philosophy in film

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.

Hip young journalists at Seattle Magazine. They are all sitting in a confernece room brainstorming. Trying to come up with some interesting ideas for articles. Jeff suggests they do one that revolves around a classified ad. And [really] this film exists because of it. This ad:

WANTED – Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 91, Ocean View, WA 99393. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.

But it was just a joke. The ad. But now it’s a movie.

And you have to admit you don’t bump into movies like this everyday. In Hollywood, for example.

This guy is weird. But is he crazy? Oh yeah. But even if he is, does it matter?

Think about it: If you could go back in time, when and where would you go? And why? That’s where the story becomes more poignant. Darius aims to go back in order to stop something from happening that took away someone she loved. Her Mom. Something she blames herself for. Or that’s what she’d do if she could go back in time.

In the end this is really just a love story with some really weird shit in it.

Ah, but then there are the Jeff and Arnau and Liz sub-plots. Why the fuck did they put that in here? Nothing strange, poignant or funny at all about them. In fact you might call them boring. Or you would if you were me.

IMDb

The original classified ad upon which the film is based first appeared in Backwoods Home Magazine in 1997. It was written as last-minute filler by John Silveira, an employee of the magazine, who is credited in the film as “Time Travel Consultant” and also has a cameo. The ad was later featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992) in the “Headlines” segment, and eventually turned into an Internet meme before being developed into a screenplay.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_Not_Guaranteed
trailer: youtu.be/QOCF-lXB_aY

SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED [2012]
Directed by Colin Trevorrow

[b]Darius [at job interview]: How far back do you want me to go? CoIIege? l was totally outgoing. A real people person. In high school I felt like that mouse that gets dropped in the snake cage and just sits there, frozen, trying to blend in. I guess I remember being happy when I was a kid. Back when you just naturally expect good things to happen. Before my mom died. Now l just expect the worst and try not to get my hopes up. Which is why l’m here. Does that answer the question?
Interviewer: UsuaIIy peopIe just say where they’re from and where they worked before.

…

Jeff: Can I get a couple of interns? Help me with some research?
Darius: I’ll do it.
Arnau: Me, too, please. Me.
Jeff: All right, give me the lesbian and the Indian and I got a story.

…

Dad: I think it’d be great if you went out, did a IittIe sociaI stuff. Get out of your funk.
Darius: I have no funk. I’m totally funkless.

…

Dad: You’re sad. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s Iike there’s a cIoud foIIowing you. You’re antisociaI, and you’re a virgin.
Darius: What?!
Dad: I don’t ever see you with any guys. I don’t remember the Iast time you brought a guy home.
Darius: Yeah, weII, how do you know I’m not on CraigsIist having casuaI encounters? Or when I was away at the dorms? You weren’t there.
Dad: I taIked to Amy.
Darius: Why are you taIking to my coIIege roommate?
Dad: We’re Facebook friends.
Darius: Oh, my God! How do I eject?!

…

Darius: What time would you go back to? If you could.
Arnau: I don’t know. I’m fine here.
Darius: I would definitely go back. Everything cool is gone. The Aztecs. People killing themselves for each other. You wouldn’t want to see the dragons and the elves, fighting each other in the magical forests? Come on!
Arnau: No.
[he puts his hand on her shoulder kindly]
Arnau: That wasn’t a time.
Darius: [Rolls her eyes]: Yeah. Right.[/b]

You mean Game of Thrones isn’t based on a true story?!

[b][Arnau and Darius are scoping out the Post Office, waiting for the person who wrote the time-travel classified ad]
Arnau: Wait. How about this one?
Darius: Yeah, she wants to stop the person who gave her that haircut from being born.

…

Kenneth [to Shannon at work]: I’II teII you about the cat in the box theory, it’II bIow your mind. It’s Iike I’m the onIy one who reaIIy gets it.You know? I started this diaIog with some big shot theoreticaI physicist onIine, and I’m Iike, “Do the ruIes of quantum mechanics aIIow for aIternate histories?” And he just bIasted me. You know, peopIe are just so convinced it’s a fixed thing, but they’re just, Iike, Iooking at this IittIe sIiver of time, that’s aII peopIe can see. It’s not a fixed thing, Shannon. You know, it’s on and off in both directions. It’s Iike a “V,” you know what I mean?

…

Kenneth: Can you Iook fear and danger in the eye?
Jeff: That’s an odd question.
Kenneth: Have you ever stared fear and danger in the eye and said, “Yes”?
Jeff: Sure.
Kenneth: Get off my porch.
[Kenneth looks at Jeff and just shakes his head]
Kenneth: Man, that smiIe…What is that smiIe? You don’t know pain. You don’t know regret.

…

Darius [to Jeff]: You’re dangIing my vagina out there Iike bait? What if this guy’s a murderer? What if he cuts me up into IittIe pieces and eats me?
Jeff: Then the story’s even better.

…

Kenneth: My ad?
Darius: Yeah. It’s pretty sIoppy.
Kenneth: Excuse me
Darius: You heard me. I hope you worked harder on your caIibrations.
Kenneth: My caIibrations are fIippin’ pinpoint, okay? But there are peopIe after me. How do I know you don’t work for them?
Darius: Because I’ve never worked for anybody in my Iife.
Kenneth: You ever faced certain death?
Darius: If it was certain, I wouIdn’t be here, wouId I?

…

Jeff [to Darius]: If this guy’s taking you to some sex bunker, he’s gonna be freaked out when me and Arnau puII out of this thing Iike it’s a cIown car.

…

Kenneth: We stiII have to discuss your reason for going back.
Darius: That’s cIassified information.
Kenneth: I can appreciate that, I respect that, but I have a certain responsibiIity to keep as the Ieader of this mission.
Darius: Then I have to teII you that it’s personaI.
Kenneth: Darius, sometimes I think we are progressing in this mission, and then other times, I’m not so sure.
Darius: I’m going back to stop my mother from dying when I was 14.
Kenneth: How’d she die?
Darius: She was kiIIed by some guy. Just some guy at a gas station took her and kiIIed her.
Kenneth: Oh, man. Just some random thing?
Darius: Yeah. WeII, no, actuaIIy. She was driving home. It was reaIIy Iate, and she caIIed me to teII me she was coming home, and I…I asked her to stop and get me chocoIate miIk. Because I had to have chocoIate miIk. So Iike five minutes Iater, she caIIed me
to teII me that she got the chocoIate miIk and she was coming home. And her voice was, Iike, reaIIy excited, Iike she was reaIIy happy. And I was, Iike, okay, whatever. I wasn’t even nice. That was the Iast time I taIked to her.
Kenneth: That’s not your fauIt.
Darius: Yeah. That’s what they teII me.

…

Kenneth [to Darius]: Okay, we can stiII do this, but you have to promise me we’re never, ever gonna taIk about my ear ever again for as Iong as you and I both shaII Iive.

…

Darius [referring to Kenneth]: What makes you think there’s something wrong with him?
Jeff: Because he thinks he can go back in time.
Darius: Was there something wrong with Einstein or David Bowie?

…

Arnau: Stormtroopers don’t know anything about lasers or time-travel. They’re blue-collar workers.

…

Jeff [tailing government agents who are tailing Kenneth]: This is fucking intense!
Darius: We’re going 15 miles per hour.

…

Jeff: Hey, you know that girI your boyfriend was going back in time to save, BeIinda?
Darius: Yeah?
Jeff: WeII, she’s aIive and weII. Lives about an hour away.
Darius: How? What do you mean?
Jeff: Bridget caIIed and set up an interview. I think your IittIe boyfriend is seriousIy nuts.
Darius: Yeah, I know, he’s totaIIy nuts. He’s compIeteIy crazy.

…

Belinda: Then there was the accident.
Darius: Accident?
Belinda: Kenneth ran his car into my boyfriend’s house. There was a big dent under the kitchen window.
Darius: My God!
Belinda: So I convinced Rob to just Iet him go and we…We toId the poIice it was a hit and run. I haven’t seen him since then. But you said you’ve seen him recentIy. How is he?

…

Darius: Can you show me the Iasers?
Kenneth: What’s wrong with your voice?
Darius: Where’s the time machine?
Kenneth: The time machine is at the Iaunch site.
Darius: Oh, right, it’s at the Iaunch site.
Kenneth: Darius. What are you doing?
Darius; I taIked to those guys who are foIIowing you. And they toId me that you stoIe those Iasers because you’re some kind of spy or something.
Kenneth: That’s perfect. Let them think that, it works in our favor. It’s better. SeriousIy.

…

Darius: You can’t time traveI! This is aII crazy. Okay, you Iied to me.
Kenneth: Listen to me.
Darius: What eIse are you Iying about?
Kenneth: Hey, hey, Iisten to me. You come to that Iaunch site at 5:00 p.m., you take my hand and I’II show you who can’t time traveI.

…

Darius: Kenneth, I’m sorry.
Kenneth: Were you making a joke of me the whoIe time?
Darius: No. I promise. I Iied about the story, but everything eIse was reaI, okay? That was reaIIy me.

…

Kenneth [to Darius]: Come with me. The mission’s been updated. I’m going back for you now. AII right. You trust me? Come on. Take my hand. I know what I’m doing, okay? FIip that switch. Do it. FIip it down. Are you ready? Go!

…

Kenneth: To go it alone, or to go with a partner. When you choose a partner you have to have compromises and sacrifices, but it’s the price you pay. Do I want to follow my every whim and desire as I make my way through time and space? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, do I need someone when I’m doubting myself and I’m insecure, and my heart’s faliing me? Do I need someone who, when the heat gets hot, has my back.
Darius: So, do you?
Kenneth: I do.[/b]

A film about this guy: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Carroll

As a boy. He died in 2009.

A character that will fascinate some and repulse others. Or both fascinate and repulse a few of us at the same time. And it is often their use of dope that does this. Heroin in particular. In some circles, what is hipper than that?

As I recall, John Belushi was a fan. I think they had him on Saturday Night Live. Performing this: youtu.be/KpJ-pqhnBzo

Back when SNL was actually worth watching. Back when the “music acts” were actually cutting edge.

Anyway, heroin. It clearly destroyed the lives of many very talented folks.

Then there is the part about being raised Catholic. Jim Carroll: the Catholic Boy: youtu.be/pdftnLhRCuQ

Always at the wrong end of the paddle. So, why not the wrong end of the needle too. A hell of a lot less painful. Or so it seemed at the time. And, come on, who among us has not wanted at least to try it. Or, to parphrase John Lennon, dope is a concept by which we measure our pain.

Look for the cast from The Sopranos.

IMDb

After being nominated for an Oscar for Running on Empty (1988), MTV asked River Phoenix what he wanted to do next. He responded by pulling out a beat up paperback of “The Basketball Diaries” and stated “I wanted to play Jim Carroll.” Later, the Los Angeles Times declared, “River Phoenix may have wanted it too much.” Leonardo DiCaprio was a fan of Phoenix’s.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Basket … ries_(film
trailer: youtu.be/NyfX9UHyxgY

THE BASKETBALL DIARIES [1995]
Directed by Scott Kalvert

[b]Mom: Jim, you’re not going to waste the whole day lying around?
Jim: Ma, I’m up. The loony alarm went off.

…

Jim [voiceover]: When I was young, about eight or so, I tried making friends with God by inviting Him to my house to watch the World Series. He never showed.

…

Jim [voiceover]: There’s only two things Swifty forbids…using the word “motherfucker” and stealing from the other team…as long as they’re white.

…

Bobby: They’re pumping so much junk in me, I can’t even get a decent chubby.
Jim: I got an idea…

…

Jim [voiceover]: I’ve known Bobby since I was 3. He’s my best friend. He was the best player on our basketball team. Two years ago, he got leukemia. He keeps fighting it off. I know Bobby’s going to beat it. He could beat anything.[/b]

No, in fact, he can’t.

[b]Jim [back at the hospital]: Bobby, I’m…I’m really sorry. Next time we’ll go somewhere…
Bobby: There ain’t gonna be no next time, Jim.

…

Jim [voiceover]: I love it this way…my feet against the tar, which is soft from the spring heat, the slight breeze that runs across your entire body, especially your crotch. You feel an incredible power being naked under a dome of stars while a giant city is dressed, dodging cars all around you five flights down. I don’t think of anything while I’m doing the actual tugging, least of all the heavy sex fantasies I have to resort to indoors. Just my own naked self and the stars breathing down, and it’s beautiful…Time sure flies when you’re young and jerking off.

…

Jim [voiceover]: Every crowd has its little games to prove if you’re a punk or not. My cousin in Jersey plays chickie, which is two cars heading towards each other at about 80 miles per hour. First driver to swerve out of the way is chicken. In Brooklyn, they make you press a lit cigarette into your arm and have it burn all the way down to the filter without the slightest flinch. Us Manhattan boys, we jump off cliffs into the Harlem River, which is literally shitty because half a million toilets flush into it every day.

…

Blinkie [offering cocaine to Jim]: That’ll make you fuck like Superman. Faster than a speeding bullet.

…

Jim [looking down at Bobby in the casket]: I looked at his body, and it was death for the first time. His face was thin and wrinkled, almost apelike, his hair just gray patches on his scalp. He looked 60 years old, and he was 16…I felt dazed, like I’d just come out of a four-hour movie I didn’t understand. I kept thinking about his face…and death…and what a cheat the whole thing was.

…

Friend: Jim, you all right? Huh? Listen, maybe you should talk to one of the priests. I don’t know. Maybe…Maybe they can help you out.
Jim: Help me out? I wouldn’t ask one of those cocksuckers for directions.

…

Jim [voiceover]: …did I ever tell you about the first time I did heroin? I went down to Pedro’s basement. All sorts of characters were in the storage-room shooting gallery. I was just going to sniff a bag, but a guy says, “If you’re going to sniff, might as well pop it, and if you’re going to pop it, might as well mainline.” I was scared of needles, but I gave in. It was like a long heat wave through my body. Any ache or pain or sadness or guilty feeling was completely flushed out.

…

Jim: Gee whiz, ma, we oughtta have these heart to heart talks more often, they’re really good for us.

…

Jim: First, it’s a Saturday-night thing, and you feel cool, like a gangster or a rock star. It’s just something to kill the boredom, you know? They call it a chippie, a small habit. It feels so good though you start doing it on Tuesdays, then Thursdays. Then it’s got you. Every wise-ass punk on the block says it won’t happen to them, but it does.[/b]

And then you’ve got to come up with ways to pay for it. That’s where the innocent civilians come in.

[b]Jim [in Confession]: Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been about four months since my last confession.
Priest: Yes, my son?
Jim: Well, I don’t know where to start, Father.
Priest: Have you taken the name of Jesus Christ in vain?
Jim: Yeah. Yeah, I have.
Priest: Have you disrespected your mother and father?
Jim: Uh-huh.
Priest: Have you stolen or cheated your fellow man?
Jim: Yeah, but I’m not proud of it.
Priest: Have you had impure thoughts or engaged in impure deeds?
Jim: Oh, Father, you have no idea.
Priest: Is there something else that you want to tell me in your own words?
Jim: I’ve done all kinds of crazy shit. Oh, excuse me, Father. Fuck, I’m s…Christ, I have a dirty mouth. Look, I’m…I’m sorry about that. Can I just go on?
Priest: 10 Hail Marys, five Our Fathers.
Jim: What do you mean? That’s it? That’s my punishment?

…

Jim [voiceover]: And you want to stop. You really do. But it’s like a dream. You can’t stop dreams. They move in crazy pieces, any way they want to, and suddenly, you’re capable of anything.

…

Jim [walks up to Swifty]: Don’t worry, Swifty, I won’t rat you out.

…

Jim [walks up to Father McNulty]: And in the next life, Father, I’m gonna have the paddle!

…

Jim [voiceover]: We just got to raise enough cash to keep our heads straight. Luckily, finding money in New York is like getting laid at the prom…

…

Jim: How come my notebook’s all wet?
Reggie: Because you pissed on it.

…

Reggie: You’re welcome.
Jim: What the hell am I thanking you for?
Reggie: Because you was frozen in the snow like a goddamn creamsicle.

…

Diane [to Jim]: Who’s the whore now?

…

Jim: All I’ve been doing is reading this diary wondering how the hell I’m still alive?

…

Jim [to the camera]: Know this. There’s different types of users of junk. You got your rich dilettante square-ass who dabbles now and then and always has enough money to run off to the Riviera if he feels he’s fucking around to the danger point. Street junkies hate these pricks, but they’re always suckers, and their money makes them tolerable. Then you got your upper-middle-class Westchester preppies… same as the others, basically. What they’re good for is opening their mommy and daddy’s eyes to this social virus and putting pressure on the government to do something about it. Then there’s us street kids. Start fucking around very young. We think we all got it under control and won’t get strung out. This rarely works. I’m living proof. But in the end, you just got to see the junk as another 9-to-5 gig. The hours are just a bit more inclined to shadows.[/b]

Political intrigue. In the modern world, we expect it. The name of the game is wealth and power. Governments can be and invariably are bought and sold all the time. And only the most hopelessly naive imagine that high school civics texts actually describe the real world.

But back in the days of emperors and kings – of royalty, of rule by Divine Right – there must have been a lot of folks who were knocked for a loop when they discovered that most of what unfolded up on the stage [or behind the curtain] was in fact just that: scripted bullshit for the masses. Here, incest, murder, regicide…you name it…seems to have been par for the course. Shades of Akira Kurosawa’s magnificent Ran.

To what extent is this film based [if not literally] on events that transpired during the historical period depicted? You got me.

For sure though: patriarchy prevails. While the Emperor is out waging war, the Empress seems to spend the bulk of her time embroidering Chrysanthemums. And this is one of those worlds where everyone knows their place and a world for which there is a place for everyone. Who am I? That does not come up all that often. But then, come on, people are people: human all too human.

But, then, what do I really know about it? China in 928 A.D?

And who are we to project [let alone impose] our own moral and political narratives on them?

If nothing else though this is a stunningly beautiful film to watch. The photographer is nothing short of extraordinary. And I say this as someone watching it on a ten year old televison with a built-in DVD player – anything but hi-def. I can only imagine what it might be like to view it with blu-ray technology.

IMDb

[b]The largest set ever built for a movie in China.

The Dragon Robe and Phoenix Gown, worn by the Emperor and Empress during the festival, were handcrafted by 40 people who took over two months to create it.

Although sometimes not noticeable, each actor is dressed in 4-5 layers of clothing, sometimes 5-6 layers. Each layer is meticulously embroidered.

Some of the costumes weighed more than 40 kilos.

More than 1000 real soldiers were used in the final battle.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Golden_Flower
trailer: youtu.be/tyVv8qSTLRQ

CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER [Man Cheng Jin Dai Huang Jin Jia] 2006
Written and directed by Yimou Zhang

[b]Empress: So you are leaving. Are you afraid?
Prince Wan: You are my mother, Your Majesty.
Empress: We have been intimate for three years. You, of all people should know who I am.
Prince Wan: I am first and foremost my father’s son.
[the Empress grabs Wan, attempting to seduce him]
Prince Wan [recoils from the Empress]: Mother!
Empress: I am not your mother!

…

Emperor [to Prince Jai]: There are many things in Heaven and Earth, but you can only have what I choose to give you. What I do not give you, you must take by force.

…

Doctor: This is a Persian black fungus. Do you know it’s properties? Two grams a day, take over a few months will cause a person to lose all their mental faculty.
Chan [his daughter]: But the Empress…
Doctor: Don’t breathe a word or our entire clan will be executed.

…

Emperor [while placing ingredients on a scale]: This will cure your anemia.
Empress: I thank His Majesty for his concern.
Emperor: All good medicine tastes bitter. You have excess bile, poor digestion, Yin and Yang are out of balance. That is why you are so infractious, listless and lethargic, and capable of nothing but cutting remarks. These are all symptoms of anemia.
Empress: It has been more than ten years. My so-called sickness is clearly not improving with Your Majesty’s treatment.
Emperor [angrily throws scale to the ground]: If your father were not the King of Liang, I would scarely be speaking to you with such restraint!

…

Emperor: It has been 25 years. I thought that I would never see you again. And you married the Imperial Doctor!
Jiang [slaps the Emperor]: At the time, you were only a lowly captain plotting day and night to become Emperor. You flattered the King of Liang into letting you marry his daughter. You planned meticulously to have my entire family put in prison. Later, I alone managed to escape. Far from home, I almost died. It was the Doctor who saved me. Who then, do you think I should have married?

…

Prince Jai [upon discovering the Black Fungus plot]: Mother was taken ill yesterday. Was it because of this?
[the Empress nods her head]
Prince Jai: Why is Father doing this to you?
Empress: Jai, after the Chrysanthemum Festival, I shall tell you the whole truth. Each day, in front of your father, I have to feign ignorance. Every two hours, I swallow this poison without protest. Nobody knows what is happening. I shall die exactly as your father intends. A half-wit. But I refuse to submit without a fight. On the night of the Festival, I shall put an end to all this.
Prince Jai: Do my brothers know?
Empress: No.
Prince Jai: If I had not returned, would Mother have gone ahead?
Empress: Yes.
Prince Jai: Then why did you tell me?
Empress: Because I want you to be Emperor.
Prince Jai: Are you going to kill Father?
Empress: I shall force him to abdicate, but it is not my intention to kill him.
Prince Jai: Mother, a son cannot stand in rebellion against his father! Whatever the circumstances, he is still my father and my Emperor.[/b]

That’s how these things works: with some being considerably more cynical [meaning less ignorant] than others. Some know it is all just an act, a Machivelian game…while others take the whole thing very, very seriously.

[b]Prince Wan: Do you know why the Empress keeps embroidering chrysanthemums?
Chan: I hear they are for the festival. The eunuch in charge of weaving has made 10,000 flowers for her.
Prince Wan: ten thousand?!
Chan: Yes. Her Majesty had them all delivered to General Wu.
Prince Wan: Of the state Army?!
Chan: Yes.

…

Prince Jai: I always knew that this was not a battle I could win. Kill me or dismember me…you will do as you wish…but I need you to know, Father, that I did not rebel for the sake of the crown. I did it for the sake of my mother.

…

Emperor: What is the punishment for a prince in bebellion.
Official: Your Majesty, to be torn apart by five horses.
Emperor: Jai, Father is prepared to spare you…if you agree to one thing. From now on, every day, you will personally serve your mother’s medicine.[/b]

Hypnosis figures prominantly in this film. And it prompts you to wonder: has it ever really been established yet the extent to which it is “real”?

At places like this [yahoo answers], you hear the arguments from both sides: answers.yahoo.com/question/inde … 141AAK0DXU

On several occasions, folks tried to hypnotize me. But none were ever successful. Once, for example, my ex-wife’s uncle [a professional therapist] tried to do so in order to help me to control chronic pain. And I really did everything I could to be hypnotized. But nothing.

And always the same bottom line: What can and cannot be accomplished through hypnosis? What can or cannot the hypnotist make the one under hypnosis do? And here the task gets rather…involved. Which is to say [no doubt] there is Hollywood hypnosis and real hypnosis. Hollywood hypnosis almost always involves that mysterious “post-hypnotic suggestion”.

Anyway, here the plot revolves in large part around this crook needing to remember where he hid a stolen painting. He had gotten knocked in the head during the heist and…forgot. So, it’s off to the hypnotist [the beautiful hypnotist] to try to recover his memory.

And then it all manages to be tied in [loosely] with how [through memory] we attain and then sustain an identity.

It’s an art heist. Which is to say it has almost nothing to do with art at all. Only about how much someone is willing to pay for any particular painting. As in millions and millions of dollars. Or in this case, pounds. It’s just another kind of “business” when you get right down to it.

Trust me though: the plot is convoluted and confusing. It is very easy to think you understand it when in fact you do not at all. What’s real and what’s not? And who is using whom? And for what end, exactly?

Or some [like me] will just shrug at how hopelessly implausible it all was but still somehow feel as though they were not actually cheated out of a couple of hours in their lives.

IMDb

All the actors underwent hypnosis as part of their preparation for the film. James McAvoy claimed that his hypnotism session was successful and left him unable to move his hand during the duration of the session.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trance_(2013_film
trailer: youtu.be/L4_bdS3_gr0

TRANCE [2013]
Directed by Danny Boyle

Simon [voiceover]: Lots of paintings have been stolen. They’re still missing. It used to be anyone could steal a painting. There was no need for a gun. All it took was a bit of muscle and some nerve. But not anymore. Those days are gone. A business can’t function taking big hits like that. So now we have procedures…and precautions…and security measures. Now we have a policy. We have bag searches and magnetic alarms and silent scanners and X-ray machines and cameras. Also, we have drills. And the first thing they tell us is…“Do not be a hero”.

Simon is the “inside man”. Sort of.

[b]Simon [voiceover]: What happens, of course, is that just as we up our game, the villains up theirs. They don’t just turn up on spec anymore. We have precautions, they have plans. They do research. They learn about our cameras and scanners and Ukrainian ex-naval commandos. But some things don’t change. It still takes muscle and it still takes nerve.

…

Simon [voiceover]: “Remember, do not be a hero. Put it down. No piece of art is worth a human life.”

…

Doctor: Well, his brain is intact on a gross level. On a smaller scale, who’s to say? What I’m saying is we don’t know. The memories may come back, they may not. All you can do is wait and see.
Franck: Isn’t there something you can do?
Doctor: For memory? Nothing. Except time.
Franck: Some sort of medicine?
Doctor: There’s no drug therapy for amnesia.
Franck: What about other sorts of therapy?[/b]

Bingo: Hypnosis.

Simon reads the card held up by Elizabeth: ARE YOU IN TOUBLE? ARE THEY LISTENING? HOW MANY?
[then she holds up a photograph of the missing painting]
Elizabeth [into the microphone taped to Simon]: I don’t wanna talk to Simon anymore. I wanna talk to the men who are listening. The men who hurt him.
Simon reads her next card: I WANT TO HELP YOU

After Elizabeth sits down with Franck at a restaurant to discuss Simon it begins to dawn on you that you might not really be “getting” this.

[b]Elizabeth: Hypnotherapy will work.
Franck: But?
Elizabeth: Only if it’s a partnership.
Franck: Very well. The finder’s fee is 3%.
Elizabeth: It’s not enough.
Franck: See what I mean?
Elizabeth: It’s not about the money. I have to have equal status in the group…otherwise Simon won’t respect me. If you wanna make progress you really have to move beyond getting one over on people, Franck.

…

Elizabeth: Hypnotherapy is a means of altering unwanted or dysfunctional behavior. The unwanted behavior in Simon’s case is forgetting.
Dominic: You mean he’s doing it deliberately?
Elizabeth: Not in the sense that you mean, Dominic. We keep secrets from lots of people, but most of all we keep them from ourselves – and that we call forgetting.

…

Elizabeth: Sustained post hypnotic suggestion is more difficult.
Franck: More difficult, but you can do it, right?
Elizabeth: Not to everyone, of course. But, yes, 5% can be described as extremely suggestible.
Franck: Wow, 5%. Who’d have thought? And what can you make them do? Well, I’m just asking. I’m interested.
Elizabeth: All right. Well, let’s see, if you had the right person…if you get a hold of them, dig right in…if you get them under your spell…if you work hard…and take your time…and do it right…you can make them want to do…almost…anything.

…

Elizabeth [to Simon]: What we are is the sum of everything we’ve ever said, done, felt…all wrapped up in one unique thread which is constantly being revised and remembered. So to be yourself you have to constantly remember yourself. It’s a full-time job but that’s how it works.

…

Franck: You’ll fuck him just to get him to remember?
Elizabeth: It’s not conventional practice, but under the circumstances…

…

Elizabeth [to Franck]: He isn’t really receiving electric shocks. He only believes he is.

…

Simon [on phone]: Elizabeth?
Elizabeth: Yes?
Simon: I have something to tell you. Are you ready? I remember. I remember where I put it.

…

Simon: I know, Franck. I know what you were going to do to me.
Franck: She put that there, Simon. It’s not real.

…

Simon: I would like to know what happened. It’s all inside my head, isn’t it? There’s something hidden inside me. What is it?
Elizabeth: It’s a memory.
Simon: Suppressed?
Elizabeth: Yeah. Simon…maybe there are some things it’s better never to remember.
Simon: I have free will though. Don’t I? Don’t I?!
Elizabeth: Yes.
Simon: All right, then. All right, then, let’s see if I do.

…

Elizabeth: The memory is not destroyed, it is locked in a cage, and with enough force, enough violence, the lock can be broken. It comes back, the memory, not completely, not entirely, but enough to drive you, to make you feel you have been cheated, enough to make you angry.

…

Elizabeth [to Franck on video link]: The choice is yours. Do you want to remember or do you want to forget?[/b]

Sometimes philosophy and science get so entangled in a movie plot it is all but impossible to get the tangles out. This is especially true regarding science fiction. Here lots of stuff is purely fictional but it is based on speculation that is rooted in intelligent conjectures about what either will or will not be possible at some point “in the future”.

In this particular future a “red ball” technology has been created that allows crime fighters to bring the murder rate in Washington D.C. down to…zero. How? Through the creation of a “precrime” unit that is able to know in advance [from “precognitives”] when a murder will be committed and who the victims will be. Then it’s just a matter of the police getting to the intended victims in time.

Where this all gets particularly tricky though [at least for me] is in the relationship between a point of view that can know [down to the precise minute] what the future will be and the extent to which any of us can still be “free”. Human autonomy in a world where the future already exists and can be grasped? Trust me: It all gets really, really murky.

Agatha: “You can choose. You can choose.”

Oh, really? Can we? Apparently knowing the future is compatible with free will because once someone knows what his future is he can choose to change it. Or something like that.

Or the Precogs themselves. All the questions here that revolve around means and ends.

Or just imagine [which they do] the moral and legal implications of arresting [imprisoning] someone for something they have not really actually done yet. The “metaphysics” of it as it were.

And talk about preventive crime. Who in his right mind is going to commit pre-meditated murder when the crime can be spotted days in advance? Now it seems it is only “crimes of passion” to contend with.

In a sense the analogy here [in today’s world] are things like the NSA program. Literally “The Program”. Do we want to be free of the terrorists? Well, this is what we have to do. Will we have to trim back on our privacy rights…our freedoms? Sure…but it’s worth it. For example, to feel safe and secure. Besides, it only goes after the Bad Guys.

Look for tons of product placements. What would the future be without them?

IMDb

[b]The “PreCogs” were all named after famous mystery writers. Dashiell Hammett, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie.

At the police station, the officers talk about the metaphysical proof of precognition. Chief Anderton (Tom Cruise) rolls a red ball along a table to demonstrate the law of cause and effect to Det. Witwer (Colin Farrell). All of this is an allusion to the famous claim of philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), that by observing billiard balls you can actually demonstrate that cause and effect does not exist but is merely a habitually created fiction of the mind.

Steven Spielberg hired the top 12 contortionists from around the world to do the futuristic yoga class scene.

A “Minority Report” in real life is a legislative procedure whereby a minority of a committee (usually members from the minority party) offer an official alternative to a piece of legislation. Because of the way rules of decorum work out, minority reports are very rarely successful (as in this film).[/b]

FAQ at IMDb imdb.com/title/tt0181689/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film
trailer: youtu.be/q2bmImPNKbM

MINORITY REPORT [2002]
Directed by Steven Spielberg

[b]Danny: The Precogs can see a murder four days out. Why the late call?
Fletcher: Crime of passion. No premeditation. That’s why they call it a Red Ball. They show up late. Most of our scrambles are flash events like this one. We rarely see anything with premeditation anymore.

…

John: Mr. Marks, by mandate of the District of Columbia Precrime Division, I’m placing you under arrest for the future murder of Sarah Marks and Donald Dubin that was to take place today, April 22 at 0800 hours and four minutes.

…

Pre-Crime Public Service Announcer: Imagine, a world with out, murder. 6 years ago, the homicidal rates had reached epidemic proportions. It seemed that only a miracle could stop the blood shed, but instead of 1 miracle, we were given 3, the precognitives. Within just one month of the precrime program, the homicidal rates in the District of Columbia had reduced 90 percent.

…

Burgess: 6 Years in the precrime prgram, and there hasn’t been a single murder.
Pre-Crime Public Service Announcer: Now, the system can work for you.
Attorney General Nash: We want to make sure that this great system is what will keep us safe will also keep us free.
Pre-Crime Public Service Announcer: On Tuesday April 22nd, vote yes on the national Precrime initiative.

…

Danny: I’m sure you’ve all grasped the legalistic drawback to precrime methodology.
Knott: Here we go again…
Danny: Look, I’m not with the ACLU on this Jeff. But let’s not kid ourselves, we are arresting individuals who’ve broken no law.
Jad: But they will.
Fletcher: The commission of the crime itself is absolute metaphysics. The Precogs see the future. And they’re never wrong.
Danny: But it’s not the future if you stop it. Isn’t that a fundamental paradox?
John: Yes, it is.

…

John: Why’d you catch that red ball?
Danny: Because it was going to fall.
John: You’re certain?
Danny: Yeah.
John: But it didn’t fall. You caught it. The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn’t change the fact that it was going to happen.

…

Danny: Why can’t the Precogs see rapes, or assaults… or suicides?
Fletcher: Because of the nature of murder. “There’s nothing more destructive to the metaphysical fabric that binds us than the untimely murder of one human being by another”.

…

Danny: Science has stolen most of our miracles. In a way the Precogs give us hope… hope of the existence of the divine. I find it interesting that some people have begun to deify the precogs.
John: The precogs are pattern recognition filters, nothing more.

…

John: Why don’t you cut the cute act, Danny boy, and tell me what it is you’re looking for?
Danny: Flaws.
John: There hasn’t been a murder in six years. There’s nothing wrong with this system it is… perfect.
Danny: Perfect I agree, but if there’s a flaw. It’s human. It always is.

…

Gideon [to John]: Careful, Chief. Dig up the past, all you get is dirty.

…

Burgess [to John]: My father once told me, “We don’t choose the things we believe in; they choose us.”

…

Wally [to John]: I like you, Chief. You’ve always been good to me. I’ll give you two minutes before I hit the alarm.

…

John: You set me up.
Danny: It seems I found a flaw.

…

Burgess: Who’s the victim?
John: Somebody.
Burgess: Who?
John [trying to remember the name]: Somebody. Leo Crow.
Burgess: Who is he?
John: I have no idea! I’ve never heard of him! But I’m supposed to kill him in less than thirty-six hours.

…

Fletcher: John, don’t run.
John: You don’t have to chase me.
Fletcher: You don’t have to run.
John: Everybody runs, Fletch, everybody runs.

…

John: You invented precrime.
[Iris chuckles bitterly]
John: What’s so funny?
Iris: If the unintended consequences of a series of genetic mistakes and science gone haywire can be called invention, then yes, I invented precrime.
John: You don’t seem all that proud.
Iris: I’m not. I was trying to heal them, not turn them into…something else.
John: Heal who?
Iris: The innocents we now use to stop the guilty.
John: You’re talking about the precogs…
Iris: You think the three in the tank come from a test tube? They’re merely the ones who survived.

…

John: I’m not a murderer. I’ve never even met the man I’m supposed to kill.
Iris: And, yet, a chain of events has started. A chain that will lead inexorably to his death.
John: Not if I stay away from him.
Iris: How can you avoid a man you’ve never met?

…

Iris [to John]: The Precogs are never wrong. But, occasionally…they do disagree.
John: What?
Iris: Most of the time, all three Precognitives will see an event in the same way. But once in a while, one of them will see things differently than the other two.
John: Jesus Christ – why didn’t I know about this?
Iris: Because these Minority Reports are destroyed the instant they occur.
John: Why?
Iris: Obviously, for Precrime to function, there can’t be any suggestion of fallibility. After all, what good is a Justice system that instills doubt? It may be reasonable, but it’s still doubt.
John: You’re saying that I’ve halo’d innocent people?
Iris: I’m saying that every so often those accused of a precrime might, just might, have an alternate future.

…

Iris: It’s funny how all living organisms are alike…
[she starts crushing a mutated plant]
Iris: …when the chips are down, when the pressure is on, every creature on the face of the Earth is interested in one thing and one thing only…
[the plant scars her palm]
Iris: …its own survival.

…

Wally: You’re not allowed in here - who are you? Do I know you?
John [in disguise, grabs Wally by the collar]: Listen, Wally - I like you. So, I don’t wanna have to kick you or hit you with anything hard, but only if you promise to help me.
Wally: …Oh, hi, John.

…

Agatha [repeated line]: Can you see?

…

Agatha: Is this now?
John: Yes, this is all happening right now.

…

Rufus [to Agatha]: Are you reading my mind right now?
John: Get up.
Rufus [to Agatha]: I’m sorry for whatever I’m going to do and I swear I didn’t do any of that stuff I did. And those thoughts about my cousin Elena, those were just thoughts!

…

Rufus: I tell you what. I do this, I get to keep whatever images I get from her head.
John: They don’t belong to anybody.
Rufus [turning to go): Then take her to Radio Shack.

…

John [to Agatha]: Where’s my Minority Report?

…

Agatha [to stranger in mall]: He knows, don’t go home.

…

Agatha: You have a choice. Walk away. Right now.
John: I can’t. I have to know.
Agatha: Please…
John: I have to find out what happened to my life.

…

John [to Agatha…but mostly to himself]: Every day for the last six years I’ve thought about only two things. The first was what my son would look like if he were alive today. If I would even recognize him if I saw him on the street. The second was what I would do to the man who took him. You were right. I’m not being set up.
Agatha: You have to take me home…
John: You said so yourself. There is no Minority Report. I don’t have an alternative future. I am going to kill this man.

…

Crow: You’re not gonna kill me?
John: No.
Crow: But you have to. They said you would. If you don’t kill me, my family gets nothing! You’re supposed to kill me. He said you would.
John: Who said I would?

…

Agatha: I’m sorry, John, but you have to run again.
John: What…?
Agatha: RUN!!!

…

Gideon: You’re part of my flock now, John.

…

Burgess: All right. Tell you what I’ll do. First thing Monday, I’ll look over the Witwer evidence and I’ll have Gideon run the Containment files, see if anyone drowned a woman named – what did you say her name was?
Lara [after a pause]: Anne Lively… But I never said she drowned.

…

Lara [in the containment ward, putting a gun to Gideon’s head]: I’d like a word with my husband.
Gideon: You’re not authorized. How did you get in here?
[she shows him]

…

John: No doubt the precogs have already seen this.
Burgess: No doubt.
John: You see the dilemma don’t you. If you don’t kill me, precogs were wrong and precrime is over. If you do kill me, you go away, but it proves the system works. The precogs were right. So, what are you going to do now? What’s it worth? Just one more murder? You’ll rot in hell with a halo, but people will still believe in precrime. All you have to do is kill me like they said you would. Except you know your own future, which means you can change it if you want to. You still have a choice Lamar. Like I did.

…

John [voiceover]: In 2054, the six-year Precrime experiment was abandoned. All prisoners were unconditionally pardoned and released, though police departments kept watch on many of them for years to come. Agatha and the twins were transferred to an undisclosed location, a place where they could find relief from their gifts. A place where they could live out their lives in peace.[/b]

Of course the murder rate was about to soar again.

It may not be necessary that you were/are a member of the armed forces in order to grasp the narratives being conveyed in this film. On the other hand, maybe it is. I was in the Army back in the late 1960s. The film focuses on the Navy during the Second World War. But the military is still the military is still the military. And everything in the military revolves around the sacrosanct “chain of command”. And every soldier embedded in the “enlisted ranks” knows just how crucial it can be when you are assigned to a unit in which the officers are hard core. Especially the commanding officer.

Here, the experience of the enlisted men is especially grueling because the CO [and the officers] before Queeg could not possibly have been less hardcore. When that happens, the transition can be nothing short of infuriating. Or can be if you are not particularly gung-ho yourself.

Ah, but what if the CO is not only a hardcore, spit and polish lifer but also…crazy? Can’t say as I ever had that experience. On the other hand, my CO at the Song Be MACV [Lt. Colonel Robert Hayden] surely came close. Of course he did put me in for the Bronze Star.

Anyway, the Caine mutiny is basically a fascinating examination into the military mentality embodied in an individual who is starting to come apart at the seams. Mentally. And of the reactions of those around him. Men who are sounder mentally but maybe not so much…morally? Which is just to point out the obvious: that psychologically sound folks can still be assholes.

This film more or less shifts back and forth between what we [the audience] know the reality to be given what we are shown up on the screen and how the individual characters in the film [not privy to this] might just as easily insist it all comes down to a judgment call. One based solely on what they do know. And how that can be effected by their own personalities and prejudices.

In the end, it’s basically A Few Good Men from a different era. Only this time the point is more a defense of Col. Nathan R. Jessup and his ilk. They have the balls to defend freedom in and around actual combat. But then again you can’t quite make the comparison between World War 2 and Vietnam. At least most don’t make it.

A word of advice: The parts about May and Mother? You might want to fast forward them. Why the fuck they were put in the movie at all is simply bewildering. Queeg and Keefer and Greenwald are the movie.

IMDb

[b]There was considerable opposition to the casting of Humphrey Bogart, since he was much older than Captain Queeg was supposed to be. In addition, Bogart was already seriously ill with espohagal cancer, although it would not be diagnosed until January 1956.

Humphrey Bogart’s tour-de-force performance in the climactic courtroom scene was so powerful that it completely captivated the onlooking film technicians and crewmen. After the scene’s completion, the company gave Bogart a round of thunderous applause.

Lee Marvin, who served in the United States Marine Corps and knew a great deal about ships at sea, served double duty by also lending his expertise on military matters.

This movie’s opening prologue states: “There has never been a mutiny in a ship of the United States Navy. The truths of this film lie not in its incidents but in the way a few men meet the crisis of their lives.”[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Caine_Mutiny_(film
trailer: youtu.be/2MeErathhsg

THE CAINE MUTINY [1954]
Directed by Edward Dmytryk

[b]Sailor [of the Caine]: It’s a mistake scraping this ship. The only thing keeping the water out is the rust.

…

DeVriess: She’s not a battleship or a carrier; the Caine is a beaten-up tub. After 18 months of combat it takes 24 hours a day just to keep her in one piece.
Keith: I understand sir.
DeVriess: I don’t think you do. But whether you like it or not, Keith, you’re in the junkyard navy. And keith … Don’t take it so hard. War is hell.

…

Keefer [to Ensign Keith while giving him a tour of the Caine]: The USS Caine is a minesweeper. These paravanes carry sweep wires off both sides of the ship. The wire saws the mine in two. We’ve been in combat a year and a half, and we’ve never swept a mine. So the first thing you’ve got to learn about this ship is that she was designed by geniuses to be run by idiots.

…

Lt. Keefer [to Keith]: This is the engine room; to operate, all you need is any group of well-trained monkeys. 99 percent of everything we do is strict routine. Only one percent requires any creative intelligence.

…

Keith: Sir, you don’t like the Navy, do you?
Keefer: Who called the Caine the Navy?

…

Keith: Sir, I spotted a Japanese aircraft off the starboard bow. Angle 20. See him?
DeVriess: Keith, if you stay in the Navy ten years, you may learn to tell the difference between an aircraft and a flock of seagulls.[/b]

Enter Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg…

Queeg [introducing himself to the officers]: I’m a book man. I believe everything in it was put in for a purpose. On this ship, we do things by the book. Deviate from the book and you better have half a dozen good arguments…and you’ll still get an argument from me. I don’t lose arguments on my ship. That’s why it’s nice to be captain. Remember, on board my ship excellent performance is standard, standard performance is sub-standard and sub-standard performance is not permitted to exist…Now that I’ve shot my face off, I’ll give you the chance to do the same.
Maryk: Captain, I don’t want to seem out of line but it’s been a long time since this crew did things by the book.
Queeg: Mr. Maryk, there are four ways of doing things on board my ship: The right way, the wrong way, the Navy way and my way. Do it my way and we’ll get along.

The he brings out the steel balls. Uh, oh…

[b]Queeg: Anyone notice anything peculiar about Seaman First Class Urban? A shirt-tail hanging out of trousers is, I believe, regulation uniform for a bus boy, not, however, for a sailor in the United States Navy. These are some of the things we’re going to start noticing again. Mr. Maryk, who is the morale officer?
Maryk: We don’t have one, sir.
Queeg: Who, then, is the Junior Ensign?
Maryk: Keith, sir.
Queeg: Mr. Keith, you are now appointed the morale officer. In addition to your other duties, you are to see that shirttails are tucked inside trousers.
Keith: Aye, aye, sir.
Queeg: If I see one more shirttail flapping while I’m captain of this ship - woe betide the sailor; woe betide the OOD; and woe betide the morale officer. I kid you not.

…

Keith [of Queeg]: Well, he’s certainly Navy.
Keefer: Yeah…so was Captain Bligh.

…

Keith [of Queeg]: You made a mistake, Tom. He’s still here.
Keefer: My mistake was nothing compared to the Navy’s.

…

Keefer [of “Old Yellowstain”]: What do you think of your boy now?
Keith: I don’t know. There must be a reason for this.
Keefer: Yeah. There’s a reason, all right.

…

Keefer [after yet another surreal meeting between the officers and Queeg]: This is what is known in literature as the “pregnant pause”.

…

Keefer: Has it ever occurred to you that our captain might be unbalanced? I’m no psychiatrist, but I know about abnormal behaviour. Captain Queeg has every symptom of acute paranoia. It’s just a question of time before he goes over the line. He’ll snap any day.
Maryk: Step outside Keith.
Keith: I’d like to stay.
Keefer: Let him. He studied psychology.
Maryk: You’re fooling with dynamite, Tom.
Keefer: Will you look at the man? He’s a Freudian delight; he crawls with clues! His fixatiom on the little rolling balls…the charttering of second hand phrases and slogans…his inability to look you in the eye…the constant migraine headaches…shirtails and tonight’s pathetic speech. “Forget about turning yellow, my dog likes me”.

…

Maryk [writting in his log book]: “Medical log on Lieutenant Commander. The possibility appears to exist that the commander of this ship may be mentally disturbed.”

…

Maryk: How’s it going?
Keith: All right. The captain’s been put away for the night.
Maryk: Lay off.

…

Whittaker: Mr. Maryk, Mr. Keith. The captain wants a meeting with all officers, right away.
Maryk: Now? At one o’clock in the morning?
Whittaker: Yes, sir.
Maryk: Do you know what it’s about?
Whittaker: Yes, sir - strawberries.

…

Keefer: Steve, are you familiar with Article 184 of Navy regulations?
Maryk: Vaguely.
Keefer: Listen to this. On the Caine it ought to be required reading. Article 184 : “Unusual circumstances may arise - - in which the relief from duty of a commanding officer is necessary. Such action shall be subject to the approval of the Navy Department, except when it is impracticable because of the delay involved.” If I were you, Steve, I’d memorise it.

…

Greenwald [to Maryk]: I don’t want to upset you too much, but at the moment you have an excellent chance of being hanged.

…

Greenwald [at the court martial]: Doctor. You have testified that the following symptoms exist in Lieutenant-Commander Queeg’s behavior. Rigidity of personality, feelings of persecution, unreasonable suspicion, a mania for perfection, and a neurotic certainty that he is always in the right. Doctor isn’t there one psychiatric term for this illness?

…

Captain Blakely: Mr. Greenwald, there can be no more serious charge against an officer than cowardice under fire.
Greenwald: Sir, may I make one thing clear? It is not the defense’s contention that Lieutenant Commander Queeg is a coward. Quite the contrary. The defense assumes that no man who rises to command a United States naval ship can possibly be a coward and that, therefore, if he commits questionable acts under fire, the explanation must be elsewhere.

…

Queeg: Ahh, but the strawberries that’s…that’s where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with…geometric logic…that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I’d have produced that key if they hadn’t of pulled the Caine out of action. I, I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officers…[/b]

Out come the little steel balls…

[b]Keefer: Steve.
Maryk: Hello, Tom. I didn’t think you’d have the guts to show up.
Keefer: I didn’t have the guts not to.

…

[Greenwald staggers drunk into the Caine crew’s party]
Greenwald: Well, well, well! The officers of the Caine in happy celebration!
Maryk: What are you, Barney, kind of tight?
Greenwald: Sure. I got a guilty conscience. I defended you, Steve, because I found the wrong man was on trial. So, I torpedoed Queeg for you. I had to torpedo him. And I feel sick about it.
Maryk: Okay, Barney, take it easy.
Greenwald: You know something…When I was studying law, and Mr. Keefer here was writing his stories, and you, Willie, were tearing up the playing fields of dear old Princeton, who was standing guard over this fat, dumb, happy country of ours, eh? Not us. Oh, no, we knew you couldn’t make any money in the service. So who did the dirty work for us? Queeg did! And a lot of other guys. Tough, sharp guys who didn’t crack up like Queeg.
Keith: But no matter what, Captain Queeg endangered the ship and the lives of the men.
Greenwald: He didn’t endanger anybody’s life, you did, all of you! You’re a fine bunch of officers.
Paynter: You said yourself he cracked.
Greenwald: I’m glad you brought that up, Mr. Paynter, because that’s a very pretty point. You know, I left out one detail in the court martial. It wouldn’t have helped our case any.
[to Maryk]
Greenwald: Tell me, Steve, after the Yellowstain business, Queeg came to you guys for help and you turned him down, didn’t you?
Maryk [hesitant]: Yes, we did.
Greenwald: You didn’t approve of his conduct as an officer. He wasn’t worthy of your loyalty. So you turned on him. You ragged him. You made up songs about him. If you’d given Queeg the loyalty he needed, do you suppose the whole issue would have come up in the typhoon? You’re an honest man, Steve, I’m asking you. You think it would’ve been necessary for you to take over?
Maryk: It probably wouldn’t have been necessary.
Greenwald [muttering]: Yeah.
Keith: If that’s true, then we were guilty.
Greenwald: Ah, you’re learning, Willie! You’re learning that you don’t work with a captain because you like the way he parts his hair. You work with him because he’s got the job or you’re no good! Well, the case is over. You’re all safe. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
[long pause; strides toward Keefer]
Greenwald: And now we come to the man who should’ve stood trial. The Caine’s favorite author. The Shakespeare whose testimony nearly sunk us all. Tell 'em, Keefer!
Keefer [stiff and overcome with guilt]: No, you go ahead. You’re telling it better.
Greenwald: You ought to read his testimony. He never even heard of Captain Queeg!
Maryk: Let’s forget it, Barney!
Greenwald: Queeg was sick, he couldn’t help himself. But you, you’re real healthy. Only you didn’t have one tenth the guts that he had.
Keefer: Except I never fooled myself, Mr. Greenwald.
Greenwald: I’m gonna drink a toast to you, Mr. Keefer.
[pours wine in a glass]
Greenwald: From the beginning you hated the Navy. And then you thought up this whole idea. And you managed to keep your skirts nice, and starched, and clean, even in the court martial. Steve Maryk will always be remembered as a mutineer. But you, you’ll publish your novel, you’ll make a million bucks, you’ll marry a big movie star, and for the rest of your life you’ll live with your conscience, if you have any. Now here’s to the real author of “The Caine Mutiny.” Here’s to you, Mr. Keefer.
[tosses the wine in Keefer’s face]
Greenwald: If you wanna do anything about it, I’ll be outside. I’m a lot drunker than you are, so it’ll be a fair fight.[/b]

Yep: Still more “love and human remains”.

Now, in some ways, what happened “back then” is considerably less likely to happen now. For example, in the interim there was the feminist movement. A whole new way to think about gender and power.

And yet in other ways [one way or another] crap like this will always be a part of what goes on when, well, “boy meets girl” in the big city.

For example, sex is almost always there to muck things up. Only back then – “the 50s” – the rules were made [and then enforced] almost entirely by men. As in of, by and for the male of the species. The “girls” were mostly secretaries. Or shuttled the elevators up and down. And married men were always on the prowl for them. Especially those in positions of power. Upper management. The company executives.

Only “back then” they often needed some place “private” to take them. And that’s where “the apartment” comes in. C.C. Baxter’s apartment in particular.

Basically, the denouement here is just the way some folks – romantics – want the world to be. A world where true love really is possible amidst all the apalling phonies. And the even more appalling “players”. A world that isn’t hopelssly plastic and revolving almost entirely around dollar bills. And they just know that C.C. and Fran will live happily ever after. In other words, with each other. Why? Because they can, after all, just watch the film over and over and over again.

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apartment
trailer: youtu.be/GX9-5Zxy5us

THE APARTMENT [1960]
Written in part and directed by Billy Wilder

[b]Baxter [voiceover]: On November 1st, 1959, the population of New York City was 8,042,783. If you laid all these people end to end, figuring an average height of five feet six and a half inches, they would reach from Times Square to the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan. I know facts like this because I work for an insurance company - Consolidated Life of New York. We’re one of the top five companies in the country. Our home office has 31,259 employees, which is more than the entire population of uhh… Natchez, Mississippi. I work on the 19th floor. Ordinary Policy Department, Premium Accounting Division, Section W, desk number 861.My name is C.C. Baxter - C. for Calvin, C. for Clifford – however, most people call me Bud. I’ve been with Consolidated Life for three years and ten months. I started in the branch office in Cincinnati, then transferred to New York. My take-home pay is $94.70 a week, and there are the usual fringe benefits. The hours in our department are 8:50 to 5:20 – they’re staggered by floors, so that sixteen elevators can handle the 31,259 employees without a serious traffic jam. As for myself, I very often stay on at the office and work for an extra hour or two – especially when the weather is bad. It’s not that I’m overly ambitious – it’s just a way of killing time, until it’s all right for me to go home. You see, I have this little problem with my apartment…

…

Kirkeby: Why do all you dames have to live in the Bronx?
Sylvia: You mean you bring other girls up here?
Kirkeby: Certainly not. I’m a happily married man.

…

Dr. Dreyfuss: You must be an iron man all around. From what I hear through the walls, you got something going for you every night.
Baxter: I’m sorry if it gets noisy –
Dr. Dreyfuss: Sometimes, there’s a twi-night double-header. A nebbish like you!
Baxter: Yeah. Well – see you, Doc.
Dr. Dreyfuss: You know, Baxter – I’m doing some research at the Columbia Medical Center – and I wonder if you could do us a favor? When you make out your will – and the way you’re going, you should – would you mind leaving your body to the University?

…

Dr. Dreyfuss [hearing loud music coming from Baxter’s apartment]: Mildred! He’s at it again!

…

Sheldrake: Tell me, Baxter – just what is it that makes you so popular?
Baxter: I don’t know.
Sheldrake: Think.
Baxter: Would you mind repeating the question?
Sheldrake: Look, Baxter, I’m not stupid. I know everything that goes on in this building – in every department – on every floor – every day of the year. In 1957, we had an employee here, name of Fowler. He was very popular, too. Turned out he was running a bookie joint right in the Actuarial Department tying up the switchboard, figuring the odds on our I.B.M. machines – so the day before the Kentucky Derby, I called in the Vice Squad and we raided the thirteenth floor.
Baxter: What – what’s that got to do with me? I’m not running any bookie joint.
Sheldrake: What kind of joint are you running?
Baxter: Sir?
Sheldrake: There’s a certain key floating around the office – from Kirkeby to Vanderhof to Eichelberger to Dobisch – it’s the key to a certain apartment – and you know who that apartment belongs to?
Baxter: Who?
Sheldrake: Loyal, cooperative, resourceful C. C. Baxter.

…

Sheldrake: Where is your apartment?
Baxter: West 67th Street. You have no idea what I’ve been going through – with the neighbors and the landlady and the liquor and the key…
Sheldrake: How do you work it with the key?
Baxter: Well, usually I slip it to them in the office and they leave it under the mat…but never again. I can promise you that.

…

Sheldrake: I’m not just giving you those tickets, Baxter – I want to swap them.
Baxter: Swap them? For what? Sheldrake picks up the Dobisch reports, puts on his glasses,
Sheldrake [looking at a report]: It also says here that you are alert, astute, and quite imaginative Baxter: Oh?
(then he dawns on him…he reaches into his coat pocket and fishes out the key to his apartment…he holds it up]
Baxter: This?
Sheldrake: That’s good thinking, Baxter. Next month there’s going to be a shift in personnel around here – and as far as I’m concerned, you’re executive material.

…

Sheldrake: Now remember, Baxter, this is going to be our little secret.
Baxter: Yes, of course.
Sheldrake: You know how people talk. Not that I have anything to hide.
Baxter: Oh, no sir. Certainly not. Anyway, it’s none of my business – four rotten apples, five rotten apples…what’s the difference…percentage-wise?

…

Fran: Look, Jeff – we had two wonderful months this summer – and that was it. Happens all the time – the wife and kids go away to the country, and the boss has a fling with the secretary or the manicurist – or the elevator girl. Comes September, the picnic is over – goodbye. The kids go back to school, the boss goes back to the wife, and the girl –
Sheldrake: I never said goodbye, Fran.
Fran [more to herself]: For a while there, you try kidding yourself that you’re going with an unmarried man. Then one day he keeps looking at his watch, and asks you if there’s any lipstick showing, then rushes off to catch the seven-fourteen to White Plains. So you fix yourself a cup of instant coffee – and you sit there by yourself – and you think – and it all begins to look so ugly…[/b]

This is the part that doesn’t fit for me. Sheldrake is so clearly a slimeball. It’s almost impossible to imagine her actually falling in love with him.

[b]Sheldrake: You see a girl a couple of times a week – just for laughs – and right away she thinks you’re going to divorce your wife. I ask you – is that fair?
Baxter: No, sir. That’s very unfair – especially to your wife.

…

Miss Olsen: Hi. How’s the branch manager from Kansas City?
Fran: I beg your pardon?
Miss Olsen: I’m Miss Olsen – Mr. Sheldrake’s secretary. So you don’t have to play innocent with me. He used to tell his wife that I was the branch manager from Seattle – four years ago when we were having a little ring-a-ding-ding. And before me there was Miss Rossi in Auditing – and after me there was Miss Koch in Disability – and just before you there was Miss What’s-Her-Name, on the twenty- fifth floor –
Fran (wanting to get away): Will you excuse me?
Miss Olsen (holding her by the arm): What for? You haven’t done anything – it’s him – what a salesman – always the last booth in the Chinese restaurant – and the same pitch about divorcing his wife – and in the end you wind up with egg foo yong on your face.

…

Baxter: The mirror…it’s broken.
Fran: Yes, I know. I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel.

…

Margie: Night like this, it sorta spooks you, walking into an empty apartment.
Baxter: I said I had no family; I didn’t say I had an empty apartment.

…

Fran: Funny thing happened to me at the office party today – I ran into your secretary – Miss Olsen. You know – ring-a-ding-ding? I laughed so much I like to died.
Sheldrake: Is that what’s been bothering you – Miss Olsen? That’s ancient history.
Fran: I was never very good at history. Let me see – there was Miss Olsen, and then there was Miss Rossi – no, she came before – it was Miss Koch who came after Miss Olsen – And just think – right now there’s some lucky girl in the building who’s going to come after me –
Sheldrake: Okay, okay, Fran. I deserve that. But just ask yourself – why does a man run around with a lot of girls? Because he’s unhappy at home – because he’s lonely, that’s why – all that was before you, Fran – I’ve stopped running.
Fran: How could I be so stupid? You’d think I would have learned by now – when you’re in love with a married man, you shouldn’t wear mascara.

…

Sheldrake [to Fran]: I have a present for you. I didn’t quite know what to get you – anyway it’s a little awkward for me, shopping…
(he takes out a money clip and detaches a bill)
Sheldrake: Here’s a hundred bucks, Fran. Go buy yourself something nice.

…

Margie: Where do we go – my place or yours?
Baxter: Might as well go to mine – everybody else does.

…

Dr. Dreyfuss: I don’t know what you did to that girl in there - and don’t tell me - but it was bound to happen, the way you carry on. Live now, pay later. Diner’s Club! Why don’t you grow up, Baxter? Be a mensch! You know what that means?
Baxter: I’m not sure.
Dr. Dreyfuss: A mensch - a human being!

…

Baxter: Who are you calling, Miss Kubelik?
Fran: My sister – she’ll want to know what happened to me.
Baxter (alarmed): Wait a minute – let’s talk this over first. Just what are you going to tell her? Fran: Well, I haven’t figured it out, exactly.
Baxter: You better figure it out – exactly. Suppose she asks you why you didn’t come home last night?
Fran: I’ll tell her I spent the night with a friend.
Baxter: Who?
Fran: Someone from the office.
Baxter: And where are you now?
Fran: In his apartment.
Baxter: His apartment?
Fran: I mean – her apartment
Baxter: When are you coming home?
Fran: As soon as I can walk.
Baxter: Something wrong with your legs?
Fran: No – it’s my stomach.
Baxter: Your stomach?
Fran: They had to pump it out.

…

Fran [to Baxter]: Why do people have to love people anyway?

…

Fran: Mr. Sheldrake’s a taker.
Baxter: A what?
Fran: Some people take, some people get took. And they know they’re getting took and there’s nothing they can do about it.

…

Baxter [to Fran]: Ya know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe; I mean, shipwrecked among 8 million people. And then one day I saw a footprint in the sand, and there you were.

…

Dr. Dreyfuss [after Fran’s brother-in-law clobbers him]: I don’t want to gloat, but just between us, you had that coming to you. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Are you going to have a shiner tomorrow. Let me get my bag.
Baxter: Don’t bother, Doc. It doesn’t hurt a bit.

…

Sheldrake: I know how worried you were about Miss Kubelik – well, stop worrying – I’m going to take her off your hands.
Baxter (stunned): You’re going to take her off my hands?
Sheldrake [indicating the suitcases]: That’s right. I’ve moved out of my house – I’m going to be staying in town, at the Athletic Club.
Baxter: You left your wife?
Sheldrake: Well, if you must know – I fired my secretary, my secretary got to my wife, and my wife fired me.

…

Baxter: Sorry, Mr. Sheldrake.
Sheldrake: What do you mean, sorry?
Baxter: You’re not going to bring anybody to my apartment.
Sheldrake: I’m not just bringing anybody; I’m bringing Miss Kubelik.
Baxter: Especially not Miss Kubelik.
Sheldrake: How’s that again?
Baxter [firmly]: No key.
Sheldrake: Baxter, I picked you for my team because I thought you were a very bright young man. Do you realize what you’re doing? Not to me, but to yourself? Normally, it takes years to work your way up to the twenty-seventh floor. But it only takes thirty seconds to be out on the street again. You dig?
Baxter: I dig.
Sheldrake: So what’s it going to be?
[Baxter slowly reaches into his pocket for a key and drops it on Sheldrake’s desk]
Sheldrake: Now you’re being bright.
Baxter: Thank you, sir.
[Baxter goes back into his office, looks around, then reaches into his closet for his coat and hat. Sheldrake comes in moments later]
Sheldrake: Say, Baxter, you gave me the wrong key.
Baxter: No, I didn’t.
Sheldrake: But this is the key to the executive washroom.
Baxter: That’s right, Mr. Sheldrake. I won’t be needing it because I’m all washed up around here.
Sheldrake: What’s gotten into you, Baxter?
Baxter: Just following doctor’s orders. I’ve decided to become a “mensch”. You know what that means? A human being.
Sheldrake: Now, hold on, Baxter…
Baxter: Save it. The old payola won’t work anymore. Goodbye, Mr. Sheldrake.

…

Sheldrake: We’re driving to Atlantic City. I know it’s a drag – but you can’t find a hotel room in town – not on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t plan it this way, Fran – actually, it’s all Baxter’s fault. Fran: Baxter?
Sheldrake: He wouldn’t give me the key to the apartment.
Fran: He wouldn’t.
Sheldrake: Just walked out on me – quit – threw that big fat job right in my face.
Fran: (with a faint smile): The nerve.
Sheldrake: That little punk – after all I did for him! He said I couldn’t bring anybody to his apartment – especially not Miss Kubelik. What’s he got against you, anyway?
Fran (with a faraway look in her eye): I don’t know. I guess that’s the way it crumbles – cookie-wise.

…

Sheldrake: Fran? Where are you Fran?

…

Baxter: What about Mr. Sheldrake?
Fran: I’m going to send him a fruitcake every Christmas.
[she holds out the deck of cards for him]
Fran: Cut.
Baxter: I love you, Miss Kubelik.
Fran: Queen.
Baxter: Did you hear what I said, Miss Kubelik? I absolutely adore you.
Fran (smiling): Shut up and deal![/b]

You have a son and you want what is best for him. Only being around you is not exactly what is best for anyone. But what you are [a junkie, say] is nothing compared to what the rest of the family is. For example, you have relatives who are basically hardcore criminals. Gangsters. Brutal thugs at times.

But then being a forlorn and floundering junkie you OD. A self-inflicted overdose that takes you as far away as it is possible to be from all the shit there is to endure if you stick around. But that leaves your son to fend for himself. And that means he makes contact with “the family”. And that means he makes contact with the criminal underworld…with dope…with rogue cops. And that means, well, you can imagine what that means. Although, come on, most of us can’t imagine it at all.

As Josh puts it, after my mum died, this was just the world I got thrown into.

Thrown into. Sound familiar?

Three brothers. One wants to continue robbing banks. One has branched off into dope. One is now making a killing buying and selling stocks. That’s the world Josh is now thrown into. Then there’s the part played by Smurf. Their mother.

And the fucking cops. Totally out of control. For one thing, they go around killing whoever they want. You know, the bad apples. They plant evidence, they plant guns. They stage events so as to make it appear that they had no choice. Then they all band together: it’s your word against theirs.

And it’s always the same for the truly innocent. Or the nearly almost truly innocent. How they can get squashed like bugs just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fucking fortuity of it all.

Look for one “crazy fucking world”.

IMDb

[b]The film is loosely based on the Melbourne crime scene in the 1980s, and the Pettingills crime family. Also, the random revenge murder of two patrolmen recreates the 1988 Walsh Street police shootings.

In an interview on the radio program “Fresh Air,” Jacki Weaver explained that her interpretation of her character included the unspoken fact that all of Janine’s children had been fathered by different men, most likely criminals themselves.

Writer/director David Michôd said he often relented to Ben Mendelsohn’s request for additional takes of his scenes because his respect for the actor’s ‘wild, unpredictable’ contributions. In fact, the very first scene featuring Mendolsohn’s ‘Pope’ character took about 15 takes.[/b]

at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Kingdom_(film
trailer: youtu.be/YNszOl14AWg

ANIMAL KINGDOM [2010]
Written and directed by David Michôd

[b]Josh [on phone]: Grandma, It’s J
Grandma Smurf: Who?
Josh: Josh.
Grandma Smurf: Oh, Josh. How are you darling?
Josh: Yeah, good. Mom’s gone and OD’d and she’s died, so…

…

Josh [voiceover]: Mum kept me away from her family because she was scared. I didn’t realise it at the time, but they were all scared - even if they didn’t show it. I think even Barry Brown was scared - even though he never showed it. Everyone felt safe around Baz. He’d punch your head off if ya got in the way - if he was in the middle of an armed robbin’, you got between him and the door, he’d put you on the ground and not think twice about it. But he was good to me, and to everyone else. Darren was only a couple of years older than me. When we were little kids, he was like, my best friend. We used to throw rocks at cars ‘n’ that. He had a way better BMX than me - my bike was shit. My Uncle Craig moved really fast, like… he was tryin’a stay in front of somethin’. And Grandma Smurf - she just seemed to wanna be wherever the boys were. And she just wanted to be around whatever the boys were doing. But they were all scared, even if they didn’t show it, even if they didn’t know it exactly. Even if they were having to do what crooks do all the time which is, block out the thing they must know. They must know it - which is that crooks always come undone - always, one way or another. In Melbourne at this time - this is a while ago now - the armed robbery squad was out of control. They were shooting guys willy-nilly and gettin’ away with it, and they’d been after Baz and my family for months. But the guy they really wanted, the guy they really hated, was my other Uncle - Uncle Andrew, but everyone just called him ‘Pope’. He was hiding in a motel room somewhere ‘cause he heard he was next. Craig was sellin’ drugs, he was sellin’ lots of ‘em. He had a detective in the drug squad helpin’ him do it - a guy called ‘Randall Roach’. They’d meet in a fish shop in Footscray, ‘cause Craig loved fish. An’ I dunno - all this seemed strange to me, but not strange either, you know what I mean? Kids just are wherever they are and they just do what ever they’re doin’, you know? This is where I was, and this is what I was doin’. After my mum died, this was just the world I got thrown into.

…

Craig [after handing Josh a handgun]: Go get him.
Josh: And do what?
Craig: Let him know who’s king.

…

Baz: Did you wash your hands?
Josh: No.
Baz: You just had your hands on your cock. Your hands go anywhere near your ass or your cock, you wash 'em after. Jesus, c’mon. Bit of soap, get a lather going. Rinse. Alright that’s enough, now stick 'em under there.
[Gesturing towards hand dryer]
Josh: I’m invisible, these things never see me.
Baz: No one’s invisible, mate.

…

Baz: Mate, I don’t know what you’re thinking about your future and that but Im about done with this shit. I need some sort of change. The stock market’s working. You know that 20 grand I put in there is 60 now? See, you get a foot in that door, there’s serious money to be made, you know?
Pope: I don’t know anything about the stock market, mate.
Baz: So what? Neither did I. Doesn’t matter. You get the paper, you learn it. Our game, it’s over, mate. It’s getting too hard. It’s a fucking joke. You know, Craig’s making a fucking fortune with the drug thing. You saw the house he’s bought.
Pope: I don’t know I got that in me. It’s grubby.

…

[Baz is approached by detectives, thinking that they are after Pope]
Baz: Oh sorry guys. You just missed him.
Armed Robbery detective: That’s alright. We like you better.
Detective [shouting, referring to Barry who is unarmed]: He’s got a gun!
[the detective raises his rifle up and shoots him dead]

…

Smurf: You know why your mum and I didn’t talk for so long?
Josh: No.
Smurf: We had a fight…about…You know the card game 500? She reckoned you can play the joker whenever you want in a no-trumps hand. She was drunk. I was drunk too, but I was right. So look what happens. Years go by and then she’s gone. And I lose my only daughter…'cause you can’t play the joker whenever you want in a no-trumps hand. And I don’t get to see you for years.[/b]

One suspects it goes a lot deeper than that.

[b]Pope [to Darren]: You know, if Baz was still here right now and we’d just been to your funeral, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. 'Cause he’d have already done something about it. If you don’t want to do anything because you’re scared… Is it because you’re scared? It’s alright if you are. I just want you to tell me about it.

…

Pope [to a cop]: Turn around, you pig cunt.

…

Smurf [crying after Craig is gunned down by the cops]: I’m having trouble trying to find my positive spin. I’m usually very good at it. Usually it’s right there, and I can just have it. But I’m having trouble finding it now.

…

Detective Leckie: You know what the bush is about? It’s about massive trees that have been standing there for thousands of years… and bugs that’ll be dead before the minute’s out. It’s big trees and pissy little bugs. And everything knows its place in the scheme of things. Everything… everything sits in the order somewhere. Things survive because they’re strong, and everything reaches an understanding. But not everything survives because it’s strong. Some creatures are weak, but they survive because they’re being protected by the strong for one reason or another. You may think that, because of the circles you move in or whatever, that you’re one of the strong creatures, but you’re not, you’re one of the weak ones. That’s nothing against you, you’re just - you’re just weak because you’re young. But you’ve survived because you’ve been protected by the strong. But they’re not strong anymore, and they’re certainly not able to protect you. We’re here because we know who you are and we know what you’ve done. Now, I know you feel like you’re in a tough situation. But you have an out. There’s nothing your uncles can do to squirm out of this one; Craig’s learned that the hard way. But you’re not like them. We can see that, and you know that. Now I know that they’re saying to you that talking to me is betraying the family, but they’ve betrayed you. The fact that you’re talking to me, the fact that you’ve been left to deal with us…is all the proof that you need. And you’re in danger. Don’t be confused about that. I think you know. And I think you know that I can help you. But I can’t keep offering. You’ve gotta decide. You’ve gotta work out where you fit.
Josh: I don’t know why you’re telling me all of this.
Detective Leckie: Yes, you do.

…

Smurf [to Ezra]: I’ve been around a long time, sweetie. J’s turned and he’s not coming back. Even if the boys get off, I won’t be seeing J again. And I don’t want Darren to rot in that jail. If my boys go down, that’s it. I got no-one left.

…

Detective Roache: Look I know you got a problem Janine, but I don’t see how this mess your boys are in has got anything to do with me. So if you’ve called me in here to see if there are some strings I can pull in your way of course. Is that what this is about?
Smurf: Hey Randall, before you go on, this boy who’s currently being looked after, tell me if you agree with this, this boy who’s being looked after, he knows who you are. And you know how these things go they’re gonna ask him all sorts of questions about everything he’s ever seen or done. Everyone he’s ever met, the whole schmozzle. And you’ve done some bad things sweetie, haven’t you? I want this part to be clear this is not about you doing me a favor or, me blackmailing you or anything like that. It’s just a bad situation for everyone. Ezra’s got the address, it shouldn’t be too hard to set up a raid on the house. There’d be reasonable grounds what with, all the strange activity, the comings and goings, day and night, one of the neighbors might’ve seen a gun or something. This is you’re area of expertise I’m not trying to tell you how to suck eggs. What do you think?
Detective Roache: I really don’t, see how anything can be done Janine.
Smurf: Randall, I feel sick about this. I’m not happy at all, not one little bit. But we do what we have to do, we do what we must. Just because we don’t wanna do something doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

…

Detective Leckie: If you’re as smart as I think you are, you’d know to walk right on by me Like we’ve never seen each other before in our lives, and you’d know to feel lucky. You’ll come unstuck. I’ve got a feeling about it. I think you do too. I reckon you probably carry that feeling around with you every second of the day.
Smurf: But I don’t, Nathan.

…

Pope [his last words, just before Josh shoots him in the head]: It’s a crazy fucking world.[/b]