis, passed away on November 11, 2006, at age 70 from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident on October 14.

Rusty actually had two sons. The older son, Joshua Mason, passed away in 1987 at age 32 due to complications from AIDS, which he received through a blood transfusion.

The movie ends with Rusty Dennis and Gar visiting Rocky’s grave. In real life, however, Rocky Dennis was not buried. His mother donated Rocky’s body to the UCLA Medical Center for medical study.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mask_(film
trailer: youtu.be/DkJs6Y1QJrE

MASK [1985]
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich

[b]Doctor [new to Rocky’s case]: As you know plastic surgury is not an option until the skull stops thicking, and there’s no evidence that it will. In fact the cranium is growing at such an accelerated rate, creating pressure on the spinal cord to such an extent that the, uh, prognosis is not good. We, uh, feel that life expectancy is…
Rusty and Rocky [chime in together]: …three to six months.
Rusty: You’re not really going to give us that life expectancy number again, are you? You know for 12 years now I’ve been listening to you guys bullshit me. First you told me he was gonna be retarded, then you told me he was gonna be blind AND deaf. Then you told me he would never do things that regular kids do. If I’d dug his grave every time one of you geniuses told me he was gonna die, I’d be eating fuckin’ chop suey in China by now!

…

Rusty [to students gawking at her son’s face]: What’s the matter, never seen anyone from the planet Vultron before?

…

Rocky [smashing plates]: I hate you going out every night and coming home wasted all the time!
Rusty: It’s none of your goddamn business!
Rocky: You’re my mother!
Rusty: Well, you’re not my warden!

…

Carnie [to Ben]: You can ride, kid, but I cannot take the blame for anything that happens to the retard.
Gar: Then I cannot take the blame for anything I do to you!
[Carnie freezes as Gar glares at him]
Gar [in a barely controlled voice]: Take…the…tickets.

…

[after Rusty hires Lorrie to fuck Rocky]
Rocky: Mom, do I look like a freak to you?
Rusty: No.
Rocky: You’ve always been real big on telling me my face doesn’t matter, but it does, doesn’t it? You think that I can’t even get a girl to like me unless you pay for her!
Rusty: I’m sorry. Maybe what I did was wrong. But it had nothing to do with your face.
Rocky: Bullshit, Mom!

…

Gar: You know, Rock, your mom sometimes does the wrong things, but for the right reasons.

…

[after an unpleasant visit with the grandparents, Rusty is about to take a lot of drugs]
Gar [gets a beer from fridge]: If you get wasted off that crap, I’m not gonna stay here and babysit you.
Rusty [scoffs]: You must be confusing me for someone who gives a shit.
Gar: Must be.
Rusty [looks at the drugs in her hand and sighs sadly]: You know, this just isn’t going to work. You’re telling me to do things and I’m just gonna end up hating you again.
Gar: Oh come on. You and your old man have been going through this shit for the longest time I can remember. Got to again, didn’t he? Got you ready for another one of those 2-hour screamers. Gets you to the place where I’m gonna put you through the goddamned wall.
Rusty [snaps back]: Oh fine. Then put me through the goddamned wall. Why should you be any different than any man I’ve known before.
[Gar slams beer bottle down on table and leaves]

…

Rusty: …now you can go anywhere you want, baby.[/b]

Dope dealer looking for a way out of the business. And, who knows, maybe even something in the way of “redemption”. Always easier said than done of course.

And let’s face it, most “day jobs” don’t pay nearly as well. Or offer up as much adrenaline pumping excitement. It always seems to come down [one way or another] to trade-offs.

Like the one between being straight and having to endure all the shit that comes your way just in the course of living your life without being high. Some can handle it and some can’t. But who among us can really know when it’s okay to call it quits and jump off the wagon. Our own trials and tribulations are never theirs. And vice versa.

Anyway, there are two kinds of drug dealers. Those who use and those who don’t. But the job carries so many potential risks that the temptation to use is always right around the corner. So this one plays it safe: He sees a psychic. In fact you wonder: What the fuck is the point of dumping all of this astrology bullshit into the plot? Maybe something about just how little control we have over our lives in a “fated” world?

On the other hand, this is a “white dope for white people” world. They have a small operation but it involves the sort of “clientale” that makes the risk far easier to calibrate. It’s not the sort of sorid stuff that sordid dope dealers often encounter out on the sordid streets.

And then in the midst of it all women are being knocked off left and right in some sort of “upscale” drug related mystery.

It’s really not all that easy fitting the pieces here into a coherent “message”. But you’re welcome to try.

IMDb

When questioned about what the film’s title meant, Willem Dafoe joked that the other two films in Schrader’s trilogy of loners were titled after the key characters occupations. He jokingly said Schrader thought no one would watch a film if it was just called “Drug Dealer”.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Sleeper
trailer: youtu.be/RtwI2U0CiIA

LIGHT SLEEPER [1992]
Written and directed by Paul Schrader

[b]John [voiceover]: Labor Day weekend. Some time for a garbage strike. Everybody crazy to stock up. They want to score at the last minute and they want it now. Never fails. The faces look alike. You gotta use memory tricks: each has some peculiarity. lt keeps you sharp. A D. D. told me, when a drug dealer starts writing a diary he should quit. l started writing after that. Not every night. Now and then. Fill up one book, throw it out, start another.

…

John [voiceover]: ‘Labor Day’'. ‘‘Union Movement’’. There’s a contradiction in terms.

…

John [to Jealous]: We pay you more, you put up with more. White drugs for white people. Twice the price, twice the safety.

…

Robert [to John]: Look, we don’t make the laws. 19 is carrying, 20 is dealing. Let him be stupid!

…

Theological cokehead: Where was l? All right, so if there’s no God, then how can we conceive of him? l mean, the idea of God presupposes the existence of God. That is the Ontological Argument. That’s Anselm. Listen, this is the good part. lf the idea of God is implanted by God, the ‘‘Sensus Divinitatus’’, the sense of the divine, you know? Then what is the role of human thought? Not faith. Thought.
John [voiceover]: Everybody wants to talk. It’s like a compulsion. My philosophy is: You got nothing to say? Don’t say it. They figure, you can tell a D.D. anything. Things they’d never tell anyone else. Of course they’re stoned to start.
Cokehead: Do you think that all of our thoughts are on a prerecorded tape and planted in our brain at birth? I do.

…

John: lt’s not like we’re strangers, after all. We were married.
Marrianne: We were not!
John: There was a ceremony.
Marianne: He wasn’t even a minister. He was an astrologer!

…

Marianne [to John]: I envy you. Convenient memory is a gift from God.

…

John: I miss you.
Marianne: You tried to kill me. You took 10 years off my life, one way or another. I couldn’t hate my mother. I was too busy hating you.
John: I thought I was just killing myself.

…

Marianne: That’s quite an erection!
John: I never had anything like it stoned.
Marianne: It’s weird. I’m dripping.
John: Let’s disappear.

…

Ann: The UN has some conference. The holiday is over. Peacemakers all over the place trying to score. UN security at every hotel. Even l have been out. Okay? Look, this is where our business is: Europe, Asia, not the fucking streets! But you wouldn’t know crack from Cracker Jacks.
John: Where’s Robert?
Ann: He’s out busting his ass doing your job!
John: lt was a confusion.
Ann: Well, get confused on your day off!
John: And when is that?
Ann: Don’t get wise with me! What do you want me to do? Suck your dick? Fine! You want a raise? Forget it!

…

John [voiceover]: I feel my life turning. All it needed was direction. You drift from day to day, years go by. Then a change comes. l am able to change. l can be a good person. What a strange thing to happen halfway through your life. What luck.

…

Cop: Who the fuck gives a shit about you? I could grind you right here. In fact, maybe I will. What do you think about that? Nobody would give a flying fuck. I look like narcotics? I’m homicide, investigating the murder in the park.
John: I don’t read the papers.
Cop: Downtown’s interested how a 19-year-old student with fancy parents got a quarter of uncut coke on her when she was found murdered. This ain’t the type of girl we find cruising Alphabet City to score. Know what I mean? Somebody sold her. Somebody upscale. You’re classy. So I hear. And maybe somebody knows something we need to know. You understand? Delivery boy! Here’s my card. You ask around. Take a week or so. Call me. Tell me something I don’t already know. lt’s either that, leave town, or get your ass busted day in, day out. Got it? Loser…

…

Ann [to John]: Strange how things work.[/b]

Up the Yangtze: A documentary on the future:

A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze - navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as “The River.” The Yangtze is about to be transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history. At the river’s edge - a young woman says goodbye to her family as the floodwaters rise towards their small homestead. The Three Gorges Dam - contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle - provides the epic backdrop for Up the Yangtze, a dramatic feature documentary on life inside modern China. National Film Board of Canada

And if the future of China isn’t somewhere in the vincinty of the world’s future, it must come awful damn close. Of course in this context what are the lives of individual men and women? In particular those who are nowhere near the apex. Not exactly the “last men”, perhaps, but rather far removed from the ubermen. At the time this film came out approximately 1,250,000 people had already been relocated in order to make the Three Gorges Dam a reality. It is estimated that over 2,000,000 eventually will be. For some this will have been a good thing and for others not so good. But again where do they fit into “the big picture”? Where do any of us fit in for that matter.

But “eminent domain” is always going to be around in one form or another. It just depends on how many layers of “democracy” there are between “the people” and “the government”.

And here political corruption abounds. The federal government distributes money to the local government officials to help those who must be relocated. But then the money will somehow “disappear.” The “common people” are often treated brutally – beaten, degraded, robbed blind. It’s the same old story, it’s the same old world.

In particular the film focuses on the film maker’s return to China to document the “surreal life of a ‘farewell cruise’ that traverses the gargantuan waterway.” It gives a “human dimension to the wrenching changes facing not only an increasingly globalized China, but the world at large.”

And this was more or less summed up [well] by one of the passengers on the cruise ship. In effect he said, “government officials in China and America are traveling in separate cars down the road. They come to an intersection. There are two signs. One points to the left and says SOCIALISM, the other to the right and says CAPITALISM. The American officials tell the driver, ‘turn right’. The Chinese officials tell the driver, ‘turn right…but put on the the left turn indicator’”.

And then there are the tourists. It’s all so pathetic at times.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_the_Yangtze
trailer: youtu.be/oV3tQ7G2Ve4

UP THE YANGTZE [2007]
Written and directed by Yung Chang

Title card: Confucius: By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest.

For most of us the “panic room” is the nearest closet. Or maybe we jump out of the window or hide under the bed. But if you are affluent enough you can afford the real thing. In other words, you can afford to purchase a home in which there is a “formal dining room”. Not to confused with the “casual dining room”. Oh, and a “working elevator”. You know, to get to the bedrooms. And six “working fireplaces”.

Of course even for the filthy rich there is still the law of unintended consequences to contend with. And Murphy’s Law. After all, the thugs aren’t in the house an hour before they are able to pump propane gas into the panic room.

And the one thing you don’t want to do when you need to be inside the panic room is to leave something that you need in order to, say, survive outside the panic room. Vital medications for example. Also, it’s best not to keep the one thing that the crooks are after in the panic room with you. Only here admittedly they don’t even know that it is in there!

And if the panic room has a separate phone line to the cops, it might be a good idea first to actually hook the damn thing up.

In other words, we are dealing here with people: the human all too human kind.

Then there’s gang that invades the house. The kind where there is as much contention within their own ranks as there is between them and the folks whose home they are invading.

What could possibly go wrong?

IMDb

[b]According to David Fincher, Kristen Stewart grew more than three inches during filming of this project. She was smaller than Jodie Foster when the production started and towered over her when the final shots were done.

Nicole Kidman replacement Jodie Foster substantially altered the tone of the film. Beforehand director David Fincher saw his heroine as a glacial Hitchcock/ Grace Kelly role model. With Foster in the lead, however, the part instantly became much grittier, more political.

David Fincher agreed that the film’s production was an arduous one, remarking it as a “logistical nightmare.” The lighting issue during the filming process was particularly difficult due to the complexity of the security cameras used in the mansion that send surveillance images to the television in the panic room.[/b]

FAQ at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt0258000/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_Room
trailer: youtu.be/him0NfgFOH0

PANIC ROOM [2002]
Directed by David Fincher

[b]Meg: That’s strange.
Evan: What?
Meg: Is this room smaller than it should be?
Evan: You’re the first person to notice.
[he pushes on a portion of the wall…a door opens]
Evan: No one from our office had the slightest idea. It’s called a panic room. A safe room. A castle keep in medieval times. They’re in vogue in high-end construction. One can’t be too careful about home invasion.

…

Lydia [in the panic room]: This is perfect. The alarm goes off in the middle of the night. What will you do? Call the police and wait till Tuesday? Traipse downstairs in your underthings to check it out? I think not.
Evan: Concrete walls. Buried phone line, not connected to the house’s main line. Call the police, nobody can cut you off. You have your own ventilation system. A bank of surveillance monitors that covers nearly every corner of the house.
Meg: This whole thing makes me nervous.
Lydia: Why?
Meg: Ever read any Poe?

…

Meg: What’s to keep somebody from prying open the door?
Evan: Steel. Thick steel. Very thick steel. Full battery backup, so even if the power’s out it’s still functional.

…

Burnham: Who is that?
Junior: This is Raoul.
Burnham: Who the fuck is Raoul?!

…

Junior: This is still a good plan. Fuck that! This is a great plan. It’s just got a slight twist.
Burnham: Yeah. Felony kidnapping. Thirty years.

…

Meg [on loudspeaker]: We’re not coming out, and we’re not letting you in! Get out of my house!
Sarah: Say fuck!
Meg: You fuck!
Sarah: Mom! “Get the fuck out of my house”!
Meg: Get the FUCK out of my house!

…

Junior: How do we get into that room?
[Burnham laughs]
Junior: Hey! What is funny about this? Is this shit funny to you?
Burnham: Well, I spent the last 12 years of my life building these rooms specifically to keep out people like us.

…

Burnham [to Raoul and Junior]: Building panic rooms. This is what I do for a living; if some idiot with a sledgehammer could break in, do you really think I’d still have a job?

…

Burnham: You guys just going to stand there?
Junior: Why? What do you got there, MacGyver?

…

[Raoul pumps propane gas into the panic room]
Junior: Worst that’s gonna happen is…is they’ll pass out. They’ll have a hang over.
Burnham: How are we gonna get in there if they pass out, Junior?
Junior [pauses]: Okay, cut it back a little.

…

Junior: Any other schoolyard bullshit you wanna settle, or can we get the fuck back to work?
Raoul: Don’t you take no tone with me, jerkwad, 'cause I’ll shove it up your ass and snap it off.
Junior: You know what? You’re a bus driver, “Raoul”! You live in Flatbush! So don’t start spouting some Elmore Leonard bullshit you just heard because I saw that movie too.

…

Junior [rummaging through the medicine cabinet]: How do you live in New York and not have a single percocet?!

…

Burnham: He’s telling the truth.
Raoul: Yeah, he’s telling the truth…you know how I know? Cause when I do this…
[Raoul points the gun at Burnham]
Raoul: …people don’t lie.

…

Burnham: Do you need this?
[Sarah nods yes]
Burnham: Can you do it yourself?
[Sarah nods no]
Burnham: What happens if you don’t get it?
Sarah [weak whispering]: Coma. Die.

…

Raoul: This kid has seen my face.
Burnham: Yeah, well, that’s not my problem.
Raoul: Yeah it is. You’re here with me. You’re on the hook too.
Raoul [looking at Sarah]: Do one. Same price for the rest.
Burnham: Stay the fuck away from me.

…

[Meg smashes the house’s security cameras with a sledgehammer]
Raoul: Why the hell didn’t we do that? [/b]

This was a great documentary. When I watched it a couple of years back, I was never even aware of such a project. The two sides of China captured in all its harsh reality, it showcased a much needed awareness. Even removing the capitalist on-rush, or having anything to do with China, its still a fantastic movie in the day-to-day life of really rural people and inspires us to treasure our own and unique geographic mysticism in the face of modern needs. What I liked about this film is its near-nil propaganda. There is also a similar movie on the three gorges dam issue called “Still Life”.
You also walk away from the documentary feeling how fragile the self is to maintain even a little optimism being put in such a crushing nihilistic environment, and the kind of friendships and solitude such an ecology necessarily breeds.

This is a set up. A political narrative disguised as something more analogous to a…universal truth?

About dancing?!

A small town steeped in evagelical Christianity. Those who run the town have decided that dancing [along with rock and roll and all the usual culprits] is the Devil’s work. So it is banned. It is literally against the law to dance!

What could possibly be more reactionary?

And yet let’s face it: we all have our own renditions of this. There are behaviors that we abhor [for any number of personal/political reasons] and we sure as shit want there to be a law against those engaging in them.

But dancing?!

Well, there is all manner of dancing. Dirty dancing for example. Are there no lines at all to be drawn when it is being engaged publically?

Here if you are of a particular political persuasion the good guys and the bad guys are easily recognized. After all, they are drawn like cartoons. But don’t think choices like this can’t be considerably more complex and ambiguous. In other words, with arguments one hell of a lot more sophisticated than those of Reverend Moore.

And we are talking about sex here, aren’t we? I mean, come on. And how many contradictory political narratives are there colliding with respect to this particular human behavior?

IMDb

[b]Loosely based on events that took place in the small, rural, and extremely religious farming town of Elmore City, Oklahoma in 1978. Dancing had been banned for nearly 90 years until a group of high school teenagers challenged it.

With the Principal’s knowledge, 24-year-old Kevin Bacon attended the Payson Utah High School as “Ren McCormack”, a transfer student from Philadelphia to get into his role. With his narrow tie and new-wave haircut, he was treated pretty much like in the film.

The scenes where Chris Penn’s character had to learn how to dance were added to the script because Penn really could not dance.

Madonna auditioned for the role of Ariel Moore.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footloose_(1984_film
trailer: youtu.be/6nSXtZPKms4

FOOTLOOSE [1984]
Directed by Herbert Ross

[b]Reverend Moore: If our Lord wasn’t testing us, how would you account for the proliferation, these days, of this obscene rock and roll music, with its gospel of easy sexuality and relaxed morality?

…

Mr. Gurntz: He was trying to teach that book down at the school.
Mrs. Allyson: Slaughterhouse-Five, isn’t that an awful name?
Ren: Yeah it’s a great book…Slaughterhouse-Five, it’s a classic.
Mr. Gurntz: Do you read much?
Mrs. Allyson: Maybe in another town, it’s a classic.
Ren: In any town.
Mr. Gurntz: Tom Sawyer is a classic!

…

Willard: Well, you won’t get any of that here.
Ren: What’s that?
Willard: Dancing. There’s no dancing, Ren.
Ren: Why?
Willard: It’s illegal.
Ren: Jump back!

…

Willard: It started when kids got killed in a car wreck. Whole town went bananas, blaming it on the music, liquor and dancing. Now they’re just convinced it’s all a sin.
Ren: Who’s convinced?
Student: Whole damn town.

…

Ren: You really can’t dance here, man? I can’t believe that.
Willard: It’s true. This isn’t the only place either. You’d be surprised. Places upstate you can’t dance. Places in Kansas and Arkansas. All over the place. My cousin lives in Montana, and ya can’t dance where she lives either.

…

Ariel: What’s the music?
Reverend Moore: I think it’s Haydn, chamber pieces.
Ariel: And that kind of music’s okay?
Reverend Moore: It’s uplifting. It doesn’t confuse people’s minds and bodies.

…

Factory boss [to Ren]: Boy, a lot of folks are gonna give you problems right off…because you’re an outsider. You’re dangerous. They’re always gonna worry about ya. And this is only one little corner of the world.

…

Ren: Hey, Woody, Woody come here. Listen, has anybody ever died doing this?
Woody: Just once.

…

Reverend Moore: I was down in Denver last year for about a week at a Bible convention. And the whole time I was there, people would come up and ask me, ‘‘Reverend, how can you live in such a small town… so far away from the hustle and bustle of the 20th century?’’ I’d say to them, ‘‘You’d never ask me that if you could just once, just for one minute experience the feeling of family that comes from knowing that all of our lives are tied up with each of us. That we feel all the same joys the same sorrows, and that we care. Each and every one of us cares for the other.’’

…

Ariel: 'Bout five years ago these kids were playing highway tag and they were drunk. One car hits the other one, and they both go over the bridge. Dead. That’s when they started passing laws against booze against dancing and drinking. I don’t know. My father had a field day.
Ren: Your father? Why?
Ariel: My older brother was one who got killed.

…

Ren [addressing the town council, reading from his notes in the Bible]: From the oldest of times, people danced for a number of reasons. They danced in prayer…or so that their crops would be plentiful…or so their hunt would be good. And they danced to stay physically fit and show their community spirit. And they danced to celebrate. And that is the dancing we’re talking about. Aren’t we told in Psalm 149 “Praise ye the Lord. Sing unto the Lord a new song. Let them praise His name in the dance”? And it was King David - King David, who we read about in Samuel - and what did David do? What did David do?
[paging frantically through Bible]
Ren: What did David do?
[audience laughs]
Ren: David danced before the Lord with all his might…leaping and dancing before the Lord.
[smacks table in front of Reverend Moore]
Ren: Leaping and dancing!
[stands up straight]
Ren: Ecclesiastes assures us that there is a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to laugh and a time to weep. A time to mourn and there is a time to dance. And there was a time for this law, but not anymore. See, this is our time to dance. It is our way of celebrating life. It’s the way it was in the beginning. It’s the way it’s always been. It’s the way it should be now.[/b]

City Island is a real place. It’s in the Bronx. As in New York City. But when you think of the Bronx [or, rather, when I think of the Bronx] you don’t think of places like this. Instead, you think of places like the urban hellhole depicted by Tom Wolfe in Bonfires of the Vanities. The place Sherman McCoy and Maria Rushkin stumbled into [in the film] after missing the exit ramp to Manhattan.

But then I’ve only ever been in Manhattan myself so what do I know.

And this is a very small island. A “fishing village”. That’s right, in the Bronx.

Okay, let’s start with the dysfunctional family…

All the best family movies do, of course. After all, what sort of material can be gleaned from a fully functioning one?

They all sort of love each other. Just as they all sort of know jack-shit about each other. In part it’s the culture. There are so many different directions in which to go in this “modern world” what are the odds that the folks in your family will pick the same ones?

Anyway, sit in on one “conversation” at the dinner table and you wonder how the hell they ever manage at all. You know, not to kill each other.

For example, note the look on Tony’s face the first time he sits down at the dinner table with them.

And they all have, well, secrets.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Island_(film
trailer: youtu.be/LIGdleyv8vo

CITY ISLAND [2009]
Written and directed by Raymond De Felitta

[b]Vince [voiceover]: You asked me about my worst secret…my most personal secret. The secret of all my secrets. Well, like most of us…I guess I have a few.

…

Michael: What were all those pauses for?
Actor: What were they? What do you mean?
Michael: You said 2 lines and I counted 4 pauses in 2 lines. Why do you need a pause before you say, “what”?
Actor: Oh, he’s stalling for time.
Michael: Why? I mean does he love her or does he not love her?
Actor: He does love her.
Michael: So what the hell you need to pause for? Listen. We have the Collar Moratorium on pauses. Five years of my life is gone out the window listening to pauses in this room. I can’t do it anymore. So we gotta cut out the pauses. In 2000 years of theatre history you’ll never find anybody pausing. The only pause - they either talk or they listen.

…

Tony: Can I ask you, like, why I’m chained to a Ford?
Vince: I’m gonna unchain you, Tony, but first I gotta tell you something. You see this house here? That’s my home. My grandfather built this home and I share it with my family.
Tony: Oh, you got them chained up in the house too?
Vince: You’re gonna get real nice food and a real nice place to live for the first time in 3 years, so you better behave yourself.
Tony: And all this because you knew my bitch mother?
Vince: Well, I gotta admit, you know, Nan could be difficult sometimes. But…she was also…
Tony: A drunk and a whore.
Vince: Why do you call her that?
Tony: She used to punish me for not boosting cases of vodka from the liquor store I worked at, by screwing my friends. Which base does ‘drunk’ and ‘whore’ not cover?
Vince: Don’t you have any fond memories of her?
Tony: Well, at least she was around. My father left before I was born.
Vince [pauses]: What do you know about him?
Tony: He’s dead.
Vince: That’s too bad.
Tony: Eh, the only thing that’s too bad, is I didn’t get a chance to visit his deathbed and dance in his ugly face for leaving me with that bitch.
Vince: Okay, let’s go. [/b]

Guess who Vince is?

[b]Vince: Shit, my wife.
Tony: Is that what you call her? “Shit, my wife.”
Vince [putting out his cigarette]: I don’t smoke.
Tony: Yeah, I can tell.

…

Joyce [Mom]: Anybody home?
Vince Jr.: I’m here. So is dad. He’s out back, handcuffed to some biker dude.

…

Joyce [lighting cigarette]: My husband thinks I quit.
Tony: One good thing about the joint, they don’t let you smoke anymore so…I quit inside.
Joyce: Being in prison and not being able to smoke? That’s like being in jail!

…

Joyce [to Tony]: This is gonna be his new career, building things. He gets discouraged when things take too long. Like more than an hour. And him and his poker games. Does he really think I buy that crap?

…

Vince Jr.[to Tony]: It’s Botero.

…

Vince: But to me, it was all bullshit.
Molly: What do you mean?
Vince: Well, because I pretended as though I, you know, that’s the way I talk to the guys inside. But actually that’s the way my son, Tony, talks to the guys inside.
Molly: No, that’s so much better. You co-pted someone else’s experience and filtered it in to your own personality…in order to create a character. That’s not bullshit, Vincent. That’s acting.
Vince: That’s acting? You’re allowed to do that?

…

Vince: Who are they?
Molly: My three secrets.
Vince: They’re beautiful.
Molly: Thank you.
Vince: Where are they?
Molly: With my husband in Schenectady.
Vince: What are they doing up there?
Molly: The real question is, what am I doing down here?

…

Vivian: I’m not a hooker!
Tony: Showing your tits for money, what’s that called, ‘librarian’?!

…

Vince Jr.: Well, mom, you were right. Dad did have sex with Tony’s mom.[/b]

Although some will lump The Deer Hunter in with all the other “Vietnam war movies”, that particular conflict itself really has very little at all to do with the film. The scenes involving the war were hardly what one would call typical and they are known mostly for generating lots of complaints [about racism] from the Vietnamese themselves regarding how they were portrayed in the film.

No, instead this is much more a film about an American working class culture that generates personalities like this that then go out into the world [war or no war] and generate the sort of consequences we see unfolding up on the screen. That and the way in which any war can change the men lucky enough to survive it. If you can call the lives of the men here the “lucky” ones.

And then [somehow] this is all linked to deer hunting…and then [later] to Russian roulette.

And the betting. As in 13 Tzameti above, men here bet on those playing Russian roulette. Who will live and who will die. But since there is only blind luck involved in “playing” it, what exactly are they betting on? Sure, gambling on something that involves skill or training or shrewd calculation makes sense. But here it is nothing but fortuity. So [I guess] it must be a metaphor for something more…profound.

In fact, the closest the film does come to examining the Vietnam war in a political context is in noting how Michael, Steven and Nick seem eager to go over there and do their bit to serve their country: to preserve the noble cause of human freedom. Not that this argument is completely baseless. It is merely the manner in which decisions like this are made largely by rote. They are men; they are Americans; and American men are patriotic; and America stands for freedom around the globe.

It’s as simple as that.

In other words, what military industrial complex? what war economy? what government lies?

Think instead the trials and tribulations of male bonding – only in particularly trying times.

IMDb

[b]The scene where Savage is yelling, “Michael, there’s rats in here, Michael” as he is stuck in the river is actually Savage yelling at the director Michael Cimino because of his fear of rats which were infesting the river area. He was yelling for the director to pull him out of the water because of the rats… it looked real and they kept it in.

Director Michael Cimino convinced Christopher Walken to spit in Michael’s face. When Walken actually did it, Robert De Niro was completely shocked, as evidenced by his reaction. In fact, De Niro was so furious about it he nearly left the set. Cimino later said of Walken, “He’s got courage!”

During some of the Russian Roulette scenes, a live round was put into the gun to heighten the actors’ tension. This was Robert De Niro’s suggestion. It was checked, however, to make sure the bullet was not in the chamber before the trigger was pulled.

The slapping in the Russian roulette sequences was 100% authentic. The actors grew very agitated by the constant slapping, which, naturally, added to the realism of the scenes.

Robert De Niro recently explained that the scene where Michael visits Steve in the hospital for the first time was the most emotional scene that he was ever involved with. He broke down in tears while discussing the scene in AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Robert De Niro (2003).

The deaths of approximately twenty-eight people who died playing Russian roulette were reported as having been influenced by scenes in the movie.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deer_Hunter
trailer: youtu.be/vw-Tyr6Rb6I

THE DEER HUNTER [1978]
Directed by Michael Cimino

Mike: I’ll tell ya one thing. If I found out my life had to end up in the mountains, I’d be all right. But it has to be in your mind.
Nick: What? One shot?
Mike: Two is pussy.
Nick: I don’t think about one shot that much anymore, Mike.
Mike: You have to think about one shot. One shot is what it’s all about. A deer has to be taken with one shot. I try to tell people that. They don’t listen.

Huh? Forget about it. Only a real man would understand.

[b]Steve [at the bar]: It’s a Green Beret! Hey! Whoo!
Mike: No kidding. Jerry! Jerry, give the man a drink. Hey! Give him a drink! Sir! Sir!
[the Green Beret doesn’t respond…just stares out in space]
Mike: I wanna talk to the man. I wanna talk to the man. We’re goin’ over there. Sir, Mike Vronsky. We’re goin’ airborne, sir. What’s it like?
Nick: I hope they send us where the bullets are flyin’.
Mike: That’s right. Where the fighting’s the worst.
Green Beret [raising his glass as though to toast the war]: Fuck it.
Mike: Fuck it? What did he say?
Nick: Fuck it.
Mike: Fuck it. That’s what I thought. W-- Well, what’s it like over there? Can you tell us anything?
Green Beret: Fuck it.

…

Banner accross the hall: SERVING GOD AND COUNTRY PROUDLY

…

Nick: Think we’ll ever come back ?
Mike: From Nam? Yeah.
Nick: You know something? The whole thing, it’s right here. I love this fuckin’ place. I know that sounds crazy. If anything happens, Mike, don’t leave me over there. You got-- You gotta-- Just don’t leave me. You gotta promise me that, Mike. Hey. No, man, you got–you gotta-- You gotta promise definitely.
Mike: You got it, pal.

…

Mike: Stanley, see this? This is this. This ain’t something else. This is this. From now on, you’re on your own.

…

Mike: Nicky, listen. It’s up to us now. It’s me and you.
Nick: What about Steven?
Mike: Forget him. He ain’t gonna make it.
Nick: Who do you think you are? God?
Mike: Look at him. He’s in a daze. He ain’t comin’ out. He’s in a dream.
Nick: Mike, what are you saying?
Mike: I’m saying forget him. Get it through your head - or you and me are both gone too.

…

Mike: We gotta play with more bullets.
Nick: What?
Mike: More bullets…
[a gunshot]
Mike: I gotta get more bullets in the gun.
Nick: What?
Mike: We gotta play with more bullets.
Nick: More bullets in the gun?
Mike: More bullets in the gun.
Nick: How many more bullets?
Mike: Three. That means we gotta play each other.
Nick: More bullets against each other?
Mike: We gotta do it!
Nick: What? Are you Crazy?
Mike: Nicky, it’s the only way. I’ll pick the moment. The game goes until I move. When I start shootin’, go for the nearest guard, get his gun and zap the fucker!

…

Nick [looking at a pile of corpses]: People inside doing it for money?
Frenchman: Sometimes a great deal of money. I cannot play this kind of game myself. But I’m always–how do you say–looking out for those things quite different, quite rare. You saw this before?
Nick: Up north.
Frenchman: Oh, yes. Of course.
Nick: Gotta go.
Frenchman: But you must come in. I insist. Of what is there to be afraid of after this war? War is a joke. A silly thing.
Nick: I’m going home, ace!
Frenchman: Naturellement I pay my players…cash, American.
Nick: You got the wrong guy, ace.
Frenchman: But you must come in. I insist…I can make you very, very rich.

…

Stan: Wait, wait! To Nick and Steve!
John :To Nick and Steve.
Mike: Nick and Steve.
John: You look great.
Mike: How’s Angela ?
John [glum]: Not so good, Mike. Worse since she talked to him.
Mike: Talked to who?
John: Steven.
Mike: She talked to Steve? I didn’t know he was back.
Stan: You didn’t know he’s back? Oh, Jesus.
Mike: No, I didn’t know. Is he back?
John: You-- You-- You didn’t–
Mike: Where is he? Where is he? Where is he?
John: I don’t know.
Mike: Just answer me. Where is he? Just tell me where he is?
John: I don’t know where he is, Mike. Angela wouldn’t tell us.
Mike: What do you mean?
John: She wouldn’t talk to anybody!

…

Linda: Did you ever think that life would turn out like this?
Mike: No…

…

Mike [on the phone[: Steve? Stevie?
Steve: Hey, I gotta go, Mike. I gotta go. Curfew, man.

…

Steve: Come here with me for a minute. It’s something I gotta show you. Yeah. Yeah. Angela, she keeps sending me socks. But it’s not socks I gotta show you, Mike.
[he opens the sock drawer and it’s stuffed with 100 dollar bills]
Steve: This-- This comes every month from Saigon. I don’t understand. I don’t understand. That place is gonna fall any day now.
Mike: It’s Nicky, Steve.

…

Steve: Where’s a guy like Nick get money like this?
Mike: I don’t know. Cards, maybe.

…

Mike: I came 12,000 miles back here to get you…What’s the matter with you? Don’t you recognize me?..Nicky, I love you, you’re my friend.
[Nick spits in his face]

…

[Nick pulls the trigger on a gun, clicking on an empty chamber]
Mike: What are you doing? We don’t have much time, Nick. Is this what you want? Is this what you want? I love you, Nick.
[Michael pulls the trigger, clicking on an empty chamber]
Mike: Come on, Nicky, come home. Just come home. Home. Talk to me.
[he looks at Nick’s track marks]
Mike: What did you do to your arms? Do you remember the trees? Do you remember all the different ways of the trees? Do you remember that? Do you remember? Huh? The mountains? Do you remember all that?
Nick [smiling in recognition]: One shot.
Mike: One shot, one shot.
[Nick pulls the trigger, shooting himself in the head]
Mike: Nicky, Nicky, no, Nick, no!! No! No! You can’t![/b]

Now join them all in a somber rendition of God Bless America.

When all that really stands between you and a survival of the fittest world is the law?

Well, it matters then just what kind of law it is. Here though – in the really wild, wild west – it ain’t much. And lots of times the folks that come up against it are not all that easy to pin down. Are they “good” men? Are they “bad” men? Were they once one and then became the other? Will something trigger them to turn it all back around again?

And then there’s the roles afforded women here. Let’s just say that back then the options were considerably more truncated. Especially in this cowtown. Big Whiskey, Wyoming.

So, the good, the bad, the ugly. Just a point of view in the end yet no less given over to folks able to come up with a political consensus. But again sometimes the law [and the concensus] is more “progressive” in one context than in another.

How about the one you are in now yourself?

And [as always] it’s a world where you are motivated to do some things by a sense of moral outrage…and other things because those with the moral outrage will pay you to do it. Then [for some] the two get all tangled up in their head and things get complicated…real complicated.

And then in the middle of all this along comes a character like English Bob. And Mr. W. W. Beauchamp.

The whole point of the movie [supposedly] was to expose and then to condemn lawless violence. And most of the violence coming from the law here too. But try to imagine the reaction of folks from, say, the N.R.A… And notice any significant decrease in gun violence in the past 20 odd years since the film came out? Here in America? And it’s not like Will didn’t morph back into Dirty Harry just before he rode out of town.

IMDb

[b]Clint Eastwood’s mother toiled through an uncomfortable day (wearing a heavy dress) as an extra, filming a scene where she boards a train; but the scene was eventually cut, with her son apologizing that the film was “too long and something had to go.” All was forgiven when he brought her to the Academy Awards and thanked her prominently in his acceptance speech.

Deputy Clyde’s line about why a one armed man needed to carry three pistols: ‘I don’t want to get killed from lack of being able to shoot back’ is sometimes attributed to lawman/gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok who usually carried two pistols around his waist, another in a shoulder holster, sometimes another stuck in the back of his belt, and usually had at least one Derringer hidden somewhere on his person. While working as a lawman, he usually carried a sawed off shotgun as well. Hickok also laughed at Ned Buntline’s report about his killing 20 men with 20 shots saying that his theory was start shooting and keep shooting until the man you were shooting at was dead.

Clint Eastwood asked Gene Hackman to model his character of Little Bill Daggett on then Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates.

According to Clint Eastwood in a 2000 interview, Gene Hackman was very concerned about how they were going to show the violence in the movie, owing to the rising gun violence in American cities. Eastwood, a lifelong supporter of gun control, assured Hackman that the film wouldn’t glorify gun violence.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unforgiven
trailer: youtu.be/XDAXGILEdro

UNFORGIVEN [1992]
Directed by Clint Eastwood

[b]Skinny: Little Bill, a whippin’ ain’t gonna settle this.
Bill: No?
Skinny: This here’s a lawful contract…betwixt me an’ Delilah Fitzgerald, the cut-whore. Now I brung her clear from Boston, paid her expenses an’ all, an’ I got a contract which represents an investment of capital.
Bill (sympathetic to the argument): Property.
Skinny: Damaged property. Like if I was to hamstring one of their cow ponies.
Bill: You figure nobody’ll want to fuck her.
Skinny: Hell no. Leastways, they won’t pay to.

…

Alice [to the women who work as prostitutes]: Just because we let them smelly fools ride us like horses don’t mean we gotta let 'em brand us like horses. Maybe we ain’t nothing but whores but we, by god, we ain’t horses!

…

Will: I ain’t like that no more, Kid. Whiskey done it as much as anythin’ I guess. I ain’t touched a drop in ten years. My wife, she cured me of it…cured me of drink an’ wickedness.
The Kid [looking around him]: Well…you don’t look so prosperous.

…

Penny: Did Pa used to kill folks?

…

Ned: Hell, Will. We ain’t bad men no more. Shit, we’re farmers.

…

Will: We done stuff for money before, Ned.
Ned: Yeah, we thought we did. All right, so what did these fellas do? Cheat at cards? Steal some strays? Spit on a rich fella? What?
Will: No, they cut up a woman.
Ned [startled]: What?
Will: Cut her eyes out, cut her tits off, cut her fingers off…done everythin’ but cut up her cunny, I guess.
Ned: I’ll be dogged.

…

Will [to Ned]: I ain’t like that no more. I ain’t the same, Ned. Claudia, she straightened me up, cleared me of drinkin’ whiskey and all. Just ‘cause we’re goin’ on this killing, that don’t mean I’m gonna go back to bein’ the way I was. I just need the money, get a new start for them youngsters.
[pause]
Will: Ned, you remember that drover I shot through the mouth and his teeth came out the back of his head? I think about him now and again. He didn’t do anything to deserve to get shot, at least nothin’ I could remember when I sobered up.

…

English Bob [discussing the assassination of President Garfield]: …one can see that there’s a dignity in royalty…a majesty…that precludes the likelihood of assassination. Why, if you were to point a pistol at a King or a Queen, sir, I can assure you your hand would shake as though palsied…
Barber: (looking at Bob’s pistols): I wouldn’t point no pistol at nobody, sir.
English Bob: A wise policy. But if you did, I can assure you, the sight of royalty would cause you to dismiss all thoughts of bloodshed and stand…how shall I put it…in awe. Whereas, a president…I mean, why not shoot the president?

…

English Bob [seeing Bill]: Shit and fried eggs.

…

Bill: First off, Corky never carried two guns. Though he should have.
Beauchamp: No, no, he was, he was called “Two-Gun Corcoran.”
Bill: Yeah well, a lot of folks did call him “Two-Gun” but that wasn’t because he was sporting two pistols. That was because he had a dick that was so big it was longer than the barrel of that Walker Colt that he carried. An’ the only insultin’ he done was stickin’ that big dick of his in some French Lady that Old Bob was sweet on.

…

English Bob [being run out of town]: A plague on you. A plague on the whole stinking lot of ya, without morals or laws. And all you whores got no laws. You got no honor. It’s no wonder you all emigrated to America, because they wouldn’t have you in England. You’re a lot of savages, that’s what you all are. A bunch of bloody savages. A plague on you!

…

Alice: You just kicked the shit out of an innocent man.
Bill: Innocent? Innocent of what?

…

Delilah: Are you still goin’ to kill those men?
Will: I reckon so. The money’s still available, ain’t it?
Delilah: Yeah. Your two friends have been taking advances on the money.
Will: What?
Delilah You know, free ones.

…

Bill [after whipping Ned]: Now Ned, them whores are going to tell different lies than you. And when their lies ain’t the same as your lies…Well, I ain’t gonna hurt no woman. But I’m gonna hurt you. And not gentle like before…but bad.

…

The Kid: You still think he’s in there? the outhouse
Will: Yeah, he’s in there.
The Kid: Well he’s holding onto his shit like it was money.

…

The Kid [after killing a man for the first time]: It don’t seem real… how he ain’t gonna never breathe again, ever… how he’s dead. And the other one too. All on account of pulling a trigger.
Will: It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.
The Kid: Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming.
Will Munny: We all got it coming, kid.

…

Bill [after Will blows Skinny away with his shotgun]: Well, sir, you are a cowardly son of a bitch! You just shot an unarmed man!
Will: Well, he should have armed himself if he’s going to decorate his saloon with my friend.

…

Bill: I don’t deserve this…to die like this. I was building a house.
Will: Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.

…

Will: I’m comin’ outta here…an’ any fucker I see out there, I’m gonna kill him…an’ any fucker takes a shot at me, I ain’t just gonna kill him, but I’m gonna kill his wife an’ all his friends an’ burn his fucking house down, hear? And you better bury Ned right!..Better not cut up, nor otherwise harm no whores…or I’ll come back and kill every one of you sons of bitches.[/b]

I sort of nearly almost lived through an experience that was sort of nearly almost similar to this. Which is to say that my ex-wife [for reasons not all that far removed from those depicted in the movie], left me and I had to raise my daughter on my own. But [admittedly] things are rather fuzzy in my head all these years later. For example, I’m not sure if the separation was for six months, a year or two years.

But eventually she came back into my life. We got divorced and we ended up raising our daughter by way of a joint custody contraption. With a lot of improvising in other words.

Here though the husband was not particularly adept at being a parent. He sort of had to start from scratch. At least I didn’t have to endure that.

And I’d like to think I was no where near as self-absorbed as he was. But Ted was certainly that. His whole world had come to revolve around work. He and Joanna were going through the motions of having a relationship but Ted is largely oblvious to it all. He really can’t seem to grasp why on earth Joanna would want to leave him: “What have I done, tell me, what have I done?” And this was a time when for many women feminism had begun to finally sink in. The perfect political storm.

The sub-text here is an exploration [re Baby Boom] of just how difficult it can be for parents to raise their kids in the context of the capitalist political economy. But here at least money is not a factor. At least not at first.

And then it all winds up in court. Where the law is supposed to be the whole point. But when it comes to child custody cases, it’s [still] mostly about poiltics. The politics of gender roles for example. And the prejudices that revolve around the sanctity of motherhood.

IMDb

[b]Dustin Hoffman planned the moment when he throws his wine glass against the wall during the restaurant scene with Meryl Streep. The only person he warned in advance was the cameraman, to make sure that it got in the shot. Streep’s shocked reaction is real, but she stayed in character long enough for the director to yell cut. In the documentary on the DVD, she recalls yelling at Hoffman as soon as the shot was over for scaring her so badly.

The famous ice-cream scene, where Billy challenges his father by skipping dinner and going straight for dessert, was completely improvised by both Dustin Hoffman and Justin Henry. Director Robert Benton liked the scene so much that he decided to keep it in the film. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramer_vs._Kramer
trailer: youtu.be/jNLcfJ06y34

KRAMER VS. KRAMER [1979]
Written and directed by Robert Benton

[b]Joanna: I’m leaving you.
Ted [on the phone to the office]: Honey, please. I can’t hear.
[He hangs up the phone]
Ted: You guys eat?
Joanna: Ted, I’m leaving you. Ted, keys. Here are my keys. Here’s my American Express, my Bloomingdale’s card…my checkbook. I’ve taken $2,000 out of our savings account because that’s what I had when we first got married.
Ted: Is this some kind of joke?
Joanna: Here’s the cleaning, the laundry ticket.
Ted: Jo, you want to tell me what’s the matter?
Joanna: I paid the rent, the Con Ed bill and the phone bill.
Ted: Boy you really picked the time. I’m sorry I was late but I was busy making a living, all right?

…

Joanna: Ted, don’t make me go back in there. If you do I swear next week, maybe next year I’ll go right out the window.

…

Ted: Come on now, what about Billy?
Joanna: I’m not taking him with me. I’m no good for him. I’m terrible with him. I have no patience. He’s better off without me.
Ted: Joanna, please.
Joanna: And I don’t love you anymore.
Ted: Where are you going?
Joanna: I don’t know.

…

Ted: Can’t you understand what she has done to me?
Margaret: Yeah. She loused up one of the five best days of your life.

…

Ted : Margaret, I just need to know something. Did you put Joanna up to this?
Margaret: No, I did not put Joanna up to this.
Ted: Give her a little pep talk, maybe?
Margaret: Joanna and I talk a great deal and Joanna is a very unhappy woman; and you may not want to hear this but it took a lot of courage for her to walk out this door.
Ted: Mm-hmm. How much courage does it take to walk out on your kid?

…

Ted [dropping Billy off at school]: What grade are you in?

…

Boss: What are you going to do about Billy? This may sound a little rough but I think you should send Billy away to stay with relatives for a while.
Ted: You mean until Joanna comes back?
Boss: Suppose Joanna doesn’t come back?
Ted: Gee, I don’t know…
Boss: Ted, listen to me. I just told the boys upstairs you’re handling the Mid-Atlantic account. I told them you’re my main man. There are guys in the department eating their hearts out because I gave this job to you. This is important. Don’t blow this. I gotta depend on you. I gotta count on you 110 percent…seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

…

Billy: We need cereal.
Ted: Okay, what color?

…

Ted [after Billy brings ice cream to the table]: You go right back and put that right back until you finish your dinner…I’m warning you, you take one bite out of that and you are in big trouble. Don’t… Hey! Don’t you dare… Don’t you DARE do that. You hear me? Hold it right there! You put that ice cream in your mouth and you are in very, very, VERY big trouble. Don’t you dare go anywhere beyond that… Put it down right now. I am not going to say it again. I am NOT going to say it AGAIN.
[Billy eats the ice cream]
Billy [after Ted grabs him]: Ow! You’re hurting me!
Ted: OW! Don’t you kick me!
Billy: I hate you!
Ted: You’re no bargain either, pal! You are a spoiled, rotten little brat and I’ll tell you right now…
Billy: I hate you!
Ted: And I hate you back, you little shit!
Billy: I want my mommy!
Ted: I’m all you got!

…

Billy: Daddy?
Ted: Yeah?
Billy: I’m sorry.
Ted: I’m sorry too. I want you to go to sleep because it’s really late.
Billy: Daddy?
Ted: Now what is it?
Billy: Are you going away?
Ted: No. I’m staying here with you. You can’t get rid of me that easy.
Billy: That’s why Mommy left, isn’t it? Because I was bad?
Ted: Is that what you think? No. That’s not it, Billy. Your mom loves you very much… and the reason she left has nothing to do with you. I don’t know if this will make sense, but I’ll try to explain it to you. I think the reason why Mommy left…was because for a long time I kept trying to make her be a certain kind of person. A certain kind of wife that I thought she was supposed to be. And she just wasn’t like that. She was…she just wasn’t like that. I think that she tried for so long to make me happy…and when she couldn’t, she tried to talk to me about it. But I wasn’t listening. I was too busy, too wrapped up…just thinking about myself. And I thought that anytime I was happy, that she was happy. But I think underneath she was very sad. Mommy stayed here longer than she wanted because she loves you so much. And the reason why Mommy couldn’t stay anymore was because she couldn’t stand me. She didn’t leave because of you. She left because of me.
[pause]
Ted: Go to sleep now because it’s really late, okay? Good night. Sleep tight.
Billy: Don’t let the bedbugs bite.
Ted: See you in the morning light.
Billy: Daddy?
Ted: Yeah?
Billy: I love you.
Ted: I love you too.

…

Billy [looking up at Phyllis in the hall who is stark naked]: Hi.
Phyllis: Hi.
Billy: What’s your name?
Phyllis: I’m Phyllis Bernard.
Billy: Who?
Phyllis: I’m a friend…uh, business associate of your father’s…dad.
Ted [from in the bedroom]: Oh, Jesus…

…

Billy: Who’s gonna read me my bedtime stories?
Ted: Mommy will.
Billy: You’re not gonna kiss me good night anymore, are you, Dad?
Ted: No, I won’t be able to do that. But, you know, I get to visit. It’s gonna be ok, really.
Billy [crying]: If I don’t like it, can I come home?
Ted: What do you mean if you don’t like it? You’re gonna have a great time with Mommy. Really. She loves you so much.
Billy: Dad? Don’t forget, once, if you can just call me up, okay?
Ted: We’re gonna be okay. Come on, let’s go get some ice cream.

…

Ted: Hi, what’s up? Tell me. What? What’s the matter?
Joanna: I woke up this morning, kept thinking about Billy and I was thinking about him waking up in his room with his little clouds all around that I painted and I thought I should have painted clouds downtown because then he would think that he was waking up at home. I came here to take my son home. And I realized he already is home.[/b]

Anarchy in the U.K. was one thing, anarchy in Salt Lake City, Utah another thing altogether. Go ahead, try to imagine Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten going about their nihilistic rebellion there.

Can’t, right?

Of course the thing about being an anarchist anywhere is how you still have to rely on everyone else [the duped masses, for example] to grow your food and make your clothes and manufacture all the other basic accouterments of, say, surviving from day to day. After all, these things don’t exactly grow on trees, do they?

In other words, their righteous rebellion unfolded mostly inside their heads. There you make up the best of all possible worlds and expect folks to just go along with it once they realize [too] just how righteous your particular rebellion is. We find a lot of that here too, don’t we?

Anyway, after watching this who could possibly not want to become a punk anarchist? If only a tongue in cheek one.

Call this a gathering of…tribes. All of the bizarre points of view that folks are actually able to talk themselves into. Poking fun at the weirdos. Only there really are people like this out there. And they really do take this shit seriously. However, uh, idiotic it might seem to you and me.

Still, I could have done with a lot less Mark. Him and Salt Lake City.

The bottom line? Well, we all we to decide this for ourselves: DID STEVO SELL OUT? IS STEVO JUST A POSER?

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLC_Punk!
trailer: youtu.be/DILdeHgWF-U

SLC PUNK [1998]
Written and directed by James Merendino

[b]Stevo [voiceover]: To be an anarchist in Salt Lake City was certainly no easy task, especially in 1985. And having no money, no job, no plans for the future, the true anarchist position was in itself a strenuous job.

…

Bob [to Stevo]: Well, it’s a crazy fucked up world and we’re all just floating along waiting for someone who can walk on water.

…

Stevo: Wait, time out. I just wanted to ask real quick, if I can. You believe in rebellion, freedom and love, right?
Mom: Absolutely, yes.
Dad: Rebellion, freedom, love.
Stevo: One: You two are divorced. So love failed. Two: Mom, you’re a New Ager, clinging to every scrap of Eastern religion that may justify why the above said love failed. Three: Dad, you’re a slick, corporate, preppy-ass lawyer. I don’t really have to say anything else about you do I dad? Four: You move from New York City, the Mecca and hub of the cultural world to Utah! Nowhere! To change nothing! More to perpetuate this cycle of greed, fascism and triviality. Your movement of the people, by and for the people got you…nothing! You just hide behind some lost sense of drugs, sex and rock and roll. Ooooh, Kumbaya! I am the future! I am the future of this great nation which you, father, so arrogantly saved this world for. Look, I have my own agenda. Harvard, out. University of Utah, in. I’m gonna get a 4.0 in damage. I love you guys! Don’t get me wrong, it’s all about this. But for the first time in my life, I’m 18 and I can say “FUUUUUCK YOU!”
Dad: Steven, I didn’t sell out son. I bought in.

…

Stevo [voiceover]: Bob and the rest of us had made an oath to do absolutely nothing. We were gonna waste our educated minds. We had no other way of fighting. As I said, there just weren’t enough of us. Sure, there was a lot more punks than there was four years earlier… but there was also as many posers. Posers were people who looked like punks but they did it for fashion. And they were fools, they’d say “anarchy in the UK.” What the fuck’s that? Anarchy in the UK. What good is that to those of us in Utah, America? It was a Sex Pistols thing. They were British, they were allowed to go on about Anarchy in the UK. You don’t live your life by lyrics. I mean, that’s all you ever heard from these trendy fucks. Like, “Did you hear the new Smiths album? It’s fuckin’ terrif.” Kids walking around Utah saying “terrif” with a stupid old English twang. See what I mean? What the fuck’s up with the England bullshit? You know Jag? He’s a fag!

…

Stevo [voiceover while bending over]: The sun never sets on the British Empire? Well the sun never sets on my asshole!

…

Mark: That’s what’s wrong with you Americans, you’re always looking for pain.
Mike: Yeah well…it pains me to hear you say that, Mark, it really does.

…

Stevo [voiceover]: If looking the way we did in Utah was unusual…in Wyoming, affectionately called the Cowboy State… we were fucking aliens.
Liquor store owner: What the hell are you?
Stevo: We come from the east in search of the Messiah. We followed that big star. Yeah, we bring gold and frankincense. Myrrh. Myrrh.
Liquor store owner: Oh, my God. Who let you boys out of the state institute? We’d better get you boys back in the hospital.
Bob: No. It’s all right, man. We’re from England.
Liquor store owner: England?
Stevo: Yeah. That’s right. That’s probably why we seem so weird to you, man.
Liquor store owner: England, huh? Well, that explains it, I guess. You boys enjoying your stay here in the good ol’ U.S. Of A.?
Bob: Sure thing. It’s a great land.
[his mother comes into the store]
Mother: What the hell is that?!
Liquor store owner: It’s all right, Mother. They’re from England.

…

Stevo [overover]: The Fight: What does it mean and where does it come from? An Essay: Homosapien. A man. He is alone in the universe. A punker. Still a man. He is alone in the universe, but he connects. How? They hit each other. No clearer way to evaluate whether or not you’re alive. Now. Complications. A reason to fight. Somebody different. Difference creates dispute. Dispute is a reason to fight. Now, to fight is a reason to feel pain. Life is pain. So to fight with reason is to be alive with reason. Final analysis: To fight, a reason to live. Problems and Contradictions: I am an anarchist. I believe that there should be no rules, only chaos. Fighting appears to be chaos. And when we slam in the pit a show it is. But when we fight for a reason, like rednecks, there’s a system, we fight for what we stand for, chaos. Fighting is a structure, fighting is to establish power, power is government and government is not anarchy. Government is war and war is fighting. The circle goes like this: our redneck skirmishes are cheap perversions of conventional warfare. War implies extreme government because wars are fought to enforce rules or ideals, even freedom. But other people ideals forced on someone else, even if it is something like freedom, is still a rule; not anarchy. This contradiction was becoming clear to me in the fall of '85. Even as early as my first party, “Why did I love to fight?” I framed it, but still, I don’t understand it. It goes against my beliefs as a true anarchist. But there it was. Competition, fighting, capitalism, government, THE SYSTEM. That’s what we did. It’s what we always did. Rednecks kicked the shit out of punks, punks kicked the shit out of mods, mods kicked the shit out of skinheads, skinheads took out the heavy metal guys, and the heavy metal guys beat the living shit out of new wavers and the new wavers did nothing. What was the point? Final summation? None.[/b]

Got that? Now all that’s left to do is choose sides.

[b]Stevo: Dad, you and I really gotta work on your definition of “good news”.

…

Stevo: You know what I think it is? I think you’ve become a fascist.
Dad: A fascist?
Stevo: You’re a Nazi!
Dad: Nazi, I’m Jewish, Steven, how can I be a Nazi?
Stevo: That’s the worst. Dad, look at this. What kinda, what kinda car is this?
Dad: That would be a Porshe.
Stevo: A Porshe, that you bought at a Volkswagen dealership. Volks…wagen, right? For the people who designed it? Who made that possible, Let me give you a hint, Adolf Hitler.
Dad: IT’S JUST A CAR!

…

Stevo [voiceover]: Where were we going? I mean, really, what was happening? This life, it was crazy. And I felt tired. Halfway through the season, inside I was so tired…and I had this wave of melancholy…just, like, sweep through me…and this impending sense that my philosophy… anarchy…was falling apart. What do you do when your foundation falls apart? I don’t know. They don’t teach you that in school.

…

Chris: Let’s speak of anarchy…
Stevo [voiceover]: So we started our debate. This was our custom. He believed in structure, I believed in chaos. This was an ongoing fight. He seemed to be winning.

…

Stevo: The school of science says the world moves from order to disorder…chaos.
Chris: They’re fools, Stevo. You know, life goes from order to disorder to order. Atoms come together randomly to form a structure. An infant is born. It grows, it gets older, it dies, it decomposes.
Stevo: Exactly. Back into chaos. Exactly. Anarchy.
Chris: But then those atoms are reformed into something else. A blade of grass, a tree, a flower, whatever…the cycle, man.
Stevo: I got it. The cycle, man. Yeah, I get you. The cycle.

…

Stevo [voiceover]: Jones didn’t need to prove the devil did not exist…not as a supernatural being… because I had seen the devil. He was in that room with Sandy. He was me, Harvard, my mom and dad, all of us. Jones was just making all of this up anyway, so who cared? “Fuck 'em,” I thought. “Fuck him, fuck this party…and fuck everything. Above all, fuck anarchy!”

…

Stevo [voiceover]: There’s nothing going on here. That’s what I saw when I looked out over the city: nothing. How the Mormon settlers looked upon this valley and felt that it was the promised land is beyond me. I don’t know, maybe it looked different back then.

…

Stevo: If I knew what was ahead of me, I may have stayed in bed. You see life is like that. We change, that’s all. You see, the guy I am now is not the guy I was then. If the guy I was then met the guy I am now he’d beat the shit out of me. Those are the facts.

…

Brandy: I have to ask you something. Why do you go out of your way to look like a bum?
Stevo: I look like a bum?
Brandy: Not in a bad way.
Stevo; I look like a bum in a good way.
Brandy: Aren’t you, like, rebelling against society? Wouldn’t it be more of an act of rebellion…if you didn’t spend so much time buying blue hair dye and going out to get punky clothes? It seems so petty. Stop me if I’m being offensive.
Stevo: Oh, no, go right ahead. It’s…No, it’s fine.
Brandy: You wanna be an individual, right? You look like you’re wearing a uniform. You look like a punk. That’s not rebellion. That’s fashion.

…

Stevo [voiceover]: And so there I was. I was gonna go to Harvard. It was obvious. I was gonna be a lawyer and play in the God-damned system, and that was that. I was my old man. He knew, so what else could I do? I mean, there’s no future in anarchy; I mean let’s face it. But when I was into it, there was never a thought of the future. I mean we were certain the world was gonna end, but when it didn’t, I had to do something, so fuck it. I could always be a litigator in New York and piss the shit out of the judges. I mean that was me: a trouble maker of the future. The guy that was one of those guys that my parents so arrogantly saved the world for, so we could fuck it up. We can do a hell of a lot more damage in the system than outside of it. That was the final irony, I think. That, and well, this. And “fuck you” for all of you who were thinking it: I guess when all was said and done, I was nothing more than a God-damned, trendy-ass poser.[/b]

There are three films here. There is Paul and Jeanne. The good. There is Tom and Jeanne. The bad. And there is Paul and everyone else. The ugly.

I just fast forward now through the bad and savor both the good and the ugly.

Purportedly, the film is basically just one man’s sexual fantasy. The director’s: The idea of this movie grew from Bernardo Bertolucci’s own sexual fantasies, stating that “he once dreamed of seeing a beautiful nameless woman on the street and having sex with her without ever knowing who she was”.

All the rest is something that each of us as individuals will attach our own “meaning” to.

Mine tends to revolve around the manner in which ones sense of identity can slip in and out of what is real and what is only imagined; of how things are and of how they might become if we are able to slip in and out of the fantasy.

Most importantly, it revolves around the relationship between the private anguish we endure in absorbing private losses and the manner in which that can be embodied when interacting with others [here intimately] who do not have a clue regarding this part at all.

To wit: We are only afforded a glimpse into the relationship between Paul and his wife. We know she committed suicide and we know Paul is embedded [somehow] in the reason. And then we watch as this all becomes entangled in his relationship with Jeanne. But nothing is ever pinned down. And Jeanne is oblivious. Thus my reaction to the ending may well be very different from your reaction. I was surprised [and not pleasantly] when all pretenses dissolve into “the real world”: Hey, kid, this is who I really am.

I preferred the man falling apart at the seams when confronted with the body of his dead wife. The leap here was just too disconcerting for me. I could not have made it myself.

And Jeanne was someone I was not able gain any traction with at all. She is very young, very beautiful, very voluputous. And I have always been attracted to, well, let’s just she that hers is extraordinary. She is “artsy”, off the beaten track. But not much more than that. Not to me. I was not able to find myself caring all that much about her. And I could only imagine my reaction to the film if I had been. How very much different it would have been.

IMDb

[b]While filming, Bernardo Bertolucci tried to explain the point of the film to Marlon Brando, suggesting that his character was Bertolucci’s “manhood” and that Maria Schneider’s character was his “dream girl”. Brando later maintained that he had absolutely no idea of what Bertolucci was suggesting or even talking about.

According to his autobiography “Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me”, the reason why Marlon Brando refused to do a full frontal nude scene was because his “penis shrank to the size of a peanut on set”.

According to Maria Schneider, Marlon Brando’s lines were routinely taped to her naked body because of his dyslexia and reluctance to memorize his dialog.

According to Maria Schneider, the famous “butter scene” was never in the script and improvised at the last minute by Marlon Brando and Bernardo Bertolucci without consulting her. Though the sodomy act was faked, her real tears in the film clearly testify her state of shock.

Jean-Pierre Léaud had so much respect for Marlon Brando that he was afraid to meet him. That’s why he shot all his scenes on Saturdays, when Brando refused to work. Due to this, the two never met in the entire making of the film on and off screen.

Such was the controversy over the film that the print was smuggled into the USA for its debut in a diplomatic pouch from Italy. The film was due to have its premiere at the New York Film Festival where tickets were going for $150. [/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Tango_in_Paris
trailer: youtu.be/3x4UOsLC0OE

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

LAST TANGO IN PARIS [Ultimo Tango a Parigi] 1972
Written and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

[b]Paul [with his hands over his ears at the sound of a passing train…seeming to beseech the heavens]: Fucking GOD!

…

Maid [to Paul]: I’d have finished by now, but the police wouldn’t let me touch anything. They didn’t believe it was suicide. There was so much blood everywhere. They had fun making me do a reconstruction. “She went there.” “She came through here.” “She opened the curtain.”…Asking if she was sad, if she was happy, if you fought, how long you’d been married, why you didn’t have any children. Pigs! They said, “Your boss is a bit unstable.” “Do you know that he was a boxer?” So? “lt didn’t work out, so he became an actor.” “Bongo player, revolutionary in South America, journalist in Japan.” “One day, he lands in Tahiti, hangs around, Learns French.” “Then he comes to Paris. There… he meets a woman with money, marries her and…” “Since then what has your boss done?” “Nothing.” I say, “Can I clean up now?” “No! Don’t touch anything!” “Do you really think she killed herself?”

…

Jeanne: I don’t know what to call you.
Paul: I don’t have a name.
Jeanne: Do you want to know mine?
Paul: No, no! I don’t. I don’t want to know your name. You don’t have a name and I don’t have a name either. Not one name.
Jeanne: You’re crazy!
Paul: Maybe I am, but I don’t want to know anything about you. I don’t wanna know where you live or where you come from. I wanna know nothing.
Jeanne: You scare me.
Paul: Nothing. You and I are gonna meet here without knowing anything that goes on outside here. OK?
Jeanne: But why?
Paul: Because…because we don’t need names here. Don’t you see? We’re gonna forget…everything that we knew. Every…all the people…all that we do…wherever we live. We’re going to forget that, everything, everything.
Jeanne: But I can’t. Can you?
Paul: I don’t know…

…

Paul: What are you looking for?
Rosa’s mother: Something that would explain…A letter, a clue.
Paul: Nothing. I told you, there’s nothing, nothing at all.

…

Rosa’s mother: I’ll prepare her a beautiful room with flowers. The cards, clothes, relatives, flowers.
Paul: You’ve got everything in that suitcase. You didn’t forget anything. But I don’t want any priests here. No priests.
Rosa’s mother: But, Paul. We have to. Funerals must be religious.
Paul: NO!! Rosa didn’t believe. Nobody believes in fucking God here!
Rosa’s mother: Paul, don’t shout. Don’t talk like that.
Paul: The priest doesn’t want any suicides. The Church doesn’t want any suicides, do they?
Rosa’s mother: They’ll give her absolution. Absolution and a nice mass. That’s all I ask, Paul. Rosa…Rosa is my little girl, do you understand? Rosa…Why did she kill herself?
Paul: Why? Why did she kill herself? Why?
[he viciously punches the door with his fist]
Paul: You don’t know, do you? You don’t know…

…

Jeanne: I shall have to invent a name for you.
Paul: A name? Oh, Jesus Christ! Oh, God, I’ve been called by a million names all my life. I don’t want a name. I’m better off with a grunt or a groan for a name.

…

Jeanne: My father had green eyes and shiny boots. I worshipped him. He was so handsome in his uniform.
Paul: What a steaming pile of horseshit.
Jeanne: What? Don’t…
Paul: All uniforms are bullshit. Everything outside this place is bullshit.

…

Jeanne: What are we doing here?
Paul: Let’s just say we’re taking a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

…

Paul: Why were you going through my pockets?
Jeanne: To find out who you are.
Paul: “To find out who you are?”
Jeanne: Yes.
Paul: Well, if you look real close, you’ll see me hiding behind my zipper.

…

Jeanne: Why do you hate women?
Paul: Because either they always pretend to know who I am, or they pretend I don’t know who they are, and that’s very boring.

…

Marcel [doing pullups]: This is my secret. 30 times every morning.
Paul: Really, Marcello, I don’t know what she ever saw in you.

…

Paul [to Jeanne]: Go, get the butter.

…

Paul [while sodomizing Jeanne]: I’m gonna tell you about the family. That holy institution meant to breed virtue in savages. I want you to repeat it after me. Repeat it. Say, “Holy family.” Come on, say it. Go on. Holy family. Church of good citizens. Church…Say it. Say it! The children are tortured until they tell their first lie.
Jeanne [in tears]: The children… are tortured…
Paul: Where the will is broken by repression.
Jeanne: Where the will… broken… repression.
Paul: Where freedom… Free… Freedom! …is assassinated. Freedom is assassinated by egotism. Family… Family… You… You… You… You… You… fucking… fucking… family. You fucking family!

…

Jeanne; You know, you’re old! You’re getting fat.
Paul: Fat, is it? How unkind.
Jeanne: Half of your hair is out and the other half is almost white.
Paul: In ten years, you know what you’ll be doing…you’ll be playing soccer with your tits.

…

Paul: You want this golden, shining, powerful warrior to build a fortress where you can hide in. So you don’t have to ever…have…You don’t ever have to be afraid. You don’t have to feel lonely or empty. That’s what you want, isn’t it?
Jeanne: Yes.
Paul: Well, you’ll never find it.
Jeanne: But I find this man.
Paul: Then it won’t be long until he’ll want you to build a fortress for him out of your tits and your cunt and your hair and your smile and the way you smell. And…and some place where he can feel comfortable and secure enough so that he can worship in front of the altar of his own prick. Jeanne: But I find this man!
Paul: No, you’re alone. You’re all alone. You won’t be free of that feeling of being alone until you look death right in the face. I mean, that sounds like bullshit, some romantic crap, until you go right up into the ass of death. Right up in his ass… till you find the womb of fear. And then,… maybe. Maybe then, you’ll be able to find him.
Jeanne: I found him. He’s you! You are that man!

…

Paul: Get me the scissors. Get me the fingernail scissors. I want you to cut the fingernails on your right hand, these two. That’s it. I want you to put your fingers up my ass.
Jeanne: What?
Paul: Put your fingers up my ass, are you deaf? Go on. I’m gonna get a pig…and I’m…I’m gonna have the pig fuck you. I want the pig to vomit in your face and I want you to swallow the vomit. Are you gonna do that for me?
Jeanne: Yeah. Yeah!
Paul: I want the pig to die while…while you’re fucking him. Then you’ll have to go behind him. I want you to smell the dying farts of the pig. Are you gonna do all of that for me?
Jeanne: Yes, and more than that!

…

Paul [to his dead wife]: You know on the top of the closet? The cardboard box, I found all your… I found all your little goodies. Pens, keychains, foreign money, French ticklers, the whole shot. Even a clergyman’s collar. I didn’t know you collected all those little knick-knacks left behind. Even if a husband lives 200 hundred fucking years, he’ll never discover his wife’s true nature. I may be able to understand the secrets of the universe, but…I’ll never understand the truth about you. Never.

…

Paul [alone at his dead wife’s bedside]: Our marriage was nothing more than a foxhole for you. And all it took for you to get out was a 10 cent razor and a tub full of water. You cheap, goddamn, fucking, godforsaken whore, I hope you rot in hell. You’re worse than the dirtiest street pig anybody could ever find anywhere, and you know why? You know why? Because you lied. You lied to me and I trusted you.
[gradually starts losing his composure]
You lied and you knew you were lying. Go on, tell me you didn’t lie. Haven’t you got anything to say about that? You can think up something, can’t you? Go on, tell me something! Go on, smile, you cunt!
[starts crying]
Go on, tell me… tell me something sweet. Smile at me and say I just misunderstood. Go on, tell me. You pig-fucker…you goddamn, fucking, pig-fucking liar.
[sobbing]
Rosa… I’m sorry, I…I just…I can’t stand it to see these goddamn things on your face!
[peels off her fake eyelashes]
You never wore make-up…this fucking shit.
[wipes off her lipstick with a flower petal]
I’m gonna take this off your mouth, this…this lipstick…
[falls over her, sobbing uncontrollably]
Rosa - oh GOD! I’m sorry! I…I don’t know why you did it! I’d do it too, if I knew how…I just don’t know how…I have to…have to find a way…

…

Paul: It’s me again.
Jeanne: It’s over.
Paul: That’s right. It’s over and then it begins again.
Jeanne: What begins again? I don’t understand anything anymore.
Paul: There’s nothing to understand. We left the apartment, and now we begin again with love all the rest of it.
Jeanne: The rest of it?
Paul: Yeah, listen. I’m a widower. I’ve got a little hotel, a kind of a dump. But it’s not completely a flophouse. And…I used to live on my luck, and I got married. My wife killed herself. But you know, what the hell. I’m no prize. I picked up a nail when I was in Cuba in and now I got a prostate like an Idaho potato. But I’m still a good stick man, even if l can’t have any children. Let’s see. I don’t have any stomping grounds. I don’t have any friends. I suppose if I hadn’t met you, I’d probably settle for a hard chair and a hemorrhoid. Anyway, to make a long, dull story even duller, I come from a time when a guy like me would drop into a joint like this and pick up a young chick like you…and call her a bimbo.

…

Paul [to Jeanne]: Listen, that’s not a subway strap, that’s me cock!

…

Paul: Mademoiselle…How do you like your hero? Over easy or sunny-side up? I ran through Africa and Asia and Indonesia, and now I found you…and I love you. I want to know your name.
Jeanne: Jeanne.
[she shoots him]

…

Jeanne [imagining what she will tell the police]: I don’t know who he is. He followed me in the street. He tried to rape me. He’s a lunatic. I don’t know what he’s called. I don’t know his name. I don’t know who he is. He tried to rape me. I don’t know. I don’t know him. I don’t know who he is. He’s a madman. I don’t know his name.[/b]

Small towns and big cities. Many [like, say, me] started out in one and ended up in the other. Does that mean anything? Maybe. Maybe not. But there is really no point in arguing about it because there are simply too many different trajectories that one can take. There’s just no escaping the parts that can never really be pinned down with any finality.

Bottom line: You come to think and feel what you do about the past, about the present…about the relationship between them. And it’s inevitable: Some want to escape to what you think and feel now and others want to escape from it.

Willie is back home from the big city. But he never quite succeeded in becoming much more than what he had figured he was bent on escaping from. He’s a jazz pianist. But he is barely able to eke out a living doing it.

Ah, but where does being “beautiful” fit into all of this? A beautiful girl, a handsome boy. Small town or not. And we surely cannot pretend that in this culture it is [ho hum] just one more variable. As though being rich or poor in this culture were [ho hum] just one more variable. Still, for some folks it can be closer to that than for others.

Anyway, with some things, big city or small town, people are people are people. Just don’t think you can ever hope to pin down exactly what that means. Take sex and love for example…

And then there is Willie and Marty. Marty is Natalie Portman beautiful. And while she is [literally] a child [13] she is precocious to a fault.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beautiful_Girls_(film
trailer: youtu.be/0AvkCamSj5o

BEAUTIFUL GIRLS [1996]
Directed by Ted Demme

[b]Kev: No Sambuca today, Darian?
Darian: It’s five o’clock in the morning.
Kev: Does that make it too early or too late?

…

Paul: I’ll bet $20 she’s banging that guy.
Kev: Bad bet.
Paul: Bad bet? Why?
Kev: Either way, you lose. If you win, she’s bangin’ him. If you lose, you’re out 20 bucks.

…

Jan: Only when faced with losing me do you decide you want to spend the rest of your life with me.
Paul: So, what’s wrong with that? I didn’t like the alternative. I mean that’s how one usually comes to a decision anyway, right?
Jan: Wrong again, Paul - one comes to a decision based on what one wants, not based on what one doesn’t want.

…

Sharon [to Tommy]: Let me ask you something. What do I do? The best years of your life were high school, when you were the king of the hill, the Birdman, and Darian was your girlfriend. You want all that back. I can’t give that to you. How do I compete with a life that is impossible for you to have again?

…

Paul: See these guys? Pete, Rizzo and Sammy B? They work all day and drink all night for 40 fucking years. Two weeks out of the year, they take a vacation and go to the Cape. What do they do? They drink all day, they drink all night. If we don’t step it up, we’re gonna wind up just like them.
Tommy: Does this little observation contain anything resembling a point?
Paul: Yes, Tom. If we don’t step it up, we’ll wind up just like Husky Pete and Rizzo and Sammy Bean.
Kev: Cool.

…

Paul: Why’d you mention the piano? We can’t compete with that.
Tommy: Show her how you spread mulch? That’s sexy.

…

Gina: I’m finished speaking to both of you okay? You’re both fucking insane. You want to know what your problem is? MTV, Playboy, and Madison fucking Avenue. Yes. Let me explain something to you, ok? Girls with big tits have big asses. Girls with little tits have little asses. That’s the way it goes. God doesn’t fuck around; he’s a fair guy. He gave the fatties big, beautiful tits and the skinnies little tiny niddlers. It’s not my rule. If you don’t like it, call him.
[she opens a copy of Penthouse…the centerfold]
Gina: Oh, guys, look what we have here. Look at this, your favorite. Oh, you like that?
Tommy: I could go along with that.
Gina: Yeah, that’s nice right? Well, it doesn’t exist ok. Look at the hair. The hair is long, it’s flowing, it’s like a river. Well, it’s a fucking weave ok? And the tits, please! I could hang my overcoat on them. Tits by design were invented to be suckled by babies. Yes, they’re purely functional. These are silicon city. And look, my favorite, the shaved pubis. Pubic hair being too unruly and all. Very key. This is a mockery, this is a sham, this is bullshit. Implants, collagen, plastic, capped teeth, the fat sucked out, the hair extended, the nose fixed, the bush shaved… These are not real women, all right? They’re beauty freaks. And they make all us normal women with our wrinkles, our puckered boobs and our cellulite feel somehow inadequate. Well I don’t buy it, all right? But you fucking mooks, if you think that if there’s a chance in hell that you’ll end up with one of these women, you don’t give us real women anything approaching a commitment. It’s pathetic. I don’t know what you think you’re going to do. You’re going to end up eighty-years old, drooling in some nursing home, then you’re going to decide, it’s time to settle down, get married, have kids? What, are you going to find a cheerleader?
Tommy: I think you’re over simplifying.
Gina: Oh eat me. Look at Paul. With his models on the wall, his dog named Elle McPherson. He’s insane. He’s obsessed. You’re all obsessed. If you had an once of self-esteem, of self-worth, of self-confidence, you would realize that as trite as it may sound, beauty is truly skin-deep. And you know what, if you ever did hook one of those girls, I guarantee you’d be sick of her.
Tommy: Yeah, I suppose I’d get sick of her after about, what, twenty or thirty years?
Gina: Get over yourself.
Tommy: What?
Gina: No mater how perfect the nipple, how supple the thigh, unless there is some other shit going on in the relationship, besides the physical, it’s going to get old, ok? And you guys, as a gender, have got to get a grip. Otherwise, the future of the human race is in jeopardy.[/b]

Hmm. Never heard that before.

[b]Willie: All I’m saying is you have this amazing thing, you got his person with all that potential, all that future… This girl is gonna be amazing. She’s smart, she’s funny… she’s hot…
Mo: She’s 13!
Willie: I know.
Mo: Get over it.
Willie: It’s not a sexual thing. This is…I could wait. In ten years, she’ll be 23, I’ll be 39, it won’t be a big deal.
Mo: Willie…you’re scaring me here.
Willie: This girl is gonna be amazing. I was actually jealous of this little kid on a bike, this short little kid on a bike, cos he gets to be her age now. I get to be some vile old man, like… What’s his name?
Mo: Roman Polanski.
Willie: No, no like…Nabokov.

…

Mo: Willie, the girl was a zygote when you were in the seventh grade.

…

Paul: Fuckin’ Mo has got it wired, man. He’s like a retard that doesn’t know any better. He doesn’t desire new experiences, new women, nothing. Look at him. He’s like the mental patient that doesn’t know he’s mental. So he’s perfectly content.

…

Paul: Supermodels are beautiful girls, Will. A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you’ve been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man - promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it’s going to be okay. The supermodels, Willy? That’s all they are. Bottled promise. Scenes from a brand new day. Hope dancing in stiletto heels.
Willie: I am now going to check your freezer for human heads.

…

Andera [to Willie]: There’s a guy out there that thinks the same thing about Tracy. He’s jealous of you, you getting to do all that with her.

…

Paul: You let her behind the curtain, didn’t you?
Willie: Maybe she missed her boyfriend.
Paul: You let her behind the curtain, I know you did. You never let them behind the curtain Will. You never let them see the little old man behind the curtain working the levers of the great and powerful OZ. They are all sisters Willie…they aren’t allowed back there…they mustn’t see.
Willie: Tell me the truth. You stay up nights thinking about this shit?
Paul: You say it like it’s a bad thing.

…

Paul [referring to Tracy]: Willie, my friend, she is delightful.
Willie: “Delightful”? Who are you, Rex Harrison?
Paul: Seriously, what is your major malfunction? I mean, she’s smart, she’s funny, she’s charming, she’s got a great ass, a nice rack as far as I can tell?
Willie: Nice rack.
Paul: She’s rich, she’s got a great ass.
Willie: Yeah, you mentioned that.

…

Steve: Can I buy you a drink?
Tommy: No, I got one.
Steve: Come on, Tom. One drink.
Tommy: I was just gonna be leaving.
Steve: OK. Let me see if I got this straight. I can’t buy you a drink, but you can stick your dick into my wife.

…

Steve [the “frat” boy]: See, I think it’s Knight’s Ridge. Fucking working-class towns, man. Girls here see a tool belt, they get moist.
Tommy: I got an extra one I can lend you, Steve.

…

Willie: Tommy was sleeping with his wife.
Mo: So?
Willie: I’m just saying it’s not like he was that innocent.
Paul: So he deserved that? You see his face?
Willie: Look, what I’m saying is that this does present a moral dilemma.

…

Steve [to Mo with his little girl looking on]: I’m…I’m just trying to save my family here, man, all right?

…

Tommy [to Sharon]: I’m just lying here and I’m wondering…how I got here, you know? I don’t mean here, I mean how I got here…How I’m not anything like what I’d hoped that I’d be, you know? I’m not even close to the guy I thought I’d end up being. And it kind of blows.[/b]

Then the script kicks in. A crescendo of happy endings. Mostly.

Paul: So you’re the little neighborhood Lolita.
Marty: So you’re the alcoholic high school buddy with shit for brains.

Let’s face it, mental illness can be tricky. It can be tricky diagnosing it. It can be tricky treating it. It can be tricky living with it.

And it can be tricky when you are around someone who is – no doubt about it – ill mentally. Tricky because there are the parts where these folks seem perfectly normal. Or when their behaviors might be deemed merely…eccentric.

You figure you can live with it. With the “episodes”. And maybe even fall in love and live happily ever after. And, sure, maybe you can. But, again, it’s tricky.

Joon is especially tricky to be around. Her behaviors can indeed be thought of [at times] as merely eccentric. But other times they are downright bizarre. Scary even. Dangerous? Sam on the other hand is seldom scary. Or dangerous. But [in his own way] he can be just as eccentric and bizarre. Is he mentally ill? Too close to call?

So how do you handle it? If, for example, you are [or want to be] her…lover? Or if you are [and have no choice but to be] her brother.

Benny is the brother. And he can be fiercely protective of Joon. Or maybe a bit too protective. And his whole life seems to revolve around taking care of her. And maybe he likes it that way.

Back again to the part about these things being tricky.

Fortunately, she is just mentally stable enough for this film to have a happy ending. That “episode” on the bus notwithstanding.

IMDb

[b]Joon’s comment to Sam, “Having a Boo Radley moment, are we?” is a reference to the character of Boo Radley in the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”, a “Boo Radley moment” is when a person is astonished at the sight of something or someone excessively strange and/or rare.

Mary Stuart Masterson told director Jeremiah S. Chechik that she did not remember filming the bus scene.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_%26_Joon
trailer: youtu.be/pEciMBEUL_s

BENNY AND JOON [1993]
Directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik

[b]Mrs. Smeal: I am done Mr Pearl, I am done. The mules turned to glue, she left the house unescorted, she has sudden outbursts. She is simply unmanageable.
Benny: Mrs Smeal! Please, wait, please. Let me talk to her. I can talk to her, you can’t quit on such short notice.
Mrs. Smeal: Oh, well I’m sorry sir. In Ireland we have a saying – when a boat runs ashore, the sea has spoken.

…

Benny: What happened with you and Mrs. Smeal?
Joon: She was given to fits of semi-precious metaphors.
Benny: The woman is a housekeeper, Joon, not an English professor.

…

Benny: I’m her brother and her only family. And we’ve done just fine the two of us for 12 years.
Doctor: Yes, but her stress level is always a factor in her display of symptoms. Her agitation should be kept to a minimum.
Benny: Everybody gets agitated sometimes it’s the only option
Doctor: Benny, don’t get me wrong. I’m impressed that you’ve managed this long. But a group home would give her a chance to develop other relationships. Also we don’t know this but what if she was capable of a part time job? They would encourage her in that direction. These are very nice places, nurturing, supportive.
Benny: I’m not farming her out.

…

Joon [wearing a snorkle and directing traffic with a ping pong paddle]: I have every right to be outside, officer, I have every right.

…

Waldo: Joon called. She says that you’ve run out of tapioca.
Benny: She what?
Waldo: Oh, and the police will corroborate.

…

Joon [to Benny playing ping pong]: Don’t underestimate the mentally ill. We know how to count.

…

Mike: Hey guys, rules are rules, without them there’s no order in the universe.
Benny: Oh don’t give me that crap. You took advantage…
Joon: …of your sick sister? A heart flush is a perfectly respectable hand.
Mike: Not respectable enough.
Benny: Hey shut up Mike. I am not taking this guy home.
Mike: You have to man. Remember the bet I lost last year. I had to re-plant your socket set. I didn’t back out did I?
Benny: You can’t bet a human being!

…

Joon: You’re out of your tree.
Sam: It’s not my tree.

…

Sam: Mentally ill. Really?
Benny: Yeah. But I mean don’t worry about it. Just let her go about her routine, you know. Her routine is everyday therapy. She runs hot and cold on you, just ignore it. That’s just the way it works. Oh, listen, she starts talking to herself, don’t worry about it…but don’t answer.
Sam: ok
Benny: She sometimes hears voices in her head. That comes with the territory too. And just make sure that nothing … and I mean nothing … happens to her.

…

Sam: You don’t like raisins?
Joon: Not really.
Sam: Why?
Joon: They used to be fat and juicy and now they’re shriveled. They had their lives stolen. Well, they taste sweet, but really they’re just humiliated grapes.

…

Joon: Did you have to go to school for that?
Sam: No, no, I got thrown out of school for that.

…

Sam: Joon.
Joon: What?
Sam: I, I love you
Joon: Me too. But don’t tell Benny.
Sam: Ok.

…

Sam: How sick is she?
Benny: She’s plenty sick.
Sam: Because, you know, it seems to me that, I mean, except for being a little mentally ill, she’s pretty normal.

…

Joon: We have to tell him.
Benny: What? Tell me what?
Sam: Err…Benny…Joon…and…and I…are…you know.
Benny: Bullshit! You…
[he gets up and drags Sam from the table]
Sam: No, no.
Joon: Don’t!
Benny: Get the fuck out!!
Joon: You can’t throw him out. I won him!!

…

Benny: I hope you’re happy…I hope you’re happy with what you have done to her.
[throws Sam against wall]
Benny: You just stay the hell away from my sister.
Sam [shakes his head]: No… no.
Benny: You wanna know why everyone laughs at you, Sam? Because you’re an idiot. You’re a first-class moron!
Sam: You’re scared, Benny.
Benny: I’m what?
Sam: You’re scared. I can see it… And I know why. I used to look up to you. But…uh…now I can’t look at you at all.[/b]

A film based on this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affair_of_ … _of_Sugamo

A “fictionalized” account: Although this film was inspired by actual events that took place in Tokyo, the details and characters portrayed in this film are entirely fictional.

It’s not like we can’t imagine something like this happening. After all, there are literally millions upon millions of families out there interacting in millions upon millions of different circumstantial contexts. Some parents are more irresponsible [selfish] than others. On the other hand [perhaps] some parents are more desparate than others. Judgments will be made [must be made] but don’t think you can ever really [truly] understand what motivates others to do what they do…just because you yourself would never do the same.

Also, some children are considerably more precocious [mature] than others.

Still, the mother here does [eventually] abandon the children to fend for themselves. And with barely enough money to get by. The oldest is only 12. And none of them [aside from her son] are allowed to leave the apartment. And they are all forbidden to go to school.

In the beginning she does seem to convey [share] something in the way of love for them. And they for her. And she does return at least one time [after 3 months] to help them along. And she does promise to return for good once she is able to remarry. But she doesn’t. These kids really are left to sink or swim. And over time it just gets grimmer and grimmer. And then one of them dies.

IMDb

Filmed chronologically over almost an entire year.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobody_Knows_(2004_film
trailer: youtu.be/gCh0IbMH15w

NOBODY KNOWS [Dare Mo Shiranai] 2004
Written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda

[b]Mother: Here goes.
[she opens up two suitcases in the new apartment – her children are inside them]
Mother: You OK? Was it hot?
Yuki: It was hot!
Mother: Wow, you did a great job. This is your new home.

…

Mother: Now that we’ve moved into a new home, I’m gonna explain the rules to you, one more time. Let’s promise to keep 'em, okay?
Yuki: Okay. How many are there?
Mother: Okay, first of all: No loud voices or screaming. Can you do that?
Yuki: I can.
Mother: Okay, next: No going outside.
Yuki: Okay.
Mother: Can you do that? No even out on the veranda. Absolutely no going outside!
Yuki: Okay, Mommy.

…

Akira: Mother I want to go to school.
Mother: You wouldn’t have any fun at school. Besides, when you don’t have a Daddy, they bully you at school. You don’t need to go to school.

…

Mother [to Akira]: Your mother, is in love with someone now.
Akira: Again?
Mother: This guy’s really sweet and serious. I think he is really looking out for me So, if he promises to really…to really marry me, then we can all live in a big house and you can all go to school and Kyoko can play the piano…So just hang on a little longer. I really think this time probably…[/b]

All four of her children have different fathers.

[b]Akira [to his siblings]: She stinks of booze.

…

Pachinko Parlor Employee [possibly Yuki’s father]: Whoa. I don’t have any money. What’ve you got left?
Akira: About 10,000 yen.
Pachinko Parlor Employee: Oh, that’s enough, huh? You know, I’m in a hell of a jam. My stupid girlfriend, you know, she totally maxed out my credit cards. I’m badly off. I’m working my ass off, slowly paying it down, man.
[he gives Akira some money]
Pachinko Parlor Employee: Uh, this is all I’ve got on me. This is it, the last time, huh?
Akira: Thanks, thank you.
Pachinko Parlor Employee: By the way, Yuki ain’t my kid. Every time I did with your mom, I used a prophylactic, huh? Good bye.

…

Akira: Listen, I keep asking you, when will you let us go to school?
Mother: What’s this “school this, school that”? Who needs to go to school anyway? Plenty of famous people never even went to school in the first place.
Akira: Like who?
Mother: How should I know. But plenty of them…
Akira: You’re so selfish, mother.
Mother: How can you say that? Selfish? You want to know who’s really selfish? Your father’s the one who’s selfish, up and disappearing like that. What is this? I’m not allowed to be happy?

…

Mother [going off again]: I send you money, soon.
Akira: You’ll come home for Christmas?
Mother: Sure, I’ll come home. I’ll be right home.

…

Akira: Bought a new game, why don’t you come over?
Friend #1: I’ll come over when I have time. See you 'round. I’ve got cram school, sorry.
Akira: See ya.
Friend #2: Who was that? Take me along to play.
Firend #1: Yeah, but his house stinks.
Friend #2: Stinks of what?
Friend #1: Stinks of garbage. The place is a real mess.
Friend #2: Like rotting?

…

Friend: Shouldn’t you contact the police or child welfare, or something?
Akira: If I do, the four of us won’t be able to stay together. That happened before and it was an awful mess.

…

Akira [shaking Yuki]: Yuki.
Brother: Yuki won’t get up.
Akira: Yuki!
Sister: She fell off the chair.

…

Akira [holding an envelope]: Kyoko, what’s this?
Sister: It just arrived.
[Akira opens the envelop…it has cash in it and a note from his mother]
“TO AKIRA, GIVE THEM MY BEST. I’M COUNTING ON YOU, MOTHER”

…

Akira [to Saki after burying Yuki bear the airport]: When I touched Yuki this morning she was so cold, it was awful. It just felt so…It was just so…awful. [/b]

Imagine the home of the future. Fully automated. Cameras and computers everywhere. Even a “flying webcam”. It circumnavigates from room to room. There is nothing you can’t know. Well, not about what is going on inside your home. Problems? A few clicks of a button and the problem is solved.

You watch this and you think: too bad we have not reached the point where we are able to insert the same sort of technology inside the human brain. Everything brought fully into focus. And if something goes wrong we know precisely what to do in order to fix it. Why? Because [finally] we know precisely what the hell is going on in there.

But then things seem to be ever so much complicated in there aren’t they?

Take for example, that first dinner shared between Richard, Alice, Alain and Benedicte. Not 10 minutes into it, Alice is throwing a glass of wine into Richard’s face. Why? Because he had just been with a whore. Or so she says.

You know then and there this is going to be a very strange film. You just don’t know [yet] how strange. Described as a “creepy psychological thriller” it is all of that and more. Or it is once the dead lemming is dislodged from the pipe under the kitchen sink. Only it isn’t really dead at all. And what the hell is a lemming [native only to Scandinavia] doing in a kitchen pipe in France?

Surreal. Dream-like. What some might cal, “open to interpretation”. For example, in the end we find out how the lemming ended up in the pipe. But how does that help to explain anything else?

From the director of A Friend Like Harry above.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming_(film
trailer: youtu.be/cB4lf0huKfU

LEMMING [2005]
Written in part and directed by Dominik Moll

Alain [voiceover]: My name is Alain Getty. I’m a home automation designer. When the Pollock Company headhunted me, we moved to Bel Air. We’d been there three months. My wife Benedicte was glad to move south. My boss, Richard Pollock, thought well of me. One evening, he’d invited himself and his wife to dinner. That is when everything came unstuck.

It starts when the kitchen sink gets clogged. Something in the S bend.

Alice [to Richard after turns off his phone]: One of your whores?
Richard: Alice…
Alice [to Alain and Benedicte]: Do you want to know why we were late?
Richard: Alice…don’t start.
Alice: He was with a whore.

Next thing you know she’s tossing a glass of wine in his face.

[b]Alice: Don’t give me that snotty look.
Benedicte: I’m not.
Alice [mockinglyly]: “I’m Not”?
Richard: Alice!
Alice: You think you are superior? The model couple in a grotty house?
Bencdicte: Not at all.
Alice: You know what? You are pathetic.
Bendicte: You too.

…

Benedicte [to Alain after Richard and Alice have left]: If I ever get like that, please have me put down.

…

Alain [looking into the pipe]: What is that?

…

Alice: Did Richard tell you he tried to kill me 20 years ago?
Alain: No.
Alice: He doesn’t brag about it. I should be dead, but he missed the jugular. I had it coming. I hate him.
Alain: Why don’t you leave him?
Alice: Because. I want to see him croak.
[after a long pause]
Alice: Do you want to sleep with me?

…

Alice [to Alain]: The body says yes but the mind says no. A shame. A big shame.

…

Alice [to Benedicte]: Last night at the lab I tried to seduce your husband. He was exemplary. He wasn’t having it. But you’ll know all of this. He must have told you.[/b]

No, he didn’t. But later she tells Benedicte that he was having it…but just a little.

Benedicte [to Alain]: I’m getting sick of your boss’s wife.

Not to worry: the boss’s wife shoots herself in the head.

[b]Nicolas: I’m a small mammals expert. My uncle was right. It’s a lemming. A Norwegian lemming. Did he tell you it only lives in northern Scandinavia?
Benedicte: Yes.
Nicolas: Where exactly did you find it?
Benedicte: In the sink pipe.
Nicolas: In the sink. My uncle thought he had misheard.

…

[b]Nicolas: You’ve heard about their mystery migrations? Aside from their seasonal migrations, every 30 years or so, overpopulation starts a mass migration. Thousands of them stream across the tundra. People used to think it was a sort of mass suicide.
Benedicte: Suicide?
Nicolas: When they reach a river or a sea, they try to swim across it. They’re good swimmers but it’s too wide, they drown.
Benedicte: A woman committed suicide here last night.
Nicolas: I’m sorry. Was she a relative?
Benedicte: Not at all. It’s a strange coincidence.
Nicolas: No. No, no, no, no. Don’t imagine there’s a link. Lemmings aren’t suicidal. It’s a dumb romantic theory. They drown from exhaustion.

…

Richard: Did she make a pass at you?
Alain: Yes.
Richard: Did you sleep with her?
Alain: No.
Richard: Why? Weren’t you tempted?
Alain: It just didn’t seem appropriate.
Richard: You thought it would be a sticky situation with Benedicte and me. Otherwise you would have done it. If you’d been sure Benedicte and I would never know.
Alain: Maybe, yes.
Richard: I think you should have done it. She wanted you. Couldn’t you give her that? If you felt no desire for her, ok. But you did, dammit!![/b]

Then things start to get strange. Really, really strange. Again, that part inside the brain. The part we don’t have the technology yet to fully understand. Let alone the knowledge.

[b]Richard [to Alain]: Be brave…

…

Alice [to Alain]: Make it look like a suicide…[/b]

Some really do wonder: What is the difference between being bipolar and just being “moody”? And if [clinically] you really are manic-depressive [what they used to call being bipolar] is it all just reducible down to those chemicals in the brain? In other words, what part does our “environment” play in it?

For example, our most important relationships – family, friendships – how can [how do] they contribute to making things better or worse?

Me, I have been diagnosed with lots of mental afflictions: PTSD, depression, anxiety disorders. And I’ve had some truly epic mood swings. But no one ever suggested [so far] I was bipolar. Not to the best of my recollection. So I was able to relate somewhat to Pat here. Though in other respects not at all. But that seemed more related to circumstances than to anything else.

For instance, I was never actually committed to a mental institution when my marriage fell apart. Oh, and my life was absolutely nothing like his. That part about dasein in other words.

The part that makes him the same as and yet different from Tiffany. Who as it turns out is crazy in her own way for her own reasons.

And still, to this day, the controversy rages on: nature vs. nurture. And, with respect to the part about nurture, there are folks who insist that most of this revolves around capitalism.

Oh, and I sure as shit could have done with a whole lot less of that NFL football/Philadelphia Eagles/juju/parley bullshit. Talk about mental illness. It is a symptom of a truly sick culture. In fact, this whole “sports” angle damn near ruined the picture for me.

Well, that and the ending.

IMDb

[b]Robert De Niro actually teared up during the scene when Pat Sr. tells Pat he wished he was closer to him, which was not scripted.

The title “Silver Linings Playbook” is a source of confusion for some, especially people not very familiar with idiomatic English. The “Silver Linings” part of the title comes from the common expression “every cloud has a silver lining,” which means “look on the bright side” or “nothing is all bad.” The first documented use of the phrase in this way is from John Milton’s 1634 work “Comus I”.

Among its 8 Academy Award nominations, this film became the first to earn nods in all four acting categories since Reds (1981) and the first “Big Five” (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Writing) nominee since Million Dollar Baby (2004). Director David O. Russell repeated the same rare feat the following year with American Hustle (2013).[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Linings_Playbook
trailer: youtu.be/Lj5_FhLaaQQ

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK [2012]
Written and directed by David O. Russell

[b]Pat [to Dr. Patel]: I come home, what do I see? I walk in the door and I see underwear and pieces of clothing and a guy’s pants with his belt in it, and I walk up the stairs, and all of a sudden I see the CD and it’s playing our wedding song, and then I look down and I see my wife’s panties on the ground and then I look up and I see her naked in the shower and I think, “Oh, that’s kinda sweet, she’s in the shower. What a perfect thing. I’m gonna find her and maybe I’ll go in there. We never fuck in the shower anymore. Maybe today we will.” I pull the curtain back and there’s the fucking history teacher with tenure. And you know what he says to me? “You should probably go.” That’s what he says to me. So yeah, I snapped. I almost beat him to death.

…

Pat Sr.: Why are you wearing a garbage bag?
Pat: To sweat.

…

Pat [to Dr. Patel]: This is what I learned at the hospital. You have to do everything you can, you have to work your hardest, and if you do, you have a shot at a silver lining.

…

Ronnie [explaining what he does after the near collapse of the economy]: You start snapping up commercial real estate – cheap – flip it over, you flip it over and that’s when you make the money. But the pressure…it’s like…
Pat: You okay?
Ronnie: I’m not okay. Don’t tell anybody. Listen to me. I feel like I’m getting crushed and–
Pat: Crushed by what?
Ronnie: Everything. The family, the baby, the job, the fucking dicks at work, and it’s like, you know, like I’m trying to do this, you know, and, and, and I’m like…suffocating. [/b]

See? This is the part about capitalism and mental health. Or the lack thereof. The relationship between them.

[b]Tiffany: What meds are you on?
Pat: Me? None. I used to be on Lithium and Seroquel and Abilify, but I don’t take them anymore, no. They make me foggy and they also make me bloated.
Tiffany: Yeah, I was on Xanax and Effexor, but I agree, I wasn’t as sharp, so I stopped.
Pat: You ever take Klonopin?
Tiffany [chuckling]: Klonopin? Yeah.
Pat: Right? It’s like, “What? What day is it?” How about Trazodone?
Tiffany: Trazodone!
Pat: Oh, it flattens you out. I mean, you are done. It takes the light right out of your eyes.
Tiffany: God, I bet it does.

…

Tiffany: Listen, I haven’t dated since before my marriage so I don’t really remember how this works.
Pat: How what works?
Tiffany: I saw the way you were looking at me, Pat. You felt it, I felt it, don’t lie. We’re not liars like they are. I live in the addition around back, which is completely separate from my parents’ house, so there’s no chance of them walking in on us. I hate the fact that you wore a football jersey to dinner because I hate football, but you can fuck me if you turn the lights off, okay?
Pat: How old are you?
Tiffany: Old enough to have a marriage end and not wind up in a mental hospital.[/b]

Part 2:

[b]Tiffany: Hey!
Pat: What the fuck? I’m married!
Tiffany: So am I!
Pat: What the fuck are you doing? Your husband’s dead!
Tiffany: Where’s your wife?
Pat: You’re crazy!
Tiffany: I’m not the one who just got out of that hospital in Baltimore.
Pat: And I’m not the big slut!..I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m sorry.
Tiffany: I was a big slut, but I’m not any more. There’s always going to be a part of me that’s sloppy and dirty, but I like that. With all the other parts of myself. Can you say the same about yourself fucker? Can you forgive? Are you any good at that?

…

Tiffany: Why did you order raisin bran?
Pat: Why did you order tea?
Tiffany: Because you ordered raisin bran.
Pat: I ordered raisin bran because I didn’t want there to be any mistaking it for a date.
Tiffany: It can still be a date if you order raisin bran.

…

Pat: How did you lose your job?
Tiffany: By having sex with everybody in the office.
Pat: Everybody?
Tiffany: I was very depressed after Tommy died. It was a lot of people.
Pat: We don’t have to talk about it.
Tiffany: Thanks.
Pat: How many were there?
Tiffany: Eleven.
Pat: Wow.
Tiffany: I know.
Pat: I’m not gonna talk about it anymore.
Tiffany: Okay.
Pat: Can I ask you one more question? Were there any women?
Tiffany: Yes.
Pat: Really? What was that like?
Tiffany: Hot.

…

Tiffany: You know what, forget I offered to help you. Forget the entire fucking idea, because that must have been fucking crazy, because I’m so much CRAZIER than you!
Pat: Keep your voice down.
Tiffany: I’m just the crazy slut with a dead husband!
[she laughs maniacally]
Pat: Shut the fuck up.
Tiffany: Fuck you!
[she sweeps everything off the table onto the floor]
Tiffany [storming away]: You shut the fuck up!

…

Tiffany [to Pat]: You may not have experienced the shit that I did. But you loved hearing about it, didn’t you? You are afraid to be alive, you’re afraid to live. You’re a hypocrite. You’re a conformist. You’re a liar. I opened up to you and you judged me. You are an asshole. You are an asshole!

…

Officer Keogh: Hey, aren’t you Tommy’s widow?
Tiffany: Yes, I’m Tommy’s crazy whore widow. Minus the whore thing, for the most part.
Officer Keogh: You want to get a drink sometime?
[she turns around and walks away in disgust]
Pat: You shouldn’t say that to her. She doesn’t do that anymore.

…

Tiffany [to Pat after changing her mind about delivering the letter to Nikki]: I do this! Time after time after time! I do all this shit for other people! And then I wake up and I’m empty! I have nothing! I always get myself in these fucking situations. I give everything to other people and nobody ever, I never – I don’t get what I want, okay?

…

Tiffany [to Pat]: Can we get through one fucking conversation without you reminding me that my goddamn husband’s dead?!

…

Tiffany: No walk, no letter. Walk to me like I’m Nikki. Do it, come on, I’m Nikki.
Pat: You’re not Nikki.
[he does the walk anyway]
Tiffany: Yes! Do you feel that? That’s emotion.
Pat: I don’t feel anything.

…

Tiffany: You’re not gonna read that shit on my time. I can tell you all about the “Lord of the Flies.” It’s a bunch of boys on an island and they have a conch – they have a shell – and whoever has the conch has the power and they can talk. And if you don’t have the conch, then you don’t have the power. And then there’s a little chubby boy, and they call him Piggy and they’re really mean, and then there’s a murder. I mean, humanity is just nasty and there’s no silver lining.
Pat: Wow. That was a great synopsis. I still need to read it, though.

…

Tiffany: You know, for a while, I thought you were the best thing that ever happened to me. But now I’m starting to think you’re the worst.
Pat: Of course you do. Come on, let’s go dance.

…

Pat Sr. [to Pat]: Let me tell you, I know you don’t want to listen to your father, I didn’t listen to mine, and I am telling you you gotta pay attention this time. When life reaches out at a moment like this it’s a sin if you don’t reach back, I’m telling you its a sin if you don’t reach back! It’ll haunt you the rest of your days like a curse. You’re facing a big challenge in your life right now at this very moment, right here. That girl loves you she really really loves you. I don’t know if Nicki ever did, but she sure as shit doesn’t right now. I’m telling you, don’t fuck this up.

…

Tiffany: You let me lie to you for a week?!
Pat: I was trying to be romantic.[/b]

Avatar is synonymous with the entertainment industry. It is pure escapism from start to finish. You settle back in your seat, popcorn in hand and flick the switch in your brain to off. Instead, you are prepared simply to be amazed by what you see. In part because almost all of what you do see is generated by the astonishing techologies now available to film makers.

Indeed: The movie is 40% live action and 60% photo-realistic CGI. A lot of motion capture technology was used for the CGI scenes.

Just ask yourself: If there were no dazzling special effects at all, would you really invest nearly 3 hours of your life in it? I mean if you aren’t a kid?

But then, come on, sometimes that’s all you want. To be, uh, transported to another world.

It’s an audio-visual feast to say the least. But hardly anything at all to really think about. The characters are mostly made of cardboard…cartoon caricatures living in a cartoon caricature world. A world of good guys and bad guys; and [of course] the evil corporation hell bent on reducing human interaction down to consumption, natural resources and markets. Along with the usual assortment of big bad Marines, mercenaries, the tough guy commando, dumb grunts, idealistic scientists, noble aboriginals and tree huggers. The majesty of nature. The People. Eywa.

And Jake. The white guy destined to straddle both worlds. The guy destined to see the light. He’s that “and only one man could save them” character. The ex-Marine who is now “one of them”.

And, sure enough, God, religion and all the usual “spiritual” mumbo-jumbo are everywhere here. And from every imaginable denomination. Including those of the extraterrestrials.

Ah, if only we could all be like the Na’vi. If only we could learn from them.

IMDb

[b]James Cameron originally planned to have the film completed for release in 1999. At the time, the special effects he wanted increased the budget to $400 million. No studio would fund the film, and it was shelved for eight years. This movie took 4 years to make.

The Na’vi language was created entirely from scratch by linguist Paul R. Frommer. James Cameron hired him to construct a language that the actors could pronounce easily, but did not resemble any single human language. Frommer created about 1000 words. Sam Worthington said in an interview that it was easier for him to master the Na’vi language than the American accent.

Each frame (1/24 of a second) of the CGI scenes took an average of 47 hours to render.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film
trailer: youtu.be/d1_JBMrrYw8

AVATAR [2009]
Written and directed by James Cameron

[b]Jake [voiceover]: When I was lying in the V.A. hospital with a big hole blown through the middle of my life, I started having these dreams of flying. I was free. But sooner or later, you always have to wake up.

…

Jake [voiceover]: One life ends, another begins.

…

Jake [voiceover]: Me and Norm were out here to drive these remotely controlled bodies called avatars. They’re grown from human DNA mixed with DNA from the natives here.

…

Max: Grace, this is Jake Sully.
Jake: Ma’am.
Grace: Yeah, yeah, I know who you are and I don’t need you. I need your brother. You know, the PhD who trained for 3 years for this mission.
Jake: He’s dead. I know it’s a big inconvenience for everyone.
Grace: How much lab training have you had?
Jake: I dissected a frog once.
Grace: Ya see, ya see? They’re just pissing on us without even giving us the courtesy of calling it rain.

…

Selfridge: Look. You’re supposed to be winning the hearts and minds of the natives. Isn’t that the whole point of your little puppet show? If you walk like them, you talk like them, they’ll trust you. We build them a school, teach them English. But after - how many years - the relations with the indigenous are only getting worse.
Grace: Yeah, well that tends to happen when you use machine guns on them.
Selfridge: Right. C’mere. You see this?
[shows Grace the sample of Unobtanium on his desk]
Selfridge: This is why we’re here. Because this little gray rock sells for $20 million a kilo. That’s the only reason. This is what pays for the whole party, and it’s what pays for your science. Those savages are threatening our whole operation. We’re on the brink of war and you’re supposed to be finding me a diplomatic solution. So use what you’ve got, and get me some results. [/b]

Get the picture?

[b]Grace: Just relax and let your mind go blank. That shouldn’t be too hard for you.
Jake: Kiss the darkest part of my lily white ass!

…

Neytiri: Your fault! You are like a baby, making noise, don’t know what to do. You should not come here, all of you! You only come and make problems. Only.
Jake: Okay, fine, you love your little forest friends. So why not just let them kill my ass? What’s the thinking?
Neytiri: Why save you?
Jake: Yes, why save me?
Neytiri: You have a strong heart. No fear. But stupid! Ignorant like a child![/b]

Jake takes his first step in the right direction.

[b]Moat: It is decided. My daughter will teach you our ways. Learn well, “Jakesully”, and we will see if your insanity can be cured.

…

Selfridge [to Jake]: Look, killing the indigenous looks bad, but there’s one thing shareholders hate more than bad press – and that’s a bad quarterly statement. Find me a carrot to get them to move, or it’s going to have to be all stick.
Quaritch: You got three months. That’s when the dozers get there.

…

Jake: This is how it’s done. When people are sittin’ on shit that you want, you make 'em your enemy. Then you’re justified in taking it.

…

Quaritch: And that’s how you scatter the roaches.

…

Jake [voiceover]: Neytiri calls me skxawng. It means “moron.”

…

Jake [voiceover]: Everything is backwards now. Like out there is the true world, and in here is the dream.

…

Grace: Alright, look – I don’t have the answers yet, I’m just now starting to even frame the questions. What we think we know is that there’s some kind of electrochemical communication between the roots of the trees. Like the synapses between neurons. Each tree has ten to the fourth connections to the trees around it, and there are ten to the twelfth trees on Pandora. That’s more connections than the human brain. You get it? It’s a network – a global network. And the Na’vi can access it…they can upload and download data – memories – at sites like the one you destroyed.
Selfridge: What the hell have you people been smoking out there? They’re. Just. Goddamn. Trees.
Grace: You need to wake up, Parker. The wealth of this world isn’t in the ground – it’s all around us. The Na’vi know that, and they’re fighting to defend it. If you want to share this world with them, you need to understand them. [/b]

And the lesson here regarding oil extraction and global warming is…

Jake: They’re not gonna give up their home. They’re not gonna make a deal. For-for what? A light beer and blue jeans? There’s nothing that we have that they want. Everything they sent me out here to do is a waste of time. They’re never gonna leave Hometree.

And see if this sounds familiar:

Neytiri: What are you saying, Jake? You knew this would happen?
Jake [anguished]: Yes. At first it was just orders. Then everything changed. I fell in love-- with the forest, with the Omaticaya People…with you. And by then, how could I tell you?
Neytiri: I trusted you, Jake! I trusted you!!
Jake [pleading]: You can trust me now. Please.
Neytiri: No! You will never be one of The People!!!

It’s shameless!

[b]Jake [about the Na’vi]: They didn’t even have a word for ‘lie’.

…

Quaritch: That is one big damn tree!

…

Quaritch: [looking at Jake and Grace tied to a frame]: Well, well, well. I’d say diplomacy has failed.

…

Selfridge: Pull the plug.

…

Jake [voiceover]: Sometimes your whole life boils down to one insane move.

…

Quaritch [to Jake]: How does it feel to betray your own race?![/b]

How it was supposed to work:

You make a movie exposing the Great Gap between how doctors treat patients in the world of “modern medicine” and how patients would like to be treated instead. You do this by making the doctor the patient. It slowly begins to dawn on him just how truly terrible this relationship has become. It changes him. He becomes Dr. Welby.

How it really worked instead:

Well, you tell me. Notice any great changes [for the better] regarding how your doctor treats you?

Probably not. If anything the world of “modern medicine” has become even more rationalized. Everything [eventually] getting reduced down to billing. And with the patients still [largely] just a means to that end.

The medical industrial complex marches on.

And yet compared to some of the experiences I have had with doctors over the years [not counting the bills], Dr. MacKee here is a veritable fount of care and compassion.

Of course, when it comes down to The Big One – a malignant tumor here – everything gets divided up between you and the rest of the world. It would be nice to have a decent fucking doctor taking care of you. But we all know that eventually what really counts is just how bad it is.

The hospital is the worst. All these folks going about the business of doing their thing as though you weren’t even there. Or as though in discussing your “condition” they might just as well be talking about the weather or a football game.

IMDb

This movie is based on the real life story of Ed Rosenbaum, M.D. Dr. Rosenbaum wrote an autobiography entitled “A Taste of My Own Medicine: When the Doctor Becomes the Patient”. This book formed the basis for the movie.

He died in 2009.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doctor_(1991_film
trailer: youtu.be/OIPv-pjABbk

THE DOCTOR [1991]
Directed by Randa Haines

[b]Murray: What’s the difference between a a lawyer and a catfish?
Jack: No idea.
Murray: One is a scum-sucking bottom dweller…and the other one’s a fish.

…

Eli: Sergio, this is Dr. MacKee. He’s an expert in heart and lungs. And I’d like him to check you out. There’s nothing to be nervous about.
Jack: Hi, Serge. How’s it hanging? I gotta tell ya, if you can hear me, I’d fire the anesthesiologist.
Eli: Dr. MacKee likes to joke. Doesn’t mean he’s not caring, that’s just his way. He’s a fine doctor.

…

Jack’s doctor: How’s business in the big league?
Jack: We’re killing 'em.

…

Jack: That’s healed fine. Let’s just get those staples out.
Patient [who has just had chest surgury]: Doctor, my husband…He’s a good man, and he…I think he’s a little nervous. Will the scar always be so…?
Jack: Tell your husband you look like a Playboy centerfold. You have the staple marks to prove it.[/b]

She doesn’t find this particularly amusing though.

[b]Jack: There’s a danger in feeling too strongly about your patients. A danger in becoming too involved. Surgery is about judgment. To judge, you have to be detached.
Young resident: But isn’t it unnatural not to become involved with a patient?
Jack: There’s nothing natural about surgery. You’re cutting open someone’s body. Is that natural? One day you’ll have your hands around someone’s heart. And it’s beating. And you’ll think, “Uh-oh. I shouldn’t be here.”
Resident: Well, then all the more reason to care about what the patient feels.
Jack: The patient feels sick. A surgeon’s job is to cut. You’ve got one shot. You go in, you fix it and get out. Caring’s all about time. When you’ve got 30 seconds before some guy bleeds out…I’d rather you cut straight and cared less.

…

Dr. Abbott: Doctor, you have a growth.
Jack: What?
Dr. Abbott: A tumor. Laryngeal. Here on the true vocal cord. We’re gonna need chest X-rays,
blood chemistry, blood count, UA, EKG…I’ll have to check with my secretary, but if it’s remotely possible, I’d like to do a biopsy tomorrow. [/b]

As though she were talking about the brakes on his car. Then she’s out the door.

[b]Anne: What is it, Jack? What have they found? Have they found something?
Jack: Yep!
Anne: OK, so… we’ll beat it.
Jack: “We”?
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Jack: 'We" don’t have it, Anne! “We” don’t have it!!

…

Jack: I have a biopsy tomorrow. It’s a laryngeal tumor.
Anne: Oh, God.
Jack: A doctor tells this man, “You have a growth.” The man says, “I demand a second opinion.” Doctor says, “OK…and…you’re ugly.”
Anne: Oh, sweetheart. Oh, baby…

…

Ralph: Your first time under the knife? I bet you feel like you don’t know what’s going on? Am I right? Well, don’t worry. They don’t know, either. My doctor, the son of a bitch, half the time he’s lying to me. And I can tell. I’m a cop. What’s your line?
Jack: I’m a doctor.

…

Dr. Reed: Dr. MacKee, my feeling - for what it’s worth - if we’re going to treat you, you’re going to meet the team here every day for the next six weeks.
Jack: And?
Dr. Reed: I don’t know what it’s like at the top of this building, but down here, we try to be civil.

…

Jack [to Laurie]: Why don’t we from now on, in this hospital, we should drop “I’m sorry” from conversation, OK? Let’s just assume it begins every sentence. “I’m sorry, the doctor can’t see you today”, “I’m sorry you have to fill in another form”, “I’m sorry we gave you the wrong treatment.”
[he turns to June]: What do we think?
June: There’s not much point shouting at Laurie.
Jack: Excuse me?
June: She’s just doing her job. If you want to shout, go shout at a doctor.
Jack: I am a doctor.
June: Not when you’re sitting here.

…

Jack: How come you’re so calm?
June: Who?
Jack: You. You seem to be taking it so well.
June: No. I have a grade four brain tumor. It took my doctors three months to find it. I didn’t take that so well at all. Actually, they didn’t find it. I rear-ended a few cars, fell over, blacked out. Short of the tumor jumping out and singing, there was nothing else it could do to get recognized. See, now I’d call that negligence, wouldn’t you?
Jack: Well, that’s-that’s…it’s difficult to comment.
June: Oh, yeah. Doctors. It’s a club, isn’t it? I forgot.

…

Jack: Well, this is quality time. Why couldn’t they send us the new IDs through the mail?!
June: Tell them you’re a big doctor. Cut in line.
Jack: Are you angry with me?
June: You lied to me.
Jack: What?
June: My tumor. I see it giving me certain freedoms I never allowed myself.
Jack: Yeah, like being incredibly hostile?
June: Like being honest and expecting people around me to do the same.
Jack: What did I lie about for Christ’s sake?
June: I’m dying. Please don’t waste my time.

…

Jack [to June]: You’re right. They should’ve found your tumor. Somebody screwed up. You should’ve had an MRI. But the system stinks. Insurance companies tell us what tests we can and cannot do. An MRI, which I know would have found your tumor…costs about $1,000. It’s appalling.

…

Jack [to resident]: If I ever hear you describe a patient as “terminal” again, that’s how you’ll describe your career.

…

Jack: No. No, I don’t want you cutting me in the afternoon.
Dr. Abbott: Excuse me?
Jack: You’ll be tired in the afternoon, and ragged and hungry. You’ll have been on your feet for hours. Come on, we both know how it is.
Dr. Abbott: Excuse me. I am the doctor and you are my patient. And I am telling you when I am available.

…

Dr. Abbott: I have a waiting room full of patients.
Jack: One fewer.
Dr. Abbott: What?
Jack: You have one fewer patient. I’m out.
Dr. Abbott: Look, Doctor, I know how you must be feeling.
Jack: That’s the problem. You don’t have the first idea what I’m feeling.
Dr. Abbott: I think we better continue this conversation some other time.
Jack: I think you ought to brush up your act, Dr. Abbott. Because today I’m sick. Tomorrow or the day after or 30 years from now, you’ll be sick. Every doctor becomes a patient somewhere down the line, and then…it’ll hit you as hard as it’s hit me.

…

Jack: You know, I’ve been pretty…No, very insulting about you in the past…which I’m ashamed of.
Eli: It’s all right. I’ve always wanted to slit your throat, and now I get a chance to.

…

Jack [to June who has died]: It’s me. It’s Jack. And I came over last night and I made you so tired. I have my operation tomorrow. And selfish to the end, I was hoping you’d be there to help me through it. Oh, June…I’m…I’m really terrified. That’s the truth…which I got from you. The truth. Do you know, I don’t even know anything about you. Not really. I know you love life. And I know you can dance. I hope you always fly over my house…with your lovely long hair.

…

Jack [to the residents]: Doctors…You have spent a lot of time learning the Latin names for diseases your patients might have. Now it’s time to learn…something simpler about them. Patients have their own names. Sarah. Alan. Jack. They feel frightened… embarrassed and vulnerable. And they feel sick. Most of all, they want to get better. Because of that they put their lives in our hands. I could try to explain what that means until I’m blue in the face. But, you know something, it wouldn’t mean a thing. It sure as hell never did to me. So, for the next 72 hours, you’ll each be allocated a particular disease. You’ll sleep in hospital beds, eat hospital food. You’ll be given all the appropriate tests. Tests you will one day prescribe. You are no longer…doctors. You are hospital patients.[/b]

See, that’s how this was supposed to have turned out. Doctors would watch the movie, see the errors of their ways, and the whole fucking system would be miraculously transformed. Of course, capitalism [and the medical industrial complex] would still be around.